Vision Battlesword [00:00:00]:
Good afternoon, Dewey.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:00:02]:
Hello.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:03]:
How are you doing today?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:00:04]:
Doing great. Doing great.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:06]:
Awesome. Well, then I'll just jump right in with my standard starting question, which is, who are you, Dewey Gaedcke.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:00:17]:
Well, let's see. I'm a father. I'm a men's group member, and career wise, I have kind of two disparate roles. One is I'm a virtual CTO. I hire and train programmers for startup companies. And then I also do trauma work and somatic psychotherapy with people.

Vision Battlesword [00:00:42]:
Well, I'm Vision Battlesword. As you know, I'm the founder of Sacred Light. I created Intentional Autonomous Relating, and I'm the host of Sacred Conversations. And you came here today with an idea to talk about resistance, which I think is very interesting because that's a. It's a very central theme to what we do in sacred Light. We help people to remove resistances that are standing between them and activating their dreams. And so when you brought up that topic, I immediately lit up because I'm like, oh, this is going to be so much fun to explore. I'm really looking forward to it.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:01:18]:
Yeah, me too.

Vision Battlesword [00:01:20]:
So what is resistance, in your opinion?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:01:23]:
The way I generally try to describe it is I say that the simple math of evolution meant that the children that behaved like their parents were more likely to survive and go on to rear more children to childbearing age. The children that did radically different stuff were really playing an odds game with nature. Your parents are here. They survived and got you into this world because of what they did. And if you go off and change very radically, that may work great, but statistically, it's not likely to work as well. And so the simple math of that built a program into all of us. I don't know exactly what level it's encoded at, but built a program into all of us that I call homeostasis preservation. So there's a very strong force in all of us that doesn't want to be destabilized, even if aspects of things in our present environment really suck.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:02:20]:
This is kind of the basis of the phenomenon where you see an abused spouse return or pick a new abuser or the spouse of an addict or alcoholic keep returning to another person like that. There's this deep, deep drive for the familiar and the status quo.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:42]:
So resistance is a force that helps to keep us in homeostasis.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:02:48]:
Correct.

Vision Battlesword [00:02:49]:
Fascinating. Are there any other definitions of resistance that are applicable to what we'll talk about, do you think?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:02:57]:
Oh, yes, but less interesting. I mean, I might have a. I might have a therapist that reminds me of mom. And I just defy them at every point simply because I'm in reaction mode and I don't quite realize that I'm bringing the past into the present. So you can. You can fight somebody that's being paid to help you in a little more frivolous way. But even under that drive of, oh, I don't want to cooperate with mom, there's this deeper drive to I don't want to change because I don't know who I'll be.

Vision Battlesword [00:03:29]:
Yeah, resistance to change, that's another kind of homeostasis tendency or predisposition, maybe. Do you think that's true? Do you think that we are just generally. Is that our default setting as people, that we're generally resistant to change, that we would prefer for things to stay the same?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:03:48]:
Very much so. I believe evolution built us that way. And really, we're a complex system, just like any biological organism's a complex system, the planet's a complex system. And I don't believe, to my knowledge, science has ever discovered a complex system that doesn't have a strong pull toward.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:06]:
Homeostasis, which would make sense. Right. Because it's sort of the force that opposes chaos, in a way.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:04:12]:
Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [00:04:13]:
When I think about, like, what you're talking about with regard to evolution, I'm thinking about how our DNA or the replication technology of our DNA has error correcting mechanisms within it which are, you know, meant to ensure fidelity of the copying process of our genetic code. So that's a kind of resistance to change that's built into the system that's meant to be in furtherance of homeostasis. But then, of course, there's always the natural randomness of the universe that can overcome that and create mutations, or there's enough energy that can build up in a system to overcome those resistances that leads to a breakthrough to change.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:05:01]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's a tipping point where, on the scales of priority, suddenly something gets too heavy and the other side tips to the top. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:12]:
So from an evolutionary perspective, can you expand on that a little bit more, just the role that you, like, your own intuition or perspective on the role that resistance plays in evolutionary process?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:05:25]:
Well, I'd say, you know, the kids that behave like their parents, just in simple probability terms, we're more likely to have kids, find a mate, have kids, and raise them to childbearing age. And the kids that went off and made friends with the crocodiles, they don't have any descendants here today. So it's the simple math of evolution.

Vision Battlesword [00:05:45]:
But evolution. Don't we normally think of evolution as the process of change, of incremental change over time?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:05:53]:
Absolutely. But that's why so much of our existence is incredibly shocking and improbable, because most mutations are harmful or neutral. Not helpful. The vast number of mutations are harmful or neutral. They're not helpful. So it's very, very rare to see positive mutations. And that's why biologically, there's this tension in us between producing new cells to repair our organs and slow down aging, but not producing new cells so liberally that we have tumors springing up all over the place.

Vision Battlesword [00:06:28]:
Yeah, that's fair. But on the other hand, evolution, as I've, I think as a lot of people have learned, it is a process that allows an organism over a period of generations, or a species, let's say, or even, even a person over the course of their lifetime, to incrementally change or transform in ways that are, that increase that person's, that, that organisms, that species fitness or capability or beneficial potential in some way. It seems as though that there's a natural momentum to overcoming that resistance and creating that kind of evolutionary change in both people and species.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:07:11]:
I wouldn't say that at the individual level. I tend to think, and I would say most biologists probably characterize evolution as something that's happened over thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, where if I'm in an environment that suddenly goes from warm to cold, I've got to adapt, I've got to mutate, I've got to find some animals I can kill and make a fur coat. But I think that's a different process. That's me being adapted to a new environmental context. That's not necessarily what I think most mean when they refer to evolution. I don't think it's operating in the individual. And as an individual complex system, I think the strong drive is to, hey, I'm here now. That means everything I did ten minutes ago and ten years ago worked.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:08:00]:
Let's not fuck with it.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:02]:
Yeah, that's fair. And I think I was drawing, I was making an almost not an equivalency, but I was certainly putting two things side by side that I didn't mean for them to be taken as the same. When I am talking about an evolution in an individual, I'm not necessarily talking about like a physical transformation through a person's lifetime, although I think that maybe that can happen. But I'm more kind of reflecting it back to, I think, what the main topic of our conversation is going to be, which is more about psychological evolution or emotional evolution or personal development, to put it that way. Right?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:08:38]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:39]:
We both believe that a human, a person, can evolve throughout their life in that way, right?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:08:45]:
We do believe that. We do believe that. We might differ on how much of that is free will versus grace, but we do believe it's possible.

Vision Battlesword [00:08:54]:
Okay, fair enough. We'll see if we need to go down the free will path. That would be it. Certainly. That would be a divergent or a large detour. That would be a detour. That would be a detour. So anyway, well, then tell me, what do you think I'm hearing that you can see a kind of a natural role for resistance and a beneficial one for resistance in the kind of evolutionary biology sense.

Vision Battlesword [00:09:25]:
But now bringing it back to that realm of personal development, what do you see the role of resistance there?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:09:31]:
Well, let's take a special case of resistance. How about denial? Okay, so I walk up to you, or you walk up to me and I say, hey, your partner's cheating on you. Okay? Now, depending on my internal resources, when I hear that, I might look at you. If I'm really, really able to stay calm and face the stress of a lot of disruption and turmoil and drama and change in my life, I might be able to look at you and say, wow, vision, why do you say that? What's your evidence for that? If I'm not deeply resourced inside, you'll see my eyes glaze over or I'll suddenly change the subject and say, hey, vision, look at the pretty birds. And you'll be like, did you hear what I just said? How do we get onto the pretty birds? Denial. It's a feature, not a bug. It's telling both of us that I don't have the capacity to tolerate and integrate this level of stress and destabilization in my system right now.

Vision Battlesword [00:10:30]:
That's fascinating, but why not just say that? Why not just say, I don't have the resources to engage with this topic right now?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:10:38]:
Well, someone who's got years and years of mindfulness practice could say that, but to most of it, it's automatic and unconscious. We've been since we were children seeing our parents model. You know, for my dad, fear and grief was unsafe. And for my mom, anger and shame was unsafe. I picked that up automatically, subliminally, unconsciously. And anytime those feelings come from my body, I don't go, I'm feeling fear that would make me a non man in Texas. I go, I gotta do something heroic right now. I've got to.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:11:17]:
You know, I've got to show everybody, you know, how tough I am, whether it's, I play football, I ride a motorcycle, I start a street fight, I jump off a cliff, I got to get away from that feeling. So it's happening automatically.

Vision Battlesword [00:11:31]:
Hmm, I see. Okay, so sometimes denial, which is a form of resistance, can be sort of a self defense mechanism that allows us to become functional when otherwise we might be overwhelmed by our emotions.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:11:47]:
Yeah, I mean, and again, back to evolution, like now for the past measly amount of time, what, hundred years, 150 years, we've had police forces, doors with locks, somewhat safe cities, air conditioning, grocery stores, the vast, vast amount of human history. I didn't, I could not afford to have my attention on sadness or anger. I had to be looking around for the predators and the enemies. I had to be much more vigilant and, or I wasn't going to survive then. In fact, there's actually some great neuroscience research and theories that the bicameral mind, the fact that we have a left and a right hemisphere is specifically the left is for focusing on the thing that I'm going to eat, and the right hemisphere is for taking in the whole of the environment and make sure I'm not going to get eaten while I'm doing it.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:47]:
That makes sense. I could see that. Have you read or heard about a book called whole brain living by Jill Bolte Taylor?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:12:56]:
I've not. Sounds fascinating.

Vision Battlesword [00:12:57]:
Do you know Jill Bolte Taylor from her TEd talk about. She's the neuroscientist that had a stroke. She gave a very famous TED talk many years ago.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:13:07]:
Did she have an NDE? I'm trying to remember. There was a neuroscientist that had a near death experience and has written extensively about that. I don't know if it was her.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:16]:
No, I heard about that as well. But I think this is something different. Jill Bolte Taylor, she wrote a book, a best selling book a number of years ago called my stroke of insight. And she was sort of one of the first people that really, like, put Ted, you know, on the scene because her, her talk was so popular and went so viral. It, like brought a lot of attention even to the fact that Ted existed and what it really was. She was a, was a neuroscientist. I believe that she was already practicing. You know, she had completed a PhD and was already in practice in some form.

Vision Battlesword [00:13:49]:
And in her early, early in her life, I don't remember exactly what age, but maybe late twenties or even thirties, she had a stroke, which was a burst blood vessel that took out, essentially took offline, her entire left hemisphere. But she was able to actually, she was aware of the experience and what it was that was happening to her while it was happening with her full understanding of neuroanatomy. And so, so she essentially got to have a subjective experiment on herself of what happens when. Oh, this part's now shut down. Oh, now this part shut down. Oh. And she went into a period of several months where, because it was like a slow bleed kind of stroke, her left hemisphere, like, gradually went offline and then gradually came back online. And she's actually able to recall the entire experience of it.

Vision Battlesword [00:14:52]:
And it informed her research in very, very interesting ways and caused her to develop theories of mind and how the brain works. And she's recently just come out with a book called Whole Brain Living that articulates some similarities of what you just reflected to me about what you read on the differences, the different functions and the different purposes of those functions from the left to the right hemisphere. But in addition, she adds an additional layer which I think you in particular will find fascinating. And I've just been blown away by it, which is that it's not just left and right, but it's also upper mind, the cortex and the lower mind, the limbic. And so there's actually, it's like four quadrants.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:15:44]:
Absolutely. Yep.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:45]:
So it's left thinking, left emotional. Right thinking, right emotional. And these are four independent. It's not just that right and left are independent, but actually four different independent quad cameral.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:15:57]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [00:15:58]:
Mind, maybe that we have that, that are different personalities, different thinking systems, different functions, and they kind of coordinate as a team to create this rich experience that we have of past, present, future here, now. Rational, emotional, all of these things superimposed on each other.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:16:18]:
Yeah. Fascinating. I need to read that book. It sounds really interesting. If my memory is correct, she generally, I believe, was probably pretty lucky. I think people that have a left hemisphere stroke end up doing fairly well. And people that have a right hemisphere stroke, if they don't recover it, are severely debilitated, because, again, the right hemisphere is the one that's more kind of taking in the hole, seeing the big picture. There's fascinating research happening right now at Johns Hopkins, where they're discovering that the metaplasticity of psychedelics and opening of critical periods allows living parts of the brain to take over, functions that were lost by the parts of the brain damage in a stroke.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:06]:
Wow.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:17:06]:
This isn't FDA approved yet, but they're planning on at some point once they get more data. They're planning on recommending a strong psilocybin dose for someone that's had a stroke because it helps other parts of the brain take over the loss functions.

Vision Battlesword [00:17:21]:
That doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, yeah. And I've actually had a lot of curiosity because of an experience that I had with a family member, my father, actually, over the last couple of years, I've had a lot of curiosity about the potential of psychedelics as a treatment for Alzheimer's for the same reason. What do you think about that?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:17:42]:
I don't know a ton about that research, but I was on a call, I don't know, two, three months ago with a group of ibogaine researchers, and they were claiming that they were seeing reversal in Alzheimer's from ibogaine. And for those that don't know, it's a very, very strong, long lasting psychedelic from Africa, from the iboga tree. And, yeah, these researchers are saying that. I think they also said they were seeing reversal in maybe dementia and Parkinson's two, although another researcher I spoke to said that, so that they suspect those claims are a little bit overblown. So I really don't know. It's not my domain of expertise.

Vision Battlesword [00:18:22]:
Yeah. But, yeah, psychedelics in general, you know, anything that stimulates neuroplasticity or even temporary elevated, you know, elevated function within the brain, making connections from place to place that don't normally connect, you would think that there would be at least a fruitful avenue of exploration down those paths, pun intended, but back to resistance. So, from. I suppose you're familiar with the term memetics. Yes, you know, as a corollary to genetics, but kind of the informational, the mental aspect of, like, an evolutionary process based on information units, and we were just talking about different types of resistance. You had brought up denial as a form of resistance that's very common, that can manifest for folks. And then I was just sort of touching on like, oh, I can see why that's useful. I can see there being a use case for that and why that would be a program that we would inherit and that we would adopt at a certain developmental stage.

Vision Battlesword [00:19:28]:
Are there other kind of resistances, psychological, memetic resistances that you're aware of that are similarly useful and common?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:19:39]:
You know, useful is a tough word because it's like so many things, if you're starving, some cake is useful in the moment, but long term it has consequences. I've been asked and have written about why there's certain people that are just completely unwilling to get near introspection work or do any therapy or go so far as claiming that it doesn't work without what would seem to be the obvious intellectual honesty of saying, well, I've only tried two models out of, you know, 300 models, and I've only sat with four practitioners out of, you know, millions of practitioners. So I really can't say it doesn't work. I can say that. That I'm not getting what I want yet. That's a reasonable statement. But to claim something so diverse as therapy and introspection doesn't work, that should be obvious to a. A thinking person right there, that there's something going on where they're working some agenda with themselves to claim and believe that.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:20:39]:
I mean, how can you not see the game you're playing with yourself? Right? One of the. One of the questions I got in one of the papers I wrote about this idea is that let's imagine that I grew up, dysfunctional family, a lot of stress, and some point in my life, in some weak moment, I compensated and did something terribly shameful, something that I now look back on or that the people, even the. Even the dysfunctional people around me would have looked down on very, very poorly and shamed me for. Well, I need to bury that in my psyche again because evolution taught me I need to be present and aware in the moment. I can't be walking around clouded in shame, not paying attention to the world, or I might get eaten by a wolf. I need to bury that and forget about it. I need to push it down into the psyche and totally distance myself from it. Well, if I've already got damaged self esteem, what's my risk if I go into introspection or therapy, dig that terribly shameful thing up and stare at it straightly? Oh, no.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:21:54]:
This is proof of my badness. This is proof of my unlovability, of my unworthiness. This is proof that I'm a terrible person. I can't risk that. I can't risk that. So I'm going to avoid introspection and therapy like the plague, because what I might find, if I dig enough, would prove something terrible about me that I, not only would it be miserable to face, but it would be actually really unproductive to face.

Vision Battlesword [00:22:22]:
Well, there are some resistances. We do have natural resistances that I think we're all very grateful to have. Like an immune system we have natural resistance to. Just like our bodies are inherently xenophobic in a way, right? Foreign toxins, foreign agents are resisted. Our bodies resist foreign invasion in different ways. So I'm just kind of curious to reflect that back to our psychology, to our memetics. Do you think we have some natural resistances that are kind of like a mental immune system? Or coming back to this question of, like, is resistance inherently something to be overcome? Or is it possible that sometimes we get signals from ourself, from our body, from deeper parts of our brain, wherever it is that that comes from, that signals resistance to us, that is actually helpful. That is maybe a part of our intuition.

Vision Battlesword [00:23:21]:
It's like, oh, thank you for bringing up this resistance to something that actually could probably be harmful to me.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:23:26]:
Right, right. Yes. I mean, I think anyone that tells you resistance is bad or to be pushed through doesn't understand healing and doesn't understand their own nervous system. We are organic beings, and in the same way that you can bring water and sunlight and nutrients to a flower, but it's going to bloom when it's ready. No matter how skilled you are with a screwdriver, that's not going to help that flower bloom. It's one thing to notice your resistance and say, oh, there's something I'm missing here. There's either time or another resource I need before I'm ready to do this and have this unfolding. That's the healthy use of resistance, is what I call letting it regulate pacing.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:24:14]:
So I use resistance not to avoid going into something, but to regulate pacing with how quickly and aggressively I go into it. And that, I think, is the healthiest use of resistance.

Vision Battlesword [00:24:28]:
I had a really interesting experience the other day. I was on a walk with my men's group, and we were in the park, and we came around to a little hill, going down to some water, and I came around, we came around the bend. I was kind of the first one to come around and look down the hill, and I just decided, I'm not going down there. And the others came by and said, vision, are we going to go down? And I said, not me, I'm good. And another person in the group said, well, that's fine, and went ahead and went down the hill and through a clearing in the path that we couldn't see from above. But once he got down there, there was an aggressive dog that suddenly jumped at him and was barking aggressively and was only kind of restrained by the leash of their owner. Would have leapt on and attacked this person. It was really kind of startling.

Vision Battlesword [00:25:20]:
And someone else in the group just turned to me and said, wow, vision, what did you sense? What did you feel? How did you know that? What made you decide not to want to go down there. She said, I don't know. I just felt some resistance. What happens for you when resistance comes up? I mean, when you notice resistance coming up for yourself, how do you process that?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:25:43]:
I first interpret it as something near one of my growth edges. I'm surrounded by some really talented people, and when they give me a suggestion and I feel myself going, no, I'm like, oh, isn't that interesting? I really respect this person. I know they see things that I don't, especially about me. I first interpret it as, oh, there's something here for me. So I get very curious. But I also respect the resistance to say, there's something I'm needing, something my system in totality is needing in terms of other resources before. I guess it depends on the strength of the resistance. But if it's a super strong resistance, there's something else I need before I'm ready to stretch that far.

Vision Battlesword [00:26:26]:
Fascinating. I love that approach. Now, isn't that interesting? I've heard you say that many times before when we're just kind of exploring different things that are coming up for us in these conversations. Now, isn't that interesting? What's going on there? I love that curious approach. I resonate with that a lot. I really feel more and more strongly all the time that whatever it is we're feeling, like our emotions, our intuitions, body sensations, random thoughts, they're all information that's coming to us from somewhere for some reason. It's not random. I guess I'm presuming that you have a belief that I share, which is that we can learn a lot about ourselves by engaging with those resistances or thoughts or feelings or whatever those things are.

Vision Battlesword [00:27:19]:
They're coming up.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:27:20]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think, you know, sometimes it's a tell you've gotten bad advice, but very frequently it's a tell that it's getting you close to a change that you're not ready to bump into, that you're unconscious and maybe wisely, but is concerned with, you know, one thing. You mentioned earlier that some of these circles we run in, resistance is a bad word. And that made me think of two things I forgot to mention, is one is at one point I actually caught myself. This is a couple years in hindsight, but I caught myself picking and staying with an ineffective therapist because there was no threat, there was no change there. And what great evidence that therapy doesn't work. Also, yeah, I laughed quite a bit when I realized I'd been doing that.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:28:12]:
Second thing is, Alan Watts once said, that egolessness is the biggest ego trip around today.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:20]:
Yeah. Yeah, I think I heard that from ram Dass at some point.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:28:24]:
Maybe it was ram Dass.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:25]:
No, I'm sure it was. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a classic. But on the other hand, sometimes we do want to overcome resistance. Or maybe first we encounter the resistance. Like, I'm thinking in the context of our process. In dream storming, we use that signal of resistance to locate opportunities for transformation. That's essentially what we're doing.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:28:51]:
Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [00:28:51]:
Is there anything in this dream right now that you do feel a sense of resistance to? And then when we sense that, then we know we're over the target, say, okay, now let's dive a little bit deeper here. So what is this resistance all about? And then we maybe discover something that is an opportunity that someone would like to embrace, to change, to actually have a transformational experience. So, I don't know. What are your thoughts and reflections about that?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:29:20]:
You know, the thought that comes to me is that there's all kinds of shapes and colors of this. But at root, the deepest wisdom in me knows that I'm continuing to function and survive now because of how I see myself and how I see the world. And at root, underneath, really, any resistance, is that this implies a threatening and uncertain change to either the way I see myself or the way I see the world.

Vision Battlesword [00:29:49]:
Yeah, that's a really striking insight for me. I'm just kind of digesting that for a minute. So maybe when we're in dream storming and we're detecting those resistances, what we're noticing, and this kind of calls back to a little bit earlier in our conversation, too, it seems to me what we're kind of noticing is, here's a piece of what I envisioned for myself or what I would envision for myself, what I would choose for myself if I believed that anything were possible, which is that there's a piece of that which is out of alignment with how I feel or who I think I am right now, and that's that. That mismatch is creating the resistance.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:30:35]:
Yeah, absolutely. That that new thing I want to achieve would. Would be somehow in conflict with the way I'm maintaining homeostasis, with the way I'm getting needs met today.

Vision Battlesword [00:30:48]:
Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Well, what do you think drives people to want to generate the energy to move out of homeostasis, to pursue transformation, to move through resistance?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:31:04]:
I believe it's hope. I believe it's hope. Most of us grew up with parents whose wounds, rigidities, and personality defects today are exactly the same or very, very close to the same as they were when we were five or six. So all of us are implicitly and unconsciously hypnotized that people don't change. So we're all. Because we didn't watch our parents change, we're all just assume it doesn't really happen in any big ways. And so there's, in many of us, there's a deep hopelessness. And once you have that first big experience where you feel a massive amount of weight or stress or pressure or tension leave your nervous system, suddenly you're like, oh, something's possible here.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:31:57]:
That's when hope grows, curiosity increases, it becomes worth it to take some more risks and move outside the box a little bit.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:06]:
I like that you use the word wait because I was actually just kind of thinking about another sense in which we use the word resistance. Like, I'm thinking about it from an exercise perspective. We deliberately create resistance for ourselves. We even call. There's a kind of exercise equipment we call resistance bands. Right. Giant rubber bands that simulate weights. But we create resistance for ourselves specifically to stimulate our own growth.

Vision Battlesword [00:32:38]:
That's interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:32:40]:
What we're not noticing in those exercises is that we're relying on the same muscles we've always relied on, and there's other muscles sitting there going, why am I not included? As much as we're using the resistance band, strengthening ourselves, unless you're really attuned or working with someone very skilled, you don't notice all the parts you're leaving out of that contraction.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:09]:
Say more about that. I'm just. Connect the dots for me a little bit. And what I'm saying, I was just saying, I think it's interesting that there are times when we intentionally create resistance to stimulate our growth, and then your reflection is we're missing out on wholly different muscles that we can exercise.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:33:28]:
Well, I'm saying that I. We all habitually lean into the resistance and the growth edge over, relying on the tools we relied on in the past.

Vision Battlesword [00:33:38]:
I see. So it's still. So what I'm hearing you saying is that there's still a kind of comfort that we can fall into where it's like, oh, sure, I'm creating more resistance for my biceps over and over and over again because I'm comfortable growing my biceps. I enjoy working out my biceps. But there's still a different kind of resistance, or there's still a different, let's say, opportunity for growth that many times we're missing out on in changing our movements, our habits, altogether, right?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:34:16]:
Absolutely, yes. And you can notice this. You can do one exercise where you feel competent, you know, maybe not as strong as you want to be, but you feel the muscle, you're working it out. You reach your point of exhaustion. It was just a normal exercise. And then you change the angle or your body posture or even where your head position is just a little bit, and suddenly this exercise is not a muscular exercise. It's doing something weird with your body, and you're like, what the hell is this? That's how you know you're firing down neural pathways that you weren't firing down before, because it feels weird. It feels uncomfortable.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:34:56]:
You're still just stretching this resistance band. But something about the way you're orienting has caused fibers in the muscles, different muscles, and different neural pathways to light up. And that is uncomfortable.

Vision Battlesword [00:35:10]:
Yeah. Okay. So there's something about resistance and comfort. It's not just that we create resistance to stimulate our growth. We also pursue discomfort. Or maybe it's a better way of saying it is. We intentionally move out of our comfort zone or out of homeostasis, and in the process, many times, we encounter or create resistance. And we do that intentionally to pursue growth.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:35:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's hard to do individually, autonomously. Cause our habits are so strong. But I think working with somebody skilled, that they will suggest you try that, and you'll feel the weirdness and go, oh, I'd rather go back to doing bicep curls the way I was doing them. But some part of you will sense, oh, there's something interesting here, something new happening, and I don't know what it is, and it's uncomfortable and uncertain. And at that point, you have to trust your coach to catch.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:09]:
You were your shaman.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:36:11]:
Are you shaman? Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:36:12]:
It reminds me of something Daniel Schmachtenberger, I heard him say one time, which is he was talking about what he was calling forms of ritualized discomfort, that he was just kind of drawing attention to different traditions in older societies. And he used ayahuasca ceremony as one of his examples of what he called ritualized discomfort, which I thought was super interesting. I don't entirely agree, or rather, I would look at that as a gross simplification of the significance of ayahuasca and ceremony, but there is something about that. I think there is an aspect that's interesting to examine about that. Certainly medicine experiences ayahuasca in particular, but pretty much any you go deep enough into a psychedelic state, you may very well experience discomfort. We often also talk about this idea of surrender. It's very tied to the spiritual path, and it's very tied to some of the best advice that we know how to give for psychedelic, uncomfortable psychedelic situations. But I just wanted to come back around to that, to Ayahuasca specifically.

Vision Battlesword [00:37:30]:
Kind of like moving a little bit out of the weightlifting analogy or the muscular exercise analogy and just asking the question. There's some connection between comfort, homeostasis, resistance, and growth. There's like some kind of constellation here of something related to the human experience. And so how much of what we're actually seeking from going to an experience like an ayahuasca ceremony is really about pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone to have new experiences, to put ourselves in that weird position like you were talking about, where the neural pathways are firing differently now. And this feels weird and uncomfortable, maybe, but also for some reason, I'm experiencing growth. I'm getting new capabilities. I'm maybe even healing parts of my psyche, even parts of my neuroanatomy through this process, but I have to go through that discomfort in order to get there because that's just inherently part of the process. I rambled a little bit, but what do you think about everything I'm saying?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:38:41]:
Well, I like all that and makes sense to me. I am. I think I would tend to split the discomfort from, you've heard of the manager from IFS. So it seems to be, and there's several different competing theories right now. It seems to be that on psychedelics, yes, there can be that discomfort and that practicing of surrender, but it also seems that it may be quieting down this resistant part, this part that's really determined to hold on to a rigid notion of self. And when that part kind of goes to sleep or quiets down, you can think of it like, let's say dad in the household is a really rigid navy man, you know, Admiral Shipshape, and everything has to be in place, and the kids can't run and scream. They can't drop toys and food and all this stuff, and the house stays like that as long as Admiral shipshape is really managing things and on top of it, and nobody wants to get beaten. But if Admiral shipshape goes to sleep, these kids all of a sudden get to experiment with a new way of playing, a new way of running, of screaming, of twisting, of rolling, of wrestling.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:39:57]:
And that, I think, is a big piece of the benefit of the psychedelics is that the experience Admiral shipshape is going to sleep, and then all these different parts of the brain are allowed to connect and play and communicate in new kinds of ways, which in some cases it's uncomfortable, it can be pretty intense. In other cases, it can be just delightful. In both cases, your nervous system is absolutely trying new pathways and experimenting with new ways of being, new ways of seeing yourself, new ways of seeing the world. And I would tend to separate that playful experimentation as distinct from the difficulty and the resistance and the stress.

Vision Battlesword [00:40:40]:
Hmm, I like that. Is it possible to experience growth without discomfort? How do you imagine a plant feels growing? Do you imagine it feels kind of like it was like being a human growing. Growing pains, right. Where sometimes it's kind of achy, and sometimes it's kind of itchy, and sometimes it just feels awkward and weird. Like, do you suppose that's, like, just sort of a universal experience of growth, or do you suppose that's just like a human point in time, point in development?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:41:12]:
It's a really interesting question, and, you know, I'm going to deflect a little bit and say that you either have to have high consciousness or fast change, and I'm not sure a plant has either. The plant is changing, probably in most cases, more slowly than a growing child does, and the plant has less consciousness to notice their subjective experience. So I really don't know. I've had moments of growth that were incredibly blissful. And I've had moments of growth where I've laid in bed and thought I was going to vomit for three days. I guess it has something to do with what and how the nervous system has shifted, what it's releasing and what the rest of the organs are doing in response. I don't know, but I've had both now, I guess. I think I would say, yeah, I actually can say this.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:42:10]:
Is that my enjoyment for that feeling? Really destabilized, disoriented, scared? I don't know who I am anymore. Feeling enjoyment for that is a more recent phenomenon, as I've gotten a lot more tools on board. I'd say early in my path, it was probably quite a bit more uncomfortable.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:27]:
I think I've noticed that for myself as well. Maybe there's something about the more mysterious things are, the more frightening change can.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:42:39]:
Seem relative to your confidence in your ability to face it.

Vision Battlesword [00:42:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. Not just self awareness or not just necessarily, like, ability to, let's say, analyze, categorize, enumerate, label, but also like, your self evaluation of your own competence, your own capability.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:43:01]:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'd say walking down a dark alley is and should be terrifying to a small woman, to a highly trained Navy Seal with his sidearm. That's a walk in the park. There's no need to be afraid, even though it's equally uncertain for both. Or I'd say the external part is uncertain. The Navy seal has one predicted outcome, and the small, fragile woman has a different outcome, a likely outcome, should something go crazy in there.

Vision Battlesword [00:43:35]:
I think to make it a fair comparison, we'd have to say that the fragile woman is also the Navy seal with the sidearm. Right. So they'd have to look the same on the outside.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:43:47]:
Are we jumping around the pothole of sex?

Vision Battlesword [00:43:50]:
No, no, not at all.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:43:51]:
Sexism?

Vision Battlesword [00:43:52]:
No, no, no, no, no, no. Not at all. I'm saying that a small, fragile woman would attract a different externalities versus a burly.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:44:03]:
Yeah, absolutely. That's a fabulous point. That's a fabulous point. And your example actually does a better job of really mapping it to internal resources. And that's the bigger the internal resources, the less fear there is, even with uncertainty.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:21]:
Right. Right. Now, and we're using this word growth to mean a couple of different things, though simultaneously. So again, we kind of did a side by side comparison of two things which are not actually quite similar. One is the physical, literal growth of a plant or an animal like a human. The other, I think when you were reflecting your own stories of personal growth, where it felt blissful, where it felt nauseating, those were not physical growth experiences, but more like psychological, spiritual, emotional growth experiences. Am I right?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:44:58]:
Absolutely. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:44:58]:
So I wonder if those mean different things. On the one hand, I have a question, open question to you, to the universe. Does growth inherently involve resistance just from a pure, like, entropic perspective? If you just think of, like, your over, you're creating order. You know, you're inputting energy to a system. Is it, is it, does it go as basic and as physics as that? But then on the other side, well, what exactly do we mean by growth when we're talking about personal development? It's not quite the same as just physical growth.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:45:35]:
Yeah, let's start there. So I think I would define growth as a couple of things. One is being more present. And by that, I don't mean the hippy dippy version of presence. What I mean is less inclined to bring the past forward into this moment. That's one sense of growth. Another sense of growth is having a deep trust in yourself to be able to manage any situation that presents itself. Another sense of growth is having more confidence in your ability just to get needs met in the given environment you're in.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:46:14]:
I'd say another version of growth is sensing a delta from a invisibly familiar state of anxiety to a new state of noticeable improvement.

Vision Battlesword [00:46:29]:
Okay, so all of these are aspects of something increasing. We're increasing confidence. We're increasing present moment awareness. We're increasing actual competence or capability. We're increasing a sense of what, peace or stability in our nervous system.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:46:52]:
Yeah. And we're noticing that what was the status quo was much worse than we realized. I frequently encounter someone I'm sitting with. I'll say, I'm feeling anxious. Is that you or is that me? And they'll be like, no, I feel completely calm. And then after something shifts and they're not at the state they've been in for the past 20 years, they're like, oh, wow, I really was anxious. It was so familiar, I wasn't noticing it. It was invisibly familiar, like the fish doesn't notice the water.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:47:23]:
So once you can see that what was, quote, normal and felt so familiar that you just thought it was fine, you're like, oh, no, that was not fine. I do not want to go back there. I see people holding the stresses and tensions and anxieties and insecurities that I once held, and they're like, I feel fine right now. I'm like, if you took all of that and put that back in my body, I would not be fine right now. You know? It'd be like the worst hangover ever.

Vision Battlesword [00:47:57]:
Huh. Well, I find it interesting to note that even some of the words that you're using right now, like stress and tension, especially tension, is associated with resistance. Again, that sort of like tension is something which is resisting, right? If you, if you think of an elastic band or two people locked arms but throwing their weight away from each other in that state of tension, it all comes back to resistance. I wonder if there's something like yin and Yang going on here, like opposing forces, that which seeks to move and that which seeks to resist movement. And like, this is kind of like what creates reality in a way.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:48:46]:
Well, and this is actually paralleled in our current political divide, right? The conservatives are really, really want to keep things the same, and the liberals really, really want to change things. And there's this, what used to be a healthy tension between those two. Now it's just spun off into insanity. And that tells, that tells us that there's something broader happening in a mental level.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:14]:
I agree. Yeah, I sense that, too. I sense that there's something going on in our collective consciousness that is very analogous to the kind of inner conflict that an individual could have if they're sort of on the cusp of like a breakthrough into a new phase of awareness. Or perhaps a complete breakdown.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:49:36]:
Exactly. I was going to say, or a psychotic break. It's exactly right.

Vision Battlesword [00:49:39]:
One of the others happening.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:49:41]:
You mentioned Daniel Schmucktenberg earlier, and he facilitated a really great conversation. It was between he and McGillchrist, the neuroscientist and psychologist. And I'm trying to remember the other fellow's name. A really interesting conversation. But in that talk, and this is back to your point about that, you quoted Schmachtenberg about indigenous people and cultures having intentional, what was the word? Suffering.

Vision Battlesword [00:50:05]:
Intentional ritualized discomfort.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:50:09]:
Ritualized discomfort, yeah. So when we got air conditionings and police forces and safe homes and all this stuff, we threw out some of our past, and that ritualized discomfort very likely was a baby in the bath water that got accidentally thrown out. And now it, like religion, was serving some kind of subtle psychological purpose that we didn't see or understand. Now we've thrown it out and we're walking around with a God shaped hole in our psyche. And that's how I explain a lot of the craziness happening and polarization happening now. And in that conversation that Schmechtenberg facilitated with McGilchrist, McGillchrist said that if any competent neuroscientist was to see a single patient behaving in the way that both sides of the political divider behaving, he would explain it as caused by right hemispheric damage. So it's very likely that culturally, when we gave up some of these practices that engender meaning and connection and shared purpose and ceremony and connection to the divine, when we threw those out as a civilization, we also threw out some key ingredient we need psychologically. And as a result, we all have right hemispheric damage.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:51:27]:
And then that's why we're behaving in these crazy ways, these new, whether it be QAnon or DEI or whatever it is, these new movements, these new churches, these new passions are replacing. They're filling in that God shaped hole in much less healthy and productive ways.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:48]:
And presumably some of the new churches are also filling the God shaped hole in healthy ways.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:51:53]:
Presumably so, but I can think of at least one.

Vision Battlesword [00:51:56]:
I love what you just said. I've never thought of it that way before. But that's so interesting to bring the analogy full circle in looking at our society and maybe even to a certain degree, our global civilization. But if you take western civilization, you know, especially like american culture and so forth, but to look at it that way as to really map human psychology to the behavior of the society, and not just human psychology, but, like, human neuroanatomy, physiology to the behavior of society, that's fascinating to me. While you were talking, I was actually just thinking also. Okay, so you've got this, like, left, right, so called, you know, conservative liberal, so called. I have huge disagreements with all of these terms.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:52:47]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:47]:
They're all unnuanced.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:52:49]:
Very unnuanced.

Vision Battlesword [00:52:50]:
I would actually love to have a conversation at some point with someone just about politics and mapping all of this out because there's. There's a really, really rich model available that Ken Wilbur has started to create. I don't think he even feels that he's finished it. But you're familiar with Wilbur?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:53:09]:
Absolutely. Sure.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:10]:
Okay. And so he's got, like, I think, like an eleven dimensional, or it's at least like seven or nine, something like that. Some. Some n dimensional political spectrum model that you created, which is just so. It's more. It's just so much more useful in terms of who actually really wanted to understand what's going on and really actually try to understand each other and what our positions are and where we're coming from. You know, something a little bit more sophisticated than left right, liberal conservative or whatever would probably be helpful. But anyway, if we just simplified it to a binary, like apparently is the preference of the powers that be is to simplify things to a binary.

Vision Battlesword [00:53:52]:
Looking at it as a left and right hemisphere, I had never thought of that before, but that's so interesting. And to say that it's right hemisphere damage is also curious to me, because if we were to map, like, a so called right conservative that would really map to the left hemisphere in a way. And if we were to map the kind of left liberal progressive gestalt, if you will, that would really be more of, like, the right hemisphere stereotype.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:54:22]:
Yes, stereotype. I don't think the more recent hemispheric and McGillchrist makes this point. I don't think the more recent hemispheric research allows that clean of a mapping anymore. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:54:36]:
But at any rate, I do agree with you wholeheartedly that these rituals, some of these rituals that we've thrown out along with the baby, with the bathwater, like you said, are critical for actually function like, like creating functional humans. They certainly serve a purpose. They evolved along with our specie and our societies. And I look at those, a lot of those. Okay, so some of the other ones that Schmocktenberger mentioned in the talk that I heard him give, he talked about ayahuasca ceremony. He talked about circumcision, adult circumcision, by the way, because there's infant circumcision I'm not aware of as being typically a traditional thing. Certainly, of course, there's one specific culture that does that, but. Or genital piercings.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:33]:
Adult genital piercings. And the vision quest. Or the. What's another word for that?

Dewey Gaedcke [00:55:40]:
Well, there's the vision question, and there's also the initiation.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:44]:
Yes.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:55:44]:
Yeah, yeah.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:45]:
Well, I think that's what I'm getting at is I think these are all forms. Forms.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:55:51]:
True, true, true.

Vision Battlesword [00:55:52]:
I think that's what's missing. It's the initiation into adulthood ritual. Initiation into adulthood ceremony. Or if you take something like ayahuasca or other forms of plant medicine, that might not be like a thing that happens, you know, at puberty necessarily, but it is a different kind of initiation into a different kind of, if you will, adulthood, spiritual adulthood, or graduating into the realm of a new kind of understanding, let's just say. So you could look at it as an initiatory process and a new kind.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:56:27]:
And a new kind of responsibility. Like there's this. I don't. I'm not as familiar with the research on female initiation, but for male initiation, it's really crucial for there to be a distinct transition from this moment where I'm left in the company of the women and now suddenly I'm invited on the hunt with the men. Right. That's a huge shift in responsibility, allegiance, sense of camaraderie, fortitude. So for boys to men in particular, the psyche needs a demarcation point, and we don't have that today.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:12]:
But I think there's equivalent rituals, traditions and initiation ceremonies for women as well.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:57:19]:
Yeah, I'm certain there are. I'm just less familiar with the details of it.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:22]:
But, yeah, that seems really important. I had this insight a few years back, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that's had it. I mean, certainly Spachtenberger's talking about it and others, I'm sure, have noticed it as well. Like you have that. Yeah. Wait a second. We're never actually becoming adults. Is it any wonder that we run around like 2030, 40 and 50 year old children? We never actually graduate to adulthood.

Vision Battlesword [00:57:52]:
And I also looked at other kind of ceremonies, sort of that we have, like take a graduation ceremony. Like this is the equivalent that we get this watered down version of, you know, you're not going to go into the forest with a loincloth and a knife. And, you know, you go out a boy, you come back a man, or you don't come back at all. Right, we don't get that anymore. Instead, we get, here's your diploma. And, you know, everybody throw their cap in the air.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:58:22]:
And getting that diploma involved a whole lot of people telling you how fragile you are.

Vision Battlesword [00:58:28]:
Yes, right, right. Sitting around a lot, listening to some things, maybe playing some sports, having a social life. There you go. You're an adult. It's like, that's a really poor substitute for a rite of passage that's both meaningful, cathartic, and transformative. And that, I think, we're truly missing. And people do go through it eventually, at some point in their life. Sometimes they encountered that kind of resistance.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:02]:
They have that kind of choice, like, okay, you either go out and come back a woman or a man or an adult, or you don't. And sometimes they turn away from it and they decide to stay in homeostasis or their comfort zone. And then sometimes they choose to go through that discomfort. And that could maybe happen at any age. You know, maybe it hasn't happened for me yet. I don't know. But it's not ritualized anymore. I think that's the key.

Vision Battlesword [00:59:30]:
There's no tradition associated with it, and it's not necessarily adapted. Whatever those critical transition points are in a person's life. It's not adapted, necessarily, to the world that we actually are living in today. To your point about the differences in how we evolved versus the kind of stressors and tensions and challenges that we face now.

Dewey Gaedcke [00:59:56]:
Yeah. And as you were talking, I don't think I've thought of this before, but it occurred to me that it seemed really important that it's intentional and willful. Like, I once had an accidental mess up in which I was lost in a very large wilderness area without food or water for five days, and I got a massive amount of growth, and all sorts of incredible things happened from that. But reflecting back on it now, because it wasn't something that I consciously chose, even though it was a form of a vision quest, it wasn't something I consciously chose. I believe that I got less growth out of it. I kind of stayed more in the Peter Pan mode for multiple years after that, almost like the having survived was a Peter Pan victory more than a transition into full masculine.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:47]:
Interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:00:48]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:00:48]:
When you say Peter Pan. So there's a couple ways I can interpret that, but can you just explain what you mean?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:00:54]:
Oh, you know, the magic and invincibility of childhood and the world will be as I envision it, not the way, not as it is.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:04]:
I see. So you almost took it as a. I am charmed.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:01:10]:
I think I did. In retrospect, I think it did. Whereas if I think I'd decided to go out there and suffer that intentionally, I think it would have been transformative in a different way or more powerfully transformative.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:24]:
I would love to hear that story sometime.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:01:26]:
I'd be happy to come back and tell that story.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:28]:
That's really interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:01:29]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:01:31]:
So I usually kind of have a thing with these sacred conversations, which is, I like for us to just use our minds and not external resources to decide what it is that we think about things and what do we mean by things and just explore that through our own thinking and experience. But I got a new toy, which is something I've been wanting to get for quite a number of years, which is a copy, a full copy of the Oxford English Dictionary in print, all 20 volumes.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:02:05]:
Wow.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:05]:
Yeah. Which I don't know if you're aware of this, but it's a. It's a special kind of dictionary. The OED, as they call it. It's a special kind of dictionary. First of all, it's probably the most complete catalog of the english language that exists. But also, each definition is not just like the current meaning, but it includes the history of the word from its first usage in print or first known usage, etymology of it.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:02:33]:
Beautiful. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:02:35]:
Which is fascinating. So I wanted to play with my new toy just a little bit and look up the definition of resistance, which here it says is the act on the part of persons of resisting, opposing, or withstanding, which is not particularly helpful. The organized, covert opposition to an occupying or ruling power. That's an interesting spin that we haven't sort of noticed yet in our conversation. Ah, okay. So in psychoanalysis, opposition unconscious to allowing memories or desires which have been repressed as unacceptable or disruptive to emerge into the conscious mind. I think we've been talking a lot about that.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:03:17]:
Definitely.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:18]:
In the physical sciences, the opposition offered by one body to the pressure or movement of another. We explored that a bit. Well, nothing jumping out right now as well. Interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:03:29]:
Well, the ruling power one is interesting because one could think of my sense of myself, my ego, as the ruling power.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:38]:
Oh, interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:03:38]:
And that as I broaden and become something different, that guy's going to lose some authority.

Vision Battlesword [01:03:45]:
Yeah, you're right. That does kind of come back around to something you were talking about before. I'm trying to remember if it was actually, in this conversation or not, but the ego as the admiral shipshape. Right?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:04:00]:
Admiral ship shape. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:01]:
Yeah. So the interesting spin on that is it's not just, there's something more than just a sort of a child parental and child relationship in the act of resisting. But that's like the word resistance in the sense of like a resistance movement against an oppressor.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:04:20]:
Well, right. I mean, but there's, there's. Right, there's. There's two sides to that resistance. One is the oppressor wants to stay in charge, and then the. The smaller, less powerful want to dislodge them. I'd say in some ways, I would describe intrapsychic conflict as being a manifestation.

Vision Battlesword [01:04:41]:
Of that in the political sense, though, because I think there's like a political connotation to that use of the word resistance. Right. It's sort of like the disempowered group becomes the resistance to the empowered group. And I think oftentimes we also have a positive. We tend to take a positive view of whoever is in the resistance, maybe because of our revolutionary history or something.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:05:06]:
Right. And that's the proper use of the term. But if we actually look at the whole context, we would say the only reason the disempowered need to resist is because those in power are resisting their empowerment. They're setting up structures, which is a form of resistance to keep control.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:25]:
Well, now that's very meta. Yeah, I can see that.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:05:28]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:28]:
Okay, so the empowered group is resisting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:05:32]:
Loss, loss of control, and the resistance movement is trying to cost them control, trying to take them out of control.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:40]:
But what exactly are they resisting? When we say that they're the resistance in the way that you just framed it, they're not resisting. They're seeking power.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:05:50]:
Right, true, true.

Vision Battlesword [01:05:52]:
So it's actually the empowered group that's resisting. We should call them the resistance because they're resisting losing control.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:05:59]:
Yeah, I think both groups. One group prefers a status quo and one group dislikes the status quo.

Vision Battlesword [01:06:06]:
Right. Yeah, that would probably be the most fair treatment, I guess. Also sort of neutral and dispassionate treatment. Interesting. Okay, so there's a phrase that goes around sometimes, which is what we resist persists. Do you think that's true?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:06:28]:
I do, I do. To the extent that we resist it in black and white terms, to the extent we resist it wholeheartedly, I don't believe if we use it for pacing and for understanding that we're organic and we need to change at a measured pace, I don't believe it has to mean that in that case. But then again, you may not call it resistance. You may call it accepting the signals or honoring. Honoring the full data picture. You're like, okay, there's some reason this person. I mean, you guys do it when you're facilitating, you're paying close attention to how and why someone's resisting. And deeper than just, oh, this is going to destabilize my identity.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:07:16]:
There's also some strategy of nourishment that they're going to lose when that identity.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:23]:
Shifts, or possibly nourishment that they could gain, well, 100%.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:07:29]:
But the strategy that's worked in the past, I feel confident in, the strategy that may work in the future is very uncertain to me.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:38]:
Right. If I were facilitating, I might be tempted to ask the question, if that strategy is working so great for you, why are you here?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:07:46]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [01:07:49]:
But, yeah, no, I think I like what you said a minute ago about paying attention to signals. I don't remember the exact wording, but that's what we're doing when we encounter resistance is we're viewing it as a signal. Just like kind of earlier in the conversation when you said, now that's interesting. Now, what's that all about? Right? Like, that's sort of how we view it as well, is we view it as a signal of, there's something here. What is it?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:08:16]:
Right.

Vision Battlesword [01:08:16]:
We don't automatically assume that whatever it is is wrong or bad or unhelpful or not serving a useful purpose or even that. We don't assume that the person wants to change it, wants to transform it. That's really, really central to my philosophy, certainly, of facilitation and guidance is autonomy is kind of like my supreme North Star. But when we find some resistance, then we're curious about it. Like, okay, well, what's behind that, beneath that? What is that trying to tell us, you know, in terms of our alignment with our true desires or our true goals.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:09:02]:
Yeah. And our habituated unconscious strategies. My philosophy, and my view is very much aligned with yours is I treat the resistance not as something to be overcome, but as a signal that we need to do some other work first.

Vision Battlesword [01:09:18]:
Well, what have you found in your own life and in your practice, for that matter, is the most effective, or what are the most effective tools, techniques, strategies that you know of for helping people to, you know, discover what their resistances are all about and transform them if they would choose to?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:09:39]:
You know, I'm not always right, but I have a really, really good knack for knowing what's being protected. It's just a several friends of mine are much better therapists than me. They're better trauma workers than me. But nobody I've met has this particular skill that I have. I know what's being defended, and I don't even need to mention it. I just start working it. I'll spend a couple of sessions working that and then three sessions, four sessions down the road, that resistance in me there anymore. And they're ready to touch into the thing that their psyche was like, no, no, no, to just a few weeks ago.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:10:16]:
It's a cue to me to change directions and go back fell. I don't fight with the resistance. I definitely don't try to bring a lot of consciousness to it. I don't want to anchor it or deepen it. I just go and start working on the nourishment that's behind it.

Vision Battlesword [01:10:33]:
And what you just said, you kind of brought up and you mentioned ifs a little bit earlier as well. So when you were just describing, kind of working with those layers of resistance until they soften and maybe dissolve and maybe fall away so that whatever is behind it that feels maybe too scary, too sensitive, too painful for them to touch into, as you put it. I think of the word protector. Do you sometimes think of those resistances as protectors?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:11:05]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I absolutely don't want to challenge or defang the protector in any way. So I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even use the phrase that I'm working with the resistances. I'm actually honoring the protector. The protector just told me something about this person's internal structure, and I'm then using that to go and solve what the protector has been working very, very hard on protecting. And by solving that, then the protector can pick another area of the fort to guard.

Vision Battlesword [01:11:36]:
What do you think those protectors are like? How do you imagine or conceptualize the mechanics of psychology? And when we use these, a lot of this language that we use seems to be kind of metaphorical in some ways, but I'm curious to know what people's models are like. What do you think a protector is?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:11:59]:
I think it is the manifestation of the genetic drive for homeostasis, preservation. I think at the most coarse level, it's trying to prevent destabilization, and it knows all the safety and nourishment strategies that have been run for years, and it doesn't. Its job is to not let those get upended.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:22]:
But we personify parts or protectors or things sometimes in different models and different lexicon ways of talking about things. Do you think of it as a person? Do you think it, does it have a personality?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:12:35]:
Yes, I actually love. So one thing I really like about chinese culture and several buddhist cultures is here in the west, we say, oh, she's a chain smoker, he's an alcoholic, they have an eating disorder.

Vision Battlesword [01:12:54]:
Or to be more, sorry to cut you off, but to be more consistent with what you just said, they are bulimic. Right. Because the words you were using previously, I was noticing were identification language.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:13:07]:
That's correct. We in the west use, and I argue against this for these people adopting all these labels out of the DSM. Okay. Oh, I'm bipolar. Oh, I'm borderline. I'm codependent. I don't believe I am. That is useful.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:13:24]:
I love. The Chinese say she has a smoking ghost, he has a drinking ghost. Okay. He has a hungry ghost. They use the language of parts work and agendic agent working for some goal or some strategy. But it's not the whole being. Yeah, it's not the whole person.

Vision Battlesword [01:13:43]:
I love that. Yeah. That just makes so much sense to me. Dis identifying from the condition, the habit, the situation, whatever it is, the circumstance. I use the same language in my IAR framework, intentional, autonomous relating. I'm pretty strict about, or at least I strongly encourage, I guess, if you want to really truly adopt the language and the program to stop saying, I am in a relationship, but rather I have a relationship because it invites the question, like, what kind of relationship do you have? Whereas this language of I am in a relationship, both. First of all, it identifies with the relationship. So it's, you know, you're contained inside of it.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:14:28]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:29]:
It's become part of my identity. And also it assumes that there's only one kind.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:14:34]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:14:34]:
Which I just think is weird, you know, but there's. Yeah. Those kind of like linguistic flips or switch switch flips that you can do, especially with that kind of certain choice of verbs. A lot of times they're so powerful in how they. They totally change your thinking in your psychology. Like you're saying, like to say, I have. And I'm not even going to go down the, like kind of western medicalized, I have an eating disorder. I would prefer to stay away from that kind of language.

Vision Battlesword [01:15:06]:
But, you know, the chinese equivalent is you say, I have a hungry ghost. It describes a relationship, actually. That's so interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:15:15]:
It does. Yeah, it describes a relationship. And I've had people get very animated about how important it was for them to get a diagnosis. Now I can explain why I've been this way my whole life. It's such a relief. It's so comforting to know that I have this disease, this dsm label, this pathology, this whatever. And I get, I get. I understand, I'm not discounting that.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:15:44]:
There can be some emotional comfort in that. And as one of the things I've been fairly extensively trained in is hypnosis, ericksonian hypnosis, and if you understand that work, it's not a great idea to be labeling yourself in that way. Not a great idea, however comforting it may be much, much more useful to look at it as a ghost that's getting a need met, rather than I am. Much more useful.

Vision Battlesword [01:16:13]:
What is a ghost? What is that? So, coming back to my question about a protector, a protector is a person that we share this experience with, that we share this physical body with.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:16:29]:
I'd say that every organism that makes it to child rearing age and helps their children survive, done so by getting needs met. Now, the ways we get needs met are sometimes modeled by healthy parents. They're sometimes modeled by very dysfunctional caregivers. Sometimes they're modeled by some kind of collective archetypes, you know, jungian cultural archetypes of an identity. So I imagine a protector could come from a protective parent, a protector could come in response to an abusive parent. A protector could come from some kind of genetic or epigenetic generational passage that this is a role of symbolism. I mean, children seem to be able to adopt these roles and personalities in the family system without anyone telling them there's some source of knowledge where they're able to pull this role out. And I just would argue that a protector is one of those comes from one of those places, but its role is to get a need met.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:38]:
Do you think it has a physical location in the brain?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:17:44]:
That's a really great question, and I would say it absolutely does have a constellation of electrical activity in the nervous system.

Vision Battlesword [01:17:56]:
Locally, though, I mean. Or is it localized?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:17:58]:
By that, do you mean size? I'm saying I'm using constellation very intentionally because it's absolutely in the human nervous system. It's absolutely there. Sure. And it's a constellation of patterns and signals. Does it sit in one place, or is that part of the nervous system up in the brain?

Vision Battlesword [01:18:17]:
That's my question.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:18:17]:
No, not necessarily, but it's frequently very easy for us to identify the center of it, even though it extends out more widely than a single spot. But it's not typically hard for us to find the center of it. You did when you and I sat together. You felt some of that. Then sometimes as it shifts, the extent of its tentacles becomes more apparent.

Vision Battlesword [01:18:44]:
I see what you mean now. Okay. Yeah. And just because you and me are the only two who know what we're talking about at this moment, I'm just going to say that what you mean is that when I had a session with you, you were demonstrating your technique to me and we were exploring a program and a sensation that I was having, or rather, what I'm saying is that the program we were exploring turned out to have a physical sensation that was localized in a very specific part of my body.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:19:13]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:14]:
Now, the fact that I felt it there doesn't necessarily mean it's localized there. That sensation can be generated somewhere in my brain. Correct?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:19:28]:
Sure. I would say the ability to even notice that there has to be an interpretation in your brain, and yet something about your overall nervous system is the. The symbolic part of your brain is saying, this is the spot where it's centered. This is the spot where it originates.

Vision Battlesword [01:19:46]:
Right. Symbolic, yes. Yeah. So I guess where I'm going with all of this is I've been really interested these days in exploring more deeply, like going beyond the metaphors that we oftentimes use when we're working with people, playing with people, exploring our own consciousness. And I really want. I'm very, very curious about the nuts and bolts of it. I'm curious about, okay, I have discovered a protector in myself. Apparently I can have a conversation with this part.

Vision Battlesword [01:20:22]:
Apparently I am of two minds in this moment. Or there. There is at least I at least have an ability to shift perspectives, have an ability to shift roles. I can query and interrogate different parts of my consciousness, different parts of my memory, my present moment experience, as if there's a person there that I'm communicating with. I. Who is me? Who am I to communicate with something else? These questions fascinate me. And coming back to kind of the neuroanatomy that we explored, like at the beginning of the conversation, I'm starting to wonder if parts are parts, really parts, physical parts in some cases, or if to your point about, there seem to be these four archetypes that are real, consistent, that are like templates that people can draw on. And parts as we discover them, tend to not always, but consistently, frequently fall into these patterns of a protector or a manager or a firefighter, etcetera.

Vision Battlesword [01:21:37]:
But my sense is that this is all metaphorical language. Like, these are sort of models of interpreting our experience. And I'm just really curious to continue to ask people like yourself and, you know, others and look into my own experience and just continue to do this kind of both physical, like, research on all levels. Right. Physical, spiritual, psychological, or any other aspects of our experience that I can get my hands on to kind of put all the pieces together into some sort of a working framework of when we bump up against something in ourself that seems to be a person or seems to be a ghost or seems to be a fractured part of ourself that occurs at a very specific age or moment in time, what is that? To a certain extent, it's good enough that we can give it a name and we can work with it, and we people can move through resistance. They can experience growth. They can experience healing. They can become more resourced and highly capable and all of these great things.

Vision Battlesword [01:22:49]:
And I want to go further than that. I want to know what that is. Right, right.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:22:54]:
Well, yes. So ifs gestalt, somatic experiencing, and several other models are all based on this idea that there are these parts kind of either being protected or protecting or managing. That's a really common theme. And when you ask if they are real or just metaphors, I would flip around. I'd ask the question, would it be useful to facilitate a conversation between them? Would we still get benefit out of that process, of that practice if there wasn't something tangible there? In other words, the scientific method, our number one tool for understanding the universe is we push on the universe and we see how it responds, and it's. Does the plane stay in the air or not? Okay. If it stays in the air, the wing is designed properly for aerodynamics, and then we work out the math later. Yeah.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:23:52]:
So I would say that if something is working functionally, that tells that there's enough substance there that we're connecting with to, in some ways, trust it.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:05]:
Oh, I believe that, and I know that to be true. It's just my nature to want to take the Lego blocks apart and see what the pieces are.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:24:18]:
Well, let's take another. Another slice of it. And that's possibly. So. That's that. Taking the Lego blocks is very much a left hemisphere activity, and we might try to switch into the right hemisphere and say, you can never step into the same river twice. If my nervous system and my personhood is continually flowing and developing, then at any one point where some significant lesson gets encoded, it's encoded for that Dewey. Not the Dewey that's here today, but.

Vision Battlesword [01:24:51]:
Also, I mean, would you agree that the more we learn about how the actual physical brain works, through neuroscience, through MRI, through all the different kind of physical studies, as well as the kind of spiritual work that we do, going into psychedelic states, altered states of consciousness, things where we're not going to be articulating these experiences in purely scientific or rational or reasonable terms or even discernible language, correct even words, right? These two wildly different domains. And yet, the more that we learn in each of these areas, as well as through these kind of explorations of our emotional experience, of our psychological experience and all these different things that can be done through metaphor, like through this kind of role play, this kind of conversational dialectic, this somatic experiencing, all of these different methods. But the more we learn in all of these different domains, don't you agree? Or do you agree that it's helpful for me? I could perhaps get to a certain level of mastery, competence, self realization, through just a pure metaphorical understanding of, well, if I treat this thing as a person and I treat this thing as a child and I treat this thing as a whatever, I can get these things to talk to each other and I can get a result. And also, if I can do that and I have an awareness of, okay, when I'm treating this thing as a child, that's hitting your right lower brain, and I know that that's also triggering these experiences in the nervous system, and I know that that also has a point of spiritual awareness to it. In other words, more sources of knowledge, more domains of knowledge to draw on. Could it make our awareness and therefore mastery better? Is that a different form of growth?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:26:59]:
Yeah, you know, I'm not sure where I come down on that. I know that Ian McGilchrist is very fond of saying, we're not machines. You're not the sum of your parts, and that the interrelatedness and the interplay between all these parts is more real than the functioning of any one of the parts. You know, the other thing I'd say is that. I mean, my fantasy long ago, because I'm an engineer, I'm a bit of a scientist, long though I worked on engines as a mechanic. I have this fantasy about understanding the mechanics of how a flower blossoms and using a screwdriver to facilitate it. But I think that is a residue from my Peter Pan days. I don't believe that a complex system can be interacted with in the destructuring manner that my left hemisphere and your left hemisphere would prefer, because it's a complex system.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:27:56]:
It's way, way more dynamic and more sophisticated and 20 steps ahead of us. So I've kind of come to a more spiritual place with it. And I also feel one of the area I can make a really strong claim is that certain part of the brains, their language is symbolic and metaphorical. They don't use language. They can't use language. And everything is kind of turtles or holons all the way down. It's interesting questions. I don't know if or when we'll get the clear picture there.

Vision Battlesword [01:28:37]:
Yeah, I just want to. One more time, just to kind of close the loop on what I was saying before, I guess, what interests me and what I find to be in my own life, I've had more sort of quantum leaps or breakthroughs or increases of awareness and understanding of the world when I've brought together seemingly disconnected bodies of knowledge.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:29:04]:
True.

Vision Battlesword [01:29:05]:
I couldn't have possibly predicted, you know, before I had the experience that hunting, that learning to hunt for food would create the most meaningful breakthrough that I've ever had in my life. In the realm of empathy, like those two things, I wouldn't have seen that coming.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:29:23]:
Yeah, beautiful.

Vision Battlesword [01:29:24]:
You know, so that's how I look at this, this whole idea of consciousness and the human experience. It's not that I want to take the tinker toys apart just for the sheer intellectual pleasure or satisfaction of, like, the watchmaker being able to spread all the pieces on the table or even to have the mastery of knowing how to put them all back together again, although all of those things are interesting to me, like, it is fascinating to me just to know, and I do actually want to have more mastery over my own consciousness and thereby also be able to help other people more. But it really is just for the sheer desire to learn, to push the boundaries, to grow, to get it like that just lights me up. And, you know, all of the other things are collateral benefits to me.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:30:14]:
Curiosity is a beautiful, beautiful trait. Yeah. I had a teacher tell me one time, really masterful. Probably the most masterful teacher I had. He said, if I have a client with this particular issue, I'll tell them I'm not gonna even work with them unless they do a specific set of weight exercises. At the same time. He was so keyed in that the psychological issue they were struggling with was directly reinforced and carried in the body, that he didn't think it would be any use, and he was a true master. Didn't think there'd be any use working with this person unless they actually activated certain neural pathways to help with the work.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:30:54]:
And I always remember that I'm naming that in response to, you talk about combining disciplines yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:31:01]:
Yeah. Well, and that's the whole. That's kind of the foundation of integral theory to begin with, is combining seemingly perpendicular disciplines or domains of knowledge and creating a more multidimensional picture of reality and thereby gaining new understanding. Like, you know, the reflection of one discipline into the other helps us gain understanding in both. I guess that's kind of the idea behind it. But anyway, that was a very long digression from resistance. So unless there's anything else that was on your mind that you wanted to talk about, I'll just kind of ask.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:31:38]:
Hmm. I'll just put this out there as a can. I can. I've got a ton of written material I'd like to organize into a book. If there's a writer that this subject is interesting, they can get in touch with me.

Vision Battlesword [01:31:51]:
Fantastic.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:31:51]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:31:52]:
And this is material all about resistance.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:31:55]:
A large. It's about psychological priorities, which resistance is one aspect of. Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:01]:
Nice.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:32:02]:
Yeah.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:03]:
Cool.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:32:03]:
Yeah. I don't have the time or the skill to organize it into a book, but if I can find somebody that's really passionate about the material, then like, to work a deal, so.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:13]:
Sounds awesome. Well, the word is out. If you want to leave me and everyone with a word of wisdom about what to do with resistance, what would it be?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:32:25]:
Notice counterintuitive decisions when it comes to cost benefit analysis, you notice that you're halfway there. You're like, well, that's interesting.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:35]:
I'm choosing a less preferable outcome for some reason.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:32:38]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:38]:
Is that what it is?

Dewey Gaedcke [01:32:39]:
Yes.

Vision Battlesword [01:32:40]:
Interesting.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:32:41]:
And I'm not judging it. It's actually wise. As I said in the beginning of this conversation, resistance and denial is a feature, not a bug. It's a feature. It's to be honored. It's to be respected. But it also teaches you something about what your unconscious is doing, and that's very useful to be curious about.

Vision Battlesword [01:33:00]:
I like that. That seems like a perfect place to end. If we notice ourself doing something counterintuitive, that might be a signal that there's some interesting resistance that we could get curious about and learn something about ourself.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:33:16]:
Absolutely.

Vision Battlesword [01:33:17]:
I love it. Thank you so much for this topic, Dewey. This was really a lot of fun.

Dewey Gaedcke [01:33:22]:
Thanks for inviting me. Loved it. Really great conversation.