#97 Love & the Metacrisis: Gigi Amzy
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Welcome to today's episode. My name is Michael Reiley. And today we welcome Gigi Azmy, who blends 28 years of spiritual insights with psychological research to guide people towards profound love and connection. She pioneered trauma healing in spiritual workshops and helps individuals attract conscious relationships.
Gigi also supports intentional communities in building lasting bonds. She's currently finalizing her book, Spiritual Guide Awakening to Love, and leads the HeartSword Sangha, a bi weekly online community for relational growth. And today we discussed love, communities, waking up and waking down along the spiritual path, all while navigating the unfolding meta crisis.
podcast, presented by Science and Nonduality.
Michael Reiley: I'm here with Gigi Azmy on the Sounds of SAND podcast. Thanks for being here today.
Gigi Azmy: Thank you, Michael. Really happy to be here.
Michael Reiley: . So I was wondering if you could introduce yourself a bit, and maybe talk about your connection to the SAND community over the years.
Gigi Azmy: With the SAND community, when I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was doing these workshops just for fun. It was called Urban Awakening. And there'd be about 50 people to a group every week that would meet in the San Francisco Bay Area. And we would do these workshops on, how do you bring your spirituality into daily life?
And what we found immediately was that we had to talk about trauma. Because the moment that we tried to bring our spirituality into daily life, we kept running into these blocks that we didn't know why they were there. And I remember Zaya seeing Urban Awakening taking off and seeing all of these young people back then I was in my thirties, right now I'm 43.
So back then she was like how are you getting these younger people into your workshops? What's the buzz about? And I said, it's because it's not a teacher student model. It's a teacher collective model where the collective is leading the conversation, with the wisdom of the teacher, but the wisdom of the group also dictates the conversation itself. And people in the group are not just interested in listening to what the teacher wants to say, but what their wisdom is also holding for themselves and for each other and where they want to go. In that way. So all of the models that we have come from have been very much the teacher sitting in front of the room and everyone else listening.
And even though we had that, we still had a huge swell of incredibly deep conversations that were happening back and forth between the entire group. And with this thing, we were started linking and okay, how do we start working on our trauma within the workshop right after meditation, right after talking about awakening and enlightenment, we would get right into the nitty gritty of the soul.
So what I saw Zaya, do was just she took that in. And it was really beautiful to see how open she was to how the younger crowd is looking into trauma now looking into their inner work to link their spirituality and COVID happened and that kind of made the SAND conference. Halt for a long time, but I saw this huge change in direction where they started going to work and highlight Gabor Maté's work on trauma and addiction.
And SAND went from talking about science and nonduality to now talking about science, nonduality and trauma and healing. And as you're saying, now bringing in this indigenous piece. of wisdom, which is absolutely incredible.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. I think one of the things with the title science and non duality, which maybe on its surface seems a little bit constraining, but what's been beautiful about the journey of SAND and I've only been a part of it for a few years now is that science is a placeholder for the relative and non duality is a placeholder for the absolute and disCOVIDring the interplay and the expansion of both of those because they're both expansive, So curious now what's present for you these days in your spiritual work and your work as a facilitator.
Gigi Azmy: I think my work right now is really, I love what Vanessa Andreotti said her name before she changed it was Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. And I'm bringing up her quote here where she said, how do we expand to sit with what is difficult without feeling immobilized, overwhelmed, throwing a tantrum or demanding quick fixes to be rescued from the discomfort. And what I found is when I went through COVID, clients, started just literally breaking my ability to be able to serve anyone, people were coming in droves. I thought it was going to be a recession of clients. People were coming in so much that I couldn't even hold space for them because I had to hold space for myself. And then the war In Gaza happened, the war in Palestine happened, and I saw the same thing. I saw that I wasn't able to hold space for others because I had to hold space for myself. And that was, incredibly humbling for someone that has done 23 years of spiritual practice. So then it tells me what is the good of my spiritual practice?
if it doesn't have the ability to withstand these harsh moments of life. And what has come to me is my spirituality, our spirituality still has to be grounded in something even more basic, even allowing us not to deny The hard, ugly parts of life, and it's just, it's still difficult. It's still difficult for all of us. Through COVID, all of us had a huge reaction to each other. We didn't know how to love each other if we had different opinions about how things should be. We had a really, all of us had an extremely hard time with that. I bless whoever didn't have a hard time. With that bless you, but most of us did right and then this war comes up again And there's 40, 000 people that have been massacred and there's still some question That maybe this is okay because someone is defending themselves And then it brings up that thing again of like, how can we love each other through such incredibly massive differences of opinions about what is right and what is wrong?
And so that my spirituality now has brought me to this point. How is my spirituality able to sit with shock and horror and not look away? And not close my heart and that has been extremely difficult and so it all it has done is really bring me to these incredibly revolutionary thinkers like Vanessa Andreotti, who have said, can we have a composting party. Because We don't know what we're doing. And I've come to the same place.
The only reason that her work resonates so much is because I've only come to the same exact place of, we don't know what we're doing. If we keep coming together, making believe like someone has the answer, we will never get anywhere. And so if we come together, And the admittance that we do not know how to move forward, then maybe we will get somewhere. that answer, I think is very hard. If it's very hard for me to hold, I know it's very hard for all of us to hold. there's nothing more that Gigi wants than an answer to make the mess better. And there's nothing more that I've looked for my entire life than an answer to make the mess better.
But I've landed in the same exact place that a lot of our best thinkers have landed in, which is if we knew we would have done it. some of the people that I admire around me go, okay, so what's the solution is the solution coming together and saying that We need to work on it. I said, no, we need to come together and say, we don't know how to work on it. We actually don't know how to relate to each other. We're still having a hard time sending a text message back to our bestest of friends, right? Like on the most basic levels of relating, something has been extremely lost. other people will say to me and the reason I just want to name this is. when I do talk to people that I really admire, what they say to me is, oh, Gigi, no, it's not a relational problem. It's an economic problem. It's because people have a difference in economics. Gigi, it's not a relational problem. it's racism. It's patriarchy. It's feminism. it's too big for people to solve. It's because, people don't feel safe with each other. I said, okay, but have you noticed that when you put people of the same economic structure, the same education, the same race, the same gender, the same relational issues are still happening. So there's a fundamental issue. in our nervous system. And people will tell me, okay, it might be breathwork. It might be communication workshops. It might be other methods that we need to try. And I'm like, we've done all of those things.
Michael Reiley: We've actually done all of those things. And the moment that conflict really hits, that's the moment that it all falls apart. Because the moment that conflict hits, what you will see is that no matter what agreement people have put together, the person who feels the most shame, the most criticized will pull away no matter what. And so the true question is, how do we work with that shame structure, with that inner critic that pulls away and refuses to talk to the rest of the group? And not only refuses to talk to the rest of the group, can actually weaponize that and say, you can't make me do anything I don't want to do, Beautiful. There's a few strands, a few things that you're bringing up. One is this narrative that we've had, especially in the U S but other Western cultures of the individual, and that somehow found its way into spirituality and individual awakening and you work on you and, completely leaving relationality out of the equation of spiritual life.
You are, I think, pointing out with the trauma work that, that is in essence relationality. It's talking about, the carrying of the wounds and the pain from our previous encounters of life.
Gigi Azmy: Yes. Yes. And if we do not know how to love each other, that means we do not know love. If we do not know love, then we do not know God. God is love. We're so confused about love. If we look at our spiritual teachers, I know some people are going to get angry at this, but most of our spiritual teachers have painful and confusing intimate relationships.
Many do. Many don't have these long term beautiful relationships that they could model to us from and be like, yes, I've been in this 23 year marriage. I've been in this 40 year marriage. Our lovemaking is amazing. All of this, our children are thriving. They're not. on the brink of taking their own lives, which is really what happening actually all of the time. If you're a spiritual teacher and your family is suffering at that degree, then what are you teaching? If your relationships aren't working, then what are you teaching? If God is love, then how could we be so confused about love? What happened to me at 30 years old was I had my last, hopefully, God willing, my last breakup. And in that moment, it was my dark night of the soul because I had already at that point had 15 years of spiritual awakening, which you'll say, Gigi, that means you had your first awakening at 15 years old. And yes, I did. I had my first awakening at 15 years old, at 16 years old. My, I was reading this book on the heart and my heart just completely blew open.
So I had an awakening of the heart at 16 years old and I'm reading, Carlos Castaneda and Neil Donald Walsh and all of these incredible books. And I'm like, this is, I'm absolutely obsessed. And 15 years later, I'm 30. And I realize that I have an absolute lack of discernment. This person that I was Literally just going to get engaged and married to has just completely abandoned me over something absolutely silly because they couldn't compromise.
And so my discernment about who this person was, my ability to be clear, my ability to have insight, and my ability to follow my own wisdom was like after 15 years of spiritual practice, what is so broken this practice? That leads me to the same patterns and I don't even know it.
. Inside, there was this message that kept saying, look at your childhood, look at your childhood. And all of my spiritual teachers were more saying things like, let go of your thoughts, let go of your feelings, let go of the stories that you're telling yourself. None of them are true. All of them are illusions.
Gigi Azmy: But what that caused me to do was that caused me to say, I'm angry right now at my partner because they did something unjust. That's just another thought. I'm sad that this is happening. That's just another feeling. But in that breakup, because it was a dark night of the soul that just took me to the depths of despair, it made me stop.
And I asked spirit, I said, spirit, what is it about this relationship that I just, broke up with that is similar to the patterns in my childhood? What is the connecting link? And I closed my eyes, Michael, and I think , what you would say, what I'm trying to say is that spirituality felt like it failed me up until that point.
Really what had happened is when I closed my eyes, I saw how spirituality actually was the reason now that I'm going to wake up, that I started going through an awakening journey to love. Cause spirit said to me, you deny your needs. In the present moment, just like you had to deny your needs as a child.
And it showed me all of these images. It showed me images of me having to say yes. When I wanted to say no to mom and dad. And then it showed me images of me saying yes. When I wanted to say no to my current partner. And so even though I felt spirituality completely failed me, cause I did 15 years, And I still couldn't get my discernment but it really showed me in that moment.
I could, at least you got your, you're able to get yourself to this mindfulness stillness where you could see this link now.
And so I saw what I did was I actually used spirituality to hurt myself. I used spirituality to say, I should be unconditionally loving, nonjudgmental, understanding the bigger person to this person.
And what I had to do then. to journey my way out of that lie that's what spirituality meant. Giving myself up to someone else being in service. So completely selfless, so completely in service to someone else that I would it. Not walk away from a situation like that. I had to unlearn these things and what I understood afterwards is that People like my partner also would use spirituality in the same way. So me I was the people pleaser codependent so I would use spirituality in the sense of saying I should be a good person by Not abandoning this person and being there for them What the other person in the constellation does is they also use spirituality and they say you shouldn't be attached to anything I do no one could hurt you, but you no one should need anyone else No one should make a relationship an obligation or an expectation and that's what the other person in the constellation does And so what you're seeing is the people pleaser is the person who's grasping I'll fix it.
I'll help. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I should be the bigger person. Maybe I should be unconditionally loving. And the purse, the other person in the constellation has an aversion. So in their aversion, they're saying, you shouldn't need me. I shouldn't have to do this. Nothing should be an obligation.
Nothing should be an expectation. And what I distilled, what I started understanding was just as Buddha had said, if you want to get out of ignorance. There's two things that you must stop doing. You must stop grasping and you must stop being an aversion. And so I understood that movement of mine was not a movement of love, was not a saintly movement.
My, Oh, I should be unconditionally loving and nonjudgmental was a bunch of BS. It was me spiritualizing. weaponizing spirituality to keep the love that I wanted to keep. And the other person who's in aversion does the same exact thing. They spiritualize and weaponize their arguments. To be able to push love away when it feels too suffocating with its needs. And so when we're talking about communities and we're talking about breath work, and we're talking about all these cool things that we could do together, like psychedelics and connection and communication. If we're not talking about this fundamental thing, that stuff makes it better. But it's not going to take it away.
Just going to be another band aid on it. It's just going to be another thing, like I said, where people are like, Oh, Gigi, but maybe it's economics. Maybe it's because people, maybe it's poverty. Maybe it's patriarchy. Maybe it's racism.
Maybe it's breathwork, right? Maybe it's this. It's so fundamental in the person's nervous system that it gets, it gets in your nervous system within six weeks of age. That's how fundamental to your nervous system this aversion or grasping becomes as a technique to relating.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. I was. with a baby yesterday, he just turned six months yesterday. It was like a little party for him, but just spending time, just seeing. How he was laughing and crying literally like breath to breath. He would be laughing. then crying laughing then crying.
It's just that like you said that modeling of what's pleasant, what can I bring more of that in what's unpleasant? What can I push away? do you think we can get rid of that in our nervous system where we just learn to recognize it and see when?
It's present
Gigi Azmy: Yeah, I'm glad you asked me that because people think healing means something stops happening. And I don't think healing, from my experience, means that something stops happening. A lot of the time, if something has such a deep groove, like those two movements that I talked about, you're either grasping, trying to hold on, trying to fix, trying to be the saintly, Do good or the one that's okay no, thank you.
Those movements have such deep grooves in the nervous system that it ends up more being about recognizing that it's happening and making a different choice. And does it happen that you start doing that so often that it becomes so natural that you don't even notice it anymore? Sure. Yeah. That could happen too.
But yeah, I think just knowing having the expectation that things don't go away can help us have so much more compassion and lightness in our own healing journey. That you become your own divine parent in that way.
Michael Reiley: and you're talking about, romantic intimate relationships with other people and that as a model of community. But I'm wondering if we could take a step back even and talk about the inner community, because obviously we have all of these different voices. We have the inner child, we have, the shadow we have.
I forget, I always forget the name of this Disney movie. The one with the different emotions were like different color people. I forget what it's called, but that was a beautiful.
It, showing that we actually do have all these different personalities inside of us, and they're a community, and how do we harmonize them together?
Yeah. And do you think that's a step that a lot of people who are trying to either make a, spiritual or let's say a community of just a family or even bigger communities neglect, is that inner community, how do we harmonize that inner community?
Gigi Azmy: Yeah, I love that you asked this question. So when you're talking about the different parts inside of us there, there was a moment before I ever even knew about parts work before I ever understood this method called internal family systems, which works with parts years before I understood this, there was a moment where I was sitting, stereotypically on a park bench, Michael, I'm sitting on a park bench and I'm waiting for a teacher to come out of her cottage at a retreat.
And I'm sitting in meditation and As I'm sitting in meditation, everything feels incredibly still, incredibly one, incredibly beautiful. And I hear the teacher's door open and immediately my mind starts to have thoughts and they're not, It's what are you going to say to her? You're probably going to say something awkward.
And I'm like but here's where something had changed. Usually what would happen is the ego would come up and go, that's not a spiritual thought or feeling. And it would push it down. But because I had an incredible awakening a few months before that, what happened this time was when those negative thoughts came up, there was no ego voice to meet it.
Not because I had lost my ego, because that's ridiculous. What I'm saying is the ego's voice was so quieted because it didn't believe itself as much anymore, the other voice that came up, Was the voice of the divine and the divine's reaction to the negative voice was so incredibly different than the ego's reaction to the negative voice.
Again, the neck, the ego's reaction to the negative voice is that's not a spiritual thought or feeling you shouldn't be here. The divine's reaction was sweetheart. I understand why you feel that way. And you could see that my consciousness was almost watching the divine do this. Cause I was even shocked. I was like, wow, look at that. was just so natural. And the voice said, oh, but I'm scared. I don't know what to say. And the divine just said, of course it's totally okay. I understand. And it was through that before I ever understood parts work that I started doing parts work too, with my clients, where I started saying.
Whereas we started calling it reparenting in that generation, we were reparenting ourselves through this connection to this divine voice that's in all of us. And a few years ago, it just started coming deeper to me that is the relationship that is trying to come in our consciousness. That's the relationship that's trying so hard to be birthed in our consciousness right now is that the divine parent wants to become central in our lives.
I could feel it because it's the parts work. that's what it's saying. It's saying, Hey, there's something here that holds all of the wisdom that you need. Just turn towards it. And all of us have a huge resistance to that. But that is definitely what's trying to come forth because it came forth so naturally here without me knowing.
And then it just exploded right into the consciousness also of the collective through internal family systems which is a psychological method of parts work talking to the higher self. So when you're asking me about community, how that would be. That would be absolutely incredible. That would be absolutely revolutionary because we're not looking anymore at a central person, a central leader in the group where someone is looking to say, this is who I should be.
That now the responsibility, the self responsibility will come from that person looking within having a conversation with their divine parent, higher self, higher being, whatever you want to call it, and coming back to the collective and saying, This is what I found.
What did you find? Let's share notes.
We found completely two different things. Incredible. How can we respect each other? Through the journey of walking through that, like if we had that piece of knowledge, but you see what I'm talking about is also just an incredible maturity because you can get this message from the divine.
For example, if any of us went back through covid again and had this piece of knowledge. And Michael your say, your guidance was not to get the vaccine from the higher being. My guidance was to get the vaccine from the higher being. How can we now stay completely regulated with each other, not demonize each other, not judge each other and walk two completely different paths, but still say, still stay within the same community with complete respect and admiration for each other. that takes so much work on so many different levels that's not just the higher being, that's a deep inner maturity. That maturity does come from also understanding that place that I'm talking about. Am I trying to fix a situation and leaning in too much? Or am I rejecting you and criticizing you?
Because I'm scared that you're different than I am. So we still got, it still comes back to that fundamental. back to those two fundamental points of grasping and aversion within the relationship. I feel too. That
Michael Reiley: Don't know what word you used exactly, but, the divine voice that we all have inside of us, that, that guidance, that the kind of awareness that's behind the ego and the thoughts and things like that, it seems paradoxical so that we connect more with that.
And it allows us to be in relation easier because we see the divine in others, This kind of namaste, this overused greeting means the divine in me greets and vows to the divine in you. So yeah, that's my question. If you could talk about that a bit more. This, communing with the, with our divine essence as a gateway to become more into relation with each other.
Gigi Azmy: Is the place that we all go to, to get that inspiration that fills us up when we've been, rocked by life and rocked by each other and rocked by relating that we can go into that place where we're getting the inspiration of the higher self.
And that higher self comes back in and fills us up with love and with the joy and with the energy where we can meet each other again in a good way. tend to just Come back again to if that worked Michael, right? If that completely worked, then things would be easy, right? Then that's all we would need to do, right?
we would be filled with the spirit and the spirit would come down and everything would be okay. But the thing is we come down with the spirit, but now you and I have totally two opposing
Ways of thinking. How can we Learn to regulate ourselves within that. How can we come together within that and say, I'm still really hurting, even though you've chosen a different way.
And even though I respect that, I think that's going to really truly be the measure of how much of that divine that we're able to bring down, not just transcend to the divine, but now we need to descend the divine into us. And when we just, as we descend the divine into us, that divine starts to meet all of these places that are not in alignment with the divine within us.
It might come down and you might feel, I'm afraid of conflict, I'm afraid of speaking when there's conflict, right? The divine might descend and might meet the part of you that says I don't feel safe saying something that the whole group doesn't agree with. I'm not going to put my neck out there no matter how correct I know this is. And so that connection with the divine, does it help the entire group be better? Absolutely. Is it going to move us forward, though, in times of great stress? No. What we found historically has moved us through great stress is because we needed each other. That was the only we could only survive with each other.
The moment that we no longer needed each other to survive because we can make our money in different ways, we can survive in different ways. The moment stress and true conflict hits the group disbands in some way. we're asking ourselves. To just, again be in deep admittance of, this is the way that we relate, and this is where it falls short, and this is where we can't move any further, if we want to get out of the relational crisis with each other,
that it's not gonna be a simple thing about economics, or racism, or patriarchy, or fem it's not. It's our nervous system.
Michael Reiley: And you've mentioned covid a few times and. At the time, we called it a pandemic. And I think that's the technical term for it. But as we're moving on now, four years since that started, we're seeing that as actually a pattern of a meta crisis, as it's called that, environmental collapse and global and injustices, the disparity wealth gap, all these things are connected.
So I'm wondering how You've been, you've hinted at some solutions earlier, but could you talk a bit about, relationality and the metacrisis that we're experiencing now post COVID?
Gigi Azmy: As I've been sitting with the metacrisis, as I've been sitting with the crisis of all things and sitting with the part, especially with the relational part and visiting communities and being part of intentional communities, and also reading the research that says intentional communities have an average of two years before they fall apart. And then being in intentional communities on my own and being with some really incredible people. These are people I still love and admire to this day. But, our relational maturity was not capable of getting us past two years. And when I looked at this and I looked at, how incredibly spiritual and loving and open and truly well meaning these people were, that was extremely confusing, that we still weren't able to get our stuff together to get to the place that we wanted to get to.
Now, why was that? And as I looked at all of these different systems, nothing really answered that question more than a system of, that is the system of human design that I asked you about in the beginning of our, podcast, I said, are, were you are you familiar with human design? What human design has done, it has totally told me that I am absolutely wrong about the direction that I'm heading. so the direction that I was heading, Michael, was. We need community. We need intentional community. Why isn't it working? And human design said, and it's not knowledge of me reading it and understanding it has said, we are actually going through a global cycle now through a new global cycle that has nothing to do with community.
And every single time you try to create community or try to create this thing that's going to happen, it's most likely not going to work. the reason that it's most likely not going to work, this is absolutely genius and I don't know why I didn't think of this myself, Michael. It's not going to work because the individual needs a ton of help before the individual is capable of being a true sovereign. Contributing member within the community without them losing themselves to what they think the others want, without them losing themselves to their own resistance that other people might want them to do something they don't want to do, like a person who's truly connected to that voice that you were talking about that inner voice.
I called it the divine parent. The higher self, whatever you want to call it, that there's so deeply connected to that as them, that they become their own sovereign self actualized contributing member. So if we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the need for self actualization, but the need for self actualization, if we truly look at it, we truly look at it.
It's the individual. It's the individual's hero's journey. So we come back full circle to you saying in the beginning of the podcast, where you're talking about, okay, Yes, in a sense, we've become too individual, but I think that's why we keep missing this piece of wisdom.
Yes, we're too individual, but we're too individual in a hyper independent state, not an inter, Dependent state. I had to learn a lot of what I had to learn on my own. I didn't have an elder. I was at an orphan like most of us without the elder to fully take her on a journey, right? Most of our teachers were on the stage teaching us from a crowd or from a book, right?
And even if you had a one on one teacher, You're extremely lucky to have that person truly, completely one on one and dedicated to you and maybe just a few other people.
What we're seeing, what I'm seeing, that we need to focus on the individual so much more than the community because the community cannot work without the individual's health. And this truly blew my mind, because it's true. Because when I look at the system, it is a system of individuals who have a lot of their own pain points that cannot work with the whole, because they just keep butting heads with the pain that they're holding inside.
Michael Reiley: This shift that you had that you because I we were saying before we recorded I'm I've been part of a community project. That's about four years old. I've been here for two years It's even in these two years it's morphed and changed what it is who's in it what if is it intentional is it just people and What I noticed time and time again, which is why I asked you about this movie "Inside Out", it's called.
I looked it up while you were talking is that people don't have their inner community sorted out. And then usually people that come to communities are escaping their escaping, they had a breakup or they lost their job or they got freaked out by the pandemic. They, whatever happened, they just want to escape.
Gigi Azmy: And they're, they rushed to these communities thinking, Oh, community's my answer. But inside they still have all these people fighting. That's right. Yeah. So imagine a community in the future. And in this community, when you come in, the community has to have a therapist that's not in the community, not allowed to be in the community. So you take therapists that are not from the community and you put, tend to a group.
Michael Reiley: Okay. So if you have 30 people, you have three therapists and they meet with that cohort a month. Okay. And so we're talking about the individual again, each individual in the group would sign up for some type of coaching or therapy that feels meaningful. That will help that person advance in the way that they're able to relate to themselves and to the group. It centers the individual's progress. and the relational aspect so much. So maybe I'll shift into just talk about, upcoming projects or things that you're working on
Gigi Azmy: Upcoming projects. Yes. So I'm working on a book called the spiritual guide to awakening to love. And it is. about this, awakening to what the Buddha said. If we are to wake up of ignorance, we have to wake up out of grasping and aversion and seeing where the grasping and aversion is lying in our relationships, except through a new lens. So the old lens said that we should be unconditionally loving, nonjudgmental. We shouldn't put expectations or obligations in our relationships. And we shouldn't be attached. But what I'm seeing and what I've understood in my awakening, my own awakening to love is that spirit told me no to all of those things. Spirit told me. Have you not noticed that trying to be unconditionally loving and unconditionally non judgmental is a grounds that starts to breed abuse? Have you noticed that thinking you should not have any attachments and love or obligations or expectations ends up creating a relationship where a person doesn't really show up for you. And so these cultural narratives and these spiritual narratives have been so incredibly sophisticated and so strong in our cultural narrative, that they have completely co opted what we think love is. And so the book is helping us to awaken out of that misunderstanding.
Michael Reiley: When you were talking about your, the last breakup that you had or this time around when you were 30, it reminded me of a friend of mine who's been married for 60 years or something.
And he said the secret to his long marriage was he had several marriages in that marriage and that they were both changing people. And every few years they needed to say we've changed. What are the new parameters of our relationship? And they needed to constantly go back and readdress. Okay, why is it we're together?
How are we going to be together? And this, that's one of the other famous teachings of the Buddha, which is impermanence.
Gigi Azmy: Yes. That's beautiful. It's beautiful to hold onto non attachment in that way.
Where the nonattachment is making our relationship a new all of the time instead of saying, I'm going to use nonattachment to say that you shouldn't need me.
Michael Reiley: right? And that your needs are actually a sign that you're not spiritual or enlightened. That's what people have done. That's what I'm talking to. And so it's so beautiful that we, your example, because he's using impermanence to bring life into the relationship.
Yeah.
Gigi Azmy: Yeah.
Michael Reiley: the other famous idea of the Buddha that, if you fall in love with someone when you're 22, you're going to When you're 77, you're not, you aren't the 22 year olds that fell in love at that age. you just aren't the same people on a cellular level or emotional or anything.
You've hopefully evolved. And so you need to look at that, and be present to that.
Gigi Azmy: And I think one of the things that I keep coming back in my own marriage, is reminding myself to look at my husband as I've never seen him before
on a daily basis. Not that I actually get to do it on a daily basis, but that practice has been so helpful in keeping the fire alive between us of Oh, wow, look at that guy.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. My wife as well, because she was in Italy and I was in the U S so we'd spend time apart. We had a long distance relationship. And I do remember that you'd be apart for two months and you'd see this person with new eyes every time. You're like, Oh my God, it's her. she looks so different.
And to always to not lose that spark of yeah, not of seeing, seeing who's there every time, not seeing our version in our mind of who's there.
Gigi Azmy: Yeah.
Michael Reiley: Yeah. Yeah, and one image I'm, you're hinting at spiritual bypassing, and we often think, or at least sometimes I think of spiritual bypassing, if I picture it as a painting or something, it's like someone meditating, and then they have this kind of road coming out of their head going somewhere else, but what you're describing is there's so many different off ramps to the bypass.
It's like one of those cluster spinning things we see in Los Angeles of all the freeways. There's so many ways to spiritual bypass and there's so many off ramps. Yeah.
Gigi Azmy: Here's the thing with spiritual bypass is we don't know when we're doing it, especially in relationships Especially with people who have been caught in like seriously Bad patterns over and over again where they end up going. Huh? How did that happen? I thought that one was the right one And so they're not bypassing because they're meaning to bypass, they're bypassing because that is the strategy that they were taught from childhood.
So if I take myself and I say, okay, since I was a little girl, I was taught to say yes. When I wanted to say no to be a good girl to not get punished, correct? So when I grow up, if I've had 18 years of that in practice, when I grow up and I sense that my partner is tense and he asked me for something and I want to say no, but I say yes because now I'm walking on eggshells.
I don't even think I'm bypassing. I just think I'm being the bigger person. I just think I'm being a good partner. It doesn't even strike me anymore that I might be people pleasing. Isn't this the right thing to do if you're a good person? My brain would tell me if I tried to argue myself out of it and say, Hey, maybe you shouldn't be walking on eggshells in this relationship. My brain would come in with the quickness and say, Oh, sweetheart, you don't want to do that. Then you're going to cause a fight. Why would you want to cause a fight? the pattern Goes on, which feeds into the pattern of my partner, which was aversion to me saying anything that was going to be felt as a burden to him. So he was in aversion, right? so if I said something that he didn't like. He would say, I wasn't being appreciative, that was not bypassing to him. He really believed that because child, if he wanted something that was not okay, he would be treated that way. It becomes so fundamental to who we think we are, that we don't even know that we're doing it, that we don't even know that we're bypassing. we literally need someone else to say, Hey, honey, when you walk into a relationship and you feel this incredible need to fix a situation and be patient with bad behavior, that's not you being a saint, that's not you being a good person, that's you playing to your wounds. the other person who's in aversion, it's when you fall in love and you find yourself pushing the other person away the moment they have a need that's not similar to yours. That's not because the other person is bad or wrong. It's because people's needs feel bad to you because your needs felt bad to your parents.
When you were a child and so needs just feel bad to you period whether they're your needs or someone else's needs it's so fundamentally hardwired into us that's why I say if we don't look at that no amount of therapy, no amount of whatever, no amount of talking, no amount of breathwork, no amount of, communication methods is going to help unless you go, I fundamentally lean in too much into relationships when they hurt, or I lean out of relationships when my partner or friends need me. Which one is my tendency? Because that's such an automatic reaction that we don't even know we're doing it. And because we don't know what we're doing it, it fuels the relationship crisis. So dramatically, and that's what it really comes down to at the crux of it.
Michael Reiley: And so for someone who's listening, who feels like they're in a relationship that's not serving them, what would you say is like the first step is it some kind of meditation? Is it therapy? Is it?
Gigi Azmy: I would ask them, look at what that person's actions in the relationship, who does that person's actions remind you of? And trace that back to start understanding why that dynamic seems to pull you in all the time. Yeah. The person who feels a strong aversion will keep pulling in the person who has a lot of needs. And so that's what's really interesting. It's like they almost have to learn how to be with the other person's needs before they can come to a place where needs aren't so painful to everyone all the time. Have you seen any of this come up in your communities at all?
Michael Reiley: Oh, yeah.
Gigi Azmy: Yeah.
Michael Reiley: It's been a microcosm of different. Dynamics. do you know, have you heard of the Damanhur community in Northern Italy? There's a woman, I think her name is Celestrina. She has a YouTube channel about communities
And she talks about the 10 signs to look for why communities fail.
Gigi Azmy: Yeah.
Michael Reiley: And we've had all 10 here,
Gigi Azmy: Okay.
Michael Reiley: yeah, there's also a part of me that I appreciate the shadow and I appreciate the difficulties
If it was too easy, it would feel like a cult or something. Like you just follow this rule book, just do what they say and do this and come to these meetings and do this and everything will be fine.
I like the messiness and I like that we're doing this together and
Gigi Azmy: Feeling into what is a community? What does it mean to be an intentional community together? Do you feel this tension between the people who want more connection, want to feel what other people might be feeling or what's really gone? What are people thinking? They want to share more than the people that don't like the feeling stuff so much and just want to do more of the logistics
Michael Reiley: yeah.
Gigi Azmy: And yeah, so that, that's what I'm talking about is this, like how. This is what happens. So the person who's in the most aversion will want to do the logistics, totally keep out of the feelings, totally keep out of how anyone is doing. They don't want to know it's your problem. And then you got the other group, the graspers, who are in grasping, and they just want to know, they want to know everything.
How are you doing? How are you feeling? What's going on? How is the group doing? They want to keep the pulse on everything and just make sure everyone's okay. that is what I've seen definitely just starts going. until it just grinds it all down and everyone just disbands because the tension is too great, just like in a relationship between someone who wants more time, more connection, more energy, and the other person who's this is too much,
Michael Reiley: yeah, what I found is Also what I experienced when I first got here, I was really into community and meetings and getting to know each other and, meditating together and doing all this stuff. And it, and after about a year and a half, I let go of that because I saw that I was trying too hard to force things that aren't here.
So now I'm in an allowing mode, just allowing whatever's going to emerge, will emerge. And I think, What is, can be helpful, healthy for a community is that it's an ecosystem and that there are different types of people who are on different spiritual paths, different stages of development, let's say, and that they help each other.
there's the beetles and the birds and the sand and the swamp and the forest and the glacier, and it's all an ecosystem that works together.
Gigi Azmy: Yes, it is. It's a beautiful ecosystem that works together. And in the work that I'm doing, I have a strong, Sense that as people start to understand this piece about themselves, that either pulls away or comes in too close, the frustration that they feel relationally. will start to wane so that they can actually start contributing to the relationship rather than draining their energy in these ways.
So if it becomes completely normalized that in this ecosystem, there are going to be people who do not want to play even though they're in the ecosystem. They just want to do their own thing, but they still want to be in the ecosystem. That's going to be very painful to the people that want to play, and want to play closely, and want to play intimately.
It's literally going to freaking hurt,
Physically. And If that could be understood, as, okay, so we, maybe these group of people in the ecosystem can understand that about themselves. Maybe they can honor that about themselves. Maybe they could honor the pain and the grief that comes up when the other group does not want to play. It brings up these really childlike feelings, right? It goes right back to childhood again of Oh, they don't want to play. They literally do not want to play. And how can we be together in that ecosystem in a loving way? Without the bitterness and resentment that is hidden in the ones who do want to play.
And there's hidden resentment in the ones that don't want to play because they feel the tension. How can we give everyone their freedom? Not ask, because what happens to the people who do want to connect, Michael, is that the pain actually becomes so big, they give up. They eventually give up. And it's just like a real marriage.
The person who wants to give the most and really be there tries so hard and they eventually give up.
And so how do we not break our own hearts in the ecosystem?
And how the people that don't want to play, the only reason they don't want to play, and they're not going to want to hear this and they never will, they're totally shunned me for this, which is absolutely okay. Because that's what I'm here for. Is the pain that it comes up inside of them to be that close.
It's too painful. It's too scary. It's too uncomfortable. So as they grow and as they can see that the people who want to play are still remaining there and the people who want to play are no longer focusing on them anymore. The people who want to play have healed so deeply they just enjoy each other and enjoy everyone else. But there isn't that tension anymore that bitterness that was that hidden that faraway resentment of God damn it. Why don't you want to be more part of this group,
It takes years for their nervous system. I'm talking 10 years to just say, to not even, I'm not even talking about healing.
It takes 10 years for that nervous system, that group's nervous system, who does not want to play in the feelings and in the connection realm, to even come to the point of saying, wow, my nervous system gets really jacked up and relating.
It takes them 10 years just to come to that point. That's why I'm saying it is such an individual within the group process. And that, if we can all come together and just really say how difficult it actually is. not coming from this point, like we, Oh, we're going to put all this stuff on it. Like you said, that doesn't actually work long term.
Michael Reiley: Are you part of a community too? Or you've just investigated them?
Gigi Azmy: I've lived in them. I had very high hopes. And then it was before COVID, I was in a community for two years. And then in COVID, I was in community for a year. And I saw the same kind of conflict cycle that I was telling you about happen. And the cool thing about both cycles was that I got to be on the outside looking in because it was happening with other people.
So I got to see how. The ones that I'm talking about that lean in versus the ones that lean out, how that ends up the community apart. And so all of this kind of just, it all informs each other from romantic relationships to friendships all the way to communities because the same exact thing happens in friendships.
.
Gigi Azmy: One person leaning in too much on the needs, the other person perceiving a need as an obligation or an expectation.
Michael Reiley: You talked about a vision of a futuristic, of a community in the future where you have these outside therapists, outside psychologists that can help you. Do you think at some point, once we heal on an individual level that this model of communities will be something that, future generations will embrace?
Gigi Azmy: Yes, but if you take that community, what you're going to take is not just the adults working with the therapists and having their own therapist and there being a therapist at 10 adults to a group, you're looking at kids and classrooms that are no longer a child to a classroom, but a child may be, for kids to a teacher type of model where again, the more we can get close to a one on one model, even for the children will be absolutely revolutionary where we say, okay, what is this child here for?
What kind of mentoring or, can we have Michael teach him about podcasting and then Gigi teach him about relationships and, XYZ teach him about cooking where it becomes like this, individualized one on one mentorship time where We're starting to look at every individual within the group that way as this, the sacred participant and what's this participants need and what's this participants need for the next wave of consciousness that needs to come up.
So we're no longer doing these kind of mass educational things. We're really honing in and we're really bringing in now that child. So that child has a chance. And having teachers of all ages so that they don't feel like the orphans that we feel like right now, where we're having to figure this out on our own. And from that space, do I feel that they will be able to contribute way better than our generations have absolutely. But if you say when would that even happen? That sounds like a few hundred years from now, right? So like for all of us to come to the consciousness of, oh, things aren't working out on a collective level because they're actually not working out on an individual level because we don't have the help that we need as individuals.
We don't even have initiations anymore, let alone help as an individual, That's why communities are not working because the individual is in a lot of pain, in a lot of confusion, and a lot of loneliness.
Beautiful. Thank you so much for reconnecting with the SAND community and sharing all of this beautiful wisdom and weaving all of these strands together. I appreciate it Thank you.
