Afleveringen
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I talk with Natasha Williams on her podcast Spiritual Warrior Journey.
I explore the way our brains work in a combination of scientific and metaphysical discussion, sharing insights on plant medicine, native tribes, dreams, and insanity.
Natasha says, âA truly interesting take on life, that deviates from the norm.â
Lincoln is a clinical counselor, hypnotherapist, with experience in physics, software, consulting, neurology, brain training, sleep, dreams, and altered states.
Natasha Williams is an author, spiritual coach and entrepreneur. She has helped thousands of women find confidence and belief in themselves. As a lightworker, she is deeply moved towards personal growth and helping raise the vibration on the planet.
Find Natasha Williams at:
https://www.spiritualwarriorjourney.com
INSTAGRAM @spiritualwarriorjourney
FACEBOOK: @spiritualwarriorjourney
TIKTOK: @spiritualwarriorjourney
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Looking for hidden messages, especially those to be revealed by experts, makes dreamwork less rewarding and casts it as a kind of work. This is why few people do it and, perhaps, why few people remember their dreams. Freud, the father of dream interpretation, famously disrespected your point of view, and the interpretive approach to dreams retains something of this flavor.
When dreamwork is welcomed as a form of conceptual play it becomes recreational. You donât have to share dreams, endure dreams, or reveal them. See your dreams as explorations of all the relevant things that donât make sense. Take that attitude and youâll feel relieved and rewarded.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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âIf a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.ââ Marcel Proust
Thinking DifferentlyDreams involve a different way of thinking. We donât get far by applying conscious thinking, which is linear, causal, and rational, to the holistic presentation that dreams employ.
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We all have personal vulnerabilities, and this is normal. We all experience trauma and deal with depression. We complain about the bad things but not the good things. Are these good things real, or are they excursions into unsustainable positive emotion?
While there is nothing wrong with needing to breath, there is something wrong when youâre desperate for breath. What you need should be a regular part of your life, not an ecstatic or occasional experience. What makes you happy?
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I met Stefan Deutsch online and sent him my Operating Manual for Enlightenment. He sent me his Love Decoded: Getting the Love You Deserve. Here are his âNine Laws for Fulfilling Relationships,â taken from the introduction, along with my comments.
1. Love that has to be earned isnât love...
2. Become aware of your own and othersâ unloving, conditional behaviors as well as loving, unconditional behaviors...
3. Never reject othersâ loving energy. It hurts them...
4. Never allow others to behave unlovingly without consequence. It hurts you...
5. Do not assume that there is any intentionality behind any act that hurts, disappoints, or angers you...
6. Assume all people, like you, are always doing the best they can...
7. Loving energy is real, nourishing, and visceral. Everyone needs to give and receive it in all our relationships, not just a few...
8. Loving energy is not to be confused with automatic, physical, and sexual energy...
9. The act of giving love must involve a conscious decision to be unconditionally loving even when you are upset with another person...
What I Consider Important...
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In a wide ranging discussion, Daniel and I talk about the intersections of life and growth, health and sanity, parenting and education, creativity and architecture.
Daniel Thomas, a British transplant living in Germany by way of Australia, is a versatile storyteller, writer, actor, and filmmaker. He has been featured in commercials, TV & Film & has written & directed his own shorts. He also hosts & produces podcasts that showcase his creative range & passion for meaningful & collaborative storytelling.
Lincoln Stoller, an American transplant living in Canada, is a physicist and psychotherapist, with a focus on learning, healing, and growth, exploring connections between culture, heritage, and the mind. Lincolnâs work challenges institutional knowledge, emphasizing emotion, intuition, and insight. Through his books and speaking, he aims to expand perspectives by integrating learning, healing, and invention.
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Gratitude is a combination of things, primarily two: a thought and an emotion.
Selfish gratitude is needy. You are grateful for what youâre getting. Itâs contingent and dependent.
Gratitude offered with appreciation asks for no reward. And while gratitude so offered feels nourishing it can also feel empty.
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Lincoln Stoller is a former mountaineer who now specializes in psycho-, hypno-, and neurofeedback therapy, in tandem with numerous other counseling and coaching services.
Lincoln lives well outside of the bounds of normalcy. He says we should âjust keep doing out-of-the-box stuff. And if people arenât calling you a little crazy or a little nutty, then you probably arenât exploring enough of the boundaries.â
Todayâs conversation revolves around the high-risk potential of hard-charging performers and achievers, whether they exist in sports, business, or other areas of life.
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Iâm in the minds business; Iâm also in the programming business. I sometimes think of therapy as a programming problem. Thatâs not a bad idea, but you canât take it literally.
Taken literally, âto programâ creates a series of steps that always choose between right and wrong. Programming requires such steps to exist, that you can discern them, choose between them, and follow them to the end of the path. None of these requirements are met in the minds of real people, but we can still talk about those rare situations when they are. The right steps are often called âgood ideas.â
As a therapist, my job is not to come up with good ideas so much as help people learn how to find them. I avoid the word âteachâ because the process of finding good ideas is not taught. I can show a person how theyâre sabotaging themselves, how to relax, and experiment, but there is no formula for finding good ideas...
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âLife is the balance between holding on and letting go.ââ Rumi
I felt it important to respond to a journalist who asked what people might expect at their first therapy session. Many come to me who are ambivalent about beginning therapy, and Iâve been to a few therapists myself.
Iâve not felt good about these first sessions with other therapists. A good therapist is wise but ignorant, and makes no attempt to hide it. No therapist is an expert because no two clients are the same.
An honest therapist knows as little about what to expect as you do. When I make my ignorance clear, everything goes beautifully because itâs you who guides me. Iâve never met a therapist as comfortable with their ignorance as I.
The journalistâs seven questions concern protocol, method, and service, but this is not what therapy is about. If youâre inviting someone to âtherapiseâ you, youâve lost your way at the start. No one is going to figure or straighten you out. You do this yourself, or else it doesnât happen.
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âThe measure of intelligence is the ability to change.ââ Albert Einstein
Is Intelligence a Real Thing?The history of intelligence is odd. Itâs variously defined and plays different roles. Even within one culture, different standards are applied to different genders, ages, and people of different inclinations.
Historically, intelligence was assumed as something you did or did not have. In the past, people did not have much education. More accurately, the lucky ones did and the unlucky ones didnât. It was assumed that intelligence preceded your ability to learn and it could be measured by what you knew.
Despite now having tests to measure intelligence, itâs still rated based on what you have learned. Our IQ tests are supposed to measure a personâs fundamental aptitude, but this is a fiction. Itâs convenient because it ends up justifying the original premise that your intelligence is what you can learn. What you can learn is measured by what a particular group, inevitably the group in power, thinks is valuable.
Weâre told these IQ tests are justified because people donât change their scores over time. This is a âlow IQâ argument which is a good reflection of how notions of IQ justify themselves. People donât change their scores on IQ tests over time not because they canât, but because they choose not to learn how to...
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âThe term neural synchrony⊠refers to how the brains of people carrying out an activity together will start to behave in the same way.â â Morten Pedersen, technologist
MysteriesThe Keys in PsychotherapyPsychotherapyâs MysteryEmpathySynchronyBecoming Synchronized
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Sociogeny is the development of social phenomena, such as common behavior and social patterns. In non-humans, we identify these as instinctive behaviors because we cannot identify them as reasoned thoughts. In humans, we take an entirely different approach because we believe our thoughts are free and our patterns chosen. This is a mistake.
People act according to what they feel, not according to what they say. We have a poor understanding of other peopleâs feelings. I know this from my experience dealing with many types of people and from my clients. My clients are trying hardest to understand others and themselves, and despite this, they make uncertain progress.
The amazing thing is that we see ourselves as individual, rational agents, thinkers, actors, and personalities when we are not.
If youâd like to examine how many of your thoughts are your own, schedule a free, zoom call at: https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/schedule15
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âThe questions you ask determine what you think.ââ Lincoln Stoller
A one hour interview about all the exploits that led me into the counseling profession. Chris offered some casual humor about mental health and addiction, and I took the opportunity to bait the hooks he offered. The dynamic of him being lighthearted and me being serious persisted throughout our conversation.
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In this episode of "Conversations with Rich Bennett," Rich sits down with Dr. Lincoln Stoller, a neurofeedback trainer, clinical counselor, and hypnotherapist. They explore the transformative power of brain training, how anxiety can become a self-fulfilling habit, and the impact of neurological patterns on personal growth.
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âBeing slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnantâit tends to get worse.ââ Molly Ivins
Balance is the first thing we lose when our mental health begins to fail. Balance is a combination of appropriate awareness and response. Appropriate refers to things that are effective in bringing one back into balance. This definition is recursive because balance is recursive. It changes as situations change. Call it resilience: an ability to return to an effective, functioning state...
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There is perpetual strife, poverty, inequity, and avoidable misfortune in the world. Things may have improved over the centuries, but have individuals changed? Few people seem concerned with the quality of themselves. Virtue is hard to measure and its benefits unclear.
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âAbsolution forgives the guilt associated with the penitent's sins, and removes the eternal punishment (of Hell) associated with mortal sins. ⊠Theologians say the absolution of a penitent more than twenty paces away would be questionably valid. Phone absolutions are considered invalid.ââ Wikipedia (2024)
Magic
As I make a last pass, looking for errors in the manuscript of my book Operating Manual for Enlightenment, Iâm reminded of how spirit supports mental health.
When I was studying ritual magic, adherents claimed magic had a direct, physical effect. This naĂŻve belief in the power of faith is reflected in most religions. I was studying this because I wanted to see what a belief in magic amounted to when stripped of all the religious trappings.
Belief in magic is pre-scientific. From a scientific standpoint, magic is ridiculous. Yet a majority of the world's population believe in magic in its religious form. Many serious scientists have and are religious, and accept the magic of religion in some form. Many careful, thinking people see physical reality as different from religious reality.
The paradox can be resolved if magic applies to people, while causality applies to everything else. I can accept that âGod created man in his imageâ only if God is a human image. In a world that doesnât have humans, God is irrelevant. If you disagree, then you live in an imponderable world.
What is moral behavior? This is an important question we need to ask. Religion approaches this unscientific questions with an unscientific answer that fails in many regards.
Absolution
According to Webroot (2024), 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornography but there is no open discussion of this.
âPornography hinders the development of a healthy sexuality, and among adults, it distorts sexual attitudes and social realities. In families, pornography use leads to marital dissatisfaction, infidelity, separation, and divorce.ââ Patrick F. Fagan (2009), psychologist and former Deputy Assistant at Health and Human Services
Religion is designed to hide moral failure. It fails because we must address moral failure ourselves, an institution cannot do it for us. Yet, most people cannot do it, so religions are created to absolve them. In this way, we accommodate immorality within communities and ourselves.
False endorsement is a blank check written on an empty bank account; an evasion that obscures insight, erodes resilience, and damages mental health. Religious absolution is an illusion.
Religion requires instructions and a protocol, asserting that words convey spirit, but this mistakes incantation for insight and ceremony for understanding. The closest any religion comes to spirit is possession.
âCurrently, when I attend my psychiatrist appointments, I often run into the same young man who stops me in my tracks and tells me flat out, âJesus loves you and will return to the earth one day to save us.â... I have met others who have started entire organizations because of their experiences of a God in a psychosis. One woman, in particular, is proud to share the love that she experiences from her own beliefs. She always tells me, âIt is not about religion, it is about love.âââ Andrea Paquette (2014)
Unwritten religions are not religions in the Western sense. These typically indigenous frameworks are social systems. I was not raised in such a system, nor in any religious system, so what I know now comes from watching and living with people of other cultures.
Spirit
Indigenous religions are experiential while the Abrahamic religions are intellectual. Experiential traditions focus on spirit, while intellectual traditions focus on behavior. Experiential traditions claim spirit must be experienced internally, while intellectual traditions claim it can also be written. Does intellectual experience prevent spiritual experience?
It is a mistake to equate experiential and intellectual religions. In the tradition of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, a spirit dancer does not dance like an animal, they are the animal. The experience is an altered state of being. You are not a person speaking to a God, you are channeling a divine force. Is being possessed the same as having spirit?
Even though the experience of possession cannot be contradicted, it provides no tool for argument. In contrast, intellectual constructions can be righteous, obliged, pious, guilty, and absolved. Thoughts are not states of being. Intellect lacks spirit. The question is whether intellect can lead to spirit.
âTeosiâs words (the words of the Christianâs God) belong to the white people⊠No one had pronounced them before the missionaries arrived with them. This is why we do not really understand them. Our thought cannot open them out in every direction as we do with those of the spirits. If we go on following them for no reason, we will eventually forget the words of our elders. Then we will be called believers, when in fact our minds will simply have become as forgetful as those of the white people who know nothing of the forest... The xapiri (spirits) continue to let us hear their songs, which are our true language.â â Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami Shaman (2013, 204)
Spirit is a personal dimension of meaningful awareness thatâs different from being healthy, stable, and normal. It does not cure disease, but it can foster mental health. Catalysts for spirit, like ceremonies, religions, therapy, and psychedelics, are not medicinal, though they can be used like medicines.
Because spirituality is not a commodity, it does not fit Western culture. Western culture seeks consolidation and condensation; spirituality seeks evolution and ethereality. Western culture encourages you to seek happiness, which depends on oneâs mood, oneâs mental weather. Spirit generates oneâs weather.
I can help you find faith in yourself. Schedule a free call:
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âThe only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.ââ Alfred Adler, psychiatrist
Are You Normal?
What is normal? This question is trite, but serious. As a therapist who works with people in all situations, I see some people who grow and others who donât. Anyone who doesnât grow is bound to get stuck and, once stuck, the distress can be long lasting.
Occasional distress is common, and we accept it as normal. Normal means both average and enduring. But distress that is chronic cannot be sustained. It is not normal.
We cannot agree on an absolute definition of normal because everyone is different. But we can define relative normality as a condition that sustains us and which others accept. If you maintain yourself in an accepted social role and behave accordingly, then you may call yourself normal.
Some people donât meet this standard, and we would agree they are abnormal if we could see they consistently fail to meet the standard. But itâs hard to evaluate another personâs consistency unless you live with them. To go beyond and judge what is good, bad, healthy, or otherwise involves other standards which Iâm not concerned with.
Sanity is the next standard we apply to people who are far from normal. We might excuse a person because of their unusual environmentâa circus clown is expected to act funnyâbut not if they abandon a normal environment entirely. The perpetual clown may do well on stage, but they will not be judged as normal. Their abnormality would be glaring and discomforting.
If your distress is not circumstantial and you feel yourself to blame, then you may feel the circumstance is unsustainable. When things are seriously distressing, youâd like to work toward a better future. If the objective youâre working toward is realistic, then you will be considered normal. If itâs unrealistic, then you wonât achieve a sustainable situation, you may find little support, and your distress will persist.
If this distress is chronic or you create chronic distress around you, then you and your approach are not normal. When the distress becomes too much, we say you are insane.
Sanity is a Category
People think insanity is a condition, but it only refers to behavior. We presume this behavior arises from thoughts and conclude a personâs thoughts are insane, but this is unjustified. Many people who act abnormally think normal thoughts. The difference lies in what they perceive. They perceive a different world.
Mental health diagnoses do not help a person. They are a way of categorizing behavior. Diagnoses are designed to help everyone else, mostly those who make a profession out of treating people. Unlike physical diagnoses, mental diagnoses lead neither to a cause nor a cure. They support the field of psychology and its related professions.
This does not mean diagnoses are useless or exploitative; theyâre an intermediate tool. They are useful when they lead to insight, but psychology lacks insight. Most diagnosis and diagnosticians do too.
Diagnosis
I recently offered a client a speculative diagnosis of Schizoid Personality Disorder. Itâs described this way (Okoye 2024):
âSchizoid personality disorder (ScPD) is a mental health condition marked by a consistent pattern of detachment from and general disinterest in social relationships. People with schizoid personality disorder also have a limited range of emotions when interacting with other people.â
âSchizoid personality disorder is one of a group of conditions called âCluster Aâ personality disorders, which involve unusual and eccentric thinking or behaviors. Personality disorders are chronic (long-term) dysfunctional behavior patterns that are inflexible, prevalent and lead to social issues and distress.â
âPeople with schizoid personality disorder may seem aloof, disengaged and distant. They often donât realize their behavior is unusual or problematic.â
Do you often feel detached and lack interest in social relationships? Do you feel limited emotions when interacting with strangers? Does this cause you distress, but do you feel this is justified? If so, then the way you look at the world is probably the same as someone with schizoid personality disorder. The only way to determine for sure if you are ScPD, is to determine if your life is dominated by these conflicts.
This description of ScPD reads like an astrology chart. It could fit anyone. I know it fits me. I read it to a high functioning client and it fit him. The difference between me, my high functioning client, and my ScPD client is that those of us on the âoutsideâ judge my ScPD client as abnormal. He doesnât feel he is, but others do, especially those who donât know or cannot empathize with him.
If youâre not normal and you want to turn it into something great, book a free call:
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âI dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?ââ Zhuangzi (4th century BCE)
To understand dreams, understand that your rational mind is not in control of your thoughts. Yes, you use words, but you donât know what youâre saying until your words are spoken. Words are like roads, they are pathways. The territory of your mind, the geography of your thoughts, is not determined by the roads you have built. These roads may determine where you can travel most easily, but not all that can be seen, and certainly not whatâs most important.
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