In Search of Soul

On Friday, February 10, 2023, Veronica Anderson and I met a couple days after the anniversary of our first meeting on February 8, 2022, in the ensoulment process that she has been guiding me through as my ensoulment coach. One of the first questions I asked was, “What is soul?” Her reply was: “authentic self, light, quintessence.” In this conversation a year later, we reflected on the difference a year can make.

Veronica Anderson
It’s nice to be tuning into what you’ve written. I was just reading it, right before our call. Yeah, excited to connect around that and other things.

The Apocrypha is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Stephen Bau
It feels kind of rambly but I think I’m more in the mode of just recording the stream of consciousness rather than going into a full on editing process.

Veronica Anderson
Perfect. I love this energy that I’m feeling from you. It’s really good.

Stephen Bau
Can you describe it?

Veronica Anderson
Well, it’s like, just get started. Just get it done. Do something and feel the confidence of what you’re doing. And that’s lovely.

Stephen Bau
It feels like getting into the mode of… Well, I picked up this book. A Brief History of the Universe by J.P. McEvoy. It’s interesting where it’s getting into… It’s from ancient Babylon to the Big Bang. I’m reading, “Celestial bodies are made of a fifth element called quintessence and their natural behavior is to move uniformly in circles indefinitely around the Earth (which does not move) either by spinning or by moving through the heavens.” And this is the philosophy of Aristotle. That’s interesting. I’m just reflecting on how I’ve seen the movie, The Fifth Element. The big reveal [SPOILER ALERT]—I don’t know if you’ve seen it—the fifth element is love.

And just that’s what I’ve been reflecting on this morning. While the commodification of love as a greeting card holiday usually takes up people’s thoughts this time of year. But that’s kind of the way I’ve been thinking of my own cosmology is that Bau means to build, which means to love. So that’s kind of been my grounding philosophy. And just how my daughter married a Quint. And so I made a recipe book for them called the Quintessentials. It’s been a kind of meditation I’ve been in this morning of trying to think of how this intention of tenderness fits in with expressing love to my beloved. How do I do that? I’m in the mode of quanta and qualia and physics and metaphysics.

And that’s what it’s been is this meeting of the feminine and the masculine in ways that something new emerges out of that. My parents did their best and it was the same like me being sort of a like a living paradox here of trying to fit all these very different things into a more organic whole and trying to embody that. It’s felt like a struggle but it’s feeling much more generative now I think.

Veronica Anderson
Good. I loved I loved in your piece about the part about regenerating the Creator.

That felt really sparkly.

Stephen Bau
Yeah. Well, it was really inspired by that the higher power of one’s own understanding means you get to create your own understanding of who that is, or what that is. It felt like a shift in perception that, “Oh. Well, is that what we’re doing then?” It’s this conversation between the creator and the co-creators, which also redefines the Creator in the process, because that’s kind of how love works is you you open yourself up to vulnerability in that in the process. It becomes a way of inviting that change into oneself.

Veronica Anderson
Exactly.

Stephen Bau
The idea then of the incarnation that I learned about gets larger when the incarnation is that vulnerability of relationship of becoming so weak that the strength is what comes out of that—giving of oneself in weakness.

Veronica Anderson
Am I hearing you correctly that incarnation is becoming so weak and vulnerable…? What was the rest of the point?

Stephen Bau
The strength of vulnerability comes from placing oneself in the weakest position and then recognizing out of that grows something very unexpected, which is something that transcends the fear that we are stuck in—if we subject ourselves to limits and death and pain and suffering, that it can only result in just more of the same. But actually what it does is transforms the whole into something else. And that’s where the regeneration comes from. That regeneration happens from the infinite becoming the finite and then the two becoming one and creating something regenerative out of it.

Veronica Anderson
I am pausing to admire the way you have just articulated what feels like the quintessence of the mystery. You’ve articulated it perfectly.

Stephen Bau
Oh, thanks! Well, I’m exploring how Einstein is just doing these thought experiments. He doesn’t go into the lab to figure these things out. He just goes into a mode of anti-authoritarian, impudent thought experiment—of what if this? What if that? And so it gives me a different way of thinking about what I’m doing, where I feel like I’m just stuck in these systems that want me to do something else, but it has me going in other directions that are… Well, he creates these two theories that seem to be in opposition to each other: the quantum and the gravitational. And so somehow YouTube was just reminding me, remember these videos, this video that you’re watching about What Is Reality? And it’s by a group called Quantum Gravity Research. Essentially, that’s kind of what I’m trying to do. Why are these in opposition to each other? Where’s the connection? There’s got to be some way that they connect. And it’s that we’re looking in the wrong place. We’re not asking the right question. And in looking at these opposing forces, usually, we go into specialization. I’m gonna focus on this or I’m gonna focus on that. But we’re seeing more of a convergence of, well, how do spirituality and science actually fit with each other. Because this experience that we’re having is not one or the other. It’s both at the same time.

I think that’s what I’m trying to articulate is, can we take a look at geometry from the perspective of sensation of what it feels like to be human, and then connect it back to the whole, where the shadows of physicality are actually pointing to the realities of the metaphysical experience that is being produced by a relationship to imagination, the pataphysical? So, it’s that we see the either/or so much that we miss this other reality that’s coming towards us all the time. And because we’re always looking in the rearview mirror, we just can’t figure out what’s going on. Until we just shift our perspective.

Veronica Anderson
That’s powerful. Looking at geometry from the perspective of sensation. I love that. I see also how this conversation has been the most concise and soulful that we’ve ever had, and the way that it started with regenerating the creator. I also heard you articulate, “Bau means build means love. That’s my grounding philosophy.” So I’m just seeing you in this gorgeous clarity today. I’m celebrating that. Wow.

Stephen Bau
Yeah. Well, I’ve had a chance to get into kind of a rhythm of, okay, let’s do 45 minutes of meditation in the morning, do some writing, and then go for a walk. That hasn’t happened every day—the walk part of it. But the meditation… Insight Timer has given me another milestone of I’ve done 40 days of consecutive meditations.

Veronica Anderson
Amazing.

Stephen Bau
So the focus this week has been on action and agency and efficacy—I know how much you like that word, efficacy—and so I’ve kind of been exploring this morning, “Well, what does efficacy mean? And that’s where it comes back to this if it can be quantified—or qualified—it would be measuring it against love. That feels funny, saying measuring, because it’s a thing that comes up in a podcast that I’m being invited into, World of Wisdom, where the host is saying, “Measuring love. That’s absurd!”

But the walks into the forest are just like taking me into “Okay, I’m wading in the water.” And it’s shallow enough that I can just stand in the middle of the stream and just close my eyes and just feel the gravity holding me there—moving the water and me having this inner sense of balance. But it’s not something I think about. It’s just something that I’m doing. But being in the middle of the stream of consciousness of experience and having a different orientation that just creates a much greater awareness of all the sensations going on around me and in me, it just feels alive being present. And then just contemplating this journey of this past year, how that shift has happened.

Veronica Anderson
So you’re saying that efficacy is measured against love?

Stephen Bau
I think so. Or I feel so.

Veronica Anderson
Love that. Great answer. Yeah, I don’t know. That feels real. What is interesting to me is that action… What was the third word?

Stephen Bau
Action, agency, and efficacy—growing out from artifact to sense to possibility.

Veronica Anderson
Hmm, can possibilities be measured?

Stephen Bau
Well, that’s what we learn from quantum physics is that, as soon as you measure it, you’re already collapsing the wave function into a particle. So yeah, possibility cannot be measured unless you’re observing it and the act of observing it is collapsing it into reality.

Veronica Anderson
Fascinating.

Something else that interested me about your piece is the introduction of Circ. Is that…

Stephen Bau
Right? Yeah. Yeah. That came out of a realization that when I looked at the verb tense of the meaning of my name—for some reason, I’d never put this together. I knew that Stephen can mean “crown” or “wreath.” Coming from the Athenian… You know, we’re going to crown someone for being in the Olympiad for showing these feats of strength or  endurance or ability. And as a verb, it means to encircle. And I’m like, “What? How come I never noticed that?” Because that’s all I’m doing. I’m just making circles all over the place.

Veronica Anderson
Such a beautiful statement. Right? Because the circle is the feminine. That’s beautiful.

Stephen Bau
The way Struppi talks about it is to fathom, which is the reach of your arms. And that’s how you can encircle someone with a hug. That’s the circumference. To fathom is to encircle.

Veronica Anderson
Amazing. So has Circ been present for you in any kind of way?

Stephen Bau
That was just the character development. Part of my narrative in The Apocrypha is, “Okay, well, if I’m going to be interacting with my inner children, maybe I need to… it just feels a little bit too self-referential to just call my light masculine Stephen, so maybe I can try a little bit of disambiguation by naming my light masculine Circ, and then it brings it back to this sense of the circle of the celestial bodies. But, it’s meant to also signify the circle of oneness, of the universe, of all. So that felt really resonant when I was delving into all those meanings.

Veronica Anderson
Yeah, I love that. I love that especially because the divine masculine role is to hold space for the divine feminine. So like, his essence is linear, he’s directed and that’s his nature. And then there is balance through the expression of the circle in his action as well when it comes to the feminine.

Stephen Bau
So that’s a really beautiful way of thinking about how Newton recognized the physics of what was going on with the gravitational pull was there’s the inertia, which wants to go in a straight line. But when you add the gravitational pull, it turns that straight line into a circle.

Veronica Anderson
That’s great. That’s very rich. Does any of this translate to the inquiry that you present at the beginning about tenderness and expressing love to your beloved and wondering about how that looks?

Stephen Bau
That’s where I was going through the week. I’ve been wondering, well how do I do this in an embodied way? And it’s kind of letting go of the inertial direction, I guess—now that I’m thinking of this—of the culture is this angry, vengeful, patriarchal kind of, “I need to have full knowledge, full control of everything that’s going on. Otherwise, I do not feel like I’m in my full strength.” But then as I’m witnessing the vulnerability and weakness that Jayne is having to deal with in this fragile body that’s aging and breaking down and what can I do to come around her and help her feel like she is being supported? And a lot of that is actually in the shift in my relationship to my family of origin, my parents and my brothers and, and how my shift in perception of myself has shifted my relationship with my parents in a way that now allows me to have agency and authority over my own beliefs, my own actions and gives me a freedom that allows me to come in closer into intimacy with my wife and my daughter. As they’re realizing, “Oh, you’re actually in alignment and and in support of what we’ve been saying all along.” Because we just don’t feel good in going in the direction that the rest of my family want to go in and so that dissonance has been kind of pulling us apart. And now this is drawing us closer together in recognition that, “Okay, now we feel like we’re in the same orbit, operating as a unit in this relationship.” So it does feel like that’s opening up vulnerability and honesty and tenderness in the relationship. And allows me to be more peaceful as well as I don’t have to be in full control of everything. I don’t have to go, “Oh, I don’t have time for that,” and be dismissive of the needs that are being expressed. I can just be present to them and go, “Okay, well, that means I need to adjust and maybe do something different to help or just allow, let be, but witness and recognize.” So internally, yeah, I can feel a softening of my own heart and a kind of reflection of that same process happening in Jayne.

Veronica Anderson
That’s incredible. What’s that look like? How do you observe that softening in her?

Stephen Bau
Well, she’s saying things that she said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t have said that before, but now it feels safe to do that.” So that’s a big difference from a year ago where there was definitely a lack of a sense of safety that I was really noticing, but not knowing what to do. That’s actually coming from the way I’m being. So instead of the impulse to, “I want to control you and your feelings,” it comes back to, “Oh, if I change how I am being that now has—(the… I don’t know what to call it—not a side effect)—an effect of shifting the relationship in a way that means a different kind of orientation for both of us at the same time. And it’s happening just by being myself. So yeah, that’s an interesting shift in perception.

Veronica Anderson
Incredible. You’ve done such good work. All the codependency, and finding your own truth, and compassionate communication. I’m really, really happy to hear that you’re experiencing these kinds of results now.

Stephen Bau
So as I’m saying that I’m feeling also there’s… The idea of individuation feels like independence or a pulling away that allows me to be myself, I guess, that when we come together, it allows greater tenderness, maybe, and that seems counterintuitive to find my own way rather than always like trying to figure out how I’m trying to be with, without losing myself, I guess, Yeah.

Veronica Anderson
Incredible. Not abandoning yourself for the sake of the relationship through a mistaken impression that that’s what’s expected of you.

Stephen Bau
It’s coming out of that, I think, grief of having done that for so long. But now being in a place where I can appreciate what it feels like to be differentiating myself and, really, getting to know myself.

Veronica Anderson
What do you think has made it possible for you to really get to know yourself? What have you done? Or what circumstances are the cause of this?

Stephen Bau
I guess I believed what other people were telling me that… This is what came up in the Sacred Circle with Brad and Steven this week was, because others were in dissonance with who I seem to be, I believed, “Oh, there must be something wrong with me.” And then it’s been coming to this slow, gradual realization that, “Oh, there’s something wrong with this entire system that just does not feel right with me.” And that is what’s right with me, is that sensitivity that I thought was, “There’s something wrong with me,” is now recognizing, “Oh, that’s my intuition. That’s my connection to the divine feminine, the Spirit of Creativity that I’m referring to as my Higher Power of my own understanding. That shift in perspective now kind of changes everything. And so the question then becomes… Well, that relieves me of the need to seek others’ approval and acceptance and love and to be able to find all of that within myself, then gives me a sense of freedom, agency, and authority that I was looking for outside of myself, and then just being surprised, “Oh, it’s been here the whole time.”

Veronica Anderson
So beautiful. That’s exactly what we’re trying to do here is to create that sense of sovereignty. Everything you need is already inside of you. And I love hearing you articulate your Higher Power. This is a really beautiful moment for me to witness, the process that you’ve been in for the last year of feeling disconnected from God, from Spirit, from anything. And in this moment, I witnessed your complete tranquility and equanimity with this relationship that you have regenerated. So beautiful.

Stephen Bau
I think that’s why I find the writing process helpful—it’s similar to what I hear from other authors—is once it’s out on the page, then it’s a surprise that, “Oh, that was in me. I didn’t I didn’t even know that was there.” And I think that’s what this year has been: a kind of self-authorship, or an invitation into that process of recognizing that internal authority that allows us to be our own authors. And it’s interesting how that idea comes up in the biblical text is that we…

Psalm 127 talks about how every day of our life has already been written before one of them came to be but it’s the paradox of but we’re also invited into the authorship of our own life. We write it through our will. And I think that’s probably the problem that the staunch Calvinists probably get into is, “Well, if there’s predestination, then what are we here for? There’s no free will. It’s already done.” But recognizing the paradox of time is something that we perceive in this momentary fashion, but depending on one’s objectivity, which might only be capable by an infinite being, it’s going to look a little different. But from our perspective, it’s like full authority and agency. So then it can’t be one and that at the same time, it seems, because that would be making ourselves God. But that’s kind of the invitation, isn’t it? It’s to become, as finite beings, one with the infinite. It’s this kind of imaginative leap, into that paradox of “Well, that’s impossible. I think the major change is getting stuck in that mind. The mind just can’t process this. But if I can get into my body then I can feel it.

Veronica Anderson
Exactly. Wow. I love that you’ve articulated here that the way to become one with the Infinite is through self-authorship and that that’s self creation. And I’d love to hear about how your progress is going with The Book of Soul and this sort of compilation of your work that we’ve been working on.

Stephen Bau
Well, that’s kind of how I’m treating The Apocrypha. Or at least the Substack version of it is, “Okay, if I can get into this rhythm now, I’m starting to create a body of work that is really kind of a notebook of how am I going to live into this process of self-authorship. And the becoming is kind of like going into that observation mode of a scientist looking at those experiments and going, “I need to keep a record of this.” How do we even figure out that the geocentric model of the universe just didn’t align with reality? It was because someone took the time to take a look at what was happening and observe, “Okay, if I measure what’s going on here, there seems to be a pattern.” And as those measurements became more refined and the instruments to measure them became more sophisticated, the science could grow out of that. But then, what’s the science of self? And that’s what I’m trying to explore is where we maybe get into this non-overlapping magisteria of: science and religion can’t meet, because they’re looking at two different things. They’re asking different questions. Then, can we start asking a question of the whole rather than the parts? And to do that, it seems like I would have to go within to find that it’s connected to the whole. The concept of interbeing then allows me to understand, or at least to imagine, I can’t find a boundary between the finite me and the infinite other, because the other is me. So then, as I learn more about me I’m learning more about the infinite. So then, this process of The Book of Soul, the book of The Apocrypha is kind of the embodiment of The Way Out Is In. And just being in that process of, instead of being an Information Architect like Richard Saul Wurman, it’s being that “in formation” architect of being in process.

Veronica Anderson
I love it.

Stephen Bau
So that’s what I’ve loved about these conversations is that it’s in the interactions, in the process and the conversation that these ideas start to take form as I’m verbalizing them, or trying to write them down. It’s in that process that things emerge. And I think that feels like the creative process of the Creator to invite the co-creators into the process. So we get to do this together and that’s where the fun comes from. It becomes re-creation, but it also becomes recreation. It’s play. It’s fun.

Veronica Anderson
That’s so beautiful. I love that. Wordplay. Regeneration, re-creation, recreation. Yeah.

Amazing. I’d love to spend a few minutes tuning into the most pragmatic aspects of our work together: sleep and food. Yes, yeah. And hear how that level of your self-authorship process is going. Yeah, it sounds like you’ve been getting more sleep and having time since you’re having this new rhythm of the morning practice, which sounds perfect, if I didn’t say that already. I love: meditating, writing, walk. And then, food supporting [the body]. Because the body loves a food ritual. Healing bodies love a really simple diet. That is just, “This is what works. I get all my nutrients. I don’t have to…” The body doesn’t have to worry.

Stephen Bau
Yes. I think that’s still in process. But I have come into a way of letting Jayne do her thing, which is she prepares the evening meals and that’s what she loves to do is go through recipes and figure out what we’re going to eat together for the evenings. She tries to do things that are healthy and diverse and creative, all at the same time. Because she wants to keep her mind and skills active as well. So it doesn’t reach the kind of like… I don’t know what a purity of diet would look like because there’s so many different ideas and philosophies about what are the right things to eat. What’s working for me in the mornings is getting some frozen fruit, heating that up, having some nuts along with that. And so that feels like I’m just eating whole foods and getting as close to nature as possible, in what I can find in the grocery store. So I’d like to go beyond that by connecting more with the local agricultural community, but that’s going to need some time to wake up over the season.

An interesting thing came up yesterday. The local newspaper came in and I’d had a conversation with the marketing director of the developers of this subdivision and local development area. And she was talking about how they’re really at an impasse with the municipality about how they’re going to help develop this region. So they’re working on this new municipal plan. And it just came in the newspaper: here’s the new neighborhood plan. It’s going through another public hearing. And part of that is connecting it to how people are using this area. It’s mostly parkland and mountain biking trails and so it’s very connected to nature and people just don’t want to see that go away. At the same time, it’s First Nations territory. And I discovered there’s a Fraser Valley Conservancy that is managing the three creeks in this area. And so that was news to me to know there’s this other organization that is already doing this work. I connected to Brad about that and I’m like, “Oh, that’s a really great opportunity to actually start connecting locally to what’s already here.” So that gives me some clues into where I want to go next.

In terms of sleep, my cat, Lucky, is already here in the room saying let me out. You can wait five minutes. But in the evenings we came to this realization that if we wanted to get some sleep, we’re going to have to give Lucky a way to go in and out himself. And so he can scratch at the door as much as he likes. We’re not going to come to the door and open it for him because there’s a window open at the back of the house that he can come in and out of. So that has renewed our sense of rest. Finally, there’s a solution here that allows us all to live in some sense of equilibrium and peace—most of the time.

Veronica Anderson
I love that renewed sense of rest. I’m sure that’s contributing to the clarity of your self-expression. And I’m really, really excited that you’ve meditated 40 days in a row and that you’ve worked your way up to 45 minutes of being present with yourself and opening up that space for your soul speak to you. It’s bearing beautiful fruit.

Stephen Bau
I’d say that’s a work in progress too. It’s very much a lot of monkey mind. But, at least, knowing that’s okay, coming back to breath, and getting into the habit.

Veronica Anderson
Yes. Exactly. Yeah, the monkey mind doesn’t stop. It doesn’t. Like every monk ever has a monkey mind.

Stephen Bau
That’s what it means. “Monk”-ey mind.

Veronica Anderson
Right? Yeah, I think I heard that for the first time just now. So just some encouragement here. You know this. This monkey mind will learn. It will. And you can also ask your higher power to help you with the dysfunctional thought patterns, with this ego that always speaks loudest and first, and feeling it there—feeling that monkey mind. The more that you feel it, the more that you become familiar with it—its quality, its flavor, its tonality—the more you’re able to say, “Oh, hey. It’s you again. Okay.” And the goal isn’t really to silence the monkey mind. It’s really to be able to identify it and say, “Oh, this is you my friend. Oh, I see. You’re the one saying these thoughts. These beliefs come from your voice. Okay. Great. And now I’m going to wait for that other voice, that quiet voice of the soul and heed that voice because that’s the one I want to follow and give space to.” And so it’s a decolonized approach that I’m describing where we’re not trying to kill off the bad plants. We’re not trying to poison all the weeds and make them die and never grow again. We don’t want to kill the monkey mind. It’s a beautiful piece of us. It’s sacred. It’s there for a reason. It’s cute and funny. And what we’re really wanting to do is to name it and give it space that belongs to it, right. Maybe it looks like a little cage, or, you know, some boundaries like, “That’s your forest over there. And now, you know, I’m over here in this clearing, devoted to soul and self and what’s infinite and expansive and unbound. So keep going. Keep looking for the space between the thoughts and feeling into that quality and that other quality.

Stephen Bau
That feels like the reparenting, like naming the children and allowing them to play and marveling in their wisdom and what fun they can have together.

Veronica Anderson
Exactly.

Stephen Bau
I think that’s just being able to recognize them as differentiated and doing different things. So then, I feel like I can, “All right. There’s Circ but then, what’s Luna doing today?” And so I can just tune into the different voices.

Veronica Anderson
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It does all come down to mindfulness and self-parenting. Those are the two big tools and I’m so inspired, Stephen, by you and the way that you’ve really grabbed on to this framework, this approach, and are just in leaps and bounds transforming yourself in the world around you. It is such a gift. Thank you for the way you show up, for all that you do, for who you are. Thank you.

Stephen Bau
I can’t express my gratitude and appreciation for her just having just such a compassionate empathetic guide through this process. I am so grateful for the journey you’ve been on that that now connects to where I’m going. It’s just noticing how the streams come together, you know, as I was walking in the forest. Right? It’s kind of what it feels like. Yeah.

Veronica Anderson
My pleasure, Stephen. Looking forward to keeping in touch over the week and seeing you again soon.

Stephen Bau
Okay. Thank you, Veronica. Have a wonderful weekend.

Veronica Anderson
Thank you. You too. Be well. Bye.

Stephen Bau
Bye.

You can learn more about Veronica Anderson’s work as a as a visionary architect and an ensoulment coach on her site veronica.earth or read more about her work in regenerative community development and as COO of Project Ká in her Substack publication, Regenerist.

The Apocrypha is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.