Speaker 1: Something is not working when we're struggling, and usually what
Speaker 1: is not working is not the other person. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Roger Holsten. Roger founded
Speaker 1: and ran the Open Gate, a conference and workshop center
Speaker 1: in England that introduced the work of ram Dos, teknot
Speaker 1: On and many others into Europe. His work has been
Speaker 1: featured many times in the Oprah magazine, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: and the Los Angeles Times. His newest book is Dropping
Speaker 1: the Struggle seven Ways to Love the Life you have. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: a couple of quick announcements. The first is that the
Speaker 1: one you feed coaching program is opening its enrollment window
Speaker 1: back up. It will be open for one week or
Speaker 1: until we sell out of spots. The holidays are coming
Speaker 1: up and it's been a time that we found a
Speaker 1: lot of people need a little bit of extra help.
Speaker 1: So if you are interested, go to one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash coaching program. You can sign up there
Speaker 1: and you will get information sent to you where you
Speaker 1: can register for the program if you're interested. And then
Speaker 1: the second thing is that our Facebook group is still
Speaker 1: going and it's going strong. Lots of great discussion, lots
Speaker 1: of great support amongst friends there. If you want to
Speaker 1: check that out, you can go to one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Facebook. Thanks, and here's the interview with
Speaker 1: Roger Hausden. Hi, Roger, welcome to the show. Pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here. I'm happy to have you on. Your book
Speaker 1: is called Dropping the Struggle. Seven Ways to Love the
Speaker 1: Life you Have, and we will get into more detail
Speaker 1: about it here in just a minute, but let's start
Speaker 1: like we usually do with the parable, and in the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandsaid stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather 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. Yeah, that's a great parable. Um. First
Speaker 1: of all, it's it's really a perfect illustration of the
Speaker 1: world that we live in, both internally and externally. Because
Speaker 1: we live in a world of polarity, there is always
Speaker 1: going to be two forces really struggling with each other
Speaker 1: in one way or another, and that's the way it is.
Speaker 1: So that's necessary. There's never gonna be one good wolf
Speaker 1: for nothing else. So I think part of the secret
Speaker 1: to that, or what the opportunity in that is, is
Speaker 1: that it gives us human beings the conscious opportunity a
Speaker 1: choice you know, we actually have a choice to feed
Speaker 1: either one wolf or the other. Now, a lot of
Speaker 1: the time we actually don't make a choice. We're rather
Speaker 1: driven by our reactive mind or by our emotional reactions.
Speaker 1: And when we're driven by emotional reaction or reactive mind,
Speaker 1: we are not able to make a choice. Usually when
Speaker 1: that happens, we feed the wolf that eventually comes back
Speaker 1: to snap at our own heels. So I think the
Speaker 1: fundamental opportunity there, you know, is to stop to feel oneself,
Speaker 1: by which I mean feel the one's presence in one's
Speaker 1: own body, that is, come into the present moment for
Speaker 1: a moment, and give yourself the opportunity to make a
Speaker 1: choice that really is conscious. So which wolf am I
Speaker 1: going to choose right now? That really is the opportunity
Speaker 1: that we are presented with every moment of our lives. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I was thinking about as you
Speaker 1: were talking, and I was thinking about the title of
Speaker 1: your book, Dropping the Struggle, is that one of the
Speaker 1: things I think I like about the parable is I
Speaker 1: think it normalizes the human condition that we do have
Speaker 1: these opposing forces within us, or or you know, we
Speaker 1: have different types of desires or however you want to
Speaker 1: phrase it, and I love the idea. One of the
Speaker 1: things I like about the parable is I think it
Speaker 1: says it's okay, that's the way we are. And so
Speaker 1: even though we don't give up the um trying to
Speaker 1: make the right choice between the wolves, we can in
Speaker 1: a sense drop at least the struggle to think that
Speaker 1: we should always always be good and and feel bad
Speaker 1: about ourselves when we have these other parts of our
Speaker 1: personality that the show up. Well, that's a really important point.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is been spoken of for hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of years, not only in spiritual traditions, but
Speaker 1: also in literature. I'm thinking of William Blake, the great
Speaker 1: English poet of the eighteenth century. He was saying exactly this,
Speaker 1: you know, two hundred and fifty years ago. That is
Speaker 1: that our notions of good and bad are distorted. It's
Speaker 1: true that there are constantly and always and always will
Speaker 1: be opposing forces. But as soon as we imagine that
Speaker 1: we can actually eradicate one and only have what the
Speaker 1: one that we consider to be so called the good one,
Speaker 1: and we're simply living an illusion, because living in this
Speaker 1: world we are subject to those two forces, however, and
Speaker 1: I think this is the secret, and this is what
Speaker 1: the those polarities appointing us to It is possible to
Speaker 1: go a third way, and the conscious choice, the conscious
Speaker 1: awareness of the choice available to you, is already the
Speaker 1: beginning of a third way that is actually not dominated
Speaker 1: by either of the polarities, but it's coming from a
Speaker 1: deeper layer of intelligence than the ordinary dualistic, preactive mind.
Speaker 1: So your book, dropping the Struggle Seven Ways to Love
Speaker 1: the Life you have. We're going to go into more
Speaker 1: detail in a minute, but before we do that, before
Speaker 1: you wrote this book, what you were mostly known for
Speaker 1: was a series of books with titles like ten Poems
Speaker 1: to Change Your Life, And so you explored the human
Speaker 1: condition by bringing together a lot of different poems that
Speaker 1: you really liked, and you sort of talked about how
Speaker 1: they show light onto the human condition. And so I
Speaker 1: was curious if you could just talk for a minute
Speaker 1: about the power of poetry to do that, and maybe
Speaker 1: if you could think of a poem or two for
Speaker 1: listeners that might be good for the theme of this show. Well,
Speaker 1: I continued dozens of poems that are good for this show.
Speaker 1: But first of all, actually the very beginning of this
Speaker 1: book dropping the struggle. At the very beginning of this book,
Speaker 1: there's a page with the title A note on the
Speaker 1: use of Poetry as a Wisdom language, and I do
Speaker 1: include a poem at the beginning of each chapter. There
Speaker 1: are seven chapters exploring different struggles that I've experienced in
Speaker 1: one way or another, and each chapter begins with a poem.
Speaker 1: The point about poetry, I think, is that it speaks
Speaker 1: truth in a universal language, and it's a universal language
Speaker 1: that crosses cultural boundaries, and it speaks directly to the
Speaker 1: human heart in a way actually the prose can really
Speaker 1: aspire to. It's also more free. Poetry is more free
Speaker 1: of religious dogma than spiritual traditions, so in that sense,
Speaker 1: also it's a universal language. It also gets to the
Speaker 1: very heart of an insight or an understanding. Really, essentially,
Speaker 1: poetry has inspired utterance. Is not a teaching it's not
Speaker 1: trying to tell us what to do. It's it's not
Speaker 1: the kind of truth that we were recognized necessarily with
Speaker 1: our rational mind. So poetry reaches deeper than the rational
Speaker 1: mind and responds to something in us that I would
Speaker 1: say is more of the heart, that is more really
Speaker 1: knowing that we can sense the truth of even if
Speaker 1: we don't fully understand it in a rational way. That's
Speaker 1: why I use poetry. So, for example, here's a poem
Speaker 1: by great twenty century Spanish poet called Juan Ramon Jimenez
Speaker 1: called I Am not I, and it goes like this,
Speaker 1: I am not I. I am not I. I am
Speaker 1: this one walking beside me, whom I do not see,
Speaker 1: who at times I manage to visit and at other
Speaker 1: times I forget. I am not I. I am this
Speaker 1: one who forgives gently when I hate, who walks where
Speaker 1: I am not, who will remain standing when I die.
Speaker 1: When I die. I am not I. I am this
Speaker 1: one walking beside me, whom I do not see. So
Speaker 1: that palmed for me wonderfully captures our dual nature, if
Speaker 1: you like, the personality and the witness, the one in
Speaker 1: us who is able to quietly be there in the background,
Speaker 1: seeing our life as we move through it. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's what humanity means by I am not I.
Speaker 1: I'm not I, meaning not the familiar identity I think
Speaker 1: I am. That has a place. Of course, we all
Speaker 1: need a narrative, a story to walk our walk, hard
Speaker 1: walk through this world. But he's also pointing to another
Speaker 1: dimension of the human being that is deeper than our
Speaker 1: familiar identity. I am not I, and this one walking
Speaker 1: beside me whom I do not see. So he's speaking
Speaker 1: there to the presence of being that I think we
Speaker 1: all know at one moment or another in our life.
Speaker 1: The stillness, you know, in the middle of activity, that
Speaker 1: is not disturbed by all the drama of our ordinary,
Speaker 1: familiar life. And it's not separate from that familiar life,
Speaker 1: it's concurrent with it. So that's what that parmer is
Speaker 1: pointing to, and my book Dropping the Struggle really points
Speaker 1: to the same premise, that there is a quality of
Speaker 1: being in us that does knows not to struggle, and
Speaker 1: that that quality of being in us that knows not
Speaker 1: to struggle, you could call the witness. As I mentioned
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, the enrollment window for
Speaker 1: the One You Feed coaching program is open now again
Speaker 1: for one week or until we sell out of spots.
Speaker 1: The holidays are coming up, and it's a time that
Speaker 1: a lot of people struggle. Might be that you're spending
Speaker 1: more time with family, which stresses you out. You might
Speaker 1: be feeling alone or lonely and and not sure what
Speaker 1: to do with yourself When everybody else is feeling happy,
Speaker 1: it could be a difficult time to stick to your diet.
Speaker 1: Over spending is a problem for people. So if you
Speaker 1: are wanting to make this a great holiday season and
Speaker 1: really give yourself a gift, a great gift to give
Speaker 1: yourself is the coaching program, and you can go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net Slash Coaching program and get
Speaker 1: more information. Again, the enrollment window will be open for
Speaker 1: one week, which means that by midnight November two, you'll
Speaker 1: need to sign up for at least the fifteen minute
Speaker 1: intro call. If you're signed up for the fifteen minute
Speaker 1: intro call by that date, you'll still be considered for
Speaker 1: one of the spots. So again, holidays coming up. If
Speaker 1: you feel like you could use a little extra support
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash Coaching program. Thanks. Let's
Speaker 1: jump into the book a little bit. You have seven
Speaker 1: different types of struggles to drop, and before we do that,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about something that you say in
Speaker 1: the book because I think it's a useful distinction. Before
Speaker 1: we get started, you say struggle is not the same
Speaker 1: as effort. So you also at another point say that
Speaker 1: struggle is not the same thing as work. So help
Speaker 1: me understand the difference. You know, when we're saying let's
Speaker 1: give up the struggle, you're not saying to give up
Speaker 1: making effort. You're not saying to give up working on something.
Speaker 1: What's the essence of what you are saying. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not saying that struggle has no part in life.
Speaker 1: After all, there's not a single person on this earth
Speaker 1: who has not struggled in one way or another in
Speaker 1: their life. So clearly struggle is part of the human experience.
Speaker 1: In fact, we're or most of us, come into this
Speaker 1: world struggling for air. So there's a place for struggle
Speaker 1: is usually when our survival depends upon it, as in
Speaker 1: the moment of being born. But struggle is very often
Speaker 1: misplaced in the sense that we often struggle for things,
Speaker 1: especially you know that the deeper, more meaningful things of
Speaker 1: being human, like, for example, a life purpose or love
Speaker 1: that matter, you know, these existential givens of life that
Speaker 1: we all wish for. You know, struggle is counterproductive in
Speaker 1: those areas of life. Effort is a different thing altogether, really,
Speaker 1: because we all know that effort is needed actually in
Speaker 1: in any area of life. In every area of life.
Speaker 1: But struggle, I would say, is an extra push, which
Speaker 1: really a rich needs. I think in fear. Effort does
Speaker 1: not require fear for its for its energizing movement. But struggle,
Speaker 1: you know, adds a note of desperation if you like that. Rarely,
Speaker 1: if ever works, you know, in the areas of our
Speaker 1: life the matter most to us. That's the difference between
Speaker 1: really struggle and effort. As far as work is concerned,
Speaker 1: you mentioned work too. I speak to that in the
Speaker 1: in the actually in the chapter on love and relationships,
Speaker 1: and anyone who is or has been in a relationship
Speaker 1: well acknowledge that almost always any way, work is required
Speaker 1: in some form or another. The primary work, of course,
Speaker 1: is the willingness to be aware of the workings of
Speaker 1: one's own mind. One can never really become intimate with
Speaker 1: another if one doesn't even really know oneself. And that
Speaker 1: is a discipline, that's a willingness to bring that intention,
Speaker 1: that conscious intention, into one's daily life and into one's relationship.
Speaker 1: So work is a natural part of any any relationship,
Speaker 1: and also a natural part of any healthy conscious life.
Speaker 1: But against struggle, I think we know that when we're
Speaker 1: struggling in a in a relationship. You know that very
Speaker 1: often where tending to beat our head against the wars,
Speaker 1: something is not working when we're struggling, And usually what
Speaker 1: is not working is not the other person, but a
Speaker 1: lack of capacity in the moment to actually really feel
Speaker 1: and inquire into our own mind. One of the areas
Speaker 1: that you talk about dropping the struggle, as you say,
Speaker 1: dropping the struggle for a perfect life. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that. I think that's really important, Eric,
Speaker 1: and glad you brought that up, you know, especially in
Speaker 1: in our culture and this culture, where you know, we'd
Speaker 1: also love to get our ducks in a row, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to have the perfect job or a great
Speaker 1: job and a great relationship and a great house or
Speaker 1: you know. And the truth is, which I'm sure that
Speaker 1: we all realize at one point or another in our lives,
Speaker 1: that you know, that life just isn't perfect. It's just
Speaker 1: not going to work out the way we plan at
Speaker 1: the beginning. It doesn't mean to say it's going to
Speaker 1: be worse or better, but it's certainly very likely to
Speaker 1: be different and not quite perfect or not quite as
Speaker 1: the way we would like it to be. And actually
Speaker 1: that chapter begins with a great poem by Ellen Bass
Speaker 1: called Relax. And these are the first few lives. Bad
Speaker 1: things are going to happen. No matter how many vitamins
Speaker 1: you take, how much pilate is your loose, is your keys,
Speaker 1: your hair and your memory? Your wallet will be stolen,
Speaker 1: You'll get fat, flip on the bathroom tiles of a
Speaker 1: foreign hotel and crack your hip. You'll be lonely. Oh taste,
Speaker 1: how sweet and tart the red juice is, How the
Speaker 1: tiny seeds crunch, crunch between your teeth? You know? So
Speaker 1: we are imperfect. I'm certainly imperfect, and I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anybody who isn't. And I think that the more
Speaker 1: we come to embrace and acknowledge our own imperfections, we
Speaker 1: can come to an acknowledge and embrace the way in
Speaker 1: which life itself doesn't seem to be perfect, although of course,
Speaker 1: really it is the way that it happens. The way
Speaker 1: that life unfals is the way it's happening. Who's to
Speaker 1: say it's wrong. The only thing that seems to think
Speaker 1: it's wrong is the plan we had in our head.
Speaker 1: But life doesn't really concern itself too much for our
Speaker 1: plans and the more that we align ourselves with life
Speaker 1: as it's presenting itself, the happier will be. In the book,
Speaker 1: you talk about Nietzsche's idea of loving your fate, and
Speaker 1: you say acknowledging and accepting the conditions of your life
Speaker 1: exactly as they are, whatever they are, because that is
Speaker 1: what you have. Yeah, that's really it's a beautiful phrase
Speaker 1: by Nietzsche. Frederick Nietzsche. You know, he said, I'm more
Speaker 1: fatty to love your fate. But he didn't mean your
Speaker 1: fate in the sense of your life being destined or
Speaker 1: fated from beginning to end, so that really there's no
Speaker 1: choice involved at all, because it's all predestined and laid
Speaker 1: out from the beginning. That's not what he meant by
Speaker 1: love your fate. Fate, for nietsure was the very moment
Speaker 1: that we're existing and living right now. So for me,
Speaker 1: right now, it's sitting here talking to you and to
Speaker 1: everyone else who's listening to this podcast, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, I'm gazing upon a great mountain called Mount Tamin,
Speaker 1: Marine County, California, and that is what I'm presented with
Speaker 1: right now. To love what I'm presented with means to
Speaker 1: fully embrace it because it's what is happening. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that in one minute, five minutes, ten minutes time
Speaker 1: it's not going to change. Of course it will. Life
Speaker 1: does change, But right now we only have this moment.
Speaker 1: This is the moment we have. This is our fate.
Speaker 1: I almost said, and I might as well say, can
Speaker 1: we die into the moment that we're living now as
Speaker 1: if there were no other? That is what he meant
Speaker 1: Niatsure when he speaks spook of living one's fate. And
Speaker 1: it's certainly what I would mean by dropping the struggle,
Speaker 1: because the more we actually allow ourselves to fall into
Speaker 1: the life we've already got, I mean right now at
Speaker 1: this moment, unless struggle will be. Mostly what we struggle
Speaker 1: with and for is to try and make what we
Speaker 1: have different. In other words, we're usually struggling for what
Speaker 1: we don't have but would like, or we're struggling to
Speaker 1: get rid of in some way or change what we
Speaker 1: already have. And I think the third way the key
Speaker 1: is to totally dive into and accept and accept. By accept,
Speaker 1: I mean embrace and welcome the moment we have. Certainly
Speaker 1: many people find that being on this show is one
Speaker 1: of their finest moments around try and three. M h
Speaker 1: m hmm. I think that's an idea that many of
Speaker 1: us are coming to, right and many people strive for,
Speaker 1: which is being present in the moment, you know, relaxing
Speaker 1: into the life we have. You make the point, though,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a good one, that that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily something you can do. Um. You mentioned Edward Slingerland
Speaker 1: in the book, his book Trying Not to Try, and
Speaker 1: we had him on as a guest, and it's this
Speaker 1: idea of some of these states, we can't will ourselves
Speaker 1: into it. So what's the right perspective for making conditions
Speaker 1: as conducive as they can be to us being able
Speaker 1: to die into the current moment. To use your phrase,
Speaker 1: rather than accept, I prefer the word allow, and even
Speaker 1: more than allow, the word welcome. Really it's being willing
Speaker 1: in the moment to acknowledge one's reality rather than some
Speaker 1: other reality that one would like but is not currently present.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is to acknowledge and welcome one's reality, one
Speaker 1: actually has to really see that this really is what
Speaker 1: I've got. For example, I mentioned about the Antarctic explorer
Speaker 1: Ben Saunders. Now he was in a very extreme situation
Speaker 1: he was in his going in the footsteps of Captain
Speaker 1: Scott in the Arctic Antarctic, sorry, completely unaided on his own,
Speaker 1: walking hundreds of miles across the snowy wastes of the Antarctic,
Speaker 1: and at one point in the middle of the journey
Speaker 1: there he was pushing his head into the wind, struggling
Speaker 1: to move forward step by step, freezing obviously in sub
Speaker 1: zero temperatures. And there was just this moment that he
Speaker 1: suddenly realized the complete reality and truth of his situation
Speaker 1: without struggling against it. He didn't want it to get
Speaker 1: warmer or the wind to stop, because that's not what
Speaker 1: was happening. In that moment, he suddenly got that this
Speaker 1: is where I am and what I'm in And as
Speaker 1: he saw that, he somehow let go, deeply surrendered, but
Speaker 1: not as a kind of act of volition, but it
Speaker 1: was a kind of spontaneous letting go of the struggle
Speaker 1: against the wind and against the temperature. Now, the temperature
Speaker 1: and the wind didn't change, but he changed, and he
Speaker 1: felt as a result, even though the conditions were exactly
Speaker 1: the same, everything in him was different, and he felt.
Speaker 1: It sounds ridiculous to say, but this was what he said.
Speaker 1: He felt a kind of joy rising throughout his body
Speaker 1: as he realized that, you know, he had completely given
Speaker 1: in to the reality of the moment. Now that's a
Speaker 1: rather extreme situation example, but it really is the same
Speaker 1: through all of us. It's really a question of seeing,
Speaker 1: not intellectually, not just as an idea or concept, but
Speaker 1: that this moment that we have really is it this,
Speaker 1: This is it for our life. This is a I
Speaker 1: think when we get that a door opens. Another area
Speaker 1: that you talk about dropping the struggle is dropping the
Speaker 1: struggle with time. And I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: particular idea that you bring up in that section around
Speaker 1: the idea of leisure. You say, leisure foster is not
Speaker 1: only pleasure, but enjoyment, and enjoyment happens when we are
Speaker 1: fully immersed in our experience at the intersection of doing
Speaker 1: and being. And you talk about how the concept of
Speaker 1: what leisure is has changed over time. Can you share
Speaker 1: a little bit more about that? Well, I think really
Speaker 1: I should point to the wonderful Benedictine Monk David stendel Brast,
Speaker 1: you know, who wrote in his Essential Writings. He pointed
Speaker 1: out that actually leisure need not be separate from work.
Speaker 1: That for him to work in a leisurely way, I
Speaker 1: love this. To work in a leisurely way actually is
Speaker 1: the highest expression of work. And by that he means
Speaker 1: that leisure it's not the privilege of people who can
Speaker 1: afford to take time and not do anything. Leisure is
Speaker 1: the virtue of those who give to everything they do
Speaker 1: the time it has to take. Whereas all too often
Speaker 1: in our culture we are rushing through an activity to
Speaker 1: get it over with. And when we do that, actually
Speaker 1: it's it actually is killing time. Leisurely activity, that is,
Speaker 1: activity that we're really fully engaged in, makes time come
Speaker 1: alive because it connects us to the timeless. Now, what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is when we're fully in whatever
Speaker 1: it is we're doing, we're in a flow. A tennis
Speaker 1: player knows this, as chef knows this, Artists of all
Speaker 1: kinds know this. That flow that you know, when we're
Speaker 1: in it and fully engaged, it's almost as if we're
Speaker 1: not doing what we're doing. It's almost doing itself through us.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean by the timeless. And yet something
Speaker 1: is getting done, a meal is getting cooked, you know,
Speaker 1: a tennis game is getting played. So the rushing through
Speaker 1: an activity to get it over with actually prevents that
Speaker 1: sense of flow to to emerge. And when we're in
Speaker 1: the flow, we are both in time and in the
Speaker 1: timeless at the same time, we're near the end of time.
Speaker 1: But the last struggle that I want to talk about
Speaker 1: that you talk about dropping is dropping the struggle to know.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me what that means to you? Yes,
Speaker 1: we live in a knowledge culture. Knowledge is the most
Speaker 1: highly priced thing in our culture that there is, really
Speaker 1: and for very good reason. Knowledge is immensely valuable and useful.
Speaker 1: Of course it is, and we all now have the
Speaker 1: great God Google who can find us pretty much and
Speaker 1: that thing and everything that we do want to know,
Speaker 1: and it's immensely valuable. But knowledge there's a static thing.
Speaker 1: And by that I mean, first of all, the word
Speaker 1: knowledge is a noun. It's a thing. It's a fact,
Speaker 1: it's an item of information, and knowing is a verb.
Speaker 1: It's active. In other words, it's a process. It's not
Speaker 1: a thing. It's not something you can store in your memory.
Speaker 1: You can store knowledge, but not knowing, So knowing comes
Speaker 1: from a different dimension in us. So dropping the struggle
Speaker 1: to know. By that, I mean we can all too
Speaker 1: easily think, especially in our culture, that the more knowledge
Speaker 1: we have, the more control we will have and understanding
Speaker 1: will have about our lives. Now, of course, at the
Speaker 1: material level that can be true, but again in terms
Speaker 1: of the deeper aspects of our life, like meaning and
Speaker 1: love to quote those again, no matter how much knowledge
Speaker 1: we have, even though knowledge is useful in those areas
Speaker 1: and can be valuable, no matter how much knowledge we are,
Speaker 1: we're never really going to know in terms of information,
Speaker 1: the secret of what our life is really about, and
Speaker 1: that comes from, I would say, instead of the frontal
Speaker 1: cortex or prefrontal cortex, the rational mind, and instead of that,
Speaker 1: knowing really comes from what I would call what the
Speaker 1: Buddhists call the heart mind, the quality of knowing, which
Speaker 1: is actually wordless um. And I think we've all experienced
Speaker 1: that one way or another in our lives, where you know,
Speaker 1: we wake up one morning we just for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: just somehow no what we need to do or where
Speaker 1: we need to go. That happened for me when I
Speaker 1: was in my hometown of Bath in England, and I
Speaker 1: woke up one morning and I just new, without any
Speaker 1: prior uh consideration or internal discussion, I just knew without
Speaker 1: any question that I needed to move to America, and
Speaker 1: in six months I was living in San Francisco and
Speaker 1: I still live there now. Uh. And that kind of knowing,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, is available and accessible to all
Speaker 1: of us, but it's not really something that is helped
Speaker 1: necessarily by information or by knowledge. Um, it's something which
Speaker 1: is deeper than that and is accessible to all of us. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that is a great place to wrap up
Speaker 1: the show. Roger, thanks so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to come on. I really enjoyed the book, and I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to looking into some of the other books
Speaker 1: that go more into poetry than the current one does,
Speaker 1: because I think it's an opening to something different than
Speaker 1: I get in my normal day to day life. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Okay, take care bye. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about Roger Housden and this podcast at one you Feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Roger