Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
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Coffee With Hilary and Les from State of Mind Hypnosis and Training Centre
Dimes, Gloves, and Death: Where does our sense of meaning come from?
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What meaning do you assign to the seemingly random events in your life? A found dime, an abandoned stroller, a cardinal at your window — are these merely coincidences, or something more profound?
Hilary and Les dive deep into how humans function as "meaning-creating machines," constantly interpreting the world through personal filters that eventually form our life philosophies. Through captivating stories—including Hilary's moving experience of feeling spiritually guided to give found gloves to a street musician—they illustrate how the meanings we create can profoundly impact our emotional state and future behavior.
The conversation shifts to a more sobering yet equally fascinating topic: our interpretations of death. Following the recent passing of Les's father, he poses questions we often avoid: Where do our thoughts about death come from? Are they based on fact, opinion, or inherited belief systems? Most importantly, do these interpretations enhance or diminish our ability to live fully?
The hosts challenge listeners to examine whether their views on mortality have become rigid opinions defended at all costs rather than evolving understandings open to new evidence. They suggest that our reluctance to reconsider established beliefs might be our greatest obstacle to growth and happiness.
This episode offers a gentle invitation to self-reflection: Could changing how you think about death actually make life more meaningful? Listen now and join us on this thought-provoking journey that blends philosophy, psychology, and personal experience into a conversation that might just change how you view both life and death.
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but it really compelled me to examine my thoughts about death where they came from and what is the meaning I put on death and where does that meaning come from? What is the philosophy that I've received from others? If I am this collection of programs, if my methods of interpreting the world around me come from my past and the influences they come from past suggestions accepted, if all of that led me to a place where, at my present age, in my present state of life, I am coming face to face with the death of my father. Now, what does all that mean?
Speaker 2:This is Coffee with Hilary and Les a podcast about the mind. As hypnotists, we work every day helping others to understand themselves, their actions and the choices they make. Join us for a chat about hypnosis and other ways to improve your state of mind. Okay, we're on the line, beautiful. Well, look at that, the sun's poking out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just as soon as we get on the line, it's like a sign we should podcast.
Speaker 2:A sign, yes, sort of like our idea for today. Interpretation of things Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly idea for today. Interpretation of things. Exactly exactly nothing means anything and everything means everything and anything can mean anything and the meaning is what we bring to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it makes me think about. I think I've mentioned this maybe a year ago on the podcast. I feel like I said it on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Um, I was somewhere, I don't know exactly, but either I or somebody else dropped a coin I think it was like a 10 cents or something and I saw it there on the ground and I didn't think anything of it because I dropped it or somebody else. I watched somebody else drop it or something, and then the person I think it may have been a lineup of some sort and then the person a couple people back moved up and then I saw them bend down and pick up the coin and say to someone that they were with look, I just found a 10 cents Like this is spiritual right. And I thought in that moment this is so interesting because I would do the same thing, you know, when I see a 10 cents randomly. But I got to see like a whole thing play out there, um of interpretation right from one contrast to the other or maybe it was spirit that arranged for the dime to be dropped and then the dime to be found yeah, no, I believe it.
Speaker 2:I thought I remember another time um, this is all over the place right now, but that's okay. I remember another time I was driving from work to home and just sort of down the street from my work, I saw this empty parking lot and there was a really nice looking stroller just sitting in the parking lot. Don't worry, there wasn't any baby in it or anything, I just kept driving, but just this stroller that was sitting there. And what dawned on me is something to the effect of you just never know all the situations that the universe has set up for people, right, so that stroller hands down.
Speaker 2:I know it in my heart that somebody would have found it that needed it, right, I didn't need it looking at it, I just looked at it and had the idea. But there was somebody out there that needed this and it was just sitting there for them, right? And you just have no idea how you are involved in the universe giving to others. You just have no idea how others are involved in the universe giving to others. You just have no idea how others are involved in the universe giving to you.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, like those gloves like the gloves.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god, the greatest story of my life, honestly, tell it. Oh, okay, so, so, um, yeah, we were in downtown toronto going to symphony and we went to the keg beforehand. And outside the keg we're coming out and there is like a Dollarama bag and I look in the Dollarama bag and there's a pair of gloves in there. It's kind of like one of those I can't remember if it was like three sets of gloves on one thing or one pair of gloves, but anyway, I picked up the bag and I heard in my head you're to give this to somebody. And I'm thinking, well, who Like who Looking around? Who am I supposed to give this to somebody? And I'm thinking, well, who Like who Looking around? Who am I supposed to give this to? And I'm getting chills just thinking about this. But anyway, we start walking to the symphony, which is just down the road, and I'm looking at everybody who passes by. This person, no, this person, no. And we get to the symphony and outside the symphony there's somebody playing the guitar on the street, just on the sidewalk area, and of course this is winter too, I should say.
Speaker 2:So I heard you know you're to give the gloves to this person and of course, there was a little bit of fear in me because I thought, you know, I just don't go randomly up to people and ask these questions Like, do you want these gloves? You know it's not something that I'm used to doing, but anyway, it was one of these like you have to do, this kind of moments. And I went up to the guy and I said, do you want these gloves? I've got these gloves here. And he said yes, and I gave him the gloves of like this intense, almost like this loving transaction. Right, he was, um, happy or, you know, maybe surprised.
Speaker 2:This person asked this. But there was something there, this energetic transaction, that was beyond, like, I just felt like I was flying and right after that I thought, oh my gosh, I want that all the time. I'm going to open a soup kitchen, I'm going to be a golf person, I'm going to be like anyway, I didn't go down that road specifically, but it was incredible, that giving feeling and it's you know, maybe I've mentioned this before on the podcast this whole idea of love's ripple effect. It sort of is like that right, you're changing a moment in somebody's life and you don't even realize it. I know that that moment, if any moments, come up in my life review, that will be it right. What did you do for others? Comes up a lot in life reviews and I hope to see that again one day. Yeah, how does.
Speaker 1:You know, our topic is a peculiar one, but it's. I don't want to rush through it. I want to start with this, this simple idea that how do we place meaning on things? You know, where does interpretation and meaning come from? You know, somebody could just as easily say ah, you found a pair of gloves, you gave them to some needy guy on the street, yippity-doo-dah, it's just. It just sort of happened. It's no big deal.
Speaker 1:And yet, for you from the moment you found them to right up till the the moments after you delivered them. There it was, it was felt, experienced by you as almost a quest, almost a life changing moment for you and for the poor guy sitting on the street playing his guitar, cold Right, and to see that things have meaning, that they mean something about us, that they mean something about life, that they mean something about the world that we're in and we're very quick to put meaning on things. In fact, to me, sometimes I really see that human beings are meaning-creating machines. We create meaning where it might otherwise appear to be none, and those meanings are very, very personal I mean, it's just me and the way I have interpreted it and what it means to me but it can have such a magnum effect like a massive impact on my emotional self, on my higher self and on my future behavior. Right, my future behavior right.
Speaker 1:If I start to interpret my world, my life, in very purposeful ways, I interpret the world as having purpose behind everything. That dime fell out of that wallet without that person noticing, only because some other force behind it was trying to create a meaningful experience for that person who came along a few minutes later, who sees it as this miraculous appearance of a dime and puts their meaning upon it. And that's what I, you know, that's what we do. We put meaning on things. And then where does that, you know? To me, it leads me to the question where does that meaning come from? Right, that meaning tends to have themes to it. You know, we tend to have the same kinds of meaning on the same kinds of things. It starts to become a trend. I mean, if we place meaning on things repeatedly in a similar way, doesn't it become a philosophy? This is my philosophy in life.
Speaker 2:This is the way I interpret life.
Speaker 1:This is the way I interpret what otherwise might be called by others as random events which is everything, really Everything's a random event and everything has meaning to its causes, everything has purpose to the dynamics that made it so. Yeah, I think that it's a great question to ask yourself where does my philosophy come from? Where does my consistently interpreted meanings? Does that make sense? Where is the? There's patterns in the way I interpret things and the meaning I place on things, and where does that come from, and isn't it?
Speaker 1:really reflective of my deeper subconscious life philosophies, and that's the stuff that just fascinates me deeper subconscious life philosophies, and that's the stuff that just fascinates me.
Speaker 1:That's the stuff that I'll get lost for the next hour thinking about, wondering how does it come about and what does it mean? Because it can also just mean nothing. It can be, oh look, I found a dime, another 10 dimes, and I might be able to buy something at the dollar store, right so? But I could just as easily say this is someone on the other side speaking to me, reminding me that they're always with me and that they love me, yeah, and that they're always going to try to communicate with me, yeah, yeah, two very extremely different interpretations of physical events in our world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sort of like a cardinal, you know, outside the window.
Speaker 1:Easily dismissed as happenstance, easily just ignored. I mean, how many things in our life do we ignore that we could be interpreting as having meaning? That they might actually have meaning, depending on the depth or the scope of what we're willing to acknowledge. For many people, it's just about what you see, what you feel. If it isn't physical, it isn't real. And there are others who say there's, there's nothing that happens in the physical that hasn't originated in the non-physical right. You want to be a Newtonian physicist? You know every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You want to be a quantum physicist? It is the way I interpret what goes on around me that creates the next thing that goes on around me.
Speaker 2:I like that Physicism.
Speaker 1:I like that physicist, I like that word. I'm a physicist. I'm a physicist when we, where I really wanted to start.
Speaker 2:Sure, throw me under the bus. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:No, that's not what I mean. In fact, I really love the way we've come to this, because you know, I said to Hillary a couple weeks ago I wanted to do a series of podcasts on death Holy crap. A series of podcasts on death, holy crap. One minute we're talking about all this beautiful interpretation and dimes and meaning and now Les throws out the word death. Right, death metal.
Speaker 1:But we've gone through in the last two months, the death of my father, and it wasn't simple and it wasn't fast and it allowed us a lot of time to think about death and to think about the processes of death and the processes, therefore, of life, because you can't have life, physical life as we know it, without death. Right, and it really compelled me, and I know it had the same effect on a lot of people, and of course you too, but that's not the meaning we put on it. And so I look at the last two months of my father reaching the point where, where he felt he thought there wasn't any value left in his life, and embracing death and dying and leaving us here, and leaving us here while you know we all hope, dream yearn, speculate where he is and what's happened to him.
Speaker 2:Just a reminder that we offer a wide range of products and services that are growing every day. Visit our website psalmhypnosiscom and check us out. If hypnosis interests you, sign up for a free consultation and let's chat about what you want to do to improve your state of mind.
Speaker 1:And so for me, like the first thing I want to talk about in death is just taking the time, for, if you're listening and for us, for these few moments, where does our experience and interpretation of death come from? Is death something you're afraid of? Is death something that's natural? Is death something that needs to be avoided? Is death something that needs to be resisted and fought against? Is death actually death? You know there's so many ways of interpreting it and everybody's got their own, and so to to just you know, as a, as a listener, you know what does death mean to you? How do you interpret death and where does that?
Speaker 1:interpretation come from? What is your experience of death? What are your experiences of people dying in your life, both loved ones and absolute strangers, public figures? What are all those experiences and what does it mean to you?
Speaker 2:and I would even go as far as to say do you think that your interpretation of death could change? And if it changed, what would that mean about you?
Speaker 1:would you want it to change and how would you want it to change? And. I think for most people. I want my interpretation of death to be accurate right. I don't want to be wrong, I want to be right about this, and For many people it's a very speculative question because they say well, you can't know. I'm not sure that that's true, but assuming for a second that it might be true, that nobody can tell you what it is, then you would be simply having an opinion um, then you would be simply having an opinion.
Speaker 1:It's my opinion that upon death, this is what happens and therefore death means this. And then again, knowing that these are all constructs in our mind. Right, going back to how I interpret this, as a function of the way I interpret my life philosophically, it's a function of the constructs that I've created in my mind about this stuff. And if I say to myself I can't really know, then what we're talking about is an opinion, and then if opinions are driven by a desire to be right, then opinions can't be permanent. Opinions are nothing more than invitations to do more homework, to do more research, to do more investigation, to spend more time with it, to think about it a while, to ask some questions.
Speaker 1:Right, an opinion is not something to be embraced and try to cling to. An opinion is something to be examined and changed. They're meant to be temporary. Unfortunately, what we tend to do is collect information confirmation bias. We collect information that confirms our opinions while ignoring information that would counter our opinion. But wouldn't it be more stimulating in life to go out of your way all the time to find information that contradicts your opinions on anything?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's scary for some people, for a lot of people, I think. If someone finds information that contradicts their opinions especially if their opinions are attached to their ego and who they are, right, you're telling me. I need to change this. This is who I am, this is who I present to the world. You know, I've thought this forever.
Speaker 1:And that's one of the most powerful reframes I use in hypnosis. All the time, I am not what I think. I am the thinker. I can change what I think. So what would be sufficient information, what would be sufficient evidence for me to change my opinion?
Speaker 2:Absolute.
Speaker 1:I tend to believe people never change their opinion. I tend to believe that people spend all of their time collecting information to confirm their opinions and that when they're challenged, when they find themselves confronted with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, they just ignore it. They just ignore it, shut it down and say to themselves well, that can't be true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't think that that kind of rigidness is helpful no, it's not, and I think it's if I can go as far to say it's hurtful to yourself right in the long run. If I can go as far to say it's hurtful to yourself right In the long run maybe not in the short term.
Speaker 1:Well, if your goal is to be right, yeah, you can't be right if you're not open to every bit of evidence that presents itself to you. Mm-hmm, and maybe rightness or the correctness or the, the correct idea is a long way away from where you are, and you can't get there without accepting in certain bits of evidence, certain bits of information along the way.
Speaker 1:Right, like to me, I have come to believe that the only unscientific thing you can do is ignore evidence, and even in science, we look at evidence and we interpret it yeah, and we put meaning on it, and every scientist who's committed to the scientific method goes through a whole series of steps where they change their mind multiple times as the evidence presents different potential interpretations you at least hope, they do that I think that there are a lot of true scientists out there who do that yeah, the ones who are public, so that's a whole different idea.
Speaker 1:The ones who ones who are out there making money from their ideas are gonna cling to their old ideas because that's their livelihood. Yeah, the last thing they want to do is say oops, sorry, I was wrong. You know those six books I wrote. Yeah, just ignore them, don't buy them anymore. And you don't want to pay me to come and speak to your audience because you know I turned out to be wrong. I think that, um, that those aren't the scientists I'm really thinking about. The scientists that I'm thinking about are the ones that are committed to discovering truth yeah as close as we can come.
Speaker 2:I wonder if there's any more information on what's underneath the pyramids Squirrel? Oh no, we were just joking, tyke.
Speaker 1:Our dog's been chasing squirrels away all morning.
Speaker 2:But that's the truth of it, is it? Hillary had a squirrel moment.
Speaker 1:Pyramids- anyway, I think that the first step, if we were to take a few podcasts to examine the idea of death, is to just examine what we already think, what we already believe, what, what our opinion already is and ask ourselves. Just how open are we to changing that? Is there value in changing that? Is there a way, you know? I would think that I start with simple facts. If I'm born, I'm gonna die not me thousands of people out there saying shut up isn't it amazing?
Speaker 2:I've thought about this isn't it amazing how we don't usually go around every day thinking about how you know our demise. Yeah, and if that was maybe more part of our thoughts, we would maybe act differently there you go.
Speaker 1:That's where I'm headed oh that's where I'm headed.
Speaker 1:But where I'm headed is is are your thoughts of death helpful to you? Right? It's a fact that if you're walking around as a human being, you're gonna die. That's just inevitable. So how can you examine where your thoughts of death come from, where your interpretation of death comes from? And could you possibly have a better one, one that makes living better, one that makes the choices you make while you're alive feel and contribute to your life better?
Speaker 1:How much does our thought of death interfere with our ability to live? And so, is there a better way to think about death? Is it possible to think about death like you think about the dime or you think about the gloves? Can you put a meaning on death that makes life all the more worth living? Is your interpretation or view of death today interfering with your joy of life, with your appreciation of others, with the things that make life worth living? So ask the question where do my thoughts about death come from? What are my experiences of death? What is my view of the whole thing? Is this helping me? Is this making my life better? Are these views?
Speaker 2:helpful. And then it's. You know, do I want to be right or do I want to be happy? I want to be right. No, I'm not, screw happiness. No, I'm just kidding. Screw happiness, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's a good intro to our next podcast so between now and the time we record again yeah, I will, because I've been doing it now for two months I will spend more time thinking about death and where my view of death comes from, if my view of death is helpful or a hindrance to me and the way I live, and then maybe we open ourselves up to the idea of reframing that Mm-hmm, thinking about it differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sounds good. Why are you laughing? All right, I've got to go to work. Okay, we'll see you later.
