Hopping With Bunny Michael

The first thing I do when I wake up is roll over and pick up my phone to scroll Instagram. I delight in the travelogues of places I could never afford to visit and revel in the lives of the rich, famous, and exceptionally beautiful. Then, suddenly, inevitably, I hit a cliff as my heart descends into my stomach and I contemplate what I’ve done with my life.

I first saw Bunny and their Higher Self memes during one of these daily doom scrolls. It felt like a grounding force, a beacon of light in the void of self-comparison. Bunny defines “higher self” as who you are beyond your social conditioning. They encourage us to seek wholeness within rather than outside ourselves. This is especially important in a world where we’re oftentimes reduced to profile pictures, dating app bios, and a set of hand-picked photos on the carousel of desire. 

I resonated with Bunny’s human-centered approach to dating in a digital world. Oftentimes we forget that the person on the other side of the screen isn’t a product to be bought or discarded. Our idea of what the perfect relationship looks like often keeps us from finding real pleasure or real companionship. 

When Bunny isn’t spreading the word of self love and acceptance, they’re singing made-up songs to their pets, making art, and recording advice for their podcast “Xo Higher Self: Advice and Healing”. We talked about everything from self-care to heightism and the effects of capitalism on our self-esteem. Join Bunny and I on the path to enlightenment. 

Jard

Hey, how are you today? 

Bunny

I'm pretty good. I just started working, but I've been up since 5:30. So it's already been a busy morning. 

Jard

I've been listening to your audio book “Hello Higher Self”. You mentioned made-up songs that you sing to your pets. 

Bunny

So funny that you say that because I literally was just saying to my partner that I made up this great song for Rio yesterday and I can't remember it. I don't know if there's a title but I remember this song “Pepperoni Pizza Pie” that I made for my cat Pepper. She passed away last year, but I still honor her through songs sometimes. 

Jard

Wow, that's beautiful. What's been bringing you joy in life? 

Bunny

What's bringing me joy? I think what's bringing me joy right now is reminding myself to enjoy the process of growth. I'm big into visualization and being the creator of your life and having those goals in mind. I’ve been really just focusing on making stuff that makes me happy, which is actually kind of a new way of thinking about it. 

Before, I was so focused on what I think people need now. And I think in doing this for so many years, I've really come to realize that in order to keep it sustainable, it also has to be about, what do I need? I guess what's bringing me joy right now is that I've given myself permission to really create things that are exciting to me and fulfill me as an artist. 

Jard

Can you explain what higher self and LHBs mean to you?

Bunny

So there's a lot of different definitions of higher self, but the way that I define higher self is who you are beyond your learned hierarchical beliefs (LHBs), which is a term that I coined to describe social conditioning. We were socialized to believe that we aren’t inherently worthy just for being who we are, but instead to rely on proving our worth through our accomplishments, possessions, and appearance. 

We're discovering that in the richest country in the world, so many people don't really understand their value and can't find self-love. When you tell people that they aren’t inherently worthy, they seek worth through oppressing other people or having so-called power through climbing that hierarchical ladder. 

When you connect to your higher self, it’s really just about bringing awareness to your learned hierarchical beliefs, which vary depending on your circumstances and how you were raised. And when you start questioning those thoughts and where they come from, who put those beliefs in your head, you can connect to a deeper truth.

Jard

You mentioned self love quite a bit—what does that look like to you? I feel like that's become such a buzzword.

Bunny

I think that what's important to understand for me is that self love is realizing that you're enough at every stage of the journey. It means that even if somebody hurt you or tried to make you feel unlovable, there’s actually nothing that anybody can do to you, [and] no mistake that you can make that’ll change the fact that you are whole and enough. Self love is just the act of prioritizing, reminding yourself of your value with or without these things that the world tells us will make us love ourselves. 

If you don't understand your wholeness regardless of the trajectory of your career or the status of your relationships, it's going to be incredibly hard to keep joy sustainable or to know what path you should take moving forward. Careers and relationships are fleeting, they don’t always define you and when you depend on those outside things, you’ll eventually crash. LHBs are saying you need this in order to be enough because you aren't. There's always more fame or more love, more affection, more attention, whatever it is and you will be in this constant state of seeking more and never feeling satisfied. 

Jard

I know that you use memes in your work. What role does humor play in your practice and service? 

Bunny

It's funny that some people think that they're funny. I guess they are kind of funny and silly. I think it's important, especially when it comes to healing, to not take it too seriously. You should always be able to laugh at yourself. 

We need to make sure we’re not pathologizing ourselves, we shouldn’t feel that there’s something wrong with us for struggling. Look at the world we live in. It’s humorous because it’s relatable, because you can recognize it. When we laugh at a joke it’s funny because we share that experience. It makes us feel like we’re in community and not alone. 

Jard

How has it been transitioning your ideas from social media into a podcast and books? 

Bunny

Writing the book was really challenging in a lot of ways. I've never written a book. I had a lot of self doubt coming up. On top of that, I was talking about difficult things from my childhood and interviewing my parents about things we hadn’t talked about. It was really nice to write something that was more long format than the memes because there's only so much you can say in that form.

I love social media formats because I think even as a writer, it confines you to this small thing to get big ideas across and it's really great practice. Making memes is not nothing, it’s not like lower art. In general there’s this cultural understanding that you just make a meme and it’ll go viral but it’s a lot. 

But anyway, the book was amazing. It’s continually teaching me. And it was just so nice to have this manual guidebook. I released a video course on how to be your higher self, too. As I grow, I'm doing different formats and finding out what feels good to me.

Jard

You’ve mentioned the slot machine mindset of dating apps. How do we build a healthy relationship to online dating? 

Bunny

There's this sense that because there's all these options that it makes it easier, and I don't think that's true. I think people are putting a lot of pressure on themselves like, “Oh my God, I've gone on all of these dates and there's all these people on this app, but I'm not meeting anybody. There must be something wrong with me.” But, having more options does not necessarily give you a better chance of making a connection. 

In a chapter on dating, I talk about investigating the LHBs that you have around dating when it comes to what you think your value is and how you see value in other people. On dating apps, we make these really quick judgments, just based on a couple images. 

One of the things that I think can really help heal your relationship to dating is to bring into awareness the assumptions that you make about what you find attractive or what you don't find attractive, what you're looking for and why. For example if you need to find this person who has this much money in order to be happy, then your avenue of who you think you could have a potential connection with is pretty narrow. I'm not saying that you need to be attracted to everybody. I just think it's important to investigate whether a desire is from your higher self or a desire based on your conditioning. 

Jard

What would you say are some common LHBs that people have around dating and relationships? 

Bunny

I'll share a little story. I had mentioned in the book as an example that a stereotypical thing might be a woman saying that she only wants to date a man that’s a certain height or taller than her. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with what you're attracted to, but what I'm asking is for you to question that a little bit. Where does that come from? Why are you only attracted to taller men? Why do you tell yourself you're only attracted to taller men? 

There's a lot of conditioning and hierarchical biases that are based in patriarchy, racism, transphobia, [and] homophobia that are influencing our perspective on dating. Let's just be real. I was saying that only dating tall men, there could be some Eurocentric biases happening in that attraction. One of my editors at the time who was working on the book told me that we shouldn’t put that in the book because it’s not an LHB. I said “Hm, okay but it can be, though.” I just feel like we don't think deeply enough about attraction sometimes. 

We know that transphobia and homophobia are so ingrained in our culture. We know that white supremacy is ingrained. Therefore, it has an effect on how you view yourself or how you view other people. That stuff is playing out in our subconscious and I think that it creates a very limited perspective on love and connection. To me, there should be no beauty standard. True beauty is having the vision to see the full spectrum of beauty. When you love somebody, the more you love them, you notice they become more beautiful in your eyes. 

Jard

Do you have any advice for dating as your higher self? 

Bunny

You are enough, just how you are. Even if the date doesn't work out in terms of what you had hoped for, that doesn’t mean it was a failure. Remember that the person that you're connecting with is a human being with their own hopes and desires and dreams and insecurities. The dating apps have created an atmosphere that can be very dehumanizing sometimes. We lose sight of the fact that we’re all people, not just products to choose or discard. 

So when you're talking to somebody or when you're gonna go on a date with somebody, center yourself in that. This is just another person that you could potentially have a real connection with. And if it doesn't end up being that way, it doesn't mean you failed. It was an experience.

I think that we put pressure on these random strangers, to be the person who's going to complete us, and then we wonder why it doesn't work out. So many people go on dates hoping that they're gonna meet the one who is going to make them enough, and it just doesn’t work out like that. Even if it did for a second, that's not sustainable. Eventually you have to realize that you're enough just how you are and that no one else is responsible for your sense of wholeness.