Speaker 1: I have lots of thoughts during the day that land
Speaker 1: me in jail if I acted on them. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Our guest this week
Speaker 1: is Rabbi Ramie, a freelance theologian who makes his living
Speaker 1: writing and speaking. He has earned rabbinic ordination from Hebrew
Speaker 1: Union College and a PhD from Union Graduate School. He
Speaker 1: has created a synagogue, worked as a management consultant for
Speaker 1: Fortune five hundred companies, and as if he hasn't been
Speaker 1: busy enough, has also published about thirty books Rabbi Ramy
Speaker 1: writes a regular column in Spirituality and Health magazine, who
Speaker 1: we are proud to have as this episode sponsor. And
Speaker 1: before we get to the interview, I want to mention
Speaker 1: that in the past several weeks we've been talking a
Speaker 1: lot about the One You Feed coaching program. If you've
Speaker 1: been wondering whether or not the program is good for you,
Speaker 1: this may help. This is what Jessa, one of Eric's
Speaker 1: former coaching clients, said when asked who would benefit from
Speaker 1: signing up to be part of the program with Eric.
Speaker 1: Anyone who has sort of something that feels in surmountable,
Speaker 1: but yet they have this like little pocket of hope
Speaker 1: inside that they want to achieve. He's amazing for that.
Speaker 1: It's real, like it's it's coaching for Jesse, it's not
Speaker 1: just coaching, if that makes any sense, Like it wasn't
Speaker 1: generic at all. He can use his immense knowledge of
Speaker 1: you know, action, thoughts and feelings and sort of craft
Speaker 1: a really particular program. To learn more about the program,
Speaker 1: you can now visit the website. Just go to one
Speaker 1: new Feed dot net slash coaching and now here's the
Speaker 1: interview with Rabbi romy Hi. Rabbi romy welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks Erk, It is a pleasure to be on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm happy to have you on. You've done a
Speaker 1: lot of different things. You've written a lot of books.
Speaker 1: You write a column for Spirituality and Health magazine, who
Speaker 1: has been our sponsor this month, which we're very excited about.
Speaker 1: And you also have have written a lot of different
Speaker 1: things that I'm interested in, Perennial Wisdom, UM twelve step programs.
Speaker 1: I'm a recovering addict, and I noticed that, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the books you wrote was with Richard Roar,
Speaker 1: who I just very recently have really started getting into
Speaker 1: some of his writings. So this is this is a
Speaker 1: good conversation time for me. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: Let me just clarify something. So I didn't write the
Speaker 1: book with Richard Rore. He wrote the forward to the book.
Speaker 1: I don't want to but okay, I don't want to
Speaker 1: attach him to anything I said in case he doesn't
Speaker 1: agree with it. So you can only blame me for
Speaker 1: what I've written it. But he did right the forward.
Speaker 1: And I also, since Spirituality and Health is your sponsor
Speaker 1: this this time, I write the regular column Roadside Assistance
Speaker 1: for the Spiritual Traveler. I also run there UH weekly
Speaker 1: interview podcast that if people are interested in they can
Speaker 1: go to Spirituality Health dot com and subscribe not only
Speaker 1: to the magazine but to the weekly show. Excellent, and
Speaker 1: we'll have links on our show notes page too, UH
Speaker 1: Spirituality and Health Magazine to Rabbi Rama's UM radio show,
Speaker 1: his blog. UM you know some of his books. So
Speaker 1: let's start the show like we always do UM with
Speaker 1: the parable. There's a grandfather who says to his son,
Speaker 1: you know, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Okay, so let me start
Speaker 1: with full disclosure. I'm an o a over eaters anonymous,
Speaker 1: So much for the anonymous part, and I overeat. I
Speaker 1: feed them both. Yeah, I feed them both, whether I
Speaker 1: intend to or not, I feed them both. But you
Speaker 1: know that the parable of the two wolves strikes perfect
Speaker 1: parallel with the Jewish teaching that every person is born
Speaker 1: with two inclinations, one for good and one for evil.
Speaker 1: And the way the Rabbis describe it, if you don't feed,
Speaker 1: they don't use the feed metaphor. But if you if
Speaker 1: you don't feed the evil wolf, if you like, if
Speaker 1: you don't feed the evil inclination, you would never fall
Speaker 1: in love, you'd never be in a relationship, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have children, you wouldn't be involved in the community, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't run a business. And they're thinking, is that that
Speaker 1: aspect of our personality is the one that operates in
Speaker 1: the world and has to be informed by the good
Speaker 1: wolf or the good inclination. But it has to be fed.
Speaker 1: You can't starve that, otherwise you'd be a saint or
Speaker 1: a monk uh in cloister community somewhere, And even then
Speaker 1: you need some of that that bad wolf energy. So
Speaker 1: for us and for me personally, it isn't feeding one
Speaker 1: and starving the other. It's having the good wolf, teach
Speaker 1: the bad wolf how to behave, and then use the
Speaker 1: bad wolf's energy to do some good in the world.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting perspective, and we've we've come across
Speaker 1: that often, where it's this idea of it's not about
Speaker 1: starving one um, you know, it's about where you put
Speaker 1: your focus. But I really like that idea of one
Speaker 1: of them trying to teach the other. One of the
Speaker 1: things that you said recently, I'll read you said, I
Speaker 1: am a Jew because Judaism values argument and doubt over
Speaker 1: revelation and belief. And then you also said, I'm a
Speaker 1: Jew because Judaism doesn't tell me what to think, but
Speaker 1: teaches me how to think. Could you expound on that
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. I think that the core of
Speaker 1: Judaism is this ancient and ongoing argument about what is
Speaker 1: just and what is kind, as well as theological issues
Speaker 1: that that's not necessarily the Jewish focus, but it's the
Speaker 1: argument is between the Jew and the texts that we inherit,
Speaker 1: and between the Jew and the rabbis who have commented
Speaker 1: on these texts before us, and the Jew and everyone
Speaker 1: who has common thing on them now including your neighbor.
Speaker 1: But you know Judaism, we say to Chew's three opinions,
Speaker 1: you even argue with yourself. So our understanding is there
Speaker 1: is no final understanding. There is no final text, there
Speaker 1: is no final revelation. It's always in process of wisdom,
Speaker 1: always comes out in the process of dialogue. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we argue constantly and as soon in a traditional Jewish
Speaker 1: educational setting, as soon as you think you've got the answer,
Speaker 1: the work of the rabbi is too, which is a
Speaker 1: break up that that notion, and say, wait, here's the
Speaker 1: mother you know, here's some other nuances you may have missed.
Speaker 1: Wrestle with those. So our educational system at its best
Speaker 1: is not about filling your head with facts that you
Speaker 1: could google. But we're actually training you to be able
Speaker 1: to think critically, and I would say paradoxically. So critically
Speaker 1: as in you know, being able to challenge ideas, and
Speaker 1: paradoxically meaning that you can hold more than one idea
Speaker 1: in your head at the same time, even if those
Speaker 1: ideas are mutually exclusive. So just see if I can
Speaker 1: make this a little clearer. We have a saying of
Speaker 1: our entire pedagogy, our entire approach to education is wrapped
Speaker 1: up in this one saying from a couple of thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, a louva a lou devray Elohim Jim aluva
Speaker 1: a loui is your opinion and their opinion, no matter
Speaker 1: how mutually exclusive, are both devray Elohim him the words
Speaker 1: of the Living God, provided that both the opinion holders
Speaker 1: are trying to to ferret out the truth and not
Speaker 1: simply throw propaganda and try to control your thinking. And
Speaker 1: you know, as long as everyone is being authentic rather
Speaker 1: than deceptive, then radically different opinions are considered, are both considered?
Speaker 1: Are are all can cidered the words of the Living God?
Speaker 1: And your job as a student, if you like, is
Speaker 1: to hold as many of those in your head at
Speaker 1: the same time so you can argue every side of
Speaker 1: an argument. Because there's truth is so is so multifaceted.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of a story I heard recently, and
Speaker 1: I know you've spent a fair amount of time in
Speaker 1: uh studying Zen Buddhism, and one of the ideas is
Speaker 1: that there's a some monastery I heard has a at
Speaker 1: the gate. It has two stone lions that represent paradox
Speaker 1: and confusion, and they're considered the guardians of truth. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: though they may they may be the brother and sister
Speaker 1: of truth, you know, because truth truth is probably uh
Speaker 1: deeply paradoxical. Yeah. So you wrote the book Perennial Wisdom
Speaker 1: for the spiritually Independent. You're very much known for and
Speaker 1: and advocate a lot of inner faith type work. Um,
Speaker 1: what is perennial wisdom? What what does that mean? And
Speaker 1: what are some of maybe the key things that stand
Speaker 1: out as you look across these different traditions. So perennial
Speaker 1: wisdom is the notion that there is a core set
Speaker 1: of I don't know if you want to say spiritual
Speaker 1: ideas or philosophical ideas, but even psychological ideas, there's a
Speaker 1: core set of ideas that people rediscover over and over again.
Speaker 1: That's why it's perennial that lie at the heart of
Speaker 1: all mystical traditions. So when I say mystical, though I
Speaker 1: don't want to restrict that to religious. Mystical could be
Speaker 1: also scientific and you know, psychological. But by mystical I
Speaker 1: mean they cut to the truth itself without labeling it
Speaker 1: according to one system or another. And the heart of
Speaker 1: the perennial wisdom, the wisdom that is perennial. It's basically
Speaker 1: four things. First one is everything is a manifestation of
Speaker 1: one thing. So you can call the one thing God
Speaker 1: or nature or universe or great spirit or energy whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Uh. You know the Buddhist notion of pratt
Speaker 1: sam would potter that everything arises together or the Hindu
Speaker 1: noan and of of everything is a manifestation of Brahman.
Speaker 1: So everything is a manifestation of the one thing. That's
Speaker 1: the first point. The second point is people have the
Speaker 1: capacity to uh intuitively know this. I mean, we're part
Speaker 1: of it. We can know it. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not it's not something that you believe in, it's
Speaker 1: something you actually experience. The third thing is that we
Speaker 1: also have the capacity not to know it. And the
Speaker 1: fourth thing is the purpose of your life is to
Speaker 1: work through the capacity not to know it and achieve
Speaker 1: the knowledge of it as it does. That makes sense,
Speaker 1: it does. And so given that this is the idea
Speaker 1: of perennial wisdom, given that it crosses a lot of
Speaker 1: different traditions, um, and even outside of some traditions, I'm
Speaker 1: interested in you talk about spiritual maturity, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a term you use often, and you describe it as
Speaker 1: living life with ever deepening qualities of justice, compassion, curiosity,
Speaker 1: all wonder serenity, and humility, and those are all, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of wrap back up into that idea of perennial wisdom.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's better for us to be part
Speaker 1: of a tradition and find one tradition and go deep
Speaker 1: in it, or can people discover the perennial wisdom and
Speaker 1: become spiritually mature by pulling things out of each of
Speaker 1: the different traditions. Yeah, that's a very It's a perennial question,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you. In the interfaith world, the PC
Speaker 1: thing to say is that people should explore their own
Speaker 1: tradition and go deeply into it, and when you go
Speaker 1: deep enough into it, you will discover this perennial wisdom
Speaker 1: that resides at the heart of all of them. I
Speaker 1: don't disagree with that. I just wonder if anyone's going
Speaker 1: to go deeply enough into any tradition to get to
Speaker 1: this perennial universalism. I don't think that's how it works.
Speaker 1: I think that the purpose of you know, if you
Speaker 1: go deeply into Judaism, the purpose that set for you
Speaker 1: is to be more Jewish, not to become a perennialist. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, the more the more you study Catholicism, the
Speaker 1: goal of the teacher is to make you more Catholic
Speaker 1: and not not more universalist. So so yeah, you can
Speaker 1: do it that way if you really want to go deep, deep,
Speaker 1: deep into the mystical heart of any brand named religion.
Speaker 1: I think that's that is certainly a doable thing if
Speaker 1: you want to put the time and energy into it.
Speaker 1: I don't think everyone wants to, and I don't think
Speaker 1: most people would. So what about the opposite of just,
Speaker 1: you know, the notion of picking and choosing. So I
Speaker 1: would say this about about that number one, You're not
Speaker 1: picking and choosing. I'm not giving you an alternative. The
Speaker 1: perennial wisdom is perennial because it comes up over and
Speaker 1: over again. But it's the truth. It's wisdom. And so
Speaker 1: the four things I just mentioned, that's what you choose.
Speaker 1: It's it's a tradition in and of itself, but it's
Speaker 1: not something to to be believed in as much as
Speaker 1: something to be experience, instant lived. How you experience it,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's contemplative practice, and there I think you
Speaker 1: need to look at the world's contemplative practice traditions plural
Speaker 1: and see, maybe there's something in Buddhism that works for you,
Speaker 1: maybe it's something in Sufism that works for you, or
Speaker 1: Judaism or Catholicism or whoever, and and follow that. Or
Speaker 1: maybe it's a scientific practice using biofeedback. There are lots
Speaker 1: of ways to move beyond the delusion of an isolated
Speaker 1: self into the reality of the integrated capital r reality.
Speaker 1: Um So, so I think it's about practice and there
Speaker 1: you know, that's a matter of your personality, and then
Speaker 1: you can find the practices in in any tradition or
Speaker 1: you know, pulling from a number of traditions. So I
Speaker 1: think it can go each way either way. Personally, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm steeped in Judaism. I'm a rabbi, so it's my
Speaker 1: my foundational practice. But I integrate a lot of the
Speaker 1: things into my daily spiritual practice. And the only part
Speaker 1: of Judaism that speaks to me is the part that
Speaker 1: either actually reflects or the part that I can turn
Speaker 1: into a mirror of the premial wisdom that we just
Speaker 1: talked about. So in the end, however you do it,
Speaker 1: you all end up in the same place. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a a teaching in and of itself, right.
Speaker 1: So I'm familiar with UM a lot of the Buddhist
Speaker 1: practices of meditation, of mindfulness, UM, of various different meditations.
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with some of the Catholic contemplative practices, but
Speaker 1: I'm not very familiar at all with what are some
Speaker 1: of the contemplative practices within Judaism. Is are those something
Speaker 1: you could describe in a in a couple of minutes
Speaker 1: to at least give me, you know, in the listeners
Speaker 1: a flavor of what those are and what those look like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think well, first of all, let me say that
Speaker 1: practice is always rooted in the body, and since humans
Speaker 1: share a similar physiology, all practices are basically variations on
Speaker 1: a theme. Whether you're praying to Krishna or you're praying
Speaker 1: to Christ. The act of prayer is probably not that
Speaker 1: it's not different and what you say is different, but
Speaker 1: the physiological physiology of it is the same. So basically
Speaker 1: contemplary practice works with breath, whether we're talking about repeating
Speaker 1: a mantra or chanting names of God, or walking or
Speaker 1: sitting and counting your breaths like you might do in
Speaker 1: his end center. So the Jewish ones are just variations
Speaker 1: on that. So, for example, we have mantra practice in Judaism.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different mantram that you can recite,
Speaker 1: but one that I do on a regular basis. I
Speaker 1: do a number of them, but but every day I
Speaker 1: recite Ha Rachaman, the compassionate one as a it's a
Speaker 1: one of the attributes of the Divine and it's a
Speaker 1: way of cultivating that quality in myself. Uh. There's there's
Speaker 1: one that I use all the every day, an owed
Speaker 1: mil Vado. It's from the Book of Deteronomy. It literally
Speaker 1: means there is nothing beside Him, and the context is
Speaker 1: there's no other God but God, sort of lahlah ila la.
Speaker 1: But in the mystical tradition it means there's nothing but
Speaker 1: God an oede mil vado, there's nothing outside of the Divine,
Speaker 1: the same way the Sufi's interpret the no, No, there's
Speaker 1: no God but Allah. There's nothing but Allah. There's nothing
Speaker 1: but God. There's nothing but this capital our reality. Everything
Speaker 1: is a part of that. So so there's montra practice.
Speaker 1: You can do that all the time. There's the practice
Speaker 1: of what's called heat bode de doute, where you isolate
Speaker 1: means to isolate, you separate yourself. You find solitude from
Speaker 1: the world. Rabbi Nachman in the seventeen eighteen early eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred said, do it out in the meadow now where
Speaker 1: I live. Finding a meadow is not that easy, but
Speaker 1: you know, go out into nature, get away from the
Speaker 1: noise of the world. And he suggests you do this
Speaker 1: at night, but get away from the noise of the
Speaker 1: world for an hour a day and just have a
Speaker 1: conversation with your higher self, your higher power, your God,
Speaker 1: so you know. And then there's prayer. Then there's silent meditation,
Speaker 1: just just sitting and and uh. It says in the
Speaker 1: Book of Lamentations, for example, it says, sit in solitude
Speaker 1: and be silent. And Isaiah says, be calm, still and fearless,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole be still in no kind of
Speaker 1: kind of notion. So Judaism has sitting practice and has
Speaker 1: walking meditation, it has mantra practice, prayer practice, as does
Speaker 1: every other tradition. Because you know, people invented them and
Speaker 1: this is what works for us, you know, for humans.
Speaker 1: So the contemplative approaches across the religions. You you can
Speaker 1: find a unifying theme across those also really around the body,
Speaker 1: around the breath, around awareness and attention. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely true. And that's why when you get contemplatives
Speaker 1: together from different traditions, they only grow closer because it
Speaker 1: isn't the theologs. They've already gotten beyond their theology. They
Speaker 1: know that theology is simply a reflection of a culture's
Speaker 1: a tribe, self identification markers. It's you know, when when
Speaker 1: you say I'm never surprised that a Rabbi comes to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that the Jews are the chosen people, I
Speaker 1: would be shocked and far more, far more impressed if
Speaker 1: a rabbi could show me in the Torah where it
Speaker 1: says the Hopies are the chosen people. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: never surprised when a Catholic theologian discovers that Christ is
Speaker 1: the second person of the Trinity rather than Krishna. So
Speaker 1: so those things contemplatives get beyond, I think very quickly,
Speaker 1: and we realized that's just it's just the marketing of
Speaker 1: the brand name religion. But contemplative practice takes you beyond that,
Speaker 1: and it's in that I don't know, we call that
Speaker 1: that world beyond those those slogans, that we find ourselves
Speaker 1: on common ground. That's an interesting perspective that contemplatives are
Speaker 1: better able to um to talk to each other and
Speaker 1: get closer across traditions. That reminds me of We had
Speaker 1: a guest on the show who in a completely different context,
Speaker 1: but said something that has stuck with me ever since,
Speaker 1: and she said, if you take the time to go
Speaker 1: deep in you know, it's about taking conversational risks with people.
Speaker 1: If you take the time to go deep, you can
Speaker 1: connect with a lot of people because underneath it all,
Speaker 1: we're really all the same. But if you stay up
Speaker 1: on the surface, it can be very difficult to connect
Speaker 1: because everybody's got a different surface. And I just thought
Speaker 1: that was really profound, And that's kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much exactly what you're saying here. If you
Speaker 1: go deeper into any of these traditions, you find that
Speaker 1: perennial wisdom. I absolutely agree with that. I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to discount the surface differences. I think that's what makes
Speaker 1: things interesting. You know, if everyone looked like me, that
Speaker 1: would be very boring. Everyone, you know, and our thought
Speaker 1: like me, etcetera. So I like the differences, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the contemplative practices take us to another place where we
Speaker 1: I think, if you practice them diligently, you do you
Speaker 1: come to this, this common ground, this common wisdom, this
Speaker 1: per new wisdom. One of the challenges you mentioned in
Speaker 1: the beginning the notion of interfaith. Like you said, I
Speaker 1: do a lot of interfaith work, and one of the
Speaker 1: problems with interfaith is its shallowness. You know, you can
Speaker 1: get representatives from different religions together and we're all on
Speaker 1: a panel, and this is just one kind of interfaith gathering.
Speaker 1: There are others that are much more effective. But you
Speaker 1: get you get this panel of people. You know, you
Speaker 1: to have your resident Catholic and a Protestant, and you know,
Speaker 1: a Muslim and a Jew and a Hindo in a
Speaker 1: Buddhist or you know whatever, the high person and you
Speaker 1: go down the line and each person tells you the
Speaker 1: key elements of her or his religion and everyone nods like, oh,
Speaker 1: isn't that lovely? And we all agree and we're gonna
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a big Kumbaya moment. When in
Speaker 1: fact act, you know, if if when Jew if I
Speaker 1: was doing it, you know I would. I usually start
Speaker 1: out by saying, well, look here's what Judaism says, and
Speaker 1: all the rest of you are wrong. It's not like
Speaker 1: Judaism is is liberal and so or we everyone everyone
Speaker 1: is right. That's a that's a modern interfaith conceit. The
Speaker 1: truth is Catholicism thinks it's right. It doesn't think Hinduism
Speaker 1: is right. Judaism doesn't think Catholicism is right or Islam
Speaker 1: is right. So there's that shallowness that is obsessed with just,
Speaker 1: you know, grinning our way through our differences, rather than
Speaker 1: actually taking them on, finding out what's interesting about them,
Speaker 1: because I think they are interesting and they're worth knowing
Speaker 1: on intellectual level, but then going deeper and saying, okay,
Speaker 1: let's now stop talking. Let's see what happens when we
Speaker 1: spend the rest of the day in silence, and then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about where we you know, each of us
Speaker 1: practicing our contemplative the contemplative practices in our religion, and
Speaker 1: then see where that takes us. The problem is so
Speaker 1: many people are ignorant of the deep contemplative practices that
Speaker 1: exist in their traditions. I mean, I spent ten years
Speaker 1: teaching comparative religion at university level, and I'm I was,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not shocked every year because you
Speaker 1: get used to it, but disappointed every year that so
Speaker 1: many of my students, and I'm in the Bible Belt,
Speaker 1: so many of my students knew only the most superficial
Speaker 1: level of their own Protestant tradition. They didn't know anything
Speaker 1: about um contemplative practice, even though it's in their Christianity.
Speaker 1: No one ever taught it to him. And and that's
Speaker 1: a that's a real shame. I think people have been
Speaker 1: robbed of the depth of their tradition even as we're
Speaker 1: being sold the surface. I think someone called you a
Speaker 1: holy rascal, and it sounds like there's an organization or
Speaker 1: a project around that. What is a holy rascal? Sister
Speaker 1: jose Hobday, who was was used to cease now a
Speaker 1: Catholic nun and a Native American elder and medicine woman.
Speaker 1: She was at one of my talks and jumped up
Speaker 1: in the back of the room and said, he's a
Speaker 1: holy rascal and it and it's stuck. Uh. Yeah, holy
Speaker 1: rascal is somebody who's uses satire and humor and the
Speaker 1: audacity of I don't want to say the audac City
Speaker 1: of Hope because maybe because audacity to point out the
Speaker 1: fact that the emperor has no clothes. I mean our
Speaker 1: our mascot is a total from the movie version of
Speaker 1: The Wizard of Oz when the little dog pulls the
Speaker 1: curtain away from the wizard and the wizard says, pay
Speaker 1: no attention to the man behind the curtain. Well, to me,
Speaker 1: religion is much of religion, especially the surface end, is
Speaker 1: simply a little man, and I mean man, a little
Speaker 1: man with a big megaphone, making lots of noise and
Speaker 1: scaring people. And what a holy rascal does is said, look,
Speaker 1: this is don't be afraid of this. You know, let's
Speaker 1: pulls the curtain back on on that aspect of religion
Speaker 1: in order to free people from that, to help engage
Speaker 1: them in the deeper contemplative side of things. It's there
Speaker 1: is a website holy rascals dot com. It's got a
Speaker 1: lot of video interviews with people I consider holy rascals.
Speaker 1: There's a book in the works and a six hour
Speaker 1: c D class and how to be a only Rascal.
Speaker 1: All that I think is coming out will eventually come
Speaker 1: out with sounds true over the next couple of years. Excellent.
Speaker 1: I like. I like the term. Let's change directions a
Speaker 1: little bit, and let's talk a little bit about UM recovery.
Speaker 1: You wrote a book on recovery. UM, you know about
Speaker 1: twelve step recovery and how that applies not just to
Speaker 1: people who have addictions, although you've got a line early
Speaker 1: on that says, twelve step recovery is about freeing yourself
Speaker 1: from playing God. And since almost everyone is addicted to
Speaker 1: this game, you know this applies to everyone. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by freeing ourselves from playing God? What what
Speaker 1: is that addiction we have? Yeah? Well, Bill w says
Speaker 1: in the Big Book, the first thing you have to
Speaker 1: do is stop playing God. Stop imagining that you can
Speaker 1: be in control of your life. And that's the addiction,
Speaker 1: is that I'm in charge of of Even if if
Speaker 1: you just say, oh, just my little world, but I'm
Speaker 1: in charge of my little world. The only way that
Speaker 1: you can man hang that illusion is by trying to
Speaker 1: control everybody else that that comes into your orbit. So
Speaker 1: the addiction is to control, controlling myself, controlling everyone else,
Speaker 1: so that whatever my delusion is, it plays out the
Speaker 1: way I think it should play out, and since that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, it's never possible. Uh. We try, you know,
Speaker 1: we do. We do more and more crazy things to
Speaker 1: try to hold on to that illusion rather than give
Speaker 1: up the illusion. And I think that what twelve step
Speaker 1: does is it helps people see that addiction to control
Speaker 1: as an illness, as a dissease and drop it, let
Speaker 1: go of it, turn it over to your higher power,
Speaker 1: you know, the way twelve step works. I am a
Speaker 1: fan of twelve Step. I know lots of people think
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. They look at the statistics the show
Speaker 1: that only a small percentage of people who are in
Speaker 1: program actually benefit or or become free of their addictions.
Speaker 1: I don't know how accurate those just stistics are, but
Speaker 1: I know that one of the things that plays into
Speaker 1: that is the fact that a lot of twelve Step
Speaker 1: programs are mandatory, are mandated by the court system, and
Speaker 1: the person going into it is just going into it
Speaker 1: because it's better to do that than go to jail
Speaker 1: as opposed to being ready to be in a program.
Speaker 1: So my bias, if you like, is I think that
Speaker 1: Bill Wilson was one of the great spiritual teachers of
Speaker 1: the twentieth sanctuary, and that twelve step as a universal practice,
Speaker 1: not just for alcoholics or any anyone with a named addiction, uh,
Speaker 1: but anyone who realizes that they need to overcome the
Speaker 1: addiction to control could benefit from twelve step practice. Yep.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I know. Twelve step programs saved my life,
Speaker 1: so I have a I have a bias towards them,
Speaker 1: certainly in some regards. And in the book you said
Speaker 1: that you also recognize the limitations of twelve step programs.
Speaker 1: What do you think some of those limitations are? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, where does it where does it stop? Or
Speaker 1: where does it what areas does it fall short? Well,
Speaker 1: I think, like any program, you can become addicted to
Speaker 1: the program, and so then it's just uh circular, you know,
Speaker 1: because because it's like any of religion, the more Jewish
Speaker 1: I become, the more Jewish I become, and I never
Speaker 1: get out of the label system of Judaism. The same
Speaker 1: thing with twelve stuff, and people make it into an
Speaker 1: orthodoxy in it itself, and and and and then we
Speaker 1: could talk about other things if you're interested. For example,
Speaker 1: the whole notion of God, of my understanding is very tricky.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because because the God of my understanding is
Speaker 1: simply my ego coming up with some kind of self
Speaker 1: serving theology. I think that at the heart, I think
Speaker 1: that that what Bill did, Bill w did is what
Speaker 1: all great gurus do. They put you in a double bind,
Speaker 1: and which means you're damned if you're doing you're damned
Speaker 1: if you don't. And when you when you're stuck with
Speaker 1: that and you know there's no out, you discovered that
Speaker 1: the problem is in the game you're playing, and you
Speaker 1: can stop playing the game. You can't win the game.
Speaker 1: To stop playing the game, you can't win the game
Speaker 1: of control. And twelve step can be another way to
Speaker 1: control things. Oh, I'm gonna turn my problem into my
Speaker 1: higher power. But my higher power is just my my
Speaker 1: own imagination, and so that doesn't really work. Eventually, you
Speaker 1: have to deconstruct the whole system. And then you turn
Speaker 1: your your will over to something you can't name, which
Speaker 1: is you know, I don't know, you want to say God,
Speaker 1: you want to say whatever you want to say, but
Speaker 1: something you can't name. And when you're no no longer
Speaker 1: in the game of control, then the need to control
Speaker 1: just stops. You know a couple of thoughts there we
Speaker 1: could probably go on this topic for a long time. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I got sober originally and had almost ten
Speaker 1: years sober, and I struggled that whole time with God
Speaker 1: of my understanding or I just wrestled with those concepts
Speaker 1: a lot, and I think I forced myself to leave
Speaker 1: certain things that didn't really work. Um. And then after
Speaker 1: ten years, I went back out and I drank, and
Speaker 1: I did that for a couple of years, and I've
Speaker 1: been back, you know, sober for about eight years. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I came back, I had to be really
Speaker 1: like for myself, I had to sort of honor the
Speaker 1: idea that I have no idea what that god or
Speaker 1: higher power is, but that if I stopped clutching so
Speaker 1: tightly like I'm gonna, you know, turn things over, what
Speaker 1: are you turn it over to? And I realized it
Speaker 1: almost doesn't matter in my case because it's the clutching
Speaker 1: that makes me sick. You really got to what I
Speaker 1: was pointing at, and maybe I guess wasn't as clear,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you have no idea what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: So can you can you turn it over to? I
Speaker 1: don't know? Right? That's the ultimate liberation that the opening
Speaker 1: line of the Doo Dijan. You know, the loud suits
Speaker 1: philosophical text is that any doo, the doo that can
Speaker 1: be named, is not the eternal dow. So any God
Speaker 1: you can imagine, isn't it. So I give up, right,
Speaker 1: you know, And and when I give up that theological game,
Speaker 1: then yes, then it's it's lifted, it's turned over, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's over. Whatever you want to say,
Speaker 1: the same thing with Job, you know, Job in the book,
Speaker 1: in the Bible of the Book of Job, Job has
Speaker 1: this notion of what God is supposed to be, and
Speaker 1: in the end God just blows all of his theology
Speaker 1: to pieces. And while most ingless translations end the book
Speaker 1: with Job repenting in dust and ash like he's groveling
Speaker 1: on the ground, the Hebrew is much more nuanced, and
Speaker 1: it really says that I find comfort in being dust
Speaker 1: and ash and being mortal and being in a state
Speaker 1: of I don't know. And that state of I don't
Speaker 1: know is what all the contemplatives end up with. You know,
Speaker 1: you go through that dark night of the soul when
Speaker 1: your ideologies and isms and all that is being stripped
Speaker 1: away from you, and you end up in this I
Speaker 1: don't know place. Um, it's it's Jesus on the cross
Speaker 1: when he says a lee a lee lama, sabachtani, my God,
Speaker 1: My God, why have you forsaken me? Because the God
Speaker 1: he had in mind isn't panning out, and so he
Speaker 1: has to let that go. And there's that moment of
Speaker 1: I don't want that to happen. But you know, the
Speaker 1: universe is so constructed that if you allow it, it's
Speaker 1: your idea is a stripped from you and you end
Speaker 1: up in this don't no place. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the Zen master, but
Speaker 1: the book is called only don't know uh, And there's
Speaker 1: a so you know, it's a pretty common Zen idea.
Speaker 1: There's a Zen saying that says, seek not after truth,
Speaker 1: cease only to hold opinions. And it's the same thing
Speaker 1: being that I don't know. Ye, that's very liberating. Joseph
Speaker 1: Campbell has that quote I won't get exactly right, but
Speaker 1: that basically God is a metaphor. You know, God is
Speaker 1: always just a metaphor for things that go beyond any
Speaker 1: possible intellectual understanding, right right, Because it's it's the DOUO
Speaker 1: that can't be named. Yeah, back to the interview. Another
Speaker 1: thing with twelve step programs that I personally have wrestled
Speaker 1: with is because I agree with you about the addiction
Speaker 1: of control and all that, and yet, like anything in life, right,
Speaker 1: it seems like there there are extremes. And one of
Speaker 1: the things I wrestled with was in the you know
Speaker 1: recovery programs is just said over and over, acceptance is
Speaker 1: the answer to all your problems. Acceptance is the answer.
Speaker 1: Acceptance is the answer. And in my particular case, what
Speaker 1: I found it was easy to do was to take
Speaker 1: that and allow sort of a um, a nature of
Speaker 1: mind to sort of avoid, or a nature of mind
Speaker 1: to just blow things off and and and and not care.
Speaker 1: And I was able to take that and sort of
Speaker 1: wrap that in the cloak of acceptance. And for myself,
Speaker 1: I had to get more into you know, I had
Speaker 1: to more look more at the Serenity prayer about you know,
Speaker 1: there are things I need to have the courage to change.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the one of the key pieces
Speaker 1: of wisdom in life is how do you know what
Speaker 1: you can't control and what you can And is there
Speaker 1: any guidelines that that you have or ways you think
Speaker 1: through that. Yeah, I think that's all I do. So
Speaker 1: I have all kinds of thoughts on it. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so when I think of the acceptance now, and I
Speaker 1: think of it in terms of I don't, there won't
Speaker 1: be anything to change unless I accept what what is.
Speaker 1: So so it's the radical acceptance of reality. And reality
Speaker 1: is I'm not in control, or reality is I've got
Speaker 1: these two wolves battling it out in my head. You know,
Speaker 1: one says eat this and the other one says, don't
Speaker 1: eat that. And as I'm standing in front of the
Speaker 1: open refrigerator watching these two wolves, you know, tear each
Speaker 1: other's throats out before I can decide whether to eat
Speaker 1: it or not eat it. If I can, and and
Speaker 1: this is I'm sort of making this metaphoric, but this
Speaker 1: is literal for me. I can I can accept the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm standing in front of the open refrigerator
Speaker 1: looking for something to eat. That it's not that I
Speaker 1: want a carrot. I mean I want junk food. So
Speaker 1: looking for junk food. If I can accept that and
Speaker 1: not judge it, just say, oh, here's the reality. Here's
Speaker 1: my here's my reality. At the moment I'm standing here again,
Speaker 1: I find that I can walk away from it without
Speaker 1: having either wolf when it's just having accepted that truth
Speaker 1: about me, I'm no longer trying to change it, and
Speaker 1: I'm no longer uh controlled by it. So so that
Speaker 1: that's one thing, and then the other thing is how
Speaker 1: do you know what you can and cannot change? That's
Speaker 1: really tough. I mean, I don't want to say that
Speaker 1: I have any idea how to answer that. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of me says you are in control of nothing,
Speaker 1: so you can't change anything, But that makes no sense
Speaker 1: because you obviously make changes all the time. So so
Speaker 1: we have to really go into I don't mean intellectually,
Speaker 1: I mean really sit in silence and look to see
Speaker 1: what I have where I can make changes and where
Speaker 1: I can't. But the notion of change is what Buckminster
Speaker 1: Fuller called trim tabbing. So you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're familiar with the word trim taber listeners are.
Speaker 1: But in the old days, Buckminster Fuller is, you know,
Speaker 1: five thousand years old, and and when he was in
Speaker 1: the merchant Marine, he was on ships that they didn't
Speaker 1: have the hydraulics that contemporary ships have or that airplanes have.
Speaker 1: So in order to turn the rudder. You just couldn't
Speaker 1: turn the rudder on these big chips because the pressure
Speaker 1: of the sea is too great. No one's strong enough
Speaker 1: to do that. So you have these little baby rudders,
Speaker 1: as he explained it to me. Why it's a little
Speaker 1: baby rudders called trim tabs, and they're tiny. You can
Speaker 1: turn those and they shift the pressure of the water
Speaker 1: against the big rudder and make enough of those little
Speaker 1: trim tab changes, then you can turn the big rudder.
Speaker 1: So he said, um, I think this is a quote
Speaker 1: from him, live your life as a trim tab or
Speaker 1: my life is a trim tab something like that. But
Speaker 1: but the idea is, Okay, I don't have to make
Speaker 1: the big changes. Yeah, that's not in my control. But
Speaker 1: where's the trim tab I can turn. That's brilliant And
Speaker 1: I think he is brilliant. And I can give you
Speaker 1: examples though you may not want them, but I can
Speaker 1: give you examples of little trim tab changes that I
Speaker 1: have made in my life with people that have changed
Speaker 1: the relationships drastically. Yeah. Well, I mean that's a very
Speaker 1: common theme on this show and a very common theme
Speaker 1: in the work that I do with people. And behavior
Speaker 1: change is starting small? Is you know doing you know?
Speaker 1: And you you know. I'm always amazed, I would say,
Speaker 1: amazed by what you know? A series of small steps
Speaker 1: taking consistently amounts to yeah, so yeah, I'd be I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear a couple of the ones that have
Speaker 1: been effective for you, your your trim tabs. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you. I'll give you one because it's the easiest
Speaker 1: to articulate and the easiest for people to grasp who
Speaker 1: don't don't know me, but would know the situation. So
Speaker 1: my dad and I my dad passed away in March.
Speaker 1: Last March. My dad and I had a very troubled relationship,
Speaker 1: with very distant relationship. I wasn't the boy he wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, he wanted a jock and he got a nerd.
Speaker 1: So most of our lives together were with my mother mediating.
Speaker 1: So you know, when I moved away, I went to
Speaker 1: college and all that, I would call mom. A good
Speaker 1: Jewish boy, I would call home every week, but I
Speaker 1: would my dad would always answer the phone because dads
Speaker 1: who were born in the thirties are in charge of
Speaker 1: the phone in the car and whatever else. He had
Speaker 1: always answered the phone. Here my voice us say is
Speaker 1: everything okay? And if I said yes, um, he said okay,
Speaker 1: here's your mother. If I said no, then he was
Speaker 1: basically going to a tirade, what's wrong with you? Why
Speaker 1: isn't everything okay? Right? So we didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of long heart to heart talks. Then my mother, and
Speaker 1: this is quite a while ago, my mother years ago,
Speaker 1: my mother went deaf almost completely. Phone is very difficult
Speaker 1: for her. So I had to start talking to my dad.
Speaker 1: And these were very difficult conversations, not because we were
Speaker 1: talking about anything, difficult because because we couldn't talk. And
Speaker 1: I was practicing and I still do, but I was
Speaker 1: practicing at the time. Meta meditation m e t T
Speaker 1: a loving kindness meditation from the Buddhist tradition where you
Speaker 1: just recognize that everyone is you know, we're all both
Speaker 1: those on this bus, and you're praying for one another
Speaker 1: to have peace and harmony and etcetera. And so I
Speaker 1: have a way that I do it based on the
Speaker 1: Jewish approach to it. And I was praying to or
Speaker 1: for my dad, saying in my imagination, may you be
Speaker 1: free from fear, May you be free from compulsion, May
Speaker 1: you be blessed with love. May you be blessed with peace.
Speaker 1: That's my Jewish version of meta practice. And the longer
Speaker 1: I did it, I realized my dad was afraid. He
Speaker 1: grew up in a time through the Depression and then
Speaker 1: World War Two, and he was a very frightened guy,
Speaker 1: very strong, very capable, very courageous, but the world was
Speaker 1: a very dangerous place and you had to survive. And
Speaker 1: survive he defined as basically, you had to have a
Speaker 1: certain income, and you know, because that's that was the thing,
Speaker 1: is money, because the depression. Baby. So so the more
Speaker 1: I realized that he was he was a frightened guy,
Speaker 1: the more I realized that his anger, because he was
Speaker 1: a very angry guy, was driven by fear based in
Speaker 1: his own experience ends. So the more I could I
Speaker 1: could feel his trap and more I could recognize my
Speaker 1: own traps, the more compassion I had on both of us.
Speaker 1: And then to make a long star shorts. So one
Speaker 1: conversation I ended it with I love you, which we
Speaker 1: didn't say to one another, and he responded with this,
Speaker 1: and it was spontaneous on my part, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: a stage thing. It just came out. And then he
Speaker 1: responded and sounded to me just as authentic and as
Speaker 1: spontaneous with I love you too. And you could almost
Speaker 1: you know this I'm making up, but you could hear
Speaker 1: the tumblers click and the relationship reconstitute itself on a
Speaker 1: different level. And the trim tab was I guess two things.
Speaker 1: I mean, the practice was meta, but the trim tab
Speaker 1: was just saying I love you at the right time,
Speaker 1: right after a lot of practice, so I could say
Speaker 1: it with authenticity, and he must, in his own way,
Speaker 1: have been ready as well. So that's a tiny thing
Speaker 1: to say in a conversation, and yet it changed the
Speaker 1: whole relationship. And for years we've had a very close relationship.
Speaker 1: And when he died, he died while I was there,
Speaker 1: and and you know, we were very close up to
Speaker 1: and including his last breath. I'm interested in how that
Speaker 1: relationship continued to transform. So you you and you have
Speaker 1: this moment of sort of mutual acknowledgement between you two
Speaker 1: about about love for each other. My experience has been
Speaker 1: that people that I found it traditionally difficult to talk
Speaker 1: to that doesn't just vanish. So how did that part
Speaker 1: of it evolve over time? How did you and your
Speaker 1: father get better at communicating, um, given that you didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of history doing it. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, not sure exactly how to answer that, because
Speaker 1: I don't know better at communicating that. Our problem was
Speaker 1: we we're always talking to that image of the other
Speaker 1: and never to the other. And with that, you know,
Speaker 1: trim tab shift thing going on. It was immediate and
Speaker 1: it was permanent. And then I just started talking to
Speaker 1: my dad and then I guess became curious. Before I
Speaker 1: was defensive, then I got compassionate, and then I became curious,
Speaker 1: So who is this guy? What was his life like?
Speaker 1: How did he get to be the guy he is?
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I think I have to
Speaker 1: imagine this. I think he had the same curiosity about me,
Speaker 1: and um, I didn't take any course and how to
Speaker 1: have a difficult conversation. It wasn't anything like that, right,
Speaker 1: It was just talking to him as opposed to talking
Speaker 1: to my image of him, which was always very hurtful
Speaker 1: and uh, you know negative. It seems that a lot
Speaker 1: of us have two responses to emotion. One is sort
Speaker 1: of an indulgence in the emotion, which is we we
Speaker 1: wallow in it, we feel sad, we get depressed, we
Speaker 1: don't do what we need we need to do, we
Speaker 1: can you know, we drink like crazy, we you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And then the other is sort of
Speaker 1: a you know, more of a repression, which I would
Speaker 1: say you you sort of alluded to it a little
Speaker 1: bit with you know, you use twelve step where you
Speaker 1: can use twelve step programs as a way of doing this,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the spiritual bypass or that you
Speaker 1: know everything is okay. So there's there's clearly two sort
Speaker 1: of extremes to this, and it's it seems obvious that
Speaker 1: the answer is somewhere in the middle. How do you
Speaker 1: think about that idea of finding the right balance between
Speaker 1: indulging and repressing our emotions? Okay, so I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know about balance. I can tell you what
Speaker 1: what I think about emotions. I think that emotions are
Speaker 1: beyond my control feelings. I don't control my feelings. By
Speaker 1: the time I know what I'm feeling, I'm already feeling.
Speaker 1: It may not be what I want to feel, but
Speaker 1: I'm already feeling it. I think that the approach to
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings ought to be And this may sound
Speaker 1: a little distant or whatever. But my my approach of
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings is observe them. Uh, there is I'm
Speaker 1: a sort of I'm a follower of Ramana Maharshi and
Speaker 1: this that I think there is an eye behind the
Speaker 1: egoic eye that I ident fi with and that I'm
Speaker 1: that I is always active, it's always observing, but I
Speaker 1: tend to ignore it and focus in on the feelings
Speaker 1: or the thoughts I'm having and identify with those. When
Speaker 1: I step back and ask, like he would know, I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing him and say, Okay, who's feeling this? You know
Speaker 1: where trace the emotion back? Or who's having this thought?
Speaker 1: I realized there's a a dimension of myself that isn't
Speaker 1: feeling that, that is just watching that feeling arise from
Speaker 1: the psycho physiology of my you know, my being in
Speaker 1: a certain situation. So so I don't try to control
Speaker 1: the feelings. I don't try to repress them, and I
Speaker 1: don't try to indulge them. I just want to watch them.
Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes I think people said, well, that
Speaker 1: makes you very cold, but I don't think that's what happens.
Speaker 1: I think what happens is once Once you know that
Speaker 1: you're not attached to or controlled by your thoughts or feelings,
Speaker 1: you're free to let them go wherever they want to
Speaker 1: go without letting them, uh necessarily express themselves. So I
Speaker 1: have lots of thoughts during the day that would land
Speaker 1: me in jail if I acted on them, right, so
Speaker 1: I don't repress them and they don't. I don't get
Speaker 1: mad about myself and thinking them because I didn't actually
Speaker 1: think them. I just noticed they were being thought. So
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, look, there's that stupid thought again. How
Speaker 1: how interesting is that? Or there's that feeling of anger
Speaker 1: or sadness or whatever. It is just being aware mindful
Speaker 1: if that's sort of the current term, but being mindful
Speaker 1: of these things and realizing simply by being mindful that
Speaker 1: the mindful me is not caught up in either the
Speaker 1: thoughts or the feelings that I'm watching. And that's that's
Speaker 1: what I try to do. Don't say I'm always good
Speaker 1: at it, but that's what I try to do. And
Speaker 1: then I find my life is much more emotionally rich
Speaker 1: because now I don't have to shut down those feelings
Speaker 1: even if they're inappropriate, because I don't act on them.
Speaker 1: Because I get to observe them and don't think that
Speaker 1: there I license to do anything thoughts or fields for
Speaker 1: that man. Yeah, that's a that's a big thing we had.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with David Reynolds. He
Speaker 1: my teacher, my friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so he has
Speaker 1: a he has yeah, he constructive living. It was a
Speaker 1: brilliant book. It was a great interview. And the thing
Speaker 1: he said that it really hit me, um, was that
Speaker 1: when you have control of your behavior, you don't have
Speaker 1: to be afraid of your emotions anymore. And as a
Speaker 1: recovering addict, that kind of blew me away, right, because
Speaker 1: when I didn't have control of my behavior, a negative
Speaker 1: emotion was you know, life threatening. And now that that's
Speaker 1: not the case, it's easier too. It's still not easy,
Speaker 1: but I'm better able to do kind of what you
Speaker 1: did and give you know, give the emotion a little space,
Speaker 1: not treated as an emergency, um, and let it breathe
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. I think that. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: studied with him. I think he's a fantastic I and
Speaker 1: urge any wind to either listen to to both listen
Speaker 1: to your interview with him and and read some of
Speaker 1: his books. Uh. One of the ways people tend to
Speaker 1: misunderstand that is to bully your self, you know. Um
Speaker 1: and and that's not what he's or what any of
Speaker 1: us are talking about. It really is having compassion on yourself.
Speaker 1: Oh there's that feeling, Oh there's that thought, and and
Speaker 1: and just distancing yourself from it enough so that it
Speaker 1: doesn't control your behavior. I know lots of people, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you do too, who feel they are not
Speaker 1: in control of their behavior. Look, if I if I
Speaker 1: was in control of behavior, I wouldn't be an overeater, right.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so don't tell me to do that. And
Speaker 1: I don't tell people to do that. I tell them
Speaker 1: to watch their thoughts and feelings and then notice the
Speaker 1: watcher and see if the watcher is looking for something
Speaker 1: to eat, or the watcher is really interested in that
Speaker 1: next drink, or if that watcher has really transcended the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Rest in that. I'll give you. If we
Speaker 1: got time, I'll tell you a really great story that
Speaker 1: I heard from a psychiatrist. Uh. He was I'm guessing
Speaker 1: I'm late sixties when I heard this. He was in
Speaker 1: his late sixties when I heard the story. It was
Speaker 1: that one of one River Wisdom School workshops, and we
Speaker 1: were talking about this this very thing, and he said,
Speaker 1: when he was an intern at a hospital, they always
Speaker 1: gave the interns the most damaged patients because they figured
Speaker 1: they couldn't do any harm. And he worked with this
Speaker 1: sixteen year old severely depressed boy and he had also
Speaker 1: the doctor had had some kind of training outside of
Speaker 1: his profession. It's probably Buddhist, but I don't know what exactly,
Speaker 1: But anyway, he sat down with the kid and they said, okay,
Speaker 1: so tell me about your depression. And this boy has
Speaker 1: been in the hospital forever. He's seen dozens of doctors,
Speaker 1: and he knows the lingo and he gives a beautiful,
Speaker 1: pitch perfect description of what it's like when he's feeling depressed.
Speaker 1: And then the the intern, the guy who was telling
Speaker 1: me the story, says to the to the kid, he says, okay,
Speaker 1: the you that was telling me about your depression was
Speaker 1: that you depressed. And the kid stops in his tracks
Speaker 1: and he's look to see and he says, no, I
Speaker 1: was just describing somebody else. And he says, okay, great,
Speaker 1: I want to work with that you, not the depressed guy.
Speaker 1: And they actually made progress. And that's the same thing
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't want to work with the overeater
Speaker 1: of me. I want to work with me that's healthy.
Speaker 1: And you know, you find a beautiful system for doing
Speaker 1: this with big mind practice from Ghenpo Roshi Uh, where
Speaker 1: you just realized there's um aspects of ourselves that are
Speaker 1: completely healthy, completely away, completely wise, but we we ignore
Speaker 1: those and we go with the others. You tap into
Speaker 1: the part of you that isn't an addict, that isn't um,
Speaker 1: you know, stuck in mired and all the madness of
Speaker 1: your life, and you can look at the mad does
Speaker 1: and say, oh yeah, how interesting is that and and
Speaker 1: move on. It's a great way to describe it. Well,
Speaker 1: we are kind of beyond our time here, so I'm
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and wrap up. But I could
Speaker 1: probably do this for another two hours. But thanks so
Speaker 1: much for being on the show. This has been easily
Speaker 1: enjoyable conversation. Thank you, Eric. It was a lot of
Speaker 1: fun for me too, all right, take care you to
Speaker 1: bye bye. To learn more about Rabbi Ramy and this podcast,
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot net slash Ramy