Amnesia and Anesthesia: Why We’re Trained to Forget and Go Numb

DESCRIPTION

In this episode of Viral Mindfulness, I explore repetition as a core value of the soul and a vital practice for staying awake in unordinary times. Part five of the Winter’s Edge Soul Care series, this teaching draws on Francis Weller’s work to examine how repetition fosters depth, memory, devotion, and resilience—countering our cultural pull toward novelty, progress, and forgetting. Through stories of music, meditation, grief, recovery, creativity, and career reinvention, I invite you to consider repetition not as boring or mechanical, but as musical, rhythmic, and alive. This episode is an invitation to return—again and again—to what matters most.

SUMMARY

In Part Five of the Winter’s Edge Soul Care series, Alexander Blue Feather explores repetition as a soul practice—a quiet, unglamorous, and deeply transformative way of staying connected to what matters. Drawing from Francis Weller’s teachings, this episode reframes repetition not as stagnation, but as devotion: the repeated return to practices, people, places, and inner truths that give shape and flavor to a meaningful life.

Alexander weaves personal reflections from decades of piano practice, meditation, sobriety, grief, art-making, podcasting, and career reinvention to show how repetition builds depth, intimacy, and familiarity over time. In contrast to a culture obsessed with novelty, progress, and constant self-improvement, repetition becomes an act of remembering—resisting amnesia and anesthesia by returning to the marrow of lived experience.

The episode also explores how repetition helps us stay in relationship with grief, loss, and suffering, not to dwell there endlessly, but to remain close enough for soul to be shaped and refined. Through repeated contact, we deepen our capacity for presence, resilience, and care—both personally and collectively.

Ultimately, this teaching invites listeners to see repetition as musical, rhythmic, and enduring: a gesture of affection, fidelity, and love. By returning again and again to what we cherish, we keep it alive—and ourselves awake—in a world that so easily forgets.

KEY TAKEWAYS

1. Repetition Is a Value of the Soul

Repetition is not accidental or mechanical—it is a soul value. The soul returns repeatedly to what matters in order to deepen, remember, and stay awake.

2. Depth Requires Repeated Contact

Any movement toward depth—whether in relationships, creativity, grief, or spiritual practice—requires repetition. Intimacy is built by going face-to-face with something many times.

3. Repetition Counters Cultural Amnesia

Modern culture is prone to forgetting and numbing. Repetition helps resist amnesia and anesthesia by keeping us tethered to lived experience, memory, and meaning.

4. The Extraordinary Is Found in the Ordinary

Repetition is not glamorous. It is ordinary. And it is precisely through the “extra-ordinary” acts of return that depth, mastery, and transformation emerge.

5. Repetition Shapes Skill and Soul

Whether learning piano, meditation, recovery, art, marketing, or podcasting, repetition slowly shapes both competence and character. Growth comes through showing up again and again.

6. Grief Requires Ongoing Return

Grief is not something to “get over.” Through repeated engagement, grief refines and deepens us, shaping the flavor and contours of our aliveness.

7. Progress Without Memory Creates Discontent

An obsession with progress, novelty, and self-improvement leaves a residue of dissatisfaction. Repetition restores continuity, grounding us in what we already know and love.

8. Repetition Is an Art of Remembering

Soulful repetition fosters memory—personal, ancestral, and cultural. Rituals, songs, stories, and practices help us maintain the trail through our human experience.

9. Repetition Is a Form of Courtship

Returning again and again—to people, practices, and passions—is a way of saying this matters. Repetition is relational, not rote.

10. Ritual and Practice Help Us Stay Awake

Prayer, meditation, art, movement, and grief rituals are not about achievement—they are designed to keep us awake, present, and connected.

11. Repetition Is a Gesture of Love

We tend what we love by returning to it. Repetition is an act of fidelity, affection, and care that keeps what matters alive and vital.

12. Repetition Strengthens the Soul Muscle

In a time of upheaval and collective strain, repetition offers steadiness. It becomes a living response to uncertainty—quiet, resilient, and sustaining.

13. Repetition Thrives in Community

Practices deepen when they are held in relationship. Circles, rituals, and shared containers support repetition not as obligation, but as belonging.

NEW! Take Action: Practice the Art of Repetition

This teaching isn’t about doing more. It’s about returning.

If repetition is a soul value, here are a few simple ways to practice it—gently, consistently, and in your own time.

1. Choose One Practice to Return To

Pick one practice for this season—meditation, walking, writing, music, prayer, breath, or stillness.
Commit not to intensity, but to showing up again.

Ask yourself:
What is one thing I’m willing to return to, even when it’s ordinary?

2. Let It Be Small and Repeatable

Five minutes counts.
One page counts.
One walk counts.

Repetition builds depth through contact, not perfection.

3. Notice What Deepens Over Time

Pay attention to how familiarity changes your relationship to the practice.
What becomes more intimate?
What feels more alive?
What softens?

Depth arrives quietly.

4. Stay Close to What Hurts and What Matters

If grief, loss, or longing is present, allow gentle, repeated contact rather than avoidance.
You don’t have to solve anything—just stay in relationship.

Repetition is one way the soul remembers.

5. Practice Repetition in Community

Some practices are hard to sustain alone.
If you’re craving rhythm, structure, and shared return, consider joining MidWinter Wise Circle—a six-week container for repeated practice, honest reflection, and deep listening.

You don’t need a perfect practice.
You need a place to return.

👉 Learn more and enroll
(Early enrollment savings available for a limited time.)