Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, I've got a long list of new Patreon
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Speaker 1: If you'd like to experience being a member and all
Speaker 1: of the benefits that come with it, go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash join. Once you really kind
Speaker 1: of create a mainline to the heart, you do have
Speaker 1: an anchor that you can tap into that will start
Speaker 1: giving the air that you need, the breath that you
Speaker 1: need to keep walking, and it will actually start to
Speaker 1: carry you forward. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we
Speaker 1: have quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are
Speaker 1: what you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our 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, assistant
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 Sarah Blondin,
Speaker 1: a writer and videographer from British Columbia. She's also the
Speaker 1: creator of the well known podcast Live Awake. Today, Sarah
Speaker 1: and Eric discuss her book Heartminded, How to Hold Yourself
Speaker 1: and Others in Love. Hi, Sarah, Welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: so nice to meet you. Eric. It's great to have
Speaker 1: you on. UM. We're going to discuss your new book,
Speaker 1: which is called Heart Minded, How to Hold Yourself and
Speaker 1: Others in Love, And we will talk about that in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking to
Speaker 1: her grandson and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up when his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother 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. I love this parable so
Speaker 1: much because I'm currently trying to train or teach my
Speaker 1: three year old and my six year old this very thing.
Speaker 1: And how I really interpret this is, you know, the
Speaker 1: kindness and the bravery and the love are really attributes
Speaker 1: of the heart. So I see that more of the
Speaker 1: inner spiritual life. And then the qualities of read, hatred,
Speaker 1: and fear are really you know, separation, alienation from the
Speaker 1: heart and from the inner self. And we often kind
Speaker 1: of spiral into that place when we're more focused on
Speaker 1: the external realms so for me, I've known, you know,
Speaker 1: how to dance with these two because they actually do
Speaker 1: serve one another. I spent most of my younger life
Speaker 1: kind of in the external realms, and then I was more,
Speaker 1: you know, in the realms of hatred and greed and
Speaker 1: trying to achieve and all of those things. And I
Speaker 1: realized that it was only in turning to the inner world,
Speaker 1: so the good wolf, to nurture the heart and the
Speaker 1: spiritual life within myself that I actually felt like life
Speaker 1: was worth living. But I needed that bad wolf quote
Speaker 1: unquote to actually encourage and force me to look to
Speaker 1: the inner spiritual realms. Yeah, I think the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: as we say, often can can do that can be
Speaker 1: the way of pointing us back. And your book is
Speaker 1: very much about this idea that in order to avoid
Speaker 1: pain and difficulty, that we have learned to turn away from.
Speaker 1: You describe it as the one place within us intended
Speaker 1: to be our safehold. We we orphan the part of
Speaker 1: us that flows with the current of life itself, which
Speaker 1: you say is the heart very much so, I mean,
Speaker 1: speaking for myself, that has been my experience, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what it was like for you. Did you
Speaker 1: feel like you separated from your heart in your life.
Speaker 1: Was that something that's happened to you. Oh yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: and it's something that still happens, right, you know, but
Speaker 1: but pretty severely. Yeah. I mean at twenty four I
Speaker 1: was homeless, heroin addict. So yeah, that's pretty pretty strong. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's avoiding feeling it at all costs.
Speaker 1: Although way I think is actually interesting about a lot
Speaker 1: of my drug and alcohol uses. I actually think a
Speaker 1: lot of it was it was the way back to
Speaker 1: feeling for me because I had separated so strongly that
Speaker 1: life felt dead and it woke my heart up a
Speaker 1: little bit. Now, maybe that's not quite the way to
Speaker 1: say it, but I always feel like so much of
Speaker 1: that was about trying to reconnect more than it was
Speaker 1: about just trying to avoid. I totally understand that. I
Speaker 1: think sometimes our reasons for disassociating and our actual the
Speaker 1: pain behind that is our longing to be at one
Speaker 1: with ourselves again. So again we can see how the
Speaker 1: bad wolf is actually leading us back toward our heart
Speaker 1: in a very kind of perverted way, right, um, But
Speaker 1: ultimately that's what we're all striving for. So the you know,
Speaker 1: the really beautiful thing about this is no any way
Speaker 1: you look at it, the heart is actually working through
Speaker 1: all of it. If we are willing to actually start
Speaker 1: listening to the longing that's guided us to the dark
Speaker 1: place in the first place. Um, which you have done, correct,
Speaker 1: Like you've kind of muscled your way back toward the
Speaker 1: light and you continue to do so because of the
Speaker 1: wisdom of the heart. Yes, totally, totally yeah, which is fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: because that's an intelligence living within you that's kind of
Speaker 1: essentially propelling us forward and forward and forward if we're
Speaker 1: willing to listen. I mean, what caused you to actually
Speaker 1: really listen? Do you remember? Was it just a rock bottom?
Speaker 1: Or yeah? That was certainly part of it. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I often say that I think like a bottom is
Speaker 1: part of what I think causes recovery, although you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of a bottom is can be misleading because
Speaker 1: you can always keep digging, right, But I think it
Speaker 1: was a combination of like a bottom or enough consequence
Speaker 1: that came together with enough hope for me. It seems
Speaker 1: that when those two things come together, that's sort of
Speaker 1: the fertile soil that recovery can grow out of. Just
Speaker 1: one or the other doesn't seem to really do it.
Speaker 1: M So that has a lot to do with grace also,
Speaker 1: and I talked about that in my book. Right, is
Speaker 1: this kind of wind that comes to support us and
Speaker 1: carry us into the lighter realms of the heart. I
Speaker 1: guess that make it possible for us to actually visit
Speaker 1: that place again. Yeah, grace is a concept I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting, and I certainly highlighted it in the
Speaker 1: book with you um and wanted to cover It's a
Speaker 1: concept I have a very mixed relationship with O I
Speaker 1: want to hear. Yeah, Well, what it is is that,
Speaker 1: like I got sober and twelve step programs, and the
Speaker 1: essence of a twelve step program is that that God
Speaker 1: comes along and gets you sober, right that it's it's
Speaker 1: the grace of God. You know, people will say that
Speaker 1: all the time, by the grace of God, I'm sober today.
Speaker 1: And I always found that challenging to fully in ernalized
Speaker 1: because I watched lots of people die of it. I
Speaker 1: watched lots of people who showed up and went to
Speaker 1: treatment like I did, and went to meetings like I did,
Speaker 1: and seemed to really be trying. And I watched them
Speaker 1: sort of die, and so I went, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know about the idea of a god that saves me
Speaker 1: but lets them go. And yet despite that feeling, there's
Speaker 1: something unnameable that occurs. I don't have a better word
Speaker 1: than grace. So the whole thing is sort of confusing
Speaker 1: for me, because I think anybody who spends enough time
Speaker 1: close to addiction goes. I have no idea. I cannot
Speaker 1: figure out what why some people get this and others don't.
Speaker 1: You know. So this idea of a grace that some
Speaker 1: of us get but others don't get is challenging for me.
Speaker 1: But I think your idea of graces, it seems to
Speaker 1: come more from within. Grace almost feels like a wind
Speaker 1: or a levity that comes and kind of lifts my
Speaker 1: gaze and my my being up from the mire. It
Speaker 1: almost stops me from looking downward at the ground and
Speaker 1: at my feet and at my suffering and says, look up,
Speaker 1: and that wisdom wasn't chosen by me. It's actually put
Speaker 1: in me. And whether I am receptive to that wisdom
Speaker 1: or not is up to me. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people that may be suffering with addictions and such,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't really know what's going on internally
Speaker 1: with them and how much they're either open to receiving
Speaker 1: that wisdom calling that always is there, or whether they're
Speaker 1: shutting down. They may be trying on the outside, but
Speaker 1: there may be internally a very big no to the
Speaker 1: healing and a very big no to the grace that's coming.
Speaker 1: And I know that from myself that you know, when
Speaker 1: I first kind of woke up to my spiritual self
Speaker 1: and my spiritual life and my spiritual responsibility, I remember
Speaker 1: having this massive no, and it was such a strong
Speaker 1: no because I was scared to death about what that
Speaker 1: would mean. And I was scared mostly of my responsibility,
Speaker 1: realizing the agency was mine and it was my job.
Speaker 1: And I think in recovery from anything and healing from anything,
Speaker 1: that job can be very daunting and big, and the
Speaker 1: pain can feel insurmountable. And we can dance with the
Speaker 1: light and dance with the dark, and sometimes the dark
Speaker 1: ultimately wins. But either way, you know, I don't look
Speaker 1: at death as a you know, horrible thing either. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to just kind of see all of it
Speaker 1: as you know, some sort of beautiful dance. But we
Speaker 1: don't really know what's going on for everyone, But for me,
Speaker 1: grace is really something that just says, look up, look up,
Speaker 1: look up, and it's up to me. Yeah, whether I'm
Speaker 1: hearing it or not. Yeah, I think what you bring
Speaker 1: up in the book, you say it at one point,
Speaker 1: you say, all this hurt and heartache I've been living with,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, we're under my ownership. The onus
Speaker 1: to change was on me. And it's this idea of responsibility.
Speaker 1: And I think this is a really critical point. I
Speaker 1: interviewed somebody just a couple of weeks ago who wrote
Speaker 1: a book about recovery called We Are the Luckiest Laura McCowan.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know where, but it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful book. But she says that in her mind, the
Speaker 1: difference between who gets sober and who doesn't are the
Speaker 1: people who take full responsibility for their healing. And people
Speaker 1: often hear this and react sort of strongly, like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not responsible for all the bad things that happened
Speaker 1: to me. And on one hand, certainly, no, we're not
Speaker 1: at fault at all for all the bad things that
Speaker 1: happened to us. But we are the only ones who
Speaker 1: can heal it. I mean, That is what is so
Speaker 1: scary for most of us. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: we don't actually start to venture within, because we know
Speaker 1: that all the fingers we've been pointing will start being
Speaker 1: pointed back at us. We will see that our hand
Speaker 1: is the one pointing, and that our eyes are the
Speaker 1: ones seeing things the way they're seeing. And that is
Speaker 1: almost like, oh, my goodness, I have to rebuild the
Speaker 1: foundation of my entire being. And you know that's like
Speaker 1: saying you have to tear your house down and rebuild
Speaker 1: it with your bare hands. And you know that again
Speaker 1: is going to provoke so much fear and helplessness and hopelessness.
Speaker 1: But that's why I kind of wanted to write this book.
Speaker 1: It's because once you really kind of create a mainline
Speaker 1: to the heart, you do have an anchor that you
Speaker 1: can tap into that will start giving the air that
Speaker 1: you need, the breath that you need to keep walking,
Speaker 1: and it will actually start to carry you forward. There
Speaker 1: is a force within you that is actually helping you
Speaker 1: move forward. You just have to start learning to be
Speaker 1: aware of it. And I'm sure you met with that
Speaker 1: force yourself because you've recovered you know, as esoteric as
Speaker 1: it seems, there's something truly there, and I think it's
Speaker 1: by way of the heart that we can access that
Speaker 1: benevolent force. Yeah, the point you make in the book
Speaker 1: so well is that this sort of looking to others
Speaker 1: to blame for what's happening to us. You say that,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't realize that this act will take
Speaker 1: from us a large sum of our power, and that
Speaker 1: power will be held hostage by the thing we've named
Speaker 1: is responsible for our distress. But the opposite is equally true.
Speaker 1: When we do take that responsibility, that becomes our strength.
Speaker 1: It helps us excavate a self that actually learns to
Speaker 1: believe in itself, a self that learns to forgive and
Speaker 1: kind of let go. And it actually helps us see
Speaker 1: that everybody is flawed, and it helps us forgive the
Speaker 1: people that have hurt us because they have been hurt,
Speaker 1: you know. And we start seeing from the perspective of
Speaker 1: of the heart. We start looking beyond not just the
Speaker 1: thing that happened to us, but the pain that was
Speaker 1: hidden within that thing, within that person, And you see
Speaker 1: the kind of ripple effect of our pain and the
Speaker 1: lineage of our pain, and you're able to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, we're all flawed, and I can forgive this,
Speaker 1: and I can move through this, and I can sit
Speaker 1: in the seat of my heart and I I I
Speaker 1: have the power to comfort, console and move myself into
Speaker 1: the life that I want, into the being that I want.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's ultimately what we're learning is a mastery
Speaker 1: of the self, right, And I think I see that
Speaker 1: people tend to often maybe one one of these is
Speaker 1: way more dominant than the other, and some people oscillate
Speaker 1: between them. But the fault is out there and then
Speaker 1: there's the equal or I just am terrible and I'm
Speaker 1: the reason that everything is as bad as it is
Speaker 1: in me. And know we've talked about putting the responsibility
Speaker 1: out there, but but how do you respond to somebody
Speaker 1: who's internalizing it not in an empowering way, but in
Speaker 1: a I'm broken kind of way. I think that's a
Speaker 1: very you know, natural part of any sort of self
Speaker 1: introspection are starting to look at ourselves is is we
Speaker 1: notice that, you know, we're kind of doing that on
Speaker 1: a daily basis all the time, Like, Oh, I screwed
Speaker 1: up with my kid, I said something horrible to him,
Speaker 1: I'm a bad mother. You know, we're doing it on
Speaker 1: large and small scales all day long. We just have
Speaker 1: to understand that that's a natural part of the process
Speaker 1: of starting to look within ourselves and starting to develop
Speaker 1: a spiritual relationship with ourselves. But if we keep at it, um,
Speaker 1: there is a tenderizing that starts to take place. Um again,
Speaker 1: we see the grace starting to work. Um. I think
Speaker 1: when you have both feet planted in front of the
Speaker 1: heart and you start saying what is true for you
Speaker 1: in that moment. And that's why I have these chapters
Speaker 1: on admitting our feelings and and speaking what is true
Speaker 1: for us to try and get that to move through.
Speaker 1: So if we're going within and all we can see
Speaker 1: is our own fault and how we've brought the pain
Speaker 1: and instigated the pain and we are wrong, if we
Speaker 1: start speaking that externally, you know, light begins to thread
Speaker 1: through our darkness, and there's this incredible vulnerability that comes
Speaker 1: with admitting how in pain we feel. And eventually that
Speaker 1: does turn to beauty if you are willing to, you know,
Speaker 1: really muscle yourself to see the goodness in that. But
Speaker 1: if you're keeping your eyes you know, downcast in the pain,
Speaker 1: in the victimization of yourself, then that's where we get stuck.
Speaker 1: That's why I wanted to create you know, the importance
Speaker 1: and and really say you have to feel what you
Speaker 1: are feeling. You have permission to feel these things because
Speaker 1: in just feeling and just speak king and giving yourself permission,
Speaker 1: you actually begin the healing process that has a very
Speaker 1: natural rhythm on its own. I love what you just
Speaker 1: said there, and I wanted to get into this point
Speaker 1: a little bit because I think it's a nuanced point
Speaker 1: and I'd like to talk about it because what you're
Speaker 1: saying is and you've got a great line here. You said,
Speaker 1: this was all for you about addressing, not avoiding your afflictions, right,
Speaker 1: And just a moment ago, you said, you know, we
Speaker 1: go into the pain um and we allow it to
Speaker 1: be there, and we speak what's true for us, but
Speaker 1: we don't look down. We sort of look up. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm curious this this idea of going into
Speaker 1: feeling our emotions, addressing our emotions. I certainly hear a
Speaker 1: lot of it in the guests that come on the show.
Speaker 1: It's certainly been a big part of my work. But
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to talk about how to sort
Speaker 1: of go into those emotions allow them to be there.
Speaker 1: But but like you said, not get law lost in
Speaker 1: our own pain and darkness. How do you do both
Speaker 1: those things? I'm going to give an annoying answer. It
Speaker 1: is literally practice, and it is a willingness to you know,
Speaker 1: ride it out, so to speak. So if you're just
Speaker 1: beginning the process of trying to heal you know, some
Speaker 1: deep and painful wounds, and you're sitting there and you're
Speaker 1: just repeating all that's wrong and all that's heavy, and
Speaker 1: all that's dark within you, I mean, you're going to
Speaker 1: feel in a dark place for a bit. And I
Speaker 1: remember once having this experience where I actually watched myself
Speaker 1: willingly go into my darkness. And I actually did this
Speaker 1: a lot when I was first starting my journey. Is
Speaker 1: that I would say, okay, I'm nose diving, and I
Speaker 1: could feel it, right, you knew when you were going
Speaker 1: into your suffering and when you were trying to escape.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming, right, so and I would say, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going in. So I would give my permission, my
Speaker 1: self permission to go headlong into this horrible dark place,
Speaker 1: and then I would expect to stay there for two
Speaker 1: or three days willingly. And then I'd feel bad about myself,
Speaker 1: and I'd roll around in this pit of despair and
Speaker 1: think nothing good could possibly come from this place, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be here forever, and this is way
Speaker 1: too hard. But I noticed that something incredible would start
Speaker 1: to happen in my agreeing to even go into the darkness.
Speaker 1: Is that I was learning somehow to take my own
Speaker 1: chains off. And I don't know what else to say.
Speaker 1: Then with practice and with time, it actually does get easier,
Speaker 1: and you start not wanting to stay is long in
Speaker 1: the dark places, and you start untying yourself quicker and quicker,
Speaker 1: and you stop needing to go as deep and as
Speaker 1: dark because you realize that the only one that lifts
Speaker 1: you out of that place anyway is yourself. So it's
Speaker 1: up to you how long or how short you're actually
Speaker 1: living in that kind of murky land. And with practice
Speaker 1: and with time, you actually start to be empowered to
Speaker 1: stop choosing it, and you've visited the pain enough to
Speaker 1: learn how to untie yourself. So again we see how
Speaker 1: the dark or the bad wolf is actually helping the
Speaker 1: light wolf. There is no right and wrong, black and white, right,
Speaker 1: you say at one point in the book, we can't
Speaker 1: think our way back to our hearts. We have to
Speaker 1: feel our way there. And that's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: what you're saying here. There isn't a prescription elsewhere you
Speaker 1: say that there's no right or wrong way of to
Speaker 1: approach our feelings. No, absolutely, And and you know where
Speaker 1: I wrestle is this idea, because I do find this
Speaker 1: point to be a nuanced one, and it's one that
Speaker 1: I think, particularly if we have developed some sort of
Speaker 1: spiritual life to a point is that you know, the
Speaker 1: term that's used as spiritual bypass, right, It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well I feel that, but I also recognize that maybe
Speaker 1: if I took this perspective about it, or I took this,
Speaker 1: you know, and then it's a way of potentially of bypassing.
Speaker 1: And I find this, you know, a lot of clients
Speaker 1: I work with is a little bit of this wrestling
Speaker 1: like what's the right way to do it? And so
Speaker 1: I find it's almost always helpful to go to the
Speaker 1: emotion first, what do I feel, and allow that feeling
Speaker 1: to be there and inhabit the feeling, and then if
Speaker 1: there is a different way to look at it or
Speaker 1: view it or perspective to take, then you use that,
Speaker 1: as you say, to sort of lift you back up out.
Speaker 1: But the descent seems to be important. I think the
Speaker 1: descent is important, UM, and I just think it's the
Speaker 1: beginning phase. I mean, that's why we're kind of starting
Speaker 1: to even bother to look within ourselves in the first places,
Speaker 1: because we're visiting the dark too much or life feels
Speaker 1: too painful, and we're kind of escaping our lives, and
Speaker 1: that forces us to look inward. So I think there's
Speaker 1: no really skipping over that step. You talk a lot
Speaker 1: about the heart and the mind, and you say, we're
Speaker 1: not trying to pit the heart and mind against one another.
Speaker 1: We're trying to marry their aptitudes. But you describe a
Speaker 1: couple of ways that you see the difference between the
Speaker 1: heart and mind. Because you sort of share the heart
Speaker 1: and the mind, you know the differences between the two.
Speaker 1: So you said something really important about, UM, not trying
Speaker 1: to pick the heart and the mind against one another.
Speaker 1: We're actually trying to bring the mind down into the
Speaker 1: heart so that it's acting more from the heart's wisdom
Speaker 1: and from the consciousness of the heart, but the mind
Speaker 1: on its own, So the unharnessed mind and the mind,
Speaker 1: by default is very frantic. It's concerned with scarcity and
Speaker 1: lack and how we look and how we feel, and
Speaker 1: what's dangerous and what's not. It's telling us to approach
Speaker 1: or not. It's like a dog chasing its tail kind
Speaker 1: of problems seeking and solving. So on its own, it's
Speaker 1: quite an ungrounded, unhelpful companion. But once it's married to
Speaker 1: the heart and the wisdom of the heart, we can
Speaker 1: actually begin to bring the consciousness of the heart, which
Speaker 1: is more of that benevolence, that kindness, that courage, that love.
Speaker 1: You know. I call it in the book the two
Speaker 1: point over vision of ourselves. So I think we each
Speaker 1: have a version of ourselves and idealized version of ourselves
Speaker 1: which we can see, and we're always measuring ourselves against
Speaker 1: this version, and that is kind of the call of
Speaker 1: the heart. That's the us. If we really step into
Speaker 1: the heart, this is the us that starts to live
Speaker 1: embodied in kindness. It's courageous, it's taking risks, it's it's
Speaker 1: living with love and leading with love. So if we
Speaker 1: start to bring that consciousness and tell the mind, this
Speaker 1: is what we want, we don't want to keep seeking
Speaker 1: our problems. We don't want to keep being worried and
Speaker 1: fearful about the unknowns and reaching to the future. We
Speaker 1: want to be seated in the present moment with this
Speaker 1: kindness at our center and just kind of unphased by
Speaker 1: what's going on in the world. I know, when I
Speaker 1: really sit in my heart, I remember really going to
Speaker 1: a state of just distress around COVID and what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world right now out and my mind
Speaker 1: started to take over. I left the seat of my heart.
Speaker 1: I kind of went into a frantic place and looking
Speaker 1: to the future and the unknowns and starting telling stories
Speaker 1: and dialogues and conspiracy, and I just went oh. I
Speaker 1: started to feel sick because the energy and the momentum
Speaker 1: can be so potent and so strong. And I walked
Speaker 1: to my cabin and I laid down on the floor,
Speaker 1: and I got so calm, and I started blessing my
Speaker 1: body and blessing my being and really trying to calm
Speaker 1: down the nervous system. And I could feel when I
Speaker 1: shifted into the heart center, because all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I started to see, you know, the beauty that was
Speaker 1: coming from this crisis and what it could create. And
Speaker 1: I started having like empowered visions and heart centered ideas.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't afraid anymore. I was in my heart.
Speaker 1: I was calm, I was courageous, and I was able
Speaker 1: to withstand this. I was able to The heart kind
Speaker 1: of gives us a very very strong spine and helps
Speaker 1: us kind of maneuver through some of the hardest places
Speaker 1: in our lives. So the point is, the mind is
Speaker 1: going to have its own agenda, but we have to
Speaker 1: start training it to start having the heart's agenda. And
Speaker 1: that's the whole point in my book, Heart Mind, is
Speaker 1: to essentially start training the mind to start doing that.
Speaker 1: I love that idea, and you mentioned this enhanced version
Speaker 1: of ourselves at the heart sees something like you know
Speaker 1: me two point oh right, And um, I think that's
Speaker 1: a great idea. But you say that we often misuse
Speaker 1: this because if it be, I'm just gonna read what
Speaker 1: you said because I think it makes so much sense. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the problem with this fantasy images that we tend to
Speaker 1: misuse it. It often becomes something we use to belittle
Speaker 1: ourselves rather than inspire ourselves. We measure who we are
Speaker 1: against this fantasy self and feel failure and incompetence when
Speaker 1: we should be grateful for being gifted this vision of
Speaker 1: a more loving and able self. So talk about how
Speaker 1: to accept those shortcomings. Because I love this idea, because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us we see this better
Speaker 1: version of ourselves. I do a lot of work with
Speaker 1: people about setting intentions for who do we want to be?
Speaker 1: What's the kind of person we want to be? And
Speaker 1: inevitably we don't live up to those all the time.
Speaker 1: And so how do we use those like you say
Speaker 1: to inspire us versus make us feel bad about ourselves?
Speaker 1: Well that was a lesson I learned for myself. I
Speaker 1: really started to see that I was using, you know,
Speaker 1: this vision that I had of myself as an instrument
Speaker 1: of abuse, and I was like, wow, I'm abusing myself
Speaker 1: for being gifted something that's that's actually there to help
Speaker 1: me move up into it. And it took me a
Speaker 1: long time to stop doing the normal thing, which is
Speaker 1: focusing on the shortcomings and how we're falling short, and
Speaker 1: really see that this vision is always there, this map
Speaker 1: is always there for us. It's like our north star.
Speaker 1: It's like there, this is where you need to be,
Speaker 1: this is how you need to look, feel, see, and
Speaker 1: it's always there. It doesn't really move, it doesn't really falter.
Speaker 1: And again we see our fear of our agency and
Speaker 1: not wanting to take full responsibility, and we see how
Speaker 1: going down to belittle and berated ourselves is actually a
Speaker 1: powerless kind of representation, and we kind of go into
Speaker 1: this persona of powerless victimhood um and we wallow in
Speaker 1: that again. But eventually, you know, I think, with practice,
Speaker 1: at least for myself, I've really started to keep shifting,
Speaker 1: keep pivoting, keep reorienting myself toward the wisdom of the
Speaker 1: heart and the vision of the heart, and we start
Speaker 1: losing interest in all the darkness. Eventually, we start losing
Speaker 1: less and less interest in needing to go there and
Speaker 1: needing to really feed those places. You know, the heart
Speaker 1: starts to really eat blazoon within us. Once it really
Speaker 1: starts to bloom and grow, it actually does start to
Speaker 1: kind of infiltrate our consciousness. Um our cells, our memory,
Speaker 1: are atoms. Everything starts to kind of start to move
Speaker 1: into a more harmonious state of homeostasis. You know, these
Speaker 1: dead cells, if you will, kind of start to die off.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there is science that's even proving this, right,
Speaker 1: like we create new pathways in the brain which actually
Speaker 1: don't have room for those kind of old patterns of hurt. Essentially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say at one point in the book, the struggle
Speaker 1: and suffering are always present. I've had I've yet to
Speaker 1: meet a day where one or the other is not
Speaker 1: offered to me, and I know this is true for
Speaker 1: most of us. So let's talk about this vision that
Speaker 1: you've just described in this opening of the heart and
Speaker 1: this blooming and these good things that are happening. With
Speaker 1: the fact that struggle and suffering tend to show back
Speaker 1: up pretty often, how do you work with that within yourself?
Speaker 1: This has been an ongoing um learning for me, And
Speaker 1: like I kind of professed late earlier, was that I
Speaker 1: tended to go to the dark place often when it
Speaker 1: would show up. It would say, Okay, here's your suffering,
Speaker 1: and I go, okay, let's do it, and I would
Speaker 1: get lost in that suffering. But now I've become it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's a hard line. You're creating boundaries now.
Speaker 1: You know, once you start to see the whole network
Speaker 1: of things that are kind of going on within you,
Speaker 1: you know you're more aware. You know you're no longer
Speaker 1: in the dark, you have the light on in the closet,
Speaker 1: you start to really create boundaries for yourself. And you know, hardships, suffering,
Speaker 1: heartache are all going to be there. Honor them, be
Speaker 1: with them. But keep, like I was saying, reorienting and pivoting.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're just going to end up lost in that
Speaker 1: suffering again. And that's not really somewhere we're trying to
Speaker 1: be anymore. Right, the whole point of healing is trying
Speaker 1: to kind of rise up to a high level of
Speaker 1: consciousness or higher frequencies, so we don't have to embody
Speaker 1: that anymore. But I don't think they're going to go away.
Speaker 1: And again, that's the compassion, that's the gentleness, that's the
Speaker 1: understanding that we're really trying to create a muscle memory
Speaker 1: with two right, you write that if we cannot transform,
Speaker 1: the moments of discomfort will forever be running from our life.
Speaker 1: But if you learn to stay, you learn how to be.
Speaker 1: And I absolutely love that idea that if we learn
Speaker 1: to stay, we learn how to be, because this is
Speaker 1: the human experience and we can't keep running from you know,
Speaker 1: every pain or every wound, or every memory or every
Speaker 1: outcropping of of something. You know, if we can learn
Speaker 1: to actually take a deep breath, sit down, let the
Speaker 1: feelings move up and out under you know, the gaze
Speaker 1: of our loving awareness, we actually start to you know,
Speaker 1: transmute the experience of our life to one of like
Speaker 1: an inner hospitality. And you know, and then and then
Speaker 1: that hospitality starts to leak outward and and everyone who's
Speaker 1: suffering feels welcome, and you know, there's no lines anymore,
Speaker 1: and it just becomes this great big dance, you know,
Speaker 1: unfurling in front of you. Yeah. I love that inner
Speaker 1: hospitality idea. And it's a phrase I actually use about.
Speaker 1: You know, we become more hospitable inside, our internal environment
Speaker 1: becomes one that is more hospitable and more pleasant to
Speaker 1: live in. Beautiful, isn't it. Yeah? Totally. But that is
Speaker 1: from sitting and staying right like that is from learning
Speaker 1: to sit your butt down. Totally, Totally there. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier about ideas about what it is
Speaker 1: that causes you know, some people to be recovering others not,
Speaker 1: you know, from addiction, And to me, that's the one
Speaker 1: that I see the most is that everybody who finally
Speaker 1: transforms it gets to the point where they Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't feel good, but okay, I can handle that. I
Speaker 1: don't have to move away from this. I don't have
Speaker 1: to because addiction is just one constant, like I don't
Speaker 1: feel good, give me something. I don't feel good, give
Speaker 1: me something. I don't feel good, give me some And
Speaker 1: we can be addicted to lots of different things. You know.
Speaker 1: Addiction happens along our spectrum, but that is the fundamental
Speaker 1: movement of I don't like how I feel, give me
Speaker 1: something to make it different, and learning to be able
Speaker 1: to go well, you know what I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have to run away from this to me is one
Speaker 1: of those fundamental things that changes inside of us. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's revolutionary. It changes your entire experience. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's always easy or right. You know, sometimes the big
Speaker 1: scary's come up, or the big sticky ikey's as I
Speaker 1: like to call them, the sticky ones that you know
Speaker 1: are really deeply entrenched and very scary. But I know
Speaker 1: well enough now that you know these are also transient things,
Speaker 1: which is only from sitting and staying and watching them
Speaker 1: come and watching them go. You quote one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Mary Oliver phrases of all time, which is that
Speaker 1: attention is the beginning of devotion that I think is brilliant.
Speaker 1: But you also quote a book that I just finished reading,
Speaker 1: which is Sue Monk Kids book called When the Heartweight
Speaker 1: Spiritual Direction of your Life's Sacred Questions that I just
Speaker 1: had a conversation with her the other day, and um,
Speaker 1: and I had just read that book for the first time.
Speaker 1: And when I saw it, I was like, well, wow,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Isn't that a gorgeous book? Oh, it's stunning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's like thirty years old. I mean, she wrote
Speaker 1: it a long time ago. Oh, and just her level
Speaker 1: of understanding of the heart was beyond eloquent. Yeah. Her
Speaker 1: new novel that just came out days ago is incredible.
Speaker 1: Is that she's just la oh my god. So I
Speaker 1: want to wrap us up here with talking a little
Speaker 1: bit about a moment you describe in the book, and
Speaker 1: you talk about you know, you sit down and you're
Speaker 1: trying to calm and cool your overly active mind, and
Speaker 1: you say, you know, for months, you've been pouring yourself,
Speaker 1: your thoughts, your inspiration into the book that we're discussing,
Speaker 1: and that very little else was allowed in and you
Speaker 1: talk about how you had to sort of settle yourself
Speaker 1: down and that I'm going to just read a little
Speaker 1: bit of what you wrote, and then I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask you to talk more about it, because I think
Speaker 1: this sort of overheated like pouring ourselves into something we love,
Speaker 1: has its beauty, but it also tends to cause us
Speaker 1: to be very overly active. And you say, if I
Speaker 1: could not tend lovingly to the quiet, I would spend
Speaker 1: a lifetime collecting things that would hold little if any worth.
Speaker 1: In the end, reflecting on how we treat ourselves without
Speaker 1: the security blanket of our achievements will expose how we
Speaker 1: are treating the foundation of our life. It's a really
Speaker 1: hard one for me to learn. It's incredible to watch
Speaker 1: how we, really, you know, circle from one achievement to
Speaker 1: the next, and one relationship to the next, and then
Speaker 1: we're never really dropping down to meet ourselves. And then
Speaker 1: I realized that the life in between was actually my
Speaker 1: relationship with my own self. And I know that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I have this very vivid
Speaker 1: image of dying for some reason and kind of lying
Speaker 1: there in my deathbed and really knowing what it is
Speaker 1: to let go and seeing that, you know, all these
Speaker 1: things we fill our days with a beautiful enough they
Speaker 1: hold very little value compared to what we actually create
Speaker 1: within ourselves, our kind of relationship to our our spirit
Speaker 1: and ourself. That is where the real value is. For me,
Speaker 1: that's what actually gives me the feeling of vitality and aliveness,
Speaker 1: not my pursuits. So yeah, I had to really learn that.
Speaker 1: I always kind of step back when I'm about to
Speaker 1: start creating a project and realize, Okay, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: going into this very momentous force that is creativity. But
Speaker 1: creativity in a sense, while you are creating, it's also
Speaker 1: a sort of it has a depleting quality. It's like
Speaker 1: a draining You know, you're excited you're writing a zephyrt,
Speaker 1: but you're also draining life force from yourself on a
Speaker 1: level I believe. And then you have to be able
Speaker 1: to become still enough to come back and replenish. And
Speaker 1: that's by way of spirit, by way of heart, by
Speaker 1: way of by way of soul, and that connection, that
Speaker 1: deep connection. And I remember going to a retreat with
Speaker 1: Natalie Goldberg, a writing retreat, and she incorporates in and
Speaker 1: we were doing slow walking and I felt this incredible
Speaker 1: joy starting to rise just by like walking so slowly
Speaker 1: and being able to see the cracks in the concrete
Speaker 1: and the way the sun danced in shadows, and I
Speaker 1: felt this joy just like wanting to burst out of
Speaker 1: my body and I wanted to skip and dance and run.
Speaker 1: And Natalie said, oh, isn't it beautiful to feel joy?
Speaker 1: You know? But try and embody and contain that joy,
Speaker 1: and then it actually kind of builds a surplus of
Speaker 1: it in the body. But so long as we're kind
Speaker 1: of spinning out on that, we're kind of depleting ourselves
Speaker 1: and we're running rampant. So it does have you know,
Speaker 1: you know, those two qualities, the paradox of creation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good way of saying that creativity is,
Speaker 1: like you say, it can ultimately be depleting, but in
Speaker 1: the moment it's this beautiful like a drug drug, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but different than a drug in that I do feel
Speaker 1: like we can meet oneness through creativity. There's a place
Speaker 1: in creativity where the self as we think of it
Speaker 1: melts away and there's just the creating, which is a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. But I always find that like when we're creating,
Speaker 1: and at the same time we can't help but care
Speaker 1: about how that creation is received and seen, and so
Speaker 1: it feels like this razor's edge to walk of. Like
Speaker 1: on one side of it, it's this beautiful generative merging
Speaker 1: with with life force because the life force feels creative,
Speaker 1: and then you just veer a little bit one way
Speaker 1: from there and you're like worried about how it's going
Speaker 1: to be and you're like, cheese, goodness. It's it's just
Speaker 1: very tricky, you know. It's because it's easy when we're
Speaker 1: pursuing something, When you know, when we're just like, well,
Speaker 1: we're just pursuing something because it's going to give us
Speaker 1: something and we can feel that, and that's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to be like I shouldn't probably do that, Maybe I should.
Speaker 1: But it's when we're pursuing things that we deeply love
Speaker 1: and have meaning and value. That's where I think it
Speaker 1: gets a little bit trickier. At least I'm finding it
Speaker 1: to be a little bit trickier to find the right
Speaker 1: way to inhabit that space that doesn't, like you said,
Speaker 1: sort of burn me out or you know, cause me
Speaker 1: to to get so sort of crazed with the thing
Speaker 1: I'm doing it. I think it's a balance that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of creative people have to figure out, yeah,
Speaker 1: and struggle with, you know, because I feel like creativity
Speaker 1: also can have like an addictive quality to it, right,
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like and then, you know, I
Speaker 1: realized my relationships with my loved ones were stuff fring
Speaker 1: my relationships with the present moment we're suffering. I couldn't
Speaker 1: sit and be still and watch a flower or the
Speaker 1: dew on the grass, you know, I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of childlike you know, bratt nous that
Speaker 1: wanted to jump up and just keep riding this you know,
Speaker 1: essentially infinite wind, right. You know, so I realized, you
Speaker 1: know that it really does require I feel better. As
Speaker 1: much as I love being creative and as much as
Speaker 1: I love doing my work, I do feel better when
Speaker 1: I am well seated inside. And I think maybe there's
Speaker 1: a way to marry the two where you're actually kind
Speaker 1: of pulling it down and into the body. But for now,
Speaker 1: you know, I see that it Yeah, exactly like you said,
Speaker 1: the razor sharp you know, between addiction and need and
Speaker 1: then not, you know, the rest of your life suffers dramatically. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on and talking with us.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to continue into the post
Speaker 1: show conversation, and you are going to lead us through
Speaker 1: What you are probably best known for is your guided meditation.
Speaker 1: So you're going to lead us through a guided meditation
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation. Listeners, if you'd like access
Speaker 1: to that, as well as exclusive episodes, I do add
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Speaker 1: You can become a member of our community by going
Speaker 1: to when you Feed dot net slash join. Sarah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on. I really haven't enjoyed
Speaker 1: talking with you. Likewise, Eric, thank you so much. If
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