Ruth 0:00
And it was, it was, it was physical. So I think the church community and the church felt like a body. It was physically like my body, you know, like it was an extension of my body. But actually it felt more like my my body could feel itself and be itself at church. I could. It felt like a good it was good, yeah, and it could hold me, and I can be held and relaxed and feel the
Josh Lavine 0:30
life source. Welcome to another episode of what it's like to be you. I'm Josh Lavon, your host, and on this show, I interview accurately typed guests about their experience as their Enneagram type. Today, my guest is Ruth, Harvey Regan, who is a sexual social nine, wing one with seven, wing eight and three. Wing two fixes. So that's 973, tri fix. And Ruth is an extraordinary example of her type. Her typing is rare, being sexual, social and being a sexual social nine. From an early age, Ruth experienced a longing to be dissolved into transcendent experience. And she claimed Jesus when she was three years old, and when she was nine, had a vision of God, Jesus, divine energy, literally entering into her body. And so just from her visions, even early childhood, she's already exhibiting some of the epic messianic boundary dissolving tendencies of sexual, social and especially with nine kind of outsourcing, a sense of being held by my environment, which she found in us, in her internal sense of divine, as well as in her experience of Church and how she and she oriented her life through basically all the way up until her late 30s, around having relationships and a lifestyle that supported maintaining this divine connection until she chose her partners, etc, and kind of outsourcing a lot of her more mundane self press needs being self pressed blind so that, in itself, is already quite extraordinary and unusual for those of us who are not sexual social. But then something profound happened for Ruth, which is that she had a kind of rude awakening where her internal vision of Jesus almost kind of gave her a loving kick out the door, saying, You need to become an adult now and embrace the mundanity of self press life, and so you we find her now having managing properties and embracing routine and learning how to cook for herself and just do the boring self press stuff that she kind of avoided, because in her previous first half of life, she felt that that stuff impeded or intruded upon her divine connection. So an unbelievable life story arc from a person who is an exceptional exemplar of their type. I'm very excited for you to learn from Ruth. And before we get there, if you'd like to learn anything more about the Enneagram or about sexual, social or type nine, or any of the other aspects of Ruth's typing, please come check us out at the enneagramschool.com you can read all about these aspects of the Enneagram on our website. You can also browse interviews by type and instinctual stacking. And also, I recommend you check out her intro course so you can learn kind of all the basic concepts that make the Enneagram. The Enneagram, finally, before we get to the interview, in addition to the interview being a kind of testament to the transformation that Ruth has undergone, she also provided a poem that she wrote, as well as three visual poems that she created across a span of years that also kind of encapsulates her journey, and also she attributes a lot of her progress through her work at the Ridwan School, which is what some people know as the diamond approach. And so I've also included a link to that in the show notes. So without further ado, I'm very excited for you to learn from Ruth. So I think, I think the way in to this conversation is having said, what you said about recently feeling un burdened by your the narrative of your life. Yeah, I'd like to understand what that narrative was that you feel unburdened by having shed, yeah. And so I wonder if it does feel like there is a kind of perfect narrative arc to the whole thing. And so if we start in childhood with your religious experience, and then go through how you lost faith and what that was all about, and then everything that kind of crashed down as a result of crashed down as a result of that. I think that's the way in. So kit, why don't we start there? Yeah, okay, what's and I'll prompt you. You shared in kind of some of the stuff that you sent me this incredible moment about it when you were a child. I'll read what you said. You said you had a vision of Jesus and feeling him walking into your body, and your whole feeling, feeling like love, feeling like honey flowing around my body for hours. Yeah,
Ruth 4:54
yeah. Um, so I guess that. The there's a bit of a backstory to that. So the back story that relates that, that feels important, is that, and I Yeah, so it starts with being born. So my, I really, when I was born, I know that it was a difficult delivery and that I was separated from my mum at birth, so not for particularly long. I wasn't like in an incubator or anything, but I was born into quite a, it's quite a, sort of like a traumatic birth for my mum. And then I was separated from her, I think, without skin to skin contact, and moved into a different room. And my mum woke up the next morning without me being next to her. And then obviously asked, you know, can I see my my baby? And and then I was kind of joined, but the moment of coming into the world was knocked into my mother's arms and not being close to my mother and separated from her for quite a I would imagine what felt like forever for a little new person, for a newborn Infant, newborn, infant, yeah, and as a result of that? Well, who knows if it was a result of that, but my mum said that was quite difficult as a baby and a difficult as a young person. I don't know what she means by that, but I imagine I was probably quite clingy or, like crying a lot, and they, they used to lead me to cry, I think, quite a bit. And the reason I'm bringing this in is that we've heart of a church community, and mum must have taken me to some evangelical event when I was about three. And I came home from that event and I walked up the stairs, and I told mom, oh, I've given my life to Jesus when I was three. Okay? And she said my behavior changed overnight when you were three years old, when I was three years old, after giving my life to Jesus,
Josh Lavine 7:16
oh, my god, okay, yeah, okay, okay, all right, taking that in so, okay, and where? Where is that in relation to the story about the vision of Jesus?
Ruth 7:32
Okay, nine, maybe somewhere between nine and 11. Let's call it 10. It was the stuff in the middle. So between, like age three and age I don't 11 or something 10, I was in a church community, and I have, I don't have any memories of like, a relationship with Jesus. The memories I've got are of church being like the place I felt safe, so Church, the stories, the the community, the building, the people, that was my I would describe it as my happy place, like my place where I felt safe, yeah, and we used to go the people just felt kind and welcoming. They felt it felt like a family. It just felt like a warm, safe, kind place with music that just it just felt and I liked the stories, and they made sense to me. It felt like the stories were talking about something. I probably would say. It feels like a I don't know if Jesus was an imaginary friend God, you know, who knows, but it was my happy it was my happy place. And we used to go on it to these camps, like good Christians do, and stay in tents and do lots of worship with lots and lots of people. And we went to this, this Wales Bible week was the place we went to which was called harvest time. It was extremely exciting for me. People had seen angels. And, you know, there are lots of miracles that were taking place and people being healed of all sorts of things, left, right and center they were, but that was the, you know, quite exciting for a nine year old person, and we were in the young people's tent, and like, singing and praising Jesus, and it is wonderful environment. So now I know, like, the kind of the music structure is, it's incredibly relaxing. It's designed to be relaxing. It's like, kind of three chords or four chords are in a particular progression, and they're just, you know, they're really very good for the body, and they kind of help relax you, and they kind of build a common just the music itself, I think, is C, D and E. Something I don't know, but just like these, you know, really good community building and relaxing music and songs that give you a sense of purpose and belonging. So that's the kind of context, and also God's love. Jesus loves you all of the things, probably, I didn't get at home, or I wasn't feeling at home, and that that's a context for, I think, being so open. And also, we were also taught about prophecy and words of knowledge, and we were taught about, you know that the spiritual world is more real than the physical world. And being children, you know, being open and being close to God and just open to like visions or pictures or words of knowledge that come from what I now know essentially that is just your innate knowing, you know, kind of but, but it, it had a very spiritual context. And, yeah, I was just really read, you know, really open, just open to that. And also knew Jesus in the sense of all of the stories, and it made sense, and it just, it just made a lot of sense to me, and then that that's in that environment, in that kind of, like, very happy place for me, I appreciate. It's not for many, many, many, many people, but for me it was, it was my safe place. Um, that that vision was an unexpected thing. I was absolutely not expected. It was something I'd never had before, and was just Yeah. Was very, very unexpected, and it was a I it was a physical presence that appears in front of me as an as physically present as a human being, and that physical presence of love, of kindness, of companionship, attunement, support and real respect for me as a an individual, as a person, There wasn't an, it was no, there was no forcing. It wasn't like, it wasn't like a, it was a, an, a, very, if I'd have said no, do you know it was there was it was just so, so finely attuned, and that physical presence that I, you know, I had a word for that was Jesus, and it was masculine, and I felt it come into my body, and that experience of liquid love and liquid gold and just just like my blood was like honey, love got Just for hours, just sort of whirring around my body. And, yeah, it was six, it was, it was pretty out of the ordinary.
Josh Lavine 13:35
I mean, I had incredible listening. Yeah, it's an incredible story, and it's an incredible telling. And there's so many things about that that I want to pull out just themes about it. Just, first of all, it feels like church and the place of belonging in the music, there's this ecstatic. It like, it's like it filled you up. It just filled you all the way up this Yeah, sense of yeah, yes,
Ruth 14:04
yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it was, it was, it was physical. So I think the chair like a yeah community and the church felt like a body, which I that, yes, like an actual body. I mean, we should come in, we can come into that later, but it felt like it was physically, like my body, you know, like it was an extension of my body. But actually it felt more like my body. Could feel itself and be itself. At church, I could. It felt like a good, it was good, yeah, and it could hold me. And I held and relaxed and safe, a little bit like I was, you know, you mapping and talking about kind of social context, but I felt like the church was my body, that it held me, that it was a safe, nurturing body through which I could relax. And I. Feel the life source, you know, that kind of yeah,
Josh Lavine 15:06
that is you're being, you're being. So let's see the energy of your storytelling is so ecstatic. And there's such a like, I feel it Yeah, through you, through your telling, yeah. And I don't want to derail that by doing my little scientific, social self press kind of thing, but I'm going to do it anyway, just to, just to kind of get some Enneagram concepts in here. So there's, there's a way that, yeah. So this externalized body I'm thinking of, I'm making a connection to self press blind there in a certain way, like I don't like the holding that I am experiencing from the church is not available from within me, and also it wasn't available in the first moments of your birth to make that connection as well. Yeah, yeah. And here you have this literal social environment that has this just religious iconography and messaging around divine love, and it just just moving into you and filling you up, and then literally, you have a vision, yeah, of that literally happening, yeah. And there's just something so powerfully sexual, social about that, too. And again, I don't mean to box it, but, it's, but it's just, it's like your availability to that, like the honey flowing from the Divine messianic energy that interpenetrates your soul and that gets in you and that fills you up and fills you with a warmth and fills you with a sense of belonging. And, yeah, it's like a complete merging, yeah, literally a merging and a being penetrated by merged, being merged with by this for you, not actually abstract, like a, like a, literally a somatic presence of that energy, yeah,
Ruth 17:01
yeah. Wasn't at all abstract, yeah, yeah. And so
Josh Lavine 17:06
the sexual, social, there's nine, I mean, there's probably some seven in there as well. And three, I don't know there's, yeah, you we could, we got the whole, we could get in there with our, with our, I don't know, tweezers and kind of make it, you know, pull it apart. But let's not do that. Let's Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so you have this, by the way, what happened? Why did you what happened when you were three that you turned your life over to Jesus? Do you? Do you remember it yourself?
Ruth 17:34
No, I've got a pretty good theory. Okay, which could I yeah, I do have quite a good theory about it, but it'll be in relation to my nervous system and, okay, which you might want to come back to later. Or do you want to go with that now?
Josh Lavine 17:56
Yeah, let's do it now. Or I, I'm curious about your theory, and then we can kind of come back to it. Okay, so,
Ruth 18:01
yeah, my sense is that cost it. I mean, this is the, this is the theory, right? So, the theory is that in the womb, it's optimal, you know, I'm, I'm, there's a holding environment. There's Yes, physical needs are met, and life force essentially what you're describing as ecstasy, or ecstatic. I just lit, I just feel that as well. It's just a raw life force that is just, you know, the ordinary raw life force that creates life that's creative, that's got masculine and feminine in it, because it's evolving and making life happen. It's the Eros of life. It is just the life force, boring, yeah, on one level, it's like the ordinary life force that everybody has that makes them and the safety within that, the ease the I would, I think my my physical chemistry has a proclivity to orientating towards that just and being porous about being I don't know it just must be something to do with my body chemistry and being Born and being so severed from that and so born into it, like an environment and not being held and not being the the that, again, the sensitivity I have towards needing, I think, the sensitivity that the porousness that my innate nature Has that needs a holding. It needs holding to contain it because it's so global and it's so essentially, so sensing or yes, yeah, and needs containing and holding, and then needs feeding, if you like, needs nurture, but it needs the containing holding space to give it pretty. Protection and boundary, and also to shape it, to help shape that kind of raw force and then nurture, you know, the actual physical, physical needs. And my sense is that my the my mum, was such a poor substitute for the womb, I don't think she could have done a good job, even if she'd been the best mum in the world, probably. But I think I would have been so sensitive to the story and the memory of what it was like, you know, in the womb, this optimal heaven space where I could just relax and grow and everything was wonderful. And to stories about Jesus and God, where, again, well, God looked after that. God was the Father. God loved you. God was going give your life to Jesus. He'll look after you and be all safe and wonderful. And I would imagine that my little soul would have just gone. I know that. Yeah, great, definitely, absolutely, he's safe. Yeah, God's safe. I know I I've got, do you know what I mean? Like, I've got that memory.
Josh Lavine 21:02
I do, yeah, I do, yeah. Like,
Ruth 21:04
attaching to God. Like, I think at age three, people have transitional objects. You know, they sort of, they transition to your blankie, or whatever. Blankie as a safe transitional objects, yeah, from their parents and I just had God happened to be my blankie,
Josh Lavine 21:22
yeah, yeah, that makes total sense. And there's, well, there's so much that you're saying that is stuff that I've been exploring around it with my theory around kind of body types, having a nostalgia for the womb, 100% holding Yeah, uh, an environment for Yeah, yeah. That's perfectly tuned to my needs and doesn't apply any pressures to me. And that's it's exactly tuned to my whole life force
Ruth 21:46
is completely, yeah,
Josh Lavine 21:49
yeah, one. And then here you have this also, like, a seven wing eight fix that's sort of like, I'm not gonna listen like, I'm gonna self direct based on my inner ideal, you know, I'm not even gonna reference like, what you said. I'm saying like, without the six wing on the seven fix,
Ruth 22:04
yes, but I think that's because, that's because the the the logic in that is incredibly, I think it's very practically and intelligently logical, which absolutely, which is that the holding onto the eye seven goes to holding onto the and the so the nine wing one is that it should be like that. You know, that is what it should be. Nine, yeah, that's, that's it in the womb. That was it, yep. I'm not sure if anyone eight would be this is it 9911? Was definitely the ideal. That is what it should be like. And then the, you know, you're born into a world, but the nervous system is kind of like, like, trying to regulate, literally, like, Oh my fucking god, trying to regulate yes and the global nature of the nervous system, where you feel everything as you as a very you know, a newborn infant, you go from being globally positive or globally like ease and wonderful, to globally like hellscape, like complete torture, stress, Separation, just like your nervous system, you know, just like, that's where,
Josh Lavine 23:24
I don't know if you're allowed to swear on No, that's fine. It's fine, yeah,
Ruth 23:28
literally. Like, how the fuck sorry to swear but how do you regulate yourself? You can't let it all out. That's good. You know, it's impossible. Which is, it is the human birth. It's that kind of like, there's nothing more traumatic for a human to experience in their life than actual birth, and they've already done that, yes, yes. But the I think that with my particular chemical makeup, you could say the I could I don't think my nervous system could cope with the global overwhelm of pain like it was so total, like, so that the only way that a nervous system can stop that is to contract, you know, like to freeze, to limit the stop it. And,
Josh Lavine 24:19
yeah, and your hands are doing a tightening, like a rigidity, like a holding yourself in. And actually, that, just to say that real quick, I think that's partly just with the one fix, or, sorry, the one wing. I think one creates its own holding by doing that. If that makes sense, you know, with that, yeah, Tension. Tension is a way I hold myself, yeah,
Ruth 24:38
because, because it's shut down sensation. For me, it's like, if you tense your muscles, it does two things, it stops it limits the amount of sensation you can feel because you're not relaxed and open, and it also creates a structure of some sort of sense of holding mm.
Josh Lavine 24:59
Yeah, and it generates its own form of sensation that you become
Ruth 25:03
familiarizing, yeah, a form of sensation that's, um, that's self generated solid, solid holding and limiting sensation at the same time. And then I've obviously got there, well, it should be like that. And I've also got the and it shouldn't be like this. Yes, not this, but that, because the not this is so overwhelmingly crushing my nervous system. It's just so too much. But I think my nervous system had to develop that strong, no, not like this, because it had to function, because it otherwise is just going to keep crashing with overwhelm. So the fear, I don't think it's like I'm not afraid or I'm I think it's just literally that in order to regulate at all, my body had to develop such a strong or maybe that I was in pain or stressed or alone to the degree that kept overwhelming itself. So it had to develop a strong, a really strong resistance to the pain or or overwhelm to function and to not just keep crashing the whole time.
Josh Lavine 26:20
You know, what strikes me is that the moment you're of being nine years old and watching Jesus walk into your body and then this blood, honey, divine flowing energy is the antithesis of that. It's the relaxation of all that tension and just the Yeah, being held,
Ruth 26:36
yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that, I mean, you could call it the wisdom of the body. I don't know if the wisdom of the spirit, the wisdom of life, you know, like but I think I had created such a, I think a split from my body, like soul body, that I am not my body. This is not me. I am dissociated from my body. That is not me. The body isn't who I am. I am something else. You
Josh Lavine 27:12
know, you put this in your, in your, in your notes to me before, and actually wanted to just real quick pause on that, because you kind of categorize that as this as part of the sexual instinct, yeah, for nine. And I'm not sure if that's in your schema, how that works, but it's, it makes sense to me, in a certain way, that you externalized your body to this holding environment that physically was the church and that community, yeah? But it's like, I am not my body. It's like I'm drawing a connection to being sexual, dominant and self press, blind, yeah, in that, yeah, yeah, yeah. This, this physical thing that is tangible is not me, my body is this is like the ocean I'm swimming in. Yeah,
Ruth 27:53
exactly. And I think that that, I mean, this is theory, right? But my theory would be that in relation to the holding of my mum, which was that first global, I don't know, you know, this is a body. I'm in a body, and this body is fucking weird. It's like, you know, one minute, it's kind of kind of okay and kind of relaxing globally, and then on another minute, it's like a kind of hellscape, and it's just unpredictable, and it's very sub optimal.
Josh Lavine 28:26
And after birth, like to speak, having them up, yeah,
Ruth 28:30
exactly. And I'm not that like I'm experiencing my, say, my soul and my the presence that's stable around it, not the body that's complete carnage. You know, the sensations in the body that are just a kind of mess, basically an unregulated, chaotic mess. So identifying myself with the stable harmony, if you like, of the spirit, or, you say, presence, or the bit that is, that is regulatable, and not identifying my sense of self with the bit that is a complete carnage pool of like, chaos sensation,
Josh Lavine 29:11
well done, yeah, yes, I'm fully there. You're fully there. That's yeah, fully there. I'm fully there, yeah, yeah. Well, so
Ruth 29:19
and I think you're right. So when, when did I had that Jesus experience? Yeah, again. And you could say evolutionary, evolutionarily speaking, it was a, quite an important, I think it was quite an important point in a safe, safe and schizoid development where I was able to feel those good feelings in my own body, not just outsource them or dissociate them to other places.
Josh Lavine 29:57
Oh, that's, that's the meaning you make of the moment of. Nine years old, of having it enter you and you're actually experiencing it closer to home. Oh, I see that makes sense, because you were talking about literally your own blood flowing and feeling the honey, yeah, the divine honey of that, yeah, inside your body, as opposed to having it be outside, yeah,
Ruth 30:13
yeah, instead, yeah, instead of the kind of the goodness is all outside my body, yeah, God. Goodness is in pre birth, goodness is in spirit. Goodness is in the safe place that isn't part of a body. And that was my, I think, my first conscious embodied embodiment, if you like, where it was like, Oh, those feelings, although I associated it with Jesus in my body. Uh huh, it was, it was still, actually, Oh, I feel those feelings in my actual physical body.
Josh Lavine 30:51
Yes, okay, I'm fully tracking, so, so you're so you're so you're nine years old, and then the next kind of major life points that, yeah, that I want to talk about is this, when you in your midlife, when you lost connection with all that, but just briefly, before we make that jump, what else? What happened in your life? Like, what's what's relevant, what feels relevant to share, from nine till, yeah, from nine
Ruth 31:21
to then, oh, okay, so the only career or life, yeah, I wanted to be a missionary, obviously, because, like, because that was all I wanted to do, was to be with God, you know, which I kind of makes sense, because it was like, Well, that was My safe place, right? And in a body and, or with the church, with the church, yeah, so sort of life, church, being part of that communion community, seeing myself only really experiencing my identity as part of that body, that church, that story, and as part of that getting married at a very young age. I was 20, yep, and seeing that relationship as a oh, I asked God to arrange my marriage for me, because I didn't want to choose the person with my sexual instinct, because, literally, innately, I was just like that would not go well. Oh, my God,
Josh Lavine 32:23
wait, I just have to comment on that real quick, because just we that's that's so interesting, yeah, and radical what I let me tell you what I or let me say what I mean by that. You know, with with nines, Nines as as as busy and productive as they sometimes can be, are often taking whether or not they're conscious of this a passive relationship to the dominant instinct. Yeah, and it's kind of like just hoping that the world provides the thing that will most nourish me. And it's almost like an abandon of my will, or a displacement of my will, like I don't want to be responsible for making this choice, or for summoning myself to put the effort in, to have to create the environment that will hold me. I just want the environment to hold me without me having to do anything. Yeah, this, this, yeah. Wish for
Ruth 33:17
God, who I'm in a relationship with, once described me regularly as a baby victim.
Josh Lavine 33:23
Baby, that's so yeah, that's yeah, that's okay. So you asked God to arrange your marriage for you, which, through this, through the Enneagram lens, we're seeing as a kind of wishing that the world will arrange itself in such a way that you get your sexual dominant needs met. I dominant
Ruth 33:44
needs met as a nine. So no, so that I don't let them fuck me up. Basically, it's not really. So I get my my sexual needs were met by God. I didn't really have any needs. That's right. No, I see that. I see them met by, yeah, a human.
Josh Lavine 34:02
Oh, that's amazing. I see, so you didn't, so you wanted a relation, your your marriage relationship, not to interfere with that connection.
Ruth 34:09
It's a support it,
Josh Lavine 34:12
to support it. I see, okay, yeah, okay, so, yeah, that's amazing. So that was, that was your framing of the partner. The ideal partner for you was someone that would support your relationship
Ruth 34:23
with God, yeah, yeah, because God first. And we also taught, you know, in church, it's like God first, of course, that's right, put your relationship like journaling, you know, sort of Yeah, God first. Yeah. Okay, so then, so I that happened, right? And I also that person that I was in this relationship with from I met them when I was 17, and I felt at home with them. They made me feel safe, and they were nurturing. So they basically provided the social and the. Self press. I think they were self pressed social. So they're basically somebody who was really kind and really holding and really nurturing, and didn't need that intimate contact too much for me, but could hold the space, and that's exactly what they did. They made a home, held it, and basically provided for my every need while I was being interesting, essentially, you know, having a relationship with God and just, you know, yeah, interesting, a quote, unquote, and I didn't feel any sense of sexual attraction towards them. It was not ideal on that front at all, you know, for years. But the the context also was that I needed to have a partner, or you couldn't be a priest. If you were a woman in my church, you had to be married to her husband. So, you know, the whole thing was just a setup to support my relationship with God and my relationship with God in the church. And the long and short of that was obviously that as the more I was looked after physically, the more ill I actually became, yeah, I started to become really unwell. And physically, like physically unwell. And I had developed bulimia, because it's probably having sex with something I wasn't at all attracted to, for a start, you know, all of the other things trying to roll, um, and, yeah, I developed a really, really good, good, strong eating disorder, and I was really unable to look after myself. I was also, you know, I just didn't have a I could work, but in a voluntary capacity, because I didn't feel confident to be able to stand on my own two feet, because I was just being essentially looked after by somebody. And it started to it started to feel really unsafe. And at the same time, our church was, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Toronto Blessing. I have not. Oh, why not? How could you not know about the Toronto Blessing? Well, gosh, okay, you've never heard of teeth turning gold.
Josh Lavine 37:30
Sure haven't No, can't say
Ruth 37:31
that. I have no no. And you haven't heard of people just laughing in the spirit uncontrollably, and it's a wave of laughter coming across the nations. No, you've had a gold dust in people's hands. I
Josh Lavine 37:48
haven't heard of that either. No, what are you talking about? Yeah,
Ruth 37:53
really. So that's the Toronto Blessing, where, in the late 90s, this phenomena arose in charismatic churches across the globe, where people would the spirit would descend on a group of people, and people would start laughing uncontrollably. They there would be reports of gold dust in people's hands, and also, like teeth filling turning gold. So there's just a lot of gold, a lot of gold dust, and a lot of laughing going on, and you'd be slain in the Spirit, which I don't know if you know, that's sort of where you're the presence of God comes in such a heavy degree that you can't stand up, and then you're just lying On the floor in ecstasy, essentially, basically, like, yeah, so that happened in our church environment, and with the like, music and the worship state and all of this going on, and my, you could say, proclivity to experience things like that, I went to those kind of meetings maybe twice a week for about four years, which is essentially kind of just like taking drugs try, you know, maybe two or three times a week for a very, very long time, right? And with you, or, you know, having kind of mushroom experiences where you're having, you know, life, expanding visions and seeing. So I basically had a very, I would say, rich experience of what people would call, I don't know, God consciousness states. I can live it. So it's just really dangerous. You know, psychologically, really, really dangerous. So you
Josh Lavine 39:44
couldn't live it in the sense of, like, couldn't bring it home with you, like, you went to go get a hit of it at the church, and then you would come back and not,
Ruth 39:50
I can say it, but you know, the whole you could say there's something really important, if you have either, like, people are going for our aisle back. Scar or, you know, you have an experience, but you don't want to have too many of those trips without actually integrating it into your life. That's right, you know, it's really dangerous actually to do that, because it's not just for drugs sake. It's to actually integrate into your human real life with your actual you know, realize it not just
Ruth 40:25
it's kind of like a revelation, or it's a realization, not an experience, yes, and so it felt like I was just having, essentially taking God drugs without being able to realize it, because I didn't. I was losing my self preservation legs,
Josh Lavine 40:52
you know, more and more, meanwhile developing, yeah, real symptoms as a result of self abandoning in really profound ways in your relationship, yeah,
Ruth 41:03
yeah, yeah, exactly. And that, that moment, to me, was having a wake up call, where I just, like I was really I had body dysmorphia, seeing myself as really fat when I was just like, you know, seven stone or something, just really being my wake up call, actually, was when I bought my mum a present for Christmas. It was skirt, and I bought her a size 16 and a size 18. I don't know what the measurements are in the US, but probably like 18 and 20, I think maybe even larger. And she took it on and tried it on, and she came back and it looked like it fitted her. And said, Oh, darling. I love the skirt, but I think we might maybe need to swap it for a different size. And she'd folded it in half, and we swapped it for a size 10, which is like the like, I literally just completely couldn't Gage, oh, I was just seeing fat, like, fat eyes.
Josh Lavine 42:16
That's amazing. You were, you were seeing other people as fat too. Or you and you were, you were just literally gaging, yeah, and you missed it by a factor of two, like a multiplier of two, yeah, okay, that's remarkable.
Ruth 42:29
It was quite, yeah, good, you know,
Josh Lavine 42:33
okay, yeah,
Ruth 42:36
yeah. Amazing. What the You know that? You know, it's amazing what our minds can do, right, like actual eyes, and just going, you're fat and you're size 20, but you're actually size 10, or you just, it was so that was a real wake up call for me, when I was like, Shit, I My perception is warped as fuck. Basically, it's just, this is not good. Yeah, and I, I actually started to coach myself. I did a coaching course, a life coaching course. So I know I am a typical life coach, but essentially, I went to, I went to a I went to a group for people with eating disorders. And this is probably, I do own this bit, but I would look I walked into the group of people with eating disorders and took one look at them. I mean, I think I stayed for about half an hour, and I thought, I'm not like, fuck that. I'm not like you. They were so boring and just so awful, and just, I was like, Nope, I'm not like you. Thank you very much. I'm never going back there. I am not going to identify with you. Thanks very much. Yeah, and I will coach myself seven fixed stuff there too. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, so, and that's what I ended up doing. I did end up just working out. Then if I wanted to get better, I had to have a long term goal, which was basically to work. My goal was to work because I couldn't work, and I ended up
Josh Lavine 44:02
just help me, just in terms of timing. What time? How old were you around this time? So I was about 2525
Ruth 44:11
Yeah, about 2524 maybe, yeah, maybe 24
Josh Lavine 44:16
she'd been married by this point by like, four or five years,
Ruth 44:19
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Four or five years got mine when I was 20, and I was able to coach myself better, just by just going, I'm not going to look in the mirror, I'm not going to look at diet. I'm just going to totally scratch that and just just have no pressure, take every pressure down and just start from the ground zero, and I got better and better, like I got consistently more better, and as as a result of that, I just as I got actually better and more able to take care of myself and taking self care seriously and staff. To just starting to sort of Yeah. Think about actually, how to live. I realized that that I couldn't stay in the relationship that I was with I was in, because it would probably kill me and I'd be loved to death like through No, yeah, no, there's no judgment. And no, you know, you couldn't have asked for anything more from my husband, and he couldn't have done anything better, given you know it, but because of my wiring, what he was doing was making me very, very ill, and what I was doing was making me very, very ill, and also making him into a carer, and stopping him from doing actually what I think, yeah, what he is doing now, which is actually living, not just caring for someone. So, yeah, it was a choice between staying with him and probably ending up in a mental hospital, actually, and just being, you know, being cared for my whole life or
Josh Lavine 46:14
and you were a you were aware of that consciously at the time when you chose to leave the relationship. You were like, this is, this is, yeah,
Ruth 46:21
yeah. I have to, I have to leave, to save myself, and also to save him. And going back to the God thing, what had happened, kind of simultaneously at the sort of a similarish time, was, I think I told you I had a vision of another vision, and that vision was,
Josh Lavine 46:48
Oh, you did. So this is the mountain one, yeah,
Ruth 46:52
yes, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I had another vision where I was on a mountain, and I'll just like tell it again. So I was on a mountain and the snow, snow capped mountain, but no sound and no wind and no no sensation. And became aware of that, and became aware that that was a montage of photographs that I unpicked, and they fell to the floor. And in this vision, I turned around, and I was in a room, a small room with a closed window and a bed and a rucksack, and actually a little bit like a monastery, like a nun or a monk's cell. And I picked the rucksack up and went down the corridor to these massive doors. And God was at these doors, and he threw the doors open, and the whole world opened up in front of me. And he said, Ruth, you'll always have a home here. Go find your mountain. And I walked out of this house again with this real sense of trust and freedom and confidence that I felt imbued with that you know that there was no holding or no like it was just that kind of fathering or briency, or I know it doesn't have to fathering person that provides you with that confidence or safety to just step into the world in your own skin. And as I was walking out into this Gloria, and was a bit like the sound of music. Obviously, I had probably seen it at some point. And in this vision, I became aware of the presence of Jesus walking beside me. And in this, yeah, I became aware of the that he was pulling his step back, keeping in step with me. Had all the time in the world, lots of things he could be doing, but again, no rush, in no hurry. And I became aware of the fact that I was small and that he was tall and I was a girl, and that he was a man, and I became aware. It is that self awareness that I'd always been trying to be like Jesus, you know, you've got to be like Jesus. And it was in that moment it sort of dawned on me, I can't be like Jesus because I'm a woman. I know I'm a girl, and I also have, I can't really be like Jesus unless I'm a woman, you know, I need to grow up. And I'm a child at the moment, and I feel like I'm a child. And I can remember looking up and just thinking, I don't want to be a child. I want to be a. Co worker, I don't want to, I don't want to be, and I can't be like Jesus, because I need to be a woman. And that's really, that's really different kind of in that. And what,
Josh Lavine 50:14
what did the distinction mean to you? What is, what does it mean to be girl versus a woman? Yeah, um,
Ruth 50:21
now, probably not much, but at the time where I was in my development, I think it was a separation. It was a distinction which was quite helpful in relation to, I am not you, and I cannot be you. You are distinctly different to me. And I think I would describe it as just that.
Josh Lavine 50:42
Well, what I mean is, what is it in your I guess the point of you having that realization was that in order to be a coworker alongside Jesus and not just his good girl, or to be a person that is not on the same level, you have to grow up. You have to
Ruth 50:59
become an adult. Exactly, coming in the den, yeah.
Josh Lavine 51:03
And what is, what was, what was the path to adulthood for you, or what, yeah, what was your vision of adulthood? Yeah.
Ruth 51:11
So in, in that so, in that exchange, that, that kind of, in that exchange, in that vision, I turned to Jesus. And he turned to me, and he looked at me, and he said, Yes. He said, I can't you know you're a child and you need to be a woman, essentially, you need to be a grown up. I can't do that for you. And he said, Ruth, go to the earth. Go find yourself. And I'll always be here, but, you know, go to the earth and go find yourself. And that was what gave me the confidence to question my faith. Essentially, that's what gave me the confidence to allow my all of my belief systems, to question them, to allow them to not be true the ideals to let them start to erode and evolve and disintegrate, essentially, and that thing of finding myself, what is myself? What is it? What does it mean to be a separate human? Essentially, and so, you know, that was like alongside my marriage. So basically the whole kind of, the whole pack of cards just started to fall down, and they literally just dissolved until I landed leaving the church and landed on the doorstep of the next person who was kind. I'd say, Can't enough or thank God for the partner that I was with then as my son's Dad, where I just was a a human, just no in my body, but just nothing special, with no faith, no nothing, and literally felt like I just landed on planet earth age there was about 30 at the time when I really got there living life as a normal, ordinary person for the first time, and it was fucking terrifying.
Josh Lavine 53:31
Yeah, and okay, and how old were you then? That was the same time
Ruth 53:35
30. I was 30. By that time, that was 30. That was the Okay, I've never had a proper job. Yes, you sort of blah, blah, blah,
Josh Lavine 53:44
Okay, God, that's amazing. Yeah, so you really did kind of that was a one way of characterizing what it meant, what it meant to become an adult, was to develop yourself present, or to just have some kind of grounding.
Ruth 53:58
Yeah, that was Yeah.
Josh Lavine 54:01
But in and again, I don't want to box it in too hard, but the it's like you, your whole inner eye had been oriented to God just up up into the sky, and you were drawing a sense of spiritual nourishment from that. And your eyes had never really come to the ground to really like regard the earthliness. It's kind of like, I think it's Ruby, who says we have to be outwardly in the marketplace, but inwardly with Allah. It was, you know, yeah, at least in his soof. But you were inwardly with a lot, but you were not in the
Ruth 54:42
marketplace. No, yes, no, so no, and told told that again, because in our Christian you could say programming, you're told that, yeah, you don't want to mix with unbelievers. There you go. Not scary, because we're going to teach. Away from God, no, they are scary. Sorry, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, absolutely. So becoming an adult meant like it meant, well, how do I hold my actual selves, like as a not just somebody else to hold me? How do I hold myself and create and contain my own emotions and my own feelings and like boundaries. What are they even, and how do I provide for my needs? Stand on my own two feet.
Josh Lavine 55:35
How when you were doing that and going to this sort of questioning of your faith and stuff. How much were you? Let's see how to put this. I'm struck by the loving kick out the door that your inner representation of God or Jesus gave you very kind and sort of like a, you know, like a, like a, like a kind, like a mature parents that's not holding on. It's like you need to go and be your own person. Now, you know kind of thing? There's a whole social commentary that came into my head around that topic, around how parents can sometimes cling and not actually let their kids anyway. So you got that, you got that front, that good, freeing kind of parenting from the your inner representation, yeah. And then yeah, what I'm wondering is, kind of as an attachment type, I'm wondering how much you are still holding on to that inner representation, like the permission of it, even as you were questioning your faith, yeah, yeah, yeah. And moving into having a job and moving into the world, and, you know, I'm saying, like, yeah, how much of an inner split was there?
Ruth 56:46
Well, the thing that I that, that's when I say, I lost my face. That's what I lost, yeah, I totally lost it. I can't even explain it. Okay, say, like, it just Yeah, went,
Josh Lavine 57:00
like, that's wild, absolutely wild.
Ruth 57:03
Really was wild, yes, like it went to the degree, like it was annihilated, is the word. I could not feel it. I could I couldn't like it. It was not there in my consciousness. I couldn't access it couldn't find it literally obliterated like old around the planet.
Josh Lavine 57:30
Thank you for bringing it there. Yeah. I really appreciate the stars, right? Yeah. So the so I
Ruth 57:39
feel in the fourth It was as if a million people, Craig, yes, and then there was silence, thanks. But
Josh Lavine 57:49
so when you were in abiding in the silence and going about your mundane new life with a job and a new relationship, I use the word mundane. I'm not sure if that was your word, but yeah, were you wishing for it back again or or grieving a loss of it? And yeah? Okay,
Ruth 58:08
yeah, I it was just Yeah, globally horrendous. It just, I can't. Just, I probably can't. It was so just, catastrophic. It's just like I'd lost my whole orientation to everything, like meaning for life, purpose, drive, you know, everything that had orientated me to any sense of meaning, purpose, point of humanity, my life, anybody else's life gone like I just didn't even know what to why would it was just very God. It was pretty bad. That was pretty not, that wasn't great. Felt very disorientating and just not great for a while, but, but that's my son's dad. Probably, obviously he wouldn't have known what had hit him, because it was quite Yes. How on earth do you manage somebody who arrives on your doorstep like that, in a new relationship and then became pregnant with Beau. And of I mean, all of this again, was very it was so good for that journey to have a baby, to be nurturing something, to be having to get a job, to actually having I worked in the health service, and I, yeah, I got a job, and I basically had to be a, yeah, just a parent and just be it was very much in my body, and it was so incredibly healing, probably whole, whole bodying, yeah, it was uh huh, yeah. When I'm young,
Josh Lavine 1:00:01
I get the feeling like, as I hear you talk about it, I mean literally in my body, I feel like a, it's like a, like a coming down, like the I guess what I'm learning from that is that the your life up to that point had been inflated in a certain way, with this attachment to however you were conceiving of kind of divine energy, and letting, letting that air out of your system helped you just, like, deflate, and then put your feet on the ground. And it's like, all right, I'm tying my shoes. I'm raising a kid. I'm
Ruth 1:00:42
Yeah, job, yeah, yeah, oh my god, this is what it's like. And actually, I can do this to some degree. Okay, so
Josh Lavine 1:00:55
you did have that experience of your capacity,
Ruth 1:00:57
yeah, yeah. Like, and the capacity in my actual body, capacity to and I think this goes back to the nervous system that learn. I think learnt to crash early, you know, just sort of can't cope with stress crash. Need someone else to regulate because it it didn't learn how to regulate itself and the resilience or connect to its own resilience and capacity to regulate stress. And I would probably characterize the next few years of my life as building a tolerance to regulate stress, like and stay Okay, yeah, functional, you know, like, how
Josh Lavine 1:01:39
without you, for example, going to get a hit at church of that, yeah, kind of, yeah, golden energy,
Ruth 1:01:44
yeah, yeah, exactly, because there's nothing available. Like, literally nothing. I just had to just not, yeah, there was nothing, no, none. Just normal, boring, you could say, but not now. I don't feel like it's boring, but just, like, just how, yeah, tolerating normal, getting up, being resilient, going to work, just not things being perfect, things being frustrating, things not being good enough. You know, all of those kind of normal things that you learn and learning to deeply, deeply appreciate them.
Josh Lavine 1:02:20
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of seven in what you're saying, like the journey of a seven to putting your feet on the ground. And let's see exiting the world of fantasy and reframe that sevens tend to live in and superimpose on top of reality, letting that dissolve and actually being in reality, yeah, yeah, and then finding a way to be contented there, rather than elevate and go whoop into your brain and into the whatever reveries and fantasies that you Feel are preferable, yeah. So what? I guess what? Huh? What did you find in terms of what helped you stay grounded? And I guess what I'm struck by is just the fact that it's like the thing that you had. I'll call it this. It's, I don't want to reduce it to this, but I will call it a coping mechanism, the way that you, yeah, your relationship with kind of religious divine energy, yeah, the fact that you know, Alderaan style, it was annihilated. You didn't have access to that anymore, like you couldn't get a hit of it. And so you were forced, by default, to stay where you were i, which I could imagine, was difficult. Yeah, and so what was, was there drama? What did you find yourself feeling dysregulated and then acting out in other ways? What did you reach for to ground yourself? Or how did you discover how to ground yourself?
Ruth 1:04:02
How did I discover how I think this is the i i think this is probably what I could describe as a trade with partners. So Beau's dad, my son's dad, who was my partner at this stage,
Ruth 1:04:32
is a very, you could say, quite disciplined, structured person. Which I needed. I didn't like it, but I needed it, and he was also kind, kind and structured, but very rigid, yeah, and I really needed that. Yes, and I think that it seems to be that so the long and short of that was that I was a I took, I took a toll on him, because the kind of level of disintegration that he was having to face on a daily with me in the place that I was was significant, and he really acted like a kind of boundaried, I would say, parent on many levels. Like, just put the washing in. I am not your mom. Like, just do it yourself. And understandably got to the end of his tether, who wouldn't. And also, I think the trade being that there is something about the energy that I have that is that is connected to source and your own creative your own life, source and transformation, he found his own way back to his homeland. He went he hadn't been it was just Germany and back to home and back to source and back to himself and the life that he lives now is a life which is home for him. He made a big life choice. I don't want to do my career. He was stopped, essentially stopped doing things that he felt he ought to do, and found what he actually wanted to do and went and did it. Mm, and yeah so some you know, my first husband, when he ended our relationship ended, went and became a brilliant photographer, which is what he was like he went and just he actually did. He's doing what he he's doing what he really should be doing, and it feels like Beau's dad's doing what he really should be doing. So I don't know if that's just me making myself feel better for being a complete nightmare, but I Yeah, no, I know that there's, there's a life aliveness that I am, that my nature is that does something that has a goodness to it, even though that was a really difficult period and The difficult sort of transition into being an adult, yeah, yeah.
Josh Lavine 1:07:45
So, how did you start a real estate business?
Ruth 1:07:51
Well, when left Thankfully, he left. Not that he left thankfully, but he basically said to me, once he's like, I just think you need to you need to lead me to leave. What you need is for me to leave. He said that to me once, and he was absolutely right. What I actually needed was to be on my own and to have to stand on my own two feet, right? So he left, and he wasn't going to be financing my dependence on him again. I think rightly so. I just had to get a mortgage, which was terrifying. So I was like, I was 30, I think I was 38 maybe 39 and hadn't I didn't have a mortgage. I didn't have anything to my name at all. And that was not great, ideally. So I think I got, I managed to get a loan from I got a loan from my dad. I think it was like 15,000 pounds or something. And then with the money that I was earning on my only 20 hours a week job, because I couldn't handle a real job at the time, I was only working 20 hours, I managed to get a mortgage from my first house, and I, I think I got that for 120,000 English pounds. I renovated it myself and then sold it for 150 and at the time I was also, I'd got promoted at work because I was building my resilience, and then I got promoted at work to a more senior role, and I met my next partner, who happened to be a woman and Okay, wasn't expecting it. I never expect anything. It just sort of happens people I'm attracted to, or Oh, and but in terms of my real estate business, I sold my house in this one village and then moved to the town where she was from. I. And bought a house for, I think it was like 159,000 and ended up selling it for 250 and then I felt that relationship ended again in a really good way. They're going different ways. And I got a job and a new relationship in London. So I have moved for relationships again. It's still that body, still that social, not sort of,
Josh Lavine 1:10:30
yeah, it's really that's I was tracking that. Yeah,
Ruth 1:10:35
exactly. So I moved to London and bought a flat for, yeah, 400 did that one up, can remove remortgage it for 575 and and now I'm buying the downstairs flat. So I managed to the house that I bought for that is now worth 575 and had the ground floor flat, and I've managed to get another promotion at work, and then enough money or capital now to be able to re mortgage this one that I'm in at the moment as a buy, to let and buy the downstairs, which has got a garden, which I think I can get planning permission for a house so that, there you go, but it's just wow, that
Josh Lavine 1:11:26
okay, so you sort of, I'm going to reduce it to it sort of hopscotch from relationship to relationship, and each one came with the new living situation that you invested in, and then turned around. And then, so a real estate business was born out of that, yeah,
Ruth 1:11:42
real estate business, yeah, so, but like now I have, I'm, now I'm, you have properties, yeah? Now I've got properties and I've got people, yeah, in those properties that are paying my mortgage,
Josh Lavine 1:11:54
I see, yes, okay, yeah, amazing,
Ruth 1:12:00
yeah. Oh yes.
Josh Lavine 1:12:12
So yeah, are you? Are you? Are you in a relationship now? No,
Ruth 1:12:17
fuck no, no, okay, no, I'm saying Fuck no. It's because it's just like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Josh Lavine 1:12:27
yeah, and where does that no come from? Yeah, comes from
Ruth 1:12:29
that's like, ah, almost like, I can't say no strongly enough No, I feel so
Ruth 1:12:48
I am in a place where I don't need somebody else to hopscotch on. I don't need somebody else to hold me. I don't need somebody else to provide for my needs, and for the first real time in my actual life, I am really standing on my own two feet as a in the independent adult, And I just need to be here and establish that, you know, just what feels really, really important are just doing chores every week on the same day. I mean, it sounds really boring, but there's something really helpful about just planning my time and learning to cook for myself, just valuing that, planning meals, self pressing, cleaning, having a real sort of routine, and trying to hold to that as much as I can, which is really tricky, because that's not my natural default. But, now I know that my nervous system needs or will is helped by others being around that I can I can manage it as an adult now, so it's kind of like, okay, I need to go to the gym or I need to do exercise. How do I structure that in a way that is supportive? So yes, I have got a personal trainer at the moment, because, okay, that helps, you know, like once a week, and I play tennis with friends, and I have a dog that I walk. You know, there are just, it's weight and in and and it'd be great if one day I can not have a personal trainer, and I can do yoga on the internet or something. But actually, I just need to know where I am. That's my level. Yeah, and, you know, in terms of planning meals, I find that really hard still, but I can take responsibility by we've got something called Green Chef. You might mind your chef, you know, where you can get a meal box and they prepare you nutritious food and you cook it. And so that's what I do for my meals. Or, yeah, starting to do and looking after myself at work, booking onto the coaching. We've got internal coaches. I'm also an internal coach, but just where I find really things tricky at work, which are routine related, or that I'm just getting support to to do that. So, yeah, it's just a really different relationship, which is, yeah, meditating, regulating my nervous system, doing exercise, having support where I need it, but being the adult that's owning, owning it and holding it and working with my limitations, and then just gently, gently, um, yeah, just gently stretching them as I can whilst coping with collapse, because my nervous system does quite regularly, just collapse and go, no, not doing anything. And then that's just got,
Josh Lavine 1:16:21
yeah, just some in a nine way, just like, just, I'm exhausted, I'm gonna just recharge. Kind of thing. I
Ruth 1:16:28
feel different. No, it feels a bit more like if you were going to try and move a cow and you tried to hit it and it just sat down and go, I'm not moving. Yeah,
Josh Lavine 1:16:43
yeah, that's yeah, I get, I get that, although, in a way, that is the nine thing, yeah, but that's very evocative metaphor, yeah. So I want to reuse, yeah.
Ruth 1:17:01
What I've been working on at the moment is in relation to the cow. Like, I've had this cow all of my life that just just sit down and just isn't moving, but generally, if it's trying to be full, you know, you can lead. Was it? I was horse, maybe you could institute. But at the moment, it's cow. It used to be a horse, but it's now cow. Probably that's good, because I'm chewing the cud. Moved from a horse to a cow evolution. But the Well, I was just, I'm just really trying to feel it like, you know, rather than feel the emotion, rather than discharge it or suppress it. You know, like, I think a lot of my seven energy and other stuff is discharging rather than feeling and processing the emotion or suppressing it. Nine stuff is suppressing it so you can't feel it, so I'm trying to feel it and be with the feeling and just allow the feeling and then let the feeling lead you know, like you were doing, actually, like you've been doing this whole time. But as I was feeling this feeling, I was like, I just feel this cow just sat not moving, and there's nothing I can do to make this fucking cow move. And I was, like, the only tools I've got are kicking it. I started trying to fucking kick this cow or push it, or, like, just kind of stabbing my back against it with my little Welly boots in the ground and try and move it, you know, literally, like with a stick. And there's nothing that is almost like the skills I've got to move this move this cow, involve violence in some way, or just trying to force it or move it, and it's just not gonna go anywhere.
Josh Lavine 1:18:50
It's kind of, it's actually the it strikes me as your three fix, kind of, trying to, trying to whip you into motion, yes,
Ruth 1:19:03
yes, because it's not, it's objectively going that you've got a mood, you know, you've got this stuff, yeah, work, or you've got, you've got to exercise. Basically, it's particularly around exercise and food, mostly exercise, okay, I did this terrible thing, which put to my nervous system, which was, go to Gran Canaria in the middle of winter and got winter sun, and I played tennis every day in 26 degrees, and I swam in a beautiful, heated swimming pool once, like every day for about an hour, lovely friends had a fantastic time. Came home to minus one or one degrees, and like winter skies and my nervous system went, you suck off. I'm not moving. I'm actually not going to get our bed. I'm not moving. I'm not doing anything, unless you make it 26 degrees all the time with sunshine like cow sat down, nah, I'm not I just could. Not for love nor money. This was like the nearly two weeks make myself leave the house. Basically, I do work from home, but you know, if I wasn't working or having to get out of the house, nothing, it was just like, Nope, I'm not new. Make me a hot water bottle. Nope, not gonna move. It was just quite so the point being, it's like, when you've got a nervous system, it's like a cow that sits down and isn't going to move. I think that's the past that's been the objectively, you know, part of me is just gone. Well, fuck you nervous. Just fuck off. Then, like, what can I do with you body? No, what? Nothing I'm just kick you, or nothing I do is going to make you move. Nothing, you're not going to, not going to listen. And, you know, and I think that as as the person I was spoken or speaking to about this was mentioned, they said, Oh, you just, probably the cow just wants a they probably want a nice grassy field, or they just, you know, you just, there are other ways that you can make cows move, other than kicking them or trying to force them or push them. And I'd say that's the the relationship that I've got. Yeah, I'm starting to develop a different kind of relationship with my self preservation instinct, because that'd be a very good reason why that cow sat down on the grass and not moving right. And my ego doesn't, you know, doesn't know what it is, but the instinct knows, and there'll be an intelligence in it, and, yeah, so all of the above,
Josh Lavine 1:21:48
yeah, that seems that seems profound. What you're saying in the sense of, we can develop a kind of, this isn't exactly where you're at, but we can develop a kind of spiritualized inner critic, where, on our inner work journey, we have a sense of the thing that we're supposed to do that's good for ourselves, yeah. And we can exhaust ourselves by trying to force, especially if you got a three fixed doing, doing that, you know, and that's, you know, cow sits down, but eventually, you know, it needs nourishment of some and it will, it will move, you know, to get that nourishment, but doesn't like to be prodded and whipped. And, yeah, I want to read you one other thing you wrote, and then see where to go from here. We might come to a close, but I want to ask you if there's anything else about the theory that you have, but here's what you wrote, you said, speaking of now, um, day to day, I often feel the state of bliss and connection. I felt associated with Jesus, but now I know it as part of my natural state, but I don't crave it or panic when I lose touch with it, or don't feel in the moment or value it more than the feeling of frustration or contraction or loss of connection. Yeah, and that feels like a really profound journey to have arrived at that place, even the awareness of that's, let's see, yeah, where you're trying to stabilize. Yeah.
Ruth 1:23:26
It feels very ordinary. It feels very ordinary on one level, because it's like,
Ruth 1:23:39
if I if I link it to my body, so my, if I cut myself, my body's going to produce platelets, you know, it's going to produce things, going to heal a scab, but it's not got those all the time, because it doesn't need them all the time. Yeah, so it'd be a bit weird if I was like, Oh, I just need platelets, please. Just more platelets. I just need them all the time. Because I don't need them all the time. I just need them when I need them. And I think that's what I'm just finding, that the same, in the same way that the body, or the physical body, just produces what it needs when it needs it, and it's quite good at regulating itself. And there are, you know, there's times when it sleeps, there's times when it's energized, there's times it's just got its own natural rhythm, and it needs that balance. It needs the, you know, just needs that. It's just part of it's it's just daily rhythm. And that's how it works, just in the same way that states of, I don't know, consciousness or bliss or relaxation or alertness or frustration are kind of a very important part of the regulating system that draw attention. Connection to, you know, needs. So for example, if there's a frustration, now I know if there's a feeling of frustration, of there's a feeling I'm starting, I start to track contractions, or, you know, tweaks in my body. I can start to track anxiety or contractions in my chest. And I know that inside that contraction, there's energy that I need, you know, there's a life force. There's something that is, is is locked in, that is just needs something to relax. So the frustration there's, it's just as interesting on one level and important as the relaxation. But you know, it's just that body. It's just your body integrating the I don't even call it soul anymore because I don't even know. I don't find the word spiritual helpful even anymore, because I don't even know, I don't think, I think that's too divorced, still. It just sort of feels like human beings have this amazing capacity to sense. And you can sense like Aboriginal trackers. They can sense with their hair. They can sense with their whole body. You can sense from, you know, essentially miles there. You have this incredible capacity to sense. And I'm just noticing that the more I relax, the more I can sense, the more I can the more intelligent I am, the whole, you know, more information it's there, the more I can connect to people and just, you know, regulate as a sort of adult, I'd say as just an adult, the human, yeah, capacity to regulate and to be is incredibly, you know, vast.
Josh Lavine 1:26:58
I love what you're saying. And this something coming up for me about so a couple things. First of all, it's it represents everything you're saying to me represents this motion from having your attention on what is potentially regulating to be this abstract, external thing, whether it was the kind of social body of the church or, literally, God, divine energy, or whatever out there, yeah, out there, yeah. And now here it's, it's, it's close, it's close by, it's close inside, yeah. And the other thing, it
Ruth 1:27:34
is my so that's just just,
Josh Lavine 1:27:35
it's that, it's that, right, right? That's like a reclaiming of your own life, life force as a source of itself, almost, or as a source of, yeah, a source of regulation anyway, yeah, source of itself. And the other thing is, how you know all three body types are trying to keep sensation at bay in some way or another, because they're always annoyances and unwanted demands, and we sense all those things through our bodies, through our sensory experience. And so all three body types are doing some form of dissociation, whether it's eight or eights are kind of pre numbing before they go out and into the world. Nines are almost numbing as a response to the world, but trying to stay open for that holding. And once you're tensing, like we talked about, all three body types have this journey of re sensitizing, yeah, to actually be attuned to themselves and their environments in a more moment to moment way, like you're talking about the aboriginals sensing the hairs in the back of their hands, yeah, as a tracking device. Just these, these sense, these fine tuned sensory perceptions are part of the body intelligence that, yeah, we recover when we become more sensitive and we stop dissociating and stop numbing, and we stop looking outside for all these kinds of it's like, it's like, when you get out of a really warm bath that the kind of non personality is always wanting, yeah, you know the air is kind of cold, but you're but you're sensing it, yeah, exactly. And then you said, yeah, yeah, that's it. It's yeah, yes, yeah, exactly. So it's like, you've gotten out of the bath, yeah, I got out of the bath.
Ruth 1:29:15
And it's that, it is. It's exactly that. So it's tolerating the it's increasing my capacity to tolerate aliveness, increasing the capacity to tolerate prickly sensation, cold sensation, yeah, charged sensations like adrenaline, just but and also feeling, just feeling in general. And I think it feels so you know it. Everyone always says, you know, whenever you feel something, it's all, if you feeling it, it's it's like weaning myself off objects. And. People, because the source is all what you know, if you feel in love, you feel it in your own heart, the feeling is always here. It's always it's coming back to that point of its distinction, isn't it? That's the this is the source, the life is here. It I am the generator of my own life. This being that is here, the creature is the generator of this life source, current, currently, you know, no, you're not generate. No one else is generating this life and nurse, and no one else is producing platelets, for example, or, you know, nothing, that's this body, and in the same way, this body is producing love, producing support, producing strength, producing all the things that are needed, in and of itself on one level, whilst deeply connected, you know, to the world. It's not a it's not an island or so, I suppose more like trees or, you know, where they're connected and they've got the root system, but they've it's just, sort of, it just feels very natural, natural, you know, it's a, sort of, it's a very normal state to be, But it's kind of like coming back. I don't I would people talk about coming home, but it just feels really even more, sort of naturally organic than that. So it's the object relations, or where I go into my mind, or where I'd shut off from things. It's just sort of relaxing and just dropping and just relaxing into a and trusting the creature that this just trusting the creature that I am, and the incredible capacity to sense and to regulate and to Yeah, to be the consciousness and the conscious aliveness coming together with the creature you know, the human creature and the body to be a very extraordinary, sensitive but strong being. That's what I am experiencing myself to be more and more. But it's like this, the intelligence, you know, my brain can't really, it's just sort of letting go because I it's just way beyond what my little mind can because it can't, you can't work. It can't synthesize this ego mind can't synthesize. It just can't. It can run tracks and loops, but it can't synthesize the intelligence of all the senses that can perceive for a long time. And, you know, sure, yeah, that it can't do that. And I think that recognizing it
Josh Lavine 1:32:52
that's cool, yeah. Partly, I think where I go with what you're saying is it's letting the body intelligence be and be the body that's in the body without mentalizing it,
Ruth 1:33:02
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Josh Lavine 1:33:07
Well, your story is incredible, and you're a very good storyteller, and your energy has this, let's see, like on the whole this, I'm seeing your whole type structure, just in your energy, you know, there's the sexual, social kind of, like intrigue, but also epicness and and then this kind of like, you know, obviously the merging of the night we talked about, but also this kind of whimsical, mischievous, seven wing, eight, secondary thing, you know? Yeah, I don't know. It's just all, it's all there, and it's very, there's a lot, there's a lot of life in it, a lot of life in it. So, yeah, I found myself very entertained by this conversation. How's this been for you?
Ruth 1:33:55
Yeah, it's been, really, it's been. How's this been for me? Um, been for me, it's relaxing, it's really enjoyable talking to you, and I think, true to type, the quality of the storytelling comes from being in the connection with
Josh Lavine 1:34:21
you, right? Yes, I relate to that as an attachment type, yeah,
Ruth 1:34:28
yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed, do you, yeah, talking and connecting on this level. So, yeah, yeah. Let me
Josh Lavine 1:34:40
think if there's anything else I want to ask you here, I ask you here, yeah, is there? Is there anything that we didn't cover, that you'd like to cover?
Ruth 1:34:55
I think just to underline that i i. I think there's a real and a very important link between the way that the nervous system develops and regulates in relation to personality type and the prison that you become because as your body regulates and contracts and limits sensation, it then patterns the limitation that you are. It patterns the the what your brain can cope with, what you see, what you can feel, and it narrows the perception, and it narrows your feeling into something that is very limited and very prescriptive. And for me, the Personality Typing is useful in relation to tracking what, tracking the limitation of sensation, and actually where, where your sensing is limited. And what I've actually found is that knowing what my type structure is and knowing the, you know, the, what, what, what's going to limit me essentially, um, that's helped me to relax and to, um, yeah, just relax and let Life grow itself, like I don't have to do anything, but by relaxing and essentially not trying to be something, or not trying to be myself, or not trying to become something, or not trying to develop myself in any particular way, the life, life force, like if it was a, I don't know, an oak, or even a like a rose, or, you know, a plant of some sort will just naturally grow itself. It will naturally optimize itself. And, yeah, that's been really helpful, because I just have to not really do much, but just relax and trust it.
Josh Lavine 1:37:21
Beautiful. Yeah. You know, I want to, I want to put a button on that, because it's, it's like an evolved sense of, let's see how to put this. Nine is often unconsciously, like we talked about, abandoning its life force, or suppressing it, or pacifying it, or being passive in relation to its desires. And what you just said could be taken as that, but it's not. It's like an evolved form. It's like a It's actually, rather than a suppressing of my life force and a passivity around it. It's actually an unencumbering of it, yes, have your way. Yes. Go, yeah, yeah. It's like a unburdening, yeah. It's Yeah,
Ruth 1:38:11
feels literally like my life force. It's just going have go take, you know, slow. There's no anywhere stopping you. Let's work, you know, have it look like, relax it like, yeah, take it. And if I if, if you need to be, you know, strengthen it like, grow it. And I just kind of feel like you grew a skeleton. Do you know what I mean? Like, life force, you grew a skeleton. You grew a whole load of shit that was like You You're perfectly capable of growing. It just got to get out of the way and let you bloody do it, which I know is also is a nine thing, but it's, it's surrendering for my own life force, rather than somebody else. That's it. Thing. This Life Force knows exactly what it needs to do, and it is bloody brilliant, um, but it's mine, and it's my source, and it's no, not dependent on anybody else. It's um, cool,
Josh Lavine 1:39:14
beautifully said. I love, I love when these interviews naturally end on a try a note of triumph and self reclamation, yeah, yeah. So that was beautiful. Thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate
Ruth 1:39:27
it. Really, really enjoyed meeting you, and I think your theory is brilliant.
Josh Lavine 1:39:33
Oh, thanks. Appreciate it. Yeah, right. Okay, thank you. Thank you for tuning in to my conversation with Ruth. If you liked this conversation, please click the like button or hit subscribe if you're watching on YouTube or if you're listening to this as a podcast, then you can leave up to a five star review and also leave a comment if you're listening on Apple or Spotify. Those are free and very effective ways to support me and the show and the work that we do at The Enneagram School, if you'd like to learn. More about the Enneagram, then come check us out at the Enneagram school.com you can read all about the Enneagram on our a lot of free resources on our website. You can also watch more interviews just like this, and you can browse them by typing instinctual stacking, also a link on the website. And also, I really recommend that you check out our intro course, where we lay out all of the concepts that make the Enneagram, the Enneagram, and it's a great place to start if you're a beginner, or a great place to go for a refresher on the basics. If you're advanced, if you think that you'd be a good candidate to be interviewed on the show, then I would love to hear from you. You can contact me right through the Enneagram school.com go to the contact form, let me know what type you are. Preference strongly goes to people who've been officially typed by the typing [email protected] the typing team over there is, in my view, the world's most accurate Enneagram typing team, and you can check out their services on their website, as well as their members area, where you can learn their typing methods by watching them type celebrities in real time. Finally, I want to mention that this show is part of a broader consortium of Enneagram content creators, and I want to plug our sister podcast. It's insomnia, where the Dream Girls explore the relationship between the Enneagram and the unconscious and the dream world, and also our new kind of collective podcast called House of Enneagram, where we explore different aspects of the Enneagram, as well as use the Enneagram as a lens to understand different aspects of art and pop culture and TV and things of that nature. All of the links to all that stuff will be in the show notes, and that's it for me. Thank you very much, and I'll see you next time
Unknown Speaker 1:41:28
you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
