we vulnerable?

hi!

Welcome to season 2! I changed the name to z_oakst, and will be updating the theme song soon. Even so, enjoy! Chatting about the yummy vulnerability of being human. 

any claims made in this season are for entertainment purposes only. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Hello. Hey. Uh yeah, and welcome to ninety-six oak street, bitch. Ninety six oak street. And they say so.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I wanna create a photo, but you can feel a mortal. But you can feel a mortal, but you can feel a mortal I wanna create a photo.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Oh my gosh, hi. Hi, we're back. We are back, and I'm so excited you're still with me. I'm so excited to share with you a new season of 96 Oak Street. I've been cooking and so these downloads, while they were a little time ago, um, are still relevant, are still timely. I pray that it lands for you exactly when you need it. And I don't even know what we're getting into today today. I I'm making this intro before listening to the entirety of what I have here, but I do know we're addressing vulnerability and transparency, we're addressing fear, and we're addressing uh grace from imagination. So you know, let's get into it. I love you and stoked. I'm so excited. Like just so y'all know, I also have a YouTube, so I'm gonna link my YouTube here too if you want to get more visuals on me and what I'm sharing. Uh sending y'all all the love, and I pray today feels smooth, especially with this download. Um, so I was just listening to a couple interviews, and one of them really moved me. Be I mean, I've been really grateful to say that a lot of interviews on YouTube have been moving me recently, but especially this one by with Shi Yang He S-H-I-Y-E-N-G-H-I, um, on the podcast The Diary of a CEO, which I have mixed feelings about, but um, I found this particular interview to be very helpful where you're saying hi baby. It's nice of you. Um, baby. Um where, you know, he talks about how necessary, I mean, there's so much within the interview, and I would suggest you watch it because um it's very foundational for the beginning of if not throughout your journey of discovering yourself, your higher self, and and the freedom of choices that you have, the delicious choices that you have in your life that bring you closer to your highest self or farther away, right? We talk about the multiverse, the choices you make bring you on a timeline that reflects those particular vibrations and frequencies, right? So there's a highest self where you make choices that serve your highest goal, your highest um your soul, and then you have, you know, maybe your lowest self or maybe a being that serves primarily the ego and materialism that takes you farther away from source, farther away from your power, but you know, still brings with it necessary understandings, even often we folks in those positions are considered karmics, where like they are repeating patterns or carrying on curses or particular patterns of harm that um they have no desire to break free of or continue to distract themselves from changing. And so he spoke about um this piece around um what I have called for so long vulnerability and how vulnerable it is to be human. And while, yes, physically um most of us, many of us, especially in the Western world, do not have um the type of bodily protections that we might develop if we lived a lifestyle where our body was more engaged, and so that being a necessarily necessary choice we carve out in our day to exercise our body because otherwise we could just not be moving or or doing anything. Um so, in that sense, the physical vulnerability, but uh you know, just in general, being vulnerable spiritually, mentally, I mean we we're we're born with knowing everything, and then over time we we get just get illusions and distractions, and and especially when you were in cultures of of cannibalism and other pieces of of of self-sacrifice and self-harm, um it you know that vulnerability becomes a weakness. And so, you know, it's really interesting when you hear language utilized around vulnerability. But this person um Um She really talked about um the goal being uh to be transparent and not like to be you know transparent in the sense of um every part of your body touched with light. So every part of ourselves has been touched with light. So we know even the darkest part of ourselves, um, and we've been able to look at it and reflect on it and even shape how it expresses itself and how it shows up to the table because there's a level of respect from which that darkness comes from, why it's there, how it's protecting you, and giving you immense pleasure uh as well as necessary discernment. And to be able to be in a position of I'm not vulnerable to all these forces if I'm transparent, right? So if I know my own subconscious and make it conscious, knowing that there's always gonna be pieces I'm not always aware of in any given moment, and yet I will always have the capacity and can always have the capacity to um know what I know when I know it, right? So if I finally realize something even after the fact is better than is better than assuming there was nothing to be learned and just getting stuck in the trauma or getting stuck in the in the in the in the issue. Uh and so I found that really important to to understand is like you aren't vulnerable when you know what you're about, when you know uh your source of power and the the manufactured consent that you've grown up with, where your identities have been manufactured for you, your character has been shaped by a society that's main goal with capitalism is to exploit you. So, of course, it's very difficult to believe that we have anything within us that's worthy beyond our ability to create profit within a system that's cannibalistic. So um, yeah, I um was really I really loved that awareness and it was really helpful for me, you know, also building on top of just the read I've been reading a little books, a couple books right now. I have a couple books I like literally read pieces of at a time. I don't I can't sit longer than 30 minutes with reading right now in terms of my mental. So I've been learning how to dice to dice it up in a way that allows me to just take little bites at a time. And he spoke about that too, like change doesn't happen all in one day where it's like, all right, tomorrow I'm gonna do the thing. No, it's like in this very moment, if I have any type of um if I have any type of motivation to make the little thing, the little change, the little act that will build over time into something big and and grand and something I can share. And it also then kind of alleviates a lot of the blocks and a lot of the um distractions that will absolutely come into your path um just to challenge you to really know if this is really what you're about, if you're really about the focus, if you're really about getting something done. Um and uh he, you know, really talked about those little micro changes being like the muscles, right? You you don't just, you know, pick up a f a 50-pound weight and start benching if you haven't started with the 10, if you haven't started with the five, the ten, and him talking about that being like literal levels of a game, like levels of quote unquote game, where it's like in level one, you're gonna have a particular set of challenges that you will move on from in level two. They might seem similar, and yet the challenges will be slightly different. Um, but you won't see you won't see one without the other. You're not gonna see level two without level one. And so that being the same thing, micro-tears um of the muscles build stronger muscles. Um if you go right for the big thing, you're gonna tear your muscle, which is not the goal. That will take months to heal, weeks to heal. And so that understanding of like what we do with our time and how we move our with our time um is essential to us having the capacity, the even endurance, the um yeah, capacity for discomfort, the capacity for pain, and to know when we experience pain that we have tools in our tool belt to not make that pain inevitable suffering, right? Because I mean, many of the religions, especially Abrahamic religions, where they believe in one God, where they believe in one type of leader, where they believe in the one over the zero, where they believe in, you know, uh the idea that there's this one thing that can make everything change or happen. Um that, you know, as we unlearn those processes, being able to tap into uh the many parts of ourselves that give us um a sense of clarity in our choices and uh and to experience suffering or to experience pain without putting on this extra emotional weight of of I'm not enough, of I deserve this, of um, you know, my religion tells me Jesus suffered for us and therefore all of us must suffer. Um you know, just like the crucification of of of the body over the mind, you know, and um uh just the crucification of the body in general, um, and and just not listening, you know, to what our body is asking of us. But yeah, so I found it really helpful to understand that distinction between the vulnerability and transparency and how important it is to for us to be transparent not only with each other but with ourselves. Like obviously you're gonna guard pieces of yourself in in relationship to folks who are not deserving of your fullness because that's a inevitable, you're not gonna be able to show everybody everything, and it's so important for as you walk into a room to have this layer of benevolence where you're not out here with ill will, you're not out here trying to intentionally harm people, um and and and you're able to move through knowing that like you will continue to read the room, you will continue to read bodies, you will read yourself, and the only way you can really read your environment is if you can read yourself. Right? Because when we're reading, we're reading under the understanding that everything is a story, everything has a song and a vibration, a frequency, an arc, uh, and you know, the location of any person in your vicinity and where they are on their own timeline and their own um story is gonna relate to your story in some ways, right? Because as we grow, we're building a story for ourselves. There's a way that the universe is speaking to us that is unique to you as an individual. There's a way that your higher self is speaking to you that is unique to you as a character. And it's so important for you to um understand your story, and that's where it's important to go internal, to go into hermit mode or some type of mode where you're really focusing on what's showing up for yourself. And so often, like, it's not in isolation, it's not like oh, I go into hermit mode and I don't see anybody. It's no, I'm really I'm listening, I'm observing, I'm not out here trying to tell everybody, I'm not trying to act. Me coming to y'all through this podcast is because of years and years of reflection and thought, and it's not to tell anybody to wait on on sharing their knowledge, but it's so important for you to know your story and and at least start the journey before you start telling anybody else anything. In my opinion, this is where I'm coming from, and what was what's worked for me is that I had to not only learn my own story as I grew up and and what what kept showing up to me with significance, it was also um, you know, the building of my character and how you know to have good character, to have principles in my actions where I have values, principles about you know why I do or don't do something and um how that reflects on my character, and how I'm not st I'm not the one to sit and judge my character, and yet we do that all the time, self-judgment. I'm not here to sit and judge my thoughts and my body and assume that that's me as in my whole self. Like my higher self as an entity is not me the body, me the mind. It's a multidimensional spiritual being that I can only barely comprehend. And yet, this being guides me in this 3D world, in this 5D world, in whatever D world you believe in. Um, and this being guiding me almost like a video game, you could think of it as surface level as that, but it's definitely not. Um but this experience of you know, you're behind the controller and you're moving this character around. But the idea is like with you know, unlike a game where you're you're kind of dictating all the movements, you are just encouraging, you're guiding um your character towards particular particular paths that you know will bring them closer to a profound sense of connection with themselves and therefore a profound ability to let it all go. Because when we die, where do we go? To our soul. Out of this one. That's where we go. And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful release, right, for the body, for the being to let go of the mortal body and become the immortal being that they always are. Um and to reflect on all of those lessons and obstacles and ways they navigated that could could have alleviated their ancestors and broken karmic cycles and other pieces that you know I think every generation is here to shift for the ancestral realm. I mean, everybody has their own belief systems, that's mine. Um, you know, where we are providing a pathway for our lineage, both our ancestors, our descendants, seven before, seven behind um before and and behind, um, of of um, you know, commitments and responsibility for our descendants, seven generations in front of us. This is an indigenous uh knowledge across the world that believes in these things. Um, this seven before and seven behind. But uh yeah, it's so important for us to Yandal! Please stop. Yandal, please stop. He's getting ready for naps, so he's starting to do things that cause um emotional reactions. All of which I've every day I'm getting better and better at noticing, oh my god, I feel very triggered by him not listening to me. I feel very triggered and like believe in the fact that like, oh, I have less power or something because I'm not able to tell my kid, or my kid will, you know, um, challenge me when it's really okay. I still need to set the boundary and need to still take the thing away or say the thing that needs to be done, and know that he's his own person. He's gonna be developing his own character, it's going to be separate from mine, and there's only so much that I can do to um um, you know, enforce any particular traits. It's really about us, you know, setting up these principles and values that um uplift him and empower him, um and also knowing that he will pick up and put down what works for him, and that will be his journey. And I just pray that through my actions he sees how powerful it is to choose your highest self in every day and know that even your highest self sometimes feels low, even um, and and and then the moment you make choices that aren't with your highest self to be able to reflect and hold the pain that that grief or harm or whatever it might have been can cause in your body and your mind, and to not get attached, not get too attached to the very most pleasurable things, and not get too attached to um what you reject and and what you don't want in your life. And I think um that I also learned from this. All of what I'm sharing in this with y'all right now is what I've gathered from the interview I watched, but you know, and also my own learnings, but you know, he really helps crystallize some parts as well. Uh, and so yeah, I think it's so important, you know, to watch that um and to just notice uh our our um our agency, our agency when it comes to our lives, because I've been hearing just even within my own family, just how often people say, I can't do this thing, or I've tried, I've tried all of it. And it's like, no, you haven't actually tried all the things because it's still happening. And the thing about this reality is if you really truly want it to end or something to stop, you will find a way to do it. Um and it might not be in your lifetime in the sense where it like, you know, the people fighting for freedom who were enslaved by other people didn't weren't necessarily all freed in their particular lifetime, but it was through intergenerations, right? It was through generational projects of freedom, of creating choice, of identifying choice, of identifying one's source of power with identifying with the the uh spells and illusions one might be under. That level that work would then allow the next generation to free itself in different ways. And so, yeah, it's it's the work, it's the real work, and it doesn't always pay, which is why it's so hard sometimes when we're in systems that require a payment that's outside of ourselves, um, and it's just as much a distraction as anything else that the real wealth is in the work that you do internally, the real wealth is in the choices that you make, the real wealth is in understanding what are your necessities, your baseline needs for your body, mind, and soul and heart to flourish, and how can you achieve those without adding additional stress that you don't want to take with you when you die. And so, you know, that was so important for me to understand. Like, I, you know, especially if I want to build these particular things, I'm not out here just trying to build to make money, I'm trying to build to have financial security of that like would allow me to spend time with my child, right? Um, I'm looking to do this particular goal because it'll give me more space and time to rest. Um, I'm I'm pursuing this particular um set of systems um or to change them so that my descendants have more of a chance to live a life where their choices are respected and honored and they are given guidance without necessarily the um the toxicity of of um control and you know so that what has been so important is to reorient with myself about my motivations in and becoming transparent and my motivations in in building my knowledge. So I hope and wisdom. So I hope that was helpful. Um but yeah, we kind of started from the place of Vulnerability and transparency and just kind of the positionality of people's terms of the use uh word vulnerability and how to reorient it more towards the desire to be transparent um and um you know why that language can be helpful in different places for different reasons and just to continue to be aware of the language we use. Much love. Hey y'all. I wanted to share about something I just listened to by Tony Morrison.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Are you saying hi?

SPEAKER_02 22:49

It's like he always knows when I'm recording. It's hilarious. Tony Morrison's book, Beloved. And in Tony Morrison's book, she talks about this um woman, Yanda, who um is a preacher, speaks from the heart, and has a congregation in the woods pretty much with other black folks. And she speaks about this one piece of how um she doesn't, you know, promise her fellow worshippers, you know, glory or that uh they're part of some superior or blessed group, uh, but that um the only grace that they can give themselves is their imagination. And that really like grounded me in how important it is to encourage our children, our youth, and ourselves to keep building our imaginations. And a lot of that starts from coming from a place of curiosity where we're asking questions to absolute truths we grew up with, or you know, as children to be exploring and asking questions and following your intuition and learning to listen to it, and all of that speaks to one's ability and safety to imagine. Thank you, Yanga, to imagine a different future, to imagine oneself, to love on oneself and one's body, to just realize how much a breath in our lungs is a gift, and to be beautifully and deliciously human and the deliciousness of having choice. And you know, hopefully the gift of being able to be present.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

He's saying hi, hi, hi, my love. Yeah, no one can speak back, but I bet you all of those who are listening are saying hi right back.

SPEAKER_07 25:05

Hi hi undos. They said hi undels.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Oh my goodness. So yeah. Normally um I try to do it so that he doesn't notice I'm recording because this is my say hello. Boom.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

I hope you're all well and much love. Who's the inner channel? Who's the inner channel? Who's the dinner chum? Who's the dinner chall? Who's the inner chum? Who's the dinner chill? Who's the dinner chum? Who's the inner channel?

SPEAKER_02 25:54

You know, it's so funny, right? Like I've been thinking a lot about like the different energies in the car. And just thinking about um this piece around fear and how and why fear walks around, you know, like she owns something. And I'm like, you know, I also want to look at fear differently. I want to look at fear with more nuance. Um, and so I feel like my journey, especially in the last couple years, has been about facing my fear and facing discomfort and facing my faith amidst it all and how strong it must be. And um, just thinking about how fear in its most beautiful light for me represents a being that wants to protect my body. Right? Like fear of being a being that's like, nah bro, you cross the line. Fear of being a being that you know looks through all your cases and sees just how much it takes to keep you alive, and is like, hey, so your body, and you're like, yeah, my body. And fear's like, so your your body, and I'm like, yeah, yeah. Still here in the body, yeah, we're still in this body. And fear's just like, oh. Okay. And then comes back to me maybe 15 minutes later. Your body? Like, yes, fear. Yes, my body. I hear you. Like, my body is so beautifully vulnerable. I hear you. That's why we have battalions of beings. And beings that not only offer protection but understand the nuance. And so when I get into a conversation with fear, I actually have a better relationship with its expression in my body. Right? I I have less judgment, and therefore I still value and validate my feelings. I still listen to my discomfort around certain people. I s and, you know, I know as a child, like we're all kind of we've been taught, especially in the Western world, and I think across the globe with colon colonization, about you know, not feeling like our no and our boundaries with our bodies were respected by adults, and that we are, you know, some kind of property. And I think that is a um echo, a it's something that's passed down that you could even consider a curse, where you're not providing, especially human beings, beings that are very sensitive, um, with the capacity to say no about someone crossing their boundaries for their body, and for like that being and that person to understand what boundaries are important for their body and why, and if they agree or not, and over their lifetime they'll play with that boundary, but the idea is for them to be empowered to know um what does and doesn't work for them and um what serves them and what doesn't, and uh especially as entities that walk around with so many vulnerabilities. It's like actually insane. And you know, we're on a water planet, on land, we don't have gills, we don't have teeth that are sharp, we don't have net claws, we don't have wings. We really out here, you know, and so I can understand how our brain was like, holy fuck, what am I doing in this body?

unknown 30:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Um and I think it's been painful because there's been so much fragmentation from our original source. If you just think of us as brains, um, let alone bodies. Uh so like the multiplicity of like the different the different um yeah dimensions of our aliveness, the different ways that we're able to feel the world around us and perceive what the world shows us. Um they're very vulnerable. And I say this all with the understanding that yet and yet uh there are ways to protect yourself, and so many of those ways have been barred from the majority of the populace. And I'm gonna speak from this country particularly, uh, you know, and um in the United States. And uh we know, just this harvesting and feeding um of energy without the reciprocity of you know, um giving true life, like giving life, giving spirit. It's it's give it's always giving fear, and so that's why I I've been really wanting to be in conversation with fear and um on understand that fear is a being that is genuinely screaming out to be heard because it's um it's trying to tell us what we know and that we know things and have been and are changing, and our bodies are on the line, and all of us are vulnerable, and all of us need to connect with our bodies, ourselves, our information, what we're gathering, what we're learning, and be in conversation, be crafting as we've spoken about, and um when you base your craft in fear, or you base your craft in lies, or you base your craft um in illusionment, don't be fucking surprised when that illusion becomes your own. Don't be fucking surprised when you never feel fulfilled. Don't be fucking surprised that you live a life in misery because misery loves the company of fear. And it's so sad because it gives fear a bad rap. I really you know, fear as an as a being that has been a protector in many lives, I will say, um, for it to be so entangled with misery makes fear feel um incompatible with our bodies, and often fear is really meant to be an alarm system. Um and I want to just value fear for that, I want to honor fear for that, and I also want to acknowledge that so many systems have been based in fear and enslaved fear to a type of experience and expression that is often self-harming or harming of other people. When fear can be a motivator for structural and systemic change, it can be a motivator to, and that's why it's used obviously by um people in power, and um, you know, the power it being so cheap because it's made from an emotion that's at a protector for very particular boundaries, um, and it's been just misused, and all these other languages that feel tethered, you know, and how fear has been exploited. And um because if humans didn't have fear, I mean I don't even know what the world would look like, right? Because I don't see a world without fear, but I don't see a world where fear is enslaved. And I'm gonna say that strong word because a lot of the abilities of the human body are being used against itself. And it's just so sad. I mean, why? And I and I asked why with the knowing that it's just because of fear, and I don't know what this other is a fear as or what I think of as an other that feels other um is so afraid about. And I think it's really just a lack of belonging, um, an abandonment. But it's like, why do you expect to be carried when you keep hurting everything that carries you? What's what what's the expectation to just have it forgotten? That's really what you y'all want is for the season to be forgotten by everybody, like the immense pain and suffering caused by your fear or whoever's fear I'm speaking to, you know. Um, you know, and I heard this one piece of like, you you know, we ask questions because we're living in parallels, we're living in a lot of parallels, and both are often true in any given moment, or many are true in one moment, and asking the why helps like pull out or helps uh identify or helps you know signify the importance of of something that feels um inexcusably counter to each other. And I feel that's the work of being human for me has been like that bridge between Oh these actually are in conversation and do yin yang, they do give and take, they do live in a changing frame that does incorporate certain necessary like core anchors and and core values. Um and being able to like not, you know, like being able to be on the bridge of these parallels where like in someone else's world what I'm saying means a myriad of different things that I could never perceive because I'm not them, but I can sense, and some people live in hells, absolute hell, and when you meet people like that, I've been just hearing from others, you know, that I've been listening to in interviews, but you hear about that, and it's like especially being somebody that did grow up in a lot of love, uh, even if there were some conditions to it that were whack, but um, you know, grew up in a lot of love, and being able to then share that love, identify that love around me, and being able to love on people who know the kind of love I know, and at times struggling to connect with people who are living in so much cold harm, and that may then continue perpetuating that harm. Often do, actually. Uh, because that's what they're rewarded for. That might be what they see in their feed, because the only thing that feels alive some days is this thing behind the screen. Um and I know that's not true, obviously. Mama Earth is right here, and Mama Earth is listening just as much as she's she's participating, and she's witnessing just as much as she's within, and I think I just have a lot of empathy, sympathy. I don't know what the words are, because there's not enough of them to really describe her experience bridging all of us, you know, and you know, I know many days I make choices that continue to harm her. And such as like use of plastic or overconsumption, like buying, you know, a couple while I reduced my amount, but still buying a couple packages from the from the aid of the zon of of bullshit. Um mostly because they deliver out in the rural boondocks. And they're cheap. And right, it perpetuates harm because the its structure and how it impacts the globe has been harmful. Uh because it's not actually serving the earth, it's serving this strange system that I don't none of us quite understands what and why it exists, mostly because it's so antithetical. That was not the word. It's so ant right, contradictory, as we spoke of earlier, contradictory to Earth and her systems that have allowed so much life to survive for a really long time. Um and yet here it is out here, like it's m it's immune to um change. It's like, why are you here if that's how you feel? Like, get out of here, like go to like fuck out of here, bro. Like just go back to that shit. Like And they want to tell us to get out of here. Like, no, like this is a planet who has its values, its core systemic gears that allow it and make it and build it and create it, and what is being built has been literally eating itself, and we understand that cycle, we understand. We've been contemplating, reflecting on a lot of its lessons. Many of us have literally felt the weight of it through our lineage, through our generations of pain and suffering. But they want to make it seem like, oh, you gotta do more, you gotta suffer more for this this heaven that you believe in. Which again, the dynamic between heaven and hell was never even a concept before the colonizer came out of here, came out and and tried to justify the obscene violence done in the name of control, and to moralize it and give people permission to be their most vile selves. And I understand that life's a spectrum. I understand that there are going to be people who choose violence as their choice of freedom, and I don't need to sit here and act like that's me. I don't need to sit here and act like that's the version I chose in this dimension. It's not. The one I chose in this dimension has been fighting the violence within me, and not fighting in a way where it's like I'm gonna ignore you or act like you don't exist. It's oh, I keep seeing where you're coming from, I keep seeing where your fear is, I keep seeing what you're based in, I keep seeing that you pop up because maybe, just maybe, I could feel the pleasure of what it means to choose violence. And as a warrior, of course, coursing through my blood is the desire to fight. And for many of my ancestors, that has looked like quote-unquote violence. But when I say violence, especially based in these systems, it's something that has no layer of divine justice, and I'm saying divine justice knowing anything, and anybody listening to this could assume their interpretation of what that means. But justice that is ancestral, it's a lineage of necessary change, of something that's rotting. And When we make that awareness and we notice that if someone punches me in the face, I will punch back or disarm in some way. Needs to be the bottom line clarity because I don't need to moralize your violence. I don't need to even try to unlike um that's it. I don't need to moralize it. I don't need to give some humanization to the violence being done right now. I can understand where it might, where it's rooted in. I can understand many angles of its face, but I don't need to justify it. I don't need to give it permission to exist in my life. Knowing there are so many coercive tactics on my daily life that involve me and me in these systems. And creating different systems is something I feel like I needed to return to because I I had to go out into the field and really get clarity um on my positionality. And um yeah, y'all. Hello, fear, and goodbye.