We Don’t Know w/ Sylvia

This final episode begins in pure grid logic (LAX airport vibes) and lands somewhere closer to ocean logic (mother-nature Norway vibes). I recorded this unhinged gospel to the unknown at the last minute en route to live in Norway for two months. Part of it was recorded in Los Angeles, then Minneapolis (so hot for that accent), before finally grounding in the fjords, where I now type this at 11 p.m. in order to make this goddamn Thursday deadline I set for myself. Jet lag is a real doozy. The sun sank behind the horizon hours ago, but it’s still light out. This land of the midnight sun never ceases to amaze me. I know things are pretty crazy out here. I do hope June and July treat you well and that you treat them well too. I’ll probably be back with Season 4 in the fall, but who knows. Thank you for tuning into this latest season and riding this wild and messy ride with me. I’m very grateful for you. Please do have an ungovernable, incorruptible, and tender summer. xSylviaNorway photos on Substack, if you fancy.

I was emotionally hungover when I recorded this yesterday. Today is better. I think. Too early to tell. I find mornings especially tender sometimes.It’s just so paradigm-shattering and grief-inducing to clearly see how much stability I once borrowed from the future (in both art and love) in order to inhabit the present. Ugh. I’m feeling a lot of grief around many things as I reconcile with different levels of reality in a deeply non-linear way.Accepting reality sucks sometimes… but at least it’s real. And just to be clear, the distinction isn’t “real vs unreal” or “good vs bad,” but more like negotiated reality vs the future I was leaning on to get through uncertainty. Reality is always negotiated, but the future was unknowingly being used as a stabilizing strategy. And I can’t currently make meaning in the way I used to in order to feel held while things are uncertain.Thankfully, I do know that feeling the grief, and honoring wherever I am, keeps things from getting stuck while also keeping my heart open. I can remain strong and soft, protective and open, full of grief and also so much love. Because for me, openness is not a personality trait; it’s an ongoing decision made under conditions of disappointment and heartache. And I refuse to harden or close my heart.This is the full Mary Oliver poem “Lead” I mention in the episode, which touches on all this and has stayed with me ever since I first read it. I used to have the last part of it taped to my fridge door.Go to Substack to see the water color void comic convo that comes along with this post. xSylvia

This week’s episode is about discernment and the personal practice of telling subtle things apart in both the mind and body — and what that practice is in service of for me personally is coherence. Not certainty, but coherence: an internal alignment between what I feel, what I say, and what I do.For me, coherence isn’t the absence of contradiction, but the ability to remain in relationship with contradiction without fragmenting. When I lose coherence, I usually become confused, dysregulated, and trapped in my head. When I have it, I’m more grounded in my body and able to move with clarity even inside total uncertainty.We unpack four things that often get collapsed into one experience: ambiguity, uncertainty, vagueness, and the unknown. They blurred together for me for years, and honestly, they still do sometimes. But when I can actually feel the difference between them (and not just intellectually categorize them but sense them in my body) something shifts. Clarity returns. Ultimately, this episode explores how we can learn to know when to stay in the question, when to tolerate ambiguity, and when discernment is asking for action instead.Discernment helps me tell the difference between ambiguity that’s alive and generative versus vagueness that’s obscuring something or keeping me stuck. It helps me recognize when uncertainty is asking me to build capacity instead of escape discomfort. And it helps me distinguish intuition from trauma — what’s an actual knowing, what’s a triggered response, what’s truly serving me and others, and what’s simply familiar.The episode also keeps circling back to the relationship we have with ourselves while we’re figuring all this out. Because discernment without compassion can become self-punishment, but compassion without honesty can become avoidance. Part of the practice, at least for me, is learning how to be rigorously honest with myself without becoming mean to myself. Cliff notes version: don’t be an asshole to yourself.Our inner critic is a habit pattern of the mind, and habit patterns can be retrained, albeit slowly, repetitively, and super imperfectly. And look, I know this can be incredibly difficult — especially if we’re dealing with things like depression, addiction, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, burnout, etc. But from my experience, it’s really hard to transform anything internally while constantly fighting ourselves or talking shit to ourselves.Nothing here is black-and-white or one-size-fits-all. This is personal, not prescriptive. We all need as much support as possible with this stuff so I hope you have it or get it. As always, just take what works and leave the rest.See ya later alligators,xSylvia

In this week’s unhinged gospel to the unknown, we unravel the wild and wonderful paradox of knowing oneself. Identity can be a trap or liberating — or somehow both at once. Depending.As Eckhart Tolle reminds us:“You must be comfortable not knowing who you are to know who you are.”Guys, you know I love a fucking paradox and multiple truths. I love them because they create space inside us, between us, and out in the world. Also adventure. Learning to hold paradox can also loosen the rigid mind that seeks safety through certainty, control, performance, and all the other unreliable coping mechanisms that often create more suffering than freedom. It can soften shame and judgment, which can lead to deeper intimacy with ourselves and others. Who doesn’t want that? Exactly.So yeah, per usual we challenge the status quo of capitalism, conditioning, and the fantasy that we human beings are fixed, fully knowable things. We explore what freedom for ourselves and others might actually mean — and how we are both radically different and deeply interconnected.I believe we can be gentle with ourselves while staying rigorously honest about our bullshit. We can befriend fear instead of organizing our lives around avoiding it. We can alchemize that into deeper trust in our bodies, feelings, hearts, intuition, discernment, and our ability to use the strange tool (or toy) known as the mind — without letting it use us. Human experience doesn’t resolve cleanly into one stable truth without loss of reality.So not blind trust, but relational listening without surrendering discernment. Because as we know feelings and bodily intuitions can carry wisdom, but they can also be shaped by trauma, projection, ideology, nervous system patterning, fear, fantasy, and all sorts of different survival strategies. But as we uncover, discover, discard, and integrate all these layers, we reconnect with our embodied intuitive knowing — and that can be fucking magic. It’s also important to name here, because I’m not sure if it’s totally clear in the episode, that some people use paradox and multiplicity to avoid accountability, clarity, or commitment. And paradox without grounding can become dissociation just as easily as liberation. Which is also why we must stay flexible and not get trapped even by paradox. Tricky shit, I know. The danger of mistaking self-narrative for self-knowledge is always present — we can remind ourselves that clarity is partial, not final. I personally practice this by trying to navigate one moment and one day at time, remembering that I’m changing, you’re changing — it’s all changing. Then I can meet each moment and version of myself and you with openness and curiosity. Take what lands and leave the rest. But do stay ungovernable, open, and tender.xSylviaQuote I didn’t cite properly is by Fannie Lou Hamer: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”Book I reference in here and repeatedly highly recommend: Howe, L. (2017). Healing through the Akashic records: Using the power of your sacred wounds to discover your soul’s perfection. Sounds True.

Episode 6 is an extra deep dive into how our fears can make us try to control people, places, and things — and how the attempt to annihilate ambiguity can erode intimacy, creativity, aliveness, and freedom.Per usual, I call myself out on the ways this rears its head for me personally. Ultimately, this is about how being devoted to living the questions can liberate us, and those we’re in relationship with — from fear.Reading this first passage is what inspired my unpacking of my own fears and everything else this episode spirals into:“Relationships do not suffer because love is absent. They suffer because control quietly replaces it. When the need to control begins to loosen, something more honest becomes possible. You no longer hold the other. You begin to meet them. And in that meeting: Not everything will stay. Not everything will return. But what remains will no longer be shaped by fear.” — VedicSoul by A Bhardwaj.The other quote and poem below are also referenced in the episode.Take what lands, leave the rest. Stay ungovernable.xSylvia“One of the great ironies of the human condition is that we are here to discover our soul’s perfection through imperfect teachers: one another.” - Linda HoweDie Before You Die by Rabia al Basri“Ironic, but one of the most intimate actsof our body isdeath.So beautiful appeared my death - knowing who then I would kiss,I died a thousand times before I died."Die before you die," said the ProphetMuhammad.Have wings that feared evertouched the Sun?I was born when all I oncefeared - I couldlove.”

The title of this one is inspired by the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory song from the creepy (and I think hilarious, depending on my mood) river scene. You know the one. But in case you forgot watch here. I often hear this melody in my head (but make up my own bad lyrics) when wading in uncertain territory. So yeah, that’s episode 5’s vibe: half-embodied, half-anxious, while continuing to wade in the wild unknown imperfectly. In this episode we continue to excavate how embodiment is the precondition for hard conversations that actually move anything personal or political. I keep harping on this because I keep encountering it on the daily. Take what works, leave the rest, but definitely try your best to stay ungovernable, incorruptible, curious, and tender out there. Lives depend on it. No pressure. LOL. But actually. Your precious presence and participation in this beautiful and horrible shit show is needed — and it’s a muscle we gotta build. Together. xSylvia

Episode 4 is basically a voice memo journal entry of sorts from Paris, France — which starts on a bridge and then is recorded while walking through the Tuileries toward the metro, emotionally hungover, jet-lagged, and very much in the middle of some shit. But also a lot of beauty.I talk about death — no one is shocked I know. More on that in this essay (the secret of death: a note from paris) from earlier in the week if you fancy. And the multiple tiny deaths that have been happening for months — of ideas, ways of being, things I’ve had to let go of or that got ripped away. And also about the Paris Metro, being held, and why I want to be crushed by greater and greater things. Oh I also very briefly mention this solid read on attachment theory which offers some interesting insights that I highly recommend you peep. And look, I know this shit has been discussed every which way to Sunday and is kinda played out, but I still took some new things away — just saying. Avoir. xSylvia

Swimming in the gap between knowing and feeling.I think the logo said Episode 3 last week but it lied. This is definitely Episode 3 and it’s called “Feeling Feelings is Hard + David Richo’s Five A’s.” It’s a horizontal dive into vulnerability, intimacy, and why it’s so much easier (for me personally) to armor up than to actually feel things some times. I talk about grief and how it’s not separate from the play and the fun, but actually part of it. And why staying in my head is a defense mechanism that keeps me from the very closeness I’m craving. Relatable? You tell me. I also crack open one of my all time favorite books on relating called “How to Be an Adult in Relationships” by David Richo and let it work as an oracle, landing on disappointment, the Five A’s (attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, allowing), and the push-pull of abandonment and engulfment fears. Also how our nervous system remembers things our brains don’t and how that can be hella annoying. But actually. So fucking annoying. And also so very human. It deserves our grace. Take what works. Leave the rest. Stay ungovernable.PS: David Richo if you happen to come across this — THANK YOU SO MUCH for writing this beautiful book. So so grateful. xSylvia

Last week I came in hot and this week I slow back down and arrive somewhere softer — because that’s where I’m at and that’s how this podcast works. I imagine more activating territory is coming this season so my hope is that this episodes offers some embodied prep. I mean, if we can’t stay with ourselves when shit hits the fan, we won’t be able to stay with others. And shit just keeps hitting the fan. On every level. And I think we need to endlessly practice feeling into when to remove and/or protect ourselves, and also when to stay with discomfort or lean into the difficult— and that takes attuning to ourselves first, and then others, while also not bullshiting ourselves, or others. And knowing when and how to repair with others. This is not always easy to do, I know. For me it’s daily, hella imperfect, and revolutionary work I do solo and with others. So yeah, this episode is not an instruction or lesson or whatever, it’s just an embodied messy demonstration of some of the ways I do this. And hopefully something inside it will feel supportive or interesting to you. As always, take what works and leave the rest.xSylvia

A zero bullshit orientation to this feral playground where we learn to embrace uncertainty, cultivate solidarity, all while challenging the status quo.Reminder: this is an adult show (18+) with swearing and taboo adult subject matter and it will surely trigger you at times — you’ve been warned. I encourage you to stay open and curious while also taking care of yourself. Only you know your edges.And as always, take what works and leave the rest.xSylvia