Speaker 1: Hi friends. This is just a quick reminder that we've
Speaker 1: got lots of free resources available for you during this
Speaker 1: difficult time, things like free group coaching, free coaching for
Speaker 1: healthcare workers, special bonus episodes, and other things. And you
Speaker 1: can get details on all of that by going to
Speaker 1: one you feed, dot net slash help. And i'd also
Speaker 1: encourage you, if you're not to get on our email
Speaker 1: list and follow us on social media because that's where
Speaker 1: we're announcing other things that we're doing, and it's the
Speaker 1: way that you can find out about it. Be safe
Speaker 1: and take care of yourself. Thanks. We are challenged to
Speaker 1: honor what we're going through and at the same time
Speaker 1: realize that what we're going through does not define the
Speaker 1: world or life. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Nepo,
Speaker 1: a poet, philosopher, and cancer survivor who has taught in
Speaker 1: the fields of poetry, health, and spirituality for forty years. Marcus,
Speaker 1: a New York Times number one selling author, has published
Speaker 1: numerous books and audio projects. He has also appeared with
Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program on Own TV. Today,
Speaker 1: Mark and Eric discussed his book The Book of Soul
Speaker 1: fifty two Paths to Living What Matters. Hi, Mark, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Great to be with you. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. Yeah, we're really excited to have
Speaker 1: you on for a second time. We're going to discuss
Speaker 1: your book, The Book of Soul, fifty two Paths to
Speaker 1: Live in What Matters in a moment. But let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable. There is a
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second. She looks up at her grandfather. She said, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable mean to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah, well, thank you. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it speaks to the proper use of will.
Speaker 1: We think in the modern world it will is meant
Speaker 1: to bend and manipulate things that are in the way,
Speaker 1: when when actually that that's feeding the darker wolf. And
Speaker 1: you know, throughout all the traditions speak have different language
Speaker 1: for it, but basically, when we cooperate, listen and work
Speaker 1: with which leads us into areas of acceptance and surrender
Speaker 1: and co creation, then we're feeding. And I would even
Speaker 1: let's let's open up synonyms for the good and bad wolf.
Speaker 1: I would think that the quote good wolf is the
Speaker 1: whole wolf, w H O L E. The integral you know,
Speaker 1: the word integrity really means to make whole. So the
Speaker 1: whole wolf and the and the dark wolf is the
Speaker 1: partial wolf, the limited wolf, the isolated and alienated force
Speaker 1: in us. So, I mean, it's interesting in Stephen Mitchell's
Speaker 1: translation of the Tao. You know, he talks back in
Speaker 1: the I'm one of those people who reads all the notes,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's like the whole deeper conversation. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just like going down a side street. It's amazing
Speaker 1: what you find. And one of the things he talks
Speaker 1: about is that the word sin, when you go to
Speaker 1: translate that in the East, it actually doesn't translate as
Speaker 1: evil or bad. It translates as opaque. So when we
Speaker 1: don't see, when we don't open up, when we're not listening,
Speaker 1: when we're not present, things get blocked and that leads
Speaker 1: us to miss paths or paths that lead us where
Speaker 1: we start misfeeding the wrong the wrong forces. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't counter the definition. It opens up synonyms and different
Speaker 1: ways of holding what those two things we feed where present. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had Stephen on the show recently because I I
Speaker 1: he's His translations of things are are stunning, and so
Speaker 1: some of his his actual writing, and um, I've often
Speaker 1: heard of sin, you know, translated as missing the mark,
Speaker 1: but I had not caught that opaque piece, you know,
Speaker 1: about not seeing and and so much of this book,
Speaker 1: so much of what resonated with me, was talking about
Speaker 1: this idea that so much of our suffering comes because
Speaker 1: we only see part of reality. And you talk about
Speaker 1: this over and over in the book, and you referenced
Speaker 1: it just now when you talked about wholeness. You say,
Speaker 1: I'll just read a line from it, because I think
Speaker 1: this speaks to it. You say, we're always part of
Speaker 1: something larger than our condition, and the circumstance we're in,
Speaker 1: real and consuming as it can be, is not the
Speaker 1: condition of the whole. We all struggle between the narrow
Speaker 1: condition of our understanding and the vastness continuing around us.
Speaker 1: As soon as we succumbed to our narrow condition, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be, as soon as we stop receiving life,
Speaker 1: we begin to paint everything with the color of our trouble.
Speaker 1: And hey, that's beautiful, and I think it speaks to
Speaker 1: what you were just saying, that this problem is one
Speaker 1: of seeing the whole, and we very often we don't
Speaker 1: we see just this little tency slice of it, and
Speaker 1: we suffer when we do. Well, yeah, thank you about
Speaker 1: that passage. And you're reading that, and let's say under
Speaker 1: that for our viewers too, that there is legitimate the
Speaker 1: friction of being alive does cause us, uh, difficulty, pain, suffering,
Speaker 1: but we double that suffering by not connecting and staying
Speaker 1: connected to the larger vastness. There's two things here I
Speaker 1: would share about. One is a metaphor of the the ocean,
Speaker 1: of the surface and the depth. So we all know,
Speaker 1: like the waves that are constantly being churned, and you know,
Speaker 1: through the weather of circumstance, the top six inches or
Speaker 1: so eight inches of the of the ocean the sea
Speaker 1: are constantly being disturbed. That's the psychology of our circumstance,
Speaker 1: our condition, whatever that might be, whether it's calm, whether
Speaker 1: it's churned, whether it's choppy, you know, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And that's natural. It's like we can't say, ol G,
Speaker 1: I don't want that. If I'm peaceful enough, it will
Speaker 1: never be. No. That's that's where the inner world meets
Speaker 1: the outer world. Is like where the sea meets the air.
Speaker 1: But you know, you'll take anyone wave and you we
Speaker 1: see them as waves from the top, but they're all
Speaker 1: one connected body of water. You you can't go down
Speaker 1: and say the wave stops here and the depth begins here.
Speaker 1: So as we go down further away from that surface,
Speaker 1: we go into the depth of being, and there we
Speaker 1: don't avoid the turbulence of the surface. But it it's
Speaker 1: right size because it has a context. So we all
Speaker 1: know when we go into that depth, then then the surface, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not as disturbing if we stay on those six
Speaker 1: top six or eight inches. Were like a pinball and
Speaker 1: a pinball machine. We live in both, and we have
Speaker 1: to live in both, but very much the passenger you read,
Speaker 1: which has been great learning for me. You know, over
Speaker 1: over the years, pain, fear, worry, all these things pull
Speaker 1: us to the surface. And that's why we need to
Speaker 1: have some kind of inner practice and friends to help
Speaker 1: us balance that by wait wait, wait no, I also
Speaker 1: need to touch in below this trouble, not to deny
Speaker 1: it or ignore it, but to right size it. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that metaphor. I think it's the right sizing.
Speaker 1: And it's not denying that it's there. It's not denying
Speaker 1: that it's real. It's it's just putting it into a bigger,
Speaker 1: vaster perspective, yeah, which is always there. And all the traditions,
Speaker 1: all the meditative traditions, I mean, all everything is trying
Speaker 1: to offer us all kinds of ways to touch into
Speaker 1: that vastness that holds us. So meditation is a way
Speaker 1: for you in your own life, Like, what are some
Speaker 1: other ways that you when you find yourself churned up
Speaker 1: on the surface, right, what are ways that you connect
Speaker 1: with the deeper vastness? So starting from the inside out,
Speaker 1: you know, just with me, there are infinite ways. And
Speaker 1: this is where for people who are listening, what I
Speaker 1: share are examples, not instructions. And if this is what
Speaker 1: we're talking about speaks to anyone, then how would you
Speaker 1: populate your toolbox of practices? What is that equivalent for you?
Speaker 1: So for me, the first thing I try to do
Speaker 1: is difficult things push us back, so I try to
Speaker 1: lean back in. I try very hard to practice leaning in,
Speaker 1: holding nothing back, being present to whatever is before me,
Speaker 1: whatever is before me, and giving it my whole heart's attention.
Speaker 1: And usually while it's a struggle, that will bring me
Speaker 1: back in touch with that underlying vastness. If that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: If you know, if this fear or this pain or
Speaker 1: this worries got a grip on me, well, then I'll
Speaker 1: read something that has always touched me. It's funny, how,
Speaker 1: you know, back when we're just buying albums, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm sure everybody does this, but I
Speaker 1: would hear one chord in one song on an album
Speaker 1: that would just take me there, and I'd buy the
Speaker 1: whole album for that one chord. And actually, you know,
Speaker 1: now later in life, I mean, I'll just play that
Speaker 1: because we have the technology to do it. Forget the
Speaker 1: rest of it. I'll just play the one were and
Speaker 1: over and over because that happens for me at that moment,
Speaker 1: to be the thread I can pull that will bring
Speaker 1: me back. Then if that, you know, another thing is
Speaker 1: calling up my nearest friend or talking to my wife,
Speaker 1: or you know, calling up a friend and saying, tell
Speaker 1: me a story. I don't care what it is, just
Speaker 1: anything that's not me. Yeah, what you said I think
Speaker 1: is really true. And meditation I think is a really
Speaker 1: profound tool. But for me, I found if I'm pretty
Speaker 1: churned up, meditation is not not not always the best
Speaker 1: place to go sometimes, but but very often not, and
Speaker 1: I love that idea. I often think of it as
Speaker 1: like I need some other voice in my head besides
Speaker 1: my own. Whether it's like you said, reading, talking to
Speaker 1: a friend, listening to a piece of music. I've got
Speaker 1: to get some other voice in my head besides my
Speaker 1: own sometimes because I just I feel trapped in it. Well,
Speaker 1: and and meditation, let's open it up. It takes many forms.
Speaker 1: It's not just sitting on a cushion, you know. For me,
Speaker 1: I I swim, uh you know, which is my exercise.
Speaker 1: But I learned pretty quickly. I've been swimming for about
Speaker 1: fifteen years. But I learned pretty quickly that while I
Speaker 1: did it, you know, I went to it physically right
Speaker 1: for aerobics and all that. But it turned out, oh,
Speaker 1: it's really a moving meditation. It really does more to
Speaker 1: center me. And it sure it does stuff for me physically,
Speaker 1: but I realized that's why I really do it. And
Speaker 1: so whatever it might be, you know, it could be
Speaker 1: you know, raking leaves or yeah, whatever, picking up branches
Speaker 1: at this time of year that have fallen in the winter.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, when we can be present then our
Speaker 1: being and doing a line. And I like to talk
Speaker 1: about that is. So one thing that I try to
Speaker 1: do when I'm agitated is return to moving at the
Speaker 1: pace of what is real. What do I mean by that? Well,
Speaker 1: for me, what I mean is nobody can stay there.
Speaker 1: But when my mind and heart and body or moving
Speaker 1: at the same pace, that seems to be like a
Speaker 1: mystical tumblers in a mystical lock. That opened me to
Speaker 1: those peak moments when everything starts to glow or that
Speaker 1: that conduit back to that vastness and and then yeah,
Speaker 1: then you know, I trip, and now adrenaline runs in
Speaker 1: my heart races and I'm not there anymore. Right, But
Speaker 1: but that that effort to try to move at the
Speaker 1: pace of what is real, to slow down enough so
Speaker 1: that those my mind, heart and body aligne and I
Speaker 1: have a different kind of openness, that that starts to happen.
Speaker 1: I love that idea I have experimented with. I've been
Speaker 1: doing it lately this week. The weather has been nice
Speaker 1: here in Columbus, nice enough, and I've been out running
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm setting a variety of these Buddhist zen
Speaker 1: chants that I that I have to my footsteps, and
Speaker 1: it's boom boom, you know, got done? Done, and it
Speaker 1: just after are to five twenty minutes of that, Boy,
Speaker 1: do I sink into a connected, deep place that's very
Speaker 1: different than like what a sitting meditation would be or whatever.
Speaker 1: Because it's, like you said, my mind is moving at
Speaker 1: exactly the pace that my body is moving, and there
Speaker 1: there's a real connection there and I found that to be. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I'm outside, so it's kind of beautiful, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a wonderful precative. It's it's been nice. Another
Speaker 1: thing in this regard is which we often don't do.
Speaker 1: I mean I do it as a poet all the time,
Speaker 1: but it's it's just helpful as a being is to
Speaker 1: read out loud. It's very different than reading. We can't.
Speaker 1: We're blessed that we can read silently, but there's a
Speaker 1: different thing that happens to us when we read out loud,
Speaker 1: even when we're alone, even to ourselves. And uh, because
Speaker 1: you know, it's like sheet music. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: read sheet music. And you know, but somebody who maybe
Speaker 1: is a very talented musician can read sheet music and
Speaker 1: hear some sense of the music. But most of us can't.
Speaker 1: And even if they could, that's different than playing the music,
Speaker 1: and it's the same thing. Reading to yourself is one
Speaker 1: thing for comprehension, but for embodiment, that's just sheet music.
Speaker 1: We need to play it. I committed more seriously over
Speaker 1: the last year to a to a deeper zen practice.
Speaker 1: I kind of was I've shared this on the show before.
Speaker 1: I I'm interviewing somebody different every week, and it's easy
Speaker 1: for me just to kind of be all over the map.
Speaker 1: And about a year ago I went, you know, I
Speaker 1: just at least for this little part, you know, this,
Speaker 1: this one aspect I want to I want to go
Speaker 1: deep in one area. And and so there's been that
Speaker 1: part of the zen practice too, which is the chanting,
Speaker 1: which is something I haven't done a whole lot of
Speaker 1: in the past, but or or even reciting some of
Speaker 1: these things out loud after my meditation. There is a
Speaker 1: different feel to it to actually say it and hear
Speaker 1: it out loud than to just read it even in
Speaker 1: my head, repeat it in my head. And the beautiful
Speaker 1: thing about what we're talking about is that these things
Speaker 1: align on us and they're not about chant beautifully, and
Speaker 1: no danger of that. It's not about reading. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we meditate, not to be great breathers, but to be
Speaker 1: clear vessels. And the same thing we sing, we write,
Speaker 1: we express, we dance not to be great performers, but
Speaker 1: to be clear vessels. You say early in the book
Speaker 1: that the purpose of the human journey is to live
Speaker 1: openly and honestly until we become a source of uncovered light.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was a beautiful line. It made
Speaker 1: me resonated with what you just said, you know, until
Speaker 1: we become a source of uncovered light, or as you said,
Speaker 1: a vessel. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Recently I heard
Speaker 1: you say somewhere and I think this is valid right
Speaker 1: now for a variety of different reasons, and not the
Speaker 1: least of which is the fact that we have a
Speaker 1: potentially terrifying virus on the planet. Right But he said,
Speaker 1: we've become addicted to the noise of things falling apart,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a really wise statement, and I
Speaker 1: thought we could explore that for a minute. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it pertains right now. I very much appreciate and
Speaker 1: love the Buddhist notion of seeing things as they are,
Speaker 1: which is maybe the at once the simplest and hardest
Speaker 1: practice we can do individually and collectively. And here's a
Speaker 1: good application of it, or case study of it, is
Speaker 1: that things, by nature, when they fall apart, they make
Speaker 1: a lot of noise, and when things come together, they're quieter.
Speaker 1: Now things, by the very nature of existence, kind of
Speaker 1: like spiritual physics, things are always coming together and falling apart.
Speaker 1: At the same time. When we're falling apart, we see
Speaker 1: the world as dark and terrible and chaotic, and it's tragic.
Speaker 1: And when we're coming together, isn't it wonderful? Everything is America? Well,
Speaker 1: of course, it's all things. At the same time, we
Speaker 1: are challenged to honor what we're going through and at
Speaker 1: the same time realize that what we're going through does
Speaker 1: not define the world or life. And so I do
Speaker 1: believe in the modern world we are addicted to the
Speaker 1: noise of things falling apart, which makes it hard to
Speaker 1: see things as they are. There's no question that this
Speaker 1: coronavirus is the thing that we all need to look
Speaker 1: at carefully, participate, be serious about. It's unknown. We have
Speaker 1: no idea what's going to happen, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: address what's actually really happening. Once we inflate and sustain
Speaker 1: a distortion of all that which leads to excessive fear.
Speaker 1: And you know we've already heard, for example, multiple uh
Speaker 1: you know, medical sources and experts say that if you're sick,
Speaker 1: it helps to wear a mask, but if you're not,
Speaker 1: the mask doesn't do anything to protect you. It keeps
Speaker 1: you from contaminating others. But it's our distortion out of
Speaker 1: fear where you know, everyone so many people are wearing masks,
Speaker 1: and also it's creating a shortage where people in the
Speaker 1: health professions we're working in hospitals, doctors, nurses, and caregivers
Speaker 1: and first responders, we're having already a shortage of masks.
Speaker 1: So we're complicating the problem by not withstanding the discomfort
Speaker 1: and fear and going down into into the depth, not
Speaker 1: the waves, to say, okay, this is real. We're not
Speaker 1: going to deny and or minimize it, but what is
Speaker 1: actually happening, so we know what right action is. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a great metaphor from a master teacher of a kaido.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know anything. I can't practice any
Speaker 1: of those martial arts, but of course you know I
Speaker 1: read about everything, and there are wonderful teachings in all
Speaker 1: of this, and so this one comes a master. A
Speaker 1: kaido teacher will often teach beginning students how to right
Speaker 1: size things and see what's actually there. So they'll say,
Speaker 1: for instance, like you know someone's coming at you with
Speaker 1: a knife. Now, adrenaline will make everything in front of
Speaker 1: you a cloud of fear. And the instruction, in addition
Speaker 1: to physical movement or whatever, is to outweight the cloud
Speaker 1: of fear, so you can see that of all the
Speaker 1: places in front of you, only one spot is dangerous,
Speaker 1: and that's the tip of the knife. Everything else is safe.
Speaker 1: Once you can see that, you have real choices now
Speaker 1: in real time. I have no idea how you practice that,
Speaker 1: but as a meta for for how we meet the
Speaker 1: outer world of circumstance, this is a powerful It's a
Speaker 1: powerful metaphor. How can we outweigh this the noise of
Speaker 1: things falling apart and the cloud of fear? You know
Speaker 1: I faced this all the time. You know from my work.
Speaker 1: I'm a long term cancer survivor over thirty two years.
Speaker 1: You know, I almost died in my thirties. I'm just
Speaker 1: recently turned sixty nine and thankfully I'm well. But part
Speaker 1: of the PTSD of being a cancer survivor is every
Speaker 1: time something happened. You know, I get a cold, or
Speaker 1: I get a gland that because um that you know,
Speaker 1: run down, that shows up all of a sudden, that
Speaker 1: cloud of fear like that knife appearing. It's all, oh,
Speaker 1: it's coming back. It's everywhere. And you know I've had
Speaker 1: that's been practiced ground for me to say, I I
Speaker 1: can't react and go running into the labyrinth of tests
Speaker 1: and everything. I need to outweight the cloud of fear
Speaker 1: so I can see what's actually there, so that I
Speaker 1: have real choices and I'm not just flailing blindly and
Speaker 1: all this with passion. Of course, this is scary, and
Speaker 1: this raises another thing. I mean again with the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: This is serious, it's real. But we're not responding well
Speaker 1: because also in the modern world, we have catastrophized our
Speaker 1: relationship to the unknown. When I was a kid and
Speaker 1: there were only three TV channels and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: weather report was called the weather report. Now it's called
Speaker 1: storm watch, right, So well, you know, storm is only
Speaker 1: one form of the unknown. It's only one form of weather.
Speaker 1: And so yes, the unknown can produce catastrophe and pain
Speaker 1: and difficulty, but it also produces wonder and beauty, you know.
Speaker 1: But for me, not one person who has been important
Speaker 1: in my life, who have loved significant other and anyone.
Speaker 1: That's not something I've planned. It's always been a surprise.
Speaker 1: It's always been a function of the unknown. So the
Speaker 1: things that make us resilient are out there in the
Speaker 1: unknown about to appear as well. And if we simply
Speaker 1: cut off the unknown, we cut ourselves off from the
Speaker 1: resources and only hunkered down with the catastrophes. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot you said there that that line, addicted to
Speaker 1: the noise of things flying apart. What I like about
Speaker 1: it is, as someone who's suffered from heroin addiction, different things,
Speaker 1: addiction shrinks everything down. That's it. That's all there is.
Speaker 1: And to your point, you know, that's a great way
Speaker 1: to think of it, because it's not that things aren't
Speaker 1: falling apart, because some things are falling apart, as is
Speaker 1: the nature of things, and they're real. And I also
Speaker 1: love that idea of and this gets back to us
Speaker 1: talking before about seeing only the problem or only the
Speaker 1: very small slice of reality versus all of it. And
Speaker 1: that's that point you're making about seeing you know, the
Speaker 1: knife point is dangerous, but there's stuff all around it,
Speaker 1: and you know it just it points to this idea
Speaker 1: that the smaller our view gets, the more we suffer, regardless,
Speaker 1: and the more broad that we can make our view,
Speaker 1: the more whole and vast we can make it the better.
Speaker 1: And I'm always sort of struck by this sense, like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's lots of things that are going wrong in the world,
Speaker 1: but there, every moment of every day is populated with
Speaker 1: beauty everywhere and people treating each other well and kind
Speaker 1: and love, and it's everywhere also, even probably in far
Speaker 1: greater numbers, it's just not nearly as stimulating. Nothing that
Speaker 1: everybody doesn't sort of know. And yet it's hard sometimes
Speaker 1: to look away. There's a real paradox that there, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're all susceptible. It's so humbling. This goes back
Speaker 1: to the good wolf and the bad wolf, or the
Speaker 1: whole and the partial. If I'm not present and open hearted,
Speaker 1: then the smallest thing governs me and it leads me
Speaker 1: into addiction of all kinds of perception, of feeling, of
Speaker 1: thought of Okay, but when I'm present in everything, every
Speaker 1: smallest moment in detail is a threshold to the holy universe.
Speaker 1: It's a huge difference. And it's a humbling thing because
Speaker 1: pain can reduce us. Sometimes we break and we fall
Speaker 1: into being completely overrun by the smallest thing, and sometimes
Speaker 1: we break open and fall into the lens of the miraculous,
Speaker 1: and and anything can be an addiction. You know, I
Speaker 1: have my dearest oldest friend who've written about Robert. He's
Speaker 1: in He's a recovering alcoholic who's been in recovery for
Speaker 1: almost forty years. And we help save each other's lives
Speaker 1: because he had bottom while I was in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And years later, you know, he had neuropathy from advanced
Speaker 1: alcoholism and I had neuropathy from being damaged by chemo.
Speaker 1: We're about, I don't know, eight years on the other
Speaker 1: side of him hitting bottom and me still being here.
Speaker 1: And we were out in the summer. We're having a sandwich,
Speaker 1: sitting on a bench, quiet with our numb hands, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he looked at
Speaker 1: me and he said, well, I'm an alcoholic, but you're
Speaker 1: a make aholic. And I immediately, while I had never
Speaker 1: thought of it, I knew exactly what he meant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew exactly what he meant. You know, I mean
Speaker 1: this creative force in me, which is a window to
Speaker 1: the holy, has been the life source of all my
Speaker 1: life force. And if I don't stay grounded in my heart,
Speaker 1: if I don't stay balanced, I can become addicted. I
Speaker 1: can become I mean, it will use me up. You know,
Speaker 1: I can work for days. It's not a question of
Speaker 1: sticking to it. It's a question of stopping. And so
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm there, or when I was younger,
Speaker 1: I would just ride it and it would be like
Speaker 1: it would be holy, but it would be like a high.
Speaker 1: And then at some point, that force, that light force
Speaker 1: would say, come on, keep going, you don't need to eat,
Speaker 1: keep going, We're almost there. Come on. And again, obviously
Speaker 1: this is not just about me. This is that this
Speaker 1: is that fine fine line between what's holy and but
Speaker 1: what's what we feed the light, the light, whole good
Speaker 1: wolf or the dark partial black hole wolf. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is back to the having the big picture,
Speaker 1: not the small picture. So let's change directions just a
Speaker 1: little bit. There's something that I wanted to explore in
Speaker 1: your book because I thought this was boy, this really
Speaker 1: spoke to me. And um, you said, we all struggle
Speaker 1: with the tension between our obsession with making things new
Speaker 1: and the wisdom that comes from re entering life as
Speaker 1: many times as necessary in order for it to reveal
Speaker 1: its secrets. How many times do we run from those
Speaker 1: we love because we insist on finding something new when
Speaker 1: we're often being asked to live more deeply where we are.
Speaker 1: The same can be said for our work in the world.
Speaker 1: How often do we abandon what has meaning because we
Speaker 1: think we're bored when we're actually being asked to penetrate
Speaker 1: the habit of work in order to unearth the very
Speaker 1: center of our calling. And I thought that was so great,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a question that I actively wrestle
Speaker 1: with from time to time that I think as when
Speaker 1: I was younger, I just thought it needed to be
Speaker 1: something else, and I just would lose interest and change
Speaker 1: directions over and over. As I gotten older, I think
Speaker 1: I've gotten wiser to realize now life is asking me
Speaker 1: to go deeper here. But boy, it's still that that
Speaker 1: siren call of something different, and sometimes that's what's needed.
Speaker 1: And I think it's discerning those two. But I was
Speaker 1: really struck by that. I haven't heard anybody articulate something
Speaker 1: that's been a fairly fundamental challenge in my life, or
Speaker 1: at least a fundamental thing to work with. I haven't
Speaker 1: heard anybody articulated that clearly. Well, it's a very profound thing.
Speaker 1: It's been profound teaching for me. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think as a poet, as an artist, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we were all trained. We all are trained, you know,
Speaker 1: and you look as a pound at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, uh made the famous statement make it new,
Speaker 1: and he, in my view, he set an entire generation
Speaker 1: back because you know, it feeds a deeper spiritual illusion.
Speaker 1: And then we'll get back to this part of the conversation,
Speaker 1: and that is the menacing assumption that life is happening
Speaker 1: other than where we are. It's just not true. And
Speaker 1: you know, and and the truth is, there is no there.
Speaker 1: There's only here. There's only here. And we spend so
Speaker 1: much time chasing, whether it's in time or place or
Speaker 1: relationship or work. If I could only get over there,
Speaker 1: if I could only have a relationship like those people,
Speaker 1: if I could only you know, be like this, If
Speaker 1: I could only get like then I'd be happy. Then
Speaker 1: I'd behold then and you know, I mean one of
Speaker 1: the profound blessings in my life and paradoxes. Is that
Speaker 1: at this time of my life and I love, you know,
Speaker 1: teaching and being with folks, and I travel a lot,
Speaker 1: and I literally I travel all over the world, and
Speaker 1: whenever I get wherever I go, I go there to
Speaker 1: affirm that there's nowhere to go, and it's and I'm
Speaker 1: happy to do it. And it's and of course we're
Speaker 1: on this again in the surface world of certain of
Speaker 1: course we're all traveling from different places. But it's like
Speaker 1: we were talking about with those moments that every time
Speaker 1: we're present and open our heart, what whether it's through
Speaker 1: love or suffering, it's always the same eternal moment that opens.
Speaker 1: There is no there, there's only here. So, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things and this applies not just to
Speaker 1: art but to life and the things we're talking about,
Speaker 1: is you know, again I was taught when I was
Speaker 1: a young poet and graduate school, you know, be on
Speaker 1: the look for good material, the good things to write about.
Speaker 1: And of course almost dying and still being here. Not
Speaker 1: only was it a miracle that I was here, but
Speaker 1: the real miracle was that it scoured my perception so
Speaker 1: that the ordinary reveal the lens of the miraculous. Everything
Speaker 1: is miraculous, everything is good material. It's only whether I'm
Speaker 1: present enough to enter it. And so if I'm not
Speaker 1: present enough, that I get bored and then I run
Speaker 1: over here, and and this happens, you know, with serial relationships,
Speaker 1: you know, and that certainly, let's be clear, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying we should stay in relationships at all costs, and
Speaker 1: we outgrow relationships. We we certainly shouldn't stay in abusive relationships,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times we get bored or we
Speaker 1: don't want to face things about ourselves, and then so
Speaker 1: it's always easier to fall in love than to stay
Speaker 1: in love. The intoxication of the quote new and often,
Speaker 1: as you know, in that quote, we we are being
Speaker 1: asked to enter and not go from here to there,
Speaker 1: but to go from out to end, to drop down,
Speaker 1: to open up, so that the miracle appears wherever we are.
Speaker 1: And I also learned this through not through any wisdom
Speaker 1: on my part, but because when I was ill, I
Speaker 1: couldn't much as I wanted to leave what I was facing,
Speaker 1: I couldn't. I mean I physically couldn't move a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, and I had to be where I
Speaker 1: was until through exhaustion it opened up. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: you and your journey to addiction of experience something similar
Speaker 1: where this, you know, the miracle of what is it
Speaker 1: opens up underneath us. And of course I was always like,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. Oh my god, it's right here,
Speaker 1: it's right here. Yeah, I've always studied Zen. But it's
Speaker 1: what drew me to make a deeper commitment. There was
Speaker 1: because that's the thing of Zen that has always been
Speaker 1: so clear to me. It's always pointing to like right now, this, this, this, this,
Speaker 1: over and over, and I realized that's for me, that's
Speaker 1: where the learning was. I I'm doing Cohen study and
Speaker 1: I'm working on a coon right now, and it's the
Speaker 1: best coon to illustrate this. And it's a monk asks
Speaker 1: the Master, what is the meaning of Bodhi Dharma coming
Speaker 1: from the West, and Bodhi Dharma is the found or Zen?
Speaker 1: Why did the why did the founder of Zen come?
Speaker 1: What was the medium of the whole thing? And they
Speaker 1: and the and the Master answers the oak tree in
Speaker 1: the garden, and you suddenly have just taken this whole
Speaker 1: massive thing, and you said, oh, the whole point of
Speaker 1: it was just that you could see and appreciate that
Speaker 1: beautiful tree there, like it's right here, it's nowhere else.
Speaker 1: And and uh, what was that you said? The menacing illusion?
Speaker 1: That life is menacing assumption that life is other than
Speaker 1: where we are, and that that has an addictive quality. Totally, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And another there's a chapter you might remember in the
Speaker 1: in the new book about the fire of aliveness. You know,
Speaker 1: we all have to survive and thrive, often out of fear.
Speaker 1: We make a god out of survival. And but if
Speaker 1: we survive without thriving, what's the point. But you know,
Speaker 1: so when I talk about in that chapter is that
Speaker 1: there is the fire of circumstance, which are the faculty
Speaker 1: as we encounter, and that fire needs to be doused.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the fire of worry, of pain. That's
Speaker 1: literal fire. You know, I'm working, I'm cooking at the
Speaker 1: stove and something catches fire. I gotta put it out,
Speaker 1: you know. But the fire of a liveness that comes
Speaker 1: from within us, this is where the heart connects, the
Speaker 1: portion of soul we carry with the rest of universal spirit.
Speaker 1: That fire needs to be fed, that fire needs to
Speaker 1: be kept alive. And so we have this twin calling
Speaker 1: in order to survive. Yes, we you know, to bring
Speaker 1: it back to the coronavirus right now, Yes, it makes
Speaker 1: we should wash our hands. Okay, can't be foolish and say,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll forget about that. It's not really no.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we can't stop loving and living.
Speaker 1: We need to feed that fire of a lie iveness
Speaker 1: and kinship in connection, and that becomes an art, a
Speaker 1: personal art. What does that mean? Well, every you, me,
Speaker 1: everyone listening has to personalize. What does that look like
Speaker 1: for you to douse the fire of circumstance and to
Speaker 1: feed the fire of aliveness. Yeah. I loved that section
Speaker 1: of the book. And there's there's something you wrote here
Speaker 1: which is I'm going to read because it's kind of
Speaker 1: practical towards this. And you say you mentioned when I
Speaker 1: find myself drifting into the future, dwelling in the past, right,
Speaker 1: which is what we're talking about, moving out of being here.
Speaker 1: I close my eyes and start over, trying to bring
Speaker 1: all of me to whatever is there when I open
Speaker 1: them again. I vowed to look at one thing at
Speaker 1: a time like a child. I vowed to listen more closely,
Speaker 1: like a person gone blind. I vowed to rediscover the
Speaker 1: world in whatever gritty, precious thing is before me, and
Speaker 1: to quiet my mind so I might feel the vastness
Speaker 1: of life flowing between us. And that's a very practical
Speaker 1: way to approach this. It's a very practical way of
Speaker 1: doing that. How do I feed the fire of aliveness?
Speaker 1: Another kind of practices And this happened. You know, when
Speaker 1: we get caught up by any kind of detail, or
Speaker 1: you know, pull to other than where we are, or
Speaker 1: worry or fear, you know, we tend to go over
Speaker 1: it like if I go I tell you to myself, well,
Speaker 1: if I go over one more time, I'll figure it out,
Speaker 1: or it'll land better, or I'll feel and it never works.
Speaker 1: The only thing to do is drop it. And the
Speaker 1: hardest thing is to drop it just when you don't
Speaker 1: want to drop it. And you know, I have a
Speaker 1: little poem of mind that I that's a real And
Speaker 1: these poems, you know, the things that I write, I
Speaker 1: retrieve and they become my teachers, you know, And this
Speaker 1: one has been a great teacher for me. It's a
Speaker 1: very it's a short poem. It goes like this called
Speaker 1: practicing as a man in his last breath drops. All
Speaker 1: he is carrying. Each breath is a little death that
Speaker 1: can set us free. And so the harder, you know,
Speaker 1: when fear, worry and pain push us away, we gotta
Speaker 1: lean back in. You know, when I'm trying to figure
Speaker 1: things out, you know, too hard and I'm stuck in
Speaker 1: my mind, I just have to drop it. Just drop it.
Speaker 1: And this is another thing I think that's been a
Speaker 1: profound listen for me over the years, and that is
Speaker 1: as soon as we count or compare, we're no longer present.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, yep. And so you know I've learned that,
Speaker 1: and we listen to that, we talked about it. Someone
Speaker 1: maybe listening to say, well, good, I won't counter compare, Well,
Speaker 1: we will. That's not the point. The point is to
Speaker 1: recognize it when we do so we can drop it
Speaker 1: because you know, for instance, example emotional example, we're friends,
Speaker 1: I respect you and one day you say something pretty
Speaker 1: harsh to me, and oh man, because I love you
Speaker 1: and respect you, it just goes right to me, right.
Speaker 1: And so later on i'm you know, I'm working in
Speaker 1: I'm going, well, how could he say that? And I
Speaker 1: thought I was Now that you know, it cuts my worth,
Speaker 1: my self worth and I'm going over it to try
Speaker 1: to make it better or land better with it. Did
Speaker 1: not the matter whether I am counting up or down
Speaker 1: or comparing up or down. The more I do it,
Speaker 1: which is an addictive quality in itself, it only unravels
Speaker 1: my worth further. The only thing that will restore my
Speaker 1: worth is to stop counting and comparing and be present
Speaker 1: so I can restore my direct connection to my life
Speaker 1: and to the vastness that holds us. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've often talked about that. It's been on my mind
Speaker 1: a lot in coaching work that I've done. It's been
Speaker 1: part of the Spiritual Habits program that we've put together
Speaker 1: and we're offering. Is this idea of we can compare
Speaker 1: ourselves up or we can compare ourselves down. You can
Speaker 1: always do that, but like you said, when we do that,
Speaker 1: we sever connection. And this ties back into what we
Speaker 1: were just saying about seeing things as they are one
Speaker 1: of the things we do as human beings which we
Speaker 1: just have to accept and have self compassion. And I
Speaker 1: love your notion of spiritual habits. I love that. You
Speaker 1: know we need that. Um you know is that we
Speaker 1: tend to inflate or deflate our sense of ourselves and
Speaker 1: our circumstances, and we need to right size them and
Speaker 1: see things as they are again, so we can have,
Speaker 1: you know, clear choices, so that we can restore our presents,
Speaker 1: we can restore our direct presence. Yeah, I've told this
Speaker 1: story recently because it just struck me so much. We
Speaker 1: were watching with my My partner's mother has Alzheimer's and
Speaker 1: so I'm always looking for shows that she'll want to
Speaker 1: watch that relax her. And so we've been watching The
Speaker 1: Crown on Netflix, which is about the royal family, which
Speaker 1: is incredibly well done. Not really my normal thing i'd watch,
Speaker 1: but there's an episode about Princess Margaret, and Princess Margaret
Speaker 1: is the Queen's sister and she wants attention, She craves attention,
Speaker 1: and she always feels like she doesn't have enough. But
Speaker 1: what's amazing is that Princess Margaret gets more attention than
Speaker 1: nine nine nine percent of us in the world get.
Speaker 1: She just doesn't get more than one person. And but
Speaker 1: when she looks at that one person and compares herself
Speaker 1: to her, she suffers mightily. And it's just it's such
Speaker 1: a stunning example to me that our comparison is this
Speaker 1: point of reference that doesn't make any sense, and how
Speaker 1: much we can suffer from it. It's just such a
Speaker 1: blatant example of it that I saw recently. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a great example. It's a great example. And what it
Speaker 1: raises too, is that when we insist on comparing, not
Speaker 1: only do we increase our suffering, but this is what
Speaker 1: leads and this is feeding the darker wolf, because then
Speaker 1: if we don't face what is ours to face, then
Speaker 1: this leads to jealousy. And what's worse than jealousy is
Speaker 1: and you know, jealousy is she wants the attention that
Speaker 1: her sister gets and doesn't see her own worth. Envy
Speaker 1: is she doesn't want her sister to have that right,
Speaker 1: and that's destructive. So so, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: first things we can do to reduce violence in the
Speaker 1: world is to stop counting and comparing when we find
Speaker 1: ourselves doing it, and to have the courage to face
Speaker 1: what is ours to face. Well, I think that is
Speaker 1: a beautiful place for us to wrap this up. This
Speaker 1: has been a wonderful conversation. You and I are going
Speaker 1: to talk a few more minutes in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation about you say the spiritual qualities of immersion and devotion,
Speaker 1: how they've guided and saved your life more than once.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about those in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation listeners. If you'd like to get access to that,
Speaker 1: as well as an episode I do each week called
Speaker 1: the Teaching a Song and a Poem, you can go
Speaker 1: to One you Feed dot net slash join and become
Speaker 1: part of the community. Mark, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on. It's always such a pleasure to talk with you,
Speaker 1: and I get so much out of your work. Oh well,
Speaker 1: thank you. It's enjoyed to be in this continuing conversation together.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Okay bye. If what you just heard was
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