Speaker 1: The beautiful part about our spiritual life is that if
Speaker 1: we give it time and attention, it does reach back.
Speaker 1: We are met in some way, and I would say
Speaker 1: relief is actually one of the first things welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. If you've lost track
Speaker 1: of what's important to you, you're not alone. We often
Speaker 1: go through phases in life where we feel dissatisfied or disconnected,
Speaker 1: and when we get off track, it's easy to get
Speaker 1: stuck in unhelpful patterns like avoidance or perfectionism. It shows
Speaker 1: up as negative self talk, breaking your own rules, procrastinating
Speaker 1: or struggling to let go of addictive or otherwise harmful
Speaker 1: behaviors to make space for healthy ones. I want you
Speaker 1: to know that all of these are struggles I've had too,
Speaker 1: and if I can turn things around with the challenges
Speaker 1: I faced deep and heroin addiction and clinical depression, so
Speaker 1: can you. What I've learned through experience is that what
Speaker 1: we know is not as important as what we do consistently,
Speaker 1: and bridging this gap is the key to feeling fulfilled
Speaker 1: at a deeper level. Bridging this gap is the foundation
Speaker 1: of the Spiritual Habits Program, a non religious mentorship and
Speaker 1: accountability experience to establish simple daily practices that help you
Speaker 1: to be more present, compassionate, and connected in your relationships
Speaker 1: in life. Over eight weeks together, you'll learn how to
Speaker 1: make small changes that have a big impact. No matter
Speaker 1: what life is serving up, you'll experience it in a
Speaker 1: more grounded, loving, strengthening, and creative way. If anything I've
Speaker 1: said is resonated with you, go to one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash Spiritual Habits to learn more and sign up.
Speaker 1: Enrollment for this year's program is open now through March
Speaker 1: thirteenth and I love to meet you in it. That's
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash Spiritual Habits to learn
Speaker 1: more and sign up. Thanks for joining us. Our guest
Speaker 1: on this episode is doctor Jan Lundy, the Gerald May
Speaker 1: Professor of Spiritual Direction and Counseling at the Graduate Theological Foundation.
Speaker 1: She is passionate about supporting people of all spiritual orientations
Speaker 1: and none, as they navigate the big questions of life,
Speaker 1: consider how to live in a complex world and navigate
Speaker 1: its many challenges. For the past twenty five years, Jan
Speaker 1: has compassionately served others as a spiritual director and counselor,
Speaker 1: and most recently, as a grief support specialist. She has
Speaker 1: a private practice in Michigan and meets with people internationally
Speaker 1: over zoom. Jan is the acclaimed author of nine spiritual
Speaker 1: growth books, including the newest one discussed here, My Deepest Me,
Speaker 1: a thirty day guided retreat to nourish your inner life. Hi, Jan,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Oh hello Eric, it's so nice
Speaker 1: to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am very happy to have you on. You are a
Speaker 1: I guess i'd consider an old friend at this point,
Speaker 1: not in your age, but we've been friends for a while.
Speaker 1: I went through a program that you run called the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, where I became an interfaith spiritual director,
Speaker 1: and so we got to know each other then, And
Speaker 1: I said, before we talked, I really think if you
Speaker 1: as a kindred spirit, and I learned so much from you.
Speaker 1: So I'm really happy to have you on and talk today. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you. And it was so good to get to
Speaker 1: know you better too. I got to know your heart
Speaker 1: a bit and your passions and your joy in serving others.
Speaker 1: So that's lovely. Yeah, And we're going to be talking about,
Speaker 1: among other things, your latest book, which is called My
Speaker 1: Deepest Me, a thirty day retreat to nourish your inner life.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, we'll start like we
Speaker 1: always do with the Parable. In the Parable, there's a
Speaker 1: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second, looks up at their grandparents says which
Speaker 1: one wins, and the grandparent 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. Now. I love this parable.
Speaker 1: It's been in my life for a long time. So
Speaker 1: this is how I think of it. I think of
Speaker 1: the good Wolf as my essence, the truth of my being.
Speaker 1: I know it as my deepest me. It is that
Speaker 1: which aligns me with what I call the virtues of
Speaker 1: the spirit, compassion, kindness, generosity, peace, joy, unity, simplicity, service,
Speaker 1: and love. I know when I listen to it, listen
Speaker 1: to that voice, that it benefits me and it benefits others.
Speaker 1: The bad Wolf, I would say, is the domain of
Speaker 1: my small, insecure, fearful human self. We all have one,
Speaker 1: of course. As well as the messages it sends, it's
Speaker 1: also the collective voice of the over culture. And maybe
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about that. The voice
Speaker 1: of the overculture, a dominant voice in society that really
Speaker 1: does send so many messages that encourages me to be more,
Speaker 1: to do more, to not be satisfied, to doubt myself
Speaker 1: and my inner truth, to be afraid to be worried
Speaker 1: and anxious, primarily that I'm never enough. So listening to
Speaker 1: this voice creates pain and suffering for me and for
Speaker 1: the people around me. Listening to the good Wolf's voice
Speaker 1: aligns me with the highest, with the good, the beautiful,
Speaker 1: and the true. That's what I call it anyway. The
Speaker 1: real capital are of which the Sufis speak, the divine,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, so for me, the tale invites
Speaker 1: us to pay attention day by day, moment by moment,
Speaker 1: we are given the choice of which voice to listen to.
Speaker 1: My calling as a spiritual guidance counselor is to companion
Speaker 1: people as they listen on a journey of discernment, as
Speaker 1: they live into this for themselves, and hopefully I can
Speaker 1: help them hear the voice of love. That's beautiful. I
Speaker 1: love everything you said there, and I want to touch
Speaker 1: on something you said because it's not a phrase I've
Speaker 1: actually heard before, which is the over culture. I instinctively
Speaker 1: kind of think I understand it any more about that.
Speaker 1: It's not an original term. I actually received it from
Speaker 1: doctor Clarissa Pinkola, SDS, who is the Youngian Analyst, and
Speaker 1: she uses that term a lot in her work. Her
Speaker 1: work has been very influential in my own spiritual journey.
Speaker 1: I almost imagine it like an umbrella, this thing that
Speaker 1: sort of hangs over us, as a collective consciousness that
Speaker 1: pulls us down in a way. Its values are of
Speaker 1: a particular tone and hue, but they are not about
Speaker 1: accepting one's uniqueness. Artists feel very stifled by it. For one,
Speaker 1: writers often due to sensitive people. It has a very
Speaker 1: strong voice that says to be accepted, to be in
Speaker 1: the tribe, to be welcome and part of the society,
Speaker 1: you really need to do it this way. And if
Speaker 1: you are someone who is creative, who's sensitive, who's spiritually inclined,
Speaker 1: perhaps maybe even more than religiously acclined, it can be
Speaker 1: a challenged to live under the umbrella of the over culture.
Speaker 1: So I have a question again about the overculture. Does
Speaker 1: every culture have one, because we have a tendency, often
Speaker 1: particularly in a lot of spiritual circles or liberal circles,
Speaker 1: to look back at indigenous times Indigenous people as having
Speaker 1: a belief system that was better in many ways. But
Speaker 1: when you said it's what the tribe says, we have
Speaker 1: to be like, it made me think, like, well, surely
Speaker 1: even then there was an overculture of some sort or
Speaker 1: other that for some people just didn't work, didn't fit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree. I think it depends on the values
Speaker 1: of that culture. If the values of the culture really
Speaker 1: are diversity, self expression, recognizing the uniqueness and the divinity
Speaker 1: of each individual, then we are each encouraged to express
Speaker 1: that uniqueness. And in our culture it's interesting and in
Speaker 1: Western culture, the US and particular, that's all I can
Speaker 1: really speak of because of being born and living in
Speaker 1: the United States, that the voice seems to be, yes,
Speaker 1: you can be all you want to be, or feel
Speaker 1: you can be. But but and sometimes the butt is
Speaker 1: very loud. We're experiencing that a lot of that today
Speaker 1: actually with cancel culture, with ghosting people, with kicking them
Speaker 1: out of everything from schools to churches. Because despite the
Speaker 1: fact that we admire people's uniqueness, there's also there is
Speaker 1: an energy, there is a force that oftentimes does not
Speaker 1: support one's genuine individuality, and that is a sense of
Speaker 1: the sacred of who you are. In the sacred I
Speaker 1: believe of your deepest essence, your deepest truth. I want
Speaker 1: to come back to values of culture in a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose the threat of that, but
Speaker 1: I do want to go deeper before we go any further,
Speaker 1: are into some words that you're using. You've used the
Speaker 1: word essence, You've used the word divinity, You've used the
Speaker 1: word you're a spiritual guidance counselor let's start with spiritual.
Speaker 1: Why is that a word as ambiguous a term as
Speaker 1: it can be. Why is that a term that means
Speaker 1: something to you? And what does it mean to you?
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful question. I do think if it is
Speaker 1: the essence the truth of our humanity, actually the truth
Speaker 1: of our humanity, and Victor Frankel, the founder of existential
Speaker 1: analysis and logotherapy in which I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: training over the years, advocates that, and I do believe
Speaker 1: this also, that we are the only creature, the only
Speaker 1: being on the earth that has a consciousness that can
Speaker 1: perceive itself and can witness itself. And in the Eastern
Speaker 1: traditions I'm thinking around us in particular onlining with that
Speaker 1: and calling it, well, that's the soul, that's that part
Speaker 1: of you that can rise higher and look deeper. And
Speaker 1: there's no other creature that can do that that we
Speaker 1: know of at least we know that we know of.
Speaker 1: So the spiritual piece is that deeply human peace. Actually,
Speaker 1: Frankel called it the new os or the spirit. It
Speaker 1: was difficult to translate that from German to English, but
Speaker 1: that that is always there no matter what, and it
Speaker 1: is always guiding us. It is always leading the way,
Speaker 1: it can always be reached. He worked a lot with
Speaker 1: people who were experiencing mental illness, severe depression, even schizophrenic
Speaker 1: and psychosis, and he said, even mental illness cannot cover
Speaker 1: up the spirit. We are also going to get to
Speaker 1: logo therapy in a little bit in Victor Frankel, because
Speaker 1: he's enormously influential on so many people, including myself. I
Speaker 1: want to stay with spirituality a little bit more of
Speaker 1: that idea, the essence of being human. The reason that
Speaker 1: question is so alive for me right now is we
Speaker 1: are preparing soon to launch our sort of flagship spiritual
Speaker 1: habits program again, and you know, kind of going out
Speaker 1: and listening to what people have to say. You know,
Speaker 1: people in our audience around it, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: ambiguity in a lot of people saying, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I like that word spiritual, and I am
Speaker 1: always on the fence with it because it means something
Speaker 1: to me. But it's a term that tends for most
Speaker 1: people to either land on to me, I think one
Speaker 1: of two extremes. One is they just associate it with
Speaker 1: religiousness in America, it's for most people at the Christianity
Speaker 1: of their childhood. Or on the other hand, we tend
Speaker 1: to hear that term and associate it with really outlandish
Speaker 1: to me, outlandish beliefs, very new age culture, lots of psychics,
Speaker 1: and lots of different things that are that are further
Speaker 1: out there, whereas to me, spirituality is actually all about
Speaker 1: meaning and connection. You know, to me, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's about what matters to me. And am I connected
Speaker 1: to it in a consistent way, which I think goes
Speaker 1: to sort of what you're saying the essence of being human.
Speaker 1: So let's go from spirituality to another word that you use,
Speaker 1: which is the divine? What does that word mean to you?
Speaker 1: That's one of those difficult things to define also, and
Speaker 1: so I just have to be very honest to say that.
Speaker 1: And I always have this written in my books and
Speaker 1: preface my workshops or have it on my website, that
Speaker 1: that's the word I use yeah. I also use the
Speaker 1: word as sacred with a capital S. It's what someone
Speaker 1: else might call God, might be what someone else calls
Speaker 1: the universe, spirit oneness. Even could be father or mother,
Speaker 1: or beloved or friends in the Soufi tradition, So it
Speaker 1: is that which aligns them with their deepest truth. It
Speaker 1: can be for some a force and energy, a resting
Speaker 1: place of knowing. For some it can be something outside themselves.
Speaker 1: And so it can be Rachman, Brahman, it can be
Speaker 1: the all, it can be Allah, it can be whatever
Speaker 1: being this. It can be so many terms, and so
Speaker 1: each of us has to find our way to explain
Speaker 1: what is at the core. That's another term that Frankel used,
Speaker 1: the core. There is a core that each of us has,
Speaker 1: and in that core is our deep knowing and our
Speaker 1: conscious and it is the job, you know, if we
Speaker 1: have a job in life to at least I believe
Speaker 1: that to get to the essence, to get to the core,
Speaker 1: because it is about meaning, making meaning of your life,
Speaker 1: making meaning of the moment, especially when it's difficult and
Speaker 1: it seems like life is meaningless, and to be living
Speaker 1: a life that is useful is a good life. I
Speaker 1: would call it not a completely self absorbed life that
Speaker 1: causing pain to others, but a life that has value
Speaker 1: and worth not just for yourself, but for others and
Speaker 1: for a humanity. You have a line in your book.
Speaker 1: I just want to read this short little section because
Speaker 1: I think it speaks a lot to what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. You say, if we are in tune with
Speaker 1: our inner life to any degree, we know that there
Speaker 1: is someone deep within us who is well worth knowing,
Speaker 1: a version of ourselves that is not encumbered or hindered
Speaker 1: by the world. There is also a source, a life
Speaker 1: giving font some of us might call God. It is
Speaker 1: the journey of our lifetime to get to know both
Speaker 1: entities and ultimately to decipher the relationship between the two.
Speaker 1: I think that's just beautifully said and really gets to
Speaker 1: the heart of it. For me, is this idea of
Speaker 1: who am I deeply inside? And then what is the source?
Speaker 1: My Zen tradition would use those two ideas as sort
Speaker 1: of form and emptiness. Right, form being me and what
Speaker 1: sort of shape have I taken? And emptiness being that source,
Speaker 1: that everything, that place which everything comes from. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: I was kind of struggling with remembering the Buddhist terms
Speaker 1: for that. I wanted to include that in my native
Speaker 1: names of the divine or basic goodness. So yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think that is the journey and how do we
Speaker 1: make sense of this? And this is what the major
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions of the world have tried to do. Also.
Speaker 1: They've tried to show a way that people can live
Speaker 1: into those questions, where did I come from? Who am I?
Speaker 1: How am I supposed to live? Where am I going
Speaker 1: when this is all over? You know what happens when
Speaker 1: I die? They ask those basic existential questions, and the
Speaker 1: journey into answering those questions is spirituality. I think, whether
Speaker 1: you are using your examples earlier in a Christian denomination
Speaker 1: or whether you're off here gathering up crystals, there's spirituality
Speaker 1: in each, Yes, that whole range of spirituality, because the
Speaker 1: spirituality is what are we doing with this? How is
Speaker 1: it creating a human existence? How are we living as
Speaker 1: human beings? Yep? And I think the term spiritual can
Speaker 1: also for people who are very leery of anything supernatural, right,
Speaker 1: which many people are, you know. But even within that,
Speaker 1: I do think that the idea of spirituality has a place,
Speaker 1: because again, it is about what is most important. You know,
Speaker 1: the deepest questions, and you can throw away the question
Speaker 1: and I often do where did I come from? And
Speaker 1: where am I going? After this? Because they feel totally
Speaker 1: unknowable to me in any real way, So they don't
Speaker 1: interest me that much. I mean, of course they're somewhat interesting,
Speaker 1: but my bigger interest is really that how am I
Speaker 1: to live? Absolutely? You know, what does it mean to
Speaker 1: be a good person? How do I live in a
Speaker 1: way that is good for myself and good for everybody
Speaker 1: around me? That's to me what spirituality is all about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would so agree, And I think that's why I've
Speaker 1: written the books I have over the years too, because
Speaker 1: people are asking, well, how do I do that? How
Speaker 1: do I do that? Because do I read this? Do
Speaker 1: I go to this event? Do I listen to this person?
Speaker 1: How do I get to mine? How do I get
Speaker 1: to know my inner spirituality? My divine imprint? I think
Speaker 1: of it sometimes, as you know, we've been given each
Speaker 1: a unique thumbprint, and so our spiritual life will be
Speaker 1: the same, it will represent that also, which explains why
Speaker 1: a lot of people struggle with traditions, with religious traditions,
Speaker 1: because their thumb print maybe doesn't match again, kind of
Speaker 1: that overculture, even of the particular religious tradition. So the
Speaker 1: spiritual journey for me is about recognizing my unique thumb
Speaker 1: print and learning to trust that this is mine and
Speaker 1: it is my unique connection to the all the emptiness,
Speaker 1: that everythingness, you know, whatever we want to call it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's also okay to call it what
Speaker 1: we need to call it for our deepening, and that
Speaker 1: is not always well received by a lot of people.
Speaker 1: They want to say that there should be a name
Speaker 1: that everyone can get behind, But in reality, I think
Speaker 1: we're maybe talking about the same thing, but we're just
Speaker 1: using different language. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly at the
Speaker 1: heart of to me interfaith work, which you train people,
Speaker 1: and I was trained in interfaith spiritual direction, and that
Speaker 1: heart of interfaith to me has always seemed extraordinarily obvious
Speaker 1: to me, which is these are all just different ways
Speaker 1: of kind of talking about mostly the same thing. And
Speaker 1: if we focus on what's in common here, there's so
Speaker 1: much to focus on that we can totally get behind,
Speaker 1: versus focusing on what's different or the words or the
Speaker 1: language you know, you know, and inter faith is often
Speaker 1: very opposite from the idea of fundamental right. Fundamentalism says
Speaker 1: I know the truth and it has to be said
Speaker 1: and spoken this way. And inner faith. There's many names
Speaker 1: for this thing. Yeah, And Matthew Fox wrote this wonderful
Speaker 1: book called One River, Many Wells, and it's such a
Speaker 1: beautiful way to describe what you're talking about. That each
Speaker 1: of the major religious traditions, the wisdom traditions we call
Speaker 1: them in the perennial tradition, is like a well that
Speaker 1: silos down into and gathers from this deep river that
Speaker 1: runs underneath, which is full of life giving wisdom, of
Speaker 1: life appreciating wisdom. And as you study the different religions
Speaker 1: and traditions of the world, you see that they all
Speaker 1: do have compassion in common. They all do have the
Speaker 1: search for truths, they do have the search for a meaning,
Speaker 1: they do have ethics and values, and so they draw
Speaker 1: from that deep river up into their own well, and
Speaker 1: then that well is their unique expression it. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: Spiritual Habits program is sort of my distillation of what
Speaker 1: those core principles are that I think underlie all these traditions.
Speaker 1: And that's just my lens on it, as you would say,
Speaker 1: but I think that's what you know in interfaith work
Speaker 1: we're trying to do is sort of, at least for me,
Speaker 1: it's always been helpful to sort of hear it different ways.
Speaker 1: You know, absolutely, a different voice, a different voice will
Speaker 1: touch your mind and touch your heart in a different way.
Speaker 1: And that's why those of us that are on this path,
Speaker 1: you know, we are always open to maybe the next yeah,
Speaker 1: the next person on your podcast, you know, the next author,
Speaker 1: the next teacher, because there's something there that will guide
Speaker 1: my journey or take me deeper, that brings up a
Speaker 1: really good question that you have raised. You know, comes
Speaker 1: up in your book a few different times. I think
Speaker 1: it's obviously something that you think a lot about. And
Speaker 1: it is this basic idea that given now that most
Speaker 1: of us are quote unquote freed from having to believe
Speaker 1: a particular thing, we are then thrust into the modern
Speaker 1: world where we can believe anything, and we are exposed
Speaker 1: to nearly everything if we're paying any attention. And so
Speaker 1: that idea that you know, Matthew Fox is talking about
Speaker 1: that there's many wells, many ways into this one river.
Speaker 1: There's also another analogy that shows up in spiritual circles
Speaker 1: about the danger of digging one hundred one foot wells right.
Speaker 1: I spend two weeks in Tibetan Buddhism, and then two
Speaker 1: weeks in mystical Christianity, and then a week in Islam,
Speaker 1: and then depth psychology and then logotherapy and then trauma therapy,
Speaker 1: and God knows my podcast is a perpetrator of lots
Speaker 1: of different approaches. How do you think about that in
Speaker 1: your own life? When to stay, when to go deeper,
Speaker 1: when to explore more widely? How do you think about
Speaker 1: in your own life? And then I'd love to see
Speaker 1: you know how you help others make that discernment. I
Speaker 1: love that question because you're really just sort of named
Speaker 1: my whole journey. There is a danger in what you
Speaker 1: talk about. I call it spiritual sampling. It's going wide
Speaker 1: and not deep. That gets us only so far, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily get us to the place where we
Speaker 1: can listen to the deepest voice of truth inside of us.
Speaker 1: That requires staying for a while, deeper listening, maybe using
Speaker 1: some of the practices from a particular teacher or tradition,
Speaker 1: and to listen deeply and to notice what is it
Speaker 1: elevating in you? What is it diminishing in you? How
Speaker 1: is it strengthening you. A spiritual life that serves you well,
Speaker 1: will be oriented towards freedom, and that it's inner freedom,
Speaker 1: so that you begin to trust who you are, You
Speaker 1: begin to trust your knowing, You begin to trust your
Speaker 1: own unique connection with the sacred as it's revealing itself.
Speaker 1: But it really doesn't reveal itself until you start to
Speaker 1: go deep. So I've done a lot of what you said.
Speaker 1: I mean in my book Your Truest Self. In one
Speaker 1: of the chapters I talk about you know, I was
Speaker 1: one of those people in the early searching years who
Speaker 1: danced on beaches in goddess circles, who studied roomy, who
Speaker 1: went to centering prayer, you know, who tried it all
Speaker 1: and did it all. It was like a spiritual sampling
Speaker 1: of just wild proportions because I was so hungry to know.
Speaker 1: That's where a lot of people are. But then, if
Speaker 1: you're fortunate, you may come across a teacher, perhaps like
Speaker 1: you have, like I have, influential teachers, teachers perhaps that
Speaker 1: were even by their presence, their very presence, opening you
Speaker 1: to something more so that you could begin to hear,
Speaker 1: to listen more deeply, to know what was genuine for
Speaker 1: you and what's not like I can still have that.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like being a seagull who sees a
Speaker 1: glittering object, and seagulls love those and they love to
Speaker 1: grab them and fly away with them, and then they
Speaker 1: end up choking on them. So I can see, Oh,
Speaker 1: that one I just had. It happened yesterday when I
Speaker 1: was doing a spiritual counseling session with someone and she
Speaker 1: was telling me about her most recent book that she
Speaker 1: was reading, and she was just enlivened by it. You
Speaker 1: could just tell it was just giving her life. So
Speaker 1: after the session, I ran to the internet, of course,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking it up, and I'm reading an excerpt
Speaker 1: from the book and on the service it sounds like
Speaker 1: it could be something it could be. And then as
Speaker 1: I got deeper and deeper, I started feeling in my body, no,
Speaker 1: this is not it for you. It's learning to trust
Speaker 1: your body wisdom. Also listening to the resonance of something
Speaker 1: in your I would call it your inner energy. Feel
Speaker 1: listening to your heart, listening to those voices. We talked
Speaker 1: about the good wolf and the bad wolf, you know,
Speaker 1: the wolf that says, you know, maybe you really should
Speaker 1: because what you're doing isn't right, it's not getting you anywhere,
Speaker 1: And then maybe the voice of the good Wolf, the
Speaker 1: Essence says no, just stay where you are a while
Speaker 1: longer and wait and listen and kind of rest in
Speaker 1: not knowing, and stop searching, stop searching, and go deep
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And then if you go deep
Speaker 1: and you find it still not enlivening you and not
Speaker 1: bringing you a greater inner freedom, then leave it. You know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is certainly a challenge I have faced
Speaker 1: my whole life being an intensely curious person who loves
Speaker 1: to learn. I've talked on this show before. Listeners have
Speaker 1: heard me talk about how at a certain point I
Speaker 1: had to sort of say, all right, this is going
Speaker 1: to be my practice for a period of time. For me.
Speaker 1: It's just helpful to set a time limit right now.
Speaker 1: My time limits are very different than you know, other
Speaker 1: people's time limits. I was interviewing a Zen priest out
Speaker 1: of New York Coach and Paley Ellison recently, and you know,
Speaker 1: in the Zen tradition they often talk about measuring progress
Speaker 1: every thirty years. I'm like, okay, well that's way too
Speaker 1: long for me, Like I wish I was that patient,
Speaker 1: but I'm not so for me in the beginning, it
Speaker 1: was like six months, I'm going to stay with this
Speaker 1: for six months. But even that was good, you know,
Speaker 1: And the way that I then engaged in that practice
Speaker 1: was very different. I talk about this where you know,
Speaker 1: I read a book a week for this podcast, if
Speaker 1: not more. When I started studying with my zen teacher,
Speaker 1: I read one book, a short book for six months.
Speaker 1: There's a difference in that way. There are times where
Speaker 1: it does really help to sort of narrow down and
Speaker 1: stay focused. I often think about when have I changed
Speaker 1: the most in life, and one of the times was
Speaker 1: in twelve step programs. And part of the reason was
Speaker 1: there was a lot of low hanging fruit. You come
Speaker 1: walking in as a twenty four year old homeless heroin
Speaker 1: attict like that. There's a lot of change, this kind
Speaker 1: of right right there waiting for you, right. But the
Speaker 1: other reason I think was that I went to meeting
Speaker 1: after meeting after meeting after meeting where we talked about
Speaker 1: the same exact stuff. Yeah, there were times that I
Speaker 1: was like, if I have to hear them read those
Speaker 1: twelve steps again, I am going to puncture my own
Speaker 1: ear drum. Right. There were moments where I felt that,
Speaker 1: but that repetition that coming back to it and realizing
Speaker 1: that every time we would read that chapter in the
Speaker 1: Big Book, I was a different person if I open
Speaker 1: to it. If I went, oh, I've already heard this before,
Speaker 1: well then that doesn't do me any good. But if
Speaker 1: I can be open to it, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I know that in the work that you do and
Speaker 1: in the work that I've done with spiritual habits, some
Speaker 1: of it is that thing about how can we narrow
Speaker 1: and stay in a lane? And so this question is
Speaker 1: so alive for me. And where I've ultimately ended up
Speaker 1: is the proportions change. And I'm not trying to turn
Speaker 1: this into an equation because equations don't work, but guiding
Speaker 1: principles where I'll be like, you know what, seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the time I'm staying in this lane and thirty
Speaker 1: percent of the time I'm just going to go out
Speaker 1: and explore and play. Because we talk about like your
Speaker 1: own essence, that's part of my essence. That is part
Speaker 1: of what brings me alive, is that exploration, that newness,
Speaker 1: that looking at the same idea from a different angle,
Speaker 1: hearing somebody else's but I think everybody has to solve
Speaker 1: that question for themselves, and it's a really challenging one,
Speaker 1: it is. But you know, I think you touched into
Speaker 1: something so important is that you found a practice and
Speaker 1: you were willing to stay for me. That early practice
Speaker 1: was very simple breath practice. And it's because I found
Speaker 1: it at a time as many people do their deeper
Speaker 1: spiritual journey, when you have a crisis, as you did
Speaker 1: and as I did. But mine was my health and
Speaker 1: I had developed chronic fatigue and massive anxiety, which was
Speaker 1: absolutely debilitating. I was a young mother and not knowing
Speaker 1: where to turn, what kind of resources to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: But I knew there was something. There had to be something,
Speaker 1: So I remember literally walking into a bookstore and standing
Speaker 1: in front of a shelf of spiritual books and just waiting,
Speaker 1: just waiting for something to grab me and to say
Speaker 1: it's me. And it did, and it was ticknat Han's
Speaker 1: book pieces every step. It was like a long drink
Speaker 1: of water after being in the desert, because I had
Speaker 1: been trying to do too much, be too much, be
Speaker 1: everything to everyone, and had lost my sense of self.
Speaker 1: And so to go back to the breath, to go
Speaker 1: back to the breath. Was such a relief. Do you
Speaker 1: mean I only have to do one thing at a time, day,
Speaker 1: only one thing at a time, and I can just
Speaker 1: sit and breathe. It was tremendously healing. And that was
Speaker 1: the root practice and everything. I've gone a lot of
Speaker 1: different places, as you have, but I landed in a
Speaker 1: lane that is definitely rooted in that deep embodied practice
Speaker 1: of sitting and staying and breathing and feeling the relief
Speaker 1: of it, of not having to do, not having to
Speaker 1: try so hard at being. And that's what I really
Speaker 1: encourage people to do, is spiritual practice is really important,
Speaker 1: even if it's just sitting in stillness and watching the
Speaker 1: snowfall down as I was fall from the sky as
Speaker 1: I was doing earlier today, or just taking those deep,
Speaker 1: compassionate breaths. The beautiful part about our spiritual life is
Speaker 1: that if we give it time and attention, it does
Speaker 1: reach back. We are met in some way. And I
Speaker 1: would say relief is actually one of the first things.
Speaker 1: As we feel like we can breathe again, we feel
Speaker 1: like we're home, we feel like it can rest a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's like the deep there it is. I'm
Speaker 1: back and that might be your north star and that's okay,
Speaker 1: and that's enough. And then if you want to go
Speaker 1: off and do universal dances a piece with sufis and
Speaker 1: or go sit of a passna retreat, you know with
Speaker 1: the Buddhists, you can do it. But explore enough and
Speaker 1: be willing to stay. I love what you said in
Speaker 1: one lane long enough to try something, to take it deeper,
Speaker 1: whether it is centering prayer, or it is meditation, or
Speaker 1: it is walking, give it a chance and let it
Speaker 1: deepen you, because that's what a spiritual practice will do.
Speaker 1: If you give yourself to it fully, without expecting results,
Speaker 1: it often delivers. Yeah, if you're not attached to the
Speaker 1: result of it, to let it work in you, to
Speaker 1: trust that it could hold you and create space for you.
Speaker 1: I always tell the people I journey with you will
Speaker 1: be met. With the right intention and attention, you will
Speaker 1: be met. You talked in there about not expecting things
Speaker 1: to be a certain way. I think one of the
Speaker 1: places people most get hung up with is expecting that
Speaker 1: their spiritual practice either something needs to be happening or
Speaker 1: they need to be doing better. You talked about the
Speaker 1: relief of the breath and what's really interesting is that
Speaker 1: I was unable to get the relief of the breath
Speaker 1: for many years because I thought that I didn't just
Speaker 1: have to be breathing. I had to be focused on
Speaker 1: my breath and I had to keep my focus on
Speaker 1: my breath, and that was the point. And when I
Speaker 1: was unable to do that, which I was very unable
Speaker 1: to do for quite some time. Given I think just
Speaker 1: the nature of off in my mind, but I think
Speaker 1: almost anybody's mind these days, it wasn't a relief. It
Speaker 1: was a frustration to me, you know, and it drove
Speaker 1: me away from spiritual practice again and again and again
Speaker 1: and again because I kept feeling like I'm failing. I'm failing,
Speaker 1: I'm failing, I'm failing. Which nobody wants to do something
Speaker 1: they feel like they're failing at every thirty seconds. So
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit about two different ideas
Speaker 1: that I think you speak very well to here, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to just read what you said. You said
Speaker 1: it's important for me to be patient with myself yet
Speaker 1: persistent in my practice. Vigilance and faithfulness are virtues of
Speaker 1: the spirit, as our gentleness and self compassion. May I
Speaker 1: practice them all? Talk to me about how those two
Speaker 1: things are going together, both vigilance and faithfulness and gentleness
Speaker 1: and self compassion. It's such a dilemma that we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in a culture that is steeped in achievement, because
Speaker 1: most of us have now gotten caught in spiritual striving.
Speaker 1: So we are trying to get somewhere in our practice.
Speaker 1: We're trying to accomplish a certain mind state or a
Speaker 1: heart state. It has to do with staying attuned to
Speaker 1: that which might take us deeper. So that's the vigilance,
Speaker 1: staying faithful to it. If you start a practice, stay
Speaker 1: faithful to it. I'm a lousy meditator. I will tell
Speaker 1: you that I hear Pema children in my mind saying
Speaker 1: you know that she has a lousy meditation. My meditation
Speaker 1: has never been good. Breathing counting breaths like you talked
Speaker 1: about made me kind of crazy, actually anxious. It can
Speaker 1: make you anxious. If you're an anxious person and you
Speaker 1: do a certain kind of breathing, it can make you
Speaker 1: more anxious. So for me, it was learning to rest
Speaker 1: in the practice. So for me, breathing, for an example,
Speaker 1: as a practice is I'm just resting and receiving. I'm
Speaker 1: just resting and receiving. I'm not doing anything, but I
Speaker 1: feel the gift of that of receiving because so many
Speaker 1: of us are doers. So it's like pointing yourself in
Speaker 1: the direction. It says, if you have a compass and
Speaker 1: you have that needle, pointing to the north star. In
Speaker 1: your north star might be your intention and your commitment
Speaker 1: to a practice, but you don't engage in it like
Speaker 1: it's this adventure that has to have certain goals. You
Speaker 1: allow it to just be and allow yourself to be
Speaker 1: in it, and that's the compassionate peace. So if I'm walking,
Speaker 1: I'll give another example. I'd love to walk walking as
Speaker 1: a spiritual practice for me. But if I try to
Speaker 1: turn it into something when I'm walking, like oh I
Speaker 1: must see this or pay attention to this, or do
Speaker 1: these kinds of breaths, I'm missing the whole point of
Speaker 1: receiving what being outdoors is going to give to me
Speaker 1: and noticing what I might not be able to see
Speaker 1: if I'm too busy thinking and focusing on an outcome.
Speaker 1: So I hope that helps. But it's the gentleness for
Speaker 1: me that has changed this whole game because I was
Speaker 1: truly a spiritual striver. And as soon as I stopped
Speaker 1: striving and waited and rested in the mystery you talked
Speaker 1: about that earlier, rested in the not knowing. I don't
Speaker 1: pretend to know much of anything truthfully about the spiritual journey.
Speaker 1: I think I know a little bit, but I really
Speaker 1: don't know how it works, except to say, when I
Speaker 1: bring myself to that place, I will be met, but
Speaker 1: I have to do it gently and without striving, and
Speaker 1: without expectation. I'll give you an example. I was doing
Speaker 1: a pilgrimage through southern California with my sister. We were
Speaker 1: visiting the various Catholic missions there, and I've had an
Speaker 1: affinity to the Divine feminine for many years. It's been
Speaker 1: an important part of my life. And of course in
Speaker 1: those Catholic churches, especially in the mission churches, there's always
Speaker 1: Mary right, usually the Guadaloupe and the brown skinned woman
Speaker 1: who protects her people. And I would walk into these churches.
Speaker 1: I'm not Catholic, I don't have any special devotion to
Speaker 1: religion in that way, but I would walk into these
Speaker 1: spaces and I would sit down in the front row,
Speaker 1: and it happen time and time again, empty empty church,
Speaker 1: of course, and I would receive a wash of energy.
Speaker 1: That's all I can call it, as if warm maple
Speaker 1: syrup was being poured all down my body and into me,
Speaker 1: and tears would come and I would just feel profound love.
Speaker 1: I never expected that. I never asked for it, I
Speaker 1: did not search for it. But it has been a
Speaker 1: recurring theme in my life that if I make myself
Speaker 1: available the divine, however you want to call that is
Speaker 1: complete mystery and it meets us where we are at.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that to sound anthropomorphic like it's
Speaker 1: a being necessarily or a god, but something happens. Even
Speaker 1: Karl Rodgers, the great American psychologist, who is the person
Speaker 1: that we know now, established what we call client centered therapy.
Speaker 1: I mean, all the therapy we see today is because
Speaker 1: of Karl Rodgers, and he if you ever have a chance,
Speaker 1: you go on YouTube and watch him in session with
Speaker 1: a client. You think he's a spiritual director, not a
Speaker 1: counselor you know, the leaning in the deep presence. What
Speaker 1: he found is when he could be in this place,
Speaker 1: in himself, this depth, and the other person was in
Speaker 1: their depth, being seen, heard, appreciated, something palpable was happening
Speaker 1: in the room, which he could not name, but he said,
Speaker 1: there is a place. There is a place when I'm
Speaker 1: in this place in me and you are in this
Speaker 1: place in you, especially, that person feels unconditionally seen, heard, appreciated.
Speaker 1: Something happens and we are met by something, some kind
Speaker 1: of mystery or an energetic field between us. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But he didn't write much about this. He only wrote
Speaker 1: about it in the last part of his career because
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was very aware of how other psychologists
Speaker 1: might not abide by that. But he moved into a
Speaker 1: spiritual understanding of encounter and how we can be with
Speaker 1: one another and what happens in that encounter. He alluded
Speaker 1: to the fact that it was spiritual. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: the challenge with the spiritual striving, or the challenge with
Speaker 1: not doing it right, is that, as you mentioned, we
Speaker 1: often are turning to spirituality because we're in a great
Speaker 1: deal of pain and we want that pain to go away.
Speaker 1: And so some of the striving may come I think
Speaker 1: from our culture. We are a culture of accomplish and
Speaker 1: all that, But some of it I think is the
Speaker 1: very natural, Like I just want to feel different. I
Speaker 1: want to feel better. I want the warm maple syrup.
Speaker 1: Right that sounds nice, right like, because what I'm feeling
Speaker 1: right now is like I don't know, cold, icy shards
Speaker 1: or something. You know? So, how do people meet spirituality
Speaker 1: a practice without expectation? And you know, I mean you've
Speaker 1: been in these circles a long time. This is a
Speaker 1: core paradox of spiritual life, which is that it works
Speaker 1: best when you come to it with no expectation. It
Speaker 1: works best when you come to it from a place
Speaker 1: of open recept Let me try that again. Works best
Speaker 1: when you come from a place of open reps. I
Speaker 1: can't say that word. You can leave that one in
Speaker 1: Chris if you want so people can hear how I
Speaker 1: generally can't speak. You get the idea. But of course
Speaker 1: it's very hard to not have that expectation because we
Speaker 1: are doing it because we don't feel good, we don't
Speaker 1: feel okay. How do you think through navigating that sort
Speaker 1: of perennial paradox. I've navigated it so many times, so
Speaker 1: many times, Eric, I just navigated it this last fall.
Speaker 1: I mean, we might call that the dark night of
Speaker 1: the senses, or a dark knight of the soul. We
Speaker 1: are in pain, we're really struggling, we're not finding a connection,
Speaker 1: we're not feeling hopeful, we're not happy. Again, this almost
Speaker 1: sounds religious, and I don't mean it to accept that.
Speaker 1: I believe it. There's a pureness of heart and a
Speaker 1: pureness of intention that when expressed, something can change. And
Speaker 1: I know you see this in twelve step programs when
Speaker 1: people come when the pain is so intense and they
Speaker 1: know they can't do it anymore the way they're doing it,
Speaker 1: because it's just like hitting your finger with a hammer
Speaker 1: again and again and again. When you're in that much agony,
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a letting go, and in the letting go
Speaker 1: we can be found. And I know that sounds religious,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of the nature of the spiritual journey,
Speaker 1: that deeper journey. We get to the point where maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know at all, maybe I haven't gotten it
Speaker 1: figured out. Maybe I've preyed on my knees all the
Speaker 1: way to the temple and still nothing is happening. Maybe
Speaker 1: I need to let it go and be found. And
Speaker 1: again that almost sounds religious. It's just that there are
Speaker 1: these hallmarks of this spiritual journey, and this is what
Speaker 1: I really love talking to people about saying, if you
Speaker 1: look at the trajectory of spirituality and in all the traditions,
Speaker 1: the saints and the mystics of all traditions talk about
Speaker 1: there may be a time, there may be a place
Speaker 1: when you do not know what to do, and all
Speaker 1: you can do is just to be there and to
Speaker 1: basically give it up meaning control, and then something happens.
Speaker 1: It's amazing and something happens. Yeah, this is always a
Speaker 1: relevant topic for me because my nature is I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit of a striver. I just like to do
Speaker 1: things and solve problems, and like that's my orientation. I'm
Speaker 1: naturally bringing that to the game. You're talking about something
Speaker 1: akin to trust. I've said this before on this show.
Speaker 1: I've talked about it a couple of different times. I
Speaker 1: had John Maybrion, who was my spiritual director for a while,
Speaker 1: when I went through your program, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is a reflection of John or a reflection
Speaker 1: of me, or the interaction between the two of us,
Speaker 1: but every single conversation ended up back with the idea
Speaker 1: of trust. What do I trust in? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: part of what caused me eventually really with twelve step
Speaker 1: programs to start to have a problem. Right, I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that there's some intervention out there that's
Speaker 1: going to occur on my behalf. You know, we used
Speaker 1: to say let go and let God all the time,
Speaker 1: and that really was hard for me for a long
Speaker 1: time because I was like, I feel like I'm handing
Speaker 1: the baton to a ghost, right, Like it's just going
Speaker 1: to drop if I let go of it. This baton
Speaker 1: is going to fall. No one's going to pick it up.
Speaker 1: So that's a perennial thing that goes on in me.
Speaker 1: But what I did realize and I finally got was
Speaker 1: that it didn't matter whether anything or anyone was there
Speaker 1: to pick up that baton, because me clutching it as
Speaker 1: tightly as I was is what was causing me to
Speaker 1: be sick. And so, you know, for me, the trust
Speaker 1: has been almost in just the process itself, almost in
Speaker 1: the process of there's an orientation to life where I
Speaker 1: do let go and let be without any idea of
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. If for no other reason, because
Speaker 1: for my internal processes, it's a whole lot more effective,
Speaker 1: healthy way to live. That's a beautiful way to put it.
Speaker 1: I think you said it so well, and I love
Speaker 1: the phrase let it be. That can be a beautiful mantra.
Speaker 1: Rather than let go and let God if that's not
Speaker 1: your orientation. Letting be is that letting go of the
Speaker 1: reins and still trusting in the process of life itself
Speaker 1: and trusting in a deeper part of you that might
Speaker 1: rise up. And I think in the Buddhist tradition Sharon
Speaker 1: Salzburg talks about that with faith, it's not about faith
Speaker 1: in something other out there than yourself, like a deity.
Speaker 1: It's like, what do you really have faith in? Do
Speaker 1: you have faith in your basic goodness? Do you have
Speaker 1: faith in your own ability to know to listen, to
Speaker 1: pay attention, to make choices, and so self trust is
Speaker 1: really really key. It's core to this journey. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, for me when I came back to
Speaker 1: AA the second time, the first time I came in
Speaker 1: and it was nineteen ninety four in Columbus, Ohio, and
Speaker 1: I was in a twelve step program and it was
Speaker 1: basically God, and it was a very particular type of
Speaker 1: God generally, and I just went, you know what, I'll
Speaker 1: do anything, tell me what to do. I'll believe it,
Speaker 1: and I stayed sober about eight years. I went back out,
Speaker 1: and when I came back, I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I can't continue to try and believe something I don't believe.
Speaker 1: That's part of why it didn't fully last, right, you know,
Speaker 1: It's partially why I ended up drinking again. It is
Speaker 1: because I hadn't really solved this problem in a deep
Speaker 1: and genuine way. And where I landed, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of where I still orient today, was that I oriented
Speaker 1: around the idea of there being certain spiritual principles and
Speaker 1: these are the things that we talked about earlier, that
Speaker 1: perennial wisdom, compassion, generosity, love, truth, kindness, acceptance, that those
Speaker 1: principles I trusted in. I trusted in that if I
Speaker 1: did my best to live according to those principles the
Speaker 1: best of my ability, I could handle whatever life sort
Speaker 1: of brought my way. And that turned out for me
Speaker 1: to be a really sturdy spiritual foundation for someone who's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a rationalist in many ways, you know.
Speaker 1: But it absolutely has worked. And from there I've actually
Speaker 1: then been able to deepen into more of the mystery.
Speaker 1: I think it's a beautiful journey I'm so glad you've
Speaker 1: felt free enough to share that with people, because it's
Speaker 1: such a great example of what can happen. I often
Speaker 1: ask people what do you believe in? And they say,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But on further inquiry, you know, they
Speaker 1: do believe in beauty, they do believe in love, they
Speaker 1: do believe in kindness. Yeah, they do believe in compassion.
Speaker 1: So harnish your start of that. You know, maybe just
Speaker 1: start compassion practice, you know, maybe just start spending more
Speaker 1: time in nature and in beauty and feel yourself get
Speaker 1: sort of rooted there and that can be the beginning,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that can even be enough. I love that.
Speaker 1: That's a really beautiful way of thinking of it, which
Speaker 1: is what do we believe? And we all do believe
Speaker 1: in some things. If we didn't have certain beliefs, we
Speaker 1: couldn't even just live any sort of life, right, We're
Speaker 1: all oriented in certain directions. I'm going to use that
Speaker 1: as a place to kind of go all the way
Speaker 1: back to very early in this conversation where we were
Speaker 1: talking about the over culture, because what we believe in,
Speaker 1: obviously we are getting a lot of that from the
Speaker 1: over culture. And you sent me a list of things
Speaker 1: that were really on your mind lately, and one of
Speaker 1: them was distraction. You know that distraction is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest barriers right now to all of us finding
Speaker 1: our deeper selves. And you sent me an article by
Speaker 1: a woman named Margaret Wheatley about distraction. There was something
Speaker 1: in there that really caught my attention. We were talking
Speaker 1: about the values earlier of the over culture, but in
Speaker 1: that article it also talks about it may have been
Speaker 1: Marshall mcluan, I can't remember who she's quoting, but a
Speaker 1: person who talked about how we inevitably as a culture
Speaker 1: will take on the values of our technologies, that our
Speaker 1: technologies actually have values embedded in them, and if that
Speaker 1: technology sort of quote unquote wins permeates culture, then we
Speaker 1: begin to take on the values of that technology. And
Speaker 1: found that a fascinating way to think about where we
Speaker 1: sit today with our hyper connected, hyper distracted online short
Speaker 1: attention span world. Share a little more about that. That
Speaker 1: is one of my greatest concerns right now, I think,
Speaker 1: because I also see it in myself. Yes, I see
Speaker 1: how easily I can be distracted into other things and
Speaker 1: even away from my spiritual practice. I think we know
Speaker 1: we're distracted, but we don't want to admit that we
Speaker 1: are because the culture is operating in distraction mode. And
Speaker 1: it's a badge of honor to say how busy we
Speaker 1: are and how connected we are and on how many
Speaker 1: platforms we are and how many followers we have, and
Speaker 1: how we are becoming influencers. And I know that's not
Speaker 1: a popular position, you know, right now, coming from someone
Speaker 1: like me, but I see it in myself. And just
Speaker 1: recently I did an at home silent retreat for a
Speaker 1: couple of days just to disconnect, just to unplug eric.
Speaker 1: I literally have to put my phone and my computer
Speaker 1: in a different room behind closed doors. If it is
Speaker 1: there within time, I will go to it. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I know my distraction level can be high because it's
Speaker 1: the more well, maybe if I read this in this
Speaker 1: book now I should follow open my computer and follow
Speaker 1: the link and go down that hole. So for me
Speaker 1: to get the quality of two and a half days
Speaker 1: in my created at home retreat room, I had to
Speaker 1: put those devices away. I went in with one book
Speaker 1: and my journal and that was it. And it's a
Speaker 1: withdrawal from the culture of technology. But I came out
Speaker 1: feeling like a transformation had happened in just two days,
Speaker 1: like a deep remembering of a greater calm, the remember
Speaker 1: bring of deeper values. Even last fall, I would say
Speaker 1: I developed this habit of I had stepped off social
Speaker 1: media because I've found it not satisfying, I guess for me,
Speaker 1: and that's just me. I know other people love it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad they love it, but I've found it
Speaker 1: very distracting. And so then I think, because I was
Speaker 1: used to the habit of distraction, I would go to
Speaker 1: my phone and I'd go to Google and just scroll
Speaker 1: all the top stories. I mean, and then I go,
Speaker 1: why are you doing this? This is crazy? This was
Speaker 1: such a waste of time. You spend thirty minutes doing this.
Speaker 1: You could have been reading a wonderful book. So since then,
Speaker 1: since last fall, I've really changed this up for myself
Speaker 1: and I'm not doing that anymore, and I'm so glad.
Speaker 1: But what I do also is have other stuff handy.
Speaker 1: So if I am going to feel that distractive urge,
Speaker 1: a restlessness or whatever, I'm going to pick up one
Speaker 1: of the books that I trust. I'm going to go
Speaker 1: to some of the music that I love. I'm going
Speaker 1: to just give myself permission to sit and look out
Speaker 1: the window and listen to the birds. It's a reorientation
Speaker 1: that has to happen, but each of us it's hard
Speaker 1: to admit how that distraction might be making us more
Speaker 1: anxious or worried or fearful. One of the messages of
Speaker 1: the overculture ever since nine to eleven has been fear.
Speaker 1: You be afraid, be very afraid, So be aware of
Speaker 1: what you're plugging into. That's making you feel fearful, it's
Speaker 1: making you feel anxious. My anxiety which actually soared last
Speaker 1: summer after the death of my mother, who I was
Speaker 1: caring for, it came back with a vengeance after not
Speaker 1: being there for a few years, and that was I think,
Speaker 1: witnessing someone's death being aware of your own mortality. I'm
Speaker 1: on the aging spectrum where I only have so much
Speaker 1: life left to live in this body, and it was
Speaker 1: really an existential crisis that created a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: physical anxiety. I've found myself engaging in kind of trauma
Speaker 1: based activities, which is staying busy, busy, busy, busy, busy,
Speaker 1: and then you lose your groundedness, you lose your sense
Speaker 1: of self. That deeper self. It's never gone for me.
Speaker 1: I had a more staticky connection, I'll just say, a
Speaker 1: more staticky connections. So stepping away from social media, stepping
Speaker 1: away from endless scrolling on Google, restoring my practices. Every
Speaker 1: morning now I make sure that I do have my
Speaker 1: book on my journal, and I always spend some time there.
Speaker 1: I'm very lucky that I can do that. I don't
Speaker 1: have to dash out the door, you know, to work
Speaker 1: someplace outs. I work at home, as you know, doing
Speaker 1: one on ones with people in groups. But it took discipline,
Speaker 1: it took the vigilance that we talked about. I had
Speaker 1: to really want this because not doing it was creating suffering.
Speaker 1: And so this can happen to all of us. I
Speaker 1: sit in a somewhat fortunate position where I get to
Speaker 1: talk to lots and lots of incredible and amazing people
Speaker 1: who do incredible and amazing things. And I will say
Speaker 1: all of them, all of us are fighting this battle
Speaker 1: and on and off. You know, I have been amused
Speaker 1: over the years at the lengths that writers will go
Speaker 1: to to stop themselves from being distracted. I mean, people
Speaker 1: like you back in the old days when you used
Speaker 1: to plug your computer into an ethernetport, right, like gluing
Speaker 1: shut their ethernetports. Like I mean, it's real. I mean
Speaker 1: when you were saying like I had to take my computer,
Speaker 1: and I mean I was half expecting you to be
Speaker 1: like I had to take it out to my car
Speaker 1: and I had to drive my car down the road.
Speaker 1: And because it's real, I mean, I feel like my
Speaker 1: ongoing challenge in this area is my phone and in
Speaker 1: the morning, get the thing kind of out of my life.
Speaker 1: In the morning, I'm like, okay, good, all right, you know,
Speaker 1: and then it just kind of creeps its way back in,
Speaker 1: first in minor ways, first ways that it's actually helping me,
Speaker 1: it's aiding me. It's oh, I'm reading these poems on
Speaker 1: my phone. But then, like you, sooner or later, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: today's top stories. I'm oh, no, here we go. Then
Speaker 1: I get to a point like you're describing, where I'm like,
Speaker 1: this does not feel good, and push the thing back
Speaker 1: out again. And I just think that is the nature
Speaker 1: of the world we live in, for better and worse.
Speaker 1: I think most things are. But you brought up a
Speaker 1: couple of really interesting ideas as you were just talking
Speaker 1: there that is as somebody who studied behavior change and
Speaker 1: behavior science so much. You hit on a couple of
Speaker 1: really key things, and one was environment really matters. You know,
Speaker 1: if your computer or your phone is near you, you're
Speaker 1: likely to get on it. And what I'm finding recently
Speaker 1: I've been joking about this is how often I go
Speaker 1: to my phone or my computer. It's not right near me,
Speaker 1: but I go to it with a legitimate purpose or reason,
Speaker 1: and I open it up and there's something waiting for me.
Speaker 1: The tab I had opened last night in my browser,
Speaker 1: the other email, the whatever it is, I won't even
Speaker 1: then remember why I came to the thing in the
Speaker 1: first place. So I think environment really matters. Our environments
Speaker 1: influence us way more than we would like to think
Speaker 1: they do. You were sort of saying the first step
Speaker 1: to distraction is being willing to admit how distracted we are.
Speaker 1: I think it's also really important for us to admit
Speaker 1: how influential our environments are on us, even though we'd
Speaker 1: like to think, well, I'm stronger than that, I'm better
Speaker 1: than that, but well not really. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing you talked about that I think is so important
Speaker 1: is like, what am I going to do instead? Because
Speaker 1: if I just take a thing away, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to be on my phone. Well, I'm getting on my
Speaker 1: phone for a reason, right, So what else can I
Speaker 1: do instead? And you really listed like, this is what
Speaker 1: I'm going to do instead, So you gave a couple
Speaker 1: of really helpful tips there for how to work with
Speaker 1: this kind of on going distraction. And I think it's
Speaker 1: really important for everybody kind of to understand that we're
Speaker 1: all struggling with this, so that we can be compassionate
Speaker 1: to ourselves, so that we can be less judgmental, and
Speaker 1: we can recognize like, yeah, this is part of modern life,
Speaker 1: but it's an important thing. At least for me. It's
Speaker 1: a really important thing to try and keep a handle
Speaker 1: on because it will spiral for me very quickly if
Speaker 1: I don't keep a handle on it, and all my
Speaker 1: time will be spent engaged in sort of mindless technology
Speaker 1: that at the end of you after you read those
Speaker 1: hour of articles on Google. My experience is often if
Speaker 1: you were like, well, what did you just read about,
Speaker 1: It'll be like, I don't know, I have no idea,
Speaker 1: nothing important, none of it stuck. Yeah, yeah, what Marker
Speaker 1: Wheatley brings up in this article which was in Shambalah
Speaker 1: Son by the way, which is now Lions Rore. She
Speaker 1: talked about an ecosystem of interruption technologies, and that really
Speaker 1: touched me because now we are talking about the interruption technology. Geez,
Speaker 1: you know, always being on on call, someone's texting you
Speaker 1: all the time. We always have our communication means with us.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's lots of benefits of that, but it's
Speaker 1: an interruption technology which does not give us the space
Speaker 1: and the time that we need to do this deeper journey.
Speaker 1: We're always being called out, We're always being distracted out.
Speaker 1: I know Father Richard Rore a few years ago when
Speaker 1: I heard him speak, said he felt that the greatest
Speaker 1: call of our day right now, spiritual call of our
Speaker 1: day was to turn inward, because we are so outward
Speaker 1: and you cannot do the spiritual journey outward. The spiritual
Speaker 1: journey is an inward journey. And I think the other
Speaker 1: thing that Wheatley talks about. I love this phrase because
Speaker 1: it reminds me of around us. To be everywhere is
Speaker 1: to be nowhere. Yes, if our attention is so everywhere,
Speaker 1: where are we we're nowhere? We're not in our deep beingness,
Speaker 1: We're not feeling at home and ourselves and likely not
Speaker 1: even at home in our families and maybe even our workplaces,
Speaker 1: and that the places that matter if we are always
Speaker 1: out there, constantly on with everything. One of my big
Speaker 1: pet peeves is to go into a restaurant where there
Speaker 1: are twelve TVs. I just I don't want to have
Speaker 1: my dinner watching television and especially what somebody else puts
Speaker 1: on it, yes, and so I avoid those. Walking is
Speaker 1: another example. When I walk on the track in a
Speaker 1: beautiful kind of wooded setting, I'm amazed how many people
Speaker 1: are on their phone or listening to something with headphones.
Speaker 1: It's just become a part of the culture. This is
Speaker 1: what she's trying to say, is that the interruption technologies
Speaker 1: become the culture. And so this is where we are
Speaker 1: right now, and this is where we're moving even more
Speaker 1: so unless we decide that we want to do it differently.
Speaker 1: If you are walking with your headphones on right now
Speaker 1: and listening to the one you feed, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to ignore Jan's advice and keep It's totally true, though,
Speaker 1: I mean I get it. I mean it's like I
Speaker 1: have my challenges with all of this, and yet you
Speaker 1: know this part of what we do here, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think you're bringing up really important points. And
Speaker 1: I love that idea about the turning inward right because
Speaker 1: the inward journey again, however we want to frame it
Speaker 1: for ourselves, whether we want to frame it as spiritual
Speaker 1: or philosophical or psychological or I mean these terms. To me,
Speaker 1: there's so much overlap. Call it what you want. What
Speaker 1: we're talking about is having the time to go inward
Speaker 1: and find out, like you said so eloquently earlier on
Speaker 1: who am I and what is my life about? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are big questions, and there's scary questions to a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but I think they're also life giving
Speaker 1: questions if you're willing to go in if you're willing
Speaker 1: to turn inward. And you know, I dare say that
Speaker 1: so many people today are I mean self help books.
Speaker 1: You are at an all time high. The top topic
Speaker 1: that people want to read about is happiness. You know,
Speaker 1: there is that deep desire and so you have to
Speaker 1: put in the time though, and the time, as you
Speaker 1: pointed out earlier, which I just want to reiterate, is
Speaker 1: it may start out is what I call spiritual sampling, filling, filling, filling,
Speaker 1: but then at some point we have to learn how
Speaker 1: to sit, how to listen to what is ours and
Speaker 1: what is not ours and what feels authentic, just sift
Speaker 1: and sort and to say this is mine and not that.
Speaker 1: This is going to take me to the place where
Speaker 1: I feel more calm. I feel it just thinking about
Speaker 1: this thing. I feel more calm, happy, at ease in
Speaker 1: my life. I want to be connected with people in
Speaker 1: a positive way, a meaningful way, and to follow that thread,
Speaker 1: you know, just to follow that thread, stay with it.
Speaker 1: And the hard thing is when others don't understand it,
Speaker 1: which is very typical of spiritual seekers, that there's always
Speaker 1: going to be someone in your life that says, oh,
Speaker 1: why in the world are you doing that? What is
Speaker 1: that all about? What does the matter with you? You
Speaker 1: just need to do this, this, and this. We had
Speaker 1: somebody in our Spiritual Habits program whose husband called it,
Speaker 1: are you going to your spiritual bullshit class now? Which
Speaker 1: is my favorite new term for my program. The spiritual
Speaker 1: bullshit Class will be open for enrollment. But you're absolutely right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it is a process of being clear about what
Speaker 1: you really want, what is your intention for yourself? What
Speaker 1: are you willing to do to make that happen. What
Speaker 1: are you willing to think more about, think less about,
Speaker 1: do more of, do less of, and just take very
Speaker 1: simple steps to make a difference in your the quality
Speaker 1: of your own life, particularly your inner life, because you know,
Speaker 1: the day that the lights go off, you know, in
Speaker 1: our own being, it's just And so how do you
Speaker 1: make peace with yourself as you are and exit gracefully hopefully?
Speaker 1: I always think of Steve Jobs supposedly as he was
Speaker 1: dying and his family was around him, and he was
Speaker 1: as zen Buddhist as you know by practice, and it
Speaker 1: was very clear he was starting to leave his body.
Speaker 1: And as he was leaving, his eyes suddenly opened wide
Speaker 1: and he said, oh wow, and he left. I want
Speaker 1: the oh Wow. I want the o Wow. But I
Speaker 1: also want the oh wow every day. You know, I
Speaker 1: want to be able to wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: with gratitude, even if it's hard, even if it's tough
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, there's still goodness here, there's
Speaker 1: beauty here, there's meaning here, and I'm going to align
Speaker 1: with that. Well, that is a beautiful, beautiful place for
Speaker 1: us to wrap up. Jan You and I are going
Speaker 1: to spend a little bit of time in a post
Speaker 1: show conversation because we did not get to talk about
Speaker 1: logo therapy, which is Victor Frankel's method of finding meaning.
Speaker 1: I maybe vastly oversimplifying that, but I can't wait to
Speaker 1: talk because you have a degree in this listeners, If
Speaker 1: you'd like access to the post show conversation and other
Speaker 1: benefits we offer, you, become part of our community at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash join jan Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. I've been looking forward to this. I always
Speaker 1: enjoy our time together. So thank you for spending some
Speaker 1: time with us. Oh, thank you for having me. It's
Speaker 1: been such a pleasure. Many blessings. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly
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