E212 - Dr. Shefali: How To Raise Conscious Children (It Starts With You)

I sat down with Dr. Shefali, clinical psychologist trained at Columbia and the voice behind the Conscious Parenting Movement for over two decades, to explore what it really means to parent from awareness instead of ego. We talk about the illusion of the perfect parent, why children are our greatest mirrors, and how the wounds we carry from our own childhoods get passed down unless we do the work to see them clearly. Dr. Shefali doesn't offer a script. She offers a practice of humility, one that asks us to look at ourselves before we look at our kids. What We Dive Into: 1. Dr. Shefali explains that most parenting struggles trace back to ego, the desire to control, to be right, to see your child as an extension of your own unmet dreams. Real conscious parenting means constantly questioning whether your actions come from your child's essence or your own unresolved story. 2. Without rites of passage or male mentors, boys are left to figure out masculinity through porn and the manosphere. Dr. Shefali argues that testosterone, purpose, and physical challenge need healthy outlets, and that community, not isolation, is what turns raw masculine energy into something protective and grounded. 3. Dr. Shefali describes how social media exploits children's developing brains, especially girls', feeding insecurity and manufacturing endless standards to chase. She calls it algorithmic abduction, a process that outsources parenting itself and leaves children disconnected from their own inner voice. Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself. https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: https://www.wakingup.com/knowthyself https://www.im8health.com/knowthyself code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer https://www.buylarine.com/knowthyself for up to 50% off on remineralizing gum ___________ 00:00 Intro 01:51 Defining Conscious Parenting 03:35 Inviting Grace Into Parenting 07:20 Children as the Ultimate Mirror 10:25 Where Support Slips Into Control 11:07 Protecting the Developmental Years 14:05 What a Human Birth Means 17:17 Nature, Nurture, and the Cost of Pushing 21:43 Why Raise Sons and Daughters Separately 26:01 The War on Little Boys 30:54 What the Manosphere Gets Right 38:10 Male Loneliness and Silence 42:45 The Father Wound 47:08 What Conscious Masculinity Looks Like 52:08 Algorithmic Abduction of Girls 58:20 Empowering Girls Beyond Appearance 1:02:31 Boundaries and Sharing Power 1:09:28 Dr. Shefali's Own Hardest Lesson 1:14:43 Preparing to Become a Parent 1:16:42 Parenting With a Misaligned Partner 1:22:13 Sibling Differences and Favoritism 1:33:09 Escaping the Perception Prison 1:38:05 The Mother Bind 1:40:50 Confused Messages About Sexuality 1:45:05 The Machine Behind It All 1:55:16 Closing Message to Parents ___________ ✨MORE FROM DR. SHEFALI↳New Raising Conscious Sons / Daughters Books: https://www.drshefali.com/raisingconscious-daughters-sons/↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctorshefali/↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@doctorshefali⁩ https://studio.youtube.com/channel/UCKzsU94h-PkLBiF5xHo-SjQ ↳https://www.drshefali.com 📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF ↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l ↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/ ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/ 👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00André Duqum?

  How do you become a conscious parent?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Have no illusion that you're going to do this perfectly. Most parents are a raving lunatic once a week. And that's the problem. Because you can control the living daylights out of your child. The child doesn't know. They're innocent. You are God for them. So how you play God is really a testament to your wisdom or your ego. Follow my script, be in my movie. We're trying to literally put our chip of who we are into them. And then we're very upset when they discard the chip or the chip malfunctions. We don't realize that we parent the child outside based on how we have parented or unparented the child within us. We're passing down generational bullshit. And that's why we have the world we have today.

• 0:46André Duqum?

  If you had to tell every parent one message, what would it be?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Have you seen yourself? Have you lived with yourself? Having that humility allows you to let go of parts of you that may not be serving your children or yourself. Children are our greatest awakeners. It takes just one conscious parent to change the world. Conscious parenting is not a strategy. It is the embodiment of your own awakening.

• 1:17André Duqum?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Know thyself Podcast. Our guest today is a clinical psychologist trained at Columbia. She is a multiple times bestselling author and the founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. For over two decades, she's really been bridging Western psychology and Eastern philosophy all around what it means to be a conscious parent. Dr. Shefali, thank you for being here.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Of course, I'm so happy to be here.

• 1:40André Duqum?

  Yeah, I've been looking forward to connecting for a while. For people that are new to the term conscious parenting, I think most of us could assume what that's alluding to. But how do you define that phrase?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Well, it means all things conscious, right? But in a nutshell, it really speaks to the parent understanding that their sacred obligation is to raise their own inner self, to raise their own inner child, the child within them that could be hurt or wounded or unprocessed, that's carrying all this pain from their childhood. And that's their primary responsibility. And from that place of healing, then they can parent the child outside of them, right? So it kind of turns the spotlight away from the real child outside to the real child inside.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  And so often, we don't realize that we parent the child outside based on how we have parented or unparented the child within us. You know, I tell parents the degree to which you judge your children, the degree to which you're critical of your children, the degree to which you accept or don't accept your children, you punish or don't punish. All of it is a mirror of your own relationship with yourself.

• 3:04André Duqum?

  There are so many avenues I'm excited to dive into that I think will really support people. We had community from our audience and in questions as well, people that are parents. I'm yet to be one, although I'm very intrigued. Before we do that, to set the stage, I think becoming a parent can feel quite daunting. You're stepping into this great unknown and it can feel burdensome and very challenging at times to realize that you have this responsibility and this physical child. And then you also have your unprocessed inner child.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:34André Duqum?

  So how do you like to invite grace into the picture? You know, to have people frame this conversation in the place they listen to it from, not like another task or thing to do add on to their to do list, but rather a place to come from that is actually embracing more of self.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think what I often say to parents that can be very relieving is have no illusion that you're going to do this perfectly. Like have no illusion, like kill it, kill your, that's your ego, that you have this idea. You know, I had this vision that my child and I would do yoga in tandem and the sun would dapple through the windows and we would be in sync and we would meditate together. And none of it ever happened, like not even close, right? But I had visions of grandeur based on myself and my own expectation, my own movie. So I often tell parents, like, that is all your own ego. That's your own projection of who this child will be

• 4:34Speaker 01

  and who you will be with this child. No one ever expects that they will be a raving lunatic. But most parents are a raving lunatic once a week, right? So I teach parents to lean into the grace that you will screw it up, you will fuck it up, you will be spending money on therapy, you will look at yourself and go, how did I become worse than my parents? And that is part of the humbling of the ego. That is the invitation to look at your unprocessed self, your unhealed self. If you think you're going to be perfect, imagine that there's such a thing and that you are actually perfect,

• 5:18Speaker 01

  which doesn't exist, but say that happened. What you will be missing in that, say you were the most perfect parent with the most perfect kid, which is no kid, no parent ever. What you don't realize is you will be missing the most profound invitation to look at yourself. So do you want perfection? Or do you want the most profound evolution that you don't even know you need? I know many parents are like, I'll take perfection. Give me the perfect kid. But that is banal, it's boring, and it doesn't even exist. So let's break that. Let's shatter that illusion that you will even come close to perfection.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  And instead, invite in the possibility for your greatest evolution through the parent-child relationship. Children are, I say, our greatest awakeners. Every relationship is an awakener. But man, the relationship with your child, and I'll tell you why, it's because there's such a hierarchy, because you can control the living daylights out of your child, right? They don't know. They're innocent. They're looking at you. They're not that smart. They don't have game. They don't have street smarts. You are God. So how you play God, you know, is really a testament to your wisdom or your ego.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Because you can get away with anything as a parent, especially in the younger years, right? They don't, they can never push back. No one's watching you. There's no supervision, no license. No one's doing continuing ed checkup on you. At best, you may have an annoying partner who goes like, wow, you're really unconscious, but you can hide from them too. So how you manage the ego in a relationship where you can have ego and where culture says you must have ego, that is a testament to wisdom and consciousness.

• 7:20André Duqum?

  I love the analogy that you gave there of just like, there's no place left to hide. It becomes the ultimate mirror for where you're stuck, where you still need to grow and embrace your own inner child. And it seems like children unfailingly become their parents, not just what they say or what they're told, but that mirror their behavior. And I'm curious your thoughts on that. Because I think that we, I think a lot of parents probably try to approach parenting from like doing, saying the right things and shaping the right way. How much do you see it as just embodying the characteristics you would wish to see cultivated?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  All of it, right? So parents have this illusion that if I just said the right thing and if somebody could just give me the script, I would get away with being a good parent. I'll do it. I'll actually be a good parent. And that is such a great delusion. And it's a trap because you go looking for the right thing to say and find that perfect strategy. But conscious parenting is not a strategy. It is the embodiment of your own awakening. So the more you awaken to your own self, to your own healing, the more you live in abundance, that is what your child will absorb, right?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  So you cannot attack anxiety in your child by telling your child to not be anxious. You can attack anxiety in your child by being okay with anxiety yourself. Like anxiety can come visit and you're okay with it. That's how your child will become okay with anxiety. But everyone's looking for the medication and the perfect script to control the moods of our children. We're all trying to control our children's moods, their thoughts, their opinions. We're trying to literally put our chip of who we are into them, right? And then we're very upset when they discard the chip or the chip malfunctions. You're like, hello, this is not how the chip is supposed to go.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  This, follow my script, be in my movie. So I teach parents how to discard their movie and to truly embrace the unknown aspects of your child. And the more unknown they are to you, the more discovery, the more curiosity, the more the adventure. But no, we don't want that, right? Because it's too scary to be in the unknown of who this child could be. So we give them a prescription list. That's how we were all raised. You will be this religion, you will have this sexuality, you will have these friends, you will think this way, and you will have the same views I have. And to a large degree, that would be okay if the parent was awakened. But if the parent is not awakened,

• 10:12Speaker 01

  we're passing down generational bullshit. And that's why we have the world we have today, because we're just passing down that pain, those toxic belief systems, and no one is examining them.

• 10:25André Duqum?

  I think it's a big motivating factor when you see, everyone sees the light that's present in the eyes of children.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:34André Duqum?

  And they re evoke that play, that light within us, the parts of us we forgot that we at some point forego. And with that, you feel like the responsibility of, oh, I want to steward this life the best I can. And there is like a discernment there between where genuine support and mentoring or creating the space and the guiding slips into control and slips into, I want my kid to be this.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:07André Duqum?

  And I've heard you really speak to the importance of protecting the developmental years for play in the body. And so what do you think most people need to be reminded in regards to those early stages of development?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness, that childhood is its own sovereign developmental stage. Many of us have children to raise them into becoming an adult. So children are seen as mini adults. And I tell parents, they're not mini adults, they're children. Like, just call them children. Why are you trying to make them extensions of the adult? They have nothing to do with adults. One day, they will grow. But if we don't treat childhood as its own sovereign, very, very sacred space in a human life, we will pollute it with adult values and adult ways of being,

• 12:04Speaker 01

  which run contrary to what children need. So let me explain that children are the closest to, you can say, source, to essence, to authenticity as we can be. They come kind of pure to themselves. And we haven't yet contaminated them with all our bullshit, right? Like, oh, who to believe in, what to believe in. And we pray on this day and we do this on this day. So at least for a few hours, they are just themselves, right? Till the parent gets them into their egoic power. So how much can we hold back that ego? And allow those early years, zero to three, for sure.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Three to seven, even better. Seven to 15, wow, now you've given your children a childhood. How can we allow those years to be slow? To be about being? To be about stillness? To be about boredom? To be about unrestricted play? Because play is a child's language. How can they stay in that dreamlike state? And discover time-space on their own unfolding? Without us hurrying them up? Without us polluting them with supervised activities and linear timelines? And, you know, we try to wake them up before they're ready.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  And it runs against who it is they are. Children live in the present. Adults clash with that time zone because we live in the future and the past. That's why I say they are the gurus of the present moment. They are your teachers for how to meditate and be in the moment. But we don't do that. We take them into our anxieties. And then we wonder why they're so anxious. Because they're not able to process the chaos and the demands of an adult world. They are not developmentally ready to do that. And we put all that before they're ready.

• 14:07André Duqum?

  What do you, it's a bit of like a kind of philosophical question and also pulls maybe a bit on your kind of eastern understanding. But how do you view like what a human birth is? You know, because I've loved the prophet from Khalil Gibran. You know, your parents, you know, your children don't come from you, they come through you. And the many different ways it's been said. It's like, to a degree, some sorrow will inevitably contaminate, so to speak. Or it's the game we're here to play. The children, as they go into the world. But I think by viewing children, like you said, they have that connection to source. They have that light. And like viewing them for what they are and not just what they can become, like helps us understand and create the right environment for them. So it's kind of a meta question.

• 14:52André Duqum?

  But like, what do you see as the responsibility of stewarding a human birth and what that means?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  You know, on one level, it is the most profound, the most sacred, the most pivotal thing in the world. But in the cosmic dance of life, it's also, you're not God. You know what I mean? Like, don't overdo it. You know, like, oh, my God, this is my child. And it's so sacred and special. You know, your child is one more animal in the world. And all of us animals are sacred, right? Like, sometimes we aggrandize ourselves that we are so anointed by some power to be. We're not. We're part of this whole cosmic dance. But within that dance, there is so much beauty here. But we shouldn't let our egos take over and make this about creating

• 15:41Speaker 01

  the next, you know, prophet, you know, the next great savior of the world. Because we can let our ego run into how special we are and how special our children are. I often tell parents, you know, your child is not that special. Very unique, but no more special than anyone else. Because it's this desire to be special that comes from ego and creates the need for superiority. And superiority, as we know, creates separation. We need to look at all children as our children. No matter what religion, what race, what part of the world. So when I gave birth to my daughter,

• 16:25Speaker 01

  I suddenly felt connected to all children and all mothers and to the child I was and to the child my dad was and the child my mother was. So if you can look at it as a connector in a long lineage and in the expanse of all living beings, now you are in the flow of the cosmic dance. But if you suddenly look at yourself and your child is all very special and you're here to kind of create the next coming of Christ, then you get into a trippy headspace, you know? And you push your kid and you push your kid to become something, your trophy, your brand ambassador. And you parent out of ego. And parenting out of ego is a lot of work. It's expensive, it's exhausting.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  It's very unsatisfying because the ego never stops. Like, where do you stop with the ego?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 17:48André Duqum?

  So what's the fine line there between nature and nurture? Because, you know, I remember watching this documentary on Judith Polgar and the Polgar sisters, like the greatest, she's the greatest woman, female chess grandmaster of all time. And her dad, you know, like sought out a wife to say, hey, we are going to create these children grandmasters. And they become, they became the best. And yet, like, yeah, it feels weird to say that someone's will was so shaping a young life. Maybe that wanted to be developed in another way. I don't know. But it does seem like oftentimes, and I'm sure I'll watch back this podcast when I have my own kids for my own, this is own advice,

• 18:33André Duqum?

  this like, this tendency to externalize and have our children be a faulty surrogate for our unachieved dreams.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly, exactly. Well, in my humble opinion, nature will always win, you know? And I feel good about that. Like, I'm glad that I can only work with my child within what its nature is. I cannot create a basketball player of the world, a star, if the genetic potential isn't there. So the genetic potential sets the stage. And then how the actors play on the stage depends on the nurture. But your example, or take the example of Venus and Serena, those are very, very rare outliers where genetics and nurture, nature and nurture kind of allowed for a spark.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  But you have to always ask, at what cost? We're not seeing the cost of, you know, we're seeing the doing and we're seeing the presentation and the persona. We're not seeing the cost, the emotional cost it takes for the parent to push that? Because now the parent has given up their own life and their own dreams and they're creating this. And for that child, who is now a puppet in the hands of the parent, to be done to, oh, chess master, ballet dancer? Like, it's a crap shoot. Like, what does the parent want to puppeteer? Right? And it's really playing God on some level. And we're doing it for what reason? Greatness? A great chess player? What does that even mean, right?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Like, how much do we really care about that in the grand cosmic dance of life?

• 20:14André Duqum?

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you even look at MJ, right? For people that saw the Michael Jackson movie and saw Joseph, you know? His father, who, I mean, without that environment, he would not have been who he was. And yet, he suffered immensely for it. So it's like.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  He wouldn't have been the MJ that we know, the Michael Jackson that we know. But we don't know what kind of Michael Jackson he would have been.

• 20:36André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  And it is a false certainty that we seem to have that he would have been anything less great because he wasn't a superstar, right? What is greatness, right? If we measure greatness by fame and popularity and global stardom, then maybe he wouldn't have been great. But is that greatness?

• 20:59André Duqum?

  That's a great question to ask, right? Because a lot of people would put that as the bucket of greatness. And yet, maybe success, maybe greatness is more defined in the quality of one's true fulfillment and happiness in life. And because trauma usually does generate this urge to prove something in the world that drives them to great achievements. But potentially lacking that feeling internally.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Well, we know he, I think we know that he couldn't sleep well on his own.

• 21:29André Duqum?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  So just there, right?

• 21:31André Duqum?

  No, that's how he died, off the sleeping.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Right, right. So just there, right? A person's nervous system isn't calm enough, soothes enough, that they can fall asleep in their own space and body with their own rhythm? That's his volumes.

• 21:46André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  So how disconnected is the parent willing to make the child to serve an external goal? That is the question. How much do you want to push your child's disconnection from their own self and their own unfolding to serve a goal that comes from your own ego?

• 22:12André Duqum?

  So you've been in this field for decades. You've written so many books. You've written new ones specifically for Raising Conscious Sons and Conscious Daughters. Maybe we can start with the sons. Why did you feel like it was important to separate the two? And then we can dive into some of your pillars and frameworks that can really support people for people that are, you know, about to be one day will or currently are parents. I think these frameworks could be very, very supportive.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think these are the two books. So I have these two companion books that are coming out together. And the reason I did that, I separated them, which was a little risky because I didn't want to reduce people to gender. This is not about that. This is about paying homage to the natural blueprint of boys and girls, of males and females. And that we do have a blueprint and how that blueprint manifests is up to each person. But we do have a neurochemistry. We do have a hormonal trajectory that if parents could plug into and attune to, they could help the child flourish rather than inadvertently suppress the child.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  So the boys book really, Raising Conscious Sons, was my motivator. And then, of course, I couldn't leave the girls out. But I started with the boys because I was looking around our world and was worried, nauseatingly so, at this wounded male problem I see in adult males, like in our leaders, and how they are toddlers stampeding for power, attention, and validation. And it was its stomach turning to watch our leaders, our male leaders, take us down, take us further away from heart and essence and connection in the slavery to fame and money

• 24:08Speaker 01

  and corruption and dominance and power. So watching that and getting tired of being angry and wanting to do something with my anger, I began to question, you know, okay, we can keep protesting. We can keep being angry. We can wake up every day and feel anxious. But let's look deeper into how did these men come to be? And that took me back to the parent. And I wanted to help parents raise sons consciously so they don't grow up to be assholes, you know? Like, can we have less assholes in the world? How could I help that? So I wanted to give parents a blueprint for conscious masculinity. So I did research. I talked to men.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  I interviewed boys. I interviewed girls. I interviewed women, mothers, and really tried to liberate parents with solutions so that they too could be less anxious. Because I know we are all, all parents right now vibrating with high anxiety because we're watching our children be abducted. You know, I call it the algorithmic abduction of childhood. We're watching our parenting be outsourced and we are outsourcing our own parenting because it's so much easier to, with a flick of a button, you have your child enraptured for hours and you can have peace. You can have a glass of wine with your friends. You can go to the gym. Your kid will still be sitting there abducted by the algorithm, right? So on one hand, we're alarmed. But on the other hand, we don't know how to help

• 25:39Speaker 01

  because we're abducted. We're distracted. And boys especially are given these very confusing messages. Don't be like girls, right? So there's some misogyny there. Or don't be like a girl. And then, on the other hand, the manosphere is giving them this caricatured persona, you know, be 666 and then you'll be amazing and this looks maxing that boys are into now. So boys are being led by the manosphere and porn downstream and further away from themselves. And they look here and they're being told, don't be sensitive and soft and don't have feelings like a girl does. So they're like, okay, I know not to be like this

• 26:23Speaker 01

  and I know not to be like this, but who should I be like? And that's why I wrote the book, Raising Conscious Sons.

• 26:30André Duqum?

  I think it's helpful to see how every animal, plant life that is fostered in the right environment becomes what it's meant to be, right? And so like, we look at, for men and for boys, what are the fundamental needs that are not being met that create these fractured lines in their psychology? That creates all these issues that we see adult toddlers running around stampeding, living in their own erection. Now, what do you see as the erosion of the developmental stage for sons in particular that you speak to?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Wow, okay. So the first thing I see is a war on little boys by making them sit in like circle time and talk about your feelings. The boys, no, they need to run. Oh, they're having feelings, go run. The boys show their feelings through their body. They're always feeling just like girls. They don't feel less than girls, but they don't talk about their feelings. Because talking, left brain, feelings, right brain, need interconnection of the two hemispheres that girls have much earlier than boys. So boys need to be physical and run and, you know,

• 27:44Speaker 01

  be in an adventure and roughhouse and playhouse and climb trees. And it's the truth because they have testosterone and they have spikes of testosterone that need kinetic release and channeling. And the hormone of the pursuit of adventure and pleasure and power and competence and conquering and conquesting is testosterone. So we need to channel that and know that that is healthy. It's not something that should be suppressed. But there is a war against little boys in schools especially. And the school system doesn't support little boys. And it's mainly run by females who don't understand male testosterone and biology

• 28:27Speaker 01

  and neurochemistry and psychology and how to nurture it and not feel afraid of it and not shame it. So that's what's happening right away. And because fathers may tend to be absent, I think your generation has very tuned in fathers. But they too were raised by absent fathers for the most part. So even your generation of men are figuring out how to be consciously masculine. So women have the onus, typically mothers, to raise boys. But they can only raise boys to a certain point. At some point, the brotherhood, the uncles, the cousins, the male elders need to take over from the mother and go, now you've done your job.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  We're going to initiate him through physical challenge to test himself and challenge himself to know his limits physically. Because males are physical first. And then we will initiate him when he's ready into manhood. And the next place I see a big, abysmal dropping of the ball is in puberty for boys. Because they don't have this brotherhood, they have their first wet dream at night, uninitiated. No one's preparing them. And he's like, what on earth is happening to me? It feels good, but I don't know what to do with this. Where do I put this? And now his whole world has changed. And now he's very attracted

• 29:56Speaker 01

  and doesn't know what to do with his desire. No one's talking to him about consent and restraint and integration and conscious sexuality. And so that's where porn and the manosphere just fill that void. And he just goes, I must be a bad boy because my mother picks up my socks every day and, you know, makes a face or rolls her eyes and no one talks to me about what's happening to me at night or whenever. And then when he discovers porn, he's like, oh, my God. This is endless. This is fantastic. And then he never emerges from his room ever again. His mother's like, he never comes out of the shower, right? But who is talking to him about it? Who is helping him nurture that passageway to manhood?

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Every man I talk to in my interviews, I ask them, who helped you with your manhood and your sexuality when you were 12, 13, 14? They're like porn and magazines. I'm like, okay, that is not a relationship. And they said, yeah, we had nobody to talk to us. But the women, the mothers, all talk to their daughters at at least a basic level about their menstruation because it's observable. You have to talk about it. But so there's some initiation into womanhood, some. For males, it's the secrecy of the dark at night. And he's alone. So he equates that with some shame and some secrecy and suppression and hiding and stealth. It starts off like that, you know?

• 31:26Speaker 03

  The wheel was brilliant, but the road made it iconic. Electricity was powerful, but the grid brought it to every home. Innovation needs infrastructure. AI is no different, especially in finance, where AI can't run without context. But it can run on Plaid's infrastructure. Built over 13 years to understand why money moves. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com/ai to learn more.

• 31:57André Duqum?

  You've mentioned the manosphere a couple of times. And I think it's important to acknowledge, what are they getting right? What are they speaking to of the underdeveloped aspects? That we've had shame and guilt around, right? Because I think that points to not just like, you know, obviously, and I'm not saying you are, but all the stuff that the toxic masculine figures or whatever are doing or saying. But they are speaking to a fundamental aspect about us that hasn't been addressed.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Exactly, and that's why they're so successful. And you can't blame them for being successful. You have to ask, what is the void they're filling? What is the void porn fills? What is the void video games fill? That's what my books speak to. Stop blaming the influences that have influenced your kid and ask, how come I didn't influence them? What was the gap? So I love that question. I think what they're getting to speak to and address and soothe is that loneliness for the brotherhood. The loneliness for strong appearing men. These boys who don't have that are seeking it. Give me an idea of power. However.

• 33:06André Duqum?

  And direction.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:08André Duqum?

  Purpose.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Direction, purpose. Tell me where to put my energy. Unfortunately, these red pill communities direct it at minorities and women, like they're the problem. But as long as that energy has a place to go, it will go there. And then when you send that energy somewhere, you feel relief. So the manosphere has told these boys that they are entitled to women. They have a right to women. And when women reject them, it's not your fault that you're not developed enough or that you're not sensitive enough. It's their fault. So it gives a real, clear channel for their anger. And instead of teaching them to process rejection,

• 33:52Speaker 01

  to step back and fall back into your own body and know thyself, they are being told to, you know, outrage against women. And giving channels that are external always work because it's an easier way out.

• 34:11André Duqum?

  Yeah, I think of, you really mentioned like the lack of rites of passage. For a woman who goes into puberty, there's a clear physical sign of the transition point to some degree. Yeah, and you're right. As a guy, especially growing up in the Midwest, for me, like all my friends, you know, growing up, there's, I mean, there are no real, solid male mentors. There's no rites of passage or initiations into manhood. Like, none of that exists.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we all should be talking to each other in circles. This is happening to my body. Man, I'm having erections every two hours, one hour, right? And they've done studies where they put sensors on a male penis. It's having erections all the time. But no one's talking to them how to manage it. And then, after the one millionth erection, the wrong place, wrong time, and a girl gets into grave danger. Because that man has not been taught how to integrate his sexuality, which is turned on all the time.

• 35:14André Duqum?

  He wrote, "Takeaway movement and the boy shatters. Takeaway challenge and his self-worth dissolves. Takeaway brotherhood and he forgets who he is."

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:24André Duqum?

  And I resonate with that, you know? We're lacking that challenge, that brotherhood, that, you know, Jung is quoted, obviously, the, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you'll call it fate. And it feels like oftentimes we have these unexpressed, underexplored aspects of masculine or feminine tendencies that then like fracture into a distorted, what we call toxic version. And, you know, that's what I think is really great about some of these more conscious male rites of passage movements and containers where people go and they scream and they yell and they fight and they like explore those aspects of self. So they don't have this pent up primal animal living within them that's underexpressed

• 36:09André Duqum?

  that then distorts and controls in different ways.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And so if we don't bring out, you know, male aggression, male sexuality out into the open in a healthy container, like you said, it will mutate. And then you get the school shooter, or then you get the pedophile, or then you get the quote unquote cheater, and you're angry with him and you think it's just him. No, he is a symptom of what's happening culturally to men. And every time I show compassion to men, you know, women get upset. I don't have compassion to men. Because we've been so wounded by men, very wounded. For years, I did not have compassion for men. I was like, oh, they don't need compassion.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  They have so much advantage, you know, they can do with less compassion. But let me tell you, I was wrong. Because the only way to heal the wounded male that we are so angry with, the only way we will get through to them and heal the planet for our daughters and our co-sisters is through compassion, curiosity. Tell me what happened to you that made you such an, you know, insensitive person? Instead of me yelling at you for being insensitive, tell me what happened to you. And then I see the good in you. Because most men, sons, are raised by women.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  So are we so evil to raise these? No, so what happened there? And let's help mothers and let's help fathers connect to the beauty of the masculine in boys and in girls, but more in boys. And allow that masculine to feel like it can express itself and that it's a positive, benevolent force in this world. Masculinity is glorious. We need the masculine as much as we need the feminine. But we need an integrated masculine and an integrated feminine, a conscious masculinity.

• 38:14André Duqum?

  Hey, everyone. I wanted to share a new partner and resource that I love and I'm so stoked to be partnering with. I'm talking about Waking Up. There are no shortage of meditation apps out there, but this one, to me, clearly stands apart from the rest. It's less an app than a library. Some of the most potent teachings I found on the art of living well, from Buddhist philosophy and nonduality to modern psychology and guided practices. These are some of the favorite courses I've been loving recently. They even have the entire collected talks of Alan Watts on there. And also, my interview with Sam Harris that we had on Know Thyself. They've offered our community a 14-day free trial. Just go to wakingup.com/knowthyself. It's risk-free, and if you love this podcast,

• 38:57André Duqum?

  there is a very slim chance you wouldn't love what they have going on there, too. The quality is just creme de la creme. That's wakingup.com/knowthyself, or link in description as always. I hope you enjoy. Back to the show.

• 39:12André Duqum?

  It feels like so much of the silent epidemics of loneliness, which often can lead to suicide, which are largely males driven.

• 39:22André Duqum?

  We are less vocal as men. And when you hear boys say, "I'm fine," or the loneliness that comes from a lack of brotherhood. Anything else you want to add there?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're not fine, so don't take words, you know? "I'm fine." It's because men are not typically able to access their verbal vault. They have a lot of feelings, but words are not the way to the man's heart, you know? His physical self, his deep capacity to protect, to provide, to have purpose, to contribute. That's how he's showing you how he feels. So many mothers will come to me and say, "My son is so lazy," or "such a loser." All he does is, you know, he's on his video games or he's in the bathroom all the time, or he's just thinking about girls.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  And in her voice, I can hear castigation and shame and degradation because she doesn't understand. She's scared of him. He looks scary and apathetic and she's not figuring him out. And I help her to understand that the boy is not lazy because he is born this way. There is no such thing. He's that way because he's lost direction. He's lost purpose. He doesn't feel like he's useful in the world. And the more machines take over and the more masculinity doesn't have purpose to dig a hole or kill the beast or, you know, change the light bulb. And if we have more and more robots to do that and more and more machines to do that,

• 40:59Speaker 01

  masculinity withers away. Because masculinity flourishes when it feels like it is useful, like it has a purpose. I tell mothers and fathers all the time, give your boy's purpose from a young age, right? Like when he's two years old and he has to go brush his teeth, make him find the toothbrush. Even though it's a, you made it up, he will immediately focus if you give him something to discover. Because that's the blueprint of masculinity. It's a beautiful force that we are slowly neglecting in the pursuit of indulgence and luxury. We're taking away friction, which is one of the things testosterone needs to replenish itself, to feel like it has a place to go.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  You know, I want to overcome friction. Masculinity needs challenge. And when you take away friction and make life so easy, that's why these boys are withering away and are becoming more and more apathetic.

• 41:55André Duqum?

  It makes me think of video game addiction and how they can become this shadow career, like a faulty surrogate for one's own hero's journey.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:03André Duqum?

  And I know you speak to that because it's something that you just spoke to, you know, at length about needing this quest, purpose, direction, something to go after.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  So I write about video games, how it provides that exact proxy, but in such a passive way that you're thinking about problems and you're just moving your wrists. But all that energy still is just staying sedentary and suppressed. Right? And exactly what's happening in the video games needs to happen out in real life, which used to happen. You know, in my generation, all the males in my life were out in the neighborhoods, riding bikes, scraping knees, not wanting to come home, living out dangerously what would be considered dangerous today. And now that's gone. You know, children were spending, on average, thirteen hours a week, a decade ago, outside

• 42:57Speaker 01

  together, band of thieves in the neighborhoods, discovering, parents could never find their kids, right? When I was growing up, no one went home. It was a punishment to go home. And now kids are spending an average of five to eight hours. So they've dropped five hours a week across America, sitting at home in front of screens, thinking about adventure, thinking about risk, thinking about Europe, but never going there, or watching Europe unfold, right? Taking a tour in the Swiss Alps on virtual reality, but never embodying the experience of it. So we are doing some things quite antithetical to what children need and what humans need

• 43:41Speaker 01

  to flourish, which is embodied, lived, present moment, connection. Yeah.

• 43:47André Duqum?

  What is the father wound? Like, how do often fathers unconsciously compete with their sons?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. So because, I think, and I'm talking generally, yes, most men grew up with confused ideas around masculinity themselves. They grew up with stoic fathers who told them, don't, we don't cry, we have to be strong at all costs.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  When we then try to teach fathers to let their sons have their feelings or express themselves, fathers feel very threatened by that because they were told so vehemently, that that's bad, that's bad, that's bad. So whenever the son appears vulnerable or appears expressive, the father feels that retaliation that he was subjected to, and he shuts it down. The second thing I've seen is that fathers unconsciously compete with their boys. And they have a very hard time trusting that their sons can be their leaders, right?

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Because they grew up wary of men, you know, men are wary of men. There are research studies that show that men can read the facial expressions of other men much better and very well compared to them reading females' facial expressions. Why? Because men are constantly gauging other men for threat, for danger, is it safe? So when a father sees the adolescent boy becoming taller than him, bigger than him, he's not thinking, wow, let me trust this son and pass the baton. He's inherently primed for competition, right? And there's some biological basis to it, you know? In many tribes, the son overtakes, and, you know, in tribes of lions, right?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  In The Lion King, the son and the uncle, they're all competing with each other. So there is some imprinting of that. But if a father can see the son as his leader, as his teacher after adolescence, and passes on the baton of trust and reverence to the son, the son will flourish in that entrustment that the father, somebody who he respects, has anointed me as the next leader of the family, you know? And that is such a, it sounds a little bit, you know, stereotypically, toxically patriarchal, but I don't mean it in those ways. I just mean passing the baton of leadership, of ownership, of accountability, right? Teaching boys accountability.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  But if the father hasn't learned accountability in his own life, no one has checked the father. And that's what the brotherhood does. You men need to check each other, right? But the more we live in nuclear families, the man doesn't need to be checked because no other man is checking him. But men get into check the minute another man comes into the picture, right? But for the father, he needs to allow his son to be checked, but also allow his son to be the leader. Yeah.

• 46:54André Duqum?

  Otherwise, oftentimes, would you say the father can be like threatened by the aliveness of the child and what that illuminates where he's still stuck or stalled within himself?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that happens with mothers too, you know? We who have been dissociated from our light, we who have been taught and conditioned to be in our false self, when we see the beauty of children in their pure, unabashed, authentic self, it's very threatening to us. When we see anyone in their light, you know, it's very intimidating because you know, wow, that person hasn't given up their light, or that person has reclaimed their authentic power, and they are marching to their own drum and beating to their own tune, and I'm not doing that. I have totally succumbed myself. I have enslaved myself to the cultural conditioning.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  So that light is intimidating to me because it shows me all the places I'm hiding from my own light. So I want to shun that light. I want to suppress that light. So I see many parents inadvertently and unconsciously suppressing the light and the power of children because it's too, they never had that power, so it's very intimidating for them.

• 48:10André Duqum?

  Yeah, that's a powerful reminder. What is your ideation or conception of what like the new masculinity then is?

• 48:20André Duqum?

  And perhaps the pillars of masculinity? Like, what does that mean to you for a healthy, conscious, integrated masculine leader? What does that look like? What does that feel like? And then we can get into the daughters.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for anything to be healthy, it first needs to be out of the darkness, out of the shadows, and it needs to be authentic. So that is the first foundational premise of health, is am I able to be aware of who I am without shame, without suppression? Am I able to accept all parts of me, masculine or feminine? And then in terms of a conscious masculinity in particular, it is attuned and aligned with the workings of my physical self. Because male energy is very physical. So a conscious masculinity integrates the physical.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  It's like a bottom-up approach, which includes my sexuality, which includes my aggression, which can be protective, and if I challenge and channel it well. So how can I show up with purpose and direction, larger than life sometimes, and not feel like I'm a scary person, not feel like I'm going to hurt anyone? You know, how can I nurture those around me with my masculinity? So conscious masculinity nurtures all around it. Conscious masculinity provides safety and a container. It's the banks of the river and allows the river to swirl in its protection. Conscious masculinity is an integrated sexuality that is not ashamed to be a sexual being

• 49:59Speaker 01

  and be the proliferator of the species. Conscious masculinity understands its sacred responsibility to, at first, protect others, which means to check itself, to have accountability, to take responsibility, to not externalize blame, and to not enter victim consciousness, right? To be the highest self it can be for all around it. And most of all, it is a masculinity that is not afraid to be vulnerable, to be imperfect, and to feel deeply. They may not show the feelings through the tears of the feminine, but they will access

• 50:43Speaker 01

  their empathy, their cooperation, their connectedness, the aspects of feminine that they can integrate into without necessarily being exactly like a female. There is a way for a healthy masculinity to embrace femininity that honors its masculinity, that doesn't have to give up its masculinity in order to be feminine. It can be integrated into its wholeness.

• 51:08André Duqum?

  That's an important point because I think oftentimes we collapse masculinity with men, femininity with women, and there are like these distinct categories. Obviously, everything lives on a spectrum, and we have our own environmental genetic proclivities towards different expressions. Some might lean more towards feminine characteristics as a man.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:28André Duqum?

  Or more masculine characteristics as a woman.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Or men think that in order to feel, I have to feel like a female or like my sister. No, you can feel still in your masculinity, your way, and you can feel deeply and have empathy deeply, but it doesn't have to look like your mother or your sister. So men think that they have to give up some aspect of their masculinity in order to feel deeply. They don't have to. It can be integrated into who they are authentically.

• 52:04André Duqum?

  Hey, fam. A quick share from something I genuinely love. This is IM8. I know it's very common to hear ads for so many different health products and supplements these days. I actually sought these guys out to partner with and have been drinking their products for a while. I think they're doing something genuinely different. IM8 Daily Ultimate Essentials Pro contains ninety nutrient-rich ingredients in one drink. It replaces about sixteen separate supplements, vitamins, minerals, probiotics, clinical doses of CoQ10 and MSM, even saffron extract for focus and mood. It's co-founded by David Beckham, built with Yale researchers, and it's NSF certified for sport, so you know exactly what's going into your body.

• 52:46André Duqum?

  You just take one of these sachets, you tear it, you pour it, you mix it. It tastes delicious, and it's actually doing your body favors. If you want to try it out, go to im8health.com/knowtheyself and use code knowtheyself for an additional 10% off, welcome kit, and five free sachets. That's im8health.com/knowtheyself. I hope you enjoy. Back to the show.

• 53:11André Duqum?

  Now, when you referred earlier with certain red pill manosphere psychological happenings and porn and sexuality, it's inextricably tied with the faults in the developmental stage for raising women and how they identify with their appearance and how self-worth and enoughness and all of that comes into the picture.

• 53:36André Duqum?

  How does the algorithmic abduction affect women and daughters differently?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. So, on the main, you know, women have more estrogen. And estrogen kind of propagates our oxytocin more than it does in men. Doesn't mean men don't have it. And our oxytocin is our bonding hormone. And nature primed us with more readily available oxytocin so we can bond with our children, we can bond with the tribe and be the nurturers of the tribe. This is just on the main. So, what that does to the female brain is that it makes her highly relationally sensitive, very attuned to how her mother is feeling, to what her father is thinking about her.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  And she's picking up signs and tone and nuance and words in a very relationally sensitive way, hypersensitive, because she is discovering who she is through her bonds, through her love relationships. And she needs the relationships around her to feel manageable, safe, and validating. Now, put that girl whose brain is primed for this, who typically would get her bonding from like a little family or little apartment complex, little park situation, school, 10 people, 15 people. Now, put that very fragile, sensitive, vulnerable

• 55:07Speaker 01

  brain into the algorithm, into social media, where she is being abducted and slammed with and seen by and surveilled by, exposed to, like, ad nauseam, right? Strangers ad nauseam, who are now commenting. You know, she doesn't know that that person who commented has literally nothing to do and is sitting in a basement. She doesn't know that it could be a troll. She doesn't know that this person is filled with hatred or is filled with his or her own damaged self. She is getting feedback now that she thinks is real. And she is now over-inundated and hyper-stimulated. And her brain literally implodes.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  And she overthinks and over-ruminates and doubts herself. And she takes 100 selfies. And when the algorithm figures out that she's been taking 100 selfies, they're like, uh-huh, a very insecure girl. Let's send her some ads for beauty products and no surgery and boob job surgery and shoes and bags. And let's commodify and objectify her to such a degree that she has no idea how we're taking her to her wallet to pay for us to live a lavish life. Like, she is, and that poor girl has no idea that she just bought $100 worth of creams because she felt so insecure, because so many people on her feet told her

• 56:35Speaker 01

  that her ears were too big and/or her face had too many sunspots. So, this is the algorithmic abduction of girls. It fills her with the pressure to be perfect and the unrelenting comparison against the most unrealistic standards of who she needs to be as a woman. She needs to be the mother, she needs to be the gym girl, she needs to have done yoga and sun salutations in the morning and drunk a matcha tea and taken the dog out and been a philanthropist, be a mother of four children who also speak different languages, who know how to ski backwards, who know how to play the trombone. I mean, it's like, the list has become endless. And then she needs to go to her six charity boards and do

• 57:19Speaker 01

  some good work in the world and be a news anchor and be a hustler and an influencer and look amazing, right? And have a big butt. So, the list for women now has just become so long that she

• 57:34André Duqum?

  So exhausting.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  So, it was always exhausting, even for me, without social media. And now, it just feels even more. And that's why you have 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds who are cutting themselves, girls, anxious at levels that are really tragic and scary, who are buying night care and skincare and daycare routines from Sephora and are taking care of their face and are talking about getting Botox by 17 because they are fighting this expectation to be eternally successful, eternally happy, eternally youthful, eternally productive.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  It's a very intense pressure cooker that our young girls are walking into. And if they don't receive guidance from the home on how to navigate this, it feels like they have the most amazing choices in the world. But as we all know, that that is a disease in and of itself. Too many choices creates a decision paralysis. And so, the question, who should I be with 1 million ways to be, actually confuses the girl and dissociates her from her own knowing. So, in my book, Raising Conscious Daughters, I talk about how to keep our daughters anchored to an inner

• 58:59Speaker 01

  knowing in a world that is so chaotic and anxiety-producing that it constantly abducts them from themselves.

• 59:09André Duqum?

  Yeah, I mean, I already know if I have daughter or daughters one day, that this will be a big focus of mine. We have some community members sending questions as well, it's like, how do you empower a girl to place her sense of enoughness and self-worth in something that is not just an external appearance in a culture that profits off of it being so?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 59:36André Duqum?

  And I'm just curious your thoughts there because, whether you call it patriarchy or individualism, it kind of rebrands addressing your insecurities as like female empowerment.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 59:47André Duqum?

  You know, and sells it to you.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Done a great job.

• 59:49André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  It's done a great job. I mean, if you look at the institution of marriage, what a great job that's done in making women feel like it's their choice to go live with one man forever. You know, I'm gonna do it with such joy, right? It sold her that, right? Like, you're gonna get the gifts and you're gonna look like a princess. So, what if you're locked in with this one man who you may not like after two days, right? It's okay. Like, we're selling these dreams and commodifying on our girls' insecurities. You're absolutely right. So, we have to teach our daughters how to embolden themselves in a defiant enoughness that comes from within and that cannot be outsourced.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  So, parents have to be so intentional of, especially with girls, to raise them to know their inner voice, to listen to their inner self, and to not buy into the standards of beauty, the standards of success, the standards of being a good girl. In the book, I talk about how to raise the daughter, your daughter, to be authentic, not good, to know her own voice rather than to follow yours. And I was telling you that I recently did an interview with Lewis Howes and I got backlash for that because in that interview, I was talking about how fathers need to

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  embolden their daughters to be able to speak up, even if against them, and to allow that healthy exchange because that is the prototype and the rehearsal for her when she goes out into the world, which is largely ruled by men. So, if you want a woman to come out of your home emboldened, you have to raise her to feel like she is fearless, but she has to practice that with you. And sometimes, that could look like disrespect. But you can't shut it down because if you shut it down too fast, too hard, when she's young, she will grow up with a prototype of fearing the male versus sharing power with the male. And many parents can't, whenever I talk about sharing

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  power with your child, parents lose their mind. They're like, what do you mean, I'm going to share power with my child? I don't share power. I have power over my child. And when my child grows up, they have to own power. I go, wow. And my belief is that you treat every human being with shared power. We're here sharing space, breaking bread, breathing the same air. Doesn't matter if you're this small or this big. We're all deserving of honor and space and validation and respect and reverence. And just because children are small, doesn't mean they're not as mighty as you. They have a different contribution to the parent than the parent has to the child. Sure, they may not be logical.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Sure, they don't know how to balance your checkbook or pay taxes, but that's not the role of children in your life. Children come to teach you how to be unburdened by ego, how to be dissociated from hatred, how to be fully present. That is the reason your child comes to you. And if you can plug into that, then you can allow your child to feel like you're sharing power with them and that they have something to give you and contribute. Every human being wants to participate, to co-create, to contribute. But we are so afraid of sharing power with our children. We see it as anathema that, oh, oh, so then what do you mean? I let my child just rule me? No, I will not.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  We don't realize that we actually cut our children from their inner power source very early.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  The wheel was brilliant, but the road made it iconic. Electricity was powerful, but the grid brought it to every home. Innovation needs infrastructure. AI is no different, especially in finance, where AI can't run without context. But it can run on Plaid's infrastructure, built over 13 years to understand why money moves. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com/ai to learn more.

• 1:04:35André Duqum?

  What's the fine line there between empowering someone or a child to use their voice and befriending them to where it's not like the parental figure anymore? How do you support people by that balance?

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, many people will ask, you know, where is that line between me nurturing their essence, but, you know, not having a boundary, right? So, boundaries are vital for health, right? We all need to know when to stop drinking that glass of wine. We all need to know how to respect another person's space, right? I'm now in your beautiful space. I know to respect your space. Where does that come from? It's unspoken. You haven't put any signs. You haven't put any red flags or... I can go anywhere as far as the space is concerned. There's no fence here. So, how do I have a boundary?

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  I have a boundary from an internal respect for my own self that I now project, oh, if I'm respectful of myself, I know he must be respectful of his space, so I'm going to bestow that, right? So, how does that translate into the parent-child relationship? When parents treat children's things, okay, when they're two years old, their little toothbrush and their little pairs of shoes and their little hanger as theirs. Where would you like me to put your T-shirt? And you, you create that kind of language where the child goes, no, not here, here. Small ways. You don't, you're not giving them license to run your life, don't worry. You're not giving them license to run your kitchen.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  In their little world, you're teaching them that I, the parent, mighty as I can be, I'm going to respect your boundary. When you respect their boundary, they learn, just through osmosis, how to respect yours. It happens beautifully. You don't have to do it through control. You don't have to do it through oppression. And you don't have to do it through a heavy hand. It comes through this natural and normal osmosis of a parent respecting a child's space, body, right? I remember telling my daughter when she was young, you know, grandma is coming, I would like you to kiss her because I know she likes kisses, but how do you feel?

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  And my daughter used to, without fear, say, I don't want to kiss grandma. And I was like, oh, shit. What do I do now? You know, so I, I did practice respecting her boundary. It made me very uncomfortable, you know, and I had to be like, I'm so sorry. My daughter is actually kind. She's actually a nice human being. I'm a good parent. I'm just trying to respect her boundaries so that tomorrow she knows that the man down the street or the woman in the neighbor's house cannot touch her when she doesn't want, right? So, it took a lot of working through of my cultural conditioning to bestow her the power over her own space, her own body. And what a beautiful thing if we can give our children that.

• 1:07:37André Duqum?

  Would another example of that be like asking them permission if they want to be picked up instead of just picking them up? Or like when, having boundaries with your own body, again?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Well, you, you don't have to go over crazy, you know? Can I change your diaper? No, we need to change your diaper, okay? Do you know you've pooped? Can I change your... You tell me. No, we can't be ridiculous, right? We have to be within the norms of common sense, right? We have to have the right intention, but we don't have to tippy-toe around our children. If you need to pick up your child and fling them into the car because you're running late for a meeting, you do that. And you go, sorry, I'll make it up another time. Right now, we're all going. You know, you can just take them, screaming, kicking, doesn't matter. I, I talk about this moment in my daughter's childhood where we had to leave the park and she, I had no authority. She was like not even listening to me. I was like, what, what do I need to do to abduct my own child?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Like, can I abduct my child? And I was trying to be all gentle and be all conscious and be all sweet, but in my head, I was like, I need to do something. So, at the end of the day, I just strapped her into the, like, an abusive person because the way she was acting is like I was a stranger, like people were looking at me like, are you abducting your own child? She looked like me, so they, they knew it was my daughter, but at some point, you can't, you know, you can't overgive authority to a child who may not understand time and space. So, you have to have common sense about it. And I took her screaming and crying, and I may have scarred her for life, but it's okay. That's part of the process. So, this is not about like tippy-toeing over, over your child. This is not about being strategically gentle.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  This is about being conscious when you can and being conscious that many times you can't. And sorry, kid, we gotta go. Sorry, kid, we, we, you know, if you're getting a divorce from your child's father, sorry, kid, now we're gonna have to deal with this trauma, but we'll do it together. You can't protect your child from life's frictions and life's inevitable disappointments. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just being mindful that where you can give your child the power over their own body, their own voice, their own space, where you can. Like, parents come to me and go, my child doesn't want to play piano anymore, right? And I, then I have to ask the parent, okay, is it a health issue if they don't play the piano? Is it a life or death issue?

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  So, if it's not a life or death issue, if it's not a health issue, what would it take for you to honor your child, right? So, you have to ask those questions.

• 1:10:08André Duqum?

  Yeah, because there's probably innumerable examples where a child does not want to do something that would be beneficial for them.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:19André Duqum?

  And discerning what we think is best for them, whether it's, you know, nurturing an inherent gift or talent, that they would probably be later in life grateful that they had some resistance and friction and boundaries that they had to face against and, and did it, you know, versus letting them follow just their excitements and they want their cookies and they want to play games or, you know, things like that.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Right, you have to use discernment. I love that you use that word. It's constant discernment. How much of the child do I allow to flourish and where is the boundary? I often tell parents that a good way to quote-unquote push their child, because many parents come to me and go, when can we push our child? They're dying to push their children. And I always say, yeah, you can push your children. So, if your child's essence is here, you can push them here, but you can't push them here. So, you take what is given to them in their inherent blueprint, in their essence, and see, play with it, step by step. And if the child leans in and does well, then you can push them a little bit more.

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  But you cannot superimpose from your own projection who and what they should be. It has to emerge from the child.

• 1:11:30André Duqum?

  Where do you see as like the, the biggest learning lesson for you when raising your daughter was, where it was really tough to practice what you preach or, you know, all that?

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, every day, it's tough to practice what I preach. I think what I just said, the attunement to who the child is versus the projection of my ego. This is the battle, eternal battle, like, how much is what I'm doing for my child truly coming from the child? Or is it coming from the projection of what I think? And I'm not saying give up your projection, and I'm not saying only follow the child. There has to be a careful balance and a dance. And conscious parenting is not so much a doing, it is a state of mind. It is asking the right questions.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  How much of this is my ego and how much of this is a response to the essence of my child? Always having this question in the forefront of my consciousness or in our consciousness will lead us in the right way. It's not a perfect technique. It's a constant questioning of our ego and checking our ego. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of courage. There is no perfection. My biggest challenge has been to, the other day, just the other day, and my daughter's 23, you would think I've learned something from myself, right? And nine books later, wow, I act like I'm elementary school conscious parenting. So, the other day, she's sitting in the house. I first, you know, I have to still change my mindset to realize she's an adult, she's

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  an adult, she's an adult, she's not yours to control at all. Like, even if you had an illusion, it's over, Shefali. So, I'm training myself, like, it's over. Your jurisdiction in many ways is over. Very hard to grieve that. So, the other day, she was sitting at home, it was a beautiful New York summer day, and I couldn't resist sending her a text. So, this is what I sent her. I said, such a beautiful New York summer day. If I were you, I would do. And I listed 10 things what I wanted her to do, right? And she wrote back, she said, oh, why don't you go do that? I was like, touche. Okay, I was like, I winked at her, I said, okay, okay. You know, I, I checkmated myself.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  But I do that all, I'm always trying to like make her into my image. I'm like, you sure you don't want to be in Rome right now? Are you sure you don't want to be studying in Paris? You don't want to go to China? And she's like, mom, that's you. You were trapped in India and your dream was to leave India and you can't believe I'm happy here. I go, no, I can't. I'm like, how can you be okay here? If I were you, and she's like, you're not. So, we're always projecting something from our lost self, like my little Indian girl that couldn't bear staying there and could only dream of living in China and Paris and London and Rome. When I see my daughter on the couch, happy, I'm like, you cannot be happy.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  See, I'm projecting who I was at 23 onto her. It's, it's this distorted mirror that happens, but I can see it and I've told her to please tame me because I'm untamable.

• 1:14:44André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46André Duqum?

  Hey, guys. So, I've been chewing this gum recently. Funny enough, I ordered some online and then they've reached out to Partner. It's great. It tastes good, but what makes it different is that it's actually good for your teeth. It's made with nano-hydroxyapatite, the same mineral your enamel is made out of. So, every time you chew it, you're strengthening your enamel, repairing damage. Most gum is just gum. It's got a lot of aspartame or microplastics. This one's actually working for you. It's an easy and fun way to sneak in some teeth care into your day. It contains natural base ingredients like chicle, myrrh, and mastic gum. They've got a bunch of flavors, mint, cinnamon, peppermint, berry. I'll sometimes chew it after a meal or on a drive.

• 1:15:28André Duqum?

  Don't tell anyone, sometimes I'm a savage and put like three to five pieces in. Right now, Lorraine Co. is offering our listeners up to 50% off. BuyLorraine.com/KNOWTHESELF. That's BuyLorraine.com/KNOWTHESELF. And you can look at the code in the description as always. I hope you enjoy. Back to the show.

• 1:15:50André Duqum?

  What do you say for, because I have a wide spectrum of friends that have

• 1:15:56André Duqum?

  what I feel is a beautiful conscious partnership and they a few years into their marriage or whatever, they decide they want to have kids and that's one aspect and the other spectrum, complete surprise with with a with a girl, one of my friends up with and now he's a father, you know?

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  He wasn't planning on it.

• 1:16:14André Duqum?

  No.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16André Duqum?

  To splitting and being a single parent. And there is of course, no perfect right scenario where all the conditions are going to be as they should to have children. And for those that feel the call to be parents, which not everyone does, what would you say would be wise to set in place and to have necessary foundational conditions to support you and and creating the right environment for for the child, whether it be from the financial side to the life arrangements like? Yeah.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49André Duqum?

  Speak to me as somebody who will have kids in in some years, you know, like what? What would be wise to have in place in life before one decides to have children?

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Well, you you ideally want to have a lot of money because they're bloody expensive.

• 1:17:05André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. The amount of times I've said to myself, thank goodness, I just have one. Because this one is draining me.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  You would ideally like to have a community that you can rely on. You would ideally not try to do this on your own. Because that is the death of you to be a single parent. On one hand, you're the boss. You don't have to deal with the chatter of an unconscious partner. But on the other hand, we were not meant to raise children on our own. It is a tremendous burden for the single parent. I have great compassion, admiration, reverence for single parents. It is not the way we were supposed to raise children. So having community, having other children around, having a support network, having tons of money would help a lot and having very, very low expectations.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  That lower your expectations, then the potential for joy and delight and surprise is infinite. Have low expectations. You know, I remember my one expectation was like, as long as I can just get her to 15 and she's not in jail or pregnant, I've done good. And I I did it. So he has created really low expectations. And other parents are like, oh, my kid is going to be a violinist and going to play at Carnegie Hall. I'm like, go ahead, knock yourself out, you know? Why would you set yourself up? And allow yourself to be surprised and allow yourself to not have a plan. Because it is a shitstorm waiting to happen. But if you lean into it, there's so much joy and so much discovery and it is an amazing journey if you're willing to look in the mirror, if you're willing to

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  really put your ego to the task.

• 1:18:46André Duqum?

  From our No Life Self Collective, Jennifer asked how to handle parenting with a spouse that has no will to learn about conscious parenting. Parents unconsciously from their own fear and frequently blames and shames the child. Especially when one parent is trying to teach the child emotional regulation, but sees the opposite from the from the other parent.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's the other big tip. Select who you're having a kid with very well. Meet their mother, meet their father, send them for a mental health status. Check their diagnosis. Get to know who you're parenting with because it is already so difficult. And then if you're fighting with them and you'll have different philosophies. I tell all women, you know, bring bring them to me, I'll tell you. You know, I'll tell you at what level of consciousness he or she is to help you. Because it is very hard to do it with someone who is not on the same page of self-awareness, self-discovery. So for Jennifer, I feel for you, it is the most common question I get asked, mostly by women.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  So we know they're talking about their male partners often. And what I would say to Jennifer is, don't focus on him.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Focus on your own level of consciousness. I always say it takes just one conscious parent to change the world. You have a lot of power. Don't sit in the victimhood of, oh, I got stuck with an unconscious partner. No, you chose him, you co-created this with him. Now, don't hold him to this. You knew on some level who he was, but not the degree to which. And try to protect your child from his unconsciousness as much as possible. And follow consciousness. You know, many parents will say to me, my partner gets upset with me when I disagree with them and they want me to follow them in front of the children so that we appear united. Right? And I always say, it's called the united front because it's a front. It's fake.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Or it could be fake. So I always tell parents who have a divided philosophy at home, follow the arc of consciousness. You are not here to be a good wife or a good husband. You are here to be a follower of consciousness. And follow that. That takes courage. It takes a really bold, strong attitude. But if you have children, you owe it to them to protect them from as much unconsciousness as you can. On the other hand, I will say, a little bit of unconsciousness is healthy. Like, let them be exposed to it, like crazy grandma, lunatic uncle.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Let them, let them handle it, right? We just don't want abuse. We just don't want zealotry, racism, prejudice being passed down because that will pollute their mind.

• 1:21:32André Duqum?

  How would you support people dealing with, that are in a similar situation? The the grief that comes from the overwhelm of dealing with a situation like that while you still need to work a job and raise this child and have a partner that's not willing to work with you in the way that you'd want?

• 1:21:51André Duqum?

  I just feel like the the weight of that, like, how do you acknowledge that more space for that? While you still have all these responsibilities?

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Right, we we walk into parenthood and marriage with this fantasy of how it's going to be and that's the problem. The more the fantasy, the more perfect it looks in our in our dreams. When we come down to reality, the gap between expectation and reality creates great depression, right? The greater the gap, the greater the depression, the greater the grief. And I have held many a person's hand, walking them through their grieving of the fantasies that did not come to light. And it's okay. It's okay to have the fantasy, we all do. Culture sells us the fantasy. And it's okay for the fantasies to not work out. It doesn't make you a failure. It doesn't make you a bad parent. It makes you a human who is on this adventure of life.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  And let me tell you, there is life after the fantasy falling apart. There is life and beauty and abundance after the so-called broken marriage, broken house, broken partnership. Your children will be resilient, you are resilient, if you can just access the reframing of your life journey and take ownership for the pain and the joy. Don't be so rigid and harsh with yourself that my life had to work out only one way. And if it doesn't work out that way, we're all a failure. No. And there's so much beauty in the dissolution of the fantasy. That's where growth is.

• 1:23:24André Duqum?

  Well said, well said. I'm sure it's it's not surprising that it's probably one of your more popular questions. We got many versions of that same question.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  There's deep mourning when your partner and you realize that we're not on the same page anymore and we can't work together anymore. But that's okay. You know, there is growth after that. People think that that's the end of the world. That's just one chapter. You know, there's so many chapters in your book. Let's turn the page, let's see what's next. Lean in, be curious. It's an adventure, there is no perfect partnership. The illusion that your friends have a better marriage than you or that person doesn't have any trauma is because you don't know them well enough. You know, I tell everyone, just become a coach or therapist for the one reason for you to realize that everyone is struggling. Everyone, I haven't met a single person who doesn't have a struggle in some aspect of their life.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:24:48André Duqum?

  Speaking of illusions that could be broken, I've heard you speak how, obviously, no two children are ever raised in the same household. Donnell asked, what causes a parent to favor one child even unconsciously? I have twin cousins who aren't having the same experience of their dad and he seems like a pretty self-aware guy, but he heavily favors one twin over the other.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Right. So parents don't like this when I say that you are treating every child differently. They're like, hell, no. I give them the same clothes, the same treatment. I'm one person, we're always together and I'm treating, I'm just one person. So how can I be treating people differently when it's the same words coming out of my mouth? So parents like to believe that they are completely equal with every child. And and that is a naive assumption they have. It's okay to accept that we are different in within the same 10 minutes of our lives as we are different with every person in those 10 minutes. So when we lean into that, we can then inquire, okay, why am I more easy with this one?

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Or why do I have a more affiliation with this one? And typically, it's the child that is most like them, that they just get. Many parents would say, I just get this child. This other one, who is this person? Right? Oh, my goodness. And the more the child can mirror the good qualities of the parent, oh, we have a golden partnership. But if the child mirrors back either unfamiliar components that the parent doesn't know how to negotiate or parts of the parent that the parent dissociated from in their own life through shame or suppression. So the other day, a mother came to me and said that my son is really an introvert. So I was like, okay.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  She's like, no, my son is an introvert. I was like, okay. She was complaining. So she's like, Dr. Shiva, my son's an introvert. As if like I would join her, right? I'm like, okay, I don't understand what is the problem. She's like, you don't understand what is the problem? She's like, I'm not an introvert. And I'm, I'm an extrovert. And look at me and look how far I've reached in my life. And it took her a long time to realize, wow. She had so dissociated from her own capacity to be an introvert. We can all be everything, right? She so was so into her extroverted nature. And I said, you can be an introvert. You just don't want to access that. So when you see him, it's unfamiliar to you. Or it's a part of you that you don't like, or you don't want to manifest. So you are shaming him.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  And it took her a few sessions to lean into the beauty of who he was. She had, she had a hard time. Because society puts a lot of values on certain things like extrovertism. And the introverted kids are treated like, come on, let's become extroverted. Like something's wrong with them.

• 1:27:42André Duqum?

  Do you see some typical patterns with the first, second, third child? How there's a golden child? How the first child gets treated differently typically?

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:54André Duqum?

  I know there's definitely some tendencies. I've even noticed in my, my own family, my sister. The connection between my mother and me and my father and my sister. And there can be the one that you relate to most. Or just genetically, there's some connection there, more so than the other. But it seems like there's kind of societally, there is a, there is a difference in how a first, second, or you know, middle child or last child is, is raised.

• 1:28:20Speaker 01

  Well, the first one is, is the damn child, right? Like, oh my goodness, because all the energy is on the child. On one hand, it's a lot of energy and a lot of attention. On the other hand, it's all the anxiety, all the control. We are first time parents. We don't know what the hell we're doing. We're terrified of every piece of germ and we think that we can protect this child. And all our anxieties come on that first child. So that poor first child, like I only have one, I'm like, I'm so sorry. I feel so bad for her.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  And then I think as we parent again and again and again, and we realize, oh, guess what? We aren't God. And there isn't the next Mozart coming from this house. And damn it, there's no Julia Roberts in our gene pool. And once you let go, like it's been taken out of you. Like you try really hard with the second one too. You're like, maybe this one, right? And you even do the third child. But the more you have, the more worn out you're like, okay, let's just blame his, his genetics. It's not happening. There's no greatness happening. And you let go of control. You actually become a more easier, more relaxed parent. Sometimes though, you neglect the child completely. Because see, once the ego's gone, you're like, okay, I don't even, who are you? I don't even care about you anymore. Because if I can't create you, what is the point of you?

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Right? I had you so I could create you. But now that I've realized I can't create you, you almost start neglecting the child, right? But those children who grow up without the spotlight and pressure of the ego, typically grow up to be the healthiest, the most adjusted. So you'll see the third or fourth child will be the freest child, the boldest child, the bravest child, because all the neuroses have been run out on the first few, you know? And that's why the older kids don't like the younger kids. They're like, I wasn't allowed to do that. How come you're getting, oh, you love this kid more than me? And then also parents become wiser, right? And they become more affluent typically, they become more stable. They become more adult. So they're much more regulated with child number two, three, four.

• 1:30:21André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm sure many middle children, second, third kids who are listening right now could relate. Are you, you have siblings?

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Yes, I have an older brother who was six years older. So I got a better version of my parents. And he, I could tell was like, damn, you get away with a murder. And I remember him being beaten and abused and hurt. And I'll tell my mother, you were really mean to him. And he's like, she's like, oh, I don't even remember. Like she just pretends to not remember. She has amnesia.

• 1:30:49André Duqum?

  Amnesia, yeah.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  And, but I saw, and I learned from that. See, younger kids learn from the treatment of the older kids, right? So you, if the parent is super strict with the older kid, the younger kid is learning strategically what not to do already. They're being parented by the older kid's parenting, right? So there's a lot less they need to learn. They've already learned it through osmosis. So the older kid is the scapegoat. You know, so my brother, poor guy, you know, he got the, the big load of the egoic expectations. And by the time I came six years later, and anyway, you know, in an Indian household, girls are treated like, you know, what, should we even expect anything from you?

• 1:31:27André Duqum?

  Right.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Right, like you're just gonna get married, so who cares? So, but I was luckily in that way. So I got less expectation. And on one hand, on the other hand, of course, culture put expectations on how to be pretty, how to be good, but much less the force of parental ego. So he's, he suffered that. And I felt guilty because I saw, I'm not getting that treatment, you know? So there's, there's always dynamics. It doesn't matter who you are.

• 1:31:52André Duqum?

  What do you see as the progression of generational trauma lessening? You know, as like one family has kids and there's a whole range of experiences within the kids there. And then they go on to have their own kids. If there is this tendency towards maturation and especially as culture and society evolves and becomes more conscious, hopefully, then you would think that less trauma would be passed on. Is that?

• 1:32:18Speaker 01

  I see, I, I think I can say that there has been a turn toward healing our trauma of recent years. And I do believe I was one of the few of many who set off the spark of parents looking at themselves, right? So we, we kind of set this into motion, me and many others with me. And now your generation has become very hyper focused on healing yourself. So just by that fact of your consciousness, your awareness, you're passing down less trauma. And it's such a beautiful thing to observe. I love it, you know? I, I watch my daughter talk about red flags and green flags and emotional regulation,

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  even though she may not fully understand it, she at least understands the concepts intellectually. So you're now taking the baton and healing the world.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid and risked 350,000 Virginians healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, thehousemajoritypack.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 1:33:55André Duqum?

  Another one from likable misfit. I have three kids in their early twenties and I have no idea what advice to give them or how to help them start their life. They feel stuck and paralyzed, not knowing if they should go to college, what they should major in, or even what jobs will exist for them in the future. How do I give them advice, support, or even hope when there's so much uncertainty and change? I feel so uncertain myself.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I think it's become a human dilemma. Again, because of decision paralysis, so many choices. We don't know what to do, so we end up doing nothing. And I, my daughter's currently in her early twenties and she's always asking, I don't know what to do. What should I do? And the, the question isn't so much what we do, but who we are becoming. So I tell her, don't focus on what you're doing. Just you, you're gonna learn about yourself and be in earth school, no matter what you do. So just start, just start. And exposure is power. So expose yourself. Go work at the Starbucks next door. Go work in the garden.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  Go mow lawn, help the elderly neighbor, bake some cookies for the, for the police department. Start contributing where you can and that will become big. But if you think, oh, I need to get a job that pays me a hundred thousand dollars and I need to only do that because that's my passion. Now you've narrowed things down. And now until that shows up, you want, you want to act. And I believe that you act and then things happen. So don't focus on the outcome. Just begin where you are. Oh, you like making cookies? Make cookies for everybody. Oh, you like being out in nature? Go, what can we do in nature? Whether it pays or doesn't pay, start acting.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Be in the mode of embodying what you love to do, even if it doesn't pay. And that will grow into something more. Don't be so fixated on the money and the outcome and the stability. Just start by acting.

• 1:35:55André Duqum?

  Yeah. Yeah, well said. I think this ties back into, which I want to close the loop on in regards to raising conscious daughters, the perception prison.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:06André Duqum?

  And you spoke to the validation, the enoughness, the self-worth. All that's tied in, especially as society

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14André Duqum?

  profits on insecurities. But when it comes to who we want to be in the world, you know, who do I want to be when I grow up? There's also that perception prison. So what other thoughts do you have there to help people navigate and cultivate listening to their own voice?

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Well, at a very pure level, the perception prison speaks to how we often trap ourselves into absolute paralysis based on what we think other people will think about us. And we get stuck. And if something doesn't look good in the eyes of others, we won't do it, even if we're miserable doing what we're doing. So I teach young women especially to step out of the perception prison. You cannot place value on what you perceive others perceive about you. You have to step out of that because otherwise it is an endless, you know, coming together of expectation after expectation after expectation.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  You have to, you have to free yourself of that. And women are more susceptible to that because we get a lot of surveillance on how we look and how we act from others. But then we base our sense of worth on this surveillance. So only we can free ourselves. No one is forcing us there. We are allowing ourselves to be there, right? When we look in the mirror and we're critical of ourselves and we go, oh, I have to dye my hair, I have to get highlights. Whose voice is that? Oh, oh, I'm so fat. I need to, you know, be on Ozempic. Whose voice is that? Or I must wear stilettos tonight. Whose voice is that? This is how, through the inquiry of the internal criticism, the internal self-loathing,

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  internal self-abandonment, when we become aware that we are the misogynist in our own lives, we've taken on the voice. We've taken on the voice of what we call the toxic patriarchy. Guess what? It's living in you now. So who is the perpetrator now? You are. So you yourself have to step out of your own perpetration at some point and liberate yourself to live your life devoid of others' perception, others' expectations. Very hard to do, not easy to do. When I got my divorce, the only thing I plagued myself with before signing the papers was, what do people say?

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  I wrote a book called The Awakened Family. That's all I cared about. I didn't care about my daughter. I didn't care about my ex. I didn't care about my happiness. I cared about what people would say about the author of The Awakened Family. And I kept tripping myself, like people will judge, I was judging that people would judge me.

• 1:38:56André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  You know, and I didn't give people grace.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  And guess what? Nobody judged me because by the time I got to that place, I stopped judging myself. The moment you give yourself grace, you will be around people who give you grace because you won't, you won't stick to and be stuck on people's judgments.

• 1:39:18André Duqum?

  Yeah, that conditioning runs deep.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Deep, deep, deep.

• 1:39:21André Duqum?

  That Cooley quote, which I love and say all the time about how I'm not who I think I am, or I'm not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:30André Duqum?

  We live in this hall of mirrors and this perception prison, as you've termed it. And it's, it's a human predicament. We have this biological imperative to survive and fit in with their tribe, right? And that shapes and that, you know, takes different forms for a man or for a woman differently because of what's asked for us and what's expected of us.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:53André Duqum?

  And where it gets scary is when you like have societal, cultural conditioning that impersonates and masquerades as your voice of reason.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:40:02André Duqum?

  It becomes the way in which you look through the world.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:04André Duqum?

  And you think it's you.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:06André Duqum?

  You think it's what you want. And to me, that, that's scary and it's inevitable because we are memetic creatures. We have this desire to fit in. It's, it's a part of us, hardwired. But that going unexamined, we then live out our life with other people's desires and dreams for us.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  Right. And we don't even realize it, right? That we are being puppeteered by these invisible strings. And our whole life was in service to other people's fears and other people's expectations. And then you may wake up one day and you can only really wake up either through your own curiosity seeking and enlightenment or through a whole lot of pain. And most of us wake up through a whole lot of pain. So I always tell people, you're just not in pain enough yet. You know, go back into your marriage, come back in five years when you're really in pain. And when, when pain has burned through every single defense your ego puts up and when your ego is not functioning the way it used to, the alcohol is not working anymore,

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  the dieting is not working anymore, the boob job, the butt, nothing's working, come back to me because then you'll be ready to grow. You know, it's a good thing when your ego doesn't work anymore.

• 1:41:24André Duqum?

  What's, what's the mother bind? So we spoke a little bit about the father wound.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:30André Duqum?

  And for the mothers, which I'm sure you can personally relate to the most, you wrote, and you end both of your books with a chapter about mothers. What begins as care slowly becomes monitoring, what begins as love starts to feel like surveillance? We talked about this line between devotion and control.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:52André Duqum?

  Any other words you have there?

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so mothers, in their essence, again, stereotyping mothers, are mothering by nature, maternal by nature, caring by nature, nurturing by nature. However, if unchecked, it can become a complex. And we can overmother. I have overmothered. And I am now trying to cut the cord that I really solidified and I did too much. And now I've overmothered. If my daughter hears this, she'd be like, you have an overmother, you've undermothered, right? She's like, don't think you're so great that overmothered. But I'm not talking about how good a mother we are. We just overdo the enmeshment. We overdo the care. There is such a thing now as too much care.

• 1:42:37André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Too much involvement, too much being there all the time, right? I was so happy to be there all the time. I was so proud of myself that I'm too, too much all the time, too much of the time. And that's not healthy because I'm getting an identity from that. So the mother bind is when you either over-function and you check out and you're absent, but mostly it is having a mother complex. When you over, you've over-functioned, where you get an identity and your sense of validation and worth from your child needing you and your child calling you every day and your child needing only, my mom's, my mom's my best friend. And we tell our friends, oh, your daughter doesn't call you every day? Hmm, how funny. My daughter's always calling me. That's not healthy, woman. That is not healthy.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  At some point, we need to free our children and we need to retire as parents. You know, 23, 25. I always tease parents that I will write a book on how to stop being a conscious parent. Like it's got to expire at some point. I'm joking. You always should be a conscious parent. But part of being a conscious parent is knowing when to stop parenting, when you need to go way, way, way back, almost not even be available, so your child finds their own inner parent.

• 1:43:53André Duqum?

  When your involvement actually prohibits more individuation.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:43:57André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  When you're actually impeding their growth and you're infantilizing themselves and you're creating this dependency, which actually makes them terrified of autonomy.

• 1:44:10André Duqum?

  What else have we not talked on in regards to daughters that you think is important to touch on? If there is.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  I think, you know, one thing I would say, in our current climate, daughters have been given a kind of confused message around their sexuality. So in this hyper-sexual era, girls have, I think, become confused with hyper-exposure, hyper-sexuality with empowerment.

• 1:44:41André Duqum?

  OnlyFans?

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  Like an OnlyFans girl, right? She's like, oh, well, I'm making my own money. But she doesn't understand that it's just a more modern, more lucrative way of paying, you know, paying through your body, right? Objectification of using your body to pay yourself. And no problem as long as you know what you're doing. But you're playing the same game. It just is looking different. It's wrapped up in a different, prettier, more glossy paper. So don't mistake your hyper-sexualization and over-exposure and your lack of privacy as empowerment.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  It's okay to be private. It's okay to, to, to be safe and to keep your body protected. It's okay. And whatever you do, make sure you've inquired as to why you're doing it. Of course, you can do everything, but you have to discern what is an impulse or what is coming from a true, inner, authentic desire.

• 1:45:47André Duqum?

  What do you see as the impact that has on culture and society? As there's been, on one hand, women have been more empowered to pursue whatever they want in the marketplace or with their own sexuality. And there's a lot of benefit to that, in that sovereignty. And yet, there is cost to the continual monetization of the objectification of one's own physical body and appearance, as though that's the most valuable aspect to them.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:46:13André Duqum?

  And just what that does internally to someone's psychology.

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I've worked with so many young women, older women, women in my cohort, who are plagued by this idea that your body is a project, needing constant improvement, like a home renovation, like, let's remodel, let's put a new room, let's tear down the old basement. And we begin to look at ourselves as real estate that can be portioned off and aggrandized and pruned and, you know, oh, I don't like my earlobes now and I need to, you know, make them touch my jaw. And I want to have a nose like everybody else and lips like everybody else. And we don't realize that we live objectifying ourselves, but objectification means, to

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  some degree, a dissociation. Because you're an object, you're not a being that is interconnected, that is following its own natural timeline. And I'm all for women trying to look as glamorous as possible, you know, buy all the jewelry in the world, but don't lose your connection with yourself. Don't sell yourself to the highest bidder. Don't sell yourself for the gaze of the other. Truly feel grounded and joyful and powerful in your uniqueness. Look like yourself. And then, sure, dress up and play with it, but first be okay in your own being.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  And I think we're trying to please others and fit in before we're connecting to ourselves. And that's where parents come in of girls. Teach her that for the first 15 years of her life, she's accepted as she is. She is honored for her ordinariness. She is celebrated for her imperfections as she is. And then, once she's grounded in that foundation and she has the blueprint of her own inner knowing and she feels worthy in her ordinariness, now she can add later. But most of our daughters are ancalists and by the age of nine and 10 are already contorting and mutating and puppeteering themselves to buy worth and validation from others.

• 1:48:27André Duqum?

  Do you see as like one machine that is for both men and women, that if you want to call it patriarchy or whatever, is creating those two issues that we've laid out, whether it's the objectification with men or the subverted dominance with men?

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Well, I think the real machine is, on one level, it's capitalism, but capitalism is just the machine that has its tentacles in all of us. But what is capitalism's puppeteer is this very tyrannical, oligarchical, dominant system that wants to control the world, right? And that's run by a few men on the top. And they use capitalism, and so all of us, you know, get infected by that, to control us. So that system wants to surveil us, wants to monitor us, wants to zombify us and dissociate us from our own inner power.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  So to have squads of young men who are addicted to video games, who are, you know, disenfranchised, who are apathetic, who are lost and directionless, is important for tyranny, to have control. And for women to be so disconnected, to not be in their feminine energy, to be constantly objectifying themselves, that they keep buying, buying, buying, buying, buying, that they're medicated, that they're depressed, that they're anxious, this serves the oligarchic powers that be. It serves that tyranny on the top. So capitalism is just the easy way that it functions.

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  But really, there's a more insidious power that is run by only a few families, men, systems right on the top. And those men are so disconnected from spirit, from essence, from interdependence, that they will dominate and rule and compete at all costs and conquer at all costs. And they can only do that by zombifying all of us. And they're winning right now. Look, we're all getting more and more zombified.

• 1:50:34André Duqum?

  Yeah, and that brings into the picture the need for sort of an individual and collective rebellion towards the systems that want to sheepify.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:50:43André Duqum?

  Everyone, you know, the Nightingale quote of the opposite of courage is not cowardice, but conformity.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50André Duqum?

  Right? And so, how often we conform to a system that wants to put us as cogs in a larger economic machine.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:50:59André Duqum?

  And be good consumers, but not challenge the status quo. And in that, you challenge this notion of raising a good girl or a good boy. And what thoughts do you have there?

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  Right, a good girl and a good boy complies to the external and fails to tune into themselves. And that's why I've written these two books, because I wanted to protest against the zombification of our children. Because they are the most helpless, they're the most innocent. So I'm empowering parents and waking them up. I start both books with a welcome letter that is really a really wake the fuck up letter.

• 1:51:38André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  This guy says, hello, parents, but I'm like, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. But it's my rallying cry that you have influence and you can change the system in your own small way, but powerful and mighty way. If you give in and you let go and you outsource your power to the algorithm, your children have no hope in hell. So it is time for parents to wake up. There is no turning back now. We are at the end of the road. We need to wake up. I don't mean to sound pessimistic or doomsday. It is a reality. We are being led like sheep to the slaughterhouse. Who is going to wake up and who has the most power? It's you, the parent. And so these books are my ode, my homage to the power of parenthood and the influence

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  you can have, but also my, you know, wake up call, my rallying cry, my pleading. I'm giving you solutions, I'm giving you the way forward. Just freaking do it and let's start together and we're in this together and there is no blame. And it is incredibly difficult. I have compassion, but we got to act together.

• 1:52:47André Duqum?

  There's so much pressure in a one or two parent household in a way that evolutionarily, like anthropologically, was different. We had children exposed to many other quote unquote parental figures or adult figures as well. In an ideal state, obviously, we raise our kids in a community where there's more than just one or two adult figures that have influence. What are your thoughts on where we've gone wrong in creating an echo chamber of a household, which is this society we live in, but the necessity for community and a tribe when raising children?

• 1:53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've gone very, very wrong. No blame, and we're all doing it, but, you know, when we turned the corner 10,000 years ago around, when we became agricultural and began to hoard and store and control and own land instead of being the stewards of land and roaming the land with few belongings and we put our flag down, that's when the ego really rose and ownership and possession and marriage and monogamy all came into the fore and we became more and more and more and more nuclear. And this is mine, my man, my woman, my child, my sheep, my...

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  And the my was unmitigated and rose. And the my, when it's not within the checking of community elders who tell you, hey, enough of you, we are a we, then the my just grows and that's what's happened. The my has risen, a balloon floating into the sky and nobody is bringing that balloon down and checking it and saying, no, you stay here. And you're not allowed to just go and spread your toxicity to everyone. So we have gone way wrong. And children growing up in a nuclear home, single home, all power to parents, great compassion for parents, they're trying their best, but that is not how children should be raised. We should be raising children in a community of crazy people, not just two crazy people, right?

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  So I can choose my crazy for today. I'm like, I'm sick and tired of the same crazy. I want to go to talk to that crazy uncle today. I cannot bear my mom and dad's crazy. It's overwhelming me and I have no power. But children have lost that power, that community, the capacity to go to other elders. They're subjugated and engaged with just, and at the mercy of the unconsciousness of one or two people. That is a tragedy, you know? And I tell parents to have compassion for the fact that their children live with them. And that doesn't mean you have to hate yourself, but just have compassion that you're not easy to live with, you know?

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  One day, I was yelling at my daughter, raising my voice and, you know, with my finger. And I froze my face. And I said, let me take my face to a mirror, just to see what she sees. Because I'm thinking I'm looking very caring and concerning. Oh, my goodness. I was like, I look like a freaking lunatic monster. I look so evil and so cold and mean. And I had such compassion for her, you know, like, you poor thing, you know, you have to live with me and my ideas about life. You poor thing, you know? Not in a way that makes me hate myself, but just in a way that I'm humble and I know I'm full of shit.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  And I'm challenging, you know? And I have compassion for you. And I live with me, so I know, you know? And making it humorous.

• 1:56:20André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  And it's not that serious, you know? If you say that you're, you know, full of hypocrisy and come on, just be honest with yourself. You are not easy to live with, right? I tell parents, can you just accept that you're not easy to live with? Like, who made you God, right? Who told you that you were a piece of cake? Because we always think it's the child's fault. We always think the partner is so difficult. I'm like, hello, have you seen yourself? Like, have you lived with yourself? And having that humility allows you to let go of parts of you that may not be serving your children or yourself, you know? And I tell parents, you know, don't be so protective about yourself. You're not that special. Let parts of you go. This is not working.

• 1:57:06André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  You know, your righteousness is not working. Your fixation on this goal is not working. Is it working? Doesn't matter if it's right. Is it working? What is the impact, right? In our heads, we're always thinking we're right or we're good. It can be so in your head. But if it's not having the impact of goodness or rightness for your child or your partner, you gotta let it go, right? So, parents get very stuck in their own need to be superior, to be right. And my work pokes at their bubble of grandeur.

• 1:57:39André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  And they don't like it.

• 1:57:41André Duqum?

  Yeah, you're shedding a light on how to build anti-fragility and build resiliency. It feels like when even just having these conversations are available, they're on offer in a household, then the shame and the guilt and the suppression isn't as present because you can be with, you can talk about things as they come up.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  I love how you just related it to anti-fragility. But if the parent is so fragile and the parent needs to be good and right all the time, how will the child learn that they can be wrong? And it's okay to be wrong. And we're wrong all the time. And it's good to be wrong and question yourself. If you never question yourself, if you don't show your child a model of your own doubt, self-doubt, of your own, you know, admissions to your own contradictions, how will the child be able to look at their contradictions and be honest about them? Right?

• 1:58:37André Duqum?

  If you had 60 seconds to tell every parent one message about raising conscious daughters and conscious sons, what would it be?

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  I would tell parents to be easy on themselves. This is an incredibly maddening journey. It's incredibly difficult to parent today, especially. To have grace for yourself, have compassion for yourself, but also know that you have tremendous power to help your child become their most powerful. And if you could lean into the mirror that your child is offering you to heal yourself, you will not only be a better parent to them, but you will actually enter into your own wholeness, your own abundance and your own fullest potential.

• 1:59:25André Duqum?

  Beautifully said. Dr. Shefali, it's been a pleasure to connect. I've been loving our conversation. These reminders are needed now more than ever. And we'll leave links down in the description where people can stay connected to your work. Find you on social media.

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  These are the two books. Raising Conscious Daughters.

• 1:59:43André Duqum?

  Congratulations on raising those children because they are your babies, you know?

• 1:59:48Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm really proud of them. And I hope they will be of service and purpose in the world, yes.

• 1:59:53André Duqum?

  As you are. That's it.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much.