Suggestibility: How Subconscious Scripts Control The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Life

Suggestibility- How Subconscious Scripts Control The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Life

Jeffrey Besecker: This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Biesecker. The mental snapshot in our minds sometimes lacks an accurate reflection of our inner truths. Certain truths are not always self-evident, and the picture buried in our minds is not always an accurate reflection of who and what we truly are. Therefore, often burying the truth of others as well. The stories we tell, both about ourselves and other people, becoming a little murky and buried in those mistruths. Today we explore the transformative journey of unearthing and challenging these narratives. Freeing us from the constraints that obscure our true essence and allowing us to more authentically embrace the truth that lies beneath the surface in others. Tune in to discover how a little-known psychological tactic known as suggestibility allows us to find more commonality and connection in one another. Tune in to find out how when we return to The Light Inside. We'd like to offer a shout out to our affiliate matching partner, Podmatch.com. Podmatch is the revolutionary podcasting matching system driven by AI. As an industry leader in podcast guesting and hosting, they are a go-to solution for creating meaningful podcast interactions. Podmatch.com makes finding the ideal guest or host effortless. Stop by and visit our affiliate link today at www.thelightinside.us. Our implicit memories often evoke subconscious scripts in the form of mental stories. These scripts are created by our experiences helping us make decisions and solve problems. When faced with the situation, our implicit memories can provide us with cues that help us navigate it. Yet those scripts often polarize the filters of our perspectives and trigger our inherent biases. When it comes to our stories and how we relate to one another, the influence of suggestion, although subtle, can often have a powerful impact on both our perceptions and our perspectives. As a psychological phenomenon, suggestibility refers to an individual's predisposition to accept, adopt, or internalize information, ideas, or beliefs presented by external sources, often without critical examination or questioning their validity. The influence of suggestion has a powerful impact on both our perceptions and our perspectives, shaping and guiding how we view, filter, and process incoming information. Rooted in behavioral science, cognitive psychology, and social influence research, suggestibility is a key component of various social processes, such as persuasion, conformity, and compliance, playing a significant role in shaping individual and group behavior, attitudes, and decision-making. For example, a person's susceptibility to suggestions is influenced by their level of ego development, their trust in the source of suggestion, and their level of open-mindedness. People with higher levels of conscientiousness are more likely to believe suggestions that come from sources they trust, and people with higher levels of open-mindedness are more likely to consider a suggestion even if it's contrary to their personal beliefs. Therefore, it can be concluded that ego development and open-mindedness are important aspects of how we form the frameworks that guide our perspectives, outlooks, and decision-making. Gareth Gwynne understands the perils of polarization and uses candid storytelling and self-realization techniques to uplift communities and revealing how inner change can affect societal reconciliation, directly transforming our communities, workplaces, and society as a whole. She studies how polarizing social topics trigger our internal world and how change sourced from within is the most effective and lasting change. Gareth, I'm excited to explore how our subconscious scripts shape the way we view our stories and narratives. Let's begin today by looking at the recurring theme here at The Light Inside of subconscious scripts. In a world where self-assessment is often touted as the key to personal growth, it's essential we delve into the intricacies of our personal narratives and uncover the profound impact of subconscious scripts on our stories. Could you briefly describe what a subconscious script is and how it affects our perspectives?
Gareth Gwyn: Yes, thank you so much. So yeah, the way that I view this is that our orientation into reality, each individual person has a different way that we filter reality. And that filtration system is made up of our belief systems and the belief systems that might be subconsciously embedded in trauma, which could show itself as an acute trauma, like something very specific happened where we froze up and then we imposed meaning upon what happened to ourselves, which then impacts the way we filter reality. That's one way, but then also there's these conformities of life where we start to believe things about aspects of our identity that may not be actually related to our core essence or our worth or our wholeness, but we start to actually adopt these belief systems and we do this subconsciously, so not fully even knowing that. So that's more of a passive form, which also has all this meaning that impacts the belief systems that allow us to move through life. And so when we're operating more from the trauma and subconscious belief systems, when they're merged together, it can really impact our relationships. And that can be in the micro and it can be in the macro as well. We can see those patterns come out. But when we start to feel blame, we start to feel judgment. We start to feel resistance, defensiveness. We start to other people. and make them wrong. Those are all guideposts that I think are really helpful to see what are the subconscious narratives that are running behind the scenes that are encouraging me to interpret what's happening in reality in a way that actually inhibits me from connection and inhibits me from seeing the wholeness in myself and therefore in other people.

Jeffrey Besecker: So much of that depends on how we're basing our judgments and evaluations, our discernment based on our past experiences. What role do implicit memory or past experiences play in shaping and guiding our subconscious grips?

Gareth Gwyn: So one example I can tell you, and I write about this through story a lot because I like to see how, OK, how did the gradual experience of somebody add up to then a moment or a series of moments where they are choosing choices that may seem violent or may seem extremist or absolutist? So my friend Jesse is a good example of this, where he was abused when he was younger. And he started to adopt these narratives that he wasn't worthy. And there was a self-sacrifice narrative running in behind the scenes, and that he needed to sacrifice himself in order to actually gain his worth in the world. And as he grew up, by the time he intersected with the Quran, he interpreted it in a very absolutist, self-sacrificial way, which translated into a very jihadist, violent, self-sacrifice combination of how he used that religion. And so that combination of factors of his trauma led to his interpretation and then the extension into violence. And as he began to heal, he reclaimed his connection with Islam in a new way where he found a different way to relate with himself. He found a different way to relate with the religion, and therefore he wasn't using it as a means towards violence. where the trauma was running the violence. And so that's one example in the sense that the things that happen to us when we subconsciously make meaning out of them, then they can actually begin to be what drives our behaviors. And so those behaviors can actually be what we see in the macro as violent cultural wars. And on the individual level, just adversity in relationships.

Jeffrey Besecker: So often, those narratives are shaped by emotional reaction. They're based on, there again, that outward projection toward the world. In this regard, how do our subconscious scripts shape the narratives and stories we construct about ourselves first? And how does that inform our perspective or view on the world?

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, so I think this is hitting it right in the heart of it. And I'll use myself as an example. So growing up in the United States as a woman, for example, and someone with white skin, something that's really interesting is, what is my role here in the world? And subconsciously adopting ways in which our cultural conformity has viewed women. And so not understanding that or knowing that, none of it being conscious, but realizing later that I have a lot of emotional reactivity in certain contexts. So maybe it's with men who I'm not aware that I'm giving my power away or that I'm making myself inferior in certain contexts. And so to understand, oh, okay, well, this is a conformity that I've adopted. And instead of asking a man or men or this concept of the patriarchy to change, if I can look inside and say, oh, I can take responsibility for the subtle ways I might actually be positioning myself as inferior, I can step into my wholeness, which will change the way that dynamic plays out. And so I hope this is getting to the essence of your question. We can dig back into another layer of it. But I wanted to just use a personal example to say that there's an unpacking the way that our emotional reactions are happening can be a guidepost to lead us in to see how we might not be claiming our wholeness and where we could actually step into more responsibility.

Jeffrey Besecker: I think this has been a great way to set up where we can see how we shape and form our awareness of another's perspective and then also how we start to guide our own perspectives. So often we're operating from that notion of mindset or thought being the core driver of that emotional response. Yet, as we peel back the layers of that emotional interaction, we start to learn that it's a greater somatically embodied system, not just a certain process, but system of processes and interactions. Going to the autonomic ladder is where, you know, I tend to lean with this a little bit, looking at that visual representation of the autonomic nervous system's response to internal and external stimuli, particularly our interaction with emotion. We're looking at the autonomic ladder being made up of those biological pathways known as ventral vagal or rest and digest that guide our social and self-centered responses of safety and security. The sympathetic or fight or flight where we're looking at that state of psychological mobilization when we feel danger or threat and dorsal vagal or shutdown as a state of psychological immobilization. I'm struggling with my words today. I'm going to get this in line. So as we consider these autonomic phases, how might our subconscious grips affect our emotional response, particularly during our social interactions?

Gareth Gwyn: So I think that distinction between are we operating from the intellectual or are we allowing our somatic experience to come into play? I think that's really interesting because when we have an emotional reaction, whether it's fight, flight, freeze, or appease, right, if we remain in the subconscious script and we allow the relationship between the trauma and the meaning that we've made of that narrative that's running, then we can stay in a place where we repeat those cycles and the same patterns in our relationships will just keep happening and that adversity and conflict and the same thing will be over and over happening. However, to your point, if we're able to actually see that emotional reactivity and shift into the somatic where we're rewiring our body at the cellular level to learn how to feel and grieve, And ultimately, that presents itself as turning inward and being able to find grief, to find anger, to find emotions and express those emotions in ways that are not dangerous to other people, but honoring the expression of them in ourself. We often, once we do that, we start to see those cycles change. We don't see those same patterns happen in our relationships because we've stepped out of that narrative. But to your point, it happens at the cellular level. Because the mind is the meaning, and when we realize the logical fallacies, the body's like, oh, you know, I'm here and I recognize my eternal essence, my worth, my love, I know how to love myself and therefore I don't need to impose this meaning or villainize other people. Another thing I feel like it's easy to stay within that victim-oppressor narrative where either I'm the victim and then the person that I feel triggered by, they become the villain, they become my oppressor. And so it's easy to stay in that locked in that duality when actually we begin to grieve and feel and see some of our own responsibility for what we've called in from our relationship dynamics. it gets more complex and nuanced where we realize actually these narratives can be rewritten into, oh man, gosh, this is what I feel like to feel victimized, or this is how I'm not even seeing that I'm also the oppressor. And so we get these realizations where we become imperfect humans who are just showing up and doing our best and shaped by our experiences, which allows us to then step into relationships very differently from a different place. And ultimately that comes from relating with our emotions differently, to your point.

Jeffrey Besecker: You mentioned that guilt, blame, shame cycle that so often drives so many of those narratives that also serve as that emotional control drama, as we've talked about some of our past episodes, that not only shape our interaction with each other, but shape that interaction within ourselves. We don't often consider that role of that struggle for the sense of safety, security, and control. Those experiences largely becoming a neural imprint. How does neural imprinting influence the way our brain perceives and responds to the world? In what way does this link our emotions to implicit memories?

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah. And I'm imagining by neural imprinting, you're pointing to the neural network and the way that the connectivity. So I think that that gets at the heart of how we make meaning. Right. And so when we're operating with the way that we have subconsciously imposed meaning onto something that has happened to us, In order to make sense of it, we can say, well, I was victimized, that person is my oppressor, and the neural network that holds that in place just allows that belief system to keep moving and keep operating. So therefore, the next time we encounter the same trigger or the same feeling we did in the original trauma, that other person becomes the oppressor, another person becomes the oppressor. And so we're allowed to remain in a narrative of right and wrong, of black and white. And until we actually see the logical fallacy at the neural network level, which is also simultaneously connected to the somatic cellular level, right? So the logical fallacy of the belief is, oh, wow, that's not even an accurate meaning. That's something that I made up. then that also is, you know, cause the neural network and the imprints in the brain are connected through the central nervous system all the way to the neural network that's also in the gut where we detect our fear. And so it's happening simultaneously. So it's, it's not about like, you know, that there is no intellectual side to this. In fact, sometimes looking at it intellectually, when we recognize the logical fallacy of a belief system that has been running, it then can help us translate that in to the cellular level. Sometimes it can be an invitation in as well.

Jeffrey Besecker: So, often looking at that internal control drama of guilt, shame, and blame, we can observe where we guilt, shame, and blame our brain or thinking, those belief processes. Yet, what we often cognitively discount or distort is that connection of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, that central medial neural network that connects us to that deeper gut knowing. Shifting that cycle is often essential in how we start to unravel some of those subconscious grips. We learn that the story alone does not guide the interaction, it only informs a small portion of the data or information we're using to form it.

Gareth Gwyn: Yes, I appreciate the way that you phrase it, that it only informs a small portion of the data. And once we're able to feel the whole body, like a full body sensory, multisensory data input, then we have antennas everywhere. And so that brings in a lot more data for the body to process, which we can then call intuition. And a lot of times an intuitive response doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't actually have to compute at the sensical level that the brain is so often desiring. And then we start to see, oh, well, the reason that I might have been craving sensemaking or meaning is to feel safe, is to feel in a zone of comfort, is to feel that I don't have to be in the unknown. But when we step into the body and we're having that full sensory input and operating more at the intuitive level, we make decisions that don't make sense. But they start to reveal themselves, that they guide us towards ways more embedded with the connection of the brain, heart and the gut that leads us in our relationships differently.

Jeffrey Besecker: I love that you're setting up and establishing that somatic coherence or that somatic system that's so intertwined. We're getting ready to set up here, going into the new year, a very deep dive into that with a bariatric surgeon who's dissected how all of those interactions take place. You know, so often we form those narratives themselves about, well, the brain is in control, the heart is in the center of it, you know, listening only to your gut intuition. Yet, all of those systems and processes are forming the genesis of their energetic interaction. Mapping that out through somatic coherence helps us to understand where any one portion of that system and process might step to the forefront at any given time. So, I'm excited to look at how we're teeing that up a little bit today. We've ventured off on a little path there, going back to neural imprinting. What role do you feel, Gareth? social conditioning or social impact plays on that neural imprint?

Gareth Gwyn: I think it plays a major role. I mean, I think that's one of the sources of what we see in the macro war, cultural wars. You know, I think it shows up in how culture as an aggregate of individuals becomes polarized. I think that's an expression of polarization where people are relating with their identity in the way that that neural imprint is Rooted in the conformity or the trauma and therefore when anything feels that it's going to threaten that there's a defensiveness and there's an immediate resistance and there's a there's a an inability to intake new information and new data so we remain locked in polarization and divisiveness. And so it takes actually that opening and that vulnerability and that willingness to feel, which can feel elusive, like feeling itself is something that is people we have to learn how to do that. Right. And so I do think that our cultural and the conformities and the traumas and the things that we're swimming in. It's opportunistic in a way because we can use our emotions to liberate ourselves from being trapped in these polarities. And actually, we can do that on the individual level, which then inspires people at the macro level as well. But it's really hard to do, you know, and we have to learn and rewire in order to do that. And I think that's part of how remarkable the human journey actually is.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we interact, we each filter our perceptions through our own Emotional Annotation and Representational Language, or ERL. These relational styles are the default emotional settings that we feel most comfortable in expressing on a day-to-day basis. We tend to have our own neural imprinting in our own cultural conditioning in how that language plays out in each of us. You know, we kind of have that go-to default that tends to be our common language or our common vernacular, our common point of referencing. Our annotation language is heavily influenced by our attachment style and the type of relationships, again, we've had in the past. In what ways do attachment styles and social conditioning weave into the fabric of our behavioral tapestry, our overall being, and manifest as threads in our emotional annotation and relational language? I'm going to weave a narrative with that wording today.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, so and I'm imagining that you're speaking to attachment theories, there's sort of the anxious, the avoidant and anxious avoidant combination aspect. Yes, I think it's really interesting is that individuals like by the way that we initially respond and react to a traumatizing event, or to the passive conformity type of trauma, our body either chooses to be in that avoidant, which is the disconnect, right? Complete disconnect. And so I'll just do this by myself. I don't need you. So just cutting off or the body responds in the sense of saying, Oh, I need you to feel okay. Please give me attention. My worth is based on what you think of me. And so there's that anxiousness coming out. And so I do think that many people have the expressions of both, depending on what context activates which part of them. But I do think that that attachment of anxiousness and avoidance is one expression that we can recognize to say, oh, we are in our subconscious scripts. We're in the duality of victims and villains. We're in the duality of not believing our worth. We're actually locked in the duality of the trap where we're not feeling anything. And so I think that that's another like a guidepost for us to just recognize and see if that's happening. That's an indicator that we're in that subconscious script and we can shift into curiosity and begin to find the feelings underneath what's presenting as anxiety or avoidance.

Jeffrey Besecker: In the past on the show, we've talked about how we tend to relate and define not only ourselves, but how we perceive our interactions based on those roles. We filter our perceptions of others in our emotional annotation and representation language. And there's an extended vocabulary or list of common emotions we all experience that fall into this dialogue. I'll have our team post them in the show notes. As implicit reinforcement, we often seek these emotional solutions as unconscious bids to validate our reactive or hyper-vigilant or emotional triggers. We look at things through that filter of, I'm anxious, even. We start to identify then with that anxiety. Rather than just allowing that to be an experience, rather than allowing it to be a feeling and a process, we start to take that on as a part of our identity. Likewise, as we lean into something like how we approach success or achievement, we start to sometimes over identify with overachieving or being a high achiever. As a part of that emotional language, we're starting to associate those experiences, you know, whether that be fear, guilt, shame, anxiety with that actual role.

Gareth Gwyn: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's a lot being thrown around in the Israeli Palestinian kind of holy wars right now. And, you know, I feel inspired by my friend Shadi, who in Palestine, who speaks about his experience. And these are my words of his story. But the part of that that inspired me, my interpretation of what he said, but how he was presented with a moment of in the middle of the street where there was tension and war and there was an Israeli who pulled a gun out in the intersection and he was trying to help a woman cross the street. But this Israeli felt threatened by his presence. And he said in that moment he was his body went into that reactivity. It went into that moment of trigger of saying, I should fight back. I need to defend myself. And he said he had to regulate his anger and say, wait a second. I recognize that this emotion, if it consumes me and I don't regulate it or I don't feel it in a healthy way, it will translate into me actually attacking the Israeli in that moment. Right. Someone's going to die. But to your point about the identity, he had to remember in that moment he wasn't his anger. He wasn't his anxiety. He wasn't any of these things that felt like so compelling in this moment of heightened tension. And he had to remember his identity of humanity and that his human identity was actually allowing him to transcend, which is a strange word. He was in it. But to really be at a place where his connection to himself allowed him not to be in that reactive polarity and division mode in that moment and stay grounded in himself, which ultimately prevented violence from happening at that intersection in the street. And so I do feel like there's not only just the importance of learning how to recognize reactivity and shift into feeling at the somatic level, but also recognizing, like you said, the aspects of our identity that we might be defending or relating with in a way that we feel threatened by. where we think that our fundamental worth is based on an aspect of our identity. And if we know ourselves beyond that, we can find the deeper connections where we don't have to slide into that reactive mode.

Jeffrey Besecker: By observing that larger context of conflict, you know, that larger global conflict, we can start to observe how that insecurity and fear of our own emotional response can become that war inside that when conflated becomes that war with others and on an even larger scale drives that inherent emotional misunderstanding that leads to global wars, global conflicts, global misunderstandings.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, and it's interesting because you can see that here's the individual, and if we have war inside of our bodies, then that's going to be outpictured and experienced at the collective level. And so it's hard to say, well, find peace within, and then that's the way to world peace, because it seems way more complicated, and there's so many of us, and it's so hard and insurmountable. And at the same time, that is really where it starts in the sense that how do we relate with ourselves so we can show up and not contribute to the war? And that's the real work. And it's really hard. And it allows us to actually lead, you know, have leadership that is differentiated in a world that's so compelled by the divisiveness.

Jeffrey Besecker: There is that salient integrative complexity that does dictate that there's a larger context at play there. Yeah. So often we turn to those default reactions that say, let's just cognitively deduce this down to the lowest common denominator.

Gareth Gwyn: And the media and Hollywood, the movies, and so much of the content that we consume is having the narrative of the victim and oppressor that's so clean and clear, the rights and the wrongs. And so we're consuming these stories, these narratives all the time, in addition to how we're mapping meaning onto our own trauma that creates our own subconscious narrative. So it's coming from all different directions to remain in this polarity. So it is hard to actually find the inner will to to disentangle all that.

Jeffrey Besecker: We started to edge up to how our default network is the neural pathway that contains those ingrained subconscious and unconscious responses that we tend to frequently engage as we lean into our subconscious scripts or those internal stories that we're holding on to. What role does the default network play in revealing the nuanced landscape of our internal dynamics and the unseen interactions that govern our responses to the external world?

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, I think there's a very tight relationship between those two. I think they're experienced differently. So for example, if the meaning and the subconscious narrative that we're running is that we're unworthy, then when something happens, the external is the stimulus. But then we beat ourselves up or we go into those shame loops or we go into these places where we feel like we're not good enough. and then we get in these like core narratives like I'm not good enough and we may not say those words but that still might be the narrative that at the core foundation is running our behaviors whether that's towards ourselves internally and allowing that war to be to keep cycling inside of ourselves or how we translate in our external relationships. So the way in which we think that the world needs to change in order for us to feel okay and then continuously getting into addictions or into like the anxious attachment or imagining that if only this would change out here then finally I might feel okay inside. Disregarding the whole time that we're the ones that actually are the sovereign beings of our own emotional experiences and that we are the only ones that can touch that dignity of our own humanity and control our own emotions. And so it's a logical fallacy to keep believing that the external world will make us feel OK.

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Gareth Gwyn: It's really fascinating because I think about this sometimes because I feel like in my own personal journey, it's really just learning how to feel. And it sounds so simple. but in a world that's locked up and that there's a lot of numbing mechanisms. I mean, we live in a culture where people take pills for anxiety all the time, you know, and so we were in, in social media and all the different things are, are keeping us away from our feelings. So the first thing I'll say is that I think it has to be extremely intentional, very deliberate, and ultimately it's pretty simple. Um, And so once we begin to recognize that we actually have a motivation, where does the motivation coming from for our willingness to feel? A lot of times I think that motivation comes from the desire to stop suffering. Once we see that our patterns are impacting ourselves and others so intensely, and it amplifies so much that it's starting to impact our life, and we feel that we're stuck deep in depression and suffering, sometimes that can catalyze a motivation and say, okay, I'm willing to learn how to feel, right? And so then that motivation, I think, has to come from the inside. It has to be activated intrinsically. So that therefore, once we meet those moments again in life, We're willing and we have a little bit more strength to say, okay, wait, pause. What can I do here? How can I look inward? How can I find the part of me that was in resistance and surrender? How can I let the tears flow? Or how can I find a place to express my anger safely? Punching pillows, you know, how can I find what the emotion wants to say and how it wants to move? And I think that that starts from finding that fundamental motivation of why we would even want to do that and how we, you know, what is driving our own self liberation? Where is that coming from? And I think oftentimes it comes from a personal desire to stop suffering. And that can translate into the social change at the macro level, but usually people want to get free from the self-imposed prisons.

Jeffrey Besecker: As we're shoving those emotions down, we're going to hopefully simplify it and then reverse engineer out. As we shove those emotions down, we're very literally storing that energy emotionally, unprocessed throughout our body. We're also shifting and interacting with that adrenal response of the endocrine system. What happens then is as that suppression occurs, we're switching into that default mode network. There's a very complex chemical process that down the road we'll get to. I'm not going to really dive too far into that today. But the somatic processes within the neural network, the default neural network, involve a network of brain regions associated with self-referential thinking, mind-wandering, and introspection. Let's go to that area where we often say mindset matters. Which areas of the mind are engaging? Self-referential thinking, mind-wondering, and introspection. We can start to draw our own assumptions and conclusions about how that transpires. We often, in our stories and narratives, turn to acknowledging that from that gut level. Self-referential thinking and mind-wondering often surfacing as anxiety and that stress-induced procrastination. We're not answering that call, processing the underlying emotion, Yet, it's not even the core value that's driving the motivation. It's the emotional reaction and response.

Gareth Gwyn: Yes. Yes. And particularly at the second part of that where you point to the core values is actually like deciding and coming to understand what are our core values and how our behaviors, how are they out of alignment with our core values? So do we know what our core values are? How do we recognize our own contradictions in the fact that we're not embodying and behaving in alignment with those values and therefore we are operating in contradiction? Um, and so yeah, I, I agree with you that the willingness to learn, to step into the somatic and leverage the entire multisensory system, um, is a pathway that we have to deliberately and intentionally move towards. Otherwise we will stay trapped in the cycles. And so I don't know if that's exactly where you were headed with this, but

Jeffrey Besecker: It was a little bit vague, but ultimately looking at that idea where we start to just simply write the narrative about the mind. The mind matters. Well, which mind? First and foremost, not all of our processing and thinking happens in our brain mind. It might be a little redundant, brain-mind, but we have those interactions of somatic coherence. We have the gut interaction, we have the neural interaction of our nervous system, we have the heart interaction, each one of them forming its own portionary equation of that overall emotional intelligence. I'm trying to step out of that narrative where we just start to guilt, shame, and blame certain ways we relate and associate to our thinking, to our brain, only saying if we just reinforce the positive. Sometimes we have to dive into that negative pool, what we deem negative, and look at those associations too and how that's interacting throughout our system.

Gareth Gwyn: I think that you're pointing to, you know, what we call the subconscious or the shadow and the shadow parts of ourselves. And as we experience shame and guilt and blame, a lot of times the shame and guilt and blame is pointing to parts of us that we haven't accepted, we haven't loved, we've rejected aspects of ourselves. And that in that way, we reject that in other people. So we're part of the war. And if we recognize our wholeness, recognizing wholeness means we are everything. That each individual embodies the universe, which means that there's a killer inside of me. There's a lover inside of me. And in certain contexts, each one would come out. And if I was in the context of someone who actually has committed murder, for example, in that context with that life experience and those variables converging, I would probably do the same thing. However, from over here, I can look at that person and say, oh, I would never do that, right? And I can start to demonize them. But if I recognize that, oh, there is this shadow part of me that I've rejected and I don't want to own the fact that there's a part of me that might kill, then I would remain able to demonize another. But if I say, you know what? I can see how all humans are vulnerable, depending on what variables are converging, to act in ways that are out of alignment, that are reactionary, that were imperfect. And I have all those parts inside of me. Then I can start to empathize with that part of myself, which then allows me to empathize with another person, with the person who has actually executed a murder in this life. and start to understand and get curious with them and start to understand the narratives that have been driving their life instead of feeling threatened and remaining in division. So I think that you're, you know, what you're pointing to in terms of going into the darkness, wholeness is the light and the dark. And if we're going to bring light to the darkness, we have to actually go into the dark and explore it.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, it's a fabulous way to tee up where I'm hopefully trying to end up in transition with this idea of the default network. This network includes the medial prefrontal cortex of the brain, the posterior cingulate cortex, and portions of the pre-ental cortex. I hope I said that right. Pre-ental cortex. These regions are active during rest and when the mind is not engaged in specific external tasks. As we're engaged with those external tasks, we're sometimes distracted from those internal tasks, contributing to the process known as autobiographical memory retrieval, where we start to form those assumptions in relations to the self. It also includes how we start to envision the future and construct that concept of what we believe about ourselves. In what ways do you feel ego development influences that process?

Gareth Gwyn: It reminds me of that saying, and I'm forgetting who said it, but as we don't see the world as the way that it is, but the way that we are. Right. And so I think ultimately, because we are the only ones that can interpret reality from our own perspective, that our sensory network is interpreting it. And we have a limited capacity to then we can't interpret from someone else's body. We can only do it from ours. And so I think that when we when we're still in the trauma, those subconscious narratives that we've placed meaning on our trauma and are operating underneath everything, then part of the interpretation of the external stimuli. lie is egoic, it's narcissistic, it's thinking that I am the only thing that matters and not even fully realizing how that's playing out or happening, but that self-referential quality starts to become weaponized and we begin to operate from an aspect of the ego in a way that is narcissistically presenting. However, once we shift out of that and we get into that intuitive unknown and the places where we're not trapped in these dualistic narratives running in the trauma, once we are able to do that, then yeah, everything changes from there and we're not in the same self-imposed rigidity. In fact, the self-absorption becomes self-awareness because we realize that there is truth to the fact that we are the only ones that can interpret our reality. So in the positive view of self-absorption, it's self-awareness. Once we've shifted out of the narcissistic mode and into the self-awareness mode, there's validity to the narcissistic mode because that's all that there is in some ways, right? And we experience, even we experience self through the experience of other. And so I think that that's there is a the different modes of operation of egoic versus self-awareness ultimately stem from a similar place. However, the presentation is different depending on the level of that subconscious narrative and trauma that's running it.

Jeffrey Besecker: So often just that narrative of ego can become very convoluted and complex from our perspective. Also interacting with some of the subconscious scripts or stored stories we've created about It's one of those areas like naming our emotions that socially and throughout our cultural upbringings, we're not really in many ways empowered to understand and look at.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that there's part of back to your question about how do we learn how to feel? Part of learning how to feel is being able to recognize what's going on in our own system and socially translate that and be able to in real time say, oh, when I heard you say that, I felt anger arising in my body. right? And so just the recognition that, oh, there's energy rising, I'm feeling, you know, maybe I'm feeling sweat start to come up or I'm feeling impulsive and just being able to be self-aware of the impulsivities that are coming through our body and be able to translate that into a language that not only we can label and understand in ourselves, but then share it in a way where we own that emotion and we're not putting that onto someone else as that they did this to us but rather we're experiencing this as a relationship to what how we experience them. I think that that's part of it as well as building those skills and the emotional intelligence inside of our systems to understand that so that we can then relate differently and be able to use our own awareness of emotion to then not repress it but to be able to actually honor that experience and set boundaries if we need to and relate with people in ways that we include what's happening in our emotional experience in the way we show up and communicate with them so that it becomes a deeper connection. But we're owning that emotion and we're not putting it as a blaming them for the way we feel.

Jeffrey Besecker: That brings us back to that emotional annotation and relational language, which at its essence is our core emotional language. Sometimes that emotional vocabulary can become somewhat limited. Throughout the course of our upbringing, our conditioning, trauma, we start to dissociate. We may not have had those opportunities in our environments to learn a broader perspective, a broader understanding or vocabulary of emotion. So as a result, we're limited in the scope of how we filter things.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah. And there's the learning the language and the vocabulary behind the emotion so that we can understand it. And then ultimately, at the feeling level of expression, sometimes the emotions have no labels. They have no need for a word. They just have a pure, raw movement. They have a gesture. They have an expression. And so, you know, I think there's both in the sense that learning the languaging and the nuances to be able to like relate with it and have some sense of understanding. But then once we get to the place where we trust our body, we trust what's coming through, then from that place, you know, there's more just movement. There's more dynamism. You know, that's where we can get inspired action that translates into love versus being trapped

Jeffrey Besecker: So often we're relating that very idea of trust on those external projections. I will trust you when and if. Underlying that is that inherent distrust of self, distrust of perspective, and distrust of uncertainty itself.

Gareth Gwyn: Yes, and I think you're highlighting another really key indicator of a subconscious limiting narrative based around conditionality. If this then, if this, if only this, and so if we create conditionalities in order to say all these conditions have to be met in order for me to feel joy, then it's going to be an uphill battle because joy is coming from the inside, right? And so I do think that we need to have a context enough that we are fight or flight isn't in heightened stimulus for a period of time so that we can actually access other emotions and get into that. So I do think that if you're in a war zone, it's harder to in that moment deconstruct this. But if we have the space and time, then we can use that as an opportunity to really understand those conditionalities that we may have imposed. And ultimately, those belief systems are logical fallacies.

Jeffrey Besecker: So Gareth, in this regard, how do you feel our level of ego development affects the retrieval of our autobiographical memories and how ego filters shape our subjective perspectives as a result?

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, I think that remaining in an egoic state would inhibit access to memory in general, to the imagery and at the soul level, the type of self-realization and self-awareness and insights about who we really are at the core. If we're remaining in an egoic, self-absorbed, unconscious suffering state, I do believe we have less access to those deeper memories, to those deeper parts of ourselves that would come online and serve us. And so it's like a barrier. It's a barrier. to our own wholeness and our own self-realization. And I think that that ultimately is what is outpictured in our dynamics in the external world as well.

Jeffrey Besecker: In that regard, we turn back to some of our past conversations based on the ego concepts of Lovinger and Grooter about pre-conventional and conventional phases of ego development and how they're characterized by the ideologies of self-concept and limit the perspective of our narratives. As an example, in pre-conventional phases, our narratives are limited by our own needs, such as the need for approval, validation, or inclusion. And as we look at conventional phases, as we develop a little further in that understanding of our interaction with ego, the narrative begins to expand and include the needs of others as a result. My goal is to look at how we shift from that phase of growth and our understanding of ego is that limited binary approach where we start to experience that binary perspective.

Gareth Gwyn: You're reminding me of another story of someone that I worked with named Scott, who he was also abused by his family when he was growing up. And he never felt like he had a place to belong. He felt isolated. He felt alone. And he didn't fully understand that. But then once the Ku Klux Klan showed him a place where he felt belonging, he felt included, for the first time in his life, he felt this familial brotherhood. And so he was vulnerable to adopting that Very limited binary ideology and that ideology became solidified with his identity. And so he wasn't thinking about others. He was only thinking about, oh, I finally have this feeling of belonging. However, that belonging was coming from an external source. It wasn't something he was able to find with himself. And so over time he had these reckonings and he had moments where he had to have the dark nights of the soul and go through these realizations. But ultimately what it led him to realize was that he was shallowly seeking belonging without even knowing it. And that once he realized that, he realized how that was leading his addiction to racism. And so, once he discerned and uncovered all that in his own reckonings and grief, he was able to then start to see other people. He was able to expand what belonging meant as, oh, I belong as a human on this planet, first and foremost. And then from there, he can see all these other people, right? It's not divided into these little categories. his identity's not wrapped up in it. And so ultimately he became an advocate for helping other people realize these limitations and connecting more deeply across all these lines that he had previously outcasted. And so he had to go through that transformation and recognize his subconscious narratives, go through the grief and pain of and shame of realizing what he had done and reckoning with his behaviors. But ultimately, it led him to being able to connect with other people and advocate for the rights and for the dignity of other humans, not just his own.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's a great story to tie in here as we look at how that autobiographical memory starts to inform those ego and emotional filters that then color our perceptions and judgments. This is an area where our team finds it beneficial to look at the fourth-person perspective of post-conventional ego perspective and ego development. We like to call it the we without an I. It's an interesting perspective for us all to challenge ourselves to try to step through. Where do I insert that perspective of I? And are we able to kind of separate from that perspective with a healthy psychological distance that says, I can now see the greater common good. I can now see the unity of all being. I can now see I, me, my as a we or us.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, it's interesting because in this human experience, we still have the experience of separation of individual people. And so it's really compelling to stay in this like, I am me, you are you, right? However, I think that once like what we're unraveling here is when we're able to get out of these, these ego narratives and be more in the intuitive and action inspired narratives that we're living and recognize our wholeness. Once we're able to do that. Yeah. I think that we see ourselves in everyone else. So everything that is the external world becomes an aspect of us and not in an egoic way, but more in a, Oh, I am you, you are me. And we, we reflect each other like mirrors. So the eye still exists in the we but the way we relate with the eye is completely transformed and it's more of a mirror reflective experience than it is a experience of separation.

Jeffrey Besecker: In that regard, and with your sharing of these narratives that we've looked at today, it's easy to see how we can become fused with our accepted ideologies and beliefs, especially about our own experiences. On that note, cognitive diffusion or adhering to a concept or preconceived idea often leads to the need for confirmation bias, where we seek to just validate our own beliefs. What role do emotional filters play in forming and reinforcing those subjective beliefs and perspectives?

Gareth Gwyn: I think they play a huge role in it. I think that's, you know, kind of harking back to how we confuse our identity with getting our needs met by the external world and how the relationship between our own identity and our own capacity to relate with our emotions. That dictates how we relate with others. Right. And so I think So I feel like that's ultimately what it comes down to is really just that willingness to feel. And once we're able to do that, we don't feel threatened by the external world anymore. We actually start to be able to have access to our own curiosity. We have access to be in the unknown, to experience mystery and wonder and awe and all of those states of beings that we begin to expand our access into. you know, when we can more easily recognize when we're in constriction and when we're identified with something versus when we're actually receptive to seeing what is here in the present moment. So I think that it's an expansion versus we're not changing who we are, we're changing the way we relate with who we are.

Jeffrey Besecker: So coming around full circle today as we near wrapping up, you mentioned early in our conversation that act of motivation or what motivates us. As we look at these social interactions, we're each guided by what's known as the approval motive. To kind of summarize that and sum it up, it's the desire to produce positive impressions in others as well as avoid disapproval. This itself is operating as a subconscious script that we seek to validate our actions with.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, there's that expression of likability.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yes. No like trust. You know, we see that very prevalent throughout our social interactions, throughout how we describe our current media, through how we relate in our interactions. You know, it's become quite a cultural buzzword that no like and trust, you know, yet underlying and belying all of that is that approval motive. Why are we seeking the approval?

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, I mean, in my direct experience, anytime that I'm seeking external approval, it shows the exact place inside of me that I have not approved of myself. And so I'm in this red herring, and I just keep trying to find the external validation and the approval from outside. But ultimately, that will be endless until I actually see the hypocrisy in the fact that I am the one that has disapproval of certain parts of my being. And I think what's interesting about the catalyst from the external is that it gives us a precise way and a precise lens into seeing the parts of ourself that we are in disapproval. So then we can then find ways to step into self-love, self-approval, self-acceptance. And once we do that, we don't need to seek it externally. We don't need to do that at all. It just becomes nonsensical. Our motivation changes. We don't have that same motivation. So I think that if we can recognize when that's happening and use it as a lens in, to find that place in ourself, we've been in disapproval, then ultimately that can lead to liberating ourselves from that, you know, that quest of trying to get it elsewhere.

Jeffrey Besecker: In bringing us around full circle today, it's essential we look at the role our subconscious grips play in creating and informing those automatic thoughts and beliefs, you know, not only about ourselves, but about how we perceive others in the world around us.

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think that where are we really coming from? How can we leverage the expanding self-awareness of our own emotional landscape to find the will to live, the will to the mysteriousness of existence, and ultimately the will to care, to care about ourselves and to care about other people? So I think the ways in which the subconscious scripts are running are ultimately self-deceptive. We're deceiving ourselves in many ways and not recognizing how that's happening. And so, if we want to turn on the inner will to serve the world and to serve towards love, then I think we have to get curious about how these subconscious scripts are operating. And I've also come to realize that everyone's on a different timeframe, right? And so, not everyone's interested in doing that. So, when we do it ourselves, we raise the probability that we might inspire someone else to embark on that journey and get curious about that. And there's no guarantee, you know, there's no guarantee that other people are going to want to do that. Sometimes the pain is so constrictive that the timing is not right to be processed.

Jeffrey Besecker: So in your work, you work on a larger scale to instill that idea of community, of building commonality. If you were to leave us with three tips today on how we can find and develop that commonality in our interactions with each other, what would those three tips be?

Gareth Gwyn: Yeah, I think one of the biggest tips I would say is anytime that we start to feel blame or judgment towards someone else to use it as an opportunity to say what's the part of me that I'm not seeing and I can take responsibility for and show up and embody what it is that I'm blaming them for not doing. And so radical responsibility and using those judgments as our guideposts to our own freedom in the relationship is a huge thing. I mean, it's easier said than done, but that's huge. And I think ultimately being willing to engage in adversity and conflict at the community level is OK and not avoiding it. However, where the powerful trust comes from is when if we recognize we've become in a reactive mode, which we all will at some point, to pursue the repair process, to follow up in community and proactively take the initiative to follow up with someone and recognize and show that we care and initiate a repair process for that relationship. Sometimes that can actually be, you know, it can catalyze deeper, deeper trust than was even there before the rupture of the conflict. And so if we're not as scared of conflict and we're willing to be honest and not manage other people's emotions by suppressing our own and not to worry about what the consequences might be, but allow our emotions to just express themselves, sometimes there will be a consequence that someone feels not okay, but the repair process becomes a new opportunity for trust building in community. So I think that's also really fundamental. Yeah, and I mean, I think ultimately, those are big pieces that are missing in our world today. And then just the one we've been pointing to is the willingness to feel and recognize when we're coming from trying to save someone, from trying to please them or appease them. And to really recognize that how can we care for them and how can we come from care instead of coming from the need to change the external. And I think people feel that. They feel it differently. They feel, okay, when we show up and we're not trying to change them, that then we can be in a new exploratory territory instead of trying to get to a specific outcome. And that's incredible for human connection. So really authentically relating and being willing to be honest without consequence, I think is a huge part of that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. Thank you for sharing those nuggets of wisdom with us today, Gareth. I truly appreciate having this conversation with you today. Namaste. The light in me acknowledges the light in you. Thank you for sharing your light with us.

Gareth Gwyn: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I admire what you're doing and pulling this together and I look forward to staying in touch. Thank you so much.

Jeffrey Besecker: This has truly been such a fun conversation. Thank you. Certainty is an indelible journey ventured forth in the quest of every breathing being. We've written novels about it, and sung songs in hope for it. Often quoted, we've lingered throughout our uncertain existence in an unrelenting pursuit of it. And sometimes we've even lived and died by and for it, often defined that the only thing that is certain is uncertainty. Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd in its nature. And premature certainty is the sworn enemy of truth. Nevertheless, we hope you've discovered a note of truth in this message, and if you found it meaningful, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been the Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker.