Deborah Meints-Pierson, LMFT

Deborah is a master therapist (licensed for over 35 years), spiritual teacher, television host, author and 3rd generation intuitive. She has helped transform the lives of thousands of people around the world. Her pioneering approach bridges Psychology, Spirituality and the Mystic Tools. Deborah is a sought out authority in the field of psychology and has served as a Palm Springs psychological expert for TV, radio & print. She wrote and Co-Hosted the popular television program "It's A Family Affair" on Time Warner Television for over a decade. Deborah has been featured in numerous shows, radio programs and publications including NBC, ABC, K-News Voice of The Valley, Desert Sun Newspaper, Desert Woman magazine and Health & Spirituality magazine.

When Deborah is not transforming lives you can find her hiking in the beautiful desert, music jamming with friends, dancing, practicing yoga, reading, & writing poetry. For more: https://soulpathsessions.com

Brenda Littleton, MA

As an educator & counselor based in social justice, personal literacy, eco & depth psychology, Brenda has worked with thousands of students and clients in their wholeness journey. She holds a graduate degree in education, post-graduate studies in counseling, and depth psychology at the doctoral level and is certified in coaching, trauma and psycho-biotics. Blending modalities of attachment theory, somatic healing, active imagination, dream work, restorative education, & place-based learning, she empahsizes the link between the mind-body-spirit-earth relationship for the healing.

Brenda's has served as a university program director of graduate studies, a clinical counselor for domestic violence & trauma recovery, a behavioral specialist in schools, & is a successful coach of executives, creatives and entrepreneurs. She is a reiki master, writer, speaker & continues in a lineage of Druidic animistic prayer circles. For more: https://www.brendalittleton.com

Acknowledgments:

Original Music composed by Zach Meints

The Soul Path Sessions Podcast is produced by Homeless Betty Productions

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE ON YOUR FAVORITE PODCAST APP TO LISTEN TO FUTURE EPISODES. THANK YOU...AND REMEMBER TO FOLLOW YOUR SOUL, IT KNOWS THE WAY!

Episode 4 Description

The metaphor of the chrysalis is examined and the process that the caterpillar undergoes reveals that it does not lead to it becoming a better caterpillar, but to becoming a completely different creature entirely. This lesson implies that when we fall apart and we put ourselves back together again, we don't return to where we were before we fell apart - to becoming a better caterpiller - but to becoming a completely different person. That leads Deborah and Brenda into a discussion about the therapeutic value of being more vulnerable and recognizing that where we are most wounded is often where the light comes out and allows healing.

Chapters & Links

00:04:00 - The Butterfly Effect

https://dark-mountain.net/the-butterfly-and-the-cocoon/

00:07:18 - Imaginal Cells Inform Transformation

https://youtu.be/3SgzN7GNs9w

00:18:00 - The Inner Dictator: Suppressing Anger

https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/getting-know-inner-dictator-phtz/

00:22:31 - Parts Work: Owning Our Emotions One Step at a Time

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/emotional-triggers#finding-yours

00:27:52 - No Feeling is Final: Becoming Vulnerable

http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html

00:43:03 - A Wonky Pilgrim's Progress: Enlightenment

https://www.themindfulword.org/2015/road-enlightenment/

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Original music by Zach Meints

The Soul Path Sessions podcast is produced by Homeless Betty Productions

Announcer: (00:09)

Welcome to the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Meints-Pierson and Brenda Littleton. Brenda is an educator and counselor rooted in Jungian and Eco Psychology. She helps her clients understand the importance of the mind, body, spirit, and earth relationship for healing. Deborah is a licensed psychotherapist and has been trained in traditional and sacred psychology, exploring from the ground up what makes our human experience meaningful, wholesome, and enlightening, Deborah, and Brenda invite you to accompany them on a soul path journey as they explore the possibilities of living a more soulful life as therapists, seekers and lovers of fate.

Brenda: (00:51)

So this is Brenda and Deborah.

Deborah: (00:54)

Hello!

Brenda: (00:56)

Let's talk about how perfectionism leads into soul stories.

Deborah: (01:00)

Well, how it doesn't. We were talking about the reason I'm doing this is because I want to do it perfectly imperfect. If I was waiting to be the perfect podcaster, it may be 10 lifetimes before I got to doing this, it just would not happen. It would be a dream sequence that would just take a lot of time. So like Brene Brown says "when perfection is driving, you can bet that shame is riding shotgun". And Brenda, you were telling a story about when endurance goes wrong. We were telling stories about goals, all of us have goals.

Deborah: (01:42)

I'll tell my own, trying to be perfect to get my PhD for me, just didn't work out. I crashed and burned hard. I was trying to be the perfect therapist, wife, mother, and PhD getter. I really thought if I got it before the age of 60, that somehow there'd be a magic spell cast on me. That being 60 would be all golden we've done something really important. It's a brilliant program in integral studies at California Institute of Human Science in Encinitas. Everything was going well until...my cat just walked in the room, she's decided to join us. I was trying to do it all. I was taking four classes, not recommended by the Dean I was doing really well.

Deborah: (02:35)

I was getting all As and suddenly I developed an intense pain in my left breast to the point where if there was such a thing as an arrow or a dagger that could have been insert it into my left breast, it was definitely there. I was having ice packs. I was in the bathtub. I was crying. I was sure that I had a really fast moving cancer. To the extent that I called my professor and I said, I need help. And she said, tell me what's going on? And I, I said, well, every time I go to write that fifth paper of the quarter, with notations, I get this intense pain. I knew enough about my body work and stuff that I was killing myself. But at the same time, you know, a perfect person gets their PhD by the time they're 60. Right.

Deborah: (03:28)

She said, no, I won't let you. I forbid you from continuing in this program. I said, oh, so that's what honesty buys me. She says, yeah, your life. So, I had to rework the model, like what was it to be in school and muscle my way through this program and not finish it. And you know what I found out? It was that I learned a bunch. I studied aIot. I met new people. I went to lunch. I learned what I didn't like. I learned what I could do if I wanted to keep my hand on the car for three days, I might get the car. That's an old contest I heard about on This American LIfe. If you hold onto the car for three days, you get the car. Your legs are swollen. You're fainting. You're dehydrated, but you get the car and I wanted the car, but I didn't want to lose my legs. So at what cost are we perfect? You brought up this concept, Brenda, and I'm handing it to you, of how the caterpillar becomes butterfly. I want to give it to you because I love this idea so much. I think I was becoming a better caterpillar. So could you tell the little story about the caterpillar science?

Brenda: (04:54)

Well, I know that there's a resurgence in the metaphor of the transformation of a caterpillar, and I'm really curious about the collective unconscious these ideas recycle as the collective needs them. So recently I've been really spending a lot of time with Bill Plotkin's book, The Journey of Soul Initiation, which was published in 2021, but it's been on my desk for a year and kind of tempting me. So recently I got into it and in the beginning of the book, he uses the transformation of the caterpillar as the operating metaphor for writing the book. Two things, I want to talk about the role of the caterpillar, but also I'm very interested in the history of our psyche and about how this is resurgent. I went back to one of my teachers, Marion Woodman, who was a depth psychologist, she's passed now, but she was from Toronto.

Brenda: (06:03)

I experienced to her at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She was my teacher for two years and she wrote a lot about the Chrysalis. I found a recent audio lecture from 1981 out of Chicago Jung Institute, where she introduces to the Institute, the Chrysalis, what I call the caterpillar syndrome. She does a great job in explaining what happens through the psyche and how we can incorporate that in our own wholeness. That gave me pause to just look at what was happening 40 years ago, what's happening now, and that's a different conversation, but it does contribute to me working with Bill Plotkin's book, The Journey of the Soul Initiation, where in short, he makes it really simple that the caterpillar goes through this falling apart, this molting process six, seven times. It is a an indiscriminate process in that that there's no preset time as to exactly when this molting happens, but it happens.

Brenda: (07:18)

The caterpillar goes through the shedding and molts and then goes through the next phase and then goes through the next phase and goes to the next phase. This process ends up activating, what the botanists call imaginal cells. There are imaginal cells that live within the caterpillar that KNOW. The caterpillar may not understand what's going on, but the caterpillar goes through the molting process to the point where then it creates this cocoon, this chrysalis and dissolves. Plotkin is very clear in the introduction that not all caterpillars make it into being a butterfly, that many of them dissolve and do not come out the other side. But those that do, when they go through that process of reformatting, from the imaginal cells, from the caterpillar, they don't come out a better caterpillar.

Brenda: (08:22)

They come out completely new, completely transformed into another creature. And that really hit home for me. When we fall apart and we go through our molting, there is an undetermined process, but it's the predictable unpredictability of it. It's the self organizing principle of chaos, which has informed a lot of my work from earlier. The takeaway for me is, and I share this with clients, is that when we fall apart and we pick ourselves up and we keep on going and we keep on going, and then our imaginal cells kick in and we fall apart and we dissolve, we need to give up the idea, as soon as we can give up the idea, that this process means that we're healing, that we are getting back to where we were before we started falling apart. All of that needs to go, all of that does not apply. All of that keeps us in the victim process.

Deborah: (09:25)

My whole idea was that getting older was not a good thing. And you had to prove that you were going to have a PhD was just coming from a model that I had outgrown. It wasn't going to make me a better caterpillar.

Brenda: (09:38)

It's not a better caterpillar, no. We're not going to be a better caterpillar. We're going to hopefully be, at least I want to be in the cocoon. I want to dissolve and trust that those imaginal cells will propel me, propel my molecular structure forward and psyche...and that's what I trust.

Deborah: (10:05)

You can't really know it. You got me started reading about the science of these imaginal cells and that there's this war that literally goes on because which sounds alot like...each episode I bring up Ukraine. Like this idea that when progress is happening to the older system, it feels like a threat. And that's literally what they were saying. The truth of it is that to the caterpillar, the imaginal cells that become a butterfly are bad. Yeah. They fight them.

Brenda: (10:41)

They resist.

Deborah: (10:43)

I think you have something on the table there you might be reading,

Brenda: (10:46)

This is one of the poems that bill Plottkinn starts his magnificent book with that grabbed my heart, to allow me to move forward into where he begins this description of not becoming a better caterpillar. It's a translation but the title was not translated. It's from Rilke. God speaks to each of us, as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear. You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like flame and make big shadows. I can move in. Let everything happen to you. Beauty, terror, just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. Give me your hand. Rilke.

Brenda: (12:22)

That really allows me to reframe the process of molting, falling apart, all of the situations in my life that I've had to pivot and rise up out of various ashes and situations, thinking that, "oh, just one more time. I'll just do this better. This next time. I'll be a better person. I'll be a smarter person. I'll finish that PhD. It'll be easier. And it really is, in reflection, me consisting of wanting to stay that caterpillar. And I know it sounds so simple.

Deborah: (13:11)

The idea is you can't know it, that dark place where you do need a hand. What my professor, she was trying to impress upon me is that I had entered the program for soul growth. That was what it was about. That's what drove me to get the education, in addition to the prestige. So it really was ego and psyche battling it out. And my body was losing. By the way, the minute I dropped out, I had no pain.

Brenda: (13:39)

That was my question I was going to ask, How long did it take you?

Deborah: (13:43)

Immediately? I think I got the mammogram and it was over. I had tremendous relief because my model, the road map just lifted up and it moved. I thought that I was being put on this path because I got all these signs. I was meant to do this program, but then when I was flexible the map changed. It was the wrong direction. I think that's really, really important. The rigidity of perfectionism. Spirit had me on the right road. I was meant to tell this story. This story may be more inspiring to somebody than the story of 'she went and got her PhD when she was 16. Now she lifts weights over her head and runs the marathon. No, this is somebody who fell down and couldn't do it. Yet is still learning what I need to learn. Even doing this podcast with you, finding out what gives me health, what feeds me from the roots, what gets me vibing? The coolest thing, I wrote an Insta-poem yesterday after Brenda gets me going, but when I found out about the butterfly, this is so rad: So when it does become a butterfly, there's this big war, everything liquifies and everything inside that Caterpillar is fighting that, as I said before. But a certain point this butterfly potentiality starts to grow and multiply and starts vibing, like good vibrations.

Deborah: (15:29)

You can't stop its consciousness. Its consciousness has multiplied, because of the war, in spite of the war, it's going to grow anyway, we've come too far. There's a tipping point at which the butterfly's just going be a thing. This is a poem that flew out of me before breakfast: Butterfly. Imaginable cells resting, architects of flight within the soft body that must resist their emergence. Hardening off to protect the known until protection becomes dissolution, separation, seeming chaos. Inside the darkness time propels, secret tells, blueprint excites, invites, entrainment, simultaneous vibration, irresistible invitation, to create a butterfly. I love the last part because it just starts rhyming.

Deborah: (16:29)

It just started rapping. it invites entrainment, simultaneous vibration. As I wrote it, it wrote me and I just took dictation, I have this strong, well, I'm very sad about things going on in the world. And I have this sense of a turning point where a lot of us, we won't back down. We can't go back to being a better caterpillar. There's something in us that is turning collectively, even would die for it.

Brenda: (17:16)

As you were speaking, I heard The Who song screaming in my background. We won't give up? What was the song we wanted?

Deborah: (17:27)

I'm thinking of Tom petty.

Brenda: (17:29)

Yeah.

Deborah: (17:30)

Up at the gates of hell.

Brenda: (17:32)

Won't back down.

Deborah: (17:34)

You can stand me up at the gates of hell and I won't back down.

Brenda: (17:37)

There's a lot of anger. I was working with someone yesterday who actually it was the first time she had claimed her anger. She actually said I'm the rage.

Brenda: (18:00)

I'm so susceptible to looking at, to observing how many of my clients have been dismissing their anger. Several of them have been spiritually raised with their parents in communes or in very distinct ways of avoiding and alchemically changing anger. It's created such a havoc in their life when they reach 40, they have no skillset on how to make room for anger or to honor it. It's basically all repressed. I wonder on a world level, how much anger is repressed and as we are observing what's going on in the Ukraine, is this not a way, an initiation for us, to open up that repression of anger and learn how to wield it and learn the benefit of it?

Deborah: (19:10)

I think it's an in and out thing. think I mentioned this earlier from another podcast. I know about my inner dictator, I know about the one who refuses to budge: the wound itself. I have to deal with that one. Once I recognize that any dictator on the outside represents something I understand deeply, is not something foreign, is part of the collective.

Deborah: (19:49)

There's this sense of, no, we going to allow the dictator to dictate to us, but we also have compassion for the process, because it's trying to protect something that it understands. One of my friends told me this morning that Putin was raised in the time..his mother was in the time of Stalin. He went without. He lived very poor. He has something inside of him that never wants to return to that state. It just doesn't come out of nowhere, how dictators are born? My own dictator, my own violence, my own blood lust. I felt all those things. So to disown them, like you would talking about in families, it's kind of like, we don't go to the bathroom. You know, we don't do that.

Deborah: (20:40)

Our families don't do it and then it becomes shameful, and then that drives perfection, right? The beginning of perfectionism and shame is writing shotgun. I can't admit how terrified I am of my humanity, which with all its hairy, spotted lumpy, unpolitically correct sides. I know one aspect of integral theory that fascinated me is that there's all these levels that we go through. Every one of us to get to the next level of understanding and inclusion, we have to be somewhat tribal. We have to, in some ways be stoic. Like our ancestors were in deny pain just to endure a boat ride across the Atlantic or wherever they came from. You can't say, oh, I need a Di-Gel. You just have got to deal with it. You have to not talk about it. So there's stoicism that becomes hardening off.

Deborah: (21:38)

So when I talk to those, like you were talking about a client, who's saying I'm just frustrated. I'm not angry. And I love everybody. And I'm like, yeah, I've been that person too. The beginning of conversation as if everyone was invited to the table, anger is one of the food groups of human emotion. It's one of the food groups: hurt, sad, angry, afraid, love. They're all just like basic food groups. If you aren't allowed express rage, it'll come out another channel, but it'll be bloated.

Brenda: (22:15)

And often pathology.

Deborah: (22:17)

Like OCD. I just can't stop praying.

Brenda: (22:21)

Or headaches.

Deborah: (22:22)

Or somatizing.

Brenda: (22:23)

Irritable bowel syndrome.

Deborah: (22:25)

Yes.

Brenda: (22:27)

Picking your nails.

Deborah: (22:28)

Yeah.

Brenda: (22:29)

Pulling your hair.

Deborah: (22:31)

If it could be invited to the table as a friend. In therapy, a lot of times what we do is, is we do parts work, where we say, hey, everybody's got anger. You go to the bathroom too. Let's just all own it. We start just having a bit of a conversation. If anybody was like slightly perturbed inside of you, what might they say? Well, people don't pray enough. That's the problem. They'll just start with something that they're doing a lot of. Okay. So let's talk more about that. People don't pray enough. Yeah. And it's just so the world's kind of messed up, oh, so somebody thinks the world's messed up. So yeah. and I really don't like my wife's family that much. So tell me about a particular instance. Well, you know, my, my mother-in-law she's...and so we get into a dialogue and we're saying, but it's just a part of you. It's not all of you. I think that the hardening off is maybe the fear that it's going to just destroy the whole system.

Brenda: (23:31)

It's over going to overrun. When I ask clients to go kick box Go hang a bag in your garage and kick box the hell out of it, or punch it, or take a, a pillow, I learned this from working in domestic violence, women are so avoidant to physical aggression because they have been the end of it. Yet they have so much rage about how they've been treated and what they've had to put up with that. Asking them to take a pillow and beat the crap out of the door with it is just so frightening. Yet working up to being able to just express, lto have that skillset, to feel I can do this to deal with my kid, so I don't continue abusing my child the way I was abused. It is so freeing. It is looking at the light and actually being with them, let's do it this way. Something so simple and so basic that we dismiss it.

Deborah: (24:38)

Yeah. I know when I do anger work, sometimes I use, I learned this from John Lee, to just take a face towel, twist its neck, ring its neck, and you can flick it. Look at it at the table. What I noticed when I do my own cathartic work in that way, when I allow it to be, and I put it in a parameter, you're not allowed to hurt yourself. You're not allowed to like break a window, but you can do this. So it has to be in that container. But it always metamorphizes the next thing. It always melts into something else.

Brenda: (25:18)

Exactly. As you were saying that I had this envision, I was back cutting, chopping firewood, and I was so pissed and I had a dull axe. I had a big stump, a big cedar round. And I thought. 'Cedar, it's easy. Right. It's soft.' I'll take my little hatchet. And I did, unfortunately I put the axe in my knee. And that allowed the pain. I got it. It's like, you can't avoid it.

Deborah: (25:54)

You still have two legs, I noticed.

Brenda: (25:55)

I do, but the whole metaphor of needing, in my knee, needing. That was when I was like 28. But I remember thinking that old adage about wherever your wounding is, that's where the light can come in. And I have a complete different take. It's a pivot on it, that's where the light comes out.

Deborah: (26:20)

That's what you've said to me before.

Brenda: (26:22)

Yeah. The wounding is not about allowing it in, it's about allowing it out. Allowing it out. Whether it's the light, the pain, the anger, if we can spend some time in developing skills to be okay with uncomfortable, being comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Deborah: (26:49)

Yeah. That wilderness. And I love this idea. What I'm taking from your light not coming in is this idea of unworthiness that I was raised with. I wouldn't be enough and I'd have to be prayed to filled with light, which I still do. But I have more of an idea that I'm worthy of it and that it is within, and I'm finding that imaginal cell That there is a butterfly. It's also okay to be the caterpillar and go through all that moting. And I would actually know that divinity resides in me and it comes out in all, its distressing disguises. as Mother Theresa would say. It comes out as hate and it comes out as jealousy and it comes out as deep grief. And if I can just trust that process, it won't go on forever. All things must pass at George Harrison. All things must pass.

Brenda: (27:52)

I'm looking for that line again about no emotion, no feeling is final. No feeling is final. Like this too shall pass.

Deborah: (28:03)

It's process. If we could just trust The soft animal of our body. Mary Oliver. Just trust That innately, like the dog licks its wound, that somehow we know if we can unwind, even we do it ineloquently, like hitting our knee with an axe. When I was moving into my new office, after going through a horrendously painful divorce, on the day before I was going to move in, completely exhausted. I fell out of the moving truck and I broke my foot in three places and was laying next to a dumpster and couldn't move. I had studied Christian science, so I just figured I'd do a lot of putting myself back together again through positive knowings that I'm perfect. What I really was meant to learn is that I had to be a patient and I had to be patient and I had to let other people do things for me. I had to go to the hospital and I had to spend four months in a cast and on a knee scooter allowing myself to become softer. When I thought that my job was to be this heroic figure, opening her own office and starting again at the age of 52. But what was really waiting for me was brokenness. And in that time of softening and healing, I saw things that I would never have seen: my impatience with people who couldn't walk fast for one thing, people who were older, there weren't enough handicapped parking places. Stairs. I have a house that has 19 stairs just to get to the front door and to go out there's Hills and everything became a thought process of going soft. And I didn't understand the lesson. I had to accept it before I understood it. That darkness I needed.

Brenda: (30:16)

Meaning comes after the narrative.

Deborah: (30:19)

Yeah.

Brenda: (30:22)

Similarly, my example of becoming soft, becoming strong in the sense of the process of learning to be soft, was I was trampled by a horse. I had taken in a horse as a guest. It wasn't my horse, but I was offering it safe harbor. One night I went out just to check on it and to let it out. And it charged the gate and pushed me down and pivoted its hind hoof right on my breast plate and my falling really scared it and so it did it again. It didn't move off me and my other three horses that were my tribe saw what was happening and they came up and they pushed the horse away. But in the meantime, I fell and broke my back in three places and three ribs were crushed. I was a professor. I was a therapist. I was really focused in on outward gain and proving myself and making sure that I was performing at a level that was within the stripe of perfectionism, even though I stay away from defining myself at that time as being perfect.

Brenda: (32:00)

But, in the meantime, I was ignoring huge issues in my life, like a really toxic relationship over-working over-extending. I was still teaching graduate studies and driving hours a day and grading tons of papers and being in school as a therapist and working at domestic violence and developing a new home. Way too much, way, way, way, way too much. And then in doing too much, I had lost softness and I had also lost the relevance of paying attention to what was important, such as in my home I had allowed severe toxicity to run the muck and totally mitigate my soulfulness. And I kept on saying, no, not now. I, I got it together. I have it. This is nothing. This is no big deal. This is not important. I can handle this.

Brenda: (33:02)

When I was flat on my back, hearing all these bones crack, I actually left my body and. I faced death about 12 times in different physical ways and each time I ask the question, is this it? If this is it, I want a direct hit because I'm not going to linger. I'm not going to fight. I'm not going to resist. I want to go on. I don't want to be on a machine for five years. And every time I get the response, 'no, you have a choice.' And so I always choose life. And I came right back into the body and this amazing pain, but I knew I have a choice. This isn't it. So I gotta get myself up off this ground and somehow get into the house to get to the hospital. And at that time I I had no backbone. And I realized at that time I had been living a life that was breaking my back. But as Jung says, what we ignore, what we resist persists and what we don't acknowledge becomes fate.

Brenda: (34:15)

And that's what happened. And here I had been espousing this, I had been teaching this. Working with clients on this, but not living it. While I didn't have 18, 19 stairs, I felt like I had 20 stairs to climb to get to that point of being free and of softening and really allowing the sense of basically feng-shui-ing my life. It was a lot easier to get rid of things after that breaking point. I realized that's what people have to do, so that when I sit with someone and I hear their unresolvable conflicts and I used to think, how did they get there? Like, how did they allow these steps to happen so that it was their life, how did it get so complex? How? And then I got it all in one minute, it's like, oh, I see. I see. Of course. Of course.

Deborah: (35:21)

And you got rid of the toxic relationship.

Brenda: (35:23)

I did. So its similar to when you had that mammogram after you quit the PhD, there was no more pain, even though I had a lot, I had to learn how to walk again. I had no pain compared to what it was beforehand.

Deborah: (35:39)

The metaphor yes. When you were saying that, I thought what was I trying to do when I was getting my office? It was to stand on my own two feet.

Brenda: (35:48)

Yeah.

Deborah: (35:49)

Which I could not do at all. I couldn't stand on my own two feet. I had one foot. It had to be enough and I had to go slow. Sometimes I think we take great personal shame when we're stopped. Because I know I was raised in a Christian tradition and even some of the new age stuff, like if something bad happens too, you it's because you brought it on, law of attraction. I think there could be incredible kindness in this experience. I don't love it, but what else would have worked for you, Brenda? When you're describing this resilience that you have, this innate...look at your ancestors we were talking about in the last show. They make boats, they can move their house from Ireland to California.

Brenda: (36:43)

Vancouver island,

Deborah: (36:45)

I'm sorry, Vancouver island. Everybody's from California in my world, I guess. So they were able to do this. And you think that fortitude is wonderful, until it isn't. Sometimes it takes the breaking of the shell that encloses our understanding so our heart can lie in the sun, quoting Kahlil Gibran's treatise on pain and joy and suffering. For me, just having to be stuck offered me a different way to go into my practice with the awareness that I couldn't do it alone. I did some things alone, but also my incredible vulnerability, incredible vulnerability. And that's an ongoing battle. I don't think I'm beyond it yet.

Brenda: (37:39)

I remember how cute you were. I. I remember thinking how cute you were in that cast.

Deborah: (37:44)

My pink cast.

Brenda: (37:47)

I thought, oh.

Deborah: (37:48)

That knee scooter was really fun. I used take it down ramps. I don't recommend it to anyone, but it was like being seven years old. It did open up a lot of freedoms to scoot. And I actually wore my hair in a ponytail when I would go on it and I had a little girl go, can I have one of those mommy? So I brought up my child like qualities of being fed and cared for. Michael had to wash my hair and just like really kind.

Brenda: (38:16)

So I I'm just wondering, if that was me going through that and having to meet new clients and be the person that people came to for assistance. How, how did it feel to be so vulnerable?

Deborah: (38:34)

Oh, it got worse. This is just going to make the story better. I'm just gonna have to total reveal. So, I had a broken foot. Do you think I'd stay, home broken in three places waiting for surgery? Did that keep Deborah home? No. She wanted to go to work on the first day. So she went with crutches from somebody who was six foot two and I am five foot eight. So those did not work. I made it down the hall. I only had one problem. I couldn't bend. This is going to - I'm sorry...full confession. But I couldn't really get to the bathroom very easily. So I thought, oh problem solved. I'll just bring a big thermos. I've been camping. I don't need to go to the bathroom. I also got a chair, a recliner, and to make it even easier, I thought I'll just wear a dress and I don't need underwear. This is horrible confession.

Brenda: (39:27)

This has happened to me when I was with a broken back. it's like, okay, how do I do this?

Deborah: (39:33)

You get really resourceful. It didn't occur to me I could if taken a week off, because I was so determined to have this happen, on schedule. I did have a secretary at the time, thank God. When I went to use thermos, let's just say, things didn't work out right. I had a client waiting. And so I had to call her in on my phone, and I have a pretty small waiting room that's really close my office, and I said, um, so I'm going to need some help. And she had to take me to the restroom and clean me up. She got me back, got me all put in my little pretty chair and I sat there. I had a male client and we were having a session, and he said, you know, Deborah, I just need to tell you that I can kind of see up your dress. It's a shame attack times a hundred. The next day I said, I'm going home. So I have a pretty strong will, but I just kept making a fool of myself.

Brenda: (40:35)

You had a limit.

Deborah: (40:36)

I think maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. I think I definitely crossed my legs. I think these lessons of resilience, everybody's talking about resilience. There is a time to be more sensitive to one's self and to be more granular and ask, what do I really need? And I wasn't great at it. I'm not gonna lie, but I've got a little better at noticing if I was out of balance. It's gradual. My little caterpillar layers are shedding.

Brenda: (41:15)

I have a poem.

Deborah: (41:16)

Oh, yay. You feel a poem coming on.

Brenda: (41:21)

It's called Prospective Immigrants Please Note: Either you will go through this door or you will not go through. If you go through, there is always the risk of remembering your name. Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen. If you do not go through, it is possible to live worthily, to maintain your attitudes, to hold your position, to dive bravely, but much will blind you. Much will evade you. At what cost, who knows? The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door. Adrian Rich.

Deborah: (42:12)

Could you read the last, I'm sorry. You just closed the book, but I want to see if you could find that last line.

Brenda: (42:20)

To maintain your attitudes, to hold your positions. To die bravely. This is what I was thinking of with your resilience. I'm going to make it to work. I'm going to open my office. I'm going to let people see my crotch.

Deborah: (42:36)

No, that was not in the plan.

Brenda: (42:39)

...but much will blind you. That's our ego. Much will evade you. That's our reason. At what cost, who knows. That client will forever remember sitting there trying to work out some anger issues and looking up your crotch. The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door.

Deborah: (43:03)

It's a wonky Pilgrim's progress. If anybody thinks that enlightenment is a straight line, I see it more as a happening. Sometimes I'm enlightened and then I go dark. And if I can be patient with that process and not judge it too much, there's humor. We're laughing about these mishaps. It'd be kind of dull if I said, I've always succeeded. And now I'm glowing. Look at this, Brenda, I'm glowing. But the fact that I know that I'm gonna wobble and certain truths, the thing I I find at this age is I more often say, ask myself when things go, other than I planned is I'll say this is gonna probably make a good story. And the other piece is what's, what's the surprise?

Deborah: (43:49)

What's the piece that...I thought I had it all figured out by 66 years of age. And no, there was a subtler lesson in this. It was to be quieter, just a bit more, or to invite someone in a bit more. It's a mysterious process. I think I trust more, that whatever's going on is supposed to be what's going on. Especially when I accept most the obvious invitations. The risks for me would be not doing a lot of things or holding back sometimes, or to invite someone into a conversation, such as this one, which might be more frightening than doing it all by myself.

Brenda: (44:38)

It reminds me, your words lead me to the saying, show up and do your best. In following that suit of inviting in conversations. I've pivoted away from the journey of healing and spend a lot of time on the actions, the flow of wholeness. It's not about more as it is about remembering. It's not about achieving, it's about remembering. I do go back to imaginal cells and trusting that, as you said, that there is a process. There is, there is a grace that if we can believe in the myths of war, internal and external, that there is a larger picture, a larger outcome, that we just cannot imagine, but those directives are working on our behalf. I get great solace from that. I don't think it's an abdication. I've been working a lot with the idea of abdication, of giving up, you know, letting somebody else carry that role for me, like the government or some higher NGO that can represent me in the world environmental issues. It's not about abdication. I go back to the balance of my ego and soul, of really placing the foothold, placing the belief, the faith, that I am remembering myself. I am remembering and allowing that to come forth. I get that it's basically the idea of stopping to add more for the sake of healing and AKA becoming a better caterpillar.

Deborah: (46:57)

Yeah. I think it's, non-linear, it's much more spirally. I've had the same kind of like, I gotta do more,I gotta do more and I have done more at times, but if it doesn't feel right...I think the work I'm doing on myself right now is to try to understand different perspectives, to keep my heart open. Somebody was doing a Tonglen practice on The Daily Evolver , is a podcast I really enjoy, there was a woman was doing this practice where you breathe into your body the smoke the density and the suffering.

Deborah: (47:44)

And you do that for your enemy as well. You bring in their suffering into your body, and then you breathe out love. And just in doing that and asking...If you actually do this practice and you do it for quite some time, it gets more intense. You get more of these images of suffering and you bring into your body and you really allow it. You don't disassociate at all, and you hurt and you feel for your enemy too, you bring all that in, and then you just release, release, love, and healing from yourself. And then I ask let me be of help where I can be of help in practical ways. You know, I'm open. I'm not always sure how I can be, but I can have a different kind of willingness than I used to have, to be used in whatever time I have left on this earth.

Brenda: (48:44)

The steward of it. It's not you choosing the work. The work has chosen than you.

Deborah: (48:51)

Good, good place to end.

Brenda: (48:52)

Thank you.

Deborah: (48:53)

Thank you, Brenda.

Announcer: (48:59)

And that concludes this week's episode of the Soul Path Sessions podcast with Deborah Meints-Pierson and Brenda Littleton. If you'd like to hear more about living a more soulful life, please subscribe to our channel on your favorite podcast app and be sure to check out the show notes and links below. For more information from Deborah, visit soulpathsessions.com and for Brenda, brendalittleton.com. Thank you for listening. And remember to follow your soul, it knows the way.