Speaker 1: For those of you who aren't aware of the benefits
Speaker 1: of being a member of the One you Feed Patreon community,
Speaker 1: I'd like to let you in on a little secret.
Speaker 1: Every week, Eric sends out a short segment we like
Speaker 1: to call the t SP that stands for a teaching,
Speaker 1: a song and a poem. What You're about to Hear
Speaker 1: is one of our favorites from this month. These short
Speaker 1: episodes are one of my favorite things about the One
Speaker 1: You Feed, and they bring together three things that we love.
Speaker 1: A practical teaching about feeding your good wolf, music and
Speaker 1: poems that are relevant to the weekly topic. When you
Speaker 1: become a member of our Patreon community, you get every episodes,
Speaker 1: exclusive post show conversations, and one of these t SP
Speaker 1: episodes every week. We really do need your support because
Speaker 1: as an independent podcast, we're competing with some huge studios
Speaker 1: with huge budgets, so every bit that you give helps
Speaker 1: us to keep doing what we do. Joining our Patreon
Speaker 1: community helps not only yourself, but thousands of people whose
Speaker 1: lives are touched by the content but can't afford to
Speaker 1: give so jo in our community at one you Feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash join, Welcome everyone to another episode of
Speaker 1: a teaching a song and a poem and a joke.
Speaker 1: This time around, you're gonna get a joke. Might give
Speaker 1: it to you right off the bat. Here, it's gonna
Speaker 1: start things off on a on a good note. Two
Speaker 1: cannibals or eating a clown. One of them looks over
Speaker 1: and his friend and says, does this guy taste funny
Speaker 1: to you? Boom boom. Now we all remember, in a
Speaker 1: blinding moment of insight, why we were happy when I
Speaker 1: stopped doing jokes. So back to teaching, song and a poem. First,
Speaker 1: a thank you for your support for being here. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you get tired of hearing that, but
Speaker 1: I don't get tired of saying it. I want to
Speaker 1: say thank you, so I did, and that goes is
Speaker 1: a big thank you for me, Chris, Jenny, Nicole and
Speaker 1: everybody here at the One You Feed. So the teaching
Speaker 1: this week, I was working on this fancy teaching about
Speaker 1: consciousness and how consciousness works, and not that I have
Speaker 1: that figured out, that's obviously a big question that nobody
Speaker 1: really knows. But I was going to kind of talk
Speaker 1: about the clear, open nature of consciousness, and then I
Speaker 1: realized I've been having a lot of conversations with coaching
Speaker 1: clients that sort of revolved around a very similar idea,
Speaker 1: and the idea was very basic, and it's don't believe
Speaker 1: your thoughts. My zend teacher says that to me from
Speaker 1: time to time, I say anything you want to say,
Speaker 1: don't believe your thoughts. And it's a really powerful practice
Speaker 1: because our thoughts get us into an awful lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: We take them as facts, that basic idea of Okay,
Speaker 1: my thoughts come up. They are something that occurs within consciousness,
Speaker 1: but I am not them. That's thing one, right, I
Speaker 1: am not my thoughts. They happen regardless really of whether
Speaker 1: I want them to or not. Sit down and meditate
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, and you surely see this happen.
Speaker 1: You sit down and meditate, and you're like, okay, I
Speaker 1: am going to watch my breath. So there you are,
Speaker 1: watching your breath, and thought after thought after thought just
Speaker 1: keeps coming, and it becomes kind of clear like, well, I,
Speaker 1: as I think of myself, are not thinking these thoughts.
Speaker 1: They're just showing up. And so it's very helpful to
Speaker 1: just get some space and go, Okay, thoughts appear to
Speaker 1: me in consciousness, but just because they appear does not
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that they are true. Very often they aren't
Speaker 1: really even capable of being true, because they are interpretations
Speaker 1: of things. Right. The question that I use in the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits program, and I think is so powerful, is
Speaker 1: the question, what am I making this mean? It's sort
Speaker 1: of an all purpose question that we can ask whenever
Speaker 1: a thought comes up, whenever a situation happens, what am
Speaker 1: I making this mean? It helps us realize that we
Speaker 1: are having an interpretation all the time. We are always
Speaker 1: telling ourselves stories about what's going on and what it means.
Speaker 1: And if we are telling ourselves the story, if we're
Speaker 1: creating it, then we can choose to not identify with
Speaker 1: it as strongly. I feel like I've given this teaching
Speaker 1: a hundred times probably, and I'm sure I have, and
Speaker 1: yet I do it again and again and again with
Speaker 1: coaching clients, and I do it again and again and
Speaker 1: again in my own life. I have to constantly go, oh, look,
Speaker 1: there's a thought, and I start believing it and I'm
Speaker 1: attached to it and I'm getting upset by it or
Speaker 1: I'm getting wrapped up in it. And then I just
Speaker 1: can take a step back and go oh wait, that's
Speaker 1: a thought, it's not necessarily true. In act acceptance the
Speaker 1: commitment therapy, right, they refer to this as cognitive diffusion.
Speaker 1: In most mindfulness practices we think of it as just
Speaker 1: sort of stepping back and observing the thoughts. But in
Speaker 1: all cases the fact remains we want to just become
Speaker 1: a little bit more I think the word skeptical is useful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we use skeptical will become a little more skeptical
Speaker 1: of our thoughts. We don't have to out right be
Speaker 1: like they're not true, we don't have to get in
Speaker 1: arguments with them. We can just become a little bit
Speaker 1: more skeptical, like, well, maybe that's not true. How do
Speaker 1: I really know that's true? And another really useful question
Speaker 1: is how would I act if that wasn't true? What
Speaker 1: if I'm completely wrong about this? You know? The classic
Speaker 1: one for people is that I'm not good enough or
Speaker 1: I can't do this right, And it can be really
Speaker 1: powerful to just say, well, what if I'm completely wrong
Speaker 1: about that? And very often, very very very often we
Speaker 1: are completely wrong about that. We sell ourselves short all
Speaker 1: of the time in what our capabilities for change are. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to the show, which you have plenty,
Speaker 1: and you subscribe to this and give us money. It
Speaker 1: must mean that you relate with me in some way.
Speaker 1: And some of the things I say, you know that
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people that believes in like
Speaker 1: five easy steps to change your life and that life
Speaker 1: becomes perfect over and and it's always happy. I'm just not.
Speaker 1: That's not my nature. I'm as Nicole said to me
Speaker 1: the other day, she said, I'm a devout negative thinker,
Speaker 1: which made me laugh. I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: are that way. You know, we're kind of devout in
Speaker 1: our skepticism. But it's funny because we should be skeptical
Speaker 1: about our own thoughts. We should be realizing that just
Speaker 1: because they show up doesn't mean they're true. The surprising
Speaker 1: thing is the more often they show up, and the
Speaker 1: more vociferously they show up, the more we tend to
Speaker 1: think they must be true, and the opposite is actually true.
Speaker 1: The more often they show up, and the more vociferously
Speaker 1: they show up, the more we should be skeptical and go, well,
Speaker 1: hang on. So this is a sort of a long ramble.
Speaker 1: I could have said it in one sentence. Don't believe
Speaker 1: your thoughts or be skeptical about your thoughts. But that
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been much of a mini episode, would it.
Speaker 1: So you get another five and a half minutes of it.
Speaker 1: But it's arguably better than if I come up with
Speaker 1: another joke. There's a what the fish say when it
Speaker 1: swam into the cement wall? Damn? All right? How about
Speaker 1: a poem that will probably surely be better unless I
Speaker 1: wrote it, which I didn't, So that's the good news.
Speaker 1: This one is called God. I always pick them with
Speaker 1: the names I cannot pronounce. I need more Robert rubbed Rabbit,
Speaker 1: Robert Frost, more of such a dumb joke. All right?
Speaker 1: This one is called Everyday Grace by Stella Nissanovitch. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna go with any s A N O
Speaker 1: V I c H. Stella Nissanovitch. It can happen like
Speaker 1: that meeting at the market buying tires, amid the smell
Speaker 1: of rubber, the grating sound of jackhammers and drills. Anywhere
Speaker 1: we share stories and grace flows between us. The tire
Speaker 1: center waiting room becomes a healing place as one speaks
Speaker 1: of her husband's heart valve replacement bed sores from complications.
Speaker 1: A man speaks of multiple surgeries, notes as false appearance
Speaker 1: as strong and healthy. I share my sister's death from
Speaker 1: breast cancer, her youngest only seven. A woman rises, gives
Speaker 1: her name Mrs Henry, then takes my hand. Suddenly an
Speaker 1: ordinary day becomes holy ground. That's Everyday Grace by Stella Nissanovitch.
Speaker 1: I think it is beautiful poem. It's that sharing that
Speaker 1: tells us we're not alone and connects us with other people.
Speaker 1: So I thought I would use the theme of grace
Speaker 1: from the last poem and use that for our song
Speaker 1: this week. So our song is called boys Ain't Shit
Speaker 1: by saying by say Grace. No, I'm kidding. I did
Speaker 1: search for Grace and Spotify and that song did come up.
Speaker 1: And unlike the Crazy Frog episode of a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago, I'm not going to put you through it,
Speaker 1: so and I'm not going to play anymore Crazy Frog
Speaker 1: for at least another episode or two. So seriously, our
Speaker 1: song this week is uh going to correct an error.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that I've done. How have I done?
Speaker 1: Seventy five of these? Get We're nearing seventy five of these?
Speaker 1: That's kind of amazing. And I don't think ever in
Speaker 1: all those seventy five I have played anything by Bell
Speaker 1: and Sebastian, which is a band that I absolutely love.
Speaker 1: They're probably one of my bands in my top ten
Speaker 1: for sure, and so um I could pick a hundred
Speaker 1: of their songs but the one I'm gonna pick is
Speaker 1: called the Ghost of Rock School. So this song features
Speaker 1: some of my favorite aspects of Bell and Sebastian that
Speaker 1: show up over and over. First, the guy's vocal melodies
Speaker 1: are I think they're long, they're complicated, they're intricate, but
Speaker 1: yet they are incredibly catchy. I think he's one of
Speaker 1: the best vocal melodists out there. Is that a term uh?
Speaker 1: Lyrics are are usually really really good. I love the instrumentation.
Speaker 1: I love the way they've got the horns that come
Speaker 1: in and often will mimic the vocal melody because it's
Speaker 1: so catchy. You hear a little of that here, and
Speaker 1: then I love the female harmonies that come in over
Speaker 1: the last part. So this is Bell and Sebastian U
Speaker 1: the Ghost of Rock School, and again, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite bands, and for some reason haven't even got them
Speaker 1: in in the first seventy two episodes. We may get
Speaker 1: a Bell and Sebastian fiesta going on from here out.
Speaker 1: We'll see. Thank you for listening, Thank you for your
Speaker 1: support of the show. Another episode out on Tuesday like always,
Speaker 1: and another one of these coming up soon. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: Talk to you soon. Bye, Goden, sun passing, God on
Speaker 1: the street, God be far better, and the promisesly God
Speaker 1: in my dreams on the free right, Grace spit it
Speaker 1: out to sip it and then I wake up. Wasn't
Speaker 1: too It wasn't just Yourfully, the damon waits at the
Speaker 1: garden gate. If you get pasted him, maybe Lawrence and
Speaker 1: Fool we'll be waiting to take you to the coast
Speaker 1: of the broad Smoke