I love the energy you are putting out in this. Reminding us of the best of humanity. I wrote this and I think you’ll find it relevant. Reading your orientation made me want to share it.
Right now I’m going to get out of this chair and go to the bathroom. And after the release and relief of it all, I am going to return to this chair and read what I wrote this morning on my Substack about how “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.” Then I am going to my favorite seafood shack by my lonesome sad sack self and order my usual mussels in white sauce with a side of linguine and hot buttered bread and revel in the meaningless mindfulness of it all. And after that well I don’t know. Peace Whenever Possible, Dwight Lee Wolter.
I'd say that true selflessness in relationships best flows from a place of radical self-love and fullness. Just as you can make more sustainable wellness changes by first cultivating empowering thoughts and beliefs, you are better able to authentically show up for a partner if you have nourished your own mind, body, and spirit. It's the oxygen mask principle: when you tend to your whole self first, selflessness becomes a natural overflow rather than a draining sacrifice. The balance between giving and receiving isn't about diminishing yourself for your partner. Selflessness, done right, is itself a form of radical wellness. it's about bringing your most vibrant, whole self to your partnership so that patience, listening, and understanding can truly thrive. It is what I write about in my book, Radical Wellness, and here on Substack!
OK, I see how this works in close relationships, like within a marriage, like within a family, like within friendships. But here is the tough part: how do we make it work when political differences make people angry enough to break it off with close friends at best, or shoot someone at worst. Are we really capable of seeing and understanding the political view of someone whose view is the polar opposite? I'd love to know what Yung says about that. Maybe it's in the podcast? I'll find out...
really enjoying this interview with Yung Pueblo. thank you so much for having him on. There is a depth to his work that reflects his own daily deep work.
Would you be willing to link the Rupert Spira meditation you referred to in the episode? maybe choice less awareness?
With so many people hating even themselves, how can they possibly platonically love others, i.e. strangers?
Largely relevant to the present social and political turmoil, both domestically and abroad, are the words of American sociologist Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception [and] awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
At least as individuals, we can try to resist flawed human nature thus behavior, however societally normalized it may be, once we become aware of its potential within ourselves. Once cognizant of it, perhaps enough of us could instead perform truly humane acts in sufficient quantity to initiate positive change on a large(r) scale.
Currently, however, there’s relatively little compassion in the world when compared to the very plentiful anger or rage. I’ve noticed myself getting angrier over the last few years, especially about domestic and global injustices, or at least how I perceive them as such.
Maybe my anger is largely related to the Internet’s ‘angry algorithm’ sending me the stories, etcetera, it has (unfortunately correctly) calculated will successfully agitate me into keeping the (I believe, overall societally-/socially-damaging) process going thus maximizing the number of clicks/scrolls I’ll provide it to sell to product advertisers.
Regardless, I often see the human race as perhaps desperately needing a unifying existential/fate-determining common cause; so much so that an Earth-impacting asteroid threat or, better yet, a vicious extraterrestrial attack may be what we have to collectively brutally endure together in order to survive the longer term from ourselves. Humanity would unite for the first time and defend against, attack and eventually defeat the humanicidal multi-tentacled ETs, the latter needing to be an even greater nemesis than our own formidably divisive politics and (mis)perceptions of irreconcilable differences—especially those involving religion, nationality and race.
During this much-needed human alliance, we’d be forced to work closely side-by-side together and experience thus witness just how humanly similar we are in the ways that really count. For me, the movies Independence Day and, especially, Enemy Mine come to mind. (Then again, one or more human parties might actually attempt to forge an alliance with the ETs to better their own chances for survival, thus indicating that our deficient human condition may be even worse than I had originally thought.)
Yet, maybe a half-century later when all traces of the nightmarish ET invasion are gone, we’ll inevitably revert to those same politics to which we humans seem so collectively hopelessly prone—including the politics of scale. And, yet once again, we slide downwards.
... Interestingly yet disturbingly enough, before people of colour became the primary source of newcomers to the U.S. and Canada, thick-accented Eastern Europeans were targeted with meanspirited Anglo-Saxon bigotry. As a broken-English, 1950s Eastern-European immigrant to Canada, my (now late) father experienced such maltreatment. Hypothetically, if Canada and the U.S. were to revert back to a primarily Caucasian populace, I wouldn’t be surprised if Eastern Europeans with a thick Slavic accent would eventually again become the main target of bigotry within the dominant Euro-Canadian/American ethnicity/populace.
I love the energy you are putting out in this. Reminding us of the best of humanity. I wrote this and I think you’ll find it relevant. Reading your orientation made me want to share it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/justinhewitt42/p/the-ground-beneath-the-sky-teaching?r=4aa574&utm_medium=ios
Right now I’m going to get out of this chair and go to the bathroom. And after the release and relief of it all, I am going to return to this chair and read what I wrote this morning on my Substack about how “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.” Then I am going to my favorite seafood shack by my lonesome sad sack self and order my usual mussels in white sauce with a side of linguine and hot buttered bread and revel in the meaningless mindfulness of it all. And after that well I don’t know. Peace Whenever Possible, Dwight Lee Wolter.
I'd say that true selflessness in relationships best flows from a place of radical self-love and fullness. Just as you can make more sustainable wellness changes by first cultivating empowering thoughts and beliefs, you are better able to authentically show up for a partner if you have nourished your own mind, body, and spirit. It's the oxygen mask principle: when you tend to your whole self first, selflessness becomes a natural overflow rather than a draining sacrifice. The balance between giving and receiving isn't about diminishing yourself for your partner. Selflessness, done right, is itself a form of radical wellness. it's about bringing your most vibrant, whole self to your partnership so that patience, listening, and understanding can truly thrive. It is what I write about in my book, Radical Wellness, and here on Substack!
OK, I see how this works in close relationships, like within a marriage, like within a family, like within friendships. But here is the tough part: how do we make it work when political differences make people angry enough to break it off with close friends at best, or shoot someone at worst. Are we really capable of seeing and understanding the political view of someone whose view is the polar opposite? I'd love to know what Yung says about that. Maybe it's in the podcast? I'll find out...
really enjoying this interview with Yung Pueblo. thank you so much for having him on. There is a depth to his work that reflects his own daily deep work.
Would you be willing to link the Rupert Spira meditation you referred to in the episode? maybe choice less awareness?
With so many people hating even themselves, how can they possibly platonically love others, i.e. strangers?
Largely relevant to the present social and political turmoil, both domestically and abroad, are the words of American sociologist Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception [and] awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
At least as individuals, we can try to resist flawed human nature thus behavior, however societally normalized it may be, once we become aware of its potential within ourselves. Once cognizant of it, perhaps enough of us could instead perform truly humane acts in sufficient quantity to initiate positive change on a large(r) scale.
Currently, however, there’s relatively little compassion in the world when compared to the very plentiful anger or rage. I’ve noticed myself getting angrier over the last few years, especially about domestic and global injustices, or at least how I perceive them as such.
Maybe my anger is largely related to the Internet’s ‘angry algorithm’ sending me the stories, etcetera, it has (unfortunately correctly) calculated will successfully agitate me into keeping the (I believe, overall societally-/socially-damaging) process going thus maximizing the number of clicks/scrolls I’ll provide it to sell to product advertisers.
Regardless, I often see the human race as perhaps desperately needing a unifying existential/fate-determining common cause; so much so that an Earth-impacting asteroid threat or, better yet, a vicious extraterrestrial attack may be what we have to collectively brutally endure together in order to survive the longer term from ourselves. Humanity would unite for the first time and defend against, attack and eventually defeat the humanicidal multi-tentacled ETs, the latter needing to be an even greater nemesis than our own formidably divisive politics and (mis)perceptions of irreconcilable differences—especially those involving religion, nationality and race.
During this much-needed human alliance, we’d be forced to work closely side-by-side together and experience thus witness just how humanly similar we are in the ways that really count. For me, the movies Independence Day and, especially, Enemy Mine come to mind. (Then again, one or more human parties might actually attempt to forge an alliance with the ETs to better their own chances for survival, thus indicating that our deficient human condition may be even worse than I had originally thought.)
Yet, maybe a half-century later when all traces of the nightmarish ET invasion are gone, we’ll inevitably revert to those same politics to which we humans seem so collectively hopelessly prone—including the politics of scale. And, yet once again, we slide downwards.
... Interestingly yet disturbingly enough, before people of colour became the primary source of newcomers to the U.S. and Canada, thick-accented Eastern Europeans were targeted with meanspirited Anglo-Saxon bigotry. As a broken-English, 1950s Eastern-European immigrant to Canada, my (now late) father experienced such maltreatment. Hypothetically, if Canada and the U.S. were to revert back to a primarily Caucasian populace, I wouldn’t be surprised if Eastern Europeans with a thick Slavic accent would eventually again become the main target of bigotry within the dominant Euro-Canadian/American ethnicity/populace.