Speaker 1: I think that's a mistake that we've been told, maybe
Speaker 1: that we're not supposed to hurt. What does healing mean?
Speaker 1: Does healing mean that I'm not going to hurt anymore,
Speaker 1: that I'm going to be fine with it all? That
Speaker 1: doesn't seem right at all to me.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think, ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Rosemary
Speaker 2: Watola Traumer, the co host of the Emerging Form podcast
Speaker 2: on creative process and Secret Agents of Change. A Surreptitious
Speaker 2: Kindness Cabal and also Soul Writer's Circle. Her poetry has
Speaker 2: appeared on a Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, OH Magazine,
Speaker 2: American Life and Poetry, on Carnegie Hall Stage, and on
Speaker 2: many river rocks she leaves around town. Since two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, Rosemary has written a poem a day, which
Speaker 2: has forged her belief in poetry as a spiritual practice.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rosemary, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: I am really excited to have you on. As I
Speaker 3: mentioned to you beforehand, I am a fan of your poetry.
Speaker 3: I do an episode each week that I give to
Speaker 3: members of our program called Teaching Song and a Poem,
Speaker 3: where I do a little teaching, I read a poem
Speaker 3: that I love, and I play a song that I love.
Speaker 3: And your poems have featured multiple times over the last
Speaker 3: number of years as we've done that. So I'm happy
Speaker 3: to get a chance to talk with you, and we'll
Speaker 3: be talking about your latest book of poetry, primarily which
Speaker 3: is called All the Honey. But before we do that,
Speaker 3: we'll start like we always do, with the parable There's
Speaker 3: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 3: and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think
Speaker 3: about it for a second, and they look up at
Speaker 3: their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 3: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 3: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 3: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe I'll start by saying it's probably very different
Speaker 1: in my life and in the work I do in
Speaker 1: some essential ways. But I also was wondering if you
Speaker 1: were going to do a grandparent, a grandfather, or a
Speaker 1: grandmother with me, and I love that I got the grandparent.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing I notice first of all that they're wolves.
Speaker 1: They're both wolves, and I just think that's interesting. Why
Speaker 1: are they so ferocious? You know, it's just interesting that
Speaker 1: they're wolves as opposed to why not snakes or why not?
Speaker 1: You know, it could have been any number of animals
Speaker 1: that could have attacked each other. So I think that's
Speaker 1: interesting and that maybe I have an inherent fear of
Speaker 1: wolves in the first place. So, but the other thing
Speaker 1: that I notice is that I haven't always in my
Speaker 1: life known which one was the good wolf, in which
Speaker 1: one was the bad wolf. And there have been times
Speaker 1: where I think I've been feeding the bad wolf, believing
Speaker 1: that I was feeding the good wolf, which is to say,
Speaker 1: especially in my story, perhaps the bent toward perfectionism, which
Speaker 1: maybe was taking good too far, and when good got
Speaker 1: too good then it became a real problem. So isn't
Speaker 1: it interesting that a simple, simple story can create such
Speaker 1: a complex array of responses? Yeah, I think the other
Speaker 1: thing in my other response is I would like to
Speaker 1: think that I feed the good wolf. I wish that
Speaker 1: were true. I know that even when I do my
Speaker 1: very best to feed the good wolf, bad things happen
Speaker 1: still and despite my best efforts. So knowing that, the
Speaker 1: other thing I suppose I've learned is that even so
Speaker 1: maybe I don't want to feed the bad wolf, I
Speaker 1: don't want to turn my back on it either, And
Speaker 1: I feel, especially in the last year and a half,
Speaker 1: I've learned how important it is to at least turn
Speaker 1: and face the bad wolf, to not try to deny
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, to not try to vilify even the
Speaker 1: bad wolf, and to notice what do you have to
Speaker 1: teach me?
Speaker 3: I love what you just said there because it made
Speaker 3: me think of something, which is that like even feeding
Speaker 3: the good wolf, you could give it too much food, right,
Speaker 3: Like I mean, feeding something is good, but stuffing something,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, is you know, until what did
Speaker 3: my accountant once say, like, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
Speaker 3: Right to use an unfortunate animal metaphor. I've shared this
Speaker 3: story from time to time, but it just came to me.
Speaker 3: I was interviewing Peter Singer, who's like the famous animal
Speaker 3: rights activist hess a well known ethicist, and I use
Speaker 3: the unfortunate phrase of killing two birds with one stone,
Speaker 3: which did not slide past him unnoticed. So I hope
Speaker 3: the pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. But that point
Speaker 3: being that, you know, I think often about the middle way, right,
Speaker 3: like that anything we take too far one direction becomes problematic,
Speaker 3: whether it be feeding the good wolf avoiding the bad wolf.
Speaker 3: I mean all these things, there's a time and a place.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And I think in poetry maybe that is
Speaker 1: one of the places. Like with poetry, a poem loves tension, right,
Speaker 1: which is why this parable is kind of sweet, because
Speaker 1: this parable is based on tension, right, and all poems
Speaker 1: thrive on it. Why because life is full of tension,
Speaker 1: and a poem wants to speak to what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be alive? If you only fed the good
Speaker 1: wolf in a poem, or if you only fed the
Speaker 1: bad wolf in a poem, that poem would be boring.
Speaker 1: It would either turn into a rant or it would
Speaker 1: turn into Hallmark fluff. So in a way, a poem
Speaker 1: really desperately wants you to feed them both to some degree,
Speaker 1: to at least honor them both to some degree.
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. I never thought of that in relating
Speaker 3: to poetry, but I think that you're right. If I
Speaker 3: think about the poems I love, there is an element
Speaker 3: of that. And honestly, if I think about the literature
Speaker 3: that I love or the TV series is that I love,
Speaker 3: or the music that I love, there is that tension.
Speaker 3: There's both, you know, it's always there, and that is
Speaker 3: what I'm drawn to.
Speaker 1: Right, because it's what's true. Yes, I used to be
Speaker 1: so angry about it. Why can't there just be a
Speaker 1: pretty poem? And it's because they're boring?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just thinking of Wordsworth's poem about the daffodils,
Speaker 3: and even that poem, which seems to be incredibly hopeful,
Speaker 3: he's still at the end, you know, in sort of
Speaker 3: a down mood, recalling the daffodils, you know, And then
Speaker 3: you know, so even in a poem that's largely about
Speaker 3: daffodils dancing along the water, there's that element of it.
Speaker 1: And if that element weren't there, I'd suggest we would
Speaker 1: forget that poem right away.
Speaker 3: We probably would. We probably would. All right, So let's
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about the new book. And primarily
Speaker 3: I was thinking we could talk about what brought this
Speaker 3: book about and what's the heart of all the honey.
Speaker 1: Well, I had a fabulous thing happen. Almost exactly a
Speaker 1: year ago. I got a call from a publisher and
Speaker 1: they said, we'd love to do your next book, and
Speaker 1: come on for a poet. That was maybe for anybody,
Speaker 1: but especially for a poet. What a sweet call to get.
Speaker 1: And so I was talking with the publishers, two of them,
Speaker 1: Steven Nightingale and Elizabeth Dilly, and they said, you know,
Speaker 1: we were thinking you could do a book that contained
Speaker 1: a broad spectrum of poems, that it would be poems
Speaker 1: about grief, that it would be poems that were full
Speaker 1: of joy, and maybe put them all into one book.
Speaker 1: And I said, I really can't imagine that. That feels impossible,
Speaker 1: And for people who don't know, about a year and
Speaker 1: a half ago, my son took his life and there
Speaker 1: were many poems that have come out of that, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine putting those poems next to some of
Speaker 1: the more lighthearted you know, mister clean showing up to
Speaker 1: seduce me in my kitchen and pretending I'm Dolly Parton
Speaker 1: while I'm making my kids breakfast, Like, how could those
Speaker 1: pasts inhabit the same spine? I told them I'd think
Speaker 1: about it, and a couple of weeks later I had
Speaker 1: a vision, which isn't a normal thing for me. Eric,
Speaker 1: although after Finn died it happened with some regularity. I'm
Speaker 1: just not going to pretend it didn't happen. Even so
Speaker 1: part of me is like, I'm a little more practical
Speaker 1: than that. But here it was this vision in which
Speaker 1: my father, who died just months after my son and
Speaker 1: my son, carved into my bedroom wall these words in
Speaker 1: all caps, we love you, and then right beneath it,
Speaker 1: all of the honey, and I knew that they had
Speaker 1: given me the title for the book. That felt like
Speaker 1: a transmission of sorts, and I thought, well, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? And thought about it all day. I went
Speaker 1: skiing with my husband in the woods, and I eventually
Speaker 1: arrived at this that all of the honey that's ever
Speaker 1: been made came from the sweetness of nectar and from
Speaker 1: the bitterness of the pollen that feeds the bees, and
Speaker 1: that that's really what's asked of us at all times
Speaker 1: in our lives, is to meet that broad spectrum. So
Speaker 1: I called the publishers with this kind of elation and said,
Speaker 1: you were right, Yes, of course it has to be
Speaker 1: all of it. Of course all of it, because that's
Speaker 1: what it is to be alive, is to meet at all.
Speaker 1: So that was the genesis?
Speaker 3: Was there going on in you? Still? The positive? The joy?
Speaker 3: I'm curious about, you know, having gone through a grief
Speaker 3: of that magnitude, which by all reports is the greatest
Speaker 3: grief that can be imagined. I'm just curious about the
Speaker 3: process of finding your way back into not even I'm
Speaker 3: not even talking necessarily about healing the grief, right, but
Speaker 3: finding even the sweet parts of things. Were you able
Speaker 3: to find those? And how were you able to find those?
Speaker 1: Oh, Eric, that's a good question. I'll start with maybe
Speaker 1: just a report that even the day that Finn died,
Speaker 1: that terrible day, I laughed and fell in love with people,
Speaker 1: with life itself, even in that most devastated moment. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying the very moment, but that evening I remember
Speaker 1: walking in the Georgia night. We were in Georgia at
Speaker 1: the time, helping my parents move into their new home,
Speaker 1: and I was talking on the phone with my beautiful
Speaker 1: friend Wendy Videlock, and it was this warm evening and
Speaker 1: Wendy said to me, he has given you his love
Speaker 1: light to carry. And in that moment she said that
Speaker 1: this firefly lit up right in front of my face.
Speaker 1: And it was magic, right, It was this zing of
Speaker 1: illogical beauty. There was no way to say how that
Speaker 1: could have happened. It felt important, and it felt whimsical.
Speaker 1: It was lightning bug for Heaven's sakes, right, and it
Speaker 1: felt like he was there. It felt fantastical. It filled
Speaker 1: me with wonder and even in devastation, I felt very
Speaker 1: open to a larger spectrum of possibility. And why is that?
Speaker 1: I think it's because, well, I think it's a few things,
Speaker 1: but at the very least it has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with showing up every day. I've had a daily
Speaker 1: poetry practice since two thousand and six where every day
Speaker 1: I show up and I say, well, what's here, what's here?
Speaker 1: Whether it's something that's devastating, nothing ever is devastating, of course,
Speaker 1: as losing Finn. But I think that daily practice of
Speaker 1: showing up and saying what's here, and exploring what's happening
Speaker 1: inside me, what's happening in the world outside me when
Speaker 1: the stakes were much lower, allowed me, when the stakes
Speaker 1: were the highest they've ever been, for me to stay
Speaker 1: very present.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a beautiful story. And I think it speaks
Speaker 3: to this idea that even our emotions in the worlds
Speaker 3: of times are not these monolithic entities, right. They wax
Speaker 3: and they wane, and other things filter in if we're
Speaker 3: open to looking for them. If we're not paying attention,
Speaker 3: it can seem very much that it's monolithic. There's only this,
Speaker 3: you know. I know, like, even on a day where
Speaker 3: I might be feeling like okay, depression is worse than
Speaker 3: it might normally be for me, even if I look
Speaker 3: at that day closely, There's going to be moments in
Speaker 3: there where I was amused, where I heard something that
Speaker 3: made me smile, where I heard a piece of music
Speaker 3: that lifted me up. I mean, there's nuance in there.
Speaker 3: And I do think that what you're talking about with
Speaker 3: your daily practice of showing up is looking for that nuance.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know, looking more closely at things that
Speaker 3: probably did serve you well when the time came.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're so right, and I love this word you've chosen,
Speaker 1: nuance because that feels very right to me in terms
Speaker 1: of the monolithic as you say, that great stone of sorrow.
Speaker 1: It reminded me actually when you said that that, I
Speaker 1: had a profound physical feeling of what that was, like,
Speaker 1: that enormous monolith of grief.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: And then it was I think a day after Finn died.
Speaker 1: It was the next day when I felt it this
Speaker 1: kind of ridiculous tsunami of love that kind of rushed
Speaker 1: at me, and I had this sense of that is way, way, way, way,
Speaker 1: way too much, like I was resisting, like I pushed,
Speaker 1: I was like that, don't even and it just kind
Speaker 1: of crashed over me and obliterated all that no, and
Speaker 1: just kind of infiltrated all of me. That's what it
Speaker 1: felt like. It felt like I just got infused, carried, buoyed,
Speaker 1: met with love. But what the sensation was was that
Speaker 1: the love somehow broke down the monolith of grief into
Speaker 1: the smallest possible atom and surrounded every single one of
Speaker 1: them with tenderness and yeah, compassion and a beauty connection.
Speaker 1: I could meet each of those motes of grief in
Speaker 1: the smallest way, not as a monolith, but as a
Speaker 1: bite sized, a bite size piece, something that was meetable,
Speaker 1: especially because it was surrounded with so much goodness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that is the flip side of grief
Speaker 3: to me has always been great love. Yes, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't pretend to know what it's like
Speaker 3: to lose a child, and I'm wary of comparing things,
Speaker 3: so that's not exactly what I'm doing. But you know,
Speaker 3: I mean I feel like the greatest griefs I've suffered
Speaker 3: have been having to put my dogs to sleep, like
Speaker 3: more than losing grandparents. I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 3: that says about me as a person, but I remember
Speaker 3: one of my dogs, Ralph, when we were putting in
Speaker 3: this sleep. The grief was overwhelming. I mean I was
Speaker 3: just heartbroken, and right in there there was also just
Speaker 3: an incredible love, Like it was just so evident to
Speaker 3: me that to be as heartbroken as I was was
Speaker 3: also that I must have loved something that much. And
Speaker 3: there was a beauty in that. Yes, yeah, there was
Speaker 3: a beauty in that. I wonder if you'd be willing
Speaker 3: to read a poem from the new book that is
Speaker 3: early in the book and that I think speaks a
Speaker 3: little bit to working with grief. And it's called the Invitation.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, I will. I love that poem too,
Speaker 1: because it was the night after he died, and it
Speaker 1: was such an important changing moment for me. Do you
Speaker 1: know what page it's on.
Speaker 3: Friend, I believe it's on page ten?
Speaker 1: Got it? Invitation? Two nights after he died, all night
Speaker 1: I heard the same one line story un repeat. I
Speaker 1: am the woman whose son took his life. The words
Speaker 1: felt full of self pity, filled me with hopelessness, doom.
Speaker 1: And then a voice came, a woman's voice, just before dawn,
Speaker 1: and it gave me a new shade of truth. I
Speaker 1: am the woman who learns how to love him now
Speaker 1: that he's gone. It did not change the facts, but
Speaker 1: it changed everything about how I met the facts. Over
Speaker 1: a hundred days later, I am still learning what it
Speaker 1: means to love him. How love is an ocean, a wildfire,
Speaker 1: a crumb, How commitment to love changes me, changes everyone
Speaker 1: invites us to bring our best. Love is wine is
Speaker 1: Trampoline is an infinite song with a chorus in which
Speaker 1: I am sung. I am the woman who learns how
Speaker 1: to love him. Now that he's gone, May I always
Speaker 1: be learning how to love like a cave, like a
Speaker 1: rough legged hawk, like a son.
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You know. There's a line in there, especially in light
Speaker 1: of our earlier conversation about perfectionism, invites us to bring
Speaker 1: our best, and I think that my relationship to that
Speaker 1: line is this. I did really feel like I've been
Speaker 1: asked to bring my best to this whole time, and
Speaker 1: part of that for me has been it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I have to show up perfect. It means I have
Speaker 1: to show up. That's what bringing my best means to
Speaker 1: me is this willingness to really show up and to
Speaker 1: meet what's here.
Speaker 3: I want to be careful here that we don't paint
Speaker 3: to rosy a picture here of what this experience was
Speaker 3: like for you. I assume in you know, right, like right,
Speaker 3: like I don't. I don't want people being like, well, okay,
Speaker 3: I guess I'm supposed to turn towards love, and you know, like,
Speaker 3: I just feel like it's important to also have you
Speaker 3: say something about the enormity of the grief.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, well, let's not have a rosie picture
Speaker 1: of this. I'm glad. I'm glad you said that. One
Speaker 1: thing I'm so clear about, Eric is that everyone's process
Speaker 1: with grief is so very different, right, and that there
Speaker 1: is no one right way to do it. In fact,
Speaker 1: that there as many right ways to do it, as
Speaker 1: there are minutes, as there are seconds, as there are humans, right,
Speaker 1: and that what's right in this very minute is very
Speaker 1: different in the next. I am exceptionally lucky that I
Speaker 1: have had a experience that has been ridiculously flooded with love.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I would have done it otherwise.
Speaker 1: And maybe the world knew that that was exactly what
Speaker 1: I needed and rose up to meet me in that way.
Speaker 1: There was a moment I remember thinking, maybe a week
Speaker 1: or two after Finn had died, and I knew there
Speaker 1: were so many people who were writing me letters and
Speaker 1: sending calls and you know, and I remember thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: it's too much. It just needs to be not that much.
Speaker 1: And then I'd imagine one person, just one person, not
Speaker 1: thinking loving thoughts toward me, and I was like, nope, nope,
Speaker 1: Actually it's just enough, like none of you stop, nobody
Speaker 1: can stop. I need it, I need all of that.
Speaker 1: I guess to say, what is it then to have
Speaker 1: that kind of grief and too I don't even know how.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say about it. Eric,
Speaker 1: I'll say this that that there hasn't been a single
Speaker 1: day since he's died that I haven't wept. But I
Speaker 1: don't mind it either. There is no part of me
Speaker 1: that wants to push the grief away, and maybe for
Speaker 1: that reason, because I'm not resisting it. It's the hardest,
Speaker 1: worst thing, worst. But see here it is there's the wolf. Right.
Speaker 1: Is this the worst thing that's ever happened to me?
Speaker 1: Of course it's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: Gregory Or has this most gorgeous poem that begins like this,
Speaker 1: not to make loss beautiful, but to make loss the
Speaker 1: place where beauty starts where the heart understands for the
Speaker 1: first time the nature of its journey. Right, So, losing
Speaker 1: Finn is the worst thing that's ever happened to me,
Speaker 1: Which makes me think of what about the women I
Speaker 1: know who've lost multiple children? What about the people who
Speaker 1: lost their child and their home and their car, and
Speaker 1: like what about you know, like so many people have
Speaker 1: so much worse. Right, But for me to not ever
Speaker 1: try to make anything but what it is, which was
Speaker 1: the worst, right, and that he was suffering so much
Speaker 1: that that felt like the best choice to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I meet that every single minute. I meet that every minute,
Speaker 1: and there has been a thousand blessings that have come
Speaker 1: from it too. Every day, just the willingness eric to
Speaker 1: say yes, even to the hardest thing I've ever had
Speaker 1: to say yes to, To develop a trust in life
Speaker 1: now beyond what I've ever had before because of it, Right,
Speaker 1: because of this worst thing, to have this deepened sense
Speaker 1: of trust in life itself.
Speaker 3: What you're describing as remarkable, because you're talking about not
Speaker 3: resisting what happened to some degree, right, which feels almost
Speaker 3: impossible in that sort of situation. And I'm sure it's
Speaker 3: not as clean as that like. I'm sure there were
Speaker 3: moments of like no, no, no, but there was some
Speaker 3: openness in you to this is what is? You know.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of that famous I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's famous, but it's famous to me idea that
Speaker 3: suffering equals pain times resistance. Right, and the pain of
Speaker 3: losing your child is at the very top of any
Speaker 3: pain scale that could ever be invented. Right, it's there. Right,
Speaker 3: Let's say it's one hundred out of one hundred, and
Speaker 3: then resistance is the It shouldn't be this way, you know.
Speaker 3: It's the fighting, it, it's all the why me, it's
Speaker 3: all that that comes along, and nobody gets to zero resistance,
Speaker 3: I don't think, right. But the thing I love about
Speaker 3: the way that equation is formulated is it says, if
Speaker 3: I've got a pain of one hundred and I'm resisting
Speaker 3: at a level of eight, I've got eight hundred units
Speaker 3: of suffering. This is obviously not an actual scientific description
Speaker 3: of what happens, but but you know, you get the point.
Speaker 3: If I was able just to resist two points less,
Speaker 3: you know, instead of I'm a resistance eight, I'm a
Speaker 3: resistance of a six. My total suffering goes from eight
Speaker 3: hundred to six hundred, right, like, there's something in this,
Speaker 3: but God, is it hard? How do you find your
Speaker 3: way towards that?
Speaker 1: So before Fen died for over ten years, probably by then,
Speaker 1: I've been working with a spiritual teacher, Joy Sharp, she
Speaker 1: leads that song, and the very first teaching that she
Speaker 1: gave me was a question, can you say yes to
Speaker 1: the world as it is? Which is such a profound teaching?
Speaker 3: Yes, what an invitation? Right? Yes?
Speaker 1: And so that was something certainly that I'd understood, you know,
Speaker 1: like any teaching, right, first, you understand it in your head. Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: I can see as to the world as it is.
Speaker 1: But then the messier things get, and the harder things get,
Speaker 1: and the harder it is to say yes to that.
Speaker 1: So I had, for you know, a decade before this,
Speaker 1: had some practice with that as something that was valuable
Speaker 1: to me. Yes, right, I had had as a prayer
Speaker 1: for myself open me. I wanted desperately to be open.
Speaker 1: That was something that has been fueling me for a
Speaker 1: long time. So I think that that kind of daily
Speaker 1: more than daily, many times daily, question can you say
Speaker 1: yes to the world as it is? And let's be honest,
Speaker 1: my son was not an easy human. He was an
Speaker 1: incredible human. He was so funny and smart and anything
Speaker 1: he put his hand to he excelled.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: We started fencing and he won the fencing championship, and
Speaker 1: he built a computer and won the science Fair and
Speaker 1: he you know, like he built computer's propos friends, like
Speaker 1: he was just so crazy alive. You know, my friend
Speaker 1: Catherine used to say he was one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: percent alive, right, So here he has this incredible, generous,
Speaker 1: amazing being who loved to push every single button I had.
Speaker 1: That was his great thrill in life was pushing every
Speaker 1: button right and poke, poke, poke poke. Just you know,
Speaker 1: he came to the world and screamed for a year.
Speaker 1: That was there was nothing perfect about that. That was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the crumbling of the perfectionism right there.
Speaker 1: But his life had forced me to say yes to
Speaker 1: the world as it is, because day after day after
Speaker 1: day of being Finn's mother was an exceptionally difficult thing
Speaker 1: to do. It was the best thing I did. I
Speaker 1: love being Finn's mother. Still I love being Finn's mother,
Speaker 1: but it was so hard, harder than anything I'd ever
Speaker 1: done before, and so I think that I had so
Speaker 1: much practice in saying yes to the world as it
Speaker 1: is by the time we got to his death. You're right.
Speaker 1: I mean the very first response was no. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you Eric that that didn't last long. That there
Speaker 1: was only a moment really of no, and it was
Speaker 1: so final, and so I knew immediately how true it
Speaker 1: was right and very real. And the death itself was
Speaker 1: graphic enough that I knew very well it was real. Right,
Speaker 1: So it was through a lot of practice I supposed
Speaker 1: to get to a place where I wanted to. I
Speaker 1: desperately wanted to meet the world as it was and
Speaker 1: not say no to his death and say yes to
Speaker 1: it and find a way to continue to meet the world.
Speaker 3: That reminds me of an idea. I don't know who
Speaker 3: said it, but it was like, practice this why you
Speaker 3: can for the times that you can't. And they were
Speaker 3: speaking about spiritual practice. They meant practice now while things
Speaker 3: are mildly difficult, like every life is mildly difficult. You know.
Speaker 3: When I teach my Spiritual Habits program, you know, we
Speaker 3: talk about this principle and I'm like, don't start on
Speaker 3: the hardest stuff, Like, don't start with like the things
Speaker 3: that you know you most can't let go of, like
Speaker 3: start on the easier stuff, you know, but it is
Speaker 3: a muscle. I do think that we develop over time
Speaker 3: where we get more and more comfortable being able to
Speaker 3: just to say, okay, this is what is what is
Speaker 3: my skillful response to this to be? And what I
Speaker 3: find is that for me, when I'm able to do that,
Speaker 3: I'm actually better able to do what it sounds like
Speaker 3: you have been better able to do, which is actually
Speaker 3: process the emotions that are happening because the resistance, the no,
Speaker 3: it shouldn't be, the that's all mental.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For me, when I can drop that, then there's just
Speaker 3: the emotional experience and that can be processed, you know,
Speaker 3: sort of as you were talking about, I can take
Speaker 3: these atom sized bits of grief they're everywhere, but one
Speaker 3: atom at a time. I'm working through it.
Speaker 1: You reminded me of something else about that time, too, friend.
Speaker 1: Is that the word okay that was really what got
Speaker 1: me through, Like I feel like okay was my mantras
Speaker 1: for the first month, especially in the day of the
Speaker 1: day after I heard myself saying it over and over
Speaker 1: and over, okay, okay. It was like I affirmed every
Speaker 1: smallest thing, like I got to the car door okay,
Speaker 1: and I opened the car door okay, and I sat
Speaker 1: down in the car okay, Like I literally said okay
Speaker 1: each time the smallest thing happened, like I met that
Speaker 1: I met, that I met that. It was only later,
Speaker 1: as I started to evaluate it, once I I noticed
Speaker 1: I was doing it, that I kind of fell in
Speaker 1: love with this word okay because it asks so little
Speaker 1: of us. And the truth was that saying yes to
Speaker 1: the world as it is is way too exuberant for
Speaker 1: what I was capable of in that moment, right, Like
Speaker 1: I didn't no. Part of me was yes, but okay
Speaker 1: isn't no either, right, Yeah. It was enough for it
Speaker 1: to not be no.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And also that it's not a verb, right, that it
Speaker 1: asked nothing of me. I didn't have to do anything.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do anything. I remember calling it at the
Speaker 1: time autonomic life. The same way that the lungs are,
Speaker 1: you know, breathed, and the heart beats. I felt like
Speaker 1: I was just being lived because I couldn't anything. I
Speaker 1: couldn't anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you used to phrase a little while ago.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is exactly what you said,
Speaker 3: but it had something to do with being supported by
Speaker 3: the world. And I'm wondering if you could read a
Speaker 3: poem called on a Clear Day, which is page seventeen, that,
Speaker 3: to me, speaks to.
Speaker 1: That on a clear day, the way the field holds
Speaker 1: the shadow of the cottonwood, this is how life holds me,
Speaker 1: holds me no matter my shape, holds me with no effort,
Speaker 1: holds my darkness and knows it as weightless, as transient,
Speaker 1: as something that will shift, disappear, return, and shift again.
Speaker 1: It never says no to me. I am still learning
Speaker 1: to trust life, to trust no matter how I show up,
Speaker 1: I will be held. Trust that my life is not
Speaker 1: a problem. Trust that as much as I am the shadow,
Speaker 1: I am also the field.
Speaker 3: There are several things in there that are remarkable. One
Speaker 3: is the turn right at the end, Right, the turn
Speaker 3: right at the end, where it's like, okay, I'm being
Speaker 3: held by this field.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Oh wait a second, I am also the field as
Speaker 3: well as the shadow. I mean, as a Zen practitioner,
Speaker 3: you know we talk about form and emptiness. Emptiness and form, right,
Speaker 3: you're both those things. But the other thing that I'm
Speaker 3: curious about in that poem is when you say I'm
Speaker 3: learning to trust life. I'm always interested in the word
Speaker 3: trust and what we mean by it, right, because I'm
Speaker 3: going to put words in your mouth and you can
Speaker 3: refute them if you would like. But certainly you're not
Speaker 3: trusting that terrible things aren't going to happen, because one
Speaker 3: of the most terrible things that could possibly happen happened.
Speaker 3: So on one hand, you could very much be like, no,
Speaker 3: I do not trust life, right, because here's great fear
Speaker 3: number one. It happened. So what does trust in life
Speaker 3: mean to you?
Speaker 1: You're so right. I wanted so desperately to protect him
Speaker 1: right and to keep him alive, and was very aware
Speaker 1: that was a possibility that I couldn't and then my
Speaker 1: greatest fear came true. So trusting life doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: my greatest fears don't come true. Trusting life means to
Speaker 1: me that even when my greatest fears come true, I
Speaker 1: will be supported enough to be able to show up
Speaker 1: right that the world is there to hold me as
Speaker 1: I stay alive, as I'm alive. Right, if I had
Speaker 1: to say, what is the word that comes to me
Speaker 1: again and again and again and again, what is the
Speaker 1: most interesting word to me right now to continue to
Speaker 1: explore it is trust, which comes, of course out of
Speaker 1: the same word is true. And this is what I
Speaker 1: ask myself every time I sit down to write, I
Speaker 1: ask myself what is the next true thing? That's how
Speaker 1: every poem gets written, is what is the next true thing?
Speaker 1: What is the next true thing? And so then trust,
Speaker 1: this willingness to be with what is true, and this
Speaker 1: willingness to know that it doesn't mean it's what I want,
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with what I want. And
Speaker 1: even then, and especially then, life will show up to
Speaker 1: meet me and hold me and lift me, carry me,
Speaker 1: buoy me. All these are words I've been feeling the
Speaker 1: embodiment of in this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a lot to say on this. What
Speaker 3: I'll say is that me too with trust. Was working
Speaker 3: with a spiritual director for a number of years, and
Speaker 3: I swear every single conversation we ended up at trust. Now,
Speaker 3: after a while I started to question, is that say
Speaker 3: more about him than me? I don't know the answer
Speaker 3: to that question, you know. I kept asking, like, are
Speaker 3: you a one trick pony? Like is this the only
Speaker 3: thing you've got in your bag? And everybody gets this
Speaker 3: or is this specific to me? But I think trust
Speaker 3: is so interesting and I love what you said about
Speaker 3: true it coming from that word. That for me was
Speaker 3: just an insight that I'm going to really spend some
Speaker 3: time with because what gets mixed in with trust to
Speaker 3: me is all so how much of that trust is
Speaker 3: coming from me? Right? Like I have a tendency to
Speaker 3: trust myself. I didn't always, right, I was a homeless
Speaker 3: heroin addict, right, So I I have a history of,
Speaker 3: you know, there being a lot of time where I
Speaker 3: simply could not trust myself, but I kind of do. Now.
Speaker 3: Some of that ends up asking, well, if I have
Speaker 3: to do it, is that trust? Right? If I have
Speaker 3: to be the one that has to put this effort in,
Speaker 3: if I have to be the one that has to
Speaker 3: rise to this challenge. This is a quick little piece,
Speaker 3: But I got sober at the age of twenty four
Speaker 3: from heroin and in Columbus, Ohio in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: and twelve step programs were the only thing on tap,
Speaker 3: and I was desperate, and they said, believe in God.
Speaker 3: And this is nineteen ninety four, right, It is not
Speaker 3: very different now nineteen ninety four. Believe in God and
Speaker 3: that meant, you know, the God, the you know, capital
Speaker 3: J God, and I developed this really immature spirituality that
Speaker 3: was like, if I do good things, then God will
Speaker 3: protect me. And then some bad things happened to me,
Speaker 3: you know, after I'd been sober a number of years,
Speaker 3: and that all fell apart, and you know, I drank again,
Speaker 3: and when I came back, I was like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: back to AA It's the only game in town. It
Speaker 3: still seems there is an element here of turning your
Speaker 3: will and your life over to a higher power God
Speaker 3: as you understand what does that mean to me? Like
Speaker 3: what do I actually believe to be true? You know,
Speaker 3: instead of trying to make myself believe something, which is
Speaker 3: kind of what you're talking about. And where I landed
Speaker 3: was this idea that there were these spiritual principles that
Speaker 3: if I lived my life by them to the best
Speaker 3: of my ability, and I asked for the support of
Speaker 3: other people, I would be able to meet what life
Speaker 3: brought me. I mean, it was that sort of basic.
Speaker 3: I'd be able to stay sober and meet what life
Speaker 3: brought me, whatever it was. And so that's worked out
Speaker 3: to be a remarkably good foundation. The thing in there though,
Speaker 3: is there is an element of me living by those principles,
Speaker 3: which is back to that question I was saying earlier
Speaker 3: about my ability, Well, what happens if that ability gets
Speaker 3: wiped out? And that's that deeper trust that you're talking about,
Speaker 3: And that's where I find myself inquiring, Okay, what is that?
Speaker 3: You know? What does hold me? When I can't hold
Speaker 3: myself at all?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Do we get to know?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's actually just as I said that, it just occurred
Speaker 3: to me that, at least for me, it's been all
Speaker 3: kinds of different things. It's actually not a thing. I've
Speaker 3: been looking for the thing, and it's actually things. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's this friend's phone call. Sometimes it's this song, Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's this poem. Sometimes it's this book I read to me.
Speaker 3: It seems like support has come in in all these
Speaker 3: different places and all these different ways. Sorry to be
Speaker 3: processing my own trust self, you're own there, But I've
Speaker 3: had two insights thanks to you here.
Speaker 1: I love that you did. I love that you're thinking
Speaker 1: about it too, And of course it's coming from all over, right,
Speaker 1: of course it does. That seems so right to me.
Speaker 1: I don't think, friend, that I have a clue what
Speaker 1: it is even exactly that I'm saying I trust, right,
Speaker 1: That's why I say I think I trust the world,
Speaker 1: I trust the universe. I say things like that I
Speaker 1: trust life. Maybe that's the cleanest I can say it.
Speaker 1: I trust life. And thinking on what you just said,
Speaker 1: you know here you are saying it comes from this friend,
Speaker 1: or it comes from this song, or it comes from
Speaker 1: this which to me says that it's coming from a
Speaker 1: sense of openness right back to what we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: That you're here, you are, you're paying attention, and when
Speaker 1: we are in that receptive open space, I think that's
Speaker 1: when life rushes in to support us, right, because because
Speaker 1: it can, because it can't.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that's a beautiful way to put it. I'd
Speaker 3: like to get a couple more poems before we're done,
Speaker 3: if that's okay.
Speaker 1: I have an idea based on something you said of
Speaker 1: a poem. Yeah, you were talking about what is true
Speaker 1: and how hard it can be sometimes to know what
Speaker 1: is true. And to me, this is one place where
Speaker 1: poetry really shines is because poetry loves paradox, which is
Speaker 1: that when two equal and opposite things are both held
Speaker 1: up is true at the same time, and I have
Speaker 1: quite a few poems that talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yep, I would love for you to pick. I have
Speaker 3: my list, but I'd love to see what you pull
Speaker 3: out of the hat here.
Speaker 1: Well. I think maybe there's so many that could have
Speaker 1: spoken to this kind of paradox, but this was one
Speaker 1: specifically about meeting death. And we were talking earlier about
Speaker 1: there's so many ways to do it right meeting your death,
Speaker 1: because there are no clear instructions. I follow what rises
Speaker 1: up in me to do. I fall deeper into love
Speaker 1: with you. I look at old pictures. I don't look
Speaker 1: at old pictures. I talk about you.
Speaker 4: Say nothing.
Speaker 1: I walk, I said. I lie in the grass and
Speaker 1: let the earth hold me. I lie on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: dissolve in the sky. I cry, I don't cry. I
Speaker 1: ask the world to help me stay open. I ask again,
Speaker 1: please let me feel it all. I fall deeper in
Speaker 1: love with the people still living. I fall deeper in
Speaker 1: love with the world that is left. This world with
Speaker 1: its spring and its war and its mornings, This world
Speaker 1: with its fruits that ripen and rot and recede, This
Speaker 1: world that insists we keep our eyes wide, This world
Speaker 1: that opens when our eyes are closed because there are
Speaker 1: no clear instructions. I learn to turn toward the love
Speaker 1: that is here, though sometimes what is here is what
Speaker 1: is not. There are infinite ways to do this right.
Speaker 1: That is the only way.
Speaker 3: There's a lot in there, And I love that very
Speaker 3: last line, in particular about there are infinite ways to
Speaker 3: do that. That is the way. And I think conversations
Speaker 3: when we talk about dealing with something as profound as
Speaker 3: dealing with the type of grief you did, I love
Speaker 3: that you said there's no right way to do this,
Speaker 3: because I think we get so focused on am I
Speaker 3: doing this the right way? I mean, some of that
Speaker 3: is just conditioning, but some of it is we just
Speaker 3: want to be out of pain, you know, what can
Speaker 3: I do to make this pain better? But recognizing that
Speaker 3: my way is the way right now? You know, I
Speaker 3: can look to others, I can look for support, I
Speaker 3: can look for guidance, but I have to trust myself
Speaker 3: to some degree. And if we take that and scale
Speaker 3: it down from the really biggest things, I mean, I
Speaker 3: think that question is always there. Am I doing this right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And unfortunately there is no answer to that question, at
Speaker 3: least to me. There's no answer to that question, because
Speaker 3: I am not you and you are not me, and
Speaker 3: we are radically different, and what I need is going
Speaker 3: to be It's just also slippery, and for me there's
Speaker 3: been a great comfort in being able to go well,
Speaker 3: that concept doesn't exist. Am I doing it right? Like
Speaker 3: if we really understood it, we'd be like that is
Speaker 3: a nonsensical question, but it is a question that arises
Speaker 3: in all of us. I think so often.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a lot of thoughts about that, friend.
Speaker 1: One of them is as a recovering perfectionist. You know,
Speaker 1: am I doing it right? Has been our leader in
Speaker 1: my life?
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I've certainly wrestled with that in every arena, but somehow
Speaker 1: not with this. I don't know. It's not that I
Speaker 1: don't wrestle with it in lots of other places still,
Speaker 1: but not with this. Yeah, And I have to say
Speaker 1: that it was interesting for you to say this, how
Speaker 1: do I make the pain go away? I haven't wanted that.
Speaker 1: I haven't wanted the pain to go away. It's not
Speaker 1: like I'm holding onto it either. I wouldn't say that
Speaker 1: I'm holding onto the pain. But I think that's a
Speaker 1: mistake that we've been told. Maybe that we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to hurt. What does healing mean? Does healing mean that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to hurt anymore, that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be fine with it all like that? That doesn't seem
Speaker 1: right at all to me. To me, I think maybe
Speaker 1: it means something more like that I'm able to be
Speaker 1: with the pain and not wish it away. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: what healing is, is to be able to meet it
Speaker 1: without wishing it away.
Speaker 3: Have you always had that capacity? Oh God, no, okay, okay,
Speaker 3: I just I didn't know if you were genetically engineered
Speaker 3: differently than the rest of us. Because I understand exactly
Speaker 3: what you're saying. For me, there has been a fundamental
Speaker 3: shift in life. It was the fundamental shift that I
Speaker 3: had to make to get and stay sober, which was
Speaker 3: I have to stop constantly trying to change how I feel. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, because I took that to the ends of
Speaker 3: the earth, right, I can't do that to the same degree.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of what you're saying. But it
Speaker 3: is a very difficult thing to say, I'm going to
Speaker 3: let these feelings be. I'm going to feel at all
Speaker 3: when what it feels like is so awful and dreadful.
Speaker 3: So it sounds to me like that's something you have
Speaker 3: cultivated again over the years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. And let's be honest, I'm not
Speaker 1: able to do it in every arena, right, like wherever
Speaker 1: I feel, you know, I'm set with my husband or why,
Speaker 1: you know, like I let the little shit get to me?
Speaker 1: You know, why does he have to choose so loud?
Speaker 1: You know? Like why is that such a big deal
Speaker 1: for me? No? I mean there's so many places where
Speaker 1: I have ridiculous amounts of resistance, right, I couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you why, although I'm really seeing it right now. How different?
Speaker 1: Maybe because this is the wolf I've been feeding, right,
Speaker 1: I can completely go there with this and I want
Speaker 1: to and I want to, And who could say why
Speaker 1: I'm so available to it? I don't know, because I
Speaker 1: love him so much, because it matters so much, because
Speaker 1: so much is at stake. Whereas with the chewing thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just annoying.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If you get that one figured out, I will have
Speaker 3: you back immediately as a guest on the show.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you.
Speaker 3: Can figure out the small annoyances like that, I'm all ears, because,
Speaker 3: believe me, I have looked nobody's writing many books on
Speaker 3: not being irritated, and it's such a trivial thing, but
Speaker 3: it's also such a miserable condition to be in.
Speaker 1: Oh it is, it is, for sure. I'd make myself
Speaker 1: really miserable with it. Yeah yeah, but not with this
Speaker 1: other piece. Maybe, like I say, maybe because I'm willing
Speaker 1: to give it everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I want to bring up
Speaker 3: something that I saw on your website, and you have
Speaker 3: a one word mantra and a three word mantra on
Speaker 3: your website, and I'm curious if these are still current
Speaker 3: or you know, sometimes we put up a homepage and
Speaker 3: about us and it's like eight years old. One word
Speaker 3: mantra is a just the three word mantra is I'm
Speaker 3: still learning? Do those still feel like? You know, if
Speaker 3: you had to have a one and a three word mantra?
Speaker 3: Those the two you're sticking with right now?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure? Okay, Yeah, and they both have
Speaker 1: I think nice little stories too, and I think about
Speaker 1: them all the time. The adjust came from my friend
Speaker 1: Jude Jordan Kaloush. She lived in Southwest Colorado with me
Speaker 1: for a while and she went out in a time
Speaker 1: of drought and she said to the trees, what do
Speaker 1: we do? And the trees said back to her, adjust
Speaker 1: And I remember in that moment it just went right
Speaker 1: through me, that kind of resonance of oh, and there
Speaker 1: it is right and the word adjusts. Then I got
Speaker 1: pretty obsessed with it and looked it all up and
Speaker 1: its etymologies and all. It's related to the word yoga
Speaker 1: and yoke like you would put on an oxen, and
Speaker 1: it's literally to yoke ourselves to the moment. To adjust
Speaker 1: is to allow ourselves to be in tandem yoke with
Speaker 1: what is I suppose. So I do love that word
Speaker 1: a lot and find myself needing to adjust, as we'd
Speaker 1: all do constantly, and I'm still learning. That came from Michelangelo.
Speaker 1: Those were the last words he said on his deathbed.
Speaker 1: And I do feel like that willingness to continue to
Speaker 1: be open and learn and be kind of like find
Speaker 1: what's new and be excited, and to even bring that
Speaker 1: kind of excitement and enthusiasm to things we think we know. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I know so much about not knowing, So
Speaker 1: you know, I think that every time we have that
Speaker 1: opportunity to be new and still learning is a good
Speaker 1: way to feed our soul.
Speaker 3: Those are great, good mantras and great stories. Let's do
Speaker 3: another poem. We'll do the question because it references the
Speaker 3: friend you just talked about.
Speaker 1: Yes, it does the same. Jude. I have to say
Speaker 1: Eric that I have been deeply, deeply, deeply blessed with
Speaker 1: some of the most incredible humans in my life. Jude
Speaker 1: Jordan Calush is one of them. I feel so lucky.
Speaker 1: You know, who do we meet when we're at our
Speaker 1: most impressionable moments? And I'm really lucky that I met
Speaker 1: Jude for sure. The question, and I'll say this too,
Speaker 1: that in this poem, the question that she asks, we
Speaker 1: had been at a dance concert the night before, and
Speaker 1: we're in this huge auditorium and all around us all
Speaker 1: this talking, talking, talking, and there's Jude being her kind
Speaker 1: of Jude self.
Speaker 3: She says.
Speaker 1: The question I've been asking myself is what is the
Speaker 1: path of love? And I knew my life changed in
Speaker 1: that second the question. All day I replay these words,
Speaker 1: Is this the path of love? I think of them
Speaker 1: as I rise, as I wake my children, as I
Speaker 1: wash dishes, as I drive too close behind the slow
Speaker 1: blue Suparu. Is this the path of love? Think of
Speaker 1: these words as I stand in line at the grocery store,
Speaker 1: think of them as I sit on the couch with
Speaker 1: my daughter. Amazing, how quickly six words become compass the
Speaker 1: new lens through which to see myself in the world.
Speaker 1: I notice what the question is not?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 1: Is this right?
Speaker 2: Not?
Speaker 1: Is this wrong? It just longs to know how the
Speaker 1: action of existence links us to the path of love?
Speaker 2: And is it this?
Speaker 3: Is it this?
Speaker 1: All day I let myself be led by the question.
Speaker 4: All day.
Speaker 1: I let myself not be too certain of the answer.
Speaker 1: Is it this?
Speaker 2: Is this the path of love?
Speaker 1: I ask as I wait for the next word to come.
Speaker 3: I love that just as like an orienting intention.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And how quickly, how quickly it changes too?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I just feel like the second I think I know
Speaker 1: this is the path of love, then I really better
Speaker 1: get curious about it again. I feel like I can't
Speaker 1: let myself get too certain about it.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, well, and also in there the question isn't
Speaker 3: is it right? Is it wrong?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Which is we were sort of alluding to a few
Speaker 3: minutes ago. You know, am I doing it right? You know?
Speaker 3: Is this the path of love? Is a very great
Speaker 3: clarifying question.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, thank you Jude Jordan Klush for that
Speaker 1: great question.
Speaker 3: Well. I think the other piece though, that that poem
Speaker 3: speaks to is that a great question is great, but
Speaker 3: not if we don't ask it often, right, right, Like
Speaker 3: I mean, like if we just go, okay, well is
Speaker 3: this the path of love? And I think about that
Speaker 3: one time? Big deal, right, But what you're doing if
Speaker 3: you're actually able to ask yourself multiple times as you
Speaker 3: go about your life, at least to me, that's where
Speaker 3: questions like that become transformative. Exactly, they become transformative when
Speaker 3: they filter into the moments of our life. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm at my mother's right now, I'm visiting, you know.
Speaker 3: Is what I'm saying and thinking and doing? Is this
Speaker 3: the path of love? Right here, right now? You know,
Speaker 3: if I don't bring that question to mind, it can't
Speaker 3: do me much good. And that's I think one of
Speaker 3: the hardest things in our current culture is we're so
Speaker 3: busy we go from one thing to the next to
Speaker 3: the next without being able to. Let me say that again,
Speaker 3: I won't say we're not able to, because actually we
Speaker 3: are able to without reflecting at all about like what
Speaker 3: is important about this thing I'm about to do. That
Speaker 3: doesn't have to be your question if that question doesn't resonate,
Speaker 3: like there's countless other good ones. For me, it's been
Speaker 3: about how do I bring these ways I want to
Speaker 3: be into the world to mind frequently?
Speaker 4: Yeah, how do we do that?
Speaker 1: How do we do that? Relqus has live into the questions, right,
Speaker 1: that's his dictum for us, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: that that is part at least of why some kind
Speaker 1: of I think a daily reflective practice is so important.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Whether it's sitting or walking or writing a poem, meeting
Speaker 1: a blank page, there's so many ways to do it right, yep.
Speaker 1: But some kind of a reflective practice where we aren't
Speaker 1: running from one thing to another and open up to
Speaker 1: that willingness to be with a new question or the
Speaker 1: same question.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've done a lot of thinking about this very question,
Speaker 3: and it's part of what the spiritual habits is designed
Speaker 3: to answer. And you know, I think we can look
Speaker 3: at behavior science to talk about this idea of triggers.
Speaker 3: We all have triggers for good and bad, you know,
Speaker 3: and if we can start to build triggers into our day, like,
Speaker 3: for example, every time I go to the bathroom. Right
Speaker 3: that there's a trigger. Okay, you know, I'm just gonna
Speaker 3: in that moment go have I been on the path
Speaker 3: of love?
Speaker 1: What a sweet lad to?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Just tie it into something like that beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or at a red light or when I go
Speaker 3: into the kitchen. But the holy grail becomes when we
Speaker 3: take our emotions as triggers, which they are, they're just
Speaker 3: unconscious triggers primarily. But when we take our emotions, I'm irritated. Okay, good,
Speaker 3: I recognize that. Now I can ask is this the path?
Speaker 3: Like when that emotion becomes the trigger for a reflection,
Speaker 3: like to me, that's where things for me have really transformed.
Speaker 1: Well, that makes so much sense. I love the way
Speaker 1: you said that. It makes me think by the way
Speaker 1: that that whole parable which will for you going to feed?
Speaker 1: Is that right? In that moment of trigger to realize
Speaker 1: we have a choice, Yeah, that's the moment to remember. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, you're chewing so loud, I'm about to
Speaker 1: fly off the handle. Or is this the path of love?
Speaker 3: Is this? Yeah? Yeah? At least for me in those moments,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't have the ability to turn the
Speaker 3: irritation off, No, right, but I can reflect on okay,
Speaker 3: just relax, Like I mean, I can work with myself
Speaker 3: so that at the very least I don't make things worse, right,
Speaker 3: you know, at the very least, I don't make things worse,
Speaker 3: which irritation often can lead to. You know, right, my
Speaker 3: father passed recently, and I think I came by my
Speaker 3: irritation from him, you know, pretty inherited. I reflect on
Speaker 3: with him just how painful it must have been to
Speaker 3: be that way as often. And then also I don't
Speaker 3: think he really learned the skill of dealing with it well.
Speaker 3: And so then I think then you add the regret
Speaker 3: of like, well, you know, I'm also letting my irritation
Speaker 3: seep out too much, and like it's my least favorite emotion.
Speaker 3: Maybe yeah, because I know what it's like to be
Speaker 3: on the other end of someone being irritated, and like
Speaker 3: I said, it's an emotion that it is there. I'm
Speaker 3: just like, well, all right, exactly. So if anybody out
Speaker 3: there knows how to solve irritation, you can be a
Speaker 3: guest on the one you Feed podcast. You know of
Speaker 3: a book, if you know of a you know, is
Speaker 3: there a method.
Speaker 1: Well, I tell you what I do with it. I
Speaker 1: have my word of the year this year is Hello,
Speaker 1: and I've just been using Hello as a way to
Speaker 1: recognize the things that show up, especially things that are
Speaker 1: not positive I perceive as not positive. Frustration, Hello, irritation, Hello, fear, Hello, stuck.
Speaker 1: As soon as I noticed that that's what's going on
Speaker 1: in me, then I read it hello, and I've noticed
Speaker 1: it doesn't change it, right, it doesn't change it. But
Speaker 1: I relax.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I have told this story before, but it
Speaker 3: was on a silent meditation retreat and there was somebody
Speaker 3: just all kinds of terrible chewing, you know, and sniffing
Speaker 3: and snorting and just all kinds you know, and I
Speaker 3: am getting so irritated, you know, I mean just and
Speaker 3: but then of course at the same time, I'm like,
Speaker 3: but you're on a silent retreat, like, you know, so
Speaker 3: there's all the judgment and the whole you know. So
Speaker 3: I was asking the spiritual teacher Adia Shanti about this once,
Speaker 3: and you know, I was like, well, okay, I know
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to let it be. So what am I
Speaker 3: supposed to let be? The fact that that noise is happening,
Speaker 3: is that what I'm supposed to allow or am I
Speaker 3: supposed to allow the fact that I'm so irritated? And
Speaker 3: of course the answer is obvious in retrospect, which is
Speaker 3: both right, it's to allow both. But what you said
Speaker 3: is when that Hello comes along and I go, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm irritated, and I just go, okay, it's all right, Eric,
Speaker 3: You're doing the best you can. Just it's okay. Everybody
Speaker 3: gets irritated, like it gets better, it doesn't go away,
Speaker 3: but that whole like I shouldn't be feeling this, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm bad for feeling this way just you know, makes
Speaker 3: everything worse.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I kind of love that you also have mesophonia.
Speaker 1: That's the you know, the annoyance that people doing. So
Speaker 1: I'm high fiving you through the screen.
Speaker 3: I have whatever mesophonia's equivalent is with all kinds of sounds.
Speaker 3: I am just a sound sensitive creature.
Speaker 1: Oh that's it. Musophonium is all sounds.
Speaker 3: It's a sound f oh okay, yeah, then I am
Speaker 3: a mesophoniac.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, And by the way, Aja is my teachers
Speaker 1: one of my teacher's teachers. It's a teacher joy Sharp,
Speaker 1: just one of her teachers.
Speaker 3: Wonderful. I'll have to look her up. Yeah, he has
Speaker 3: been incredibly influential, and I've had the great gift of
Speaker 3: being able to sit down with him a number of
Speaker 3: times with this show and just kind of hang out
Speaker 3: and spend time together, and so he's meant a lot
Speaker 3: to me. Well, I think that is a great place
Speaker 3: for us to wrap up. We're gonna have a brief
Speaker 3: post show conversation where I'm gonna ask you to read
Speaker 3: another poem or two listeners if you'd like access to that.
Speaker 3: You can get access to that to add free episodes
Speaker 3: to the teaching song and a poem that I referenced
Speaker 3: earlier by going to one u feed dot net slash
Speaker 3: join Rosemary. Thank you so much. This has been really beautiful.
Speaker 1: So fun.
Speaker 4: Thank you Eric, Thank you.
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