Speaker 1: Before we get started, I want to give a big
Speaker 1: shout out to our newest Patreon members Lenuda In, Don
Speaker 1: b Barb w Lorraine Maryland, W, Brian s, Charles s
Speaker 1: Asia J Jackie t Andy Veta. Thanks so much to
Speaker 1: all of you, and thanks so much to all of
Speaker 1: our Patreon members. If you'd like to experience being a
Speaker 1: Patreon member and all the benefits that come with it,
Speaker 1: go to one you feed dot net slash join. Instead
Speaker 1: of trying to shove a part of me that's craving
Speaker 1: a cigarette aside, or that's really sad aside, instead of
Speaker 1: saying that, turning within and saying, you know this sadness
Speaker 1: in me, I'd like to know more about it. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: guard to gin, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But It's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ralph
Speaker 1: de la Rosa, a psychotherapist in private practice and a
Speaker 1: seasoned meditation instructor. His work has been featured in The
Speaker 1: New York Post, cn in, g Q, Self, Women's Health,
Speaker 1: and many other publications and podcasts. Ralph regularly leads immersive
Speaker 1: healing retreats at Omega Institute, Spirit Rock and Crapolo. His
Speaker 1: newest book is Don't Tell Me to Relax Emotional Resilience
Speaker 1: in an Age of Rage Fields and Freakouts. Hi, Ralph,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you for having me back. Eric.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to see you. It's a pleasure to have
Speaker 1: you on again. You and I talked recently pretty briefly
Speaker 1: for a mini episode. We're gonna do a full episode
Speaker 1: now and we're going to talk about your latest book,
Speaker 1: which is called Don't Tell Me to Relax Emotional Resilience
Speaker 1: in the Age of Rage Fields and Freakouts. But before
Speaker 1: we do that. We'll start like we always do with
Speaker 1: the wolf parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The granddaughter
Speaker 1: stops and she thinks about this for a second. She
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandfather and she said, oh, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather 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, every time I hear
Speaker 1: that parable, and it's that's a great parable. But I
Speaker 1: just want to love the bad wolf. Yeah. Well, I
Speaker 1: identify a little bit with maybe not as bad wolf,
Speaker 1: but more black sheep. And I think those energies within
Speaker 1: us are just so often misunderstood, greed and hatred, rage
Speaker 1: and so on, and they often come from a lack
Speaker 1: of love. And so my instinct is to love the
Speaker 1: so called bad wolf and maybe feed them what they need,
Speaker 1: and to celebrate to celebrate the kindness and the and
Speaker 1: the other things that the other wolf represents. But I
Speaker 1: just really been in this nonpartisan place honestly recently, where
Speaker 1: now that the tides are shifting socio politically, there's still
Speaker 1: a lot of uncertainty on the table. I just want
Speaker 1: to remember that we've got to love racists, for example,
Speaker 1: while hating the racism for example. Yeah, we've really got
Speaker 1: to figure out how to become one human family again.
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I think that is such deep and
Speaker 1: challenging work to do, super challenging, But that's what we're
Speaker 1: here for, isn't it. Yep? I agree. It's that whole
Speaker 1: being able to separate a certain behavior or a certain
Speaker 1: thing from the underlying person. And a lot of your
Speaker 1: book is really about this idea that our challenges, the
Speaker 1: so called negative things, come from a good place and
Speaker 1: can be really empowering. You say pretty early on in
Speaker 1: the book, you say a trouble and disaster inherent in
Speaker 1: this life can become an endless wellspring of inspiration when
Speaker 1: we know how to meet it, and goodness knows, we
Speaker 1: feel like there's a lot of trouble and disaster. Although
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people that tends to think
Speaker 1: that trouble and disaster has been part of the human
Speaker 1: family forever. But I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: feeling it. So how we meet it skillfully is a
Speaker 1: really important thing at this point. Yeah, And the thing
Speaker 1: is going back to the wolf. Parable we don't get
Speaker 1: rid of the so called bad wolf at any point.
Speaker 1: We're hardwired for anxiety, fear, anger, these sorts of you
Speaker 1: know what are sometimes in Buddhist cannon called defilements. And
Speaker 1: so the only way uh for me is compassion for
Speaker 1: those energies in us, you know, and and to stand
Speaker 1: for love in the midst of all this calamity that
Speaker 1: we're facing. Let's talk about that, because within Buddhist circles
Speaker 1: there is the sense of um equanimity is king right,
Speaker 1: and that these these emotions are afflictive m M. You know,
Speaker 1: and we know the ways that they can be afflictive.
Speaker 1: We know what unchecked anger can do, we know what
Speaker 1: unchecked greed can do. I know in my life lots
Speaker 1: of times I've just tried to get rid of those
Speaker 1: things without understanding them. And I think what you're talking
Speaker 1: about is really the path is through understanding them, through
Speaker 1: embracing them absolutely. It's like that famous Ah John Chalk quote,
Speaker 1: the famous Thai Buddhist teacher who says that there's two
Speaker 1: forms of suffering. There's the kind that you run from
Speaker 1: that chases you everywhere, and there's the kind that you
Speaker 1: turned towards that opens a door. And that's what I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in. One more thing here too, with regards
Speaker 1: to what I just said about loving racist while hating racism,
Speaker 1: that's actually about me. That's actually about It's not so
Speaker 1: much for the so called racist in that example I'm
Speaker 1: laying down. Is that I feel better when I take
Speaker 1: that stance and I'm less torn down, I'm more energized,
Speaker 1: I have more vitality frankly to do the work of
Speaker 1: justice and healing in the world. YEP. I was talking
Speaker 1: with my spiritual director earlier today and he said something
Speaker 1: I thought was really really interesting. He said, every situation
Speaker 1: has an invitation and a temptation, and those are sort
Speaker 1: of old, fusty words, but every situation we have an
Speaker 1: invitation to turn towards the words I would use to
Speaker 1: turn towards our deeper, wiser self, or we have a
Speaker 1: temptation to run from it to turn away from it.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what you're saying. There's these two
Speaker 1: kinds of suffering, the kind where we run from it
Speaker 1: and it chases us. You and I are both addicts,
Speaker 1: you know, have a history of addiction. That's the classic
Speaker 1: running from the suffering. You know, I was running from
Speaker 1: that suffering at full speed. And then there's turning towards it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about turning towards right now, people that
Speaker 1: appear to be difficult to turn towards. So let's just
Speaker 1: pick an example that some people is going to get
Speaker 1: a little bit political, and then somebody's gonna get mad,
Speaker 1: and somebody's going to agree. But there's a lot of
Speaker 1: right now anger towards let's say people who don't wear
Speaker 1: a mask. I think that that makes sense. I think
Speaker 1: that that's righteous. It's compassionate. The definition okay, if compassion
Speaker 1: is what I see something causing harm and I want
Speaker 1: to address it. Yep, And so right there, anger actually,
Speaker 1: even though the expression of anger could be very damaging
Speaker 1: and destructive, but at its core, anger has this compassionate
Speaker 1: I see suffering, I wanted to end in some way
Speaker 1: nature to it. Yeah, and so I think that that's righteous.
Speaker 1: But the question is, how do we then let that
Speaker 1: anger inform us? Does it eclipse us and the anger
Speaker 1: calls the shots and it's it takes what we think
Speaker 1: they didn't do next? Or can we have a relationship
Speaker 1: with our anger where we allow it to come up?
Speaker 1: And the door for me that that opens is then
Speaker 1: I can put my anger a little bit to the side,
Speaker 1: not suppressing it, not repressing it, but put it to
Speaker 1: the side, Listen to it, what is it upset about?
Speaker 1: And then I can in a mindful way, speak for
Speaker 1: that anger and coming from it. So I was just
Speaker 1: actually in a situation where people were social distancing, just
Speaker 1: like an hour ago, and somebody was getting too close
Speaker 1: to me in a line, and I got furious that
Speaker 1: this person just came up and stood right next to me,
Speaker 1: masked even it's just right now, that's dangerous and it's
Speaker 1: just it's just dumb. This is how can you be?
Speaker 1: So I got angry first, and then I took a
Speaker 1: breath with the anger, and I softened my body a
Speaker 1: little bit. And Okay, I that anger is telling me
Speaker 1: I need to say something. I know that if I
Speaker 1: speak from that anger, forget it. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: an argument with with that person. I'm going to alienate
Speaker 1: that person. I'm going to look like the jerk actually
Speaker 1: everybody around, and I'm going to feel awful walking away
Speaker 1: from that. So instead, take a breath, soften and hey, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to social distance right now. Would you like
Speaker 1: to go ahead of me? And I'm going to stay
Speaker 1: six ft behind you? And I said it just like that,
Speaker 1: a little bit firm, but direct and non confrontational. Just
Speaker 1: this is what I'm doing. These are what my boundaries are,
Speaker 1: and this is what I would like to do to
Speaker 1: meet that need of mine right now. And I walked
Speaker 1: away feeling better. That's a good question, because what happens
Speaker 1: a lot of times is we walk away still angry,
Speaker 1: which is not necessarily bad. We drive back and forth
Speaker 1: from Columbus to Atlanta a lot. My my partner's mom
Speaker 1: has Alzheimer's in Atlantis, drive back and forth, and so
Speaker 1: we have to stop along the way to get get gasoline,
Speaker 1: and we'll go into some store and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a clear sign on the door everybody wear a mask.
Speaker 1: And I go inside and you know a bunch of
Speaker 1: people aren't wearing a mask, and I just stay away
Speaker 1: from them, but then walking away carrying that anger. You
Speaker 1: know those jerks. Yeah, and sometimes we can't help it.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to point out, and this is
Speaker 1: something I talked about in the introduction of the book,
Speaker 1: is the static paradigm of emotions, which basically means like
Speaker 1: when anger comes in, we tend to think anger is
Speaker 1: the only game in town, it's the only thing happening.
Speaker 1: But that's not true. That's never actually true. You know,
Speaker 1: our brain is a symphony and all part all cylinders
Speaker 1: are firing at all time. In that moment of anger.
Speaker 1: For example, in the line that I was in earlier
Speaker 1: at a ski resort, I was angry, but there was
Speaker 1: also a part of me that wanted to address it.
Speaker 1: There was a part of me that wanted to do
Speaker 1: it in an effective way. There was a part of
Speaker 1: me that haunted some other things, like to move forward
Speaker 1: in the line right that It's never just anger. And
Speaker 1: I think COVID times have really exposed us to this.
Speaker 1: Because we could have a moment of being devastated about
Speaker 1: losing our job or losing what to speak of losing
Speaker 1: a loved one, we could see somebody else who's thriving
Speaker 1: in this time and in the exact same moment that
Speaker 1: we're devastated, be happy for them or maybe even jealous
Speaker 1: of them. We could be grateful for a precious human
Speaker 1: existence and the privileges that we do have, and at
Speaker 1: the same time feeling into the sadness of right now,
Speaker 1: the grieving of you know, there's been so much loss
Speaker 1: right now. We're multiple in nature and fluid by nature.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I mean by the process paradigm,
Speaker 1: that if you notice your experience, it's never just loneliness.
Speaker 1: You can always bring other emotional energies too, for example
Speaker 1: that loneliness, and I think the highest one, the most
Speaker 1: ideal one, is compassion and love. You know, Can I
Speaker 1: be compassionate towards my lonely self, Can to be loving
Speaker 1: towards my angry self? Honoring that multiplicity and fluidity. It's
Speaker 1: the kind of medicine that we need right now. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, so, let's talk about the process for that,
Speaker 1: because I think a lot of people feel overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: an emotion anger, that's all I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll hear people say to me, I just can't get
Speaker 1: over being angry. I'm just angry all the time. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about tuning into those other energies that are there.
Speaker 1: I like, you believe very much in multiplicity of things, right,
Speaker 1: that idea of I'm this and that, not I'm this
Speaker 1: or I'm that. You know, things are good or they're bad. No,
Speaker 1: some things are good and some things are bad. You know,
Speaker 1: it's diverse, it's complex. So is it really just a
Speaker 1: matter of remembering to try and widen the lens. No,
Speaker 1: But that is the first step and the most difficult one,
Speaker 1: especially with really strong emotions like anger or panic. You know,
Speaker 1: to turn on the light bulb of awareness and say
Speaker 1: to yourself, I'm angry right now, make a choice rather
Speaker 1: than just be intoxicated by the emotion. That is the
Speaker 1: first step, and that step will save us a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble because with awareness comes choices. But if we're
Speaker 1: we're just lost in it. We're just an autopilot with it.
Speaker 1: So there's more to it than that, for sure. With
Speaker 1: regards to things that come back around, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: somebody saying can't get over this anger or another really
Speaker 1: common one is inner critics come around around with the
Speaker 1: same message, perseverating the same stuff. Over and over again.
Speaker 1: One thing I would say to a therapy client is, well,
Speaker 1: have you listened? Have you listened to that part of
Speaker 1: you yet? Have you maybe said to your inner critic, Okay,
Speaker 1: I hear you. You think I'm a failure and you
Speaker 1: think I could have done better, and you would like
Speaker 1: it if I were different in this way? Have you
Speaker 1: let that part of you know that you've heard their message?
Speaker 1: Nobody shows us how to do that. So the answer
Speaker 1: is commonly no. But it's not an inner monologue inside.
Speaker 1: It's more of a dialogue and sometimes a chorus. And
Speaker 1: when we do that, that part of us starts to
Speaker 1: feel heard and it tends to help that angry part
Speaker 1: of us move on. So this is a good segue
Speaker 1: into something you write about in the book, and I
Speaker 1: know is a big part of your work, which is
Speaker 1: the internal family systems ideas, because you just describe for
Speaker 1: us what that is. Absolutely so. Internal family systems is
Speaker 1: an evidence based modality of psychotherapy that is quite frankly,
Speaker 1: very cutting edge and versioning. At this point, I know
Speaker 1: the progenitor of it, Dick Schwartz, who's my personal mentor.
Speaker 1: I just did a live session with a lot of
Speaker 1: more set on a trauma conference and worked with Tim
Speaker 1: Ferris on his podcast recently. It's gaining traction, and it's
Speaker 1: gaining traction because what it offers is a very clear
Speaker 1: map of the psyche and how to work with the
Speaker 1: psyche and how to do these sorts of things that
Speaker 1: I am pointing to here. So we start with the
Speaker 1: basic assumption to basic assumptions, really one is that we
Speaker 1: have multiple parts of us. So I have parts of
Speaker 1: me that show up when I'm lonely, parts of me
Speaker 1: that show up when I'm reactive. I have parts of
Speaker 1: me that show up when I'm just trying to not
Speaker 1: you know, screw things up and get through the day.
Speaker 1: And then we have another aspect of our being which
Speaker 1: correlates with Buddha nature and Buddhism. We just call itself
Speaker 1: with a capital S, which correlates to the same concept
Speaker 1: in Hinduism or source energy. The open heart are innate
Speaker 1: capacity to be and we use some sea words to
Speaker 1: describe that open hearted state of calm, curiosity, compassion, and
Speaker 1: clarity would be the first four. We have many more
Speaker 1: sea words and other words that begin with other letters.
Speaker 1: But when we are curious, when we are compassionate when
Speaker 1: we are calm, when we discern something clearly, the notion
Speaker 1: here is we're actually in touch with divine spark within us.
Speaker 1: We're in touch with budded nature. So when I talk
Speaker 1: about bringing compassion to your anger, or at least curiosity
Speaker 1: right to your inner critic, oh tell me more. When
Speaker 1: we take that sort of stance, we're actually in touch
Speaker 1: with our deeper nature. It might be just rarely in touch,
Speaker 1: dipping our toe in, not the full thing, but we're
Speaker 1: in touch with that. We're in touch with that wiser nature.
Speaker 1: At the moment we get curious and instead of trying
Speaker 1: to shove you know, a part of me that's craving
Speaker 1: a cigarette aside or that's really sad aside, instead of
Speaker 1: saying that, turning within and saying, you know, this sadness
Speaker 1: in me, I'd like to know more about it. When
Speaker 1: we do that, and that's this kind of the central
Speaker 1: rudimentary processes, is a lot more that goes from there.
Speaker 1: It gets very deep and and direct. Quite frankly, it
Speaker 1: moves people out of trauma very very quickly, in my experience.
Speaker 1: But when we do that, that's the sort of door
Speaker 1: opening we're talking about here, because if you're alive, everything
Speaker 1: in you is a living energy. We tend to think
Speaker 1: of our emotions more as objects. That's just sadness. No,
Speaker 1: that's a living energy that's in you that you have
Speaker 1: a relationship with. You can hate it, you can shove
Speaker 1: it aside, you can be kind to it, you can
Speaker 1: listen to it, just like a person pick your path,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean it's part of what you do
Speaker 1: in internal family systems, identifying and naming these different parts
Speaker 1: of you. Is it useful to sort of have an
Speaker 1: inventory of who's in the house. Absolutely, because my family,
Speaker 1: what we mean is is that we have a family
Speaker 1: of parts inside of us. Right, that's the family we're
Speaker 1: talking about in this case. And so is it you've
Speaker 1: got an inventory you know who's living here? Yes, we
Speaker 1: do inventory. We do what's called parts mapping in this practice.
Speaker 1: And it's very interesting how much our own nervous system
Speaker 1: has answers for us. And we'll give us information if
Speaker 1: we approach with curiosity. And so, for example, if there's
Speaker 1: a sad part of me present and I get curious
Speaker 1: about that partise, mate, say what is it that you
Speaker 1: would like me to know? Oh? Sad part? Oh forlor
Speaker 1: and part, and oftentimes when we're curious enough, what happens
Speaker 1: as a whole tapestry will emerge. We might get memories
Speaker 1: from childhood, or we might get other images, or we
Speaker 1: might start connecting dots or or insights, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: do a thing that might sound a little bit funny
Speaker 1: to somebody who has an experience this yet, But we
Speaker 1: will ask parts of us, do you have a name?
Speaker 1: And particularly with inner children, they'll they'll give us a name.
Speaker 1: And what this really is before it starts standing to
Speaker 1: CULTI or two weird? What this really is is what
Speaker 1: Carl Yume meant when he talked about making the unconscious conscious.
Speaker 1: We're taking these energies inside of us that are ordinarily
Speaker 1: formless and a bit mystifying, and we're relating to them
Speaker 1: and we're allowing them to become more conceptual and to
Speaker 1: take form, moving out of the darkness of unconscious to something.
Speaker 1: I have the sad part whose name is I don't
Speaker 1: know Fred, or sometimes they have cartooning names, or you
Speaker 1: just get you know, I'm the lonely part. But then
Speaker 1: that allows you to have a label and to recognize
Speaker 1: and that challenge we were just talking about of how
Speaker 1: do I turn on the lights in a moment when
Speaker 1: anger is present. You know, if you have a relationship
Speaker 1: with that anger, and you know that angry part of
Speaker 1: you has an aim, then you know you are on
Speaker 1: your way to being able to say, I recognize you,
Speaker 1: I can ask you to step to the side so
Speaker 1: I can speak for you instead of you doing that
Speaker 1: for me. So in something like acceptance and commitment therapy,
Speaker 1: there's a tendency to identify these names or these voices,
Speaker 1: And one thing that suggested is give it a funny
Speaker 1: sound so that you can recognize it, so that you
Speaker 1: can disidentify from it. This sounds similar, but it sounds
Speaker 1: more like you're really talking about first embracing that voice,
Speaker 1: seeing what you can learn from it, what it has
Speaker 1: to say, and allowing it to have it say. But then,
Speaker 1: as you said, sort of set it aside. Like the
Speaker 1: idea of a family. I think it's an interesting one,
Speaker 1: and I don't know I f s that well, but
Speaker 1: it seems to me a little bit like you can
Speaker 1: identify this part of you, and you could be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're sort like a four year old, and if I
Speaker 1: had a four year old in my family, I would say,
Speaker 1: what do you want? What do you need? I would listen,
Speaker 1: but then I would not let the four year old
Speaker 1: run the household exactly. I would say, thank you for
Speaker 1: the input, but hang on, I'm the parent here. This
Speaker 1: is the direction we're going to go. But you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to shove the four year old in the closet
Speaker 1: until to shut up, because that will give you a
Speaker 1: particular result, because that is that part of you is
Speaker 1: essentially you, and you are thus shoving yourself in a
Speaker 1: closet at that point. Liz Gilbert actually talks about this
Speaker 1: in her book Big Magic, her journey with a fearful
Speaker 1: part of her that was stopping her from taking risks
Speaker 1: and having adventure in life, and she finally got to
Speaker 1: this place where she processed with this fearful part and
Speaker 1: made a deal with this fearful part of her inside
Speaker 1: that that part could sit in the passenger seat, and
Speaker 1: that part was allowed to talk to her, and that
Speaker 1: part was never ever ever allowed to touch the steering wheel. Yep, yep,
Speaker 1: pretty good advice. We're in the realm of yoga, right.
Speaker 1: This is a particular kind of yoga. This is a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice. Really, it's a practice of relating, of developing,
Speaker 1: of conscious evolution, and that correlates with this concept of
Speaker 1: yoga and the Eastern traditions. In what yoga means is wholeness.
Speaker 1: We're just talking about allowing yourself to be a whole
Speaker 1: person in a skillful way that allows you to move
Speaker 1: through the world without having to shut things down or
Speaker 1: to violently wall yourself off in some way. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the inner critic again. You've got somebody who's just
Speaker 1: got out of a job interview and they feel like
Speaker 1: they said something stupid h and they're perseverating on it
Speaker 1: day after day. So you turn towards it and you
Speaker 1: ask it. Is this the process of continuing to turn
Speaker 1: towards it, and eventually that energy dissipates because typically this
Speaker 1: is an instant It's not like you turn to know,
Speaker 1: what do you have to say and it goes, well,
Speaker 1: I thought you were an idiot in that meeting, and
Speaker 1: then it's then it shuts off. There's an evolution that
Speaker 1: can happen with inner critics, in particular, if you build
Speaker 1: that relationship with that voice inside of you. I'm at
Speaker 1: a point with my inner critics, which still come around
Speaker 1: where I can say thank you so much for trying
Speaker 1: to keep me safe, and they'll back off because I
Speaker 1: see through their party lines to what they're actually trying
Speaker 1: to do. They're trying to keep me from risking something
Speaker 1: or making a mistake or doing a face plant on
Speaker 1: Eric Summer's podcast for example. That's what an inner critic
Speaker 1: really is a part of us that's trying to minimize
Speaker 1: risk in our life. Also, that is a defensive energy.
Speaker 1: Inner critic is a defense mechanism again, because it's impetus
Speaker 1: is to keep us safe, minimize risk in some way,
Speaker 1: and defensive energies always have a more vulnerable part underneath them.
Speaker 1: They always have some part of us that holds some
Speaker 1: experience of pain, shame, or fear underneath them. That's the
Speaker 1: real point of getting to know your inner system or
Speaker 1: inner family is getting down to the point where you
Speaker 1: can get below the anger, the anxiety, the inner critics,
Speaker 1: the defensive energies, to the parts of us that need
Speaker 1: love the most. If we can hold space or inner
Speaker 1: children with tenderness and care, they start to move on
Speaker 1: from those experiences we've internalized. That's when mye really starts
Speaker 1: to open up. Yeah, I did a lot of this work.
Speaker 1: We didn't use these terms really, it was more called
Speaker 1: sort of inner child work. Right, this is twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, given a sense of how old I am
Speaker 1: at this point. But we can never tell what all
Speaker 1: contributes to our growth. But I feel like that was
Speaker 1: a big part of my development. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: parallel modalities that have this sort of awareness. I f
Speaker 1: S isn't the only one. You know, inner child work,
Speaker 1: the shadow work, Gestalt therapy has a form of parts
Speaker 1: work and empty chair technique, and a lot of ancient
Speaker 1: indigenous traditions have this sort of awareness in them as well.
Speaker 1: There's something called soul retrieval that's practiced by people in
Speaker 1: the Andes Mountains and um I believe there's a form
Speaker 1: of soul retrieval in in a form of medicine practice
Speaker 1: in West Africa as well, and it's very very very similar. E.
Speaker 1: M d R. Another trauma informed therapy also has many
Speaker 1: many similarities to what we're talking about. I'll say one
Speaker 1: last thing, which is I took an advanced teacher training
Speaker 1: with Jack Cornfield last year at Spirit Rocket. Was really cool.
Speaker 1: It was invite only there was like forty of us
Speaker 1: and he taught us meditations that came from some medicine
Speaker 1: tradition he had studied in that was not Buddhism. And
Speaker 1: I ran up to him excitedly during the break and
Speaker 1: I was like, this is just like parts work, and
Speaker 1: he very coolly looked at me. He said, you hang
Speaker 1: around long enough and you get to see that this
Speaker 1: is just the architecture of the mind. That's great. I
Speaker 1: want to go slightly deeper on this topic, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about that core self, the self with
Speaker 1: a capitalist because in Buddhism it's not really a thing.
Speaker 1: Just tell me about your understanding of that, and how
Speaker 1: sort of a Buddhist understanding of the self being quote
Speaker 1: unquote empty versus a self with a capital s in
Speaker 1: you know, parts work, or even in Hinduism. Just kind
Speaker 1: of curious how you think about all that. So, the
Speaker 1: Buddhist concept of no self has a paradoxical element, which
Speaker 1: is also the Sanskrit term is to talk at the
Speaker 1: garba or Buddha nature, which actually to talk at the
Speaker 1: garba literally translates to the womb of enlightened intelligence, right
Speaker 1: the place where our enlightened intelligence develops, and that considered
Speaker 1: essential and non changing about us when they say I'm
Speaker 1: empty of self. Emptiness in Buddhism doesn't mean no qualities.
Speaker 1: It means not solid. It means how we ordinarily habitually
Speaker 1: think of it. There is considered to be two sides
Speaker 1: to emptiness, which is the open space aspect, but then
Speaker 1: the warmth, the emotional warmth that is inherent in emptiness,
Speaker 1: as well the compassion. There are two doors that go
Speaker 1: to the same place. So there is a self actually
Speaker 1: in Buddhism. I believe that when the Buddha talked about
Speaker 1: no self, he was actually talking about these parts that
Speaker 1: we blend with that we mistake for our true nature.
Speaker 1: And Buddha did talk about we do have a true nature.
Speaker 1: We have a deeper nature to us, and it's beyond
Speaker 1: these habitual modes of being, which for me, that's the
Speaker 1: various wounded and reactive and defensive parts of me that
Speaker 1: I sometimes take to be me. They're not me. And
Speaker 1: so there's that Zen saying, not one, not two. It's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite sayings of all time. And so
Speaker 1: I'm not just one in that I have many parts,
Speaker 1: as Walt Whitman said, I contain multitudes, and yet I'm
Speaker 1: not too because it's all me somehow. This is pointing
Speaker 1: us to that there's something deeper and mysterious about us
Speaker 1: that isn't solid. It's very fluid, it's very dynamic, but
Speaker 1: it is essential and it's universal. We all have it.
Speaker 1: Do you look for it in parts? Work? So you
Speaker 1: do an inventory of all, Right, here's these various parts
Speaker 1: of me, Here's this scared self, here's this critical self.
Speaker 1: What sort of things do you do to find or
Speaker 1: connect with that self? Of the capitalists, Buddha nature, whatever
Speaker 1: labels we use, it are incomplete. Are a million ways
Speaker 1: of pointing to it in no ways of actually getting
Speaker 1: completely at it and doing it justice. This is true,
Speaker 1: Yes we do. But you know it's so funny about suffering.
Speaker 1: Is that's what points us to compassion the most, more
Speaker 1: than anything else. We won't actually sit down with ourselves
Speaker 1: and find compassion for ourselves until we feel totally stuck
Speaker 1: and back into a corner. So when people come to therapy,
Speaker 1: what the process might look like is this thing happened
Speaker 1: this week that really piste me off, and I've just
Speaker 1: been in a mind loop about it. Okay, what's that
Speaker 1: part of you saying? And we just start there with
Speaker 1: with getting into just listening, allowing, honoring, and you know,
Speaker 1: can you find it in your body? Are there any
Speaker 1: images that come with it? And then we will ask
Speaker 1: the question, well, how do you feel towards this angry
Speaker 1: part of you? And what first comes up is, you know,
Speaker 1: I hate it. It's ruining my life, it's made a
Speaker 1: mess and I have to make an apology because I
Speaker 1: went off on somebody for example. And what we do
Speaker 1: is we say, well, that part of you that's hating
Speaker 1: the angry part, just ask them if they'll step aside.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because it works. It often works. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it doesn't. We have to work with the angry part
Speaker 1: a little little bit. But oftentimes the angry part will
Speaker 1: say okay, and and you'll literally feel that part of
Speaker 1: you move off to the left or the right. And
Speaker 1: then I'll just ask, well, how do you feel towards
Speaker 1: the angry part of you now? Now that the part
Speaker 1: of you that's hating the angry part to stepping to
Speaker 1: the side, how do you feel towards them now? And
Speaker 1: usually it only takes two rounds of this before somebody says,
Speaker 1: I feel a little more open to it now that self,
Speaker 1: that openness to your angry part is self. What happens
Speaker 1: is there's a development, there's an evolution to this where
Speaker 1: your various parts as they experience you being a good
Speaker 1: parent in your own inner family. By connecting from this
Speaker 1: place of self, your parts, the whole array of them,
Speaker 1: the full spectrum of an emotional, cognitive, psychological parts we
Speaker 1: hold start to trust that it's a good idea to
Speaker 1: let the heart be open. And so the process and
Speaker 1: therapy there's this evolution where more and more parts are
Speaker 1: willing to step aside. And what I would actually say,
Speaker 1: the true corollary of no self in Buddhism two parts
Speaker 1: work is all of your parts stepping aside, and what
Speaker 1: you're reduced down to is your open, compassionate, true nature.
Speaker 1: And the idea is is we actually want to get
Speaker 1: that energy within us to start leading our lives because
Speaker 1: that's actually the best candidate for handling our affairs. Another
Speaker 1: C word, Yeah, another C word C is for cookie.
Speaker 1: That's good enough for me. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I spend a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: is how do we remember to remember the biggest challenge
Speaker 1: that I find people any kind of coaching work we're
Speaker 1: doing any sort of this inner work is remembering. As
Speaker 1: we're going about our day two tap into this to
Speaker 1: widen the lens, to look to that true self, to
Speaker 1: identify the parts. It's that stepping out of autopilot. And
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious how you think we make
Speaker 1: the evolution from we're barely aware of what's happening. If
Speaker 1: we're talking about making the unconscious conscious, there's not much
Speaker 1: of it, and over time we do it, but the
Speaker 1: question is often how do I do it more during
Speaker 1: my day? How do I bridge that gap? And isn't
Speaker 1: it wonderful that the actual definition of the word that
Speaker 1: gets translated into mindfulness, the word actually means remembrance. That's
Speaker 1: what meditation actually is. It's a training in remembering. We
Speaker 1: practice that. We have a million opportunities per set to
Speaker 1: get distracted, Remember we're meditating, come back to the object
Speaker 1: of focus, get distracted, remember again and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And that is quite an ideal training for what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, because we're putting ourselves in a controlled
Speaker 1: environment that is very nourishing over time, and we're training
Speaker 1: in coming to presence out of autopilot. And it's true
Speaker 1: we have to train ourselves to do it. That's number one.
Speaker 1: I think without an inner life, it's very very hard
Speaker 1: to be happy and to really make meaning what to
Speaker 1: speak of, discover your true purpose and self actualization. But
Speaker 1: without an inner life, without a willingness to sit down
Speaker 1: with yourself in a bare naked kind of way on
Speaker 1: the daily, how can you expect your life to progress?
Speaker 1: You know, if you're not willing to hang out with you,
Speaker 1: how can you expect anybody else to be willing to
Speaker 1: hang out with you? So that's number one. But then
Speaker 1: I'm also a fan of you know, we're also connected
Speaker 1: to our phones and that's a mixed bag. But I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of reminders, setting reminders on my phone.
Speaker 1: Take one breath, now, stop for one minute, now, remember
Speaker 1: to be kind. I go through cycles of different reminders
Speaker 1: so that they stay novel enough that I pay attention
Speaker 1: to them. But usually I set with them for about
Speaker 1: six times a day, between six and twelve times. And
Speaker 1: when that comes on, it's a practice like no, you
Speaker 1: do it. There's different ways that we can give ourselves
Speaker 1: training wheels like that, you know, post it notes on
Speaker 1: the bathroom mirror and what have you to bring our
Speaker 1: meditation practice into our daily lives. Yeah, In the Spiritual
Speaker 1: Habits program that I developed and I lead to take
Speaker 1: people through one on one in a group, we work
Speaker 1: with an app called mind Jogger, which actually randomizes these
Speaker 1: reminders so that you don't know when it's going to come.
Speaker 1: It's not like every day at two o'clock. For each
Speaker 1: lesson we're on, We've got certain reminders and they go.
Speaker 1: And I found that to be a useful tool for
Speaker 1: some people. You know, the technology doesn't work for some people,
Speaker 1: and so I'm always interested in other ideas for remembering.
Speaker 1: I agree with you. First is we've got to have
Speaker 1: a basic training where we're learning to do this, building
Speaker 1: the muscle. But then the next big step is just
Speaker 1: we meditate in the morning and then we go to
Speaker 1: bed and we're like, what the hell happened in between? Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of going to bed, I mean another way we
Speaker 1: can work reminders into our daily lives as we think
Speaker 1: about the pivot points, right waking up in the morning,
Speaker 1: heading out the door to work, arriving at work, leaving work,
Speaker 1: you know, going to bed. These pivot moments in our
Speaker 1: transitional moments in our day are great moments too. Okay,
Speaker 1: I just walked into the office. I'm going to take
Speaker 1: three conscious breaths before I opened my inbox. I know.
Speaker 1: I was just talking with a client today about how
Speaker 1: losing some of those transition points because of COVID, because
Speaker 1: of not going out is challenging because two years ago
Speaker 1: I stopped going to another job and I get to
Speaker 1: do this all the time and I'm in my house
Speaker 1: and I love it. But I used to do that.
Speaker 1: It was my walk from my car to my desk
Speaker 1: and from my desk in my car each day. Had
Speaker 1: a practice of being very present. You know, there were
Speaker 1: those transitions, so I think creating them in our lives
Speaker 1: now is important but harder. I think literally everything is
Speaker 1: harder about life unless you're living on a mountain snowboarding
Speaker 1: most of the time, and that seems then that things
Speaker 1: are easier. I don't know, you can you tell me? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about the intensity of my therapy. I know,
Speaker 1: I know it's true. I did cheat by moving to
Speaker 1: the mountains. Let's talk about radical non pathology. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by that? One of my favorite concepts so
Speaker 1: pathological model, which is the common medical model that has
Speaker 1: been adopted by the world of psychology as well, focuses
Speaker 1: on symptoms, and symptoms are a problem. Your anger is
Speaker 1: a problem, your depression is a problem, the pain in
Speaker 1: your back is a problem. And you know, in the
Speaker 1: Chinese medical tradition, for example, they have a different feel.
Speaker 1: Your symptoms are actually your body trying to work something out.
Speaker 1: My last intimate partner was an acupuncturist and studied in
Speaker 1: this five elements school of Chinese medicine, and she would
Speaker 1: give people treatments sometimes, and she told me one said,
Speaker 1: if a lot of she moved in a session with somebody,
Speaker 1: she would give somebody heads up within the next twenty
Speaker 1: four to forty eight hours, you're likely to get sick.
Speaker 1: Why because it takes energy, it takes she for your
Speaker 1: body to manifest symptoms. Those symptoms are literally your body
Speaker 1: trying to work something out and inject something toxic from
Speaker 1: your system. And so if you're she is low, you
Speaker 1: don't have the energy for your body to produce an illness.
Speaker 1: But the illness itself is your body, like a fever
Speaker 1: is cooking you know, a bacteria for example, or a
Speaker 1: virus out of your system. And so if you think
Speaker 1: about that, the symptoms are actually evidence that our system,
Speaker 1: which is innately good and innately moves towards well being
Speaker 1: in the presence of the right conditions every time. What
Speaker 1: we think of as problems are actually our system trying
Speaker 1: to get our attention and say something's off here, there's
Speaker 1: something off, or we need to work something out, we
Speaker 1: need to understand something in a new way. Our current
Speaker 1: paradigm or patterns aren't working anymore, whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: that's all evidence of our inherent goodness. That's at frankly
Speaker 1: evidence of our buddhen nature. That we have this basic
Speaker 1: wholeness to us, this basic loving, open hearted nature that
Speaker 1: wants to see us move in the direction of goodness
Speaker 1: of enlightenment, quite frankly. And we also have these parts
Speaker 1: of us like an inner critic that will hor rang us,
Speaker 1: harang us until we stop and say, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm getting curious about you? Now, please tell me more.
Speaker 1: And that inner critic is actually actually an invitation to curiosity.
Speaker 1: And if we accept the notion that curiosity is an
Speaker 1: extension of our basic wholeness, well, then the inner critic
Speaker 1: has actually backed us into a really good corner where
Speaker 1: we have no other choice but to get curious. And
Speaker 1: touching on our basic wholeness. So the self is an
Speaker 1: ecosystem in which nothing's really so random. There's outliers to that,
Speaker 1: there's exceptions to that rule. But the self is an
Speaker 1: ecosystem wherein every part, just like in a literal environmental ecosystem,
Speaker 1: everything is working together to produce longevity and vitality and
Speaker 1: maintain the health and balance of a system. Even predators
Speaker 1: in an ecosystem are serving as they're managing population. Wildfires,
Speaker 1: normative wildfires what we have these days are not so normative,
Speaker 1: but wildfires. It takes a wildfire to break open a
Speaker 1: pine cone and to allow you know, these very tough
Speaker 1: seeds that are weigh deep down in there to actually
Speaker 1: be planted and take root and for new forced growth
Speaker 1: to happen. So even something that looks terrible like a wildfire,
Speaker 1: serves a perfectly good purpose in service of the whole.
Speaker 1: And I think it's that way with us and our
Speaker 1: emotions and our afflictions, the repetitive patterns in our lives.
Speaker 1: It's actually trying to get us, trying to kick our ass,
Speaker 1: frankly a lot of the times into asking better questions,
Speaker 1: making deeper choices, entertaining the notion that maybe we don't
Speaker 1: have it all figured out after all. So when I
Speaker 1: say radical non pathology, it's really as opposed to demonizing
Speaker 1: our experience. It's saying, you know, something's bothering you. That's
Speaker 1: an invitation to presence, that's an invitation to go a
Speaker 1: little deeper with yourself in your life. One of my
Speaker 1: favorite parts of the book it made me laugh, was
Speaker 1: when you talked about your nickname when you were younger
Speaker 1: in high school. Your nickname was No Fun, which made
Speaker 1: me laugh because you said, which was sadly not named
Speaker 1: after the iggy pop song, which I love that song
Speaker 1: and I have I thought, when again when I heard
Speaker 1: No Fun, I thought, all right, but you're talking about
Speaker 1: the fact that you were literally No Fun. Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had undiagnosed PTSD. That it doesn't even swept under
Speaker 1: the rug. It was just kind of out in the open.
Speaker 1: Nobody did anything about it, nobody knew what to do
Speaker 1: about it, frankly, and so I was angry, emotional, reactive, wounded,
Speaker 1: tearful kind of all the time. At that point. I
Speaker 1: was very upset also about the injustice in the world.
Speaker 1: Identified my introduction to radical feminism as my for spiritual awakening.
Speaker 1: And when I started figuring out that the ways in
Speaker 1: which I had been bullied and beaten and abandoned and
Speaker 1: all of this was kind of nothing compared to what
Speaker 1: most of the world experiences. I was lived and filled
Speaker 1: with an urgency to address it. However, I could, as
Speaker 1: you know, six year old kid in a small desert town.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, my friends started calling me no fun
Speaker 1: because I was constantly on about racism or on about
Speaker 1: you know, you can't joke like that or whatever. We're
Speaker 1: wasting your time drinking, you know, to be doing something meaningful,
Speaker 1: I would help someone. So I got I got a
Speaker 1: bad rap for that. I had a punk rock zine
Speaker 1: back then, I kind of homemade publication, and so I
Speaker 1: just called it no fun to kind of throw that back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you and I have some commonalities of our youth.
Speaker 1: I was into punk rock, and although I somehow very
Speaker 1: early on in life, I got the idea that having
Speaker 1: a sense of humor was spiritual virtue. And so I've
Speaker 1: kind of tried to maintain that, trying not to turn
Speaker 1: into a defense mechanism, but turned it into a healing mechanism.
Speaker 1: You know, can I say something a little controversial, Sure, No,
Speaker 1: definitely not. But I'll tell you something. I didn't really
Speaker 1: have a sense of humor until I discovered alcohol. I
Speaker 1: didn't actually have a sense of confidence or daring nous
Speaker 1: until I did cocaine. I never even stepped on to
Speaker 1: a dance floor until I did drugs. Yeah. I'm actually
Speaker 1: trying to point to the radical nonpathology piece here again
Speaker 1: in that just because something is necessarily toxic doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it can't open a door for you. And if I
Speaker 1: had stayed with the first few times I drank alcohol,
Speaker 1: first few times I've done cocaine and said Okay, I
Speaker 1: got I needed from this, it would have been a
Speaker 1: great teacher to me. Absolutely, I share that view about
Speaker 1: my drug use. There was benefit in that. And could
Speaker 1: I have kept it, like you said, you know, if
Speaker 1: I could keep it to two drinks? Two drinks. To
Speaker 1: this day, I hate to say it, but two drinks
Speaker 1: is the best anti depressing I've ever found. I just
Speaker 1: am absolutely incapable of keeping it there, fundamentally, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: incapable of keeping it there. I have tried very hard.
Speaker 1: You know. The second time I got sober, I went
Speaker 1: to moderation management, And I mean I worked that program
Speaker 1: like my life was at stake because I was like,
Speaker 1: I've got to figure this out, because I knew what
Speaker 1: was coming. If I didn't figure it, I was like,
Speaker 1: it's back to a a for me. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds terrible. It wasn't terrible. It sounded terrible at
Speaker 1: the moment. But I think that alcohol in a way
Speaker 1: showed me what I needed to learn to do without it.
Speaker 1: That as well, that's another dimension of what that particular
Speaker 1: substance had to show you and teach you, right, And
Speaker 1: it has that to show and teach a lot of us.
Speaker 1: And it's unfortunate that. You know, of course, people do
Speaker 1: dive from the disease of alcoholism really a symptom of
Speaker 1: alcoholism symptom of something else called trauma, pretty much every time.
Speaker 1: But I do think we live in a much more
Speaker 1: fluid and complex world where things aren't so black and
Speaker 1: white as much as we would like them to be,
Speaker 1: because it would be easy to just say, I, you know,
Speaker 1: hit a rock bottom. Therefore alcohol is bad in my life.
Speaker 1: But um and I am in a similar place for sure,
Speaker 1: where my desire system isn't always the best sometimes, But
Speaker 1: I really wanted to highlight by saying that very semi
Speaker 1: problematic thing is that everything actually in our world is
Speaker 1: trying to show us something. Everything in our world is
Speaker 1: actually trying to reflect ourselves back to us, some quality
Speaker 1: of us back to us in some way. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for those years. I'm also grateful that they're over.
Speaker 1: Amen to that. I wanted to ask you about anger,
Speaker 1: he said. I cannot underline this point enough. Anger almost
Speaker 1: never operates without some form of logic behind it. It's
Speaker 1: never random. It has intelligence. Now, you also in the
Speaker 1: book tell stories about going to visit your father, and
Speaker 1: your father just had sort of this unchecked anger that
Speaker 1: you happened to be to bear the brunt of. From
Speaker 1: your perspective, what was your dad's anger intelligence about my
Speaker 1: going somewhere You don't want to go here. I think
Speaker 1: you're going to a really important place. Because it was
Speaker 1: one of the most healing moments in my life when
Speaker 1: I realized that my dad had a trauma history too.
Speaker 1: The things I resented him for that I longed for
Speaker 1: an apology that I never got didn't arise in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: My dad, who was Ray jing drunk, very abusive psychologically
Speaker 1: sometimes physically, and then also a feverishly evangelical Christian combination. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very interesting mix of values. But he grew up in
Speaker 1: nineties Oklahoma, rural on a farm collecting hay bales by
Speaker 1: the time he was six seven years old, and in
Speaker 1: a Southern Baptist home. And I never got to meet
Speaker 1: my paternal grandfather. But I can only imagine what discipline
Speaker 1: looked like in his home. I can only imagine what
Speaker 1: gender roles look like in his home. I can only
Speaker 1: imagine what wounds were internalized by my dad that we
Speaker 1: didn't even have the word trauma really back then. We
Speaker 1: didn't even really have psychotherapy in the mainstream. Back then,
Speaker 1: you go to church and you repent, and that's about
Speaker 1: it in terms of your process with yourself and your
Speaker 1: development with yourself. And seeing that there's a lineage here,
Speaker 1: there's an intergenerational thing that went on with him, because
Speaker 1: then what was his dad's deal? What happened to his
Speaker 1: dad to make him that way? For example, there's an
Speaker 1: intergenerational piece of hurting others and offloading your anger onto
Speaker 1: others that was passed on to me that I took
Speaker 1: pardon for too long of being at war with myself
Speaker 1: and being at war with others, and really frankly being
Speaker 1: filled with a lot of hatred um at certain points.
Speaker 1: That was handed down to me. And what a gift
Speaker 1: it is to have the awareness that that legacy can
Speaker 1: stop here, that I can extinguish it. I've been blessed
Speaker 1: with teachings and practices and processes that allow me to
Speaker 1: heal and literally take that lineage of anger out of
Speaker 1: the world. It's no more because I ended it. I
Speaker 1: am not going to pass it on. And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's true for all of us. That there's a
Speaker 1: saying that what you heal in you heals generations. I
Speaker 1: love that phrase. I look at my son and certainly
Speaker 1: didn't do it perfect. I don't even know what that
Speaker 1: would mean, but yeah, it's a really beautiful thing to
Speaker 1: see that at least some portion of that that hurt
Speaker 1: that just been flowing down generation after generation, at least
Speaker 1: a significant portion of that didn't get passed on. You
Speaker 1: know that means a lot to me. Yeah, absolutely, And
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Winnicott was one of the most prominent
Speaker 1: child development theorists in the psychology world, one of the
Speaker 1: things that he said was the best thing, the absolute
Speaker 1: best thing you can teach your child is how to
Speaker 1: turn challenges into opportunities, strengths out of adversities. I know
Speaker 1: you're a fan of this concept of post traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: He says that that's actually the best thing you can
Speaker 1: teach your child because that gives them a compass and
Speaker 1: an awareness that they can carry out into the world
Speaker 1: and they'll know what to do when you dropped the ball.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's awesome. Yeah, all right, you and I are
Speaker 1: going to continue in the post show conversation talking about
Speaker 1: whatever comes up. I think we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: one of the phrases in the beginning of your book,
Speaker 1: which is being caught up in this world is like
Speaker 1: sleeping in a forest fire. So we're gonna wrap up
Speaker 1: this interview and go to the post show conversation. Listeners,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to get access to the post show Conversation,
Speaker 1: a special episode I do call the teaching Song and
Speaker 1: a poem and all sorts of other wonderfulness, go to
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash join Ralph. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. This has really been a real pleasure, and
Speaker 1: this is one of those that if I wasn't watching
Speaker 1: the clock would go for three hours. But we'll keep talking.
Speaker 1: But thank you so much for coming on and sharing
Speaker 1: all your your wisdom. I really appreciate the opportunity. You're
Speaker 1: wonderful interviewer. Thank you. If what you just heard was
Speaker 1: helpful to you. Please consider making a monthly donation to
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