At the moment, in both The Marion Method Matermind and The Marion Method Compasses, we are focussing on our YESES.
The word “YESES” is a shorthand way of describing the depth of what we’re doing together.
In this document, I’m going to share why our yeses and noes are so important in The Marion Method, what I mean by our yeses, and what maps and compasses are most helpful in this part of the journey.
WHY YESES AND NOES ARE SUCH A CORE PART OF THE MARION METHOD
In The Marion Method, we are each unique Souls of Love, Will, and Consciousness.
“Love” includes our deep interconnectedness with all of life.
“Will” includes both our uniqueness and our true power, together.
SLUG WISDOM
We each have what I call “slug wisdom” ~ a deep inner wisdom and knowing about our yeses and noes.
When I was contemplating yeses and noes some years ago, slugs kept visiting me, and I loved seeing how immediately they responded to their environment.
I saw them reaching out with their tentacles if they were drawn to something, and immediately pulling in those tentacles if they sensed danger, or something that they didn’t want.
To check the accuracy of the term “tentacles” for this document, I did some research about slugs, and I discovered that the upper pair of tentacles are for “seeing” and smelling, and their lower pair of tentacles are for feeling and tasting.
I also learnt something that I love, and that is so relevant for The MM. The mucus which slugs leave behind them not only makes their path smoother, it’s also their navigation system ~ it’s their way home to their tunnels, and to their feeding grounds.
This is so related to the gifts of our own yeses and noes as humans.
In the next section, I’ll share why.
HOMECOMING TO OUR SOUL AND HOW THE DDC WORKS AGAINST THAT PROCESS
In The MM, our yeses and noes are one of the most clear and direct routes home to our Soul.
And, of course, that means that the Disconnected Domination Culture works very hard to disconnect us from our yeses and noes as babies and children, so that by the time we are adults, most of us are much less connected with both our yeses and noes, and to who we really are, and to our innate compass home to our Soul.
In this document, I’m focussing on our yeses, and later on, I’ll focus on our noes.
What then, are these yeses, these direct routes to our Soul?
And what exactly does the DDC do to trick us into disconnecting from these navigation routes home to our Soul?
OUR YESES AT DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENTAL PHASES
I invite you to think about that slug, reaching forward with its tentacles.
At the most intrinsic level, this type of movement is also how our yes is revealed and expressed.
This is a way that many of us might know our yeses on the deepest biological level ~ as a physical movement, turning, or reaching towards something:
When a baby turns towards her mother’s breast.
When a baby’s eyes, and then his head, follow the movement of his mother.
When a baby reaches out her arms to be held.
When an older baby starts reaching for the food his mother is eating.
When a toddler reaches for one type of food rather than another.
There is a progression of our yeses, as we move through physiological, emotional, and cognitive developmental phases.
We might look even earlier than infancy to see these yeses.
From a psychospiritual perspective, we might look at the yes of a Soul to incarnate.
At a deep psychospiritual-physiological level, we might consider the yeses of the ovum and the sperm to come together, and later, the yes of the baby who is ready to be born.
From a MM perspective, the way that these yeses are responded to in the particular culture, family, and time the person is living within affects their connection with their deepest inner wisdom.
MAPPING THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF OUR YESES
We might categorise these yeses into approximate groups:
~ starting with biological survival needs, and needs for safety, and belonging;
~ to feelings-related needs such as to be understood, heard, and seen;
~ to our unique preferences;
~ to our interests;
~ and increasingly, towards our callings that bring meaning and purpose;
~ and then, following Life’s callings to us.
Holding in mind, all the while, that from a MM perspective, the newborn baby is a wise Soul in a little body, and that within the most primal biological needs are also the deepest callings of their Soul and Life.
We might map the various forms of yeses in this way:
Needs
Desires
Wants
->
Preferences
->
Interests
->
What is important to us
What matters to us
->
What we are called towards
->
What Life calls us towards
LOVE-NEEDS, WILL-NEEDS, and SOUL-NEEDS
In The Marion Method, another way of grouping our needs, which are one place on that developmental ladder, is into these three categories:
LOVE-NEEDS
Love-Needs are needs for acknowledgment of our true Soul nature as Love. These include needs for community, belonging, interconnectedness, love, closeness, attunement, affection, compassion, empathy, support, cooperation, collaboration, etc.
WILL-NEEDS
Will-Needs are our needs for acknowledgment of our true Soul nature as Will. These includes needs for protection, agency, choice, autonomy, encouragement, support to be powerful and to take action, our timing to be heard and honoured, etc.
SOUL-NEEDS
Soul-Needs include meaning, purpose, and contribution.
MASLOW
If, at this point, you’re thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I wonder if you’ve heard of the research which indicates that he learnt from the Indigenous knowledge of the Siksika people in what is now Canada, and turned much of it upside down.
If you want to learn more about that, I recommend this article by Teju Ravilochan:
It includes the following:
“[Maslow] estimated that “80–90% of the Blackfoot tribe had a quality of self-esteem that was only found in 5–10% of his own population” …. “Maslow saw a place where what he would later call self-actualization was the norm…..
Maslow appeared to ask, “how do we become self-actualized?” Many First Nation communities, though they would not have used the same word, might be more likely to believe that we arrive on the planet self-actualized…..
Self-actualization is not achieved; it is drawn out of an inherently sacred being who is imbued with a spark of divinity. Education, prayer, rituals, ceremonies, individual experiences, and vision quests can help invite the expression of this sacred self into the world.”
How do you feel and what do you think when you read this?
THE DDC AND OUR YESES
The quote from Ravilochan shows the stark contrast between what Maslow witnessed in the Siksika community, and what happened for many of us, growing up in the DDC.
The Disconnected Domination Culture, by definition, is about creating disconnection and domination.
Disconnection is the first act of the DDC.
The more that people are disconnected from themselves, from each other, from a sense of community of other humans and other-than-humans, the easier it is to dominate them ~ in other words, to get them to do what the DDC wants.
Interestingly, Ravilochan’s article also directly speaks to this.
He said:
“30-year-old Maslow arrived at Siksika …. He intended to test the universality of his theory that social hierarchies are maintained by dominance of some people over others. However, he did not see the quest for dominance in Blackfoot society. Instead, he discovered astounding levels of cooperation, minimal inequality, restorative justice, full bellies, and high levels of life satisfaction.”
The DDC tells us that cohesive community requires domination.
Many intact Indigenous communities tell a very different story.
HOW THE DDC DISCONNECTS US FROM OUR INNATE WISDOM AND UNIQUE GIFTS
The Disconnected Domination Cultural beliefs about babies, children, and parenting are one of the primary ways that we become disconnected from the innate wisdom of our yeses, and our unique gifts.
On the most practical level, rather than being deeply supported by community, many parents are isolated, and their needs, especially for support, are often not sufficiently met.
In The Weirdest People in The World, author Joseph Henrich tracks this very long journey from community cultures to the particular family structures we see in the DDC. He says,
“These policies slowly transformed the experience of ordinary individuals by forcing them to adapt to, and reorganize their social habits around, a world without intensive kin-based institutions.”
When one or two parents are doing the work of a whole village, separating mothers and babies becomes easier, as does separating parents, babies, and children from their needs, interests, intuition, and callings.
One way of looking at this process from an MM perspective is as follows:
1 ~ Disconnection from community -> leading to unmet needs for support, belonging, safety, etc.;
2 ~ Mothers, disconnected from support from sisters and elders, are taught to disconnect from their babies;
3 ~ DDC beliefs have already tricked women into not seeing the incredible power of their wise bodies, especially during pregnancy, birth, and early parenting;
4 ~ This disconnection from the wisdom of their bodies can then be passed down to babies and children, so that their innate body wisdom, including their slug wisdom, is also overridden, which they then internalise and continue to do to themselves;
5 ~ When people are disconnected from community, from their bodies, from their slug wisdom, from their ancestors and elders, and from their other-than-human kin, domination becomes increasingly possible;
6 ~ Domination, or power-over, begins externally, with coercion, including shoulds and have-to’s, and is then internalised throughout childhood, so that people grow up to either coerce themselves through internalised shoulds, have to’s, and musts, and/or to aim to coerce others in similar ways;
7 ~ Wider systems appear which mirror these processes, and where our true needs, preferences, and callings are not honoured, and we are persuaded instead to want things that appear to meet our needs, but actually support the DDC to flourish, rather than the flourishing of Souls and Soul-honouring communities.
DISCONNECTION FROM OUR YESES IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD
Growing up in the DDC, most of us had painful experiences when we expressed our needs, wants, desires, preferences, interests, or callings.
The DDC cultural conditioning of our parents might have meant that when we called out for closeness as babies, they believed (because they’d learnt or been told) that the best thing for babies was to be left alone in a cot in a separate room.
As a result of our needs for closeness repeatedly not being met, we would have experienced deeply painful feelings from those Love-Hurts, and we would have made conclusions about those needs, and speaking those needs, which often still affect us as adults.
The innate wisdom of our body to know what food we wanted and when, or what we were called to learn and when, or how we could heal and when, might have been overridden, again by our parents’ DDC cultural conditioning.
We might have learnt things such as:
In order to stay connected, we needed to not ask for what we really wanted;
To be safe, we needed to disconnect from what our body was communicating to us, and instead, to do what others told us to do;
We “shouldn’t” want something, which we might have internalised, and so then we would hit ourselves with guilt sticks every time we wanted that, or wanted anything;
Shame for being connected with our body wisdom, so we internalised those shame sticks and so felt shame when we connected with that wisdom;
Our unique preferences, interests, and what was important to us might have been judged, overridden, or punished, and so we might have internalised those, and now judge, override, or punish ourselves when we connect with a preference, interest, or something that’s important to us;
Our parents or culture may have taught us, indirectly or indirectly, that our needs to be safe, belong, or be loved, would only be met if we appeared to prefer what they preferred.
We might have been told that our callings were not “practical”, or that we wouldn’t be supported if we followed that pathway, or we simply might no longer be self-connected enough to know what we felt deeply called to.
As a result, many of us in the DDC become adults who don’t really know what we need, want, prefer, are interested in, or are called towards.
We might ignore our needs and feel exhausted and burnt out.
We might want others to meet our needs without us knowing what they are, and feel resentful as a result of them not doing that.
We might do things such as eat food we don’t enjoy, or quantities that aren’t what our body wants, and feel uncomfortable.
We might leave others to make choices for us.
We might not know what lights us up, or be scared to even listen to what helps our heart sing for joy.
We might feel bored, because for a variety of reasons, we’re not connected to what we love.
We might ask for what we want, or go to meet our needs, and then hit ourselves with guilt, shame, or other self-judgment sticks.
We might feel deeply uncomfortable with receiving, so that even if we do have what we really want, we don’t actually truly feel it, nor the sense of satisfaction or fulfilment that is often a sign of really being willing to receive what we really want.
We might be doing a job that brings us no sense of meaning, purpose, or fulfilment.
OUR FEELINGS AS CLUES ABOUT CONNECTION AND DISCONNECTION
Our feelings communicate to us about our relationship with our needs, wants, desires, preferences, interests, and callings.
Depletion, exhaustion, frustration, resentment, shame, guilt, and boredom can indicate disconnection from our yeses.
Satisfaction, energy, power, gratitude, expansiveness, delight, and fulfilment can indicate connection with our yeses (and a willingness for them!)
In addition, if we have gone ahead and listened to our needs, wants, desires, preferences, interests, and callings, but then some DDC thoughts float around and we imbibe them, such as by hitting ourselves with guilt or shame sticks when we are tired and meet our needs for rest, or when we buy something we’ve truly dreamt of having, or when we needed to be heard and spoke our voice, then guilt or shame are the indicators of those internalised cultural sticks.
If we feel guilt or shame, or we’re judging ourselves in any way (including in the DDC-tricky way of a judgment disguised as a feeling, such as, “I feel like a failure”), THAT IS WHAT THE DDC WANTS.
DDC consciousness dissipates the more connected we are with who we most truly are, and with the innate wisdom of our yeses and noes.
And because the DDC doesn’t want to dissipate, we may find that on a part of the journey when we increasingly connect with our Soul through our yeses, the inner and outer DDC sticks get louder.
This is an invitation to get freer from them, rather than believing that they’re true and going back to our older relationship with our yeses.
DESIRES OR DISCONNECTION?
Our feelings also give us information about whether we were feeling and meeting a true desire, or whether we were meeting a desire we were enticed into believing we wanted, such as by advertising or subtle coercion (which I’m going to talk all about later in this document).
If it was a true desire, we are likely to feel similar feelings as above: satisfied, happy, delighted, or fulfilled.
If it wasn’t our true desire, but something manufactured and sold to us, we might feel flat, empty, or numb.
We might find ourselves wanting the next thing that we think might help us feel satisfied, full, satiated, or fulfilled.
This is another powerful and elusive way that the DDC operates; by creating endless cycles of apparent wanting.
FROM WANTING TO WILLINGNESS
In The Marion Method, once we reconnect with the innate wisdom of our yeses, the next step is to move towards full-body yeses – this is where we move from what we want, to what we are willing for – this is a whole practice and process in itself, which I won’t go into in this document.
However, I’m going to flag this next step.
For similar reasons to those above, even when we know what we need, want, desire, prefer, are interested in, or are called to, we might not be willing to be, do, or have that, because of all kinds of really important other needs, values, and feelings.
The willingness work helps us move to a full-body yes, which is where we are absolutely and truly willing for what we truly want. And that willingness is powerful, and has non-local effects.
BEING TRICKED INTO WANTING WHAT WE DON’T REALLY WANT OR NEED IN THE DDC
The DDC does a variety of things with the yeses of our Soul.
It helps us disconnect from them, in the variety of ways I shared about above.
But it also tricks us into wanting what IT wants us to want! (What a lot of “wants” in that sentence!)
EDWARD BERNAYS, THE “FATHER” OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
To understand this, I’ll talk about Edward Bernays, and I’m also going to quote quite a lot from one of his books, called “Propaganda”, which was published in 1928.
(There’s a link to it at the end of this document, and if you want to learn more about this topic, I invite you to see if you’re willing to read it. It’s quite short, and has a lot of information in it that you might find really interesting).
In Propaganda, Bernays, who was the nephew of Freud on both sides, said
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”
This harks back to what I wrote earlier in this document, about the DDC holding that domination is required for society to function. Bernays, following in the footsteps of his uncle, showed a much more surreptitious and hidden way of creating that domination rather than the more overt ways of the past; physical force and coercion.
And this is so often how the DDC operates – it infiltrates, and is often hidden in plain sight, usually in the places we would least expect it.
A MORE SUBTLE FORM OF DOMINATION
At the core of Bernays’ work was the belief that the masses could not be trusted, and that the moulding and suggestion was necessary to create a “smoothly functioning society.”
This lack of trust was highlighted in these words, again from his book Propaganda:
“…if all men had to study for themselves the abstruse economic, political, and ethical data involved in every question, they would find it impossible to come to a conclusion about anything.”
And if we have any question about whether this is also domination, we might receive our answer in his words in the same book:
“It is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.”
The shift from power-over bodies to power-over minds and consciousness is clarified here:
“Formerly the rulers were the leaders. They laid out the course of history, by the simple process of doing what they wanted. And if nowadays the successors of the rulers, those whose position or ability gives them power, can no longer do what they want without the approval of the masses, they find in propaganda a tool which is increasingly powerful in gaining that approval.”
One of the terms he coined, “the engineering of consent” speaks volumes.
Our consent, or our yeses, are not true yeses if they are engineered.
This is the trickery, and in the journey of connecting more deeply with the yeses of our Souls, we’re often invited to disentangle our true Soul yeses from those which are engineered from outside of us.
I looked up the etymology of consent here. The website Etymology online said:
“c. 1300, “agree, give assent; yield when one has the right, power, or will to oppose,” from Old French consentir “agree; comply” (12c.) and directly from Latin consentire “agree, accord,” literally “feel together,” from assimilated form of com “with, together” (see con-) + sentire “to feel” (see sense (n.)).
“Feeling together,” hence, “agreeing, giving permission,” a sense evolution that apparently took place in French before the word reached English.”
TRUE DESIRES, OR MANUFACTURED ONES?
A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary by Adam Curtis called The Century of The Self, which included a lot of information about Bernays. I also invite you to consider watching this if you want to understand more about this topic. I learnt a lot from it.Persuading, or convincing, people that they wanted things that they didn’t actually need was a core part of what Bernays did, and taught.
In the documentary, Curtis quoted banker Paul Mazur, who said in 1927:
“We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. […] Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
This is the core of what happens in the DDC.
The DDC tries to trick us into desiring things that we think will meet our needs.
This training of desire for new things was also deeply specific to that moment in time, with increasing mass production.
The documentary continues with this quote:
“Mass production is only profitable if its rhythm can be maintained — that is, if it can continue to sell its product in steady or increasing quantity. The result is that while, under the handicraft or small-unit system of production that was typical a century ago, demand created the supply, to-day supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand.”
In other words, desires are engineered to support the DDC, rather than to support a Soul-based community.
Bernays believed that democracy would be maintained by distracting people from what he saw as “dangerous political thought” by persuading them to think that their real choices were in what products they chose as consumers.
In each of the examples given in the documentary and many of the other source articles I read, such as where Bernays found a way to persuade women that cigarette smoking was linked to freedom, he attached a product to an existing human need.
In the case of cigarettes for women, that need was freedom, and he created action by others elsewhere that gave the impression that buying that product would meet that need.
OVER-FULLNESS AND OVERWHELM
Interestingly, later in his life, when he was 100 (Bernays lived to 103), even he said:
“‘Everyone has a press agent now, or a media consultant or communications director or whatever you want to call it. Sometimes,’ he suggested, ‘it seems sort of like having discovered a medicine to cure a disease, and then finding out that so much of it is being administered that people are getting sick from the overdoses.'”
I wonder if you notice times when you buy something, and don’t feel guilt or shame from sticks, but rather, a sense that you might feel if you ate too much food – uncomfortably over-full, almost to the point of sickness, because you weren’t listening to when your body was telling you that you were already full, and that more was too much?
Satisfaction is often a sign of a need being met.
Fulfilment is often an indication of a calling being honoured.
Disgust is often a sign of a no.
And uncomfortable over-fullness is often a sign that we were being enticed into thinking that we wanted something that the DDC wanted us to have, which was actually too much for us.
Overwhelm is another sign of too-muchness.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed in response to storing and ordering and keeping track of your belongings, that may well be a sign of being tricked into having more by the DDC.
In the DDC, many of us are trained out of knowing what we truly need, and we’re also trained out of knowing when WE ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH TO FULFIL US, or what would TRULY FULFIL US.
THE TRUE SOURCE OF THE EMPTINESS AND LONGING
Many of us, especially those of us whose intact Indigenous ancestor’s cultures were lost a very long time ago, don’t know what we’re truly missing.
We might feel an emptiness, and think that we’re hungry, or that we need more of something, when actually the emptiness is a need for community, or for deep connection with the land and the seasons, or our ancestors, or meaningful cultural paradigms.
Or the unmet needs may stretch back to infancy, when we were babies, perhaps being left alone to cry.
We might try to fulfil the needs of baby us for closeness by buying something soft.
We might buy something new for our house, when what we are truly longing for is to feel at home in our body, in the place where we live, in nature, in our ancestral lineage. A new rug might help us feel some satisfaction in some ways, but not most truly and deeply.
The DDC creates the sense of an emptiness that needs fulfilling, since it has been working for centuries to disconnect us from the earth, the seasons, our ancestors, our elders, our communities, our localities, and the innate wisdom of our bodies.
And at the same time, it sells us things, trying to trick us into believing that having another product will fill the hole that the DDC itself created in the first place.
The DDC knows exactly what its doing, and is very competent at it.
MORE AND FASTER, OR LESS AND SLOWER?
Last week, I was watching videos of people decluttering on YouTube. Here’s another clear example of the over-fullness that we are tricked into in the DDC. More and faster are core tenets of the DDC.
We often require slowness to actually feel in our bodies what we want and don’t want. The faster we go, the harder it can be for us to feel our yeses and noes.
And when we’re already full of food, the lack of sensation of hunger means it’s hard for us to actually listen to what our body needs.
More, faster, and fuller simply create over-fullness, which is uncomfortable, not in the way of guilt and shame, but in a communication that we have actually had too much.
THE QUESTION AND THE INVITATION
So, part of the invitation for ourselves is to not only do the inner work to reconnect with our true needs, preferences, interests, and callings, that we’ve disconnected from in the DDC, or learnt that our needs to be safe, to belong, or to be loved won’t be met if we trust them, but to also discover where we seem to want things that we only want because we’ve been tricked into wanting them by the DDC.
In Chapter Three of Propaganda, Bernays says,
“…. the men who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise;…. who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve on our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?”
Later on, he gives a specific example:
“A silk manufacturer, seeking a new market for its product, suggested to a large manufacturer of shoes that women’s shoes should be covered with silk to match their dresses. The idea was adopted and systematically propagandized. A popular actress was persuaded to wear the shoes. The fashion spread. The shoe firm was ready with the supply to meet the created demand. And the silk company was ready with the silk for more shoes. The man who injected this idea into the shoe industry was ruling women in one department of their social lives. Different men rule us in the various departments of our lives.”
Fashion is a powerful way of enticing people into buying more. When the fashions keep changing, there’s always something new to buy. Our perceptions of what is beautiful can be shaped by seeing others wear those items. We may first see a pair of shorts, or shoes, and not find them beautiful, but if we see lots of people wearing them, our perceptions may change, and we might find ourselves apparently wanting them.
But do we really want them, or do we want and need belonging, inclusion, to be safe, to be seen, or to experience a shared reality and common ground?
Bernays wrote Propaganda in 1928, well before the Internet. Even the “movies” were relatively new:
“The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world to-day. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.”
And
“No matter how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership.”
And if we think about the ever-changing Internet, we might read his words:
“If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands, commercial firms will meet the new standards. If it becomes weary of the old methods used to persuade it to accept a given idea or commodity, its leaders will present their appeals more intelligently.”
If we are being influenced to want certain things, and prefer something over something else, through a myriad of ways, reconnecting with our true yeses is vital if we are to deeply connect with ourselves.
Just as Bernays believed that the masses couldn’t be trusted, our journey is to reconnect with the innate wisdom of our yeses, and to trust them.
To trust ourselves.
To trust our innate wisdom.
Since Bernays linked products and policies to needs for safety, security, belonging, being valued, or freedom, returning to those needs in our bodies and feelings, and our true choices for what will truly meet those needs is one way we connect with our Soul. This is how we gradually move away from being tricked into thinking we want what others want us to buy or believe.
And yet, that can be a challenging process, if we contemplate what Bernays said:
“Because man is by nature gregarious he feels himself to be member of a herd, even when he is alone in his room with the curtains drawn. His mind retains the patterns which have been stamped on it by the group influences. A man sits in his office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment. In actual fact his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped on his mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought.”
and
“Men are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions. A man may believe that he buys a motor car because, after careful study of the technical features of all makes on the market, he has concluded that this is the best. He is almost certainly fooling himself. He bought it, perhaps, because a friend whose financial acumen he respects bought one last week; or because his neighbors believed he was not able to afford a car of that class; or because its colors are those of his college fraternity.”
and
“A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it a symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself. A man buying a car may think he wants it for purposes of locomotion, whereas the fact may be that he would really prefer not to be burdened with it, and would rather walk for the sake of his health. He may really want it because it is a symbol of social position, an evidence of his success in business, or a means of pleasing his wife.”
and, most potently:
“It will come to him as his own idea.”
The more connected we are with the innate wisdom of our bodies, and our true yeses, the less we will be swayed by the yeses of others.
MONTESSORI AND AWARE PARENTING
I was passionate about Montessori’s work when my son and daughter were children, and I followed the Montessori approach, especially in the early years of their homeschooling journey.
I so clearly remember reading about how for Montessori, helping children refine their perception protects them against being tricked into wanting things as a result of seeing advertising. They come to deeply discern, and to trust their experience, because of that refined perception. True decisions come from that place of deeply nuanced discernment.
If you want to learn more about that, here’s an article on it.
I also see the deep self-connection that my daughter and son have as young adults, which I believe is because their dad and I practiced Aware Parenting (by Aletha Solter) with them.
I see this as the common theme of many young people whose parents practiced Aware Parenting. Aware Parenting supports parents to be able to truly perceive what a baby, child, and teen needs, and when what they appear to want might be a form of dissociation.
So much of the practice of Aware Parenting, in all three of its core aspects, is about helping children stay connected with themselves.
And, to be clear, Aware Parenting does not include most of the other concepts shared here in this document, such as the concept of Soul.
FROM SOUL-CONNECTION, TO A SOULFUL SOCIETY, IN AN AGE OF INCREASING AI
Our yeses aren’t only about what we choose to buy, wear, eat, or do.
They are also about what we perceive to be true, and real, and how we choose where to “spend” our attention.
In a world of increasing AI influence, being even more deeply connected with our slug wisdom is, I believe, more important than ever.
In an article, Mostegel shares the questions that many people are asking: “what is an authentic event and what is merely an apparently authentic one? What is information and what is manipulation disguised as information?”
Nick Shepley, in The Explaining History Podcast said: “It is to reclaim the agency of one’s own mind in the face of systems designed to engineer consent.”
Here we see the term “engineering consent” again.
Being increasingly connected with our yeses as nuanced compasses to our Soul and to what we choose to believe and trust is becoming even more clearly important.
In The MM, agency is part of our true nature as Will – as powerful beings, able to make true choices and act upon them.
THE MM MAPS AND COMPASSES THAT CAN BE HELPFUL ON THIS JOURNEY OF RECLAIMING OUR YESES
To make decisions from our true yeses, the yeses of our Soul, there are a few different elements:
~ To tend to the younger parts of us, for whom our needs for safety, belonging, or love, were not met if we were deeply connected with our yeses. As we tend to them, those parts of us now know how to be both deeply connected with our yeses AND experience those vital needs being met;
~ To understand the difference between our needs, and the myriad of ways that our needs can be met (Nonviolent Communication is really helpful for this. I invite you to print our their lists of feelings and needs if you’re wanting to learn how to map your sensations and experiences with feelings and needs. NVC differentiates between needs and strategies, which can be life-changing, particularly in relationships (although I prefer not to choose the word “strategy”, as the origin is from war.)
~ To understand how the DDC works, both in disconnecting us from our true yeses, and enticing us into yeses that aren’t truly ours. As we increasingly understand this process, we can more and more clearly see when we are in the process of being enticed, and actually connect with whether we really want what we are being enticed to want;
~ To reconnect with the innate wisdom of our body, and to learn how to deeply listen to the yeses and noes in our body, and to trust them;
~ To know how to hear the Messages from Life, so we experience being supported in being given information that helps us see what is a true yes for us, and what is a manufactured one.
YOUR YESES
I wonder how you feel and what you think when you read this.
I invite you to listen in to your yeses and noes in terms of what resonated with you in what you read.
I wonder what reparative statements the younger parts of you might want to hear about your needs, wants, desires, interests, preferences, and callings, particularly from your Inner Loving Parents and The Great Mother, if you’re already familiar with those elements of the MM work.
How do you know when you have a yes to something?
How do you differentiate between a true yes and an engineered yes?
What are you called to do now, having read this?
Would you like to explore your yeses even more in your everyday life?
And if you have a yes to learning more about Bernays, here are some of the sources that I accessed for this document:
http://www.historyisaweapon.org/defcon1/bernprop.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4shttps://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/original-influencer
https://academyofideas.com/2017/07/edward-bernays-group-psychology-manipulating-the-masses/
https://newhistories.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/volumes/2013-14/volume-5/issue-1-media/the-invisible-government-edward-bernays-public-relations-and-propaganda
https://www.thisiscapitalism.org/blog/bacon-eggs-and-public-relations
https://explaininghistory.org/2026/01/20/manufacturing-consent-the-architectures-of-wartime-propaganda/
Much love,
Marion
xoxo