🏮 e1 // Pretend To Be Who You Really Are
This one’s for the shapeshifters. 🦊✨
In episode one we go full !foxmagic.
You might find this episode affirming if you are a complex character who plays many roles in life.
If you contain multitudes (you do) and yet sometimes struggle to live up to “Your True Authentic Self”—this episode is thy remedy. Stay awhile and listen as we dissolve the involuted notion of a singular “true authentic self” and instead decentralise our quest for authenticity—orienting instead towards authentic relating. In this way, we embrace the multiple personas we have, experiencing their contradictions as a generative force.
This episode was crafted in response to the following question from a long-time subscriber of The Museletter. (Subscribe for free at foxwizard.com)
I have been challenging myself to release or tear down my personas. (The whole once-a-Marine-always-a-Marine thing is real!) I have tended to feel chameleonesque, like a pretender. But I see you embracing and seemingly curating your manifestations.
How do you do that!? And, is it comfortable?
I swear a few times in this episode, and it’s probably not safe for work (my work). But I suspect you’ll enjoy it.
Keywords: personas, authenticity, self-development, fluidity, relational dynamics, emotional acuity, complexity, growth
Chapters
00:00 Whomst art thou?
02:29 This is take #78
03:20 A question of personas
07:17 The question as asked
07:46 Masks of amplified aspects of authenticity
10:00 Development as complexification
11:37 Authentic relating > authentic self
12:14 Waters; disturbed
14:26 Personas; muddled
17:36 An inescapably fluid character
19:10 Only that which can change
19:45 This podcast is for the shapeshifters
20:56 Embrace thy contradictions
22:06 Oh hello, MOLOCH
23:44 Hermetic mercuriality
26:38 Playing your Part
28:15 Who’s right?
29:33 Read the room
30:52 Embrace thy personas and parts
33:12 OODA loops
36:27 Chameleons are actually pretty fkn cool
39:04 Before tending comes pre-tending
41:34 Courting contrast and contradiction
43:35 Embracing and seemingly curating
49:57 And… is it comfortable?
54:50 Lean towards complexification
58:12 Thank you for listening
References
- Shout out to this podcast episode with Dr Myriam Hadnes, wherein we discuss—amidst many things, including the delicate sautéing of onions—how traumatic family dynamics can give rise to some deft facilitation sensibilities
- I make reference to this fantastic episode On Trauma and Vegetation Gods by Josh Schrei on The Emerald Podcast
- I, of course, reference James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games. The full quote from the passage I read can be found below.
- I have been finding sweet confluence betwixt the sensibilities of “The Fourth Way” (by Gurdjieff)—coupled with Layman Pascal’s Gurdjieff for a time between worlds—along with No More Gold Stars by Carol Sanford. And many other developmentally-inclined works besides.
- The notion of “authentic relating”—whilst utterly intuitive and natural—was probably coalesced for me by Nora Bateson. I’ve listened to many podcasts with her as a warmly weaving guest. The technological metamodernist Stephen Reid has an exquisite set of knowledge graphs. Here’s one with Nora Bateson + the term “relationship”.
NO ONE CAN PLAY A GAME ALONE. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others.
Simultaneously the others with whom we are in relation are themselves in relation. We cannot relate to anyone who is not also relating to us. Our social existence has, therefore, an inescapably fluid character. This is not to say that we live in a fluid context, but that our lives are themselves fluid. As in the Zen image we are not the stones over which the stream of the world flows; we are the stream itself. As we shall see, this ceaseless change does not mean discontinuity; rather change is itself the very basis of our continuity as persons. Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.