The Wonder Land

“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”In this episode, we step outside the mind’s demand for practicality and question what that word is really protecting.Practicality often masquerades as neutrality, but it’s deeply personal, contextual, and identity-shaping. What seems sensible in one frame can quietly limit vitality, creativity, and presence in another.We explore: • How practicality becomes an identity rather than a tool • Why “being busy” often passes for being practical • The difference between practical vision, effort, and activity • How rushing is a prediction the body carries • Why impracticality can restore creative flow and nervous-system regulationImpracticality isn’t rebellion or chaos.It’s a way of interrupting automatic continuity—long enough to notice what’s alive.Sometimes the most practical thing we can dois stop being legible to the past.Now go play.The world is waiting for you to remember the wonder that is your real inheritance.(You can blame us when you’re late.)⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastLet’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com

Join us as we take a jaunt out of the mind’s need for practical answers. What happens when we stretch the edges of what seems useful and necessary? Where in your life has practicality become limiting and fear-based? Listen in for an invitation to live a little more impractically—and discover what becomes possible when usefulness loosens its grip.⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastLet’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” — Alan WattsWhen a bone breaks, we don’t heal it—we cast it.Not to fix it, but to stop ourselves from interfering while something deeper does the work.In this episode, we explore how emotional and mental wounds behave the same way. Thought keeps “touching” the injury—replaying, analyzing, defending—and that interference becomes the pain.Healing doesn’t require more effort.It requires less agitation.Sometimes distance, delay, or not getting what we want is life creating space for repair. Step back from the details and let something new form on its own.⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastLet’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com

Today’s episode explores a quiet but destabilizing realization: the “I” cannot be found. It has never been directly experienced, yet it is assumed to stand behind all experience.We examine how this inherited linguistic structure and emotional habit comes to feel essential to seeing, hearing, and feeling—and what becomes obvious when that belief is cut at the root. This conversation points to what is already the case, and the clarity that remains without reference to a central “self.”This Conversation Is for You If • You’re curious about the felt sense of “I” • Self-inquiry keeps circling but not landing • Language feels like it’s doing more than describing • You’re open to clarity without a reference point⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastLet’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.comWork With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → https://uncoveryspace.comAlex → https://canaimacoaching.com

In This EpisodeWe explore the difference between possibility and positivity—and why confusing the two quietly keeps us trapped.Possibility is not optimism. It is not hope, reframing, or emotional correction. It is neutral, dimensionless, and unbound by history or expectation. This episode invites a shift out of linear narratives and into the vast field where no trajectory is required.This Conversation Is for You If • Positivity feels forced or vaguely dishonest • You sense that hope still carries pressure • You’re curious about living without a timeline or track • You want relief without needing a better story“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is — infinite.”— William Blake⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastLet’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.comWork With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → https://uncoveryspace.comAlex → https://canaimacoaching.com

What is fear, and what gets built around it?This episode explores fear as an architecture shaped by the search for safety. We trace the trembling scaffold beneath our thoughts and identities and ask a simple, destabilizing question: what are we actually trying to stay safe from? A quiet dose of Wonder Land medicine for living inside a matrix of fear without rushing to escape it.This Conversation Is for You If • Fear feels subtle but ever-present • Safety quietly organizes your choices • You’re willing to stay with the tremble instead of fixing it⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastLet’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.comWork With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → https://uncoveryspace.comAlex → https://canaimacoaching.com

What existed before we learned how to manage ourselvesIn This EpisodeWe explore the idea of First Nature—the original, untrained intelligence of the body and nervous system—before optimization, self-improvement, or survival strategies took over.In this conversation, we touch on: • The difference between First Nature (innate regulation) and Second Nature (learned adaptation) • How productivity, politeness, and “coping skills” often override embodied knowing • Why so much healing work is actually about remembering, not fixing • What becomes available when the body is trusted before the mind intervenesThis Conversation Is for You If • You’re tired of managing yourself • You sense your body knows things your thoughts don’t • You’ve done “the work” but feel further from ease • You’re curious what remains when strategies fall awayPlayful InvitationFor one ordinary moment today, pause before adjusting yourself.Notice what your body is already doing right—without instruction.Closing ReflectionFirst Nature doesn’t need motivation, permission, or language.It isn’t optimized, moralized, or curated.It moves toward balance because that is what living systems do—when they are no longer interrupted.Featured Closing LineBefore we learned how to survive ourselves, we already knew how to live.⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast

What if free will is just a story thought tells? This episode explores the subtle “glue” that turns events into a personal narrative—and how blame, guilt, and shame fall away when that glue dissolves.Patreon: patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastContact: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.comAmanda: uncoveryspace.comAlex: canaimacoaching.com

What if the voice urging you to do more, be better, fix yourself… isn’t actually you? This episode explores the illusion of the inner “knocker,” the self-improvement loop it creates, and the freedom that appears when you realize the voice was never yours.Patreon: patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastContact: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.comAmanda: uncoveryspace.comAlex: canaimacoaching.com

What if the battle between thoughts and feelings is empty—held together only by the habit of remembering to worry, fear, or ruminate? In this episode, we explore what happens when the mind forgets to remember, and how consciousness reveals itself as wide, spacious, and never out to harm—only to move.Patreon: patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcastContact: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.comAmanda: uncoveryspace.comAlex: canaimacoaching.com

“Profound truths are recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth.” — Niels Bohr⸻In This EpisodeWe explore contradiction as something born from language, not reality.Contra-dicere — “to speak against” — reveals that opposites arise when words divide what experience holds as one. This episode invites you to notice how truth often requires both sides, and how silence dissolves every apparent conflict.Highlights • Contradiction as a linguistic act • Why profound truths arrive with their opposites • Paradox vs. conflict • What becomes clear before language enters⸻This Conversation Is for You If… • You feel torn between two truths • You’re curious about how language shapes perception • You crave the clarity found before words⸻Playful InvitationNotice one place today where you’re “speaking against” what is.What shifts when both sides are allowed to be true?⸻Closing ReflectionWe work with being,but non-being is what we use.— Dao Te ChingContradiction is simply truth echoing through language.Wholeness was here all along.⸻Become a Patron & Join Our Deep Dives👉 patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast⸻Let’s Connect📧 podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com⸻Work With UsAmanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

🌿 The Wonder Land — Episode 134: This Little Thing⸻✨ In This EpisodeWhat does it mean to “close the book” on the little encapsulated self-idea?In this episode, Alex and Amanda explore what lies beyond the identity we habitually defend—the “little thing” we mistake for who we are. Together, they unpack the subtle tension between liberation and the mind’s resistance, the Yes, but… that keeps us circling back into old frameworks.This isn’t about denying the self. It’s about seeing through its edges into something vaster—an awareness unconfined by story or definition.They explore:🌿 What it means to close the book on the self-story without rejecting it🔥 The familiar “Yes, but…” defenses that arise when freedom feels too spacious🌊 How identity contracts around safety and control💫 The felt sense of dissolving beyond This Little Thing into wholeness⸻🌕 This Conversation Is for You IfYou feel ready to stop rehearsing the same self-narratives.You sense there’s more of you than the roles, fears, and names you’ve worn.You’re curious about what remains when the little self grows quiet.⸻🌀 Playful InvitationWhen you notice the mind narrating your experience—“I’m this,” “I always,” “I never”—pause.Close the book for a moment.What’s here when the story stops mid-sentence?Can you sense the vastness that holds even this little thing with tenderness?⸻🌙 Closing ReflectionLiberation is not the destruction of the self—it’s the freedom to no longer confuse it for all that you are.The book of you can rest, its pages complete, even as new chapters arise and fade.Because the vastness you are has never been contained within its cover.Close the book gently.You are already written in everything.⸻🌿 Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com⸻🌙 Work With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

🌿 The Wonder Land — Episode 133: The Opposite of Peace“The ego is a kind of flip, a knowing of knowing, a fearing of fearing. It’s a curlicue, an extra jazz to experience, a sort of double-take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.”— The Joyous Cosmology⸻✨ In This EpisodeAlex and Amanda explore the subtle texture of doubt—not as conflict, but as the quiet opposite of peace.It isn’t war or resistance that fractures our inner stillness, but the mind’s habit of doubling—of layering story upon story until presence becomes noise.This conversation unfolds through:🌿 The etymology of doubt—from the Latin dubitāre, “to be in two.”🌊 The difference between uncertainty and doubt, and why one is creative while the other is restless.🪄 The Magus archetype in tarot as a symbol of weaving multiplicity into coherence.💫 How peace emerges when we stop multiplying stories and allow uncertainty to simply be.Doubt, they suggest, is not a failure of faith but an invitation—to return to the stillness that holds all possibilities at once.⸻🌕 This Conversation Is for You IfYou find yourself caught in mental loops of what-ifs and maybes.You long for peace that doesn’t depend on answers.You’re ready to see uncertainty as creative energy instead of threat.⸻🌀 Playful InvitationWhen you notice doubt arising, pause and name the stories that are multiplying.Can you feel the moment when uncertainty turns into agitation?Then try standing in that space—as The Magus does—not to choose, but to weave.⸻🌙 Closing ReflectionUncertainty is not the opposite of peace; it’s the ground of it.Peace is not the absence of movement—it’s the stillness wide enough to hold every possible direction.Doubt is only the echo of our resistance to that stillness.When we stop trying to choose one story to be final, we find ourselves resting again in the creative hum of the unknown.Doubt, even here, is not an ending.It’s an invitation back to peace.⸻🌿 Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com⸻🌙 Work With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

🌿 The Wonder Land — Episode 132: Control Collapse⸻✨ In This EpisodeAlex and Amanda explore the strange beauty that unfolds when control begins to dissolve.What if realizing that control is an illusion isn’t a loss—but an initiation?This conversation travels through the tender, disorienting space that opens when the structures we’ve built to feel safe begin to collapse. In the absence of control, something else appears: presence, participation, and a deeper form of belonging to what is.They explore:🌊 What happens to the self when control dissolves🔥 Why the mind clings to control as a survival language🌿 How surrender is not passivity, but intimacy with life💫 The wonder-filled terrain that reveals itself when nothing needs to be managed⸻🌕 This Conversation Is for You IfYou’re exhausted from trying to hold everything together.You feel the quiet ache of wanting life to soften around you.You sense that freedom might live on the other side of control.Come with us—to the edge where collapse becomes creation,and where what falls apart reveals what’s always been whole.⸻🌀 Playful InvitationNotice one small thing you usually try to control—your schedule, your words, your emotions—and experiment with letting it unfold differently.Watch what happens when you stop steering and start witnessing.Where does the current carry you?⸻🌙 Closing ReflectionControl promises safety, but what it really offers is tension.When it collapses, what’s left is not chaos—it’s coherence without command.To release control is to remember you were never separate from the movement of life.You were the wave mistaking itself for the ocean’s edge.⸻🌿 Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com⸻🌙 Work With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

🌿 The Wonder Land — Episode 131: The Lingering Mystery“My technique is don’t believe anything. If you believe in something, you are automatically precluded from believing its opposite.”— Terence McKenna⸻✨ In This EpisodeAlex and Amanda linger in the soft, sensual pulse of not knowing. They explore curiosity as something alive and playful, not a problem to be solved but a space to be entered.This conversation invites you to savor the mystery—the magic trick you never want to ruin by explanation. It’s about the pleasure of asking why just to feel wonder ripple through you, not to find closure.They explore:​🌸 Curiosity without conclusion — whispering “I wonder why…” not to be right, but to taste possibility.​🌀 Maslow’s two types of curiosity — deficiency-based vs. being-oriented, or curiosity born from lack vs. curiosity born from awe.​🌿 The role of language — how words can both reveal and limit the vastness of what we sense.​🔥 The imaginative “why” — freeing curiosity from the need to tether itself to truth.Through stories, laughter, and philosophical play, Alex and Amanda remind us that mystery is not an obstacle—it’s the playground of wonder.⸻🌊 This conversation is for you if:You’ve grown weary of needing answers.You’re ready to feel the beauty of unknowing.You long to meet life not with certainty, but with delight.Come linger with us—in the shimmer between sense and surrender,where curiosity itself becomes connection.⸻✨ Playful InvitationTry it yourself:Ask “why” ten times and answer each one with nonsense.Why is the sky blue? Because whales keep painting it each morning.Because the sun borrowed the ocean’s clothes.Because blue hides better from giants than green.Let your imagination be the teacher.Let not knowing be the gift.⸻💫 Closing ReflectionMystery was never meant to be solved.It was meant to be lived—like a poem that changes each time you read it.The next time you feel the tug to figure it out, pause.Ask a gentler kind of why—one that doesn’t need solving.One that lets you linger.⸻“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t.And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be.And what it wouldn’t be, it would.”— Lewis Carroll⸻🌿 Become a Patron & Join Our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.👉 patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com⸻🌙 Work With UsExplore deeper through our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

✨ Become a Patron & Join our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast----------------------🌿 Show NotesToday we explore the veil of self-identification and how to watch it drop. What is going on when it is apparent and how can we play with its movement? Listen in to find out how direct contact is automatic when the veil drops, and recognize the dynamics at play.⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com🌿 Work With UsExplore deeper with our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

✨ Become a Patron & Join our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast_______🌿 Show Notes — The Wonder Land, Episode 126: River & WaveIn this conversation, Alex and Amanda explore the many forms of flow—how it shows up in seasons of creativity, and how we can trust its different shapes. Sometimes flow feels steady and inevitable, like a river reshaping everything in its path. Other times it feels cyclical and rhythmic, like a wave transmitting energy without having to carry it all.We also reflect on the “frozen” seasons, when flow feels absent or delayed, and how these pauses are not failures but holding spaces—waiting rooms where life gathers itself before returning as inspiration.✨ Key threads you’ll hear:What We Mean by Flow — the difference between creating from pressure and creating from inspiration.The River — matter in motion, a current that embodies direction, inevitability, and momentum.The Wave — energy in motion, a rhythm that moves through us without needing to be carried.Metaphors for Creative Seasons — how both river and wave are natural forms of flow.Frozen Seasons — honoring the stillness that holds hidden life.We close with an invitation:When do you feel like the river, pulled into your inevitable course?When do you feel like the wave, transmitting energy without moving yourself?And how might noticing the difference help you trust your own rhythm of flow?⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com🌿 Work With UsExplore deeper with our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

✨ Become a Patron & Join our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast🌿 Show Notes — The Wonder Land, Episode 128: The Subtle Violence of Self-ImprovementToday we reflect on an evocative statement that captures the mind’s endless drive for self-improvement. At first glance, this pursuit looks reasonable—even admirable. But when we look closely, we see how habituated we are to its subtle violence: the never-ending, never-satisfied belief that who we are right now is not enough.In this conversation, Alex and Amanda explore what happens when we uncover this restless pattern and recognize it for what it is. Beneath the pressure to keep improving lies a surprising freedom—an ease that arises when we no longer mistake endless striving for life itself.✨ Key threads you’ll hear:The continuous self-improvement activity of the mind.How subtle resistance disguises itself as “reasonable” growth.The never-ending loop of “not enough” and its hidden violence.The relief and freedom that emerge when the pattern is seen clearly.This episode invites you to notice: what shifts when the pressure to be better dissolves, and life is allowed to be enough—just as it is?⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com🌿 Work With UsExplore deeper with our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

✨ Become a Patron & Join our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast🌿 Show Notes — The Wonder Land, Episode 127: As Far as the “I” Can SeeThis conversation traces the ripple effect of self—how our identities are shaped by memory and conditioned responses, and what unfolds when we move past those ripples into the unmapped.We explore the edges of recognition: how experience changes when it’s no longer mediated by habit, memory, or the need to name. What lies beyond the familiar “I” isn’t emptiness, but intimacy—a field where perception is direct, unfiltered, and strangely close.✨ Key threads you’ll hear:The Ripple Effect of Self — how memory and reflexes shape concentric rings of identity.Beyond Recognition — the intimacy and disorientation of encountering what isn’t anchored in memory.Seeing Without the “I” — perception unmediated by story or selfhood.The Edges of Knowing — moving from “I know this” to “I don’t know, but I can stay.”Practical Reflections — experiments to notice the edges of “I” and linger in unreferenced presence.We close by returning to the phrase: as far as the I can see. What lies beyond that edge may not be ours to grasp—but perhaps it is ours to dwell in.⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com🌿 Work With UsExplore deeper with our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com

✨ Become a Patron & Join our Deep DivesGet early access to course discounts, behind-the-scenes reflections, and exclusive content when you join us on Patreon.https://www.patreon.com/TheWonderLandPodcast✨ In This Episode:What is it that breaches the loop of the painful self-stories? What can we see about the rupture of the beliefs that seem invisible? What happens when the Me-sense glimpse the discomfort of being groundless? Join us for a conversation with the whisper from beyond that seems to play at the edges of the mind, tickling the questioner with prompts and guidance to drop out of the abstractions and into The Wonder.⸻🌀 Let’s ConnectHave thoughts or questions? Want to share how the episode landed for you?📧 Reach us at: podcast.thewonderland@gmail.com🌿 Work With UsExplore deeper with our coaching, courses, and creative containers:Amanda → uncoveryspace.comAlex → canaimacoaching.com