The Follow Your Art
Podcast

Full transcript of the entire episode here:

Hey guys.

David here.

I wanted to start this episode off and let you know that there's going to be two comments that I found somewhere online. And with this following your art podcast, I want to kind of share with you some of my thinking around the two comments that I've picked out.

These two comments are from separate profiles of friends of mine, and shared from other outside profiles.

With that in mind, this first one, I'm going to get right to the point, Dakota, she shared this post by a man named Gunter Davon, or Davon,I think, Davon. It says, I catch feelings from how we joke around and communicate. Not from sex.

With not being in all caps.

Let's get right into it. You know,

I look at that and I say, Okay, I catch feelings from how we joke around and communicate not from sex. I want to point out something very important when it comes to how we use our metaphors, right to express what we're what's going on for us right now. I think the feedback system and the feedback loops in our in our lives when we're using metaphors are responding to the way or to the way we use it, how we use it, and all aspects of that metaphor.

I was looking at the definition for the word catch. And I was able to kind of sift through all of the different definitions, and I found the one that I think I, you know, to catch feelings really means.

And in the term is, you know, to capture something. If I if I catch feelings, it's something that I've really wanted, right? I want to feel love for somebody, I want to feel excitement about seeing someone come and enjoy spending time with me. And if I if I catch feelings, I finally got it, right, it's mine.

The challenge with that is you can't leave out the other side of the metaphor. What's the other side of the metaphor?

It's the fact that what you catch is going to try to escape.

If I use a metaphor, like I catch feelings, I'm using something saying, I've got this thing, this person, this animal, this whatever, I’ve caught these feelings.

Their mine. Locked it down. It's going to try to escape.

That's the challenge I see with using a phrase like catching feelings. You know, there's many definitions for it, right?

If if feelings catch you, and this is using it in a different way, right? If feelings catch you, right, that's a whole scary situation. But that is to say that if I have caught a cold, right, I am grasped by that cold, and I'm sick or whatever I haven't, I'm experiencing some sickness.

All I'm trying to do is say this word catch is way more dynamic than we like to lead it to believe and it's doing more for the internal experience of a human being, then the person may or may not be intending just by using the expression and expression of that metaphor to catch something, whether that be feelings or whatever. Right?

So I've got feelings. You know, it says I catch feelings from how we joke around and communicate, not from sex. Now, we have three different experiences in a relationship right here that it's laid out for us. And it's leaving out one of them from the emotions of the experience, right? If I have feelings for someone, it's going to be so essentially, right? If we break it down, if I have feelings for someone, it's going to be because, and I'm putting this into my words, it's going to be because we joke around and because we communicate and it's not going to be because of sex.

That I would actually fundamentally disagree about. I'm going to just say it right there. I disagree.

And I'm not disagreeing that feelings are important to or that joking around is important to feelings, and communication is important to feelings. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm disagreeing with the separation between these things and sex as if sex is the enemy.

You know, and maybe that's not what they're saying. But the implications of that right? Not from sex and not is an all caps. It's saying I don't catch feelings from sex, you're not going to, you know, get me to want to be with you because of how good the sex is or whatever. Again, I don't think I would agree with that. Because if I'm experiencing a wonderful loving, and I mean, yeah lustful experience with the person, sex is totally going into how I feel towards that person. I've had experiences where the sex with someone turned me off to them, I did not want to be with them because of how whether that was, and I don't want to, you know,

I don't want to

what's the word I'm looking for?

I don't want to act like that's all there was to it. This person was a beautiful person, they could joke around, they could communicate, but the sex was boring. And so that made the feelings harder to be to keep in touch. That's a whole. If you're using this as an equation, let's say feelings equals playful plus communication, right? It's saying not from sex. Oh, that's not even in the equation. It just says feelings equals playful plus communication, you could have a good friend like that you gave a really good friend, a really best friend.

That's what you could have. And that's great. Maybe your couple, your lover is your best friend. That's wonderful.

But I'd argue you can catch feelings from sex as well, meaning you can it's possible to catch feelings from sex, if the sex is good enough.

But it's also important to note that these three in combination work a hell of a lot better, right, we're talking about three different in my opinion, three different levels of experience, sex being the bass. Communication, and joking around can also be in the bass, but they also move up the ladder

to other parts of your experience, right in the emotional region, and in the mental game. So it's not just about sex. There’s all I think that to try and exclude it is to do a disservice to what your relationships can actually build on, and the kind of energy that you can create and create with.

Now,next up the second comment that I saw, and I found this on my friend, Chelsea's page, posted by she shared someone's mother of heathens post it says it was a picture of a girl laying back and I actually want to do that image justice. Give me a second. The comment above it. The painting is of a woman laying on a on a bed, red hair, green sofa, blue dress and yellow book in her right hand as she's laid back kind of, she looks beat right? She looks kind of like she's fucking giving up on one level and just trying to relax. And the comment says it since it's impossible to know which period of my life is the middle, I've decided to have an ongoing crisis.

Man, that's a point of giving up that really,

that's it's terrible. But at the same time, it's an acceptance.

It's an acceptance of the way things are.

I think, because

I once heard a man say and this this is going to speak directly to the middle of what this whole statement is trying to point to.

I heard it from a man who was a part of a church. I think it's the Agape church a long time ago. I was going through some really tumultuous experience.

And in the middle of that I was kind of trying to find something that could help and I heard this guy talking and he's uh. He was leader of the church there. I don't remember his name. But he said

it I'm gonna have to put this into my own words. He said, if you're going to have to be experiencing something for the rest of your life, right? If you're going to be experiencing whatever you're experiencing, like you're depressed or you're fucking angry, or you're just you betrayed, right? If whatever you're experiencing in this moment right here right now, you would have to experience for the rest of your life.

just think about that for a moment. Put yourself in that position where now, what would you need

in terms of resources

in terms of

what you're capable of. Right? What would you need in order to survive that for the rest of your life?

Right? If you're having, say you're depressed or whatever, if your life is that depressed for the rest of it, what do you need to be experiencing in terms of resources, in terms of your capabilities? In terms of who you really are? That can handle that for the rest of your life? Who is it that you are, that is able to handle that for the rest of your existence in on this planet?

With that in mind,

it says, since it's impossible to know which part of my life is the middle?

I was trying to figure out okay, what is she talking about? What is the middle the period of life that is the middle is to say, when I'm not a child? And when I'm not an adult? I'm trying to find when should I have a midlife crisis? When am I supposed to have? When am I expected? Right? When do I need to look for whatever this midlife crisis is? Right? Do I what? So it's trying, essentially, the person is trying to

eliminate the anxiety

of the experience of not knowing whether or not they're having a crisis, for the they're sacrificing all of that anxiety, for the certainty of knowing it's happening now period, right, I've sacrificed the future possibility of what I'm afraid of,

for the present existence of what is in terms of like,

I might not realize I'm already in it. So let's just be in it, and just say I'm in it, or whatever, right. That's the challenge that I think this person is facing. And again, I'm going to circle right back to what I said, if you would have to experience that for the rest of your life, either side of that, meaning the present ongoing crisis, if I have to experience that, for the rest of my life, this ongoing crisis, whatever it may be, for the rest of my life, what do I need, in terms of resources and capabilities? What kind of person do I need to be to be able to handle this, and to be able to push through and to be able to survive?

And on the other side of the coin, right, if I am just facing the anxiety of not knowing whether or not the crisis is coming?

Right? That I'm afraid, so afraid that the crisis is coming? If I need to live in that fear of the future crisis being present, or that anxiety of the future crisis being present,

what resources and capabilities and who do I need to be

to have in my life, the ability to keep going, regardless of living in that for eternity? You could say if I have to do this for eternity, what do I need to be to just keep going?

That being said, I'm gonna leave it there. I find this to be very fascinating, in terms of, you know, seeing stuff that's posted and being able to share my own thoughts on it. In this follow your art podcast, I will see you on the other side. Talk soon

Full transcription of the video:

Hello, welcome to episode two of the follow your Art Podcast. This is David here. I wanted to, I wanted to talk about a couple of things that have really, they've really kind of sparked my interest, right in terms of you know how like what kind of dialogue they can open up. And there's two, essentially, separate statements I saw on two separate people's Facebook pages. And with these statements, I'm going to try and, I’ve generated essentially, my own kind of questions about these statements, right? And I'm going to keep it really simple because I get how confusing this stuff can be, when you're trying to convey ideas using just words, right? Because ideas are beyond just the words. They exist in the external reality, at least in my world. And so we're gonna, we're gonna keep it really simple, right? I saw two different posts on two different friends pages. One of them says, philosophical things to ask your kids just to see what they'll say. And on the original posts that my friend shared, the original poster, they said philosophical things to ask your kids just see what they say. And then they put a whole bunch of questions, and then they were sharing questions and sharing the kids answers and responses. And this was cool, I thought it was great, it's a great way to kind of get the topic going.

So for me, in hearing that, right, and hearing what was said there, I had to. I mean something about it really; I had to, I had to dig a little deeper. So when it says philosophical things, I looked at the definition. It says the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline. A particular system of philosophical thought, so a philosophy is a particular system of philosophical thought. It is the study of theoretical basis, of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge, or experience. And lastly, the part here says it a philosophy is a theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior. By the way, I'm traveling a lot. So if you hear lots of outside noise, that's just neighbors. These walls, I think, have to be paper thin, because I could hear a lot going on.

Now, with that in mind, philosophy being that, when I read that word, philosophical things, the questions I read, didn't really fit into the category of philosophy. Right? Not all of them, maybe some of them. And then some of the people were like, Hey, these are stupid questions. Like, you gotta ask better questions or whatever, but like, and then they give a whole new list of questions that are like, about reality constructs and things that you can't like, it defeats the purpose, because now the quote, the initial statement, is it philosophical things to ask your kid just to see what they'll say, right? And the questions this new person put underneath it said, everything else sucks, here's the better questions, made questions that kids can't answer.

So now you've taken children out of the realm of philosophical conversation altogether, because they're not, they're out of the game, they're not able to play with you. So for me, I want to say that when it comes to philosophy, you're playing a game, right? Your game of thinking, How do we turn this question and on itself, how do we express the meaning of this word, and not undermine the totality of what that word can be for someone? How do we define that and for it to still stand under the weight of everything that exists around it. With that in mind, I just wanted to point to that in terms of philosophy, yeah, there's a lot of useful questions that can come out of that. But you've got to dig deeper to be able to really reach the reach the actual gold eye and to sift away the, what was that phrase we used in school? It was.

I don't know. Essentially, it's fake gold. I don't remember the word was, it'll come to me. But essentially, you got to sift out the fake shit from the real shit. And once you get the real the real gold you can take that with you and use that. But there's so much questions there that that aren't actual gold in terms of philosophical dialogue. Now moving on, I liked this other post that I saw on another friend's Facebook and it says, they said you got to find someone with an old soul because the new souls soulless. Now I don't know if the people that I'm, you know, talking about on my podcast here, want me to name them? So I'll blur the name and if they want me to share their name, I can but let's just protect their anonymity for right now. It says you got to find someone with the old soul because the new souls soulless. So I said okay, that's interesting. And these definitions are coming from Oxford languages by the way. So, this next one has maybe a few different definitions right? The first one being the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal, spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal. In mythology, soul is psyche. And psyche is soul, by the way, just in case you're not sure what that is. Now, next definition says, um, person's moral or emotional nature or sense of identity, a person's moral their soul is their moral or emotional nature or sense of identity.

Next definition says the emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in an art, a work of art, or an artistic performance. So this thing has soul or it lacks soul, right? African American culture or ethnic pride. So, in African American culture, ethnic pride, soul music, right? The essence of it and then the next that's the one definition for that. The next one says, the essence or embodiment of specified quality, the essence or embodiment of a specified equality. An individual person. You know, people who said, I'll never tell a soul. They're talking about a person I'll never tell anyone. And then lastly, one more definition it says, a person regarded with affection or pity. And then the sentence says she's a nice old soul. She's a she's a sweet soul. This word actually comes from your it says, German origin, soul. I don't even know how to say that an Old English but it says it's related to Dutch zeal and German seal.

Ah, what are we really talking about here when we talk about soul? It says another definition in dictionary.com says the principle of life feeling thought and action in humans. The principle of that, what is it principle now? And this is regarded as a distinct entity separate from the body and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body, spiritual part of humans. Where does the soul go? Right? What is this? What it? Where does the soul exist for you? Right? Where is your soul? If you were to ask, if you ask yourself that, we can inject the philosophy, the philosophical thinking, and we kind of pointed inwards and say, Where, in me or around me or in my existence does my soul be? Where is that? And it's and I think that's a very interesting question to ask yourself, Where is soul? And you could say, Where's my soul? Because it does exist for individuals, but where is soul.

Invoke invoking in that a new idea, I would share something that I think his name is Dr. Keats. He talks about soul making, right we can, there's soul crushing, right? And there's soul stealing. And you have soul making, you know, how do you become someone who makes soul? You know, what do you have to do? And what way do you have to do it, right, to be able to connect with soul making on that level. And I get that I'm kind of jumping around all over the place here. But ultimately, when it comes to what we're talking about, what is soul? And I'll define it for myself.

Soul is that droplet that left the ocean of what you could call God, right. Source. It's a droplet from that ocean, that eventually, is the essence of who you come to be when you're, when you're birthed out of this world, right, when you're when you when you come into being that droplet is the essence of you, and there's a soul there, that's tied to that. And that soul will always go back to the ocean when we leave this plane. Some people call that heaven, right, getting to return to source, right? That's not what this is, in terms of how I'm using it. I’m just talking about soul is essentially, let's talk about a little bit more fundamentally, I think there's a genetic code that your soul is kind of entered into this world with and your soul has all of the details in terms of fate-wise, in terms of choice-wise, that you're able to kind of branch out and do. That does not mean that all of the things for you are completely planned out in my thinking on this, right. It's not all completely planned out in terms of like, first he's gonna be here, then he's gonna go there, no.

It's more like ,you know what it is. Soul is the entire Choose Your Own Adventure book. And the decisions you make in this life turn that page to whatever page is next, right, you get those choices, those fundamental choices, go to page 93, or go to page 2, 27. You know, and then you get to page whatever 27 or. So the totality of the existence you are, could be anywhere from like 1000 pages, to 5000 pages, these are all of the open options you have, and soul encompasses all of that. And with that in mind, you get to make choices within the range of that book, that project your life forward. Or maybe even lead to your demise. Right soul has been to every ending the book has, because soul is the book. That's the challenge that I'm kind of putting forward for this. With that in mind, I just kind of wanted to share some cool ideas and philosophy in terms of spirituality and what that really entails and what's possible. So thank you for listening to episode two of my podcast. I will talk to you soon.

Full Transcript of this Video:

Hey guys, David here. This is my podcast, the follow your art podcast. And it's gonna go on as long as I'm on this follow your art journey. That's the idea. I'm not sure if it's gonna work out in terms of the totality of what I'm experiencing and where this goes next. But for me, I want to engage people in a new way, right? I want to share with you what I'm experiencing, and how to go about this in my own way, right, personally. Speaking to that, I love to chat with people, I love to engage with people in different ways. And if that means I get to interview somebody, great. If not, if this is a solo thing, I'm not sure. My point is, this first episode, I want it kind of revolving around, just getting started. Because that's, that's what I'm doing here. Right, I'm just getting started with this podcast.

I'm just getting started with a huge, immense journey that I had no idea I would be taking on, in terms of the scope of everything that's in front of me, and everything that's around me, and behind me and the massive multitude of options that keep presenting themselves to me that I know I need to stay in touch with in terms of staying grounded. Which is to say, I've got to keep updating, right, if I if I, if I tomorrow, have new options that weren't available today, and certain options that were available to me today that are no longer available to me tomorrow. If I'm acting on the information I'm just getting in the moment tomorrow, that yesterday, was in effect for me, I'm not current with what's actually going on for me, in my experience. I'm not current with what's actually happening in the present moment, right.

We talk about being in the now and being in the present moment and being present to what's happening. What we're really saying, is updating in your nervous system, what's actually happening, hat's actually going on. And to respond to what was yesterday is to respond to something that does not exist today, right? The options have changed, or maybe there are options that were present yesterday that are also present today, but they're not present in the same way, because now you've changed. Now you're moving forward.

So what does that mean, for just getting started? I've had the pleasure of many awesome, awesome intellectual mentors. And one of them, this guy Jamie smart was with me on the road for a short period of my life, but a significant period of my life when I was experiencing a lot of inner and outer chaos and turmoil. And, and that's not to say that at all that is gone, but that I've learned different ways of managing the storms that face your inner self. And he speaks to this idea that if you're willing to take the next step, right, if all you are is willing to take the next step, that's all you need, right? Because say you can't see the whole road in front of you, or you can't see everything, the totality of all that exists right in front of you, because there's just too much information, there's too much stuff going on, you only need enough know-how to know how to take just this next, this next step, right?

If you're not able to take the this next first step, the challenge is that you're hesitating somehow, right, you're not able to just get started. You've got to take some action, and sometimes no matter what action you take, it feels like the wrong action. Right? No matter what action you're wanting to do to create this thing that you want to create, but you can't picture everything that's possible for yourself because there's you're only able to see up to the horizon that you have. Which is to say that that may not be where the destination is, you've got to go beyond that horizon and experience the new horizons that are presenting themselves to you.

Because if you've not able to do that you're going to be not taking that next first step which means what do I need to do right now? What needs to happen right now to get me one step closer to that thing that I want. Whether it's a kick ass relationship, whether it's you know, for me I love music, right? I said I I want to I want to challenge myself in terms of creating music. So I've had to somehow figure out how to gear my resources and what's available to me, whatever that may be, and direct myself towards what's possible, what is possible. And sometimes, it doesn't feel like any of that is possible, but I've got to just take this next step. This next. Okay, what can I do from here, right? Maybe I can't do anything that needs to happen for that whole thing. But maybe whatever step I can take from here will make more options that open up to me that get me closer to that thing that I want.

Do you get that so like, let me let me let me put that a different way. If I don't have any way to move towards what I want, I need to move towards opening up options that will move me towards what I want. That's it. So either I'm moving towards it, or I'm moving towards something that's moving me towards it, that can move me towards it, that might move me towards it. And if it might move me towards it, maybe that's the chance that I need to be able to take just the next first step.

That's what this is about.

Just getting started, means you don't need to know the entire step-by-step plan to get all the way to the end. You do not need all of the information to be able to make that happen. You only need whatever information that's going to get you one step closer, and just take that step. That's it. That's what it means to just get started. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. That's what this is. I'm just getting started on this podcast. And I said, I'm gonna take this next step. I don't know what the whole journey looks like, I don't know how it's gonna be by the end of it. I don't know what it can look like and what it can be possible. But if I'm just willing to take this next first step, I've given myself, I've opened myself the doorway to become what I need to be in order to create what I want.

So that being said, I'm gonna leave it there. If you want to jump in with me, let me know. I'd love to have you on, have you on board and we can, you know, figure out some cool stuff to do together. Yeah, already. I will talk to you soon.