143 The Myth Of Identity: On Resetting Who You "Are"

I got a few messages after the Slave to King episode a couple weeks ago with my friend Patrick from Germany.

A couple of guys dealing with similar things asked the question,

How did he transform so quickly?

If you didn't catch that episode,

Essentially less than a year ago,

Patrick was in a very dark place,

Battling various demons,

Various humiliations.

His love life reflected a lot of the turmoil that was going on inside of him.

And then as he spoke about on the podcast,

As of recent,

Things are very different.

In fact,

They're beyond what he thought was possible.

A lot of it's showing in his abundant dating life,

But it's really a reflection of how he's transformed as a person.

What we didn't really go into,

We kind of only brushed over in that episode,

Was that just before what we can say is his internal victory in terms of his hero's journey that he's experiencing now,

Just before that,

He hit a stage that we might call the final battle.

And this was just a couple months ago.

It was like in early December.

He and I were speaking.

He had gone through six months or so of like deep work on himself,

Lots of recognition,

New awareness,

Changing of behaviors.

But he had this final,

It's almost like this final stand of his demons,

Like these self-sabotaging temptations.

It showed up in a question or a thing that he said when we were speaking,

Which was,

I don't know who I am.

Right?

He had been working on himself to change who he was,

Who he thought he was,

But then he didn't know who he was.

And there's a temptation to go back to the familiar.

He was even afraid to maybe even start dating because it might,

You know,

He kind of wanted to do another six months of celibacy kind of out of fear.

But my response to him of,

I don't know who I am,

Was,

Who said you need to know who you are or why do you need to know who you are?

And I wasn't trying to be cheeky,

Although maybe I was trying to inject a little bit of levity.

It was a real question though.

Like,

Why do you need to know who you are?

I even took it further of like,

Who's to say that you are anything?

And this is pointing to,

I think what is a semantic disturbance is very common in most people and their perceptions of identity,

Which basically comes down to the fact that you are not who you think you are.

I know that's a bold statement,

But I shall clarify who you are.

Your sense of identity is not a static thing.

Our semantic consciousness,

The part of our mind that wants to label things with the assumption that things are statics that we can map reality.

It wants to think that your identity is a static thing,

But your identity,

Who you think you are,

Is not a static thing.

It's dynamic.

It's actually a momentary expression of many different forces.

And in fact,

As Robert Anton Wilson would say,

It is plural and mutable.

Plural meaning it can be many things at once as opposed to Freud's monotheistic idea or monotheistic model of the mind.

Who you are can be many things,

Many contradictory things at the same time.

Plural.

It's also mutable.

And that moment to moment it changes,

Even though our semantic consciousness often hopes that or assumes that it doesn't.

So in this episode,

We're going to be speaking about what I'll call the myth of identity.

The basic idea that who you are,

Your identity,

Is a fiction,

Is a myth,

Which can be scary to some people.

It can cause a freak out moment of I don't know who I am.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be or anything of that sort.

But I would suggest that this is actually a very,

Well,

Not only is it a more accurate view of identity,

It's actually a very empowering idea once you accept it.

It reminds me of a movie that meant a lot to me in my adolescence.

I watched it many times from like 15 to 19,

Which is Donnie Darko.

I don't know if I would care,

I would relate to it anymore.

But there's a scene I remember where the character that serves as the hero's mentor,

Which is the man in the bunny suit.

I think he has a bullet hole in his eye.

He's like a dark twisted version of a mentor.

Says to Donnie in the movie theater,

I can do whatever I want and so can you.

I remember that was a very empowering message.

The idea that you can reset,

Especially I guess to me as a troubled teenager,

That was a nice thing to hear.

But I would actually say this again.

It's a scary thought,

But it's a true thought and it's an empowering thought that who you are is mutable.

And if you are looking to change something about yourself,

Be it change your performance in an area of life or the thing that you're experiencing in an area of your life or something more like a total transformation,

Be it inner or outer.

I mean,

Everything relates to who you are.

Of course,

I think it's a very useful idea.

Understanding how identity can be changed.

So this episode will explore that.

We'll also cover the relationship of identity to ideology,

Other abstractions,

The idea of dissolving identity,

Recreating essentially being what you want,

Doing what you wilt as in last episode,

But also speak about some hindrances to this as far as the way people think,

But also forces like shame and guilt that prevent someone from expressing what we could call the individuated self.

To use Jung's term.

This is episode 143,

Which is not doesn't mean it's the 143rd episode.

I of course didn't didn't start numbering these solo podcasts until last year.

So I think we're actually like 180,

But this is episode number 143 and not as a numerology or anything like that.

But this number 143 has some significance to me,

Has significance to me and some significance to the episode.

So I'll share what 143 means towards the end of the episode.

Personal life updates.

As of this moment of recording right now,

It's February 8th.

My baby has not been born yet,

But we think it could be any day now.

So actually,

By the time this episode comes out,

Which will be in a couple of weeks,

I might have a child already.

But if you're on my email list,

You'll get the more detailed update of that.

Right now you're listening to episode 143,

The myth of identity.

So the main idea of this episode was inspired by maybe an unlikely source,

The work of Robert J.

Lifton,

A psychiatrist active in the 1960s who literally wrote the book on brainwashing.

His book titled Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism shared some things I didn't know I've been reading it for understanding certain elements of mind control.

One thing that was interesting is that I didn't actually know where the term brainwashing had come from,

Even though I use the term quite liberally,

Especially on the podcast.

The term brainwashing,

Which of course has negative connotations in the English speaking world,

Is actually a direct translation from a Chinese term that I won't try to pronounce,

But directly translates to clean the mind.

It comes from the Chinese Communist Party's efforts of what they would call thought reform or reeducation programs.

Shortly after the Communist Party took power in China,

They would take anyone who might be a dissenter,

Not everyone,

But various people,

A lot of Westerners who happen to be living in China,

Pre-communist rule,

Missionaries,

Doctors who'd moved their other expatriates,

But also Chinese people.

They would basically be abducted or in their language arrested for crimes,

Put into what would be called a thought reform school,

Which was really a prison for brainwashing,

And put them through what they would call reeducation programs,

Which was essentially a mind control program to essentially change who they were from a person's perspective in an undesirable way.

Robert J.

Lifton in the 1960s interviewed 25 of the Westerners,

Actually many people,

But 25 of his subjects were Westerners who had gone through years of thought reform school or the communist prisons,

And then were released back to the West.

Something that was interesting is that he basically found three types of people came out of these thought reform schools.

They're the people who were apparent converts,

Like the brainwashing.

Basically their brains were washed.

Even though they're maybe from America or Europe or previously had a different identity and subscribed to different ideologies,

They came out of the Chinese prison camp almost completely a different person,

Usually with allegiance to communist China and a disdain for the West.

Obviously,

It's a surprise when someone changes or transforms,

Let's say,

Even in an undesirable way transformed so completely.

Many people fell in the confused category.

They weren't really sure of what their identity was.

They're kind of confused about what they believed because they remembered thinking one way prior to prison and then thinking another way,

And it's just confusing.

They were kind of like the identity-less people.

And then there were the people who were able to maintain their previous identity and worldview.

And essentially,

He calls them apparent resistors.

They were able to,

For the most part,

Nullify the brainwashing attempts,

Which is quite impressive given that they basically went through psychological and sometimes physical torture essentially by experts to break their character.

So it's very impressive when someone can go through a brainwashing program without getting washed.

Of course,

Everyone was affected to some degree.

This last kind of person I'm actually going to speak about more in a different episode on how to resist taming,

How to resist attempts to modify who you are.

Everyone was affected to some degree though.

They were in a situation,

A very different environment,

And of course,

To some degree,

Had a newly constructed identity.

Now,

One of the factors that Lifton identified that allowed someone essentially to abandon an old identity and take on a new one was actually it was more about who the person was prior to their imprisonment because of course,

For the most part,

All the prisoners were subjected to very similar if not the same psychological stress.

It was a jarring environment for everybody.

Many of the same techniques were used on them like a need for public confession,

Physical torture,

Different factors.

For some people,

It totally worked on them.

For other people,

It didn't work so much.

One of the things that allowed for the change or allowed someone to be susceptible to this is that they had dormant parts of their personality that maybe they had dissociated from but still existed.

One example was a French doctor who came to China maybe a decade before the communist takeover and he had a very strong identity of being an independent,

Essentially happy loner.

He didn't have any friends even from childhood because Lifton psychoanalyzed all of the subjects.

From childhood,

He had this strong belief that he didn't need people.

People didn't need him.

They didn't do anything for him.

He was polite to everybody.

He didn't really have any friends.

He wasn't emotionally close to his wife.

Part of why he moved to China was to get away from Europeans where he can instead just do his work as a doctor,

Help some people that felt good and spend the rest of his time reading and hunting and whatever he wanted.

This was a very strong self-perception he had that for most of his life served him.

But he was still a human being.

Even though he didn't identify with this aspect of himself,

There was a part to him,

You could call it a dormant archetype or a suppressed part of his personality,

That totally wanted to belong to something,

That totally cared about connection.

He hadn't experienced it consciously for a long time.

But essentially,

One of the reasons why he was susceptible to brainwashing is that even though he had this identity of,

I am a loner or I don't need people in a new environment,

In a stressful place when controlled essentially by the brainwashers,

We could call them,

They basically activated this part of himself that he wasn't even aware existed and used it against him to prove to him that he wasn't who he thought he was.

And then he actually,

While in prison,

Kind of flipped into a totally different person,

Seemingly totally different person where he was very socially dependent on other people.

It was actually his hardened identity that made him susceptible into being changed because he didn't realize or he had a part of himself that we can say wasn't integrated.

And this hardened view,

Lifton would call this a view of totalitarianism or excuse me,

A totalism view of things are either black or white.

It reminded me of when I was in a cult.

I was both affected by what we could call thought reform,

But also was a thought reformer myself.

Something I noticed about people who came in the door,

There were some people who were almost impossible to really change.

These were the people who had kind of a more fluid,

I would say a more accurate view of life where like,

They didn't put things in black and white categories.

And they weren't hard to convince to check out our programs,

Our cults.

They would willingly go into like early levels of the cult indoctrination process,

Check out an event,

Go to some classes,

Hang out with people.

But they were very hard to get the stick because they were so open-minded,

Right?

They were like,

Oh yeah,

I'll check that out with no resistance.

But yeah,

Once they didn't want to do something,

They stopped.

Then there were other people who were admittedly less pleasant to be around,

Who would sometimes dabble,

But then they were kind of openly confront the cult and like call it a cult and accuse people of manipulation and this and that.

And of course,

They were a little bit more challenging to deal with as a cult member.

But funny enough,

If they stuck around just long enough,

They actually would flip similar to this French doctor I just mentioned,

They would flip going from a very hardened anti-cult person to one of the most devoted people.

It's like they had to have a totalistic view.

And it's funny,

I'm speaking a little bit for my ego,

But sometimes when I speak about my cult experiences,

This would often happen with alcohol involved when I'd be at a bar,

Say maybe sharing thoughts with friends or acquaintances where somebody would say,

Oh,

I'm too smart to be brainwashed.

Anyone who gets brainwashed is an idiot or anybody who joins a cult is an idiot,

Something like that,

Which of course I find insulting.

And sometimes I say this,

Sometimes I don't,

It depends how many drinks I had,

But it is my view that anyone who has that kind of worldview actually is quite easy to brainwash because when I was in the brainwashing role,

When I was a cult enroller,

With such a person,

All you had to do was show them something in their worldview that was incorrect,

Right?

Because everything is black and white for them.

If you show them,

Oh,

Well,

This isn't actually completely white,

It kind of shatters their reality and then they have a freak out.

Like,

Oh,

I need a new ideology essentially,

Of course this is happening under the surface,

Not super conscious of them.

And then they're very easy to convert to a new ideology.

It's like,

Oh,

I proved your ideology wrong.

Well,

Here's a better one.

And they switch.

As opposed to someone who I would say has a more efficient nervous system,

Has a more accurate model of the world where they recognize the probabilistic nature of reality that nothing is ever for sure.

They're very hard to pin down to an ideology because they're a lot more fluid in their thinking.

And actually,

This happened in 2018 when I started appearing in articles.

I wasn't there to speak out against my cult,

But I was there to share my experience truthfully.

I got a lot of hate from both sides.

I got hate from people who I still get angry at me for saying anything positive about my cult experience because a lot of people,

Again,

From a totalistic view are like cult equals bad.

Therefore,

If you're saying anything good about a cult,

You must be bad.

Every so often,

I'll get angry messages sent through my website on that.

But I also got some angry messages,

More expected or what you would expect from cult members.

And there's actually this one guy who sent me a pretty upset message.

And it was funny because I enrolled him into one taste,

Into my cult.

And when he showed up,

He was one of these guys who was very accusatory and he made fun of the terminology and he was pointing out things that are wrong.

And like four years later,

Here he is doing the same thing,

But in the opposite direction.

It was interesting,

Right?

It's essentially,

I would say,

An inefficiency in thinking that allows you to be susceptible to other people's direction essentially.

Because the more accurate way to view one's own mind,

Let's bring this back to identity,

Is that we all have the ability to experience various perspectives.

Humans are adaptable.

We are born very plastic.

Even through adulthood,

Our minds are very plastic and there's good reason for this,

Right?

Humans,

Unlike other animals,

Our environment,

We can control to some degree.

So our environment can change a lot.

So we're kind of born with the ability to change who we are to adapt an environment,

Right?

The personality traits that really benefited your great-great-great-great grandparents might not be so useful in the 21st century.

So even though all of us might have certain tendencies that have been conditioned into us or activated into us,

Dormant in our psyches is essentially the ability or the germ of every personality trait,

Every possible personality trait.

So even if you see yourself as a social person,

There's a part of you that likes being alone.

Even if you see yourself as a chaotic person,

There's a part of you that is very orderly and appreciates that.

And you can think of any dichotomies when it comes to personality traits,

Any continuum from extroversion to introversion,

Feeling thinking,

Of course I'm mentioning Myers Briggs,

But you can think of any two opposing adjectives.

You and I and everybody have a little bit of both of those ends of the spectrum.

Now this is a truth that a lot of people either deny or not aware of,

But it's very important.

It's very important for your sanity,

For resistance to negative influences on your mind,

But also in actively trying to change yourself,

It's good to recognize.

You have the capabilities to do everything,

To experience everything and to perceive every emotion,

Even if you've been one way your entire life.

That's for both good and bad.

Your positive traits can be flipped into undesirable ones.

Your negative traits can also be flipped into the positive one.

You have the ability to experience that even if you haven't in a long time or if ever.

Now of course,

None of us are blank slates.

We are born with certain tendencies to maybe on to lean towards one end of a given continuum of traits to another.

It's based on our bodies,

Our hormonal profiles,

The receptors for different hormones in our bodies would have us react to certain events in certain ways.

Of course,

Our early environmental conditioning and even in all adult environmental conditioning can sway us to one direction or the other.

A lot of our environmental conditioning,

It's either going to align with your tendencies.

If you were born to be an aggressive person because maybe you have a lot of androgen receptors and you respond to testosterone and competition a lot and you were born into a war tribe,

You were born into the Genghis Khan's Mongols or something like that,

That would be your environment would align with those traits or probably feel really good.

You probably would excel in that society.

But of course,

Those same traits in a modern,

Western,

Peaceful society that might not be so useful,

Right?

You might be called toxic for those same exact traits.

Maybe your environment would go against what we would call your instincts.

But also,

Our personality traits and our expression of personality is also activated by immediate experience.

We've all experienced this to some degree and how during the day with your colleagues,

Your work colleagues,

You might behave one way.

When you go home to your family,

You might behave a slightly different way,

Right?

Depending on what friends you're around or the situation,

Parts of your personality will activate one way or the other.

This is one of the reasons why I think I've always been a little annoyed by anyone who takes personality tests really seriously,

Like any kind of personality test,

Be it from the astrological to the more seemingly grounded ones like the Myers-Briggs test,

Like when people are like,

Oh,

I'm an INFJ,

So I behave this way.

It's like,

Come on.

And it's actually funny.

Come on because we are all capable of everything depending on context or conditioning and many factors,

Right?

But actually,

Something I've noticed about a lot of people I know who are very into personality typing and have a very static view of personality,

Very often these people will have some special exception for themselves,

Right?

Like someone who's really into Myers-Briggs will be like,

Oh,

Yeah,

You're an introvert.

That person's an extrovert.

But me,

I'm actually an introvert extrovert.

I've heard that from a lot of people who are into Myers-Briggs,

For instance.

Like,

Oh,

Yeah,

I'm basically because they're actually recognizing a truth that because they observe themselves 100% of the time,

Whereas maybe they only observe the introverted guy at work and they only observe the extroverted girl at parties and they're like,

Oh,

That person is that way,

That person is that way.

But me,

They see themselves both at work and at parties.

So they're like,

Oh,

Yeah,

Well,

I'm both,

Right?

And then they create a special category for themselves.

But actually,

The truth is that everybody is both,

Right?

Everybody's capable of things based on environment and various factors.

So actually,

The truth is that they're not part of a special category of extrovert introverts.

They're part of the biggest category of every 100% of people.

It's not like the special 8% that's both.

It's like 100% of people are both to some degree.

And I've also seen this in like people who are into the doshas,

Which is an Ayurvedic concept of three,

They're called constitutions based on your body,

Tendencies,

But also affects emotions.

I've heard people who are really into the doshas,

Like,

Oh,

You're this doshas and that person's that doshas.

Like,

Oh,

Well,

I'm tri-doshas.

I'm all three.

It's like,

Come on,

No,

No,

You have tendencies of all three as all of us do.

This finite view of personality typing is actually a semantic disturbance.

It's an incorrect way of modeling reality.

So with all this view of identity being mutable and plural,

One might question,

Why do we have identities anyway?

And it reminds me of a time when I was in college,

Early in college.

I entered college in the way many people do of like,

Okay,

Brand new environments.

Let me recreate myself.

I,

For the most part,

Didn't like who I was in high school.

I had this who I thought I was.

My identity was that of like a shy kind of meek person.

So,

Who didn't like to socialize that much and didn't have a lot of confidence.

So in college I did everything I could to basically start afresh and be the opposite in a sense.

But the truth was I still had the tendency to be by myself.

It was a thing that caused me a lot of stress in high school and I tried to try to be more of a party person.

But remember this one moment I was connecting with a woman,

A girl my age,

18,

Who was in like the social group that was forming,

That was kind of part of.

And she came to me once in the dorms and kind of like jabbing at me,

Kind of teasing at me that like I never participated or I rarely participate in group things and I wasn't so friendly.

And in a moment that was a new thing for me because I kind of on some level refused to continue feeling shame about just not having social tendencies.

I just declared to her,

Yeah,

I'm antisocial.

I said it like as if I was declaring something.

And I remember this is like a moment in my confidence building that has been significant,

Which is why I'm sharing it obviously.

She had this reaction of like kind of like being startled or like surprised,

Not startled,

But like kind of surprised at my reaction because I think she had probably never heard of someone owning the idea of being antisocial.

And it was like,

Oh,

And she actually burst into a smile afterwards like,

Oh yeah,

You are antisocial.

And it was like a moment for me that's been significant because it was like I was owning a tendency that I had that I had previously shamed,

But now I was owning it and it kind of made it better.

It became part of my identity and I kind of recreated who I saw myself as and I just saw myself as antisocial and I kind of owned it and it felt good for a while.

But of course,

You know,

That was another way of statically viewing myself.

And later in my college life,

It kind of kind of bit me that I had labeled myself as antisocial,

Even though for that moment or maybe my freshman year,

It felt empowering because it highlights what identity does do for us.

It creates a false sense of control and a clarity of relation to other people.

All right.

The feeling of control is in the same way,

You know,

Our semantic mind wants to label everything to get a sense of like,

Okay,

If I can label everything,

I can map reality and I can predict the future to a degree and I'm safe,

Right?

It comes down to a security impulse,

Which also is part of the clarity of relations.

Like if you know exactly how you relate to everybody,

It also gives a more finite way or a more static way to be like,

Okay,

This is the way things are.

I know how to proceed.

Identity is to the individual what a myth is to society.

As we've spoken about in different episodes on this podcast myth,

Harari's work on sapiens.

I mean,

He speaks about this in more detail.

Myths allowed large groups of people to connect beyond the ability of their limbic brain,

Right?

So like up until the Neolithic era,

Groups of people could only collect up to a maximum of 150 because that's the limit of the human social brain,

The limbic brain.

But with a mythology,

With an ideology,

With a group identity,

Large groups of people,

City states,

Nation states,

World religions,

They can identify with this abstraction,

With a myth and that could allow them to connect beyond their ability,

Beyond the ability of their social brain.

That's of course the function of a myth.

A myth is the abstraction that binds a society of individuals.

An identity is the individual version of that.

An identity is to the individual what myth is to society.

An identity is what allows an individual to fit the group myth or the group identity.

Personal identity is how you fit into the group identity.

So if you have the identity of being a healer or a father or a follower or a submissive person or a firefighter or the person everyone goes to when they have a hard time or whatever the identity is,

Whatever the traits or qualification,

The qualities that you see yourself as and other people see you as,

Right?

Like an identity is only functional on a social level if the way you see yourself in some way lines up with the way other people see you.

Now of course in reality,

That isn't always the case,

But that is the attempt and that is the hope,

Right?

It's always a jarring experience when a person comes to the realization that the way their friends see them is different than the way they see themselves.

It's always what we would call an identity crisis,

Right?

It feels very upsetting.

Whereas positively or negatively to recognize that the way that you see yourself matches the way other people see you,

It gives a feeling of comfort even if it's a negative thing,

Right?

Even if like,

You know,

You feel down on yourself about a certain thing and other people see it,

You know,

I don't know what,

Whatever the thing is like you're,

You're bad at something or you're incompetent,

Something even though it doesn't feel good to have to be attached to a negative trait,

It helps you feel sane,

Right?

Your,

Your perceptions of yourself are confirmed by people outside of you.

This is one of the reasons why it's kind of hard to change,

Especially,

And I've said this in a few episodes,

It's hard to change who you are when you continually spend time with people who see you a certain way,

Right?

The example I always give is like the young guy who's a little bit different than let's say the small town he's growing up in.

It's very hard to change because everybody around him is confirming this other identity.

There's a subconscious need to conform to this identity to conform to these expectations,

Even if there's a conscious desire to change,

Which is why your environment matters so much.

Because we all have a,

An instinct we can say or a preconscious tendency to attempt to be congruent,

Even though they're all abstractions,

Even though the reality of identity is that is plural immutable.

There's always an attempt of our semantic consciousness to have congruence to not have dissonance.

An example that I has come recurred in my younger life was even though from a fairly young age until,

Until adulthood,

One of the biggest things that I was always trying to change or it took a lot of my energy and focus was trying to change how shy I was.

I was trying so hard to be more not shy for other people to see me that way,

Et cetera.

But something that I noticed at various times was that in moments where I felt socially confident because obviously being a plural person is everyone else.

It's not like I was always shy.

I had moments where I felt really confident or I don't know what the cause was,

But I had these moments.

There was often a thing,

I recognize this happened a bunch of times in college where for some reason I was just really confident around people that I was previously shy around.

But once I realized that,

There's a part of me that wanted to go back to being shy because it felt weird.

It felt like there's like a fear,

A semi-conscious fear that people are going to see me being incongruent or being not consistent.

That felt almost worse than being seen as shy.

In high school,

A symbolic moment for me of me really stepping in the direction of transformation came from an external thing.

It's like a thing that means a lot to high school kids,

But not so much to adults,

Which is getting a tattoo.

I was one of the first of my friends to get a tattoo,

One of the first in my high school to get a tattoo.

I got this big dragon on my chest.

I remember the first thought I had while the needle was going in me was not like,

Oh,

Is this going to look cool or whatever.

It was actually the thought that I don't think my personality matches someone who has a tattoo and that's going to be weird.

That was actually my greatest fear.

In the hour or something that I was getting this tattoo,

I kept thinking about that like,

Man,

This really doesn't fit my personality.

I was feeling like this,

We could call it cognitive dissonance or stress inside of myself.

Of course,

That's a very silly thing and of course,

It's from a very adolescent mindset,

But this was like a real stress.

This was essentially the part of myself that was attempting to be congruent with a part of myself that I didn't even like.

This instinct for congruence is essentially to preserve relations.

In the generic self-help role,

You often hear of this idea of crabs in a bucket.

Very often,

This is like something a motivational type self-help person will talk about,

Which is,

Oh yeah,

Your friends,

Whenever you change,

People are always trying to bring you down or there's that kind of thing.

This can be observed in social media and a lot of people when they are trying to change who they are,

Will recognize some sort of challenge from their environment,

Direct or indirect challenges from their friends or family to bring them.

It's framed always,

The crabs in a bucket analogy is that crabs always want to pull each other down,

Which I think is actually not the best way to look at it.

I think it's an overly negative way of looking at it.

I don't think it's necessarily that your friends want to keep you down.

It's more that your friends,

Everyone who knows you,

Has learned to relate to you with a certain identity.

You are part of their reality.

They have a social reality of different people.

They know you're one of them and they've learned to relate to you in a certain way.

Because they have this perception of you and your identity,

Your seemingly static identity,

They don't have to spend that much energy thinking about it,

Which is the reason why we abstract anything,

The reason why we have certain values and assumptions about the world.

It's like once we have that assumption,

We no longer have to think about it,

Assuming it's a useful thing.

If they have an assumption of you that you're a very dependable friend,

Well,

That's a very … Then they have all this evidence to know that you always show up on time.

The time that you don't show up can cause them extra stress than if it was with a person who never shows up on time because now they have to think a little bit more when dealing with you,

With a part of reality.

You're actually costing them calories.

They have to expend more energy in seeing how to relate to you.

Of course,

No one likes to do that.

No one likes to expend more calories than necessary.

When someone is changing,

They want to resist it or make sure it's not a real change or maybe challenge you to go back to the way that they expect you to be,

Not because they're evil,

Not because they want to keep you in the bucket necessarily,

But because it's actually easier on their consciousness.

It actually saves them calories to not have to change or recreate their vision of you as you recreate yourself.

If they know you as being a follower and suddenly you show up as a leader,

Well,

It's kind of … Or any behavior,

Any change in behavior.

They know you as being super nice and all of a sudden you're more aggressive.

It really goes down to a very primitive neural program,

Which is we want to know what the routines are.

The dog brain inside of us wants to have these routines,

So we don't have to continue considering things.

When something unexpected happens,

It kind of causes this freak out on the dog brain level.

It's like if the sun were to rise from the west,

Well,

All of our assumptions about how the day is going to go is going to be different.

It's the same thing with personalities.

This is my only real criticism about the whole identity politics world.

It's not about how people want to be called or how people want to see themselves personally.

I feel everybody should do whatever they want and express themselves however they want.

In fact,

In line with this episode is that identity is mutable and therefore do whatever you want as long as it doesn't affect other people's ability to do what they want.

My issue with identity politics though,

The main thing is that on a semantic level,

On a perception of how identity is,

It's actually inaccurate.

It's a semantic disturbance.

A lot of identity politics is based on the assumption that identity is this static thing that now must be recognized by the whole world to prove that it's real.

Whereas if all of these people really pushing identity politics agendas recognize the truth,

Which is identities are abstractions.

They're abstractions that have use.

Various,

If you let's say look at gender roles,

Even the traditional gender roles which of course don't match everyone and how they want to express themselves had a function at one point.

There's a reason why a lot of these tendencies or assumptions in society developed,

Which is not to say that they're true.

In some cases,

They're arbitrary,

But there were reasons.

But regardless,

They're abstractions.

They are essentially maps to aid to some function in society.

To treat them as anything other than that is inaccurate and causes a lot of stress.

A lot of the people I see who get so worked up about identity stuff,

Which is not to say that their feelings aren't valid or that I understand it can be challenging to not,

I mean,

Of course,

To not know who you are and really care about it.

But the thing is if people recognized the actual truth about identity,

I don't think anybody would take it that seriously.

Because the truest truth is that,

Again,

We have the dormant aspect of every personality trait.

And people can,

If you observe a person in his or her totality for long enough,

You can observe evidence of basically every adjective.

I mean,

At least if you put them in the right environment.

People don't want to see things that way.

They want to see themselves as static or they want to see people as static.

And this inaccuracy,

This semantic disturbance causes a lot of stress because it's not in line with reality.

So you might be thinking,

Okay,

That's great,

Ruwan.

I'll remember all this identity stuff in dealing with other people.

But what about myself?

Right?

It's nice that your friend Patrick could transform so quickly,

But I still have tendencies about myself that I want to change.

What do I do about that?

For the rest of this episode,

I'm going to share certain things I've suggested to various clients,

Certain ideas to play with to take this beyond just an idea.

And we can say reset yourself or recondition yourself or at least allow yourself in practice to not be stuck on an old identity.

There's a book I recommended to a few people.

It's a fiction book that explores this idea in kind of a whimsical slash dark slash kind of aggressive way.

It's a book that was famous in the 70s called The Dice Man.

Not to be confused with Andrew Dice Clay,

Although I haven't been able to find this online.

I do think the comedian who became Andrew Dice Clay,

Andrew Silverstein,

Silverman,

I'm guessing he read this book and maybe it was inspired because the gist of the book is that it's a psychiatrist who kind of comes to the realizations that we're talking about here that,

You know,

Freud's monotheistic inspired view of the mind being singular is incorrect and it's a fictional book,

Of course.

He develops a practice called dicing where he lists a bunch of desires he has,

Even conflicting ones,

And rolls the dice and then,

You know,

He assigns a number to each one.

He rolls his dice and then whatever number comes up,

He'll do that thing.

And the philosophy he espouses is similar to the one we're talking about in this episode,

Which is he recognizes that every human being is full of contradictory impulses where we have all of these different desires,

These different instincts,

A lot of which go against each other.

But in order to conform to society,

We pick one spot on the continuum of personality traits.

We pick one set of desires and impulses and behaviors and dissociate from the rest.

And in the character's philosophy,

He says,

Like,

This is actually crazy.

You know,

We're trying to make ourselves one thing to fit into an insane society,

But really the same thing is to explore every impulse.

And,

You know,

The book is written in the 70s by a man and he,

You know,

A lot of the impulses he explores are taboo sexual ones,

Like one of the first,

Actually the very first scene.

He rolls the dice and says,

Oh,

If this is snake eyes,

I'm going to go next door and rape my neighbor.

And it comes up snake eyes and that's what kind of what sets off the book.

I'm sure you could not,

A book of that sort written now definitely would not become popular.

It probably would be probably deemed toxic,

But this is,

You know,

This is what the story was.

And actually I had never even finished the book because I felt like some of the things the guy did were so over the top that it just,

You know,

It kind of took away from the philosophical message.

It was interesting that back in the 70s,

I mean in the,

In the story,

His whole philosophy of dicing and his practice of dicing of like listing a bunch of things,

Some of which you wouldn't normally give yourself permission to do.

And if it comes up,

You just do it.

You basically make your life random and make your personality random.

In the book,

He ends up kind of developing a cult around us where like all of these people,

Celebrities,

Or people like start practicing dicing.

And in real life,

In the 70s,

There was a group of people that actually ended up doing this like fans of the book and the author.

I'm forgetting his name off the top of my head,

But oh,

Luke,

I think it was Luke Reinhardt,

But I don't think that was his real name.

Regardless,

I read something where the author said that he would often have to respond to fan mail by telling people,

Hey guys,

It was just a book.

You shouldn't literally be doing dicing,

At least not to that extreme in real life.

But that's neither here nor there.

I've recommended this book to a few different people who I felt were a little bit hung up on this idea of needing to know who themselves were.

And similar to Patrick,

As I mentioned in the beginning of this episode,

I've heard of a few different guys,

A few different people,

Women also,

Who while I kind of on the brink of them really,

We can say transforming or individuating or really becoming themselves,

Shedding a set of behaviors they didn't like so much.

There's an attachment to it.

And they question or they come up with this stressful thought of I don't know who I am with,

Which has the presupposition of one needs to know who they are.

And I share this book and I share this idea because maybe you don't.

Maybe you can actually live in a totally random way.

I think,

You know,

Movies that I found compelling,

Like I mentioned,

Johnny Darko would also Fight Club,

Which I've talked about quite a bit on this podcast.

You know,

There are scenes where the hero,

Not the hero,

But the guide,

Let's say Tyler Durden in Fight Club,

You know,

There's that scene where he abducts the Korean kid who's working in a mini-mart and puts a gun to his head and says,

How come you're not in med school or something like that?

Right.

Because he somehow found out that that kid dropped out of med school because it was too hard.

He's like,

He basically like threatens death upon a person for the kid to do the thing that he actually wanted to do,

But was scared to do.

Right.

It's kind of some of us,

I'm sure,

Would wish that some benevolent,

Dark split personality version of us would put a gun to our head and make us do the things that we want to do,

Because it also highlights the thing that is true for many people,

Which is that with every desire,

In the same way that we live on both sides of every continuum to some degree,

Every desire tends to come with an equal amount of resistance.

This is something Steven Pressfield speaks about in his creativity work.

This is something that is also spoken about in esoteric circles.

I think I spoke about this in the Gnosis episode on how one of the ideas behind really clearing your mind and adopting an attitude of constant laughter is to prevent the natural internal resistance to the things you want arising.

The basic principle is that to the degree that you want something is the resistance,

Right?

Someone who doesn't really care about expressing themselves,

Probably doesn't have that hard of a time doing it.

Where someone who deems it as super important and identifies it as part of their purpose will have a ton of resistance.

It brings the idea of the yin-yang symbol,

Which is used in many ways and may perhaps overuse,

But one of the meanings of it is that in everything is its opposite,

Right?

Within the white half is the black dot and the black half is the white dot.

The idea behind dicing,

Even though I wouldn't say someone literally do this,

Although I have recommended it to some clients where they have a lot of conflicting desires,

I'll say,

Okay,

List them all out,

One to six.

Make one the most practical thing that you feel you should do.

Make six the most taboo thing that you don't even want to admit yourself that you want,

But you do.

Roll the dice and do one of those things.

Assuming none of them will cause harm in your life or life of others,

Why not try it?

Really,

What the thing is,

Is giving yourself an opportunity to express every instinct,

Which doesn't mean literally doing everything you want,

But a lot of the things that cause a person internal trouble is essentially shame,

Is this feeling that there's something about yourself that is unacceptable and you try to not accept this part of yourself,

But it is a part of yourself which causes this tension of shame.

I mean,

One of the functions of shame is that it is a way to basically cut off parts of a person's self that don't align with the group identity or the society,

The myth of society,

So that you basically carve a person into a shape,

Into an identity that actually does fit.

Whereas you can't really do these things,

Which is why shame feels so bad.

I guess not actually that effective.

You can shame someone into not expressing their sexual desire,

But it's still there and it's going to come out in some weird way,

Of course,

Because even though maybe you don't want to literally try this dicing practice,

There is certainly something useful in playing out every emotion.

The thing about emotions,

The thing about following your feelings and listening to your body comes from the basic wisdom that a lot of what we think,

A lot of our higher order perceptions from our semantic consciousness,

We can say,

Have semantic disturbances,

Have inaccuracies.

They have incorrect – the modeling of the world is not the same thing as the territory of the world.

The map is not the territory.

So if you look at our emotions,

Which come from a more primitive part of our brain that can't even process all of that symbology,

We come a little bit closer to actual truth,

Some level of truth.

And emotions,

Every emotion has a function.

There's something that relates to survival.

I've spoken about this in a few episodes.

I've referenced Gabor Maté's great talk on the function of anger is to take space.

Anger is a very useful emotion.

It maybe shouldn't always be expressed in the way that the initial impulse is,

But to suppress it almost always has a negative effect on one's health,

Mental health but also physical health.

Pain is also a useful thing,

Right?

On a sensational level,

Pain tells your body not to do things that would be damaging to it,

Right?

It tells your hand not to be in a fire because it's going to damage it.

So you pull yourself away or whatever to avoid certain things that are not good for it.

But emotional pain is the same thing.

This is actually,

You know,

When those guys,

The listeners of the podcast asked me,

What specifically was it about Patrick that allowed him to change very quickly?

My first answer has been he was 100% willing to fully feel his pain.

Like,

You know,

In our first many times that he and I spoke,

You know,

He kind of,

You know,

He hit on something so hard that he couldn't help bursting into tears or maybe not bursting but like crying,

Which is not a common thing for an inherently masculine person and not an easy thing.

But he confronted it.

He took it head on.

He didn't shy away from it.

So the process that takes some people years and years and years to go through because they don't want to confront that pain,

He went,

He hit it head on and that pain allowed,

He allowed his pain to serve the function that pain is supposed to serve,

Which is to get yourself to change the behavior in the same way that physical pain gets you to keep that your hand out of the fire.

That emotional pain forces you to change something.

Every time I saw him cry,

I said,

Good.

That's all I said.

I gave him some space,

But I said good,

Right?

Because he was confronting this thing that would force him to change as opposed to trying to medicate the pain by,

You know,

Avoiding it,

Watching TV,

Indulging in substances or anything for,

For a superficial pleasure.

He confronted the pain.

He allowed himself to feel it.

So he had no choice.

Like his subconscious was like,

Okay,

Great.

Let's,

Let's do something different with ourself.

And even the emotion of shame,

Which generally speak of in a negative context,

Even shame has a function.

Shame is often interpreted in a way that's not useful.

It's interpreted maybe through the,

Uh,

The lens of society that is a reason to change your behavior to conform with society.

But I would actually reinterpret shame and I hope anyone who feels a lot of shame or guilt for things that don't aren't really useful,

Which is in many cases you will shame feel shame for things that isn't actually useful.

I would like to give a different way of interpreting shame,

Which is the function of shame to you as an individual.

It's a signal that something in you is separate,

Right?

There's something that could be integrated that is,

Is not,

It's a sign that it's time to sew on a piece of your shadow if you will.

Because if we accept the truth of personality,

Of identity,

That in everything is his opposite,

That we have the ability to basically we have the germ for every personality trait,

Every emotion,

Every behavior,

And you just accept that you should be able to accept when you do something that maybe goes against who you thought you were.

One example for myself that caused me a lot of shame and I spoke about this in the,

In the episode on how to release regret was that,

And then,

You know,

That was only a couple of years ago or it's like two years ago.

I basically went into straight like nice guy mode in a relationship that didn't even want to be in.

And I,

I felt so much shame about it for like a long time afterwards for more than a year afterwards because I had an identity,

You know,

Here I am on this topic helping people with nice guy syndrome,

Talking about the,

You know,

How to get out of a beta mindset.

And there I was in the middle of that identity.

Basically that situation,

That relationship activated a part of my personality,

Which maybe never will completely be gone.

And actually part of one of the reasons why I think I was vulnerable to switching back into a behavior set that I didn't want was that I tried to dissociate from it rather than recognizing,

Yeah,

You know,

That it means a tendency that exists in all of us.

It's a tendency that I expressed predominantly for years of my life.

And even though I've switched into a very different behavior set,

It's still there,

Right?

The,

The,

The,

The denial that I was there left me vulnerable to have it being activated in a new situation,

Which is that relationship.

And without trying to,

Without trying to blame that person.

Yeah,

I mean there,

Where there was something that activated these traits that I didn't like about myself,

Mainly because I didn't recognize the truth about them.

And on top of that,

This shame compounded because I didn't want to admit to myself that I had a nice guy behavior instead of,

Instead of confronting it,

I tried to deny it,

Which only caused it to perpetuate,

Which goes back to the self-help cliche,

What you resist persists.

Whereas when I accepted the truth about it,

When I sewed back on the shadow of recognizing,

Okay,

You know,

I have these traits,

We all have traits that may seem undesirable,

Whether it's weakness or over-aggression or,

You know,

In the same way,

Like,

You know,

You have a killer in you,

You also have a little bunny in you.

You might see yourself as brave,

But there is something,

You know,

Cowardice could be activated in you.

And to the degree that you want to maintain a static view that you are only one set of traits is how much you are going to,

You would be vulnerable to perhaps being brainwashed in some on some level,

But also experiencing shame and pain over what we might call cognitive dissonance.

Whereas my hope of this episode is that it can basically,

At least it'll give you the rational framework to not feel or not be weighed down by what might seem like cognitive dissonance,

Which of course comes from an incorrect Freudian model that the mind is supposed to be one thing.

And on a practical level,

I would just one example is,

You know,

I speak to a lot of guys who want to be more alpha,

Right?

Like they don't like that they have a tendency to be lower status in certain situations.

Something,

You know,

Obviously there's various,

You know,

How to be dominant and often cool tips that are online.

But something I offer guys in that situation a lot is what if next time you're in such a group that makes you feel low status,

You go into it actively trying to be the lowest status,

Just to see,

Just to experiment just for fun.

Like what could you do to actually make yourself bottom man on the totem pole,

Right?

And the purpose of this is to recognize how fluid and mutable something like statuses,

Which really comes down to your self perception.

Because say for that example,

To repress the part of the,

You know,

The lower status part of you is to cause it to persist or is to have it come out in an unconscious way because it exists.

Whereas to be like,

Okay,

There's a part of me that could be low status in certain situations where I have that ability.

It doesn't have to be a tendency,

But I have this ability.

I can play this role.

I could play this card.

When you do that actively,

There's no reason for that part of you to try to stick around.

Whereas,

You know,

The obvious example is like the repressed Catholic with all his guilt,

Let's say about sexuality,

It ends up coming out in a weird way.

I actually just heard an interesting theory,

I think it was from Alan Watts.

Someone sent me an Alan Watts episode or a talk that I really enjoyed.

I think it was him that said,

Perhaps one reason for all the Catholic repression of sexuality was actually to make people more interested in sex.

It was just the idea that maybe somebody recognized if sex was too free,

People would get bored with it and it's needed for procreation,

So let's repress it so that people are going to want to do it more.

I mean,

I don't know if I buy that idea,

But it's a fun thought.

Reminds me of the movie American Beauty where the Kevin Spacey's neighbor who's like this retired army guy,

A retired soldier who's very against homosexuality or free expression or anything,

Ends up wanting to express or explore homosexuality with Kevin Spacey when he sees Kevin Spacey newly express himself,

Right?

He initially does the crabs in the bucket thing of challenging the changes,

But then he wants to engage with it himself.

Of course,

Spoiler alert,

His advances are rejected and he ends up getting angry and killing Kevin Spacey,

But you know,

Neither here nor there.

So playing out every emotion is an important thing.

Giving yourself an opportunity to explore all of those desires,

Right?

Just spoke about this in the Do It Thou Wilt episode.

You know,

To be willing to at least explore a desire or urge without shame is the thing that allows something to heal.

Most of my life I've tried to avoid the feeling of guilt,

Which of course made me feel guilty.

I don't know where it came from,

Maybe my Catholic grandmother,

I don't know,

But guilt is always something that has really affected me and I've done everything to avoid feeling.

And in my second ayahuasca experience,

I had this really dark trip where earlier that week I happened to watch the Vice Guide to Liberia,

Which covers the really sadistic warlords doing what we would in the West,

We would consider war crimes,

You know,

Really messed up things,

Killing children,

You know,

Obviously raping and murdering and you know,

Child sacrifice.

There's even a scene where this one of the warlords,

His name was General Butt Naked because he had the belief similar to Crazy Horse that if he didn't wear any clothes,

I mean,

Crazy Horse didn't have this belief,

But if you know he dressed in a certain way,

Which was for him wearing no clothes,

He would never die in battle.

Crazy Horse was told the prophecy that if he wore lightning bolts,

I think,

Or was it like gray marks on his body in battle,

He would never die in battle,

Which allowed him to do very brave things.

General Butt Naked,

Same thing,

But his was run out naked.

He was actually,

I think,

Caricatured in South Park.

Anyways,

In the Vice Guide to Liberia,

He speaks about,

You know,

Without any guilt,

He speaks about,

Yeah,

You know,

Something I would do,

That's not how he spoke,

But he would say that he would cut out the live heart of children and cut it up and feed them to his child soldiers because he believed that eating a beating heart made them more powerful.

And it's like,

Wow,

That's a really shocking thing that's very outside of my reality.

I happened to watch that maybe four days before an ayahuasca ceremony.

And my entire trip,

My entire journey in the ayahuasca ceremony was basically feeling guilt over everything that was going on in Liberia as if I did it myself,

Like,

And I saw these visions of the thing I just described,

But me doing it and like the raping and murdering and all of this stuff.

And for some reason,

I don't I mean,

My only interpretation is the reason why I experienced this extreme guilt was the fact that I tried to repress guilt.

So I so I allowed myself or my unconscious or the medicine,

If you will,

Forced me to confront like a really extreme level of guilt,

Like things that are way beyond anything I've actually done that I felt guilty about in my life.

I would think as a as an attempt to sew back on my shadow to recognize that,

Yeah,

Okay,

There.

And because it gives in the in the ayahuasca experience,

As really seeing it from the perspective of I had done all these things.

And I think the purpose if there is a positive purpose,

Was to recognize that these are all parts of the self,

Right?

I mean,

After that experience,

I did not feel guilty for any of the little things I felt bad about.

But to have compassion for the impulses that are in a person,

Including myself,

Including some of the people that are very hard to relate to like a like a Liberian warlord.

Because the ultimate thing is to own everything,

We could say get off on everything,

And essentially love everything about yourself both ends of the spectrum,

Which might be hard to accept if you say,

Are listening to this episode or listen to this episode,

Because there's some tendency you have or behavior that you really want to change.

And you're like,

You know,

You understand that this thing about me,

It causes me so much pain,

There's nothing,

There's nothing positive about I can't get off on it.

I can't love it or accept it.

It's,

You know,

It's it's shameful,

Or whatever the trait is,

Right.

And it's interesting,

With almost every trait that someone might dislike about themselves,

There's someone else who would look at it neutrally,

And maybe someone else who would maybe even look at it as somewhat positive,

Right?

I can look at myself of the things that I've hated about myself in the past the most were a tendency towards shyness.

There's other people have shame about being too angry.

There's other people have shame about everything,

Right?

And there's other people who are like,

Oh,

It's not that big a deal,

Right?

It's all subjective,

But really,

It's not.

It's a thing that you could love about yourself,

Because that's just a thing.

Or it's something you could get off on,

Because that's just the way it is.

And getting off on it is what allows it to pass on.

Just like the imagery from the existential kink episode of like,

You get off on the sensation,

It passes on.

If you resist the sensation,

It turns into pain.

Because this level of acceptance is what allows you freedom from the old program.

It's,

You know,

As I mentioned,

The hardest people to brainwash were the ones who,

Yeah,

They could accept it.

Okay,

You know,

Like,

We would share our cult paradigm and reality and they're like,

Yeah,

Okay,

I can see that.

I mean,

They didn't buy into it fully.

They couldn't really be hooked by it,

As opposed to the person who resisted it,

Who was ultimately vulnerable to basically changing allegiances when maybe it wasn't that good for them.

Or maybe it was,

I don't know,

Depends on a person's cult experience,

Of course.

But all of this stuff,

The loving yourself,

And we're going to close here with why I said that the number 143,

Episode 143 is significant is that to one of my role models for,

We can say masculinity or how to be a person,

A leader,

A father,

A teacher is someone named Mr.

Rogers.

If you're not American,

Maybe you haven't heard of Mr.

Rogers.

If you are American,

I'm sure you've heard of Mr.

Rogers.

He was a children's show host,

I think from the 60s all the way through the 90s for a very long time on public broadcasting.

And he had one of the shows that was a little,

I mean,

Certainly less flashy,

Right?

There were no graphics.

It was a lot of times this old man just talking to the camera in a very slow way because his whole thing,

I mean,

He embodied many traits and values that I relate to,

Like the importance of attention and enjoying moments and appreciating silence,

Which are things of course I didn't appreciate or recognize when I was like four watching the show.

But as an adult,

I've watched the documentaries on him.

I mean,

There's a Tom Hanks movie,

A fictional movie about a real experience that a journalist had with him.

I forget what the name of that is,

But you can,

I recommend it.

I really recommend the documentary on him.

There's a documentary,

I forget what it's called.

I think it's like Welcome to the Neighborhood or something like that.

It's a beautiful documentary.

And it's something that I hope to aspire to as a new parent because the way that Mr.

Rogers would speak to children is so touching because it really speaks to a person's inner child.

The part of ourselves that is beneath all of the social constructs and ideology and sense of identity.

And something that he would say to children very often that as an adult can bring you to tears,

Which is so simple,

Which is,

I like you just the way you are.

And he would say that,

He said that a few,

I mean,

He said that a lot to kids,

Right?

I like you just the way you are.

It always creates this like,

You know,

I mean,

I could get emotional thinking about it as an adult,

But even to children,

It's so meaningful because what he was,

What he was addressing in children was this early level stress of,

Oh,

No,

I'm not good enough.

Oh,

No,

Who I am is not good because of some perception maybe from their parent getting upset or,

You know,

Them recognizing they didn't conform to their kindergarten rules or something,

Or they're not,

They're not living up to something and it starts really early.

And then this compounds for a lot of,

If this incorrect idea or this,

I'll actually call it a toxic idea that you're not good enough,

Once into adulthood,

It's the cause of a lot of major issues,

Right?

Things that are like nice guy syndrome to anything that's not good,

Right?

Any,

Any,

You know,

Any behaviors that is not desirable,

That's filled with shame that causes you to not be your individuated self comes from not liking yourself,

Right?

And you know,

And this has been readopted in the pop psychology world of learning to love yourself or self love.

But you know,

We can say this more directly of just like when Mr.

Rogers says,

I like you just the way you are.

There's a calm to it.

There's a peace to it.

And there's an opportunity to integrate with yourself in a way that is more true than any identity that you can portray to either yourself or to the world.

And the reason why one 43 is significant,

I mean one it was,

It was a Mr.

Rogers weight his entire adult life under 43 pounds.

But the reason why he cared about that,

He speaks about this in the documentary,

Which is of course made after he died.

To him,

One for three men.

I love you.

One as I is one letter.

Love is four letters and you has three letters,

Which I know maybe is a cheesy way to end or is a cheesy thing for me to say,

But I don't know when Mr.

Rogers says it really means something because you know,

At least as far as we could tell,

He lived it.

So when I see,

You know,

They're very spiritual hippie,

Whatever people who make a lot of big deal when they see 11 11 on the clock or anything like that.

For me,

The one,

The number one 43 is significant in this way.

It's like a,

It's a reminder to like myself just the way I am.

And I offer that to you that,

Uh,

Well you can like you just the way you are and has nothing to do with your identity or how you think you should portray yourself.

And while you may have tendencies or behaviors that are undesirable,

Those are also plural and mutable.

And beneath all of that,

Beneath those perceptions or tendencies is a self that is real regardless of how it expresses yourself in the,

In the cool thing is when you really accept all of these ideas,

It becomes a lot easier to really be who you are and to express yourself in a way that is desirable,

Which might mean from the outside you've transformed in a significant way.

So if you are trying to transform something about yourself,

I hope this episode was useful.

If there's anyone that you know that you think it would be useful for as well and mean a lot to me and hopefully them if you shared this episode with them.

And if you're a man who wants a more direct way to work on his internal transformation and become closer to his individual weight itself,

You might want to check out my masculine archetype challenge.

It is a 21 day program with lessons and missions that are simple and easy to help you integrate.

Perhaps parts of yourself that you've dissociated from parts of those testosterone driven virtues that we,

I would compile together and call the masculine archetype.

I referenced some ideas here from the semantics episodes and please stay tuned for the next episodes.

We have some fun ones coming out on different aspects of brainwashing that can be used for positive means in your relationships,

How to resist taming and other fun stuff.

So make sure you're subscribed and have a notification for the Ruano podcast.

I'll see you in the next episode.

Goodbye.