36. Return to Nature, Return to Self: Reclaiming Intuition in a Conditioned World with Dr. Elizabeth Philipose

In this episode of Conditioning to Consciousness, I’m joined by Dr. Elizabeth Philipose, a scholar, spiritual guide, and longtime educator whose work lives at the intersection of systems theory, feminism, spirituality, and collective healing.

Together, we explore the hidden architecture of power—the systems of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism, and scarcity thinking that quietly shape how we see ourselves, how we relate to one another, and how we understand what’s possible in our lives. These systems don’t just exist “out there.” They live inside us, shaping our beliefs, our nervous systems, our sense of worth, and even our capacity to rest, create, and trust ourselves.

Dr. Philipose brings decades of experience teaching gender and women’s studies alongside deep spiritual training in energy work, meditation, yoga, and spiritual counseling. In this conversation, she breaks down how these systems became normalized over centuries, how they are interconnected, and why burnout, disconnection, and division are not personal failures—but predictable outcomes of living inside structures that reward overwork, obedience, and control.

We talk about the 1492 paradigm, racial capitalism, the invention of scarcity, and how control over bodies—particularly women’s bodies—became central to maintaining empire and hierarchy. We also explore how intuition, creativity, emotional intelligence, and connection to nature were systematically suppressed, not because they are weak, but because they make people less controllable.

Just as importantly, this episode isn’t only about deconstruction—it’s about reorientation. We discuss what it looks like to reconnect with the body, with nature, with intuition, and with inner authority as part of a larger paradigm shift already underway. Dr. Philipose shares how spiritual awakening, nervous system regulation, and consciousness work are not escapes from reality, but essential tools for collective transformation.

In this episode, we explore:

• How capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and colonialism are interconnected systems
• Why burnout and disconnection are systemic, not personal failures
• The concept of the 1492 paradigm and how it still shapes modern life
• How scarcity thinking fuels competition, fear, and division
• The suppression of intuition, creativity, and rest—and why reclaiming them matters
• How reconnecting with nature and the body supports collective healing
• What paradigm shift looks like on an individual and societal level

Elizabeth Philipose, Ph.D., has been an educator in universities in two countries for over twenty years. She teaches courses about globalization, coloniality, social justice, ecological consciousness, and decolonial feminism. She has published articles on international human rights, the laws of war, the politics of pain, transnational friendships, and sacred pedagogies. She is trained as a spiritual therapist, coach, and movement chaplain, and works with people to support their social justice advocacy. Her abiding passion is always with the people and projects that transform, heal, and inspire us to r

If this episode spoke to you, it would mean the world if you took a moment to leave a review or share it with a friend who needs it. And make sure you hit follow so you never miss an episode of Conditioning to Consciousness.

You can connect with me on Instagram @jesscallahan_, join my Substack community at conditioningtoconsciousness.substack.com, or explore more of my work at jesscallahan.com.

My Back in the Body Nervous System Healing course is now available! Find it here.

Thanks for listening — I’m so grateful you’re here.

Transcript

Jess Callahan 0:01

Hey guys, welcome back to the Conditioning to Consciousness podcast. Today's interview is with Dr. Elizabeth Philippos. And I love this conversation because, you know, as part of my mission in this podcast, it's really to shine a light on the systems that keep us small and disconnected and overworked and in burnout and you know divided between each other and, you know, the systems that tell us that we're not equal inherently, and the systems that just feed off of power and control. And, you know, here we here we focus on a lot of other things. That's just one part, you know, the reconnection with self and intuition and higher states of consciousness, like all of that is part of this inner journey. But just, you know, the state of the world right now, it's heavy and it's it's more important now than ever to shine a light on these systems and how we can spot the systems, spot the conditioning, and start to like de-thread those like layers of conditioning that we maybe don't realize that we have accumulated. So in this conversation, Elizabeth really brilliantly just like breaks down the systems and their interconnectedness. You know, we talk about capitalism and racism, and we talk about patriarchy and reconnecting with the cycles of nature. And if you've been here and if you've been listening, you know that, you know, those are so up um our wheelhouse here. So it's a great conversation. Um, Elizabeth is she has a PhD in international politics. She has taught gender and women's studies for over two decades, and she has like credentials in spiritual counseling, coaching, Reiki, yoga, meditation. She's worked as a spiritual guide uh for more than 12 years. So she's a brilliant mind to break down this space for us. So I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to have this conversation with her and that we can share it with you today. All right, Elizabeth, thank you so much for being with us today. I'm really excited to dive in and just learn a little bit more about you and how we got here.

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 2:26

Yeah. Well, I'm so I'm so glad to be here and talk to you. Becoming you, becoming uh your authentic you. That's uh that's my whole deal in the world. And so I'm really glad to uh have this conversation. So um, you know, the I spent a good portion of my life being someone else, not being myself. And that came a lot from um I grew up very fish out of water, the only one like me. Um, and I I had a kind of uh inner turmoil always around there was part of me that always knew there's something more for me in this life, but I was in circumstances that felt very limiting. And so I was always in that struggle, you know, between limited ideas and this other voice in me. But it was um was when I uh went to college and I met uh some feminists, and they were just, you know, women in classes that were reading books. We didn't, I didn't discover feminism in class. I discovered it with these women who we would read books together. And if it's when I started to realize, oh, that we're in systems of power and inequality, that uh it helped me to understand that, oh, uh the limitations that I was experiencing, they're not about me in particular. They're systemic and structural, and they manifested in my personal life, but they weren't about me. Uh and so I felt a really tremendous freedom, you know, from limited ideas just by understanding systems and structures. Um, and that got me, you know, on a on an academic path. And I really dove into always a feminist perspective, but thinking about how social power operates and how social power constructs not just the institutions and the external world, but also constructs us from the inside, our subjectivities, our perceptions, uh, our horizons of possibility. You know, what we think is possible for us is completely generated by the world's limited ideas, you know, and it lives in us as though that's who we are, you know, until it doesn't, uh until we become aware uh that we're being run by somebody else's thoughts about who we are and what we should be. Um so that's kind of, you know, it was my very early, early life that led me to sort of tune into these different ways. And I went the academic knowledge route, uh, partly because um partly because it was as far away as I could get from religion, which is I grew up in uh in a very um a very uh 24 hour seven, you know, 24 uh sorry, seven days, 24 hours, um, all God all the time. And um, and that was sort of sold also in a very limited, bigoted way, you know, the way that people interpret the divine. And um, and so, you know, I was I wanted to be connected to something greater, which is where feminism led me, you know, to connect with social movements and activism and social justice, you know, those were like things greater than myself, um, but decidedly secular for a long time. Uh, and then uh, you know, and I did that for many years, and I did the kind of I went on the um success uh ladder, you know, really seeking um to be at the top of my game and be with people who were, you know, at the top of their game, and you know, still with this revolutionary impulse to change the world, but also um in the kind of institutional structures of success and ambition. Um and uh so it happened that at some point in my academic career that I really started to uh burn out. And I want to be specific about what burnout is, uh, is that I developed um panic attacks. Uh and I never had that before, and I wasn't an anxious person, and you know, so it just started to come on on me, this like uh panic attacks. Um I started to just feel myself just sort of um out of body and out of my life. I was so unhappy and restless, and I couldn't get grounded. So the panic was rising. Um, and my um, you know, I would say it rose to a level of terror. So I knew that I had to, you know, make a change. And um, you know, and part of the terror I have to say is like a lot of things that I studied were about violence, were about war, were about violence against women. And um, I learned, you know, in my healing journey that actually just studying that and working with people who've had the experience is uh secondary trauma or vicarious trauma. So some of that panic came from that very intense work that I'd been doing. But it's so at some point in a panic attack, I heard a voice, a voice that came through me that said, You need a spiritual community. Now I had I did not have that thought on my own. I wasn't planning it, I wasn't debating it, it just came through this like moment of real terror. You need a spiritual community. And so I I was attuned enough to know that you know, when voices like that speak to me, they're true and to listen. And so I sought spiritual communities, I found um a teaching that is based in universal principles and laws that is inclusive, uh, that everybody uh is of God, that there's nobody left out, um, and there's no hierarchy in God. And a God is not uh a guy in the sky. God is a cosmic life force that creates all things. And, you know, and so I just it just sort of started to help me to come back to uh what's true and real and to find an anchor, you know, in my own divine self, in my own divine nature, um, and to reorient from being, you know, worldly to um inner and inward. Uh and so yeah, that really has brought me to the work that I do now. I'm still, I still uh teach college, gender and women's studies, um, but I do it from a very different perspective, you know, where you know the the healing part comes first, the transformation part comes first. That and that, you know, it's interesting because when I when I started to kind of see the world differently or reorient myself to this kind of spiritual path, then the same books that I read before, the same feminists I was studying before, now I saw the healing in those texts that I didn't see, you know, before. Now I saw that, oh, that was always there. You know, so I didn't have to import anything into the material. I just had to reorient the perspective. And so I find that to be really just such a beautiful thing to be able to do uh in college with uh, you know, 20-year-old students, right? Is um is that uh they if they're open to it, they get so many tools and resources for navigating the world from something that's truer about themselves than the world tells them, right? Something that's more authentic and lasting and enduring. And so that's a I just find that to be really a tremendous, um, tremendous way to marry my own expiration of spiritual life with an academic uh framework. It's entirely possible, is what I discovered. Yeah, and then I also sort of branched into uh because what in my spiritual path and I studied to be as a spiritual counselor, um, and I did uh a lot of training in energy medicine um and so many other modalities. So uh so I I started working with individuals and couples and doing uh retreats and workshops and just very specifically as a spiritual guide, and um that brings together the academic, what I know about systems and structures and the way the world works, you know, with uh spiritual training.

Jess Callahan 11:48

Yeah. Oh, very good. That's what an interesting journey. And I love hearing just about your connection with spirituality and feminism, sort of like early on. It okay, I'm thinking about the shift. You mentioned that you went from, you know, a family where religion was really ingrained in your upbringing. And then later you hear this voice that says that you need a spiritual community. Like, what was that moment like? Did you feel resistance or were the two ideas sort of separate enough for you at that time?

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 12:22

Well, yeah, I mean, it had been decades since I left church, you know, uh probably 30 years. So the um the sting of it, you know, is long past. But, you know, I wasn't I wasn't resistant, but I knew that if I was gonna go that way, it had to be a teaching that was politically uh aligned. It had to be a teaching that spoke of a God that I know in my heart, right? So when I left religion, I didn't leave God. Uh I, you know, I just knew that this wasn't it. This wasn't the vehicle. Um and uh and so it took it took that sort of uh voice for me to do the research to actually find teachings that did match you know what I knew about God. So that I wasn't resistant. No, I was very open to it, but I wouldn't I would not then and I would not now go to uh a place that taught something that was um uh what that excluded anybody from God's love because then I don't think that that's actually about God.

An Evolving Perspective of Feminism

Jess Callahan 13:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I think I think um it can be hard to find and it can be hard to like decipher and and distinguish early on. Um I want to ask you, you mentioned your work in feminism, and there was a shift that you talked about where you said, you know, you reread some of those texts and said that was there all along. So I'm curious how you define feminism and if and how your perspective of feminism has evolved.

The 1492 Paradigm

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 14:16

Um yeah, well, it certainly has evolved in terms of how I've perceived it. So, you know, when I was 19 and was reading books that revealed the nature of um social power, um, of course, there's an angry phase, there's a uh, you know, a rage phase and all those things, you know, and um so I did go through all of that, and that's like early on. But um I think uh I think the the thing that I've always taught um is uh you know, a key teaching of feminism is that we are more than the world tells us. You know, so we study representation of women in media, and that I think the subtext of that is we are more than the world tells us. Uh, or we study, you know, um gender roles and uh the limited ideas of what women are possible, can do, right? And I think the subtext of that is we're more than the world tells us. And so the segue into a more healing transformation kind of framework was easy in the sense that I think that is what spiritual teaching is telling us too, is we are more than the world tells us. And that's for everybody. Uh, we're more than worldly opinion, we're more than material reality, uh, we're more than these bodies, right? We're more than these minds. Uh, there's a mourness to us. And so I found that to be perfectly compatible, you know, with how I've been uh approaching feminism. But I think the the shift that has, and it's been, you know, a gradual, continuous shift, because every semester I say things that I'd I didn't say before, you know, and it's just sort of going with that intuition about where we are as uh humanity, where we are as a civilization. So the the students that I'm working with, they're not the students that I worked with five years ago before COVID. They're not the students that I knew 10 years ago. Um they they're they're you you know uh evolution is happening at such an accelerated rate, you know, that every semester these are new people. This is like a new cultural um awareness that they're coming with. So I find that there's a synergy, right, between how I'm growing and how they're growing and what we can talk about now, what's possible now for our conversations. So feminism's a great basis for that because it's a a rich, deep, long tradition of analyzing social power, what the world tells us, right? Um, and and it's in every single location, right? Like wherever starting from the lives of women, right, wherever women are, there is a body of scholarship to tell us how social power works there. You know, and starting from the lives of women, it tells us about how systems of race work. And starting from the lives of women, it tells us about the way that class works, right? Because what we once you start to learn about social power around gender, it it opens, it opens up your awareness to see, oh, social power works along these so many different trajectories, right? There's part of a say kind of consciousness, right, that gave birth to this system. Um, and I know a lot of people there's a lot of different ways to date, you know, patriarchy, and say thousands of years, hundreds of years, but I I work with the 500-year paradigm, and that is the opening of European colonialism uh and the you know emergence of what we are now, a uh globalization. And so, how did gender operate in a colonial framework? And how did how did race get created right for that colonial framework? All those things, right, is really what shapes the world today. It's how we operate today. Um so um so we're unraveling, you know, that entire system. I call it a 1492 paradigm, unraveling that whole system of power starting from the lives of women. Yeah.

Jess Callahan 19:01

Um okay, so I have I have questions. I did, I wrote down, I saw some um an article that you wrote about the 1492 paradigm. And I I was really interested in that because I think we talk a lot about these systems of power right now and their impact on our day-to-day lives, right? Like how the patriarchy shows up, especially in in gender roles for women and men and all that it keeps us separate from or disconnected from, right? We talk about capitalism and how it teaches us to push and work harder and not rest. And, you know, there's like all of these impacts of these systems that are harming us today. Not to say that all of them, I'm I don't know, trace back to that time, but I'm wondering if you could break down a little bit about that um 1492 paradigm. Can you give us like the Cliff's notes version of how um you know, I've done some. Has I've done actually a good amount of um research into the history of how we got here, specifically through the lens of like, why are we so disconnected from our intuition? And I think a lot of those systems play a big part, but I'm interested in hearing it, you know, from your perspective as you know, an a true academic. Like what um what is it that really got us here? Cliff Cliff's notes. Cliff's notes, okay.

The Conditioning That Starts Early

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 20:30

Well, um, well, the first thing, first thing I'll say is that that paradigm, a paradigm means there's a there's a whole bunch of things existing in it. It's like a geological age, right? So there's all the species, all the formations, all of the life forms, right, that we could say make up a geological age. So so the complexity of the last 500 years, we'll say, is in that paradigm. Um but what what I focused on is the emergence of capitalism and how it developed, and that comes comes into existence, you know, around the 1700s. Um and it's completely interconnected with European colonialism, um, because the the mechanism of capitalism is um uh producing abundance out of scarcity. The assumption is there is there is scarcity in nature. And so how did how did you know how did capitalism develop is by um working in countries where they're colonizing the people and the lands and enslaving people, right, to produce you know mass production for the motherland, right? And so the tech technologies of capitalism um of uh fragmentation of labor, meaning instead of a craftsman doing the product from beginning to end, you break up the thing. And so one person does this, one person does that, one person does the other thing, you fragment, right? So you have constant production, constant output. Um, and in so doing, no individual actually owns the product, right? So it's part of the disconnection from our creativity, right, that comes to us. So those things are very intertwined. So I I often talk about racial capitalism, um, because by nature, by definition, it was founded on um the uh the labor of black and brown people to serve Euro uh centers, right? Um so those two things come together. Um the way that gender operates, the binary gender system that we operate with also emerged somewhere in the 1700s. It's also very tied to colonial um needs, that is, to keep reproducing the empire and to do it appropriately, right? So appropriate reproduction became key to the strength of the empire. How how do we, uh colonial powers, uh uh uh justify our rule over others is by knowing that we are this, right? By blood, by ancestry, by nature, right? So that's creating a division. And anything that has to do with reproduction is about women's bodies and controlling women's bodies and controlling their sexuality. So let me tie that to race. You know, the concept of race is the development of um an invention of um biological differences, right? Race means biology or species. Um, and so when when you create a system based on an idea of biological differences between populations, which translate into social value, right, then you must control human reproduction. Um, and then you have to make then the women, you know, because it's the women's sexuality that needs to be controlled, because if women go around having sex with the wrong people, right, they're gonna give birth to the wrong types of population. So men's sexuality, less crucial to control, because, well, let's say this men are making up this system, and you know, and they don't carry the product of their sexual activities, right? So women's sexuality became as very key to control and to control white women's sexuality so that they keep producing the right races for the empire, um, and to control in the United States uh enslaved black women's reproduction so that they keep producing slaves, right? So that they keep reproducing labor for the plantation owners. So women's bodies, you know, are crucial to this. Um we can throw in their compulsory heterosexuality. Yeah. Um, because how how do you sell this to people? How do you get people to go along with this idea? Is you have to sell it as nature. This is the only way, this is the natural way to be heterosexual, monogamous, nuclear, right? Um uh uh the woman stays home and does all the labor in the home, you know, but you have to sell it as that's natural, that's the natural order of things. And whether you make reference to religious texts that tell you that's the natural order of things, and I'll just say no religious text actually actually says that, um, you know, or some other, you know, claim to scientific nature, right? Um so so this is how kind of how you get people to buy into it, right, is you sell it. So we get trained early on. We get it trained. Uh we go to school when we're four years old or five years old. Some of the first things we learn, we learn about authority. Authority stands there and tells us what to do. We learn to obey. We learn to um sit in our chairs when we're told to sit in our chairs. We learn to pee when we're told we can pee. We learn, you know, to nap when they say it's time to nap, right? We learn to work for external rewards. Um, and that is like the uh early seeds of um capitalism, like learning to be good workers, right? We learn to create for external rewards. We're four years old. We're getting the lessons, right? Of obedience, authority, uh, labor, and what's valuable about us, right? Other people's approval because we have behaved appropriately. It starts really early on that we learn that uh boys don't cry, you know, and there's a lot of studies about, you know, the distortions of boys and men's lives based on limited ideas, right, of how they can be, and and harsh masculinity training that prevents them from feeling tenderness, uh, you know, and uh or being in their emotions, having emotional literacy, um, being other regarding, being kind. All these things are characterized as as their weakness, right? So we learn early on, boys are this way, girls are this way, um, and this is nature. This is how nature produces us. Now, I always say if this was nature, we wouldn't have to be told. We wouldn't need to be trained, right? And it wouldn't need to be repeated our whole lives. Yeah. But uh if it was nature, we would just do it, but we don't. We learn, right, how to do all those things. So early on, even in our the architecture of schools that has um boys' bathrooms and girls' bathrooms, we learn early on, right? Um, that these things should be separate. Um yeah, I mean, so this is kind of like how that 1492 paradigm, abstract and ginormous as it is, becomes how we live our lives and how we see ourselves and what we think is true, what we think is real, right? We learn about race, we have to be taught about race. We don't know about race till somebody teaches us, right, that there are differences. Some things are desirable, some things are not. Our perception is completely shaped. The other thing you'll say, and you probably know this from your studies, is like until we're about eight years old, we have no filters. Uh, we're just sponges. Uh it's not like we're in a hypnotic state. We just receive everything. So, so later on, you know, we have all these biases. We don't even know where they came from. It seems like, oh, just the way things are, right? So the process of normalization that we go through, and that normalizing is of capitalism, colonialism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, all the things. And they're completely connected because this is how you construct the empire. Yeah.

Deconstruction and The Paradigm Shift

Jess Callahan 29:57

It's like a giant PR scheme built on like, you know, control and productivity and empirical expansion and oh man. But so, okay, you talk about the deconstruction of it, and I feel that, you know, in myself right now, like, you know, peeling out those threads of conditioning that just like run so deep, but also like in parenting right now, you know, I like think about my kids who really like have just absorbed all of these messages from the outside world from the time that they were little and the ways that um like we we drive every day basically um for them to play soccer a little ways away from our house. And I love those drives because my kids, my older kids are really deep thinkers and they they really like to learn about the systems. And so we're always sort of having those conversations. Um, I think most recently my son and I were talking about purity, and I was like, unless you're talking about like olive oil or maple syrup, if somebody's talking to you about purity, it's like a you know, you got to tune in and really figure out what they're trying to get at there because it's like, but like it, you know, it just it runs so deep. Like, how do you see the deconstruction taking shape today? And do you feel like we are approaching a paradigm shift, a new paradigm shift?

The Role of Intuition

The Myth of Scarcity

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 31:25

Yeah, yeah, I do. I I I I think we're in it right now. I and I think we've been in it for a long time, but we're in it in a really accelerated way right now. Um you know, just uh it runs very deep, but it runs very contrary to our nature. And so that's the good news. Um you know, that's why it unravels. Um, you know, because it's not actually who we are. We are not divided and separate people. Uh we are not antagonistic to each other. We learn it. We learn how to do that and be that. So so that's the good news, I think, is you know, when we talk about a paradigm shift, um, what we're shifting towards, now this requires some of our agency, it requires some of our, you know, consciousness, right? But what we are shifting towards, quite possibly, is a deeper authenticity, a deeper um meaningful, purposeful way of being um ourselves. And um, and I always think about alignment, right, as alignment with how God sees us, alignment with our divine nature. Um, and so I think that that is happening, and it might be happening through contrast, right? It might be happening through burnout, it might be happening through um, you know, horrible things happening that we're uh witnessing or experiencing, right? It's all that pain um is for purpose, is showing us to uh deeper meaning in deeper ways. And so I think that is happening. Um, it's really important, like what you're doing, just equipping kids with questions. Um and you know, I think a really powerful question to ask when someone's saying it's like this is how do you know? Um, because if you really ask people who are saying things just parroting the world of opinions, for instance, you ask how do you know, there's not really an originating point of that knowledge. You know, they don't know how I just know this, right? And so it sort of um uh dissolves the the power, the influence of those thoughts, right? When you can't trace where they where they came from, right? Or you can't trace like some logical um source for that. Uh I uh but yeah, critical critical questions, uh critical inquiry, curiosity, right? Curiosity even about our own selves. So when we're first unraveling programming and we become aware, oh, there's all this programming in me, you know, we encounter, say somebody, there's a trigger, right, to be curious about it. Huh. Why do I have that feeling? You know, I don't even know where that came from, right? And to be curious about it also starts to unravel it. It's no longer just who I am and how I am in the world or how things are. It's oh, a thing to be interrogated, a thing to be explored, right? So get a little distanced from it. Um that so that distancing, and it's like it's like once we become aware that there's all this, you know, all of this world of opinion living in us that isn't serving us, right? It even just knowing that dissolves its its uh grip on who we think we are, right? Um and I think uh yeah, I mean, developing a more inner attunement is really important. So you mentioned intuition. And you know, I think our intuition is the voice of the divine in us. And so we tune into it more and more. The more we tune into our intuition, the more we realize it's always talking to us. So going from intuitive hits to oh, daily guidance, moment-to-moment guidance, you know, for how I'm gonna move through the world. So the more we trust it, the more we listen to it, you know, the more our channels open up. And that is, I think, reliable information. There's always reliable information once we tune into it. And that also reduces the noise of the world or the impact of the world in our lives. Um, it's also evidence-based, you know. So for instance, um, you know, this 1492 paradigm, it's a tapestry. So once you start to unravel one part of it, everything starts to unravel a bit. So we take uh take the concept of scarcity, which is uh a foundational assumption of capitalism. There's not enough to go around in nature. Um and um when you, you know, just look at the facts of that, right? For instance, um, is there enough food on the planet for everybody to eat? Well, yes, you know, people who do that kind of work can tell you there's more than 3,000 calories of food per person on the global market every single day. Every person does not need to eat 3,000 calories, right? So it tells you that no one needs to starve to death. Nobody needs to go without a daily meal, right? Because we have enough, right? And that scarcity is a lie. That's a lie. Then, you know, we can look at other evidence. So other evidence, um, if they said scare there's scarcity in nature. Well, does nature ever stop producing? Does never nature ever stop creating? You know, has there is there ever a moment when nature quits? No, no, it's constantly producing. So there's another way to know that's a lie, right? That is not a truth uh of nature. So like that, right? Like that, we start to say. Some might say, well, we're you know, we're petroleum is scarce, but energy isn't, right? Um and those the systems we're in are limited, but creativity isn't. Yeah. Innovation isn't, right? Ideas are not. So, you know, unraveling, tell the truth is a really good way of starting to, you know, dislodge the power of the world's thoughts on us. Um, empirical evidence, right? Uh the idea that there's only two genders is undermined every day by the fact that we see many genders. You know, it's empirical, factual evidence. And scientists, you know, if you're a good scientist, you start shifting the way that you study and you start asking different questions because empirical reality is telling you a story that's different from what science is telling. That's called testing a hypothesis. You know, so those things are are also, but I just want to say when you unravel scarcity, if if you take scarcity as the thing to unravel, and it's a good one because we're all operating, we're so uh trained in scarcity thinking, right? That there's not enough money, there's not enough love, there's not enough good men, there's not enough good women, uh, there's not enough um, I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, my thighs are not slim enough, there's a not enoughness is a plague in our uh self-awareness and our consciousness. But once we start to unravel that, we start to unravel then the mechanism of competition, the assumption that if if there's not enough to go around, then of course we have to compete, right? But if you're saying, oh, actually there is enough to go around, that unravels the mechanism of competition. Then if competition is being unraveled, then greed, hoarding, monopolies, um uh all those things, self interest, right, all those things start to come apart. That's The basis of um racial divides. There's not enough to go around. So we start to you, you see what I mean as a tapestry, right? It all starts to unravel.

Tuning Into Nature as a Guide

Jess Callahan 40:11

And I think it's it's really complex and it is like it, there's all of these different systems and topics that overlap. But I think like a a good news piece sort of to it is if it if it's hard to understand and hard to follow, it's sort of like once you understand how the systems work and like this conversation, like how they in a related way sort of came to be and everything was built on them. Once you see them, you can't unsee them. And of course you're always gonna just be like peeling back layer after layer, but the connectedness of it all, and I think the path to deconstruction step by step becomes more clear, but you just have to have like a willingness to see it first, I think. Um, I love how you use the example of nature as a guy. What would be some ways that somebody could tune into themselves or like the rhythms of their own natural energy or like energy like natural cycles to like deconstruct some of this or at least like bring an awareness to how these systems are shaping their lives?

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 41:23

Yeah. Well, we're we're trained to be so disconnected from nature. So there's a it is a retraining, a relearning and an unlearning of the world. So some of the things that we learn about nature, well, some of the things we learn about our own nature is that it's untrustworthy, that we need to suppress our nature because we're dangerous otherwise, right? Yeah. Um and so we have to address that, right? Address that uh where in us, um, where in me am I afraid of my own nature, or where am I afraid of nature itself, or where do I think I'm divided from it, right? And then the practice of just recognizing um, oh, I am nature, right? That's the other divide we do, is there's humans and there's nature, of recognizing, no, I am nature. So, you know, I focus a lot, it depends, but I focus a lot on the genius of this body. And um the the fact of breath happening automatically, uh, and the fact of that breath being turned into life for my cells, for my tissues, for my bones, and the you know, automatic coming in and going out, and in intricate processing that happens without my mind's involvement. Thankfully, if my mind had to figure it out, I'd be dead. So just you know, being aware that there is a miracle of nature going on right here, and guess what? It's me. Right? Or uh walking down the street and just noticing, oh, 26 tiny little bones in my feet that move together synchronistically so that I can propel myself down this street, you know, and just to marvel at us, marvel at the genius that is uh moving through us is is one way. I find that to be helpful because it's tangible, it's physiological, it's you know, all the things, right, of um of what our our minds sometimes need to be convinced about something truer about ourselves, right? Um it's also like being in nature, being in a forest, right, and just recognizing the exchange that we have with trees and knowing a little science, right, of the chemistry of trees and how it's uh how it enhances our immune systems, uh, or that trees know when we're there and they emit a uh positive chemistry for us, or that if you lean up against a tree and just breathe for a little bit, it takes your stress and dissolves it and turns it into something benign. You know, that having a relationship, I think, with the natural world and bridging what we've been taught is a division. Uh you see you see a magnificent sunset, you know, ah, and that's me too. Yeah. The same beauty and magnificence, right, that we see everywhere. Oh, that's me too. And it's uh so a process of affirmation, a process of reclaiming who we really are through those very physical um experiences, I think, you know, has some impact on us.

Jess Callahan 45:00

Yeah, yeah. And I think I get the, you know, just senses. I'm feeling it as you're describing it, that like when you establish that connection and when you marvel in this fact that like, you know, all of the bones in your feet, like you said, are working together to propel you forward and you don't have to have thoughts associated with it. You're just doing it right. And like the fact that we are built to, you know, literally live like in that relationship with trees and plants. And um I I think that all that feels unnatural and forced and um like ways that we're kind of like stuffed in these boxes may start to feel louder and like incongruent with our own selves and our nature. Would you say that's true?

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 45:50

Yeah, definitely. And I and I think that is the the reason that we are dissuaded from being in our nature is because um, you know, systems of power, elite power, uh, needs us to fulfill all these roles. And if we knew who we really were, we would not willingly fulfill these roles, meaning we would not willingly be limited beings, right? We we want uh to live our whole lives. Uh we would not channel our creative energy into wage labor. Yeah. So so it's like it's deliberate that we have been divided um in these ways. And so, yes, we start to um when once we realize, you know, that we're more than this, um, and we realize that um also I think you know, we get sick of the struggle because it is a struggle to live inauthentically, it's a struggle to live in in conflict with our true nature, right? So we get sick of the struggle and see more actually peaceful, more um calm ways of being in the world, more regulated uh ways of being in the world that um serve us, right? And what does it serve us with? It serves us with peace.

Jess Callahan 47:15

That's a really beautiful way to put it. It um just the the effort that genuinely goes into living inauthentically, and and when you do finally, you know, just make that commitment to living true to yourself, and you know, you stop with like the people pleasing and the conformity and all of those other roles that we pick up along the way, it's like I feel so much, you know. I just I can like live in my skin and I can move around, and um it's hard to put into words the feeling of it, but you just really find yourself, you just connect with yourself. And um I just I love how you described that.

Collective Healing

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 47:57

So yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I I I just want to add one thing to that to say that you know, me feeling better, you feeling better is not the end in itself because we're we what we what we are in inherently connected to everybody and everything. So my joy is you know, elevating joy. You know, uh my peace is is contributing peace to the collective. And I think sometimes in spiritual movements we get very self-interested and self-oriented, but just to know that we are um fields of consciousness and energy that impact everything and everybody by doing that work. And so, yes.

Jess Callahan 48:49

Yeah, no, it's an important point because I think it's like like in the work I do, I'm always telling people like when you when you heal yourself and when you share your healing with the world, it's like you're creating this ribble effect that's like just shifting the world around you. And when enough of us are making that like the choice to go inward to excavate some of that stuff to elevate our consciousness, it's like, you know, you reach that sort of like tipping point when enough of us get that to that level and we can sort of collectively elevate by like one percent, then the world shifts. And it's like, you know, if we all just keep contributing, like if I'm putting my joy into the world, it does um, it has a ribble effect that can be really powerful and I think aids in this shift that we're all experiencing.

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 49:38

Yep.

Jess Callahan 49:38

Yeah, yeah. So is what we're here to do. It is, it is. It's it is the work of the work of this time, right? So yeah, well, thank you. This this conversation has been just really like enlightening for me, eye-opening. It's you've just like challenged me to look at you know my world through different lenses. And um, you know, I know you've done the same for everyone listening, and so I'm just so grateful that you spent the time with us today. Thank you, thank you.

Dr. Elizabeth Philipose 50:05

Yeah, my my honor, my pleasure. So glad to talk to you. Thanks.