How do Science & Spirituality Co-Exist? What Fire Teaches Us with Dr. Amber Ortega

Play Video
ABOUT THE EPISODE

My friend Dr. Amber Ortega joins me to talk about science and spirituality. As a scientist, firefighter, and priestess, Amber brings a unique lens to exploring these two worlds that often seem at odds. 

We talk about the science of fire and why it’s been such a powerful symbol for humans throughout history. We also discuss what fire teaches us about boundaries, how agreement fields set us up for success, and the importance of trusting our bodies. 

And in a world that’s obsessed with the brightest flame and flashiest lights, Amber and I talk about the science of smoldering and what it means for us on a day-to-day basis.

ABOUT AMBER

Dr. Amber Ortega is a weaver of science and spirit, here to co-create planetary healing. She earned her PhD in Atmospheric Chemistry and is an Elemental Priestess of the Sacred Arts. She’s a lover of deep conversations and comfortable with most things taboo (which makes her a fantastic guest in this episode)! She’s also a Wildland Firefighter and lives a vegan, sober lifestyle.

Never miss an episode.

Alyssa Patmos 0:04
This is Make It Mentionable. I’m Alyssa Patmos and this is the show about being human in a world that encourages us to be robots. I invite you to join me as we journey through the mess, the magic and the mania in between. Because what we can talk about, we can manage. This honest conversation extravaganza includes free flowing conversations and high doses of vulnerability to remind you that you aren’t alone. No topic is off limits, and episodes are designed to leave you smarter, aka more self aware than when you came. I am so glad you’re here.

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of naked mentionable. Today, I am here with my friend Amber Ortega. I should say Dr. Amber Ortega, which is part of what we’re talking about today, marrying the feminine and the masculine inside ourselves. And Amber, I’m so glad you’re here because I feel like you’re the perfect person to have this conversation with.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:13
Thanks. Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Alyssa Patmos 1:16
So before we dive into this very rich and nuanced topic, can you tell people tuning in a little bit about who you are?

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:27
Oh, okay. I have a canned answer to that in the spiritual side, which is who are you? And my kind of personal motto is that I’m a weaver of science and spirit. And I’m here to co create for planetary change.

Alyssa Patmos 1:44
I love that. I’ve never heard you say that.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:46
I can give you like a paragraph, actually. Because I’m presenting in a national meeting tomorrow. I have like all my accreditations on why you should pay attention to me scientifically. And I could do that for my spiritual practice. But just though, for me that vato like is a compass. And like anything that happens if it is an alignment with that motto, then I know what I’m doing.

Alyssa Patmos 2:08
So to clear things up here you have your PhD officially in what?

Dr. Amber Ortega 2:14
The long answer is Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences with specialization in Analytical Chemistry. When I tell people I just say Atmospheric Chemistry, so the first word in the last word of that whole big thing.

Alyssa Patmos 2:28
Wonderful. That’s like mostly how academic papers go where you need like two of the key words instead of the entire long chain. Okay, so So you have a PhD so you’re officially a doctor and you go by smoke. Dr. Correct because you’ve taken atmospheric chemistry into this super specialized niche of studying the smoke of wildfires. Did I get that right? Yeah. Okay. And so then on the on the flip side of it now I need your I need your can spiritual compass answer one more time.

Dr. Amber Ortega 3:03
So I’m a weaver of science and spirit, and I’m here to co create for planetary change.

Alyssa Patmos 3:08
Okay, so when you think of planetary change, what does that mean to you?

Dr. Amber Ortega 3:15
Well, I technically say planetary healing, but I screwed it up just now. Who this is deep, essentially, the recognition that we are like the earth fingernails, and that we are like part of earth system. And whether you want to anthropomorphize that and think of Earth as a living, breathing goddess, or you want to Gaia hypothesis, scientific systems it either way, like we don’t exist without the earth. And so bringing back like a reverence and respect to kind of heal that relationship with our proverbial mother.

Alyssa Patmos 3:56
I love it. Okay, so you’re a priestess on one side, and a, a PhD on the other side, a doctor on the other side. And so I love that weaving of science and spirit because the world of mysticism, and spirituality is so often completely juxtaposed with the world of science. And so for you dabbling in both of those, what what do you notice? Like what’s similar? What’s truly different about this world? And why do people so often take alliances on one side or the other?

Dr. Amber Ortega 4:33
So I’ll just as I did for the science side, credentials for the priestess side, I have a three year degree as a Priestess of the Sacred Arts from All Seasons Chalice in at Star House in Boulder, Colorado. I’m also a Universal Life Church minister, and an Elemental Priestess for the Quantum Frequency Technologies. We can get into what that means later, but that’s that side in case people are like, what’s that? Yeah. So I find that science and spirituality are two sides of the same coin. You know, way back in the day 15 and 1600s, the practice of both was the same called alchemy. And both sides, even in the modern world are kind of obsessed with the exploration of the unseen. That’s the term I like to use for it, what we cannot see how does it work? Why does it work? How are these two things similar? How can we repeat this or not repeat it? And so I find for me for a long, long time I struggled with, you know, am I this musician, artist priestess? Or am I this like analytical chemist scientist. And it was a real internal conflict. Because I’ve been a performance musician and a dancer and like, published author and traveled the world worked for the European Union, but science and I thought I had to choose, like, I can’t be this long haired red wearing scientist. And I realized that may just be me like is that like, I don’t have to choose like, I can be both. And just me standing in that, in either my previous work, or my science work, is me changing the world, because we don’t have examples of either of those in those two realms. And I find, you know, I got into earth sciences, through my priestess work, and through my relationship to nature. For a long time, it was kind of like, Why study God, when you can study the calculus of the weather, you know, people talk about a tornado or hurricane as an act of God. So like, dammit, I want to know the equations of I want to fly a helicopter into it, why not? And how does one better than the other. And I’ve also found working in the sciences, especially earth sciences, the skills and education and experience levels that people have to have in those fields, fish and wildlife, forestry, meteorology, climate change. You know, it’s a lot of kind of crazy levels of calculus, and analytics, and data science, all those individuals can make a lot more money, working for things that are sort of destroying the planet versus trying to help heal the planet. And while those people I work with in the science realm might not be spiritual, I do believe they have like a seed in them, that wants to work for the betterment of Earth and humanity. And that’s why they do it, because they can make three, four times the amount of salary working for more industrial entities. And they don’t they choose not to. And so my highest self have a spiritual side can work with their highest self. And that becomes a spiritual relationship. Even though in the world of stop signs and red lights, it looks like a scientific collaboration. And I don’t feel like they need to be aware of what’s working on the highest self, or the little seed of like wanting to heal the earth aspect to still be used as an instrument in that way.

Alyssa Patmos 8:18
I love that. I love that. And I love it. I believe that all of us has this seed that connects us back to Earth anyway, as you said, like we’re earth’s fingernails, which I want to ask you about in a second because I want to understand what that means to you even more. But we all have this seed inside of us. That connects us back to this universal energy, whatever people want to call it. Some people call it God, some people call it universal wisdom. Other people call it cosmic intelligence there, there are many names for it. But I think we all have a connection back to it, because we’re made up of the same energy at the end of the day. And there are various levels of people who, who take interest in understanding what that means. But it doesn’t mean that the people who aren’t taking interest in it are also part of the plan. That’s weaving everything together, which I love. I think that’s so fascinating. So to go back to some of the planetary healing pieces, because right now, you know, there’s so much conversation around what’s happening to the earth and how humans are interacting with it. And so I like that you said like, we’re Earth’s fingernails. So can you elaborate a little bit on that? What does that mean?

Dr. Amber Ortega 9:32
Sure, um, one of the first individuals I’ll give credit to for really like blowing my mind in terms of spirituality, but in this like, very, very intellectually stimulating way was Alan Watts. And one of my favorite Alan Watts quotes is, and I’m totally paraphrasing, but, you know, there’s the ocean and the ocean is huge and expansive but at the edges of the ocean there are waves. So the metaphor is as the ocean waves, the universe peoples. So as the universe is huge and expansive at sort of the very edges where it hits something else, there’s people. And I find, you know, in thinking about that, and my body in my incarnation on Earth, you know, I am entirely Earth materia. And without this lovely, perfect balance of the right temperature and pressure, and water, and air and heat to keep me warm, and food, I don’t exist, you don’t exist, we didn’t exist. And so I find that like, relationship between kind of my human self and my story and my day to day, and sort of the elemental reality of the earth, to be very meaningful, and scientifically relevant and accurate. And that’s what I mean by like, we are Earth’s fingernails, you know, we are just little, you know, things on the surface, like you have bacteria growing on your skin. That’s kind of what we are. And while we have the ability to change the planet, just like an ingrown nail can really drive you crazy, and screw up your day. You know, we can do that to the earth. But you know, we also get leveled a lot when it comes to natural disasters, which is why my career has been focused on studying natural disasters and sort of being part of them in an active way. Because that’s really where humanity gets sort of restricted off it, like, You’re no better than any other living creature, and you’re part of this cycle. And if you don’t kind of respect and take care of it, you know, all things come back to balance.

Alyssa Patmos 12:10
And that’s very true for for fires, right? Like, isn’t that isn’t that the historical purpose or the natural purpose of a fire to help restore balance?

Dr. Amber Ortega 12:23
Yeah. So we didn’t really mention this, but part of my day job is being a wildland firefighter. And I ended up getting deployed to Incident Command teams of wildfires across the country for months at a time, which is very intense and very exciting and very, like first responder paramilitary. But you know, you our fire is the only natural disaster we try to control. But before humans, and I’m kind of talking about the science hat, and we’ll put the spiritual hat on next. Before humans, there was a lot more fire. So whenever my friends are affected by wildfires, usually by the smoke and kind of complaining as smokey about those fires, how about that? Before humans there was a lot more fire because we didn’t put them out. So lightning would strike somewhere in the West when it was dry and hot in the summer. And it would just burn till winter till it hit a lake or a creek or river. And, you know, we could go for a long time on this discussion how we’ve dam the rivers, so they’re dryers or fires can cross them now. So when we think about fire, in its natural occurrence, it happens really, really often. You know, we’re here in Colorado, the Ponderosa and lodgepole pine forests, you know, to our west should burn every 50 years, if not more than that. And when they burn that frequently, it just burns out the underbrush. Native Americans have been using prescribed fire for as long as we can find evidence of to burn out that undergrowth. And it actually helps the ecosystem like pine cones. They have seeds in them and they don’t expand and release the seeds till they’re over like 150 degrees Fahrenheit. So it regenerates the forest and what’s called the pioneer species, the first plants to grow after a brush fire. They’re like raspberries you know, stuff that bears and wildlife really want. When we stop fire, which humans do for a long, long time we we put out every wildfire possible. It allows a buildup of all the trees and brush and that ecosystem that was supposed to burn 150 years ago, but we kept stopping it. So as soon as lightning strikes now it’s like scorched earth down to bare mineral soil. So there’s nothing left to like recede. So that’s kind of the human impacts of fire. But fire it’s As you know, part of the cycle of destruction and regeneration, and kind of transferring energy from, from something that can no longer be used to something that can be more useful.

Alyssa Patmos 15:15
So spiritually, then, you know, there are so many people who love to use fire metaphors for diving into your purpose or for ambition, or, you know, I can, can’t tell you how many times you know, you hear the phrase like the fire in your belly. So on the spiritual side, then like, why are we so drawn to the magic of fire.

Dr. Amber Ortega 15:41
So, you know, where that instantly takes me is the Elementals. And kind of in the like, North American or mid latitudes. So that’s like, from the equator to the poles, the mid latitudes, Europe and Americas, we typically orient to the four directions, earth, air, fire, water, and fire itself represents illumination. And initiation. It’s like that spark. When you follow sort of anger, and sexual desire down, it’s that like fire that like create, transmute take something, make it something else, express. And, you know, a forest fires during the same thing, you have sort of this stale old forest that needs to burn, it needs to express it needs to transmute, it needs to initiate a new wave. So I think that’s why, and it’s like the universal power of light of like, putting light in the dark, shining it on something, it becoming alive, like anything. And I think that’s why we use the spiritual matter, metaphors of inner fire inner flame. Because it’s that sort of spark of like, Go action.

Alyssa Patmos 17:12
Yeah, there’s something really interesting about the movement through the dark, like, as I think about even a wildfire like it’s, it’s the ends up lighting up the night sky, but it’s movement, it’s moving. It’s not this stagnant energy that’s just sitting there. And I think that’s what happens to many people is we lose connection from the fire because we get stagnant or, or we we get a little bit scared of going in and lighting up the darkest of places. And then and then we’re not transmuting things in the same way. Do you see that as well?

Dr. Amber Ortega 17:47
I do. And I could nerd out so hard on the scientific side about this. Like, yeah, when you look it up map of where the wildfire burned, do you hear like how much percent contain rate when you see like a big black on the map. But that is not a super accurate picture. When you get in the land. When you’re actually in a wildfire. There are parts there’s the flaming front, the stuff that’s really active and really hot, and let’s sexy photos, big flames. But behind that, where the fire already came through something that seems like less hot. It’s still simmering, it’s still smoldering. And I think that can be a metaphor for our own life. You know, it might not be that thing we’re super excited about that we’re maybe obsessing about right now. But it’s like marinating, it’s simmering. And that’s actually how a fire can hold over. Through the winter snow, it can actually go underground in like simmer through roots and stuff. And then when the snow melts, it hits the surface and it can turn into another wildfire again.

Alyssa Patmos 18:53
Okay, this is amazing. This is an amazing metaphor. There’s so there are at least three times where we could have stopped the conversation and like, I feel like it would have had an impact. But this one is super interesting to me. Because I’m a marinate, like I use the word marinate all the freaking time, I have to marinate on things. And I feel like in today’s society, there’s so much pressure for the flashy for that initial photo of like the huge flame and like this passion that is like completely undeniable so much so that you can see it from miles and miles away, you know. And yet the smoldering is what happens I think for a lot of people where it’s like it’s it’s burning, but it’s not as noticeable. And so I think sometimes we don’t know how to pay attention to what is smoldering under the surface because we’re looking for this giant flame and expecting that to be the answer to things.

Dr. Amber Ortega 19:54
Yeah, totally. And even in it keep going going with this metaphor and like actual fire science. Oftentimes, when you have a big thunderstorm, and like lightning strikes in a dry forest, it doesn’t suddenly create a tidal wave of all wildfire, it actually hits like a tree in it sort of smolders for days. And then all of a sudden, the conditions are right, it gets hot, dry and windy. And that’s when it can take off. And so I use the metaphor, and I like to live seasonally aligned. So I tend to do this, like, early, early spring, it’s like what seeds in my planting. And if I have that intention of like, okay, here’s like, I go through a whole process in the winter, um, where I pick a spirit word, and I kind of ask my background and my shadow, like, who’s raising its hand the highest. And then I plant like three seeds, like three bullet points of things I want to work on. And I intend on them. And then I kind of like, let them go, like writing your Starbucks eat or universe order out, and then come back to them and give them attention as they come up again. And I think that that’s kind of how when you’re suppressing a wildfire, you have to have that same approach, you know, those flashy headline news, million acres a day kind of situations are just brush fires, you don’t even have to pay attention, John, because they’re going to put themselves out, you know, they’re gonna last a day. It’s when stuff starts smoldering and like heavier fuels that used to be really, really mindful of like the other conditions. Hmm. And I find that’s true. Like, in my life, my goals, and different things I’m working on, or even how I support like friends and loved ones, you know, once they you plant those intentions, you know, I really do feel like it’s about just trusting that when the conditions will arise, like, it’ll be easy, you know, it’s already ready, you’re just waiting for the right temperature, pressure and wind direction to like, align up in your life, for that to, you know, take off.

Alyssa Patmos 22:09
I find that we have to be committed to those intentions, in order for that process to end up happening. I feel like you know, so many times we, we get so focused on goals, and then there’s a ton of power in the intention. And and I think when we can look at goals as something with intention, rather than just this like spiral of activity, they end up holding a lot more power, because it allows, it allows for a detachment from the outcome in a different way. Then, I think like, traditionally how we think of goals works. So like long term for me, I set intentions, but then on a daily basis, I have goals like, Okay, well, what are my goals for today? What do I need to get done? But then for me, the way that I think of the long term ones are much more intention based because it allows me to release the outcome more effectively than if I say goals, I try to control way more if I, if I use the word goals, which is not good.

Dr. Amber Ortega 23:12
No, I’m totally with you. And that’s one reason why, you know, instead of New Year’s resolutions, or like, the year goal setting, I do a spirit word. This year, spirit word was in alignment, kind of in parentheses with my highest self. And I was into loom in March, and having kind of a hard time. And coming back to that spirit board that I set in December. And I kind of realized that like the first part, you know, if being in alignment with my highest self is a year from now, goal, I first have to learn how to discern, like what’s in alignment and what isn’t, like, that’s sort of step one. But for me, that’s that process of setting the intention. And then when shit gets a little crazy, I’m like, What am I set that intention? How does the situation fit in that alignment? What am I feeling? Where’s the lesson right here? And in that, in that particular situation, it was like just discerning like, what is mine? What isn’t mine? What’s in alignment? What isn’t?

Alyssa Patmos 24:19
Discernment was huge for me this year. I came about it in a slightly different way, but also trying to answer the question around what’s in alignment for me because I’ve gone through a lot of changes in the past year and a half and an alignment around like, okay, like, who am I and what do I actually want like, signs all these stories that get placed on us and discernment came up for me too. And it was it was interesting when I first started looking into it because I had no idea how religious of a word discernment is. And so I started looking it up and I was like, I want to be like a discerning woman. There’s something so Strong and sexy and powerful about that, to me like a woman who can just discern, this is right for me, this isn’t right for me. This is worth my effort. This isn’t worth my effort. There’s like, oh, that feeling. I’ve loved the word this year. And but when I first started looking at it coming from a religious background and sort of like exiting that work that world, when I started looking at this, I had no idea how much religious ties there were to discernment. But if we abstract that up a level, I’m assuming it’s because there’s some sort of spiritual superpower in being able to discern.

Dr. Amber Ortega 25:41
Totally, that the word came up a lot in my spiritual training. And the training I did was focused on getting beneath the dogma. There are some kind of like core truths, not even like truths, because people have attachment to that word, but like, principles. One of the things I was trained in come back to that is like I’m a ceremonial is the art of ceremony. And like, literally, it’s a Mad Libs you fill in the blank. It’s like, how, what’s our intention? How are we setting aside sacred space? Like what are we attuning to graduation ceremony, Catholic mass, like release ceremony with fire initiation ceremony for, you know, spiritual training or yoga training or Reiki training? It’s literally the same ceremony with the fill in the blank, like, what are we doing? Who are we attuning to? How are we bringing it in? How do we release it? What’s the intention again? And, you know, I find that we learn discernment as step zero in the art of mediating spiritual power. And in order to create agreement fields, with other people, and with the unseen, being able to discern like, what is in alignment with my highest self, what isn’t? And, and quite practically developing for me, because I’m very somatic, little bodily indicators, if something was or wasn’t, you know, is it a diet? Which is it a feeling in my back? Does that mean in alignment, not an alignment, and using my body is kind of a barometer for discernment. Because your mind can justify a lot, especially right now, where we are, we’re, you know, always analytical in the mind, you know, I could justify my way out of a paper bag, or tell myself, I could convince myself something was in alignment if I really wanted it enough, even if it’s not, and I do believe that, if I did that, eventually, I would see that it wasn’t in alignment and things would balance itself back out. You know, just kind of like my natural disaster metaphor.

Alyssa Patmos 27:59
Yeah. For me, I love what you brought up about the body because you know, so many people, even with our health issues, like I believe that disease is really like dis ease in our body. And so like I love the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vander Kolk. And I think that one of the huge shifts for me over the past few years having to some random health stuff come up like endometriosis, or, or even even to an extent like the OCD things that come up. And I had to reframe, I used to say, like, Oh, my body hates me all the time. And, and I was like, well, this, this isn’t helpful. Like, that’s obviously not a helpful thing to be saying to myself. And so I had to reframe it into my body is an excellent communicator. And once I started encouraging that I got so many more science and communication from my body around what is in alignment for me and what isn’t. And obviously, like, the mastery of that is a completely ongoing journey. But I think our bodies are such powerful communicators that we’re not taught to listen to. We’re not taught the language of our body, and it’s different for everyone. But I think when we can start tuning into that for ourselves, we get so much more information that we can use to go out and do things in this world.

Dr. Amber Ortega 29:29
Oh, yeah. 100%. It reminds me so something that I’ve experienced in the past, I have lost about 80 pounds, I used to be over 220 pounds. And I essentially quit drinking alcohol. I’ve been sober for four and a half years now. And through like all the self work that’s involved with that, I ended up losing a lot of weight, but it was never an intention of like, I need to hit this number on the scale. It was like, I recognized that I had What what the statement actually was, I was single and dating, online dating. And for a while, I don’t know, the fourth or fifth time, a guy broke it off with me. Because I was a big girl, huh? Now I also feel like we sort of give away our power and allow the stories, we need to support our internal dialogue to like manifest as a mirror for ourselves. So there’s like a big backstory as to like, I don’t want to say this guy was like, just an asshole, because it’s so much deeper than that. But in my kind of processing conversation with him around that, I said, Yeah, I’ve never had a body. Meaning like, I’ve never had the body, you know, like the Claudia Fisher, like, you know, body or whatever. But my body heard me deny the fact that I have a body. And I felt that like, in my bones, like, What the fuck? How, what have we been carrying around for the last 30 years? Like, what the things and that just like? That was a real sort of, like, transformative moment for me, which I do think ultimately got me on this, like, I gotta examine that was a little bit of a catalyst for like, Wow. I am in like a constant state of like dissociation. Because I completely deny the fact that I even have a body. So with that, whenever I am, in the dealings of men, and I share them mentioned, like, well, you know, yeah, she’s got a perfect body. I’m like, Well, what is perfect? Who decided what that was for you, you realize you can come up with your own version of perfect, because even when I was, you know, BMI was very overweight. There were certain men who still found me like very, very desirable, because I was their version of perfect. And so I always catch men when they’re like, Well, you know, yeah, she’s got a perfect body. But I’m like, Well, who told you that was perfect? Like, if you could kind of deprogram yourself, like, what is your unique, you know, perfect, because I’m no, I’m attracted to men. For me, what I would call the perfect body that I’m most attracted to is is, like, my own unique thing that I don’t think came from society like, or when I talk to men about what they think a man’s perfect body is, it doesn’t match with what they think.

Alyssa Patmos 32:42
Right? Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And I think that it’s important for us to define that for ourselves too. Because it can be so hard, no matter what weight you’re at, to appreciate your body. And partly because I think we live in our mind so much, we don’t value everything that our body is doing for us. For me, I don’t know, if you notice, um, for me, I, there have been two relationships, where I gained weight towards the end of both of them. And, and it was a signifier, looking back, it was a signifier of the emotional turmoil that I was going through. And these weren’t bad people by any means. Again, it’s so nuanced. I don’t want to call them assholes because they’re wonderful people. But there’s a point where there’s an expiration date on certain relationships. And that cycle has to close and we have new ones. And so damage was done in both of those relationships to some degree, but like, I played a part in that too. And so at the end, though, both of them commented on my weight, the first one, called me fat at the time, and I ended up going out and buying a treadmill, instead of having a boundary around, like, Excuse me, it is not okay for you to comment on my body in that way, I went out and bought a treadmill. Like, clearly I was not ready to end the relationship. And normally, I wouldn’t say you end a relationship just over that. But there were other things there. And then after and then after, we eventually broke it off. A few months later, like the weight sort of melted away. The same thing happened in another relationship where it just, it just like came up and it snuck up on me and there wasn’t like, in those moments, there wasn’t a huge lifestyle change. It was just like this protective mechanism of my body communicating with me in a different way and like literally adding on the pounds. And so between that one and now like 30 pounds is gone, which is an astonishing number because they don’t think of all the ways I’ve changed my life. And I think that we don’t always give ourselves the grace and compassion for like what our bodies are fully capable of doing to support us. In this in this world, and so when I think about the fact that we can’t even fully associate into our bodies in a lot of way, when we think about the world holding us, and we think about the world, and like Earth being an extension of our body, it doesn’t surprise me that people have a hard time connecting with that, because we can barely connect to, to our own house.

Dr. Amber Ortega 35:26
Oh, yeah, totally. I agree with you. And I’ve experienced that, in my own situation, for sure. I grew up in a household where, before my parents got divorced, my dad would have to represent body shame, and fat shamed my mom. And so I was kind of convinced that like, my body was like a currency for love. And I ended up that’s when I really, really got overweight, because it was literally, I mean, I almost think it was intentional in terms of like, I want to protect myself against men like my father, I want to self select partners that are less shallow. That won’t leave me because I got fat, because I’m already thought. And it took a long, long time for me to, like individuated from my parental trauma, in order to like release that agreement field I had with myself.

Alyssa Patmos 36:27
So let’s talk about agreement fields, because you just mentioned two words that are huge, like agreement fields is one of your favorite words. Obviously, we’re friends like in real life off the internet. So I hear I hear the words you say. And and I love it. I love how you talk about agreement fields. But also individuation, which is something that so many people struggle with, because it’s like if we’re not taught it, and we’re not modeled If our parents haven’t fully stepped into individuation, then we’re not modeled how to do it. And so as adults, we’re left as these like, toddlers in adult bodies like learning how to do this thing and an agreement fields correlate so much with boundaries that I think it’s really important in, in our ability to individually so can you explain what an agreement field is?

Dr. Amber Ortega 37:18
Oh, sure. I love agreement fields like that concept. It’s part of why I love science, because it exists even if you don’t know about it, and spirituality it exists even if you don’t know about it. So agreement fields. And I really became shored up in my agreement fields during my spiritual practice. And agreement field is like, what is the intention between two things interacting? Like that’s the most sort of base level, I can get it. With my spiritual work, I have an agreement field with the unseen. You know, I can’t take on everybody’s everything. I can’t heal everything. So I had to get very discerning with my agreement field as to like, who am I as a woman of spirit? And what is my preach says practice. An agreement feel it can be something really like I recently had to mediate through two healers that never established an agreement field. So you know, there was this, oh, you’re using my imagery on Instagram? And it’s like, Well, you asked me to promote this thing. And I was like, Well, what was your agreement field? You agreed to promote it? Did you talk about, like, whose images were using what agreement fields also have to deal with reciprocity, that doesn’t mean money, necessarily. It can be like time energetic trade work. But if you enter, even if you don’t speak about an agreement field, there’s an agreement field. And often the more ambiguous and the more assumptive it is, the more room for like hurt feelings and miscommunication and feeling like you didn’t get what you were owed for some exchange. And often an agreement field can be like the highest self or soul level. You spoke about, like a relationship. I’m gonna use a term I hate not working out, but it probably worked out exactly how it was supposed to. You probably had some soul agreement field that was complete, or at least you made enough freewill decisions that the highest potential path, you know, you achieved what was highest given the situation. And now you know, no longer serves. And so, you know, agree with fields are so essential. You know, I have an agreement field with my work. Now, my supervisor I work for the Forest Service at the Forest Service, we’ve never had to like sit down. This is our agreement field conversation. But we have quarterly like, here’s my tasks, how I think I did how he thinks I did, like, where’s improvement? Where do I need more support in the agreement field is, you know, these are the things I’ve agreed to do. And he’s agreed to support me in these ways. But that works with friendships, even on like a tiny scale, say, a friend of yours, you know, approaches you and they have a lot of story that you can feel pouring out of them. You can very quickly say, hey, is this something you need witnessed, or something you wanted fight song, you can establish that agreement field. And without, like, really manifesting a concrete agreement field. That’s when you get into that. I don’t want fix I just want witness. Well, we didn’t establish agreements. Also, I didn’t know. So I just did my natural thing, which was the do what thing you didn’t want, but we never talked about it, you know?

Alyssa Patmos 41:01
Yeah. And it devolves it just dissolves into this like miscommunication. scenario that you know, it, it, there is a way out of it. But it can be messy at times, because then you’re coming from the reactive place, rather than this place where you had the intention, boundaries and expectations were clear. And then you were operating from there. And so you talked about alchemy earlier. And so alchemy, I want you to define what that is, because then I want to talk about how it’s much easier for things to alchemize when agreement fields are in place. So first off the what is what is alchemy because it’s a word that gets used a lot now and and it’s an ancient word. And there’s a there’s there’s a rich history there. But also I think people use it in different ways now.

Dr. Amber Ortega 42:01
Oh my god. Yeah. Um, when I am in a site, surrounded by scientists-only space, alchemy is used as negative. Oh, that’s just alchemy.

Alyssa Patmos 42:14
What?

Dr. Amber Ortega 42:14
Like, yeah, meaning like flies spontaneously combust. Right?

Alyssa Patmos 42:17
What?

Dr. Amber Ortega 42:18
Or, like, show up? Yeah, yeah. Cuz alchemy, like, one of the experiments back in the day, was that if you put meat in a jar, they believe that the meat would spontaneously generate flies, right? That’s alchemy. When actually like, if you cover one and don’t cover one, you can see that if it’s open, sorry, there’s a barking dog. If it’s open, you know, flies land on it. And they put maggots in it. And then it grows and blah, blah, blah. So if you’re a scientist, you use it as like, yeah, that’s, you know, a black box of magic. I find in the more conscious communities, dare I invoke the word spiritual materialism, that the word alchemy is like a sexy buzzword, you know, let’s charge everybody 3333 and have it on 1111 Because for alchemy, Alchemy, rising, you know, the astrological lunar eclipse was just like a lot a lot of buzzwords. And, in I get that, for some people, those words, they’re very exciting and activating, and it speaks to their audience. And that serves a purpose. For me, Alchemy gets to that place before the scientific method was really crystallized. And it was kind of a wonderment of trying to, it’s like, really observe without, like, kind of knowing you don’t know why. And it was a place where, you know, science and mysticism were the same, you know, often, back in the Middle Ages, the scientists were also very into astrology. And it was, you know, that kind of, you know, they would do an experiment they cared about during, you know, the waxing part of the moon. And, and I tend to I tend to use the word not really on in my own vocabulary, like in my own daily life, but I do use it to sort of like signal that place where science and spirit are merge. So that’s, that’s how I manifest it. And I think it also brings into the realm of thought that intention And a tension and we’ve kind of circled around that before, you know, you plant an intention. But what allows it to grow is a tension, you know, it’s like a seed. A seed is kind of the most basic form of magic. You know, you plant a seed, and you give it the right conditions, and you water it, and it literally grows you food, which is also very scientific, and gets the principle of like, the earth actually provides us food. So why do we pay for it? That’s a whole nother conversation. But it’s kind of back to that wonderment. You know, before we knew about, like photosynthesis and plant cells out of cell walls and animal cells don’t and that’s why they’re green, and all that kind of stuff. It was really like, ooh, if I do these kind of magical things like this will work. And I think because the human psyche is multi dimensional and complex, but can also be very predictable and scientific and even programmatic like it computer alchemy is a great word to use for like the human process of like understanding and unpacking and discernment and individuation because it is this, like science meets spirit, you know, we often think of like my soul, my soul’s development or my personal trauma as something like outside of science. But given like the right conditions and right environment and calming down our limbic system, like you have food, water, shelter, you went to the bathroom, the doors are locked, you know, and now I can sort of explore why do I feel that way?

Alyssa Patmos 46:40
Mm hmm. Yeah, for me, Alchemy is so much about like the transmutation of things like, like backfire and in its power in allowing things to transmute. And and I think I agree it gets so used as as a buzzword, which spine of it I love when you said activation like that activates something and someone great. But I also think that that the the blend of it and recognizing like how it’s used in the science community and the spiritual community, and then how those two things were closer together, more often than not, in historical times, I think is really, really powerful for for sort of what we’ve been talking about, which are elements of the unseen, like, I think alchemy has some strong energy behind it as a word, because it embraces the unknown in a different way. You feel like the scientific method is like really driven and a hypothesis and it was really driven to like seek something about the unknown and to find an answer to it. And I think in a lot of ways, like spirituality and religion certainly does this, like people make people make science or religion, people make religion, a science where it’s like, you have to get down to like understanding everything. But there’s so much power in not knowing if we can, if we can embrace it, which does require quite quieting mind. And so one other thing I want to ask you about, is relates to these things, and I know you have a special interest in it. And so when we think about the unknown, and the unseen womb, and one of the core fears of being human is dying, and death and fire, you talked about it being part of the of this cycle of destruction, and then rejuvenation, but so much of life requires death of things, death of versions of ourselves, eventually death of our bodies, death of thoughts, death of relationships at times. And so, for you and your you have an intimate relationship with, with death and what it means and so when you think of us as you know, an extension of Earth and being connected in this way, what what is good for us to know what is good to make mentionable about death?

Dr. Amber Ortega 49:14
Hmm, let’s see. Well, you know, you are correct to have a interesting relationship to death I will admit I’ve never been through an official trademark death doula training but I have functioned as a death doula many times and it’s never something I like wanted, it’s something that found me or people would seek me out to do or I’ve done for family members and loved ones or friends. And I think my relationship with the unseen and the agreement field I have with the earth allows that and you know, I have this sort of personal have like a three part dream about my incarnation in which I climbed up a tree. And it wasn’t until I did a seasons of endarkenment, underworld initiation training. And we kept going into the underworld by climbing down the tree of life. I got out of meditation like the facilitators like what’s wrong with you was like, That’s my tree. That’s the tree I climbed up when I was born, like, what are you doing with the tree? Why is this a tree for you guys and then we talked about how there’s like certain in every culture, there’s like a tree that you know the tree of life and that sort of permeates all these different religions and spiritual practices because it’s sort of real in the unseen and so, I view I view death as that transmutation, you know, energy cannot be created, nor destroyed, only changed in form. And all things feed all things. And it’s really kind of a, we don’t really know what happens after. But we know what happens, right up to, and having helped a lot of things, crossover. You know, it’s very similar, the fear and the anguish, and the scared Enos by the person or thing that it’s about to cross over, and their loved ones. In the end, all everybody wants us to know, like, they’re held in love, and welcomed on the other side, that it’s a safe place to be. And I think that’s also true in life, you know, secretly, we all want to be held in our vulnerability and witnessed and have and celebrated. And so, you know, the closest plsa people that I’ve helped cross over, it’s really like standing in a circle with them, and the ancestors for living and past. And like saying, like, whatever needs to manifest for the greatest good allow it to happen. I recently helped my black cat who was technically my familiar crossover. And it was really like the human level was really sad and hard. And should I put him down? Should I not? And is he ready? Or what if I kill them too soon. And, and ultimately, like, I FaceTime with my spiritual teacher with him because she’s worked with him a lot to write before. And during the process, because I had a doctor come here to do it. My significant other was like holding my cat, and I was in deep meditation with him. And my agreement failed with Mr. Block. We worked together, he was my Gaiden dreams. Anytime I did any astral projection or shamanic journey, and he guarded the body very Egyptian cat guard the body like and so I was like, deep in meditation with him. And and like in a boat with him crossing like water, which is very, very common for most even, like DMT dreams where you like lose your skin and lose your body and have to swim through some substance. And, you know, like he was greeted by like, all these different like friends and familiars and animals that we have seen and all of our journeying in the unseen and it was beautiful. And that kind of just obliterated all sadness and grief, and what if, and he’s gone because he got to be like his form in the unseen.

And I have found that even with helping another elderly person, who was actually deep in hallucinations, and once he was going, he needed to get dressed, he needed to put on his tux and it was hat and we’re going to a party, because his highest self was going to a party. And the family members are like he’s talking to dead people. And I’m like, not necessarily those people are alive on the other side, and they’re about to receive Him if that’s awesome party. So don’t drag him out of the hallucinations, like he’s one foot in and one foot on the other side and like what a gift it is to witness somebody verbalizing that, you know, in between, I’m somebody who I’ve a vasovagal syncope, so I faint. And when I come back to the process is very similar to people I know who’ve done heroic levels of DMT where you kind of when you’re coming out of it, you see this sort of REM sleep dream world and this world at the same time. It feels like there’s choice, you don’t want to come back you do, you don’t know. And then you’re like in your body. And it’s this weird like, I’m human again, that face that like it baby like newborn toddler just like I get stuck in the human sack again is it’s very similar and even in like high level Tibetan tantric practices, it’s called The Little death, you’re actually like, self orgasm before you would work with another person, you have to like die onto yourself, you have to experience an ego death, and be in this space of like your essence. And in that essence, is what I feel we are when we’re in sacred space, you know, I am who I’ve always been, for the last seven incarnations, and the next seven, and like, if you’re in it with me, you are to. So I think, in using the death metaphor in our everyday life, you know, a spiritual death and ego death and dying of a relationship. It is, even if we don’t consciously think about it, it is coming back to who we are in the unseen and in sacred space. And it is my belief, when we do crossover, we actually kind of look at our life that we just lived like a movie. And we look at those different crossroads where you had a freewill decision, and you had your highest potential path, and you either read the stop signs and red lights to like, get on or stay on the highest potential where you did it, and then like a new highest potential path manifest. And coming back home to those decisions, in the other side, kind of helps dictate what happens to you next, as like an entity. And I think, while living we do that, when we review, you know, the death of a relationship, or a job or an opportunity that no longer serves us is that coming back home, to what’s in alignment, and gives us the opportunity to like, discern, like, oh, that finished, it was really great, but it no longer served. So how beautiful is it, that I can look back. And in the process of grieving, somebody who’s past or a job or relationship that’s over, it’s very similar, like the thing that hurts is like, that slice of our energetic pie we had open for it, and there’s nothing there anymore. So whatever, I’ve facilitated awake, or memorial service for somebody, it’s very important to like, tell the joyful stories and stuff, they’d kill you if you said out loud. And I think that shoe for a job and even a relationship, even if it was very bad and traumatic towards the end, it’s like, how did that serve? What like instead, I learned how did I learn how to speak up for myself? How did I get in a better relationship with my own anger that I denied before having to like, defend myself and bring it out. And so part of like, allowing grief and I don’t even know that we really process grief, we just like sit with it as an inevitable reality, like the Buddhist suffering is sort of an inherent part of life is to like fill it with the lessons and the joy and the oh, I kind of see how this is like, in the story of my life, how this was an opportunity.

Alyssa Patmos 58:30
I love that because you know, there’s so much pressure to consider a relationship that ends as a failure, and divorce as a failure. And really, it doesn’t, there’s nothing that says it has to be looked at like that. There’s nothing that says that it can’t just be a cycle that came to completion. And how beautiful that it actually got to come to completion. Because otherwise, you can spin in a cycle forever and miss so many paths to your highest potential. But I also love what you said, I feel like so many times there is pressured to make sure that we take the path of the highest potential to the point where it stunts us from doing anything, because it’s like, we come to the fork in the road. And it’s like, well, what the hell do I do? Like I could go this way, and I see something there. And I could go this way. And that might be more comfortable. And so we get paralyzed. But I love what you said, because it takes the pressure off where you’re like, Okay, there’s one path and like, this has the highest potential here. Maybe I listened to it, maybe I don’t, but eventually, there’s gonna be another thing that allows me to get back to the highest potential. So even if I screw it up, even if I have a detour, that’s all it is. It’s a detour. And there’s still going to be the next opportunity. And hopefully we’re reflecting along the journey so that we make we catch more of the signals earlier, but I feel like that can take off so much pressure of feeling like it Every decision is this moment of like, how do I step into my highest self? Because that’s where self development just becomes so much willpower in this like painful word, rather than embracing the journey of our lives.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:00:15
Oh, yeah, totally. And I think like, there’s the butterfly effect, like you don’t know. And I also one of my sayings is that, like, I’m on the need to know basis with spirit. Like, I don’t know why. But I usually find out eventually. And having, I’m personally divorced, and actually my ex, and I got like our 15 seconds of internet fame. We were together for almost 15 years, I met him when I was 14. And we broke up when I was 28. And it was actually very intentional and a little bit analytical, because we kind of like knew it wasn’t someone’s Rocky and we set like, literally we’re like, okay, if these six things, we haven’t made measurable progress in six months, then we’re gonna have a conversation. But at the end, it was literally like a high five bro moment, like we had a good run. You know, we did this, like, Dreaming Out Loud of like, what is my mythic dream life in five years from now? And what is my ideal partner doing? And both are like, I don’t want to be there with you doing that. Oh, all right, well, we better get out of each other’s way. And when we finally signed our divorce paperwork, it was like this, like, we both already kind of started other relationships, because the process of separations of final divorce is pretty long. And we both have this check in moment. Like, is it better for you now? But yeah, it’s better for you. Yeah. And until we took a like, divorce selfie outside of the courthouse, which I hashtag divorce selfie. And like, three days later, we are on Good Morning America, The Washington Post, like the divorce selfie craze, really like the fifth couple to ever use it. It was hilarious. But it really was, like, you know, really was amicable and seven years later, you know, we’re so loosely, friends, like out of respect for each other and other relationships. We’re not in like regular contact, but to deny or shame. over 10 years of my life during my like, adolescent development, like I can’t, I can’t undo the bands I saw or the degrees I got are how we both sacrifice and support each other. Like that was the agreement field and it no longer sir. Yeah. So totally with you on that. There’s something else you said I wanted to speak on that I do not remember.

Alyssa Patmos 1:02:40
Okay, if it’s important that we’ll come back. I think overall, there’s there’s so much Okay, wait, other train of thought totally just popped in, and I want to go with this one instead. So we’ve been talking about the unseen and there’s so much pressure to know everything in today’s society, like we put systems in place to try and know more things and to have that safety and security and a sense of knowing. Personally, I find a freak ton of freedom in I’m in not knowing and that’s been the most interesting journey with OCD is like, it’s it’s the downing disease in many ways. And so it’s been this catalyst for me having to embrace the uncertainty because I don’t know whether me tapping this five times, or walking away from it is actually going to stop the terrible thing in my mind that I think is going to happen if I don’t do this. And so I’ve had to embrace that, that not knowing over and over and over again, to be able to leave my house. And, and yet, at the same time, it’s set me free, like physically from having to tap things, but also emotionally, of being able to embrace not having to have answers to everything all the time. And obviously, I still get trapped in thought patterns that prevent that. And there are times when OCD flares up. And it’s a really big indicator that I’m trying to control way too much in my life. So going back to just talking about mysticism, in science, you know, I’m sure there are people who are listening who are skeptics, you know, and and, and sometimes it can be harder for certain men, especially I find men especially but a lot of women to it, which is people who are driven by logic and the rational mind, to embrace some of the things that we’ve talked about. And yet I find that skeptics, you know, a lot of times they want to poopoo on religion, but at the same time, don’t want to trust in the unknown. So, so for you, what would you say to someone who is the skeptic who might be hearing some of these things? And they’re like, I don’t know, like, I don’t know how to believe in this. I don’t know how, I don’t know how to process it. What would you tell them?

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:05:01
Well, you know, quite frankly, my scientific answer is like, we still don’t understand gravity.

Alyssa Patmos 1:05:07
Hmm.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:05:08
We don’t know. We don’t understand how lightning bolts discharged that much electrical current, but we know it happens. We see it all the time. And it’s repeatable. You know, acceleration due to gravity is a constant, how gravity manifests gravitational fields, like why it happens. We’re still kind of in a theory of, but people, you know, like things fall down is like a core principle of being alive. And even our bodies don’t function without gravity. But as far as unrolling like the science, like, it’s still an open question. So like, there’s my science example. You know, I mentioned that I’m sober. And I’ve definitely done some time with the 12 steps. And one of the core principles or sayings in those communities is “self-knowledge availed us nothing”. And that’s that came through when you were speaking about the OCD, it’s like we can, I can know why and how and what traumas and what situations caused or whatever. But self knowledge does nothing to like my reactions and how I function in the future. And one of the lessons I learned early in my PhD, was you sound like a car salesman, if you try to know everything, if you try to have an answer for everything, it’s actually sounds much more vulnerable and intelligent, and are the leaders we look up to the most. I’m thinking like, Nelson Mandela kind of stuff. They were very vulnerable. They often said, I don’t know. And so I had to learn in like doing talks, and continuously defending my work to like, literally a panel of white men, that could be my father. When somebody asks you in, in, like, oral exams for your PhD are meant to find the edge of what you know, you’re supposed to get to a point where you don’t know. And once and I used to do this all the time, because I was also like, a big procrastinator. And if I don’t care, I don’t do it. So I’d have like coding homework, literally, for a class, my PhD advisor was teaching. And you know, he’s like, why don’t you do the homework? I was like, Well, I was working on research for you. So I didn’t do it. He’s like, Well, what are we do? And I was like, well, let’s sit down with a whiteboard. And I’ll tell you how I would think it out. So that’s often how I approach things in science where somebody asked me a question. You know, or, you know, technically I have a PhD in climate change. But I’m not a climate change scientists. But you could ask me a climate change question. And I might say, well, technically, I don’t know. But how I would start to think about it is like this. And the way that functions on the spiritual side of things for me is taking the meditative time to have that sort of mission statement. I’m a weaver of scientific science and spirit, and I’m here to co create for planetary healing. So whenever I’m at that crossroads of I know this or I know that it’s like, what, just in my body feels like a fuck yes, if I try it on with that statement. And it allows me like, most of the time, I don’t, I know, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m eating for dinner. I don’t even know my calendar for tomorrow. But I do know that I have in place these agreement fields with the unseen in my own like covenant statement with who I am as an incarnated priestess. So I don’t have to worry about it. Like it shows up. And if it’s easy, if it comes to me, like I believe what’s in alignment with my highest self is already coming towards me. So I don’t have to go find it so much.

Alyssa Patmos 1:08:53
Oh, that’s such a huge thing. Because the finding it puts so much pressure like on the on the trying and I I just want to add that, you know, for some people, it’s not like this happens overnight there. There are periods of learning, there’s periods of growth, there’s periods of freaking waiting, like my orchid grows freaking slow. Her name is Olivia. And she grows slow, but she’s beautiful when she comes into bloom. And she’s beautiful throughout the whole journey. If you have patience and and can appreciate the process like she has, I give all my plants names. And yes, they’re all like she or he or whatever I want them to be. She has like six blooms right now. And so she’s gone through the phase of losing all of her flowers and has regrown an entire new shoe and has six blooms on but that process has been months long. And the same can be true for whatever journey we’re on in finding this resonance with ourselves finding this place where we can be resonant and in alignment with ourselves. I know that you know, I would sometimes get envious of the people who are like in my spiritual way And it’s this like, seemingly overnight experience the way that they talk about it. And I’m like, there’s so much struggle, I don’t feel like I’m there. I don’t feel like I’ve had this like one pinnacle moment. And that adds a lot of pressure. And so for me, like, sometimes it’s just in the whispers, like, it’s in the whispers that you choose to pay attention to or not. And if you start to pay attention to the whispers more, it gets easier and easier to discern what’s clutter? And what is that higher self? What is that intuitive voice that’s there. And so for me, the whisper that like kept picking up, I don’t have the, I don’t have the mission statement and the same sort of clarity that you have. But I do know the Word, and the word is nourishment. And I know that I am here to nourish, like, I know that when you nourish things, they can flourish. And so for me, the discernment piece has been around is this nourishing? First off to me, is it nourishing to my soul and my spirit. And then does this allow me to help nourish other people? And specifically, that’s gone more towards relationships, business wise, recently, where it’s like, am I am I helping you nourish relationships, because relationships teach us so much about ourselves? And so I just had to add that, because I’ve had so much pressure, it felt so much pressure over the years to have these spiritual answers, like, right away. And that’s not how it works is part of the journey and unfolding of our entire lives. Because if we aren’t going through that, then we’re dead. And I want to be living and so we have to embrace that.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:11:37
Totally. And when I first discovered Star House and started, like even contemplating committing to a three year spiritual training, I would have these like tidal wave moments of, of coincidence and downloads, and then kind of like, halfway through my second year, like, I was, like, am I regressing, like, that slowed down. And one of the facilitators, I was talking to her about this, like in a, you know, in a less formal setting. And she goes, honestly, like, as you live more and more in alignment with your highest path, like, you get used to it. So it’s not like you’re not getting these tidal waves of spiritual realization, like you are in the flow of it. And that’s why I am now like, you know, every single day, now, there is something that would blow my mind when I was 26 100%.

Alyssa Patmos 1:12:39
That is, this is mind blowing for me, because I because I always felt the pressure to have the one moment, you know, or, or like the big moment, but But when I think about it, it is like, I listen to the whispers now, and it leads to magic in my life on a daily basis. And so I love thinking about it in terms of you’ve gotten used to it, and you’ve embraced that as part of your life. Like, for me, the way it happens is every morning, I’m not gonna say every most mornings I get up and I read before Jeff wakes up. But I have this thing where I don’t read books in chronological order, all the time. And I just like here, which book to go get. And it’s like, this morning, it was breaking the habit of being yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza. And it was like, go to page 222. And so I haven’t read the 221 pages before it. But that page held the wisdom that I needed today. And like, that’s how the magic manifests in my life. So I love this reframe of also getting used to it and it’s it. It’s okay being in in this subtle moments when you choose to listen.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:13:45
I used to have this practice and there’s two practices I’ve recommended to people who’ve come to me for I don’t know what you would put on a website that you could charge for for what I offer, somebody wants that it was just like Time with Amber. One of them is literally staring herself in a mirror and meditating and like owning that those are your eyes and that is your face. And this is the thing that’s thinking the thoughts and the other one is at first it’s intense, but like once a week, unscheduled day zero on the calendar and family friends lovers agreement field, no obligation to anyone and let life lead you. And if that is that you read that page and then you get this like oh my god, I know this place down the corner has brunch and you go by yourself, you know like you will when I let myself do that. I do kind of have this like okay, well I know I know that something I’m supposed to get and then and then you know you do and so when you actually like intentionally say like alright spirit, our highest self. Like the highest self terminology resonates for me, like I, I give you permission to, like, take the wheel. And I’m like, on a need to know basis about where we’re doing and what we’re going. But like, I’m trusting, you know, and you’re not gonna get that far from home or in that much trouble. If you’re just kind of like, Hey, everybody, I need a day that’s just like unscheduled and and that I may end up you know, roller skating with strangers. I don’t know, you know, but I need the agreement field of nobody’s gonna be mad at me for whatever my highest self decides for me to do today.

Alyssa Patmos 1:15:32
Yes, the unscheduled days I can attest to this practice. And the funny thing is, is like, Geoff and I are and you like, we’re all part of the same social group, and we’re very social people. And this social calendar can get to be very intense, because people we have party planning friends, and they just love planning these awesome parties that are so such fun gatherings. But I will sometimes get like so freakin moody. It’s the calendar is full. And it’s partly because I ignore my soul. I ignore my soul around meeting a day when life can leave me I love that phrase that you use, and it will push it will push to the point where I will cause turmoil in the relationship on accident, if I don’t listen to it, and get very feisty about then someone suggesting plans. And so I find that like when we ignore those calls, not to fret because they’re going to come back up, and they’re probably going to come back up with a louder freakin voice that causes more turmoil in our lives.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:16:38
I would say like, can you put it on the calendar?And say just like, this is unscheduled me?

Alyssa Patmos 1:16:46
Oh, yeah, we have no plan days now. It’s like, and it’s in the joint calendar. And it’s like, no plan days. No plans, and you just kind of end up spending them with him. But I go off do my own things at certain points. And that’s great. But yeah, definitely need no plan days.

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:17:04
Yeah, too. And that actually helped me when I was in that phase of like, oh, no, I haven’t had like a miraculous amazing coincidence of events that I take as a spiritual breakthrough, you know, what’s happening, and then I was doing those like, unscheduled days and like, letting life lead me. And then I get them, it was out there reminds me of a practice I had where I, for a month straight. I had to tell somebody and actually mean it. They were beautiful every day. And I would, you know, be like, out and about and witness a stranger who, you know, didn’t look anything like what this perfect thing might be. But they radiated beauty and I had to tell them, and it allowed me like that the intention to put more attention on beauty allowed me to witness all this kind of beauty. So I totally love your like, Now you listen to the whispers because it’s that you know, if you put the intention on, like, you got used to like all spiritual downloads, so I have to like pay a little bit more attention to them. You’re not so much on autopilot, you know.

Alyssa Patmos 1:18:29
Right. Autopilot is the was the worst, the worst. Alright, so thank you so much for this conversation. I had talked to you for days on end. If people want to find you or have questions or want to reach out in some sort of capacity, what is your preferred way that they do that?

Dr. Amber Ortega 1:18:49
Um, probably Facebook and Instagram. And my Instagram @BlackTuesday74. And my Facebook is Amber Ortega, PhD.

Alyssa Patmos 1:19:02
Awesome. Well, thank you so so much for being here and for this conversation. So fun. I love somehow we transition from fire to spirituality to skeptics. We went all over the place I love it. I think it’s it’s important stuff that people end up wondering but don’t always have a place to ask. So thank you for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. And thank you for listening in and catch us next time on Make It Mentionable.

You’ve just finished listening to another episode of Make It Mentionable with me, your host, Alyssa Patmos. If you’re looking for more in between episodes, then sign up for The Peel. It’s my free newsletter that gives tips for how to navigate whatever life dishes and it’s also the place where I share the juiciest of stories. To check it out, head on over to Alyssapatmos.com/thepeel. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top