Apple Pie Playground, July 19, 2026
Apple Pie Playground with Valerie
The Science of Staying in Your Own Lane
How does staying in our own lane hold together a material universe? Sound silly? Let's talk about life's purpose.
Finding Your True Lane: Purpose, Presence, and the Courage to Create
Summary
Creating Reality in the Present
Valerie opens by describing creative reality as an overlooked spiritual gift available in every present moment. She encourages listeners to reinterpret difficult starts, restarts, and do-overs through letting go, renewed focus, and self-forgiveness. The episode presents attention as a major influence on moment-to-moment experience and invites listeners to imagine preferred conversations, emotions, and outcomes. Joy, curiosity, and alignment become practical ways to reconnect with the authentic inner child. This opening establishes the episode's central idea that people can consciously participate in creating a different experience of life.
The Roadway Metaphor for Personal Boundaries
A week of driving on newly paved roads without visible lane lines gives Valerie a metaphor for personal purpose and boundaries. She compares uncertainty on the highway with the difficulty of staying in one's own energetic and spiritual lane. Trying to satisfy everyone, control other people's choices, or monitor every surrounding lane can drain energy and cause a person to lose their own destination. The discussion asks listeners to trust others with their journeys while taking responsibility for their own direction. Staying in one's lane therefore becomes an act of focus, authenticity, and respect rather than isolation.
Breaking the Subconscious Autopilot
Valerie connects controlling behavior to subconscious fears involving unpredictability, vulnerability, and instability. She describes the subconscious as holding emotional conditioning, survival strategies, and automatic trauma responses that can shape how people navigate life. Habit and routine may keep people living from an energetic past, with very few fully conscious present moments. The episode proposes interrupting that autopilot by doing at least one new, novel, or different thing each day. Even small changes can restore conscious choice, imagination, creativity, and a clearer sense of direction.
Purpose as an Organizing Energy
The episode then interprets purpose through spiritual and scientific-sounding ideas involving energy, quantum mechanics, and entropy. Valerie describes purpose as a localized anti-entropy project that helps organize both an individual life and the shared material world. In this framework, apathy and stagnation weaken coherence, while intention, passion, and right action create durable patterns. She compares human cooperation to the organization of billions of cells that sustain a living body. The broader message is that purpose supplies energy, structure, and meaningful participation in collective reality.
Service, Compassion, and Human Wholeness
Valerie explores several philosophical and spiritual approaches to purpose rather than insisting on one predetermined assignment. Service repeatedly appears as a pathway toward a worthwhile life, compassion, awakening, and care for future generations. She discusses selfless action in Eastern traditions, caretaking roles in general descriptions of Indigenous perspectives, and Carl Jung's idea of integrating the shadow with the authentic self. Existentialist radical freedom is presented as another view in which people form their own purposes through choice. Across these perspectives, purpose is connected to service, wholeness, compassion, and harmonious participation in society.
A Four-Part Exercise for Finding Direction
The final portion guides listeners through a structured writing and reflection practice. The four stages examine the natural flow of daily life, the passions that animate a person, an unrestricted 'What If?' vision of the future, and the concrete sacrifices and uncertainties involved in taking action. Listeners are asked to identify first and second steps, visualize one month of purposeful living, and choose one small affirmative action for the following day. The exercise avoids immediate self-editing so that authentic first impressions can surface. Valerie closes by encouraging continued reflection, focused movement, and a purpose-driven life lived within one's own lane.
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Apple Pie Playground, a show serving up slices of remembrance of who we are as sacred children of the spark, where friends gather for a littlelevity, add in some fun and self-reflection as we use play self-therapy tools that reawaken our authentic selves on this human journey together. Can you come out and play today?
Speaker Identification
Speaker 1 - Announcer / Prerecorded Introduction and Closing Promo: Identified from the polished opening and closing language that frames the host's live monologue. The transcript does not establish whether the same recorded voice performs both segments, so they are grouped under one functional label.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host: Identified when she states, 'I'm your host, Valerie,' and continues as the sole live speaker throughout the episode.
Speaker 1 - Announcer / Prerecorded Introduction:
Welcome to Apple Pie Playground, where we serve up slices of healing for the heart. Stay tuned for a journey of transformation back to the divine inner child. Can you come out and play today?
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Welcome, everyone, to Apple Pie Playground. I'm your host, Valerie. I am so glad to be on the playground today, and I want to thank you, BBS, for being on the playground with us. It is so good to be here with you, friends.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
I have been reminded a lot lately that we really have at our disposal a most beautiful etheric gift. It is overlooked and not often accepted, but it is the gift of creative reality. A new reality is never more distant than the second we choose to create one for ourselves. That is a beautiful idea when you think about it. We have an abundance of opportunities to redo, retry, and realign ourselves through every present moment of our own making.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
What science tells us is that our moment-by-moment reality is generally most affected by our focus and attention. That is a tricky thing for humans with brains that remember everything and forgive only a little, but we are growing. We are learning how to let go and realign ourselves with focused attention on how we want to experience things: what a preferred moment would look like, what a preferred conversation might sound like, and what laughter would feel like as we let go of everything but joy, perhaps one moment at a time.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
I wanted to share that thought because of all my restarts, redos, and do-overs this week. Difficult starts and stops can be reimagined with a little letting go, refocusing, and self-forgiving. I also remembered that, as promised, we want to get in some expressive play today - a little reflective self-therapy, as we like to call it. Before we do, however, I have to confess a real difficulty of mine this week.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Welcome to the playground. Let us allow our inner child - our authentic self - to come out and play this afternoon for a little while in the energies of self-reflection, curiosity, and alignment. Everybody, welcome in. It is great to be here.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
I am wondering whether you have ever driven on a highway where the lane stripes have been completely paved over, so there are no painted lines anywhere on the road. It is a real dilemma, isn't it? Multiple lanes reach into the distance over the hood of your car, and you are not even sure which lane you are in or which lane you are supposed to be in. Has anybody ever been in that situation?
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Where I live, many highways are being repaved, and I suppose that is fairly normal for places with a lot of weather. I have been driving on roadways without painted lane lines for a good week. As drivers, I think we are all doing the best we can to stay in our own lane and get where we are trying to go with the greatest intention. It is a paradox: not having visible lanes makes you more focused on picking a lane and staying in it.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
What is interesting about that scenario is that I have had about as much trouble staying in my own lane energetically this week as I have had staying in the lanes on the roadway. We will talk about that today and consider how to manage what is essentially limited mental energy for focusing on our own proverbial lane. Is it the same with limited spiritual energy and staying in our own lane? It is fascinating how frustrating it can be to figure out which lane we are supposed to occupy as an exercise for life.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
The lane is an easy metaphor when we think about our goals and how we measure them against the life we are living. Is there a question within that metaphor as we pursue our purpose in this life? Do we even believe we have a purpose? Can we tell by the way we drive through our lives, the lanes we choose, and the places we decide to go?
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Does it make sense that focusing on our special part to play in the world - on a chosen purpose of our own - may be the best way to streamline our personal power, growth, and influence? Purpose expands our powers, friends. All kinds of things, however, can get in the way of that power.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Do we try to be everything to everybody instead of being true to ourselves? Does it wear us out to avoid offending other people along the roadway and in all the other lanes? We may tiptoe around what we say and how we feel because it does not feel safe to disagree with or disappoint somebody. When that is the case, those are fragile relationships. There is so much self-editing, self-effacing, and avoidance of our personal needs. What a heavy load that is.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Metaphorically, we may be driving while constantly looking to the left and right when we could simply stay in our own lane and go where we want to go. What if we are trying to do the driving for everybody else? What if we have input on every single thing and are continually crossing the lines between ourselves and other people? Are we unable to trust others to do what they are meant to do while we focus on doing what we are meant to do?
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Here is an 'ouchy' one in our metaphor: Are some of us hogging all the lanes, shifting from one to another as though we are lost in lives that do not make sense on roads that are not taking us to any particular destination? Are we confounding everybody around us by trying to control as much as possible, perhaps even for their own good? All that effort can ensure that we lose our own destination. That is something to think about.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
We can see many reasons why a good driver needs to stay in their own lane. We may also wonder where these situations come from, deep within what we call our subconscious suitcases. We take psychological terminology with a grain of salt here on the playground, so I am applying it only in very general and loose terms.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
From the perspective of the subconscious mind, our need to control outcomes, other people, and environments - the things that keep us in everybody else's lane or prevent us from choosing a lane - is rooted in fears such as unpredictability, vulnerability, and instability. These conditions can negatively affect our ability to pursue our life's purpose. They are deep in the subconscious, yet they emerge in the way we navigate our lives and in the kinds of drivers we become.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
The subconscious mind holds a great deal of conditioning, survival strategy, and autonomic trauma response. That is why a dedicated practice of bringing the subconscious into conscious awareness is so important. Conscious awareness requires an alignment of what the brain does with the heart and nervous system, energizing the body as an electromagnetic system. That alignment produces a balanced, resonant energy flow.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
The conscious mind tends to inhabit the logical, goal-setting environment of the brain, while the subconscious exists in the deeper, habit-driven environment, with a great deal of emotion attached. Our subconscious suitcases hold a lot of emotion. I recently heard a profound idea in a conversation about this topic, and I want to share it.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Most of us experience very few consciously present moments in any given day - probably far fewer than we imagine. We are so tied to habit, routine, time, protocol, and autonomic behavior that we are often living in what might be called an energetic past. We live there through much of every day. Nothing changes in what I would call a waking past life because everything is so habituated. We move through the day on autopilot, and that does not create a new reality; it simply replays an old routine.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Does that make sense when we think about trying to find a lane while we are not consciously aware of where we are going? We turn on the vehicle's automatic controls, set a speed, and let the car go. Imagine how unlikely it is that we will experience innovation, imagination, and creativity during a day filled with so much habitual behavior that we relive the past instead of producing fresh, unique, and novel present moments.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
If purpose is an underlying reason for being alive, what are we doing to that reason when we spend lifetimes entrenched in habitual behavior to the point that we do not experience the reason for our being? So often, we are not in our own lanes. We drift, change lanes, and go where we are accustomed to going because we are afraid to choose a lane, because we feel a need to control everybody else, or because we simply do not know where we are going. That is a great deal of driving without a purpose or true north.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
The main idea from that conversation was that we can break the spell of living in a daily past by choosing to do something new every day. Do something different, novel, or unique - even if it is small. A small change can reshape our reality and hold us in present moments that lead to new, fresh, and novel experiences. We then become more consciously aware of how we are choosing to unfold our day.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
I thought that was wonderful advice and insight. Here on the playground, we have adopted a collective goal of growing in wisdom through experiences that change us and build our knowing. We are sorting through the ideas that merit our attention as we are guided toward a single source of truth, taking this journey a little at a time. We awaken in remembrance of who we really are, carrying and expressing wisdom through experiences that move us toward deeper knowing. It is beautiful work to do.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
I wanted to add that conversation to our toolbox and create a little wisdom through applying it to our lives. I needed to find my lane this week and stay in it. I needed to imagine and create within it, own the point of view that exists in my space, be brave, and honor my voice in what matters to me.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
At the same time that we are doing our own beautiful work, the other drivers in this thing called life do not need us changing lanes in unhelpful ways. We have our own lessons to learn. This is also, in a sense, a quantum lesson involving the physical laws of our material reality.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
As creators, we have created what we call physical laws as we co-create material worlds. In this spiritual framework, it comes from our intention and the energy of our eternal spirit. In other words, our reality currently organizes through what we call quantum principles. That is our present organizing theme in the material world, until evolution carries us through the river of experience toward whatever comes next. The cosmos expands, and we do our part, ever evolving and ever changing.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Within the increasing complexity we call quantum mechanics, there is a principle called entropy, the idea that energy that is not purposefully ordered eventually falls into disorder and chaos as a natural phenomenon. We use our energies, along with everything else, in organizing our reality in this material realm. By using our energy to organize reality, we maintain structure in the physical environment and the material world that we are daydreaming and constructing together in the mind's eye.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Our energies as human beings have an organizing purpose. Our purpose creates and maintains physical order in a material reality. Purpose is a primary organizing function for us in that way. Scientists have called each person's purpose in the material world a 'localized anti-entropy project.' We each have a project in co-creating this material realm, keeping it organized, holding it together, and maintaining resonance. In this view, that anti-entropy project is our purpose in life.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
When we look at entropy, whatever is not organized falls into disorder and chaos. The purpose we construct helps define a life well lived through an ordered engagement with our passion. In that sense, friends, your purpose in life is helping to hold a world together. Without purpose or energy input, human life can energetically stagnate and destabilize. Apathy and lethargy can create incoherent energies that collapse rather than unify within the body's fields and within our shared field of conscious co-creation.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
When we contribute our energy to a collaboration of organizing structures, we align in purpose and participate in ordering life events that carry passion. Those events become harmonic and collaborative. We contribute to organizing our material world through intention and right action, patterning a life that holds coherence and is unified, harmonic, and durable. Just as billions of cells organize to keep a body alive, we organize energetically to sustain our material reality.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
That does not mean everybody is born with one specific purpose that must be achieved. Many people prefer that idea, and that is fine, but it is not required in this discussion. Purpose can instead be understood as an important tool for a harmonious shared human reality, and energy input is important in our co-creation of an organized, coherent life together.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Philosophy, broadly speaking, has often concluded that human beings are not necessarily assigned a life's purpose or placed here on a fixed assignment. Yet cultivating a worthwhile life requires a commitment to living fully. That necessity places purpose front and center. The word 'service' often appears when philosophical discussions turn to human purpose because service is viewed as a pursuit of a high and noble state of humanity.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
In Eastern philosophies, service can lead humanity toward awakening. It is described as selfless action that generates compassion. This relates to the beautiful notion of the divine feminine coming into this age. I find it surprising that we are not integrating the divine feminine more fully, and I look forward to seeing how that idea progresses as polarity takes on a different tone. That is not our primary topic today, but it is exciting and worth mentioning.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Service generates compassion, and compassion is an absolute necessity. The root of a life lived in harmony with all things begins with compassion. This is where the beautiful masculine can come in from the battlefield, lay his head against the divine feminine, and receive the compassion of a hard-fought peace. In some Buddhist practices, service is also associated with energetic healing and the goal of alleviating the suffering of all sentient beings. That idea of selfless action as a healing energy is worth discussing.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
When considering Indigenous perspectives in general terms, a life purpose may involve stepping into roles that connect one generation to the next. People become living, breathing continuations of past generations moving into future generations. They step into roles of service as caretakers, choosing work that harmonizes the world around them and unifies it energetically. That is powerful and necessary work.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Carl Jung saw a person's purpose as a way to integrate the shadow self with the true, authentic self. In other words, purpose can make a person whole by providing an opportunity to integrate those parts of the self. That is certainly something to consider.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Are we born to fulfill a specific purpose? Maybe, and maybe not. Does that ultimately matter? Fulfilling a life's purpose is still a central function of who we are. A common philosophical view is that we live dynamic lives in which our choices affect how life unfolds. The question becomes whether we can focus sufficiently on service to a deeply held purpose in a way that harmonizes society.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Existentialists were convinced that we are born with what they called radical freedom and that forming our purpose in life is uniquely our own work. From that perspective, creating purpose is part and parcel of the radical freedom of being alive. It is an interesting way to look at the question.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Are we born with a specific life's purpose? Maybe. Are we born to find a life's purpose? Absolutely. Service is key to that work. Service to purpose helps organize our physical world and extends the awakening of our spirit into the celestial realm.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
What does all of this have to do with staying in our own lane? It gives us a reason to focus and discover what excites us in a purpose-driven life. We hear and read that phrase all the time. We are not very good drivers if we cannot find our lane and stay in it. Sometimes there are no lane lines painted on the road for us to follow, and those are the times when staying in our lane may be most important.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
We remain faithful to ourselves and our purpose, never mind who is on the left or right. It is our journey, our fuel in the tank, and the ride of a lifetime, however we choose it to be. This idea emerged through several conversations this week and through my own experience on highways that were a little tricky to navigate. I hope we gained something from an interesting week of suppositions and conversations about life's purpose.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
I promised expressive play today, so I want us to do a little self-reflection and self-expression together. Those are among the great things in life - the groovy stuff. Would you like to do some expressive self-therapy? Do not be shy. All we need is something to write with and something to write on. Some of us like to use notebooks, but if you cannot get to paper or a table, feel free to meditate on the exercise as we go.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Let us grab a pen and some paper. We are going to jot down reflections and answers on the page. Allow what comes to you to arrive without editing. Capture the first things that come to mind and put those ideas on paper. First impressions are often the most honest, authentic, and worthwhile material for reflection.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
We will record responses to questions about finding our purpose and move through four phases of reflection. After reflecting, we will end with a few action-oriented questions that can help us discover or develop our purpose.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Part One: Reflect on the Natural Flow of Your Life. Think about your life's purpose - developing it, spending more time experiencing it, changing it, or allowing it to evolve. How would you describe the way your life flows right now as a daily routine? How would you prefer it to flow through a day or week? How does that flow relate to the passions you already have?
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Consider which passions currently receive your daily energy and which passions you would like to develop within the way you prefer your day to unfold. The idea is to reflect on how well your sense of purpose aligns with the flow of your life, and vice versa. If your life purpose and the flow of your energy are not easily aligned, you are likely to experience frustration and real barriers to living with purpose as a lifestyle. Consider how well your preferred routine aligns with the passions and purpose you want to pursue. That is the first reflection. I hope you have written down ideas you can revisit during the week.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Part Two: Reflect on What Animates You. What gets you excited? What would get you out of bed every morning with a spring in your step? Keep in mind that we defeat our imagination when we limit our highest excitement with limiting beliefs. Let your mind run wild and allow your heart to daydream about ideas that feel beautiful and passionate, without allowing imagined limitations to interrupt the exercise.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Set aside worries about funding, income, skill level, access, relationships, or technology. We are daydreaming. If we can imagine a possibility, it exists as a reality in some form that we may draw into our experience. Allow your passions to exist in a world where you can jump out of bed and pursue your purpose. What gets you excited? What would you do for free? If you could solve one problem in the world, what would it be? What are you passionate enough about to climb onto a soapbox and speak? Record what arrives without editing.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Part Three: Play the 'What If?' Game. Reflect on what your future could look like if you allowed it to be true no matter what. What if money were no object? What if skill level, access, or relationships were no object? What would you do tomorrow to create a purpose-driven life? What purpose would you pursue, and what would fill your day if there were no limitations or hurdles?
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Now identify the first step you would take toward realizing your life's purpose. What would be the second step? Be specific. Where would you want to be in developing your purpose by the end of the month? Visualize the scene that reflects what life would look like after your first month of living your true purpose. Make the picture as specific as possible.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Part Four: Define an Actionable Reality. What would an actionable reality look like in the development of your life's purpose? Consider three questions. First, what are you willing to sacrifice or give up in the short term to reach your purpose goal? Make a list and be honest with yourself. Second, what degree of struggle or uncertainty are you willing to face? Try to define it. Third, what is one small but affirmative step you can take tomorrow toward your life's purpose - not in a few days or over the weekend, but tomorrow? Identify the one small step you can wake up and take.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Those four areas can begin our contemplation of moving toward a life purpose, developing it, expanding it, or changing it. Some red flags may have appeared as you considered how the process would unfold, and you may also have experienced a few moments of insight. Our good work is to imagine a life well lived.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Today's reflection may help us follow our hearts and change a few things so that we can live a purpose-driven life and get into our own lane, regardless of what everybody else is doing. We can remain focused and move forward. There is a great deal of research and guidance available on finding purpose, and many things to study. I enjoyed our activity together, and I hope it merits further reflection this week. I am glad you took a chance on participating, and I hope it serves you well.
Speaker 2 - Valerie / Host:
Now, friends, it is time for me to go home. Off the playground I go. I will wave goodbye and thank BBS for being with us today. We love you so much, BBS. Until next time, friends.
Speaker 1 - Announcer / Prerecorded Closing Promo:
Time to head home, friends. Thanks for being part of today's journey. We will see you back on the playground next Sunday at 1:00 p.m. Central Time on BBSRadio.com. Make sure to subscribe if you enjoyed the show. Find us on Telegram and X to share your insights on today's topics. Your input heals the child in us all.
