Speaker 1: Every single feeling you could ever possibly have, I have had,
Speaker 1: I will have. But I can also choose how I
Speaker 1: respond to those feelings, what actions I take, and what
Speaker 1: I am choosing to focus on. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for 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: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is in q, a National Poetry Slam champion, award
Speaker 1: winning poet, and multi platinum songwriter. He's been named as
Speaker 1: one of the world's most influential thought leaders on oprah's
Speaker 1: Super Soul one d list and as the first spoken
Speaker 1: word artist ever to perform with Shirk to Solea in
Speaker 1: Q rights to entertain, inspire, and challenge his audiences to
Speaker 1: look deeper into the human experience and ask questions about themselves,
Speaker 1: their environment, and the world at large. Today, in Q
Speaker 1: and Eric discuss his book in Choir Within. Hi and que,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Man,
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to have you on. We are going
Speaker 1: to talk about your one, a full book of poetry
Speaker 1: called Inquire Within, but before we do that, we'll start
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking to his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He said, well, 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 means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Okay, I personally think they're
Speaker 1: the same wolf. Okay, and yet maybe there you know
Speaker 1: two parts of the same wolf. Yeah, and uh, Once
Speaker 1: you know that, then I think you have to integrate
Speaker 1: both of them into who you are. I don't think
Speaker 1: that you can ignore fear or anger, or jealousy or
Speaker 1: sadness or any of the shadow emotions. I think you
Speaker 1: have to accept them, integrate them, and alchemize them. I
Speaker 1: think it's a lot easier to hate than it is
Speaker 1: to create, but creating is a lot more satisfying. So
Speaker 1: that's what I try to do within myself. I don't
Speaker 1: ignore the wolf, that is the negative wolf and quotation marks,
Speaker 1: right right, Um, I just try to make friends with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I try to play as much as I
Speaker 1: can with the positive wolf and quotation marks. So for you,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that poetry is one of the ways that
Speaker 1: you alchemize those shadow emotions into the other side. Yes, definitely,
Speaker 1: that's um my alchemy outlet of choice. Yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: heard you use that poetry for you is either purging
Speaker 1: or praying or both. Yeah. Absolutely, I love that idea.
Speaker 1: A lot of people when they think about doing something
Speaker 1: like poetry, they look at the craft aspect of it
Speaker 1: and they go I cheez. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: can do it that well. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: can do it at that level, and so that stops
Speaker 1: them from doing it. But I'm assuming you believe that
Speaker 1: the benefits of doing that sort of thing. It's not
Speaker 1: about the end products, about the process of going through
Speaker 1: it that really matters, as far as the alchemy piece. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know you could say that about anything. Man.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at anything in the entire
Speaker 1: world and you think I have to do it at
Speaker 1: a certain level, how will you ever start? That's right?
Speaker 1: And so poetry is no different. We're all storytellers. Every
Speaker 1: single day, we are telling stories to ourselves and to
Speaker 1: other people, and uh, we're always actually like integrating the
Speaker 1: stories that are reflected back to us from everyone else.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what is poetry if not storytelling? Right?
Speaker 1: And you know, you just have to choose to explore
Speaker 1: it like anything else in life, and you might be
Speaker 1: surprised at the benefits. I've become a big advocate as
Speaker 1: I've gotten older at doing things even when and often
Speaker 1: especially when I don't think I'm going to be good
Speaker 1: at them, Like I recently took up wood carving, and
Speaker 1: I can. I can tell you I am terrible. I
Speaker 1: carved a bird and it looks like you can tell
Speaker 1: it's a bird, but it's like a bird that has
Speaker 1: serious birth defects, right, Like, it doesn't look quite right.
Speaker 1: But I I picked it up and I was like,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm not going to be good at it,
Speaker 1: but that's not the point. Well, what have you learned
Speaker 1: so far from your emerging wood carving career. I've learned
Speaker 1: how to protect my fingers. I've still got all ten
Speaker 1: of them. That's a It's a positive thing, yeah, in
Speaker 1: and of itself, to learn to be aware, Yeah, in
Speaker 1: the thing that you're doing, to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: not hurting yourself or anyone else around you. Yeah. I've
Speaker 1: learned how to clean up my messes. I've learned a
Speaker 1: couple of different type of knife strokes. I've learned how
Speaker 1: to sharpen my knives. I've learned some things about how
Speaker 1: to start the carving so that I don't get myself
Speaker 1: asymmetrical right out of the beginning. But you know, the
Speaker 1: main thing is I just enjoy doing it. You know.
Speaker 1: I just really felt like I was like, I need
Speaker 1: to do something with my hands. Yeah, I play guitar,
Speaker 1: and that's that's that is one thing. But I felt
Speaker 1: like I still I found myself wishing I had more
Speaker 1: dishes to do, and I was like, all right, that's
Speaker 1: a problem. Like but but I liked it because it
Speaker 1: was tangible. Look at either everything is a spiritual practice
Speaker 1: or nothing is a spiritual practice. Amen. And it's something
Speaker 1: that I'm constantly reminding myself of. Nobody likes the feeling
Speaker 1: of not being good at something. I mean, it fucking
Speaker 1: sucks to be a student at anything in life. But
Speaker 1: how are you ever going to grow unless you get
Speaker 1: out side of your comfort zone and all of this
Speaker 1: motivational you know, self help stuff. I mean, you hear
Speaker 1: this over and over and over again, and yet often
Speaker 1: even the people who are saying it need to be
Speaker 1: doing it. You know. It's like we teach what we
Speaker 1: need to learn so um, you know, or even think
Speaker 1: about kids, man like, kids are always outside of their
Speaker 1: comfort zone. And that's partly why they grow so much,
Speaker 1: is because they're not really in control of their environment
Speaker 1: and they're constantly doing things for the first time. And
Speaker 1: I think that that really allows people to evolve at
Speaker 1: a really quick pace. But then we grow up. We
Speaker 1: become good at something, we choose a career, you know,
Speaker 1: we're making a living, and then we get validated for
Speaker 1: that thing, and we just stay there because we're scared
Speaker 1: to be students again. We're scared to look foolish. But
Speaker 1: you know, if I never look foolish, then I'll never
Speaker 1: be brilliant. Absolutely, let's move into a poem of yours
Speaker 1: before we get too far in here, so that people
Speaker 1: can get a sense of you and your work. And
Speaker 1: so I thought i'd ask you to read the title
Speaker 1: of your book, which is inquired Within. You want me
Speaker 1: to read the inquiry within poem, is what you're saying. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I thought you were saying. You just wanted me to
Speaker 1: say enquire within. No, actually, let's do the poem. You're like,
Speaker 1: just read the title of the book that will be
Speaker 1: and then we're done. Well, this is called enquire with him.
Speaker 1: I used to look up when I prayed. I would
Speaker 1: raise my head to the skies. If God lived in
Speaker 1: a penthouse made of clouds. As a kid, I thought
Speaker 1: he could hear my prayers better when I was on
Speaker 1: a plane, after all, I was closer to him. I
Speaker 1: would ride elevators to the top floor to us to
Speaker 1: whisper my secret desires. I've never told anyone that as
Speaker 1: an adolescent I stopped praying alltogether. I didn't believe in belief.
Speaker 1: It seemed to me that people had created God to
Speaker 1: control themselves and others. It was the long con self delusion.
Speaker 1: As a form of therapy, I convinced myself I was
Speaker 1: stronger than that I wasn't. As a young man, I
Speaker 1: explored spirituality, I wanted answers. I devoured every self help
Speaker 1: book I could get my hands on. I watched The
Speaker 1: Secret two times in a row, and still somehow managed
Speaker 1: to misunderstand the law of attraction. It was quite comical, really.
Speaker 1: They say the difference between intelligence and wisdom is experience.
Speaker 1: But you can have experience without having wisdom or intelligence.
Speaker 1: So what the fund did I know? Recently I started
Speaker 1: praying again. I couldn't specifically tell you why, but if pressed,
Speaker 1: I'd say it had to do with a sudden and
Speaker 1: unexpected need to surrender. I felt the urge to bow
Speaker 1: in the service of something greater than myself, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want religion to get in the way. So one night,
Speaker 1: as the overwhelming silence of the city filled my empty room.
Speaker 1: I knelt at the foot of my bed and I prayed.
Speaker 1: It was oddly familiar, except this time. Instead of looking
Speaker 1: up to God, I looked inside. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: So we referenced earlier that poetry for you is either
Speaker 1: purging or praying or both. You reference prayer in that
Speaker 1: poem there, What does that word mean to you? Prayer? Well,
Speaker 1: it's constantly changing, you know. I don't think that there's
Speaker 1: one fixed definition that would be satisfactory. Probably at this
Speaker 1: point it means manifestation, huh me connecting to uh the energy,
Speaker 1: you know, the universal energy, and trying to create something
Speaker 1: inside of myself outside of myself. It's a pretty good definition.
Speaker 1: I find prayer an interesting thing for people who tend
Speaker 1: to not necessarily believe that they're praying to a being
Speaker 1: that's going to answer that prayer, and so I pray
Speaker 1: off and but I don't actually believe in necessarily a
Speaker 1: god out there who's going, oh, thanks for registering your desires, Eric,
Speaker 1: or thanks for you know, like for me, it's kind
Speaker 1: of your point about inquire within. I think for me,
Speaker 1: prayer is an intention sett in vehicle. It's a way
Speaker 1: of aligning myself internally as to what's important again, like
Speaker 1: you that is ever evolving. Yeah, I mean, look, spirituality
Speaker 1: is logical for me. It's not this esoteric thing that
Speaker 1: I have to wrap my mind and my heart around.
Speaker 1: It's very logical. The whole entire world is basically just
Speaker 1: moving energy. You know, if you focused in on any
Speaker 1: of the things that are around us, this table, the
Speaker 1: chair that I'm sitting in, I mean, there's more space
Speaker 1: inside of it than anything else. You know, it's very
Speaker 1: very small percentages that they're actually solid. And then if
Speaker 1: you zoomed out in the universe, it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: You know, go to space and it's just empty for
Speaker 1: the most part. And so even us, we're just vibrating energy.
Speaker 1: So I I look at the world like we're in
Speaker 1: a sea of consciousness, and uh, we're separate from it,
Speaker 1: and we're also at one with it and where the
Speaker 1: experiencer and we're the observer of that experience. You know.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about gratitude the other day because gratitude,
Speaker 1: I've always known intellectually that it's an important practice, and
Speaker 1: I've always explored it in my work, but I've had
Speaker 1: a hard time being consistent with it and I had
Speaker 1: a breakthrough that I'll share with you. And the breakthrough
Speaker 1: is how I was looking at the practice of gratitude.
Speaker 1: You know. Oftentimes, like I would get something and I'd
Speaker 1: immediately be like, oh, this is awesome. It's not exactly
Speaker 1: what I wanted, but you know, thanks, and then I'd
Speaker 1: start to think about what else I wanted, you know, like,
Speaker 1: for example, I got nominated today for a Billboard Award
Speaker 1: um for the Best Soundtrack Album. Okay, that's not exactly
Speaker 1: what I wanted. I wrote three songs on a Disney
Speaker 1: movie last year, and now I've just been nominated for
Speaker 1: something that wasn't what I was manifesting. But I got
Speaker 1: a gift. And imagine if you gave a gift to
Speaker 1: someone okay, and they got it and they literally were
Speaker 1: like this is cool, Like thanks, It's not really what
Speaker 1: I wanted, but I appreciate you giving it to me.
Speaker 1: And you know, what I really want is that thing
Speaker 1: out there. Well I might not think the person is
Speaker 1: an asshole, but I definitely wouldn't give them another gift.
Speaker 1: I would just give it to someone else. And why
Speaker 1: is the universe any different? If everything is vibrating energy
Speaker 1: and the universe gives you a gift, no matter if
Speaker 1: it's huge or if it's small, and you don't match
Speaker 1: up to the frequency of that vibration and give it
Speaker 1: gratitude for the present that you received the universal just
Speaker 1: go give it to someone else. So you know, that's
Speaker 1: been a real breakthrough for me. And now I find
Speaker 1: myself being intensely grateful throughout my day, and you know
Speaker 1: at the end of my meditations, and the more grateful
Speaker 1: I am, the more present summer siving. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you a question about that worldview because I occasionally
Speaker 1: struggle with it, and I'll tell you in what way.
Speaker 1: Because the logical extension of that can be that people
Speaker 1: whose lives are terrible brought that on themselves. Why is
Speaker 1: that the logical extension of it. I don't necessarily agree
Speaker 1: with that, but I want to know what you mean
Speaker 1: before I respond. My view of it is saying that like,
Speaker 1: if I am grateful for things, I'll get more good things.
Speaker 1: But that sort of says, at least taking a logic
Speaker 1: and reversing it would say if I don't have good things,
Speaker 1: then that's somehow a lack of gratitude. No, that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. What I'm saying specifically, Yeah, you could
Speaker 1: be grateful for anything if you actually chose to start
Speaker 1: looking at the world from the standpoint of like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is all a miracle, right, You could be grateful
Speaker 1: for everything that's right now. There's there's stuff that happens
Speaker 1: that is unimaginable, there's no way to make sense out
Speaker 1: of it. But you don't have to make sense out
Speaker 1: of things in order to accept them and find gratitude
Speaker 1: because they made you who you are. Right So for me,
Speaker 1: that's a larger spiritual lesson. But like every day, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get nominated for some award. Just having
Speaker 1: a moment with you. I don't know you. You're across
Speaker 1: the country and we're having a conversation and we're sharing
Speaker 1: time together, the most valuable thing that both of us have.
Speaker 1: We're choosing to share this moment together, or a meal
Speaker 1: or a smile or the way the breeze hits you.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this because I've mastered it. I'm a
Speaker 1: fucking student. I'm figuring it out on a moment to
Speaker 1: moment basis. But I'm certainly not saying that if people
Speaker 1: have bad stuff happening to them they deserve it because
Speaker 1: of their lack of gratitude. Yeah, I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: as a rule for myself, the more that I focus
Speaker 1: on what I'm grateful for and match up with that
Speaker 1: frequency of the universe, the more either I discover that
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for that I wouldn't have seen before, or
Speaker 1: the more that actually gets created. And I can't answer that,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna keep trying. It does seem absolutely true.
Speaker 1: It's something that you do very well in your work,
Speaker 1: which is that you hold paradox really well and you
Speaker 1: explore paradox. What I'm doing is I'm saying, let me
Speaker 1: apply logic to something that's spiritual, and there's a paradox
Speaker 1: to a lot of spirituality I have found for myself.
Speaker 1: It's paradoxical. You're you're holding these different ideas at once.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about, you're the experiencer and you're the observer,
Speaker 1: and that's the paradox. You're separate and you're one yes,
Speaker 1: and you have to be able to hold two truths
Speaker 1: in the same space at the same time to get
Speaker 1: the cosmic joke, you know, Like in that poem that
Speaker 1: I read Enquired Within, I remember being at home alone,
Speaker 1: high as ship, you know, just so stoned watching the
Speaker 1: Secret And what I said in the poem is true.
Speaker 1: I misunderstood the law of attraction. I thought it meant
Speaker 1: that you just have to go around and be positive
Speaker 1: all the time. I'm just gonna be positive all the time.
Speaker 1: First of all, that's stupid, it's unrealistic. That's not the
Speaker 1: way the world is set up. It's set up as
Speaker 1: we're talking about in dichotomys. It's good wolf and the
Speaker 1: bad wolf, and that's why they're separate, but the same, yes,
Speaker 1: yes as the great zen Masters. Zuki used to say
Speaker 1: not to but not one. And I love that because
Speaker 1: it captures that, you know, yeah, you and I are
Speaker 1: not one, but we're also not really too. You know,
Speaker 1: that's so well said. I love the simplicity of that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just think once I realized that I
Speaker 1: had made a mistake, you know, that year that I
Speaker 1: had spent walking around forcing myself into positivity, it just
Speaker 1: seems so silly. I'm not talking about gratitude, like forcing
Speaker 1: myself into positivity all the time. I get upset, like
Speaker 1: everybody does. I get stressed out, I get annoyed, I
Speaker 1: get nervous, every single feeling you could ever possibly have,
Speaker 1: I have had, I will have. But I can also
Speaker 1: choose how I respond to those feelings, what actions I take,
Speaker 1: and what I am choosing to focus on. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think this is a good segue to another poem of yours,
Speaker 1: if you would be kind enough to read it for us.
Speaker 1: It's a very short one, but it's called problems. Yes,
Speaker 1: how do we talk about the problems without feeding them?
Speaker 1: If we ignore them, we most likely keep repeating them.
Speaker 1: If we explore them, we run the risk of reinforcing them.
Speaker 1: So how then do we get down to the source
Speaker 1: of them? I love that In some ways, I almost
Speaker 1: would say that question has been at the heart of
Speaker 1: this podcast from the beginning. It's been this how do
Speaker 1: you do these two things? And I was just right
Speaker 1: up against this. Very recently, I had a two week
Speaker 1: vacation coming up, and I've never taken two weeks off
Speaker 1: in my life, so I was so excited. I had
Speaker 1: been planning and it was this big deal. And the
Speaker 1: night we went on vacation, my partner's mother went into
Speaker 1: the hospital, and we hopped in the car and drove
Speaker 1: to Atlanta, and all of a sudden everything on vacation
Speaker 1: was whacked out, and so I'm in the midst of
Speaker 1: that moment, going okay, let me think here, let me
Speaker 1: let me work through. So on one hand, I'm feeling
Speaker 1: intensely disappointed and frustrated, and yet on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I also recognized, like I'm talking about vacation and her
Speaker 1: mom's going into the hospital, and you know, let me
Speaker 1: keep some perspective on all these things. And so I'm
Speaker 1: balancing both those things, you know, like and for me,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of you know, hold the two extremes and
Speaker 1: a middleway kind of guy, right, that often leads to
Speaker 1: the middle way, and you know, the middle way was like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, how do I allow myself to feel
Speaker 1: what I feel and yet keep some perspective? And that's
Speaker 1: why when I read that poem of yours, I was like,
Speaker 1: that says it so poetically. How do I do these
Speaker 1: two things? And again, I think we've been exploring that
Speaker 1: question on this show a thousand different ways. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine if you just were so angry at yourself for
Speaker 1: feeling that way, Wow, you shouldn't feel that way, or oh,
Speaker 1: you're such a bad person, how does that do anything
Speaker 1: but exacerbate those negative feelings. Right, you have to accept them.
Speaker 1: Whatever comes up, you have to accept it, and then
Speaker 1: you choose what you're gonna do with it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I actually have a new poem that I think really
Speaker 1: represents this. Would you like to hear that? I would
Speaker 1: love that. Okay, great, I like this kind of like
Speaker 1: on the fly thing that we're doing. There's noises in
Speaker 1: the background, alarms are going off, my emails are coming
Speaker 1: in breaking loose. Now, it's all good. I just have
Speaker 1: to find it real quick. Okay, here we go. I
Speaker 1: wrote this after I came back from India and I
Speaker 1: was at the end of last year. This year feels
Speaker 1: like a lifetime. I mean, it's very hard to make
Speaker 1: sense out of time. I'm in love with the part
Speaker 1: of me that hates myself. I accept the part of
Speaker 1: me that rejects myself. I don't judge myself. Whenever I
Speaker 1: am judging myself, I respect the part of me that
Speaker 1: disrespects myself. I have confidence whenever I am being insecure,
Speaker 1: I am happy for my sadness. Both are welcomed through
Speaker 1: my door. I can laugh at being angry, I can
Speaker 1: cry and celebration. I don't worry why I'm in the
Speaker 1: process of a transformation. There's nothing to release. Alchemy is integration.
Speaker 1: I'll never overcome it. I've become my expectation. I'll never
Speaker 1: outrun it. I am from my destination at the summit,
Speaker 1: looking up before my first step was taken. I've awakened
Speaker 1: in the dream. I am patient in the race. I
Speaker 1: am naked in belief. I am wearing every face I
Speaker 1: create by manifesting everything in empty space. I myself am
Speaker 1: empty space. I am boundless energy. I am God inside
Speaker 1: a case. I am physical reality, the canvas and the paints.
Speaker 1: I am spiritual reality. I swallow what I taste. I
Speaker 1: am only here because I've learned that I can be erased.
Speaker 1: I've already been erased. I will never be erased. I've
Speaker 1: buried every treasure that I've carried in my hate. Now
Speaker 1: I measure what is infinite with what can be replaced.
Speaker 1: I can weather any weather. I'm a storm inside of base,
Speaker 1: taking form for pain or pleasure. I can form to
Speaker 1: any shape. I know that time doesn't exist, although I
Speaker 1: oh there's none to waste. That's why I'm sitting still,
Speaker 1: and yet I feel the sun upon my face. I
Speaker 1: am faster than I've ever been. I'll never keep this pace.
Speaker 1: I've come to end where I begin making everything but
Speaker 1: haste on a wheel that doesn't spin. Go within for
Speaker 1: inner space. I'm embracing every sin, finding home in every place.
Speaker 1: I'm at peace with every piece. I embody what I've chased.
Speaker 1: I'm in love with the part of me that hates myself.
Speaker 1: I accept the part of me that rejects myself. I
Speaker 1: don't judge myself. Whenever I am judging myself, I respect
Speaker 1: the part of me that disrespects myself. I have confidence
Speaker 1: whenever I am being insecure, I am happy for my sadness.
Speaker 1: Both are welcomed through my door. I can laugh at
Speaker 1: being angry, I can cry and celebration. I don't worry
Speaker 1: Why why alchemies, integration, I love it. You're right. It
Speaker 1: is right on, right on target, with so much of
Speaker 1: what we are talking about and about embracing these paradoxes.
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty serious Zen student. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've gone very far into that particular tradition, but boy,
Speaker 1: it would be right up your alley. Not far enough.
Speaker 1: I need to go farther. Zen is the tradition that
Speaker 1: has you do things like coons and a coon It
Speaker 1: is like what is the sound of one hand clapping? Right?
Speaker 1: Some people say this is an oversimplification, but it's basically
Speaker 1: trying to break our relying on the logical brain. You know,
Speaker 1: it gets you to this deeper point of integration of
Speaker 1: realizing opposites at the same time. And your poem has
Speaker 1: a lot of things that could come right out of
Speaker 1: a Zen co on for sure. Well, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're solving the riddle, you have a moment of confusion,
Speaker 1: and in that moment of confusion, enlightenment can sneak. That's right,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a Zen phrase. I won't get it
Speaker 1: exactly right, but uh, it's basically great doubt, great enlightenment.
Speaker 1: Doubt is considered a key element in Zen. Great faith,
Speaker 1: great doubt, great determination, beautiful those three things, you know,
Speaker 1: and like you said, that moment of confusion, it can
Speaker 1: be a beautiful moment that not knowing, well, we don't
Speaker 1: know anything at any time period. Yeah, let's go there,
Speaker 1: because that's another really interesting part of your work. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of your work has a political viewpoint. It
Speaker 1: has a viewpoint on the way we are, say, perhaps
Speaker 1: treating the world. It has some clear viewpoints, and yet
Speaker 1: I think you do a really good job of honoring
Speaker 1: the fact that multiple viewpoints are valid and that people
Speaker 1: who don't believe the same thing as us are very
Speaker 1: often very much like us. And I'm curious how you
Speaker 1: do both those things, because again there is a viewpoint.
Speaker 1: You clearly do have views, opinions, and strong feelings about
Speaker 1: certain things, and yet there's a real honoring of people
Speaker 1: who believe differently. How do you get there? Because I
Speaker 1: think that's a real big question for our world right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't mean to repeat the same stuff, but it
Speaker 1: goes back to the thing we said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: which is one wolf, you know, two wolves? You know
Speaker 1: what was the thing that you said, I really want
Speaker 1: to not to not one exactly, not to not one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just so well said, that's poetry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have very strong opinions about the world
Speaker 1: and where I think we should be headed in comparison
Speaker 1: to where we are. But I don't think that I'm
Speaker 1: necessarily right, because there's been many times in my life
Speaker 1: when I thought I was right, and then later I
Speaker 1: realized that I was wrong. Because of new experiences. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that you can invite anyone into having
Speaker 1: a difference of opinion unless you lead by example and
Speaker 1: then give them space. Otherwise we're just at war with
Speaker 1: each other, which means we're war with ourselves. And yet
Speaker 1: I don't think that being silent is an option either,
Speaker 1: So we're just going back to these dichotomies. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to be a part of
Speaker 1: the noise, you don't want to just be making noise,
Speaker 1: but you also have a responsibility to not be silent,
Speaker 1: especially during these uncertain and important times. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 1: finding that dichotomy harder to hold. I feel very strongly
Speaker 1: about this, I feel like I have a responsibility to
Speaker 1: speak about this, and yet, like you, I distrust certainty
Speaker 1: in all its forms. You know, if you act really
Speaker 1: certain about something, even if I believe exactly what you believe,
Speaker 1: I'm almost inclined to argue with you. I distrust certainty.
Speaker 1: So on one hand, I feel very strongly and have
Speaker 1: opinions like you, and yet I'm trying to hold this
Speaker 1: space for for other people. And boy, I'm feeling the
Speaker 1: rub of that dichotomy a lot. How does that show
Speaker 1: up in reality for you in your life. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. I don't know. If it's the
Speaker 1: polarization of the moment, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: in the past, for me, I was better able to
Speaker 1: separate somebody's political beliefs from their underlying goodness. And I'm
Speaker 1: having a harder time. I mean I I can definitely
Speaker 1: relate to that. You know, a lot of what we're
Speaker 1: exploring is you know, my as I said, purging or praying.
Speaker 1: You know, that's myself. Yeah. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: times the poems that I'm writing, I write them into
Speaker 1: existence for me, right. You know, sometimes I don't catch
Speaker 1: up for years. I mean, I'm not joking. I mean
Speaker 1: it's funny, but I've things that took me ten years
Speaker 1: to be able to have them, like in a cellular way.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like you know, see song back and forth.
Speaker 1: You know. I'll tell you, did you watch this social
Speaker 1: media documentary? I haven't seen it yet. It's really really great.
Speaker 1: I'll just give you and everyone a synopsis because you
Speaker 1: know what it's about anyway. So I'm watching it, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all these people who created all of
Speaker 1: these platforms, these tech platforms, social media platforms, basically saying
Speaker 1: that we created them to addict you, right, and in
Speaker 1: addicting you, we addicted us. And maybe they started out
Speaker 1: with good intentions, but ultimately they have been co opted
Speaker 1: to the point where there is the degradation of democracy
Speaker 1: going on all over the world, and no one believes
Speaker 1: in acts, no one believes in science, no one believes
Speaker 1: in truth. And if you can't have truth, you can't
Speaker 1: even have an argument because you don't know what the
Speaker 1: funk you're arguing about if you don't have like truth
Speaker 1: to look at. And so these people are basically saying
Speaker 1: it is an existential crisis to humanity what it has become,
Speaker 1: this monster that it has become, and they're very regretful,
Speaker 1: and now they're spending their time trying to do the
Speaker 1: opposite often and they're saying, in the end of this thing,
Speaker 1: they're like, the biggest consequences could be literally like the
Speaker 1: end of democracy, you know, civil war, countries and political
Speaker 1: factions being overthrown, dictatorship, authoritarian regimes. Well like just all
Speaker 1: these crazy things. And I finish it and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, And then I checked my Instagram yeah,
Speaker 1: and you realize you're watching it on Netflix's right. And
Speaker 1: then and then yesterday I saw that the guy who
Speaker 1: did the documentary, the main dude, has a fucking page
Speaker 1: and I just was scratching my head. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't make sense of all this either.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to put it into my art and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be good to myself and good to
Speaker 1: the people around me. You know. I did this project
Speaker 1: for North Will Health recently, and uh, there're a hospital
Speaker 1: system in uh, you know, on the East Coast basically,
Speaker 1: and so it was a tribute to the nurses and
Speaker 1: the doctors who are the real superheroes right now. And
Speaker 1: they animated to one of my pieces. And there was
Speaker 1: an agency that was like working the middle part of
Speaker 1: it and they were fantastic. But we were on a
Speaker 1: call and one of the guys and he was just
Speaker 1: doing his job, he was like, you know, you end
Speaker 1: it with love, like the last word is love, and
Speaker 1: he goes, love is kind of soft to end on.
Speaker 1: He goes, is there any way we can end on
Speaker 1: like something that's like like harder, like you know than love?
Speaker 1: And I literally, you know, everybody's on the call, I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: love is not soft to me, right, love fucking hard.
Speaker 1: Life is hard, and to love through life means you
Speaker 1: have to love harder. So that's my message to people
Speaker 1: and myself is love your self harder, love your family,
Speaker 1: your colleagues, your friends, your community is harder, and then
Speaker 1: try to love the people that you don't love harder
Speaker 1: because they probably need it the most. I consider myself
Speaker 1: a realistic optimist, and I hope that what comes out
Speaker 1: of all of this is more compassion and empathy, because
Speaker 1: that's what the world needs most. I think love is
Speaker 1: really hard. And you know there's another thing that I
Speaker 1: think what you just said there, did you say realistic optimist?
Speaker 1: I've been reflecting lately on that. I feel like hope
Speaker 1: has become almost a moral obligation right now. What do
Speaker 1: you mean, Well, despair just seems to be just knocking
Speaker 1: at everybody's door, and I feel like it takes a
Speaker 1: commitment to look for hope. Right now. I feel like
Speaker 1: like the world needs love. I think it also needs hope,
Speaker 1: and I feel like the reason I say moral and
Speaker 1: the reason I say obligation is maybe that's not quite
Speaker 1: the right because I don't know if I believe in those,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: and it's the hard thing to do, you know, and
Speaker 1: I feel like we need it. I have to different
Speaker 1: definitions of hope. Hope can be despair and disguise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not careful, you know. I hope. You can hope from
Speaker 1: a place of victimization. I hope, you know. So I
Speaker 1: try not to do that. Yeah, But there's another part
Speaker 1: of hope that is really really beautiful when it's like
Speaker 1: practiced correctly. And I go through various degrees of success
Speaker 1: and failure with that. Um And I was reading Unbroken.
Speaker 1: I'm like actually looking at it right now. Do you
Speaker 1: know this book Unbroken? The guy who ends up in
Speaker 1: a raft in the ocean and a p of w cam.
Speaker 1: It just goes through crazy amounts of problems and remains unbroken. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm reading it and I'm just thinking, like, ship
Speaker 1: is really bad right now. It's really bad. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna front I'm not gonna pretend it's all good. I
Speaker 1: understand the despair. I don't think that the coronavirus in
Speaker 1: general has created any problems. I think it's just brought
Speaker 1: them to light. The systemic racism, the inequality, the lack
Speaker 1: of leadership from our politicians, our health care system, all
Speaker 1: of it is just being brought to the surface. And
Speaker 1: I'd rather be at the surface than underneath. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we might deal with skirmishes of real political ongoing civil
Speaker 1: violence after the election, you know, is over whatever that
Speaker 1: even means. Um So I'm not even pretending that it's
Speaker 1: going to get better immediately, but I think it's necessary.
Speaker 1: Number one, and number two, we're still a really far
Speaker 1: away from Nazi Germany. I'm reading this book, man, like,
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's a whole thing that they talked about
Speaker 1: yesterday in terms of like, uh, the Japanese. At a
Speaker 1: certain point, it was like a massacre of like a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand Chinese people, and it was insane. The Germans
Speaker 1: killed six million Jews, but it was like twenty million Russians,
Speaker 1: not even saying anything about I'm sure you guys know
Speaker 1: all this, but I just it's just when people make
Speaker 1: the comparison of that, I think they're missing the reality
Speaker 1: of our lives. If this is the biggest crazy ship
Speaker 1: that's going on right now, to be able to quarantine
Speaker 1: is a fucking luxury. It's a privilege. There's so many
Speaker 1: people who don't know where their next meal is coming from.
Speaker 1: They don't even have time to listen to a podcast
Speaker 1: or buy a poetry book. They're trying to put food
Speaker 1: on their kids take. You know, it's like, we have
Speaker 1: a lot to be ful for. We have to find
Speaker 1: ways to acknowledge that and try to be of service
Speaker 1: to the people around us. I could not agree with
Speaker 1: you more that I think that that's one of the
Speaker 1: benefits of of history. I think is seeing like, wow,
Speaker 1: holy mackerel, you know, we've got things pretty good. I
Speaker 1: often think when people think the world is disintegrating, I
Speaker 1: often think that's very much a I don't know if
Speaker 1: I want to use this term, but I will use
Speaker 1: it sort of a more upper middle class white view
Speaker 1: of the world. You know, because if you look, if
Speaker 1: you look around the world at hundreds of different measures
Speaker 1: the world has it just gets better and gets better
Speaker 1: and gets better and gets better. The number of people
Speaker 1: in poverty, the number of people that are illiterate, the
Speaker 1: number of child laborers, the number of people in slavery,
Speaker 1: the number I mean, all those numbers go in the
Speaker 1: right direction historically, And I'll piggyback what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: think it once again goes back to this dichotomy. A
Speaker 1: lot of times people will use that as an excuse
Speaker 1: to not pay attention to how bad the problems are now.
Speaker 1: And you have to be able to hold two truths
Speaker 1: in the same space at the same time. Is getting
Speaker 1: better and ship is really fucked up? And things are
Speaker 1: true now? Absolutely, I could not agree more. Yes, I
Speaker 1: often say too, is this because the fact that the
Speaker 1: world is getting better doesn't do any good for the
Speaker 1: person who the world isn't better for now? Right right,
Speaker 1: there are still people suffering in ways that are unprecedented,
Speaker 1: I mean, or not unprecedented, but are terrible. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I say that. I feel like hope right
Speaker 1: now is so important because I feel like what we
Speaker 1: get is so much despair. We're sold it by the
Speaker 1: for profit media. And I'm not shipping on the media,
Speaker 1: by the way, I cust a lot. I apologize for
Speaker 1: anybody if there's kids, car Yeah, we're marking this one
Speaker 1: explicit um, but but really I am not, you know,
Speaker 1: just belittling the media just because it's the thing to do.
Speaker 1: No the media, I mean journalists, I have the highest
Speaker 1: respect for every single thing that they put into their
Speaker 1: jobs and trying to bring the truth to the world,
Speaker 1: which the vast majority of them are. But we're in
Speaker 1: a system that basically sells suffering and fear and anxiety
Speaker 1: in order to get you high on that. So you
Speaker 1: keep coming back to it over and over again. And
Speaker 1: so you know, that's why I hope is so hard
Speaker 1: to find, because the loudest voices are fear. And by
Speaker 1: the way, the media is not as bad as Trump is,
Speaker 1: because you look at the Republican National Convention and it
Speaker 1: was all fear. Everything that was being sold was year
Speaker 1: in order to get people to go, oh no, well,
Speaker 1: you're the only answer to this, and you know so,
Speaker 1: I think it's just these systems that have been created
Speaker 1: to keep people consuming, to keep people scared, and to
Speaker 1: keep people in line. I agree, I agree, And that's
Speaker 1: the hope I'm speaking of, not the sort of meek
Speaker 1: I hope. One of my favorite stories of all time
Speaker 1: and is about and maybe you've heard of it. It's
Speaker 1: called the Stockdale Paradox, and it's uh a general I
Speaker 1: think he was a general. Stockdale is the highest ranking
Speaker 1: prisoner of war in Vietnam, and those guys went through hell, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, starved, tortured, all kinds of stuff. And so
Speaker 1: somebody was interviewing him and they said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: so I assume it was you know, the optimists that
Speaker 1: got through, and he went, no, no, no, the optimists
Speaker 1: they all died. They thought I'll be out by Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: I'll be out there Christmas, I'll be out by Easter.
Speaker 1: And they've died of a broken heart. And they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: so it was the pessimist. You no, the pessimists. They
Speaker 1: didn't do so I didn't do so well either, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they just gave up. They just gave up. And then well,
Speaker 1: who who who got through? He said, Well, the people
Speaker 1: that got through were the people who are able to
Speaker 1: to see the reality of their situation in all of
Speaker 1: its brutal truthfulness, but also never lost faith in their
Speaker 1: ability to get through it. And I love that because
Speaker 1: I think that's what you and I are talking about here,
Speaker 1: is you've got to see the reality, to sugarcoat it,
Speaker 1: to pretend it's not there. You've got to have that.
Speaker 1: But that seems to be most of all we get.
Speaker 1: Here's here's the brutal reality here's your big steaming pile
Speaker 1: of crap, you know. But it's that second piece that
Speaker 1: that I feel like is so important. That's what I
Speaker 1: love in the work that you do and the thing
Speaker 1: that I try and bring to the show and I can,
Speaker 1: is that second piece that says, hey, we've got to
Speaker 1: keep some belief that there's another side to this, because
Speaker 1: if you don't have that belief, you you can't advocate
Speaker 1: for change, you can't keep the energy to keep going.
Speaker 1: You've got to believe that there's some way that things
Speaker 1: get better. Yeah. When I see a car crash coming
Speaker 1: when I'm on the freeway, I forced myself not to
Speaker 1: look at it. I forced myself. It's a conscious decision,
Speaker 1: not because I don't want to create more traffic, although
Speaker 1: that's a byproduct of it. Um, I forced myself not
Speaker 1: to look at it because it's the same thing. Your
Speaker 1: eyes are always going to be drawn to the destruction.
Speaker 1: I just want to make a point to myself to
Speaker 1: keep my eyes on where I'm going, where I want
Speaker 1: to be, you know. I mean, if I can help,
Speaker 1: I want to help. I don't want to pretend that
Speaker 1: things aren't bad over there, But I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a lucky lou. I don't think I've ever said
Speaker 1: that before. Looking look, Lou, well, where did that come from?
Speaker 1: In my mind? It's a it's a nice it's a
Speaker 1: nice one. Maybe you'll use it in a poem soon.
Speaker 1: It'sn't it really style. It's not real your style, but
Speaker 1: it's not a real hard hitting word. You know. The
Speaker 1: thing I often ask myself when I'm thinking about what
Speaker 1: I want to pay attention to, is is it going
Speaker 1: to influence what I actually do? You know, is paying
Speaker 1: more attention to the news, to this issue, to this thing.
Speaker 1: Is it going to change what I do? Or is
Speaker 1: it just gonna perpetuate, you know, malaise, you know in
Speaker 1: me and in others. All right, well, you and I
Speaker 1: have run out of time, but you're gonna join me
Speaker 1: briefly in the post show conversation. We're going to explore
Speaker 1: a couple more of your wonderful poems and your wonderful style.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 1: come on. I think this has been a really good
Speaker 1: and pretty frank conversation and I and I really appreciate
Speaker 1: you engaging in it. Amazing And let me just say
Speaker 1: to anyone who's listening. The book Enquire Within is out.
Speaker 1: You can get it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Speaker 1: You can get the audio book and then I'll be
Speaker 1: reading all my poems to you. And it's really something
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of. It came out during the height
Speaker 1: of the fear and anxiety around on the pandemic. It
Speaker 1: was like March one. Oh, yeah, it's a tough time
Speaker 1: to launch a book. Yeah, but it's done so well.
Speaker 1: I don't think that we went maybe as wide, but
Speaker 1: we went a lot deeper and so we're still, you know,
Speaker 1: getting it out to as many people as possible because
Speaker 1: it was medicine for me to write, and I hope
Speaker 1: it's medicine for people to read. Yeah, and there's absolutely
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes. You click on that
Speaker 1: link and you can purchase the book. Lots of Love. Thanks.
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