March 1, 2023 • 44 mins
We were curious about consciousness and interruption. How we can view interruption as a destructive distraction in some settings, but we can also benefit from interruptions when we are in intentionally crafted creative spaces. When we are paying attention, conscious of the thriving of the people we are with, interruption can be a positive motive force. Join us as we talk with Marti Spiegelman and explore disjointed career paths, coming to wisdom about consciousness, connection and fluidity, energy and purpose. When applying principles of awareness and negotiability we can achieve nothing less than an interruption in our worldview, in which we embrace change as a reconnection with the world around us and appreciate the constancy of human and ecological relationships.
Marti Spiegelman is a training professional, mentor, speaker, and founder of Awakening Value™: Technologies of Consciousness. Marti holds a BA in biochemistry from Harvard University, an MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and has advanced training in neurophysiology, psychology, and anthropology. She was president of her own design firm for 20 years. She is also an initiated wisdomkeeper, with over four decades of specialized training in Indigenous technologies of consciousness and related scientific, economic, and sociological fields.
To learn more about We Interrupt this Podcast, read the show notes, and suggest people we should talk to and topics to explore, please see our webpage at: https://www.weinterrupthis.com or contact us on twitter at @HaakYak.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
If we come into a situation where people are even a little bit more conscious and paying attention to one another,
this thing that we call interruption can be like play.
It can be like intersecting currents of a river.
You know,
a wave comes up, and another wave comes up, and another wave comes up, and that's a creative process.
(00:38):
Welcome to We Interrupt This Podcast.
I am Laure Haak, your host.
Many of us grow up learning that interruptions are impolite,
distracting,
hurtful, or even dangerous.
What if interruptions also have a good side, enhancing creativity,
connection,
reducing power imbalances.
(00:59):
In this podcast, our goal is to generate evocative conversations, exploring interruptions across a diverse set of perspectives, to understand more fully what interruption is and how it may be useful or even necessary for building inclusive communities.
We were curious about consciousness and interruption,
how we can view interruption as a destructive distraction in some settings,
(01:23):
but we can also benefit from interruptions. In intentionally crafted creative spaces when we are paying attention,
conscious of the thriving of the people we are with, interruption can be a positive mode of force.
Join us as we talk with Marty Spiegelman and explore disjointed career paths,
coming to wisdom about consciousness,
(01:43):
connection and fluidity,
energy and purpose.
Marty is a trained professional mentor, speaker, and founder of Awakening Value (01:46):
Technologies of Consciousness.
Marty holds a BA in biochemistry from Harvard University,
an MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and has advanced training in neurophysiology,
psychology and anthropology.
And if that weren't enough,
(02:06):
she is also an initiated wisdom keeper with over four decades of specialized training in Indigenous technologies of consciousness,
and related scientific, economic, and sociological fields.
Hi there.
Good to be with you,
Marty.
Let's just dive right in here.
What is it about interruptions that excited you about talking with us today?
(02:31):
It really plays right into the core of why I do what I do in the world.
If we look at Western culture,
people don't pay attention to one another,
they just blast in:
I have something to say! I have something to say!
And that's what we call an interruption. It has nothing to do with what anybody else said.
But if we come into -- and I hope to open this up a bit as we talk --
(02:55):
if we come into a situation where people are even a little bit more conscious and paying attention to one another,
this thing that we call interruption can be like play.
It can be like intersecting currents of a river,
you know,
a wave comes up and another wave comes up and another wave comes up. And that's a creative process.
So from one view,
(03:17):
interruption is destructive, and from another view,
it's something else altogether.
So that's why I got excited.
Awesome.
So,
we're gonna go a little sideways here and understand a little bit more, Marty, about your background.
And so I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your educational or learned experience background and how you got to,
how you got to where you are today?
(03:40):
Oh OK.
Great.
It's what they call in South America,
a zigzag path.
So I was born into a very short but illustrious uh lineage of scientists.
I grew up with Nobel Laureates in the living room, and science, and discovery, and I didn't really know anything else.
So when I got to university,
I went into biochemistry,
(04:02):
like my dad,
I didn't stay in biochemistry very long because I realized I wasn't my dad, and I did a zig into graphic design.
And this is just because I didn't know what to do,
right?
A friend of mine was doing this thing called graphic design.
And there was a wonderful teacher from Japan, and I asked him if I could take his course and he says,
(04:25):
all you need is to want.
I got a degree in biochem and I went on to grad school in graphic design and ended up being a,
a typographic and systems designer for 20 years.
I had my own firm in San Francisco and I had a wonderful time.
It was a beautiful career.
But then,
you know,
(04:45):
things change and I, for a lot of reasons,
part of which was a tanking economy,
decided to leave my design business one day.
It just happened like that.
And because I was having a midlife crisis in California,
you know,
in California,
what we do is we go get energy healing if we're having a midlife crisis.
(05:05):
I found this wonderful Scottish guy who is doing what he called visionary craniosacral work.
It's an ancient hands on energy healing technique.
And after some sessions with him,
he said,
you know,
you ought to study with me. And I sort of hemmed and hawed for a bit.
But I studied with him.
I taught for him.
I developed my own course, and then I started to teach other things like visionary skills.
(05:31):
And while I was making this transition,
I received in the regular mail,
remember regular mail?
I received invitations to study with Indigenous masters on three different continents.
These are three separate invitations.
I said yes to everything.
And within a year or two,
(05:53):
I had my first levels of initiation into Indigenous cultures. Over six years or so,
I began to realize that what I was being given was actually mastery in consciousness.
And I started to realize that these Elders are the,
the keepers of the consciousness and the well being of their people.
(06:15):
They are the masters of consciousness.
Their job is to not just keep their people going, consciously woven into the world.
Their job is to evolve consciousness through the thriving of their people.
I'm gonna interrupt for a second.
But you mean,
also maintain the history?
Is this biographical consciousness as well the people?
(06:36):
Yes.
Yes.
The the teaching is:
don't forget what you already know.
It's really that simple.
The more I was initiated and the more I taught,
the more I realized that everything I was being given was exactly what we're seeking in the modern world.
Absolutely everything.
And I also realized that this thing called consciousness can be described through physics.
(06:59):
It can be described through neurophysiology and energy awareness.
It can be described in the mythic language of original human cultures.
But it seemed to me that if I could get leaders, because I can't teach everybody,
but if I could get influencers and leaders and creative people,
people who want to make a difference,
(07:20):
if I could change their consciousness,
then what they could do would really change.
And so that's how I ended up where I am.
So Marty,
you're talking about this idea of consciousness. Thinking about how Indigenous peoples talk about consciousness,
(07:42):
I'm wondering how did you perceive or understand differences in how they approached this concept of consciousness?
Well,
the realization was that there is no difference.
There are a small number of principles of consciousness that have to do with how awareness is used.
Human awareness.
(08:04):
And those principles exist in every culture
I have worked in.
The visible expression of these principles is different,
one continent to the next.
The human imagination creates symbols and metaphors relative to natural surroundings.
(08:26):
So if I live in West Africa,
where the land is very flat and there are some high plateaus,
but they're also flat, and the trees are sparse, and the wet and dry seasons change instantaneously.
There's a certain energy to the whole environment that is going to drive how I imagine the forces of consciousness expressing.
(08:55):
So my,
my symbols and my,
my colors and my understanding of the elements and so on is gonna be relative to my environment.
If I live in the Andes,
I have a different experience of those same principles because my environment is at 17,000 ft and I'm experiencing nature and the powers of the universe in a different way.
(09:19):
But the principles are the same.
They're the same.
Thinking about interruption, and this really wonderful visual
you started this off with, this idea of water and waves colliding with each other and creating new things. As you are working in these different communities,
(09:45):
and I'm going to include all of the communities you've worked in,
how have you noticed interruption in these different environments?
You're talking about the words,
the colors,
the ways people interact with their environment
shapes the imagination.
How does it shape ways of interacting with each other, of sharing information, of being creative together?
(10:07):
How have you seen this play out?
And have you noticed interruption differently in these different spaces?
If we go into what we're calling an Indigenous environment,
if there is something that we would call an interruption,
they would call it the speech of nature.
And if we're in South America,
they would call it the,
(10:28):
the old Quechua word is Pacha Kuti,
which means an overturning of space time.
And so there's an awareness that things get interrupted,
that there are cycles of action.
There's a beginning,
there's a creation of momentum and knowledge, and that cycle completes in the moment of completion and starts the next one.
(10:50):
But sometimes those cycles get interrupted part way through because a larger force has a bigger idea,
so to speak, or a larger force is on the move.
So, like an earthquake is an interruption.
A volcano exploding is an interruption.
In terms of human interaction,
it gets a little more complicated because each culture has its rules about speaking up or not speaking up.
(11:15):
But here is where the the difference is.
If we go into an Indigenous culture,
assuming it hasn't been too westernized,
we'll find people attuning to one another and we'll find people attuning to not just one person to one person,
but each relationship to the collective and the collective is attuned to nature because their business is living well in their environment.
(11:46):
And so they might speak over one another if they're building a house and somebody's got a better idea and it's more efficient.
They might speak over another person,
but it's not intended to put anyone down.
It's intended to keep the process efficient, and so they'll speak.
It's like the that river analogy that came through.
(12:07):
It's like one current,
rolling over another to keep momentum going, to keep efficiency going.
And sometimes just for play,
sometimes just for absolute play because they understand the,
the power and the necessity that we have some fun.
Can you talk about the play part a bit more. When you first started talking about interruption,
(12:29):
it's,
that interruption is a bad thing.
It is a negative connotation. And particularly in Western culture,
the experience I've had and many others have had, is if you do interrupt,
unless you're in a very special group, interruption is seen as,
as really bad.
Especially if you're in a leadership role and you talk over somebody who may be somebody that you are supervising.
(12:55):
It's really seen as a bad thing.
So I'm curious,
I really like this idea of interruption in,
in a sense of play.
How does that manifest?
Well,
I think one thing we're missing here -- I appreciate the question.
One thing we're missing is that in a healthy culture or a,
a conscious group,
we could use either of those phrases,
(13:17):
there is the element of respect.
There are already relationships formed and there is an element of respect.
And so if I'm exercising respect,
I will not interrupt another person because what they're saying is so valuable.
I wouldn't dare cut it off.
(13:39):
It would be like stealing money from somebody or stealing a resource from a group that needs the resource.
If I am well connected with the people and we know one another and we understand one another's contributions,
then the interruption process can be additive.
(13:59):
But there has to be a well established relationship,
there has to be respect in action and then that playfulness can come in. Playfulness means that we are adding. Playfulness is additive.
Playfulness is exploring.
And if we're exploring and respecting one another and staying connected,
(14:25):
then that the interruption of playfulness really brings about great discoveries.
But if we're in a situation where we are so often in Western culture, where people don't know one another,
we don't really all belong to the same culture or even the same group.
And there is the that drive of individualism,
(14:46):
I have to make my mark.
If that undercurrent is there too,
then our interruptions are competitive and our interruptions cut off value.
They cut off the delivery of meaning which is what drives the establishment of value, and meaning and value together
drive our choices,
they drive our actions.
(15:07):
So if we're all always cutting off meaning and cutting off value,
our actions are going to be actions that cut things off and that ends up cutting off our thriving.
The first thing that really needs to happen is that a,
(15:31):
a group,
a team,
a company,
a community needs to allow time for relationships to be established, that we need to get to know one another.
There's a,
a principle in the technologies of consciousness.
It's a principle of relationship.
It says that there are three attributes of a relationship and there's -- imagine an energetic connection between me and you to make that energetic connection come alive.
(16:02):
The very first attribute is fluidity.
In other words,
we have to flow something to the other person.
We have to flow awareness,
attention,
respect,
and that flow needs to be connected at the other end.
So if you're flowing awareness to me,
I have to actually receive it,
then I have to flow something back to you and you have to receive it and we need time for that connection to be made.
(16:26):
So first fluidity,
then connectivity.
And if we do that, let's say two people in a new group do that,
and then each of those two people do it with another person and so on and so on until everybody is cross connected. If we've done that connecting well,
we might eventually end up with what is called a network of affection.
(16:50):
But we do at least have the beginnings of that third attribute,
which is framework.
We have an interconnected group. If we take the time,
and I don't know
corporate settings where anybody is really honestly available to do this,
I know people have tried.
But if you took the time to do some honest connecting,
not little adult games,
(17:11):
but some honest connecting.
And then you got down to work,
then it would be a completely different scenario.
You talk,
I listen,
I talk,
you listen is an outcome.
It's not a methodology.
It's an outcome of people not being connected in the first place.
The the other thing is -- I'm gonna come back to the three attributes of a connection between people.
(17:37):
The Western way of connecting is, imagine I'm an electrician.
The first thing I do is I,
I wire two things together and then I flow electricity fluid through that.
And then I think I have a connection.
We bring that analogy, laying down the wire first and then flowing something through it second,
we bring that to human relationships.
(17:59):
And just because we're sitting in a room,
there's some unspoken idea that because we're on the same team,
we're connected.
So why aren't we getting along. Between two people
you can't put a wire down first and then flow something through it.
You have to flow your energy and your attention and your awareness and your caring to another person.
And then see if the connection actually happens.
(18:21):
And if we could start to get the order right,
then we could very quickly build teams that actually function.
You're coming in with intentionality.
Say that I'm coming because I want to make connections.
And so it's like you're almost like the source of, like you say, the source of energy.
It completely changes in a way that perception and your expectation walking into a meeting.
(18:46):
You're not looking for the source of energy,
you are the source of energy, and then that radiates out.
Oh, I like that.
That's a really cool image.
And even more so, the Western person would be likely to do that as an individual.
I am coming with intentionality.
But the,
the conscious way to do it is that there is an axial purpose to the meeting.
(19:07):
Hm.
And everyone is coming to give energy to the axial purpose and they're gonna do that by connecting person to person,
to person.
But it's not, my ego is connecting to your ego.
It's, we're here to serve this axial aligning purpose.
We live in a series of generations where in Western culture,
(19:32):
emotional development has been so damaged or dented.
I could use stronger words.
But you get my drift here, that a lot of people in our lifetimes are just never going to be able to course
correct the degree to which they are defending themselves.
And so you walk into a,
(19:52):
a group of adults sitting in a business meeting.
A lot of them may have had such difficult histories that you can't make them be nice in a meeting.
They just can't.
And it has to do with their experience and,
and how they have managed to keep themselves upright in life.
You can't just demand that,
that be different instantly.
(20:13):
And so we're looking at,
if we could live for several 100 years,
we'd be looking at probably a 200 year project here. In this moment,
the how do I do this?
Number one,
you may not be able to.
And so if you're trying this in a company and you get one or two people to connect honestly and a bunch of them don't,
(20:34):
don't harangue the people who can't connect the way you want them to.
That you're looking at them as they are, and you have to take them as they are and love them that way.
We do so much measuring and judging, and you didn't do this and you can't do that.
I mean,
it's like we're,
we're just beating ourselves up every day.
We need to stop doing that.
(20:54):
We could at the very least try to interest them in what,
what does it take to energetically connect with the people you're working with?
Because that alone changes it,
that alone. When people are feeling energy,
even just a little bit changes the game.
Somebody who's good at sensing energy between people can be more playful and will not insult the people who are more defended. Then you can get a group more alive and the people who are more reticent and pulled back might open up a little bit more.
(21:25):
So I think maybe the easy the answer to the question,
how do we do this, is
anywhere,
any way we can instill in people in leadership positions,
a little bit of energy intelligence,
a little bit of skill in sensing the energy of people,
the energy of spaces.
(21:46):
And that's really what we could also call what I call awareness training.
It's different than mindfulness.
It's an original training that you find in Indigenous cultures.
All children get it. Basically they get taken out into nature and they learn how to feel nature,
how to hear the speech of the trees and the birds and the earth and,
(22:07):
and so on.
And that's their way of,
of learning to sense energies and hear the speech of other beings.
I want to come back to our topic of interruptions. If everyone is tuned into the larger thing instead of their own egos,
if everyone is tuned in and somehow juiced by the larger purpose of the meeting and everything is,
(22:33):
is in relationship to the larger purpose,
then creative positive interruptions just spark. If any of it is run at the ego level of consciousness,
then you get competition and defensiveness and control and it doesn't work at all.
(22:53):
Marty, I'm wondering if you can reflect.
There's been a,
I don't know if it's a shift but,
maybe a lifting up of this,
this idea of purpose in the corporate environment.
I've worked in nonprofits for quite a while, and mission driven and vision,
all that is
baked into how nonprofits work.
But it has not necessarily been baked into how corporations, for-profit companies work.
(23:18):
The work that you've been doing, Marty,
has also intersected with this idea of a purpose driven organization,
whether it's for profit or nonprofit, and how to bring that purpose forward into the organization's DNA.
Yeah,
my work does touch on that and I,
I would have to say even when I was a designer,
I was faced with the,
(23:38):
the mission statement and the vision statement and corporations, and where do they go on the annual report?
Even then before I was initiated myself,
I wanted to say to them (23:47):
people,
your mission statement and your vision statement,
number one are the same thing.
And number two,
the way you word them,
they're antithetical one another.
Here's where,
where it has to come in for any organization,
whether it's a family or a neighborhood or a town or a county or a country.
(24:12):
Janine Benyus, who established the term biomimicry,
she's just wonderful.
She says famously that nothing exists outside of a system.
So imagine, we walk into a forest and we go up to a redwood tree and we say,
what's your purpose?
That tree,
(24:33):
its purpose is, we could say, to be tree,
to be that kind of tree.
But its purpose in being that tree has a multifold ripple effect from everything that its root system is doing, everything about the way it grows,
(24:56):
and the role it plays in rain cycles in its environment,
and the the role its canopy plays in water cycles and nutrients and oxygen CO2 exchanges and all the other microbiomes that interact with trees and the pheromones that go back and forth, and everything!
Its ripple effect is enormous.
(25:16):
But for the tree,
it's simply being the kind of tree that it is.
If we could crack open that dimension of consciousness,
even a tiny,
tiny bit in any organization,
any group we might be working with,
we have, at group scale,
we have a purpose.
But can we, the Indigenous cultures they say vision into,
(25:41):
can we vision?
Can we see?
Can we begin to experience what our beautiful positive ripple effect is?
And so every time I take a step that is in service to my purpose,
I feel the beauty of my ripple effect.
So I'm gonna bring something else up here, Marty.
(26:01):
One of the things you've said in your TED talk is this idea, you can't strategize your way to consciousness.
The other piece in the TED talk you talked about is this idea, what is technology.
And again,
coming from a scientific background,
I think of technology as gears and bolts and
electrons flying around and,
and instead your definition of technology is the body of knowledge applied to a problem to advance understanding.
(26:30):
And so I think a lot of what I've been asking you questions about here is,
in a way it feels a little bit like I'm faced with this problem, and how do we develop a strategy for getting people to think more about awareness and to be more aware,
and to like be creative with each other.
And I guess what I'm,
I'm wondering, Marty, is
we can't strategize our way to consciousness.
(26:52):
But how do we,
how do we do this?
Right?
How can we, even if it's in ones and twos here,
how can we consciously approach this idea of,
of consciousness,
and,
and raising awareness and noticing this energy and helping to build energy.
(27:13):
How do we do that?
Yeah,
here's how we do it.
We first have to realize two things about,
I'm gonna say human consciousness.
Human consciousness has two extraordinary functions, and one is the function of perception.
And if we go back to the Latin and Greek roots of that word, perception is not a subjective thing.
(27:37):
Perception means to know the world through the senses.
And so here's a little bit of neurophysiology.
You know your world through your senses,
first and foremost,
and you know it completely and everything that your senses are picking up throughout your entire life is recorded in your nervous system at some level or another forever.
(28:01):
You have all the detail inside you.
So we are constantly proceeding.
We are knowing the world.
The other aspect of human consciousness is our special kind of awareness.
We may be perceiving everything.
But in the Western world,
we're only aware of a tiny,
little bit of it.
So if we train awareness,
(28:23):
the way humans used to. Human awareness needs training,
period.
It needs training.
We are not born knowing how to use our awareness fully.
So my vision is, if we can find enough leaders,
it doesn't matter the profession,
but we,
(28:43):
we need people in governance and finance and,
and business and education. People who really,
really want to change the world.
What if we trained their awareness,
so they were actually connected again into the world, into the universe.
The ripple effect of their full consciousness and how they live and how they process information and how they relate and create that ripple effect would be sufficient.
To put it simply, consciousness is a state of being in which we know the world through our senses and process information in multiple dimensions that are above,
(29:26):
if I can use that word, above the level of the ego.
We are processing information relative to our membership in the world,
relative to our belonging to one another.
And the ego is left to do its original job,
which is to simply be the home of our beautiful personalities.
From my viewpoint.
(29:47):
This isn't about something we can force people to do.
You can't go in and just demand everybody be conscious and do it a different way, because it just won't work.
Humans are extremely complex and we have developed
our way of being in Western culture over 2000 years and it's,
it's like turning a super tanker in the ocean.
(30:08):
You,
you can't turn it on a dime.
And so part of the skill for people who are advisors to organizations is to realize which organizations could become conscious and which ones need to just have their hands held being the way they are.
Don't try to change everything, but what a headache.
(30:29):
It's not going to work.
You just have to let it be.
It's like in the forest.
Some trees aren't gonna make it.
You can't expend all your energy insisting that they make it.
So some people,
we leave,
we help them as best we can,
we let them be and we keep searching for those organizations and those leaders who will say to us,
(30:50):
look,
there's something else that could be done.
I know there's something else.
I don't know what it is but I want it.
Those are the people that I will train.
And if I'm working just with organizations,
I'll look for those organizations who say essentially the same thing to me.
OK,
we're willing to do it differently.
It doesn't mean that we get rid of hierarchy.
(31:12):
It means that value in an organization is determined by function,
not by position.
And so the value of the current underlings has to be increased.
And the role and the value of the leader has to be re-evaluated and redefined,
(31:34):
not as a control,
but as a contributory kind of function.
If we could at least just start thinking about everyone in the organization,
in essence,
having an equal amount of power,
but just a different job description,
they're equally valuable.
I think it's really important to drop the idea that that we can just go out and change everything if only we knew how. It just won't happen like that.
(32:01):
That also reminds me of another comment you made about this idea of understanding our world.
And many of us saying,
oh I get it,
this is the way it is.
And then you kind of believe that for the rest of your life instead of
this approach you're talking about,
which is also mirrored in,
in a lot of agile technology processes.
(32:23):
Of,
well,
I understand this now,
I also understand that I can't understand everything.
So I'm gonna try this experiment, or I'm gonna iterate this one time, and learn something, and then adjust my understanding of the world as I move forward.
So you can't quote unquote,
fix something, because every time something changes,
(32:44):
everything changes,
right?
If you cut that tree down in the forest,
so many things change.
We have to think about our understanding of the world as a negotiation,
as an evolution over time, and that we look for these opportunities,
as you're saying,
Marty,
to learn, to train, and grow and evolve over time.
(33:08):
What I want to do is come back to the topic of this podcast.
How do we think about interruptions. Marty,
you talked about macro interruptions and we've also been talking about human size interruptions and organizational interruptions.
So let's come back to that.
(33:28):
I always love to think about interruptions in conversation,
but there are so many other ways of appreciating interruptions and,
and one of the interruptions here I think, is coming to understand that we are all of us learning every day.
And all of us, our contexts are changing every day. And to embrace that interruption in our understanding of the world around us and just glory in the learning that we can do every day.
(33:57):
But Marty,
I think the question then comes is,
is so many of us get uncomfortable with that because -- not that we're learning,
but that things are changing every day.
How do you approach that?
That level of uncertainty that's been brought in into a person's life and organization's life when,
(34:17):
when you don't have the standard operating procedures that you're following every day.
How do you,
how do you work with that with people?
Well,
there's a few things that,
that we want to question first and a few things we want to realize.
We tend in,
in Western culture to depend on a fixed idea of something.
(34:39):
And then I,
maybe as you just said,
maybe I'll learn something and then I'm gonna go work with it and see what more I understand.
And that,
that learning that I'm gonna investigate,
we take as a fixed piece,
but it's not.
The world isn't fixed.
We tend to want too much certainty.
And so every uncertainty is an interruption.
(35:02):
Actually,
neurologically,
we are constantly walking into the mystery. Every single second that is approaching, is unknown until you have experienced it.
Every moment.
Every nanosecond of our lives is essentially an interruption of what we have known,
right?
(35:22):
Because the world is on the move and consciousness is on the move and we are constantly evolving.
What we're really talking about is a shift.
Sometimes in the,
in the wisdom traditions is called a perceptual shift.
A shift in how we know the world.
In other words,
moment to moment,
(35:42):
I am being informed by the world around me and moment to moment,
I am knowing new things.
And so, I'll do better if I have a set of principles that organize me to understand that world,
moment to moment. And I will not do so well
if I have an external set of rules that say I must do this and cannot do that, because the world doesn't pay any attention to my rules.
(36:08):
The world,
the living world,
the conscious world has its own beautiful,
resilient,
negotiable principles.
If I listen to the beautiful way you pose that inquiry,
what we're calling interruptions and what the another reason I'm so excited by you landing on this is that really we're seeking negotiability
because the world is always gonna interrupt us and people are always gonna interrupt us and life is always interrupting us.
(36:35):
That's the certainty we've lost our negotiability.
We've become so afraid of change and so disconnected from the larger forces that create our world that we're defended against them.
We don't want any change,
we can't handle it,
we can't process it.
This has shifted us into a an idea of life that just isn't functional.
(36:57):
Um who are the people out there who are willing to actually reconnect to the vibrant,
beautiful world that we live in and be alive with it moment to moment because that will change how you understand it,
it will change how you create,
how you relate.
And so the constancy of change will not longer disturb you thinking that there is a,
(37:19):
a safety net is we,
we have the wrong idea of the safety net.
Our safety net ought to be the constancy of human relationship.
It ought to be the dependability of one person to the next to the next.
It ought to be the membership,
everyone belonging to everyone else.
(37:53):
We're recording this in December,
which is a big holiday season for many,
many different traditions and a big part of the holiday season is also um in a way,
it's a recognition of the changes in the environment.
For those of us in the northern hemisphere,
it's turning to winter and there's,
you know,
for me,
there's snow on the ground and I'm wondering part of this communication can almost be finding seasonality in the work that we do the grant cycles,
(38:23):
things like that.
But also connecting the work of an organization to this environmental seasonality that we have.
And in a way that could help us with.
I think a word you've used early Marty is this idea of a framework,
providing a,
a bit of a framework,
a tether so that yes,
things are evolving and changing every day.
(38:43):
But we know that every day the sun comes up and the sun goes down.
And we know that every year that we have these cycles of seasons they manifest different in different parts of the world.
But we have these seasons that come.
And so we have certain things that are more or less certain in which we can exist in this uncertainty of what's gonna come day to day or minute to minute,
(39:07):
moment to moment.
And Marty,
I'm wondering if that's part of the work that you're doing also is,
is,
is reconnecting us humans with,
with things outside of the human realm or not,
they're not outside of they're connected with,
but that are disconnected with right now.
Uh Yes,
(39:28):
this is one of the most valuable things that we get from original human wisdom.
Humans until modern times,
humans have always paid attention to their place in the universe.
They have always known that they needed to be connected,
not just into nature but into the stars to our place in the great family of all things including stars and planets and Galaxies and the whole bit,
(39:56):
we have always looked to our place in the universe until modern times.
And this larger belonging,
there's a level of wisdom out there,
a level of evolving wisdom that isn't the speech of the trees or the birds.
It's bigger than that.
It,
it is some people call it collective consciousness.
And the more we are in relationship to the broader world and to larger powers,
(40:21):
the more we hear that bigger wisdom guiding us and the more the more certain we are Laurie,
you really hit on that.
The,
the reason indigenous cultures have what we call cosmologies,
they have a vision of how the universe is constructed is we need the framework.
But you can't just make a framework and stick people in it.
(40:42):
The framework is the last thing to merge.
If we remember those of a relationship fluty first,
then connectivity and you keep doing that,
keep doing that until you have an interrelated set of relationships.
And that is the framework,
the framework is the expressive larger conduit for all the relationships that create it.
(41:05):
And if we made companies that way,
we would have much longer term,
companies and organizations.
We need that because we need a certain level of certainty.
That's,
that's a given requirement for human sanity if you will,
that's really important.
And I think the other thing that happens is that as we establish a,
(41:26):
a sense of belonging to something bigger and we have more certainty,
then we are much more apt to explore and create and play with uncertainty.
We become more negotiable and we process information differently.
So the small surprises of everyday life,
they actually quit being the negative kind of interruption and they become moments to learn and explore Marty.
(41:59):
Thank you.
This has been a really fun conversation in closing.
I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about your learning process with indigenous communities and indigenous elders.
One of the things that we Westerners are often criticized for is is learning something and then taking it out of its home community and applying it in our Western world without appropriate attribution or understanding.
(42:30):
There are a number of really important points here,
I am being asked by a group of elders in South America to carry the wisdom of their lineages forward into the Western world.
So I'm not only initiated by them,
but they are saying,
please keep this alive for anyone working with me.
(42:53):
They know that we all have permission.
And I also take my students to those same elders for initiation.
So that's a unknown and asked for connection and working with indigenous wisdom.
If you do learn something for heaven's sake,
say where you got it,
(43:13):
there's a poem,
whatever you have to say,
leave the roots on,
let them dangle the earth to just to be sure where they came from.
(43:33):
Thank you for joining us today.
For more about this podcast.
Please see our website at www.
We interrupt this podcast.com.
There we have show notes,
links and other episodes.
You can also contact me on Twitter at Hack Yak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
I look forward to hearing from you.
(43:53):
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee,
Pottawatomie and Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to elders past and present and to emerging and future indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you also to Emma Levinson for her Interruptions artwork featured on our website
and to Alan Huckleberry for allowing us to use Bartok's Melody with Interruptions from the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy video recording project. Segue music is “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers, from Silverman Sound Studios.
If we come into a situation where people are even a little bit more conscious and paying attention to one another,
this thing that we call interruption can be like play.
It can be like intersecting currents of a river.
You know,
a wave comes up, and another wave comes up, and another wave comes up, and that's a creative process.
(00:38):
Welcome to We Interrupt This Podcast.
I am Laure Haak, your host.
Many of us grow up learning that interruptions are impolite,
distracting,
hurtful, or even dangerous.
What if interruptions also have a good side, enhancing creativity,
connection,
reducing power imbalances.
(00:59):
In this podcast, our goal is to generate evocative conversations, exploring interruptions across a diverse set of perspectives, to understand more fully what interruption is and how it may be useful or even necessary for building inclusive communities.
We were curious about consciousness and interruption,
how we can view interruption as a destructive distraction in some settings,
(01:23):
but we can also benefit from interruptions. In intentionally crafted creative spaces when we are paying attention,
conscious of the thriving of the people we are with, interruption can be a positive mode of force.
Join us as we talk with Marty Spiegelman and explore disjointed career paths,
coming to wisdom about consciousness,
(01:43):
connection and fluidity,
energy and purpose.
Marty is a trained professional mentor, speaker, and founder of Awakening Value (01:46):
Technologies of Consciousness.
Marty holds a BA in biochemistry from Harvard University,
an MFA in graphic design from the Yale School of Art and Architecture, and has advanced training in neurophysiology,
psychology and anthropology.
And if that weren't enough,
(02:06):
she is also an initiated wisdom keeper with over four decades of specialized training in Indigenous technologies of consciousness,
and related scientific, economic, and sociological fields.
Hi there.
Good to be with you,
Marty.
Let's just dive right in here.
What is it about interruptions that excited you about talking with us today?
(02:31):
It really plays right into the core of why I do what I do in the world.
If we look at Western culture,
people don't pay attention to one another,
they just blast in:
I have something to say! I have something to say!
And that's what we call an interruption. It has nothing to do with what anybody else said.
But if we come into -- and I hope to open this up a bit as we talk --
(02:55):
if we come into a situation where people are even a little bit more conscious and paying attention to one another,
this thing that we call interruption can be like play.
It can be like intersecting currents of a river,
you know,
a wave comes up and another wave comes up and another wave comes up. And that's a creative process.
So from one view,
(03:17):
interruption is destructive, and from another view,
it's something else altogether.
So that's why I got excited.
Awesome.
So,
we're gonna go a little sideways here and understand a little bit more, Marty, about your background.
And so I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your educational or learned experience background and how you got to,
how you got to where you are today?
(03:40):
Oh OK.
Great.
It's what they call in South America,
a zigzag path.
So I was born into a very short but illustrious uh lineage of scientists.
I grew up with Nobel Laureates in the living room, and science, and discovery, and I didn't really know anything else.
So when I got to university,
I went into biochemistry,
(04:02):
like my dad,
I didn't stay in biochemistry very long because I realized I wasn't my dad, and I did a zig into graphic design.
And this is just because I didn't know what to do,
right?
A friend of mine was doing this thing called graphic design.
And there was a wonderful teacher from Japan, and I asked him if I could take his course and he says,
(04:25):
all you need is to want.
I got a degree in biochem and I went on to grad school in graphic design and ended up being a,
a typographic and systems designer for 20 years.
I had my own firm in San Francisco and I had a wonderful time.
It was a beautiful career.
But then,
you know,
(04:45):
things change and I, for a lot of reasons,
part of which was a tanking economy,
decided to leave my design business one day.
It just happened like that.
And because I was having a midlife crisis in California,
you know,
in California,
what we do is we go get energy healing if we're having a midlife crisis.
(05:05):
I found this wonderful Scottish guy who is doing what he called visionary craniosacral work.
It's an ancient hands on energy healing technique.
And after some sessions with him,
he said,
you know,
you ought to study with me. And I sort of hemmed and hawed for a bit.
But I studied with him.
I taught for him.
I developed my own course, and then I started to teach other things like visionary skills.
(05:31):
And while I was making this transition,
I received in the regular mail,
remember regular mail?
I received invitations to study with Indigenous masters on three different continents.
These are three separate invitations.
I said yes to everything.
And within a year or two,
(05:53):
I had my first levels of initiation into Indigenous cultures. Over six years or so,
I began to realize that what I was being given was actually mastery in consciousness.
And I started to realize that these Elders are the,
the keepers of the consciousness and the well being of their people.
(06:15):
They are the masters of consciousness.
Their job is to not just keep their people going, consciously woven into the world.
Their job is to evolve consciousness through the thriving of their people.
I'm gonna interrupt for a second.
But you mean,
also maintain the history?
Is this biographical consciousness as well the people?
(06:36):
Yes.
Yes.
The the teaching is:
don't forget what you already know.
It's really that simple.
The more I was initiated and the more I taught,
the more I realized that everything I was being given was exactly what we're seeking in the modern world.
Absolutely everything.
And I also realized that this thing called consciousness can be described through physics.
(06:59):
It can be described through neurophysiology and energy awareness.
It can be described in the mythic language of original human cultures.
But it seemed to me that if I could get leaders, because I can't teach everybody,
but if I could get influencers and leaders and creative people,
people who want to make a difference,
(07:20):
if I could change their consciousness,
then what they could do would really change.
And so that's how I ended up where I am.
So Marty,
you're talking about this idea of consciousness. Thinking about how Indigenous peoples talk about consciousness,
(07:42):
I'm wondering how did you perceive or understand differences in how they approached this concept of consciousness?
Well,
the realization was that there is no difference.
There are a small number of principles of consciousness that have to do with how awareness is used.
Human awareness.
(08:04):
And those principles exist in every culture
I have worked in.
The visible expression of these principles is different,
one continent to the next.
The human imagination creates symbols and metaphors relative to natural surroundings.
(08:26):
So if I live in West Africa,
where the land is very flat and there are some high plateaus,
but they're also flat, and the trees are sparse, and the wet and dry seasons change instantaneously.
There's a certain energy to the whole environment that is going to drive how I imagine the forces of consciousness expressing.
(08:55):
So my,
my symbols and my,
my colors and my understanding of the elements and so on is gonna be relative to my environment.
If I live in the Andes,
I have a different experience of those same principles because my environment is at 17,000 ft and I'm experiencing nature and the powers of the universe in a different way.
(09:19):
But the principles are the same.
They're the same.
Thinking about interruption, and this really wonderful visual
you started this off with, this idea of water and waves colliding with each other and creating new things. As you are working in these different communities,
(09:45):
and I'm going to include all of the communities you've worked in,
how have you noticed interruption in these different environments?
You're talking about the words,
the colors,
the ways people interact with their environment
shapes the imagination.
How does it shape ways of interacting with each other, of sharing information, of being creative together?
(10:07):
How have you seen this play out?
And have you noticed interruption differently in these different spaces?
If we go into what we're calling an Indigenous environment,
if there is something that we would call an interruption,
they would call it the speech of nature.
And if we're in South America,
they would call it the,
(10:28):
the old Quechua word is Pacha Kuti,
which means an overturning of space time.
And so there's an awareness that things get interrupted,
that there are cycles of action.
There's a beginning,
there's a creation of momentum and knowledge, and that cycle completes in the moment of completion and starts the next one.
(10:50):
But sometimes those cycles get interrupted part way through because a larger force has a bigger idea,
so to speak, or a larger force is on the move.
So, like an earthquake is an interruption.
A volcano exploding is an interruption.
In terms of human interaction,
it gets a little more complicated because each culture has its rules about speaking up or not speaking up.
(11:15):
But here is where the the difference is.
If we go into an Indigenous culture,
assuming it hasn't been too westernized,
we'll find people attuning to one another and we'll find people attuning to not just one person to one person,
but each relationship to the collective and the collective is attuned to nature because their business is living well in their environment.
(11:46):
And so they might speak over one another if they're building a house and somebody's got a better idea and it's more efficient.
They might speak over another person,
but it's not intended to put anyone down.
It's intended to keep the process efficient, and so they'll speak.
It's like the that river analogy that came through.
(12:07):
It's like one current,
rolling over another to keep momentum going, to keep efficiency going.
And sometimes just for play,
sometimes just for absolute play because they understand the,
the power and the necessity that we have some fun.
Can you talk about the play part a bit more. When you first started talking about interruption,
(12:29):
it's,
that interruption is a bad thing.
It is a negative connotation. And particularly in Western culture,
the experience I've had and many others have had, is if you do interrupt,
unless you're in a very special group, interruption is seen as,
as really bad.
Especially if you're in a leadership role and you talk over somebody who may be somebody that you are supervising.
(12:55):
It's really seen as a bad thing.
So I'm curious,
I really like this idea of interruption in,
in a sense of play.
How does that manifest?
Well,
I think one thing we're missing here -- I appreciate the question.
One thing we're missing is that in a healthy culture or a,
a conscious group,
we could use either of those phrases,
(13:17):
there is the element of respect.
There are already relationships formed and there is an element of respect.
And so if I'm exercising respect,
I will not interrupt another person because what they're saying is so valuable.
I wouldn't dare cut it off.
(13:39):
It would be like stealing money from somebody or stealing a resource from a group that needs the resource.
If I am well connected with the people and we know one another and we understand one another's contributions,
then the interruption process can be additive.
(13:59):
But there has to be a well established relationship,
there has to be respect in action and then that playfulness can come in. Playfulness means that we are adding. Playfulness is additive.
Playfulness is exploring.
And if we're exploring and respecting one another and staying connected,
(14:25):
then that the interruption of playfulness really brings about great discoveries.
But if we're in a situation where we are so often in Western culture, where people don't know one another,
we don't really all belong to the same culture or even the same group.
And there is the that drive of individualism,
(14:46):
I have to make my mark.
If that undercurrent is there too,
then our interruptions are competitive and our interruptions cut off value.
They cut off the delivery of meaning which is what drives the establishment of value, and meaning and value together
drive our choices,
they drive our actions.
(15:07):
So if we're all always cutting off meaning and cutting off value,
our actions are going to be actions that cut things off and that ends up cutting off our thriving.
The first thing that really needs to happen is that a,
(15:31):
a group,
a team,
a company,
a community needs to allow time for relationships to be established, that we need to get to know one another.
There's a,
a principle in the technologies of consciousness.
It's a principle of relationship.
It says that there are three attributes of a relationship and there's -- imagine an energetic connection between me and you to make that energetic connection come alive.
(16:02):
The very first attribute is fluidity.
In other words,
we have to flow something to the other person.
We have to flow awareness,
attention,
respect,
and that flow needs to be connected at the other end.
So if you're flowing awareness to me,
I have to actually receive it,
then I have to flow something back to you and you have to receive it and we need time for that connection to be made.
(16:26):
So first fluidity,
then connectivity.
And if we do that, let's say two people in a new group do that,
and then each of those two people do it with another person and so on and so on until everybody is cross connected. If we've done that connecting well,
we might eventually end up with what is called a network of affection.
(16:50):
But we do at least have the beginnings of that third attribute,
which is framework.
We have an interconnected group. If we take the time,
and I don't know
corporate settings where anybody is really honestly available to do this,
I know people have tried.
But if you took the time to do some honest connecting,
not little adult games,
(17:11):
but some honest connecting.
And then you got down to work,
then it would be a completely different scenario.
You talk,
I listen,
I talk,
you listen is an outcome.
It's not a methodology.
It's an outcome of people not being connected in the first place.
The the other thing is -- I'm gonna come back to the three attributes of a connection between people.
(17:37):
The Western way of connecting is, imagine I'm an electrician.
The first thing I do is I,
I wire two things together and then I flow electricity fluid through that.
And then I think I have a connection.
We bring that analogy, laying down the wire first and then flowing something through it second,
we bring that to human relationships.
(17:59):
And just because we're sitting in a room,
there's some unspoken idea that because we're on the same team,
we're connected.
So why aren't we getting along. Between two people
you can't put a wire down first and then flow something through it.
You have to flow your energy and your attention and your awareness and your caring to another person.
And then see if the connection actually happens.
(18:21):
And if we could start to get the order right,
then we could very quickly build teams that actually function.
You're coming in with intentionality.
Say that I'm coming because I want to make connections.
And so it's like you're almost like the source of, like you say, the source of energy.
It completely changes in a way that perception and your expectation walking into a meeting.
(18:46):
You're not looking for the source of energy,
you are the source of energy, and then that radiates out.
Oh, I like that.
That's a really cool image.
And even more so, the Western person would be likely to do that as an individual.
I am coming with intentionality.
But the,
the conscious way to do it is that there is an axial purpose to the meeting.
(19:07):
Hm.
And everyone is coming to give energy to the axial purpose and they're gonna do that by connecting person to person,
to person.
But it's not, my ego is connecting to your ego.
It's, we're here to serve this axial aligning purpose.
We live in a series of generations where in Western culture,
(19:32):
emotional development has been so damaged or dented.
I could use stronger words.
But you get my drift here, that a lot of people in our lifetimes are just never going to be able to course
correct the degree to which they are defending themselves.
And so you walk into a,
(19:52):
a group of adults sitting in a business meeting.
A lot of them may have had such difficult histories that you can't make them be nice in a meeting.
They just can't.
And it has to do with their experience and,
and how they have managed to keep themselves upright in life.
You can't just demand that,
that be different instantly.
(20:13):
And so we're looking at,
if we could live for several 100 years,
we'd be looking at probably a 200 year project here. In this moment,
the how do I do this?
Number one,
you may not be able to.
And so if you're trying this in a company and you get one or two people to connect honestly and a bunch of them don't,
(20:34):
don't harangue the people who can't connect the way you want them to.
That you're looking at them as they are, and you have to take them as they are and love them that way.
We do so much measuring and judging, and you didn't do this and you can't do that.
I mean,
it's like we're,
we're just beating ourselves up every day.
We need to stop doing that.
(20:54):
We could at the very least try to interest them in what,
what does it take to energetically connect with the people you're working with?
Because that alone changes it,
that alone. When people are feeling energy,
even just a little bit changes the game.
Somebody who's good at sensing energy between people can be more playful and will not insult the people who are more defended. Then you can get a group more alive and the people who are more reticent and pulled back might open up a little bit more.
(21:25):
So I think maybe the easy the answer to the question,
how do we do this, is
anywhere,
any way we can instill in people in leadership positions,
a little bit of energy intelligence,
a little bit of skill in sensing the energy of people,
the energy of spaces.
(21:46):
And that's really what we could also call what I call awareness training.
It's different than mindfulness.
It's an original training that you find in Indigenous cultures.
All children get it. Basically they get taken out into nature and they learn how to feel nature,
how to hear the speech of the trees and the birds and the earth and,
(22:07):
and so on.
And that's their way of,
of learning to sense energies and hear the speech of other beings.
I want to come back to our topic of interruptions. If everyone is tuned into the larger thing instead of their own egos,
if everyone is tuned in and somehow juiced by the larger purpose of the meeting and everything is,
(22:33):
is in relationship to the larger purpose,
then creative positive interruptions just spark. If any of it is run at the ego level of consciousness,
then you get competition and defensiveness and control and it doesn't work at all.
(22:53):
Marty, I'm wondering if you can reflect.
There's been a,
I don't know if it's a shift but,
maybe a lifting up of this,
this idea of purpose in the corporate environment.
I've worked in nonprofits for quite a while, and mission driven and vision,
all that is
baked into how nonprofits work.
But it has not necessarily been baked into how corporations, for-profit companies work.
(23:18):
The work that you've been doing, Marty,
has also intersected with this idea of a purpose driven organization,
whether it's for profit or nonprofit, and how to bring that purpose forward into the organization's DNA.
Yeah,
my work does touch on that and I,
I would have to say even when I was a designer,
I was faced with the,
(23:38):
the mission statement and the vision statement and corporations, and where do they go on the annual report?
Even then before I was initiated myself,
I wanted to say to them (23:47):
people,
your mission statement and your vision statement,
number one are the same thing.
And number two,
the way you word them,
they're antithetical one another.
Here's where,
where it has to come in for any organization,
whether it's a family or a neighborhood or a town or a county or a country.
(24:12):
Janine Benyus, who established the term biomimicry,
she's just wonderful.
She says famously that nothing exists outside of a system.
So imagine, we walk into a forest and we go up to a redwood tree and we say,
what's your purpose?
That tree,
(24:33):
its purpose is, we could say, to be tree,
to be that kind of tree.
But its purpose in being that tree has a multifold ripple effect from everything that its root system is doing, everything about the way it grows,
(24:56):
and the role it plays in rain cycles in its environment,
and the the role its canopy plays in water cycles and nutrients and oxygen CO2 exchanges and all the other microbiomes that interact with trees and the pheromones that go back and forth, and everything!
Its ripple effect is enormous.
(25:16):
But for the tree,
it's simply being the kind of tree that it is.
If we could crack open that dimension of consciousness,
even a tiny,
tiny bit in any organization,
any group we might be working with,
we have, at group scale,
we have a purpose.
But can we, the Indigenous cultures they say vision into,
(25:41):
can we vision?
Can we see?
Can we begin to experience what our beautiful positive ripple effect is?
And so every time I take a step that is in service to my purpose,
I feel the beauty of my ripple effect.
So I'm gonna bring something else up here, Marty.
(26:01):
One of the things you've said in your TED talk is this idea, you can't strategize your way to consciousness.
The other piece in the TED talk you talked about is this idea, what is technology.
And again,
coming from a scientific background,
I think of technology as gears and bolts and
electrons flying around and,
and instead your definition of technology is the body of knowledge applied to a problem to advance understanding.
(26:30):
And so I think a lot of what I've been asking you questions about here is,
in a way it feels a little bit like I'm faced with this problem, and how do we develop a strategy for getting people to think more about awareness and to be more aware,
and to like be creative with each other.
And I guess what I'm,
I'm wondering, Marty, is
we can't strategize our way to consciousness.
(26:52):
But how do we,
how do we do this?
Right?
How can we, even if it's in ones and twos here,
how can we consciously approach this idea of,
of consciousness,
and,
and raising awareness and noticing this energy and helping to build energy.
(27:13):
How do we do that?
Yeah,
here's how we do it.
We first have to realize two things about,
I'm gonna say human consciousness.
Human consciousness has two extraordinary functions, and one is the function of perception.
And if we go back to the Latin and Greek roots of that word, perception is not a subjective thing.
(27:37):
Perception means to know the world through the senses.
And so here's a little bit of neurophysiology.
You know your world through your senses,
first and foremost,
and you know it completely and everything that your senses are picking up throughout your entire life is recorded in your nervous system at some level or another forever.
(28:01):
You have all the detail inside you.
So we are constantly proceeding.
We are knowing the world.
The other aspect of human consciousness is our special kind of awareness.
We may be perceiving everything.
But in the Western world,
we're only aware of a tiny,
little bit of it.
So if we train awareness,
(28:23):
the way humans used to. Human awareness needs training,
period.
It needs training.
We are not born knowing how to use our awareness fully.
So my vision is, if we can find enough leaders,
it doesn't matter the profession,
but we,
(28:43):
we need people in governance and finance and,
and business and education. People who really,
really want to change the world.
What if we trained their awareness,
so they were actually connected again into the world, into the universe.
The ripple effect of their full consciousness and how they live and how they process information and how they relate and create that ripple effect would be sufficient.
To put it simply, consciousness is a state of being in which we know the world through our senses and process information in multiple dimensions that are above,
(29:26):
if I can use that word, above the level of the ego.
We are processing information relative to our membership in the world,
relative to our belonging to one another.
And the ego is left to do its original job,
which is to simply be the home of our beautiful personalities.
From my viewpoint.
(29:47):
This isn't about something we can force people to do.
You can't go in and just demand everybody be conscious and do it a different way, because it just won't work.
Humans are extremely complex and we have developed
our way of being in Western culture over 2000 years and it's,
it's like turning a super tanker in the ocean.
(30:08):
You,
you can't turn it on a dime.
And so part of the skill for people who are advisors to organizations is to realize which organizations could become conscious and which ones need to just have their hands held being the way they are.
Don't try to change everything, but what a headache.
(30:29):
It's not going to work.
You just have to let it be.
It's like in the forest.
Some trees aren't gonna make it.
You can't expend all your energy insisting that they make it.
So some people,
we leave,
we help them as best we can,
we let them be and we keep searching for those organizations and those leaders who will say to us,
(30:50):
look,
there's something else that could be done.
I know there's something else.
I don't know what it is but I want it.
Those are the people that I will train.
And if I'm working just with organizations,
I'll look for those organizations who say essentially the same thing to me.
OK,
we're willing to do it differently.
It doesn't mean that we get rid of hierarchy.
(31:12):
It means that value in an organization is determined by function,
not by position.
And so the value of the current underlings has to be increased.
And the role and the value of the leader has to be re-evaluated and redefined,
(31:34):
not as a control,
but as a contributory kind of function.
If we could at least just start thinking about everyone in the organization,
in essence,
having an equal amount of power,
but just a different job description,
they're equally valuable.
I think it's really important to drop the idea that that we can just go out and change everything if only we knew how. It just won't happen like that.
(32:01):
That also reminds me of another comment you made about this idea of understanding our world.
And many of us saying,
oh I get it,
this is the way it is.
And then you kind of believe that for the rest of your life instead of
this approach you're talking about,
which is also mirrored in,
in a lot of agile technology processes.
(32:23):
Of,
well,
I understand this now,
I also understand that I can't understand everything.
So I'm gonna try this experiment, or I'm gonna iterate this one time, and learn something, and then adjust my understanding of the world as I move forward.
So you can't quote unquote,
fix something, because every time something changes,
(32:44):
everything changes,
right?
If you cut that tree down in the forest,
so many things change.
We have to think about our understanding of the world as a negotiation,
as an evolution over time, and that we look for these opportunities,
as you're saying,
Marty,
to learn, to train, and grow and evolve over time.
(33:08):
What I want to do is come back to the topic of this podcast.
How do we think about interruptions. Marty,
you talked about macro interruptions and we've also been talking about human size interruptions and organizational interruptions.
So let's come back to that.
(33:28):
I always love to think about interruptions in conversation,
but there are so many other ways of appreciating interruptions and,
and one of the interruptions here I think, is coming to understand that we are all of us learning every day.
And all of us, our contexts are changing every day. And to embrace that interruption in our understanding of the world around us and just glory in the learning that we can do every day.
(33:57):
But Marty,
I think the question then comes is,
is so many of us get uncomfortable with that because -- not that we're learning,
but that things are changing every day.
How do you approach that?
That level of uncertainty that's been brought in into a person's life and organization's life when,
(34:17):
when you don't have the standard operating procedures that you're following every day.
How do you,
how do you work with that with people?
Well,
there's a few things that,
that we want to question first and a few things we want to realize.
We tend in,
in Western culture to depend on a fixed idea of something.
(34:39):
And then I,
maybe as you just said,
maybe I'll learn something and then I'm gonna go work with it and see what more I understand.
And that,
that learning that I'm gonna investigate,
we take as a fixed piece,
but it's not.
The world isn't fixed.
We tend to want too much certainty.
And so every uncertainty is an interruption.
(35:02):
Actually,
neurologically,
we are constantly walking into the mystery. Every single second that is approaching, is unknown until you have experienced it.
Every moment.
Every nanosecond of our lives is essentially an interruption of what we have known,
right?
(35:22):
Because the world is on the move and consciousness is on the move and we are constantly evolving.
What we're really talking about is a shift.
Sometimes in the,
in the wisdom traditions is called a perceptual shift.
A shift in how we know the world.
In other words,
moment to moment,
(35:42):
I am being informed by the world around me and moment to moment,
I am knowing new things.
And so, I'll do better if I have a set of principles that organize me to understand that world,
moment to moment. And I will not do so well
if I have an external set of rules that say I must do this and cannot do that, because the world doesn't pay any attention to my rules.
(36:08):
The world,
the living world,
the conscious world has its own beautiful,
resilient,
negotiable principles.
If I listen to the beautiful way you pose that inquiry,
what we're calling interruptions and what the another reason I'm so excited by you landing on this is that really we're seeking negotiability
because the world is always gonna interrupt us and people are always gonna interrupt us and life is always interrupting us.
(36:35):
That's the certainty we've lost our negotiability.
We've become so afraid of change and so disconnected from the larger forces that create our world that we're defended against them.
We don't want any change,
we can't handle it,
we can't process it.
This has shifted us into a an idea of life that just isn't functional.
(36:57):
Um who are the people out there who are willing to actually reconnect to the vibrant,
beautiful world that we live in and be alive with it moment to moment because that will change how you understand it,
it will change how you create,
how you relate.
And so the constancy of change will not longer disturb you thinking that there is a,
(37:19):
a safety net is we,
we have the wrong idea of the safety net.
Our safety net ought to be the constancy of human relationship.
It ought to be the dependability of one person to the next to the next.
It ought to be the membership,
everyone belonging to everyone else.
(37:53):
We're recording this in December,
which is a big holiday season for many,
many different traditions and a big part of the holiday season is also um in a way,
it's a recognition of the changes in the environment.
For those of us in the northern hemisphere,
it's turning to winter and there's,
you know,
for me,
there's snow on the ground and I'm wondering part of this communication can almost be finding seasonality in the work that we do the grant cycles,
(38:23):
things like that.
But also connecting the work of an organization to this environmental seasonality that we have.
And in a way that could help us with.
I think a word you've used early Marty is this idea of a framework,
providing a,
a bit of a framework,
a tether so that yes,
things are evolving and changing every day.
(38:43):
But we know that every day the sun comes up and the sun goes down.
And we know that every year that we have these cycles of seasons they manifest different in different parts of the world.
But we have these seasons that come.
And so we have certain things that are more or less certain in which we can exist in this uncertainty of what's gonna come day to day or minute to minute,
(39:07):
moment to moment.
And Marty,
I'm wondering if that's part of the work that you're doing also is,
is,
is reconnecting us humans with,
with things outside of the human realm or not,
they're not outside of they're connected with,
but that are disconnected with right now.
Uh Yes,
(39:28):
this is one of the most valuable things that we get from original human wisdom.
Humans until modern times,
humans have always paid attention to their place in the universe.
They have always known that they needed to be connected,
not just into nature but into the stars to our place in the great family of all things including stars and planets and Galaxies and the whole bit,
(39:56):
we have always looked to our place in the universe until modern times.
And this larger belonging,
there's a level of wisdom out there,
a level of evolving wisdom that isn't the speech of the trees or the birds.
It's bigger than that.
It,
it is some people call it collective consciousness.
And the more we are in relationship to the broader world and to larger powers,
(40:21):
the more we hear that bigger wisdom guiding us and the more the more certain we are Laurie,
you really hit on that.
The,
the reason indigenous cultures have what we call cosmologies,
they have a vision of how the universe is constructed is we need the framework.
But you can't just make a framework and stick people in it.
(40:42):
The framework is the last thing to merge.
If we remember those of a relationship fluty first,
then connectivity and you keep doing that,
keep doing that until you have an interrelated set of relationships.
And that is the framework,
the framework is the expressive larger conduit for all the relationships that create it.
(41:05):
And if we made companies that way,
we would have much longer term,
companies and organizations.
We need that because we need a certain level of certainty.
That's,
that's a given requirement for human sanity if you will,
that's really important.
And I think the other thing that happens is that as we establish a,
(41:26):
a sense of belonging to something bigger and we have more certainty,
then we are much more apt to explore and create and play with uncertainty.
We become more negotiable and we process information differently.
So the small surprises of everyday life,
they actually quit being the negative kind of interruption and they become moments to learn and explore Marty.
(41:59):
Thank you.
This has been a really fun conversation in closing.
I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about your learning process with indigenous communities and indigenous elders.
One of the things that we Westerners are often criticized for is is learning something and then taking it out of its home community and applying it in our Western world without appropriate attribution or understanding.
(42:30):
There are a number of really important points here,
I am being asked by a group of elders in South America to carry the wisdom of their lineages forward into the Western world.
So I'm not only initiated by them,
but they are saying,
please keep this alive for anyone working with me.
(42:53):
They know that we all have permission.
And I also take my students to those same elders for initiation.
So that's a unknown and asked for connection and working with indigenous wisdom.
If you do learn something for heaven's sake,
say where you got it,
(43:13):
there's a poem,
whatever you have to say,
leave the roots on,
let them dangle the earth to just to be sure where they came from.
(43:33):
Thank you for joining us today.
For more about this podcast.
Please see our website at www.
We interrupt this podcast.com.
There we have show notes,
links and other episodes.
You can also contact me on Twitter at Hack Yak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
I look forward to hearing from you.
(43:53):
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee,
Pottawatomie and Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to elders past and present and to emerging and future indigenous leaders.
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you also to Emma Levinson for her Interruptions artwork featured on our website
and to Alan Huckleberry for allowing us to use Bartok's Melody with Interruptions from the University of Iowa Piano Pedagogy video recording project. Segue music is “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers, from Silverman Sound Studios.
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