Speaker 1: The best rehearsal for the future moment is the way
Speaker 1: you take care of this moment and then you find oh,
Speaker 1: here you are in that so called future moment, and
Speaker 1: you're able to take care of it. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Martin Aylward. He's practiced
Speaker 1: meditation intensively since the age of nineteen, spending four years
Speaker 1: in Asian monasteries and with Himalayan hermit's. He's been teaching
Speaker 1: worldwide since, leading retreats and courses and mindfulness, meditation and
Speaker 1: inner freedom. Martin is the co founder, along with Mark Coleman,
Speaker 1: of the Mindfulness Training Institute, running yearlong professional mindfulness teacher
Speaker 1: trainings in Europe and the US. Hi, Martin, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks. Hi. Alright, Jenny, Hello, I am excited
Speaker 1: to have you on. We're going to be discussing your
Speaker 1: book called Awake, where you are the art of embodied awareness,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we'll also talk about many of the
Speaker 1: roles you play and you're in Jenny's relationship, is her teacher,
Speaker 1: and lots of different things. But before we do all that,
Speaker 1: we are going to do the parable, and I am
Speaker 1: going to let Jenny read it. So I forgot to
Speaker 1: mention listeners, Jenny is with us this week for a
Speaker 1: special episode, so welcome her. And she's going to read
Speaker 1: the parable to Martin from here. Yes, so happy to
Speaker 1: be here. All right. So Martin, as you I'm sure
Speaker 1: are familiar, The parable goes there was a grand parent
Speaker 1: talking with their grandchild and they said, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves at battle within us. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stopped
Speaker 1: and thought about it for a second and looked up
Speaker 1: at their grandparents and said, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandparents said the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: ask you what that parable means to you in your
Speaker 1: life and in the work that you do. Well. When
Speaker 1: I first heard it, it reminded me so much of
Speaker 1: something quite similar that I say often to students, to
Speaker 1: meditation practitioners, which is, whatever you feed, that's what grows.
Speaker 1: And I use that to illustrate like where their mind
Speaker 1: is going, basically because I don't want to lay down
Speaker 1: the law like this is where your mind should be.
Speaker 1: You should be in the present, you should be attending
Speaker 1: to your breathing. It's like, now I want people to
Speaker 1: really explore their mind. I want them to explore where
Speaker 1: their attention goes. But I also want them to be
Speaker 1: very clear that, you know, whatever they feed, that's what grows.
Speaker 1: And so to take pause in that moment. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like when your attention has gotten seduced by some
Speaker 1: pleasant fantasy, for example, and it's like, oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: realized that, you know, I wake up to that, and
Speaker 1: I should kind of go back to my breath or
Speaker 1: whatever is the focus of my attention. But actually this
Speaker 1: is much more interesting than my breathing. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to just stay with this sort of spacing out in
Speaker 1: this fantasy for a couple of minutes and then I'll
Speaker 1: go back to my breath and that at that point
Speaker 1: that I remind people, So okay, but remember what have
Speaker 1: you feed? That's what grows. And at that point you
Speaker 1: get the choice, what do you want to feed investing
Speaker 1: in this kind of abstract reality of something you wish
Speaker 1: was happening, or do you want to invest in how
Speaker 1: skillfully and wisely and spaciously you can connect with what
Speaker 1: is happening. So you know, it's very close in a
Speaker 1: way to that key line that comes up in the parabox. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love to ask you kind of a follow
Speaker 1: on question to that, because I think this speaks to
Speaker 1: a really important question I think comes up in this
Speaker 1: podcast a lot, which is one interpretation of what you
Speaker 1: feed grows means I've got to banish negative thoughts and
Speaker 1: negative mind states or they're going to grow. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about how we don't fall into that trap
Speaker 1: of banishment of something because we know that leads to
Speaker 1: lots of problems, and we'll probably talk about that, but
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it's not so much about the content of mind. I mean,
Speaker 1: we do have some choice, right. You can see your
Speaker 1: mind going off in some directions and just be like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: that's not helpful, that's not skillful. I've been down that
Speaker 1: road many many times before, and you know, you drop it.
Speaker 1: You you consciously redirect your attention to something more skillful,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's plenty of good examples of that.
Speaker 1: But you know, various addictive behaviors without them being classified
Speaker 1: necessarily as addiction. You know, we're all capable of various
Speaker 1: addictive behaviors. And the point at which you see, I'm
Speaker 1: going down a road that I know leads me to
Speaker 1: compulsion and to comparison and to misery in some way. Right,
Speaker 1: But it's not just about the content. It's really about attitude.
Speaker 1: The attitudes that you feed are then the attitudes that grow.
Speaker 1: So whether you feed an attitude for example, that is continually,
Speaker 1: I mean that one of the three main attitudes that
Speaker 1: we get stuck on, right, and listeners can see for themselves. Mean,
Speaker 1: we all have all three, but listeners can see which
Speaker 1: is they're sort of primary suspect, as it were. The
Speaker 1: first one is the grabby mind, right, the one that's
Speaker 1: just always pursuing what's what do I need? What's out
Speaker 1: there for me, what's next? You know, the mind that's
Speaker 1: convinced that what I want in some other moment, some
Speaker 1: other place, and I'm just always trying to get there,
Speaker 1: trying to get there, trying to get there. And then
Speaker 1: the next one is the opposite of that, the sort
Speaker 1: of resistant mind, the mind that's always looking for what's wrong,
Speaker 1: what's the problem. And for some of us, you know,
Speaker 1: that can be our primary orientation to life is scanning
Speaker 1: for what's not okay, what's not okay about me, what's
Speaker 1: not okay about the situation I'm in, what's not okay
Speaker 1: about my family? Was not okay, et cetera. And then
Speaker 1: the third one is an attitude where we just sort
Speaker 1: of check out. And the first attitude happens around a
Speaker 1: particular shiny object, it's what I want. The second attitude
Speaker 1: happens around us, also around a specific object of what
Speaker 1: I don't like, what's wrong, And the third tends to
Speaker 1: happen when there isn't a specific object. There's nothing particularly
Speaker 1: pleasant nor unpleasant that's happening right now. Things are pretty
Speaker 1: just ordinary, and then we tend to either get spaced
Speaker 1: out or bored or restless. And for some other people
Speaker 1: that can be their primary motivation or primary attitude. Right
Speaker 1: they just going comfortably numb. You're going to sleep in
Speaker 1: various different ways. So those tend to be the kinds
Speaker 1: of attitudes that we have been feeding most of our lives,
Speaker 1: just by internal habit, plus education, plus the kind of
Speaker 1: societal encouragement that we get from advertising and everything else.
Speaker 1: And then if you come into an intentional transformation or practice,
Speaker 1: then that question what are you going to feed? You know,
Speaker 1: becomes very alive. Like given that those three polls, if
Speaker 1: you like a shorthand for all the different polls on
Speaker 1: our mind, you know, most people just go through life
Speaker 1: being pulled around more or less unconsciously by those things.
Speaker 1: And so the parable is pointing to the but oh,
Speaker 1: I can actually start taking charge. I can't choose the
Speaker 1: content of my experience very often, but I can start
Speaker 1: to take charge of what do I feed in terms
Speaker 1: of how I meet the content, and I can actually
Speaker 1: learn to meet my experience more kindly, I can learn
Speaker 1: to meet it more spaciously. I can actually learn even
Speaker 1: to recognize what those internal habits are actually as a
Speaker 1: first step, because most people don't actually really know what
Speaker 1: their habits are. They're so busy pursuing the shiny, or
Speaker 1: freaking out about the uncomfortable, or just spacing out in general,
Speaker 1: that the stories we tell ourselves is it's all about
Speaker 1: what's happening to me, rather than actually it's all about
Speaker 1: how am I going to meet it? In your book,
Speaker 1: I love how you explore this whole idea through the
Speaker 1: terrain of growing older and growing wiser. I think we
Speaker 1: can all look around and maybe notice this with some
Speaker 1: of the people in our lives. I know I can
Speaker 1: with like my parents who have grown older, or some
Speaker 1: of the important figures in my life as they've grown.
Speaker 1: You say that if you look at older people who
Speaker 1: have done no liver reading practices like you just talked about,
Speaker 1: that physical tensions, views, beliefs, they all get more reinforced
Speaker 1: or more rigid. And then you go on to say
Speaker 1: as you age, your patterns get stronger. And if it's
Speaker 1: not love that feeds your heart, then inevitably it will
Speaker 1: be its opposite. If your heart can't give itself up
Speaker 1: into caring and kindness, it will be left in the
Speaker 1: prison of suspicion and grump It's that last line that
Speaker 1: just encapsulates it perfectly, because I know we have all
Speaker 1: known someone that unfortunately that is the end of their story.
Speaker 1: But the good news is we can feed the opposite
Speaker 1: with caring and kindness. Yeah, yeah, that might sound like
Speaker 1: a kind of bleak assessment of people growing older. It's
Speaker 1: like if they haven't got a trans more informational practice,
Speaker 1: they're destined to become suspicious and grumpy. And you know
Speaker 1: that's not altogether true, of course, there's exception, and also
Speaker 1: sometimes even very late in their life, like people can
Speaker 1: go down one road very very far until right near
Speaker 1: the end even and there's something about the proximity to
Speaker 1: death actually that sometimes like some people just hard and
Speaker 1: even more into denial and fear and stuff. But sometimes
Speaker 1: in a very beautiful way. It's like suddenly confronted by
Speaker 1: the specter of death, sometimes people really soften and become
Speaker 1: very sweet, and it's somehow like the work that hasn't
Speaker 1: been done their whole life by grace or something somehow
Speaker 1: gets done very beautifully and powerfully in that proximity to death.
Speaker 1: But I would say to anyone that's a big gamble
Speaker 1: to take. You know, you want to wait to right
Speaker 1: at the end of your life, and I hope that
Speaker 1: you'll suddenly be able to soften and open, you know,
Speaker 1: much better to not wait until you're at death's door.
Speaker 1: Better to soften and open now and be able to
Speaker 1: live a life in the benefit of that softening and opening,
Speaker 1: a life than that's animated by ease and kindness and fluidity.
Speaker 1: And there's a much better recipe for then, when one
Speaker 1: gets to the end of one's life, being able to
Speaker 1: drop it graciously, you know, when the time comes. I
Speaker 1: read some really interesting things recently talking about similar to
Speaker 1: what you just said. They're about near the end of life,
Speaker 1: some people change in really strong ways, and we certainly
Speaker 1: know that proximity to death, or perceive proximity to death,
Speaker 1: tends to wake many of us up in many ways.
Speaker 1: But here's the interesting piece I saw. We have a
Speaker 1: tendency to look at old people and they don't engage
Speaker 1: in new activities, like they don't want to go to
Speaker 1: the rec center, and meet new people. And one reading
Speaker 1: of that is their lives are closing down and they're
Speaker 1: not interested in new experience. And I think there's an
Speaker 1: element of that. But the thing that I saw that
Speaker 1: sparked my interest was for many of them, what they
Speaker 1: wanted was deeper connection with what they already had, and
Speaker 1: they thought, I don't have enough time left to go
Speaker 1: build brand new friendships, like I want to be with
Speaker 1: the people who matter. What I've seen happen in practice, though,
Speaker 1: is if those people who matter aren't around, then you're
Speaker 1: left with the worst of our worlds. You're not out engaging,
Speaker 1: you're not making new connections, your life is shrinking, but
Speaker 1: you don't have enough of the type of connection you want.
Speaker 1: I just found that sort of fascinating because it was
Speaker 1: a different angle on a phenomenon and I've certainly seen
Speaker 1: and read about. Yeah, it makes sense, makes sense, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting. You know, we've all maybe got a few
Speaker 1: more decades left to experience the aging. But I'm fifty two, right,
Speaker 1: and in Buddhist teachings, reflecting on death is very central.
Speaker 1: In my twenties, I got into Buddhist practice quite intensely
Speaker 1: and seriously as a teenager. In my twenties, I was
Speaker 1: very clear about aging, sickness, and death. It's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: everything ages and dies. We're all going to die, no problem.
Speaker 1: It's kind of easy to be. However much I thought
Speaker 1: I was sort of staring into the eyes of death
Speaker 1: and ready for Lord Yama to come and whisk me
Speaker 1: off at any moment. You know, it was far away.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, thirties is basically the same forties
Speaker 1: you started to get the first whispa of the realities
Speaker 1: of aging, and fifties really it's still very early on, really,
Speaker 1: but it's like, oh, but it's nevertheless unmistakable. What I
Speaker 1: think about aging is it can be humiliating or it
Speaker 1: can be humbling. It just depends how much you're going
Speaker 1: to hold onto yourself image. The more you hold on,
Speaker 1: the more it's humiliating. You know. I was just doing
Speaker 1: some yoga today outside the deck this morning, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't do a great deal of yoga, but
Speaker 1: my wife practices at all art and she teaches yoga,
Speaker 1: and she kind of managed to cajole me into doing
Speaker 1: something with her this morning. And I was just doing
Speaker 1: it downward dog, and I looked down at my hands
Speaker 1: on the deck and it's like, oh, man, hands are
Speaker 1: they you know, they're wrinkly ass hands. They're they're old
Speaker 1: man hands. I've done a lot of building. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: my hands have really worked for me in my life.
Speaker 1: You know, I've seen my hands being good agents of
Speaker 1: activity and creativity and action. And I looked down at
Speaker 1: them on the deck to thew I'm like, oh, dear,
Speaker 1: it's actually ought to take in those moments. So you
Speaker 1: keep updating just the reality, the reality of the ways
Speaker 1: things are seizing up and wrinkling and sagging and graying
Speaker 1: and you know all that. And yeah, it's like you're
Speaker 1: going to be humiliated by that, you know, that confute
Speaker 1: like there's something wrong with aging, whereas actually it's the
Speaker 1: most right thing, is the most natural thing in the world, right,
Speaker 1: Or you can end up being in denial of it,
Speaker 1: and then, you know, in the various ways we see
Speaker 1: people in a rather kind of clumsy or desperate way
Speaker 1: trying to recapture youthfulness, etcetera. Or you can go graciously
Speaker 1: into it. I think that's a real practice. It takes
Speaker 1: work to actually accept the increasing limitations on one's energy
Speaker 1: and to kind of be willing to progressively, gently, gently
Speaker 1: let go of what one takes for granted in one's youth,
Speaker 1: and that starts to change as as your age. I
Speaker 1: have to let you know that what you just shared
Speaker 1: reminded me of a passage in your book that really
Speaker 1: touched me deeply and opened up a new kind of
Speaker 1: frame for me about how I view my mom's current experience.
Speaker 1: So listeners may know, and I mentioned to you before
Speaker 1: we started the recording that she's in the end stages
Speaker 1: of dementia and Alzheimer's, and she's in such a way
Speaker 1: that she's bedridden, she's vegetative, she's non responsive, you know,
Speaker 1: and we have hospice coming in and caring for her,
Speaker 1: and it is very difficult to see her need everything
Speaker 1: done for her, you know, to be washed and wiped
Speaker 1: and changed and fed. And that has been a very
Speaker 1: sad thing for me to witness. And while it is
Speaker 1: still sad, you write in your book that you had
Speaker 1: a student once who had a stroke and after that
Speaker 1: stroke wasn't able to look after himself physically in this
Speaker 1: way that my mom is, and the counsel or the
Speaker 1: encouragement you gave him was this hang on I told him,
Speaker 1: and this will feel humiliating, let go, and you can
Speaker 1: be humbled by all the care and love and attention
Speaker 1: you're being given. And when I've read that, all of
Speaker 1: the sudden saw, in addition to the of course sadness
Speaker 1: that I feel in in the limitation that's there with
Speaker 1: my mom, I was so deeply touched by Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: she is being loved and cared for. And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the real hallmark qualities that I think of
Speaker 1: when I reflect on my mom's life is that she
Speaker 1: was the quintessential caring for others always right and thinking
Speaker 1: of others first, always And it's almost like now all
Speaker 1: of those seeds that she sewed, you know, are coming
Speaker 1: back to her so that she might be cared for completely.
Speaker 1: That connects to this idea that you also mentioned as
Speaker 1: these heavenly messengers. Right, these things that we witness are
Speaker 1: things that happened to us or as we see death,
Speaker 1: you know, coming potentially closer as we are someone we
Speaker 1: know ages it can wake us up to a deeper
Speaker 1: way of life. And I just have to thank you
Speaker 1: for that reframe. Yeah, beautiful, and you know it changes
Speaker 1: not just your mom's experience, but he changes your experience
Speaker 1: right to see her that way other than helpless in
Speaker 1: some way, to see her as oh as the recipient
Speaker 1: now in her last moments of life, of the care
Speaker 1: and the love that she's been such a giver of
Speaker 1: and the rest of her life were beautiful to be
Speaker 1: able to look on the situation that way, and then
Speaker 1: you know, suddenly, then the carers are like these divine beings,
Speaker 1: and the whole situation then is somehow redolent of the
Speaker 1: beauty of human nature. It's also sad to see her
Speaker 1: losing her autonomy and losing her cognition and fading away.
Speaker 1: But you know, in terms of the title of your
Speaker 1: podcast and what you feed, it's like you can feed
Speaker 1: seeing that through a cynical lens or a disappointed lens
Speaker 1: or resentful lens, you know, or you can feed the
Speaker 1: seeing it through a lens where you emphasize and you
Speaker 1: recognize the beautiful human qualities that are also at play there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so much that lens, right, because both are absolutely true.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely true that seeing her in this state is
Speaker 1: hard and difficult, and she's missed so many things in life,
Speaker 1: and she suffered so much. That is unquestionably true, and
Speaker 1: there are these other elements, and oftentimes it's not about
Speaker 1: making one of them not true or not being willing
Speaker 1: to acknowledge. It's about how do I hold both these
Speaker 1: things and where do I give a little more attention
Speaker 1: as well as what's true and what's useful. So both
Speaker 1: of those things are true, but what's useful? Is it useful?
Speaker 1: You don't have to be in denial of the aspects
Speaker 1: of it that are painful or difficult. But which one
Speaker 1: do you want to feed? You want you want to
Speaker 1: feed the appreciation of human nature and the appreciation of
Speaker 1: the kindness of the care as, etcetera, etcetera. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're both true, but one is more useful to focus
Speaker 1: on than the other. Sometimes I say, yeah, that may
Speaker 1: be true, but it ain't useful. We've kind of fetishized
Speaker 1: the truth one as if there is a truth, and
Speaker 1: you know that's not always the case. And secondly, if
Speaker 1: something is true, then the fact that it's true pulls
Speaker 1: all the attention, and the fact that something is true
Speaker 1: sometimes just isn't the most important thing about it. What's
Speaker 1: useful is sometimes much more important than what's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always loved Buddhism's framing. I heard it is a
Speaker 1: different term, although I now use the phrase useful, But
Speaker 1: that framing of things is skillful and unskillful. I just
Speaker 1: found to be helpful to me when I was younger,
Speaker 1: to take it out of right and wrong and good
Speaker 1: and bad and really just kind of go like, this
Speaker 1: is a skillful response to life, and this really isn't. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Buddha puts those two together, right, true and useful
Speaker 1: or skillful, just in terms of what we say. He says,
Speaker 1: don't say something. The fact that it might be true
Speaker 1: is not good enough reason to say something. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's is it true and useful and kind and then
Speaker 1: by all means set. But you know, this sort of
Speaker 1: crept into our language a lot recently, people talking about
Speaker 1: my truth. Well, this is my truth, and therefore I'm
Speaker 1: going to spit it out. But you know, maybe what
Speaker 1: you're saying might be hurtful to somebody else. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: actually it might be true, but maybe it's coming out
Speaker 1: of your own reactivity and your own incapacity to hold
Speaker 1: your own emotional life. It's cetera, etcetera. So don't be
Speaker 1: seduced by the fact that something's true, you know, check
Speaker 1: if it's got a few other worthwhile attributes as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with the heavenly messengers. The phrase I heard the other
Speaker 1: day really for the first time. I'm sure you've heard
Speaker 1: it before, and I don't remember which Buddhist teachers said it,
Speaker 1: but it really resonated with me, which which said that
Speaker 1: we are all brothers and sisters in old age, sickness
Speaker 1: and death. And that's just such a beautiful reframing, like
Speaker 1: that's all of us, you know, we're united in that thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea of a heavenly messenger, like, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: heavenly messenger. If it gets you to see your commonality
Speaker 1: with all humanity, it's a pretty good message exactly across
Speaker 1: all the things that we might disagree about or find
Speaker 1: ourselves in conflict or resentment with others. And some of
Speaker 1: the classical Buddhist practices involved just that, seeing everybody as
Speaker 1: a skeleton, which can seem a little hardcore, right, but
Speaker 1: it can appear an exterior view of that. It can
Speaker 1: even appear a little life in eyeing or something. Like
Speaker 1: any true practice, you have to know it from the
Speaker 1: inside to see what the benefit is. And actually one
Speaker 1: benefit of that practice is what you just said about
Speaker 1: all being brought the siblings in aging, sickness, and death
Speaker 1: right against all the ways we divide people up, whether
Speaker 1: it's through political affiliation or age. You know, an attractive
Speaker 1: nurse and etcetera, etcetera. And then oh, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: where we're all headed. We're all headed to the same boneyard,
Speaker 1: you know. So it really increases one sense of empathy
Speaker 1: for others. And it's also seen in the in the
Speaker 1: monastic practices as a kind of counter weight practice to
Speaker 1: lust in various ways. So you know, you see somebody
Speaker 1: any wow, and you know you're inflamed with desire for
Speaker 1: their young, firm, attractive, radiant countenance. And then you imagine
Speaker 1: their hair falling out and their teeth falling out and
Speaker 1: their skin falling off, and yeah, kind of rubs away
Speaker 1: a little. I think written the term corpses in waiting,
Speaker 1: we're all corpses in waiting. I love that. That's what
Speaker 1: I saw when I met Eric. I just thought, right there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the new skeleton filter I can put
Speaker 1: on Maya my zoom. Actually, you saying that made me,
Speaker 1: in a roundabout way, think about somewhere else that you go,
Speaker 1: because it made me think about the public speaking advice,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes imagine everybody naked, which then made me
Speaker 1: think about the situations in which one of the ways
Speaker 1: we divide ourselves from others is by they're not good,
Speaker 1: they're bad. But another way we divide ourselves from others
Speaker 1: is that they are better than us. And you talk
Speaker 1: about something called the deficient age gap that I really love.
Speaker 1: When I read it, I was like, Yeah, that describes
Speaker 1: my experience. Share a little bit about that. I got
Speaker 1: to remember what I said about it now, But as
Speaker 1: far as I remember, there's various ways we sense an
Speaker 1: age gap, and in some ways it's quite natural. It's
Speaker 1: quite natural certainly as we go along to feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: my inner sense of self, the sense of image, you know,
Speaker 1: I forget that i'm the age I am, and I
Speaker 1: look in the mirror, and then oh, I'm suddenly reminded
Speaker 1: because actually I feel more vital and young and energetic
Speaker 1: than that. And that's quite natural and healthy, even I
Speaker 1: think to even though one slows down in various ways,
Speaker 1: that the sense of inner interest and brightness and vitality
Speaker 1: can be intact. That's one way of experiencing oneself as
Speaker 1: a younger than one really is in terms of feeling
Speaker 1: more vital. So that's not deficient. But the deficient part
Speaker 1: is where this happens, basically in areas of our life
Speaker 1: or in situations where we tend to feel not so
Speaker 1: confident and competent right. And what people will notice if
Speaker 1: they pay attention is in those moments they often feel
Speaker 1: young or small. The sense of self right is young
Speaker 1: and small. So if you feel awkward in a social situation,
Speaker 1: for example, or at work, you feel intimidated by colleagues,
Speaker 1: or in dating anywhere you're ill at ease, it's like
Speaker 1: check in. Not just with the feeling you're having and
Speaker 1: the stories you're telling yourself might be some sort of
Speaker 1: uneasy story about what's happening or what are they thinking
Speaker 1: about me right now, etcetera, but really tune in what's
Speaker 1: the sense of self like and you'll probably find that
Speaker 1: you you literally feel smaller than the people around you,
Speaker 1: and that you feel young. And the reason it's important
Speaker 1: or helpful to find your way into that inner sense
Speaker 1: of self is because it's a way of recovering the
Speaker 1: ways that early on in life, certain situations made you
Speaker 1: feel lesser than smaller than deficient in some way or another.
Speaker 1: An example of that if you've got shamed very much
Speaker 1: as a child for being stupid, for example, don't be stupid,
Speaker 1: come I you're you know you're told consistently that, Or
Speaker 1: it might need not even be you're told you're stupid,
Speaker 1: it might be your told come on, you're a clever boy.
Speaker 1: You ought to know the answer to that. You know,
Speaker 1: that's easy for you. That sounds like a very encouraging
Speaker 1: thing to say to a kid. Come on, you're a
Speaker 1: clever girl. We should know that. But the inner experience
Speaker 1: of the child is there must be something wrong with
Speaker 1: me then, because I don't know the answer to that,
Speaker 1: and they're saying it's easy, so I must be. So
Speaker 1: either you're shamed or you're encouraged. But either way those
Speaker 1: two situations can give rise to this sense of or
Speaker 1: not I'm not I should know something that I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm basically deficient in some way, and we get stuck
Speaker 1: there in some way when that kind of situation replicates
Speaker 1: itself as an adult and we find ourselves in that
Speaker 1: kind of situation where I feel like I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: know the answer here. I'm supposed to know what to do,
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to know what to say, and I don't.
Speaker 1: What comes up as insecurity, and we take it to
Speaker 1: be just about, oh, I feel insecure in this moment
Speaker 1: or in this situation. But if you feel, and it's
Speaker 1: very often you can recognize either by the inner feel,
Speaker 1: the sort of atmosphere of your experience, or actually by
Speaker 1: the image that's there or the association or if you're
Speaker 1: really sense in sometimes the direct memory, it's like when
Speaker 1: I was whatever six years old. Oh, it's like when
Speaker 1: those adults used to say that to me, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: so that's the first step, is actually recognizing that deficient
Speaker 1: in a self image so that you can then see
Speaker 1: what does it need? Right? Mostly what it need is
Speaker 1: need some care and attention, need some love and reassurance,
Speaker 1: you know, which is exactly the things that didn't get
Speaker 1: then it got shamed or whatever. But what we tend
Speaker 1: to do, because it's uncomfortable to feel insecure in that way,
Speaker 1: we push it away, or we try to compensate for it,
Speaker 1: or we avoid the kind of situations where that insecurity
Speaker 1: comes up. And so what we end up doing is
Speaker 1: more of the same we keep pushing the feeling away.
Speaker 1: Just like we got pushed away or rejected early on
Speaker 1: by trying to avoid feeling like that, we keep doing
Speaker 1: the same thing now. So finding your way into that
Speaker 1: inner self image is a way to actually recover what
Speaker 1: that really needs. And it's like, oh, poor little one
Speaker 1: that's six year old, feeling lonely, feeling confused, feeling rejected,
Speaker 1: feeling inefficient in some way, And actually it sounds maybe simplistic,
Speaker 1: but the work is often in the recognizing where that
Speaker 1: structure is and how it is. But very often all
Speaker 1: it really needs is to be taken in to our
Speaker 1: field of attention. It just needs to be held a
Speaker 1: little kindly. It needs to get now, that feeling of
Speaker 1: insecurity needs to get the love and care and reassurance
Speaker 1: that it didn't get earlier on, and then it can
Speaker 1: kind of integrate, and then those things can become actually
Speaker 1: just distant memories of that thing that happened to me
Speaker 1: once and I don't really have any power left to
Speaker 1: show up in the present. So in a practical way,
Speaker 1: let's pretend we've got someone and at certain meetings at
Speaker 1: work they noticed this feeling. Okay, anytime there is an
Speaker 1: older man in the room who's slightly grumpy, I suddenly
Speaker 1: feel very insecure. I noticed it's this deficient age gap.
Speaker 1: And so the thing that I always think is challenging
Speaker 1: for people is they are A in the meeting, so
Speaker 1: they kind of have to be in the meeting a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know. So what's a way of working
Speaker 1: with that kind of a in real time? And B
Speaker 1: is that something that you can then take with you
Speaker 1: to your meditation and work with when you have more time, Like,
Speaker 1: what's a practical way of of kind of really putting
Speaker 1: this into action. Yeah, well, I'd say it's a little
Speaker 1: the other way around. Okay, so the meditation part comes first.
Speaker 1: And it's not that you can take the office experience
Speaker 1: to the meditation Christianer, you can, but much more that
Speaker 1: you take the meditation experience to the office because if
Speaker 1: you don't have so much of an inner grounding and
Speaker 1: actually being able to meet your moment to moment experience
Speaker 1: and steadier attention in your moment to moment experience, which
Speaker 1: is sort of what you're learning to do in meditation, right,
Speaker 1: and you're learning to do that in a pretty neutral situation.
Speaker 1: You're just sitting down quietly. Right, If you don't learn
Speaker 1: to be able to stay with yourself when you're sitting
Speaker 1: down quietly, then the chances that you'll be able to
Speaker 1: stay with yourself when you're suddenly triggered in the meeting
Speaker 1: by the old grumpy man and you're suddenly feeling insecure.
Speaker 1: It's like you're dreaming. You know, you can't suddenly come
Speaker 1: into wise, steady, curious, clear presence when you're being impacted
Speaker 1: by something that's really difficult for you. So if you
Speaker 1: want to deal with that difficult situation at work, I
Speaker 1: know it sounds like a few steps removed, but my
Speaker 1: first advice would be, okay, let's first develop some skill
Speaker 1: in how to be in a non charged moment, like
Speaker 1: sitting down quietly at home for twenty minutes in the
Speaker 1: morning and noticing how your mind is bouncing around all
Speaker 1: over the place and realizing that, hey, whatever you feed,
Speaker 1: that's what's going to grow. So if you just let
Speaker 1: your mind keep bouncing, that's what will grow. And that
Speaker 1: just gentle discipline of again and again and again. You know,
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of times you're not forcing your mind
Speaker 1: back to the present moment or something, but you're just realizing, oh,
Speaker 1: there goes my mind again by its habit, and here's
Speaker 1: the opportunity to actually choose to learn how to bring
Speaker 1: my attention to where I am, to settle it into
Speaker 1: the simplicity and the naturalness of this breathing body, and
Speaker 1: to relax into being here. I'm certainly, in the last
Speaker 1: thirty something years of doing this practice the most central, important,
Speaker 1: profound and transformative benefit that I can point to in
Speaker 1: all of meditation practice. And you can look at all
Speaker 1: the kind of expanse of experiences and deep insights and
Speaker 1: all the rest, but just that the capacity to actually
Speaker 1: be where you are, the capacity to actually have your
Speaker 1: mind and your body be together and here and somewhat harmonized,
Speaker 1: and that you're basically relaxed in your skin. You're okay
Speaker 1: to be with your own mind and your own body
Speaker 1: wherever you are. That's not only a profoundly transformative skill,
Speaker 1: but it's also then incredibly portable. Then when you're in
Speaker 1: the office already you're developing the habit of actually just
Speaker 1: being a you and to your experience before the grumpy,
Speaker 1: triggering old bugger comes in the room. You know, you're
Speaker 1: just used to being with yourself in a non triggered way.
Speaker 1: And so then when something potentially painful or disorientating or
Speaker 1: difficult happens, you tend to notice it much much earlier.
Speaker 1: You notice it before it gets to crisis levels, right,
Speaker 1: because you're attuned. So when you start to breathe faster,
Speaker 1: or your shoulders get a bit tense, you notice how
Speaker 1: something's weird. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm starting to get activated.
Speaker 1: And then the habit is not to compensate, not to
Speaker 1: run away, not to distract, but to be interested, to
Speaker 1: be connected. And so I've got a lot more faith
Speaker 1: in doing it that way around somehow, Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a long, frustrating way to deal with the office problem. Then,
Speaker 1: you know, pleaded by all means, try to tune in,
Speaker 1: you know, even to notice where are you tense? Right?
Speaker 1: So rather than the story, what's happening and why is
Speaker 1: that person like that? And what my thinking about me?
Speaker 1: And what should I say next? And then you've got
Speaker 1: that racing mind with all of that, just where are
Speaker 1: my tents? And that can feel like I haven't got
Speaker 1: time to think about that. I've got to think about
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, And you know, I'm scanning for danger.
Speaker 1: But just try it once. Just try it once instead
Speaker 1: of all the drama and detail that's going on in
Speaker 1: the scenario around you. Where are my tents and is
Speaker 1: it possible and even just a little bit like five
Speaker 1: ten percent to soften a little bit of where I'm
Speaker 1: tents and what does that do to change my perception
Speaker 1: of the current situation? And if it does something, then
Speaker 1: I would say good. Now go and learn to meditate,
Speaker 1: and you can. You can change it a whole lot more.
Speaker 1: I think this idea that you're pointing to of cultivating
Speaker 1: an embodied way of experiencing life, tuning into the body,
Speaker 1: tune into bodily sensations as they connect to the way
Speaker 1: we're experiencing the world, which really is experienced in the body. Right.
Speaker 1: But all of this has been just central in my experience.
Speaker 1: If you're teaching both as my mindfulness teacher trainer, the
Speaker 1: one that I have studied with to become a mindfulness teacher,
Speaker 1: and also in the book that you wrote, you know,
Speaker 1: you say something interesting, you say your psychological past is
Speaker 1: not actually behind you, it's in you. It directs your
Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings. It plays out in the defenses and
Speaker 1: desires and distractions that make up your habitual responses. It
Speaker 1: is stored in your bodily experience and it's just so
Speaker 1: pardon saying, but mind blowing to really discover that for yourself.
Speaker 1: I think everyone probably has a slightly different flavor and
Speaker 1: slightly different personal experience of this, and depending on your
Speaker 1: history of trauma or not, but the body might be
Speaker 1: a quite scary place to dive into, and that's okay,
Speaker 1: that can be worked with with the support of another person, etcetera.
Speaker 1: For me, personally, diving into the terrain of the body
Speaker 1: to meet what is arising with some space and kindness
Speaker 1: feels much less complicated then if I meet it in
Speaker 1: my head, you know, where there is all that drama
Speaker 1: and the storylines like you're talking about, it just seems
Speaker 1: so much simpler to go down and meet it in
Speaker 1: the body. Yeah. And I think for whatever reason or
Speaker 1: partly it's some of the wonky presentations of meditation. Partly
Speaker 1: it's just the ideas that people generate. But people have
Speaker 1: an idea of meditation as predominantly wrestling with their mind
Speaker 1: or trying to silence their mind or shut it up
Speaker 1: in some way, and then they might refine that a
Speaker 1: bit more. And I'm not trying to shut my mind up.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to kind of be with my mind.
Speaker 1: But in the background they mean so that little shut up.
Speaker 1: And I've even heard a lot of meditation teachers often say, oh,
Speaker 1: meditation is about a lot more than relaxation, as if
Speaker 1: relaxation is some sort of minor thing that you might
Speaker 1: do in a yoga class. But meditation is much more
Speaker 1: deep and special than that. But no, meditation is a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot a lot about relaxation because many subtleties of relaxation.
Speaker 1: So partly it is learning to actually just muscularly relax.
Speaker 1: Often we're not as relaxed as we think. Joe or
Speaker 1: his tents or forehead is crisped, or shoulders are up,
Speaker 1: or hands are you watch people's hands, man, it's like,
Speaker 1: what are they doing? You know? People? People are incredibly
Speaker 1: tense and agitated in the hands off. So firstly, just
Speaker 1: that actual kind of muscular softening, and that's already you're
Speaker 1: learning to actually consciously soften. Relax just physically is already freeing.
Speaker 1: And then of course that oh, that tends to soften
Speaker 1: the breath. And then there's a sort of energetic softening
Speaker 1: as we notice tension patterns that we don't even have
Speaker 1: access to in our ordinary lives because they're a little
Speaker 1: more subtle, but they start to appear. And then we
Speaker 1: can see that also as emotional relaxation, as we actually
Speaker 1: start to digest some of our emotional patterns and avoidance strategies, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that goes all the way to you know, I
Speaker 1: think of the essence of Buddha's teachings on liberation as
Speaker 1: really about existential relaxation, you know, in other words, that
Speaker 1: very sense of taking oneself to be someone. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can only take yourself to be someone with a
Speaker 1: lot with tension. What we call ego really is just
Speaker 1: attention patterns, right, and so and we might some of
Speaker 1: us might think, oh, yeah, I love to just relax
Speaker 1: trying to be somebody. It's such a hard job trying
Speaker 1: to go through the world trying to be someone all
Speaker 1: the time. But actually, when we come into touch with that,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, we long for a kind of
Speaker 1: piece from our mind, But on the other hand we
Speaker 1: defend against it because it's like, who are you really
Speaker 1: without your thoughts? Actually, when your mind goes quiet, it
Speaker 1: sounds good, but when you get there, it's very confronting
Speaker 1: because you're losing your sense of who you are. So
Speaker 1: to actually learn the art of existential relaxation means you
Speaker 1: can just soften the whole sense of being someone that
Speaker 1: you have to defend somebody, you have to promote somebody,
Speaker 1: you have to keep telling other people who you are, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean that any sense of self disappears.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't mean that any personality disappears, right, But
Speaker 1: it means that personality becomes a means of expression that
Speaker 1: can be bright, and it can be can be creative,
Speaker 1: and it's unique. Right, We've all got a unique personality,
Speaker 1: but it's no longer something that we're needing neurotically to
Speaker 1: prop up. And you know, it's just not the center
Speaker 1: of our experience. And that's a profound relief. When the
Speaker 1: sensory reality around us, the sounds of the world, the
Speaker 1: feel of the world, the miracle of being conscious, the
Speaker 1: very fact that there's seeing and the hearing and this
Speaker 1: touching and this feeling and all that's happening, then there's
Speaker 1: room for all of that to become more central. When me, me, me,
Speaker 1: my my my can soften and relax, and then there's
Speaker 1: just oh, the capacity to engage lovingly, creatively, playfully, the
Speaker 1: capacity to do all this stuff we call life without
Speaker 1: taking oneself so seriously, so personally, and then we have
Speaker 1: access to that. I'd like to pivot here to something
Speaker 1: you talk about in the book about waking up, growing up,
Speaker 1: showing up, and I want to just read something that
Speaker 1: you wrote, which is that spiritual work has often spoken
Speaker 1: about in terms of waking up scene through our defenses
Speaker 1: and delusions to a clearer sense of reality. This clear
Speaker 1: scene can dissolve are patterning in the immediacy of the seeing,
Speaker 1: but the patterns are dissolved in the moment rather than
Speaker 1: fully resolved. And you describe sort of some early experiences
Speaker 1: you had where you really were able to touch this
Speaker 1: transcendent dimension of life, you know, you describe sitting and
Speaker 1: being at one with the birds and the sounds and
Speaker 1: then the bell would ring, you know, And so talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about, you know, how we start to
Speaker 1: integrate waking up, growing up, showing up well in terms
Speaker 1: of the dissolving and resolving, and maybe another one which
Speaker 1: is just solving. So that's the main way of the world.
Speaker 1: When we have a problem, we try to solve the problem,
Speaker 1: right for something that's totally appropriate. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: a maths problem, you can solve it. If you've got
Speaker 1: a logistical problem, you can solve it. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to more the inner or the psychological problem or
Speaker 1: the existential problems, an existential problem can't be solved. So
Speaker 1: one enters into these inner practices that offer a different
Speaker 1: way to meet experiences. And we might learn that various
Speaker 1: practices meditation, but other kinds of things, various things that
Speaker 1: lead to trance states as well, can dissolve problems. Right,
Speaker 1: So rather than fixating on it, my mind just can
Speaker 1: open up and realize there's a whole other universe going
Speaker 1: on there, and my little problem isn't the main thing,
Speaker 1: and and it drops away. And that's a very powerful
Speaker 1: and beautiful thing to experience and actually to develop some
Speaker 1: skill in the capacity to dissolve problems by realizing that
Speaker 1: just because a problem arises, it doesn't have to pull
Speaker 1: all my attention. Right, so I can have the problem
Speaker 1: that I'm angry, for example, right, just because I'm angry,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that I have to keep focusing on
Speaker 1: why I'm angry, who I'm angry with, and why they
Speaker 1: did that, and how bad they are and what I
Speaker 1: should have done and what I'll do to the next time.
Speaker 1: You know, it can be dissolved by realizing how this
Speaker 1: is the anger and it's heart and it's bubbly, and
Speaker 1: I can give it attention and it can cool itself out.
Speaker 1: If you really give anger itself attention rather than giving
Speaker 1: all the attention to who you're angry with and why.
Speaker 1: You know the story of it, the anger, and give
Speaker 1: the attention to anger itself. It'll be hot, it'll bubble energetically,
Speaker 1: it'll burst, and then it's done. It's dissolved in that moment. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's fantastic, beautiful skill to learn. But by doing that,
Speaker 1: you haven't necessarily resolved the patterning, Like what do I
Speaker 1: get angry around? Why do I constellate so much around anger?
Speaker 1: How calm? I've got this strong need for me to
Speaker 1: be so right and for the other person to be
Speaker 1: so wrong right? And sometimes it's like we only get
Speaker 1: as far as the dissolving, and sometimes meditation can be
Speaker 1: not psychological enough. I would say, you know, we hear
Speaker 1: a lot about oh, just let go of the story.
Speaker 1: And that's beautiful, powerful advice, but it's good for dissolving
Speaker 1: but not for resolve thing. So at some point it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna have to get back into that
Speaker 1: anger stuff and actually understand more about it. If you've
Speaker 1: dissolved things a few times, some things you dissolve them,
Speaker 1: they're done, you know. But the stuff that's very core
Speaker 1: patterning for us, and stuff you've actually got issues with,
Speaker 1: however much or however often you dissolve it, it'll just
Speaker 1: keep coming background the next time there's a there's a
Speaker 1: suitable trigger. So if dissolving doesn't work, you need to
Speaker 1: do some resolving. And that means that's that process of
Speaker 1: actually opening to you know, a bit like we spoke
Speaker 1: about earlier with the deficient self image. That's the place
Speaker 1: to become genuinely curious about my anger, right, what are
Speaker 1: the kinds of situations that trigger it? And who do
Speaker 1: I take myself to be when I'm angry? Right for
Speaker 1: some of us, it might be I become the one
Speaker 1: who's absolutely right, and I won't listen to anybody else,
Speaker 1: and I have to affirm my view and everybody else
Speaker 1: is stupid because they won't listen to me. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of arrogance to anger. Really, where does
Speaker 1: that come from? And then for others of us, it
Speaker 1: might be the opposite, that we feel actually very small
Speaker 1: all and powerless, and the anger is in our attempt
Speaker 1: to get hold of some strength or some agency, a
Speaker 1: way of reasserting ourselves because we don't actually feel strong.
Speaker 1: So those things have their antecedents in our psychology. We
Speaker 1: learned our emotional styles, We learned our emotional patterns, and
Speaker 1: the ones that exercise us the most, the skill of
Speaker 1: dissolving them probably won't be enough a long term, and
Speaker 1: that's certainly what I found. I did a good ten
Speaker 1: years of pretty hardcore meditation practice before I realized that
Speaker 1: there were some areas of my life that just hadn't
Speaker 1: gotten touched. You know, Some things had opened up incredibly
Speaker 1: in some ways. My understanding of reality had really really
Speaker 1: deepened and developed, but my capacity to go home and
Speaker 1: be with my parents for three or four days hadn't
Speaker 1: hadn't developed very much at all, you know, So it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, how come I still feel like I'm
Speaker 1: a rebellious teenager and I get all kind of reactive
Speaker 1: and angry. It's like, oh, this on parts that I
Speaker 1: had learned to dissolve some of that emotional stuff, but
Speaker 1: I totally hadn't learned to really recognize where it was
Speaker 1: coming from, why it would keep coming back, and how
Speaker 1: to actually really explore it and care for it so
Speaker 1: that it would resolve itself. And now I can report
Speaker 1: a much happier relationship with my parents. Did that happen
Speaker 1: for you primarily through mindfulness in meditation or was there
Speaker 1: other psychological work? You know, there's all kinds of modalities
Speaker 1: of therapy, you know, for you, is it a multimodal approach? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was for me. I think there's more. This is
Speaker 1: like twenty five years ago, and I think there's more
Speaker 1: psychological skill within the meditation world these days. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of my friends and colleagues who teach dharma and
Speaker 1: teach meditation retreats and just a lot more psychologically skilled
Speaker 1: and have done more psychological work themselves than some of
Speaker 1: our own teachers, and particularly you know, some of my
Speaker 1: Asian teachers. Is like, they have the same kind of
Speaker 1: psychological framework. So I wouldn't say that can't happen just
Speaker 1: within a magistrative framework. Particularly if you have a teacher
Speaker 1: who's who's a bit more psychologically attuned and skilled. But
Speaker 1: for me, yeah, it wasn't enough. Somehow what I've been
Speaker 1: doing in meditation, and I was a student of the
Speaker 1: Diamond Approach for about thirteen years, and that's a school
Speaker 1: started by somebody who called Hamid Ali writes under his
Speaker 1: pen name A. H Almas, And I found the weaving
Speaker 1: together of spiritual depth and psychological skill that whole school
Speaker 1: holds I found really really helpful. And the spiritual depth
Speaker 1: bit I had that covered right Buddhist practice and teachings,
Speaker 1: but to have that model of like the kind of
Speaker 1: far out dimensions of the mind, but held within a
Speaker 1: sense that sometimes there's a sense that we need to
Speaker 1: do our psychological work in order to access those depths.
Speaker 1: But in the Diamond approach, there's really the sense that
Speaker 1: actually meeting your own psychological fears and blockages and deficiencies
Speaker 1: is actually a very direct portal too that spiritual depth,
Speaker 1: because you meet the ways you compensate, the ways you
Speaker 1: shut down. And if you can meet the ways you
Speaker 1: shut down, that's really really cool, right because right where
Speaker 1: you shut down, that's exactly there where you can open.
Speaker 1: So rather than avoiding those places their portals, the places
Speaker 1: you've shut down, the places you've learned to go tight
Speaker 1: or go unconscious, are exactly the places where things can
Speaker 1: really open up. So I was hugely appreciative of that
Speaker 1: whole body of teaching and the whole school and the
Speaker 1: thirteen years I practiced in it, and my wife actually
Speaker 1: teaches in that school as well. Now, the understanding of
Speaker 1: that school has very much flowed through and and informed
Speaker 1: the way I teach as well. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't in any way teach that work, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely informed some of the way I work with students. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've had Hamid on a couple of times. He's a
Speaker 1: fascinating guy. It's interesting because my journey in some ways
Speaker 1: is reverse of yours. I got sober at twenty four
Speaker 1: from a heroin addiction, and I got sober in a
Speaker 1: twelveth step recovery program, and my growth years were all
Speaker 1: about growing up, showing up, cleaning up. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was really where the orientation was for a long time.
Speaker 1: Even my Buddhist inquiry was very focused on the psychological
Speaker 1: elements of it. It's really only been in the last
Speaker 1: I'd say seven years that I really started tuning into
Speaker 1: the waking up side of it, that dissolving that you
Speaker 1: speak of. So if mine has been kind of reversed
Speaker 1: in that way, but I think my experience that sounds
Speaker 1: like yours and most people that I admire, and I
Speaker 1: think our wise have said, the reason we talk about
Speaker 1: all those things is because you need to do them all.
Speaker 1: You know, you need to do all those things, waking up,
Speaker 1: cleaning up, growing up, showing up. We got integrated, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I ideally, I mean, I'm not sure you've got to
Speaker 1: do it all. You don't do it all, you'll make
Speaker 1: a mess in some of those other areas. And we
Speaker 1: can see the mess is being made, like you, you know,
Speaker 1: in the spiritual scene, is the mess of people that
Speaker 1: sometimes actually you've got great potency and clarity of mind
Speaker 1: and can teach really authentically about the wide open, spacious, liberated,
Speaker 1: free mind. But they've done a lot of dissolving and
Speaker 1: not enough resolving, and so they're unresolved material then leaks
Speaker 1: out in various ways, usually by having sex with their students.
Speaker 1: Things to be the most problem. It's a favorite, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the great sages of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: you know, think of people like Rahma and Maharishi, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I don't think of some of those people are very integrated,
Speaker 1: for example, right, I don't think Ramana was very integrated
Speaker 1: in some ways. But it doesn't matter, you know. I
Speaker 1: don't think you need to be actually skilled in all
Speaker 1: those areas to be of great help and support to
Speaker 1: people in one or two of those areas, you know.
Speaker 1: But I do think ideally you least need to have
Speaker 1: an aware us that they're distinct, right, that the growing
Speaker 1: up is distinct from the waking up, and that somebody
Speaker 1: can be very awake and not have done much growing up,
Speaker 1: for example, And that's really important. Otherwise people can get
Speaker 1: very confused and discouraged by the fact that a teacher
Speaker 1: might have blind spots, or might behave badly, or might
Speaker 1: not have all of their worldly ship together, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: but they're supposed to be enlightened. It's like, yeah, but
Speaker 1: they might be very awake. But some teachers in a
Speaker 1: very renunciate lineage, for example, they just don't have very
Speaker 1: much experience of the worldly stuff. And because there's this
Speaker 1: sort of froth and fog around ideas of awakening or enlightenment.
Speaker 1: Somebody's supposed to be realized, being as if they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be omniscient, and I they're supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to tell me about everything. Should I invest in crypto?
Speaker 1: You know? And what does that person know? You know,
Speaker 1: it's like going to a seller butt and asking them
Speaker 1: for sex advice. You know, what do they know? But
Speaker 1: you see that all the time, people getting getting kind
Speaker 1: of sedue. I think it probably happens less now because
Speaker 1: there's more understanding of these different areas than it did
Speaker 1: a generation ago. But the idea that you're going to
Speaker 1: the guru or the wise figure and asking them for
Speaker 1: all kinds of things that were outside of their wheelhouse,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the teacher themselves, you know, being a little
Speaker 1: enamored of their own teaching throne, that they were qualified
Speaker 1: to dispense advice about anything and everything. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's Ken Wilber that first coined those terms, right,
Speaker 1: the waking up, growing up, showing up, and cleaning up,
Speaker 1: and just the recognition that those are each distinct areas
Speaker 1: is really important, even if you don't have to get
Speaker 1: that good at all of them. The showing up piece.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not for everyone. The Buddha talks about
Speaker 1: the patcheck of Buddhas. You know some people who are
Speaker 1: really really awakened, but they can't teach. Just showing up
Speaker 1: isn't their skill. They're not good at communicators, they don't
Speaker 1: really like people. Maybe, you know, they just better sit
Speaker 1: in the cave. You know, rishial beings well developed the
Speaker 1: radically beautiful mind state, and maybe one or two other
Speaker 1: people might learn from them. So I think it's also
Speaker 1: cool that there are specialists. I think it's brilliant that
Speaker 1: people do three year retreats or ten year retreats. You
Speaker 1: know that there's some people that don't necessarily show up
Speaker 1: so much. They're not they don't do the psychological work,
Speaker 1: but they might go super deep into the awakened presence stuff.
Speaker 1: So to the extent that we're we want to be
Speaker 1: active and clean and a force for good amidst the
Speaker 1: stuff of the world, then at the very least need
Speaker 1: and awareness of those things. And yes, great if you
Speaker 1: can have a more integral approach. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to dismiss the specialists and the eccentrics and people that
Speaker 1: go really deep down one path changing directions. Yet again,
Speaker 1: one of the things read in your book that I
Speaker 1: was really struck by was a framework you talk about
Speaker 1: called no rehearsal, no replay. Can you share what that is?
Speaker 1: I think it's really useful for those of us who
Speaker 1: tend to spend a lot of time in our mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, most of us convinced somehow that we can
Speaker 1: rehearse the future, you know, and so we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time imagining that conversation and how it's going
Speaker 1: to go and what I'll say, and then and then
Speaker 1: you know, you can plan what you might say with
Speaker 1: a certain degree of confidence. But the idea that you
Speaker 1: can then imagine what the other person is going to
Speaker 1: say is the max. You can imagine that absolute max
Speaker 1: is your first line. You can't go beyond that. But
Speaker 1: if we're honest and we see how much we invest
Speaker 1: in imagining future scenarios as if we can actually insert ourselves,
Speaker 1: is if it's worth the rehearsal. Now, of course, I'm
Speaker 1: not suggesting there's no future planning. You know, if you
Speaker 1: need to take the train to Paris next week, better
Speaker 1: buy a ticket in advance, you know. But the actual
Speaker 1: rehearsal we need to do. It's like simple logistical stuff.
Speaker 1: When you invest in that planning for a moment, you
Speaker 1: sort of give away your ease and stability you right now,
Speaker 1: And the rehearsal you do tend to be filtered through
Speaker 1: the mind state with which you're rehearsing, right, which is
Speaker 1: usually some variation of anxiety or excitement or a combination
Speaker 1: of the both, neither of which give you a very
Speaker 1: clear view. So the best rehearsal for the future moment
Speaker 1: is the way you take care of this moment, and
Speaker 1: then you'll find, oh, here you are in that so
Speaker 1: called future moment, and you're able to take care of it.
Speaker 1: You know, speaking is something that's very amazing. We think
Speaker 1: we're in charge of speaking, and therefore we rehearse what
Speaker 1: we're going to say, but actually we never, like all
Speaker 1: the while we've been talking, and while we continue to
Speaker 1: talk now, we never know really what's coming out of
Speaker 1: our mouth next, And yet we're more or less coherent
Speaker 1: with each other, right, And so actually learning to inhabit
Speaker 1: that and realize that you can just make it up
Speaker 1: on the spot and not even make it up. You
Speaker 1: can just inhabit the moment, and you've got what it
Speaker 1: takes the capacity to speak and be intelligible, an already
Speaker 1: acquired skill early on, so that the rehearsal you need
Speaker 1: to do is very, very minimal. And of course, if
Speaker 1: I was going to come here and talk to you
Speaker 1: about a bunch of data points on something, I'd need
Speaker 1: to have the information the data points. But that's not
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way we
Speaker 1: try to rehearse the self. I try to imagine myself
Speaker 1: in a future moment, and it's pointless and it's impossible,
Speaker 1: and it's just anxiety provoking. So don't rehearse yourself for
Speaker 1: a fu your moment. Take care of yourself here and now.
Speaker 1: So that's the no rehearsal. And then the no replay
Speaker 1: is just, you know, don't lay that on yourself afterwards,
Speaker 1: what did I say? What did they think? How? And
Speaker 1: you replay through it through the distortions of the mind
Speaker 1: state with which you're remembering. Right, the very reason you
Speaker 1: feel the need to go back and see how it
Speaker 1: was is because of some habitual anxiety. So it's like,
Speaker 1: once it's done, drop it. And like when people are
Speaker 1: speaking in groups, for example, which sometimes you know understandably
Speaker 1: people can feel a little anxious, and I really give
Speaker 1: them that encouragement, specially when people are anxious speaking in groups,
Speaker 1: you know, and I say, okay, so when you pass
Speaker 1: the mic to the next person, don't go back and
Speaker 1: replay what you said. You know, you'll been scanning for
Speaker 1: that thing, that bit there that I said. Was that
Speaker 1: a bit weird? Did they think that was a bit?
Speaker 1: You know? It's just let you just drop it. And
Speaker 1: the more you drop those things, the more you have
Speaker 1: access in the present while you're speaking and listening and
Speaker 1: showing up to just actually sense and if you sense
Speaker 1: you're going too fast, slow down a bit, or if
Speaker 1: you sense that you're starting to ramble, stop so you
Speaker 1: can take much better care of what you're doing by
Speaker 1: being alive in the present than you ever can through
Speaker 1: the rehearsing and the replaying. And there's something about that,
Speaker 1: just that framing or phrasing of it, you know, no rehearsal,
Speaker 1: no replay, that kind of can cut through some of
Speaker 1: all that stuff that we tend to do. I think
Speaker 1: to the as listeners are hearing you say that there
Speaker 1: may be a bit of a yeah, but don't we
Speaker 1: need to learn from what we do and as I
Speaker 1: read your explanation of no rehearsal, no replay, of course,
Speaker 1: that popped into my mind. And then I turned the
Speaker 1: page and you said, and yet sometimes we need to
Speaker 1: learn from our experience. But you make a wonderful kind
Speaker 1: of way to do that skillfully. You say that wisdom
Speaker 1: reflects on your behavior, right, otherwise, you know, Mara, which
Speaker 1: is the Buddhist ideology of kind of all the things
Speaker 1: that trouble us judges your identity, right, So can we
Speaker 1: look at our behavior rather than making an identity statement
Speaker 1: about who we are or aren't as a human? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're looking at your activity or what will happened there? Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe that was a bit unskillful. I might want to
Speaker 1: apologize to that person. That's really helpful. But when you're
Speaker 1: measuring yourself and post, oh, how could I do that?
Speaker 1: How could I say that? Why am I such a
Speaker 1: You know? That's never helpful. And that's the difference whether
Speaker 1: you're evaluating the activity or whether you're judging the self.
Speaker 1: And I think your earlier framework of is this useful
Speaker 1: is really a key one in that too. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm thinking about something in the future, am i
Speaker 1: covering new ground. It's actually knowable and usable, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it is useful, but we all know a point where
Speaker 1: we have gone past useful into you know, rumination. It's
Speaker 1: just we're thinking the same thing over and over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. At that point it's not useful. Well, Martin,
Speaker 1: I just want to take a moment before we wrap up,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of personally and publicly, to say like,
Speaker 1: thank you for your teachings. I mean, they have been
Speaker 1: such a great blessing to me. Your work has been
Speaker 1: a treasure trove for me, especially in these last well
Speaker 1: it's almost a year now that I've been your students
Speaker 1: as a mindfulness teacher and training your book, your Son
Speaker 1: Alive the way that we can connect with you there
Speaker 1: and the teachers that teach to that platform at the
Speaker 1: Mulan where you host retreats. You have a way of teaching,
Speaker 1: a way of phrasing things that has brought alive aspects
Speaker 1: within my experience that had been untapped before and somewhat inaccessible.
Speaker 1: And so, first of all, thank you. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for what you do and for putting that out
Speaker 1: into the world. And to that end, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: listeners after hearing this conversation have felt inspired to connect
Speaker 1: with you more. How can they do that? Well, that's
Speaker 1: lovely to hear, Jenny. It was delight to get to
Speaker 1: know you over the last year and it's just very
Speaker 1: nice to hear your appreciation. Thank you. So through my
Speaker 1: website Martin Aylwood dot com and there you can link
Speaker 1: to the Mulan, which is the center where I live
Speaker 1: and teach retreats in southwest France, and the various social
Speaker 1: media and propaganda and things about my teaching activities are
Speaker 1: all there. So that's the kind of one stop shop
Speaker 1: for the variety of different projects I'm involved with. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the best way. So Martin Aylwood, that's a funny
Speaker 1: Scottish name, but a y l W a r D
Speaker 1: dot com. And the Mulan, I must say, is a
Speaker 1: dreamy property. I mean it is beautiful it I think,
Speaker 1: you know, French chateau type building and such comfortable accommodations,
Speaker 1: dullicious food and then just beautiful surroundings of nature in
Speaker 1: the southwest of France and sit into here really liberating teachings.
Speaker 1: It's a dreamy place to be, yes, it is. It's beautiful,
Speaker 1: well Thank you so much, Martin. It has been a
Speaker 1: real pleasure to have you on, as you mentioned where
Speaker 1: people can get a hooly view of links in the
Speaker 1: show notes, and a real pleasure to get to talk
Speaker 1: with you. Thank you, Yeah, thank you both. I've enjoyed it.
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