Lexie Carroll > Recent Status Updates

After emerging from the darkness the heroine’s journey continues with the road forward, “the path of trials” (named from hero’s journey). Joseph Campbell says “dragons are now to be slain”. But slaying is not the heroine’s way. She would rather engage the dragon than kill it, entice him into her purposely diverse team, harness his unique set of skills. Her path is different from the all-conquering hero.

In this culture we’re so used to quick fixes, instant information & immediate gratification. We want to hack/drug our way out of the dark. But we won’t find our way by running desperately toward the light, rather by embracing the dark, exploring the fecund loamy realm of our inner being. We must resist the urge to see the dark/difficulty as a problem to be vanquished. We must release what we’re not meant to be.

If Women want to change things, we need authority. And authority comes, in good part, from inside ourselves. It comes from conviction, from understanding and owning our stories. From a strong sense of who we are and what our (rightful) place is in the world.

It makes sense why so many destructive decisions are made by men sitting in the tops of skyscrapers- physically disconnected from the earth. Political and corporate decision making are based on a numbing out. That’s how corruption happens- a rupture of the heart (Latin cour). Bringing in the feminine quality of allowing to feel and move through pain (childbirth) will help to rebalance this situation.

The insanity of our current exploitation of the planet comes from the fact that we have lost touch with being a PART of the natural world, of living in our bodies, of embracing the cycles & seasons, fully present in time. We are caught not only in an industrial wasteland, but a wasteland of the heart and the spirit. The wasteland is not an outer sickness of culture, it is a sickness within ourselves.

When women seek success and equality in a male dominated world, we must act like men to achieve it (male hero journey). The standards of success are judged by male qualities, and so women are somewhat doomed to fail. But it’s easier to follow the system and be accepted. But by colluding with the system of patriarchy, we prop up and perpetuate the system that destroys us and the planet. We embrace the wasteland.

Each of the 4 practices is a means to an end:
Silence/Solitude: to come back to God and our true selves.
Sabbath: a restful, grateful life of ease, appreciation, wonder and worship.
Simplicity: freedom and focus on what matters most.
Slowing: to be PRESENT: to God, to people to the moment.

Slowing: What we visually consume:
Remember, what we give our attention to is the person we become, for good or evil. Every single thing that we let into our minds will have an effect on our souls. If you fill your mind with unrealistic portrays of beauty, romance, sex, violence, revenge, opulence, wealth, etc, what shape will that give your soul? Our time is our life, and our attention is the doorway to our hearts.

Common Acids:
From Plants: citric, malic & tartaric acid. Named after citrus, apples & grapes (wine making) respectively. Malic and tartaric are about the same level of sour and slightly stronger than citric acid. Most fruits contain both citric & malic.
From Fermentation: lactic & acetic. Lactic bacteria are tough and versatile, operate in many conditions. Acetic bacteria are picker, ignoring sugar, desire alcohol.

The chemical family of acids have a backbone of carbon atoms studded with hydrogen (and a few oxygens thrown in). Their principal trait is that hydrogen atoms tend to break loose and trail off, like sequins coming off a dress. Acidity, quite simply, is loose hydrogen ions. The more loose hydrogen ions, the more acidic something is. Some taste buds have tiny donut-hole shaped pores for detecting loose hydrogen atoms.

Sour: the taste of acids, mostly made by plants or fermentation.
Sourness balances sweetness, bitterness and fattiness, and makes flavors seem brighter and livelier.
Sour enhances gentle saltiness and tames excessive saltiness.

Slowing by managing your phone: consider leaving your phone in a drawer at night, out of the bedroom so you don’t check it first thing in the morning. Especially not social media & news feeds. The Press is still a slave to the bottom line: journalism is a for-profit business and bad news sells. Starting your day with that is a recipe for anger, not love. Begin your day seeking God‘s presence (prayer, scriptures)

Slowing; “cultivating patience by deliberately choosing to place ourselves in positions where we simply have to wait.” We are embodied creatures, whole people, not just brains on legs. Our apprenticeship to Jesus has to be a whole person endeavor. Mind and body. Try driving the speed limit, in the slow lane. Show up early for an appointment and don’t use your phone. Practice presence.

Salty makes other flavors more intense/focused/balanced, while suppressing bitterness. Most flavor differences among salts are due to differences in shape and texture, as well as trace minerals.

Salt your dish early and often while cooking, not heavy-handed at the end. This gives the salt time to slowly absorb into the food and be evenly distributed.

Practice makes perfect. Simply testing & paying attention to lots of things will help develop your palate over time. You help it along by creating an environment of careful smelling, (lots), but you will need patience. It takes repetition, and that’s fine! If you don’t get oak now, you will in a hundred smells. It’s all fine; it’s a long game. Nobody is born with an incredible palate, we all have to earn it.

If you struggle to describe a flavor beyond a generic term like “fruity”, try something like tasting different kinds of apples, pears and berries. Or fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries next to strawberry, raspberry and blueberry jams. Is there one aspect or aroma that sticks out in one versus another? How does one evolve into another?

You don’t need to make up romantic word poetry just for extra points. Flavor is its own poetry! More language is useful if it helps YOU clarify, but for its own sake, it can muddy the definition of what you were intending to explain better.

When you’re trying to put a name to a flavor, you flip through (your memory catalogue of individual flavor experiences) like a graphic designer flipping through their Pantone to find the right color. But no one is born with this catalogue- you build it for yourself by paying attention and carefully considering flavors and smells.

On Smell:
-you can smell way more things than you can taste
-individual aroma molecules have multiple aroma qualities
-no aroma molecules are totally unique to one ingredient
-ingredients contain many different aroma molecules
-mixtures of aroma molecules reflect some of the aroma qualities of their components, as well as some qualities that only exist in the mixture (whole is greater than its sum)

It’s impossible to pin down single smell elements in isolation, the way you can with taste elements. At the most basic, molecular level, smells have multiple sensory qualities compounded together. The way we perceive them is more like seeing a face than tasting a taste- a highly organized mix of many features, which is impossible to break down into one descriptor but immediately recognizable as a (complex) whole.

The client’s repeated exposure to relational trauma memories- triggered by the therapeutic relationship- in combination with reliable non-reinforcement of the negative expectation leads to a disruption of the learned connection betwn relatedness and danger.
This process of activation->disparity->counter conditioning, when sufficiently repeated (in a safe context) often leads to desensitization of trauma memories.

Clients who have been interpersonally victimized often struggle to notice disparity between suspicion and actual safety. Why?
1. Those exposed to chronic danger often assume such danger is inevitable.
2. In many cases the orig. perpetrator of violence promised safety/caring/support.
3. Therapy implicitly requires intimacy & vulnerability from the client.
Thus, it takes considerable TIME to build trust with client.

As many psychodynamic theorist suggest, activation of relational memories and feelings from the client (transference) towards the therapist should be expected when treating those with childhood (and extended adult) trauma. In fact, activation and exploration of this (relational) material in therapy is often necessary for the successful resolution of chronic interpersonal problems.

Beyond specific/discrete transference triggers, the therapeutic relationship itself (by virtue of its ongoing nature & importance to client) may replicate conditions similar to those of early important relationships, including the client’s need for attachment. To the extent that the earlier relationship was characterized by trauma, the current therap. relationship is likely to trigger negative emotional memories.

As storytellers, influencers use the same strategies that novelists and screenwriter use. Familiarity, novelty, and repetition.
Familiar building blocks like archetype settings and characters help the audience engage with and relate to the story setting. Novelty prevents boredom and retains the viewers interest. Repetition of key motifs and phrases reinforces the intended message.

The Trifecta of idea spread on social media:
Influencers
Algorithms
Crowds
They all interact with each other in a synergistic way

Be a hollow bone (vessel) for good to work through. You can honor your life and attract peace and prosperity through the art of self mastery. You can break intergen. cycles of trauma, you can reject nihilism, and you can make a meaningful difference in the story of well-being” (that will impact others who come after you). As we continue to feed the spirit of healing, the spirit of healing will nourish us in return.

Believing is Seeing: “when the world seems bleak, we can remember the cyclical nature of the universe, and we can believe in regeneration.” Choosing this belief (and then acting on it) is important not just for our own benefit, but also for those to come. “Your children and descendants depend on your optimism. A world in balance is possible, but it has to be believed in order to be seen.”

“The connection we foster between ourselves and our food is a lifelong quest.
Hunting and eating meat perfectly exemplifies what I call the most fascinating paradox of our existence: in order for one life to be nourished, the life of others must end in some way and at some time.”

Life must end in order to sustain life. Death sustains life; death feeds life.

“Food goes beyond just nutritional value. It is a physical expression of how we as humans are vulnerable in and dependent on the natural world. That is the core of our spiritual relationship to food.”

The fact that we need to eat food, daily, constantly throughout our lives, illustrates the deep dependence we have on Mother Nature & the Earth. How easily we dissociate from this dependence and its implications!