Speaker 1: Why am I feeling this? When did I first feel this?
Speaker 1: What does this part of me? Want? What's its need?
Speaker 1: By tapping into what we really want and need in
Speaker 1: a certain moment, it can lead us to a place
Speaker 1: of happiness and peace. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Jonathan Robinson, a psychotherapist, best selling author of
Speaker 1: many books, and a professional speaker. His work has been
Speaker 1: translated into forty seven languages. Jonathan has made numerous appearances
Speaker 1: on the Oprah Show, and CNN, as well as other
Speaker 1: national TV talk shows. He's spent over thirty five years
Speaker 1: studying the most practical and powerful methods for personal and
Speaker 1: professional development, and in addition, Jonathan is known for his
Speaker 1: popular podcast Awareness Explorers. Hi, Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm really excited to be here. I am
Speaker 1: excited to talk with you. You and I talked recently
Speaker 1: on your podcast, the wonderful podcast Awareness Explorers. So we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about a lot of the topics there, as
Speaker 1: well as some of the stuff that comes up in
Speaker 1: many of the books that you've written. But before we
Speaker 1: do any of that, will start like we always do
Speaker 1: with the Parable. In the Parable, there is a grandparent
Speaker 1: talking with a grandchild and they say, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and 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 grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents as well. Which wolf wins,
Speaker 1: and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do well. I hope to give a slightly
Speaker 1: unusual answer. Imagine Yoda saying the one you feed like,
Speaker 1: He might say, impatient you are. You know, we look
Speaker 1: at the world in terms of good and bad, but
Speaker 1: if you go beyond mind stuff, it's all one. There's
Speaker 1: no good and bad other than in our mind. So
Speaker 1: I think the grandpa is saying to his grandson, feed
Speaker 1: the one. Feed, not good or bad. Feed the fact
Speaker 1: that everything's interconnected, that we're all one, that there's something
Speaker 1: beyond like and dislike, good, bad, up and down, called reality.
Speaker 1: And our job is to get back to the oneness
Speaker 1: of reality, because that's where true piece is. I love
Speaker 1: it feeding the one, feeding the unity, paying attention to
Speaker 1: the unity. Let's start by talking a little bit about enlightenment.
Speaker 1: Your podcast Awareness Explores, You've interviewed a number of people
Speaker 1: who at least make claims in that direction towards enlightenment.
Speaker 1: You've in reviewed people like rom Doss, the Doli Lama
Speaker 1: in the past, who are certainly very esteemed spiritual leaders.
Speaker 1: What does that word enlightenment mean to you? Is it
Speaker 1: a useful word. Is it a confusing word? Do you
Speaker 1: use it? Well? Like any word that refers to a
Speaker 1: big thing, love, God, enlightenment, you always have to define
Speaker 1: the term because they mean totally different things to different people.
Speaker 1: So I'll say that enlightenment is when you shift your
Speaker 1: identity from your ego personality to just simple open presence
Speaker 1: and awareness in this moment, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: have done that. It's not as hard as we tend
Speaker 1: to think. We tend to think you have to practice
Speaker 1: for fifty years to do that. But there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of people that I've interviewed, and I think all
Speaker 1: of us experience that for moments in our life, and
Speaker 1: that when we live beyond our ego and into the
Speaker 1: state of compassionate, loving awareness, life is a totally different experience, right.
Speaker 1: I think when I think about this question of enlightenment,
Speaker 1: I agree a lot with what you said. It's sort
Speaker 1: of this going beyond this small sense of self, and
Speaker 1: we tend to think of it as a state that
Speaker 1: we arrive at and that's it, And it seems much
Speaker 1: more that people sort of dip in and out of it.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we're there, We're not there. We have
Speaker 1: degrees of it, it's along a continuum. And and the
Speaker 1: other thing about the traditional enlightenment experience that's often described,
Speaker 1: particularly in the Zen tradition, where we talk a lot
Speaker 1: about satory or can show these moments boom, you know,
Speaker 1: I think those are all real. I've also sometimes joked
Speaker 1: that I think some of what makes an enlightenment experience
Speaker 1: seem like an enlightenment experience is you you cover a
Speaker 1: lot of ground really fast, whereas if you have been
Speaker 1: more gradually seeing more and more degrees of truth, it's
Speaker 1: not so sudden. So I I've joked before that if
Speaker 1: you were to take the twenty two year old heroin
Speaker 1: addicted me and put him in my brain, he might
Speaker 1: think he was enlightened. He might really be like, oh
Speaker 1: my God, like this is so different, this is so peaceful, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm not claiming I'm enlightened. I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: the contrast, yea, often times I think makes those really
Speaker 1: sudden moments uh seemed like they're so special because there's
Speaker 1: just a strong contrast. Quite true, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the most enlightened people I've interviewed, whether it be the
Speaker 1: Dalai Lama or mother Teresa or whoever. Once you it
Speaker 1: becomes more of your normal state after a while, you know,
Speaker 1: let's just call it peace and presents. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: fireworks going off. It's not necessarily that you have all
Speaker 1: knowledge of the universe. You can be a pretty screwed
Speaker 1: up human being and experience not a screwed up human being,
Speaker 1: but have a it up life and still be rather
Speaker 1: enlightened because it doesn't give you any special power other
Speaker 1: than you're in touch with the peace of this moment,
Speaker 1: and your mind is not so much playing tricks on you.
Speaker 1: You're just open, compassionate awareness. Well, sometimes you can get
Speaker 1: used to that, and sometimes if you haven't had that
Speaker 1: for a while, it's like, oh my god, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: But really it's our natural state. Yeah, it is amazing.
Speaker 1: I often reflect that it's one of the best and
Speaker 1: most challenging parts of being human is our ability to habituate. Right.
Speaker 1: The fact that we can habituate to anything is really
Speaker 1: it's a great survival skill. You know, it's a really
Speaker 1: important thing, and you know, it means we can deal
Speaker 1: with lots of challenges and upsets, but it also means
Speaker 1: that we do get used to positive states, and they
Speaker 1: do seem ordinary, and we often our brains tend to
Speaker 1: be drawn towards change, difference, novelty. It's part of the
Speaker 1: wiring of the brain to look for difference. Change. That's
Speaker 1: true because that's what would have traditionally represented danger. Well,
Speaker 1: the good thing about enlightenment, or moments of enlightenment, will
Speaker 1: call it, is that in those moments things do seem new.
Speaker 1: You know, we always bring the past into the present,
Speaker 1: but enlightenment could be called moments where you're just really
Speaker 1: there and it's new. It's like a child. So what
Speaker 1: was it like to talk to Mother Teresa. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty big one. Rom Dawson like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: Dali Lama all right, yeah, but like Mother Teresa, that
Speaker 1: seems like a big deal to me, right right. Well,
Speaker 1: any time I've talked to any of these people that
Speaker 1: you may have heard of Byron, Katie Ajashanti, Mother Teresa, whoever,
Speaker 1: it's very humbling, partly because they are very humble, and
Speaker 1: they're very vulnerable and they're very human. So when I
Speaker 1: was talking to Mother Teresa, I felt like I was
Speaker 1: talking to the deepest, most vulnerable part of myself because
Speaker 1: she was kind and sweet and generous and human. You know,
Speaker 1: she said, after a while, do you have what you need?
Speaker 1: I'm really tired and I really need a nap. And
Speaker 1: I thought that was so sweet. Yeah, it's funny. I
Speaker 1: love Audio Shanti Dearly. We've talked to him like four
Speaker 1: times on the show. I think he and I have
Speaker 1: a great connection. I'm not going to put him in
Speaker 1: the same sentence with Mother Teresa though, actually not from
Speaker 1: a wisdom perspective, but just from I mean, she is
Speaker 1: someone I so admire. These people who were so dedicated
Speaker 1: to serving other people with little or no reward always
Speaker 1: strike me as they feel almost like a different breed
Speaker 1: in some way to me. Since you brought her up.
Speaker 1: I was just looking at a letter she sent me
Speaker 1: and I'll read it. I've never read this letter to
Speaker 1: basically anyone other than my wife, and you know it's handwritten.
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing that she took the time. I sent
Speaker 1: her my book in which I interviewed a lot of
Speaker 1: spiritual leaders, called The Experience of God. And she said,
Speaker 1: I received your copies of your book along with your letter.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sending them. God loves you
Speaker 1: for your deep interests. In the things of God. I
Speaker 1: will pray for you that Jesus may fill you with
Speaker 1: his Holy Spirit, whom he has promised would lead us
Speaker 1: all into our truth. I'm sorry that I will not
Speaker 1: be able to appear on a TV talk show called
Speaker 1: Oprah with you. I am sure that you understand this.
Speaker 1: Keep the joy of loving God in your heart and
Speaker 1: spread that joy to all you meet, especially those closest
Speaker 1: to you. Happy and holy New Year. I pray for
Speaker 1: you and God bless you, Mother Teresa. That's amazing to me.
Speaker 1: Even Oh can't get Mother Teresa. She's like, sorry, you
Speaker 1: got things to do. Well. She's not focused on the world,
Speaker 1: and we get very lost in the world. And that's
Speaker 1: part of the problem. You know, we think a thousand
Speaker 1: Facebook likes or a thousand Facebook friends equals one really
Speaker 1: good friend, but it really doesn't. And we're learning that
Speaker 1: spending so much time in social media or worry or
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of like we have a victim Olympics. Now.
Speaker 1: Everybody's trying to be the biggest victim, and yet pieces
Speaker 1: very much just in this moment in your heart, and
Speaker 1: it's available to all of us. And the good news
Speaker 1: is that it's never far away? So what would you
Speaker 1: say from having interviewed a lot of great spiritual teachers
Speaker 1: over time, and I think your approach with Awareness Explorers
Speaker 1: has been a little bit more focused on what we
Speaker 1: would think of as awakening maybe than than everything. But
Speaker 1: what do you think are a couple of the key
Speaker 1: learnings that you've taken from the Awareness Explorers podcast that
Speaker 1: have meant something in your life that have caused you
Speaker 1: to live or do something differently. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: One thing I would say is that people who have
Speaker 1: progressed have usually done a lot of trial and error
Speaker 1: and found a few things that really work for them.
Speaker 1: And it may not have been in their tradition that
Speaker 1: they brought up with. It may be that they just
Speaker 1: stumbled upon some technique or phrase or very simple thing
Speaker 1: often that just made for exponential growth. And that's why
Speaker 1: in the Awareness Explorers podcast we often talk about very
Speaker 1: simple techniques and I tell people try different techniques, especially
Speaker 1: ones that you can use in daily life, so you
Speaker 1: don't have to spend all your life on meditation Christian,
Speaker 1: try techniques that take five seconds to do that see
Speaker 1: if they can propel you into a slightly different view
Speaker 1: to propel you into your heart, to propel you into compassion,
Speaker 1: to help you find a place of peace even while
Speaker 1: you're walk into your car. If you can do that,
Speaker 1: your life changes, because then you have a friend for life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think that's true. I think that idea and
Speaker 1: that spirit of experimentation is really important. I've been reflecting
Speaker 1: on this a little bit recently with a couple of
Speaker 1: coaching clients of mine, and we were reflecting on two
Speaker 1: things about that. One is that sometimes you find a
Speaker 1: technique that works for you and it helps you shift
Speaker 1: your view. I like the way you said that. I
Speaker 1: think shifting a view is such a great way of
Speaker 1: describing all of this. You find a technique that helps
Speaker 1: you shift your view, and then it stops working. It
Speaker 1: was useful for a time, So sometimes something that was
Speaker 1: working stops working. And conversely, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: times the technique we may have tried before that didn't
Speaker 1: do much for us at a later stage in our
Speaker 1: growth or journey can be very beneficial because we've changed
Speaker 1: and and shifted enough. And so I think that spirit
Speaker 1: of experimentation and being willing to try different things, he's
Speaker 1: really so important in a certain sense of playfulness about
Speaker 1: it is really helpful. I totally agree with you, and
Speaker 1: and you're right, some things that didn't work now work,
Speaker 1: and some things that work for you people have a
Speaker 1: hard time letting go. It worked for me for ten
Speaker 1: years and now it's not working, But they used it
Speaker 1: for ten more years and they could be using something
Speaker 1: much better. When I interviewed a bunch of these spiritual leaders,
Speaker 1: one of the things that surprised me was how often
Speaker 1: people talked about gratitude. I thought people would talk more
Speaker 1: about love or consciousness or things like that, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of taken aback that so many people mentioned
Speaker 1: that gratitude was a doorway. Well, I kept a gratitude
Speaker 1: journal and I found it boring, and you know, I
Speaker 1: forced myself to do it, and it wasn't very good.
Speaker 1: So you know, I kind of gave up on that technique.
Speaker 1: And then a friend of mine came back from India
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and he looked like he was
Speaker 1: totally lit up, And I said what happened? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: my my guru gave me a mantra for feeling overwhelming gratitude.
Speaker 1: Well that perked up my ears. So I said, well,
Speaker 1: what's the mantra. You know, I always want the best technique,
Speaker 1: and he said, well, you have to go to India
Speaker 1: to get it from the Guru. Personally, I said, crap,
Speaker 1: you know, have you ever been to India? Eric, No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a long plane right away, and
Speaker 1: and then a phrase yea yeah, but you know I'm persistent.
Speaker 1: So I flew there and took a rickshaw for four hours.
Speaker 1: Finally get to the guse ash Ram and I explained
Speaker 1: to him after waiting for a while, uh, what I wanted,
Speaker 1: and he said, in his Indian accent, ah, yes, my
Speaker 1: mantra is the best mantra on earth. And he leans
Speaker 1: into whisper into my ear. I'm so excited, you know,
Speaker 1: I flew all this way and he says, whenever it's possible,
Speaker 1: repeat these words. The untra I give you for a
Speaker 1: feeling overwhelming gratitude is thank you. Well, I look at him.
Speaker 1: I'm figuring he's like joking with me, but he's totally serious,
Speaker 1: and I go, thank you, that's it. I traveled eighteen
Speaker 1: thousand miles. Again, thank you, that's it, and he goes, no,
Speaker 1: that's it. Is the mantra you have been using and
Speaker 1: that makes you feel like you never have enough. My
Speaker 1: mantra is thank you, not that's it. That's it would
Speaker 1: think you nowheh. So I'm totally I'm totally piste off.
Speaker 1: So I look at him, I make a snide face
Speaker 1: and I go, well, thank you, and he says thank you.
Speaker 1: It is not the montre. You must say it from
Speaker 1: your heart many times a day. So when you eat
Speaker 1: good food, say thank you, or when you see your child,
Speaker 1: or a sunset or your pets, say thank you from
Speaker 1: your heart for five seconds and you'll feel overwhelming gratitude. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I had nothing to lose, so when I
Speaker 1: went back to my hotel room, you know, I said
Speaker 1: thank you for the air conditioning, and then I said
Speaker 1: thank you that there was water running. You know, in
Speaker 1: India there's nothing guaranteed. And then I opened up my
Speaker 1: computer and I think, well, thank you for this computer.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is fifty thousand years of human ingenuity
Speaker 1: in a little box in front of me. And then
Speaker 1: I skype my wife. I'm talking to my wife on
Speaker 1: the other side of the planet for free. Instantaneously, I
Speaker 1: say thank you, and it hits me how much we
Speaker 1: actually do have. So tears of gratitude start coming down
Speaker 1: my eyes and my wife looks at me and she says,
Speaker 1: that must have been some mantra he gave you, And
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, you won't believe it, you know. So
Speaker 1: gratitude in terms of journal or or other things that
Speaker 1: I was doing little meditations didn't work. But saying thank
Speaker 1: you for this moment twenty times a day for five
Speaker 1: seconds actually does really change my experience. And once you
Speaker 1: find technique that works for you, you have a friend
Speaker 1: that is like your best friend. Because if you can
Speaker 1: change your consciousness quickly, that's better than money, that's better
Speaker 1: than anything else. That's a great story. So has that
Speaker 1: approach continued to work for you? To continue to just
Speaker 1: say thank you? You know? Do you say thank you
Speaker 1: for your computer every time we remain thankful for the computer?
Speaker 1: Or is it something you know, like the gratitude journal.
Speaker 1: Like you said, I've had similar experiences where I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, it's starting to feel like I'm
Speaker 1: going through the motions here? How do you avoid it
Speaker 1: feeling like you're going through the motions? Well, the good
Speaker 1: news is I have a bunch of techniques, you know,
Speaker 1: like five or six I cycle through So every day
Speaker 1: I choose what technique I'm going to focus on, and
Speaker 1: I write it on a post it note. I put
Speaker 1: in a couple of places. So today's my thank you Day.
Speaker 1: Now do I get used to it? If I did
Speaker 1: it every day, I would? But really the key is
Speaker 1: I up down from my head into my heart. I
Speaker 1: feel my heart, and in my case, I kind of
Speaker 1: say thank you to creation. And it's not always thanking
Speaker 1: for the same thing. You know, my knee hurt yesterday.
Speaker 1: Today it doesn't. I'm thinking, Oh, thank you for my knee,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's only five seconds. I can then
Speaker 1: turn to my dog, thank you for my dog. I
Speaker 1: can thank you for being on this podcast. I can
Speaker 1: thank the weather is nice outside. I mean, it's endless.
Speaker 1: And I keep it new by only doing it one
Speaker 1: day a week. What are some other techniques, like what's
Speaker 1: tomorrow going to be? What's what's gonna be on the
Speaker 1: post it note for tomorrow? I'll go over a few
Speaker 1: of them. Sometimes they're just a simple phrase. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but I have a judgmental mind,
Speaker 1: and I bet a bunch of your listeners do too.
Speaker 1: So I'm trying to be more compassionate, more loving. I
Speaker 1: have definite opinions about how people should be handling the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and some people are not doing what I think they should.
Speaker 1: Have definite opinions about politics, and some people are doing
Speaker 1: differently than I think about that, etcetera. You know, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of polarization, and if you're trying to
Speaker 1: feed the one, it's not about them being good or bad.
Speaker 1: It's how can I feel more compassionate. So I've come
Speaker 1: up with some phrases that help me to feel more
Speaker 1: compassionate when I notice I'm judging people. One of those
Speaker 1: phrases is forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Now you may have heard somebody stole that from me
Speaker 1: a couple thousand years ago. Uh yeah, and I have
Speaker 1: forgiven him for stealing that from me. I'm just kidding,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, but people don't know what they're doing. People,
Speaker 1: including me, often do unconscious things. So when somebody is
Speaker 1: doing something that I think might be detrimental, I say, hey,
Speaker 1: forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. Or I
Speaker 1: might say it must be hard being them. Know, if
Speaker 1: somebody is doing something I think it's really detrimental, to
Speaker 1: their kid or something, or to their own health. I think, wow,
Speaker 1: it must be really hard being them, and that helps
Speaker 1: me feel compassion. Or I might say, hey, I don't
Speaker 1: really know what's best. You know. That helps me to
Speaker 1: realize why should I be so judgmental. I'm not God.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's best for somebody else. So tomorrow
Speaker 1: is my phrase day for feeling compassion. Okay, what are
Speaker 1: some others I hold? You know a motivation you did
Speaker 1: about you know, five phrases to ease your judgmental minds.
Speaker 1: I think you've given us a couple. You've got a
Speaker 1: couple more in there, sure, you know. One of the
Speaker 1: things I do is I might say, how is what
Speaker 1: they're doing? Like what I do? You know? Yesterday there
Speaker 1: was a guy tailgating me, like, you know, like three
Speaker 1: inches from my bumper, you know, And I'm starting to
Speaker 1: get annoyed at this guy, and then I think, well,
Speaker 1: how is that like me? A lot of times I'm
Speaker 1: in a hurry, or I'm tailgating someone, or I'm not
Speaker 1: giving somebody's space. As soon as I realized how's that
Speaker 1: like me? I just let it go. That's a great one.
Speaker 1: I have that experience driving to where I'll be like,
Speaker 1: somebody will just do something and I'll think, what a jerk,
Speaker 1: And then I'll think I have done that fifty times
Speaker 1: in my life, a hundred times in my life ten
Speaker 1: minutes ago. It's a very helpful one to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that speaks also to this underlying idea
Speaker 1: that I really got from Buddhism that really stresses this fact,
Speaker 1: which is like everybody wants to be happy, everybody wants
Speaker 1: to avoid suffering. So like, if I look at like
Speaker 1: something like you said, and I think, well, how is
Speaker 1: that like something I do, I may get there. I
Speaker 1: may not write because I may look at that and go, well,
Speaker 1: I don't do that. But if I drop down another
Speaker 1: level or another level, I realized at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, what they're doing is the same thing that
Speaker 1: I do, which is I try and feel happier and
Speaker 1: I try and avoid suffering, and they're doing the same thing. Now,
Speaker 1: our strategies are different, but underneath and I've I've always
Speaker 1: found that to be another way to keep drilling down.
Speaker 1: You know, how is that like me? Okay, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not on the surface level, but one layer down or
Speaker 1: another layer down, eventually I get to if I have
Speaker 1: to that common layer, which is okay, they're trying to
Speaker 1: avoid suffering, right, And that would be an example of
Speaker 1: a phrase that came to you, that's real to you,
Speaker 1: that through trial and error, really has impact on how
Speaker 1: you look at the world. You know. Another phrase I
Speaker 1: use is they are being a perfect them. I heard
Speaker 1: that one when you said it, and I loved it.
Speaker 1: I thought, that is so good. They're being a perfect them.
Speaker 1: Say a little bit more about that. Well, you can
Speaker 1: do it an experiential way. Imagine your favorite politician that
Speaker 1: you hate or that you love to hate. You know,
Speaker 1: it will be different people for different folks. And even
Speaker 1: if you think they're a bad person and they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing what they're doing, it's kind like in a
Speaker 1: movie where you see a bad guy and you can
Speaker 1: appreciate how well they're being a bad guy, how much
Speaker 1: you dislike them, they're just doing a perfect bad guy.
Speaker 1: And your favorite politician that you love to hate is
Speaker 1: kind of like that, like, Wow, they're really doing that
Speaker 1: role really well. And I encountered a very nasty cashier
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago. They were very rude, and
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, they're really doing the rude cashier thing
Speaker 1: really well. If we needed a rude cashier in a movie,
Speaker 1: that would be the first person I would pick, because
Speaker 1: they're doing it perfectly. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's such
Speaker 1: a great one. It's a hard one when we start
Speaker 1: talking about politicians or people in pandemics who are not
Speaker 1: behaving the way we think they should, because we go well,
Speaker 1: it has real impact and real consequence on people. So
Speaker 1: I think all these things are as you're saying, they're
Speaker 1: just ways of shifting our view. It's not like we
Speaker 1: stay on that view that's the only view. It's not
Speaker 1: to say we don't think that person is doing great harm,
Speaker 1: but it's a way of shifting our view so that
Speaker 1: we can be a little bit more flexible in the
Speaker 1: way we view the world. Absolutely, And you know, if
Speaker 1: you have that don't know mind, like I don't really know,
Speaker 1: it's best. You know, for example, is a pandemic good
Speaker 1: or bad? People would say it's bad, But what if
Speaker 1: there's a worst pandemic coming in two years that we
Speaker 1: don't know? And because we now are better prepared because
Speaker 1: of the science and the things that we've had to
Speaker 1: do to deal with this stuff, when it comes to
Speaker 1: the worst pandemic, we're going to be ready. We don't
Speaker 1: know what the future is, so I think it's helpful
Speaker 1: to look at the world and well, I don't really
Speaker 1: know what's best. I have my opinions. The problem is
Speaker 1: that we believe our beliefs, right, Yeah, we do. And
Speaker 1: I always find this one of the hardest aspects of
Speaker 1: the spiritual life to navigate, which is that a certain
Speaker 1: degree of awakening shows you that, as you said, it's
Speaker 1: all kind of one, and there is a place, perhaps
Speaker 1: beyond good and bad, that there is this different view
Speaker 1: of the world that doesn't divide it up. So there's that,
Speaker 1: and that's very real, and there's the life we're living
Speaker 1: right here. You know that. Zen, we talked about the
Speaker 1: absolute and the relative, and it's a teaching eye reference
Speaker 1: often because it's being able to hold both those views
Speaker 1: and move between them that I find both very important
Speaker 1: to being both liberated and being a compassionate, ethical, moral
Speaker 1: human being. And I think it's an interesting dilemma to
Speaker 1: find our way back and forth between those places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in my podcast, we often talked about two wings
Speaker 1: of a plane. One wing is realizing that we don't
Speaker 1: know to trying to feed, the one to trying to
Speaker 1: see beyond good and bad, and the other wing is
Speaker 1: discernment is being effective in the world, making wise choices,
Speaker 1: and being able to act passionately on our beliefs. And
Speaker 1: if you have two wings well developed, that plane console.
Speaker 1: But if you only have one wing well developed, that
Speaker 1: plane is likely to go around in circles and eventually crash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of phrase by I can never
Speaker 1: say the guy's name, Mr. Gadata, who says, wisdom is knowing,
Speaker 1: I am nothing. Love is knowing I am everything, and
Speaker 1: between the two my life moves. And I just love
Speaker 1: that phrase. It speaks to exactly what you just said,
Speaker 1: the two wings of an airplane. And as a coach,
Speaker 1: what I often do is I try to ascertain which
Speaker 1: wing is weaker. I think people should work on their
Speaker 1: weak wing, because that one, if you don't work, goanna
Speaker 1: and it really falls apart, the planes going down. But
Speaker 1: in this culture, we focus a lot on, you know,
Speaker 1: getting good at the world and making decisions and getting
Speaker 1: good at money, but we don't necessarily focus so much
Speaker 1: on love, compassion, unity, that other wing, which is half
Speaker 1: of what it is to be a human being. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you need both. But to your point, ninety eight percent
Speaker 1: of us us care only about the things of not
Speaker 1: only but very much about the things of the world
Speaker 1: and the outside events. And so what most of us
Speaker 1: need is a nudge back towards you know, the deeper
Speaker 1: realities of life or or you know, what we might
Speaker 1: call spiritual spiritual just being a clarity on what really
Speaker 1: matters to us, what's really important. I have a refrigerator
Speaker 1: magnet to quote from the Buddha, and it says, do
Speaker 1: not search for peace in the world. You will not
Speaker 1: find a there. Peace is only found within. And in
Speaker 1: a way that's an uplifting message because I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but it seems like things are getting really
Speaker 1: crazy out there. Eric Uh. You know, we're having several
Speaker 1: catastrophes hitting us at once, and if you're trying to
Speaker 1: find peace in the material world right now, you're going
Speaker 1: through a lost stress. But that's just one channel. There
Speaker 1: is another channel, and on the other channel, the channel
Speaker 1: one versus channel two. On channel one, it's always peaceful,
Speaker 1: it's always just right now. It's always very simple, and
Speaker 1: our mission, should we decide to accept it, is to
Speaker 1: get good at balancing out channel one and channel two
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Speaker 1: dot com slash wolf. I think that's really well said
Speaker 1: and really important is it is a balance of the channels.
Speaker 1: You know, we can get the message that it's all
Speaker 1: about what's inside us, it's only about our internal state,
Speaker 1: and if we think that's true, then we often we
Speaker 1: don't live in the world in a way that serves
Speaker 1: our best interest. I love that balancing out the channels.
Speaker 1: I think the spiritual teacher A jun Chaw once said,
Speaker 1: if I see a guy about to go off the
Speaker 1: road into a ditch on the left, I shove him
Speaker 1: to the right. And if I seem about to go
Speaker 1: off a ditch on the right, I shove him to
Speaker 1: the left. And it's so knowing it's where we do.
Speaker 1: And so in the coaching work I do, it's a
Speaker 1: very similar thing. It's sort of you've got to ascertain. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the same thing. Isn't what everybody needs because some people,
Speaker 1: you know, have got that thing down really well, they
Speaker 1: need a different tool. So I think it's back to
Speaker 1: that idea a little bit earlier about flexibility, right, It's
Speaker 1: about being able to move between these different realities, these
Speaker 1: different insights, these different views, these different stories of the world.
Speaker 1: It's you know, I have become more and more focused
Speaker 1: on this idea of flexibility of our views. You know,
Speaker 1: how can we be flexible? We're always taking a view.
Speaker 1: We can't really not do it, but we can certainly
Speaker 1: learn to be a whole lot more flexible in them,
Speaker 1: and we can learn to not take our view quite
Speaker 1: so seriously. You know, if you look back on your life,
Speaker 1: you can say, well, I believe that way back when
Speaker 1: what was I thinking? You know, and ten years from
Speaker 1: now we'll probably be doing the same thing with what
Speaker 1: we're thinking now. I like to think beliefs are like
Speaker 1: outfits that you try on. Oh I'm now playing the
Speaker 1: I'm a spiritual secret belief or I'm now playing like
Speaker 1: I know what I'm doing in the stock market belief.
Speaker 1: But it's all with a certain amount of amusement. A
Speaker 1: certain amount of playfulness. You know, all kids play, and
Speaker 1: really all animals or mammals play, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times adults lose that sense of play. They don't even
Speaker 1: play tennis. They compete at tennis, so they compete at golf.
Speaker 1: You know, I think we need to be able to
Speaker 1: be playful with our own thoughts and beliefs, and that
Speaker 1: gives us a certain amount of freedom right there. And
Speaker 1: it's a freedom that not only gives ourselves freedom, but
Speaker 1: it gives other people interact with us a certain spaciousness
Speaker 1: and freedom because we're all very serious now, you know, problems, plans, pandemic, uh, money, worries, depression,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And really, you know, as a kid,
Speaker 1: we all kind of play with this stuff. We're not
Speaker 1: waiting for everything in the world to be okay before
Speaker 1: we have a good time with our friend. Yep, that
Speaker 1: is really true. And I've over the years, have really
Speaker 1: started to work on that that play element, because, like
Speaker 1: you said, I will immediately turn something that is fun
Speaker 1: into something I'm competing at. Like I took up rock
Speaker 1: climbing recently into a rock climbing and I love it,
Speaker 1: and I've had to be careful that, you know, part
Speaker 1: of it is just my nature, and I just let
Speaker 1: it do what it's gonna do, which is like I'm like,
Speaker 1: I want to climb that, and then I'm gonna climb
Speaker 1: the harder one than the harder one and the harder one.
Speaker 1: So some of that I just take with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt. But to some extent I also have really
Speaker 1: just tried to also just focus on the enjoyment of
Speaker 1: being up there and the feeling of just the pleasure
Speaker 1: of doing it, and whether I stay on you know,
Speaker 1: V twos as they call him in bouldering, or V
Speaker 1: three's the rest of my life. So what Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really a matter of are you really enjoying yourself? You know,
Speaker 1: I've been some books about happiness, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you the single best happiness technique I've ever come across.
Speaker 1: Are you ready? I am ready. Okay, If you're enjoying
Speaker 1: a moment, don't let your mind hijack you away from
Speaker 1: the moment. So that if you're playing with your dogs
Speaker 1: and you have a thought, oh, I need to get
Speaker 1: back to work, give yourselves another freaking minute to play
Speaker 1: with your dogs. You know, if you're having a good
Speaker 1: conversation with a friend on the phone and the thought
Speaker 1: comes up, Oh, I gotta make another call. Give yourself
Speaker 1: another two minutes and just tell your friend how much
Speaker 1: you're enjoying this. You can literally double your amount of
Speaker 1: enjoyment just by giving yourself a little bit more room,
Speaker 1: a little bit more play, a little bit more space,
Speaker 1: and not being so committed to always being on top
Speaker 1: getting stuff done at the most efficient rate possible. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a type a personality to Eric, so I have
Speaker 1: had to learn this and it's really a wonderful feeling
Speaker 1: to like just let some of that constriction go and
Speaker 1: be a little bit more like a kid again, and
Speaker 1: you know, we're here to have a good time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You guys had a podcast recently where you talked about
Speaker 1: the five different types of inquiry. I think questions are
Speaker 1: really important. I think inquiry is really important. Can you
Speaker 1: walk us through what those different types of inquiry are?
Speaker 1: Do you remember that one? I do remember. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'll be able to say all five. One
Speaker 1: of them, of course, is Byron Katie's work which she
Speaker 1: has four questions in a turnaround and the first question
Speaker 1: I love or really the first two questions are, can
Speaker 1: you absolutely know for sure that this is true? So
Speaker 1: you're thinking the politics is all screwed up. Can you
Speaker 1: know for sure that that's true? Or you're thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: this person shouldn't have done that to me. Can you
Speaker 1: know for sure that that's true? Just asking that question
Speaker 1: gives you a little bit of space. And then there's
Speaker 1: um Romana Ma Harshy's inquiry, which is trying to get
Speaker 1: you back to this place of pure awareness. I actually
Speaker 1: have a funny story about that. Many years ago, I
Speaker 1: went to India a prior time to see this guru
Speaker 1: named Punjaji you you may have heard of. He was
Speaker 1: a disciple Romana Ma Hershy and Um. I didn't really
Speaker 1: know what the scene was there. So I walked into
Speaker 1: a house which ends up with his USh ram and
Speaker 1: there's like thirty people sitting in front of him. He's
Speaker 1: a big bald headed guy and he looks at me.
Speaker 1: He points at me. He says, you sit here right
Speaker 1: in front of me. So I'm like nervous. I I
Speaker 1: sit in front of him and he gets really close
Speaker 1: to my face and he says, who are you? Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about Romano Ma harshy or any
Speaker 1: of this stuff. So so I say I'm Jonathan Robinson
Speaker 1: from the United States, and he and everybody in the
Speaker 1: room just bust up laughing, and I think, well, that
Speaker 1: was the wrong answer. So he goes, no, no, who
Speaker 1: are you really? And I go, I'm a seeker and
Speaker 1: he shakes his head. No. I go, well, I'm a man,
Speaker 1: shakes his head. No, A writer. No, I do this
Speaker 1: for like twenty things. You know. I'm a husband, I'm
Speaker 1: a I'm a tennis player. He keeps shaking his head no.
Speaker 1: Finally I run out things to say. I look in
Speaker 1: his eyes, and his eyes were like beams of light
Speaker 1: coming out, and I decided to just shut up and
Speaker 1: look in his eyes. And I was really overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: an incredible wave of love, and it was so strong
Speaker 1: that I just started sobbing in his lap. As I'm
Speaker 1: sobbing in his lap, he says to me, this love
Speaker 1: that you feel now, this piece that you feel now,
Speaker 1: is who you really are, and your job in life
Speaker 1: is to never forget that. And that's really who we
Speaker 1: are are somewhere in us, you know, thank the creation
Speaker 1: that we have that inside of us. Call it a soul.
Speaker 1: Or consciousness or awareness or God, doesn't matter what you
Speaker 1: call it. But by asking well, who am I? That's
Speaker 1: a former inquiry that can help you see through the
Speaker 1: character that you're currently playing. Your job is to go
Speaker 1: from a role to our soul. And one former inquiry
Speaker 1: is called who are you? Or what are you? And
Speaker 1: I like that former inquiry because it's very quick for
Speaker 1: the people that it works for. Another former inquiry is
Speaker 1: just asking people questions like you and I ask on
Speaker 1: our podcast. You know, just wanting to learn? What do
Speaker 1: I want to learn? And you know you are really
Speaker 1: good at that. And by going with your curiosity, what
Speaker 1: what do I want to know? No, that's a form
Speaker 1: of inquiry. I tell people, what question if you knew
Speaker 1: the answer to it would change your life. What are
Speaker 1: you really yearning to know? I say, follow that question?
Speaker 1: So that's a form of inquiry. And then there's forms
Speaker 1: of inquiry where you kind of go into a feeling
Speaker 1: and you say, well, why am I feeling this? When
Speaker 1: did I first feel this? What does this part of
Speaker 1: me want? What's its need? And by tapping into what
Speaker 1: we really want and need in a certain moment, it
Speaker 1: can lead us to a place of happiness and peace.
Speaker 1: Those are great inquiries. I'm thinking of a section in
Speaker 1: one of your earlier books where you're talking about questions,
Speaker 1: and you say questions are a quick and powerful way
Speaker 1: to change your focus and what you focus on growth.
Speaker 1: Our emotional state is largely determined by what we think about.
Speaker 1: And then you have four questions that I really like.
Speaker 1: And these are not necessarily the same level of deep
Speaker 1: spiritual insight questions about the essence of who we are,
Speaker 1: but I really liked them as four questions that can
Speaker 1: help us move for m a state of sort of
Speaker 1: unhappiness into one that's a little bit more open. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine you remember what the four are, but maybe
Speaker 1: you do, but I have them in front of me.
Speaker 1: If you don't, I might know what they are, but
Speaker 1: you might as well, uh say them so I don't
Speaker 1: embarrass myself. What small successes have I had recently? Uh?
Speaker 1: What could I feel grateful for? We've sort of covered this.
Speaker 1: Who do I love and or who loves me? And
Speaker 1: what do I appreciate about myself? And I really like those.
Speaker 1: I think those are four really helpful questions that will
Speaker 1: reorient what we're paying attention to. Yeah, and The great
Speaker 1: thing is that there's always something that you can appreciate
Speaker 1: about yourself. There's always someone or some pet that you're
Speaker 1: loving or have loved. There's always some success. If you
Speaker 1: got out bed and made it to the toilet today,
Speaker 1: that was a success. You know, uh, not everybody does that.
Speaker 1: There are ways to kind of counter the mind. The
Speaker 1: mind is kind of always looking for problems. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: always looking for what's wrong and what can I do about?
Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to force the mind in
Speaker 1: that direction. That's a given. A guest we had on
Speaker 1: called Mary O'Malley. She would be a great guest for
Speaker 1: your show, by the way. She's written a couple of
Speaker 1: amazing books. But she referred to our brains as problem factories.
Speaker 1: And I loved that because that image really worked for
Speaker 1: me because I was like, that's the way my brain works.
Speaker 1: As soon as one comes off the assembly line, it's
Speaker 1: like another one gets cranked out. There's a problem factory,
Speaker 1: one after the other. Yeah, and that's its job, and
Speaker 1: it does a wonderful job. It's a perfect them. But
Speaker 1: the important thing is to realize that there is something
Speaker 1: beyond mind. And if you can both listen to your
Speaker 1: mind and also not listen to your mind. Then you
Speaker 1: can be happy. But if you are always on channel two,
Speaker 1: always what are the problems, then it's going to really
Speaker 1: limit your experience of life quite a bit. Say a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that. There's something beyond mind. Well,
Speaker 1: people talk about it in different ways. People experience in
Speaker 1: different ways, So you can talk about intellectually like it's
Speaker 1: deep piece, it's connection with everything, it's oneness. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: people tune into it through poetry, or some people tune
Speaker 1: into it by being in a redwood forest, or some
Speaker 1: people tune into it by making love or looking into
Speaker 1: the eyes of their child or their pet. So it's
Speaker 1: a quiet, wordless place where reality is not being hijacked
Speaker 1: by a constant dialogue, by a constant narration. And we
Speaker 1: do have little moments of it, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like a on a treasure hunt for more of those moments.
Speaker 1: Right before the podcast, I was petting my dog, looking
Speaker 1: in her eyes and telling her how much I loved her. Well,
Speaker 1: that was beyond mind. That was like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: had somebody walked in the room, then I would have
Speaker 1: been embarrassed, but it was like we're both in love.
Speaker 1: We're both devoted to each other. It was so sweet.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, I'd better get ready for
Speaker 1: the podcast. And then I thought, well, let me do
Speaker 1: this for thirty more seconds, because this is the juice
Speaker 1: of life, and we all want juice. And the mind,
Speaker 1: you know, is there for taking care problems and making
Speaker 1: us money and doing those things. But you really have
Speaker 1: to give this other world it to do the world
Speaker 1: of oneness. There's another technique that you talk about in
Speaker 1: one of your books called the Pain and Pleasure List.
Speaker 1: Could you say just a little bit about what that is.
Speaker 1: I thought it was an interesting way to look at
Speaker 1: shifting some of our priorities. Yeah. Well, most people have
Speaker 1: a list of the things that they don't want to do.
Speaker 1: There are difficult that they don't like, you know, it
Speaker 1: might be like taxes. Well, when you're making a list
Speaker 1: of the pains in your life, the question to ask
Speaker 1: is can I delegate this to anyone? I don't like
Speaker 1: house cleaning, Eric, So I now pay somebody to clean
Speaker 1: my house. It's great. So making a list of your
Speaker 1: pains and seeing if you can reduce any of them
Speaker 1: will immediately lead to be more happy. But probably even
Speaker 1: more effective is making a list of your pleasures. People
Speaker 1: often get stuck with the same three or four pleasures,
Speaker 1: so I tell them make a list of forty forty pleasures.
Speaker 1: That's the goal. It could be really simple pleasures, like
Speaker 1: right now, I have a rock between my fingers I'm
Speaker 1: playing with and I like doing that. That's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: It doesn't cost anything, you know, it feels good. Uh,
Speaker 1: what the hell? Of course, there's things like tennis. There's
Speaker 1: things like spending time with my wife or my dogs.
Speaker 1: But it can also be simple things like massaging my hand. Luckily,
Speaker 1: my hand is with me wherever I go. It can
Speaker 1: also be big things like going to a redwood forest
Speaker 1: or playing music. And you realize as you make this list,
Speaker 1: how many of these pleasures am I doing a lot
Speaker 1: of people really had this thought that as soon as
Speaker 1: I get through all the difficult stuff in life, with
Speaker 1: my leftover time, I will do some pleasure. I will
Speaker 1: give myself some pleasure. So it's kind of like you're
Speaker 1: always giving yourself leftovers. And what I do is I
Speaker 1: actually schedule some of my pleasures in my calendar. They're
Speaker 1: like appointments, like I have a date with myself. I
Speaker 1: have a date night with my wife, but I have
Speaker 1: a date night with myself where I get to read
Speaker 1: some of my favorite books. I get to do basically
Speaker 1: whatever I want for three hours because it's on my calendar,
Speaker 1: and that what I need to do during those three hours.
Speaker 1: And I think scheduling pleasures can be another great way
Speaker 1: to easily increase your happiness level. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: people that go overboard, you know, and they need to
Speaker 1: not do that, But most of us really need to
Speaker 1: work towards treating ourselves with kindness. Right back to that
Speaker 1: knowing which side you're sort of airing on and moving
Speaker 1: yourself back towards the middle. I love in this you
Speaker 1: sort of talk about like just sort of adding it up,
Speaker 1: like the amount of time that I'm spending on these
Speaker 1: things in life I don't like, versus the amount of
Speaker 1: time I'm spending on these things I do like. And
Speaker 1: you say the key to having a successful life is
Speaker 1: to find the right balance of pain to pleasure. It
Speaker 1: must be a balance that works not only in one's
Speaker 1: current life, but it must also work long term. And
Speaker 1: you say that I found that when the degree of
Speaker 1: pain is compared to pleasure rises above a five to
Speaker 1: one ratio people dislike their life. Now, of course, is
Speaker 1: it exactly I do one, of course not. But as
Speaker 1: a general way of thinking about it is to look
Speaker 1: and go, okay, is there some balance here? You know,
Speaker 1: if I'm spending ten hours doing stuff I don't like
Speaker 1: for every hour I do like, that's going to be problematic.
Speaker 1: So either a I need to start doing more things
Speaker 1: I like, which is sort of working on We might
Speaker 1: even say that's working on channel two. Or we could
Speaker 1: work on channel one, which is learning to like more
Speaker 1: of the things we're doing, you know, changing our relationship
Speaker 1: to the things that we're doing. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people they don't have a five to one pain to
Speaker 1: pleasure ratio, they have like a twenty one pain to
Speaker 1: pleasure ratio, and then they wonder why am I depressed?
Speaker 1: I go, well, it's simple mathematics. Here. You're doing twenty
Speaker 1: times more things that you don't like than you do like,
Speaker 1: and that's a problem, right, I assume then working with
Speaker 1: someone like that, you would say, okay, well let's get
Speaker 1: some more pleasure in your life, and also maybe let's
Speaker 1: work on reframing some of the things that seem like
Speaker 1: you don't like them. Is there a way to sort
Speaker 1: of change our relationship to those things. You know, you're
Speaker 1: looking for the quickest way to make somebody feel better
Speaker 1: for the least amount of effort. That's why I've tended
Speaker 1: to focus on methods that take under thirty seconds to do.
Speaker 1: You know, certain phrases, even certain meditations that take under
Speaker 1: thirty seconds to do. But I found one of the
Speaker 1: simplest things that really can make a profound change is
Speaker 1: I have people commit to something that they know would
Speaker 1: make their life better. You know, as I say that
Speaker 1: to you, Eric, we all know something that oh, if
Speaker 1: I did that, I would have a great time, it
Speaker 1: would make my life better. But we don't do it.
Speaker 1: You might be backpacking, it might be uh going for
Speaker 1: a walk with a friend, it might be meditating. Whatever
Speaker 1: it is, I say, schedule it into your week, actually
Speaker 1: put it on your calendar, and then make a commitment
Speaker 1: that if you do not do that, that you have
Speaker 1: to rip up a dollar. For some reason, the threat
Speaker 1: of ripping up a dollar if you break your promise
Speaker 1: to yourself is enough to get a lot of people
Speaker 1: to radically change behavior they may have had difficulty changing
Speaker 1: for thirty years. Well, I think the thing that would
Speaker 1: make my life a lot better. Would be to take Chris,
Speaker 1: who's our editor, and cut his hair in a mohawk
Speaker 1: like mine. So, Christopher, I am coming over next Thursday.
Speaker 1: Get your shares out, get your hair clippers out, because
Speaker 1: you're getting a mohawk and if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: you have to rip up a hundred dollars. How's that,
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I on the right track. Absolutely if he
Speaker 1: send me pictures, my mohawk needs touched up. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: we are at the end of our time. I do
Speaker 1: want to talk with you in the post show conversation
Speaker 1: for a little bit about meditation in general, and I
Speaker 1: am interested in some meditations that take less than thirty seconds. Also,
Speaker 1: so you and I are going to explore meditation in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation. Listeners if you would like to
Speaker 1: get access to this post show conversation a lot of
Speaker 1: other ones. A episode I do each week called its
Speaker 1: Teaching Song and a poem, AD free episodes and the
Speaker 1: joy of supporting a show that you listen to and love.
Speaker 1: Go to one you feed dot net slash join Jonathan.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for coming on. This has been a
Speaker 1: really fun conversation. Thank you so much. Eric. If what
Speaker 1: you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making
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