Speaker 1: Not only do we not need the institutionalized, organized religious
Speaker 1: paths to get us to some kind of spiritual intimacy,
Speaker 1: but religion can be an obstacle to a spiritual experience.
Speaker 1: But I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good woalth. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Back on the show today is Mirabi Star, an award
Speaker 2: winning author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and a leading teacher of
Speaker 2: interspiritual dialogue. In twenty twenty, Mirabi was honored on Watkins
Speaker 2: List of the one hundred most spiritually influential living People.
Speaker 2: Drawing from twenty years of teaching philosophy and world religions
Speaker 2: at the University of New Mexico, Taos, Mirabi now travels
Speaker 2: the world sharing her wisdom on contemplative living, writing as
Speaker 2: a spiritual practice, and the transformational power of grief and loss.
Speaker 2: She has authored over a dozen books, including the one
Speaker 2: discussed here, Ordinary Mysticism Your Life as Sacred Ground. I
Speaker 2: also want to let all of our listeners know that
Speaker 2: we now finally have a great YouTube page, so you
Speaker 2: can watch your favorite interviews on there. You can find
Speaker 2: it on YouTube at the one you feed.
Speaker 3: Pod him Mirabi, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I can't believe we're here together
Speaker 1: in person.
Speaker 3: I know. I think this is your third or fourth
Speaker 3: time on the show, and we are doing it in
Speaker 3: person at your place near Taos, and it's beautiful here
Speaker 3: the mountains in the distance. It's lovely.
Speaker 1: It's such a joy to work in this space.
Speaker 3: So we're going to be discussing your latest book, which
Speaker 3: is called Ordinary Mysticism, Your Life as Sacred Ground. But
Speaker 3: before we do, we will start with the parable like
Speaker 3: we always do. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's
Speaker 3: talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins, And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: For so many years I have been on a spiritual path,
Speaker 1: and I mixed it up with perfection and purification, like
Speaker 1: there was some kind of end result of all the
Speaker 1: spiritual practices that I'd been doing and all the spiritual
Speaker 1: traditions I had been immersed in, and that end result
Speaker 1: was something like enlightenment, or in the Christian language, it
Speaker 1: would be salvation. You know, each spiritual tradition has some
Speaker 1: version of an end goal. And so no matter what
Speaker 1: I did, it fell short. And so my ideas of
Speaker 1: somehow arriving at a place where I was awake and
Speaker 1: free and fully compassionate, were never enough, Like, I never
Speaker 1: got there, and so I kept feeling like all I
Speaker 1: was doing was feeding the bad wolf that I couldn't
Speaker 1: access the good enough wolf and making sure that she
Speaker 1: would prevail. And I think I've just let that go.
Speaker 1: Not only I think, I know I have, and that's
Speaker 1: incredibly liberating, so that the bad wolf and the good
Speaker 1: wolf have merged into this glorious, messy, beautiful, vibrant being,
Speaker 1: and that's the one I feed.
Speaker 3: The good enough wolf. I like that. I didn't like
Speaker 3: that idea. Throughout your book, this idea is really on display,
Speaker 3: this sense that in the midst of our ordinary lives,
Speaker 3: with all their challenges, and in the midst of our
Speaker 3: own emotional and behavioral things that we might call emotional
Speaker 3: or behavioral failings, that even in the midst of all
Speaker 3: that there is some sacredness available. And like you, I
Speaker 3: think I for years had sort of an end goal,
Speaker 3: which was being enlightened so that I never felt any
Speaker 3: more pain. And as a former heroin addict, I clearly
Speaker 3: like that's what I was aiming at, right, Like I
Speaker 3: drove my life into the ground, I burned it down
Speaker 3: to chase that feeling. And I think that I was
Speaker 3: able to pivot to some degree and go, oh, maybe
Speaker 3: I could get something like that out of spirituality, and
Speaker 3: that's a much better way to pursue it. I mean,
Speaker 3: don't get me wrong, a much better way to pursue it.
Speaker 3: But like you say, always sort of not quite getting
Speaker 3: there or having these experiences that were you know, life
Speaker 3: changing and stuff ways, but then life goes back to
Speaker 3: being life. Right. It's like a drug. You go up,
Speaker 3: but you got to come back down. And so I like,
Speaker 3: you have gotten a lot better at accepting who I
Speaker 3: am and my life the way that it is. But
Speaker 3: that's always an ongoing challenge, I think.
Speaker 1: And it's humbling. It's humbling, like this is it. What
Speaker 1: you can see is what you get, you know, the
Speaker 1: person who wakes up in a bad mood, or who
Speaker 1: eats too much, or in whatever it may be that
Speaker 1: we judge ourselves about. It's easy to say it's all sacred,
Speaker 1: but it is sometimes like really, this is it, But
Speaker 1: it's when you're not trying to use spiritual practice as
Speaker 1: a bypass such a great term spiritual bypass or as
Speaker 1: a drug, or as a way to check out of reality,
Speaker 1: which I think you and I having been on a
Speaker 1: spiritual path for a long time, we're probably conditioned to do.
Speaker 1: To use spirituality to get away from life, whether it's
Speaker 1: beliefs or practices, or rituals or texts you know, and
Speaker 1: to actually show up for the full catastrophe as Orbit
Speaker 1: the Greek called. It is so much more ample and
Speaker 1: generous a way to live, and it includes everything and
Speaker 1: everything belongs. As my friend Richard Dore says, everything belongs Now.
Speaker 3: I'd like to turn this to our listeners. What part
Speaker 3: of that message struck a chord with you as you
Speaker 3: think about nourishing your good wolf, What specific ideas or
Speaker 3: actions come to mind for me? This month? It's relationships.
Speaker 3: Relationships are the cornerstone of our well being. When they thrive,
Speaker 3: we flourish, and when they struggle, we suffer. Many of
Speaker 3: us face relationship challenges, feeling lost and frustrated, but there
Speaker 3: is hope. Strong relationships aren't just about fate. They're built
Speaker 3: on learnable skills. By developing these abilits, you can transform
Speaker 3: your connections and in turn, your life. So relationships are
Speaker 3: this month's theme and our weekly bite of wisdom for
Speaker 3: a Wiser, Happier You newsletter, and I'd love to send
Speaker 3: them your way. Each week, we send a menu of
Speaker 3: a few small exercises you can put in practice to
Speaker 3: feed your good wolf, along with a reflection and a
Speaker 3: related podcast episode on the topic. At the end of
Speaker 3: this episode, I will be giving you a tip from
Speaker 3: this week's newsletter, But in the meantime, if you'd like
Speaker 3: to join thousands of others who are already benefiting from
Speaker 3: these tips, go to Goodwolf dot me slash relationships. That's
Speaker 3: good wolf dot me slash relationships.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking a lot about change and when not
Speaker 3: to change, I guess, or when to give up trying
Speaker 3: to change, because I think there are changes that we
Speaker 3: can make in our lives and often need to make
Speaker 3: that are really positive. And I think the more that
Speaker 3: the way I behave aligns with who I want to
Speaker 3: be inside, the more peace I have. And so there
Speaker 3: are positive changes that are worth aiming at, and we
Speaker 3: fall short of those. That doesn't mean that they're not
Speaker 3: worth aiming at. And there's plenty of times where it
Speaker 3: seems to me that that needs to be set down,
Speaker 3: And so I think a lot about when to use
Speaker 3: each thing.
Speaker 1: I love that, Eric. I'm not saying anything goes. This
Speaker 1: is not a sloppy you know, just whatever, it's all sacred,
Speaker 1: and just do whatever you want and behave however you wish,
Speaker 1: and do whatever you want to your body and not
Speaker 1: worry about the consequences or treat your loved ones like
Speaker 1: shit and not worry about how that affects your relationship. No,
Speaker 1: it's not in anything goes. In fact, this path of
Speaker 1: reclaiming everything is sacred requires a certain rigor and discernment
Speaker 1: so that you can really show up for reality with
Speaker 1: an an open heart and a clear mind and a
Speaker 1: brave way of being. It's sort of like my interspiritual work,
Speaker 1: which you've spoken with me about in the past. We've
Speaker 1: had conversations about walking an interspiritual path and how some
Speaker 1: people see that as being somehow superficial, like just taking
Speaker 1: a little bit of this and a little bit of
Speaker 1: that whatever makes you happy, and it's like a self
Speaker 1: gratification or something, rather than engaging deeply with one tradition
Speaker 1: and reaping the harvest of that discipline that comes with
Speaker 1: committing to a single spiritual tradition. And I've called that
Speaker 1: into question because I grew up in my spiritual life
Speaker 1: anyway with that messaging that you should pick one path
Speaker 1: and go deep rather than explore multiple spaces. But my
Speaker 1: lived experience Eric was always that in encountering and cultivating
Speaker 1: intimacy with multiple spiritual spaces and traditions, I experienced great
Speaker 1: depth of transformation, of spiritual presence, that it was anything
Speaker 1: but superficial and lightweight, and a little bit of this
Speaker 1: and a little bit of that. It was deep encounters
Speaker 1: across a broad spiritual landscape. It's the same thing with
Speaker 1: this ordinary mysticism business. It's not like, oh, it's okay.
Speaker 1: Whatever you do is holy and you have a pass.
Speaker 1: Both paths, the ordinary mystical path and the interspiritual path
Speaker 1: and the path of the feminine mystic which you and
Speaker 1: I have also spoken about, require that you show up
Speaker 1: as awake and committed to loving kindness as you can
Speaker 1: possibly be, and it gives you much more freedom without
Speaker 1: someone telling you the way you're supposed to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a line in the book where you're talking
Speaker 3: about intention. You say, to be a mystic in our
Speaker 3: times is not about renunciation. It is about intention. And
Speaker 3: then you go on to say set your intention to
Speaker 3: uncover the jewels buried in the heart of what already is.
Speaker 3: That's a great line. Choose to see the face of
Speaker 3: God in the face of the bus driver and the
Speaker 3: moody teenager impeeling a tangerine or feeding the cat. Decide
Speaker 3: mean it, open your heart and then do everything you
Speaker 3: can to keep it open. And I think that's speaking
Speaker 3: to this commitment, right, like decide mean it, like you're
Speaker 3: bringing your whole self and your whole effort to this.
Speaker 3: And then you also say, but setting our intentions blesses
Speaker 3: the outcome without investing them with shame or blame if
Speaker 3: they don't work out. That's the flip side of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. You know, I always appreciated Pama children, always, always,
Speaker 1: who happened to have been just little sidebar my social
Speaker 1: studies teacher when I was twelve.
Speaker 3: You have got to be kidding.
Speaker 1: Didn't know that story, huh. Yeah. Before she became Pemma,
Speaker 1: she was still dear dra And in fact, it was
Speaker 1: in my probably sixth grade year that she went off
Speaker 1: to Boulder to be with joined trumpa rampachet and become wild. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So years later, Yeah, Natalie Goldberg was my English teacher.
Speaker 1: Palma Children was our social studies teacher, Ramdas and Trumpa,
Speaker 1: and all the characters came through Taos in those days
Speaker 1: to our alternative schools. So I come by this path
Speaker 1: I'm on. Honestly, I was going to.
Speaker 3: Say, yeah, you may not have had much choice.
Speaker 1: It really feels that way. But Palma, you know, years later,
Speaker 1: when I started reading her as Palma Children, she spoke
Speaker 1: about this revolutionary concept that all of our gifts, all
Speaker 1: of our beauty, all of our wisdom, is completely and
Speaker 1: inextricably entwined with our shadows, with our neurosis, with our insecurities.
Speaker 1: And I was like, really that this is such a relief.
Speaker 1: That was my intuitive experience that those two things could
Speaker 1: not be separated and they were not mutually exclusive. And
Speaker 1: I think that message from Homa twenty thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: I don't remember when it was start where you are
Speaker 1: that was the book just really paved the way or
Speaker 1: unpaved the way, because it rewilded the way of my
Speaker 1: heart so that I could accept that truth.
Speaker 3: Use the word shadow there, and it made me think
Speaker 3: of later in the book, you talk about your shadow,
Speaker 3: and you brought up one of your sort of shadow sides,
Speaker 3: which is that you keep trying to simplify your life,
Speaker 3: and to use your phrase, you remain phrenetically overextended. And
Speaker 3: I relate with that to some degree, and I think
Speaker 3: about it a lot. I'm like, well, my ability to
Speaker 3: like want to do things and to engage deeply and
Speaker 3: be somebody that's like I see something, I'm going to
Speaker 3: go over there, I'm going to go get like That's
Speaker 3: one of my very best traits. And its shadow is
Speaker 3: exactly as you're saying that. It gets me to a
Speaker 3: place where either, like you say, I'm over extended, although
Speaker 3: I've gotten a little bit better at that. It's more
Speaker 3: my mental state is always out in front of me,
Speaker 3: and so I have to work hard to reel it
Speaker 3: back in. And so I wouldn't want to get rid
Speaker 3: of that part of me that would be destroying part
Speaker 3: of I think who I really am. But I also
Speaker 3: don't want to let it run the entire show exactly.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful example. Yeah, And the things that we do,
Speaker 1: probably you do this, I know I do, are beautiful,
Speaker 1: wonderful things. You know today is a perfect case in point.
Speaker 1: Before I saw you, I did eleventy seven things and
Speaker 1: cram them all in and manage to have a couple
Speaker 1: of bites of a taco, you know, to keep the
Speaker 1: machine of my body going. And I kept stopping in
Speaker 1: between taking a breath and going wow, here you go, Mearby.
Speaker 1: It's the this is what you do. But they're all beautiful,
Speaker 1: I mean, starting with a yoga class, like get into
Speaker 1: the car and drive to yoga check, you know, and
Speaker 1: then take care of the two year old for an
Speaker 1: hour while her mom has a massage. Check. They're all wonderful.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to get lost. But when you remind
Speaker 1: me of what I said myself in my little book,
Speaker 1: it's like I can take a breath again and say, yes,
Speaker 1: it's all intertwined and it's all sacred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there is a way I have found to
Speaker 3: be going, going, going, and to be present. Yes, it
Speaker 3: takes a little more effort, I think, because you know,
Speaker 3: there isn't the spaces, but I know I can have
Speaker 3: those two experiences, right, one of which is like I'm
Speaker 3: doing all my things and I feel present and I
Speaker 3: feel content and I feel connected. And I can also
Speaker 3: be doing the exact same things and feel completely frenetic.
Speaker 1: Right, That's such a great insight. You know, what I
Speaker 1: think is the key to the distinction between the frenetic
Speaker 1: and the present is humor. There's always part of me
Speaker 1: that's not always but often is right behind the little
Speaker 1: stress monkey going look at you, cutie, Well you're just
Speaker 1: you're doing it again, and isn't this hilarious? You know?
Speaker 1: And same thing with my judging mind, you know, the
Speaker 1: mind that judges other people as being unconscious or somehow
Speaker 1: otherwise falling short of my standards being a human being.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I hear that little critical voice
Speaker 1: in my head, right behind it is the chuckle yeah,
Speaker 1: like look who thinks she knows what they don't know?
Speaker 3: That's really good to cultivate inside. I have an external
Speaker 3: version of that in my best friend Chris, who's the
Speaker 3: editor and founder with me of this show, and he
Speaker 3: just probably in the same way that we all have
Speaker 3: qualities that we sometimes will take too far. His humor
Speaker 3: not that he takes it too far, but like as
Speaker 3: a defense at points, right, but it's almost impossible to
Speaker 3: get him to be consistently serious about anything, which is
Speaker 3: one of his best traits. And it's perfect for me
Speaker 3: because when I do get so focused. That sense of
Speaker 3: humor tends to sort of constrict and shrink, and it
Speaker 3: does not really allowed to with him around, you know.
Speaker 3: So it's a real gift to uh also have people
Speaker 3: that can do that for us.
Speaker 1: Yes, definitely, I have one of those. Doo that's beautiful.
Speaker 3: Speaking about our failings or are not living up to
Speaker 3: the people we want to be. You have something in
Speaker 3: the book. I never can say her name, right, but
Speaker 3: you're talking about the French nun.
Speaker 1: Thees Teresa Luciu.
Speaker 3: Thank you, My mouth doesn't make those sounds. You talk
Speaker 3: about how she hated herself for hating the way the
Speaker 3: sister beside her in the refectory chewed her food. I'm
Speaker 3: an extraordinarily sound sensitive person, and so somebody chewing loudly
Speaker 3: around me, or like chomping on their ice, it brings
Speaker 3: up this like just strong irritation that no matter what
Speaker 3: I have tried to do, I can't turn off.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah, dysphonia or something I know about.
Speaker 3: This, Yeah, I cannot turn it off. So it's good
Speaker 3: to know that a saint had the same problem.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So what a wonderful next step of our conversation, Eric,
Speaker 1: Because I think one of the things I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do with ordinary mysticism and with my work in general,
Speaker 1: because I've been so deeply immersed in the teachings of
Speaker 1: the mystics across the spiritual traditions over the years, is
Speaker 1: let people know that your life is not counter or
Speaker 1: in opposition to the lives of these saints and mystics
Speaker 1: that we know about. It's not like we should not
Speaker 1: put them on a pedestal, because what that means is
Speaker 1: then we feel like we could never hope to emulate
Speaker 1: their beautiful, wonderful spiritual qualities. All of them, I assure you,
Speaker 1: had their things, their neurosis, their mistakes, their indulgences, their misbehaviors.
Speaker 1: You know, they all also felt like they fell short
Speaker 1: all the time. There's a part of this book in
Speaker 1: the back that is called You're not in trouble, which
Speaker 1: is a phrase that my brother in law says sometimes
Speaker 1: to all of us to remind us and to himself
Speaker 1: that those ten thousand things a day that you think
Speaker 1: you screwed up are just fine. You're just fine, You're
Speaker 1: not in trouble. And so I think all the saints
Speaker 1: and mystics that we revere probably had those conversations with
Speaker 1: themselves as well, and so when we can see their humanity,
Speaker 1: the humanity of the people like Teres or Toes of Avila,
Speaker 1: who is moody and could be moody and demanding, or
Speaker 1: Francis of Assisi, who would get angry and climb up
Speaker 1: on the roof of the church that was being built
Speaker 1: in his name and tear the tiles off and throw
Speaker 1: them to the ground because he was looking for a
Speaker 1: community of voluntary simplicity and the people who were trying
Speaker 1: to follow in his footsteps were getting it all wrong
Speaker 1: and he get pissed off. And sexism and racism in
Speaker 1: the people that we revere, we get to look at
Speaker 1: those qualities and say, ah, they are just like me,
Speaker 1: and we're all doing the best we can to live
Speaker 1: lives of loving, kindness and service and maybe not self lessness,
Speaker 1: but less selfishness, less self centeredness.
Speaker 3: Yes, So how do you think about that when it
Speaker 3: comes to more modern teachers and the sex scandals that
Speaker 3: we see right which are you know, rife throughout I
Speaker 3: mean really everywhere. And so it's easier to say somebody
Speaker 3: in you know, back in the fifteen hundreds or fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 3: who acted a certain way that's so far away we
Speaker 3: can sort of separate the person from the message easier
Speaker 3: than today or ten years ago. How do you think
Speaker 3: about that?
Speaker 1: I think about it a lot because, having you know,
Speaker 1: grown up since early teens in the spiritual arena, multiple
Speaker 1: spiritual spaces, Buddhists, Hindu, Sufi and others. I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of bad behavior in the teachers that I have
Speaker 1: loved and followed, and I've tried to give them a pass.
Speaker 1: And the philosophy of the Guru doesn't do anything that's
Speaker 1: not for the benefit of the disciple, gets them a
Speaker 1: lot of leeway. But I'm not buying it anymore. I
Speaker 1: no longer even believe in a fully enlightened being, and
Speaker 1: that's like sacrilege in my spiritual community, because I have
Speaker 1: a Guru named Curli Baba. It's been my lifelong teacher
Speaker 1: and beloved kind of spiritual anchor. He will remain so,
Speaker 1: probably till the day I die. He's in me. There's
Speaker 1: nothing I can do to extricate myself from my love
Speaker 1: and devotion to him. And yet I no longer believe
Speaker 1: that the Guru won't do anything that isn't of benefit
Speaker 1: to the disciple. I've seen them all make mistakes that
Speaker 1: have done harm to the people who have followed them,
Speaker 1: sexual impropriety, homophobia, and everything in between. And we know
Speaker 1: better now. Well, even in the sixties, even the difference
Speaker 1: between the nineteen sixties and seventies when I was starting
Speaker 1: on my spiritual path and now there's just no excuse.
Speaker 1: There's a power differential between the teachers and the students,
Speaker 1: for one thing, and for the teacher to use that
Speaker 1: power differential to his own benefit and gratification is wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it's pretty clear that one of
Speaker 3: the things that makes something a cult is when you
Speaker 3: can't question the people at the top. The minute that
Speaker 3: they're infallible, you've got a pretty good idea, it's time
Speaker 3: to go right, you know, it's wise to just say, Okay,
Speaker 3: I need to go somewhere else and seek my guidance
Speaker 3: and wisdom because that's dangerous.
Speaker 1: Well, exactly, Eric. And so that's a mark of what
Speaker 1: makes a teacher an authentic teacher in my mind, is
Speaker 1: when she carries wisdom, transmission, shock, the energy, whatever you
Speaker 1: may call it, that's real, and is willing to apologize
Speaker 1: and admit when she's off the mark that goes such
Speaker 1: a long way, someone who is humbly able to say,
Speaker 1: you know what, that was not okay, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: You and I both know Henry Shukman, and I interviewed
Speaker 3: him just a few days ago. And I'm not saying
Speaker 3: Henry's a guru, right, but he's somebody that a lot
Speaker 3: of people look up to, and he's a very wise teacher.
Speaker 3: He's one of the most gifted teachers. I think that morning,
Speaker 3: as we were preparing, he was down on the floor
Speaker 3: setting up lights with the other people there. And that's
Speaker 3: the kind of leader that I'm looking for, and the
Speaker 3: kind of leader I want to be is the person
Speaker 3: that's not setting themselves so far away from everybody else,
Speaker 3: that's right in it with everyone. And it was just
Speaker 3: another thing that I looked at that made me love Henry,
Speaker 3: you know, because it was just he was right there.
Speaker 3: He's the teacher, and yet he's willing to sit down
Speaker 3: and help you screw in the light bulb exactly.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 3: I do think it's interesting, though, to think about. I
Speaker 3: think there's a further distinction. I think your first distinction
Speaker 3: is true that nobody should be given a pass that
Speaker 3: like bad behaviors should be called out and it should
Speaker 3: be stopped. But then you get to the next level,
Speaker 3: which is what about their message or their teaching? Okay, right,
Speaker 3: I think we're all wrestling with this, even outside of
Speaker 3: spiritual circles in this day and age. It's the musician
Speaker 3: as a person and then what they created. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: can you and should you separate those things exactly?
Speaker 1: And sometimes I think in our hyper aware era, we
Speaker 1: ourselves might cancel ourselves because of white guilt or fear
Speaker 1: of what you know, doing something that is inappropriate or
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation. Are all the things that I, for instance,
Speaker 1: wrestle with and talk ourselves out of our prophetic calling. Again,
Speaker 1: it's this idea of perfection that we may hold in
Speaker 1: our minds. And so how do we step up as teachers,
Speaker 1: as prophets, as contemporary sticks, which so many of you
Speaker 1: who are listening qualify as being without being so hard
Speaker 1: on ourselves when we miss the standards we hold ourselves
Speaker 1: to or hold others to. So I think that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful example, Eric, is that there is such power that
Speaker 1: certain people carry to transform our consciousness and open our hearts.
Speaker 1: Those very same people are human beings and they're going
Speaker 1: to sometimes do things and say things that cause harm.
Speaker 1: Do we cancel them completely? Do we call out the
Speaker 1: behavior and affirm the beauty that they carry. That's that's
Speaker 1: what I would vote for. But again, that takes rigor,
Speaker 1: It takes discernment, and it takes the discipline of keeping
Speaker 1: your heart open so that you don't just write them off,
Speaker 1: but you forgive and allow and are willing to listen
Speaker 1: and engage in hard comfort.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is challenging. I mean I spent I
Speaker 3: mean a number of years of my life as a
Speaker 3: you know, out and out criminal. You know, I've got
Speaker 3: a grocery list of crimes and that's not me anymore,
Speaker 3: but it was. And so where in here do we
Speaker 3: hold people's ability to change and also not be naive
Speaker 3: that some people don't change, aren't capable of changing, don't
Speaker 3: want to change even what they say. It's I just
Speaker 3: I don't think there's any answers, But I think it's
Speaker 3: a question I think about a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that you're asking these questions and you're
Speaker 1: asking them publicly, because I think we all need to
Speaker 1: be listening in to the nuances of this question.
Speaker 3: So let's come back to your book, and there's just
Speaker 3: so many beautiful lines. But I thought, I have you
Speaker 3: read the first few paragraphs of a section in the
Speaker 3: book that I think covers a lot of what we've
Speaker 3: been talking about. I'll let you find it. The section
Speaker 3: is called the Myth of the Perfect Family. It's in
Speaker 3: the first chapter.
Speaker 1: Intention it's hard to give up our fantasies of a
Speaker 1: life where beauty is built in and we don't have
Speaker 1: to work at finding it. It's easy to recognize the
Speaker 1: presence of the sacred in the saintly hospice chaplain who
Speaker 1: turns your mother's deathbed into a temple, in an epic
Speaker 1: sunset over the South Pacific, or in the birth of
Speaker 1: a baby to a couple who had given up hope
Speaker 1: of ever conceiving, let alone carrying a child to term.
Speaker 1: But what about your boring job, your addicted partner, your
Speaker 1: home town that feels more like a strip mall than
Speaker 1: a community. What about your dining room table at dinner time.
Speaker 1: One of the things it means to be an ordinary
Speaker 1: mystic is to bow at the feet of your everyday existence,
Speaker 1: with its disappointments and dramas, its peaceful mornings and luminous nights,
Speaker 1: and to honor yourself just as you are. Remember Stephen
Speaker 1: Stills of Crosbie Stills in nash He told us that
Speaker 1: if you can't be with the one you love, you
Speaker 1: should love the one you're with. I say, if you
Speaker 1: can't be the one you wish you could be, love
Speaker 1: the one you are. And if you don't have the
Speaker 1: life you imagined you would have or should have by now,
Speaker 1: how about loving the life you are living. A mystic
Speaker 1: finds the magic in the midst of the nitty gritty,
Speaker 1: the crusty spaghetti saucepot in the sink, and the crocus
Speaker 1: poking out of a spring snowfall, the unsigned divorce papers
Speaker 1: on the kitchen table, and the results of your latest
Speaker 1: blood work on your computer screen.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I think that's really beautiful. It made me think of something,
Speaker 3: this idea of having to look for beauty instead of
Speaker 3: it just being always built in. I think it's a
Speaker 3: great way of really thinking about for me, the effort
Speaker 3: that it takes. I wish it didn't like you're saying.
Speaker 3: I wish that, like my grateful awe eyes were always
Speaker 3: open and I just wandered around and you know, beauty
Speaker 3: at everything, but I don't. I have to consciously, moment
Speaker 3: by moment, remind myself to try and look for it.
Speaker 1: And there are practices that help, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: in many ways, I'm deconstructing religion in this book, saying,
Speaker 1: not only do we not need the institutionalized, organized religious
Speaker 1: paths to get us to some kind of spiritual intimacy,
Speaker 1: but religion can be an obstacle to a spiritual experience.
Speaker 1: But I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 1: I love many of the practices and sacred texts and
Speaker 1: prayers and and even ideas and concepts that are at
Speaker 1: the heart of the different religious traditions and one of
Speaker 1: the kind of universal practices, but I think helps build
Speaker 1: these wonder muscles and open these beauty eyes is contemplative
Speaker 1: practice of any kind. Whether it's seated meditation on a
Speaker 1: cushion on a daily basis for twenty minutes or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be, or walking in the woods in a
Speaker 1: mindful way, or reading poetry where you really show up
Speaker 1: for the feast of words. There are many different ways
Speaker 1: to cultivate a contemplative life. It helps so much to
Speaker 1: awaken the heart of the mystic so that you will
Speaker 1: perceive beauty when you look.
Speaker 3: There are sort of two arms, as I think of it, right,
Speaker 3: there's the actual contemplative practices that you're describing, which are
Speaker 3: a practice and discipline, and then there's the how does
Speaker 3: what we see or realize there trickle out into all
Speaker 3: the other moments of life. That's sort of that second
Speaker 3: part of it is like where I'm really interested in
Speaker 3: kind of what I'm writing about in the upcoming book
Speaker 3: and taught in the Habits That Matter program is not
Speaker 3: how to do the formal practice more formal practices, but
Speaker 3: how to drip it into all the rest of your
Speaker 3: life beautiful.
Speaker 1: So you said it earlier when we were speaking before
Speaker 1: we got on air, that your deep and long time
Speaker 1: rigorous commitment to a sitting practice is changing, and that
Speaker 1: now it's kind of just infiltrating every aspect of your life.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the fruit of this kind of
Speaker 1: contemplative is that you've cultivated for so many years, and
Speaker 1: that I have as well, and many people I know
Speaker 1: and love are kind of walking away from the cushion
Speaker 1: and seeing how that contemplative habit shows up when it's
Speaker 1: needed most you know, in line at the store, in
Speaker 1: traffic and an argument with a beloved. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just like like weightlifting. I think you and I are
Speaker 1: both exercisers. Yes, I find that when I do my
Speaker 1: exercise practice, every aspect of my life is strengthened and
Speaker 1: I feel better and I have more more energy to
Speaker 1: do what I love. It's not like I'm so virtuous
Speaker 1: because I lift weights or I hike every day, or
Speaker 1: I do yoga and all the things that I do.
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time doing physical practices, and
Speaker 1: my body really thanks me for it. The harvest is
Speaker 1: everywhere in my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. I agree it's important. And I do
Speaker 3: think that both elements of that formal practice, whether it
Speaker 3: be meditation or exercise, being things that you sort of do,
Speaker 3: make it more likely that you'll be strong in the
Speaker 3: rest of your life, or you'll be wise in the
Speaker 3: rest of your life, or awaken the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: And we need to be willing, like you are, to
Speaker 1: allow that to morph and change. For instance, I live
Speaker 1: and we're looking out the window right now together, which
Speaker 1: is cool, right on the edge of national forest. So
Speaker 1: my two dogs, Lola and Ruby, demand to take a
Speaker 1: long walk every day because that's all they've ever known.
Speaker 1: So we get out into those mountains every day. And
Speaker 1: for many, many years, I have not only had a
Speaker 1: practice of silence when I was walking, but I've written
Speaker 1: about it. So I've like come out publicly and said,
Speaker 1: take a walk, but don't have your you know, ear
Speaker 1: pods in your ears, and don't catch up on phone
Speaker 1: calls and texts. You know, be present in most you're
Speaker 1: listening to the feet, Yeah, listening to the one you feed,
Speaker 1: and then you can catch up on all the past episodes.
Speaker 1: So recently I started listening to the audible version of
Speaker 1: Braiding Sweet Grass. Well, I just finished it yesterday, So
Speaker 1: it took a long time because it's a long book,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the most powerful transformative books I've
Speaker 1: ever read. I loved it so much, and I make
Speaker 1: a living out of reading transformational books. I loved it
Speaker 1: so much, and it got to the point where I
Speaker 1: was not going to get through it because it's so
Speaker 1: long and I have so many things to do unless
Speaker 1: I bent my rule of walking in nature and not
Speaker 1: listening to anything. So I started listening to it on
Speaker 1: my walks, and it was extraordinary. It was so liberating
Speaker 1: to break that rule. There was one point where she
Speaker 1: was talking about moss and lichen. Robin Wallkimerer reveals nature
Speaker 1: as God, as divine, as sacred, so beautifully, but so
Speaker 1: she can get totally into something like lichen and moss,
Speaker 1: and it's utterly captivating and transformational and heart opening. And
Speaker 1: while I was walking, she was described viving a certain
Speaker 1: kind of lichen, and I was seeing it in the
Speaker 1: rocks on the path where I was walking. It was
Speaker 1: such an epiphany. It was a spiritual experience. It was
Speaker 1: a mystical experience. And it wouldn't have happened, that epiphany,
Speaker 1: that mystical experience, that ordinary mystical moment, would not have
Speaker 1: happened had I stayed rigid about my spiritual practice of
Speaker 1: silence while walking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes me think of in the book you
Speaker 3: say there's a tension of paradox for you when you
Speaker 3: think about where we gain real wisdom. Is it lived
Speaker 3: experience or is it the distilled transmission from books or scriptures.
Speaker 3: My answer is both. And I think you're describing this
Speaker 3: in a slightly different way, which is that your conditioning
Speaker 3: is to have that experience, you need to be quiet
Speaker 3: while you're walking. It's the lived experience side. What you
Speaker 3: found was that in the right way, the scripture, right,
Speaker 3: we'll call her a book a scripture, right, the scripture
Speaker 3: was the thing that enlivened that moment in combination with
Speaker 3: lived experience, and so they're sort of separate, but then
Speaker 3: ultimately they become ideally they're not separate exactly.
Speaker 1: And in fact, what I found was, and this has
Speaker 1: just been in the last week that I discovered this
Speaker 1: by listening to her book, that I do both. So
Speaker 1: I listened for a while and then I turn it
Speaker 1: off and I walk in silence for a while. So
Speaker 1: I'm doing both, and that works beautifully. It's a tapestry
Speaker 1: I do too.
Speaker 3: That's my general Like, if I'm out for a long
Speaker 3: hike or bike ride, I'm like, okay, half of this
Speaker 3: I can listen to music, or I can listen to
Speaker 3: a book that I'm into, I can talk to a friend,
Speaker 3: and half of it I'm just going to turn all
Speaker 3: that off and just be out here and I can
Speaker 3: do both, like you said, and that seems to allow
Speaker 3: me to get at the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1: And this is the liberation that I'm hoping we can
Speaker 1: all give ourselves permission to experience with an ordinary mystical life,
Speaker 1: to release, to jettison, to give up and walk away
Speaker 1: from all the rules and regulations that legislate that control
Speaker 1: our spiritual experience, and allow ourselves to kind of undomesticate
Speaker 1: the path to the sacred, to draw on the spiritual traditions,
Speaker 1: the age old methods and practices and poetry that feed
Speaker 1: our souls, and to also be willing to not know
Speaker 1: and allow it to be revealed in your regular, everyday life.
Speaker 3: I think the other thing that you do in this book,
Speaker 3: and I think is really important, is to I'm going
Speaker 3: to use my own words here bring down the bar
Speaker 3: of what constitutes a mystical experience, because I struggle with this.
Speaker 3: People use the word joy all the time. Joy is
Speaker 3: not a word that I feel like is exactly in
Speaker 3: my emotional register. I just don't think it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's never there, but that's not my
Speaker 3: lived experience of my emotional register. And so when I
Speaker 3: think that that's the bar I'm aiming at all, my
Speaker 3: experience is not good enough and I'm not good enough.
Speaker 3: Instead of going, here's me and the way I see
Speaker 3: and relate to the world, and in the midst of
Speaker 3: that there are moments of beauty and maybe joy or
Speaker 3: contentment might be more my emotional register, right, I'm a
Speaker 3: little bit more equilibrium. I think in reading your book
Speaker 3: you're a little more like up here and then down here,
Speaker 3: like you've got a wider emotional register, which is not better,
Speaker 3: it's different. And so for me there's been a process
Speaker 3: of recognizing that it doesn't have to be one of
Speaker 3: these earth shattering moments of complete liberation or a blinding
Speaker 3: flash of enlightenment for it to be something that is
Speaker 3: still really beautiful and beneficial.
Speaker 1: Are you listening, y'all? This is so good, Eric, This
Speaker 1: is the essence and I forget myself all the time
Speaker 1: of what I'm trying to say. Your life is not
Speaker 1: only good enough, whoever you are, whoever's listening, it is
Speaker 1: the most beautiful thing it can be. In Jewish mystical teachings,
Speaker 1: every one of us is imprinted the day that we're
Speaker 1: born with what is ours to do and be in
Speaker 1: this world to mend, actually to mend the torn fabric
Speaker 1: of the world of reality tikun olam, to repair the world,
Speaker 1: and often our lives are an adventure of discuss what
Speaker 1: that is. But it's so important, as you're saying, to
Speaker 1: not discount what and who you are, because I promise
Speaker 1: that your version of tikun olam what it is any
Speaker 1: of you, any of us are here to do and
Speaker 1: be in this world, is hidden in plain sight, nestled
Speaker 1: at the heart of who you already are. Someone with
Speaker 1: an emotional register of equilibrium or an enneagram four like me,
Speaker 1: that experiences the heights of drama. So I might say,
Speaker 1: but ecstatic states and deep pain and grief, and you know, fine,
Speaker 1: I find the presence of the sacred in both. It's
Speaker 1: probably harder for me to actually be present when things
Speaker 1: aren't intense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is sort of accepting us. I love the
Speaker 3: way you describe this in the book. You say, for me,
Speaker 3: almost everything that happens is a big deal. I've always
Speaker 3: been this way. I can take the most prosaic encounter
Speaker 3: and convert it into a melodrama where my husband Jeff
Speaker 3: will gloss over a torn rotator cuff as if it
Speaker 3: were a hangnail. I just love that because you're just
Speaker 3: like in that sentence, you're letting yourself be the way
Speaker 3: you are, and you're letting him be the way he is,
Speaker 3: and you're not making one of those better than the other.
Speaker 1: It's so true, I mean, and it's easy. It's easy
Speaker 1: to let go of the judging mind when we set
Speaker 1: our intention, when we realize that everything belongs, that everything
Speaker 1: is sacred. I mean. It's not always easy, Eric, but
Speaker 1: it's often much easier than we make it out to
Speaker 1: be to just allow things to be what they are,
Speaker 1: and to allow our beloveds to be who they are.
Speaker 1: I've been married for twenty six years. This is my
Speaker 1: second marriage, it's his second marriage, and I knew right
Speaker 1: from the beginning that we were really different. We have
Speaker 1: really different temperaments, and that the way he is is adorable.
Speaker 1: His quirks and behavioral challenges are endearing to me. They
Speaker 1: were endearing at the beginning, and they're endearing still, I
Speaker 1: think because I know I knew that he accepted me unconditionally,
Speaker 1: and that there was something wonderful ahead if I could
Speaker 1: also accept him and therefore myself unconditionally. Not that we
Speaker 1: don't have our moments, we do, but there is this
Speaker 1: kind of what would you call it? We adore each
Speaker 1: other for all of those quirky little things that make
Speaker 1: us who we are.
Speaker 3: Yep. I think you were using it at the beginning
Speaker 3: of that that it's easy to let go of those
Speaker 3: things when we think that everything belongs. And I would
Speaker 3: say that it actually that that makes it possible. It
Speaker 3: may still be very difficult within that, but if you
Speaker 3: can't take that first step, if you can't at least go,
Speaker 3: this has a place, this belongs, This is okay. I
Speaker 3: may still resist it ninety percent of the time, and
Speaker 3: I can work on that, but if I can't do
Speaker 3: that first step, it's not even possible to let things
Speaker 3: myself and others be the way they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and probably does start with our sense of ourselves
Speaker 1: as adorable, Like can you cultivate that for one minute?
Speaker 1: You are adorable? Mirabi, Eric, you're adorable, And see if
Speaker 1: that tenderness doesn't start shifting things so that everything becomes adorable.
Speaker 3: You were speaking just now about your husband, and in
Speaker 3: the book you're talking about this idea that the general
Speaker 3: prevailing wisdom. Let me see if I can say this right,
Speaker 3: is that in the beginning of a relationship, we are infatuated,
Speaker 3: and so we see people as really great and then
Speaker 3: over time we see who they really are. And you
Speaker 3: and I think Leonard Cohen and I don't remember who
Speaker 3: else you quote. Flip that on its head and say, actually, no,
Speaker 3: your initial impressions when you saw someone is beautiful and
Speaker 3: wonderful and special and unique. That's what's real. And what
Speaker 3: has happened is time has dulled that. Yes, and that
Speaker 3: is a complete reinvention of the way we think about
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so glad you picked up on that, because
Speaker 1: that's one of the great enlivening insights of my life.
Speaker 1: And I've carried that into the realm of grief too,
Speaker 1: that when people die in our life, you know, in
Speaker 1: our world, in our close world, we often glorify them like,
Speaker 1: suddenly the person who acted like an asshole, suddenly the
Speaker 1: person who misbehaved is wonderful, and their character defects become
Speaker 1: just interesting aspects of who they are and were. And
Speaker 1: not only that, but we start to see them as
Speaker 1: maybe an ancestor who carries wisdom and guidance for us.
Speaker 1: And there might be people who say, you know what, honey,
Speaker 1: that's magical. Thinking that person was a jerk in real life.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make them suddenly an enlightened being now that
Speaker 1: they're dead. And I mean, I've kind of received that messaging.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of you have too, And I think there's
Speaker 1: something true in that sense that the loved one who's gone,
Speaker 1: even if they were difficult and problematic in your life
Speaker 1: when they were alive, become something holy, something generous, something
Speaker 1: someone generative. They become a life giving source for you,
Speaker 1: a source of wisdom, of courage, of energy, of guidance,
Speaker 1: an ancestor that that isn't just an idea, but an entity,
Speaker 1: a reality. I don't know whatever your beliefs are about
Speaker 1: life after death. In one of my books, Caravan of
Speaker 1: No Despair, my memoir of it's called a member.
Speaker 3: Of your first book. I read that book, yes.
Speaker 1: A memoir of loss and transformation. I have a chapter
Speaker 1: called Believing Everything, where I systematically kind of like Descartes
Speaker 1: when he came up with I think and therefore I am.
Speaker 1: I systematically go through all the possibilities, all the things
Speaker 1: that the different world religions say, atheism says about what
Speaker 1: happens after you die, and I conclude that they're all true.
Speaker 1: So whatever you believe about what happens after death, I
Speaker 1: have experienced and many of you have too, the true
Speaker 1: presence of loved ones who have died as real, as available,
Speaker 1: as helpful, as beautiful. And that's kind of like that
Speaker 1: is about. When you fall in love, you're seeing the
Speaker 1: real person, and over time that gets dulled. As you said,
Speaker 1: I think when someone dies who they really are, their
Speaker 1: essence is liberated and accessible.
Speaker 3: For me, that belief system is a double edged sword,
Speaker 3: and I'll tell you that the good side of it
Speaker 3: makes complete sense to me, which is believing, particularly with
Speaker 3: your current partner, that the person you saw them first
Speaker 3: as is who they really are. I have this situation though,
Speaker 3: when a relationship ends, I suddenly see that person as
Speaker 3: the end all and be all of everything that ever
Speaker 3: could be good in the world, because I can't have it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so for me, I actually think this insight of
Speaker 3: yours is really good because what I can do instead
Speaker 3: of saying is it true is to ask my favorite question,
Speaker 3: is is it useful in the case of somebody who say,
Speaker 3: someone has left me and is moving on. Probably not
Speaker 3: useful to deify them, Yeah, probably useful to think about
Speaker 3: the parts of them that I didn't like as a
Speaker 3: way of moving through. But with the people i'm with
Speaker 3: or the people who have passed on in the way
Speaker 3: you're describing gone, it's probably really useful to see them
Speaker 3: as beautiful, wonderful people, knowing that the truth is, of
Speaker 3: course they're all both, but it's more useful to see
Speaker 3: them that way. I often more than I think about
Speaker 3: is it true? Because so many things are true at
Speaker 3: the same time, is which of these ways of thinking
Speaker 3: is more useful to me being the person I want
Speaker 3: to be? I mean, and I never thought of this idea.
Speaker 3: It's new to me that you've just said here, this
Speaker 3: idea of the way I saw them in the beginning
Speaker 3: is how they really are. Like, how useful is that
Speaker 3: in me with my current relationship right to think back
Speaker 3: to how luminous she seemed to me? Then yeah, and go, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's real, that was really her, Like that's a beautiful
Speaker 3: and useful thought.
Speaker 1: Yes, And that's the way of ordinary mysticism is how
Speaker 1: do we see the divine, the sacred, the luminous and
Speaker 1: numinous in the people in our lives, including the people
Speaker 1: for whom it is difficult to see, in whom it
Speaker 1: is difficult to see.
Speaker 3: I've got a couple that I think you know that's
Speaker 3: a that's a deep practice.
Speaker 1: It is, and I'm not always good at it, believe me.
Speaker 1: True confessions.
Speaker 3: Yep. I think I'd like to talk about letting go,
Speaker 3: you say. Sometimes when I'm wrestling with a problem or decision,
Speaker 3: I remember I don't have to figure out. I can
Speaker 3: give it over. My default is to the great Mother.
Speaker 3: I murmur words like here, Mama, you take it, and
Speaker 3: then I get on with my day and wait to
Speaker 3: see what happens. I think a lot about letting go,
Speaker 3: and I thought we could just talk about it. In general.
Speaker 1: There's such a fine line between letting go and checking out.
Speaker 1: There are certain things that the holiest, most sacred, most
Speaker 1: awake thing you can do is to not turn away,
Speaker 1: but to stay present with difficult feelings, for instance, like
Speaker 1: jealousy or grief, just missing someone you love. And those
Speaker 1: of us who've been on a spiritual path of any
Speaker 1: kind know all the tricks to be okay with difficult feelings,
Speaker 1: to meditate our way out of it, or to just
Speaker 1: let go and be grateful. There are lots of good,
Speaker 1: good tools and techniques, but sometimes the magic is in
Speaker 1: not letting go, in showing up. So say we're talking
Speaker 1: about addiction. To be with the difficult, almost unbearable feeling
Speaker 1: of craving. Sometimes that's the way through, right, is to
Speaker 1: not run away from it, not indulge in the substance
Speaker 1: to make the feeling go away, but staying with the
Speaker 1: hunger and exploring it with curiosity and tenderness, and then
Speaker 1: the letting go when the times when we're able to
Speaker 1: let go, or when it's useful to use your language, Eric,
Speaker 1: to let go becomes a true freedom, a true path
Speaker 1: to freedom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that is another one of those things
Speaker 3: that's really hard to sort out when I should allow
Speaker 3: a feeling to be because that's either instructive or it's
Speaker 3: a way of being present. It's a way of not
Speaker 3: running from my emotions, and when it's time to try,
Speaker 3: as we're saying, to let go, it's a very subtle
Speaker 3: thing to sort of figure out. I think I think
Speaker 3: about it with anger often, right. Anger is certainly a useful, generative,
Speaker 3: powerful emotion, and it can also get stuck in the
Speaker 3: on position, which is what we would call in We
Speaker 3: used to refer to in twelve step programs as resentment,
Speaker 3: and they used to say all the time, resentment is
Speaker 3: the biggest thing that causes people to go back to drinking. Now,
Speaker 3: I don't think that's true for everybody, Like I might
Speaker 3: absolutely like fear based person. That's much more likely to
Speaker 3: me than be mad at somebody is to think terrible
Speaker 3: things about myself or whatever that you know, So it's
Speaker 3: not everybody, But I think it's interesting to think about
Speaker 3: when a feeling gets stuck, and we do need to
Speaker 3: work on saying, hey, let's let's turn the channel, let's
Speaker 3: make a conscious effort to think something different. Let's let
Speaker 3: go at whatever form that takes. I often feel like
Speaker 3: I don't know even today how to sometimes decide which
Speaker 3: is which.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot of conditioning that's going to get
Speaker 1: in the way, you know, and a lot of it is,
Speaker 1: if you'll forgive the term patriarchal conditioning, you know, a
Speaker 1: paradigm that conditions us to believe that the more spiritual
Speaker 1: thing to do is to transcend the feelings. And I
Speaker 1: remember when when my daughter died. Not long after, within
Speaker 1: a year or so, my teenage daughter was killed in
Speaker 1: an accident car accident. I was in Mexico and someone
Speaker 1: brought me to a shaman, a Mayan shaman in the Yucatan.
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time in the Yucatan, and
Speaker 1: I feel very at home there. Fluent in Spanish, I'm
Speaker 1: very connected to the land and culture. So this wasn't
Speaker 1: like a totally shocking foreign thing. But basically the dude
Speaker 1: said to me, you need to let your daughter go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was within the first year. It was definitely within
Speaker 1: the first year. I was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: have to let her go. I mean, I might as well.
Speaker 1: Someone might have said, climb Everest by tomorrow at noon.
Speaker 1: There was no way that that was going to happen.
Speaker 1: And I felt like there was something wrong with me,
Speaker 1: that I was flawed, because it was such an impossible thought.
Speaker 1: Not long after, I was back home here in Taos
Speaker 1: and a visiting Zen teacher came who happened to be
Speaker 1: a woman We had douksan and we were sitting together
Speaker 1: in an interview and she was just asking me what
Speaker 1: was up, And of course that's what came up, as
Speaker 1: my daughter died a year ago or less, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you have a great trauma, many
Speaker 1: of you know, you experience traumatic brain damage in a way,
Speaker 1: and so you forget about time is very fluid for
Speaker 1: me in those first year couple of years after Jenny's death.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it was early on and I was talking
Speaker 1: about my difficulty in letting go, and she was like,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? You're a woman, you're a mother.
Speaker 1: We're not supposed to let go of our children. And
Speaker 1: when a child dies, it is a fundamental rupture of
Speaker 1: that truth that that attachment is appropriate. When the Buddha
Speaker 1: talked about attachment, either he didn't know about a mother's
Speaker 1: attachment to her child, or that's not what he was
Speaker 1: talking about. That's not the kind of attachment that we
Speaker 1: were being encouraged to use contablet of practice to see
Speaker 1: beyond that's an attachment that is appropriate, and that was
Speaker 1: so helpful to me.
Speaker 3: There's a story in the Buddhist tradition that I sometimes
Speaker 3: have taught in the Habits That Matter program. What is
Speaker 3: your take on that story?
Speaker 1: So just a nutshell version, y'all of that mustard seed
Speaker 1: story or the Kisagotami stories. This is a young woman
Speaker 1: whose child has died and she is absolutely distraught. It's
Speaker 1: a perfect example, Eric that you brought this up. She's
Speaker 1: beside herself with anguish and she is carrying the corpse
Speaker 1: of her child around her village and wailing and saying,
Speaker 1: can anybody bring my child back to life? And of
Speaker 1: course makes everyone very uncomfortable. She's kind of nuts, she's
Speaker 1: crazy with grief. And finally someone says, we can't do it.
Speaker 1: I can't do it. But there's this guy who's teaching
Speaker 1: in the forest not far away, and people say amazing
Speaker 1: things about him. Why don't you take your child to
Speaker 1: him and see if he can do it? Because if
Speaker 1: anybody could, he could. Of course it's Siddartha Gotama, the
Speaker 1: boos Duck, and so she's very excited by this possibility.
Speaker 1: And she hauls the corpse of her child into deer
Speaker 1: park or wherever the forest is, or the Buddha is
Speaker 1: giving his discourses, she lays, or she charges in like
Speaker 1: Mary Magdalen where Jesus is feasting with the tax collectors.
Speaker 1: She just comes right on in and she lays her
Speaker 1: child at his feet, interrupts his discourse and says, Master,
Speaker 1: I hear that you can bring my child back to life,
Speaker 1: can you please? And the Buddha looks at her with
Speaker 1: unconditional compassion and says, okay, I'll tell you. Why go
Speaker 1: back to your village, knock on every door and collect
Speaker 1: a mustard seed from every household that has not experienced
Speaker 1: the death of a loved one. Bring back this collection
Speaker 1: of seeds, I will concoct a magic potion that will
Speaker 1: bring your child back to life. So thrilled, she hauls
Speaker 1: her baby's body back to the village, knocks on every door,
Speaker 1: and of course not a single household has been free
Speaker 1: of the experience of the death of a loved one.
Speaker 1: And she goes back to him, and she says, you
Speaker 1: tricked me, And in that moment, in his absolute just
Speaker 1: makes me cry. His absolute, unconditional, loving response to her
Speaker 1: that no words needed to be exchanged. She woke up.
Speaker 1: What did she wake up to? She didn't let it go,
Speaker 1: She didn't rise above and transcend her grief. What she
Speaker 1: experienced in her body was the felt sense of Oh,
Speaker 1: everybody experiences his loss, grief, sorrow. Someone we love is
Speaker 1: going to die and we're gonna wish they hadn't. I
Speaker 1: belong to this web of inter being, as Tick Nathun
Speaker 1: called it, and we all do. That was liberation, as
Speaker 1: we belong to each other.
Speaker 3: As we wrap up, I'm curious out of all of
Speaker 3: valuable ideas we've explored today, what's the single most impactful
Speaker 3: insight that resonates with you listener? For me, it's about relationships.
Speaker 3: Many of us grapple with relationship issues in silence, uncertain
Speaker 3: how to mend the cracks. The reality cultivating a fulfilling
Speaker 3: relationship isn't solely about compatibility or fate. It's about developing
Speaker 3: crucial interpersonal abilities. How's that for a fancy phrase? Basically
Speaker 3: means we can improve our relationships. And here's a quick
Speaker 3: tip for you. Focus on active listening. Make a conscious
Speaker 3: effort to listen more than you speak in your next conversation,
Speaker 3: focusing entirely on understanding the other person's perspective. Being a
Speaker 3: good listener goes a long way in making our relationships better.
Speaker 3: This month's newsletter focuses on relationships. Get practical exercises, reflections
Speaker 3: and podcast links to nurture your connections. Sign up at
Speaker 3: Goodwolf dot me slash relationships. Thousands are already benefiting from
Speaker 3: these tips. Join us in fostering stronger relationships at Goodwolf
Speaker 3: dot me slash relationships. I love that story for that reason,
Speaker 3: and when you were talking about the Buddha and attachment.
Speaker 3: I was bringing it up because to me, that story
Speaker 3: isn't a Buddha saying get over it. It might seem like,
Speaker 3: in a superfluous reading of it, that that's what happens.
Speaker 3: She realizes everybody else has a death, and she goes, Okay,
Speaker 3: well I do too, and now I'm not grieving. That's
Speaker 3: not what it is about. It's about I'm just not
Speaker 3: alone in my grieving, and what's happening to me is
Speaker 3: not a mistake. Yeah, a problem that I have done
Speaker 3: something or goes against an order of the universe. And
Speaker 3: I've experienced similar things, like losing a dog. I've told
Speaker 3: this story on the podcast many times. But I lost
Speaker 3: one dog and I was like, all right, that's terrible,
Speaker 3: and it was deeply grieving. And then not long after,
Speaker 3: we lost another dog who got cancer, who was young,
Speaker 3: and there was a part of me that went, that's
Speaker 3: not right, that's not fair two dogs in that amount
Speaker 3: of time. He was too young, he was, But I
Speaker 3: had enough wisdom to just go that's what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 3: living things get sick, they die, and it didn't lessen
Speaker 3: my grief at all. But I didn't have a bone
Speaker 3: to pick with the world over or the universe. It
Speaker 3: actually allowed me to inhabit my grief beautiful, And I
Speaker 3: think that's that story, right. She's actually able to inhabit
Speaker 3: her grief, which means she will heal in whatever the
Speaker 3: when we can have a long conversation about what healing
Speaker 3: from grief even means, but there is a healing, and
Speaker 3: she's able to begin that path by realizing that what's
Speaker 3: happening to her is not unique and she's connected to
Speaker 3: everyone else.
Speaker 1: And there's something deliciously holy about that realization.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's the realization I think that is at the
Speaker 3: heart of when twelve step programs work, that makes them work.
Speaker 3: That is one of the key things fellowship. You walk
Speaker 3: in and all this shameful, awful things that you've thought
Speaker 3: and felt and everything, and you hear people all around
Speaker 3: you saying the same thing and laughing about it, and
Speaker 3: you go, oh my god, I'm not alone. And up
Speaker 3: toil that point, at least my experience and hearing enough
Speaker 3: other people talk to it, you think you're uniquely insane.
Speaker 3: You think you're uniquely crazy. Why do I keep doing this? So? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's that recognition. As you said, we belong to each
Speaker 3: other beautiful. Well. I hate and interviews where I'm the
Speaker 3: one who's saying the last thing really well, but I
Speaker 3: feel like we kind of hit just a beautiful stopping point.
Speaker 1: So oh and I you know, for me, this whole
Speaker 1: thing was a conversation. It wasn't just me talking about
Speaker 1: my little book. I loved that it was conversational.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I hope we featured your wonderful little book
Speaker 3: enough listeners nearby and I are going to continue to
Speaker 3: talk in the post show conversation, and we're going to
Speaker 3: talk specifically about something that is more interesting than you
Speaker 3: think it is, which is the process of translating old texts,
Speaker 3: beautiful texts into English that Mirabi is really really good at.
Speaker 3: So if you'd like access to our post show conversations,
Speaker 3: ad free episodes, and to be part of our community,
Speaker 3: which we'd love to have you in, go to oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash join.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mirabi, Thank you Eric, what a joy.
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