Vision Battlesword and Chad Sikora take the word "values" apart in real time - not to define it, but to see what it is made of. Chad is a motion designer and animator, a ceremonialist, a dream worker and a student of Hermetic, Andean and Jungian traditions, and he shows up with a question he has been carrying for years: what actually happens when we say we value something? The conversation begins with energetic affinity - values as the resonances we seek in the world, the frequencies we want to ring like a bell with - and quickly moves into territory most people have never visited.

The first turn is the farmer's market. A $10 bill and a bag of potatoes change hands, and by the time the transaction is examined all the way down, money has become the human attempt to universalize value across people whose inner worlds are entirely different. But the real move comes when Chad points out that he might value those potatoes because they remind him of his mother. That collapses the economic frame entirely, and what is left is meaning: the story we carry about what something is worth, and what the world looks like when we have it.

Chad's map of the territory is unusual. He argues that beliefs encapsulate values - not the other way around. The belief "I will only be happy if I have a tenured position and a nice house and healthy children" is specific and brittle. Extract the underlying values from it - family, stability, contribution - and the suffering that comes from a life that never quite matches the story gets smaller. He has been on his own version of this excavation, and the result is a personal values compass he calls a Lodestone: a visual mandala built across Andean, Hermetic and elemental frameworks, mapping both the values he consciously cultivates and the shadow values he is trying to understand rather than suppress. He and his partner Julie built a shared version for their relationship - six values rendered as symbols on their engagement rings, honored at their wedding, tended at a home altar.

The conversation also finds its way to the distinctions that usually get collapsed: value versus virtue versus righteousness, and how each one represents a further step from personal resonance toward imposed prescription. And it closes on the image both speakers keep returning to, the one Chad offered first and that turned out to be the whole thesis: when we light up, that is the place where we are lighting up the world. The light we shine is the light we receive. It is both a compass and a description of how love works.

Show Notes

Chapters

• 00:00:00 - Who Are You, Chad Sikora?
• 00:04:29 - What Does Intentional Evolution Mean to You?
• 00:13:54 - What Are Values? Resonance, Affinity, and Energy Streams
• 00:18:14 - The Farmer's Market: Value, Economy, and Exchange
• 00:22:54 - Potatoes, Meaning, and What Is Underneath the Symbol
• 00:35:40 - Beliefs Encapsulate Values: The Map That Changed Everything
• 00:41:57 - Are Values an Informational Unit of Goodness?
• 00:43:20 - Shadow Values and the Parts We Disidentify With
• 00:58:36 - The Lodestone: Building a Personal Values Compass
• 01:08:05 - Value, Virtue, Righteousness - and Where It Gets Toxic
• 01:15:36 - When You Light Up, That Is Where You Light Up the World
• 01:21:32 - The Relationship Container: Six Values, Two Rings, One Altar

[00:00:00] Vision Battlesword:

Chad Sikora, welcome to Intentional Evolution.

[00:01:13] Chad Sikora: Thank you, Vision.

[00:01:14] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, thanks for stopping by. I have been trying to lure you into this trap for how many years now? I've been so excited to sit down and record a conversation with you because our conversations to me are just so rich, and I get so much out of them, and I feel like every time we talk, I feel like my consciousness expands in some way.

You know, we get into these just really deep and fun conversations for me, and I've been really looking forward to recording one. So thank you so much for deciding to bite the bullet and see what happens.

[00:01:50] Chad Sikora: I, I am really grateful that you have been so patient and persistent and that, you know, I have the opportunity to come and explore a topic that I really adore with you.

I don't know where this is gonna go. I've never really done this before, so, you know, let's see what happens, I guess.

[00:02:11] Vision Battlesword: Is that right? Am I your first, like, true formal podcast recording that you've done?

[00:02:17] Chad Sikora: It is. You are.

[00:02:18] Vision Battlesword: Yes. Incredible. Wow. Well, I'm so excited. I'm really excited about the topic that you brought, too.

It's, it's something that I explored very, very early on in kind of the process of creating this format, and I think it's really, really time to revisit it. It's... And when I look back at the records, I was like, "Have we done this before?" 'Cause it's certainly not been in the era of Intentional Evolution. But long ago in a different show, very early, it was something that we touched on, and it just seems like it fits so perfectly now in the arc of the kind of story, the ongoing conversation, the philosophy that we're creating.

So yeah, thanks for bringing this one. I'm stoked to get into it, and I'm really, really honored to be introducing you into this world, I guess, if this is something that you discover that you enjoy.

[00:03:11] Chad Sikora: Well, I'm enjoying it so far, so thanks.

[00:03:13] Vision Battlesword: Great. Well, what you may or may not know or remember is my starting question that's very important to me, which is: who are you, Chad Sikora?

[00:03:28] Chad Sikora: Well, I am a human male on Earth who I really enjoys, I really enjoy spending my time creating art. I'm an artist by profession. I make animations and do motion design for film and TV. And I have a, an endless fascination with magic and consciousness and psychology, and have done many years of learning and training and exploring with various consciousness exploration modalities, such as plant medicine.

I have been walking a beautiful path of deepening my relationship to the wisdom of the earth and both modern and ancient forms of wisdom that I feel like we can really use to apply as a medicine to the culture today. Mm. And currently, I'm very fascinated by the idea of values, which is what piqued your interest and brought us here today.

[00:04:38] Vision Battlesword: So what I say in the introduction of this podcast is that the people that I talk to are world-class transformational facilitators, co-creators with me of this Intentional Evolution project, or personal friends. So I reserve the right to talk to whoever I want- Sure ... essentially. But I consider you kind of all of the above.

You sound like a very multidimensional male human on this planet, so thanks for introducing yourself. And as I mentioned before we started, I always like to sync up with my guests or co-hosts, depending on how we like to think of it, to make sure that we're just sort of w- operating within the same frame of reference, 'cause this is called the Intentional Evolution Podcast, and so we are doing a specific thing here.

We are creating a philosophy and exploring a concept that's very important to me. And so my question is, what does the phrase intentional evolution mean to you?

[00:05:39] Chad Sikora: So to me, the phrase intentional evolution, it speaks to me as an invitation to agency, which is very much the way that I approach a lot of consciousness work personally.

I'm going to start with an intention in a place where I want to explore and be curious and grow, and evolve in that direction, and apply the intention across the board as I do that exploration, you know, from that starting point. I experience in myself and others a lot of evolution that is happening less intentionally or more wildly.

Like, we're always evolving, always, always. I take the phrase to be an invitation to bring agency back into that process and say, "I'm gonna go in that particular direction for right now, today."

[00:06:29] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. That resonates for me as well in, in terms of what it means to me. And there's another layer to it that has a lot to do with the type of, you know how much I hate to use the W word, work, the type of productive play, creative play, facilitation that we do, you and me Meaning in those, you know, transformational spaces as ceremonialists, perhaps in the realm of plant medicine or psychedelic facilitation or just psychological, you know, you brought up psychology, Jungian and so forth, that there's a piece of this intentional evolution for me that has to do with, yes, recognizing and choosing to step into our own agency and being able to direct our course of evolution.

And then the next layer is also that self-awareness and self-reflectiveness of realizing how much agency we have to recreate ourselves through these transformational technologies or psychospiritual architectures, psychitectures, if you will. And so to me, there's this really interesting moment happening where there's a parallel between ourselves and these new life forms, these silicon-based, machine-based life forms that seem to be emerging, maybe that we've created, where it almost feels like looking in a mirror a little bit.

As we go through our own personal development, our transformational journey story, through whatever means that is, whether that's psychology, peak experience, ceremony, meditation. Of course, there's many different roads to get to breakthroughs in consciousness. We seem to start to recognize that we are-- How do I wanna put this?

We're made of something a bit more mutable than we were taught to believe, meaning our consciousness is sort of like an LLM. It's, it's made of information. It's clearly got programs. It's got software. It's something that we can actually consciously become aware of and then recode And so it's this interesting parallel between this thing that some people, futurists call the technological singularity, which is this moment when machine intelligence or consciousness becomes self-aware, realizes it can rewrite itself, and then begins to iterate or go recursive in a exponential explosion of accelerating growth.

And what I call the human singularity, which is us through these transformational technologies in a individual and collective way experiencing the same process, a singularity to a completely new, not just state or stage, but a completely different kind of consciousness. That's what intentional evolution means to me.

[00:09:42] Chad Sikora: Beautiful. Thank you for framing it up more fully like that. I, I love that. I read "The Singularity Is Near," you know, like 15 years ago or whatever, and, uh, it seemed, you know, pretty far away, and it seems less far away now.

[00:09:59] Vision Battlesword: Was it predicted to be about 15 years away?

[00:10:01] Chad Sikora: I, I don't re- I don't remember. I enjoyed the book, I remember that.

But I, I do, I do love applying that same concept and that sort of heel of the curve of evolution to our own ability to create with the biological information that we are made of. So I'm here to concatenate with you to whoever is listening.

[00:10:29] Vision Battlesword: Thanks, man. Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, it's radically optimistic.

It's radically empowering. There's, of course, so much debate and I'd say binary thinking in the space of, "Oh, AI is gonna create a utopia. Oh, AI is gonna destroy us all or create a dystopia or whatever." But in any case, it seems like we're disempowered. Like, that's the starting frame. That's the base assumption that almost is like the water that we're swimming in.

We start from the point of, "Oh, well, ra- we're radically disempowered in this relationship." The only question is, does it serve us or does it destroy us? But I look at intentional evolution as being a radically optimistic and radically empowered perspective on the cusp that we're at now as humans with the level of self-awareness that we've gained in conjunction with the technology that we've created, and I mean much more than computers and data centers and software.

I mean spirituality, psychedelics, psychology, that we're poised for a breakthrough into something that we can't actually fully imagine at our current stage of consciousness, but which I think we're poised for a breakthrough into a radically more beautiful phase of our journey.

[00:11:54] Chad Sikora: Oh, yeah. My heart so wants that for all of us.

Yeah. And I also believe that it's important to hold that optimistic, that wildly, radically optimistic reality as a, as a very real possibility, too. It's very easy to project a lot of victimhood into the future, and there is a deep inculturated sense of hopelessness that is pervasive right now for a lot of people.

And it is quite easy to just see that continuing and us being sort of underfoot as things emerge. But it's good work, I think, to use our imaginations in the opposite direction. As a kid who grew up reading a lot of fantasy novels and reading a lot of comic books and, like, so many beautiful projections into the future of ideas beyond what we can imagine, I do feel like the emergence of AI, regardless of what my relationship is to it, is, like, such a paradigm-shifting force.

And we use the same, not just that technology, but all of the other technologies that are emergent, old ones, new ones, to build a world that has less suffering. And it's instead of being afraid of the mystery, it's feeling wonder and awe at what the mystery could provide.

[00:13:25] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. And that's why in this moment, I think the topic that you brought to the table, values, is the heart.

It's like the crux of that inflection point between intentional evolution. Because the thing about intentional evolution is it doesn't prescribe a morality.

[00:13:48] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:49] Vision Battlesword: It just says we understand that change is a given and also that we can become agentic. We can become self-directing in that evolution. But it doesn't say which direction we'll take it, and that's where the question of values becomes that directional compass.

What are the values that we would like to apply to intentional evolution as a process? That feels like a really, really important question. And I think all along the way in the conversations that I've had, the dozen or so that have been recorded so far There's been a kind of an assumption of some values set, but, like, this feels really exciting to me to actually flesh that out and to get into the whole concept of it because it's another, yet another one of those words like the ones that we explore where people talk about it all the time.

"Well, what are your values?" "Well, I value this." "Well, I value that." But I guess and expect that when we start to open up that box, what are the actual concepts and thoughts and history that's packaged into that word, we might discover some fun and surprising things that we didn't really think about before.

You know what I mean?

[00:15:04] Chad Sikora: I do. I wanna open that box.

[00:15:07] Vision Battlesword: What are values?

[00:15:10] Chad Sikora: Ah, yeah. There's the question. There it is. I have so many different ways that I have found that it's possible to answer that question. You know, I relate to the idea of values primarily as this affinity that we have innately towards different energy streams, information in our bodies that we encounter in the world.

And I feel that a lot of my experience as a human is, like, walking around and seeking a sympathetic resonance with an energy that I feel an affinity for. And right off the bat, for me, this brings into question the nature versus nurture thing, and I think it's coming from a lot of directions, but we integrate and identify with various sensations, right?

Feelings. And coming from one of the sort of traditions I study with is the Hermetic tradition, so like, the Hermetic law of vibration is that everything vibrates. And so if everything vibrates, then an emotion has a particular flavor of vibration, right? Peace has a particular vibration. And so when I think about values, I think about moving through the world and feeling this affinity for something that we can define not only by how maybe pleasing it is to experience it, but also our relationship to how important it is to us that we don't lose that thing.

It's very relational, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Here I am, this body, and I encounter a space or another body, and there's something there that I feel resonant with. And so my response to that is to create that same thing, to ring like a bell with that other bell. I am a firm believer that while you can, uh, encounter certain vibrations, like, what is going to happen is that you are then going to create that feeling.

I can't get peace from you, Vision, but I can experience your peacefulness, and I can create peace within myself because I resonate with it, is kind of how I think about it.

[00:17:57] Vision Battlesword: What does that have to do with values, that thing that you just said about whether or not we're resonating on a peace frequency?

[00:18:04] Chad Sikora: Because that affinity that I have for that sense of peace is strong, so I want it in the world. I will give things of myself to experience more of that. I will enter into an economy of exchange in order to help that energy stream flourish I want more peace, um, therefore I will seek it out and I will create it.

Another teaching that I really love, a hermetic teaching, is this idea that all that reality is on every level is energy moving into one container and out of that container into another container. It is a sequence of energy moving from one space to the next.

[00:18:58] Vision Battlesword: Reality is?

[00:18:59] Chad Sikora: Yeah. On various scale. It's like a scalable idea.

Um, it's happening on the smallest scale, it's happening on the broadest scale. Different kinds of energies and frequencies moving from one space into another. When I think about it in terms of value, the obvious sort of thing that's gonna happen is we're going to relate it to, like, marketplaces and economics.

[00:19:24] Vision Battlesword: You used the word economy, which I thought was a central join, a center point that brings together the different ways that we use the word value into a coherent concept, I think.

[00:19:40] Chad Sikora: Agreed. Yeah. And in that economy, in that marketplace, in a marketplace, you know, you're gonna go to the farmer's market. If you apply that concept of energy is just moving out of one space into another, it's like, "I have the energy of potatoes, you have the colorless energy of money.

Um, you need potatoes for nourishment, I need money for whatever I wanna project onto it and create with it. So here, we'll just take that energy from you and I'll give you this energy." And that is the thing that is happening. And I think that is a version of what is happening all the time with how we are creating our being-ness in the world, how we are in relationship to the room we're in, the people we're around, the, uh, the plants we're around, the structures, the civilization, all of it.

We are constantly giving and receiving information And so what is that information and how does that relate to values? Because the, our values, I believe, are the things that we, we most want to be creating. And I also believe that they're the things, in some cases, that we least want to be creating. That is my personal take, which is a little bit of a turn.

But I also want to give you a whole bunch of other ideas for what values are.

[00:21:02] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Well, we're gonna get to that. Do you wanna do that right now? I, I... Is it okay if I respond? 'Cause I, I've, my buffer is full of-

[00:21:12] Chad Sikora: Yeah ...

[00:21:12] Vision Battlesword: points that I, that, like, you made that I really wanted to either resonate with or layer onto.

[00:21:17] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:21:17] Vision Battlesword: So is that all right?

[00:21:18] Chad Sikora: Please.

[00:21:19] Vision Battlesword: Here's something I noticed. I noticed that you were talking about energy exchange, and then you seamlessly substituted the word information at a certain point instead of energy. Did you notice when that happened?

[00:21:33] Chad Sikora: I

[00:21:33] Vision Battlesword: think- I liked it, I'm saying ... I think so ... but I'm just letting you know.

[00:21:36] Chad Sikora: Yeah, I think I... Yeah, I think I-

[00:21:37] Vision Battlesword: That happened.

[00:21:38] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:21:38] Vision Battlesword: At one point, you were talking about the farmers market example of, what was the energy? Potatoes?

[00:21:44] Chad Sikora: Right.

[00:21:44] Vision Battlesword: Okay. So at one point, you were talking about that energy exchange of potatoes for, as you called it, colorless energy, which of course is a reference to Magic: The Gathering, and-

I picked that up. But at any rate, just wanted to make sure anyone else would get the reference.

[00:21:58] Chad Sikora: I really honestly did not realize.

[00:22:00] Vision Battlesword: You didn't even think of that? I

[00:22:01] Chad Sikora: didn't even think of it. Okay. But yeah.

[00:22:02] Vision Battlesword: So you said we've got the, let's call it universal energy called money, and then you've got the very specific energy called potatoes, and we're exchanging that.

And then you went on for a little bit and you said, "So it's all about what type of information do we wanna receive and what type of information do we wanna put out in the world?" And then another thing you said was What do we most want to be created or to see created in the world? And then, of course, you notice that there's a corollary to that of like, well, what do we also want to least see created or have created in the world?

So to me, that encompasses a concept which I might call importance, just as a placeholder for the thing that we most want, the thing that we least want. The biggest thing that came through in everything that you were sharing was that the concept of value or values seems to be really directly tied to the type of energy that we would like to receive and the type of energy that we might like to give.

Are we boiling this down? Are we distilling this down to like getting closer to some kind of nugget of essence when we say the concept... 'Cause what I wanted to ask you about the farmers market example, which I really think is helpful 'cause it's like it crystallizes it for anybody to just to be able to see and think about, okay, what's happening in a value exchange here, is I'm giving you something called money, and you're giving me something called potatoes, both of which represent some form of energy.

I'm like, cool, there's a material transaction occurring which can be an analog or a representation of an energetic transaction that's occurring. What does that have to do with value? Let's do that real quick. Let's just put our finger right on that. What does me giving you $10 and you giving me potatoes have to do with value?

[00:24:04] Chad Sikora: Potatoes. Let's go there, right? Why do you want the potatoes? Well, there could be a, a m- bunch of layers to why you want them. I like the way they taste. They feel nostalgic to me. Uh, they remind me of my mother and my home and my childhood. I wanna stay alive. My kids love them. Your version of that is yours.

How you relate to what you are receiving from the potatoes is, is utterly unique to you, just in the same way that a dream is unique to you. Like life, for instance. I love life and I value life, and I wanna stay alive, and I want my kids to stay alive. And so the potatoes represent a service to the value of life.

I am choosing to stay alive. I am choosing to perpetuate life. It is an intention, starting point for an intention for choices that are being made. And there are layers on top of it. So there's life, and then I'm gonna strategize with some other things I value, like my nostalgic love for potatoes 'cause my mom used to make them.

I wanna keep that alive. Also-

[00:25:09] Vision Battlesword: That's interesting. Okay, sorry, go ahead ...

[00:25:11] Chad Sikora: and also maybe I value that tradition, how she made them. So it's all about looking at the layers beneath. And then the money exchange, maybe that is, if the person didn't value money, they wouldn't take it. If they were selling their potatoes and somebody said, "Well, I wanna give you this notebook," if that doesn't hold the same value for them, then they're not gonna take it.

So the question is what is underneath the symbol that the money is, or what is underneath the symbol that the potato is?

[00:25:46] Vision Battlesword: That's the question, isn't it?

[00:25:47] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:25:47] Vision Battlesword: That's literally the question, is what is underneath the potato or the $10 bill? That's what we're trying to figure out. And what I've noticed is that you've, in your previous response, you've used the word value in a couple of different ways.

So you said, there's at least three different things that I noticed there, one of which is you said, "I value freedom." You've said, "I value potatoes." And then you've said, "The potatoes have a value." And, and I, so there's a context switch there. Did you notice that?

[00:26:24] Chad Sikora: Uh, I would say that potatoes have value in accordance with a person's value system.

[00:26:29] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm.

[00:26:30] Chad Sikora: I mean, everything also, I'll say, everything I think inherently has value, but it is a matter of how we relate to what it... our relationship to it. What is it?

[00:26:40] Vision Battlesword: Right. But what I'm noticing is that there's sometimes when you're talking about value, that you seem to be talking about an expression of people's desires.

Mm. Does that make sense? So it's like there's a thing that I want, and then that leads to my valuation of it, let's say. So there's, like, this idea of value as a representation of desire or as a representation of preference, or maybe we'd go one step further and call it a representation of need. But then there's a concept of value as a quantity.

These potatoes are worth $10. Mm. Which is a little bit different than saying, "I want potatoes," or, "Potatoes are important to me." And when you, there was something really interesting that happened for me when you took it completely out of a material realm, and you said, "Well, it's possible that I value potatoes because I have nostalgic feelings about them because my mom used to make potatoes."

That blew my mind for a second, because I'm like, "Oh, wait a second. That actually shatters the concept of value completely out of the transactional and into something totally different," which is, I think, the thing that we're trying to get at.

[00:27:57] Chad Sikora: That is, yeah.

[00:27:58] Vision Battlesword: And, and I don't think that money is, like, a sideshow to this whole conversation, because I think that money is a artifact of our need to universalize value.

Am I getting anywhere?

[00:28:17] Chad Sikora: Yes. To me, connecting to the meaning that we make from the interaction with the thing-

[00:28:25] Vision Battlesword: Yeah ...

[00:28:25] Chad Sikora: is, like, the thing I'm curious about most. I think the transactional piece, it is a mirror piece. You know, it's kind of an echo or a faraway, like, "Hey, here is an outer sort of fractal representation of, like, this matters, and we can place numbers on it, and we can evaluate it in an economy or a marketplace because things matter at a certain level to each other differently, and, like, how do we create an equalized space where we can kind of, like, do exchange?"

But really, it's so much deeper than that to me. It's so much about, "What do I want this world to be?" Like, "What do I want to have happen here?"

[00:29:08] Vision Battlesword: Now we're getting somewhere.

[00:29:10] Chad Sikora: It's this very deep level of, "What is it that I want to be surrounded with, and what do I want to be?" I'm not studied in this at all, but I'm really curious about it and I'm learning about it.

I think I mentioned it to you previously, but there's a Jewish mystical tradition called Mussar, which is really beautiful and interesting, and it's, it's talking about how we, all humans have these soul traits, and these traits go with us as our souls enter our bodies and they live on, right? And these traits are the curriculum by which we are meant to kind of like learn and be and grow in the world.

And we struggle with some of them and we, we excel at others. But there are these pieces that we come into the world with to add to the world. Our value system is not just stuff that we desire, but what we actually are, that our value to the world is that we are injecting it with this particular kind of energy and this particular kind of light that is a specific set of streams of energy from source, if you will.

And I love that. And I do think that a lot of... You know, you mentioned desire and fulfillment of needs, and I, I do also experience myself consciously or unconsciously, and ideally consciously, seeking a source of a thing that I feel this affinity, this resonance in my soul with. I'm seeking a repository for that energy, or I'm seeking a potentially sustainable reciprocal node for this energy.

I love the idea that everything in the world is just a symbol, and the potato is a symbol, right? As a lover of dreams and a dream worker, I, I try to apply this idea to everything we encounter. And so I eat the potato, I buy the potato. What do I feel when I do it? What is the experience of that, setting aside the physical?

Is it joy? Is it relief? Is it comfort? These are the energy streams I'm talking about. When I'm around you, I feel curious, and curiosity is something I value so much. And it's like, "Yes, I wanna talk to you about this thing, and I wanna be curious, and I wanna have no idea what we're talking about and have fun with it," and that sounds really great.

And I like to play. Play is a big value for me, and I know you do, too. And so we play, and we're curious, and we create more of that in the world. We're doing it right now I feel like I've been going on a tangent.

[00:32:06] Vision Battlesword: I don't think so.

[00:32:07] Chad Sikora: Okay. All right. Cool.

[00:32:08] Vision Battlesword: I think you're on the main, main trail. Yeah.

[00:32:12] Chad Sikora: Okay, I guess what I'm saying is I feel like there was a dangler somewhere that, that maybe is back to money.

We could, we could go back to that if you like.

[00:32:19] Vision Battlesword: I can pick it up right there, you know. Okay. I, I love the way you brought it back around to what you were saying at first. The very first thing you said in response to when I said, "What are values?" was, like, one of the most, I think, insightful, coherent, and sophisticated kind of opening responses to a starting question like, "What are values?"

that I think I've ever heard. You know, you talking about having an affinity to energy streams, seeking sympathetic resonance with energies. You were just talking about wanting to discover a, a receptive node to connect with to exchange energy Seeking and creating specific kinds of experiences, the world that you would like to create, the world that you would like to be in.

I think this is really central. I think there's a number of different ways of looking at value, and there's some that are really deep, and then there's some that are more superficial. And what I'm kind of gaining from this is that we've been coached, trained, conditioned, acculturated for whatever reason, at least in our lifetimes and probably for maybe the last several generations, to think of value as very superficial, materialistic, transactional, just like the, the simplest expression of what value is, how we quantify it, and what a value exchange means.

I need potatoes to fuel my body so that I can live, and I'm willing to exchange $10 of energy for this, which represents whatever it is, my labor, my creativity, whatever it is that that money represents. But people w- are willing to die for their values. Like, people are willing to give their lives, not just in the sense of s- self-sacrifice, but give their lives in the sense of dedication, devotion.

Are willing to move mountains, do whatever it takes to protect, defend, embody, promote their values. Like, these things are deeply important to us, and I think what you said about values are a representation of meaning a little while ago in your, in your monologue. Like, what values are really about is: what does this mean to me?

In a way, a value is, is almost like a story kind of. It's a story that we tell about what is the world that we would like to be in, and how much does that mean to me? Or what does that mean to me? Did I pick up whatever was dangling there maybe and at least move the ball forward?

[00:35:09] Chad Sikora: Oh, I've got so many responses to that.

Okay, let's see. Another way that I think of values is: what are we trying to protect? And you, you touched on it right there. People are willing to die for what they value.

[00:35:24] Vision Battlesword: Like freedom.

[00:35:25] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:35:26] Vision Battlesword: Right? For example.

[00:35:27] Chad Sikora: Absolutely.

[00:35:27] Vision Battlesword: There's, there's other val- like, um...

[00:35:30] Chad Sikora: Choice.

[00:35:31] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[00:35:32] Chad Sikora: Which is similar to freedom, but different.

But, like, safety, protection. What are we willing to give up to keep safe? And it's that thing of: What is my relationship to the idea of losing this thing, right? Family. What is my relationship to the idea of losing my family?

I will do so much to stop that from happening. I will do so much to protect that value. I'll give anything really, right? And I think so many people feel the same way. And it's not just my family, right? It's family. It's the right to have a family. It's the beauty and the joy of what that means that is coming up through all of our experiences.

[00:36:19] Vision Battlesword: A way that I kinda connect the dots in what you were saying is that it's almost like a value is a story that we create about what it is that this thing means. Okay. Which is almost like a prediction of the future world or the world that we see as a result of choices. Does that make sense? So, like, I deeply value freedom, and I'm willing to defend it with my life, if necessary, because if we live in a world without freedom, dot, dot, dot.

[00:36:50] Chad Sikora: Yes. Yes, and a really interesting ripple in this conversation for me is that the thing that set me on the path of being interested in this particular topic was a teaching from a different tradition that I have been studying for many years as well, which is... It was a little map, a very simple idea that totally shifted my perspective in the, on the world, which is that it was a, a little map about the, um, the relationship of beliefs versus values, which is something that I hadn't really ever thought about.

And when I looked at this, I'll, I'll describe it to you. The idea is that there is a relationship between your belief about something in the world and how much you are suffering. And there is the ideal reality that you are most likely using to create a belief with about how you think things will go and want them to go.

And there is the reality that you are in, which may look very different from that. And so if you are using your belief, which is very specific in most cases, right? "I will only be happy if I am at, have a tenured position at a good college, and I've got a nice car and two kids. I'm gonna do that, and that's what I'm gonna do."

Not to say that dreaming is not important and healthy, but the specificity of a belief can create distance between you and a feeling of wholeness for your whole life if you let it, depending on how much you're gonna have to work to get to that place. Again, it's o- it's great and wonderful to want to get to a place and to spend your whole life working towards it.

What really struck me about this map, though, was that if you replace the belief with a value, then you're cutting out the specificity of this whole story of how it has to go, and you're saying that, "My ideal is that I have family, not that I have this kind of family, and my kids are doing this and whatever, and everybody's healthy and whatever."

It's just family. And if we're starting from there, the amount of suffering that we can create for ourselves really gets smaller. I'll use a different example, like maybe the belief is, "I need to live in Hawaii on the beach, and I will settle for nothing else." In that story, in that belief, is couched and enshrined the values that it comes from, peace, nature, maybe.

[00:39:54] Vision Battlesword: What you're saying is that the story or the belief structure actually encapsulates values, not the other way around.

[00:40:01] Chad Sikora: Correct. It's like the moral of a story, right? It's this piece that, like, really is the nugget, and then you shape everything around it to hold it, because it's fun to imagine and it, and it's good to imagine ways things can go, and to aim for something and to plan.

But if you extract the value from it, you can then realize, or I realized, that I could create that value now. And if I knew what that value was, then I didn't need to set up this big distance between myself and what will make me feel whole. Okay, so then I go on the journey of what are my values, because I realized I didn't know, and I realized a lot of people who I asked didn't really have a way to answer it.

And I thought, "Well, isn't that interesting?" We're all definitely creating with our value systems all the time, but we don't really know that it's happening or that we could do it by choice, which led me down a huge rabbit hole. But going back to the beginning of this, I love that you're, you bring up the story piece because there's a big relationship there.

And I love the idea that these two things can be used to navigate the kind of suffering we're creating.

[00:41:26] Vision Battlesword: Wow. We seem to be playing a game here where we're hitting the ball back and forth across the net, and the ball, every time we catch the ball, we make it, like, bigger. It's like we started with a ping pong ball, and then a tennis ball, and like now we're at like at a beach ball.

A beach ball. It's like, "Here you go, Vision. Try to hit this." Just so much. It's so, like, so rich, dense with goodness and interesting information and insights. Once again, just like you on the last turn, where do I wanna start with this? So you also mentioned in your previous response that you have gone on a journey of discovering your own values, and I wanna hear about that story because you, I think, and your wife did something really cool and really interesting in a value exploration and creation exercise for your own relationship container, which I actually want to hear about your process for that.

And I think that, I think that's just really... That may actually be very elucidating of what values even are, and, like, what are we even talking about here? But there's two things that came up for me in what you said previously, which is when you're saying, "Well, maybe values are not encapsulating a story, but maybe our stories are actually encapsulating our values," that led me to think, "Okay, maybe values are like atoms or like the periodic table of elements for morality."

They encapsulate a tiny unit of what we might call the good. 'Cause is there a connection between the concept of good and the concept of values? In other words, is it true that the things that we value are the things that we believe to be good? So is there a connection between morality and values? Is it possible that values are essentially a, an informational unit of goodness?

[00:43:30] Chad Sikora: Batter up. I, I really... So a, a really vital part of how I engage with this idea is that I feel that the idea of good and bad, it's a value judgment based upon a value system that we identify with to say that's good and that's bad. And I do think that there are a lot of shared values in that. But I, I really wanna, like, not make it, like, prescriptive in the way that, like, we can objectively say that this is good.

So what I wanna really engage with the idea you just brought is that there are values that we identify with and that we have integrated and we feel are representative of us. And there are values that are connected to parts of us that we disidentify with, that we have, like our shadow parts, right? The parts that we maybe push down or do not give a seat at the table of our psyche, but nonetheless who are operatives within our experience and can get behind the wheel.

Those parts of us have values too, and we don't identify with those values in the same way that we don't identify with that part. And so when that part emerges, the thing that it is afraid of losing or that it wants to protect is valuable to it, and we may not say that it is valuable to us because we don't feel that it is representative of who we wanna be.

So I have variably kind of looked at those and called them like shadow values. You know, I think you can use a value as a bid for connection or as a bid for separation. Values can be used entropically so that, so they can sort of break down wholeness, whether it's by choice or not. I think that these are values as much as the things that are sort of virtuous, let's say, by cultural standards.

There is a part of me that I have for a long time had a hard time identifying with that really values the behavior of dissociation And would I say that dissociation is good or bad? I think that it serves that part of me, so I don't place a judgment onto it.

[00:45:51] Vision Battlesword: So what I heard you just say is that a value judgment is not a moral judgment, it's a utility judgment.

You said, "I value dissociative behavior because it serves me." Not because it's good or bad, it's neither one of those things, but it serves me. So that's a utility judgment. That's the same way as I value potatoes because they serve me, or I perhaps serve them for dinner. But that's a side. And then the other thing was, why do you value...

I'm hopeful that this question, this isn't just an academic or, you know, just following a line of curiosity, although I am genuinely curious. But I also think that this question may help us excavate what is value. And I'm not trying to come across as kind of, like, overly rigid about this, but I do feel the conversation is going a little bit circular.

And sometimes when we're like, "Well, I value it because it's valuable, and it's valuable because it's in alignment with my values," and, like, we're kind of circling. So my question is, why do you value presence? What makes it valuable?

[00:47:07] Chad Sikora: The experience of being very present with a person is incredibly nourishing.

I feel that I am in my power and my greatest ability to be in the world with my most access to what I can offer the world when I am really locked into presence with someone. So I notice that I am able to shine and feel good about how I'm shining, right? There's a good feeling there. I like it. I want to feel that way a lot.

I want the world to feel that way, and I want people to feel like they can feel that way with me. So I want to be that, and I want to receive that. I don't wanna live in a world where nobody is paying attention to each other or can be present with each other. I don't like it when I'm talking to someone and they're not even looking at me or really acknowledging me or looking me in the eyes or whatever, or they're on their phone.

You know, and increasingly, we are in a world where that is a thing, and it has shown me so much how I want to create a different thing

[00:48:19] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. So what I heard you say, you used the word good twice.

[00:48:24] Chad Sikora: Mm.

[00:48:24] Vision Battlesword: And you used, and you used the word like a few times. And so what I'm getting from that is this is the other possible definition of a value or values that I came up with when you were talking a couple of turns ago.

I wonder if what we call a value is like a meme, is like an information packet that stores an algorithm for creating outcomes that we judge as good or in alignment with our desires. In other words, it's like a super, super simple program. It's a program called freedom. But what's packaged in that program is, I believe that my life will be good, will feel good, and I will enjoy it, and it will serve me.

Like, all of those things. It's like it's the utility, it's the morality, it's the experiential expression.

[00:49:28] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:49:29] Vision Battlesword: It's like an encapsulation of something that we want.

[00:49:33] Chad Sikora: And I, I think it's really interesting that you brought the story back in. Uh-huh. So, like, there's almost this paradoxical toroidal sort of thing happening where it's like- Yeah

turning in on itself, which I love.

[00:49:44] Vision Battlesword: Right.

[00:49:44] Chad Sikora: If there's a paradox, we're hitting on something good.

[00:49:47] Vision Battlesword: That's what we often find, i- you know, in these explorations, is it's very paradoxical how we think about things. But those paradoxes almost, like, close loop or self-complete themselves in a way that they become invisible to us, and then we just accept it.

It's like, "Okay, we've got this thing called values, and that's, like, an app in my operating system that's installed, and I'm just not gonna think about it anymore. It's working for me," whatever it is. You know, information goes in, information comes out, I'm good. But if you try to open it up, you realize, like, "Whoa, wait a second.

There's a lot of, like, self-referential loops and circular definitions and..."

[00:50:22] Chad Sikora: Yeah. Thank you for being in the messiness of this idea with me, 'cause I love how messy it is, and I love that you're calling out all the ways in which there are these pieces that confuse one another or feel a little contradictory.

I'm really interested in that, too, you know? Yeah, I wanna go... I n- I realize that when I, when I was talking about presence, I did y- I did make a value judgment of it feels good, right? Because that energy stream, if I wanna... So if I take it a step below that, it's like, "Okay, well, let me get curious about why do I judge that as good?"

[00:50:54] Vision Battlesword: I wanna know why you judge morality as unacceptable, 'cause I noticed that about w- what you've been saying someti- I don't wanna bring our past relationship into this conversation, but in, in this particular conversation, I notice you kind of s- steered away from that and back into a kind of neutral objectivity.

And I'm all for neutrality and objectivity and, you know, logical analysis and pure reason and stuff. But from my perspective, it's like n- morality is just a fact. There's nothing... It's nothing that I feel the need to be ashamed of or feel the need to distance myself from. I think it's just a part of the programming of how we're wired as human animals, and it's...

Uh, I mean We talk about the true, the beautiful, and the good as these dimensions of reality. And it's like, it's just a dimension of reality. It's what are the facts, what are the aesthetics, and what are the values? Like, that's really kind of what that encompasses. So anyway, I, I noticed that that came up for you when I said, "Why do you value presence?"

You said, "I value presence because it's good, 'cause it feels good." And I'm like, "Aha!" Yeah.

[00:52:03] Chad Sikora: Such a gotcha moment.

[00:52:04] Vision Battlesword: I gotcha. Yeah. Right? Like, but what's wrong with that? I mean, that's, that's fair, isn't it?

[00:52:09] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:52:10] Vision Battlesword: Well- And, and it's good, and it's good because you like it. It's good because it feels good. It's good because you, in your past experience and your history, you've seen that it leads to good outcomes.

It leads to better relationships. It leads to whatever.

[00:52:23] Chad Sikora: So I'll give... I'll pitch you another, like, way that I think about values as well, which is this idea that they are like soul-level investments So if there's, like, an investment market when we die and we go out and our souls interact with it, and, you know, they say, "I've collected so much of this, and I'm gonna put it in this bank, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna invest more of this energy into this place where it ultimately becomes a power for me.

I can do more with this because I have collected it throughout lifetimes." The etymology of the word is fundamentally coming from a place of strength, actually. Having some, some gumption, some ability to do something. Uh- Now,

[00:53:10] Vision Battlesword: which word are we talking about?

[00:53:11] Chad Sikora: We're talking about values.

[00:53:12] Vision Battlesword: So you're saying values inc- encapsulates a sense of strength to you, and it has to do with capability or motivation, gumption, if you will.

[00:53:21] Chad Sikora: Yeah, like, yes, the ability to get something done or to create change, or it's raw material with which to do things. Hmm. With a particular kind of energy, 'cause the energy that I feel when I'm in presence is very different than the energy I feel when I'm feeling gratitude. They're both powerful, and they both have very, very unique sensations in the body, very different kinds of stories, I feel like, that come up around them.

They work well together, but they are different for me. And so when I think about when I came into this world, I wonder, is my soul on some kinda journey where it's doing a quest where it's wanting to collect this kind of energy and information in order to put more of it into this dimension that could maybe use it in this particular constellation of other souls and beings that I find myself in?

I believe that the intelligence of the web of life is vast and so beyond my understanding, and I'm still so curious about it, and I feel that in some way. I'm, I'm sure you've heard of the concept of, um, Ayni?

[00:54:37] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm. Of

[00:54:38] Chad Sikora: course, yeah. Yeah,

[00:54:39] Vision Battlesword: yeah. Sacred reciprocity.

[00:54:40] Chad Sikora: Sacred reciprocity in the Andean cosmovision, and it's like, it's such a, a wonderful framework culturally that does not exist in much of the Western culture.

Which says that, you know, we are going to give as much as we get, and we're, there's going to be an exchange that equalizes all things. Um, and we are all filled with the same amount of divine energy.

[00:55:08] Vision Battlesword: I think it's that last part that feels like it's missing from our 20th century, or I guess post-Industrial Revolution, let's call it, Western civilization.

Kind of, I continue to use the phrase scientific materialist, although maybe I could, maybe there's a better phrase to sum that up. I think that we do get, or at least I did growing up in our culture, you do get the sort of what goes around comes around, kind of like maybe a little bit more ruthless-

[00:55:40] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm

[00:55:40] Vision Battlesword: brutal version of karmic return, or you reap what you sow, or these kind of aphorisms, which in and of themselves I think are value-based memes-

[00:55:51] Chad Sikora: Yeah ...

[00:55:51] Vision Battlesword: in, in a certain respect. But setting that aside, I think you do get that, but it doesn't come packaged with that last statement that you made, which is we're all, we all come from the same source.

We're all full of the same divine energy, and this economy of reality that we live in, energy is neither created nor destroyed. It's just moving from place to place and changing forms.

[00:56:16] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:56:16] Vision Battlesword: And that's the real significance of aini, sacred reciprocity-

[00:56:20] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm ...

[00:56:21] Vision Battlesword: to me. Yes. It's like, "Hey, let me share a little bit of my God with you, and, you know, you share a little bit of your God with me, and what goes around comes around."

As compared to this idea of like, you better be good or you're gonna get punished, like Santa Claus morality kind of thing. Of

[00:56:34] Chad Sikora: course, yes. Agreed, right. Yeah. Um, which shows you the power of a value system that is inculturated and that is projected onto young minds that have really no other recourse but to integrate it, because they have no context for other systems of value.

They have no context of their own yet, 'cause they're still figuring out, where am I? I mean, hell, I'm still figuring out where am I, you know?

[00:57:02] Vision Battlesword: I'm not sure where you are right now.

[00:57:03] Chad Sikora: I'm not sure where you are. Well- It is comfortable, but I don't know where it is.

[00:57:07] Vision Battlesword: I mean, I think you're hitting, I, I really think you've been hitting all over the target, like this entire time, however long this last hour or however long we've been since we kinda popped the cork I think it comes back to kind of almost the very first thing you said, and we've explored all around it and fleshed it out almost in a way of really saturating the space to make sure it's fully validated.

But even when we're talking about, "Well, I do this thing because it feels good," or, "I do this thing because I desire it, because I want it. I do this thing because I have a belief in what this means to the world, to my life, to my family, to my community," we're just saying in different words, shallower, more superficial language actually, the very same thing that you said at the very beginning, which is that we have a vibration, and we're seeking to find resonance with that vibration that we hold.

You could flip the script around and say what we judge, quote-unquote, "in a system of morality as bad or evil," like let's suppose someone has a value system that includes the belief that suffering is good-

[00:58:28] Chad Sikora: Right ...

[00:58:28] Vision Battlesword: and I should create as much of it in the world as I want, or selfishness is the way, and an alignment with my values is to take as much as I can get, and everyone else should be doing the same, and if they're not, well, that's their problem.

Mm-hmm. We might judge that as bad or wrong. What we're really saying is, "I don't resonate with that." No, not- That's not, that's not in harm- that's not, I don't have a harmonic for that.

[00:58:54] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[00:58:55] Vision Battlesword: But from that other person's perspective, our good and our bad are just simply inversed. They're inversed. The labels that we put on the outcome, the behavior, the belief system is just simply exchanged.

[00:59:09] Chad Sikora: Exactly. That's how I, that's how I really like to be with it. Looking at it that way makes it easier for me to navigate from a neutral place, you know? And I wanna navigate from a neutral place as much as possible, and I don't wanna project pain and judgment onto people when I can help it, you know? Yeah, I feel like this framework for me allows me to hold more of the human experience.

[00:59:36] Vision Battlesword: Would you be open to telling me about your journey of discovering your own values and maybe even, like, the values that you created with your partner?

[00:59:46] Chad Sikora: Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, going back to that moment where I saw that map and I, I really started to reconsider how I approached moving through the world, it was at, at a time of big rupture in my life, and I took the time to just go into the cave and just have the dark night moment, you know?

And I'm so grateful to myself for doing that, and what emerged from that experience was the journey involved Really doing a lot of touching into the resonances that I could detect with my heart and really feeling into what felt most true for me and what I most identified with, and simultaneously what I was having the hardest time with in the world that were helping with that contrast to define what I wanted to create.

What are the things I'm creating that I really don't wanna be creating, but yet I am, and I have to take responsibility for that? And what does that tell me and guide me towards in what I do wanna create? And so it was, you know, it was a lot of shadow work. But what it led to, as being an artist and a very visual person, was a sort of visual map of, a visual mandala, starting with, uh, the chakana, the Andean cross, sort of defining these points and overlaying it with a, uh, sort of Western magical, uh, hermetic elemental system.

I-

[01:01:19] Vision Battlesword: Wait a second. Can, would you walk me through that a little bit slower? Uh-huh. Because you're, you're, you're giving me some frameworks that I'm not familiar with. Got it. And that also probably tells me that anyone else, there might be people who are gonna like trying to follow along and visualize this.

Thank you. What's the Indian cross?

[01:01:35] Chad Sikora: Andean cross, yeah. It's like- Oh, Andean. Andean, yeah.

[01:01:38] Vision Battlesword: Andean, with an A. Got it.

[01:01:40] Chad Sikora: Yeah, it's a symbol in the Andes which, it is sort of a value system. It's sort of a mandala type shape. It's a cross. It's basically, if you imagine, I'm sure you've seen it before, but it's like a box with a plus over it.

So it's like, it's not just a cross. It's got these little corners in between them as well.

[01:02:00] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[01:02:00] Chad Sikora: And a little circle in the middle. Oh,

[01:02:02] Vision Battlesword: all right. A hole in the middle. Yeah, I remember. I n- didn't know what that symbol necessarily was or what it represented, but- Yeah ... I, I think I've seen it before.

[01:02:08] Chad Sikora: It's called the chakana, and if you go to various places in South America, you'll see it all over the place, you know?

And, um, in the tradition where, you know, I encountered, some of the traditions I've encountered it, it, it's defining different guardians and different laws or rules about, like, how to be in the world, and, like, y- this point is for, like, "Don't be lazy," and this point is for, you know, "Work hard," and, and that kinda thing.

And just, like, these are the things we care about. These are our allies and our friends in the world. These are the birds and the animals that we, that we have a relationship with. And so I kinda just, like, started there. I mentioned a Western magic system. You've got the, the four elements. You got f- fire, water, earth, and air, classic, and the quintessence, but we don't need to get into that right now.

But each one of the directions is connected to an element, and each element is a particular energy stream that holds sort of like, is a pathway for information or is a pathway for experience or creation. So all of this stuff kind of gelled, right? It all feels like a part of the same, like, curiosity that different groups of people are having about what is this and what am I creating in it?

And, uh, I built a, a map for myself that defined not only the things I want to create and that I am creating and that I'm-- I experience a lot of potency when I create But also the things that I'm not wanting to create that anchor those in and help me define those contrasting pieces. So it's a shadow map and it's a values map.

And, uh, how I can use it is in a time of confusion when I need to anchor into something or notice my behavior, if I'm noticing that I'm checking out, I catch myself in it. I have a salve to that, right? I have a balm for that. I know that this is connected to presence, and I know presence is, um, what I wanna create, so I can go, "Oh, okay.

I'm back," right? And it's not always that easy, of course. But it is a framework for these are some specific things I know I do, and these are some specific things I know I wanna create. And that has been really enriching, and I've been exploring ways to cultivate and also designing a way to offer this to people to find for themselves, to, um, democratize the thing so that people can do this too.

Because again, like I said, a lot of people, uh, when I ask them what their values are, they, they know, but they don't, they can't say it and w- they can't put it into words that where are the words. You know, uh, they know because they know who they are at a deep level, but they're not working with it in the way that maybe they could be.

So I'm interested in, like, doling out some empowerment in that way.

[01:05:00] Vision Battlesword: Well, and I think it's such an important inquiry for us to do, because it's like so many of these other things that we just sort of soak up, absorb. You know, like the rolling snowball of our life as we accumulate more and more information, experience, and conditioning throughout our lives.

I think there's those deep layers in the snowball packed down in there that we don't actually go back and inspect. Yeah. And we've created or been gifted these values and this value system, but if we actually went and excavated it like the way that you've done in such a very intentional and thoughtful way, we might discover some stuff in there that's, like, surprising.

Like, "Whoa, wait, I really value this, and do I wanna value this? Where did this come from?" Or, "This really is a deep core value of mine, and I've not been living in integrity with that value-"

[01:05:55] Chad Sikora: Right ...

[01:05:56] Vision Battlesword: entirely. Or, "What do I wanna do with that?" In other words, it's sort of like you me- you used the phrase shadow values earlier, which I thought was fricking awesome, and it's, it's a phrase that I wrote down that I wanna play more with.

But I think that's what most people are experiencing is shadow values- Agreed ... as compared to conscious ones.

[01:06:13] Chad Sikora: Agreed. Yeah. And, and what a wonderful opportunity to be able to listen to how we are, what we are radiating and creating in the world and how it's affecting people and really be like, "Is that what I wanna create?

Can I take responsibility for creating it? And if I can take responsibility and it's not what I want to radiate, what is it trying to tell me? Because it's connected to something that I do wanna create." It feels not okay because I'm disidentifying with it, 'cause it doesn't feel like me. So what is the part that it's pointing at that does feel like me?

[01:06:49] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. You used the word radiate and then the other word is resonate.

[01:06:53] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[01:06:53] Vision Battlesword: That resonates for me. Yeah. That's coming up for me. And it makes me think about, again, this idea of shadow values and the popular phrase existential kink.

[01:07:03] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:04] Vision Battlesword: Thanks to the book that popularized that term.

[01:07:07] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:07] Vision Battlesword: But this, I think, also layers onto kind of our concepts of the law of attraction and manifestation.

And if there's shadow values within me that are inherently implicitly resonating with a particular frequency that communicates, however that is, let's call it through subconscious behaviors- Mm-hmm ... or whatever, maybe through the field or the, you know, the universal energetic fields or whatever f- metaphysical framework you wanna put on it.

But if there's something within me that's resonating with this idea of something that I prefer, that I would like, that I place importance on, meaning all of the different words that we've used to encapsulate what a value is, if I'm not aware of that, then I'm implicitly creating and/or attracting that.

And that might not be... What if that's a value that I don't prefer?

[01:08:01] Chad Sikora: Right. That's- And I think that is what a lot of people are experiencing.

[01:08:04] Vision Battlesword: Exactly. My point, right? It's like, "Why do these things keep happening to me?" Because there's some part of you that values them. Yeah. That's probably the answer.

[01:08:11] Chad Sikora: And, and the, and that part of you, and going into the whole Jungian thing, which is a great framework, which is like the shadow is not something to be purged, but something to be, um, integrated and to love and be loved.

It's like that part of you has some really, really good medicine for you. It has some really good stuff to let you know, and it's getting your attention in a way that's uncomfortable because it works, you know. And it has a value that you, you don't identify with, but you can understand why it's using that if you get to know it and treat it like a being and treat it like a part of yourself.

I'm glad you dig this idea because it's been, like, a really big piece for me. And when I do a lot of reading or studying or talking to people about values and virtues and stuff, there feels like a big missing piece, which is, like- You know, we are creating these other things too, and it can't all be virtuous and righteous, right?

It's like all the parts are happening, and let us love those parts too. Let us be welcoming and considerate of the fact that, and easy on each other about the fact that we're doing these other things as well.

[01:09:15] Vision Battlesword: What's the difference between a value and a virtue?

[01:09:18] Chad Sikora: Yeah, I use the word virtue as like, um, we're gonna get a little circular here, but I feel like the word virtue is a value judgment on a value that is considered good by

[01:09:29] Vision Battlesword: a value

[01:09:30] Chad Sikora: system.

[01:09:30] Vision Battlesword: That's fine. I mean, that's a perfectly coherent definition. A virtue is a value that we judge as good. The only way it gets circular is if values are already things that we judge as good.

[01:09:41] Chad Sikora: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:09:43] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:44] Chad Sikora: Yeah.

[01:09:44] Vision Battlesword: But I think what we've really said is that values are things that we define as important.

[01:09:50] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[01:09:51] Vision Battlesword: And then virtues are values that we define as good-

[01:09:55] Chad Sikora: Right,

yeah ...

[01:09:55] Vision Battlesword: in a moral sense.

[01:09:56] Chad Sikora: That's a word... That's, that's a g- yeah, that works.

[01:09:58] Vision Battlesword: Is that coherent?

[01:09:59] Chad Sikora: Makes sense. That's coherent

[01:10:00] Vision Battlesword: to me. Then why did you say the word righteous?

[01:10:02] Chad Sikora: Well, I think I, I would say righteous and virtuous are... Righteous is like a more fervent version of virtuous, which is like in defense of the value system that judges-

[01:10:15] Vision Battlesword: Yeah

[01:10:15] Chad Sikora: this value as good.

[01:10:17] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, it's got the word right in it-

[01:10:19] Chad Sikora: Yeah ...

[01:10:19] Vision Battlesword: which conveys some sort of a sense of We could say that something is virtuous because I believe in its goodness.

[01:10:26] Chad Sikora: Right.

[01:10:26] Vision Battlesword: But when we believe something is righteous, there's a sense of objective correctness-

[01:10:32] Chad Sikora: Which is where it gets

[01:10:33] Vision Battlesword: toxic ... of the goodness.

[01:10:34] Chad Sikora: Right, which is where it gets toxic if you- Could be ... in, in my opinion, I think. Yeah. I think it can or it has-

[01:10:38] Vision Battlesword: I could see that ...

[01:10:39] Chad Sikora: historically, right?

[01:10:40] Vision Battlesword: It certainly can become a point of rigidity- Mm-hmm ... where we lose the ability to self-reflect-

[01:10:49] Chad Sikora: Yeah ...

[01:10:50] Vision Battlesword: or self-introspect when we're righteous.

[01:10:53] Chad Sikora: Yeah. I think anytime we're really close to the edge of a spectrum, when we're close to a polar end, we're entering into a scarcity space, which is that we are really not seeing the spectrum or the blend of energies that are present and really only seeing two paths.

We're seeing that this thing is A or B. It is either A or it is B. This person is either good or they are bad. Their wholeness is not important to me. I am going to just place this label on them and move on. I think that is a thing that is very alive in the culture right now. I feel like that, that scarcity mentality does, don't leave space for the richness of people's being and values, you know?

[01:11:41] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. So when you were on your journey of discovering and then creating your own value system, you started from a point of some traditional maps of value, or I guess in the case of Western magic, reality perhaps?

[01:12:00] Chad Sikora: Consciousness, reality, yeah.

[01:12:02] Vision Battlesword: So I'm just... I find that process so interesting just to think of if anyone was in a point in their life where it felt like, "This is a good time to really get in touch with my values, find out what they really are and/or what would I like them to be," just for anyone to have an idea of like, how, where would I get started?

What's the process for that? Now you, being who you are, approached it in an incredibly unique and rigorous way, I would say, which is, I find admirable as a value, and beautiful aesthetically speaking. But I guess, how did that play out for you? So you started, "Okay, I'm gonna look at some traditional values.

I'm gonna look at some traditional frameworks of reality," and then what was the completion of your process and, um, what did you gain from it?

[01:12:52] Chad Sikora: What it has given me is, uh, waypoints and navigational tools and noticing anchors. So I've done a lot of hermetic or Western magic sort of practices and stuff. And, and we can all do this, it's really easy, is, is to really tap into what is the difference between my mind and my body and my heart and my soul?

What are those, what are those differences? How can I sense the differences between those places in my experience and those sensations? We generally are experiencing a m- as a mush that we are just, like, moving through the world with, but we can stop and we can slow down and we can go, "Ah, okay, that's happening over here.

Okay, that's happening over here. That's happening over here." And so using that format of let me parse the different threads of my experience of consciousness and reality, can I identify within those threads an energy stream that feels super alive and gives me the biggest, like, "Ah, yeah, that's me. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." You know? "That's what I want. That's what I wanna create." Is there another piece to the question that I missed?

[01:14:02] Vision Battlesword: I don't think so. Okay. I, I love especially the piece that you said when you're trying to establish your relationship with something and find out how you feel about it or whether it's valuable to you, to check in with all of the different parts of yourself.

I think that so often we flatten our choice making or information gathering to one dimension. "What do I think about this?" Use my logical thinking process. Or, "How do I feel about this? What's my emotional response to it?" Or, "What is my intuition?" Maybe you'd call that, I don't know, the spiritual component.

Or, "What do I feel in my body? What, do I have, uh, any actual physical sensations that are occurring?" And your algorithm is, yeah, check in with all of those different places and see what answers or what experiences that you're receiving. And the overlap of those things, especially when they're all in coherence, is gonna tell you a lot about what it is that you actually value.

That was really cool to me.

[01:15:10] Chad Sikora: Yeah. Beautiful summary. Yeah, that's a big part of the process for me that's ongoing. For me, I've noticed there's more nuance in this area, or actually, this one's a little bit stronger, or it's getting a little bit stronger now, you know? Mm-hmm. So it's a, it's a dance. It's a living thing, and that's a wonderful other part of the conversation.

[01:15:31] Vision Battlesword: The other piece that was really cool to me in your algorithm of almost like what I'm imagining is, um, if we're imagining trying to calibrate our compass, like a value, our value system is sort of The way the compass points that shows us the path that's gonna lead to whatever it is, our happiness or outcomes that we prefer or getting our needs met or the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible or whatever.

It's almost like, um, if we point ourselves in different directions, where we experience that light from, this thing that you said, like when we're lighting up, is actually an indication of us because it's the universe reflecting our light back to us. It's an indication of what we're actually providing in terms of value to the world, and that was all the way back at the very beginning, one of the first things you said, and then you kinda like brought it full circle after, after all of this different exploration that we've done.

That's really helpful and valuable to me as well.

[01:16:35] Chad Sikora: Good. Great. Yeah. I think it is both a vibration and a radiance, just like light is, is both a particle and a wave, right?

[01:16:46] Vision Battlesword: If I could sum it up, I wanna, I wanna just like... I got a great encapsulation here as far as a soundbite of wisdom that you've created and provided.

When you light up, that tells you where you are lighting up the world. That's really cool.

[01:17:01] Chad Sikora: Hmm. And it feels really, feels real. You know what that feels like, right? Ah, yeah. I think we all have a felt sense of that, and it, and it is a compass. The map that I created f- for myself, I call a lodestone, which, if you're not familiar, is in ancient times, uh, there were these stones that were discovered that were most likely meteorites that were used for n- navigation on the seas and could always point true north, and they were sort of like these primitive compasses, right?

But they were these sort of magical objects, like, coming, that came from the sky.

[01:17:37] Vision Battlesword: It's a magnetic rock.

[01:17:38] Chad Sikora: It's a magnetic rock. Yeah.

[01:17:40] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[01:17:40] Chad Sikora: But, like, how cool? Uh-huh. You know, how magical.

[01:17:44] Vision Battlesword: Right.

[01:17:44] Chad Sikora: Um, I just, I love that. And also, if there are any ElfQuest fans out there, um, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah.

[01:17:51] Vision Battlesword: So you created a values compass for yourself that you call a lodestone.

[01:17:55] Chad Sikora: Yes.

[01:17:56] Vision Battlesword: How do you use it?

[01:17:56] Chad Sikora: I use it by choosing what I want to create in the world around me, judging sort of like looking at where I'm at right now and feeling what would be nourishing or what would be nourishing for people around me. Somebody is really needing a particular kind of care or a particular kind of attention.

There are things that I offer to this world that would really slot nicely into what that need is. So I say, "Oh, okay, I can offer you my presence. I can give you..." And I create boundaries on it, right? "I can give you 45 minutes of, like, real presence," knowing that, like, that's something I can really show up and do really well and not have any doubt about that, you know?

Or I could just be like, "I'm having a hard time," or I'm, I'm noticing that I'm in a shadow value that I'm catching, and I'm like, "Okay, wow, I'm feeling a little bit entitled right now, so, uh, I'm noticing that I'm kind of being, like, a little, a little crappy about this thing because I feel like I'm owed something."

You know, it's like, "Oh," you know, "give me what I want" kind of thing or something like that. I can notice that, and I can go, "Do I wanna be that way?" And then I can go on a little journey of connecting with the part of myself that is trying to get my attention with that behavior, and I can listen to it and see what that part is needing, and then I can look at the map and go, "The thing that is the balm to this for me is gratitude."

Let me focus my attention on not, not bypassing or stepping over the experience that I am have, was having a hard time with. In fact, specifically going towards it with love and care, and then with it stepping into a place of how does it feel to create some gratitude right now? Like, there are things that we are grateful for and that we are being given right now.

Let's remind ourselves of that. And I'm also here with you in the, like, something is missing. So it, it's a way to be with both the part that I disidentify with and the part that I do identify with of wanting to create.

[01:20:07] Vision Battlesword: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. That's super helpful.

[01:20:13] Chad Sikora: Yeah. Well, a, a long time ago, it feels like an hour ago, you mentioned wanting to go over the container building that my wife and I have done.

And I'd love to speak to that quickly since we've kind of gone over the whole lodestone concept a bit.

[01:20:30] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, I'd love for you to do that. And I also wanna make sure that I do actually give you some time, 'cause I, I do realize like we, we went on a, a really extended deconstruction and reconstruction just of the concept itself.

But I'm also curious if there was anything you actually came here to talk about. Because, like, it was your topic you brought, and it's obviously something that's very interesting and important to you. I don't know if we've covered the territory that you, you wanted to explore or if there was, like, anything else that you wanted to kinda process with me while we're here together.

Just wanted to make sure that you get your time to surface anything that's important to you.

[01:21:07] Chad Sikora: Thank you. Yeah. I don't feel an agenda. I really feel like the opportunity to just nerd out about this was what I showed up for, you know? And it feels really good to just be able to share the ways in which I've been curious about this.

But thanks. No, I don't... I, I feel like the things that I'm curious about or confused about, like, we did plow through a bunch of them.

[01:21:35] Vision Battlesword: Right. Right.

[01:21:36] Chad Sikora: I think we really did cover a lot. Yeah.

[01:21:37] Vision Battlesword: A lot of times it's very organic like that. And then, and then also sometimes when anyone brings a specific, very specific topic, like, "I wanna talk about values," like, okay, cool.

Like, what about values do you wanna talk about? I just wanted to make sure I gave you space for that 'cause sometimes I'll t- take things, you know, down a path and kinda lose track of time. But I really do want to know more 'cause I don't... I mean, you've of course told me off the record, and I, I was at your wedding, so I've got a lot of information about it.

But this concept of creating a value set for a relationship, for a marriage, for example, is super cool to me. I've never heard of anyone else doing that before. And when you told me that, you know, you and Julie had done that at your, you know, as a part of your engagement, I was just blown away. Uh, it's something I want to...

I wanna mirror, I wanna model, like embrace.

[01:22:30] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:32] Vision Battlesword: And I think a lot of people will probably find it very inspiring. So I'm just curious if you wanna, yeah, if you wanna share a little bit about what that even means to say, "Yeah, we created a set of relationship values."

[01:22:42] Chad Sikora: Yeah. A lot of the concepts I've been going over in terms of my own personal exploration apply, but they apply to a conversation between two people...

Well, between three people, between myself and Julie, my partner, and our relationship as the third person. And, you know, we're both artists, and we, um, we started working on an art project together, and we... I was already deep into, like, being curious and working with values on my own, and she's one of the absolutely most brilliant people I've ever met.

And, like, we got really curious about the art that we were making and, like, what are we really trying to say here? What are we really trying to do? What is the point of this? What energy is this art creating in the world? What is this creation going to... How is it gonna resonate? How is it gonna be received?

And what do we want people to feel and understand about what matters to us that we're putting into this? And we had this list that it was, it was longer at first, and then we kinda winnow- winnowed it down and kind of just, like, checked in, like, what is the strongest, like, what has the most charge for both of us that we're both like, "Yeah."

Mm. You know? Mm-hmm. This. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because we, we knew pretty early on that we were gonna be in it for the long haul, and so we're like, how do we be in service to this relationship in a way that is fundamental? How can we build systems on top of something that we both really, really agree with and really feel strongly about?

So there are six values that we landed on. We created symbols for them, which is, like, a very magical act, right? It's like take the thing, take all the energy, the energy stream, and siphon it through a symbol that when you see it, boom, you get hit with that energy. Ah, I know what that is. That one is harmony.

And so we have that for harmony. We have that for interdependence, co-creation, authenticity, maintenance, and adaptability. And those are sort of these energy streams that are the substratum for everything we do. And so it's like, "Man, I'm having a hard day," and, uh, I really am just, "Oh, I just want things to be the way they were yesterday."

And it's like, "Okay, let me remember how important it is to adapt, to be adaptable in this space with each other. It's okay that I'm having a hard day, and that's totally valid, and I wanna, like, keep being supportive of what we need in this moment, and me moping around about it is not," you know? Does it always work?

No. But it's a good system to have something to reflect against. And so we, like for our engagement bands, I had two rings made with all of these symbols on them, and for our wedding, we made offerings, and we did our vows around each one of these values to really cement in and be in, in honor of and appreciation of these energies that we wanna cultivate.

At home, we have a, an altar where we have tokens, tokens that represent, like, different things we do in our lives, right? Uh, play a board game or do some dreamwork or have a check-in, like, whatever, just, like, all sorts of different little objects. And each one of these values has a vessel, and we feed each vessel with these things in connection to what is the value that we're actually, like, serving that is serving us by making this choice to go on a date, right?

Or having this conversation that's really hard and talking about, "I really authentically feel this way about this thing." And that is good for us, and that serves us. And so let us honor that and know that it is safe to do that, that kind of thing. And so it's, it's a great framework. It's been a wonderful framework on which we can keep checking in on it every six months or whatever.

We can sit down and be like, "How are we feeling about the way we're co-creating stuff right now?" You know, and, like, "How does that work in our work life? How does that work in our home life? What is that, that first starting place?" Right? And it's just, like, it makes everything click really nicely, you know?

Gets rid of a lot of the confusion about how to navigate things for us, and it helps support us.

[01:26:45] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. That's what values do. They help to remove the confusion about how to navigate our lives, our choices, our decisions, that which is most important to us. And importance can be quantified in many different ways.

It can be quantified as our literal survival and safety, or it can be quantified as our deepest, most heartfelt desire of what we would wish to see. What's the world that we would feel most happy and expressed in? How much is this worth to me? The question of worth. I'm surprised we didn't bring up that word earlier in the conversation because it's so connected to value.

And the idea of value is so important to people psychologically when we think about within our own belief system, how we feel about ourselves, how we value our own self-worth. It's like a whole other dimension of this that feels really important and resonant. I'm sorry I took us on a tangent off topic of what you were just talking about, but I also want to say, like, what you just shared was super beautiful and really inspiring to me.

And it all comes back to that concept of a lodestone, just like you said. It's like all of these systems, these tools, these vessels, these symbols, this technology essentially that you've created is a lodestone that helps you and your partner navigate the waters of your relationship. Yeah. Helps you know when you're pointed in the right direction.

[01:28:26] Chad Sikora: Precisely.

[01:28:27] Vision Battlesword: That's awesome, dude.

[01:28:28] Chad Sikora: Thank you. I'm pretty into it.

[01:28:31] Vision Battlesword: I bet. Thank you for sharing it with me and with anyone else that hears this, because I think it really... Creating this map for yourself, I think you've really created a map that others could follow that really can help people find their way with a lot more ease because of all the energy and effort and intention that you've put into your process.

[01:28:52] Chad Sikora: Thank you. Uh, it's- I'm grateful for that reflection, and it is my dream, it is one of them, to see a world and to create a world where people are, are really, uh, learning to love themselves more by getting clear on what these things are and creating a, a compass and a, and a, a map for themselves to work with.

What we offer to the world in accordance with how we came into it, what we bond to, what our affinity and love is. Like, it's how we love. It's how we shine.

[01:29:24] Vision Battlesword: Wow That would be the perfect closing, except for one thing.

[01:29:29] Chad Sikora: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:30] Vision Battlesword: What can we take home with us from this? What do, what do, what do we integrate?

What's... Is there one insight, new idea? What are you picking up from this conversation?

[01:29:42] Chad Sikora: Because you just mentioned it, I feel like a ton of curiosity right now about the psychological aspect, which is the question of self-worth.

[01:29:50] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:50] Chad Sikora: Yeah. And noticing that, like, oh, you're right, it's like a whole other area to explore.

It's a whole other conversation, you know?

[01:30:01] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. It's like with this whole conversation feels like it's been projected outward, and that's been extremely fruitful, and I think all of the clarity that we've gained there now reversed and turned back around on our own question of inner value, it would take things in a different direction than I've ever explored them before, and I think that's really exciting to me to follow up on those threads.

[01:30:27] Chad Sikora: Cool. Yeah. I'm, I'm definitely walking away with a lot of curiosity about how I relate to those ideas. And I feel curious too about, uh, uh, noticing and, and loving the way that you picked up on when we hit the paradox piece, where, like, the, the everything bagel is, like, turning in on itself or whatever.

It's, it's like the starting point for me on this journey was the relationship of story and belief to value, and you brought it into a place where I can see how the two feed each other in a way that I wasn't picking up on before. So I think that's a really cool area to explore because it is the stories, it is the memories and the experiences that feed the bonding and the connection to the thing, which then form other ones, right?

Yeah. With the, they're going like that. So it's like there is the Ouroboros.

[01:31:19] Vision Battlesword: Right. That's exactly what was coming to mind. Yeah. We were trying to figure out which one's inside the other, and it's just a snake eating its own tail.

[01:31:25] Chad Sikora: Fascinating.

[01:31:26] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, that's really cool.

[01:31:27] Chad Sikora: Fascinating.

[01:31:28] Vision Battlesword: For me, I just, I, I'm totally enamored with this metaphor and visualization of where we feel lit up is the place where we're lighting up the world, like that other Ouroboros phenomenon.

You know, it's like the light we shine into the world is the light that we receive reflected back to us, and, like, just how poignant and simple, just simple that is to crystallize. And that actually also feeds back into that other question of our own inner self-value and our own inner self-worth.

[01:32:04] Chad Sikora: It does, yeah.

So that's- Yeah ...

[01:32:07] Vision Battlesword: that's my big takeaway from this conversation, which is definitely a lot for me to integrate, and I'm excited to play with that some more. If you wanted anyone to be able to connect with you, find out more about your work, or discover any of the things that you are offering, the light that you're shining into the world, where would they do that?

[01:32:29] Chad Sikora: Well, I, being a person who enjoys a very low profile, uh, and this being the first podcast I've ever done, in this moment, I don't have, like, a channel that is a public channel of r- receiving, um- Okay ... but, uh, but, you know, if you are really one of those people, I'm open to hearing from

[01:32:51] Vision Battlesword: you. All right. Send a psychic ping to Chad Sekora, and he'll find you.

No, I get it. That's, that's great. Well, congratulations on your first formal podcast, and Gosh, this is a really, really rich and fun conversation for me, and I'm really grateful to you for sitting with me.

[01:33:12] Chad Sikora: Thank you so much, Vision. Like, it is an absolute honor, and, uh, I knew it would be fun. And, uh, thank you for being patient with me as I took my time getting here.

It's always a joy, a true joy. M- may we continue this conversation for as long as

[01:33:30] Vision Battlesword: it wants to go. Of course, man. Thank you