Speaker 1: Our suffering can be our greatest tutor and our greatest guide.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf y.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Kamla Kapoor, an award winning Indian born American author, poet,
Speaker 1: and playwright. She holds a master's degree in literature from
Speaker 1: Kent State University in Ohio and studied creative writing at
Speaker 1: the University of Iowa. Kamla was on the faculty of
Speaker 1: Grossmont College in San Diego for eighteen years, and her stories,
Speaker 1: poems and plays have been published in prestigious American and
Speaker 1: Indian journals. Her new book is Roomy Tales of the Spirit,
Speaker 1: A Journey to Healing the Heart. Hi Kamla, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks Eric, good to talk with you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am looking forward to it. Also, your latest book
Speaker 1: is called Roomy Tales of the Spirit, A Journey to
Speaker 1: Healing the Heart. And we will get into that book
Speaker 1: and a lot of your wisdom here in a minute.
Speaker 1: But let's are like we always do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second. He looks up at
Speaker 1: his grandmother. He says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well. I think that that parable is um
Speaker 1: if you had to summarize how to go about living
Speaker 1: and how to go about thinking in a way that
Speaker 1: enhances the quality of your life. Then that parable is
Speaker 1: a little nutshell of wisdom. And I think that for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. The the obvious one is that
Speaker 1: there is a battle going on between us, between almost
Speaker 1: every individual, between what the West might call the good
Speaker 1: and the evil forces, and that we can have a
Speaker 1: say in who wins in that battle. There's obviously a
Speaker 1: wolf that is fearful and not very kind, and not
Speaker 1: very nice, not very aware. And then there is the
Speaker 1: wolf that if we feed, it becomes the opposite of
Speaker 1: the bad wolf. I want to say two things about it.
Speaker 1: The first one is that the Powable places the responsibility
Speaker 1: for living with the good wolf squarely in our laps,
Speaker 1: in the lap of the individual. It's up to you
Speaker 1: which one you're going to feed in order to help
Speaker 1: it to grow, because when you feed something, it grows,
Speaker 1: So that is very important. And the other part that
Speaker 1: I think is very important is that there are always
Speaker 1: these two wolves. You can't kill off one wolf. The
Speaker 1: grandmother doesn't advise her grandson to kill off one wolf
Speaker 1: because you can't. These are the two forces of life,
Speaker 1: if you want to call them En and yang or
Speaker 1: good and evil. And I would also like to add
Speaker 1: another point to this is that the bad wolf that
Speaker 1: is fearful and doubtful and not very kind and is
Speaker 1: you know, has a lot of vices, is absolutely necessary
Speaker 1: for the good wolf to become what the good wolf
Speaker 1: becomes if we feed it. So it's like Roomie would say,
Speaker 1: he would say, you know, we have to harness the
Speaker 1: power of the demons inside us so that they can
Speaker 1: use stones for our palace. Now that's a very complicated idea,
Speaker 1: but what it basically says is that it is a
Speaker 1: negative side. It is our bad and fearful and vulnerable
Speaker 1: and very human side that has a role to play
Speaker 1: in what we become. Right And I like that part
Speaker 1: about the Parable two where it doesn't really say anything
Speaker 1: about having to harm the bad wolf for harness the
Speaker 1: bad wolf for anything. I think it it's sort of
Speaker 1: just says, hey, like, you know, you're going to need
Speaker 1: to put a little more attention over here, exactly. And
Speaker 1: it's attention, it's awareness, it's consciousness. If you're not even
Speaker 1: aware that this is going on inside you, then you
Speaker 1: can't even begin to remedy it, because most of us
Speaker 1: go through our lives with a sort of a default
Speaker 1: mode of thinking, just being unawarily caught up in our
Speaker 1: passions and our emotions without reflecting upon them. Right, So
Speaker 1: let's start off by you telling us who Roomy is.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have probably heard the name.
Speaker 1: A lot of people know him as a poet, but
Speaker 1: he was more than a poet. But give us a
Speaker 1: little sketch of who he is. Roomy was born in
Speaker 1: the thirteenth century in in Persia what is not a
Speaker 1: now called Iran. And then he moved to Turkey, where
Speaker 1: he spent most of his life. And he was just
Speaker 1: an ordinary human being, uh till he just like you
Speaker 1: and me and going about business as usual, till he
Speaker 1: met a wandering ministry called sham shut In or Shums
Speaker 1: for for short, and who really ignited the spiritual spark
Speaker 1: in him. But a few years after they met Shums
Speaker 1: was was killed. And some people say, you know, he
Speaker 1: was killed by his jealous disciples because there was such
Speaker 1: a love between them, or some say it was his
Speaker 1: son who killed him. But the the effect of Chumps's
Speaker 1: death was delivered a deep wound two. Roomis heart and
Speaker 1: a transformative wound, a wound that he was in the
Speaker 1: long run. So um it has said that he when
Speaker 1: somebody asked him to write down the poetry that he
Speaker 1: was reciting or the stories he was telling, that he
Speaker 1: wrote the mut Nami, which is which is six volumes,
Speaker 1: very dense volumes, not only of poetry, but prose and
Speaker 1: lectures and parables and discourses on the right way of thinking.
Speaker 1: This is what has endured his writing. I believe it
Speaker 1: just poured out of him, and so we are left
Speaker 1: with this wonderful work of art and spirituality combined, which
Speaker 1: helps us to navigate our day to day lives. So
Speaker 1: I hope that gives you some idea of who Roomie
Speaker 1: was before he became a poet. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: studying law, he was into jurisprudence, and just a teacher.
Speaker 1: He was just going about his life till this particular event.
Speaker 1: And that's why I say in my book as well,
Speaker 1: that our suffering can be greatest tutor and our greatest guide,
Speaker 1: because it's like, you know, it's like plants. If you
Speaker 1: if you prune a plant in one direction, I'm sure
Speaker 1: a tree hurts, but it teaches the tree which direction
Speaker 1: to grow in, is like teaching us to feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf. Right, And so with Rumi, what religion would
Speaker 1: he be considered to be? What tradition would he be
Speaker 1: considered to be part of? Well, this is a very
Speaker 1: interesting question. Rumi is very obviously from the Sufi tradition
Speaker 1: of Islam, and the Sufi tradition of Islam is like
Speaker 1: the mystical version of Islam, just like in Christianity we
Speaker 1: have the Bible and then we have the Nastic Gospels,
Speaker 1: which are far more mystical. But I also want to
Speaker 1: qualify that even though he comes from the Islamic tradition,
Speaker 1: the guides and the Guru, those that are admire say
Speaker 1: the same thing over and over and over again that
Speaker 1: we're all made after the same light. We are all
Speaker 1: made of the same stuff. And the current divisions and
Speaker 1: probably even ancient divisions political religious divisions in our times
Speaker 1: and in history are deeply flawed because they're thinking behind
Speaker 1: them are deeply flawed in the sense that you know,
Speaker 1: a Jewish person will think of God as Jewish, Hindu
Speaker 1: person will think of God as Hindu, and an Islamic
Speaker 1: person is Islamic, but really if we're all creatures and
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters of the of the One God, then
Speaker 1: we are co sanguine. We share the same blood, we
Speaker 1: share the same spirit, And so even though it comes
Speaker 1: from the Islamic tradition, the message is not confined just
Speaker 1: to Islam or to Sufi mysticism. Right, you know my experiences,
Speaker 1: You read any of these traditions deeply enough and you
Speaker 1: start to say, well, boy, this all sounds pretty pretty similar,
Speaker 1: doesn't It sort of sounds like the same message just
Speaker 1: delivered in slightly different cultural contexts. And you know, the
Speaker 1: slight sort of um, what would be the word for it,
Speaker 1: the slight warping that happens by filtering through it to
Speaker 1: human lens. But but when you boil it all down,
Speaker 1: there's an awful lot of similarity. It's the root, you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about the roots of all religion are
Speaker 1: the same, and it's the human urge to connect with
Speaker 1: something higher than us, which not just higher and beyond us,
Speaker 1: but something that is within us. It's not just out there,
Speaker 1: it's it's something we can connect with through our journey inward.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing that is similar to almost all
Speaker 1: traditions and It doesn't mean that God is only inside us,
Speaker 1: but is pervasive inside and outside us. You know, we're
Speaker 1: If you're all made of the same stuff, then the
Speaker 1: same thing is filtering through all of us, no matter
Speaker 1: which religion you turn to. But you have to really
Speaker 1: go to the root of it and practice what you learn. Yes,
Speaker 1: you say in the book that the thesis, or rather
Speaker 1: the hope of this book is that we can and
Speaker 1: must turn from being closed to being open, from contraction
Speaker 1: to expansion, from isolation to connection, taking the first steps
Speaker 1: towards wisdom, happiness, and joy. And I love that. I
Speaker 1: have been thinking an awful lot lately about that very
Speaker 1: idea of expansion versus contraction. Right. We've had a spiritual
Speaker 1: teacher on Audi Ashanti who said to me once, ego
Speaker 1: is just a contraction, right, And I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: this idea a lot, this contraction to expansion that James
Speaker 1: Hollis the psychotherapist often just to ask a question when
Speaker 1: trying to evaluate a decision, is this going to expand
Speaker 1: your life or contracted? So I love that idea so much.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about it from your perspective. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, um, we could characterize the bad wolf as
Speaker 1: the contracted wolf, because you know, to in order to
Speaker 1: be greedy or unkind or fearful, you're basically, you know,
Speaker 1: thinking from a very egocentric and a very personal point
Speaker 1: of view, and it's not an aware point of view.
Speaker 1: So when you open out, and this opening out, by
Speaker 1: the way, happens a great deal. You know, say, when
Speaker 1: your heartbreaks, for example, I mean, what happens to your
Speaker 1: heart when it breaks, It cracks open, and it's hurts,
Speaker 1: of course it hurts, but it also opens out. It
Speaker 1: opens out to receive others, to receive love, to receive kindness,
Speaker 1: to give it and to receive it. So to live
Speaker 1: in an open ways, to live in a vulnerable way,
Speaker 1: to take away that ego skin that separates us from others.
Speaker 1: It's like King Lear, you know, when he's really is
Speaker 1: down and out, and here's this really autocratic king whose
Speaker 1: nose has been rubbed to the ground. When he finally
Speaker 1: gets there, his heart is open. He can live in
Speaker 1: a hovel with a crazy madman and love him. It's
Speaker 1: like in roomy stories. You know, all these stories are
Speaker 1: about characters who begin off being very closed and then
Speaker 1: by living through the experience, you see how suffering opens
Speaker 1: them up to being more aware and connecting with the
Speaker 1: higher selves. What I see with suffering is for some people,
Speaker 1: suffering opens them up. They transform it in beautiful ways, right,
Speaker 1: and and they grow from it. And then there are
Speaker 1: other people who seem to be embittered or broken by suffering.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of curious. I asked this to a
Speaker 1: lot of guests, but I'm curious, from your perspective, what
Speaker 1: is the difference in the people who are able to
Speaker 1: use suffering to turn it into something beautiful versus the
Speaker 1: people that sort of implodes upon. First of all, I
Speaker 1: want to begin with the assumption that I think that
Speaker 1: all people are capable of transformation. But you're very right
Speaker 1: that some people, a lot of people get very embittered
Speaker 1: by their experiences and stay in that bitterness. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the different between the two is either you're
Speaker 1: happy being unhappy, or you want to do everything in
Speaker 1: your power to get out of it, you know, to
Speaker 1: not realize that there is a different way of being,
Speaker 1: in a different way of thinking around about the same issue.
Speaker 1: You know, that horrible thing happened to me, and and
Speaker 1: now I don't want to trust anybody anymore, or that
Speaker 1: horrible thing happened to me, and I'm going to learn
Speaker 1: from that experience and move on and not live without
Speaker 1: trusting people, because to live without trust and hope is
Speaker 1: not a good life. So I would also qualify that,
Speaker 1: you know, if we didn't have people who were embittered
Speaker 1: by their experiences, we would have no room in us
Speaker 1: for compassion. So those of us who can transform, those
Speaker 1: of us who can you know, transcend negative experiences and
Speaker 1: and and learn from them, must have compassion. Because if
Speaker 1: there is hope for the people who are embittered, it
Speaker 1: is compassion for them. Although you can't always reach them,
Speaker 1: but those that we can reach in our lives, the
Speaker 1: only truly transformative power in life is love, and Roomy
Speaker 1: says that over and over again. You know, and it's
Speaker 1: very sad that there are so many people who don't
Speaker 1: know how to live with hope and joy. And I
Speaker 1: think ultimately the answer is unknowable. The Hindu philosophy might
Speaker 1: say it's karma, it's how you lived in your previous life,
Speaker 1: but we don't know that maybe in your previous life
Speaker 1: you feed the dark wolf more and now it's time
Speaker 1: for you to learn what to feed in yourself. But
Speaker 1: I don't really have the answer for that, Eric, And
Speaker 1: it is one of the greatest mysteries of life, because
Speaker 1: you know, there are people who can transcend, and there
Speaker 1: are people who live happily, joyful lives, and there are
Speaker 1: people who can't do that, and all I can do
Speaker 1: is hope that something will turn them. Certain people have
Speaker 1: tried to study resilience, and resilience is what we might say,
Speaker 1: is the ability to take a really bad experience and
Speaker 1: and come through it stronger and better. They often talk
Speaker 1: about that that the idea of being able to find
Speaker 1: a coherent narrative out of it. And that's why I
Speaker 1: think the work that Roumi does that you're continuing of
Speaker 1: telling stories, stories that show, hey, look how this person
Speaker 1: took suffering and transformed it. Look how this person did it,
Speaker 1: and it it sets up a narrative that allows us
Speaker 1: to try and I think frame our own experience in
Speaker 1: that way. I know in my own life being able
Speaker 1: to turn a lot of the things that have happened
Speaker 1: to me, having a coherent narrative that shows those as
Speaker 1: growth experiences, shows those as things that propelled me forward
Speaker 1: versus things that brought me down. Really transforms my relationship
Speaker 1: to them, and so I think story is a really
Speaker 1: powerful way to do that right on. And and all
Speaker 1: the stories of roomy stories that I've retold in this
Speaker 1: book and the other one that I wrote before that
Speaker 1: I sectioned off in a group stories under different titles,
Speaker 1: like you know, one of the one of the ones
Speaker 1: in this book is Embraced Suffering, and and there are
Speaker 1: there are four stories under that about characters who embraced
Speaker 1: their suffering, who saw the good in their suffering, and
Speaker 1: how they did it. It's exactly what you were saying.
Speaker 1: And stories are also more powerful because when you're reading
Speaker 1: a story, you you relive it. You enter the story,
Speaker 1: and you go through these experiences with the character and
Speaker 1: then come out hopefully on the other side with with
Speaker 1: a nuggete of gold with a gem. Okay ah ha,
Speaker 1: I can do this too. I can apply this to
Speaker 1: my own life. And then the second section is prey.
Speaker 1: And I deeply believe in the power of prey because um,
Speaker 1: a prayer. What is prayer but a dialogue with our
Speaker 1: higher selves? And the dialogue is productive in itself because
Speaker 1: by you know, having like just exploring the other side,
Speaker 1: and you can come to a conclusion that well, if
Speaker 1: I am this way, then I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: a happy person. But if I'm another way, there is
Speaker 1: another way of thinking. It's and it all boils down
Speaker 1: to perspective. You know. The perspective we have is how
Speaker 1: our life ends up being. So if it's a contracted perspective,
Speaker 1: then you're going to live a contracted life. And and
Speaker 1: the third part of this book is surrendered to the
Speaker 1: cosmic will and that which is you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of us get stuck with our bad experiences because we
Speaker 1: don't know how to accept that which has already happened,
Speaker 1: in that which we cannot change, that we can only
Speaker 1: change through our thinking by finding what you call a
Speaker 1: coherent narrative in it, you know, by looking back, looking
Speaker 1: back and saying, okay, did anything good come off that?
Speaker 1: And making a list to it, you know, practical things.
Speaker 1: Do you have a story you could summarize from the
Speaker 1: book that might talk about suffering? Yes, several. Actually there
Speaker 1: is the very first story, um called We Never Know Why,
Speaker 1: is about this guy who gets you know, he's sleeping
Speaker 1: peacefully and suddenly he's woken up very rudely by by
Speaker 1: somebody who's whipping him and beating him and punching him,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know what's going on this The stranger
Speaker 1: just keeps hitting him and saying run, run, and and
Speaker 1: and this guy is running. He said, what the hell
Speaker 1: is life all about? You know? Why am I suffering? Like?
Speaker 1: What have I done to this guy? And then the
Speaker 1: stranger makes him eat all these apples, stuff his mouth
Speaker 1: with apples, and then he makes him drink at a
Speaker 1: fountain and you drinks, and you drinks, and he vomits
Speaker 1: up ultimately, and what does he see in his vomit
Speaker 1: but a black snake breathing in it. So he's really shocked,
Speaker 1: and he looks at the stranger, who says, you know,
Speaker 1: I was walking by you. I saw you sleeping with
Speaker 1: your mouth open. I saw the black snake slithering into
Speaker 1: your mouth, and I wanted to save you. So he said,
Speaker 1: why didn't you just tell me that there was a
Speaker 1: black snake? And mean, you're trying to get it out
Speaker 1: and I would have borne my suffering better. But the
Speaker 1: stranger says, if I had told you, you would have
Speaker 1: died of fright. So in this story, the last sentences Emma,
Speaker 1: who's the central character, felt at the feet of the
Speaker 1: stranger and said, oh, blessed is the hour you saw me.
Speaker 1: Blessed is the suffering you inflicted to awaken me? And
Speaker 1: all suffering has a power to awaken us. And all
Speaker 1: four of the stories under this section talk about the
Speaker 1: transformative power of suffering. And you know, it's very important
Speaker 1: to remember this, and it's not always possible to remember it.
Speaker 1: If you're human, we forget sometimes the black wolf predominates
Speaker 1: in us, you know. I don't think you ever get
Speaker 1: to the point where the black wolf is anguished, um
Speaker 1: and just the good wolf lives you. And the trick
Speaker 1: is to remember when you're suffering, for example, which is
Speaker 1: not always possible to do that. This suffering, like all
Speaker 1: my other sufferings, will will bear good fruit, right. I
Speaker 1: think the thing that's so interesting when we have these
Speaker 1: discussions about suffering and how it can be transformed and
Speaker 1: how it can bring all these beautiful things forward, all
Speaker 1: that is true, and yet when you're suffering, you are suffering.
Speaker 1: That's the part of the story that gets lost, is that,
Speaker 1: like the suffering is really you're going to be through that.
Speaker 1: It's I often think about that idea people say, like, well,
Speaker 1: when one door closes, another opens, you know. And I
Speaker 1: often joke yes, but nobody mentions the long dark hallway
Speaker 1: in between. And and that's kind of what the what
Speaker 1: the suffering is. And I think we can use it
Speaker 1: to transforms, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt
Speaker 1: like hell exactly. And I think that the two go
Speaker 1: hand and and that's what these stories about, the very
Speaker 1: human people who suffer, you know, and when they're suffering.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful story room is under the praise section
Speaker 1: about this musician called Alamaldine who's a who's depressive, you know.
Speaker 1: And he goes to his priest who tells him to pray,
Speaker 1: and and he doesn't believe the priest because he feels that,
Speaker 1: you know, the devil comes to him and says, you know,
Speaker 1: what are you mumbling in your beard for? Is there
Speaker 1: anybody who says, here I am when you pray to Allah,
Speaker 1: you know? And he's poor Jelamo. He says, no, I
Speaker 1: never heard him reply to any of my prayers to him.
Speaker 1: But towards the end of the story, and he has
Speaker 1: to go through horrific experiences to realize that hints crying
Speaker 1: out to God and God saying here I am is
Speaker 1: the same thing, you know, and from my own life,
Speaker 1: I know that if I remember to pray when I'm
Speaker 1: really suffering intensely, because what prayer does is it reminds
Speaker 1: you that there is another way to think. For example,
Speaker 1: whenever I'm going through really hard times, and that's what
Speaker 1: the third section is about, I remind myself, or try
Speaker 1: to remind myself, or to try to remind myself most
Speaker 1: of the time that this is the cosmic will, this
Speaker 1: is what is happening now. I can't change it. All
Speaker 1: I can do is accepted, and the accepting of it
Speaker 1: transforms it. Yeah, I was sort of touched in the
Speaker 1: book when you were talking about this acceptance and the
Speaker 1: challenge of this. You mentioned that it's challenging to get old,
Speaker 1: that accepting getting old is challenging. It's very challenging. I
Speaker 1: turned seventy one this here, and you know, my health
Speaker 1: is not what it used to be. My stamina, my
Speaker 1: intellectual acuity is not what it used to be. But
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as I find myself worrying about it,
Speaker 1: a bitching about it, it just gets worse. But like
Speaker 1: I was diagnosed with, you know, peripheral neuropathy, and there's
Speaker 1: really no cure to it. I just have to accept it.
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes my legs burn and and like
Speaker 1: today they're burning, and I just like, oh, you got
Speaker 1: you gotta just put up with it and do what
Speaker 1: you can, you know, spray them with all the sprays
Speaker 1: you've got and rub them or whatever. But you've gotta
Speaker 1: live with it. If you don't live with it, There's
Speaker 1: a wonderful story another Roomie stories about a woman whom
Speaker 1: you know, who doesn't like getting older at all, and
Speaker 1: how she tries. It's called the Witch of Kabul, and
Speaker 1: she tries to lure this young man you know, does
Speaker 1: the tremendous suffering that causes her inability to realize and
Speaker 1: Roomys quote from that is that when the candle of
Speaker 1: your youth dims, you have to light the candle of
Speaker 1: the spirit. You say in the book, if I don't
Speaker 1: actively assent to my aging, I am surrendering to despair
Speaker 1: and constant complaining to being an unhappy and an old hag,
Speaker 1: which which that the hag part makes me laugh, but
Speaker 1: but it's so true, Like if I don't surrender to this,
Speaker 1: then I'm surrendering to like you said, despair and constant complain.
Speaker 1: I thought that was just a beautiful way to say it. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, you surrender to one thing or the other,
Speaker 1: you know, So which one are you're going to surrender to?
Speaker 1: Which one are you going to feed? I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to your parable and and and to a cent
Speaker 1: to your life. The way it is, exactly the way
Speaker 1: it is, exactly the way it turned out, exactly the
Speaker 1: arc of your story. What didn't happen, what happened the
Speaker 1: dreams unfulfilled or the ambitions unfulfilled, or how much you
Speaker 1: achieved or did not achieve. You know, unless you say
Speaker 1: yes to it and embrace it fully, you're going to
Speaker 1: be unhappy. Yeah, I want to go back to something
Speaker 1: you said just a couple of minutes ago. And and
Speaker 1: I may not get this exactly right, but you said
Speaker 1: that that one of the characters in the story really lies,
Speaker 1: that crying out to God was the same as hearing God.
Speaker 1: You're crying out to God, and God saying here I
Speaker 1: am is the same thing. You know that, you know,
Speaker 1: let me give you my own example. You know, if
Speaker 1: I'm suffering intensely and I remember to pray, and I
Speaker 1: remember to just turn toward this higher power and myself
Speaker 1: and say could you help me please, you know, or
Speaker 1: say could you help me accept this because I can't
Speaker 1: change it? Or if I can't change it, could you
Speaker 1: help me to change it? Please? The process of here
Speaker 1: I am to help you start. You know, I firmly
Speaker 1: believe in the power of prayer, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: because as soon as you start praying, you've got a
Speaker 1: different perspective. You're not mired in your suffering. You're doing
Speaker 1: something about it. You're asking for help. You have recourse
Speaker 1: so to turn towards that which helps us to overcome
Speaker 1: are suffering, which we fall into periodically. Because you know,
Speaker 1: our lives are not linear. We never get to the
Speaker 1: point where where we are totally enlightened. Our life is circular,
Speaker 1: and it's it's like a spiral. And and and if
Speaker 1: you want to think of, you know, the access of
Speaker 1: the spiral as suffering or as God, then you're always
Speaker 1: moving either close to or moving further away from it.
Speaker 1: You're revolving around it all the time. And some some
Speaker 1: of these things are periodic. Some of these are tied
Speaker 1: to you know, the the atmosphere or the environment or
Speaker 1: the you know, the way the stars are aligned or whatever.
Speaker 1: We're connected to the vaster life that we inhabit. We're
Speaker 1: not just isolated creatures living our own little lives. We
Speaker 1: connect to do everything there is. We're connected to nature,
Speaker 1: were connected to the sky. We are connected to God
Speaker 1: if you want to call that energy, God or nature.
Speaker 1: Our love roomies other words for God is love. So
Speaker 1: that's why I said to remember to remember. That is
Speaker 1: the trick, because we know when we're suffering, we forget. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say, at one point in the book, I thought
Speaker 1: this was a was a great way to say it. Briefly,
Speaker 1: the examined life means that we not only think, but
Speaker 1: we also think about our thinking. And that's a little
Speaker 1: bit of what you're describing here. It's remembering to sort
Speaker 1: of look at our thoughts from a different perspective. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's first of all, realizing that you're in a bad
Speaker 1: place right now. You know you're not doing well, and
Speaker 1: and you you know, if you've lived the Examined life,
Speaker 1: you've developed techniques by now, like breathing or meditation, or
Speaker 1: stretching or going out for a war. All of these
Speaker 1: are very important because you know the physical and the
Speaker 1: mental and the psychic are on a continuum. You know.
Speaker 1: Then you remember that you have to do all these things.
Speaker 1: And the first step is recognition you're not in a
Speaker 1: good place, and the and the second step is to
Speaker 1: watch what you're doing to not be in that good place.
Speaker 1: You know. Sometimes you're either not accepting what's going on,
Speaker 1: or you're not embracing it, or you want something else
Speaker 1: instead of what you're getting, or you're you know, mired
Speaker 1: and your desires for this or that, this that and
Speaker 1: the other. And so, yes, what you said is true.
Speaker 1: So I think we're nearing the end of our time here.
Speaker 1: But I want to hit on something that you say
Speaker 1: in the book. I just I'll just read this paragraph
Speaker 1: because I think it ties us back to the wolves. Also,
Speaker 1: and you say, the ultimate Mary, the holy Union, we
Speaker 1: are told repeatedly by our guides, especially the pre eminent
Speaker 1: psychologist Carl Young, takes place in the Temple of our souls.
Speaker 1: It is the marriage between our lower and higher selves,
Speaker 1: between human and God. The goal of this marriage is
Speaker 1: not perfection, but wholeness. The human and the divine together
Speaker 1: form a whole. Well, that kind of says it. Uh
Speaker 1: and uh, And I don't think I could add to that,
Speaker 1: and perhaps just to say that this you know, just
Speaker 1: like when you love somebody, you stay connected to them, uh,
Speaker 1: and you make the effort to stay connected. So this
Speaker 1: is the love between the higher and the lower selves
Speaker 1: that keeps that connection and ends up in the marriage
Speaker 1: where you know the ultimate All our guides say is
Speaker 1: to live beyond pleasure and pain, is to live beyond
Speaker 1: suffering and and joy. It's it's it's to be in
Speaker 1: a place where you expect to do both and yet
Speaker 1: have cultivated the perspective where you know that this is
Speaker 1: going to pass, and everything, whether it's good or bad,
Speaker 1: is going to pass, and um, you will arrive at
Speaker 1: that axis around which you've been revolving all your life.
Speaker 1: You know, to have hope for this marriage is a
Speaker 1: wonderful hope to have and to strive towards the marriage
Speaker 1: is something we can do. The responsibility for it is
Speaker 1: ours right. I love that idea of the marriage between
Speaker 1: our higher and lower selves, between human and God. I've
Speaker 1: often heard people describe humans or a spiritual description is
Speaker 1: like we're part animal, we're part God, right, and and
Speaker 1: we're sort of in the middle. We're sort of stuck
Speaker 1: in the middle there, and we try and live out
Speaker 1: both those to the best of our ability. Yes, and
Speaker 1: we're not stuck in the middle. We sort of joined
Speaker 1: by these two if you if you'd like, yes, and
Speaker 1: to live at this node where we are joined. And
Speaker 1: there's something else in between animals and God, and that
Speaker 1: is human. And the human is the one that examines
Speaker 1: and changes his or her thinking. The human is the
Speaker 1: one that has the power to evolve, because it's ultimately
Speaker 1: all about our own personal evolution, which by the way,
Speaker 1: I firmly believe raises the evolution and consciousness of the planet.
Speaker 1: That's our responsibility is as human beings all the stages.
Speaker 1: Socrates says, know thyself, and the unexamined life is not
Speaker 1: worth living. And the other elements that we haven't even
Speaker 1: touched on is all you know, I mean, just think
Speaker 1: about the world you live, and think about the mystery.
Speaker 1: It's not just you look outside in the garden, look
Speaker 1: at the plants, look at the sky, look at the sun.
Speaker 1: And it's like Einstein says, you know, the person who
Speaker 1: doesn't feel all at this existence that we are here
Speaker 1: at this point in this time, and this body is
Speaker 1: like a snuffed out candle. So we don't want to
Speaker 1: be snuffed out candles. We want to do everything in
Speaker 1: our power to stay connected to the wonder of existence. Yes,
Speaker 1: I find that another great way to approach the divine
Speaker 1: is through just looking at the mystery that life is
Speaker 1: and just how tremendous it is. Like what's going on
Speaker 1: inside my body right now is so unbelievably complex. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is so much happening every second boom boom, I mean,
Speaker 1: trillions of chemical reactions. It's just staggering what all is
Speaker 1: going on right as I sit here and talk to you,
Speaker 1: that I'm not even doing any of it. It's just happening.
Speaker 1: And the fact that we have all our limbs, we've
Speaker 1: got fingers, you know. I mean, really, if you start
Speaker 1: counting your blessings from your toe upwards and how many
Speaker 1: things are working, That's one of the ways I think
Speaker 1: when I worry about, or think about or suffer about
Speaker 1: getting older, you know, look at how many things are
Speaker 1: working for Christ, you know, I mean, give thanks, give,
Speaker 1: you know, that's another very very important message that all
Speaker 1: the guides and the groups give us. Gratitude is the
Speaker 1: ultimate alchemy. As soon as you say Hey, thank you
Speaker 1: that I'm alive today. You know that I'm breathing at
Speaker 1: the very basic level and then count all all the
Speaker 1: other blessings. And that's one way it is not stay
Speaker 1: stuck in bitterness and and the suffering and in the
Speaker 1: contracted state. Yes, gratefulness is an expanding state for sure.
Speaker 1: If we can get ourselves there, it's the outflowing. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you Comla so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed this conversation. And we'll have links in
Speaker 1: the show notes to your book and um how people
Speaker 1: can find you online. So again, thanks so much. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed the book and I really enjoyed getting to
Speaker 1: talk with you. Thanks Eric, I was happy to be
Speaker 1: interviewed by you. I'm looking forward to hearing both of
Speaker 1: us talk. Yes, okay, wonderful. Thank you, Thank you. If
Speaker 1: what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider
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