Guthrie Sayen

Bill: Welcome to the True You Podcast, and I wanna welcome our special guests today, uh, Guthrie Sayen. Is that correct? Do I pronounce it right?

Guthrie: You've got it.

Bill: Guthrie. Sayen, yeah. So Guthrie, uh, and I met just this year for the first time. I'd heard his name, uh, through IFS trainings. Guthrie, I, I'd heard of you, I think that you might have done a training through the Institute with Brian Ju Judon. Does that sound right?

Guthrie: It does. I

Bill: Yeah.

Guthrie: 21,

Bill: Yeah.

Guthrie: somewhere around then. It was called Coaching for Self-Leadership.

Bill: yes, and I attended a verSayen of that. You weren't involved with someone by the name of Anne was working with Brian at that time, and it was one of the first, uh, actually I take that back. My, my training was back in about 2018 that I attended. Yeah, so Brian goes way back and, and, uh, so when I saw that you were offering a training and I'd heard such good things about you, despite the fact that I'd been trained already in the IFS model by IFS of Canada and the institute at several levels and intimacy from the inside out, you and I had a conversation and it made sense for me to come to your training and Guthrie. Something I want you to know is that. I consider you to be, I don't think you're even as old as I am, but I consider you to be an elder and a mentor, and I really respect you, so I'm delighted to have you on the show. And of course, I'm also here with my co-host, Dr. Martin Kettle Hut, also known as Marty. Let's hear your voice. My voice, Marty.

Marty: Yes, my voice is here. I. We want Okay.

Bill: So, Guthrie, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read what you sent over for the bio and then we'll just jump right in. Okay. Guthrie is the co-founder of the Institute for Healing and Awakening, creator and lead trainer for coaching with Spirit, a comprehensive coach training with a spiritual orientation creator and lead trainer of the coaching with IFS programs. Which provide an in-depth immerSayen in IFS over a year and a half with emphasis on helping practitioners awaken. Welcome to the show, Guthrie.

Guthrie: Thank you very much, bill, and thank you for the personal introduction. at that outset, I was quite touched.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've been to a lot of different trainings and some of them are very didactic, very educational. Some of 'em have some heart. Your, your training and my experience for the most part is all heart and, and lots of great, great information, some of which I some somehow missed along the way, so it's really enhanced the work that I'm already doing. So I appreciate you,

Guthrie: Thank you, sir.

Bill: um, Marty, I wanna make sure that there's room for you here. Obviously Guthrie and I already have a relationship. And you are just getting to know them and something tells me that your questions for Guthrie may be more pertinent and relevant for the listener than even mine. So please, please bring your voice.

Marty: Okay.

Bill: Is there anything on your mind right now that you'd like to say or ask? I.

Marty: Oh no. A lot of the words are gonna be really interesting to unpack a word, not just words. I don't mean that like. You know, it's all about words, but they, they're powerful words. Things like self-leadership, awakening, So I'm, I'm my lips. Let's get.

Bill: Great. Well, I'm, I'm wondering Guthrie if, how you'd feel about talking to us and our listeners about. The way that you open each of the training sesSayens, you and Barie open each of our training sesSayens with a meditation that's built on basically four principles of focus. Would you be willing to talk about that?

Guthrie: I would, so whatever kind of work you're doing, if it's in the field of healing or helping other people, pre presence, being present, available with an open heart is the paramount skill. It trumps all the technical skills. So I've created a meditation that? I call the four building Blocks, A presence, and the first one is ground. And we, we can feel into our ground right now by just dropping down into our seats, the full weight of our bodies landing on our two sitting bones. Feeling our feet flat on the floor. What that does is this opens a connection to the earth to ground, and it gives us stability and a sense of safety when we're grounded. The second step I call core, and that's being able to bring your awareness. the core of your body and feel from the inside, the somatic sensations,

Marty: Yeah.

Guthrie: the emotions that are present and needs or wants that may be present. It's where we're the most US, and when we've got core. We've got confidence. In other words, we can confide in the information inside. One of my definitions of coaching is relocating the source of authority from out there to in here. And when you've got core, you've got your own sense of authority. You've got authority from within. You don't have authority from without. And so core gives you confidence and it gives you a sense of embodiment.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: So when you're stable and embodied, you're then ready open your awareness outward in all directions. And. Just imagine that you're hearing a sound right now in the distance that a sound, that sound is arising in a field of awareness. And when you're able to rest into this field of awareness, you've got context, you've got space. There's lots of room for whatever's happening inside me and whatever's happening inside you. So at this point, we've got ground core and then what I call field. Just notice what happens when you let your field opened outward. You can sense the room, you can sense beyond the room. If I were to ring a bell, you would hear the sound of that bell and then it would disappear. But the field, that spacious awake field would remain. And then from there you include the body so that you have field awareness. And simultaneously you're embodied. You're present here now and you're ready to focus. So that's the fourth step. So it's ground, core field and focus.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: And when you've got, all four. You are in the catbird seat as the old Southern Baseball announcer, red Barber used say, meaning you're spot.

Bill: Wow. Really nicely described Guthrie. Thank you.

Marty: I love these, these, what did you call the four blanks of

Guthrie: The four, the four building blocks are present.

Marty: Building blocks. Okay. I'd love to just, uh, learn a little bit more about that as a, as a Like these four? Why in this order like that,

Guthrie: So it was me trying to reverse engineer what I. do so that I can help others do it.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: were certain things that I just did intuitively and I wanted to figure out how I could help others to do it. And one of the things I noticed that I always did was that I grounded myself first. If I'm doing this really quickly, if I just need two seconds, I feel my weight on my chair, which I'm doing now, and they go to the field

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: and then I'm ready.

Marty: Gotcha. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. Very good. um, I loved also what you said about presence being the, key to it all. Um, and I would, I I agree totally, and I'd just love to. I know. Um, say more about that, because I think it's really something that most people are walking right past the, that that effectiveness at many levels that comes from presence, we just don't have time for it. Like, that would be nice, but I gotta get some work done here. Right.

Guthrie: So I've spent a lot of time training coaches. And I've also spent a lot of time coaching people, and what I've noticed is that when we slow down and allow the connection to open between two beings, something magical begins to happen. Both systems begin to relax my system. Relaxes more, their system relaxes more, and I find that we can get into a self amplifying loop that brings us closer and closer into a heart connection, and in that place that people begin to naturally heal. Because they are sitting with someone who's fully present, fully available, is offering unconditional positive regard to quote, you know, the great Carl Rogers and how often do they get that even from their partner. And when you're present, you can listen without an agenda. You are not formulating a reply . you're simply available so that that person can hear themselves, speak from a deeper level from within, and then have themselves reflected and observant to other.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: In a sense, we're creating a third entity. So Marty, you're an entity or a system. I'm an entity or energetic system. And as we connect, like right now, we're creating this intersubjective space and we can tap into that. And it has its own intelligence. It is smarter than we are. Separately.

Marty: so, I'm thinking about. The work that that I do with non coaches. Right, as well. And I think, I just want to make the point that everything that you're saying also applies in those kind of conversations. Not only do you establish this third entity, so to speak, this third

Guthrie: Yeah.

Marty: this bigger, better, more compasSayenate and wise intelligence, but also. This just happened this morning. I was coaching a young businessman York City um, he was trying to, you know, figure something out. Um, and I know that he knows that capable and can answer the question, but I could see that he, was just too much going on and so I let him in. Uh, these four, but in a different order honestly, to reproduce my experience. Right. I go, I go ground, body, field, core ending in that inner authority. That's, and then I asked him, now go back to your question that you were trying to answer, and he knew the answer right away.

Guthrie: Yeah. so you helped him get grounded and present. And then he, his native intelligence, his native creativity was then available to him. He was relaxed in a, in a safe, accepting place.

Marty: Right. I think that third entity with president, it's the shared intelligence.

Guthrie: Yeah.

Marty: now he was able to tap into it, whereas before he was just running around in his own mind looking for the answer. And once he got present, then not only was he grounded in himself who this larger field was available to access.

Guthrie: Exactly. So when we're connected to to the field, connected to a larger intelligence. We're connected to what I call spirit. Which is the creative force in the universe. The spirit is leading evolution, and we are still evolving as a species as well as not a universe system.

Marty: Thanks for indulging me in that line of questions, but I just, I'm, I'm a real believer in the, the of the meditation practice for human beings. And so I just wanted to impress upon our re our listeners, you know, that the, there's a lot more of you available when you slow down for a second.

Guthrie: Yeah. Let me, let me offer a really simple model of the human mind that your listeners might find useful.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: Subjectively speaking, the only thing that exists is consciousness. In the contents of consciousness. Let's just think about that for a moment. I person perspective, the only thing that truly exists that I'm experiencing right now with the two of you is consciousness itself and the contents of consciousness. Does that make sense? So think about the contents of consciousness are generated by our five physical senses. So viSayen, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, those are all sensory inputs into consciousness. Those are sensory objects of of consciousness, but we also have mental objects,

Marty: Hmm.

Guthrie: thoughts, emotions, opinions, et cetera. So consciousness. It's like the sky and the objects of conscious, and it's always present. It never goes anywhere, and the weather changes. The sky doesn't change. It's always spacious. It's always holding the weather, the physical sensations, the emotions, the thoughts. They're transient. They keep changing. Now, here's the kicker. The kicker is the quality of our lives is determined by our relationship to the contents of consciousness. The quality of my life is determined. How I relate to those objects, how do I relate to the physical feelings, the sights I see, the thoughts, the memories, the emotions, how I relate to those

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: intimately affects quality of my life.

Marty: Right.

Guthrie: let's say you have in your hand, in your open hand, you have a little steel ball. And that steel ball is covered with very sharp points, and if you hold your hand open, it can press there without causing any trouble. What happens if you squeeze it? That's what we do. We squeeze our thoughts, we squeeze those objects of sensation. We identify with them, we become them. They think that's who we are and what my life is about is having people open their hand. In other words, going into field awareness

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: And being able to pay attention what they're holding without hurting themselves. Most people, of the time. Hurting because they are identifying with the contents of their consciousness. Instead of simply offering presence like we offer a client's presence and

Marty: Yeah.

Guthrie: positive regard. wanna do the same thing for our internal world

Marty: Yeah, yeah.

Guthrie: to be with.

Marty: Awesome. Thank you. Well said. The same guy. The same client. Um, later on in the, in the sesSayen, I asked him about the homework that I had given him the week before, and he said, oh, oh, I, I, uh, I, I, last night I said to myself, darn, I forgot about that homework. I, I said, well consider, you know, instead of squeezing that pointy ball that you open your hand. I didn't put it in those words, but, recognize that you remembered it last night rather than right, because you have a pattern. I told him of putting yourself down. Like the, the good news is you actually remembered it last night. There's that relationship between us and the contents of our consciousness,

Guthrie: Yeah.

Marty: absolutely, really that is what gives the texture to our life.

Guthrie: Yeah. So I think Bill, in the beginning talked about, or maybe it was you, Marty, but one of you mentioned, let's define waking up

Marty: Uh huh.

Guthrie: and waking up is bringing consciousness from the background into the foreground. So consciousness doesn't need to be developed. It's already there. It predates our birth, it will postdate our death. It is there, it cannot be damaged, but for most people it's in the background. And so we, we live in a thought based understanding of the world. So in other words, have the capacity for OS two, but we're living in OS one. What we wanna do is to bring OS two into the foreground and it can hold

Bill: Operating system.

Guthrie: OS one.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, after all, whatever it is that's coming up. It might be really ugly. It might be unpleasant, whatever it is, it is in the field of consciousness,

Guthrie: and, and there is a part of you that's calling it ugly. So that's another part that could also be held lightly.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: We don't have to identify with that part. That holds the judgment. That's a sub mind.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's a part.

Guthrie: It's a part in language of internal family systems.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Bill: So someone comes to you, Guthrie, or me or Marty or any coach, and says something to the, that could essentially boil down to, I'm not happy with the quality of my life. And in your beautiful language, you might, you might meet them where they're at and say it differently. But in the language that you're using today, you're saying that the quality of your life is in direct relationship to how you're holding the contents of your consciousness.

Guthrie: Yes, exactly. I think it, yeah. Um, ham Hamlet says something like this to his friend Voat. Um. There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so,

Marty: That's exactly what he says.

Guthrie: yeah. Yeah. I've memorized that and I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson says, you know, for what is heaven for one man is hell for another. So it all depends on how we hold it. Once our basic need needs for, for, um. Our basic physiological needs are met. Basic needs for safety, uh, met. Our happiness is really determined by, by how we treat, how we react to or simply respond to the contents of our consciousness.

Bill: What happens that we're aware of

Guthrie: Yeah, whatever happens that we're aware of but how we relate to it to

Bill: The content, the,

Guthrie: to do we squeeze it or do we simply hold it?

Bill: yeah, I'm breaking it down just a little bit more than that. So. Uh, the contents of our consciousness is what happens that we're aware of,

Guthrie: Yes,

Bill: and then what we do with that determines the quality, whether we squeeze it or,

Guthrie: How we relate. Do we identify with it? Or do we simply, are we simply aware of it?

Bill: so, I'm, I'm, I'm, I know that you may not intend this, but I'm, I'm noticing that this conversation is actually walking through what it might look like to go from what I just call suffering. To suffering enough to want to make a change and be willing to, to reaching out, asking for help, and finding yourself in the presence of a coach that thinks the way that you and I think, and that way, the way that Marty thinks. By the way, my language is much more street, I suppose, which is just, it's not, it's not what's happening out there. It's what you think about what's happening out there that determines your happiness. I just say it in a slightly different way. I think it, I think we're saying the same thing. Wouldn't you say Guthrie?

Guthrie: Yeah, it's not the circumstances. It's how you relate to the circumstances.

Bill: So now, now a potential coaching client comes to one of this, uh, one of the of us comes to a coach and says, help me. And, and what you're laying out is, well, let's understand what's happening. First, let's both agree on what's actually happening. In other words, we're not gonna be talking about your ex-wife other than how you're holding the memory of her or the relationship with her. We're not gonna be talking about your scarcity around money. We're not talking about your broken down car or your relationship with your parents. We're talking about how you relate to all of that.

Guthrie: Ultimately that's what we're doing.

Bill: Takes a while to get there.

Guthrie: I wouldn't naturally say that in the beginning.

Bill: No, you wouldn't say that, but that's your goal, isn't it? As coach is to help him get to that pump point so that you're both in at least agreement about what there is to deal with.

Guthrie: So I, I think in every coaching sesSayen there's a meta agenda. And it's shifting the identification from parts to consciousness, from parts to self with a capital S. 'cause if I have access to what IFS calls self, which is awareness, then I have access to creativity, compasSayen, curiosity. I'm interested and available, so life circumstances become something you can play with rather than being dominated by. And for me, the beginning of a coaching sesSayen begins before I, the client arrives. when I get present and then I, I invite them to make room for whatever's happening inside them. 'cause you never know where that's gonna lead. One of my sayings is, um. The system knows how to heal. So if you think of each of us as a system, it's this amazingly complex interaction of sub minds or parts or sub personalities, and it looks really complicated. But if you enter into that system with humility and respect, and as a learner. The system will gradually teach you how it wants to heal and awaken.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: And so that's what I think of myself as as a student of another person's system, and that I'm, I'm the learner and their system's gonna teach me how I can use my skills. To open up whatever wants to be opened.

Bill: I love that. I, I, I, would you say it again? I know you'll say it differently this time. Nothing wrong with the way you said it just now, but I just want to hear it again. That's so important as a coach. Yeah.

Guthrie: so a metaphor that I often use Bill is I say when we enter another person's system and we begin to come into intimate relationship with them. We're entering a foreign country and we don't, we don't know the laws. We don't know the language. We don't know the customs or the dress code, and so we enter with humility and deep respect for who this person is right now because they've survived a lot of hurt. That's our initiation in being human is to be traumatized. And if we can come with this kind of humility and curiosity of the student, the system will begin to reveal how it wants to heal and awaken. It will begin to teach client and me. How that wants to happen. And so even though I have a very powerful tool like IFS at my disposal, I don't force the protocol onto the client. The client will tell me what's working and not working, indirectly through parts. Nonetheless, I will get the message, oh, I need to adjust. And so one of the things when when I do something, I go, oh, I need to adjust. I don't blame myself for making mistakes. I go, oh, new information.

Bill: Yes. Yeah.

Guthrie: adjust that? I've just learned something. So that's one way I stay present. So sometimes, you know, the, both of you know have intuitions and you know, I have a deciSayen to make. When I have an intuition, do I share it or not? 'cause you really want the client to have the intuitions, but sometimes our intuitions can be of service to the client. Or let me stick with that and I share it and it doesn't land right with the client.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: I can get in a fight with myself or I can let it go and just dance with the client.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: So it's like you're in a dance competition. Yes, one of the partners did something, but together they can correct it so quickly. Many people won't even notice the misstep, but it requires a kind of trust of your partner and humility. And it also requires us to go easy to have compasSayen for ourselves. 'cause if I beat myself up, I've now, now thrown dissonance into that inter subjective space we were talking about.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: And what we're doing in that inner subjective space, like Two Dance Partners creating more and more coherence, because the more coherence we create, the more access we have to the field.

Marty: Which suggests to me, and, and if I'm interrupting, just tell me, wait a second. That's fine. I'll wait. But I wanna, I've been mulling this over, um, that there's not only, um. Uh, identifying with it, holding it, but there's also othering it like, oh, this part of me is wrong. This part of me should be ex, you know, gotten rid of, it should be fixed. This, bad. And it, this could go to the outside world too. But in that intersubjective space, it's not other, even if it's somebody else, that's me being an idiot over there. Like, you know. So I have to approach it differently, you know, I don't just cancel it, wait a minute, that's, that's part of all of us. Gives me access to address it. So I think that that othering is a very popular way right now. I find that, um. That we are not, that we're, um, not enjoying the intersubjective space. We other something in that space.

Guthrie: I agree. So we see othering constantly going on in our culture and we do it internally. So, you know, an old joke is that I could be very rich. If I could sell parts, guns, and you could buy a parts gun from me and kill off all the parts in you you don't like, but you can't kill parts.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: like you can't destroy energy.

Marty: Right,

Guthrie: And moreover, you're misunderstanding these parts because parts even in bad roles have a noble purpose. So when we stop othering. We stop the war. So we turn around, we, we say, Hey, wait a minute. I've been judging you. I've been pushing you away, been stuffing you into my unconscious. What if, what if we actually talk

Marty: Mm-hmm. Right, right.

Guthrie: And then I find out? It's secret history,

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: It's been doing what it's doing. 'cause the secret history of misbehaving parts is, is buried in the past. Um, sometimes it's part of explicit memory, but often it's part of a implicit memory. It's not normally available to us in, in our everyday minds.

Marty: Mm-hmm.

Guthrie: But we can still get to that material

Marty: Right.

Guthrie: and we then understand, oh, this is, this was an adaptive behavior when we were four years old. It's maladaptive now that I'm 54.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah.

Bill: Gut, you've said so many things that stand out to me, and I if, if you don't mind, if I'm not, if not, I'm not interrupting a, a flow for you. I'd like to just go back and point out the things that jumped out and landed for me of, of what you've said so far. Um, I'm gonna go all the way back to your reference to Core and I'm, and I'm thinking about, um, nonviolent communication because you described that core really is a, an awareness of what Rosenberg would call what's alive inside.

Guthrie: what's alive inside. I love that.

Bill: Are you familiar with the nonviolent communication?

Guthrie: I am, I think Marshall Rosenberg a great body of work.

Bill: He certainly did, and that was probably, I, I only recently I thought I'd already read the books and if I did, I've changed so much that the, the me that remains has no memory of anything that he taught years ago. So I, I revisited apparently for the first time, uh, for the parts of myself that were listening this time. And I, and I got, I'm getting so much value, uh, from what, what he taught and, and that was one of the first pieces for me was to begin a connection with myself and then therefore with another person with curiosity about what's alive inside and authentic disclosure of that. If that's all I ever got from nine nonviolent communication, that would've been enough, but I got so much more.

Guthrie: Yeah. I agree. That would've been enough. It's basically what The, his book is subtitled compasSayenate Communication

Bill: Yeah.

Guthrie: and that's what he's teaching. And when, when we begin. Identify with awareness rather than the contents of awareness. have. We have natural access to compasSayen. We don't have to develop it. It's already available.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah.

Guthrie: And compasSayen is the ability to be with, with suffering without having to do anything but being available to be of service if that would serve.

Bill: I had like to spin a new theory with you

Guthrie: Sure.

Bill: in the, in the 10 minutes that we have remaining for, for your, your feedback, your, your response to it. So here's the idea. I'm beginning to notice that when I follow a client's system. Far enough along to find the hidden secret parts of them and the wounds that made them secrets and hidden in the first place. That's, there's a commonality in those wounds. The first level that I, in those wounds, the further level and in the past, that blocked access to the innate resources. That we all have until the, until we become blocked to them. So my theory is that every burden is tied to either an event or conditions that blocked us from access to our innate resources. What do you think of that?

Guthrie: I completely agree. I mean, to give this a really big picture sort of view, I every insult to our system has an address in the space time continuum. In other words, it happened at a specific time that? you can find on a clock, you know, specific time, date, year a specific place. And was a contraction space time continuum. And when we go back to that place unconditional positive regard, we release the contraction and we're free. And if we do enough of this, um, we actually free ourselves from the space time net. I mean, we can still live in it and negotiate it, but it doesn't control our.

Bill: Love it. Part of the IFS model for those that are listening that are familiar and been trained in the model, is the integration of qualities that there hasn't been room for as long as, as the system was burdened in that way. And so one of the things I love about this awareness is that it now it makes even more sense. It's not just that there's more room spatially inside for qualities such as, let's just say joy, playfulness. Creativity and confidence. There's, there's, it's more like an acknowledgement that now that the space has opened up now that we're no longer con, what word did you use? Contracted?

Marty: Contract.

Bill: No. Now that we're no longer contracted and, and you feel that spacious lightness, openness that's happening inside. Notice what it is. Not only that you are, are aware is emerging, but what you want to emerge that hasn't been there. Maybe there's room for that now.

Guthrie: I think there is one of my many wake up experiences was that I was out for a walk and I had gotten the idea. From one of my teachers, Jeffrey Martin, that actually suppress our own sense of fundamental wellbeing. And I, the thought just came to me, it just like popped into consciousness. What if I stopped blocking joy? And from that moment on, virtually anytime I remember it, I can access joy. It is just, it's there always. We just have to stop suppressing it.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah.

Marty: So Bill, in that, um, asking that question, you said you used to think of shame, so is. Now you're saying there's some traumatic event that, that, that causes the contraction. is shame just an example and now you see that there are others or is this below that? Like even more original than the shame is something happened?

Bill: I think it's all integrated at the same level that the way I'm thinking about it is that the shame or the shaming that that left, that left shame,

Marty: Yeah.

Bill: um. Is, is the, is what, uh, Guthrie's talking about the contraction and that squeezes literally squeezes the life right out of us. 'cause it's not safe enough to feel joyful anymore. It's not safe enough to display that given or to, to experience it. It gets, it gets shut down either because there's fear or shame or guilt or some, some. Um, cons, construction of thought that says, okay, this is, this is the law in this new land. This, this land is forming and evolving in this moment, as I realize I'm not safe to just be who I am, which brings us all the way back to the true you and the reason that we're having this conversation in the first place. We are, we, we have less access to who we really are because we're so busy being. Uh, afraid that who we, who we really are is not okay, and therefore we're putting all of our energy into trying to be who we think we need to be to survive that.

Guthrie: Yeah, so the, the front we present to the world is basically our protector's best guess to what's gonna keep us safe.

Bill: Yes.

Guthrie: But just coming to shame for a moment. I can't resist this, so it's my belief that. Everything has its purpose. And you know, you would say, well, maybe shame is the exception. But I discovered in my own personal word that what shame, shame is an awful, awful feeling. It's like a very heavy, wet blanket. But imagine if that heavy, wet blanket is protecting you as it was in my system from terror.

Bill: Hmm.

Guthrie: actually be thankful to the shame. I mean, it's just amazing what we discover if we're willing to be curious and nonjudgmental as we go. Looking around inside.

Bill: Yeah. Yeah.

Marty: Well that's back to the part of what I find so interesting about what you've said is that all in. All encompassing blue sky of consciousness or, or its right? And so nothing that appears in that space is like anomaly. Like it all has purpose. It all has a reason. It all we it go up to it, get into it. why, why it's there. Whether it's shame or, or something else. It, it serves a purpose.

Guthrie: It does, and when we have access to the field of awareness, when we're identified more with consciousness than the contents. We don't judge any of it. We can just be curious about it all.

Marty: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bill: honor the time that you said that you had for us today. So we need to wrap it up here very shortly, Guthrie, and if, if it's okay, I'd like to end with two things. One is my favorite quote from today's conversation from you. And the other is to ask you how folks might get in touch with you if they're interested in your training. So the quote here, please let me know if I misquoted here, but I believe what I heard you say was, our initiation into being human is to be traumatized.

Guthrie: Yeah.

Bill: That that.

Guthrie: I think that's when we agree to incarnate. We're agreeing. We're agreeing to to be hurt, to be traumatized.

Bill: Yeah, apparently that is the case because that seems to be what happened. And

Guthrie: I mean, the birth itself can be traumatic.

Bill: are you familiar with Weller? Um, I'm looking over at my bookshelf for some help, and it's not coming right away. The, oh, here it is. The wild edge of sorrow by Weller.

Guthrie: No, but I love that the title

Bill: He,

Guthrie: a quote from a poem.

Bill: he has, oh yeah. It's poetic. The whole book is poetic and he talks, he's not an IFS person, but he talks about trauma in a way that defines it more clearly than I've ever seen. Do you mind if I grab it real quick before you leave?

Guthrie: would love to hear.

Bill: Alright. It is, uh, Francis Weller. The name of the book is The Wild Edge of Sorrow and the quote, he's actually paraphrasing his mentor when he talks about it. He's talking about Carl Young and he says he's talking about complexes and complexes are. What I, from what I understand, what forms from trauma, he says Complexes are fragmentary. Bundles of concentrated emotional energy formed when we were confronted with an experience too intense for us to successfully digest.

Guthrie: Yeah, we were unable to integrate it,

Bill: That just really put

Guthrie: disintegrated or fragmented

Bill: yes.

Guthrie: it creates disharmony in The system. It's un we're unbalanced and we're not whole. So healing is integrating those fragments and that's how we become whole again.

Bill: The fragments from as a result of the trauma. All right, so Guthrie, if someone gets, wants to get ahold of you and look into your training and, and what, where would they go? Where would you recommend, what would you recommend they do?

Guthrie: I would send them to, um, the website is Healing and Awakening Institute. Healing a ND. Awakening, healing And Awakening Institute, and that's where most of my courses are offered

Bill: And the training that I am in is called, uh, coaching with IFS.

Guthrie: coaching with I FS One

Bill: One and, uh, Bardy, who was a guest two weeks ago is your co-train

Guthrie: She is.

Bill: and co and, and the co-founder of the institute.

Guthrie: the institute. together.

Bill: Yeah. Great partnership. You guys do a wonderful job. I so appreciate you. So in fact, I'm gonna see you next week in the next training. Is it next week or two weeks now, I think. Yeah.

Guthrie: I dunno off the top of my head, but I, I look forward to it. Bill

Bill: Yeah, me too.

Guthrie: thank you for, uh, being part of the conversation. I enjoyed meeting you.

Marty: Pleasure to meet you.

Bill: Thank you, RIE.