Then Again, What Do We Know?: Recent Episodes
Brianne Grebil & Mer Monson
Is growth up to us?
What if we’re made to grow?
What if growth doesn’t need to be pushed or forced?
Expanding by looking, wondering and sharing
Cool byproducts of exploring and expressing
What if growth is a wider and wider lens of awareness?
What if playing in the wonder is more than enough?
Can we stop ourselves from growing?
Tuning into inklings as a catalyst for growth
A lesson from the flowers
What if decision making is naturally effortless?
What if we notice rather than decide?
What if not knowing yet can be totally satisfying?
The unhelpful pressure of finding the “right” answer
What if we just overcomplicate decisions that seem more important?
Noticing where all our “doing” actually comes from
The millions of things happening beyond our conscious choices
Playing in the mystery of free will
The innocence of always doing what makes sense to us in the moment
Our cool capacity to see more in any moment
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” - Rumi
How much we think about our body and how little we need to
Do bodies need managing and solutions?
Is our body in our way?
What if bodies are REALLY not separate from the intelligence of life?
Pinning our body up against the wall
Presence and listening with our body, without agenda
Riding the possibility of Alzheimers or cancer down the road…
The rabbit hole of thinking about our appearance
Rethinking the positive body movement
What if exercise is play?
What if our body isn’t us and isn’t ours?
“You are a ghost driving a meat-covered skeleton made of stardust. What do you have to be afraid of?” -Anonymous
“Out beyond all ideas of wrongdoing and righting there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.” -Rumi
Why Brianne wrote the book now, in the middle of her Mom’s journey
A look at the book’s title
The first moment Brianne’s mom didn’t know who she was
What about the worst part of it, the painful parts?
How has Brianne’s relationship with suffering changed?
Why love doesn’t care how you feel
What about Brianne’s forgetting and remembering?
Deeper intimacy and connection in the face of so much loss
Brianne turns her mom into a metaphor of what life is
Finding a newer, deeper center of balance
Palm trees and wind storms
What’s left when it all gets stripped away?
Brianne’s hope for the book
What if feeling uncomfortable isn’t a bad thing?
What if discomfort isn’t personal?
Being comfortable with being uncomfortable
Listening without our shield of ideas
What if discomfort is a side effect of life rearranging itself?
Moving from coping to opening
What if discomfort is an invitation, a doorway?
Looking through discomfort rather than at it
Being in conversation with life instead of ourselves
What if discomfort is life’s way of asking, “Wanna talk about it?”
We are always in progress
The “It’s not fast enough” thought
What if self sabotage isn’t a real thing?
Grace with the unpredictable pace of life
Marking progress as a tool in the game
Respect and appreciation for the unknown
Does life make it’s own progress?
The dance of giving something our time and attention
Suffering from an overinflated sense of “I”
Beating ourselves up with what we make up
Why does nothing require our worry?
A look at the words, “giving” and “up”
Giving up as a strategy versus getting to the end of your rope
Does life work on stuff when we don’t?
Genuine giving up, without strings or agendas
What about the saying, “Never give up!”?
Dancing between making stuff happen and giving up
What if the only thing we can really give up is a thought?
How recognition of truth soothes our soul
The gift of awareness and noticing
The Perfume of Silence by Francis Lucille
Faith as an awareness of knowing
Faith versus desperate hoping
Exploring faith through existential crisis and religion
Faith in what’s behind and before “everything”
What if faith is just a side effect?
Why we can’t “do” faith
Faith as sustenance
The game of growing faith
The gift of having less and less faith in ourselves
Life moving us versus us moving life
A fresh take on moving mountains
What isn’t spiritual?
Why we go spiritually seeking
Stepping back into action after spiritual epiphanies
The interplay of spiritual seeking and physical action
Noticing we’re ready for a new adventure
Being pushed or being moved to step into new circles
Getting too caught up with ourselves and our own journey
Playing full out in the world, knowing where we can rest
Looking from the mountaintop, playing in the valley
Putting our hands in the clay of life
Are funks really a problem?
Being aware we’re lost in a funk
Can life still make stuff happen, even in a funk?
Grace to let ourselves be human
What if we’re not really checked out, we just think we are?
Taking our hands off the wheel
Life doesn’t need to be understood to be be fully lived
Thought is not reality, but our reality is made of thought
Glimpsing reality beyond the world we walk around in in our heads
A fresh look at our role in the art of life
Existing is so weird and cool
Netflix show that mentioned rainbows: Abstract - The Art of Design; Season 2, Episode 1 - Olafur Eliasson
The appearance of rest versus really being in it
Rest versus relief
What if peace is always already here?
What is our role in discovering peace?
Why can’t we “do” rest?
The oops of being in hot pursuit of peace
The richness of stillness
Playing with sponges and water
Letting our tools be “of the moment”
The gold mine beneath all our ideas and beliefs
What if seeing truth naturally dissolves what we’ve built on top of it?
Be still and know that I am God - Psalms 46:10
Why it’s such a juicy, delightful and sometimes scary exploration
Loosening our grip on who we think we are
The gift of exploring who we’re not
Who is the self we’re trying to work on?
Blurring the edges of who we think we are
Getting a taste of our true identity
What if who we are doesn’t need to be soothed, fixed or empowered?
What about fault and responsibility?
What if we are the awareness of all of it?
What if all the juice is in the silence between the notes?
Freedom to be human
Is seriousness ever required?
What do we mean by “serious”?
What does seriousness have to do with care and importance?
Caring about stuff without holding it tightly
Popping the bubble of our made up assumptions
Why are we “okay no matter what”?
What if life isn’t inherently serious?
Seriousness & complicated versus simple & obvious
Getting a feel for living with lightness
Does love take work?
How our personal worlds collide
How our thinking distorts how other people look
What if love and peace are always already here?
Not putting weight on all the moments that feel off
What if we don’t have to solve messes to get out of them?
What if the basis of connection is beyond the chaos?
Seeing our thinking about people for what it is
The part we play when our feelings get hurt
Finding the space where our thoughts about people are irrelevant
What if it doesn’t take effort to enjoy other human beings?
Realizing a deeper truth about who and what we are
We can’t fake hope
What if hope has nothing to do with the future?
Hope says this moment isn’t everything
What if hope is just the space of knowing that there’s more?
Hope is the breathing room around our experience
What if hope (and everything else we’re looking for) is always in the background?
The cosmic joke
Real hope vs a positive mental attitude
The hopefulness of understanding we’re never stuck with the experience we’re having
Looking at what actually fuels our experience rather than trying to change it
What if hope is just a natural side effect of glimpsing truth?
Do the past and the future really exist?
Hope is in the now
“The divine passes from the formless to form, and as human beings we are both spectators and participants in this spiritual theater called life.” - Sydney Banks
If you want something to change, how much of that change is up to you? What fuels change? How does it happen and where? These are just some of the questions we swirl around in with this episode.
That voice in our head
What does our mind have to do with our life?
How much is our “self manager” really in charge?
Life - being in for the ride
The big story and our story, holding both
What if the absurdity of life doesn’t need to be solved?
How does glimpsing the big picture color our human experience?
Life - holding more and handling more with less effort
Fun with rocking horses and shopping carts
Insecurity, a flavor in the package of being alive
Confidence in what?
Confidence and insecurity, two temporary flavors of thought
What if we could be confident, even with insecurity?
What if insecurity doesn’t have to go away to stop getting in our way?
A fresh look at shyness
What if everything we think about ourselves is up for grabs?
Change comes from seeing truth, not by trying harder
Being alive versus thinking about being alive
What if how we think we’re doing in life is irrelevant?
The infinite richness of life itself
Jeb Corliss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k
Love - a big word we make up a whole lot of things about
Believing in love versus sensing it’s always here
Love is the ground, Love is the container
What if everything is love in disguise?
What if we can’t mess love up?
The Prodigal Son - looking for love where it isn’t
How love innocently becomes a doing
What changes as we wake up to love?
The ordinariness, beauty and inevitability of falling back into love
How understanding changes our experience of the dark
Love is what’s left when everything else is gone
We're often told that it's important to have goals - but is it? Do we need goals? Do we have to make ourselves do things? Mer and I explore this and more in our fun conversation.
When we stop trying to solve a problem, is it still there?
Does life see anything as a problem?
The game of conjuring up problems
What if it’s inevitable that we’ll figure it out or life will care of it?
The magic of wondering vs trying to solve
We don’t NEED to wind ourselves up about anything, but it’s okay that we do
What if the secret to solving a problem is to first fall into the space where it isn’t one?
What if we could enjoy changing the world?
Metaphor of the two minds from “Slowing Down To The Speed of Life” by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey
What if overwhelm describes the state of our mind not the state of our life?
How can a list of things to do have weight?
Humans create drama about what’s happening and how much there is to do
What if life doesn’t need to be handled, and just gives us what we need to do the thing in front of us?
What if how we think life is going is irrelevant?
When you see something truer than the voice in your head, it takes care of itself
What’s always there beneath and beyond the chaos?
Why we don’t want you to listen to our words
What if we’re all just waking up to something we already know?
A closer look at what loneliness is and isn’t
Why trying harder doesn’t help
What if we’re always already connected?
What if we can hate a feeling without thinking it’s a problem?
What if our own opinions about how we’re doing aren’t relevant to being ok?
Life is built on truths that don’t disappear; we just lose sight of them
Waking up to the ground we’re standing on
A whole new lens on the saying “It doesn’t matter”
What lets us create more, and what gets in the way of letting it out?
What if creation is designed to be easy?
What if creation works best when we don’t plan it all out?
How the gap between our taste and our talent shrinks
Ira Glass video: https://vimeo.com/24715531
What if we don’t have to get it “right”?
Taking ourselves way too seriously
What if what comes out of you isn’t about you?
A new take on impacting the world
What about the self critic?
Looking at all of life as art (p.s. you too :)
A new lens on mental health
The pile of rules we make up about anxiety and depression
Is darkness the color of the ground, or is it shadows passing through?
Seeing space in the ebb and flow of emotion
What about those moments we forget we’re anxious or depressed?
What if feelings aren’t personal?
The gift of being unafraid to feel
What if a dose of understanding is the best medicine?
Glimpsing we’re always okay, even in the dream of thought
Quote from Jo Jo Rabbit: https://onbeing.org/poetry/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing/
Rumi poem: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8534703-The-Guest-House-by-Mewlana-Jalaluddin-Rumi
Episode notes:
What if we are always in transition and we just notice it sometimes?
“Change is the only constant in life” - Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher
The humanness of getting attached to impermanent things
The gift of seeing that nothing in this world is consistent, steady or reliable
How humans make meaning of things and circumstances in the first place
What if hanging out in the unknown is a sweet spot?
What if we don’t have to take our made up worlds so seriously?
The beauty of fully experiencing life, knowing it’s all okay
What if we’re a leaf on the tree of life?
Episode notes:
The gift of looking our fear of death in the face
Can exploring death bring us back to life?
What doesn’t die?
What helps us see it’s safe to grieve?
The paradox of finding something more through loss
Finding beauty in the mystery of life
The difference between believing something and touching truth
Freedom beyond planting flags and marking the territory of our own beliefs
Episode notes:
Why we picked our podcast name
Being a recovering know it all
Waking up to what’s behind everything
Albert Einstein book - The World As I See It
The stories we make up about illness
What if safety doesn’t lie in what’s happening to our body?
What isn’t our job?
What if illness is part of the whole?
Illness from inside and outside the intellect
Seeing beyond the need to make sense of it
Can feelings ever permanently hurt us?
Giving emotions the benefit of the doubt
What if emotions aren’t what we think they are?
Feeling with curiosity rather than obsession
Life comes with a moment by moment feeling
Life beyond the full-time job of feelings
Do we have to work at feeling good?
Seeing beyond the recipes and formulas
What we’re up to & what we hope you’ll be up to as you listen
The gift of looking fresh - at anything
Self help and the game of trying to outwit ourselves
What if wholeness is our default?
Who is the self we think needs fixing?
Playing with change without having so much on it