Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show, you may not
Speaker 1: realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes
Speaker 1: in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that
Speaker 1: we've decided to handpick one of our favorites. Then may
Speaker 1: be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth
Speaker 1: another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Mirabi Star.
Speaker 2: If I think about it, all of those spiritual traditions
Speaker 2: that I was so gleefully engaging over all those years
Speaker 2: were mostly masculine paradigms. The texts were written by men
Speaker 2: for men.
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. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mirabi Star,
Speaker 1: an award winning author of creative nonfiction and contemporary translations
Speaker 1: of sacred literature. Mirabi taught philosophy and world religions at
Speaker 1: the University of New Mexico, Taos for twenty years and
Speaker 1: now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and interspiritual dialogue.
Speaker 1: Her latest book is Wild Mercy Living The Fierce and
Speaker 1: Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics.
Speaker 3: Hi, Mira Bai, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Eric. It's wonderful to be with you,
Speaker 2: really truly wonderful to be with you.
Speaker 3: Well, it's such a pleasure to have you back on.
Speaker 4: We talked several years ago about your previous book to
Speaker 4: the one we're about to discuss, and then you and
Speaker 4: I also got to talk in March as we headed
Speaker 4: into the coronavirus crisis. Today we're going to discuss your
Speaker 4: most recent book called Wild Mercy Living The Fierce and
Speaker 4: Tender Wisdom of the women mystics. But before we start,
Speaker 4: let's start, like we always do, with a parable. There's
Speaker 4: a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says,
Speaker 4: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 4: are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 4: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 4: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 4: hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and she thinks
Speaker 4: about it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother.
Speaker 4: She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother said,
Speaker 4: as the one you feed. So I'd like to start
Speaker 4: off by asking you what that parable means to you
Speaker 4: in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 2: First of all, I love Eric that you made it
Speaker 2: a grandmother and a granddaughter. Thank you for that, for
Speaker 2: lifting up the feminine. And I feel like it actually
Speaker 2: changes things that you did that because there are these
Speaker 2: kind of masculine values that we don't even notice that
Speaker 2: we buy into that courage. For instance, we often think
Speaker 2: of this sort of masculine warrior figure that's charging forth
Speaker 2: with the sword outstretched, and that's bravery and a feminine
Speaker 2: version of this wolf parable would be much more aligned,
Speaker 2: I think, with lifting up values of cooperation and mutual
Speaker 2: empowerment and creativity, and also even even values like kindness,
Speaker 2: like loving kindness and tenderness and mercy would be not
Speaker 2: always sweet and mild, but sometimes ferocious. As the sacred
Speaker 2: feminine is. You know, she has those qualities of fierce
Speaker 2: truth telling that cuts through illusion and doesn't put up
Speaker 2: with injustice or with unkindness or with hypocrisy. So I
Speaker 2: guess what that parable does for me is it reminds
Speaker 2: me that my commitment to those values that I think
Speaker 2: of as feminine values of loving kindness and fierce truth
Speaker 2: telling do not necessarily always mean that I have to
Speaker 2: go along and make everyone feel okay about what's happening.
Speaker 2: It sometimes requires feeding the good wolf, sometimes requires being
Speaker 2: fierce and protective and wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love the word fierce.
Speaker 4: I think it's such a great word, particularly when you
Speaker 4: marry it with fierce and tender wisdom. You know, wisdom
Speaker 4: being both fierce and tender. I think wisdom needs both
Speaker 4: those qualities. Right, the classic Bodisatva of manjuiciry and his
Speaker 4: flanking sword, Right, he cuts away delusion, and yet there's
Speaker 4: a there's a tenderness that we have to have to this.
Speaker 4: You've got a great line fairly early in the book,
Speaker 4: you said, I believe in the healing energy of the
Speaker 4: feminine as a fire that can melt the frozen heart
Speaker 4: of the world, the artistry that will mend the tattered
Speaker 4: web of interconnection.
Speaker 2: Thanks for pulling that line. I remember very well writing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the tattered web of interconnection.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
Speaker 3: So I thought maybe where we would go from here
Speaker 3: would be to have you tell us maybe a story
Speaker 3: or a little bit about one of your favorite women mystics.
Speaker 3: I'll let you pick. I'm not gonna choose, but just
Speaker 3: tell us a little bit maybe about her life and
Speaker 3: what about her matters to you. Because there's so many
Speaker 3: great ones in the book, I thought we'd pull a
Speaker 3: couple of them out and bring their story into the conversation.
Speaker 2: Wonderful. Well, just you know, intuitively and spontaneously, since I
Speaker 2: wasn't prepared for any particular questions, I will talk for
Speaker 2: a moment about Rabbia Rabbia of Basra, the twelfth century
Speaker 2: Sufi mystic who lived in what's now called Iraq. And
Speaker 2: actually I'm thinking I think she was actually ninth century.
Speaker 2: I think Robbia was quite ancient, ninth century. And she
Speaker 2: lived in a very poor family, so poor that one
Speaker 2: by one, it seems that her family members each died.
Speaker 2: We don't know exactly what happened, but somehow she ended
Speaker 2: up orphaned at a very young age, like twelve, just
Speaker 2: wandering the streets and begging, and became an easy target
Speaker 2: for slave what it would they be called eric traders,
Speaker 2: slave traders, and she was scooped up and snatched and
Speaker 2: brought to live in some kind of household, possibly even
Speaker 2: a brothel, we don't know for sure. And she worked
Speaker 2: hard and endured much abuse for several years, but had
Speaker 2: this deep senses I think many of us do when
Speaker 2: we're young, of spiritual connectedness and yearning. And so she
Speaker 2: would work all day and then she would pray all night.
Speaker 2: And one night the person, the man who owned her,
Speaker 2: heard some kind of sort of ethereal but also almost
Speaker 2: animal like sounds emanating from the courtyard, and he looked
Speaker 2: out his upper story window and down into the courtyard,
Speaker 2: and there he saw Rabbia in prayer, prostrate on the
Speaker 2: cobblestones of the courtyard, and there were flames leaping from
Speaker 2: the top of her head, and he listened to her
Speaker 2: cry out to Allah with all her heart and saw
Speaker 2: the fire increase in intensity with the power and passion
Speaker 2: of her prayer. And he didn't know what to make
Speaker 2: of this, and he grappled all night with what he
Speaker 2: had seen. And in the morning he went to her
Speaker 2: and he said, Rabia, I realize that you are a great,
Speaker 2: powerful spiritual being, and so I would like to offer
Speaker 2: you two choices. You can either have your freedom and
Speaker 2: do whatever you need and want to do, or you
Speaker 2: can stay in our household and we will all take
Speaker 2: care of you, and you can have students and disciples
Speaker 2: come and will take care of them too, and this
Speaker 2: will be this will be your house of worship. And
Speaker 2: she chose to go. And even though she was offered resources,
Speaker 2: she didn't go to a nice house in the city.
Speaker 2: She plunged into the desert and lived alone for many
Speaker 2: years in the desert. Said that she had a brick
Speaker 2: as her pillow, and she had one chipped vessel in
Speaker 2: which she received and carried and drank water, and then
Speaker 2: the same vessel was used for food. And people would
Speaker 2: bring her these things and visit her in the desert,
Speaker 2: and everybody wanted to be her student, but she refused
Speaker 2: to accept students because she didn't want to buy into
Speaker 2: the power of being an important teacher. She just wanted
Speaker 2: a full bodied, direct and personal relationship with her divine beloved,
Speaker 2: who was not a romantic figure like God is for
Speaker 2: other mystics that we could talk about. God was this
Speaker 2: kind of uncompromising beloved who demanded no less than everything
Speaker 2: of us. And so everyone who did come to learn
Speaker 2: from Rabbia was subjected to that same rigor of spiritual
Speaker 2: communion with reality, direct experience of reality. So Rabbia's my
Speaker 2: favorite fierce feminine mystic of the moment.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, I could see why you
Speaker 4: chose her, given that we were talking about being fierce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's why. And also she's just
Speaker 2: on my mind and heart these days with I mean,
Speaker 2: I think what's required of us in these times is
Speaker 2: a certain kind of naked grappling with what is like
Speaker 2: we can't just spiritually bypass our way out of the
Speaker 2: realities of the moment, the COVID nineteen pandemic, the incredible
Speaker 2: divisiveness and gulf and chasm that separates the United states
Speaker 2: the country that you and I both live, and social
Speaker 2: unrest is intense and extreme as it should be right now,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of the spiritual belief systems that
Speaker 2: many of us have subscribed to over the last twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty years are not holding up. They're crumbling, Like
Speaker 2: so many structures are crumbling right now, and we can't
Speaker 2: just think our way into prosperity or just the power
Speaker 2: of positive thought is not enough to meet the power
Speaker 2: of this moment and what it requires of us that
Speaker 2: sort of manjuicery or Collie, what I'm interested in right
Speaker 2: now is what seems to be required. And yet I
Speaker 2: also adore the women mystics who were much more rooted
Speaker 2: in poetry and peacefulness.
Speaker 4: Some of these spiritual belief structures that you feel like
Speaker 4: are not serving us.
Speaker 3: Well. You elaborated just a little bit on one of them,
Speaker 3: which is sort of the idea of the power of
Speaker 3: positive thinking, or the idea of manifesting I can just
Speaker 3: think about something and make it come true. Are there
Speaker 3: other ones that you think that we've been living with
Speaker 3: for a while that are of less use in today's world?
Speaker 2: So glad you asked that question, Eric. One of them
Speaker 2: that I find to be problematic now, even though philosophically
Speaker 2: I'm aligned with it is non duality. So there's a
Speaker 2: very popular spiritual movement that I think drawn from an
Speaker 2: ancient Indian tradition of advita Vedanta Advitavedanta, the path of
Speaker 2: non duality, where the understanding is that we are already
Speaker 2: one with the One, there is no separation, and so
Speaker 2: yearning for union, which is at the heart of all bimistics,
Speaker 2: really is this burning yearning for union with the beloved
Speaker 2: with God. As love is an illusion and so therefore
Speaker 2: devotional practices would also be in some sense delusional, or
Speaker 2: they would take us away from the truth of our
Speaker 2: not tuness, our non duality, our essential unity with reality,
Speaker 2: with divine reality. The problem that I find with that,
Speaker 2: to me, that's a very masculine paradigm that is kind
Speaker 2: of predicated on this understanding that duality is an illusion,
Speaker 2: and therefore our bodies and our sense of individuality is delusional.
Speaker 2: And the temptation there, I feel, is to then check
Speaker 2: out of the human condition. We're all just one. So,
Speaker 2: for instance, black lives matter, like why are these people
Speaker 2: so angry? You know about injustice? Don't they realize we're
Speaker 2: all one. People tell me all the time, because I emphasize,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of waking up from the coma of
Speaker 2: white privilege. Whenever I get a chance and people say
Speaker 2: to me, but we're all one. You know, I don't
Speaker 2: see color. Color as just an illusion. Race isn't even
Speaker 2: real biologically yes, I know, biologically speaking, there is no
Speaker 2: such thing as race. And in the real world of
Speaker 2: human society, not only is there such a real thing,
Speaker 2: but people suffer terribly as a result of those false constructs.
Speaker 2: And it's the same with masculine feminine. Can't tell you
Speaker 2: how many guys, usually white dudes, say to me when
Speaker 2: I talk about wild mercy. There's always someone in an
Speaker 2: audience who says, but God, Mirabi. They usually are man
Speaker 2: explaining me God is beyond gender. Maybe you don't know that, Mirabi,
Speaker 2: but actually God is beyond gender. And it's just the same.
Speaker 2: It's like I don't see color. All lives matter. It's
Speaker 2: the same bullshit. It's the same thing that opens us
Speaker 2: up to thereby treating other beings as if their pain
Speaker 2: is not real and doesn't matter, and not doing our
Speaker 2: work of mending the broken world. You know, and Judaism,
Speaker 2: that beautiful term tikun olam in Hebrew to mend the
Speaker 2: world like that's what we were born for. Even my
Speaker 2: beloved teacher around us, who died almost a year ago
Speaker 2: now and whose death I'm still grieving, says, Yes, in
Speaker 2: the big cosmic picture, everything is perfect. All is one,
Speaker 2: Subek is what our guru Maharaji said, Sabeck. All is one.
Speaker 2: And here in this fleeting human life where we are
Speaker 2: for just two seconds, for a very short time, there
Speaker 2: is and our curriculum rom that says is to alleviate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this is one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 4: to talk about well in spiritual life. Is exactly what
Speaker 4: you're saying that on one hand, yes, everything is perfect
Speaker 4: and one and at the exact same time and an
Speaker 4: equal measure. We live in this world and there is suffering,
Speaker 4: and that suffering is real, and my experience has been
Speaker 4: and I think about this one a lot, particularly over
Speaker 4: the last year. It seems that if people get too
Speaker 4: oriented to one side of that, they can get lost.
Speaker 4: We can get lost, right, it's all one, It's all fine,
Speaker 4: no big deal, you know, out beyond right and wrong,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, you know the roomy quote right, you know,
Speaker 4: so that breeds callousness if taken too far. And yet
Speaker 4: what I see in so many activists who I respect
Speaker 4: immeasurably is all that is seen is the problem, and
Speaker 4: it's seen so intensely, and it seems that the people
Speaker 4: that can have both. I look at people like Martin
Speaker 4: Luther King or A Gandhi or other people, those people
Speaker 4: really seemed to live both those sides of it. They
Speaker 4: really seem to say, I do have a broader vision
Speaker 4: that the world is unified, and there's this deeper sense
Speaker 4: and I'm fiercely committed to the problems of the world,
Speaker 4: and I bring those two things together in some sort
Speaker 4: of blending that gives me the strength to do what
Speaker 4: I need to.
Speaker 2: Do, exactly, because otherwise it's soul sapping, as you were
Speaker 2: referring to with the activists that you know and respect.
Speaker 2: You know, just that burnout is such a real thing
Speaker 2: because when you get into that dualistic thinking of the
Speaker 2: victims and the purpors and that's all you see, then
Speaker 2: it just takes away your energy. And they're so individualistic.
Speaker 2: Too often it's a feeling of I have to do
Speaker 2: something and instead of realizing that we can only do
Speaker 2: it together. So yeah, it's almost like I'm listening to
Speaker 2: you speak and I'm thinking that to be a nondualist
Speaker 2: and a fierce advocate for humanity and the earth at
Speaker 2: the same time. So it's not like the whole philosophy
Speaker 2: of nonduality is meaningless. It's actually hugely helpful when we're
Speaker 2: stepping up to mend the world to be resting in
Speaker 2: that oneness. But it needs to be I think a
Speaker 2: felt sense, like an experience of oneness, not an idea.
Speaker 2: That's where I think it gets dangerous when we just
Speaker 2: buy into these concepts without experiencing them in our bones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that can be a hard one to feel an experience.
Speaker 4: It makes me think of a couple of other ones, right.
Speaker 4: One is that one of the things I love about
Speaker 4: Zen is form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. You can't
Speaker 4: separate the two, you know, and they'll say and zen
Speaker 4: if you get stuck on one side of that, you
Speaker 4: really need both. And then I was also thinking about
Speaker 4: also some of it comes down to, I think in
Speaker 4: classic Hindu texts, this idea of these different types of yoga,
Speaker 4: you know, raj yoga and Bakhti yoga and saying that,
Speaker 4: you know, for some people, just being able to appreciate
Speaker 4: the divine is this formless thing that works for some
Speaker 4: people and for some other people that doesn't work. We
Speaker 4: need to put it in the human form that can
Speaker 4: be loved. So I think some of it's maybe not
Speaker 4: at least for me. Some of it's not getting too
Speaker 4: far over to one side or the other. The middle way,
Speaker 4: and then the other is sort of knowing tendencies what
Speaker 4: tends to be more effective for me.
Speaker 2: I love that you're bringing this up. Eric. I feel
Speaker 2: the same way. And the yogas are a beautiful example
Speaker 2: of spiritual temperaments, I think is what you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: some of us have a more sort of intellectual contemplative temperament,
Speaker 2: and some are more Karmi yogis and active, and those
Speaker 2: are the ones often that are the activists that are
Speaker 2: doing save, loving, selfless service. And then Bakhti yoga is
Speaker 2: kind of the biggest basket. You know that most people
Speaker 2: can relate to this heart centered desire for connection with
Speaker 2: God in a loving form or the supreme reality or
Speaker 2: whatever you might want to call it, and other people
Speaker 2: are more drawn like you said, like raja yoga, I
Speaker 2: call it the spiritual fireworks, you know, to altered states
Speaker 2: and resalted states of consciousness and so on, or even
Speaker 2: just thus and as to the physical postures, that's a
Speaker 2: kind of temperament. Yogas are all paths to union. They're
Speaker 2: all yokes that connect us with the divine and work.
Speaker 2: And I love that about Hinduism, how generous it is
Speaker 2: that we're all different and it all counts, and all
Speaker 2: the other religions have their edisone for us, Hinduism is
Speaker 2: probably the most tolerant.
Speaker 4: The other Hindu idea that I've always loved since we're
Speaker 4: talking about them, is this idea that as you move
Speaker 4: through your life, there are different activities that are appropriate
Speaker 4: to certain phases of life, you know. I've just always
Speaker 4: thought that was really interesting because it sort of says like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, when you're in your thirties, as an example,
Speaker 4: taking care of your family and creating a living that's
Speaker 4: part of your spiritual life at that time, you know,
Speaker 4: and then as you get older, you have more time
Speaker 4: to devote to more of a spiritual life. And I
Speaker 4: think it frames it all under the context of its
Speaker 4: all a way of being of service to God. But
Speaker 4: it doesn't make it sound like there's something wrong with
Speaker 4: being engaged in the world.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, household or yoga sounds like you and I
Speaker 2: love the same dude, Houston Smith, Am I right?
Speaker 4: Yes, Yes, that book is such a master work.
Speaker 2: Nothing else has been written like it. I tried. I
Speaker 2: wrote a book called God of Love, A Guide to
Speaker 2: the Heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, just the three
Speaker 2: Abrahamic faiths anyway, and I tried to follow in Houston
Speaker 2: Smith's footsteps, but they're too big.
Speaker 3: You did a lovely job.
Speaker 4: I am just wrapping up a eighteen month inter faith
Speaker 4: Spiritual Direction training program.
Speaker 3: You are, I am, and your book God of Love
Speaker 3: was one of the texts.
Speaker 2: Oh that makes me so happy. Wow, you're just wrapping up.
Speaker 2: Can you say more about it.
Speaker 4: It's through something called the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, and
Speaker 4: it's Innspiritual interfaith Spiritual Direction.
Speaker 3: It's been a good program.
Speaker 4: It's been interesting because my instructors are going to hear
Speaker 4: this and roll over. I'm going to get a phone
Speaker 4: call in like twenty minutes. But on one hand, I
Speaker 4: would say I did not learn very much if I
Speaker 4: interpret learning as cramming more things into this brain, yeah,
Speaker 4: because I've been reading about and studying this stuff, and
Speaker 4: for a long time, I've interviewed three hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: some people. I mean, I just it would be hard
Speaker 4: for there to be something like, oh I never heard
Speaker 4: that before. So in that way did I learn? But
Speaker 4: if I if I interpret learning as going deeper into things,
Speaker 4: I would say it's been a very powerful program.
Speaker 2: Yes, beautiful. Yeah, I'm sure enrich many people that you're
Speaker 2: doing this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been interesting. You know, most of the work
Speaker 4: I do with people is one on one. Work I've
Speaker 4: done up till now is co work, and spiritual directions
Speaker 4: a different type of work, and so I've done some
Speaker 4: of that. I've got a program called Spiritual Habits that
Speaker 4: we've run a couple times. And I always am sort
Speaker 4: of in a mindset of like, I want to get
Speaker 4: better at what I do, and this just seemed like
Speaker 4: another very interesting avenue to pursue.
Speaker 2: Beautiful, all right.
Speaker 4: We were talking about raj Yoga Hinduism. I want to
Speaker 4: circle back to another of the favorite things that you've
Speaker 4: ever expressed that I've heard, is this idea of interspiritual, right,
Speaker 4: I use the word interfaith in inner spiritual. They're not
Speaker 4: the same thing exactly. But we're not going to go
Speaker 4: into that right now because I just don't think the
Speaker 4: distinction is that important given our limited time. But there
Speaker 4: are people who move around through the different traditions a lot,
Speaker 4: and they take practices here and they take practices there,
Speaker 4: and oftentimes that's thought of as not being ideal, whether
Speaker 4: it's from a really extreme not ideal, like you're going
Speaker 4: to help well for that, or it's more of a
Speaker 4: you need to go deeper in one area. The analogy
Speaker 4: that's often used is that going around and trying lots
Speaker 4: of different practices are traditions is like digging a lot
Speaker 4: of different wells and only getting ten feet deep in
Speaker 4: each of them. But you sort of took that analogy
Speaker 4: and spun it on its head. Tell me a little
Speaker 4: bit more about kind of how you took that analogy
Speaker 4: and your thoughts on all of this.
Speaker 2: I have so much to say about this, and it's
Speaker 2: so alive for me right now that it's going to
Speaker 2: be challenging to distill it. First, I will say that
Speaker 2: I feel like that drawing from many different spiritual traditions
Speaker 2: is like trying to get to water by digging many
Speaker 2: shallow wells. That that charge is not only not true,
Speaker 2: has been weaponized to harm people like me or people
Speaker 2: like many of you who are listening right now in
Speaker 2: this scampfire circle that were gathered around, who have an
Speaker 2: interspiritual temperament, that you are more like, I would almost say,
Speaker 2: naturally or innately suited to, like a bee, draw nectar
Speaker 2: from all the flowers of the human spirit, and that
Speaker 2: it is almost a violence against your soul. To pick
Speaker 2: one tradition to the exclusion of any of the others
Speaker 2: almost feels like a violation of a covenant with God,
Speaker 2: like I'm going to exclude you, beloved from all these
Speaker 2: other places and only pay attention to you in this one.
Speaker 2: So that's how I feel, And I've heard beautiful analogies
Speaker 2: like interspirituality is more like cross training, where you're you know,
Speaker 2: you're using all the different parts of your body to
Speaker 2: develop a robust life or what else. You're digging one
Speaker 2: well with many different tools that I love that one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a good one. So all of that resonates much
Speaker 2: more with me. You know, from a very early age,
Speaker 2: or young Team. I was exposed to many different spiritual traditions,
Speaker 2: particularly Hinduism, all the different schools of Buddhism from Zen
Speaker 2: to Tibetan to Vipassana, three different Sufi orders, Native American
Speaker 2: traditions from my home of Taos, New Mexico, where I
Speaker 2: still live, and Jewish mysticism, Christian mysticism, and they all
Speaker 2: felt equally true to me, and I still on a
Speaker 2: daily basis in my own practices engage many of them,
Speaker 2: if not all of them, or certainly on a weekly basis. However, Eric,
Speaker 2: I am feeling right now that my lifelong interspiritual proclivities
Speaker 2: are rooted in white privilege, and that I have the
Speaker 2: luxury or the privilege of drawing from these different spiritual
Speaker 2: traditions that are rooted in other cultures, that come from
Speaker 2: other cultures without necessarily honoring the cultural home of each tradition.
Speaker 2: I think that I am but am I? So that's
Speaker 2: what I meant by this is a very living question
Speaker 2: for me right now. It's very alive for me in
Speaker 2: light of kind of thank God, collective awakening around white
Speaker 2: privilege and unconscious white supremacy. Like Wow, I've been not
Speaker 2: only living an interspiritual life for decades, but teaching about
Speaker 2: it and telling people that this is your birthright to
Speaker 2: draw from all of these different spiritual traditions. And now
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, have I just in many ways been diminishing
Speaker 2: my own humanity by ignoring the I don't know the
Speaker 2: sanctity of like, where does appreciation veer into appropriation? And
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm doing that or not. And
Speaker 2: I don't know if I'm teaching that or not. But
Speaker 2: what I do know is I'm making the question public,
Speaker 2: and I'm doing that with you in this moment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think sometimes that's it's the best we
Speaker 4: can do. I often wonder about that question, appreciation versus
Speaker 4: appropriation in various areas. I think it's a tricky question,
Speaker 4: you know. I think by some of the definitions I've
Speaker 4: heard of the difference, it would seem to me you
Speaker 4: are in appreciation. You're always very clear about where things
Speaker 4: are coming from. You're very clear about the source, You're
Speaker 4: very clear about you know, context within a certain point.
Speaker 4: But again, everybody has to arrive on those things kind
Speaker 4: of on their own. This question for me has been
Speaker 4: alive over the last two years in a slightly different
Speaker 4: way because as a lifelong inner spiritual practitioner, just like
Speaker 4: as long as I can remember, I just it seemed
Speaker 4: completely self evident to me at eighteen, Like I think
Speaker 4: they're all talking about the same thing, and how would
Speaker 4: one of them be better than the other, Like the
Speaker 4: different traditions. Just that seems sort of self evident to
Speaker 4: me at a very early age. So I've always sort
Speaker 4: of but the last two years, I've sort of honed
Speaker 4: in on zen and picked Zen, and listeners are like,
Speaker 4: all right, we've heard you say this one hundred times.
Speaker 4: But just because I felt like I'd sit down to
Speaker 4: meditate or I'd sit down to say, all right, I
Speaker 4: have time for spiritual practice, and I'd be like, I
Speaker 4: don't even know what I'm doing, not in like I
Speaker 4: don't know, I don't know how to do a whole
Speaker 4: lot of things, but I don't know what to do.
Speaker 4: Which of them am I going to do? And is
Speaker 4: there any rhyme or reason in what I'm doing? And
Speaker 4: as somebody who can get very lost in intellect, I
Speaker 4: could find all my time trying to figure that question
Speaker 4: out instead of just practicing. So for me, it's been
Speaker 4: nice to sort of root myself somewhere for a while.
Speaker 4: But again, as we talked about that sort of moving
Speaker 4: from one extreme to the other, finding in between. For me,
Speaker 4: that's just been a correction to a lifelong you know,
Speaker 4: And I don't think I'll ever not be inner spiritual
Speaker 4: in some sort of deep way, always interested reading, you know,
Speaker 4: but particularly with my job. Right every week I interview
Speaker 4: somebody different about something different. I was like, I need,
Speaker 4: at least in my own like this little bit of
Speaker 4: time I carve out for my spiritual practice.
Speaker 3: I want to.
Speaker 4: I just felt the need to stabilize for a little while.
Speaker 4: But who knows how long that will last.
Speaker 2: Oh, I hear it. That's beautiful. It sounds really right.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a good move at this juncture.
Speaker 3: At this point, we shall see.
Speaker 4: I'm back to a little bit of the Maybe what
Speaker 4: I need to be doing is learning to do some
Speaker 4: of those Soufi dances or something, you know. I'm like, no,
Speaker 4: you said you're all right till the end of ongo period,
Speaker 4: you know, to or hatso this winter you're staying here.
Speaker 4: So I do think even though a second ago, I
Speaker 4: was like, let's not talk too much about what inner
Speaker 4: spirituality is Let's have you do just a short reading
Speaker 4: on it, because I do think there are some nuances
Speaker 4: in there, and I do know that a lot of
Speaker 4: our listeners are very interested in this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Sure. This was from the very last chapter in Wild Mercy,
Speaker 2: called Taking Refuge. Each chapter opens with a kind of
Speaker 2: prose poem and then get into the different mystics. Right,
Speaker 2: so this is an opening prose poem. You follow the
Speaker 2: footprints of the beloved across manifold spiritual landscapes. You catch
Speaker 2: the same ancient, spicy aroma of love in Judaism that
Speaker 2: you have tasted in Islam. Your attraction to the lush
Speaker 2: sensuality of Hinduism does not in any way preclude the
Speaker 2: way you rest in the intellectual purity of Buddhism. Contemplating
Speaker 2: the Daude Jing strengthens what the hopey elders have taught you,
Speaker 2: that the earth is alive, that she is your mother,
Speaker 2: that she is the love of your life. Institutionalized religious
Speaker 2: authorities discourage this kind of roaming. They will call you
Speaker 2: a lost soul. You lie down with the beloved in
Speaker 2: so many forms. The purests will call you a slut.
Speaker 2: The more open minded may still accuse you of hoping
Speaker 2: to get to water by digging many shallow well as
Speaker 2: if you were a fool. You are no fool. You
Speaker 2: are in love, and you will use every available means
Speaker 2: to reach the living waters of love itself, which you
Speaker 2: can't help but notice bubbling up from the altar of
Speaker 2: every sacred space you have ever entered, including and maybe especially,
Speaker 2: the wild spaces of this earth. You embrace your beloved
Speaker 2: through your friendship with Jesus alone, or through Jesus plus Buddha.
Speaker 2: You walk one path, or three or eleven different spiritual
Speaker 2: paths that all bring you home to the one love.
Speaker 2: Maybe you say no thank you to any kind of
Speaker 2: organized religion and instead cultivate a direct relationship with the
Speaker 2: beloved in the temple of your own heart. The singular
Speaker 2: true believers will advise you against all of this multiplicity,
Speaker 2: recommending that you pick a single tradition and go deep.
Speaker 2: As if your polyamorous spiritual proclivities render you a diletante,
Speaker 2: they will mistakenly judge your way as superficial and undisciplined,
Speaker 2: rather than as the mind blowingly, heart openingly soul transfiguringly
Speaker 2: rigorous spiritual practice that it is you don't care that
Speaker 2: much what they think. Anyway, you are not about to
Speaker 2: miss any opportunity to encounter your beloved and bow down
Speaker 2: and rise up and take refuge.
Speaker 3: Does meditating feel like a chore another to do list
Speaker 3: item to check off? Or perhaps it's even fallen off
Speaker 3: the list entirely? If you sense that meditating regularly would
Speaker 3: benefit you, but you struggle to find a sustainable place
Speaker 3: for it in your schedule, I can help. There are
Speaker 3: reasons people struggle with creating and maintaining a meditation practice,
Speaker 3: and it isn't because meditation isn't right for them. In
Speaker 3: my free guide the top five reasons you can't seem
Speaker 3: to stick with a meditation practice and how to build
Speaker 3: one that lasts, I teach you why it can be
Speaker 3: a struggle to build a meditation practice that lasts, and
Speaker 3: the small fixes that can have a big impact when
Speaker 3: it comes to getting you where you want to be
Speaker 3: with meditating regularly. Go to oneufeed dot net and sign
Speaker 3: up for this free guide right on our homepage. I
Speaker 3: would be curious how do you determine And this again
Speaker 3: might be more of an intellectual concept, but what practices
Speaker 3: make up your spiritual practice. How do you know if
Speaker 3: you are on the right path at any given moment,
Speaker 3: and just how you navigated that challenge over time, because
Speaker 3: it's the challenge is if you go to a particular path,
Speaker 3: they tell.
Speaker 4: You exactly what to do. When we're juggling lots of
Speaker 4: different things, we're figuring out what to do, which I
Speaker 4: in general think is a healthier state of affairs to
Speaker 4: be our own authority. But there is also something to
Speaker 4: following guidance. So how have you figured that out?
Speaker 2: Yeah, wonderful question. Eric. Well, these days, these last few years,
Speaker 2: I've been really interested in reclaiming feminine wisdom teachings across
Speaker 2: the spiritual traditions. So what I've woven braided into my
Speaker 2: interspiritual life are these feminine wisdom teachings, and they're often
Speaker 2: difficult to find, you know, to excavate, because they've been
Speaker 2: so successfully and intentionally hidden across the landscape of the
Speaker 2: world's religions. I mean, if I think about it, all
Speaker 2: of those spiritual traditions that I was so gleefully engaging
Speaker 2: over all those years were mostly mass skill in paradigms.
Speaker 2: The texts were written by men for men. Even the
Speaker 2: activists that you just mentioned, Martin Luther, King and Gandhi,
Speaker 2: and the people we go to as the kind of
Speaker 2: prototypes of whatever spiritual or even political ideals we may
Speaker 2: hold are almost always men, and so it takes great
Speaker 2: effort to find not only women, but the face of
Speaker 2: the Goddess, the feminine face. So, for instance, my morning
Speaker 2: practice for many years has been I do a couple
Speaker 2: of different things. One is I do a kind of
Speaker 2: breathing visualization chakra meditation that it's kind of like house
Speaker 2: cleaning every morning, you know, just just clearing out to
Speaker 2: those energy centers in my body. Ramdas taught me this
Speaker 2: practice when I was I don't know, fifteen maybe, and
Speaker 2: he said, at the time, there're seven chakras, right, it's
Speaker 2: better to start with the heart chakra, which is the fourth,
Speaker 2: and go up, you know, to the throat, third eye,
Speaker 2: crown of the head, and don't mess with the lower chakras,
Speaker 2: the solar plexi, the second chakra, which is the seed
Speaker 2: of sexuality, the first chakra, which is the most basic
Speaker 2: primal chakra, like, those will just get in trouble, so
Speaker 2: stick with the upper ones. And so I have reclaimed
Speaker 2: the lower chakras in my morning meditation. Same thing with Chappa.
Speaker 2: I use prayer beads, either Sufi or Islamic Tasbi with
Speaker 2: ninety nine beads for the ninety nine beautiful names of
Speaker 2: Allah of God, or I use one hundred and eight
Speaker 2: prayer beads in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. So it's
Speaker 2: an introspiritual practice of mine, depending on how I'm feeling
Speaker 2: that day. But now for my mantra, I pick a
Speaker 2: feminine mantra. I invoke a feminine energy, whether it's om
Speaker 2: Tare toutare toure Soha in the Tibetan tradition of invoking
Speaker 2: Tara the Bodhisatva of compassion or Sita or Radha in
Speaker 2: the Hindu tradition, or Sofia in the Christian tradition. And
Speaker 2: I intensely focus my spiritual practices around the feminine. The
Speaker 2: last thing I'll say, so, I have a morning meditation
Speaker 2: and I root it in what I've always known, but
Speaker 2: I bathe it in the fragrance of the feminine, and
Speaker 2: it infuses me for the rest of the day in
Speaker 2: such a way that I can show up for the
Speaker 2: challenges of this world. Without getting to thrown. My contemplative
Speaker 2: practice is my root. The other practice is Shabbat. So
Speaker 2: every Friday night I light the Sabbath candles in the
Speaker 2: Jewish tradition, which is my ancestral tradition. So it feels
Speaker 2: homey and cozy to me. I light the candles for
Speaker 2: invoking the Sabbath, which carries over until sunset on Saturday.
Speaker 2: But it's infused with the feminine because the Shahina, which
Speaker 2: is what you're calling on when you light the candles
Speaker 2: and welcome the Sabbath, is feminine. She's the indwelling, feminine
Speaker 2: presence of the divine. And so I sit with the Sharhina,
Speaker 2: the feminine imminence of the majestic, transcendent Holy One comes
Speaker 2: into my body and into my family, and into my
Speaker 2: community and into my relationship with the earth for that
Speaker 2: twenty four hour period in a very tangible way. So
Speaker 2: I've reclaimed the feminine in my ancestral tradition. And so
Speaker 2: these are the few practices that are really integrated. Is
Speaker 2: a meditation practice and the observing of Shabbat, the keeping
Speaker 2: the Sabbath holy.
Speaker 4: You're writing on the Shabbat and Sabbath in the book
Speaker 4: was lovely, and I feel like inside me, there's just
Speaker 4: this building. I keep reading about that practice. You know,
Speaker 4: you quoted Heschel in the book, and I have done
Speaker 4: a lot of his reading over the last year, and
Speaker 4: he has got a whole book on the Sabbath. So
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm nearing that point where it's like,
Speaker 4: I think I'm ready to do it. I think I'm
Speaker 4: ready to give a twenty four hours that I'm gonna
Speaker 4: like each week. I need to talk with my partner
Speaker 4: and get her on board, make sure that we're both
Speaker 4: kind of aligned in it. But yours was sort of
Speaker 4: felt like another law gone, that fire that's building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what happened to me too. Eric. There are
Speaker 2: numerous things over a few year period that pointed toward
Speaker 2: really taking this practice on. And now I swear, even
Speaker 2: though I felt like I couldn't possibly fit it in,
Speaker 2: now I can't live without it. So blessings to you
Speaker 2: on that path. I hope you get to do it.
Speaker 2: It's so delicious.
Speaker 4: Back to your morning practice with the beads, You're repeating
Speaker 4: the mantra as you touch each of the beads.
Speaker 3: You work your way all the way through it. Right,
Speaker 3: is that kind of.
Speaker 2: One direction of it, Yeah, and then reverse, then go
Speaker 2: back in the under direction, and then after doing the
Speaker 2: chakra meditation, you know, which is a kind of cleansing, centering,
Speaker 2: and then doing this to me, it's a devotional practice,
Speaker 2: doing jappa or dicker in the Sufi tradition. Then I
Speaker 2: just sit, you know, for a few minutes, and I
Speaker 2: feel settled. But I need all those forms to be
Speaker 2: able to rest in the formless.
Speaker 4: It's interesting the times that I've done practice using different
Speaker 4: beads of different sorts, I found it really helpful. There's
Speaker 4: something about maybe the tactile nature of it that gives
Speaker 4: me a little bit more focus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's true. I love that. I think it's embodied,
Speaker 2: it's feminine. And then afterwards, I actually always play a
Speaker 2: little flute. I have a bamboo flute that I got
Speaker 2: from JG. Satch Dev when I was sixteen and I
Speaker 2: will be sixty this year, and I play a little
Speaker 2: flute every morning, and I also do yogas and as
Speaker 2: I do son salutation. So yeah, if it's embodied, it's breath,
Speaker 2: it's and it's stillness, it's all of the things I love,
Speaker 2: and I have a pooja table and altar that has
Speaker 2: all my friends, all the saints and masters, and statues
Speaker 2: and pictures of the beings that have inspired me for
Speaker 2: so long.
Speaker 3: A recent Instagram post of yours had who you called
Speaker 3: your spiritual father, ram Das, and a picture of your
Speaker 3: actual father. It was a lovely seeing those two together.
Speaker 2: That was from my day of the Dead altar. I
Speaker 2: do an altar for Dia de los Motos, and we
Speaker 2: just finished that period and I just couldn't bear to
Speaker 2: dismantle the author until very recently.
Speaker 4: Yes, you are in New Mexico, which is over the
Speaker 4: last few years become one of my favorite places in
Speaker 4: the country. I'd never been until a couple of years ago,
Speaker 4: and now I think I've been there like three times,
Speaker 4: and I love it.
Speaker 2: It's so magical, the Land of Enchantment they call it
Speaker 2: for good reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were going to probably spend a month in
Speaker 4: New Mexico last May, but obviously the coronavirus sort of.
Speaker 3: Canceled all that. But we may be back.
Speaker 2: Oh I hope we will be back, but yeah, good,
Speaker 2: I hope.
Speaker 3: So, so let's.
Speaker 4: Spend a couple minutes. We're kind of near the end
Speaker 4: of our time. But I always like to get this
Speaker 4: in if I can, which is to talk about the
Speaker 4: link between creativity and spirituality and mysticism. You write very
Speaker 4: lovely things about it in the book. I was wondering
Speaker 4: if you could just talk a little bit about for
Speaker 4: you what the link is and how they support each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I can't even remember a time in my life
Speaker 2: where they weren't interwoven. Creativity and spirituality. Okay, I actually
Speaker 2: can remember one time when I had a self proclaimed
Speaker 2: white male teacher who told me that I needed to
Speaker 2: stop writing poetry and drawing in my journal. I've always
Speaker 2: had this big blank book that I carried around and
Speaker 2: would write and draw in the book because I needed
Speaker 2: to just read the texts and do the practices, and
Speaker 2: that was too focused on me. That was the implication.
Speaker 2: And so I did try for a while to disconnect
Speaker 2: from my creativity, but it was absolutely impossible. You know,
Speaker 2: I grew up in an artistic family and an artistic
Speaker 2: agnostic family. They didn't subscribe to any particular religious ideology,
Speaker 2: and in fact, we're very suspicious of religion. But creativity
Speaker 2: was sacred and is in my family. So I really
Speaker 2: have never been able to tease those strands apart. But
Speaker 2: what I guess I'm really coming to in my life
Speaker 2: is that there is a wildness to the creative act.
Speaker 2: Whether we're making visual art or writing, or music or
Speaker 2: dance or any of the artistic expressions, there is a
Speaker 2: way that we have to surrender to the process and
Speaker 2: let it take over us. That feels sacred to me.
Speaker 2: That's holly surrender. That's allowing ourselves to become a conduit
Speaker 2: for the sacred in our lives and making making ourselves
Speaker 2: available to the Holy One to use us as she will.
Speaker 2: And so any chance to be able to do that
Speaker 2: for me is a cause for celebration and praise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree so much.
Speaker 4: I play guitar and make some other music, and when
Speaker 4: the good stuff happens is when I'm able to sort
Speaker 4: of get out of the way. Although it's this interesting,
Speaker 4: similar to spiritual practice, there's a certain amount of diligent
Speaker 4: practice that I do that enables me to build up
Speaker 4: enough dexterity that's the wrong word, but to be able
Speaker 4: to work with the instrument in enough of a way
Speaker 4: that I can actually vacate the premises, like if you
Speaker 4: suddenly gave me like a trumpet. I don't think that
Speaker 4: I could just let it come through me, because all
Speaker 4: my attention would be like, what do I do? I
Speaker 4: don't even know what to do with this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but with guitar there's a certain amount of work that
Speaker 4: I do that then enables me to sort of, when
Speaker 4: I'm lucky, take my hands off the wheel and see
Speaker 4: what happens.
Speaker 2: Totally, that's so beautifully said. And I think in the
Speaker 2: book I write about haiku, how I love the structure
Speaker 2: of a three line poem with five syllables, seven syllables,
Speaker 2: five syllables. Inside that structure is this tremendous freedom that
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would be able to access
Speaker 2: without it.
Speaker 4: One of the things that my Inner Spiritual training program
Speaker 4: did on a recent retreat.
Speaker 3: Was we wrote haiku together. It was this fascinating thing.
Speaker 4: One person would take a line, then the next person
Speaker 4: would take a line, and the next person would take
Speaker 4: a line, and there were some actual prompts to sort
Speaker 4: of like it was. I almost felt like it was
Speaker 4: like mad lib, like spiritual mad libs for hike. But
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe what came out of it. I was like,
Speaker 4: that's pretty darn good. It was really it was a
Speaker 4: really kind of cool process.
Speaker 2: I love that you did it together. That's what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about here, is this communal experience of spirituality that
Speaker 2: I think is feminine and needed by people of all genders.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, absolutely, Well, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 4: the time to come on. I could talk with you
Speaker 4: for far longer than we have time for, but we
Speaker 4: are at the end. So I loved the book. Again,
Speaker 4: it's called Wild Mercy, Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom
Speaker 4: of the Women Mystics, and I know our listeners would
Speaker 4: love it. It'll be links to it in the show
Speaker 4: notes as well as all the other places to find you.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much, Mirabia. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's just a joy to be with you, my brother.
Speaker 2: Take care of you one.
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