Speaker 1: Fresh starts. Do you believe in fresh starts, Chris, I do.
Speaker 1: I've had multiple fresh starts in my life, and always
Speaker 1: for the better after I got through them. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: of us in recovery certainly believe in fresh starts because
Speaker 1: suddenly there's a day where it's like everything sort of changes. Right.
Speaker 1: Fourteen years ago for me was the last drink, So yeah,
Speaker 1: we can make big changes. I can also think back
Speaker 1: about seven years ago to kind of when I became
Speaker 1: a steady meditator and helping people find that fresh start
Speaker 1: and making those consistent, long term changes in their life
Speaker 1: is what I do in the one you feed Personal
Speaker 1: Transformation program. So if you're looking for a fresh start
Speaker 1: in go to Eric z Emmer dot coach slash application
Speaker 1: and sign up for a thirty minute call with me
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about whether I can help you or not.
Speaker 1: No pressure, no hard sales, just an opportunity to talk
Speaker 1: about you and your life and see if we're a fit,
Speaker 1: and I'll make sure that you get some information that's
Speaker 1: helpful to you either way. That's Eric Zimmer dot coach
Speaker 1: slash application. If I think about it, all of those
Speaker 1: spiritual traditions that I was so gleefully engaging. Over All,
Speaker 1: those years were mostly masculine paradigms. The texts were written
Speaker 1: by men for men. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: for worth living. This podcast is about how other people
Speaker 1: keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed
Speaker 1: their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Mirabi Star, an award winning author of
Speaker 1: creative nonfiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. Mirabi taught
Speaker 1: philosophy and world religions at the University of New Mexico,
Speaker 1: Taos for twenty years and now teaches and speaks internationally
Speaker 1: on contemplative practice. And inter spiritual dialogue. Her latest book
Speaker 1: is Wild Mercy, Living The Fierce and Tender Wisdom of
Speaker 1: the Women Mystics. Hi, Mirabi, welcome to the show. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Eric. It's wonderful to be with you,
Speaker 1: really truly wonderful to be with you. It's such a
Speaker 1: pleasure to have you back on. We talked several years
Speaker 1: ago about your previous book to the one we're about
Speaker 1: to discuss, and then you and I also got to
Speaker 1: talk in March as we headed into the coronavirus crisis. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss your most recent book called Wild Mercy,
Speaker 1: Living The Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics.
Speaker 1: But before we start, let's start, like we always do,
Speaker 1: with a parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always a battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: She looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins, and the grandmother says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. First of all, I love
Speaker 1: Eric that you made it a grandmother and a granddaughter.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that, for lifting up the feminine. And
Speaker 1: I feel like it actually changes things that you did
Speaker 1: that because there are these kind of masculine values that
Speaker 1: we don't even notice that we buy into that courage.
Speaker 1: For instance, we often think of this sort of masculine
Speaker 1: warrior figure that's charging forth with the sword outstretched, and
Speaker 1: that's bravery, and a feminine version of this wolf parable
Speaker 1: would be much more aligned, I think, with lifting up
Speaker 1: values of cooperation and mutual empowerment and creativity, and also
Speaker 1: even even values like kindness, like loving kindness and tenderness
Speaker 1: and mercy would be not always sweet and mild, but
Speaker 1: sometimes ferocious. As the sacred feminine is, you know, she
Speaker 1: has those qualities of fierce truth telling that cuts through
Speaker 1: illusion and doesn't put up with injustice or with unkindness
Speaker 1: or with hypocrisy. So I guess what that parable does
Speaker 1: for me is it reminds me that my commitment to
Speaker 1: those values that I think of as feminine values of
Speaker 1: loving kindness and fierce truth telling do not necessarily always
Speaker 1: mean that I have to go along and make everyone
Speaker 1: feel okay about what's happening. It sometimes requires feeding the
Speaker 1: good wolf, sometimes requires being fierce and protective and wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the word fierce. I think it's such a
Speaker 1: great word, particularly when you marry it with fierce and
Speaker 1: tender wisdom. You know, wisdom being both fierce and tender.
Speaker 1: I think wisdom needs both those qualities. The classic bodhisattva
Speaker 1: of manjuiciary and his flaking sword, right, he cut cuts
Speaker 1: away delusion, and yet there's a there's a tenderness that
Speaker 1: we have to have to this. You've got a great
Speaker 1: line fairly early in the book. You said, I believe
Speaker 1: in the healing energy of the feminine as a fire
Speaker 1: that can melt the frozen heart of the world, the
Speaker 1: artistry that will mend the tattered web of interconnection. Thanks
Speaker 1: for pulling that line. I remember very well writing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the tattered web of interconnection. Thank you for that. So
Speaker 1: I thought maybe where we would go from here would
Speaker 1: be to have you tell us maybe a story or
Speaker 1: a little bit about one of your favorite women mystics.
Speaker 1: I'll let you pick. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna choose,
Speaker 1: but just tell us a little bit maybe about her
Speaker 1: life and what about her matters to you. Because there's
Speaker 1: so many great ones in the book, I thought we'd
Speaker 1: pull a couple of them out and and bring their
Speaker 1: stories into the conversation. Wonderful. Well, just you know, intuitively
Speaker 1: and spontaneously, since I wasn't prepared for any particular questions,
Speaker 1: I will talk for a moment about Robbia Robbie of Bastra,
Speaker 1: the twelve century Sufi mystic who lived in what's now
Speaker 1: called Iraq, And actually I'm thinking I think she was
Speaker 1: actually ninth century. I think Robbie was quite ancient, ninth century.
Speaker 1: And she lived in a very poor family, so poor
Speaker 1: that one by one, it seems that her family members
Speaker 1: each died. We don't know exactly what happened, but somehow
Speaker 1: she ended up orphaned at a very young age, like twelve,
Speaker 1: just wandering the streets and begging, and became an easy
Speaker 1: target for slave what it would they be called eric traders,
Speaker 1: slave traders, and she was scooped up and snatched and
Speaker 1: and brought to live in some kind of household, possibly
Speaker 1: even a brothel, we don't know for sure. And she
Speaker 1: worked hard and endured much abuse for several years, but
Speaker 1: had this deep sense, as I think many of us
Speaker 1: do when we're young, of spiritual connectedness and yearning. And
Speaker 1: so she would work all day and then she would
Speaker 1: pray all night. And one night the person, the man
Speaker 1: who owned her, heard some kind of of sort of
Speaker 1: ethereal but also almost animal like sounds emanating from the courtyard,
Speaker 1: and he looked out of his upper story window and
Speaker 1: down into the courtyard, and there he saw Rabbia in prayer,
Speaker 1: prostrate on the cobblestones of the courtyard, and there were
Speaker 1: flames leaping from the top of her head. And he
Speaker 1: listened to her cry out to Allah with all her heart,
Speaker 1: and saw the fire increase in intensity with the power
Speaker 1: of her and passion of her prayer. And he didn't
Speaker 1: know what to make of this, and he grappled all
Speaker 1: night with what he had seen. And in the morning
Speaker 1: he went to her and he said, Robbia, I realized
Speaker 1: that you are a great, powerful spiritual being, and so
Speaker 1: I would like to offer you two choices. You can
Speaker 1: either have your freedom and do whatever you needn't want
Speaker 1: to do, or you can stay in our household and
Speaker 1: we will all take care of you, and you can
Speaker 1: have students and disciples come and will take care of
Speaker 1: them too, and this will be this will be your
Speaker 1: house of worship. And she chose to go, And even
Speaker 1: though she was offered resources, she didn't go to a
Speaker 1: nice house in the city. She plunged into the desert
Speaker 1: and lived alone for many years in the desert. Said
Speaker 1: that she had a brick as her pillow, and she
Speaker 1: had one chipped vessel in which she received and carried
Speaker 1: and drank water, and then the same vessel was used
Speaker 1: for food. And people would bring her these things and
Speaker 1: visit her in the desert, and everybody wanted to be
Speaker 1: her student, but she refused to accept students because she
Speaker 1: didn't want to buy into the power of being an
Speaker 1: important teacher. She just wanted a full bodied, direct and
Speaker 1: personal relationship with her divine beloved, who was not a
Speaker 1: romantic figure like God is for other mystics that we
Speaker 1: could talk about. God was this kind of uncompromising beloved
Speaker 1: who demanded no less than everything of us. And so
Speaker 1: everyone who did come to learn from Robbia was subjected
Speaker 1: to that same rigor of spiritual communion with reality, direct
Speaker 1: experience of reality. So Robbia is my favorite fierce feminine
Speaker 1: mystic of the moment. I was going to say, I
Speaker 1: could see why you chose are given that we were
Speaker 1: talking about being fierce. Yeah, yeah, I think that's why.
Speaker 1: And also she's just on my mind and heart these
Speaker 1: days with I mean, I think what's required of us
Speaker 1: in these times is a certain kind of naked grappling
Speaker 1: with what is like. We can't just spiritually bypass our
Speaker 1: way out of the realities of the moment, the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen pandemic, the incredible divisiveness and gulf and chasm that
Speaker 1: separates um the United States, the country that you and
Speaker 1: I both live in. Social unrest is intense and extreme
Speaker 1: as it should be right now, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of the spiritual belief systems that many of us have
Speaker 1: subscribed to over the last twenty or thirty years are
Speaker 1: not holding up their crumbling, like so many structures are
Speaker 1: crumbling right now, and we can't just think our way
Speaker 1: into prosperity, or just the power of positive thought is
Speaker 1: not enough to meet the power of this moment and
Speaker 1: what it requires of us, that sort of manjuicery or Collie,
Speaker 1: what I'm interested in right now is what seems to
Speaker 1: be required. And yet I also adore the women mystics
Speaker 1: who were much more rooted in poetry and peacefulness. Some
Speaker 1: of these spiritual belief structures that you feel like are
Speaker 1: not serving us. Well, you elaborated just a little bit
Speaker 1: on one of them, which is sort of the idea
Speaker 1: of the power of positive thinking, or the idea of manifesting.
Speaker 1: I can just think about something and and make it
Speaker 1: come true. Are there other ones that you think that
Speaker 1: we've been living with for a while that are of
Speaker 1: less use in today's world? So glad you asked that question. Eric.
Speaker 1: One of them that I find to be problematic now,
Speaker 1: even though philosophically I'm aligned with it, is non duality.
Speaker 1: So there's a very popular spiritual movements that I think
Speaker 1: is drawn from an ancient Indian tradition of advit the
Speaker 1: vedantavit Vedanta, the path of non duality, where the understanding
Speaker 1: is that we are already one with the one, there
Speaker 1: is no separation, and so yearning for union, which is
Speaker 1: at the heart of all the mystics really is, is
Speaker 1: this burning yearning for union with the beloved with God.
Speaker 1: As love is an illusion, and so therefore devotional practices
Speaker 1: would also be in some sense delusional, or they would
Speaker 1: take us away from the the truth of our not tuneness,
Speaker 1: our non duality, our essential unity with reality, with divine reality.
Speaker 1: The problem that I find with that, to me, that's
Speaker 1: a very masculine paradigm that is kind of predicated on
Speaker 1: this understanding that duality is an illusion, and therefore our
Speaker 1: bodies and our sense of individuality is delusional. And the
Speaker 1: temptation there, I feel, is to then check out of
Speaker 1: the human condition. We're all just one. So for instance,
Speaker 1: black lives matter, Like, why are these people so angry,
Speaker 1: you know, about injustice? Don't they realize we're all one?
Speaker 1: People tell me all the time, because I emphasize, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of waking up from the coma of white privilege
Speaker 1: whenever I get a chance and people say to me,
Speaker 1: but we're all one. You know, I don't see color.
Speaker 1: Color is just an illusion. Race isn't even real biologically, yes,
Speaker 1: I know, biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race.
Speaker 1: And in the real world of human society, not only
Speaker 1: is there such a real thing. But people suffer terribly
Speaker 1: as a result of those false constructs. And it's the
Speaker 1: same with masculine feminine. Can't tell you how many guys,
Speaker 1: usually white dudes, say to me when I talk about
Speaker 1: wild mercy. There's always someone in an audience who says,
Speaker 1: but God, Mirabi. They usually are man splaining me God
Speaker 1: is beyond gender. Maybe you don't know that, Merabi, But
Speaker 1: actually God is beyond gender. And it's just to say,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't see color. All lives matter. It's
Speaker 1: the same bullshit. It's the same thing that opens us
Speaker 1: up to there by treating other beings as if their
Speaker 1: pain is not real and doesn't matter, and not doing
Speaker 1: our work of mending the broken world, you know, and
Speaker 1: Judaism that beautiful term ti kun olam in Hebrew, to
Speaker 1: mend the world, like that's what we were born for.
Speaker 1: Even my beloved teacher around us, who died almost a
Speaker 1: year ago now and who's death I'm still grieving, says, yes,
Speaker 1: in the big cosmic picture, everything is perfect, All is one.
Speaker 1: Subec is what our Guru Maharaji said, subac all is one.
Speaker 1: And here in this fleeting human life where we are
Speaker 1: for just two seconds, for a very short time, there
Speaker 1: is suffering, and our curriculum, Ronda says, is to alleviate it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the biggest challenges to
Speaker 1: talk about well in spiritual life. Is exactly what you're
Speaker 1: saying that on one hand, yes, everything is perfect and
Speaker 1: one and at the exact same time in an equal measure,
Speaker 1: we live in this world and there is suffering, and
Speaker 1: that suffering is real. And my experience has been and
Speaker 1: I think about this one a lot, particularly over the
Speaker 1: last year. It seems that if people get too oriented
Speaker 1: to one side of that, they can get lost. We
Speaker 1: can get lost, right, it's all one, It's all fine,
Speaker 1: no big deal, you know, out beyond right and wrong.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, you know the room E quote, right,
Speaker 1: you know, so that breeds callousness if taken too far.
Speaker 1: And yet what I see in so many activists who
Speaker 1: I respect immeasurably is all that is seen is the problem,
Speaker 1: and it seems so intensely and and it seems that
Speaker 1: the people it can have both. I look at people
Speaker 1: like Martin Luther King or a Gandhi or other people,
Speaker 1: those people really seemed to live both. Those sides of it.
Speaker 1: They really seemed to say, I do have a broader
Speaker 1: vision that the world is is unified, and and there's
Speaker 1: this deeper sense and I'm fiercely committed to the problems
Speaker 1: of the world, and I bring those two things together
Speaker 1: in some sort of blending that gives me the strength
Speaker 1: to do what I need to do, exactly, because otherwise
Speaker 1: it's soul sapping, as you were referring to. With the
Speaker 1: activists that you know and respect, you know, just our
Speaker 1: that burnout is such a real thing because when you
Speaker 1: get into that dualistic thinking of the victims and the
Speaker 1: perpetrators and that's all you see, then it just takes
Speaker 1: away your energy. And they're so individualistic. Too often it's
Speaker 1: a feeling of I have to do something and instead
Speaker 1: of realizing that we can only do it together. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like I'm listening to you speak and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking that to be a non dualist and a fierce
Speaker 1: advocate for humanity and the earth at the same time.
Speaker 1: So it's not like the whole philosophy of non duality
Speaker 1: is meaningless. It's it's actually hugely helpful when we're stepping
Speaker 1: up to men the world to be resting in that oneness.
Speaker 1: But it needs to be I think a felt sense,
Speaker 1: like an experience of oneness, not an idea. That's where
Speaker 1: I think it gets dangerous when we just buy into
Speaker 1: these concepts without experiencing them in our bones. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: can be a hard one to feel an experience. It
Speaker 1: makes me think of a couple of other ones, right,
Speaker 1: One is that one of the things I love about
Speaker 1: Zen is form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. You you
Speaker 1: can't separate the two, you know, And they'll say in Zen,
Speaker 1: if you get stuck on one side of that, you
Speaker 1: really need both. And then I was also thinking about
Speaker 1: also some of it comes down to, I think in
Speaker 1: classic Hindu text, this idea of these different types of yoga,
Speaker 1: you know, raj yoga and and boka yoga, and saying
Speaker 1: that you know, for some people, just being able to
Speaker 1: appreciate the divine is this formless thing that works for
Speaker 1: some people and for some other people that doesn't work.
Speaker 1: We need to put it in the human form that
Speaker 1: can be loved. So I think some of it's maybe
Speaker 1: not at least for me, some of it's not getting
Speaker 1: too far over to one side or the other. The
Speaker 1: middle way and then the other is sort of knowing
Speaker 1: tendencies what tends to be more effective for me. I
Speaker 1: love that you're bringing this up, Eric, I feel the
Speaker 1: same way. And and the yogas are a beautiful example
Speaker 1: of spiritual temperaments, I think, is what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Some of us have a more sort of intellectual contemplative temperament,
Speaker 1: and some are more karma yogis and actives, and those
Speaker 1: are the ones often that are the activists that are
Speaker 1: doing save, loving, selfless service. And then Bakta yoga is
Speaker 1: kind of the biggest basket. You know that that most
Speaker 1: people can relate to this heart centered desire more connection
Speaker 1: with God in a loving form or the supreme reality
Speaker 1: or whatever you might want to call it. And other
Speaker 1: people are more drawn, like you said, like Roger yoga,
Speaker 1: I call it the spiritual fireworks, you know, to altered
Speaker 1: states and resulted states of consciousness and so on, or
Speaker 1: even just us and as the physical postures. That's a
Speaker 1: kind of temperament. Yogas are all paths to union. They're
Speaker 1: all yokes that connect us with the divining world. And
Speaker 1: I love that about Hinduism, how generous it is that
Speaker 1: we're all different and it all counts. And all the
Speaker 1: other religions have their edicine. For us, Hinduism is probably
Speaker 1: the most tolerant. The other Hindu idea that I've always
Speaker 1: loved since we're talking about them, is this idea that
Speaker 1: as you move through your life, there are different activities
Speaker 1: that are appropriate to certain phases of life. You know.
Speaker 1: I've just always thought that was really interesting because it
Speaker 1: sort of says like, well, you know, when you're in
Speaker 1: your thirties, as an example, taking care of your family
Speaker 1: and creating a living that's part of your spiritual life
Speaker 1: at that time, you know, and then as you get older,
Speaker 1: you you have more time to devote to more of
Speaker 1: a spiritual life. And I think it frames it all
Speaker 1: under the context of it's all a way of being
Speaker 1: of service to God. But it doesn't make it sound
Speaker 1: like there's something wrong with being engaged in the world. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Householder yoga sounds like you and I love the same dude,
Speaker 1: Houston Smith, Am I right? Yes, Yes, that book is
Speaker 1: such a master work. Nothing else has been written like it.
Speaker 1: I tried. I wrote a book called God of Love,
Speaker 1: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
Speaker 1: just the three Abrahamic faiths anyway, And I tried to
Speaker 1: follow in Houston Smith's footsteps, but they're too big. You
Speaker 1: did a lovely job. I am just wrapping up a
Speaker 1: eighteen month inter faith spiritual direction training program. You are,
Speaker 1: I am, and your book God of Love was one
Speaker 1: of the texts. Oh that makes me so happy. Wow,
Speaker 1: you're just wrapping up. Can you say more about it.
Speaker 1: It's through something called the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, and
Speaker 1: it's inter spiritual, inter faith spiritual direction. It's been a
Speaker 1: good program. It's been interesting because my instructors are going
Speaker 1: to hear this and roll over. I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: phone calling like twenty it's But on one hand, I
Speaker 1: would say I did not learn very much if I
Speaker 1: interpret learning as cramming more things into this brain, because
Speaker 1: I've been reading about and studying this stuff and for
Speaker 1: a long time. I've interviewed threeftes some people. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just it would be hard for there to be
Speaker 1: something like oh I never heard that before. So in
Speaker 1: that way did I learn? But if I if I
Speaker 1: interpret learning as going deeper into things, I would say
Speaker 1: it's been a very powerful program. Yes, beautiful. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: sure enrich many people, but you're doing this. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: been interesting. You know, most of the work I do
Speaker 1: with people is one on one. Work I've done up
Speaker 1: till now is coaching work, and spiritual directions a different
Speaker 1: type of work, and so I've done some of that.
Speaker 1: I've got a program called Spiritual Habits that we've run
Speaker 1: a couple of times. And I always am sort of
Speaker 1: in a mindset of like, I want to get better
Speaker 1: at what I do, and this just seemed like another
Speaker 1: very interesting avenue to pursue. Beautiful all Right, we were
Speaker 1: talking about raj Yoga, Hinduism. I want to circle back
Speaker 1: to another of the favorite things that you've ever expressed
Speaker 1: that that I've heard is this idea of inter spiritual. Right,
Speaker 1: I use the word inter faith and inter spiritual. They're
Speaker 1: not the same thing exactly. But we're not going to
Speaker 1: go into that right now because I just don't think
Speaker 1: the distinction is that important given our limited time. But
Speaker 1: there are people who move around through the different traditions
Speaker 1: a lot, and they take practices here and they take
Speaker 1: practices there, and oftentimes that's thought of as not being ideal,
Speaker 1: whether it it's from a really extreme not ideal, like
Speaker 1: you're going to hell for that, or it's more of
Speaker 1: a you need to go deeper in one area. The
Speaker 1: analogy that's often used is that going around and trying
Speaker 1: lots of different practices their traditions is like digging a
Speaker 1: lot of differ wells and only getting ten ft deep
Speaker 1: in each of them. But you sort of took that
Speaker 1: analogy and spun it on its head. Let tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit more about kind of how you took
Speaker 1: that analogy and your thoughts on all of this. I
Speaker 1: have so much to say about this, and it's so
Speaker 1: alive for me right now that it's going to be
Speaker 1: challenging to distill it. First, I will say that I
Speaker 1: feel like that drawing from many different spiritual traditions is
Speaker 1: like trying to get to water by digging many shallow wells.
Speaker 1: That that charge is is not only not true, has
Speaker 1: been weaponized two harm people like me or people like
Speaker 1: many of you who are listening right now in this
Speaker 1: campfire circle that were gathered around, who have an inter
Speaker 1: spiritual temperament that you are more like I, I would
Speaker 1: almost say naturally or innately suited to like a b
Speaker 1: draw nectar from all the flowers of the human spirit,
Speaker 1: and that it is almost a violence against your soul.
Speaker 1: To pick one tradition to the exclusion of any of
Speaker 1: the others almost feels like a like a violation of
Speaker 1: a covenant with God, like I'm going to exclude you,
Speaker 1: beloved from all these other places and only pay attention
Speaker 1: to you in this one. So that's how I feel.
Speaker 1: And I've heard beautiful analogies like inter spirituality is more
Speaker 1: like cross training, where you're you know, you're using all
Speaker 1: the different parts of your body to develop a robust
Speaker 1: life or what else. You're digging one well with many
Speaker 1: different tools. That's yeah, that's a good one. So all
Speaker 1: of that resonates much more with me. You know, from
Speaker 1: a very early age or young teenager, I was exposed
Speaker 1: to many different spiritual traditions, particularly Hinduism, all the different
Speaker 1: schools of Buddhism, from Zen to Tibetan to Vipassana, three
Speaker 1: different Sufi orders, Native American to editions from my home
Speaker 1: of Taos, New Mexico, where I still live, and um
Speaker 1: Jewish mysticism, Christian mysticism, and they all felt equally true
Speaker 1: to me, and I still on a daily basis in
Speaker 1: my own practices, engage many of them life, not all
Speaker 1: of them are certainly on a weekly basis. However, Eric,
Speaker 1: I am feeling right now that my life long inter
Speaker 1: spiritual proclivities are rooted in white privilege, and that I
Speaker 1: have the luxury or the privilege of drawing from these
Speaker 1: different spiritual traditions that are rooted in other cultures, that
Speaker 1: come from other cultures without necessarily honoring the cultural home
Speaker 1: of each tradition. I think that I am but I
Speaker 1: am I. So that's what I meant by this is
Speaker 1: a very living question for me right now. It's very
Speaker 1: alive for me in life of kind of thank God,
Speaker 1: collective awakening around white privilege and unconscious white supremacy. Like wow,
Speaker 1: I've been not only living an inter spiritual life for decades,
Speaker 1: but teaching about it and telling people that this is
Speaker 1: your birthright to draw from all of these different spiritual traditions.
Speaker 1: And now I'm wondering, have I just in many ways
Speaker 1: been diminishing my own humanity by ignoring the I don't
Speaker 1: know the sanctity of Like where does appreciation veer into appropriation?
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I'm doing that or not.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if I'm teaching that or not.
Speaker 1: But what I do know is I'm making the question public,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing that with you in this moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes that's the best we can do.
Speaker 1: I often wonder about that question, appreciation versus appropriation in
Speaker 1: various areas. I think it's a tricky question, you know.
Speaker 1: I think by some of the definition as I've heard
Speaker 1: of the difference, it would seem to me you are
Speaker 1: in appreciation. You're always very clear about where things are
Speaker 1: coming from. You're very clear about the source. You're very
Speaker 1: clear about you know, context within a within a certain point.
Speaker 1: But again, everybody has to arrive on those things kind
Speaker 1: of on their own. This question for me has been
Speaker 1: alive over the last two years in a slightly different
Speaker 1: way because as a lifelong inter spiritual practitioner, just like
Speaker 1: as long as I can remember, I just it seemed
Speaker 1: completely self evident to me at eighteen, Like I think
Speaker 1: they're all talking about the same thing, and how would
Speaker 1: one of them be better than the other, like the
Speaker 1: differ trations. It just that seems sort of self evident
Speaker 1: to me at a very early age. So I've always
Speaker 1: sort of dabbled, but the last two years I've sort
Speaker 1: of honed in on Zen and picked then and listeners
Speaker 1: are like, all right, we've heard you say this a
Speaker 1: hundred times. But just because I felt like I'd sit
Speaker 1: down to meditate, or I'd sit down to say, all right,
Speaker 1: I have time for spiritual practice, and I'd be like,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what I'm doing, not in like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to do a
Speaker 1: whole lot of things, but I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: Which of them am I going to do? And what
Speaker 1: is there any rhyme or reason in what I'm doing?
Speaker 1: And as somebody who can get very lost in intellect,
Speaker 1: I could find all my time trying to figure that
Speaker 1: question out instead of just practicing. So for me, it's
Speaker 1: been nice to sort of route myself somewhere for a while.
Speaker 1: But again, as we talked about that, sort of moving
Speaker 1: from one extreme to the other, finding in between. For me,
Speaker 1: that's just been a correction to a lifelong you know,
Speaker 1: And I don't think I'll ever not be inter spiritual
Speaker 1: in some sort of deep way, always interested reading, you know,
Speaker 1: but particularly with my job, right every week I interviewed
Speaker 1: somebody different about something different. I was like, I need,
Speaker 1: at least in my own like this little bit of
Speaker 1: time I carve out for my spiritual practice. I want
Speaker 1: to I just felt the need to stabilize for a
Speaker 1: little while. But it who knows how long that will last. Oh,
Speaker 1: I hear it. That's beautiful. It sounds really right. It
Speaker 1: sounds like a good move at this juncture, at this point,
Speaker 1: we should we shall see. I'm back to a little
Speaker 1: bit of the Maybe what I need to be doing
Speaker 1: is learning to do some of those Sufi dances or something.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, no, you said you're all right till
Speaker 1: the end of ongo period, you know, to our hot
Speaker 1: so this winter you're staying here. So I do think
Speaker 1: even though a second ago, I was like, let's not
Speaker 1: talk too much about what inner spirituality is. Let's have
Speaker 1: you do just a short reading on it, because I
Speaker 1: do think there are some nuances in there, and I
Speaker 1: do know that a lot of our listeners are are
Speaker 1: very interested in this sort of thing. Sure. This was
Speaker 1: from the very last chapter in Wild Mercy, called Taking Refuge.
Speaker 1: Each chapter opens with a kind of prose poem and
Speaker 1: then gets into the different mystics. Right, so this is
Speaker 1: This is an opening prose poem. You follow the footprints
Speaker 1: of the beloved across manifold spiritual landscapes. You catch the
Speaker 1: same ancient, spicy roma of love in Judaism that you
Speaker 1: have tasted in Islam. Your attraction to the lush sensuality
Speaker 1: of Hinduism does not in any way preclude the way
Speaker 1: you rest in the intellectual purity of Buddhism. Contemplating the
Speaker 1: dowde Jing strengthens what the Hopie elders have taught you.
Speaker 1: That the earth is alive, that she is your mother,
Speaker 1: that she is the love of your life. Institutionalized religious
Speaker 1: authorities discourage this kind of roaming. They will call you
Speaker 1: a lost soul. You lie down with the beloved in
Speaker 1: so many forms. The purests will call you a slut.
Speaker 1: The more open minded may still accuse you of hoping
Speaker 1: to get to water by digging many shallow wells, as
Speaker 1: if you were a fool. You are no fool. You
Speaker 1: are in love, and you will use every available means
Speaker 1: to reach the living waters of love itself, which you
Speaker 1: can't help but notice bubbling up from the altar of
Speaker 1: every sacred space you have ever entered, including and maybe
Speaker 1: especially the wild spaces of this earth. You embrace your
Speaker 1: beloved through your friendship with Jesus alone, or through Jesus
Speaker 1: plus Buddha. You walk one path, or three or eleven
Speaker 1: different spiritual paths that all bring you home to the
Speaker 1: one love. Maybe you say no thank you to any
Speaker 1: kind of organized religion and instead cultivate a direct relationship
Speaker 1: with the beloved and the temple of your own heart.
Speaker 1: The singular true believers will advise you against all of
Speaker 1: this multiplicity, recommending that you pick a single tradition and
Speaker 1: go deep. As if your polyamorous spiritual proclivities render you
Speaker 1: a dilettante, they will mistakenly judge your way as superficial
Speaker 1: and undisciplined, rather than as the mind blowingly heart opening,
Speaker 1: lee soul transfiguringly rigorous spiritual practice that it is. You
Speaker 1: don't care that much what they think. Anyway, You are
Speaker 1: not about to miss any opportunity to encounter your beloved
Speaker 1: and bow down and rise up and take refuge. I
Speaker 1: would be curious how do you determine? And this again
Speaker 1: might be more of an intellectual concept, but what practices
Speaker 1: make up your spiritual practice? How do you know if
Speaker 1: you are on the right path at any given moment,
Speaker 1: and just how have you navigated that challenge over time,
Speaker 1: Because it's the challenges if you if you go to
Speaker 1: a particular path, they tell you exactly what to do.
Speaker 1: When we're juggling lots of different things, we're figuring out
Speaker 1: what to do, which I in general, I think it's
Speaker 1: a healthier state of affairs to be our own authority.
Speaker 1: But there is also something to following guidance. So how
Speaker 1: have you figured that out? Yeah, wonderful question. Eric. Well,
Speaker 1: these days, these last few years, I've been really interested
Speaker 1: in reclaiming feminine wisdom teachings across the spiritual traditions. So
Speaker 1: what I've woven braided into my inter spiritual life are
Speaker 1: these feminine wisdom teachings, and they're often difficult to find,
Speaker 1: you know, to excavate, because they've been so successfully and
Speaker 1: intentionally hidden across the landscape of the world's religions. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I think about it, all of those spiritual traditions
Speaker 1: that I was so glee fully engaging over all those
Speaker 1: years were mostly masculine paradigms. The texts were written by
Speaker 1: men for men, Even the activists that you just mentioned,
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King and Gandhi, and the people we go
Speaker 1: to as the kind of prototypes of whatever spiritual or
Speaker 1: even political ideals we may hold are almost always men,
Speaker 1: and so it takes great effort to find not only women,
Speaker 1: but the face of the Goddess, the feminine face. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, my morning practice for many years has been
Speaker 1: I do a couple of different things. One is I
Speaker 1: do a kind of breathing visualization chakra meditation that it's
Speaker 1: kind of like house cleaning every morning, you know, just
Speaker 1: just clearing out to those energy centers in my body.
Speaker 1: Ramdas taught me this practice when I was I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifteen maybe, and he said at the time, there are
Speaker 1: seven chakras, right, it's better to start with the heart chakra,
Speaker 1: which is the fourth, and go up, you know, to
Speaker 1: the throat, third eye, crown of the head, and and
Speaker 1: don't mess with the lower chakras, the solar plexus, the
Speaker 1: second chakra, which is this seat of sexuality, the first chakra,
Speaker 1: which is the most basic primal chakra, like, those will
Speaker 1: just get in trouble, so stick with the upper ones.
Speaker 1: And so I have reclaimed the lower chakras in my
Speaker 1: morning meditation. Same thing with choppa, I use prayer beads
Speaker 1: either Sufi or Islamic Tasbi with ninety nine beads for
Speaker 1: the ninety nine beautiful names of Allah of God, or
Speaker 1: I use a d eight prayer beads in the Hindu
Speaker 1: and Buddhist traditions. So that's an inter spiritual practice of mind,
Speaker 1: depending on how I'm feeling that day. But now for
Speaker 1: my mantra, I pick a feminine mantra. I invoke of
Speaker 1: feminine energy, whether it's owned tad, a toad to Solha
Speaker 1: in the Tibetan tradition of invoking Tara the Bodhisattva of compassion,
Speaker 1: or Sita or Radha in the Hindu tradition, or Sophia
Speaker 1: and the Christian tradition. And I intentionally focus my spiritual
Speaker 1: practices around the feminine. The last thing I'll say, so,
Speaker 1: I have a morning meditation and I rooted in what
Speaker 1: I've always known, but I bathe it in the fragrance
Speaker 1: of the feminine, and it infuses me for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day in such a way that I can
Speaker 1: show up for the challenges of this world and without
Speaker 1: getting to thrown. My contemplative practice is my root. The
Speaker 1: other practice is Shabbat. So every Friday night, I like
Speaker 1: the Sabbath candles in the Jewish tradition, which is my
Speaker 1: ancestral tradition, So it feels homey and cozy to me.
Speaker 1: I light the candles for invoking the Sabbath, which carries
Speaker 1: over until sunset on Saturday. But it's infused with the
Speaker 1: feminine because the Shachina, which is what you're calling on
Speaker 1: when you light the candles and welcome the Sabbath, is feminine.
Speaker 1: She's the indwelling, feminine presence of the divine. And so
Speaker 1: I sit with the shakina, the feminine, the imminence of
Speaker 1: the majestic, transcendent Holy One comes into my body and
Speaker 1: into my family, and into my community, and into my
Speaker 1: relationship with the earth for that twenty four hour period
Speaker 1: in a very tangible way. So I've reclaimed the feminine
Speaker 1: in my ancestral tradition. And so these are the few
Speaker 1: practices that are really integrated. Is is a meditation practice
Speaker 1: and the observing of Shabbat, the keeping the Sabbath holy.
Speaker 1: You're writing on the Sabbat and Sabbath in the book
Speaker 1: was lovely, and I feel like inside me there's just
Speaker 1: this building. I keep reading about that practice. You know,
Speaker 1: you quoted Heschel in the book, and and I have
Speaker 1: done a lot of his reading over the last year,
Speaker 1: and he's got a whole book on the Sabbath. So
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm nearing that point where it's like,
Speaker 1: I think I'm ready to do it. I think I'm
Speaker 1: ready to give a twenty four hours that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like each week. I need to talk to my partner
Speaker 1: and get or on board, make sure that we're both
Speaker 1: kind of aligned in it. But yours was sort of
Speaker 1: felt like another log on that fire that's building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what happened to me. To Eric, there are numerous
Speaker 1: things over a few year period that pointed toward really
Speaker 1: taking this practice on. And now I swear, even though
Speaker 1: I felt like I couldn't possibly fit it in, now
Speaker 1: I can't live without it. So blessings to you on
Speaker 1: that path. I hope you get to do it. It's
Speaker 1: so delicious. Back to your morning practice with the beads.
Speaker 1: You're repeating the mantra as you touch each of the beads,
Speaker 1: and you work your way all the way through it, right,
Speaker 1: is that kind of one direction and then reverse then
Speaker 1: go back in the under direction, and then after doing
Speaker 1: the chakra meditation, you know, which is a kind of cleansing, centering,
Speaker 1: and then doing this to me, it's a devotional practice
Speaker 1: doing joppa or dicker dicker in the Sufi tradition. Then
Speaker 1: I just sit, you know, for a few minutes, and
Speaker 1: I feel settled. But I need all those forms to
Speaker 1: be able to rest in the formless. It's interesting. At
Speaker 1: the times that I've done practice using different beads of
Speaker 1: different sorts, I found it really helpful. There's something about
Speaker 1: maybe the tactile nature of it that gives me a
Speaker 1: little bit more focus. Yeah, that's that's true. I love that.
Speaker 1: I think it's embodied, it's feminine. And then afterwards, I
Speaker 1: actually always play a little flute. I have a bamboo
Speaker 1: flute that I got from J. G. Such dev Uh
Speaker 1: when I was sixteen and I will be sixty this year,
Speaker 1: and I play a little flute every every morning, and
Speaker 1: I also do yogas and as I do sen salutations.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's if it's embodied, it's breath, that's and
Speaker 1: it's stillness, it's all of the things I love. And
Speaker 1: I have a puja table and altar that has all
Speaker 1: my friends, all the saints and masters and statues and
Speaker 1: pictures of the beings that have inspired me for so long.
Speaker 1: Recent Instagram post of yours had who you called your
Speaker 1: spiritual father, Ramdass and a picture of your actual father.
Speaker 1: Was a lovely seeing those two together. That was from
Speaker 1: my day of the Dead Altar don for And we
Speaker 1: just finished that period and and I just couldn't bear
Speaker 1: to dismantle the alter until very recently. Yes, you are
Speaker 1: in New Mexico, which is over the last few years
Speaker 1: become one of my favorite places in the country. I've
Speaker 1: never been until a couple of years ago, and now
Speaker 1: I think I've been there like three times, and I
Speaker 1: love it. It's so magical, the land of Enchantment they
Speaker 1: call it for good reason. Yeah, we were going to
Speaker 1: probably spend a month in New Mexico last May, but
Speaker 1: obviously the coronavirus sort of canceled all that. But we
Speaker 1: may be back. Oh I hope we will be back.
Speaker 1: But good, good, I hope. So let's spend a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. We're kind of near the end of our time,
Speaker 1: but I always like to get this in if I can,
Speaker 1: which is to talk about the link between creativity and
Speaker 1: spirituality and mysticism. You write very lovely things about it
Speaker 1: in the book. I was wondering if you could just
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about for you what the link
Speaker 1: is and how they support each other. Yeah. I can't
Speaker 1: even remember a time in my life for they weren't interwoven.
Speaker 1: Creativity and spirituality. Okay. I cactually can remember one time
Speaker 1: when I had a self proclaimed white male teacher who
Speaker 1: told me that I needed to stop writing poetry and
Speaker 1: drawing in my journal. I've always had this big blank
Speaker 1: book that I carried around and would write and draw
Speaker 1: in the book because I needed to just read the
Speaker 1: texts and do the practices. And that was too focused
Speaker 1: on me. That was the implication. Um, And so I
Speaker 1: did try for a while too disconnect from my creativity,
Speaker 1: but it was absolutely impossible. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in an artistic family and an artistic agnostic family. They
Speaker 1: didn't subscribe to any particular religious ideology, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we're very suspicious of religion. But creativity was sacred and
Speaker 1: is in my family. So I really have never been
Speaker 1: able to tease those strands apart. But what I guess
Speaker 1: I'm really coming to in my life is that there
Speaker 1: is a wildness to the creative act. Whether we're making
Speaker 1: visual art or or right eating, or music or dance
Speaker 1: or any of the artistic expressions, there is a way
Speaker 1: that we have to surrender to the process and let
Speaker 1: it take over us. That feels sacred to me. That's
Speaker 1: holy surrender. That's allowing ourselves to become a conduit for
Speaker 1: the sacred in our lives and making yes, making ourselves
Speaker 1: available to the Holy One to use us as she will.
Speaker 1: And so any chance to be able to do that
Speaker 1: for me is is a cause for celebration and praise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree so much. I play guitar and make some
Speaker 1: other music, and when the good stuff happens is when
Speaker 1: I'm able to sort of get out of the way.
Speaker 1: Although it's this interesting, it's similar to spiritual practice. There's
Speaker 1: a certain amount of diligent practice that I do that
Speaker 1: that enables me to build up enough dexterity it's the
Speaker 1: wrong word, but to be able to work with the
Speaker 1: instrument and enough of a way that I can actually
Speaker 1: vacate the premises. Like if you suddenly gave me like
Speaker 1: a trumpet, I don't think that I could just let
Speaker 1: it come through me, because all my attention would be
Speaker 1: like what do I do? I don't even know what
Speaker 1: to do with this thing. But with guitar there's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of work that I do that then enables
Speaker 1: me to to sort of, when I'm lucky, take my
Speaker 1: hands off the wheel and see what happens. Totally, that's
Speaker 1: so beautifully said. And I think in the book I
Speaker 1: write about haiku, how I love the structure of a
Speaker 1: three line poem with five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables.
Speaker 1: Inside that structure is this tremendous freedom that I don't
Speaker 1: know if I would be able to access without it.
Speaker 1: One of the things that my Inner Spiritual training program
Speaker 1: did on a recent retreat was we wrote haiku together.
Speaker 1: It was this fascinating thing. One person would take a line,
Speaker 1: and the next person would take a line, and the
Speaker 1: next person would take a line, and there were some
Speaker 1: actual prompts to sort of like it was almost I
Speaker 1: almost felt like it was like mad lib, like spiritual
Speaker 1: mad libs for haiku. But I couldn't believe what came
Speaker 1: out of it. I was like, that's pretty darn good.
Speaker 1: It was, really, it was a really kind of cool process.
Speaker 1: I love that you did it together. That's that's what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about here. Is this, this communal experience of
Speaker 1: spirituality that I think is feminine and needed by people
Speaker 1: of all genders. Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Well, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to come on. I could
Speaker 1: talk with you for far longer than we have time for,
Speaker 1: but we are at the end. So I loved the book. Again,
Speaker 1: it's called Wild Mercy, Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom
Speaker 1: of the Women Mystics, and I know our listeners would
Speaker 1: love it. There'll be links to it in the show
Speaker 1: notes as well as all the other places to find you.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much, Mirabi. It's always a pleasure. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's just a joy to be with you, my brother.
Speaker 1: Take care of youone. Okay, if what you just heard
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