Kind: captions
Language: en
there's no such thing as the evil one
out there
it is our inner that is represented on
the outside on a global scale
so each one of us does matter so that's
why i always hone it down
to what are you doing in your life how
are you buying into what is toxic
and believing it to be true and causing
your suffering so that's where we take
ownership
finally but we can only take ownership
when we can see
culture for what it is and name it oh
this is toxic
this is beneficial and discern and not
just take what culture gives you as the
pill that you're meant to swallow
and then wonder why you're suffering
you're suffering because there are
toxicities
that you're ingesting from culture that
you are making your own and then you are
adding to it
[Music]
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hey everybody welcome to another episode
of impact theory
i am joined by clinical psychologist and
wildly best-selling author
dr shafali dr shafali welcome to the
show
thank you for having me back i am super
excited to have you back
very excited to actually be on set and
share space with you to talk about your
new book
a radical awakening you took on a big
topic with this homie like you really
put yourself
out there it's funny how the beginning
of the book is like hey
uh p.s i'm gonna piss some of you off
bear with me
rock for the journey and you know by the
end hopefully we'll be able to
help you have these transformations i
thought all right let's see
like how hard she goes with this you
really like go into it like
this was pretty straightforward
hard-hitting
there were two things that i took away
sort of as
um really powerful
which is this idea that we are animals
you said i wanna i wanna make sure
people hear me
we don't come from animals we are
animals
and then that we have to own completely
own our internal lives
talk to me about the idea of what a
radical awakening is and like
what those two elements mean okay
so at its basic core
a radical awakening has two layers the
first
is to understand that we are living in
a man-constructed cultural matrix
that has pretty much lied to us about
our essence
and the second layer is while it has
done a lot of things to women
especially now our radical awakening
occurs when we see how we are
co-creating and co-participating
in the cultural lies so those are the
two layers
in terms of the two things you you took
away
which other people may not take away
these things stood out for you
well one i want to be clear that those
are in no way shape or form the only
things that i took away
they felt um like things to anchor
around
in terms of the totality of the takeaway
yeah
and this conversation will be super
interesting because there's
so much in your book i was like oh my
god this is amazing and then there were
parts where i had the reaction you told
me i was going to have which is
this is crazy yeah and
talking through both sides of that i
think are going to be
really interesting okay so
um so let's talk about the the first one
you brought up about our
animal nature and so the reason i
i had a whole section on our bio
physiology how it impacts our psychology
is because we take our biological nature
for granted
yet every woman knows around her
menstrual cycle
her hormones are out of whack and it
deeply impacts her psychology
so i grounded one of the themes
in the book around our biology because
we take for granted our wiring
and males know that they are heavily
influenced by their biological wiring
and so are we women you know how our
bodies are constructed
has a deep impact on how our
psychologies are
you know we are givers in our body you
know our
vaginas are created to receive and to
give
our breasts lactate when our babies are
born to give
you know our very psychology is based on
this biology of inherent
nurturing giving connection uh oxytocin
works in a different way
than yours you know females have a
different love hormone and
connection ability than you and this is
very biologically based and i think we
are out of touch
and out of sync with our bodies with how
our biology influences us and because of
that
we misunderstand ourselves and certainly
we misunderstand
men and males who have testosterone and
your
sexuality is very differently driven
because of your biology than ours
you know our egg gets released once a
month so our hormonal cycle
ovulates and pendulates over a whole
28th cycle day cycle
yours is every day you know 24 hours you
all have a different
sexual energy about you because of your
testosterone which we have
way lesser in our body so all these ways
cause misunderstanding so when i say we
are animals
it's to ground us in our biology and to
make us remember that we are part of the
animal species and i think we as a
humanity
have forgotten who we really are you
know by going to the top of the food
chain as we have
we've forgotten our place in nature so
when i say we are
animal don't forget you know we are we
we are part of this wondrous kingdom
but we're not better than necessarily
and our minds
have deluded us to believe we are so
superior
that we have decimated everything around
us now
you know so we'll be the only one
standing and eventually we will
corrupt ourselves we are on that path of
self-destruction
it's interesting so when i look at
human nature so the the idea of
remembering that we're animals i think
is so
important and to not lose sight of the
words i use for i think a very similar
thing is you're having a biological
experience
right and i'm always trying to get
people to recontextualize whatever is
happening
rage joy love pursuit
anything that um recognizing that
ultimately it comes down to how you feel
which is a game of neurochemistry right
and if you don't understand
that i could give you a billion dollars
and you could still be suicidal and
therefore obviously money is not the
answer
and neurochemistry ultimately is right
now becomes a question of what are those
levers that we can pull to manipulate
our neurochemistry
now in terms of maybe stepping up a
level to
the cultural implications of what it
means to be a human to
have gotten the bigger brain to not
necessarily have more physical strength
or sharper clause
but to instead climb using culture
using this where knowledge stacks right
that i can actually hand it off to my
offspring
in a way not even necessarily just my
offspring but everybody in the tribe
so that a hundred years later people are
still learning
an innovation that was learned a very
long time ago right right but tom how
innovative are we look around us
i mean we are as destructive as we are
created so that was the
that sentence right there is exactly um
fascinating to me we are and i'll say it
the other way we are as creative as we
are destructive
and do you see it both ways or do you
feel like the destructive force is
somehow more powerful
so so being a psychologist i am
fascinated by this amazing mind we have
on and it has to be in quotes because
on one hand it has the potential to
create
amazing things but on the other hand
it's pretty deluded too
for example we can be holding the idea
of evolution
on one hand and then believe in creation
on the other hand
the same mind can do that our mind is
constantly creating justifications
how can we justify slavery for example
a good church-going man can you know on
the other hand be on top of a ship which
has slaves at the bottom
how can we justify cruelty to animals
the way we are and how can we justify
destroying the planet how can we justify
the holocaust obviously
the people who did these uh inimitable
evils justified were always justifying
if you really break down our psychology
so on one hand the mind is creative but
is it a discerning mind
is it a wise mind i i highly
highly disagree with anyone who will say
we are wise
as a default you mean because as a
default as a default
we're clever and we're really smart
people but
but are we as a default wise wisdom is
something that we talk about
has to be cultivated and you and i know
how hard it is
to cultivate consciousness you know for
the most part
the consciousness quotient on our planet
is pretty
a business something that you go into in
the book well i it's there's no such
objective thing but i talk about just as
we talk about the
intellectual quotient we've got to come
up with a consciousness quotient
which has to do with consciousness
self-awareness well self-awareness
self-governance self-reliance you know
the ability to live in an
interconnected fashion where we are not
destroying each other and the earth
right so where our mind defaults
is self-preservation right we're really
good at indulgence
comfort and self-preservation but are we
really good
at living to living together as an
interconnected species
look around i don't see evidence of that
i see separation
i see hatred i see divisiveness that is
also part of the human mind
so we just have to acknowledge that the
human mind is
has potential for great creativity but
it also has this potential
for destruction and when we
decontextualize
ourselves as being so superior we enter
this delusion of grandeur and we forget
that we are causing wreaking havoc on
our earth right now
you know no one has wreaked so much
havoc as the human
and in the last 30 years you know if you
watch any david attenborough
uh nature video he will end with some
optimism but also with a grave warning
that we have caused more calamity in the
last 30 years
than has ever been caused on the planet
so who has caused that
if not the great man right so we have to
step back and become humble so when i
say we're animal it's my
call to let's be humble let's learn
from how other animals live let's not
pretend we are so fancy and superior
because we're really not and with that
humility now
with curiosity we can learn and grow but
i think we've entered a great narcissism
as a
species as a humanity that we are just
limitless there's no stop button
we're on mars we're in on the moon and
we can't even take care of our children
and our elderly so what are we doing
that's interesting this is such a
fascinating game to me of
almost fractal-like never-ending
complexity
yeah which you do a good job of
exploring in the book
you're constantly moving from one side
of
hey look there are real problems that
have positioned you to be suffering for
whatever reason
oh but hey you also have to take
ownership of your internal world and
recognize and i know you don't like
hearing that
and i thought you navigate that really
really well
staying on that topic for a second
how much of the um the sort of
destruction
and disconnect do you think is a
function of
time horizons versus nature because
you know knowing that at one point the
entire human race was
boiled down to the cape of hope at the
tip of south africa
and reduced to like 6 000 total human
beings on the planet and from that we've
built back to the whatever 8 billion
that we have now
so we've done an extraordinary job
of keeping civilization alive of
accomplishing
amazing things and look amazing is very
subjective to me getting to the moon is
amazing to me
the fact that we want to go to mars and
i think will eventually go to mars is
amazing
and yet i also recognize the duality of
our
how capable of destruction how the
madness of crowds can do things
like make people think slavery is okay
right so they're
both of those things exist so now as we
bring it down to the individual which
you do
so beautifully in your book how do you
help people
navigate like let's set aside for a
second sort of the
the amoeboid like nature undulating
nature of a crowd which we can't really
control and there's not a lot that you
as an individual can do but you can now
get into your body
and develop that self-awareness how do
you help people walk
through that so that they lean to the
side of
the better angels of our nature and not
to
the more destructive elements sure so
when you broil it down to the micro
you have to understand that this
cultural matrix which is so
infinitely complex is
chasing something uh
akin to dominance of the entire globe
like you said
going to the moon is amazing to me it's
a thirst for dominance you know and then
i as a psychologist will say why why do
we need to dominate the moon
right why are we incessantly dominating
it comes from ego for me for you it
could come out of curiosity
and exploration so that's the good side
of the ego which is
which does have that adventure spirit
but i get worried about it
because in the micro right when we bring
it down to the micro i see this thirst
for dominance
and superiority we are now trying to
over dominate
our aging process we're trying to over
control it all we're coming from this
desire of perfection and control
so on a micro level i see that delusion
playing out
and increasing this connection to who we
authentically are
right i want to put a point on something
in there so is the reason that is
problematic because it generates
suffering in the mind of that individual
or are you still looking at it only as a
macro problem both right the macro is
the micro the micro becomes the macro
suffering is created because the more
craving we have
the more we think we need to have so for
example you and i talked about this in
our last interview
with our children just take it just a
two-year-old
right now because the the two-year-old
down the street
is learning 16 languages or going to the
alps on a
skiing trip and learning how to ski
backwards and then this one is going to
the third world country so-called third
world country uh to live in the jungle
and then this one is going for
lacrosse and this one is going for sign
language now that technology has allowed
so much more
exposure it creates an insecurity that
we should be doing it all
we can go to the moon why not go to the
moon so we don't go to the moon that
creates insecurity
oh you've been to the moon and i haven't
been to the moon we have that same
philosophy with our
children and it's a rabid delusion
of endless craving that doesn't end now
i mean
i see it as a parent everywhere it's
like constant craving
constant insecurity the the fact that we
can
doesn't mean we necessarily should and
we we see that mania on a very personal
level i see it in my office
when women come feeling constantly
insecure because now the other one has
you know these huge implants that make
her look amazing
so now my ordinary shape doesn't look
amazing now i'm feeling more insecure
or that one has lashes that come out
like till here and mine are so stunted
now i'm feeling insecure
or her kid is studying you know and
going to fancy museums every day and
studying with the best artists in the
world and mine
i don't have the money so mine is only
playing with clay you understand
it's become a culture of endless
consumerism and it affects
the world i talk about the woman
especially because she's the one who
culture is objectifying
and great and grave insecurities
are being caused within her and a schism
between her accepting her authentic self
and her essence
to this idea of perfectionism the idea
of that woman
i want to produce and curate that child
we have endless imagination which is the
beautiful thing about us
but it creates endless craving and
endless suffering
okay you know yo yes uh
this idea in your book about we're
animals i think it's so brilliant for
the reasons that you're touching on now
so putting it back in that context of
beauty has utility yes now we can argue
that it shouldn't
right sort of ought almost moral
imperative
but in terms of the natural world we
are an animal it does and there
are things they've done these studies on
peak shift so you take a
mother bird that has this big red nose
and she feeds her babies so of course
the baby sees the big red nose and they
react that they're going to be fed
the bigger like if you make an
artificial version of that mother and
make the nose bigger
and more red then the baby actually eats
more and gets like more hyped up to eat
and
they call that concept peak shift it's
the reason women get just
hilariously large breasts and do all
that right because it it does
get an amplified reaction from the male
right
so now you get into the tragedy of the
commons
where if i don't extend my eyelashes
wear the tight-fitting outfit have the
good body
get breast implants somebody else is
going to do it
and it does have utilities yes it has
great value
it takes the attention if i'm
heterosexual
and i want the attention of the man that
man is going to look at that woman
so i'm the wife first i'm pissed off
with the man i'm really in big trouble
then i want to be like where i want to
be the object of desire
100 percent so there is some biological
basis for why that man
looks at that buxom woman it's
biologically
wired in the man to be attracted to that
signs of fertility yeah signs of
fertility productivity youth
and uh and and health right so that's
very valuable
however where we have gotten stuck as
women right
now is that it's not just beauty for
utility
there is a standard of beauty and in
some areas it's been to look anorexic
to be completely androgynous looking
today it's to be all you know shapely
it the idea of beauty changes with
cultural standards
and we like puppets keep running after
that standard
trying to match it you know of course
the male will be wired in a certain way
to
be attracted to a certain kind of body
just in terms of
the the what we talked about fertility
health and productivity
but when we women succumb to cultural
standards
based on what culture imposes on us and
we defy our own natural bodies
and we go and mutate our own natural
bodies to become that cultural standard
now we are falling into the patriarchy
and actually genuflecting actually
serving the patriarchy by falling prey
to it
so women need to own that yeah a male
could be wired to youth
and beauty in that productive sense
and we need to be okay with that and not
get enraged and hold the man possessive
but we also need to not fall prey to it
in our bodies so we need to accept our
aging
we need to accept our saggy bottoms we
need to accept
our wrinkles and our cellulite this is
part of our nature
but we want to control our nature i want
to use some of the language you use in
the book because i thought you
handled this issue so well explain to us
how because you talk about if i see a
part of me that's flabby i'm just going
to call it flabby yeah
but what what is the key insight that
you've had there
that makes that not self-diminishing
so we women have been raised
to fit the standard of beauty which is
this ideal of perfectionism
so we are always seeking our worth
through our beauty
you know most of us are and it takes
honesty to accept it
i hope women can accept that we all want
to be desired and be seen as youthful
and beautiful
hence the cosmetic industry is booming
and will always boom and the plastic
surgery
industry is filled with female clients
but we don't want to own it
that this is what we call it so when
we are conditioned to want to look
pretty
and young now when we see flabby
parts of our body we don't want to
accept that this is part of nature
we want to make it beautiful so if
you if you were a woman and you said to
me hey you know i have flabby underarms
i as your friend knowing that we are all
conditioned
will say no you don't it's so beautiful
now by imposing the judgment of beauty
and beauty is a judgment
we actually don't allow the woman to
accept
yeah you flabby you know so
we are constantly seeking to make
everything
fit this paradigm of beautiful
and actually that makes us more insecure
instead of going
yeah i have crow's feet yes
lots of cellulite instead of somebody my
best friend telling me no you don't have
cellulite
no i do you know so when my daughter
comes to me and goes
oh my goodness i have pimples i go oh my
goodness yes you do
you know oh she goes oh my goodness i
have a big nose i go oh my goodness yes
you do
i don't say no you don't i go call it
whatever
big small it is what it is you know i
my daughter will say sometimes maybe
that oh why am i not you know
a size zero i go because you're not i
don't go yes you are
or you can become skinny tomorrow you
are your body
except your body how do you frame that
for your daughter like if she said my
arms are flabby do you say
hey you should be completely fine with
that but if you want non-flabby arms go
to the gym or do you have a totally
different mechanism for that
well so with my daughter if the
complaining gets too loud
i'll go okay you could change your diet
or you could exercise more
but i fundamentally want to tell her
that you're fundamentally
made the way you're made you know and
you've got to accept it you cannot be
a different skin tone you cannot have a
different eye color can you pair
contacts yes
can you not ever get tanned more yes but
it is what it is you know i always want
to communicate to myself
and to all women at the end of the day
ex-self-acceptance
is your greatest sword that is what is
going to make you the most desirable to
yourself and to others
do not fall for standards of beauty it
is our wiring to want to be desired
but it is also part of our wisdom
to understand that the desire can
sometimes be sexual
sometimes it can be emotional it can be
intellectual
and after a certain youthful phase of
our
life we can surrender to letting go
some of that desire that comes from
youth
right and and i want to us women to go
to the bottom of why we need to be
desired
so much right it's natural on some level
to be desired
every woman wants a compliment the 80
year old grandmother wants to be told
she's beautiful
of course men want to be told they're
handsome and desirable too but we in
this modern era
have gone so far to want to cancel
our our aging we want to act like we're
not growing older
that is a fundamental problem that
causes us suffering
and then we play into the patriarchy you
know by
by wanting to look younger we actually
get oppressed by the patriarchy
by our own internal oppression so the
patriarchy is probably the thing that
you and i
are the farthest apart on help me
understand your side better why does it
seem important to tie that
to masculinity
to men i'm not sure which of those no it
has nothing to do with men or
masculinity
it's it's like racism has really nothing
to do with any one singular white person
it's a systemic reality that we live in
right now in this modern era we happen
to be living
in a very toxic patriarchy it has
nothing to do with men can you define
patriarchy then
sure so uh patriarchy is a systemic
endemic set of beliefs uh where
the woman in the in the system
is subjugated is conditioned to be in
service off
is silenced to put the other in this
case the male
before them and the male is the leader
the ruler the governor
and the initiator of the cultural norms
and
while in tribal communities there was
shared responsibilities there was a
great reverence
for the woman while the male may still
be the leader because he's maybe bigger
there was a great reverence i believe
for the feminine force of the woman but
in today's culture
it is it is suppressed she's taught to
be
serva she's thought that she's not good
enough and that is the underpinning of a
patriarchy
now does it mean that one man believes
in it and another does
it doesn't matter at this point what one
of one man or
believes in or not it's the overarching
system
that places men in the stronger than
position
physiologically intellectually
emotionally spiritually
they just have the run of the of the way
right now
and women are trained to be in service
of that
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i the way that i look at it is
if i think about trajectory that we're
on a good trajectory
like if you were to transport somebody
from
[Music]
mars somewhere far away where they've
never encountered the culture that we're
living in now
and just transplanted them here and
asked like
is there equality um between sexes i
think they would say
ah it's probably it's not perfect for
sure and there are definitely areas that
you can improve but it's good
and if we were having this conversation
in the 1960s
that feels way more like just sort of
where nobody's yet questioning it and so
obviously we're all colored by our own
experiences and because my experience is
i have a wife who is my peer in every
way who went from a
traditional housewife because that's
what she was raised just subconsciously
to be
and she decided one day that she wanted
to be an entrepreneur and so
i had to go from i have someone who
cooks
cleans lays out my clothes every day
like runs the household top to bottom
there's so many things i don't have to
think about because she's doing them all
for me
to her saying hey by the way i'm not
going to do any of that for you anymore
you're on your own for that and now i'm
going to step
in as a business leader and to me that
was
a very difficult transition
just because it was so foreign but it
was so
easy psychologically to say i want you
to be whatever you want to be
right so there was no sense of well but
you're a woman and you should be
some kind of way it was and this is why
this is one of my favorite shirts
like to me that's if you're human like
you should be able to come to the table
and play to the best of your ability
and do whatever the hell you want to do
and you shouldn't be judged on race
color creed sex right
any of that so right to me because i
grew up in that it is
so hard for me to like
see this top-down
oppressive what it feels like to me and
this is sort of my
take on i don't think of it as a
patriarchy because that word is so tied
to
men and that's so foreign to my
experience
what i look at is certainly imperfect
and i see certainly over the last you
know 50 years women really having to
fight to come into their own
but when i think about how did they get
left in a position where they had to
fight this hard because that's
super unfair right and my answer to that
isn't
top down it's bottom up it is the nature
of
for the vast amount of human history
life was what cruel short brutish
and deadly i forget the the like exact
quote
and it was two sides of an equation
doing the best they could and
accidentally creating structure
i don't think it's possible to
um like we see monarchies have fallen
throughout history we see that empires
come and go
it's ultimately some a ball gets moving
and then it takes on a life of its own
that well outlives whoever may have
intentionally
i agree i agree with you it's not
created by a man
it's a system right and that's why i
said systemic but
i don't know whether i would agree with
you so much that
life before and we don't know what we're
talking about when before
right so the way i see a a strong
demarcation point
is when we began to live
owning land right with the agricultural
revolution
and we we decided to domesticate animals
and to have
property and along with that then
another few thousand years later
came the marriage and the contract of
that marriage
where the man not only controlled the
land but also the women and the children
and the cattle
and the marital contract ensured that
property went down the
lineage his lineage um and so
he he wasn't an evil man he was just the
stronger one
physiologically and so began to own and
then own and own
and we began to create institutions that
took us further and further away from
living interconnected in nature
i mean we are so far from nature you
have to go looking for nature now you
know
we have dominated nature we don't live
in an interdependent
relationship with nature and i think
along with that
as man grew in his dominance
women went further down in their
submission
now of course you don't see that in your
very microscopic
male female relationship but if you just
pan out
globally there is a scourge of any sense
of equity
between males and females i mean i grew
up in india and i know india today and i
know the middle east and i know
women even in the west you know when i
came to america
i pedestalized the western woman
thinking surely she has a voice
surely she's in her power but then look
how hard
even the metoo movement has shown how
hard it was for women
to speak out against real abuse
because they have been subsumed
in a culture that has conditioned them
to stay mute
we have been disconnected from our
knowing and you as a
male cannot have full appreciation for
that because you didn't grow up
like we did you know and i'm not saying
oh you're clueless you just can't know
what we grew up with and what we face on
a daily basis
in terms of how we've been conditioned
to be the good girl
to be uh silent to be second to be at
the back
this is just every girl will say yes i
have to fight that
i have to fight that idea that i need to
be the perfect woman
the perfect wife the perfect mother i
have to fight it you know and and
the fact that we have to fight it says
that there's something to fight and
there's a system in place that we
constantly have to
buffer ourselves against and that takes
energy it's exhausting and most of us
don't have the financial or intellectual
resources or a great
partner like you to do this fight to
fight the fight
so we give up there's a subtle
difference i think between how you and i
see it that may or may not be fruitful
to explore but let's try
okay um so the way that i
think about everything is utility and
so somebody has a goal right so let's
say a woman
doesn't want to be subservient they want
to make sure that their voice is heard
and there is some hurdle that could be
the way that they were raised the things
they've internalized the frame of
reference or it could be
outright oppression certainly in other
countries i'm not blind to that
[Music]
where i think this it becomes really
important and in your book you talk
about this and so i don't in any way
shape or form think i'm introducing you
to a new idea
i'm putting i guess more emphasis there
there are two sides that you present
a vision of a top-down culture that is
actively
holding you back like the the way that i
the image that spontaneously popped into
my mind
when you called it the culture of the
culture was
a villain right that the culture is a
villain
and but you're very clear that people
have to take their power and you give
very amazing steps and so i really want
to be heard in the context of i think
what you put forth in the book is
extraordinary
and there is only one minor shift which
is i think people will end up chasing
their tail
if they're trying to fight the villain
of culture but it's not a villain it's
the unconsciousness culture
is unconscious agreed so that's not a
villain but we must battle
and discern the unconsciousness and call
it what it is
we cannot on the other hand glorify
culture culture has
passed down toxic messages for men and
women and children
and animals and we are seeing the
effects
in the ravaged earth and mental illness
is on the rise today more than it has
been at
any point in history now you could say
because there's more reporting and more
testing i don't think it's just that but
i do think it's
complicated so for instance i think if
you said
as a lay person and i do not claim to be
an expert but i am very well read on the
subject
what's the number one cause of
mental illness i would say it's diet
and when i think about what people do to
their neurochemistry
just by what they eat sure i think we
will find on a long enough timeline that
that's been the biggest
tragedy which is why i resonate so well
with your
you have to take ownership of your life
correct so where does diet come from
even if i go with your
thesis that that's the cause where is
diet coming from from our increasing
disconnection to living
off the earth living in an
interdependent way
are increasing greed and consumerism and
machination and production over
production everything is industrialized
now
so who has done that the modern human
mind has done that
we have literally taken every industry
the fisheries
whaling uh dairy
and mechanized it to such a level of
over production
and destroyed the natural nature of the
cow
for example which then overpopulates the
earth and which then
pollutes the earth through methane in
every if you go down any path
we will see that the modern human has
created a culture
of consumerism greed and exploitation
and our women and children suffer
because we are in the underbelly of that
now i'm not blaming the man
and blaming the system that is set up to
dominate the weak
so my thesis as slightly different from
yours
is that the culture is a
not entirely random artifact but it's a
bottom-up phenomenon that's born
out of the biological realities of who
we are
so you start god only knows how many
hundreds of thousands of years ago and
it continues to echo
while you can draw demarcation lines
like the
um agrarian revolution like the
industrial revolution and they really do
have very market very rapid changes but
they're still
in many ways an echo of just like what
we are
what the human mind is at its base layer
and the thing that i am trying to thread
the needle and get your insights on
are this idea of my hypothesis
is that if we over emphasize
the culture is what you're fighting
against versus
the way your mind works is what you're
fighting against so
my like really court you have two thesis
in your book one your mind is messing
with you two the culture is messing with
you
i think does that feel but they're very
interconnected agreed right
you and i are culture i ask audiences
all the time who do you think is culture
it's you who's going to go out there and
deal with your children now you are your
child's culture
right and now you're in your child's
mind the child then carries it on
so the individual is the micro and the
macro
at the end of the day right we are
constantly interconnected and
uh influencing each other right so where
is culture i can't touch it
right there's no such thing as the evil
one out there
it is our inner that is represented on
the outside on a global scale
so each one of us does matter so that's
why i always hone it down
to what are you doing in your life how
are you buying into what is toxic
and believing it to be true and causing
your suffering how are you co-creating
and co-participating
in your reality in your marriage in your
in your divorce in your parenting in
every
in your diet right so that's where we
take ownership
finally but we can only take ownership
when we can see
culture for what it is and name it oh
this is toxic this is beneficial
and discern and not just take what
culture gives you as the pill that
you're meant to swallow
and then wonder why you're suffering
you're suffering because there are
toxicities
that you're ingesting from culture that
you are making your own and then you are
adding to it
makes a lot of sense so now talk to me
about how are the ways that we
navigate that if if our biology
and the culture at large are giving us
what i'll call beliefs but you might
have a more nuanced take on that
and that's what's sort of toxifying our
minds and trapping us right
how do we begin to sure hope so let's
take just the example of our sexuality
as women
you know so we are biological beings we
are highly sexual beings we may not have
a high sex drive
as males do but we have a highly
flourishing sex drive i'm sure
but look at what culture has done to our
sexuality
as a female sexual being we have been
marauded
we have been abducted from it we have
been pillaged
you know from it and because of it you
know we have been raped
and we have caused within ourselves
great shame
and uh divorce from our own sexuality
yet it's being taken away from us by
culture
all the time ask any woman she's nervous
if she walks down a dark alley
if she gets into an elevator with five
men if she's in a room
alone with with men she waits for the
woman to come why
because that's partly biological right
we're always going to be smaller
we're always going to be prey but
culture has kept us
from our voice to speak up and fight
against that and
kept us divorced from our own sexuality
right most of us have grown up with
huge inhibitions from religion from
education
that we should not be or or
you know brazen vixens and we we're not
even taught to explore our sexuality
those are things that bad girls do so
now we go into relationships
not even knowing who we are sexually but
we're in sexual relationships
that immediately sets us up for lesser
than dynamic we are disempowered
we're disenfranchised you know so that's
just one example
right this is how young girls are raised
and it's in the culture
be a good girl we hear that so much
growing up be a good girl
oh good girl boys don't hear that as
much
boys will be boys so we're given a
different message and we want love and
worth
so we're very good and we try to be very
perfect and we try to people please and
we're trying to
conflict a void and that's how we're
raised
and then what that does to us is that
systematically
because we're seeking to get love and
worth from the outside
we don't listen to our own inner knowing
and we're increasingly disconnected from
it and then
when we're in a situation where our
boundaries are being violated
we can't speak we don't speak up and
then we
enter shame because we divorced
ourselves we
abandoned ourselves we betrayed
ourselves but we don't find a voice
you know i took 40 years to find my
voice and i was outspoken
but to truly find my voice not the
pleasing voice
not the voice that sought simply to get
love and worth
and desire from outside but the voice
that truly believes
herself who understands herself that
took
years to come did you find it or build
it
cultivated it because well i first had
to find it because it was taken away
from me
and i'm not blaming my parents and i'm
not blaming culture it just is the way
i so was raised to want love and worth
from the outside
i just gave up i was like okay i'll be
who you want me to be just love me
let me think i'm worthy and i will do
whatever it takes so i began to
live a false self as most of us do
to get love and worth from the outside
so it was first lost so i had to first
reclaim it and then nurture it back to
life
so my own true self didn't believe me
because i had betrayed it so many times
so the true self is like no i don't
believe you i'm going to stay small
hidden behind my rock
so we have to say i'm going to back you
i'm going to listen to you i'm going to
follow your way
i'm going to honor you i won't give you
up for the love of the other
i'm going to water you i'm going to
blossom you
so this is the journey that i outline in
this book for
women to follow you've lost your voice
it was taken from you
but here's the pathway if you're sitting
right now on your couch
feeling dislocated feeling
discombobulated disenfranchised loss to
yourself
this book will give you the path to
reclaim that voice and to
build her up again it's interesting in
reading the book
it was it felt really universal to me
meaning that it felt like it applied to
men as readily as it
does women and i'm curious to know if
you feel that way or if you feel that
there's
um and and i i have really heard you
in terms of the cultural message of um
boys will be boys versus
uh be a good girl so i i totally
understand that part
but in terms of i would say finding your
voice not being afraid to be who you are
and again this is me sort of in context
of me
what i had to learn in my journey was to
speak up to be heard to
be more aggressive to be tougher to
channel masculine energy which you would
not think that a guy would have to do
but that really has been my journey
do you think that the strategies that
you lay out in the book
will work for anybody or do you think
this the particular strategies that you
lay out
are distinctly useful for women
strategies for
the reclamation of the voice is for
everybody
i just hone in on some very key
female-oriented messages that that have
been passed down
to the girls years that are unique
but you know my next book is probably
going to be on the awakening of the man
so there will be more specific you know
male oriented messages that are kind of
nuanced
but the pathway how it gets lost
and how to reclaim it is universal as
you said so this book is for anyone
who's lost their sense of self and their
place in the world
and so afraid to reclaim that
that is universal but there are some
nuances that girls will understand more
than
a boy when they read this yeah yeah it
um
i hear you i understand why you're
saying that but it is it
it is very useful information i'll be
very curious to see if you do the next
book on the awakening of the man that'll
be fun today as well
um talk to me about sex and marriage you
you wrote this
after you got divorced while you were
getting divorced i was
i was awakening through the whole
process and then finally wrote the book
maybe
after my divorce yeah so it's it's
really intriguing to see you sort of
break out of you know talk about
cultural norms break out of that
introduce new ideas ways for people to
be um you touch on
monogamy um being polygamous like you
you go into a lot of places um that i
found
really interesting what's your take on
sexuality in the context of a marriage
specifically
well so before i zero in on sexuality
let's take a step back and understand
marriage
and how marriage has been severely
controlled by religion and
the judicial system right so legality of
marriage that's why you have a contract
and the prohibitions that come from
religion around how
you have to be married right many people
don't want to even have sex before
marriage because religion has said you
need to be pure
and chaste and sex is for procreation
in some cultures you know so religion
has played a heavy hand in coloring
the marital understanding in a couple
and the judicial system has really laid
down the legalities and made it very
hard to break the contract
right so now the person is entering this
contract with very stringent ideas
around what that relationship will be
and because it's a contract there's some
sort of like you owe me something
and you better fulfill the contract and
if you don't fulfill the contract
you are going to be judged in a
particular way right breaking the
contract
is frowned upon right you looked at
looked on as a failure or
cheater or betrayer you're not meant to
break this contract so
marriage has severe cultural
pressures for longevity right you're
praised if you stay
and stick it out and uh it has religious
implications and legal implications so
already it's heavy duty
it's not just like oh i love you no now
it's like
a lot of baggage with it now sex within
the marriage can be
you know again misunderstood that
you your sex belongs to me now your
sexual desire belongs to me you can't
even desire anyone right
most men will say i cannot talk about my
desires
to to my wife right it takes real open
communication
for the woman especially to feel secure
if her partner
the male talks about desire outside and
vice versa
so now because marriage is about
possession control and ownership
sex becomes about ownership control and
possession
on top of the fact that we are not an
openly sexual culture right sex is not
something you talk about at the dining
table
it's not something you know you like
having coffee with your buddy you're
like hey how many times did you orgasm
last night
you don't talk about these things this
is taboo right
so sex is is severely legislated
within the mind inhibited within the
mind especially the mind of the female
and now you're supposed to have great
sex in the marriage but look how loaded
it is before we can even talk about it
right so all of this needs to come out
of the closet
and we need to adult up and talk about
sex
in a more normative normalized
non-judgmental non-shaming way
and open up to the possibility of all
possibilities
you know and i do see a trend going of
people talking about being fluid in
their sexuality and
and that's wonderful let's talk about it
we've not even been able to talk about
it till now
so in sort of post awakening so we've
got the
post awakening female we've got the post
awakening male
what does that look like to you is it at
one point i think
um i'm going to get close this is almost
a quote that the
rules of monogamy are a lie
and i don't know if you mean that
biologically because you also give the
stat about
i think 83 86 something along there
uh pre-agree society
indigenous societies use 83 or 86
percent religionists
and all animals non-human animals are
polygenous by nature
so so so when i say the lie of monogamy
i i say it because
it's been sanctified as holy
monogamy monogamy and that's the lie
it's a great choice
it's a wonderful choice but it's a
choice
but it's been given to us as the only
way to have
relationships that's the lie and that
it's sanctified
and that somebody who is not part of
that box is
a cheater a horrible human being a
villain an evil person how do you help
people cross a chasm between
sort of i'm encountering these ideas
probably when i'm pre-awakening
how do they navigate like when they've
got insecurities and they've got
jealousies and they
have a fantasy about you know i'm with
one person
how do you how do you help them is it
like
compartmentalized don't think about that
yet first first you have to claim your
voice
right right all of what we're talking
about on the individual level boils down
to our lack of worth
i call it the pill that kills it's our
unworthiness
so we can't really have any wise
conscious discussion
about heavy topics like monogamy without
an acknowledgement that
we're coming from great deep grave
insecurity
within it's the insecurity within us
that makes us want to dominate and
control the other
and i believe like you said the scourge
of humanity or mental illness is the
diet
for me the scourge of humanity and
mental illness is our deep void our
insecurity which is causing us to want
to go to mars and colonize it and
go to every corner of the earth and
dominate it similarly with our partners
dominate their every part every thought
every desire
it comes because we are not whole from
within so we are an attachment
to our partners we have attached to the
idea that we own them and they owe us
something
this is a faulty idea which comes from
insecurity
so at the end of it all i talk about how
we can heal
the deep grave insecurities that we have
which is why we can't have open honest
authentic transparent relationships with
ourselves
leave alone with someone else we're not
even authentic with ourselves
because we're with a false fake
personality trying to get love and worth
from the outside
and how do we and this is a theme in the
book that the one person you need to
fall in love with is yourself
yes how do we fall in love like do
is there so i would say to have
self-worth you have to do something you
believe is worthy
do you think there's anything like that
or no this is a pure realization
that you are enough right now it's a
pure realization it doesn't come from
your doing
the doing can help with your worth but
the doing can only truly be
aligned doing when you are aligned with
your own
inner self so we are worthy as we are
it comes from deep self acceptance
as we are and this is what is sorely
missing
and it starts from our childhood
conditioning because our parents were
conditioned
to seek to crave to be successful to
achieve
to get love and worth from external
sources this is what they pass down to
their children children grow up with a
void
who am i i guess i'm only as good as the
love and worth i get from the outside
let me keep seeking it so we're all
seeking something from the outside we're
all on a hamster wheel
looking for love on mars and going to
the ends of the earth
when it's all right here and this
is why i don't look at going to mars as
an accomplishment
because we're not even here and so when
you talk about that thing
inside is that an unbreakable spirit
that
there's no amount sort of of child abuse
like as much as
i hate that this is true your childhood
really seems to impact the trajectory of
your life
yes sadly it really does so can
that thing be broken and would need to
sort of be reconstructed or
is it a simple stripping away and you
will find something waiting for you
so people have different ideas you know
who knows what there's no real thing
we're talking about
so it's a model of looking at it yeah
it's a theory so the way i look at it
is that there's an essence that is
indestructible
but we are taken away from it and we are
taken away from it because we're
we're conditioned to look for love and
worth in these fake
false ways that i call the layers of the
ego
so we all create these disguises and
layers of the ego
that take us further and further away
from this essence
so part of awakening is not an
additive process it's a subtractive
process where you
subtract subtract undo unlayer
unseduce yourself from the lies that
you've been told by culture
don't buy into it don't buy into it the
more you let go
you get liberated from these tethers and
there's your true self but it's a hell
of a process
dr shafali thank you for writing the
book thank you for coming on thank you
for
letting me play with some of these ideas
in real time that was really wonderful
i think your book has just extraordinary
gifts in it
in terms of how to navigate this stuff
very powerful
i hope you do write the next book that
would be amazing
where can people find you and continue
to engage with these ideas
so uh on my website dr shafadi.com i do
a lot of courses i help people
in real time through hours and hours of
practical courses so they can go on my
website and explore
that's amazing guys trust me
whenever we have somebody on that has
clinical psychology work behind them
it is such a gift she's bringing an
untold number of hours of actually
working with live real people to help
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