Speaker 1: I think we have to be willing to trust that
Speaker 1: life is teaching us, and often it's through enduring and experiencing,
Speaker 1: suffering and difficulties that allows us to become much stronger.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep them selves moving
Speaker 2: in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: What does it take to free not just your body
Speaker 3: but your mind, And what can a nineteenth century freedom
Speaker 3: fighter teach us about resilience Today, as part of Women's
Speaker 3: History Month, we're diving into the extraordinary life and spiritual
Speaker 3: wisdom of Harriet Tubman, not just as a conductor on
Speaker 3: the Underground Railroad, but as a guide for how we
Speaker 3: break free from our own inner prisons. My guest today's Springwasham,
Speaker 3: is a Buddhist teacher and healer who explores the intersection
Speaker 3: of spirituality, justice, and personal transformation. In this episode, we
Speaker 3: talk about courage, healing from hardship, and why we all
Speaker 3: need a north Star to follow. By the end, you
Speaker 3: might just walk away seeing struggle and yourself a little
Speaker 3: bit differently. Stick around. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is
Speaker 3: the one you feed. Hi, Spring, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you, Eric, I'm so happy to be back
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, third time, third time. So I love when I
Speaker 3: can connect with guests multiple times over the years. It's
Speaker 3: a warm feeling I have. And I love to see
Speaker 3: how people's work evolves and they're thinking changes and grows.
Speaker 3: And we're going to be discussing your latest book called
Speaker 3: The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground. But
Speaker 3: before we do that, we'll start, like we always do,
Speaker 3: with the Parable of the Wolves. And in the parable,
Speaker 3: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 3: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 3: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 3: other's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 3: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it
Speaker 3: for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins, and the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was thinking about this topic last night.
Speaker 1: I was teaching an online class at Spirit Rock, where
Speaker 1: I'm on the Teacher's Council Meditation community in California, and
Speaker 1: I was talking about the stories of the great leaders
Speaker 1: throughout time. I was talking about the body Satphas, and
Speaker 1: I was talking about Harriet Tubman, and I was talking
Speaker 1: about how important it is for us to tell these stories.
Speaker 1: We must tell the stories of these beautiful heroes over
Speaker 1: and over from every tradition, those who represent love and
Speaker 1: bravery and courage and have great heart. We can't forget
Speaker 1: them right now, and particularly in the face of so
Speaker 1: much violence and so much greed and hatred and delusion.
Speaker 1: These stories are so important of people who fed the
Speaker 1: good Wolf and led others. And so for me right now,
Speaker 1: these stories that we tell that we must remember and share,
Speaker 1: they're very important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are. As you were talking, it made me
Speaker 3: think of an exercise that I've done with people before.
Speaker 3: I didn't make it up. It was taught to me,
Speaker 3: but I don't remember by who. But it's in trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what your values are, what's important to you.
Speaker 3: One way of doing it is to look at somebody
Speaker 3: you really admire, and what is it about that person
Speaker 3: that you admire so much that tells you something about
Speaker 3: what you really value, you know, and it points a
Speaker 3: direction for you to go. So I agree. I think
Speaker 3: looking at these people who are so extraordinary, Harriet Tubman
Speaker 3: being an exceptional example of that, is a really powerful
Speaker 3: pointer to us in pointing the direction towards who we.
Speaker 1: Want to be exactly. And the stories from all the
Speaker 1: traditions our mythology are stories of all the heroes and
Speaker 1: the heroines, and these are stories that we love to tell.
Speaker 1: As a Buddhist teacher, we tell so many. We're storytellers
Speaker 1: and in Romey story and poems from this to that,
Speaker 1: and we gather and we tell stories from the past
Speaker 1: and stories about how to live with more joy and compassion.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's all we're doing is telling stories,
Speaker 1: our stories, our personal stories. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: a good time to be remembering the stories of the
Speaker 1: goodness of the human heart right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny because we look at these stories, and
Speaker 3: any good story, there is challenge, there is conflict, there
Speaker 3: is overcoming and most of the time we don't want
Speaker 3: our stories to look anything like that, right, we want
Speaker 3: just a story of everything being good. But A does
Speaker 3: it make for a very good story? B isn't the
Speaker 3: way the world works? And C isn't you know really
Speaker 3: how we grow in life?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we all know that we grow through challenge,
Speaker 1: but we don't like it. You know. We do have
Speaker 1: this idea of that we're on this something, this elevator,
Speaker 1: our awakening, goes straight up one floor than the next floor,
Speaker 1: and we just go higher and higher, faster and faster.
Speaker 1: Well it's really not like that. Sometimes you go straight
Speaker 1: down to the basement and the hell realm for a while,
Speaker 1: and then here and there and then. But I think
Speaker 1: we have to be willing to trust that life is
Speaker 1: teaching us and often it's through enduring and experiencing suffering
Speaker 1: and difficulties that allows us to become much stronger. It
Speaker 1: allows us to awaken qualities that we didn't know we had.
Speaker 1: You need some struggle in this life, and nobody has
Speaker 1: struggle free. Let me just say that, you know, nobody
Speaker 1: gets out of this without some scratches and hardship, no
Speaker 1: matter who you are. But I think it's a time
Speaker 1: that we have to kind of embrace this idea that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there will be hardships, there will be the ten thousand sorrows,
Speaker 1: and if we can lean into them as seeing them
Speaker 1: as valuable, we'll learn and will be resilient in a
Speaker 1: different way.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you a question about that, because this
Speaker 3: has been on my mind a lot lately. We interviewed
Speaker 3: a woman you may know her. Her name's doctor Joan Katchatori.
Speaker 3: She focuses a lot on traumatic grief. A lot of
Speaker 3: the work you've done, you know, focuses on trauma and
Speaker 3: healing of trauma, and so on one hand, we have
Speaker 3: this idea that, yeah, it is through struggle and difficulty
Speaker 3: that we transform and we grow, and yet oftentimes it's
Speaker 3: the very worst thing to say to somebody who's in
Speaker 3: the middle of deep struggle and difficulty or trauma, like
Speaker 3: it's a growth opportunity, right, Like, you know, it makes
Speaker 3: you want to stab somebody. So I'm curious for you
Speaker 3: and your own life as you're going through challenges. How
Speaker 3: do you navigate that? Maybe I want to keep one
Speaker 3: eye on the fact that there is growth here in this,
Speaker 3: but I also want to allow myself to be where
Speaker 3: I'm at and experience the emotion and not try and
Speaker 3: spiritually bypass it.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I think you do both. You know. When
Speaker 1: I'm going through difficulties and as we were having our
Speaker 1: conversation before we started taping, I went through this period
Speaker 1: of tremendous suffering. I got this jungle disease, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was going to die from the treatment and
Speaker 1: all these difficulties. And what I realized is that I
Speaker 1: knew in the moment that this might be the hardest
Speaker 1: thing I'm facing. It was really like a life or
Speaker 1: death shamanically at least, I felt like dark night of
Speaker 1: the soul. But deep down I did know that this
Speaker 1: is going to be of benefit. I knew it was impermanent,
Speaker 1: and so, yeah, it doesn't help when someone's in their
Speaker 1: darkest hour to go, hey, you're gonna love this in
Speaker 1: six months. You know. No, I just show up compassionately.
Speaker 1: But I do remind people of their strength and moments
Speaker 1: of hardship. I do remind them that, you know, this
Speaker 1: is why we remind ourselves by telling stories of those
Speaker 1: who have endured. This is why we take comfort and oh,
Speaker 1: if somebody else has been through this experience and let's
Speaker 1: talk about the story of how they did it, that
Speaker 1: does give us a kind of comfort, a compassion. I
Speaker 1: do recognize in the moment when we're experiencing something, there's
Speaker 1: the belief that it'll never end and I'll never survive
Speaker 1: and I'll be like this forever. The ego mind tells
Speaker 1: us that absolutely. But then you know, that's what I
Speaker 1: love about our hearts is that they recover. Yeah, we recover.
Speaker 1: Let us take joy in that we recover and we
Speaker 1: go on, you know, to a new day. There is
Speaker 1: something about that deeper truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that idea of reminding people of their
Speaker 3: strength and reminding ourselves of our own strength is really important.
Speaker 3: And our ability to cope into weather storms without minimizing
Speaker 3: the real pain and difficulty, but also you know, remembering
Speaker 3: exactly what you said, our strength, our ability to cope,
Speaker 3: and that we do indeed recover. It's one of the
Speaker 3: great human attributes is we are remarkably resilient.
Speaker 1: Yes, especially if you've ever had a broken heart or
Speaker 1: you know, that's a place where you can really see,
Speaker 1: you can feel devastated, and then you know, six months
Speaker 1: later or even shorter, you're back. You know, and you
Speaker 1: thought I thought I was going to die of this,
Speaker 1: and you're like, wow, no, it's just it hurts, but
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good, you know. And I think it's
Speaker 1: important for us to remind ourselves that when we're in
Speaker 1: the grip of something, it's not to negate it. It's
Speaker 1: to say, yes, this is really hard, this is really painful,
Speaker 1: I'm challenged, I'm at the edge. This is almost more
Speaker 1: than I can bear. And we meet people there and
Speaker 1: we were with them. I'm with myself in those moments,
Speaker 1: so we don't negate what's happening. We're always opening to
Speaker 1: that depth with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're going to get into the book in the
Speaker 3: second but I want to go a little bit more
Speaker 3: into the Peru situation. So you have led retreats in Peru.
Speaker 3: How would you describe plant medicine retreats in Peru? Would
Speaker 3: that be an accurate representation?
Speaker 1: Yeah. As a Buddhist teacher, I created an organization that
Speaker 1: we do these fourteen day journeys where we blend Buddhist practice,
Speaker 1: embodiment practice, and plant based medicine in South America.
Speaker 3: So you've been doing that for a while and then
Speaker 3: you got this jungle based disease that made you really
Speaker 3: really sick, and then the treatment made you even sicker.
Speaker 3: I'm curious were you at a crossroads about going back
Speaker 3: and continuing to do that, because that's the sort of
Speaker 3: story that I hear and I'm like, Okay, well that's
Speaker 3: why I'm not going to the jungles of Peru. Now.
Speaker 3: You know, you might be much braver than I am,
Speaker 3: but I'm just curious, like, how did you sort of
Speaker 3: think through that and go you know what, I'm assuming
Speaker 3: you got to some internal calculus that said the work
Speaker 3: I'm doing down here and the benefit I get outweighs
Speaker 3: whatever this risk and fear is. Can you sort of
Speaker 3: share how you got through that for yourself?
Speaker 1: Well, the whole thing was very surprising. I've been going
Speaker 1: to Peru two thousand and seven. I even lived in
Speaker 1: the Upper Amazon in a jungle lodge with no electricity
Speaker 1: for a year. I was fine. I never even had
Speaker 1: much of a fever. I had always found Peru in
Speaker 1: the jungle to be my power spot, you know. I
Speaker 1: went there and I was restored, I was renewed, I
Speaker 1: was I loved Peru. I loved the jungle there, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I got bit by this bug and it was rare
Speaker 1: and contracted. This jungle disease as like a flesh eating disease.
Speaker 1: Literally starts to go into your body and yeah, it
Speaker 1: takes chunks out.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and if you don't cure it, it goes
Speaker 1: into your organs and it's fatal and it creates all
Speaker 1: this havoc. And so then you have to do the treatment.
Speaker 1: But the treatment is like chemotherapy. You have to go
Speaker 1: many days and endure this, you know, almost the same
Speaker 1: kind of medicines that are in cancer treatments, and it's
Speaker 1: really toxic and dangerous. So you have to often be
Speaker 1: in a hospital where they can on it to your organs.
Speaker 1: Why you get this IV for hours of this toxic
Speaker 1: medicine and I have a severe allergic reaction to that.
Speaker 1: But it did give me a breakthrough. I didn't leave
Speaker 1: Peru and now I'm based in Costa Rica. I was
Speaker 1: already kind of thinking of making radical changes. So that
Speaker 1: did wake me up. You know, when you're lying there
Speaker 1: and you think you're going to die, everything comes into
Speaker 1: kind of this clarity. You know, you're like, okay, Universe,
Speaker 1: you know I'm here, I'm paying attention. It does put
Speaker 1: a stop to things, and I think now it went
Speaker 1: from being my apocalypse. Twenty twenty one was just brutal
Speaker 1: for me. It was just everything dismantled. I mean it
Speaker 1: was wow, yeah, battles to being this breakthrough year that
Speaker 1: opened my heart. And I'm not just saying that to
Speaker 1: be cheesy teacher. It really did. The worst thing became
Speaker 1: the best thing because I I grew. I changed in
Speaker 1: a good way from that experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love how open you are in your writings
Speaker 3: about current struggles that you have or very recent struggles,
Speaker 3: because there is a tendency. I mean, I know I
Speaker 3: have this tendency to talk about a struggle from fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago and how all my inner work has transcended
Speaker 3: and overcome and all this I love teachers who are
Speaker 3: really open about like yeah, and you know what, just
Speaker 3: last year I had like three really crappy months, you know,
Speaker 3: because I think it shows the truth of what the
Speaker 3: spiritual journey is like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that, you know, as teachers, I'm
Speaker 1: also forever a student. Yes, I don't tell my students.
Speaker 1: I don't tell people I work with. I'm awakened, I'm
Speaker 1: on the path, I'm walking. We're together, We're side by side.
Speaker 1: And that's just always how I have felt. I have
Speaker 1: never tried to put myself above others. I'm struggling. There's
Speaker 1: days that are great, days that are hard. I'm doing
Speaker 1: the practices I talk about. I'm not just advising them,
Speaker 1: you know. I'm like, you know, so I like to
Speaker 1: talk about what's real and what's authentic, just the human
Speaker 1: being we all are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's turn our attention now to your new book.
Speaker 3: It's called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman Awakening from the Underground.
Speaker 3: How did that book come about?
Speaker 1: Well, the book was a shock to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I had always admired Harriet Tubman, but I wasn't like
Speaker 1: a Harriet Tubman fanatic who doesn't love Harriet Tubman every
Speaker 1: year they pull out Harriet Tubman's picture and story and
Speaker 1: we be like, yay, Harriet, Yeah, like everybody Black History Month.
Speaker 1: I would learn a few facts that I didn't know,
Speaker 1: and I watched the movie in twenty nineteen, big Hollywood
Speaker 1: movie that came out, and again this great admiration. But
Speaker 1: this relationship that happened was as big as shock to
Speaker 1: me as anyone. I mean, I wasn't expecting this, and
Speaker 1: I could say the spirit of Harriet Tubman began appearing
Speaker 1: in my consciousness. It was May of twenty twenty. It
Speaker 1: was a week before George Floyd was murdered. For those
Speaker 1: of you, you know, this whole case of police brutality
Speaker 1: is everywhere again right now because of all these recent murders.
Speaker 1: But this was in the quarantine at that moment, in
Speaker 1: the quarantine where it was just so hard right the
Speaker 1: whole world was going into lockdown, and there was something
Speaker 1: I think in the summer of twenty twenty that it
Speaker 1: feels like the tectonic plates underneath our feet were quaking.
Speaker 1: There was a crack I feel in the matrix, and
Speaker 1: I felt like it was a crack of compassion that
Speaker 1: started to emerge in consciousness, through the violence, through the chaos,
Speaker 1: through the pandemic, and I think Harriet, through that crack,
Speaker 1: just appeared in a dream. And I write about this
Speaker 1: in the first chapter. I read through the book chronically
Speaker 1: what happened in this real language as clearly and honestly
Speaker 1: as I can articulate. Late like, it's still a mystery
Speaker 1: how this is happening, how an ancestor can come and
Speaker 1: begin to share ideas and thoughts and feelings. It's not
Speaker 1: something that has ever happened to me before. So when
Speaker 1: Harriet appeared in this nightmarish dream and I was running
Speaker 1: from my life, and I was holding on to something,
Speaker 1: and all I remember was my hands burning, and it
Speaker 1: was the back of Harriet Tubman's dress, and I remember going, what,
Speaker 1: but then feeling relieved, like, yes, Harriet understands these problems
Speaker 1: we're having. Harriet has been here before, and this is
Speaker 1: the right person who can help me. And I remember
Speaker 1: there was this great relief, And from there it just
Speaker 1: ticks on a life of its own. The whole journey,
Speaker 1: which I share about very clearly in each chapter, how
Speaker 1: it led up to the finishing the book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so you have a dream about Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 3: You become a little more interested. You start this Church
Speaker 3: of Harriet Tubman, and it's enormously well received and it's
Speaker 3: a beautiful and joyous and vibrant thing. Talk to me
Speaker 3: about the journey from sort of where that is to
Speaker 3: starting the book, and what sort of things were happening
Speaker 3: for you.
Speaker 1: Well during that time where you know, the first dream,
Speaker 1: and then what was happening in society. I started feeling
Speaker 1: Harry Tubman around me all the time. I started thinking
Speaker 1: about the name would come. I started doing research and
Speaker 1: I just thought, well, maybe other people are having this
Speaker 1: experience with Harry Tubman. I'll put on a zoom class.
Speaker 1: That's what everybody was doing, right. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's do the Zoom class. And then the class, you know,
Speaker 1: went viral. Is started out as just a five week
Speaker 1: class actually, and it was the Dharma of Harriet Tubman.
Speaker 1: And unbeknownst to me, in that sea of faces, you know,
Speaker 1: all those faces in the Zoom rooms, my publisher, Patty
Speaker 1: Gift from hey House, the vice president, was taking the
Speaker 1: five course. I didn't know. They just signed up and
Speaker 1: so contacted me during that time and said, you have
Speaker 1: to write a book about this. You had to write
Speaker 1: a book about Harriet Tubman, and I obviously felt completely inadequate.
Speaker 1: I was like, what are you crazy. I'm not a historian.
Speaker 1: I didn't study African American history. This is way too much,
Speaker 1: is Harriet Tubman? I know I write spiritual books. I
Speaker 1: don't want to write a historical book. This is way no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not the right person call this person called it.
Speaker 1: You know, I was preferring other people. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to take on that. But that's when Harriet kind of appeared.
Speaker 1: Shortly after that, I said, well, I'll wait for a sign,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna know this is way too deep, way
Speaker 1: too complex. I can't. And then Harriet Tubman's spirit began
Speaker 1: to appear in one particular night and a very unmistakable experience.
Speaker 1: I write in the second chapter, she gives me the task.
Speaker 1: He shows me, Oh, no, you aren't supposed to write
Speaker 1: this book, and you agreed to this a long time ago.
Speaker 1: And it was like, what you know? And so I
Speaker 1: don't call the book channeling. That word connotes if I'm
Speaker 1: going to sit here with you, Eric, and you're gonna say,
Speaker 1: let me talk to Harriet, and I go Harriet Tevin
Speaker 1: has speaking. Now you know what this is not what
Speaker 1: it is. This is a conversation with an ancestor, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't just come on. This is a deep process.
Speaker 1: This is something that I call sessions, and it's like
Speaker 1: an agreed upon moment too for the greater good. And
Speaker 1: the stories that Harriet wanted me to help convey was
Speaker 1: the stories about her heart, her heart message. We know
Speaker 1: the facts, we know that she was a warrior, we
Speaker 1: know all these things, but we often don't recognize Harriet
Speaker 1: as a great teacher. And there's like more to the
Speaker 1: story of this being than just the slave woman who
Speaker 1: led some missions and freed some people. Oh, it's deeper
Speaker 1: than that. There's a very profound spirit to this ancestor.
Speaker 1: And that's what my role, my real task is to convey,
Speaker 1: to have a different conversation about this being, this ancestor,
Speaker 1: who I will say, doesn't just belong to me. This
Speaker 1: is a primordial ancestor. She's your ancestors. Yes, she happens
Speaker 1: to be African American and I'm African American. Yes, but
Speaker 1: this is beyond colored. This goes beyond She's everyone's ancestor.
Speaker 1: So I think i'd like to put it in that
Speaker 1: context because it goes beyond these labels and boxes of gender, color, religion, class.
Speaker 1: It's beyond that.
Speaker 3: I want to get to that inner message of Harriet Tubman,
Speaker 3: what came to you and your interpretation of it. But
Speaker 3: I think it would be helpful if maybe we do
Speaker 3: a brief sketch of her life. You hear it, but
Speaker 3: I don't know that everybody remembers. There are parts of
Speaker 3: her story. I did remember as I was kind of
Speaker 3: going through your book, So maybe we could just spend
Speaker 3: a minute and you could just lead us through like
Speaker 3: a several minute sort of arc of her life and
Speaker 3: what she did, just so that everybody has that picture
Speaker 3: before we go into some of the underlying pieces.
Speaker 1: Sure, so when we talk about Harriet Tubman's life, and
Speaker 1: another reason that I was inspired about this book was
Speaker 1: to tell the real story of her life. So there's
Speaker 1: these messages, that conversations, and they're all about each stage
Speaker 1: of her life right where we talk about one thing.
Speaker 1: So it's all very historically accurate. Step by step, the dates,
Speaker 1: the times, everything is very historically accurate. So we know
Speaker 1: Harrit Tubman was born around eighteen twenty to eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: five somewhere in there, and her grandmother came over on
Speaker 1: a slave ship, and then her mother was born and
Speaker 1: started kind of Harriet Tubman's lineage. Harriet was born and
Speaker 1: was born enslaved in Maryland and was on a big
Speaker 1: timber plantation and her whole family was there, and you know,
Speaker 1: her childhood was just brutal. I mean, it's all of
Speaker 1: the things that you've see on TV shows and specials,
Speaker 1: just beatings and the abuse and all of that. Harriet
Speaker 1: endured a tremendous amount of child abuse and being lent
Speaker 1: out an enslaved child that no one cared about, and
Speaker 1: was subject to all of that and felt very very
Speaker 1: passionate that she should be free, right, very much, always
Speaker 1: leaning into that. And then when Harriet was maybe somewhere
Speaker 1: between ten to thirteen. We don't know that much about
Speaker 1: Harry's exact age because nothing was documented when slaves were born.
Speaker 1: There was no birth certificates or you know, we don't
Speaker 1: know times and all of that, so there's always a
Speaker 1: little mystery about her exact date of birth. But she
Speaker 1: had this head injury. She went to a store to
Speaker 1: get some items. In that moment, she saw a slave
Speaker 1: running into the store being chased by an overseer, somebody
Speaker 1: who oversees the plantations and keeps everyone in a very
Speaker 1: brutal working condition there. And he asked her to hold
Speaker 1: down the slaves. She denied immediately, no, I will not
Speaker 1: hold him down, so you can beat him. And he
Speaker 1: threw a weight that was on the counter and hit
Speaker 1: her in the head. I think this is the first
Speaker 1: significant thing. There's like some key things about her life,
Speaker 1: born into slavery, her whole family, many siblings. Then she
Speaker 1: gets this head injury. And the head injury, they thought
Speaker 1: she would die, right They carried her back to her
Speaker 1: house and for two days she went in and out
Speaker 1: of consciousness. But Harriet says that was the beginning of
Speaker 1: an awakening and this incredible connection to the spirit world.
Speaker 1: It was like something open, and she journeyed and saw
Speaker 1: herself and talked about throughout her whole life, this conversation
Speaker 1: with the divine. She became clairvoyant. She had this awakening
Speaker 1: that happened there. So then she goes on to continue
Speaker 1: living as a slave, but runs away when she's in
Speaker 1: her twenties twenty six, somewhere around there twenty seven, finally
Speaker 1: runs away makes it alone. Nobody knew what to make
Speaker 1: of Harriet Tubman because of the injuries. She had narcolepsy, seizures,
Speaker 1: and she would just pass out at any moment in
Speaker 1: the middle of a conversation, just fall into a sleep, stayed.
Speaker 1: They couldn't never wake her up, no matter what they did,
Speaker 1: but when she did wake up, she would have these stories,
Speaker 1: and they just thought, this lady is crazy. She was
Speaker 1: seeing visions of the future and her role and being
Speaker 1: a conductor and being free, and everyone thought she was
Speaker 1: just crazy. And Harriet, you know, was one hundred pounds
Speaker 1: five feet tall. This was no large person, right, so
Speaker 1: they thought this crazy woman. But Harriet's really enough, made
Speaker 1: her way on her own all the way to Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: walked one hundred and twenty miles to get there, and
Speaker 1: then in the Abolitionist Society, the Anti Slavery Society, and
Speaker 1: became a leader. And even though she was wanted fugitive
Speaker 1: began speaking out right away when she got to Philadelphia
Speaker 1: and she was wanted, and she began her first mission
Speaker 1: by rescuing a niece and her two children that were
Speaker 1: on the auction blocks going to be sold away from
Speaker 1: the farm that she grew up on and that led
Speaker 1: her into rescuing people. And then she became one of
Speaker 1: the most famous conductors and her nickname was Moses after
Speaker 1: she conducted on the railroad for ten years and rescued
Speaker 1: all of her family members, including her parents in a
Speaker 1: very daring rescue. As an underground operative. She then became
Speaker 1: involved and was recruited into the Civil War. And this
Speaker 1: is a part of the story that many people don't
Speaker 1: know about. And also this has been kind of suppressed
Speaker 1: that Harriet was a great war hero and it was
Speaker 1: extremely patriotic. Was a nurse. She had this match ability
Speaker 1: with making plant concoctions that cured dysentery. She had some
Speaker 1: gift with it, and she was saving countless lives with
Speaker 1: her medicine, brews and her tinctures. But also she was
Speaker 1: recruited to be a spy for the Union Army and
Speaker 1: she was the first woman in history to lead, plan
Speaker 1: and execute her own military raids with her own troop
Speaker 1: of black soldiers and led very amazing successful attacks on
Speaker 1: the Confederate stronghold places and rescuing people. And I mean,
Speaker 1: who does this right.
Speaker 3: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a woman who's formerly enslaved leading.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just makes no sense, and then went
Speaker 1: on to join the Woman's movement and fought with Susan B.
Speaker 1: Anthony for the passing of the Women's Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 1: And just her whole life was just dedicated to liberation
Speaker 1: and freedom, that every being born should have the same
Speaker 1: equal rights. I could say, mariy, but those are some
Speaker 1: of the main things that stand out.
Speaker 3: Another part of that story that I had never heard
Speaker 3: was that her mother's slave owner, when he passed in
Speaker 3: his will, what you can tell that part. I had
Speaker 3: never heard that, and it's sort of astounding and heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, this is like a big one. Yes. So
Speaker 1: Harriet's grandmother came over on a slave ship. Her name
Speaker 1: was Modesty, and then Modesty gave birth And I have
Speaker 1: a chapter called Harriet and her Grandmother Modesty in the
Speaker 1: family tree. Her mother was born on the plantation, gave
Speaker 1: birth to Harriet, was married. Harry's parents were married. Harry's
Speaker 1: family was very close knit. Her parents managed to stay
Speaker 1: loving and married and died at an old age together.
Speaker 1: They stayed throughout their entire life in marriage, and unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to her mother, rich her mother's name was rit Rittia,
Speaker 1: the grandfather who purchased her grandmother, and then the whole
Speaker 1: family came freed. Her mother said wrote in his will
Speaker 1: upon death, writ is to be freed at the age
Speaker 1: of forty in all of her offsprings well. When the
Speaker 1: patriarchal father died, they didn't honor the request and the will.
Speaker 1: But the thing is Harriet knew though. Harriet had this
Speaker 1: unwavering knowledge that her family was being betrayed, and saved
Speaker 1: up money even though she was a slave, did side job, somehow,
Speaker 1: hustled together some money, went into town, hired a lawyer
Speaker 1: to look into her family records. The lawyer found the
Speaker 1: record and said, here's the record of the will. You
Speaker 1: are free, but there's nothing we can do. There's no
Speaker 1: course that's going to listen to. You just go back
Speaker 1: to slavery. But that burning feeling that you know everything
Speaker 1: that's happening to you is wrong. And that family that
Speaker 1: was locked into this battle with Harriet's family for all
Speaker 1: those years, fueled Harriet's motivation. And it was so painful
Speaker 1: to see her mother working when she knew her mother
Speaker 1: was supposed to be free and they were all supposed
Speaker 1: to have been let go, you know, and to live
Speaker 1: free life. So that was a very powerful story of betrayal.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this family that owned them, Oh, they did everything,
Speaker 1: everything you could think of to Harriet's family, including sol
Speaker 1: three of her sisters away. And it was a painful dynamic,
Speaker 1: I would say the least.
Speaker 3: And it's remarkable that she had the foday to instead
Speaker 3: of being broken by it, she was fueled by it.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you just also just use this analogy of
Speaker 1: you're supposed to be led out of prison, right, You're
Speaker 1: supposed to be le out of prison, but the prison
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you. They hide it from you and keep
Speaker 1: you in jail another twenty years, right, and go, oh,
Speaker 1: well they told the governor said you could go, but
Speaker 1: we decided, yeah, to hide that paperwork. You know. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of betrayal this is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, it's incredible. And the stuff about her
Speaker 3: in the Civil War leading troops and she's just truly remarkable,
Speaker 3: more so even than the basic facts that I knew
Speaker 3: about her, you know the fact that she was a
Speaker 3: conductor on the underground railroad and how many people she
Speaker 3: had rescued, But that other stuff too, it's just it's
Speaker 3: kind of amazing. I'd like to shift us a little
Speaker 3: bit into some of the deeper messages embodied in Harriet's life,
Speaker 3: in your interactions with her spirit, and how that also
Speaker 3: ties in with your dharma teaching, and so, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the places I'd like to start is talking
Speaker 3: a little bit about prisons of the mind. We can
Speaker 3: clearly see the external prison that slaves are in. We
Speaker 3: can see the external structures that black people still live
Speaker 3: in today. I mean, there's external prisons of varying shapes
Speaker 3: and sizes and dimensions, but there's also kind of the
Speaker 3: prisons of our mind. Share a little bit more about that,
Speaker 3: because that's really very much in line with the Buddhist
Speaker 3: teachings on liberation.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can definitely see where we're imprisoned by
Speaker 1: our thoughts, right, and how we can get imprisoned by greed,
Speaker 1: we can be imprisoned by hatred and delusion, and that
Speaker 1: to be walking the path is to be breaking out
Speaker 1: of all these constructs about who we are, who other
Speaker 1: people are, and ultimately letting go of greed and letting
Speaker 1: go of hatred, and letting go of delusion and seeing
Speaker 1: the truth of who we are. But I really believe
Speaker 1: that these mind states are real prisons and the ideas
Speaker 1: that we're freeing ourself from them. And I think what
Speaker 1: stood out for me about Harriet Tubman was she was
Speaker 1: never imprisoned by the inferiority demon. They tried to beat
Speaker 1: it into her, you're worthless, you'll never be free. You know,
Speaker 1: you're a woman. Who do you think you are? And
Speaker 1: it was this ability of Harriet. Somehow she was never
Speaker 1: beholden to the program. She was always like, I'm outside
Speaker 1: of that. I don't subscribe to that right, I won't
Speaker 1: adopt I'm inferior because I'm black and a slave and
Speaker 1: a woman. And those were hard conditions to overcome and
Speaker 1: born into slavery, and your mother was born into slavery,
Speaker 1: and your grandmother was brought over as a slave. I
Speaker 1: mean to have a vision of seeing yourself as somebody
Speaker 1: other than that, to see yourself as you are in
Speaker 1: the eyes of what do you call God or Buddha,
Speaker 1: or to see your true nature, to rise up. That's
Speaker 1: what I mean by breaking out of the prison. It's
Speaker 1: the prison of concepts that limit us to who we are.
Speaker 1: And Harriet was trying to liberate people from hatred. Doctor
Speaker 1: King used to say that I'm going to liberate too
Speaker 1: from your hatred. You don't see it as a prison.
Speaker 1: You like it or you're involved in it. Right, Brutalizing others,
Speaker 1: hating other people is a prison. There's no freedom in that,
Speaker 1: there's no happy result in that, there's no winning in that.
Speaker 1: That's a path of destruction. And so that's what prisons do.
Speaker 1: They imprison us from seeing our goodness. So the whole
Speaker 1: of the spiritual path is waking up and letting go
Speaker 1: and shedding more and more these cells that we lock
Speaker 1: ourselves in. And now on the outer level, yes, there
Speaker 1: are people literally in cells literally experiencing on the physical
Speaker 1: level imprisonment, but many more are dealing with the prison
Speaker 1: of their mind. And we can see this now that
Speaker 1: where we are in this time is a war of consciousness. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like who's going to win the war? Which wolf wins?
Speaker 1: Right now? Right, it's so classic.
Speaker 3: Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask
Speaker 3: you something. What's one thing that has been holding you
Speaker 3: back lately? You know that it's there, You've tried to
Speaker 3: push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way.
Speaker 3: You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major
Speaker 3: saboteurs of self control, things like autopilot behavior, self doubt,
Speaker 3: emotional escapism that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's
Speaker 3: the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put
Speaker 3: together a free guide to help you spot these hidden
Speaker 3: obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can
Speaker 3: use to regain control. Download the free guide now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net, slash EBAs book and take the first
Speaker 3: step towards getting back on track. We all know examples
Speaker 3: of people in situations that they are not free in
Speaker 3: many ways, but they are in many other ways very free,
Speaker 3: freer than most of us. You know. Nelson Mandela is
Speaker 3: a historical example of that. But we can read memoirs
Speaker 3: of people in prison and we can see, like wow,
Speaker 3: that person, Yes, while they were living in terrible circumstances,
Speaker 3: but inwardly they were free. Nicole on our team who
Speaker 3: helps put these episodes together and do research, she really
Speaker 3: drew a parallel that I'm glad she did about when
Speaker 3: you're talking about Harriet Tubman, and you know, having to
Speaker 3: free not only the slaves once they were physically free,
Speaker 3: but having to free their minds, and it reminded of
Speaker 3: Edith Eager. I don't know if you knew who she is.
Speaker 3: She was in the Holocaust camps, I think at Auschwitz,
Speaker 3: but she talks about that even after being freed, she
Speaker 3: had work to do to free her mind from captivity.
Speaker 3: And how many people remain imprisoned in their mind even
Speaker 3: after they were set free.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even trauma is a form of being in
Speaker 1: prisoned still. Yeah, right, we're still enacting. We're still reacting
Speaker 1: until we even heal our trauma. We're imprisoned by it.
Speaker 1: We're imprisoned by a fear and what just happened to us.
Speaker 1: Our bodies hold on. So freeing your mind is no
Speaker 1: easy job at times, you know, we've got like it's
Speaker 1: not easy on the external level, right, But this is
Speaker 1: the time that we're in now, We're in a time
Speaker 1: and space where we have to look at our mind
Speaker 1: and what we are creating, the hell realm, because exactly,
Speaker 1: you meet people all over who live in very difficult
Speaker 1: situations but are experiencing much more joy. We see billionaires
Speaker 1: on TV right now creating hell realms and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: they're in a hell realm of their mind. They might
Speaker 1: have a billion dollars, but it doesn't buy you real freedom,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't buy you compassion, it doesn't buy you wisdom.
Speaker 1: And so there's a guy that I love a lot
Speaker 1: who's on death row right now, named Jarvis J. Masters.
Speaker 1: He's at same Quentin Prison, and he's someone that I
Speaker 1: think about every time I drive over the Richmond Bridge,
Speaker 1: you know, because he's in a tiny unit right there,
Speaker 1: on death row and practicing hour after hour after hour
Speaker 1: after hour. Right He's like, if I die here, okay,
Speaker 1: so be it. I was freed a long time ago.
Speaker 1: My heart is free. They can do whatever they want
Speaker 1: to my body now, prison it, beat it, lay it here,
Speaker 1: or even kill it, you know, but I know my
Speaker 1: heart is free. And so this is what we talk about,
Speaker 1: the prison of the mind. And this is a high
Speaker 1: level we're talking about, you know, this is a higher
Speaker 1: level of consciousness.
Speaker 3: I love what you said there about how difficult this is, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, it is extraordinarily difficult to free ourselves from
Speaker 3: the prisons of our mind. But in my experience, to
Speaker 3: do it to whatever extent we are able to free
Speaker 3: ourselves is valuable. You talk about abolitionism later on in
Speaker 3: the book, and you say that there's three levels of it, inner, outer,
Speaker 3: and ultimate. Talk to me about what you mean by that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was thinking a lot about that
Speaker 1: word abolitionism and abolitionist. You know, those who that word
Speaker 1: was so popular when people were seeking to abolish slavery, right,
Speaker 1: they wanted to abolish this law, They wanted to abolish
Speaker 1: this mind state. Right, and then you know, the word
Speaker 1: kind of went out of style a little bit. It
Speaker 1: was very popular the abolitionist society. These were kind of
Speaker 1: like the activists of our time, you know. So that
Speaker 1: word abolishing, you know, and I think about that right now,
Speaker 1: Inner abolitionists, is this abolishing our own greed, hatred and delusion.
Speaker 1: It's this seeking to abolish that which is destroying us. Right,
Speaker 1: We're going to abolish these habits, these patterns, and we're
Speaker 1: going to liberate ourselves from them. I mean, as a
Speaker 1: dharma practitioner, it's all we're ever doing is uprooting these
Speaker 1: seeds and planting new ones. Right, we're cultivators, we're farmers
Speaker 1: of our consciousness, and you've got to be willing to
Speaker 1: tackle these habits in these mind states. So the inner
Speaker 1: is the willingness to do the work of abolishing our racism,
Speaker 1: our cruelty, our inner hatred. And we don't do that
Speaker 1: with a state of the baseball bat. We're doing this
Speaker 1: with the heart of compassion, you know. So we're the
Speaker 1: inner abolition. The outer is just that we become also
Speaker 1: sensitive to what is happening around us. We don't walk
Speaker 1: around with blinders on. Oh sorry, I'm sorry, that's happening
Speaker 1: to you. It's not happening to me. By someone's being
Speaker 1: murdered outside in front of us, well sorry, Like we
Speaker 1: seek also to end it in our environment, it becomes
Speaker 1: an extension. This is an extension of me, you know.
Speaker 1: And when I see the suffering right outside my house,
Speaker 1: there's a movement to reduce it, to help support abolishing
Speaker 1: any place where this hatred is living in society. And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of the outer. It's that movement to
Speaker 1: reduce and that abolitionists. Our ancestors who were some of
Speaker 1: the greatest abolitionists ever, they didn't live in slave states,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to. They wanted to abolish it because
Speaker 1: of its cruelty. So I know, for a lot of
Speaker 1: us right now, I want to abolish the current way
Speaker 1: policing is done in America and re envision another way,
Speaker 1: a safer way, a more loving way. You know, that's
Speaker 1: something that that word is picking up steam again. Abolition,
Speaker 1: you know, let's abolish this system and create something else.
Speaker 1: And then ultimate is just kind of moving on the
Speaker 1: path of like the Buddhas and the profits and the
Speaker 1: awakened beings, that's seeing that all of this is just
Speaker 1: a dream. Ultimately, it is the abolishing of the ego itself. Right,
Speaker 1: ultimate liberation is the south. The whole idea is gone,
Speaker 1: and we're just in a sea of compassion and we're
Speaker 1: just being used in the service of humanity in that way.
Speaker 1: So I write that as the ultimate level of it.
Speaker 1: When the ego has been abolished, now you're really free.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love thinking of it in those ways, and
Speaker 3: that we do have work to do in er outer
Speaker 3: and at least a glimpsing occasionally at that ultimate freedom
Speaker 3: is there. I want to change directions a little bit
Speaker 3: here and talk about the North Star. What is the
Speaker 3: historical importance of the North Star? And what's the symbolic
Speaker 3: importance of the North Star? Why is there a chapter
Speaker 3: that's very much focused in that direction.
Speaker 1: When I think of the North Star. You know, first
Speaker 1: of all, Harriet Tubman was someone who followed the North
Speaker 1: Star by herself, walked all the way from Maryland to Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: following just the lights in the sky. I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: there was no cell phones, there's no maps. This is
Speaker 1: someone who could not read or write. This is someone
Speaker 1: who was avoiding slave catchers and dogs and you know,
Speaker 1: bounty hunters and his faith in the stars. This kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of when Doctor King used to say,
Speaker 1: the strong arc of the universe bends toward justice, right.
Speaker 1: And the history of the North Star is so interesting.
Speaker 1: It used to think it was the Star of Bethlehem
Speaker 1: going back that far. And the North Star is an
Speaker 1: interesting polarist. It doesn't move, It stays like in the
Speaker 1: same direction pointing north, and sailors used it, and it
Speaker 1: has this amazing history. Native American tribes used it. They
Speaker 1: would refer to it as their chief star, right, and
Speaker 1: they would build their lodging around looking at the star,
Speaker 1: and it felt like us star that was a protector star.
Speaker 1: So here you have this star system that's leading people
Speaker 1: that actually becomes a map, a light, a beacon to
Speaker 1: what they were figuring was the promised Land, But they'd
Speaker 1: been dreaming a place out of slavery, out of change,
Speaker 1: into a place where they could be free and not
Speaker 1: be brutalized. So Harriet's belief in faith in the North
Speaker 1: Star was profound. She had a great like this is,
Speaker 1: I know I can follow this, and I know these
Speaker 1: stars are helping me, And that night would walk all
Speaker 1: through the night's left in the day hiding and all
Speaker 1: through the night walk just following the stars. And because
Speaker 1: I'm such a stargazer, I love it. You know, I
Speaker 1: always feel that when I look in the sky and
Speaker 1: see the stars, you feel like there's a benevolence there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know that Frederick Douglas's anti slavery paper
Speaker 3: was called The North Star, which I found another really
Speaker 3: interesting parallel. There A question for you his was Frederick
Speaker 3: Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Were they contemporaries or was one
Speaker 3: later or earlier than the other. Where are their timelines?
Speaker 1: Their lives overlap a lot. First of all, they were
Speaker 1: born in Maryland and both escaped from slavery. Frederick Douglass
Speaker 1: was first, and also incredible, there's more stories coming out
Speaker 1: about Frederick Douglass is such a hero I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that much about Frederick Douglass until I read
Speaker 1: his He had three biographies chronicling his long life, and
Speaker 1: I remember when I was writing the book, I read
Speaker 1: all three of them. I listened to them on audible
Speaker 1: and I was like, wow, you know, just his journey
Speaker 1: is so incredible. But they knew each other. Frederick Douglass
Speaker 1: was a great supporter of Harriet Tubman. In fact, Harriet
Speaker 1: Tubman had taken refuge in Frederick Douglas's home in New York.
Speaker 1: He's home was a stop on the underground. This is
Speaker 1: all very secret society. Yeah, so apparently she had come
Speaker 1: through his home on her when she was conducting and
Speaker 1: had a group of passengers. He wrote very beautiful things
Speaker 1: about Harriet Tubman and saw her as a great hero.
Speaker 1: And I wrote a quote in there that he had
Speaker 1: written about Harriet in his paper The North Star. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he called his paper the North Star after the star
Speaker 1: such a symbolism of hope and freedom.
Speaker 3: You say, in its deepest spiritual meaning, the light in
Speaker 3: the sky and especially the North Star, represent our own
Speaker 3: inner light, the light of truth, love and wisdom. At times,
Speaker 3: our light can be ab scured, like clouds temporarily hiding
Speaker 3: the moon, but its essence can never be destroyed. Talk
Speaker 3: a little bit more about that idea.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this is really something that came through
Speaker 1: a lot in the book with Harriet Tubman two and
Speaker 1: as with all great teachers, they talk about this innate
Speaker 1: goodness that we have that you know, even though right
Speaker 1: now we are being bombarded with violence and negativity in
Speaker 1: our media. For every one terrible action, I believe there's
Speaker 1: a million more than are not being aired. They're not
Speaker 1: being amplified this goodness that we have, Like there's this
Speaker 1: natural movement toward compassion. And I think that Harriet sees
Speaker 1: this as our inner light. You know, in the Buddhist
Speaker 1: tradition they say you're all Buddhas, you just forgot, you know,
Speaker 1: and the whole journey is about waking up to that truth,
Speaker 1: to who we are, you know, and that light than
Speaker 1: the sky. It feels like the universe like you know,
Speaker 1: imagine when these people were walking and praying and they
Speaker 1: had their hopes and their dreams and this new life
Speaker 1: and the universe is twinkling like follow me backoning you
Speaker 1: you feel like, yes, there's something greater that's moving me
Speaker 1: that's moving, this spirit of love in truth. And you know,
Speaker 1: I believe the universe is a compassionate place and we
Speaker 1: are reflections of that. We are celves in the mind
Speaker 1: of this universe, you know, So that goodness is in
Speaker 1: us now. Confusion, Wow, we're in the depths of it, right,
Speaker 1: We're in the depths of it. But that doesn't mean that.
Speaker 1: You know, the sun is still shining even when the
Speaker 1: clouds are there, right, And I believe that, So I
Speaker 1: believe it. There's something about this light that we are light,
Speaker 1: we are spirit.
Speaker 3: Let's transition a little bit from here to a chapter
Speaker 3: you've got called General Tubman in the Civil War, where
Speaker 3: you sort of bring out what we've shared a little
Speaker 3: bit about what Harriet Tubman did in the Civil War,
Speaker 3: which is remarkable, but you also then go into the
Speaker 3: deeper underlying idea of a nation that's divided. We certainly
Speaker 3: see that today. We hear all the time that polarization
Speaker 3: is really bad, and it does seem to be. But
Speaker 3: you point out very rightly, and there's a lot of
Speaker 3: historians who also point out this is not new. You say,
Speaker 3: the idea that the United States has ever been truly
Speaker 3: united is a figment of our collective imagination, a fantasy
Speaker 3: many of us are slowly giving up on Black people
Speaker 3: really understand that America has always had two distinct sides
Speaker 3: with radically different ideas about what freedom and democracy are.
Speaker 3: And then you go on to share this idea which
Speaker 3: is talking about you know, this crack goes back to
Speaker 3: our founding fathers in a very very clear way. George
Speaker 3: Washington owned more than one hundred slaves, where another founding father,
Speaker 3: Benjamin Franklin, freed his slaves and became an abolitionist. And
Speaker 3: both these guys wrote the Constitution together. And so divide
Speaker 3: is there kind of from the start, share a little
Speaker 3: more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think this is why understanding history
Speaker 1: is so important, because people don't understand how do we
Speaker 1: get here? You know, I think a lot of young
Speaker 1: people there's a movement to try to suppress history or
Speaker 1: to suppress all this information about how the US, how
Speaker 1: the America came to be with its ten thousand joys
Speaker 1: and it's ten thousand sorrows. So we just want to
Speaker 1: tell the joys and focus on the Mayflower and the Gate.
Speaker 1: But then no one understands that. But why are we
Speaker 1: having so many problems if this was so beautiful, right,
Speaker 1: And I think it's important to know the history to
Speaker 1: know that this difference of opinion around life and human
Speaker 1: rights for all beings goes back to the very beginning.
Speaker 1: There was a difference. Some agreed and some didn't, and
Speaker 1: some were totally against this, you know. And we saw
Speaker 1: that even with Abraham Lincoln, he was very against the
Speaker 1: idea of slavery, and there was others that were very
Speaker 1: in favor of it. So again we have these figureheads
Speaker 1: over and over who represent this battle line like I
Speaker 1: don't agree with this, I don't want this, and then
Speaker 1: other people saying this is our way of life, we
Speaker 1: do want this, and we don't agree with you. So
Speaker 1: history is definitely coming back. What we are experiencing now,
Speaker 1: Eric feels very similar when I studied our history of
Speaker 1: the lead up to the Civil War that happened in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty It started and went to eighteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: But everything is mirroring, including people believing had the country
Speaker 1: believing there's another president, and the other half is astounding
Speaker 1: that I'm raising the alarms on all this, and I
Speaker 1: think Harriet is back because there is another war brewing
Speaker 1: and we all feel that we feel like where's is going?
Speaker 1: This can't be going anywhere good. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: buildup of military happening, militarization of people in their own homes.
Speaker 1: So this is what happened. This is what happened in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, and it's interesting to see that. So
Speaker 1: I think it's important that we understand history so that
Speaker 1: we have more compassion to what is happening now, and
Speaker 1: we can bring more awareness to what's happening now. How
Speaker 1: do we heal this crack?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, what is it going to take for us
Speaker 1: to heal this? You know, how can we find commonality
Speaker 1: around human rights and equal justice for all beings? So
Speaker 1: this is our challenge for this generation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so too. And you know, with the
Speaker 3: idea of a civil war, you know, I generally stay
Speaker 3: fairly far from politics on this show. It is scary
Speaker 3: in a way, and I sometimes worry though that by
Speaker 3: us forecasting that's where we're headed. And I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that's what you're doing. You're just saying there are signs
Speaker 3: or that mirror it that we are pushing ourselves in
Speaker 3: that direction, that we're tallying up our differences. I always
Speaker 3: think about the stock market and I'm always like, well,
Speaker 3: I mean the stock market is like it's bad because
Speaker 3: people think it should be bad. Like I mean, it's
Speaker 3: this very strange thing that responds, you know. People always
Speaker 3: talk about the stock martlegal, the market was feeling fear today,
Speaker 3: like it's this living creature, which in some ways it is.
Speaker 3: It just always weirds me out though, because I'm like,
Speaker 3: but we're the consciousness that's driving the entire thing. So
Speaker 3: same thing with the divide that is very real and
Speaker 3: is here and does need healed, you know, is like,
Speaker 3: what way of relating to it helps us, like you said,
Speaker 3: to bridge it, to narrow it, to stop it from
Speaker 3: getting to the point where we have to fight each other,
Speaker 3: you know, because there's nothing good that comes out of that.
Speaker 3: My belief is, and I know yours is that like
Speaker 3: whatever the question is, y once is a bad answer.
Speaker 1: Well, I absolutely agree with you. And I know that
Speaker 1: without the Civil War, slavery would not have ended. So
Speaker 1: in order for that system to collapse, it had to
Speaker 1: be a battle because it was so dug in right,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have there was no resolution. People were willing
Speaker 1: to go to battle over it, right, they were willing.
Speaker 1: And so I hear you like, you know, all of
Speaker 1: this is our minds. We are creating it. We are
Speaker 1: creating the divide, we create the stock market. It's all
Speaker 1: our dream, right, We create our concepts, and these are
Speaker 1: the prisons that people are willing to die for the
Speaker 1: prisons of our concepts, you know. And so I don't
Speaker 1: know what it would mean to have another civil war,
Speaker 1: if that's eminent. All I'm saying is that when you
Speaker 1: study the three four years before, you know, in the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, Wow, it almost is an exact replica of
Speaker 1: what's happened now. The divide is even the same states. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a history. It's trying to repeat itself
Speaker 1: all these years later. But now we have more awareness.
Speaker 1: So what does this mean for a more conscious society? Yes,
Speaker 1: and I think it's hard to know of talking about
Speaker 1: it creates something more real, or not talking about it,
Speaker 1: Inevitably we wind up there like what he'lls ignoring it
Speaker 1: or going nothing's happening, Let's focus on the joint everybody.
Speaker 1: And then there's a you know, next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a build up outside your front door and you
Speaker 1: go well, how did this happen? Well, it was happening,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to know what's creating.
Speaker 3: What agreed one hundred percent, there's no right answer there.
Speaker 3: I want to go back a little bit to something
Speaker 3: that you said a little while ago, which was, you know,
Speaker 3: for every terrible act we see on the news, you know,
Speaker 3: you believe there's lots and lots and lots of other
Speaker 3: acts of love and compassion and kindness and decency that
Speaker 3: are out there. Can I share a very similar belief,
Speaker 3: So we know that news can be toxic for us
Speaker 3: in many different ways. I mean, at the very least,
Speaker 3: it's just one view of the world, and it's a
Speaker 3: view of everything that's going wrong in the world largely,
Speaker 3: that's what it is. That's its view and its orientation,
Speaker 3: and so on one hand, being exposed to it too
Speaker 3: much will at the very least skew our belief about
Speaker 3: what's happening in the world, because we will say, oh,
Speaker 3: we're only looking at the bad, not again all the
Speaker 3: wonderful acts of kindness that if you walked out your
Speaker 3: front door you would be seeing. So how do you
Speaker 3: orient towards being in touch with what's happening? Paying attention
Speaker 3: to the news, so that you do know what's happening,
Speaker 3: but not getting lost in it, because I do think
Speaker 3: that you still have a view of humanity. That's as
Speaker 3: you said earlier, the universe is a compassionate place. So
Speaker 3: how do you in your own life very practically manage
Speaker 3: that desire to be informed with the desire not to
Speaker 3: drown in negativity.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't have a television, that's for sure. I
Speaker 1: haven't for a year. So I don't have CNN on
Speaker 1: while I'm cooking and cleaning or whatever. People laugh box
Speaker 1: any of it. It is going twenty four hours. It's
Speaker 1: an addiction. Yeah, it's an addiction I think to the media.
Speaker 1: And so I'm very aware of what I watch. And
Speaker 1: also I'm very somatic and very sensitive. And you know,
Speaker 1: in all the media rather or Netflix or Hulu, if
Speaker 1: you see the amount of violent programming, I still feel
Speaker 1: like Hollywood's responsible for mental illness by just putting out
Speaker 1: endless crimes and violence and stories and homicide X and
Speaker 1: killer this, and it's all sensationalized, you know, all these
Speaker 1: serial killers. And I mean, if you're a child, then
Speaker 1: you're just as all you absorb. I mean, my god,
Speaker 1: no wonder. Our children, you know, are suffering from mental
Speaker 1: health crisises. So watching dehumanization happen hour after hour after
Speaker 1: hour after hour does something to your consciousness. It's a
Speaker 1: form of programming. The world's not safe. It's terrible. People
Speaker 1: are horrible. They're everywhere, you know, So I limit everything
Speaker 1: I watch. I'm very aware what I take in, and
Speaker 1: I try very consciously to watch positive things. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to engage in something on my computer, I'm going
Speaker 1: to make sure that there's some positive spin on it
Speaker 1: because I need everything I can get right now. So
Speaker 1: I implore people, we need every help we can have. You know,
Speaker 1: the help was with our minds, because it's onslaught of violence.
Speaker 1: It's just if you really just go look at what's
Speaker 1: treading all the top things, they're all basically greed, hatred
Speaker 1: and delusion magnified and package in a glamorous way sadly.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I'm in the middle of watching a series
Speaker 3: called Viking, which, yeah, the level of violence in it
Speaker 3: is for me personally, the battle scenes, I'm like, that's
Speaker 3: not what I want. It's the story that's happening here.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Jenny puts a blanket over her head and I start
Speaker 3: hitting fast forward, fast forward to get through it.
Speaker 1: But imagine an eight year old's mind alone, No, I
Speaker 1: get it so plugged into TV and online. Now you
Speaker 1: know they had to live like that for years, absorbing
Speaker 1: hours and hours of just like you know, we just dehumanize,
Speaker 1: you know, you show it over and over again. It
Speaker 1: creates a violent society. So just something for us all
Speaker 1: to think about what we do all the time.
Speaker 3: I know, yes, yes, I certainly can fall prey to it.
Speaker 3: I wanted to end with We started talking about the
Speaker 3: importance and value of stories, and you tell in chapter eleven,
Speaker 3: which is really about women, you know, the heart of women,
Speaker 3: and you know, Harriet Tubman, after working on Free and Slavery, became,
Speaker 3: as you mentioned, a part of the women's movement. And
Speaker 3: but you tell a story in there about a important
Speaker 3: part of the story of the Buddha. Sujata am I
Speaker 3: pronouncing that correctly? Yeah, So she often gets a footnote
Speaker 3: when we tell sort of you know what happened with
Speaker 3: the Buddha, right, but share a little bit more about
Speaker 3: that part of the story and what it means to you.
Speaker 1: Well, I have such a good connection with that story
Speaker 1: and the story about Sujata always was very meaningful. I
Speaker 1: remember when I went on a pilgrimage to India. I
Speaker 1: went to Sadjata village and went to this place where
Speaker 1: they created this whole shrine, and you know, I took
Speaker 1: photos and there was an orphanage and I gave a
Speaker 1: bunch of donations to the orphans and I prayed outside
Speaker 1: and had a little image of her with a rice bowl,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was felt like a very special place,
Speaker 1: but it felt so neglected compared to all these other monuments.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, right, Sajata's off over here and
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a graveyard and here, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like it kind of symbolize the feminine in
Speaker 1: the in the role like off over here. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: this person Sho Djata, who basically saved Siddhartha's life, but
Speaker 1: you know who cares? You know, she's over here. But
Speaker 1: I just remember going and I found such a connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the story is, you know, the to be Siddharta
Speaker 1: was killing himself, practicing in this warrior way and destroying
Speaker 1: his body, you know, eating only a grain of rice
Speaker 1: a day and not sleeping and not bathing and just
Speaker 1: practicing this kind of esthetic way that was so violent.
Speaker 1: He was near death. And in the story that there's
Speaker 1: a very beautiful story where the gods in the heavens
Speaker 1: were like, oh no, he's gonna die. He's killing himself,
Speaker 1: you know. And then we have the story of Sudjato,
Speaker 1: who on that day the Siddharta was face planted near death,
Speaker 1: couldn't even move his body any longer to practice. Sijata
Speaker 1: comes through the forests, have made this bowl of rice,
Speaker 1: putting all morning, hour after hour, and was gonna make
Speaker 1: an offering, as his customary in many cultures where we
Speaker 1: make offerings to spirits, we make offerings to these altars,
Speaker 1: we make offerings to our ancestors and the Buddha's and
Speaker 1: the buddy sapphas. And then saw this mangled man in
Speaker 1: the dirt, you know, and her heart opened, and she
Speaker 1: then gives this bowl of food and then helps him.
Speaker 1: And this becomes the balance of the feminine, the feminine spirit,
Speaker 1: Like you can't just think that we're a blend of
Speaker 1: masculine and feminine energies. And she represents the mother everything
Speaker 1: he had suppressed, the wife, his mother. I'm alone I'm
Speaker 1: a man, I'm gonna do this. She kind of comes
Speaker 1: in and feeds him and then bathes him, and interesting enough,
Speaker 1: in other stories and tiknat Hans story, they become lovers.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, she nurses him back to health, not just
Speaker 1: for a day or two days, but over a long
Speaker 1: period of time because he was so ill from how
Speaker 1: he had he needed a long period of restoration. But
Speaker 1: as you know, these stories, nobody wants to talk about
Speaker 1: the Buddha having a girlfriend or Jesus being married or
Speaker 1: I mean, these are like this evokes, I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't even want to get into you know, Islam and
Speaker 1: what that would mean if a woman appeared anywhere in
Speaker 1: the story. You know, it's such a it's so much
Speaker 1: destructive energy towards the feminine, you know. So so I
Speaker 1: talk about that story and how Sujata is making uh resurgence,
Speaker 1: the lost women in the Buddha's life, his aunt and
Speaker 1: the people who raised him. And also the Gospels of
Speaker 1: Mary Magdalene, you know, are rising, and you know the
Speaker 1: Pope recently said, yes, these are legitimate gospels. We have
Speaker 1: destroyed them for a long time. But here, you know,
Speaker 1: which tell the different story and so Harriet loves that
Speaker 1: that they're just this feminine and masculine. They need to
Speaker 1: work together. One doesn't overpower the other. It's like the
Speaker 1: eagle and condor prophecy. Right, these energies fly together, one
Speaker 1: doesn't dominate. And so this chapter was about Harriet's leaf
Speaker 1: in the feminine spirit, needing to rise and to be
Speaker 1: in harmony with the masculine.
Speaker 3: Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.
Speaker 3: Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices
Speaker 3: didn't quite match the person you wanted to be. Maybe
Speaker 3: it was autopilot mode or self doubt that made it
Speaker 3: harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why
Speaker 3: I created The Six Saboteurs of Self Control. It's a
Speaker 3: free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that
Speaker 3: hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to
Speaker 3: break through them. If you're ready to take back control
Speaker 3: and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at
Speaker 3: oneufeed dot net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen
Speaker 3: starting today one you feed dot nets slash e book. Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful story, and I love the way you
Speaker 3: sort of pull more out of it because again, in
Speaker 3: the way the Buddhist story is normally told. It's just
Speaker 3: sort of like, well, and then someone gave him food,
Speaker 3: and then he went on and you know, became enlightened,
Speaker 3: and there's more there and it is a real turning point,
Speaker 3: and so I love the way you've brought that out.
Speaker 3: We are out of time, so spring, thank you so
Speaker 3: much for coming on. I always love talking with you.
Speaker 3: The new book is called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman,
Speaker 3: Awakening from the Underground, and we'll have links in the
Speaker 3: show notes to where people can get the book and
Speaker 3: learn more about you and your work. So thank you
Speaker 3: so much for coming on again.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric. I always have so much insight and
Speaker 1: enjoy talking with you, so thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
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