Speaker 1: It gives people a sort of permission to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay to be human. I can fumble, I can fall.
Speaker 1: We screw up. That's what we do. That's not what's important.
Speaker 1: What's important is how do we push through that? How
Speaker 1: do we break through that? Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: 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 Sebastian Siegel, a British American screenwriter, director, author
Speaker 1: and actor from Oxford, England. His new movie is Grace
Speaker 1: and Grit, based on the American philosopher Ken Wilbur's memoir
Speaker 1: John McKay had to say about the new movie Grace
Speaker 1: and Grit will shake you and maybe even awaken you
Speaker 1: in some way. This movie is a must see, especially
Speaker 1: for anyone interested in love or consciousness. Hi, Sebastian, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. To be here. We're going to be
Speaker 1: discussing a recent movie that you directed called Grace and Grit,
Speaker 1: as well as a bunch of other things. But we'll
Speaker 1: get to all that in a moment, and we'll start
Speaker 1: like we always do, with the parable. In the parable,
Speaker 1: there is a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops, thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. This is a beautiful, terrible and it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful question I think for people to engage in. Hence
Speaker 1: the theme of your podcast that I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for bringing to the world. Certainly with a question
Speaker 1: like this, it's not something that gets answered, and it's
Speaker 1: always answered. We have to keep asking it, which is
Speaker 1: why this is such a great content and such a
Speaker 1: great underlying theme for a show like this. I think
Speaker 1: of it in sort of four levels. One it was interesting,
Speaker 1: and when you sent that to me and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about it, one of the first dreams that I
Speaker 1: remember as a child, maybe just a couple of years old,
Speaker 1: was about a sort of dark kind of mythic figure
Speaker 1: like a horse or a bull, and a light mythic
Speaker 1: figure like a horse or a bull, and they'd come
Speaker 1: out of a cave and they were pushing each other
Speaker 1: back and forth, and then they went back into the cave,
Speaker 1: and then they were about to come out, and I
Speaker 1: was sort of telepathizing that I was on top of
Speaker 1: one of them, but I didn't know which one I
Speaker 1: was on top of and which one would come out.
Speaker 1: And then I wake up, and it's very much I
Speaker 1: think this question to take that then from the personal,
Speaker 1: I think into the archetypal sense of what these two
Speaker 1: figures are in the parable of the bad wolf and
Speaker 1: the hopeful of the wolf of light and the wolf
Speaker 1: of darkness. That in the very youngion sense, we have
Speaker 1: these art types that were born into the world with right,
Speaker 1: whether it's the Messiah or the Great Father, the Great Mother,
Speaker 1: or the thief or the hero. And I think there
Speaker 1: were always eating one of those things more and I
Speaker 1: think then to take it then to sort of a
Speaker 1: more contemporarizing of it the sense of karma and the
Speaker 1: sense of dharma. Right, that karma is sort of what
Speaker 1: is your fate? And the sense of dharma is what
Speaker 1: is your destiny? You know that what do we come
Speaker 1: into this world in a way that we're limited by
Speaker 1: this trap, this pattern that we engage in again and
Speaker 1: again and again, right, might be this dark wolf? And
Speaker 1: then what is our destiny or what is our dharma?
Speaker 1: And that was what are we choosing to do with
Speaker 1: every day? How am I choosing to greet people with
Speaker 1: my eye contact? There's this very beautiful term in Hawaii aloha,
Speaker 1: which is hello, goodbye love, but it also means how
Speaker 1: you make someone feel when you greet them, And it
Speaker 1: also means how do you feel when you greet someone?
Speaker 1: And I think about that ultimately as a dharma in
Speaker 1: other words, as that wolf, the one that you choose
Speaker 1: to feed. That it's less about well, I want to
Speaker 1: give into the things that lift me up and the
Speaker 1: things that you know obviously you know when we think
Speaker 1: about I want to do the things that where I
Speaker 1: lift other people up. I want to engage in things
Speaker 1: that cultivate, yeah, joy and peace and ease and life
Speaker 1: and abundance energy. But really it's so subtle. I think
Speaker 1: it's so simple that it starts just with this spark inside, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the spark of spirit of God, of love, and that
Speaker 1: if we sit into that, then feeding that wolf that
Speaker 1: is the wolf of hope and love comes naturally. I
Speaker 1: love that. Let's start with your latest movie, Grace and Grit,
Speaker 1: of which you were I believe, the screenwriter and the director,
Speaker 1: maybe among other things, but at least those two. Why
Speaker 1: don't you tell us about the movie in your own words.
Speaker 1: I could summarize that I've seen it and I loved it,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna let you sort of give the brief
Speaker 1: summary for our Listeners adapted screenplay from Ken Rob's book
Speaker 1: on the same title. Grayson GrITT and I produced it
Speaker 1: with two producing partners, and I directed the movie. And
Speaker 1: it is really a story of about love beyond life.
Speaker 1: It's a story about transcendence. It's a true story between
Speaker 1: Ken Wilbur and his would be wife. They meet, they
Speaker 1: fall madly in love, and the film, ultimately it's experiential
Speaker 1: that we see and we experience romantic love and courageous love,
Speaker 1: and selfless love and passionate love and then ultimately transcendent love.
Speaker 1: And when I say the movie is experiential, I mean
Speaker 1: that we see these characters portraying these things, experiencing these things,
Speaker 1: but we want to experience that. I want the audience
Speaker 1: to feel those things and sitting through the movie. So
Speaker 1: like a song, the rhythm and the sound and the
Speaker 1: music is one thing, but also what's the feeling that
Speaker 1: it evokes. So it's a film that I think people
Speaker 1: have to be ready to see it. They have to
Speaker 1: be willing to let go, to surrender into it, like
Speaker 1: the book, and it's ultimately an experience of what is
Speaker 1: it that we're touching our soul? This thing that echoes beyond.
Speaker 1: How does love trans form us? How can it make
Speaker 1: us better, deeper and greater service to ourselves and to
Speaker 1: everything that we touch in his life? It is a
Speaker 1: beautiful film and it is experiential. I absolutely felt it,
Speaker 1: My partner absolutely felt it. Some people are going to
Speaker 1: know who Ken Wilbury is, but plenty of people aren't.
Speaker 1: So why don't you share with us who Ken Wilbury is.
Speaker 1: Ken Wilbur is perhaps the most brilliant human being that
Speaker 1: ever lived. And I say that in total truth that
Speaker 1: you think about Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and then you know,
Speaker 1: going forward, all these brilliant sort of thinkers and writers,
Speaker 1: and he's a map maker. Yeah, And essentially from the
Speaker 1: Big Bang to now, we have books like A Brief
Speaker 1: History of Time, right, Steven Hawkins book that described from
Speaker 1: the Big Bank to now the entire physical universe and
Speaker 1: how it evolved. And I think Wilbur has a book
Speaker 1: to compare that to just those titles, A Brief History
Speaker 1: of Everything, where it's from the Big Bank to now
Speaker 1: ultimately the extrapolation of just the physical universe, but also
Speaker 1: of feeling, of thought, of spirit, of consciousness, of religion,
Speaker 1: of what is going on ultimately and then that you know,
Speaker 1: going Outward is really an examination of what is consciousness,
Speaker 1: not our consciousness, just our consciousness, but what is the
Speaker 1: consciousness of God, of Spirit, of the entire cosmos. And
Speaker 1: so the ideas that he writes about are so big
Speaker 1: and so vast and so complex that the reason he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a broader audiences because there are many incredible authors,
Speaker 1: brilliant authors today and you know, in the past, psychologist, philosophers,
Speaker 1: authors of spirituality of consciousness that are accessible. In other words,
Speaker 1: you can pick up a book, yeah, by Mariann Williamson
Speaker 1: or Schopenhauer, or Tony Robbins, you know, or Carl jung
Speaker 1: Uh and you don't need any preface to read that.
Speaker 1: You can pick it up and it's successible and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: One of my most favorite authors is James Hollis, who
Speaker 1: was one of the founders of the Young Center in Houston,
Speaker 1: and it's a dear friend of mine also, and his
Speaker 1: work is very accessible. Ken Wilber's work requires a prerequisite
Speaker 1: of fifty other books, so to arrive to Ken Wilbur,
Speaker 1: it seems that, you know, someone has to be in
Speaker 1: a place where they're ready to not just explore those ideas,
Speaker 1: but that there's a certain vernacular that's a requisite. Although
Speaker 1: I do think that when someone is interested in consciousness
Speaker 1: and interested in spirituality, interests in philosophy and psychology, eventually
Speaker 1: all roads lead to Ken Wilber. That he's sort of
Speaker 1: brilliant mind and radically creative and radically original. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is my thought, but also many of the most
Speaker 1: brilliant people today would say the same thing about him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is an extraordinarily highly regarded writer, philosopher in all
Speaker 1: those areas. What's interesting to me, and I read a
Speaker 1: bunch of ken Wilber a long time ago. Was was
Speaker 1: really when I read mult the boles of his books,
Speaker 1: and this book, Grace and Grit, though, stood out for
Speaker 1: me in a totally different way. To me, it was
Speaker 1: a very different Ken Wilber book. Was that your experience
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, Erica was in fact a brief history
Speaker 1: of everything, was the first book I read of his,
Speaker 1: and then I would six Eychology, Spirituality and Integral Psychology,
Speaker 1: a number of other books, and Grayson GrITT was always
Speaker 1: sitting there in my living room or somewhere, you know,
Speaker 1: on my shelf, and I just didn't want to read
Speaker 1: it because it didn't seem to be a book on consciousness.
Speaker 1: That it was the one book that had characters in
Speaker 1: it who were people. Yeah, that all of the characters
Speaker 1: and the other books are conceptual, yeah ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: they're about consciousness, and so um. I just you know,
Speaker 1: I was looking for really kind of heavy, challenging material
Speaker 1: at the time, many many, many many years ago, and
Speaker 1: so then eventually I took it with me and opened
Speaker 1: it up, and I was just immediately struck in the
Speaker 1: heart that it was a reference point I think for
Speaker 1: what's possible in love. To see these two people who
Speaker 1: are evolved, grounded, compassionate, tender, intelligent beings uh He and Trea.
Speaker 1: To see them at their best, shine brightly, to see
Speaker 1: them fumble, Yeah, to see them really be at their worst.
Speaker 1: I think for many people around the world. When I
Speaker 1: read the reviews about the book, it gives people a
Speaker 1: sort of permission to say, Okay, it's okay to be human.
Speaker 1: I can fumble, I can fall. We screw up. That's
Speaker 1: what we do. That's not what's important. What's important is
Speaker 1: how do we push through that, How do we break
Speaker 1: through that, how do we feed as just saying the
Speaker 1: wolf that is love and it is hope. So in
Speaker 1: one way, the book is, you know, this epic love
Speaker 1: story and a reference point for what's possible in love. Also,
Speaker 1: people think about romantic love and passionate love and then
Speaker 1: courageous love and selfless love and transcendent love. How far
Speaker 1: down that path and most people get romantic, passionate, courageous maybe,
Speaker 1: selfless maybe, And this really is an exemplar of what
Speaker 1: is possible. How far can we allow love to push us,
Speaker 1: in other words, to crucify us and to resurrect us
Speaker 1: in the same way that Khaligobron talks about love to
Speaker 1: really really embody that. And I think what's powerful about
Speaker 1: this book is that, and the story is that it
Speaker 1: really shows that that these two people allow themselves to
Speaker 1: be crucified by love and then came out on the
Speaker 1: other side. Yeah, like just exploding sort of with light.
Speaker 1: So I was also reluctant to read the book, and
Speaker 1: then when I did, it blew me open and I
Speaker 1: just didn't want the pages to end, you know, at
Speaker 1: the very end, I just I didn't want to I
Speaker 1: didn't want to turn the last page. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: I read the book. It made me sad in two
Speaker 1: key ways. The first was the obvious sadness of the book.
Speaker 1: These two people fall in love, and as they're preparing
Speaker 1: to go on their honeymoon, she's diagnosed with breast cancer,
Speaker 1: and the book walks through their experience together, ultimately ending
Speaker 1: in her death. And so it's both incredibly uplifting and
Speaker 1: heartbreaking at the same time. So that was one way
Speaker 1: that it made me sad. The other way that it
Speaker 1: made me sad at that point in my life was
Speaker 1: I thought, I'll never have anything like this. What they
Speaker 1: had was so beautiful. That sort of made me sad
Speaker 1: at that point. I'm happy to report that now I
Speaker 1: feel like I have found something that beautiful. But it's
Speaker 1: just such a profound story about, like you say, these
Speaker 1: different parts and different aspects of love. It's beautiful you're saying,
Speaker 1: you know. I think the sense of a lot of
Speaker 1: people who write about the book online is very much
Speaker 1: that that you see people saying, like this book maybe
Speaker 1: not afraid to love again. Yeah, this book made me
Speaker 1: not afraid of death. This book gave me hope in
Speaker 1: some sort of future. And I like what you said
Speaker 1: very much about connecting with someone and finding that. And
Speaker 1: I think that ultimately where that hope is because I think,
Speaker 1: what is that ingredient inside this book that inspires that?
Speaker 1: And it is in the same way that Killoguban talks
Speaker 1: about It's not about finding other person, it's about locating
Speaker 1: the courage inside of ourselves to say I am comfortable
Speaker 1: to be crucified by love. It is going to hurt me,
Speaker 1: for sure, but in that it will transform me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That if we are vulnerable, we are going to be
Speaker 1: more sensitive to pain and more sensitive to joy. But
Speaker 1: we cannot allow ourselves to be less sensitive to pain
Speaker 1: without numbing joy. If we dim the light of a fire,
Speaker 1: we dim the heat that it may inflict upon us,
Speaker 1: but we also dim the light. Yeah, that guides us, Yes,
Speaker 1: very much so. In the story it says, Look, if
Speaker 1: you're willing to be crucified by love, it's going to hurt,
Speaker 1: but it will be the most delicious and spectacular thing
Speaker 1: that you can possibly experience in this short instant of
Speaker 1: a human life. And at the end of life, people
Speaker 1: are always you know, when people have regrets, it's to
Speaker 1: say I didn't love enough, I didn't give myself enough.
Speaker 1: I could have dealt with the pain of the thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you go to a restaurant, you go out
Speaker 1: somewhere and you see two people. The other day, I
Speaker 1: saw this animous woman and they were sitting outside on
Speaker 1: the bench, and he was talking, you know, very emotionally,
Speaker 1: like sharing something with her. And there was a window
Speaker 1: between us, and I couldn't hear what he was saying,
Speaker 1: but I was looking at and she was really looking
Speaker 1: at him. And then she reached out and just caressed
Speaker 1: his head and he looked up and they held this
Speaker 1: long gaze of eye contact, and I thought, that's the
Speaker 1: most beautiful thing to see and be seen. And we
Speaker 1: all love to see that when we see it out
Speaker 1: in the world, because we want to experience it ourselves.
Speaker 1: So I think anytime we can use media, whether it's
Speaker 1: music or movies or books or poetry, to use that
Speaker 1: as a reference point what's possible with our own soul,
Speaker 1: then that's time well spent and it's attention well spent.
Speaker 1: And that's very much choosing them when you feed somewhere.
Speaker 1: You wrote in talking about the movie, you said, the
Speaker 1: purpose of relationship is to magnify the beauty of the
Speaker 1: human experience and act mutually as catalysts to increasing growth
Speaker 1: in one another. This is the requisite of relationship for
Speaker 1: me in any dynamic friend, lover, or family. So again
Speaker 1: us I would ask, how do you know in a
Speaker 1: relationship of any different sort, whether it's romantic or family
Speaker 1: or whatever, whether you are acting as catalysts to increasing
Speaker 1: growth in one another or whether the reaction that's happening
Speaker 1: is not a positive catalyst. Well, a great question. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful because they all come to the same end ultimately
Speaker 1: in terms of the growth happens when we're ready. So
Speaker 1: sometimes that nurturing and that uplifting is the thing that
Speaker 1: lifts this up. By nurturing and loving someone else, we
Speaker 1: lift ourselves up. By caring for someone who's ill, we
Speaker 1: feel better. If we are all someone cares for us,
Speaker 1: we also feel better. And that's a powerful electrical current
Speaker 1: that goes both directions. Also, sometimes heartbreak, sometimes devastation is
Speaker 1: love and it's many disguises in the way to lift
Speaker 1: us up. Just like if we take a ball and
Speaker 1: we slam it against the floor, the heart are we
Speaker 1: slam it against the floor the higher it goes. Many
Speaker 1: people have to go through something devastating to have an
Speaker 1: awakening so sometimes unintentionally, I think we're in relationship. It's
Speaker 1: not so much that someone hurts us or that we
Speaker 1: hurt someone, but sometimes we're seeking that out. We're seeking
Speaker 1: some sort of pattern, yeah, from our childhood, or some
Speaker 1: sort of karmic pattern again again again, and that no
Speaker 1: matter who the other person is, no matter what they do,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep seeking that thing and tell it
Speaker 1: hits us in a way that breaks us open until
Speaker 1: we can become aware of it. So, in terms of
Speaker 1: the question, how do we know if it's a positive catalyst,
Speaker 1: Ultimately it's always a positive catalyst. It's just like how
Speaker 1: long do we have to yank on the tooth before
Speaker 1: it's ripped out of our mouth? You know, ideally we
Speaker 1: can feel that pattern and see it soon enough to say, okay,
Speaker 1: I've had enough of this. I think you know, now
Speaker 1: is the time I'm ready to step upward, to move onward,
Speaker 1: to not feel this pain anymore. I think that the
Speaker 1: shortcut to that there is a tool, and I think
Speaker 1: that shortcut is really to be in service that if
Speaker 1: we are in relationship and we think about the little
Speaker 1: self and the ego excelf, what do I want and
Speaker 1: what are my passions and what are my pains and
Speaker 1: what do I need? If we put that aside. For instance,
Speaker 1: just so you know, I'm fortunate to know this person, friend, family,
Speaker 1: or lover. How can I be supportive of them right
Speaker 1: without damaging my own self in terms of not having
Speaker 1: any boundaries, you know, how can I be supportive and
Speaker 1: loving and appreciative and full of grace and exuberance, you know,
Speaker 1: in a way that's still healthy for me? And then
Speaker 1: when we start to feel something intuitively um to pay
Speaker 1: attention to that intuition, to say, okay, this this feels good,
Speaker 1: where this feels like I'm robbing myself. Yeah, to never think, look,
Speaker 1: this person is is robbing something from me or damaging me.
Speaker 1: I'm choosing to in this engagement because I think that
Speaker 1: in the personal responsibility there's help. We have this choice
Speaker 1: to say I'm in control, right, that I have a
Speaker 1: say here, and in this reference, you know to I
Speaker 1: think concentration has an extreme example. You know, in Victor
Speaker 1: Frankel's book You, he talks about stimulus and response and
Speaker 1: that freedom exists between that in that gap between stimulus
Speaker 1: and response. So in applying that now to the relationship
Speaker 1: of love, and where the catalysts for joy, there is
Speaker 1: a moment we can get touched or slapped, I think,
Speaker 1: where we feel it, but we have that moment between
Speaker 1: stimulus and response where we can decide what it means.
Speaker 1: And it's the meaning that determines whether the catalysts is
Speaker 1: positive and helpful. And yeah, yeah, Victor Frankel did say
Speaker 1: very clearly that the thing they couldn't take from him
Speaker 1: was his ability to choose his response. That remained his
Speaker 1: you know, and you look at this movie Grace and GrITT.
Speaker 1: Bringing it back to the movie, is this idea of like,
Speaker 1: they tried everything they could to get out of her
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis, and and they didn't, but they did very
Speaker 1: much choose how am I going to live this? You know,
Speaker 1: how am I going to respond to this? What's the
Speaker 1: way that we're going to live through this? And I
Speaker 1: think you explore that beautifully in the movie. I guess
Speaker 1: at the very end of the movie, she writes the
Speaker 1: title of the book, it takes Grace and grit. You know,
Speaker 1: the book's called Grace and Grit. She writes, it takes
Speaker 1: grace and grit. I'm curious what that phrase means to you.
Speaker 1: What does that actually translate to in the way you
Speaker 1: live your life, thanks for that. Everything that we delve
Speaker 1: into intuitively, vocationally, for play or for relationship, ultimately someone
Speaker 1: inside we're seeking to be more, to grow, to fulfill
Speaker 1: something in our fingerprint that we haven't touched, and that
Speaker 1: takes grace. It takes a little bit of breathing deeply
Speaker 1: and letting go, allowing the music to guide us that
Speaker 1: overthinking it. It also takes grit, having an affortitude to
Speaker 1: be bumped on the dance floor, to hit roadblocks and
Speaker 1: to push through and to say it's okay. And I
Speaker 1: think that that paradox in life holds true. I think
Speaker 1: to anything that we engage in, whether it's light and
Speaker 1: dark or the end breath and the outbreath, you know,
Speaker 1: the sweetness or the bitterness. I think even in the
Speaker 1: loss of someone that we love or the loss of
Speaker 1: something that we aspire to, whenever we're sad, it's really
Speaker 1: a reflection of how much joy was there, of how
Speaker 1: much something allowed us to grow. Talking about relationship, when
Speaker 1: people lose someone in any capacity, friend, family, or lover,
Speaker 1: pain that they feel is really a celebration of some
Speaker 1: sort of joy that existed some sort of beautiful path.
Speaker 1: I've had a couple of people in our community this
Speaker 1: week who have lost animals, you know, and we've been
Speaker 1: trying to reflect on that, like without trying to turn
Speaker 1: the sadness off or get past it, you know, feeling
Speaker 1: it going all the way into it, but remembering that
Speaker 1: in the midst of that, you're only in this much
Speaker 1: pain because you had that much love. I'm going to
Speaker 1: switch directions very far here because in addition to being
Speaker 1: an actor and a director and a writer, you're also
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily physically fit person. You've been a cover model
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, and I want to ask a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, because I think the way you've
Speaker 1: talked about exercise is very interesting, because there's a perception
Speaker 1: that people have, like, well, if somebody's a cover model,
Speaker 1: that must be just a vain sort of thing, or
Speaker 1: they're not that smart, or different perceptions, and that's not
Speaker 1: you at all. And you've talked very eloquently on what
Speaker 1: it is about exercise, and and really I think you've
Speaker 1: talked about how it ties to your entire spiritual path.
Speaker 1: Can you say a little bit about that the physical
Speaker 1: form that we have in this world is one aspect
Speaker 1: of our being, and it's also the vehicle for our
Speaker 1: own mind and our own soul. And people talk about mind, body, soul.
Speaker 1: You know, to sit just up in the mind is
Speaker 1: just as ridiculous as it is to sit just in
Speaker 1: the body. To honor all of these aspects of being,
Speaker 1: to honor as many facets of being that we can.
Speaker 1: The more the other aspects of our being are growing
Speaker 1: and are capable. Scientific study show that, you know, when
Speaker 1: we're exercising the blood flow to the brain, the endorphins
Speaker 1: allow us to be sharper doing things physically often and
Speaker 1: pushing it to a certain place. We're engaging in something
Speaker 1: that's been happening for billions of years since before we
Speaker 1: were human. You know, you look at you know, even
Speaker 1: on an evolutionary level, you know, when the sun comes up,
Speaker 1: the movement of molecules in the ocean's physical and then
Speaker 1: when we evolve into different species. Yeah, the hunting and
Speaker 1: the running and the casing, it's integral to to who
Speaker 1: we are. So this idea that just in the last
Speaker 1: hundred years, that all of a sudden we can now
Speaker 1: sit still is insane. That we have to engage things
Speaker 1: that are fundamental in order to reach up higher into
Speaker 1: things that are more transcendental. Yeah. So in other words,
Speaker 1: we don't want to you know, cut off from here
Speaker 1: down or here down, or here down or here down.
Speaker 1: We want to engage all these aspects of our being.
Speaker 1: So for me, physicality was never about building great thighs
Speaker 1: or you know, a beautiful physique or something like this.
Speaker 1: It was really about pushing it physically to the limit.
Speaker 1: And I think as a kid, you know, exercising just
Speaker 1: as hard as I possibly could, and I have that feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're seven, eight, nine, ten or whatever
Speaker 1: and you're running in your heart rates just pounding, pounding, pounding,
Speaker 1: feels like it's going to explode out of your chest.
Speaker 1: But no matter how hard you push it, you can
Speaker 1: just keep pushing it. It's the greatest feeling in the world, right,
Speaker 1: It's so amazing. And I think that I got so
Speaker 1: hooked on that as a kid that I always that's
Speaker 1: why I look for when I exercise. And then the
Speaker 1: byproduct of that, you know, I eat very healthy, and
Speaker 1: so there's just a by product of the of for
Speaker 1: that of making being consistent and doing that every day
Speaker 1: in my life and eating healthy resulted in me being
Speaker 1: in exceptual physical shape, and so I was able to
Speaker 1: do the over a hundred magazine covers. It wasn't something
Speaker 1: that I aspired to so much, but it was just
Speaker 1: sort of the right place at the right time, and
Speaker 1: then that gave me, I think, also a voice to
Speaker 1: be able to talk about and discuss and explore the
Speaker 1: power of physical fitness in terms of what that means
Speaker 1: for our emotional fitness and also our mental acuity to
Speaker 1: you know, draw an analogy. Even you have like Einstein,
Speaker 1: when he was coming up with his greatest theories, he
Speaker 1: would go on a bike ride. You know that the
Speaker 1: physicality he would talk about about being on the bike
Speaker 1: and feeling the air and pushing himself that he would
Speaker 1: get all of a sudden these ideas. You know, it's
Speaker 1: not coincidental. You know, he was doing that by choice,
Speaker 1: knowing that that writing a bicycle was healthful for him.
Speaker 1: So the interlink of all things has become sort of
Speaker 1: cliche and pop culture. Yeah, mind, body, soul, we're all connected.
Speaker 1: But for so many people, these things are all up here.
Speaker 1: They gonna become actual when we actually engage them, when
Speaker 1: we really feel Yeah, my mind my body, my soul.
Speaker 1: And I think a great misconception on this something that
Speaker 1: we see in sort of New Age spirituality or pop
Speaker 1: psychology is, you know, start the ego, feed the soul.
Speaker 1: You here, this this kind of thing, you know, And
Speaker 1: and I get that at a certain level that's appropriate
Speaker 1: to draw someone in who's lost in a sense of
Speaker 1: self identity and just being lost in the sense of self.
Speaker 1: This tiny ego, right, feed the soul. Right. But in actuality,
Speaker 1: the ego is not a bad thing. Ego doesn't even exist.
Speaker 1: The ego is just a concept that's our sense of
Speaker 1: self and how we operate in the world. And so
Speaker 1: a very healthy ego is a vehicle for an even
Speaker 1: more healthy soul that has to be tempered by focus.
Speaker 1: But what are we doing with this ego? Are we
Speaker 1: here to absorb and take? Are are we here to give?
Speaker 1: And we here as a mechanism, as an aperture through
Speaker 1: which light can shine come out. So in the same
Speaker 1: way egoically we have a sense of ourself, have a
Speaker 1: sense of our body. Yeah, and the body is an amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, vehicle to do everything we do, from eating
Speaker 1: to laughing to crying to sexual rapture. And reproduction. So
Speaker 1: why would we not want to take that vessel and
Speaker 1: celebrate it every day in some capacity. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's a very spiritual practice. I get a lot out
Speaker 1: of exercise that's way beyond the physical health benefits. It
Speaker 1: is probably my major emotional support tool. When I'm not exercising,
Speaker 1: I don't do well mentally. And you know, when you
Speaker 1: would depthtail back into something in an earlier conversation about
Speaker 1: how do we feel the catalyst as positive or negative,
Speaker 1: something somewhere inside someone, some story happened where you needed
Speaker 1: that physicality to break through to feel this emotional high,
Speaker 1: and that might have been a negative at the time,
Speaker 1: but look at now, it's become this huge positive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel very much the same way, and so
Speaker 1: many people who are incredible athletes feel the same way.
Speaker 1: That there was something that held them back and that
Speaker 1: through by swimming across an ocean or climbing a mountain
Speaker 1: or doing a workout, that they felt like, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. So that ultimately that negative catalyst, what
Speaker 1: felt like a negative catalyst, was ultimately an ultra positive catalyst.
Speaker 1: It's just we don't see it yet. And I think
Speaker 1: that you know devethtail back into that one is that
Speaker 1: when we feel something painful, to say, hey, look in
Speaker 1: the very chungy and trumpet type of way, this is
Speaker 1: just a sensation. This is just an electricity at any
Speaker 1: junction in our life if we feel pain and angst,
Speaker 1: if we could start to apprehend it as it comes
Speaker 1: on the way in and say, there's something painful here,
Speaker 1: and this is a powerful ingredient. This is a powerful
Speaker 1: salt to make the cake even sweeter and more delicious.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna feel this pain, I'm gonna allow it to him,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna know that I'm gonna transmute this into
Speaker 1: something spectacular. And I think exercise is one of the
Speaker 1: easiest ways to immediately do that. In a day, you
Speaker 1: can say, Okay, i'm feeling pain, I'm gonna go hike,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go run, i'm gonna go work out, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go swim, I'm gonna do something, and then immediately
Speaker 1: that energy is transformed into something that is uplifting and enabling.
Speaker 1: Let's move from physical practice to some of the spiritual
Speaker 1: practices that you do. And I get actually that you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily make a distinction right there, They're all the
Speaker 1: spiritual practices in a way, but let's move to more
Speaker 1: dedicated spiritual practice. What does that look like for you today?
Speaker 1: The conventional response, I think would be something about what
Speaker 1: is the zazen practice look sitting? How much time is
Speaker 1: in meditating? What types of meditative practice? There are a
Speaker 1: number that I engage in. How do we think and
Speaker 1: feel about the food that we eat? What is it
Speaker 1: doing in my body with my choice? What kind of
Speaker 1: joy or pain am I causing in the world? Why
Speaker 1: what I choose to eat? How am I receiving other
Speaker 1: individuals in my life that I know or that I
Speaker 1: don't know? In the Martin Bouber terminology, having an eye
Speaker 1: vow relationship. Am I running into someone on the street
Speaker 1: that's upset and I don't know them? Am I allowing
Speaker 1: them to feel seen? Or am I just avoiding them?
Speaker 1: Am I engaging different modalities, whether it's meditation but also
Speaker 1: a prayer breath practice. I think about ultimately being here
Speaker 1: in this world as a human. It's so radical if
Speaker 1: we just sit for an instant and think about, Wow,
Speaker 1: like this is so bizarre it's occurring. It's really outrageous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just take it for granted because we've been doing
Speaker 1: it every day as long as we can remember in
Speaker 1: this life. But we look up at the moon and
Speaker 1: we think, well, in the moon, that's real, you know,
Speaker 1: are sure it's two miles away, it's made of iron
Speaker 1: and dust and dirt and whatever, but that's it's real.
Speaker 1: It's in free fall. The earth is in free fall,
Speaker 1: the sun is in free fall. And the reason I
Speaker 1: bring all these things up is to say, this entire
Speaker 1: existence is a spiritual game, practice play. And if we're
Speaker 1: not bringing that kind of poetry and that kind of
Speaker 1: dance and that kind of play to life in every capacity,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean we're wrong or we're bad or anything.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to lose, but we're missing out the moment
Speaker 1: we bring a spiritual practice into exercise, into how we eat,
Speaker 1: into how we greet one another, into how we work,
Speaker 1: the moment the world opens up. So for me, my work,
Speaker 1: my primary practice is in remembering, in cultivating always that
Speaker 1: away arness that right now is a spiritual practice. No
Speaker 1: matter what I'm doing, how am I letting life come
Speaker 1: through me? And how am I apprehending everything to allow
Speaker 1: this play to be something original and truthful. I love
Speaker 1: that idea. By choosing the things you do, you can
Speaker 1: actually be reminded more easily that life is about a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice. It's like for me in this podcast, the
Speaker 1: work that I do is naturally sort of reminds me.
Speaker 1: And I love the way you said that, and not
Speaker 1: only do I deliver it, it delivers me. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful idea. So I wondered if maybe we
Speaker 1: would talk about written about some people that have really
Speaker 1: inspired you. And I picked three of the ones that
Speaker 1: show up most often, Ken wilbur Ramana Maharshey, and Alan Watts,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if for each of those people,
Speaker 1: you could just give us one idea from them that's
Speaker 1: really important to you or has been really meaningful to you.
Speaker 1: Alan Watts, you know, as a sort of scholarly writer
Speaker 1: and intellectual, has such a devious sense of humor. And
Speaker 1: I think that when I had this sort of love
Speaker 1: affair with his books and his talks and his writing,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was really one of the authors
Speaker 1: that I think just shape me so enormously because he
Speaker 1: had this underlying sense of radical sense of humor, and
Speaker 1: so I think he was embodying really the sense of
Speaker 1: godliness in that way that it is a play that
Speaker 1: yes it hurts, but it's play. It's all in the
Speaker 1: name of play. And so I think that, you know, he,
Speaker 1: being such an intellectual, talks about things in very simple,
Speaker 1: beautiful and accessible terms with this radical sense of humor.
Speaker 1: And so I just adore that man for that. Ken
Speaker 1: Wilbur in the same way, is brilliant and right is
Speaker 1: you know, scholarly and spectacular, and he also has this
Speaker 1: radical sense of humor. Yeah, I laugh aloud when I
Speaker 1: read his books, and and sometimes people will say, what,
Speaker 1: there's something funny in these books, you know, And I
Speaker 1: mean there is, you know, He's he's really he touches
Speaker 1: the sort of paradox between everything in life, the breath
Speaker 1: and the outbreath of the salt and the honey, in
Speaker 1: such a way that's spectacular. It's like fireworks on the page.
Speaker 1: It's out of control. Every time I read cans Work, Um,
Speaker 1: I see something and I thunderline and I write notes
Speaker 1: and all his books, you know, and everything that I read.
Speaker 1: But you know, when I'm writting this, just I'll read
Speaker 1: something that I haven't read in a while, and I think, God,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. That's just outrageous. It's so smart and brilliant,
Speaker 1: it's so good. Yeah, I mean it's so it's out
Speaker 1: of control. I mean, his mind is just like a
Speaker 1: spectacular old But I don't want to be reductionistic about
Speaker 1: his work. Yeah, I mean he's touching so many things,
Speaker 1: you know. But anybody who's interested ultimately in philosophy and
Speaker 1: psychology and consciousness and spirituality and transcendence is going to
Speaker 1: end if they're voracious in discovery and curious, they're gonna
Speaker 1: It's all roads I think lead to his work, not
Speaker 1: that it's the end all, you know, But he is,
Speaker 1: you know, a voice that is just so pivotal in
Speaker 1: terms of defining and exploring and describing and knowing, you know,
Speaker 1: what are we? What are we doing here? What's really
Speaker 1: going on here? You know? What is going on? What
Speaker 1: are we? In aspect though he writes about it intellectually,
Speaker 1: and he writes about it pragmatically and simply, and he
Speaker 1: writes about it's in in a way that's scholarly and intellectual,
Speaker 1: and he writes about it in a way that's poetic.
Speaker 1: It's quite powerful. Romanomo Harshy his writing is so gentle
Speaker 1: and graceful, and you know, when I read his work,
Speaker 1: it's like a deep breath ultimately about service that we
Speaker 1: are in service to love. He's one of my faves,
Speaker 1: you know. And I still feel so grateful to discover
Speaker 1: his books and his writing because of that, Because I
Speaker 1: read that, and I think, you know, each individual is
Speaker 1: not so important, you know, what's what's important is this
Speaker 1: stream of being of love, and as one individual, I'm
Speaker 1: part of this stream. I'm an aspect rather of this stream. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so I think his his work kind of takes
Speaker 1: me there. It reminds me of what's really going on
Speaker 1: in a very simple and fundamental way. I love that
Speaker 1: description of reading his work being like a deep breath.
Speaker 1: There are people for me, it's the same thing. It's
Speaker 1: just I read it and it's like, oh yes, I remember,
Speaker 1: and every part of me relaxes. Every part of me
Speaker 1: just goes, oh yeah, all right, it's okay, it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's better than okay. Even so, I I think it's
Speaker 1: a great description. The last thing that I would like
Speaker 1: to talk about it is an Instagram post you did recently.
Speaker 1: It was this idea of the bent finger and I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you could just sort of explain that metaphor
Speaker 1: for us. Yes, on the sailing of assistein Chapel Michelangelo's
Speaker 1: glorious painting of God and Man of Adam of the creation. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: God's hand is reached out yea, and man's fingers slightly bent. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is so spectacular that in one way, when we
Speaker 1: think about destiny, it's not a final location. God's hand
Speaker 1: is always reaching out and we must always reach out
Speaker 1: to touch it, to touch our destiny. And that's guided
Speaker 1: by our intuition. Yeah, I know. Those Our intuition tells
Speaker 1: us what to engage in. Not that one is wrong
Speaker 1: or one is bad, or one is right, or one
Speaker 1: is this or that or the other. But it just
Speaker 1: it guides us, this deep intuition, something we see in life.
Speaker 1: So so I really want to do that. That'll be easy,
Speaker 1: that's the right thing to do. But then something deep
Speaker 1: down says is no, no, no, this is the path,
Speaker 1: that's the deep intuition, that's the thing that helps us
Speaker 1: touch our destiny. Yeah, and we always have to keep
Speaker 1: reaching out for it, you know, we have to keep
Speaker 1: reaching out for it. So I think about destiny is
Speaker 1: that continual process of engagement. This thing that I wrote
Speaker 1: online on Instagram in this case about man's finger reaching out,
Speaker 1: is that in order to touch God, or to touch
Speaker 1: the grace of God, we have to have the courage
Speaker 1: to take initiative. That it's our responsibility, and so much
Speaker 1: that the power of prayer. You know, what prayer does
Speaker 1: for us is it makes us feel a certain way,
Speaker 1: maybe puts us at ease, but then also it brings
Speaker 1: an awareness and to what it is that we want
Speaker 1: to feel or do. And then ultimately though, it's got
Speaker 1: to be acted upon. And so by praying, saying something
Speaker 1: out loud, it lets us know. It vocalizes from something
Speaker 1: concept roll bringing outward into something actual, to saying this
Speaker 1: is what I want. And then our step is then
Speaker 1: to engage in it. So, in other words, that spent
Speaker 1: finger reaching to God, God happens through us. It's not
Speaker 1: out there, it's not something we pray to to get.
Speaker 1: It's happening through us all the time. And so to
Speaker 1: touch that to complete that circuit, that circle, a complete
Speaker 1: electrical current. In this painting on Assistant Chapel, man is
Speaker 1: depicted in the image of God. But man must reach
Speaker 1: out to touch the godliness within him, to become God,
Speaker 1: to allow God to move through us. We must engage.
Speaker 1: And we have this sense so often that it's out
Speaker 1: there happening to us. Rather not only is it happening
Speaker 1: for us, it's happening through us. And the moment we
Speaker 1: choose that take that responsibility of initiative, the moment all
Speaker 1: these energies fuel us and source us and pulse through us.
Speaker 1: Why because the circuit becomes complete. Yeah, because the circuit
Speaker 1: becomes complete. But it only becomes complete with action, with doing,
Speaker 1: with reaching our own finger out this word becoming, you know,
Speaker 1: and these two coming coming into you know fully and be.
Speaker 1: You know, one is a state of being and one
Speaker 1: is a state of doing. Becoming. Yeah, and becoming only
Speaker 1: happens from a complete circuitry. You know that we have
Speaker 1: to both feel and be present and stillness, but also
Speaker 1: engage in doing. And I think that paradox in life,
Speaker 1: you know, is written into so much of what we
Speaker 1: are and how we breathe. Yeah, the in breath and
Speaker 1: the outbreath, you know, stepping in and stepping out, you know,
Speaker 1: sleep and wake, eyes open, eyes closed, Yeah, hold on,
Speaker 1: let go, hold on, Let go that circuitry, that paradox
Speaker 1: is what always is the is the trickery and life,
Speaker 1: yeah for us, but it's also the paradox that's woven
Speaker 1: into that is the all, the the ultimate game of
Speaker 1: joy in life. It's the waves that crash on the ocean.
Speaker 1: You know, every wave is completely different, It sounds different
Speaker 1: from any any every other way right there, unlimited waves
Speaker 1: like every fingerprint. But when we hear it, we hear
Speaker 1: this thing, this pattern is becoming, like the breath that's
Speaker 1: going again and again and again again and again. We
Speaker 1: are just one fragment, just one instant, yeah, in that play,
Speaker 1: and the only way to allow that play to be
Speaker 1: beautiful is to let go and allow it through us
Speaker 1: to do. By letting go that becoming, be and coming,
Speaker 1: we could take it all the way back to where
Speaker 1: we started, which is that's another way sort of of
Speaker 1: saying grace and grace very much. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: is a great place for us to wrap up. Sebastian,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming on the show. I have
Speaker 1: really enjoyed this conversation. We'll have links in the show
Speaker 1: notes to where people can find Grace and grit, where
Speaker 1: they can find your work and thank you so much. Eric,
Speaker 1: is such a pleasure being here. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me. If what you just heard was helpful to you,
Speaker 1: please consider making a monthly donation to support the One
Speaker 1: You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With
Speaker 1: this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits.
Speaker 1: It's our way of saying thank you for your support now.
Speaker 1: We are so grateful for the members of our community.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to do what we do without
Speaker 1: their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted.
Speaker 1: To learn more, make a donation at any level and
Speaker 1: become a member of the One You Feed community, go
Speaker 1: to when you feed dot net slash Join The One
Speaker 1: You Feed podcast. Would like to sincerely thank our sponsors
Speaker 1: for supporting the show.