Speaker 1: We know that things like meditation and mindfulness practice are
Speaker 1: life changing, but we usually can't stick with them consistently
Speaker 1: enough to really see their benefits. We read inspirational authors,
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts like this one, get fired up to
Speaker 1: apply what we've learned, and inevitably we fall back into
Speaker 1: old patterns. It's so frustrating. When we can stick to
Speaker 1: our spiritual practices, their benefits are guaranteed to develop over time,
Speaker 1: but without enough traction, we barely scratch the surface. This
Speaker 1: is why any spiritual practice needs to become a habit
Speaker 1: for it to transform our lives. And this program happens
Speaker 1: in our group setting, in which community connection and friendships
Speaker 1: are created which support you all along the way. Go
Speaker 1: to Spiritual habits dot net to learn all about this
Speaker 1: opportunity for us to connect and dive deeper into how
Speaker 1: spiritual habits can transform the way you experience your day
Speaker 1: to day life that Spiritual habits dot Net. I hope
Speaker 1: to meet you in this special program that starts very soon.
Speaker 1: Honoring of life really becomes about being clear about what
Speaker 1: our values are and making those decisions with the commitment
Speaker 1: to the least harm possible. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for 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 h Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is seven A Selassie, a teacher, author and
Speaker 1: speaker who explores the themes of belonging and identity through meditation, creativity,
Speaker 1: and spirituality. She is also a teacher on the ten
Speaker 1: Percent Happier Meditation app. Seven A began studying Buddhism thirty
Speaker 1: years ago and is a three time cancer survivor of
Speaker 1: stage three and four cancer. Her book is You Belong
Speaker 1: A Call for Connection. Hi seven A, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, thanks for having me. It's a real honor
Speaker 1: to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book.
Speaker 1: You belong a call for connection, but before we do,
Speaker 1: we'll start, like we always do, with the Parable. And
Speaker 1: in the Parable, there's a grandmother who's talking with her
Speaker 1: granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always a battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grand
Speaker 1: utter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandmother. She's a 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. Yeah. I really appreciated this question.
Speaker 1: I gave it some thought, and in reflecting, I realized
Speaker 1: that I might have had a different answer in the
Speaker 1: past that really thought of those so called bad qualities
Speaker 1: and that bad wolf is something that I needed to
Speaker 1: kind of exercise or eliminate, something that was not a
Speaker 1: part of me. You know, and I really take it
Speaker 1: to heart that the parable says that these are both
Speaker 1: inside us, and as I've come to maybe hopefully more
Speaker 1: maturation in my process and in my practice, you know,
Speaker 1: recognizing that I don't need to reject any part of
Speaker 1: myself and I can still recognize what needs to be
Speaker 1: nurtured and what needs to be maybe soothed or transformed
Speaker 1: or you know, worked with in a different way, because
Speaker 1: I've really come to appreciate everything that's brought me to
Speaker 1: this moment, including my so called negative traits or bad
Speaker 1: qualities or the bad wolf, and really come to appreciate
Speaker 1: how I might not have even gotten to understanding how
Speaker 1: much I want to support and encourage the good parts
Speaker 1: if I hadn't have had to deal with the bad parts. Right, So,
Speaker 1: even just that good and bad starts to be thrown
Speaker 1: into question, and it really becomes about really understanding my
Speaker 1: values and living in an integrity and alignment with this
Speaker 1: process of waking up. So it's a profound parable because
Speaker 1: it seems simple and just kind of identifying these good
Speaker 1: and bad qualities, but it really leads us into a
Speaker 1: full exploration of what it means to be human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. That's a great and nuanced take on it.
Speaker 1: I've joked before that almost I would rather say the
Speaker 1: skillful and unskillful wolf. But that doesn't make for a
Speaker 1: very good parable. Kind of loses some of its edge.
Speaker 1: But like you said, one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about the parable is it does not say we have
Speaker 1: to starve the bad Wolf. It doesn't say we have
Speaker 1: to lock him up. We don't have to do anything
Speaker 1: to the bad wolf. It's just let's give a little
Speaker 1: bit more attention. But I also think you're right that
Speaker 1: I like that idea of I think if I look
Speaker 1: at my own life, and so much of the show
Speaker 1: has been me talking about all the things that I've
Speaker 1: messed up in my life and how those things have
Speaker 1: led me to where I am. You know, how our
Speaker 1: pain and our mistakes and our problems. Is that idea
Speaker 1: of yeah, understanding and soothing the bad wolf. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it just makes it so much more human relatable. It
Speaker 1: gives this potential and possibility that I think is really powerful. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are so many places I could jump in here,
Speaker 1: because your book has so many wonderful things, but I
Speaker 1: think I'm just going to start at the beginning, which
Speaker 1: is to talk about belonging, and I guess I was
Speaker 1: hoping maybe we could start by having you define what
Speaker 1: you mean by belonging in this case, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I start the book kind of in that classic thing
Speaker 1: where you define something by looking at its opposite. And
Speaker 1: so I talked about the fact that I am belonging
Speaker 1: expert because I didn't feel like I belonged for so long,
Speaker 1: and so for me, belonging really begins to fill out
Speaker 1: a sense of wholeness that I didn't feel as a
Speaker 1: young person and even more recently in my life that
Speaker 1: I always felt like an outsider, either culture early or
Speaker 1: racially or socially, or there are ways that I felt
Speaker 1: like I was not enough, didn't look a certain way,
Speaker 1: or have enough things, or have enough success or maybe
Speaker 1: it was too much in certain spaces, like that was
Speaker 1: too political or you know, too disruptive to certain spaces
Speaker 1: or places or communities. So, you know, belonging was something
Speaker 1: I was searching for and feeling a lot of times
Speaker 1: that I didn't have. So on a social level, like
Speaker 1: a human level, belonging is that sense of ease and
Speaker 1: wellness and sense of connection that we feel with people.
Speaker 1: And I'm also talking about belonging on sort of a
Speaker 1: more absolute or spiritual level, which is that feeling of
Speaker 1: not being separate from anything, so from parts of ourselves,
Speaker 1: from other people, from nature, and really from all of reality.
Speaker 1: So talking about both the relative sense of belonging and all,
Speaker 1: so this spiritual or absolute sense of belonging, you say
Speaker 1: that belonging is not dependent on things being as we
Speaker 1: want them to be. You listen, things off, it's not
Speaker 1: necessary to achieve some definition of success or to behave
Speaker 1: like everyone else, sort of have the perfect partner, or
Speaker 1: be the perfect size or shape. You even say, the
Speaker 1: forces of oppression don't have to magically disappear in order
Speaker 1: for us to belong. Yeah, and so you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the book I spend kind of exploring what
Speaker 1: are often called in Buddhism the two truths or the
Speaker 1: paradox of the two truths. This absolute sense of belonging
Speaker 1: that I was speaking of, which is the truth of
Speaker 1: reality that you know, Modern physics and ancient wisdom tell
Speaker 1: us that there's no separation. So even on a just
Speaker 1: energetic level, we're all vibrating energy patterns, and that's been
Speaker 1: shown to be true even if our senses tell us otherwise,
Speaker 1: and so we belong no matter what. You know, that
Speaker 1: fundamental sense of belonging is a act that it's undeniable.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the relative truth of all those
Speaker 1: lists of things you just read, and including the forces
Speaker 1: of separation. So I kind of repeat this two sentences
Speaker 1: over and over again, that we are not separate and
Speaker 1: we are not the same, and navigating those two truths
Speaker 1: is really the work of belonging. Yes, I don't know
Speaker 1: who your teacher was. I know who you said your
Speaker 1: teachers teacher was, Joco Beck, So I know you have
Speaker 1: a Zen background. I'm in the Zen tradition primarily, and
Speaker 1: that absolute and relative is such a Zen idea. It
Speaker 1: shows up there so often, whether we refer to it
Speaker 1: that way as absolute and relative or we refer to
Speaker 1: it as form and emptiness. I think it's such an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to talk about because you actually say, how
Speaker 1: do we acknowledge difference and inequities and also hold a
Speaker 1: firm conviction that fundamentally we are all irrevocably interconnected. And
Speaker 1: I think this is such a question I get a
Speaker 1: lot when I'm working with people and coaching. We start
Speaker 1: to wander into that absolute truth, or we start to
Speaker 1: wander into the idea that like everything we're seeing is
Speaker 1: our perspective, and people will go, yeah, but what about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump? What about this act of violence? And it
Speaker 1: feels like there's never a very good answer except to say,
Speaker 1: we kind of have to hold both these truths. But
Speaker 1: do you have a better way to say it than that?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like I always fall short. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a process, because we're all falling short all the time,
Speaker 1: because there's no perfect balance of meeting both, not in
Speaker 1: most humans I've met anyways, And you know, for me,
Speaker 1: it's really navigating where our imbalances maybe, and particularly where
Speaker 1: our aversions and grasping maybe, especially when they're quite subtle. Right,
Speaker 1: So we can have a tendency to want to bypass discomfort,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of discomfort with the relative reality
Speaker 1: because it is uncomfortable. You know, it's painful to witness
Speaker 1: what we're still doing to each other in this day
Speaker 1: and age, you know, in the most obscene ways. There's
Speaker 1: a war raging right now in Ethiopia, where I was born,
Speaker 1: that is based on the most inane delusions of separation
Speaker 1: that you could imagine you know, any delusion of separation
Speaker 1: is delusion. But the lengths that people will go to
Speaker 1: kind of cling to that idea that there are these
Speaker 1: fundamental differences that require violence and aggression. But you know,
Speaker 1: those are sort of the very egregious acts of separation.
Speaker 1: But you know, we don't even want to look at
Speaker 1: kind of the anger that comes up in response to
Speaker 1: our neighbors or to our family members, and so we
Speaker 1: can kind of lean towards that absolute of we're all
Speaker 1: one or it's all emptiness is a way to actually
Speaker 1: avoid that. There's a subtle aversion in our practice. And
Speaker 1: then on the other side, you know, we can cling
Speaker 1: to those relative realities as if they're true, true and
Speaker 1: and more true. And the thing about this paradox is
Speaker 1: they're both true. It doesn't say that one is truthier,
Speaker 1: you know, so it becomes a really moment to moment
Speaker 1: subtle awareness of you know, which one we're clinging to,
Speaker 1: which one we're avoiding. That's how it's been for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the middle Way. It's one
Speaker 1: of those teachings that has meant so much to me.
Speaker 1: And we tend to think of the middle way is well,
Speaker 1: we just sort of split the difference. But the other way,
Speaker 1: that the middle way, I think, manifests as you hold
Speaker 1: these two extremes like that. Yeah, that's great. On an
Speaker 1: absolute level, it's all interconnected, it's all one, it's all
Speaker 1: essentially fine. And on a relative level, it's none of
Speaker 1: those things. And I have to hold both those. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I know for me, a really good sign that
Speaker 1: I'm not holding that is when I kind of slip
Speaker 1: into domination. And I really believe, and I talk about
Speaker 1: this in the book, that separation begets domination, these dominating
Speaker 1: patterns where we cling to being right. And there's some
Speaker 1: way in which I like that holding the extremes where
Speaker 1: you really can't be right if you're sort of in
Speaker 1: the extremes of both camps, because you're recognizing the multitudes
Speaker 1: of realities along that whole spectrum in between, right, instead
Speaker 1: of trying to hold to some particular balance in the middle.
Speaker 1: So I really like that. While we're talking about this
Speaker 1: doctrine and the two truths between the absolute and the relative,
Speaker 1: let's just talk for a moment about the absolute. I
Speaker 1: love how you mentioned that both sort of our indigenous
Speaker 1: wisdom are religious traditions of all sorts and modern science
Speaker 1: both point, is, you say, to the truth of our belonging,
Speaker 1: you know, they both point to the fact that separation
Speaker 1: is a myth for you. How is that gone from
Speaker 1: an intellectual understanding, because again, if we study science closely enough,
Speaker 1: we sort of yeah, you do arrive at this point
Speaker 1: where you're like, well, yeah, I guess you know, it
Speaker 1: is all energy that's just swirling around in all kinds
Speaker 1: of different ways, whether you know, more condensed or slower,
Speaker 1: But that's all that's happening. How has that happened for
Speaker 1: you experientially? Has it largely been through meditation practice that
Speaker 1: you've had some of those maybe more experiences of oneness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they're definitely been experiences, particularly on deeper treat
Speaker 1: where there's been that understanding of the energetic body from
Speaker 1: the experience in many different ways, you know, so subtle
Speaker 1: sensations to strong sensations, to recognizing you know, tones in
Speaker 1: the body that mapped to the chakras, and all types
Speaker 1: of experiences that many people probably had. I think my
Speaker 1: earliest experience pens were through psychedelics when I was in
Speaker 1: college and like a lot of people, opening kind of
Speaker 1: a door to the mystical and the awareness that, wait
Speaker 1: a second, there's more going on here than the ordinary
Speaker 1: senses reveal. And so that is really I think powerful
Speaker 1: window into the nature of reality. We're in the right
Speaker 1: circumstances and conditions that allow for that. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: I think also unless sort of let's say, mystical and
Speaker 1: meditative experiences or not less meditative, but less kind of
Speaker 1: typically what people would think, we're spiritual awakenings, there can
Speaker 1: be really powerful mental and emotional understanding of this. You know,
Speaker 1: something as simple as being on retreat and reaching such
Speaker 1: a point of stillness that there's an awareness that when
Speaker 1: we're truly present and mindful and with our sensory experience,
Speaker 1: we can be flooded with love and connection, you know,
Speaker 1: feelings of witnessing the same room and the same people
Speaker 1: in a completely different way. And so it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be like an energetic body experience or out of
Speaker 1: body experience or the walls melting or that. It can
Speaker 1: be just really um, you know, a love for others,
Speaker 1: and people experience this on dance floors, you know, at festivals,
Speaker 1: or in nature at the beach with their children, with
Speaker 1: their pets. So it's also tuning ourselves to what that
Speaker 1: is actually speaking to and kind of waking up our
Speaker 1: antenna for that. There's a phrase that you use in
Speaker 1: the book that I want to talk about because I
Speaker 1: think this is so insidious in modern life, although I
Speaker 1: actually don't think it's a modern phenomenon. It's just maybe
Speaker 1: been turned up a little bit, and you call it
Speaker 1: compare and compete. Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: You know, I connected to this, but it's teaching of
Speaker 1: Anna m A n A, which is a poll word
Speaker 1: that means to measure. And one of the things I
Speaker 1: love about that teaching, as I heard it from Joseph Goldstein,
Speaker 1: is that mana is one of the very last fetters
Speaker 1: or you know, these bad wolf qualities in us. It's
Speaker 1: one of the very last ones in the classical teachings
Speaker 1: um it said to release before awakening. So basically that
Speaker 1: measuring mind, it's often called the comparing mind, it's there
Speaker 1: till the end. And I always want to start with
Speaker 1: that because it's something that we have to work with
Speaker 1: and get used to so we can get into like
Speaker 1: fix it and solve it mode that this is something
Speaker 1: to get rid of, you know, kind of like the
Speaker 1: bad wolf, but it's actually something that we have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge is part of being human, and we don't want
Speaker 1: to feed it, but you know, we have to learn
Speaker 1: to kind of live with it inside us. And it
Speaker 1: really is that measuring. You know, we literally measure everything.
Speaker 1: There's a part of our mind that's constantly in that mode.
Speaker 1: And what's really fascinating about it is that it said
Speaker 1: that it manifests as both an idea of better than
Speaker 1: and less than and equal to. So it's not just
Speaker 1: about superiority or inferiority. There's sort of an equality fixation
Speaker 1: that we have as well, which you know, for those
Speaker 1: of us who are interested in issues of justice and equity,
Speaker 1: you know, we really have to look at that because
Speaker 1: it's still fueling a sense of separation and so it's
Speaker 1: still navigating that paradox when we work with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a really interesting teaching to that better than,
Speaker 1: worse than and equal. I think I've shared this experience
Speaker 1: on the show before, but I had this experience of
Speaker 1: I went to Los Angeles and I was interviewing somebody,
Speaker 1: and I went to their apartment and they had a
Speaker 1: really nice apartment in the Hollywood Hills, it was beautiful,
Speaker 1: and I stepped on in the balcony and I had
Speaker 1: this moment of looking down at everybody down there, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, you know, this guy has it all,
Speaker 1: Like look at all those people down there. You know
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, sort of looking down on And
Speaker 1: then I had this moment I glanced over my shoulder
Speaker 1: and I saw these houses up the hill and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, wait a minute, like this guy has
Speaker 1: just got an apartment. And in that moment, I just
Speaker 1: got this sense and and the sense was whether I'm
Speaker 1: comparing up or I'm comparing down. I'm not connecting, And
Speaker 1: it was that sense that the way out of this
Speaker 1: was to be connected. Yeah, I really see it in
Speaker 1: my life too, in terms of just the way our
Speaker 1: society is structured so that we are often aren't in
Speaker 1: contact with people that are that different from us. Right,
Speaker 1: So we see that in terms of the lack of
Speaker 1: racial integration, class integration, that there can be that measuring
Speaker 1: just because society is structured it that way. And I've
Speaker 1: really looked at, you know, the lack of people kind
Speaker 1: of outside of and I have a pretty multi racial
Speaker 1: group of friends, but I don't have a kind of
Speaker 1: group of friends that spans the education spectrum or somewhat
Speaker 1: a wealth spectrum. But I often notice that I feel
Speaker 1: a sense of separation from my friends that are, you know,
Speaker 1: way way wealthier than me, and feelings of guilt or
Speaker 1: that kind of privilege paranoia can crop up with friends
Speaker 1: who have a lot less than me, and so just
Speaker 1: starting to see how it plays out in our own lives,
Speaker 1: and then we start creating these bubbles where we feel safer,
Speaker 1: maybe because we don't have to deal with that comparison
Speaker 1: so much and reckon with it. Yep. I find it
Speaker 1: so interesting that that phrase keeping up with the Jones
Speaker 1: is right comes from, you know, really comparing yourself also
Speaker 1: but just to the person right next door. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: so endemic. But you say in the book, and I
Speaker 1: love this, you say, we hustle relentlessly to be better, smarter, healthier, cooler, thinner.
Speaker 1: You're funnier, prettier, calmer, and woker. The error at the
Speaker 1: end of these words is comparison and competition. And I
Speaker 1: love that that idea. Like any time you've got that
Speaker 1: prefix at the end, is it a prefix a suffix?
Speaker 1: I don't know those two letters at the end you're
Speaker 1: in comparison mode. Yes, yeah, and you know, to not
Speaker 1: beat ourselves up about any of this. Of course, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite statements ever, and it's in the book,
Speaker 1: is one from Christian Murty where he says, you think
Speaker 1: you're thinking your thoughts, you're not. You're thinking the cultures thoughts.
Speaker 1: And just to realize that this patterning and conditioning is
Speaker 1: really just bread into us literally, you know, epigenetically. Some
Speaker 1: of these anxieties and ways that we bring in, these
Speaker 1: fears about the outside or others or certain experiences, that's
Speaker 1: passed down. It's either passed down genetically, or it's passed
Speaker 1: down culturally or socially and our families, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's really obvious. I spent a year working in refugee
Speaker 1: camps in West Africa, and that was the longest I'd
Speaker 1: spent outside of New York City in over a decade.
Speaker 1: I lived in New York at that time. This was
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and three, and when I came back,
Speaker 1: it was so wild. I got on the subway and
Speaker 1: I could see all the fashion trends that were popular
Speaker 1: that year. All the women were wearing the same kind
Speaker 1: of boots and all the guys had like a particular
Speaker 1: kind of haircut or facial hair, and there was this
Speaker 1: way in which I could just see this, how does
Speaker 1: that happen? You know, how to suddenly everyone pick up?
Speaker 1: But it's it's in this comparison. Oh she looks cool
Speaker 1: and she has that Maybe I should get that, or
Speaker 1: this is in this magazine or that celebrity, And so
Speaker 1: it shows up in the most mundane ways. The Devil
Speaker 1: Wares product. I don't know if you've seen that film,
Speaker 1: but you know this certain color blue that everyone has
Speaker 1: suddenly two really harmful ways where the comparison and competition
Speaker 1: and leads to everything from eating disorders to self harm
Speaker 1: to suicide to much more harmful also systemic compression. That
Speaker 1: is such a great quote. We're not thinking our thoughts,
Speaker 1: were thinking the cultures thoughts. And I think one of
Speaker 1: the best things about meditation for me was when I
Speaker 1: finally got over worrying that there were thoughts happening, feeling
Speaker 1: like that was bad. To suddenly really sit back in
Speaker 1: a position of curiosity and be like, what has happened
Speaker 1: in here? Where do these thoughts keep coming from? I
Speaker 1: call them mine, but they're not mine in any sense.
Speaker 1: That I can say I chose them exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: meditation shows us that right away, like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: choosing to think or not think. And if you go
Speaker 1: a level deeper, as you're saying, you start to realize, like,
Speaker 1: I didn't choose these thoughts. They are the cultures thoughts,
Speaker 1: or they are my parents thoughts, they're this combination of
Speaker 1: all these things. But that's a really freeing At least
Speaker 1: it was for me, a really freeing realization like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I don't have to take these so seriously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's freeing. And it's also so powerful for what ails
Speaker 1: us as a society because it really allows us to
Speaker 1: tackle some of the divisions and some of the inequities
Speaker 1: without those feelings of guilt or accusation. And I like
Speaker 1: this saying that I've heard now from many people that
Speaker 1: it's not your fault, but it is your responsive That
Speaker 1: is a very well articulated phrase. Exactly, it's not my fault,
Speaker 1: but it is my responsibility. You talk a lot about
Speaker 1: implicit bias. You told the story I think it was
Speaker 1: with Dan Harris about being at a hospital and meeting
Speaker 1: a surgeon. Could you share that story, Oh, with my sister. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So my sister's intellectually disabled, so I'm her guardian. She's
Speaker 1: older than me, and so I tend to a lot
Speaker 1: of her medical decisions. And she lives in a wonderful community.
Speaker 1: She needed surgery, so it's part of the process in
Speaker 1: terms of getting that set up. But I didn't go
Speaker 1: to the initial meetings with the surgeon, but her house
Speaker 1: leader was telling me that, you know, the surgeon was
Speaker 1: really great, that she explained everything to find out. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't have a big vocabulary or you know, an intellectual
Speaker 1: understanding of what's happening. But she's very emotionally mature and
Speaker 1: she was, you know, feeling comfortable with the surgeon. So
Speaker 1: she lives in upstate New York, and so I went
Speaker 1: up for the day of the surgery and the hospital
Speaker 1: is pretty white. It's a fairly rural area, and everyone
Speaker 1: in the pre oper room was white except for one
Speaker 1: Filipino nurse. There were you know, white anesthesiologists, you know,
Speaker 1: white assisting surgeon and the other nurses. And then the
Speaker 1: doctor came in, doctor La Board and she was a young,
Speaker 1: dark skinned black woman, and I was completely surprised because
Speaker 1: even though I knew she was a woman because they
Speaker 1: had been referring to her, so I just naturally assumed
Speaker 1: that she was white. And by naturally, I mean you know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking the cultures thoughts that we here doctor,
Speaker 1: and we might think male, but maybe we've evolved beyond
Speaker 1: that to think, okay, it could be a woman. But
Speaker 1: you know, even though I've had black doctors, I grew
Speaker 1: up in d C. And you know, I was fortunate
Speaker 1: to have doctors that look like me growing up that
Speaker 1: I just sort of absorbed this idea that this doctor
Speaker 1: was going to be a white doctor. And I was
Speaker 1: just so you know, embarrassed up my own mind, but
Speaker 1: also could thankfully as a mindfulness teacher and someone who
Speaker 1: you know, a week later, I think was giving a
Speaker 1: talk on unconscious bias at a big conference for doctors
Speaker 1: and nurses, medical people working in hospice care, and you know,
Speaker 1: I could also laugh at myself and use this as
Speaker 1: an example that we don't have to take our thoughts personally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, this is not because I'm a bad person.
Speaker 1: It becomes a problem when I don't take responsibility for
Speaker 1: it and start to question that and you know, start
Speaker 1: to work on changing those unconscious beliefs. I love that
Speaker 1: story because I think it shows that unconscious bias even
Speaker 1: among your own race. You know, it's not my fault
Speaker 1: that I thought that, but I'm responsible for working on it.
Speaker 1: And that was a really powerful idea I got last year.
Speaker 1: We had Abram x Kendy on the show and was
Speaker 1: talking to him and this idea that I can absolutely
Speaker 1: have racist thoughts. You know, we tend to say I'm
Speaker 1: not racist as if it's an identity, and it was
Speaker 1: really powerful for me to realize and to start to
Speaker 1: be more comfortable with saying that's a racist thought I had.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean I'm a bad person, but I have
Speaker 1: to own up and say that's what that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know that's the maybe later step. You have
Speaker 1: to first even see it, and that's the hard work
Speaker 1: because there has to be a willingness to see it.
Speaker 1: There has to be the openness, and then there has
Speaker 1: to be the capacity. And that's really the practice, because
Speaker 1: if you're not used to even examining what's going on inside,
Speaker 1: you know, this stuff is just going to roll by.
Speaker 1: And that's where the defensive knife comes in because you're
Speaker 1: not even seeing what people are pointing to and and
Speaker 1: this can happen in all of us, and and also
Speaker 1: even the most practiced of us. That's the challenge that
Speaker 1: many practitioners of color have come up against in spiritual
Speaker 1: communities where there is the assumption that there's this tension
Speaker 1: to our thoughts and our behaviors and unconscious patterning in
Speaker 1: particular ways, but there's a whole layer that it has
Speaker 1: never been examined and has never been really seen, because
Speaker 1: you know, we need some kind of larger awareness of
Speaker 1: what it is. You know, we don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: We don't know, and so there can be thoughts, speech
Speaker 1: actions that are actually revealing a lot of unconscious bias,
Speaker 1: and it's just not even really acknowledged by people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you do a nice job in the book
Speaker 1: of talking about that and saying, hey, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't remember exactly the way you phrase it, but it
Speaker 1: gave me a little bit of laugh But it was
Speaker 1: basically like, hey, unconscious bias is unconscious as in you
Speaker 1: don't know you have it, you know, the very definition
Speaker 1: of it, which is such a great way to think
Speaker 1: of It's like, oh, yeah, I don't see what I
Speaker 1: don't see, right, Yeah, But if you have been practicing
Speaker 1: for a really long time, or you know, you feel
Speaker 1: pretty aware of a lot of things. There can be
Speaker 1: that bypassing to bring that up again, um, to think
Speaker 1: that you do see what you don't see, you know,
Speaker 1: because you've seen a lot. And I like to say,
Speaker 1: just because you've seen the nature of reality, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you understand anything. It's interesting because it's the same
Speaker 1: thing with cognitive bias, right, we learn about cognitive bias,
Speaker 1: and yet most of us cope. That's interesting. I see
Speaker 1: how my friend Bob has that, and I can sure
Speaker 1: see how my wife has that, but it actually doesn't
Speaker 1: for most people penetrate like, oh I have those, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting question to sort of be asking
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, like I know I have them,
Speaker 1: What am I missing here? It's a curiosity. It can
Speaker 1: be a curiosity. Yeah. I often bring up the issue
Speaker 1: of fat bias or fat phobia, which is something that
Speaker 1: I have been having my eyes open two more and
Speaker 1: more over the years because certain students and people who
Speaker 1: I met on retreat or uh, you know, just different folks.
Speaker 1: Why did things out to me that I never knew?
Speaker 1: You know? And much like racial stereotypes or racial biases
Speaker 1: that arenu't founded. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: ideas we have about fat people and then not to
Speaker 1: mention our unconscious biases or aversions to fatness that you know,
Speaker 1: it's really shocking when we start to really look at
Speaker 1: it in ourselves and then towards others, and it's been
Speaker 1: quite humbling. Actually. You talk a lot about how belonging
Speaker 1: really starts with our body and with embodied practice. It's
Speaker 1: a term it's being used a lot these days. Embodied
Speaker 1: say a little bit about what it means to you.
Speaker 1: For years, I really practiced mostly with my head. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a way in which I was constantly trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the practice, and there was a real
Speaker 1: disconnection from the body, and which I think is pretty
Speaker 1: common in our contemporary culture, that we are head centered,
Speaker 1: you know, rashal oriented modernist people. That's such a feature
Speaker 1: of modernity, you know, the rational and the cognitive rules.
Speaker 1: And so for me, even just starting to feel that
Speaker 1: I had a body to actually listen to the classical
Speaker 1: teachings in a deeper way, not as they were filtered
Speaker 1: through some of my teachers who could have pushed the
Speaker 1: mind of mindfulness more than anything, and recognizing that, you know,
Speaker 1: so many of these ancient teachings are fully embodied. They're
Speaker 1: often paired with embodied practices, you know, be it chigong
Speaker 1: or yoga or tai chi, or that there are ways
Speaker 1: for us to come into an experiential, embodied presence that
Speaker 1: is about that energy. When you asked me about connecting
Speaker 1: to the absolute, those are embodied experiences of it. I
Speaker 1: didn't experience it in my head. I experienced it as
Speaker 1: really starting to connect to that vibratory energy. So for me,
Speaker 1: just on a fundamental level, like being able to feel
Speaker 1: the body was a hurdle and I really had to
Speaker 1: learn that. And I find that I'm often having to
Speaker 1: teach that to people that they don't quite know how
Speaker 1: to actually sense the body. And that is such a
Speaker 1: powerful and really revolutionary experience that leads on too, so
Speaker 1: much more awareness, so that when we start working with
Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions, and especially difficult emotions or traumatic memories,
Speaker 1: that that capacity to be in our bodies lends so
Speaker 1: much support to unraveling that and to actually cultivating a
Speaker 1: sense of well being. We can't really have a sense
Speaker 1: of well being that's only in our heads. There is
Speaker 1: an ease and a wellness that comes only through the body,
Speaker 1: or especially through the body. Embodiment or embodied practices, Do
Speaker 1: you mean the same thing as somatic. That's another term
Speaker 1: that is used a lot. Are those interchangeable in your
Speaker 1: mind or is there a distinction there? I don't see
Speaker 1: a distinction. There might be a semantic difference that I
Speaker 1: don't know about. But for me, sometimes when people talk
Speaker 1: about embodied practices or semantic practices, they're talking about those
Speaker 1: movement practices like yoga and tai chi. I'm really talking
Speaker 1: about practicing meditation and stillness, but with an awareness or
Speaker 1: an attention to the body. You say, for many people
Speaker 1: it can be difficult to know the difference between feeling
Speaker 1: bodily sensations and simply thinking about the body. Is there
Speaker 1: a ground rule or a way that you have a
Speaker 1: sort of knowing whether somebody's actually feeling what's going on
Speaker 1: versus thinking about the body. How do you tell where
Speaker 1: somebody is if it's a room full of people, I
Speaker 1: can't tell. So I give a lot of cues and
Speaker 1: so invite people to feel the pressure to understand how
Speaker 1: the heat is being distributed, or you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: having them sense their feet to notice that there's a
Speaker 1: difference between the outside of their feet and the inner
Speaker 1: feed and can they send just one toe at a time,
Speaker 1: and you know, sort of taking them through all these
Speaker 1: different cues that helps them to start to bring in
Speaker 1: aliveness to the sense of their understanding of the body,
Speaker 1: so that they start to notice sensation, vibration, pressure, pulsing,
Speaker 1: temperature on the surface versus temperature inside, and so giving
Speaker 1: a lot of cues. If I'm working with someone individually,
Speaker 1: you know, then I can start to ask them questions
Speaker 1: and have them reflect back to me at their feelings
Speaker 1: that I can understand better. And have you found that,
Speaker 1: like mindfulness or meditation in general, is a skill that
Speaker 1: we get better at. Yes, yeah, you know, I'm living
Speaker 1: proof of that that I did not have an embodied
Speaker 1: sense of myself and definitely not in my practice for years.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that you know, as I'm talking
Speaker 1: to you, I can actually feel my feet on the
Speaker 1: floor and that's you know, part of my kind of
Speaker 1: fluctuating awareness as we're speaking, is testament to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I have a long way to go, but
Speaker 1: I have also made progress in that area. Where in
Speaker 1: the beginning, when it was like feel this, I was like, like,
Speaker 1: do I have feet? I mean I assume I do.
Speaker 1: I remember for a while I practiced with these Reggie
Speaker 1: Ray tapes. Yeah, he's great with that, and he would
Speaker 1: say like, notice the personality of your big toe, and
Speaker 1: I'd be like, what is what I mean? First? That
Speaker 1: still makes me laugh. Um, it's just it's a funny
Speaker 1: anything to say, I think. But I got much better
Speaker 1: at body practice by practicing in the shower because there
Speaker 1: was enough going on sensation wise, enough change and variability
Speaker 1: that I actually had something I could work with, you know.
Speaker 1: And then over time, you know, I got more subtle.
Speaker 1: But I have a long way to go with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I used to work at a meditation center and Reggie
Speaker 1: Ray's group rented it once and he came in and
Speaker 1: it was packed with chairs and people everywhere, and the
Speaker 1: first thing he had people do was lie down on
Speaker 1: the floor and there was really no room and so
Speaker 1: people were like lying under their chairs and sideways and
Speaker 1: people's feet were in people's head. And I was really
Speaker 1: impressed by that because I know for myself, like I
Speaker 1: really I do have to lie down when I feel disembodied,
Speaker 1: because sitting up there's a way in which so much
Speaker 1: of my energy is keeping my body up. And when
Speaker 1: I'm lying down, I can really feel the whole length
Speaker 1: of the floor, I can feel supported, I can feel
Speaker 1: so many points of contact with the earth that you know,
Speaker 1: that sense of embodiment comes much more alive. In the book,
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about inter reception, the process
Speaker 1: by which we sort of sense our internal body. You
Speaker 1: also then talk about one of the central practices, and
Speaker 1: mindfulness is around vedonna, which is this often translated you say,
Speaker 1: is feeling tone, which is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral? Is
Speaker 1: inter reception the scientific name for what we're driving at
Speaker 1: with vedonna, DNA is definitely part of interception. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to reflect if there's any part of interception that's not
Speaker 1: only Vedana, and I guess I'm pronouncing it wrong when
Speaker 1: I say Vedona Veda, because when I've read about each
Speaker 1: of them separately, I've been like, that sounds like a
Speaker 1: very similar thing, because when I tune into my body,
Speaker 1: there's often that very basic I like it, I don't
Speaker 1: like it, or I don't really notice it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I've always understood Vadena not so much about liking or
Speaker 1: not liking that comes in the classical teaching, it's talked
Speaker 1: about as sankara. You know, that's that's sort of the
Speaker 1: action of liking or not liking. DNA is just a perception,
Speaker 1: So it's actually just the perceiving quality or it's related
Speaker 1: to the perceiving quality of just knowing. Actually, Vadna and
Speaker 1: sanya perception both are rooted to panja, which is wisdom,
Speaker 1: so they all have this quality of just knowing. They
Speaker 1: all have the same roots, so they know what's happening.
Speaker 1: That's why they're so connected to interception. So it's just
Speaker 1: knowing whether something is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Sankara. I know,
Speaker 1: I'm getting really nerdy here, but I'm a nerd. So
Speaker 1: sankara is the same root as karma or comma, and
Speaker 1: you know, kmma just means action, Karma just means action.
Speaker 1: So sankara is the action of moving towards or away
Speaker 1: or not. So that's the liking not liking when we
Speaker 1: move towards something or not. So yeah, it helps me
Speaker 1: just understand that distinction so that I can be with
Speaker 1: something unpleasant without any need to like, like or dislike, right,
Speaker 1: that's the freedom. It's so interesting how those two happen
Speaker 1: so fast. They're all happening at the same time, so
Speaker 1: it's not even that they're like separate experiences, like all
Speaker 1: of the five aggregates arise at the same moment, right. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody say that before. I've heard people
Speaker 1: talk about how they're not really separate, how we're sort
Speaker 1: of making distinctions that don't exist. I've always thought of
Speaker 1: it somewhat sequentially. Yeah, there might be the like stopping
Speaker 1: time Jedi master version of seeing them in their sequence,
Speaker 1: so we can separate it out, But for for most
Speaker 1: of us, it's just a rising moment to moment to
Speaker 1: moment to moment. In a little while, we're going to
Speaker 1: go into the post show conversation, you're going to lead
Speaker 1: us in a short meditation. That's one of your favorite
Speaker 1: practices around embodiment, which is an elements practice. So I'm
Speaker 1: not going to talk about what that is except to
Speaker 1: say it's a great practice. We'll do that in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation. But I think where I want to
Speaker 1: kind of wrap us up here is you talk about
Speaker 1: being at the heart of the Buddhist path. Are ethical teachings. Really,
Speaker 1: all of our religious traditions, there are these ethical teachings,
Speaker 1: and we tend to like to sort of skip by them,
Speaker 1: particularly in our modern interpretation of a lot of these.
Speaker 1: We don't really like them. We don't like the term moral,
Speaker 1: we don't like that idea. But you talk about them.
Speaker 1: But you describe the five precepts in what, to me
Speaker 1: was a really interesting way. I had not heard them before.
Speaker 1: You phrase them slightly differently, and I really liked it,
Speaker 1: and I thought I would just maybe walk through each
Speaker 1: of those and you could just briefly talk about them
Speaker 1: for a second, yeah, and just know they're not my phrasing. Okay.
Speaker 1: The first is to honor life, which is traditionally said,
Speaker 1: as I've read it, do not kill. But I like
Speaker 1: that phrasing of honoring life. How do those mean different things?
Speaker 1: Do you? Or do they? They do mean different things
Speaker 1: to me. You know, there's a way in which gratitude
Speaker 1: and I talk about gratitude earlier in the book, is
Speaker 1: so central. You know, we started talking about the wolf
Speaker 1: and being grateful for the bad wolf as well as
Speaker 1: part of the process, and so there is harm that's
Speaker 1: part of being human, and so whatever steps we take
Speaker 1: to do the least amount of harm possible, you know,
Speaker 1: whether that's being a vegan or speaking out against war,
Speaker 1: there's a way in which we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: we all are going to bring harm in some way
Speaker 1: or another. So that honoring of life really becomes about
Speaker 1: being clear about what our values are and making those
Speaker 1: decisions with the commitment to the least harm possible. And
Speaker 1: you know, for some of us who choose to eat
Speaker 1: eggs or drink milk, or maybe that means only buying
Speaker 1: those things from humane sources and knowing what our food
Speaker 1: chain is involved in, or you know where our products
Speaker 1: come from and whether they're tested on animals or so
Speaker 1: it really becomes about a bigger picture of honoring life,
Speaker 1: not just what it means to kill something or not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's always that smart elec response that I get as
Speaker 1: a vegetarian, which is what you're killing plants? I'm like why, Yeah,
Speaker 1: true I am. And we drive back and forth to
Speaker 1: Atlanta to take care of Jenny's mom, and one look
Speaker 1: at the windshield and the bumper of the car tells
Speaker 1: me I took an enormous number of insect life forms.
Speaker 1: It's there the second is to be generous, Yeah, to
Speaker 1: take not what's not freely offered. You know, for me,
Speaker 1: this is such an interesting one because they're such different
Speaker 1: expressions of generosity in different cultures. I've seen that being
Speaker 1: a part of different cultures growing up, and the expression
Speaker 1: of generosity in Ethiopian culture looks so different than the
Speaker 1: expression of generosity in American culture. And so that sense
Speaker 1: of not stealing and being generous becomes really about understanding
Speaker 1: what it means to be in relationship and what it
Speaker 1: means to be in reciprocal relationship, because there are times
Speaker 1: in kind of an American context where I was behaving
Speaker 1: in an Ethiopian way where you always offered to pay
Speaker 1: for everything and you give a lot, and that's based
Speaker 1: in a culture there there's a reciprocal relationship of generosity,
Speaker 1: so that there's always a balancing happening, and so you
Speaker 1: also have to learn what is generous and what's appropriate
Speaker 1: and what's in balance. So I know this is different
Speaker 1: than what the classical teaching is saying, but when you
Speaker 1: said that, it reminded me of um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: also being a generous to ourselves, you know, and not
Speaker 1: overgiving in a sense and not overtaking right. Well, what
Speaker 1: I liked about these rephrasings is I think they are
Speaker 1: in a lot of senses broader. You know, if I
Speaker 1: say do not steal, that's a law. Be generous is
Speaker 1: a different way of looking at that. The next is
Speaker 1: to respect erotic power. Yeah, you know, I so appreciate
Speaker 1: this teaching on retreat to refrain from sexual activity, which
Speaker 1: really feels restrictive, but creates a container of safety for
Speaker 1: people who are practicing together, living together, who don't know
Speaker 1: each other, and we're really not sort of giving that
Speaker 1: attention where it may not be desired, and we're helping
Speaker 1: to see our patterns in that way. And at the
Speaker 1: same time there can be this subtle and sometimes not
Speaker 1: so subtle message that sex is bad and erotic energy
Speaker 1: is bad, and so really learning to respect that energy
Speaker 1: in a way that also allows it to flourish when
Speaker 1: it is appropriate it rather than actually really sometimes stifling
Speaker 1: it in the name of something that is more spiritual
Speaker 1: or more profound. It's such a delicate balance. And so
Speaker 1: where we are and who we're with and what's appropriate
Speaker 1: is really a communicative process, I think, which leads us
Speaker 1: into the next one, which is traditionally do not lie,
Speaker 1: But I like this interpretation much better. Communicate honestly, yes,
Speaker 1: and you know, honestly doesn't mean saying everything all the time.
Speaker 1: What I love about these and you know, the phrasing
Speaker 1: in the book has the inclusion of the earth and
Speaker 1: the ancestors and all of these qualities that to me
Speaker 1: denote relationship. And so this one especially is about really
Speaker 1: learning to listen and to bring an quality of clarity
Speaker 1: and kindness to our interactions so that what comes out
Speaker 1: is for you know, the betterment of a relationship. And
Speaker 1: then the fun in know one is traditionally said avoiding
Speaker 1: toxic inst here it says cultivate clarity, which again I
Speaker 1: really like that spin on it. Yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: with this growth of you interest in plant medicine, even
Speaker 1: in Buddhist communities and with Buddhist teachers, you know, this
Speaker 1: traditional idea that anything outside of ourselves is considered an
Speaker 1: intoxin it that should be avoided. It doesn't acknowledge sort
Speaker 1: of what it means to heal our trauma, to grow
Speaker 1: in wisdom and learn from indigenous ways, and so it
Speaker 1: gives a much broader sense of what it means to
Speaker 1: be clear clear headed, clear minded, and yeah, I love
Speaker 1: it too, and it also invites in questions about technology
Speaker 1: and media and you know the other things that are
Speaker 1: delude our minds besides booze and drugs, you know. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I had never seen the precepts sort
Speaker 1: of put in these words, and I really resonated strongly
Speaker 1: with them. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to talk in the post
Speaker 1: show conversation where you're gonna lead us through a short
Speaker 1: four elements practice, which, as I said, is a wonderful
Speaker 1: practice that I've recently been exposed to and I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to that. Listeners, you can get access to this
Speaker 1: post show conversation ad free episodes, a special episode each
Speaker 1: week I do called a teaching song and a poem,
Speaker 1: and other benefits of our community by going to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash joint seven. Ay, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to come on. I've
Speaker 1: really really enjoyed this conversation. And as often as the
Speaker 1: case it is kind of flown by, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: how do we get an hour already? But but here
Speaker 1: we are. So I really enjoyed the book and we'll
Speaker 1: have links to it in the show notes and to
Speaker 1: your website and all that, and I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, It's been great. If what you just
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