Episode 32: Stepping into Belonging
In this second installment of "The Problem with Problems" series, hosts Marti Spiegelman and Todd Hoskins explore how our dualistic worldview impacts our sense of belonging. They discuss how a binary "either/or" perspective shrinks our awareness to two dimensions, forcing us to see ourselves as either included or excluded, which fundamentally limits our creative capacity and connection to the world.
Marti and Todd propose that true belonging isn't about fitting in with specific groups but rather about recognizing our inherent membership in the greater whole—the living universe. They suggest that when we shift our awareness away from self-reference and into direct sensory experience of the world around us, we can discover that belonging is already guaranteed and unconditional.
Throughout their conversation, Marti and Todd look into how this shift in orientation transforms our relationship with problems, creativity, and collective action. They explore how indigenous cultures maintain connections to something larger than ego structures and how our modern disconnection from Nature places excessive pressure on human relationships for validation.
The episode concludes with Todd's potentialities essay on "Sinuosity"—the value of winding, responsive paths versus our cultural obsession with directness and efficiency—and how embracing our natural rhythms might lead to more authentic ways of being in the world.
Series: The Problem with Problems
We live in a world dominated by problem-solving. From personal development to global policy, we're trained to identify issues, analyze them, and implement solutions. But what if this very mindset—our problem-solution paradigm—is itself limiting our capacity to navigate the complexity of our time?
In "The Problem with Problems," Marti and Todd explore how our fixation on problems shapes our reality, influences our sense of belonging, and may blind us to the deeper patterns at play. This three-part series invites listeners to question a fundamental assumption of modern life: that progress comes primarily through fixing what's broken.
What might we discover if, instead of asking "how do we solve this problem?" we asked "how do we participate more wisely in this living system?" Join us as we venture beyond the problem-solution mindset into more expansive ways of seeing, being, and creating.
Photo by Cup of Couple
Timeline
00:47 Hosts introduce themselves and the episode topic
01:09 Marti opens discussion on dualistic worldview and belonging
02:51 How dualistic framework limits our awareness
04:16 Connection between worldview and creative capacity
05:57 The impact of feeling that your ideas go "against the current"
07:15 Proposal to leap into direct experience of belonging
08:08 Discussion of flowing awareness into the world around you
09:01 Belonging without judgment or attachment
09:36 Exchange with the universe and membership
10:55 Unique genius as the language of belonging
11:38 Todd reflects on his personal search for belonging
13:35 Discussion of isolation in modern culture
14:02 Marti on discovering "coming home to oneself"
15:30 How putting pressure on humanity affects belonging
17:00 Finding comfort in feeling held by the universe
18:00 Discussion of seeking versus receptivity
19:36 How self-referential awareness creates an "us versus them" worldview
21:09 The simple yet difficult exercise of experiencing the world through senses
23:16 Todd on the questions "Who are we?" and "Where are we going?"
25:16 How Nature reflects our true nature
26:19 Todd shares his first profound experience of belonging
28:57 Marti's analogy of relationships and the "third thing"
30:20 The pressure that lifts when you recognize your belonging
31:18 Discussion of pilgrimage and discomfort in seeking
33:00 Shifting from problem-solving to participation in the living world
34:40 Indigenous hunters and listening to larger systems of life
36:16 Non-ego states and Manuel's quote on membership
37:21 Exploration of courage versus conformity
39:31 David Whyte's perspective on courage
40:16 The fine state of not knowing
41:04 Living ourselves into new ways of thinking
42:14 The freedom that comes with experiencing the world differently
43:14 Potentialities segment on "Sinuosity" (Todd)
52:30 Takeaways
57:22 Closing remarks and invitation to the next episode
Quotes
“When we experience the world in terms of A or B, or us versus them, we begin to see ourselves as included or excluded. We end up believing we belong or we don't belong.”— Marti Spiegelman
“In this duality framework, our choices dwindle to A or B, and our visions of what's possible are immediately radically limited. The concept of potentiality becomes nearly unknowable. Without awareness of the whole that we belong to, the value of collective action becomes quite elusive.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Our worldview shapes our creative capacity, our identity, what we're able to give and receive. That worldview shapes our belief and whether we fit in, whether we're supported and valued at all.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Instead of accepting a culturally imposed idea of whether and where we might fit in, what if we just take a running leap into the direct experience of our belonging?” — Marti Spiegelman
“Our membership, our belonging is to the earth—to the rivers and the clouds, to the mountains, to one another, to the whole cosmos. In active membership there is no ego. If ego's active, there's no room for membership.” — Marti Spiegelman quoting Don Manuel Quispe
“The experience of belonging comes first, and that experience ignites your uniqueness. Your uniqueness is required, and the expression of that uniqueness—that unique genius—is the language of your belonging.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Membership is not about exclusivity or inclusivity in the Western sense. It's about our existence as unique required living parts of a conscious universe. Our genius—our passion—is unique, not so we can be isolated in a niche, but so we can feed that genius into the universe and be fed in turn.” — Marti Spiegelman
“If ego is active, you can’t get to membership.” — Don Manuel Quispe
“You don’t have to conform in order to belong.” — Todd Hoskins
“There are some things that can be known that cannot be told.” — Don Manuel Quispe
“What are you aware of? What are you paying attention to? Very few people are primarily, first and foremost, aware of the world around them. They're aware of self first. The more we are self-referential in that way, the more everything becomes for or against us.” — Marti Spiegelman
“Nature always reflects to us our true nature.” — Angeles Arrien
“We belong to one another, but we need, to awaken a sense of the bigger thing that everything belongs to.” — Don Manuel Quispe
“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.” — David Whyte
“The first courageous step may be firmly into complete bewilderment and a fine state of not knowing.” — David Whyte
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of being; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.” — Richard Rohr
“Nature rarely moves in straight lines.” — Todd Hoskins
“The duality of either ‘straight’ or ‘bending’ takes us out of responsiveness and places us squarely in the realm of choosing strategies rather than being present . . . When we insist on straight lines and direct approaches, we often find ourselves at odds with the natural world, with others, sometimes even with ourselves. We feel we must choose: belong to the world of efficiency and directness, or be cast out as inefficient, weak, indecisive.” — Todd Hoskins
“What if belonging emerges from our capacity to respond appropriately to what each moment requires — sometimes direct action, sometimes a winding path? The belonging is not just me. It is me in the world, of the world, responding to the world, which also includes me.” — Todd Hoskins
“My most meaningful connections — with places, with people, with ideas — have rarely come from direct pursuit. They've emerged through a process of winding, of allowing, of responding to what is present rather than forcing what I think should be..” — Todd Hoskins
“Leaders far too often are carrying tools of flattening rather than shaping. They operate from a worldview where power equals wiping out what doesn't work and starting over. They fear taking actions that aren't straightforward because they believe that wouldn't constitute real leadership.” — Todd Hoskins
“What might emerge if we reclaimed sinuosity as a valuable way of moving through the world? What if belonging wasn't about fitting ourselves into rigid categories and straight-line paths, but about finding our unique way of winding through the landscape of life?” — Todd Hoskins
“When we are not bound by time, not obsessed with the short term, we start to see these marches forward as detached from the rhythms of life that is larger than us. Not only do we have permission to be winding with the long term, we are a part of the long arc of life, impacting it by our uniqueness. The obsession with efficiency and directness is often just another manifestation of our short-term thinking, our inability to see ourselves as part of something that extends far beyond our individual lives.” — Todd Hoskins
Links
Derek Walcott’s poem “Love after Love”
The Pleasures of Finding Things Out by Richard Feynman
Credits
Theme music courtesy of Cloud Cult