Sacred Purpose with Jeff Brown
“I really believe your sacred purpose is to find the most clear, clarified calling that lives inside of you. It's somehow connected to God.”
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Jeff Brown
In this episode
Jeff and I explore the intersection of human and soul, what it means to be spiritual and grounded, and how to cross the bridge from survivalist consciousness to authentic consciousness.
Jeff teaches us the truth about the Self actualized path and the internal safety and security created through the embodiment of Sacred Purpose.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favorite podcast platform. Favorite quotes and a full transcript of this podcast can be found below.
About Jeff Brown
A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of 8 popular books: Soulshaping, Ascending with Both Feet on the Ground, Love It Forward, An Uncommon Bond, Spiritual Graffiti, Grounded Spirituality, Hearticulations, Humanifestations. He is also the central subject in the award-winning spiritual documentary, ‘Karmageddon,’ which also features Ram Dass, Seane Corn, Deva Premal and Miten. Jeff has authored a series of inspirations for ABC’S ‘Good Morning America,’ and he has contributed to The Washington Post, Elephant Journal, Positively Positive, The Good Men Project, Unity Magazine, Rebelle Society, and Maria Shriver.com. In 2010, he wrote a blog ‘ Apologies to the Divine Feminine (from a warrior in transition),’ which quickly went viral and continues to be widely shared today. His dictionary of new terms and short impactful writings became a phenomenon some years ago,and continue to be shared by individuals worldwide. His quotes have been shared in social media by Alanis Morrissette, Fergie, Jason Silva, LeAnn Rimes, Amanda De Cadenet, Chrissy Metz, and many other well-known figures. Most beautifully, they have touched and benefited many souls. This gratifies him deeply. Jeff is also the founder of Soulshaping Institute and Enrealment Press. He lives in Canada with his wife, poet Susan Frybort.
How To Connect With Jeff
Favorite Quotes from the Podcast
“Sacred purpose is a buffer against the madness of the world. It becomes a buffer against your own madness too.”
“Learned helplessness is learned hopelessness. It’s the shamed human.”
Transcript of the Podcast
It is my pleasure to introduce to you, Jeff Brown. We had an amazing conversation centered on grounded spirituality. He is a former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist and the author of eight popular books. He is also the central subject in the award winning spiritual documentary, Carmageddon. Jeff has authored a series of inspirations for ABC's Good Morning America, and he has contributed to the Washington Post.
Elephant Journal, Positively Positive, The Good Men Project, Unity Magazine, Rebel Society, and Maria Shriver. In 2010, he wrote a blog, Apologies to the Divine Feminine, From a Warrior in Transition, which quickly went viral and continues to be widely shared today. Jeff is also the founder of Soul Shaping Institute and Enrealment Press.
Let's drop in.
[00:01:30] ERIKA STRAUB: I'm first off just so grateful for your time and to get to dive into something. And I hope that, you know, we do Drop in somewhere that maybe feels, um, unique and, and not like all the others, perhaps no expectations though.
[00:01:48] JEFF BROWN: Yeah, not to say that I haven't had amazing times on shows. I have, I'm just always aware to try to be in my freshness place when we, when I connect with whoever I'm connecting with.
[00:02:00] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, my, my biggest intention with this space and who I've reached out to and who I wanted to connect with is really people's work and writing that just so deeply connects with where I'm personally at, right? Like that resonance. Kind of evolves as, as we do, but also getting to know the human and the soul and the self behind the work and who that is today, not just like the story behind it.
[00:02:32] ERIKA STRAUB: Um, so really the heart of it, like, I want to know, like, who is this person sitting in front of me? Who's created these beautiful pieces of art that just so deeply resonate with my journey.
[00:02:45] JEFF BROWN: Great. It's a good place, good place to start.
[00:02:50] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. So maybe just like, what's, what's alive for you right now and in this chapter?
[00:02:59] JEFF BROWN: Um, I had a, um, I mean, there's a bigger context for it, but I had a, um, very difficult reaction, adverse reaction to prescriptions in the summer and autumn, um, that kind of caught up with me. I'm not a drug user. So I don't, I didn't see the signs. Um, and I was caught in a, in a much bigger. Context that was part of the reason I had added a particular thyroid medication, even though my numbers were said to be optimal, um, Kind of, um, made it more difficult to distinguish what was happening for me physically from what was happening for me in this other reality that I've been dealing with.
[00:03:42] JEFF BROWN: And, I had a, just a, um, a startling, startling experience that I'm in many ways, lucky to have survived, um, in, I mean, I think it, I think the adverse stuff probably started in June or July. Um, I had been taking this particular armor thyroid medication and I think around early November, 2022, I started, my doctor didn't insist on bloods.
[00:04:09] JEFF BROWN: I'm pretty sure he had the numbers and he knew that my numbers were optimal and you really should be careful with thyroid. And I don't, I didn't know any of this stuff. And then I stopped, I just got off it. Um, I had the good sense, part of my brain had the good sense to get off of it. And then I asked for some sleeping meds.
[00:04:26] JEFF BROWN: I normally don't take really anything in the system forever. Um, but I couldn't, I couldn't fall asleep. I was so, I think my T3 was probably high, was probably like just like hyperthyroid without knowing it. And then I guess because those, partly because I'm, I don't know if it's a Jewish liver. I always said I have a Jewish liver.
[00:04:45] JEFF BROWN: My doctor says there's no such thing as a Jewish liver. I'm not convinced he's right about that. But, um, I had some kind of a genetic problem with particular meds and I've known that, and even with coffee, I shouldn't even drink coffee. So, um, I added one particular sleeping med that seemed to interface with whatever metabolic.
[00:05:04] JEFF BROWN: Confusion. I was in and produced a very intense psychological and particularly physical response. Like I lost over 40 pounds rapidly. I looked in the mirror and I didn't know it was my body. I mean, it was wild, um, but and not to glorify it or to say that I'm happy that it happened because I learned wonderful things.
[00:05:22] JEFF BROWN: That's not true. I'm not happy it happened, but I will write a book about the profound nature of my internal experience in the heart of this space. Drug trip, um, what I saw about my own psyche and about the human psyche, um, and what I now more deeply appreciate about You know, I've had a challenging life and an overcoming life and all of those things, but there's some way in which I didn't really fully understand how hard it is for a lot of people here.
[00:05:52] JEFF BROWN: Um, I understood theoretically, I've been holding space for people forever, but I didn't understand it experientially exactly. And somehow about get something about getting inside of this horrible experience where it was all I could do. My grandparents used to say, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.
[00:06:09] JEFF BROWN: And I was like, yeah, whatever, you know, you're 22 years old that you're not worried about. Now I understand what that's about. And I understand about something about drugs. And I understand that a huge percentage of the population, whether it's drugs or food sensitivities or all kinds of things is in a somewhat altered state most of the time.
[00:06:27] JEFF BROWN: Um, I believe, and, and now I'm also aware having, I'm looking into it, I'm going to spend a lot more time inside of it, just, you know, About 300, 000 people die every day or every year in the U. S. from adverse reactions to prescriptions. Medical error, and that's a big part of medical error, is the third or fourth leading cause of death.
[00:06:46] JEFF BROWN: And that doesn't include the other two million people, and I think it's quite a bit higher, who are adversely affected in all kinds of different ways. So there's that piece. And just the whole psychological piece, I interfaced with somebody in the psychiatric community because I was in an altered state and, um, Thankfully, I boundaried it and said, I'm not going anywhere you want to take me.
[00:07:05] JEFF BROWN: And then I stopped taking the sleepy med and everything turned back to normal except my body. So now, and now I'm looking more deeply into how this works in the world and how these systems, um, you know, actually, uh, Not just necessarily perpetuate the problem, but often create the problem and, and just how serious this is.
[00:07:27] JEFF BROWN: Um, so a lot has come out of it and I'm, I'm just at the beginning of the, I think restoration process. I think I was just in shock for a long time and, and then getting clear on what I'm going to start writing about now and where I'm going to write from and all the rest of that. And, um, and the return of the activist that's always been inside of me, I was.
[00:07:48] JEFF BROWN: Criminal law guy and I was became a lawyer and I was going to be a courtroom activist and I instead became another kind of activist, but the activist is back on a very, very deep level. And there's such important work to be done. So feel excited about that.
[00:08:06] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. And and what does the activists symbolize?
[00:08:10] ERIKA STRAUB: I
[00:08:13] JEFF BROWN: think it's archetypal, you know, I think, um, I mean, I, I had a warrior, a very identifiable warrior archetype from a young age. Um, and for a while, I just thought, Oh, this is sort of how I've in Richard's fortress terms is, you know, firefighter is some kind of a protector, but that wasn't actually true. It felt like it was fundamental to my soul's journey.
[00:08:37] JEFF BROWN: I mean, how did I know I was going to be a trial lawyer? How did I know I was going to work with this Eddie Greenspan guy? How did I, you know, it was like I'd been there before. So I think it's more complicated than just protector. I think the core self has, I call it sacred purpose, has many intrinsic callings, gifts and offerings, encoded path I really believe in.
[00:08:58] JEFF BROWN: Um, and that includes archetypal transformation. So I think that the warrior, the benevolent warrior or my movement in this lifetime from malevolent to benevolent warrior is really about activism and the desire to, to genuinely Stand up for truth in the most horribly uncomfortable places, um, not just to talk about truth.
[00:09:20] JEFF BROWN: There's a lot of people talking about truth, but really, really going to the gnarly edge of truth that can destroy you. And, and being really clear that you're doing it because it's how you actualize your own sacred purpose. I mean, that's the first reason you do it. But also because I have this gift.
[00:09:36] JEFF BROWN: Crazy desire to make this world a better place. Um, I still believe in humanity, despite everything I've experienced and everything I've been and everything I've seen, and I can't shake it. So all of that, it's all happening at the, at the same time. Yeah.
[00:09:53] ERIKA STRAUB: I love hearing about that. And I'm like so deeply pulled by the activism and that sort of.
[00:09:58] ERIKA STRAUB: Symbolism and I think a lot about agency a lot. That's what I see show up or not show up like in work, in my work with clients and as well as in relationships and just the interplay of agency or activism and helplessness and how those can kind of be the opposite side of the same coin. And like, how do we help someone rise into that activism or into that archetype?
[00:10:24] JEFF BROWN: Yeah.
[00:10:25] ERIKA STRAUB: And then helplessness.
[00:10:26] JEFF BROWN: Um, well, I mean, first of all, we maybe stop calling it rise, um, which I, I tend to believe and I understand metaphorically what it means, but is part of the tendency, the dissociative tendency ignited by patriarchy, particularly in the spiritual world, and now in the mainstream culture to you.
[00:10:50] JEFF BROWN: Somehow see everything expansive and extraordinary about about us as something above us, something that we ascend towards, which I think ultimately leads to something dissociative. We're not birds and you know, so you do something amazing. And they say, well, that's just out of this world. Well, what do you mean?
[00:11:09] JEFF BROWN: It's out of this fucking world. I, it came from my lived experience, I suffered in the bones of my being, and I created that from that place. It's not out of this world. It's out of Jeff Brown's body. Just so we're clear about that. And because I really believe, and that's why I started to call it sacred purpose when everybody was calling it divine purpose, it was like, okay, so you find the most clear, clarified Calling that lives inside of you and it's somehow something to do with God, not to say we aren't God seeds or reflection of the God self, if you believe that, that's fine.
[00:11:42] JEFF BROWN: But I think we need to, one of the reasons we're in so much trouble is because we spend so much time imagining this healthiest version of ourselves as being something that is something heightened. Something above us, something so that we move our energy upwards rather than horizontally, relationally, and downwards to connect more deeply to Mother Earth.
[00:12:03] JEFF BROWN: Um, so I'm, I'm re languaging not to make it difficult for you because I think it's a really There's something about this that I, and I haven't fully articulated it today, but I think that is, um, I wrote about this a lot in Grounded Spirituality that I think really matters in relation to your question.
[00:12:20] JEFF BROWN: Um, so learn helplessness, learn hopelessness, whatever it is, the shamed human. Yeah, I mean, right. Um, so we live in this, um, I mean, partly deliberately and partly it's just sociologically what's happened. But this, this sense of smallness, the, this, this marketing world that benefits from our, um, when we're dissociated from ourselves, when you hate yourselves, consumerism, praise on this uncentered consumerism, praise on the self hating consumerism.
[00:12:51] JEFF BROWN: Praise on the internalized shame. Um, because if you're sovereign and I'm not sure that's even the right word, but if you're centered and you're clear and you're here for everything and you're experiencing presence as a whole being and a whole life experience, you're less likely to be played or manipulated or hooked by this absolutely unconscionable system that we live in.
[00:13:14] JEFF BROWN: And, um, so the system perpetuates the shame cycle.
[00:13:22] JEFF BROWN: And so did our parents. If you got too big, too full, too expressive, what did they say to you? You're too full of yourself. You're too big for your britches. Your ego's ruling the day. Excuse me, there were good reasons for that, probably. Because back in those days, if you, and maybe even now, if you're too visible, you were at risk.
[00:13:46] JEFF BROWN: So they weren't always just trying to hurt you. But the effect of it is that self actualization was off the table. Um, you were accepted if you were more adapted to the world around you, if you had the audacity to do what I'm sure you're doing in your life, which is pioneering a new way of being in your lineage, crossing the bridge from survivalist self identification to authenticity, which is a huge and extraordinary thing.
[00:14:15] JEFF BROWN: Um, you know, you, you were shunned, or you were shamed, or you were discouraged, or you were alone. Really. Um, so those of us who are determined to craft a new and healthier way of being, we are up against it because we're carrying internalized shame and then we have all of these systems outside of us that are trying to make us generic and small.
[00:14:37] JEFF BROWN: And now, you know, the whole world economic forum and globalism and, you know, quite apart from whatever you think politically, my view is really that, you know, there's healthy globalism and then there's you know, uh, tyranny that masquerades as benevolence globalism. And I really believe that there's a war now between individuation, individuation structures, um, and a more generic notion of collectivism, um, where they, the self is certain selves are sacrificed for the collective.
[00:15:08] JEFF BROWN: And I think this is all part of that. And it's all designed in a way to keep us from becoming truly empowered, centered, unshamed, rebraved human beings who are really clear that we come in with this enormous, extraordinary life force, these magnificent callings, gifts and offerings that live at the heart of us that, um, and I'm not talking about anything unhealthily egoic.
[00:15:34] JEFF BROWN: I'm talking about the sturdy self concept, a healthy ego, the recognizing that you have value. And then. Also, recognizing that your, your value has something to do with an offering to the world itself. It's all tied together. Um, and I think that we're fighting for the life of that. Um, and at a time when, and it hasn't been established enough yet, and now technology is granting permission.
[00:15:56] JEFF BROWN: So the polarizers and the algorithm people and the shadow banners, I, as a shadow band person, I know all about the shadow banners. Um, And I'm an unusual person to shadow ban because I'm writing self help spiritual. I'm not, you know, I'm not an anti vaxxer. I don't do any of those things. Um, but we're up against it.
[00:16:14] JEFF BROWN: And I think that it, this is just going to be a fascinating battle. Um, and it always has been, but even more so between those of us who long to be unshamed, rebraved, and truly integrated and sovereign and a whole bunch of systems that want to keep us. small, generic, and so riddled with confusion and self hatred that we can't even begin to mobilize our energy or find our way or even believe that we have a brilliant path living inside of us.
[00:16:44] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. I find like in my own personal journey, shame has been the reckoning, like that's at the core of it. Or if I go into particular situations or I encounter certain individuals, shame is there if I can't feel myself. Like if I'm like, who am I in this situation? Usually there's shame in like that field, right?
[00:17:09] ERIKA STRAUB: And it's, it's so interesting just to watch the nervous system reactions or our attachment reactions when shame is in that field. Like it, to me, it feels like the true blockage from manifesting what it is we want to create in our life or self actualizing or being sovereign. That shame is this like sneaky, sometimes invisible energetic system.
[00:17:34] ERIKA STRAUB: Individually and collectively just blocking life force energy, soul expression, um, deepening intimacy, the relationships that we want being seen. Like it feels like shame is at the center of this.
[00:17:47] JEFF BROWN: And by, so by shame, when I think of shame, I, I, I feel like what we're talking about is kind of self hatred in a way.
[00:17:55] JEFF BROWN: True. I mean, as a, just to lean into that for a moment, even that, I mean, imagine if you're a self hating being, you hate who you are. Um, because you've internalized various messages and had various experiences that reflected it back to you. Try to imagine yourself worthy of deep, intimate relational contact in any form, or to even begin to look in the mirror and have an intimate, positive, affirming, curious experience to imagine that you could actually make a difference in this world.
[00:18:30] JEFF BROWN: I mean, I think of all of the greatest. Probably the greatest books ever written, never got sent out into the world because the shamed, super sensitive, sensitivity for me is brilliance. The most brilliant beings out there were absolutely sure nobody would ever accept their work. And that may have been true.
[00:18:49] JEFF BROWN: Um, just how much lost brilliance. Does this species have to account for because we've been so busy shaming and igniting an experience of self hatred and inhumanity and, um, and, you know, we see the other side of it. We see this, this, the self hating, the Trumpian, or there's so many of these figures in the world who then, you know, do this delusion, they swing to a delusion of grandeur that.
[00:19:14] JEFF BROWN: You know, really the reality is in many of these cases, there's a hole in the ego so big that nothing can fill it. And that's, that's shame. It's self hatred. And it's because people, I mean, you know, I'm convinced right now, if somebody showed up who had a genuinely strong and clear sense of self that was throughout their body, throughout their parts and pieces, you know, really, and was capable of exploring questions.
[00:19:42] JEFF BROWN: Not from a left perspective, not from a right perspective, but from a really centered, sovereign, clear perspective, the whole world would bow down before them, finally having a leader that they could live with, um, instead of these, you know, people who are, whether it's in the economic or political realm, who are overcompensating from a horribly unhealthy self concept in all the wrong ways by questing for power over, um, and this, this cycle just continues and it's creating all this insanity on so many levels.
[00:20:14] JEFF BROWN: Even the, even the algorithmic polarization game that meta plays in order to make more money as though it couldn't just make enough money
[00:20:21] ERIKA STRAUB: doing
[00:20:22] JEFF BROWN: it another way is turning us all against each other. And we, I think when Donald showed up, we started to see, and I don't blame Donald for this. This has to do with how, how systems responded to that experience.
[00:20:34] JEFF BROWN: And I feel like the polarization game got much more activated in social media. Um, and so that we're all hating each other. And as a result, everybody who is carrying shame, which is most everybody is feeling ignited in their shame and feeling that they have to fight back in order to assert their right to exist.
[00:20:50] JEFF BROWN: And we're doing it in all the wrong ways. The puppeteers are laughing hysterically behind the scenes. Um, and we're just perpetuating our hate and shame cycle. And it's. This is, uh, it's, it's a terrifying moment for the species because I think we're very close to them winning. Um, and yes, I'm aware at the same time many of us are doing deeper work than it before.
[00:21:11] JEFF BROWN: Trauma is a normalized word finally. I mean, how fucking long did that take? I mean, seriously, we need to go more mate to show up to know that people were traumatized. Like, are you kidding me? Um, so, you know, are we going to get there soon enough? Are we going to get unshamed? If we don't get there quickly enough, are we going to get rebraved?
[00:21:30] JEFF BROWN: Because this is all connected. The more shamed we are, the more frightened and terrified we are to take action in our lives. Are we going to get there quickly enough before technology completely controls our consciousness? I don't know.
[00:21:44] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, I don't know. I, you know, when I, when I think of shame or when I fold shame, yes, about self hatred, but I think it's also this like absence of self.
[00:21:55] ERIKA STRAUB: There is not going
[00:21:55] JEFF BROWN: to self form if the self doesn't, I mean, we know that how touch early touch is important or touch at some point is important in the development of the self. So that includes nourishing commentary, you know. The kinds of affirmations that lead in the direction of self love, like, how does the, how does the self even begin to form developmentally if it's, um, is carrying shame?
[00:22:16] JEFF BROWN: I mean, that's, that's absolutely right, you know. It's huge. It's, it's huge. Like, abandonment is a huge psychological issue, a nexus wound. Shame is a, we could even call it a nexus wound, I suppose, in a way, is that everything, somehow, is, Leads leads back in that direction.
[00:22:33] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, absolutely. And then the different adaptations that come from that, like, I think of it as The absence of self and what we create in that absence is this false self with all these different adaptations that we build to defend against not having a self, to defend against not having to reckon with that shame.
[00:22:53] ERIKA STRAUB: Because I don't think there would be a need for this defensiveness or this polarization if there was a self. We don't have to defend what's true. Yeah.
[00:23:03] JEFF BROWN: Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. And if there was a self that was Fundamentally connected to its reasons for being in this lifetime, you know, so I mean for me sacred purpose you can use whatever term you want for it, but I think it's an important part of it because For me the work in grounded spirituality for years was about trying to figure out the relationship between here getting here Presence and then why?
[00:23:27] JEFF BROWN: Because I found, for me, the more here I got, the more information I got as to why I was here. It was in my body. It would reveal itself. You're gonna study law, you're gonna do psych, and then you're gonna write. It was clear as a bell. It was encoded. And then the more I was able to surrender to the why, like, for example, to get lost in the writing process, the more that very specific Part of my sacred purpose brought me back into the, into the here.
[00:23:52] JEFF BROWN: So the here and the why became indistinguishable eventually, but before I could even really begin to do that deeper work, which happened really a lot through somatic site, bioenergetics without low and in holotropic breath work and throwing the assistance off my back, which was throwing my shammy mother off my back.
[00:24:09] JEFF BROWN: That was exactly what I was in at the time. I had to do, I had to do some preliminary work to deal with the self hatred or the shame. Um, because in the heart, I, I couldn't even begin to imagine actualizing these glimpses of path and purpose if I didn't feel like I was worthy. It's just about worthiness worthy to be alive, worthy, to connect to good people, worthy to find your path, worth to imagine you could actually make a difference.
[00:24:40] JEFF BROWN: If you don't feel like you have any value, of course you're not gonna feel like you could ever, you're not gonna feel like you could make a difference from the right place in you. You may be overcompensatory and may go fight to make a difference, but it's not the same vibrationally as it is when you're coming from a clear, solid, unashamed center.
[00:24:59] JEFF BROWN: That's where life is. That's where real life is.
[00:25:01] ERIKA STRAUB: I've found in my journey that a lot of times. Especially because I work with trauma and have been on my own spiritual healing path of trauma and embodiment that part of that work has been about a huge part of the work has been finding safety, right, like, how can I just feel safe in my body, let alone in this world or in relationships, but how can I feel safe.
[00:25:23] ERIKA STRAUB: First, my body. And I think a lot of times we stop there that like, okay, I'm okay. But I think the second part of this journey is like, and how do I feel deserving? How do I feel worthy? Like we have to go beyond just the safety piece and bring in the worthiness piece. And I know for me that piece was missing for a big part of my journey that it was like, I was just in safety, but then there was this stuckness, right?
[00:25:52] ERIKA STRAUB: There was still this smallness. It's happening because what had to come next was like, how do I actually now feel secure or enough or deserving to kind of take the next step in my journey?
[00:26:05] JEFF BROWN: It makes sense that you, this, it is kind of hierarchy needs stuff. I mean, you, you needed to find a way to feel safe in the world before you could then sit on that plateau for a moment.
[00:26:16] JEFF BROWN: And then. Feel that frustration because you're ready to grow to the next place. And then one of the next places was, okay, I feel safe, but I'm still riddled with shame and insecurity and all of these other feelings about who I am. And I don't feel like a worthy being and absolutely. So it's important to talk about these developmental stages in order, because I think to work on the shame piece before you feel safe, maybe.
[00:26:40] JEFF BROWN: Not very effective. Um, because you really do probably on some level need to feel somewhat secure in your own skin, or at least in the world before you can start to attend to these more subtle considerations about your stuff. Yeah, beautiful. That's beautiful stuff. That's great.
[00:26:55] ERIKA STRAUB: Thank you. Yeah, it felt like those were the two like really big pieces that needed to happen.
[00:27:02] ERIKA STRAUB: And then Really coming into embodiment first and then starting to move into expression. I think that's another piece that we sometimes get entangled. Cause so much of, I think the self development space is about expression, like express, express, right. Take up more space, use your voice. But if we're not actually like embodying our safety and our security.
[00:27:23] ERIKA STRAUB: How do we then, you know, take up more space if we're not like filling up our whole body with self, how do we then create like a fulfilling life around us?
[00:27:36] JEFF BROWN: Great question.
[00:27:38] ERIKA STRAUB: I don't think we can. A great
[00:27:39] JEFF BROWN: rhetorical question. You're right. No, we know.
[00:27:42] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. So those have been like really present to me in just this whole journey.
[00:27:47] ERIKA STRAUB: And then what I'm so attracted to, to the work that you do, this grounded spirituality is this intersection of self and soul. I think some people use that interchangeable some don't I see there being like the true self which I'm in my own personal work like that's my integration of self and soul it's like I have this vessel that now feel safe I can be embodied in it I can be present and now my spirit can can truly like channel and move through and express you Through this vessel.
[00:28:18] ERIKA STRAUB: And to me, that's like the integration. But I would, I would love to hear more of just like your journey or your kind of reckoning of that integration.
[00:28:28] JEFF BROWN: Right. Right. So one of the things I'm leaning into now is writing my own version of a parts model. I won't call it a parts model. That really emanates from some of the work and things I talked about in my first book, Soul Shaping, which is, you know, adaptations, disguises, defenses, archetypes, all these things.
[00:28:45] JEFF BROWN: Um, and my experience as a pragmatic Jewish survivalistic warrior living in a toxic house, it's sort of a miracle I could have any connection to something more subtle inside of me, but I did, and I would get these glimpses of path. Um, and. It was very clear to me from an early age that what I was accessing was something called the soul.
[00:29:08] JEFF BROWN: There was, I didn't have words for it then, but there was something inside of me on an essential level, um, that demanded to be experienced and expressed in this lifetime, um, in order for me to live a more gratified life, what I call true path versus false path, true self, false path. False self in many ways we can be, we may be, or we may not be talking about the same thing, but, um, so this is fundamentals.
[00:29:35] JEFF BROWN: Why wrote soul shaping? Because I felt like I was. Moving into direction of expanding my soul's experience to something closer to what I might call wholeness because we never really talk about what is the vision of an actualized being that we're all striving for. I mean, we, you know, they talked about it for a while.
[00:29:52] JEFF BROWN: We don't talk about this anymore. What does the whole being look like? What is a healthy being? What is it to be what I call an in real being? Not a not someone who's mastering. Limited or singular threads of consciousness like master meditators, but everything else in their life is a shit show, which is most of the spiritual teaching world.
[00:30:10] JEFF BROWN: Um, but you know, people who are actually, um, developing the capacity to be here for everything again, um, on various levels. And, and so for me, so that, that's been my, my primary directionality. And along the way there were adaptations disguised as defenses. There was all of those things. Some of which reflected my true self or true path and others that didn't.
[00:30:34] JEFF BROWN: Um, and one of my challenges right now with sort of rich, I've interviewed Dick Schwartz. I know him for a couple of podcasts, the IFS guy. And, um, you know, I, I think the model is very helpful. Um, but I think it's the only the beginning of these kinds of models. That's how I feel. And, you know, I challenged him a little in our second interview around something he said just about the soul and because what is the self, what is, I mean, we're, I mean, the, the absolute self that the dissociated spiritual bypassing Eckhart Tolles of the world are talking about, um, is generic, you're entering into a kind of a non, so called, allegedly non dual, it's not non dual, because they're pushing away everything, they don't want to deal with the feelings, the body, the ego, the identification, identification, It's a story.
[00:31:20] JEFF BROWN: There's nothing non dual about it. Um, it's a strange notion of inclusivity, but that aside, it's like entering into a place of sort of generic equanimity that we all allegedly share. This is the, the story that that state, once you get there is the state that we all share. I'm not sure it's the same state for everybody because I believe so much in individuation, but I'm talking about, I'm not interested in that.
[00:31:48] JEFF BROWN: And, or I'm certainly not interested in going there before I formed my core. Individuated self, and then I may not need to go there, or when I go there, it'll, it'll be flavored more by my own unique impression and nature. And I think that what's missing for me in these, that model, and in that work and in many people's work is that they're not understanding that every single self, the, you know, he, he used to talk about leadership self, which was sort of their American way of talking about the self, but it is, is, um, is idiosyncratic is, um, is polyphrenic.
[00:32:24] JEFF BROWN: I think he would agree with that, but, but it, but maybe there is no identifiable self independent of talking about the soul itself, which I think is in a way what you're saying. And. So the soul isn't some subtle little thing, somehow that's sort of in your body, but not really in your body, it's sort of a little outside of your body, but that really it is, it is the core of you, and that, so every self And, and, and the generic collectivist systems, this is the last thing they want to believe.
[00:32:57] JEFF BROWN: That there is a absolutely uniquely individuated version of Erika, and that if she doesn't get to actualize that, connect to that, own that, live that, unshame that, and embody that, and humanifest that in this lifetime, she will never be a whole being. And you'll not experience true gratification and, and, and I believe that's, that's true.
[00:33:21] JEFF BROWN: And I believe that. So I think that the part of me that had to become the trial lawyer and had to walk away from that warrior way of being finally in my soul's journey through time is fundamental to what myself is or was. And if I hadn't made that decision at that incredibly difficult moment, because I loved law and I was ready to do great work in law, then on some level, I would not be fully able to inhabit myself.
[00:33:47] JEFF BROWN: But this is, this is cool, subtle, interesting stuff about what does it mean to be a human? What is a whole human? What is the self? I mean, these are the, what is spirituality? You know, the, so much of what we've been calling, people say I'm a spiritual person. And if you ask them what they mean, well, they'll tell you they do Reiki and the Bach flower remedies and all these things.
[00:34:06] JEFF BROWN: But if you ask them what is spiritually, nobody has an answer to the question. So I defined it in grounded spirituality. That spirituality means reality. The most spiritual person is the one who's holding the greatest number of threads of reality, which also includes the souls. sacred blueprint. Um, and when you look at it through that lens, most of what we've been calling spiritual isn't spiritual at all.
[00:34:25] JEFF BROWN: It's this, it is the spiritual bypass. See that they say they act like the talk is, it's kind of like, and I've done this too, that the spiritual bypass means we're bypassing reality to go to that thing people call spiritual. I don't think so. I think it's the spiritual bypass because we're bypassing. The actual spiritual realm, which is reality.
[00:34:45] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, I, I,
[00:34:47] JEFF BROWN: I'm a whole different way of looking at it.
[00:34:49] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. I'm so in that lesson in this chapter in my life. So I, I so love this intersection right now because I think we can all get to maybe like the stereotypical spiritual spin on something, right? Something hard happens. This is a very condensed version of it.
[00:35:10] ERIKA STRAUB: Something hard happens. It was meant to happen. That's it. Move on. Like, and
[00:35:15] JEFF BROWN: It's karma. It's karma, baby. It's just karma.
[00:35:17] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, and it's so Everything happens
[00:35:19] JEFF BROWN: for a reason. And it's always a good one. It's always designed You incarnated for this fucking reason. Right now to be stabbed 47 times in the back alley.
[00:35:28] JEFF BROWN: You know you chose that path. Anyway, continue.
[00:35:32] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, that. Exactly.
[00:35:33] JEFF BROWN: It's just
[00:35:34] ERIKA STRAUB: ridiculous. And it, uh It removes us from the very human experience of what actually just happened, and what that brings up in our bodies, like, the emotions, the, the experience itself, like, I think a lot of that pull to that spiritual ascended realm, we don't actually then integrate any of these lessons we're having.
[00:35:56] JEFF BROWN: That's the purpose of it. That's why it was developed, to get away from the hardships of the human lessons.
[00:36:00] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, and I'm finding myself getting my feet deeper in the ground. As I feel like I was starting to like float a little bit in that space and, um, realizing how out of body I actually was and how, how much I want to be in my body and actually build the capacity in my body to really like be present for what is here today and how much that really requires slowing down so much.
[00:36:31] ERIKA STRAUB: Not getting to the silver lining, not putting that spin on it, but actually being with whatever is showing up today in this moment. And To do that, how deeply we have to be with our sensitivity, right? That are like
[00:36:49] JEFF BROWN: sensitivity is brilliant. Sensitivity is brilliance. I mean, it, it's a double edged sword in a harsh survivalist world.
[00:36:54] JEFF BROWN: It's hard to be a sensitive, but it is, I think it is the portal to. Everything beautiful and brilliant and true. I mean, the, I mean, if you're going to get clear on who you are and why you're here, you're going to have to get pretty subtle and pretty sensitive, particularly in this harsh landscape that we live in, an armored landscape, in order to hear the voice of intuition and to hear the messages of what, you know, when somebody's off path, I call those truth, truth aches.
[00:37:23] JEFF BROWN: Various indicators in your life that you're off path, but you know, that feeling when you know truth or speak truth and you get those chills, call them truth chills, you call them whatever you want, but, but to hear them, to feel them and then to honor them requires a lot of work. I mean, it's, you know, shame related work, peeling of armor, getting to large pieces of unresolved material, ancestrally and individually, that's blocking your clarity and that's.
[00:37:49] JEFF BROWN: Creating an inner environment that has no energy because it's so bunked up with unresolved. I mean, there's so many parts to reaching the stage where you can know who you are and know why you're here and actually be here, I mean, be here now. You know, I knew Ram Dass. And I, Richard Alpert is his real name, and I, I don't believe he was really here.
[00:38:11] JEFF BROWN: Um, I think after the stroke, he was more here, but we had interactions where I confronted him over parts of two days about him being a spiritual bypasser, and he made that admission unhappily at the end of the conversation. And, you know, I mean, We write about the things that we most need to learn. I write about groundedness because a part of me doesn't want to be that grounded.
[00:38:31] JEFF BROWN: I'd like to float away. You know, you know, Eckhart talked about the power of now in my view, because he's not present, he's, he calls it awakening. And that to me, that's the sleeping. I fall asleep when he talks. Um, Ron Doss talked about being here now at a time in his life when he, he wasn't, he was in his head and he was in his balls and he was, You know, his challenge probably was living somewhere in between.
[00:38:51] JEFF BROWN: Um, and so, you know, what does it mean to be here now? What does it mean to be now? What is it? And I think it, it is what you just described and what I call in real meant it's, you were just talking about reaching a place where we're. Here to the best of our abilities for all of this, and, um, it doesn't mean we don't have preferences.
[00:39:11] JEFF BROWN: That doesn't mean we seek out hardship, right? Sometimes maybe people need to do that to wake down to the reality of what it is to be a whole being. But, you know, to be able to at least have the capacity to hold the space for the shadow, let's call it, and for the light, and to be able to be there in a sturdy way without having to run away to some mechanism or another.
[00:39:33] JEFF BROWN: I mean, that's, you know, which is, I think, the way it was always supposed to be before the family and the systems got to us.
[00:39:41] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. I do think we were asleep and we were numb and that's a lot of ways, right? Because we can be used, manipulated. And I think about my journey being numb and desensitized for a good chapter.
[00:39:58] ERIKA STRAUB: Of it, and how, how actually that's so much more frightening to me to be numb and desensitized because those are, those are my compass. Those are how I know myself, how I know myself in each moment, like, what am I actually feeling right now? What's actually happening in this relational field for me right now?
[00:40:17] ERIKA STRAUB: But to think about like this wide gap of time when those weren't available, and it's like, what was leading during that time?
[00:40:26] JEFF BROWN: Survivalism. Thank you. On some level or another. Right? So we're crossing a bridge. I believe from survivalism is defining principle who we are is defined by what puts food on the table and armor if you have to armor and just you just survive to something we might call authenticity.
[00:40:43] JEFF BROWN: Who are you? Really? How do you really feel? Why are you really here? Um, and you know, it's a difficult bridge crossing. And when you're in the survivalist consciousness, you're and you're numbed out in your arm and all the rest of it. Mhm. There's a way in which you're less protected because you're more manipulated in that state, but there's a way in which you're more protected because you're also probably more survivalistically vigilant if you're in a survivalist consciousness.
[00:41:07] JEFF BROWN: But, so the authentic consciousness is much more gratifying, um, And in some ways, in a survivalist world, a little bit riskier, um, because you, you, you'll see things more clearly in certain ways, but in other ways, you're more open. Um, so my work has been to, you know, I bounce from warrior to surrender and then to find a way to be able to be in the integrated bridge between those two.
[00:41:33] JEFF BROWN: Aspects, which is the bridge between survivalism and authenticity and to realize that authenticity isn't just about being soft and sensitive and feeling based, it can be strong and centered and empowered. The thing that threads it together is the intention is benevolent. There's benevolence in both directions.
[00:41:49] JEFF BROWN: The warrior is benevolent, the surrendered soul is benevolent. The heart is moving through me and the heart is really my decisions. Um, and it's doing whatever the soul's bidding requires.
[00:42:01] ERIKA STRAUB: So easily
[00:42:02] JEFF BROWN: easy to say these things, but
[00:42:04] ERIKA STRAUB: yeah, it is, it's much easier to say them than to be, to be them. Um, I'm curious your perspective on attachment.
[00:42:16] JEFF BROWN: Just, that's it. I'm going
[00:42:18] ERIKA STRAUB: to leave it open just attachment in general. Cause I think that's a big word and piece. Um, That comes into this spiritual and human and self and spiritual integration, like where does it
[00:42:34] JEFF BROWN: so I think like this question of where we end and the other begins is incredibly important question.
[00:42:41] JEFF BROWN: It's lives at the heart of the boundaries question. And I think it lives the heart of everything. It's like, you know, um, where does the individual droplet of meaning. For example, meet the oceans of essence. That's how I think the broader sense. In the more localized interpersonal sense, I think that, um, there's something the survivalist game was to present the hallmark, hallmark romance vision of reality, which we all know about.
[00:43:08] JEFF BROWN: We all know about that eventually. Um, and I think the real authentic truth is that we're at a stage. Sadly and ridiculously still of human development, where it's almost people can do to figure out what their issues are as individuals and to deal with themselves and to live inside of their shamed beingness, the idea that they're going to encounter the other, and that the other, and that they're going to have, you know, 40 or 50 years of incredible ecstatic delight, given that both individuals are carrying this enormity of unresolved collective material, is ridiculous.
[00:43:44] JEFF BROWN: So I think now what's happening, and I'm sure it's probably happening for you, is getting more clear as to what Healthy relatedness looks like, but also getting more realistic about the sociology of it and understanding that any little, and this is not what everybody wants to hear, but that any little step forward relationally towards authentic relating is huge.
[00:44:05] JEFF BROWN: It's not necessarily incredibly gratifying yet, but, you know, I think we really are in this gestation phase and this uncovering phase and this excavation of the reality of just. Why it has been so difficult for two people, not just lovers, but friends as well, to stay in a really healthy place in a world that never taught us authentic relating and never taught us how to clear our emotional debris and come back to freshness of appreciating.
[00:44:31] JEFF BROWN: If you think about Peter Levine's waking the tiger work, um, you know, the type, the animals fight and then, You know, one of them leaves and the other one keeps moving and discharging to clear all of whatever that was so they can come back to an experience of freshness of appreciation. Let's say presence within themselves.
[00:44:49] JEFF BROWN: Well, humans, because of these for stinking of brains of ours, we don't do that. And so we end up being trauma accumulators. We've been accumulating trauma for centuries. Now we've reached a tipping point, right? It's clear we're going to, like, destroy the species if we don't start doing some work. Um, but I think to expect two people who are.
[00:45:07] JEFF BROWN: Trauma accumulators to, you know, float in that nirvanic state for long periods of time is entirely unrealistic and it's, it's, it's leading to shame people end up feeling they're sold a karmic bill of goods for everybody else, but what they say they have that you find it is true. And so I think we just need to get realistic.
[00:45:27] JEFF BROWN: optimistic, but really realistic and really understand two people sitting at a table for coffee for the first time. There is so much going on in that experience other than just two people sitting at the table. That's such
[00:45:40] ERIKA STRAUB: a great question
[00:45:42] JEFF BROWN: is, is the other person willing to engage the process with you at a deeper level or they're not going to, which is an eternal frustration for me.
[00:45:50] JEFF BROWN: I think attachment is just inherently difficult at this stage of human development.
[00:45:57] ERIKA STRAUB: I think so too. And, and really the relationship paradigm, I think is changing a lot right now, but it is arduous and it is slow. But I do think for those of us really deeply engaged in this work, we do need someone sitting across from us who is deeply engaged in the work as well.
[00:46:16] JEFF BROWN: Yes, and you know, you will encounter and maybe you haven't, I do session work encounter often people who are perpetually in dynamics with people who aren't interested in doing that work. And it makes sense to me why they're not, why they keep manifesting that because it is actually quite terrifying to be in relationship with someone who's also willing to do the work.
[00:46:39] JEFF BROWN: I mean, there's always so often there's a fuser and an isolator and every dynamic there's, there's somebody. Moving a little off and somebody trying to pull him back and quite often that rolls reverse and two people to stand on the dance floor Staring deeply into one another's eyes really to own their stuff and to be able to hold the space for the other person's stuff Wow, that is I mean There are very few people, I think, at this stage of human development who are even ready.
[00:47:07] ERIKA STRAUB: Who have that capacity.
[00:47:08] JEFF BROWN: Yeah, to really, really, really, whoa.
[00:47:12] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah, yeah. What would you, this, I feel like we just answered it in what you just shared, but what would you say that intimacy is? How do you hold that?
[00:47:26] JEFF BROWN: I think it, I think the um, The best way for me to think about it is that intimacy is at each stage in life, the capacity to, to truly meet somebody exactly where they are without any, um, intrinsic bias, without any agenda, without any, um, reframing or upframing or, Corrective listing or any of those things just like really here.
[00:47:54] JEFF BROWN: We are just as we are and and if you can meet yourself in that place, you're more likely to be able to meet somebody else in that place. I think, and if you can meet others in that place, you're more likely to be able to do it with yourself. It is. It does go back and forth. I think in many ways. And I think that's all we're talking about.
[00:48:10] JEFF BROWN: I don't think it's about transcription. Okay. You know, just meeting somebody in their deepest vulnerabilities. I think that's just part of it. I think accepting somebody when they're in their arm workplaces, dealing with the world in a survivalistic, anxious place. And I think real intimacy is meeting somebody exactly where you're meeting yourself.
[00:48:28] JEFF BROWN: Exactly.
[00:48:29] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. I think that it, and it's also the work of a lifetime. I think that intimacy Many
[00:48:35] JEFF BROWN: lifetimes.
[00:48:36] ERIKA STRAUB: Many, many lifetimes. And To me it is, it is the soul work. Like I think there's so much purpose in our capacity to meet people where they're at and meet ourselves. Yeah, I think's so. Richness. Yeah,
[00:48:53] JEFF BROWN: it's fertile.
[00:48:54] JEFF BROWN: Um, but I think the soul has, um, I think the soul is both incredibly sensitive and incredibly sturdy at the same time, and I think that it has a real soft place. And it depends really on what your particular sacred purpose is, but I think being able to connect to that really essential place within yourself, um, requires a kind of capacity for surrender and softness.
[00:49:22] JEFF BROWN: It's very rare to see in the world. And I think then when the soul feels seen and the soul feels invited and the soul is living its path and purpose, it's quite enlivened. It's quite sturdy. It's quite profound. And for me, sacred purpose is a, it becomes a buffer, which is really just about being moving and living from the soul.
[00:49:40] JEFF BROWN: Becomes a buffer against the madness of the world. And I think it kind of becomes a buffer against your own madness too. And you know, for me, it's, it's like, you know, how do we make the world a better place is going forever about that you and I could spend 3000 years talking about that, but for me, it comes down to, um, in many ways, Figuring out why we're here, you know, what's encoded in us.
[00:50:01] JEFF BROWN: And because I do believe that if everybody at the end of their lives reached the place that I think Virginia Satir, this great sociologist reached, when she was said to have said to Jean Houston at the end, I did what I came here to do. I think if everybody, if we set up our world so that everybody at the end could say, I did what I came here to do, we would be living in a very loving place.
[00:50:22] JEFF BROWN: And the people who are living there, truly living their path and purpose, they don't want to do harm. They just want to really just do their thing. And, uh, you know, it's like a happy artist. Um, I think that's, that's, That's the direction we need to go. And that's why I have such a fundamental intrinsic opposition to any structure or system that is trying to encourage us or condition us in the direction of becoming, um, generic beings, uh, which is the nature of the entire marketplace.
[00:50:52] JEFF BROWN: God,
[00:50:54] ERIKA STRAUB: I just, I felt a swell of emotions when you said that when we're engaged in like our purpose, our sacred work, we don't want to hurt people. All this
[00:51:08] JEFF BROWN: acting out that you see is coming from people who, you know, have so much accumulated trauma that's blocking their clarity and they haven't, in their circumstances, emotionally or tangibly been able to find their true path and to live their purpose and, and how many people do you ever meet in your lifetime?
[00:51:28] JEFF BROWN: I don't mean on Instagram, where they're all pretending they found their path of purpose. Um, I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not talking about them. Um, but on a real level, who are really, have really, I mean, I did fucking years of work. I mean, I didn't talk about it. Nobody, you know, nobody talked about it. And, you know, in the world I lived in, it was very private.
[00:51:49] JEFF BROWN: But. It takes a long, long time to clarify who you are, and to protect who you are, and to separate it out from who you aren't, and then to figure out how to bring that into the world, the economic world, and all those things, and it's, it is a life's journey, um, and we meet very few people Who have done that and that's makes me very sad.
[00:52:12] JEFF BROWN: Um, it makes me very sad. I mean, like there was a lot of talk about self actualization. There was a lot of talk about the possibly human. Now we seem to, I don't hear a lot of talk about it. I'm going to do an insta live Sunday night with someone who's a kid who's talking about it. I was just so excited that she's talking about it.
[00:52:31] JEFF BROWN: But, Nobody's really reading them anymore, talking about that. And now we're moving in the direction of AI. I mean, this is not a species that should go anywhere near AI. We haven't even figured out what authentic intelligence is, let alone artificial intelligence. And is this going to bring us closer to a life in place of a sacred purpose?
[00:52:49] JEFF BROWN: I don't see how it's going to. I don't see how any of this is going to take us more in that direction. The
[00:52:56] ERIKA STRAUB: battle
[00:52:57] JEFF BROWN: continues.
[00:52:59] ERIKA STRAUB: Definitely. You, you can feel when you do encounter someone in their sacred purpose. I think there's a real, like, felt sense, um, of that, in that energy.
[00:53:14] JEFF BROWN: Yeah. It's, it's, it's, um, it's, it's rustic and it's real.
[00:53:20] JEFF BROWN: And it's royal in the best sense. It's not aristocracy, it's meritocracy. Someone you know has really fucking earned it. And there's an energy of that, taking ownership for what you've crafted yourself in the world. It's um, it's everything you would never encounter when Prince Charles is whatever he's rambling on about or something.
[00:53:40] JEFF BROWN: It's, you know, it's utterly preposterous, the whole thing. It's the fact that we even have, still have aristocracy.
[00:53:47] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah,
[00:53:48] JEFF BROWN: exactly what we're talking about. It's, it's yet another obstacle to creating a world that's based on meritocracy and that which we craft within ourselves and the, the unbelievable brilliance that comes from that and the energetic shifts and the sense you have when you're with that, that you want to cozy up to that because it feels however imperfect it may be.
[00:54:08] JEFF BROWN: It feels energetically like it's closer to what human possibility looks like than what we see for the most part.
[00:54:16] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. And it is earned. It is so earned.
[00:54:21] JEFF BROWN: Absolutely. You know, that's why I used to get upset about if I wrote a quote that somebody thought was profound, you know, saying that's out of this world.
[00:54:30] JEFF BROWN: And they weren't trying to insult me. I mean, they were complimenting me. I knew that. But I was like, no, I suffered like I just suffered like a suffering monkey to figure out whatever that led to that clarity or something. And, and, you know, I think because we're shamed, we, even if, even as I say that, I think, well, that sounds so Transcribed Egoic, that's just so egoic.
[00:54:55] JEFF BROWN: Um, I used to call it egotistical in my era and, and it isn't, it's just a real acknowledgement that whatever little gift I have, and I, the fact that I'm calling it a little gift as part of that narrative, whatever gift I have, Cultivated. I earned it. It's mine. And don't tell me I channeled it for fuck's sakes.
[00:55:18] JEFF BROWN: I'm not interested in that nonsense. Everything wonderfully brilliant for that moment is channeled. It's like, yeah, it's channeled from my kishkas. It's channeled from my guts. It's channeled from sitting and eating gefilte fish, even if I didn't want to with my boobie. It's channeled on emotional release work.
[00:55:37] JEFF BROWN: It's channeled. So all of it came through My, my fleshy hunger to figure out who I was and why I was here. So, and I think we want to celebrate that in each other. You know, I, I, I'm very, um, I love the work of Rob Bresni, the author of astrologist, and I interviewed him for the enrollment hour podcast. And, and I, I, because I, I feel like he's one of the few.
[00:56:00] JEFF BROWN: people in the field that I know who is just delighted to see people find their way to their magnificence and doesn't feel threatened by it or jealous of it. When I see people finding their true path and purpose and actualizing it, it's amazing. Even if they're far better writers than me, I feel safer in the world.
[00:56:19] JEFF BROWN: I have a purely selfish response, I suppose. I love when people find their magnificence and actualize that. It's like, oh god, now that's one less person that's gonna want to harm strangers, you know. Yeah. It's one more person to help us to figure out how to resolve this species.
[00:56:39] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah.
[00:56:40] JEFF BROWN: We want more of that.
[00:56:41] JEFF BROWN: And we, we need to fight against all of these pressures to become just like each other, to copy each other, to build your following by doing what some other guy did. It's, it's horrifying. It's, it's this, you're taking this extraordinarily brilliant species and you're just, you're turning them into something basically subhuman.
[00:57:05] JEFF BROWN: That's what's It's terrible.
[00:57:09] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah. I definitely feel that. And It is a beautiful thing when someone does bring it forward, their gift, their magnificent into their art, into their words, into their whatever modality it is that they alchemize.
[00:57:28] JEFF BROWN: It's, it's beautiful. It's a, it's a, I, when I articled in criminal law, this guy at Greenspan, we did a big murder trial in Canada and I prepped it.
[00:57:35] JEFF BROWN: I wrote cross exams. I was so into it. And, and then you came to the jury address. I'd written the jury address like I was so in the zone, 167 pages in four days. It was like so zoned. And, but then he wrote this three pages on his own at the end, in his own words, you know, he did something finally. But he didn't have to do more than that, because when he spoke those three pages to that jury, everybody cried.
[00:58:00] JEFF BROWN: I cried. Because this was a guy, despite whatever his issues were, when it really came down to it, he'd really found his path. He was here to raise the presumption of innocence in Canada, something we knew very little about. He was here to fight against capital punishment single handedly, goddammit. Uh, remove capital punishment in parliament, then got rid of it in Canada.
[00:58:20] JEFF BROWN: Um, he did extraordinary work and he, he was in the heart of his calling in those three pages. And it was just such a beautiful, it just, it restores your faith in the entire species. And then when he yelled at me, cause I hadn't gotten this tuna fish sandwich at four in the morning while I was on the way to Clark repair, that was a different story.
[00:58:42] JEFF BROWN: But those three pages, those little glimpses of possibility, they keep you going.
[00:58:47] ERIKA STRAUB: Oh, I love that. And you know, how we can condense them into a single Instagram post, right? Or a single quote, no one can never know the whole story or what was earned to get to those three pages or that one quote, but to celebrate that journey, because there, there is a sense, I think that comes over us in us when, when we find that articulation point for all that's been earned.
[00:59:15] ERIKA STRAUB: It's, it's such a beautiful, restorative, regenerative sense.
[00:59:21] JEFF BROWN: Clarity comes at a price. It's not just because you're smart. You gotta be a little smart, sure, but so what? I mean, clarity, you know, I think Streisand, who had extraordinary, has extraordinary talent, said all of this. One percentile and ninety nine percent perspiration or something and I always thought that feels about right to me So you have an intrinsic potentiality fucking who cares if you're not willing to fight for the actualization of that That's what changes everything.
[00:59:51] JEFF BROWN: Yeah, so the more clarity the more chaos Preceded it probably
[00:59:59] ERIKA STRAUB: I, I imagine that to be very true. Yeah. Very much so. Well, Jeff, I wanna thank you so much for your time. Like I, there's such a pull to be like, Ooh, I have so many questions. I wanna keep picking your brain and learning from you. So, thank you though for just making this space to have this conversation.
[01:00:18] ERIKA STRAUB: There was so many nuggets in here and it's something I'm gonna walk. Definitely watch back and listen in, um, just letting it kind of sink all in. But I, I felt that gravity in your words and your work. And so I just want to say that, like, I see you. And from what I just know of your journey on the surface, it took a lot to get to those words.
[01:00:40] ERIKA STRAUB: So just honoring your journey and grateful for your time.
[01:00:45] JEFF BROWN: Thank you. You're doing great work. Thank you.
[01:00:48] ERIKA STRAUB: Thank you so much. And where can people find you? What is the latest work that you're bringing into the world? I just want to make sure we include that, um, in the notes for everyone.
[01:00:59] JEFF BROWN: Um, JeffBrown. co. Um, I'm on Facebook.
[01:01:04] JEFF BROWN: The links are all off of that site. Um, my newest book, Humanifestations, which has been essentially in certain very tricky ways shadow banned on Amazon, is there. Thank you so much. Uh, it's also on in realmen. com, um, signed copies of it. Um, it's very similar to my book articulations, the one before, which is a quotes book that did very well.
[01:01:26] JEFF BROWN: Um, and I'm working on a course, an audio course, have a number of audio courses there. I'm working on an audio course related to healing, um, your heart after unresolved love relationships, um, which seems to be something people are interested in. And I've got a few book projects on the go that are clarifying themselves over time.
[01:01:49] ERIKA STRAUB: Beautiful. And it would be a disservice if I didn't just name this at the end. Um, and thank you as a woman and someone really embodying my feminine after living in a lot of masculine guarding your blog article, um, I believe it was called something from
[01:02:08] JEFF BROWN: the
[01:02:11] ERIKA STRAUB: warrior in training or the warrior in transition.
[01:02:16] ERIKA STRAUB: Um, Just so deeply touched by that. And I'm going to include that if you're okay with that as well. Yeah, I'll send
[01:02:23] JEFF BROWN: you the, I don't know if you have the YouTube link. There's a good, I'll send you that link. If you don't have that,
[01:02:27] ERIKA STRAUB: that would be amazing. That,
[01:02:30] JEFF BROWN: that was wild 2010. I, I, it was a Facebook note. I wrote a note, but I felt a strong pull to do it two years earlier.
[01:02:38] JEFF BROWN: And I did, I didn't feel ready yet, but then I wrote it and I, I had no idea what viral meant until that thing exploded on Facebook. It was wild. And, um, Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was a very sincere piece. I, a lot of the perspectives that I expressed there, I, I explored while sitting with my boobie, my Jewish grandmother in her apartment and understanding something about her experiences.
[01:03:02] ERIKA STRAUB: Yeah.
[01:03:02] JEFF BROWN: I
[01:03:02] ERIKA STRAUB: think it's something every woman would so deeply benefit from reading. So I just wanted to name that here cause that, I mean, just God shot to the heart, like, so thank you for those words. You're
[01:03:16] JEFF BROWN: welcome. Thank you.
[01:03:18] ERIKA STRAUB: Thank you for, thank you so much, Jeff.