Mini-Episode: A Non-Contingent Self

This week’s episode is centered around cultivating a relationship with self that is non-contingent. A self that is not tied to or determined by the myths of human beings. They are exploring how to activate a sense of belonging to something bigger to help us build the most powerful, authentic and potent versions of ourselves.

• If you want to dive deeper into this conversation about the Contingent Self - Join the Patreon!
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• Mini-Toolkit for Crisis Responders

Transcript

Mini Episode - April 08 2026
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Hello, everybody. Welcome to Becoming the People. I'm Prentis Hemphill, and I'm really grateful to be with you another week for a mini episode, one of these installations that I do between guest episodes where basically I just rant and rave about whatever I've been feeling over the last week or last month. This is my space to share it with you all.

And I really, really, really want this to be a space still of reciprocity. So if you have ideas or thoughts or topics that you want me to talk about here, or if you want to write me a letter about something that's been on your mind, I would love to read that, share that, engage with that. You can go over to our Patreon and let us know what's on your heart and mind in this moment, and I'd be happy to, yeah, chop it up with you. Happy to talk about it and be in connection.

Let's see, I think before I start, I want to do a couple things that I don't want to forget before the episode is over, which is, I've been saying this a few times, this will probably be the last time I mention it here on the podcast, but on April 13th, the organization that I'm a part of, the Embodiment Institute, we are hosting a webinar. And that webinar is for folks that are responding to crisis or might be responding to crisis in their community. We are convening a group of healing justice practitioners, coaches, healers, frontline workers that have been responding to the crises of the last couple years, climate crises, deportations ramping up, and they are sharing their best practices and learnings.

So that will be April 13th. We are doing a big, big webinar. There's going to be a lot of people there. It's going to be a really, really powerful event.

A lot of folks have already signed up, and there's still room for you to sign up. So please, we'll put the info in the show notes if that is something that is of interest to you. Please join us there. We have already released a kind of sneak peek, a kind of like tapas.

or something like sample platter of the toolkit that we're going to be offering after the webinar. There's a mini toolkit that's out right now. You can go to my page. You can go to the Embodiment Institute page on Instagram.

and on our websites. And get that info. There's practices on there. Our good friend Adrienne Marie Brown has offered some practices.

The folks over at Latinx Therapist Network have offered practices there. So there's already a mini toolkit. You can check it out. You can get access to it now.

And just know that after we do the webinar, that toolkit's going to continue to grow. So if you want to use practices that any of us are going to be facilitating or sharing. You can get access to it after the webinar, but right now the mini toolkit is available. Please, please, please, please check it out.

And I think the other thing is we just had a really A really cool event. We just did our first live on the Patreon this last week, and I hung out with a bunch of folks that have been following the podcast. A lot of folks have been following since before it was becoming The People. They've been following since Finding Our Way.

But we just hung out for an hour, and I really want to start doing these lives more regularly where we just kick back and talk and ask and answer questions. I gave folks like sneak peek of what's coming up on the podcast. Folks asked me all kinds of questions about my life, about how this whole thing came to be. So I'm happy to answer all those questions and hang out with y'all.

I love the Patreon community. Y'all are so just fucking smart and engaged and thoughtful. And I love spending time with you. I also shout out to Matt, who mows the yard here at my house.

Matt was on the mower and also on the Patreon live, hanging out with us and just being the kind and wonderful person that he is. So shout out to Matt again. You know, we talked on the last episode about meeting people in different contexts. And Matt's one of those people in my life that's just been a lovely light of a human being who I met because he mows the yard, mows my pasture here, and I'm so grateful for it because I have not felt up to it the last year.

So thank you, Matt, and thank you to everybody who came. That was really, really fun. Thank you for that. I'm trying to think if I have anything else coming up.

I will be teaching soon, but the applications are closed. I think otherwise, Yeah, I will keep y'all posted when the gigs begin. Summertime is where things get busy, but I will keep y'all posted here when things are going down or when I'm going to be on other shows. But I'm just grateful for y'all hanging in there with us and hanging out with us.

And I think sometime soon, like sometime real soon, like in the next week, these are going to start uploading to YouTube. So you can see me in all of my awkwardness doing these episodes. So yeah, check these out on YouTube soon. And I think, I don't know what the page is.

I'll let you know when I know what the page name is. I probably would be becoming the people, but check us out there soon. I'll let you know when that's happening. Yeah, so today I actually, I really appreciated the response to the last episode about a movement that can grow and that piece that I was sharing with you all about really my longings, like what I want to what I want to be a part of, and where I

feel myself and other folks can get a little bit stuck. And I want to be in the kind of movement that can double in size, that can triple in size, that is compelling to people, that speaks to their concerns and their lives, that feels welcoming and belonging. I want to be a part of that kind of movement. I want to be a part of building that kind of movement.

I want to be a part of that kind of world. A lot of you resonated with that. A lot of folks had pushback too. I mean, we talked about this on the live event.

There was pushback folks being like, I'm not gonna waste my time with people that are already lost or I'm tired actually from engaging with people that don't see my point or don't don't respect people in my community, and I absolutely get and understand that. I'm certainly not advocating for people to push past what feels safe for them. I think I said that on the last episode. But generally, I think this orientation opens us up to find places where we might not be looking for connection.

We might not even believe, we might be moving with our own biases and not believing that there's connection possible. And then foreclosing that. And I'm not even talking about like, we gotta go talk to, I'm not on my, I know there was some controversy in the last couple of weeks about the Russell song and then his response to people's critique of that. I'm not even taking it that far.

I think for a lot of us, I'm talking about the people in your life, the people you engage with, maybe the people in your family. Do you know what their concerns are? Do you know what they care about? Do you know how they're making meaning of what's going on in their lives?

And are you engaged with that? But yeah, there was debate online and I appreciate that and welcome that. And I'll say what I said. I still mean what I said.

Even though I can receive that feedback, I still feel like this is an important point to bring forward right now. And we can nuance it and break it up and all of that. I'm really down for that. I think there's some of us that need this message right now.

And so this last couple of weeks, as I've been thinking about it, I've been like, okay, well, what makes that kind of engagement with other people possible? What makes it possible in me? I know someone online was like, those folks need to know that you're being generous with them or you're gifting them something. And I was thinking about that response and I was like, it doesn't actually...

like an overextension for me. It doesn't feel like I'm giving more than I have when I engage with people that way. And I was trying to figure out why that is, like what happens inside of me that doesn't feel like if I engage with people, if I talk to people, that yeah, that I'm giving more energy or I'm giving extra, it actually just feels like I'm allowing the flow of connection to happen.

And so I was trying to think about what has to be true inside of me, actually, for that kind of encounter to be possible. And it brought me back to this thing that I've been, I had another rant and rave a few months ago on Instagram about the, this idea, and I've got to find a better name for it. Um, and it's not like a new idea. It's not like I discovered this idea, but I want to talk about this idea, um, which is the non-contingent self.

That's what I call it. The non-contingent self. And I think that, um, Many of us not having access to this kind of self or way of being in ourself actually creates a lot of the disconnection in the world that we can't seem to break out of. And I think that that's having repercussions on our relational lives, on our political lives, that we don't exactly understand.

So I want to get in a little bit into this idea of the non-contingent self and what I mean by that. So I think for a lot of us when we encounter other people, we have this like question that is running in the background. And that question is, can I belong? Do I belong?

Do you think I'm worthy? Do you think I have value? And even if we are coming into the situation going, I know you don't think I have value, but I do have value. That question is still there.

The question has still posed itself. It's still operating inside of that relationship, inside of that relational field. So I think a lot of us, and there's good reason for it. I mean, human beings, want to belong.

They want to feel included. They want to feel seen. They want to feel like what they offer and bring to the community or to a group of people is really, really valued. We want to feel that.

And I think that the question can become amplified or almost louder than it needs to be. It can lead in a way and we can become unaware of it. So I think a lot of us might be leading, this is a hypothesis I have with this question of, do I belong? And maybe we have a certainty of I do not belong.

or I'm going to make myself belong or whatever reactive stance we can have to that question. But I think fundamentally the question is, do I belong? And when I'm talking about a non-contingent self, what I'm meaning by that is I don't offer up that question for other people in the same way others might. It means moving into an encounter with someone where maybe there's a question of belonging.

Maybe you want to belong, but the question is, do I want to belong here? The question is, am I interested in belonging? Is there something to belong to? Those are questions to me that proceed, do I belong?

But if I'm encountering you, I'm not leading with the question of, do you value me? Will you accept me? Do you think I'm good enough? a non-contingent sense of oneself is not offering that question up to everybody that we meet.

And that's really what I mean. That's really what I'm wanting us to cultivate is the discernment to not move forward, not to bring that question forward in every encounter. And I think that that's a really, it's a, it's a, there's a skill to that. I think, especially in the world that we live in, I think there's kind of a skill to that or a practice around that, that feels really important right now.

Okay. So part of what I think is happening is that there's a culture and a kind of over culture that is, that is, always selling us this question of like, do I belong? Am I good enough? Am I this enough?

Am I that enough? Am I, you know, who's this? Who's that? There's always that question.

And the question keeps getting drudged up in order to sell us any number of things that make us more accessible to the ever moving target of belonging in this society or being good enough in the society. I think belonging, again, is an absolutely human question to be engaged in. But the way that that question gets repeatedly trudged, is that a word? Drudged up?

Repeatedly activated in us, to me feels unhuman. that we are never settled. We never get a moment of peace with that question. It's just always there.

It's always this hum that's operating in our relational encounters with each other. Do I belong? I do not belong. I don't want to belong, whatever it might be.

Just always operating because there are these ever-moving standards of who belongs, who's good enough, who looks right, who doesn't look right, who's the right ethnicity, skin tone, whatever. That question is just operating with us all the time. And so I think unnaturally we are faced with this like deep, deep kind of cultural insecurity that we don't talk about. And we're all just trying to like scramble to be good enough for it.

So I think that question that ends up sitting in all of us a little bit more than it should. I also think there's like, how do I say this? There's like a, The connection that we have, there's so many people to be connected to. I was just talking to my friends about this yesterday, actually, where, I can't remember what it's called, I know it starts with a D, but that effect, you're only supposed to, you only can have relationships with, say, 150 people.

And then after that, humans just aren't designed to maintain that many stories or faces or whatever. I think my number is more like 30, because I can't remember anything. Some of us have different numbers, but I think 150 is supposed to be the max of what human beings can actually maintain. But our society is structured in a way where it's like we're connected to thousands of people.

You know, we're connected sometimes to millions of people. And there's, I think, maybe we still maintain our kind of close relationships, but there's a sense that we can be connected to and getting information from and interacting with a huge number of people. And I think that's skewing a little bit our sense of where do I actually belong? Who do I belong with?

And if you can discern that, I mean, I feel like, you know, social media for me is like, I love being able to connect with so many people. I love being able to have these kind of conversations with so many people. But I'm not having these conversations with you in your living room with your friends, where it actually matters, or with your family, where it actually matters, or with the people you work with, where it actually matters. I'm not actually there.

And you're not actually here with me. There's a, there's a important distinction there. There's a, there is a kind of connection, but it's not the kind of connection that actually produces the belonging that I think feeds us on a deep level. So I think given the way we structure the world and the way we engage with the world, it's like being able to draw those distinctions of like, where do I actually want to belong?

Do I want to look like this person on TikTok? Do I want to look like this influencer? Why? Do I want to belong with them?

I don't even know them. Where do you want to belong? Who really matters to you? Who do you really want to throw down with?

Who do you really want to build with? I think these are really, really critical questions. And it, to me, gives an indication of like, where do I want to take this question of, do you value me? Who do I want to take that question to?

Do you want to take that question to the world? Do you want to open that question up for everybody? Or are there some people that can actually engage with that question in a way that will have a real impact on you, that is really meaningful, that you can really internalize and allows you to be who you are, allows you to flourish, allows you to get the feedback you need.

But we don't want to be carting that question around to everywhere. So, that to me, those are the distinctions the non-contingent self can make. I think the other piece, um, I was thinking about this cause I was like, when did I start to feel this? Maybe I didn't have the words for it, but when did I start to feel it?

And I've told this story actually a lot lately, strangely, but, um, when I was about 11, um, that was a, that was an interesting year for me. But when I was about 11, I, uh, I guess I started to get what you call politicized or really it's like I started to second guess the world as it was and the world as it was being taught to me. And I think that came through a few different avenues. I think it came from like reading books off of my sister's bookshelf.

I think it came from just like a, I don't know, a kind of almost inherent questioning that I've always had. But it all started to kind of like get a little clearer when I was 11. And the wild story is my sister had the autobiography of Malcolm X on her bookshelf and I read it twice when I was 11. And I would take that book to school because I had some teachers that actually are really out of pocket around race with me.

Growing up where I did, there were some moments where I was like, whatever, you might call it a microaggression, whatever. I had moments and I was just a child, you know what I mean? I was 11 years old. Side note, that's what I think about with racism or all these myths of superiority all the time.

I think about like, the children that have to navigate the psychological damage of those myths in their day-to-day lives, there's something about that that makes me absolutely enraged, and probably because I was that child who had to navigate those moments of a teacher being off or expressing something that was just completely inappropriate. But I would take that book to school, and I would sit it on the corner of my desk, And I remember my teacher was like, oh, well, that's a very serious book or something like that. But I thought of it as kind of a protection.

It was like, this book is creating a force field around me. And this teacher is gonna come to me with a certain kind of, they're gonna approach me with a carefulness, because I'm indicating something about who I am and something about what is solid in me. So that's one story. I was a militant little 11 year old.

And, um, but I think what was happening for me, I remember kind of engaging with this question because it's also, I think probably a couple of years later that I started to understand myself as queer. But I remember grappling with this question, sitting with God at the time and saying, okay, the world tells me I'm wrong because I'm black, because I'm queer. And by the world, I mean people I know, people that are close to me. I get these indicators in any number of ways that there's something wrong with me.

And I remember having this moment of like, okay, well, God made me. God made my hair as kinky as it is. God made my nose this way. God made my lips this way.

God made my skin this color. God created me in a way where my gender and sexuality are authentic expressions of who I am in the world. God created me and God created, in fact, not just me, but all of this diversity, so to speak, in the world. God created trees that look different from each other, plants that look different from each other, that act different, that do different things.

If God created that and God created me, then human beings have created a layer of lies that make them feel better about who they are, that soothe them, that have them access power or whatever it might be, that try to keep them safe. They've created this layer on top of what to me feels like the reality, which is simply that God made me. And that was my framework that I was operating out of. God made me, therefore I'm fine.

Therefore, not only am I fine, I am, I, there's something, I'm created. I exist. I am an expression then of God. I got that when I was about 11, I became clear about that.

And that changed my life, but part of the challenge of that is that as soon as I realized that, I realized that I would be choosing potentially a lonely path. I would be choosing a path where I saw that conformity brought you whatever, all the things, the homecoming dates, the boyfriends, the compliments, the opportunities. I knew that that conformity brought you that. But I didn't care.

It seemed more important to me to live a life that was authentic, as authentic as it could be. And also not a reactionary life either. I didn't always want to be in opposition to that world. I mean, I am in some ways politically in opposition for sure.

But I didn't want my life energy to be spent in a rejection of something. I wanted to still find a way to be expressive, as expressive as I can be of what I feel inside. I wanted to feel free at least inside. I put it that way.

So I think where all this relates to the non-contingent self for me is this. There's a need I see for a lot of us and it doesn't, I know that I'm using words like God and all of that and I mean that as expansively as possible. However you get into that or don't, spirit, universe, life, aliveness itself, all of that. But I think it's important for us to have a space of like prior belonging, to belong somewhere much bigger than the human world or the human myths.

To belong to something much, much bigger. You can keep track, I belong in the animal world, I belong in the microbial world, I belong in the world of aliveness, I belong on earth, whatever it might be. But start to belong to something bigger, a prior belonging, so that the belonging that you bring to interactions with other human beings is not the kind of, it doesn't open you up for an existential loneliness. Human belonging matters to me.

But when I was 11, I was like, oh, there's this other place where I belong. And that made me much more sturdy. It made me much more able to deal with the myths that had entrapped people with compassion, because I wasn't putting my belonging on the line with them. I wasn't putting my belonging on the line with a person with their own motivations and fears and doubts, with all the ways that they've been hurt and wounded and coerced.

And for a lot of people that, you know, are on the outs of these myths, We got a lot of wounds there. We got a lot of pain there that hasn't been tended to, that we haven't had places to actually to care for. Stories, we haven't had places to tell our stories. I think it's important that we do.

And in that, I think it's also important that we practice the cultivation, the relationship with this self that is non-contingent, that isn't up. The question, Carting around the question is a part of what keeps recreating the world as it is. When we move from the clarity of what we are and who we are, I think what we build and what emerges from us is much more authentic and powerful and potent. I want to maybe in another episode get in a little bit into like how we practice this, how we cultivate it.

I'm not sure how I want to do that. But I do just want to say that this is to me a kind of, you know, I've been talking about this question of maturity. I think it's a developmental capacity, and I don't know if it's something we used to have and lost. I don't know if it's something that emerges uniquely from the way that this world is structured.

I don't know, but it feels like developmentally, when I'm with my daughter, for example, I am trying to support her connection to the sense of herself that is not dependent on people liking her or approval. Now, one thing I want to note, I'm not saying there aren't consequences. I think I mentioned the loneliness. There are real consequences.

There's consequences in the shape of loneliness. There's consequences in the shape of people really get activated when you are yourself. I remember when I started doing embodiment work and I just started to move differently. I had more of my dignity online.

I was practicing with it. I had kind of been inadvertently trained to shrink around certain types of people, to shape myself around what they needed to feel and what they needed to be. And when I stopped doing that, and I just allowed myself to be in every encounter, I noticed a little tinge of like, who do you think you are? You know, that has a little bit of a threat in it.

You better get back into the shape that allows me to be who I am. So there's cost to it. And we have to navigate it carefully and thoughtfully. But the truth of it remains.

The truth of what I'm talking about with the non-contingent self remains, even if we have to navigate it. And I will say, almost maybe controversially, that part of what I have said with people when I work around this thing of the non-contingent self is that even if you hurt me, Even if you hurt me, even if you hurt my body, even if you take my life, there will have been something that you couldn't touch. There is something in me that can't be touched, that can't even be hurt.

I don't want to be hurt. I don't want any of us to be hurt. I look around the world right now and I want none of us to be hurt, especially in the ways that people are experiencing the horror of this world. And yet still true, I believe is that there is something in us that can't be touched.

That's what I believe. That's how I operate and how I move. That's what I believe about you. That's what I believe about everybody.

And that's what I believe is actually the frustration of the people who are so addicted to violence and pain in this world. I think they realize that there's something operating above them and it frightens them. It terrifies them. They don't know how to humble themselves to it.

And they amass a certain kind of power in defiance of that. And I think what I'm offering to us today is that there is another kind of power available when we can touch into this non-contingent self. And it is that power that to me is much bigger than the small maneuverings of the terrified. When we have that soft, relatability, the clarity, the dignity that isn't up for debate, that I don't give to you to offer me approval on.

It actually allows me to see you. It actually allows me to see who you are, more about what you care about, more about where you're stuck, and allows me to be seen as I am. So that, that to me is what sits underneath this growing our work, growing our movements. How do we actually develop this non-contingent self?

The self that can actually relate. That's my, that's my sermon for today. That's my message for today. Love to know how y'all feel about it.

Join us on the Patreon as always. That is where the conversation is. That's where the debrief is. So if you have thoughts, if you're like Prentis that spoke to me, if you're like, Prentis, you were completely off with that, just come tell me on the Patreon.

Happy to hear it and engage with it. And yeah, please support the work, support independent podcasts, people that are trying to put our voices out. It's very, These kinds of things, I think I've said it on every episode, I'm totally in my learning bag right now. I'm totally in my experimental bag right now.

I'm trying. I'm trying to figure this out and trying to figure out how to connect with you all and get these messages out. So if you feel it, let us know. We'd love to feel you.

And yeah, just wishing everybody You know, the best week that's possible in a world on fire, the best week that's possible, the most connection that you can tolerate. Yeah, I'm wishing you all all of that this week. And thank you so much for listening today. And we'll see you next week with a guest episode.

Thanks, y'all. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña with special production support this season by Jasmine Stein. It's sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine. Our theme song was created by Mayyadda.

If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon. Prentis and Phil, we are having a great time over there building community, learning together. Come join us.

And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming a People. 

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We're becoming the people. The people, the people, the people, the people. We're becoming the people.

We're becoming the people. The people, the people, the people, the people. We're becoming the people. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.

Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum