Speaker 1: Fear, but on the kindest bravery and love side needs
Speaker 1: to be fed a very strict, careful, limited diet. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen 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 Scott Edelstein, who has
Speaker 1: studied with several spiritual teachers, including Tony Packer, Dane and Cottagery,
Speaker 1: Tim McCarthy, and currently Steve Hogan. As the friend of
Speaker 1: several spiritual teachers, he's also spent much time with them
Speaker 1: off duty, sometimes serving as a confidante. He's a long
Speaker 1: time practitioner of both Buddhism and Judaism, and a committed
Speaker 1: proponent of serious spirituality in all forms and traditions. Scott's
Speaker 1: work on several spiritual topics has appeared in shambalasan American
Speaker 1: Jewish World the writer. His new book is The User's
Speaker 1: Guide to Spiritual Teachers. Hi Scott, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks Eric. It's pleasure and bit of an honor to
Speaker 1: the year. I'm excited to have you on. Your book
Speaker 1: is called The Users Guide to Spiritual Teachers, which I
Speaker 1: think is a topic many of our listeners are going
Speaker 1: to be interested in. So we will get into it
Speaker 1: in just a second. But let's start like we always
Speaker 1: do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Sure well, first of all,
Speaker 1: the work that I do is as a writer and
Speaker 1: researcher and editor and collaborator and ghostwriter. And I would
Speaker 1: actually like to this parable because I would argue, if
Speaker 1: there's a word here that is not right, that indeed
Speaker 1: there is always a battle going on inside us, with kindness, bravery, love,
Speaker 1: and other such things on one side, and with greed,
Speaker 1: hacred and other such things on the other. But I
Speaker 1: would argue and strongly that fear belongs on both sides,
Speaker 1: and that fear, but on the kindness, bravery and love side,
Speaker 1: needs to be fed a very strict, careful, limited diet.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is fear is partly what
Speaker 1: keeps us alive. It's partly what keeps us safe. There
Speaker 1: are things we need to be afraid of. What happens
Speaker 1: is people then stoke and feed the fear in an
Speaker 1: an appropriate way for things that we shouldn't be afraid of.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be afraid of immigrants just because they're immigrants.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be afraid of people who we see as
Speaker 1: the other just because they're the other. We probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: be other remembering the first place. Um. But we also
Speaker 1: should be paying attention to our bodies, um, to our hearts,
Speaker 1: to our minds when we do feel fear, and instead
Speaker 1: of saying, oh, that fear is bad, getting rid of it,
Speaker 1: we need to actually discern one of that fear is
Speaker 1: telling us something useful and important. And I'm saying all
Speaker 1: this because that discernment is at the heart of the
Speaker 1: user's guide to Spiritual Teachers. One of the big problems
Speaker 1: that often happens with spiritual teachers who are Charlotte's or
Speaker 1: creditors and narcissists or liber teams or whatnot, is we
Speaker 1: assume that because they're spiritual teacher, we should never fear them.
Speaker 1: But actually there's plenty of people in that role who
Speaker 1: we should fear, and if we paid attention to that fear,
Speaker 1: it would serve as well. Yes, an earlier book of
Speaker 1: years was Sex and the Spiritual Teacher, Why it happens,
Speaker 1: when it's a problem, and what we can all do,
Speaker 1: And certainly there are no shortage of stories of spiritual
Speaker 1: teachers who take advantage of students. So I agree with you,
Speaker 1: it's certainly something to watch out for and worry about.
Speaker 1: I want to kind of just jump into the book
Speaker 1: because I think there's so many different things in here
Speaker 1: or that you talk about with spiritual teachers, and I
Speaker 1: want to start by a saying or something that you
Speaker 1: have pretty early in the book. You say, a spiritual
Speaker 1: teacher is a living, breathing human being with normal human emotions, impulses,
Speaker 1: and desires. So talk to me about what you're driving
Speaker 1: at with that sentence, like why that's important? Sure, if
Speaker 1: they didn't have the normal human desires and expectations and foibles, um,
Speaker 1: then they would have nothing of value to teach us
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't be able to number one, speak from
Speaker 1: their experience, including their mistakes. Number Two, they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the necessary empathy. So if I were to look at
Speaker 1: a cat and go, why why are you tearing that
Speaker 1: mouse to pieces? The cat would just say you don't
Speaker 1: understand it all, do you? Because you and I would
Speaker 1: never tear a mouse to pieces. But if you're a cat,
Speaker 1: there is nothing better, more appropriate, more fun than to
Speaker 1: beat the craphole out of a mouse. So if we
Speaker 1: go into assume that our teachers are somehow, our spiritual
Speaker 1: teachers are somehow inherently different from us, then how are
Speaker 1: we going to apply their experience to our lives? And indeed,
Speaker 1: the only people who are going to claim that they're
Speaker 1: fundamentally different from us are going to be Charlotte's or alternatively, somehow,
Speaker 1: some supposedly channeled being. But even if the being is
Speaker 1: somehow being channeled in sign of some corporeal time, share
Speaker 1: the same rules of engagement and the same discernment would apply. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in It's a question I've asked some
Speaker 1: of the so called teachers we've had on the show,
Speaker 1: and it's really about people who make some claim or
Speaker 1: believed to some degree that they have achieved used the
Speaker 1: word enlightenment, awakening, use whatever word you want. And I'm
Speaker 1: always kind of curious. The thing I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: out of out of those folks sometimes is, well, how
Speaker 1: different is having obtained that? How different is that experience
Speaker 1: of living than what say mine is, or or other people?
Speaker 1: And I find it a fascinating question, because at the
Speaker 1: heart of the show we talk a lot about this
Speaker 1: new reference in the book, this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: we're seeking something and yet at the same time that
Speaker 1: seeking often can stand in the way. But there's a
Speaker 1: reason that we are on a spiritual journey. There is
Speaker 1: a place to go, although I get that we could
Speaker 1: say there's not, but for purposes of keeping this conversation saying,
Speaker 1: we'll assume there is a place to go, that there
Speaker 1: is some degree of improvement in our quality of life
Speaker 1: that occurs. And I just am always interested in, like,
Speaker 1: just how far does that go? It's a wonderful question,
Speaker 1: and I'm thrilled that you asked it, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Let me speak to that in a couple of ways.
Speaker 1: The first is people, I do think um pretty consistently
Speaker 1: misunderstand enlightenment as some kind of threshold that gets crossed
Speaker 1: some combination of losing your virginity and getting bar mixivent
Speaker 1: are confirmed. First of all, that's not the case, because,
Speaker 1: as we know, everything is constantly changing, Everything is in
Speaker 1: flux and flow, and so even if a certain experience appears,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that that experience is stays around forever,
Speaker 1: because nothing stays around forever. So I think it's more
Speaker 1: useful to look at enlightenment will come back to what
Speaker 1: is enlightenment a moment as something that comes and goes
Speaker 1: for some people that may never come at all for
Speaker 1: others if it does show up and then it disappears again. Uh.
Speaker 1: It isn't something where you can suddenly, oh uh, some
Speaker 1: gate has opened in my brain and now I can
Speaker 1: just rest on my laurels, or now everything's easy, or
Speaker 1: now I understand everything, or now my discernment is perfect.
Speaker 1: We still have to be engaging, moment by moment, listening
Speaker 1: to our own hearts and minds and guts, making the
Speaker 1: room determinations. So that would be the first half. The
Speaker 1: second is that the whole question of what is enlightenment?
Speaker 1: And of course, as Lee Armstrong said, if you if
Speaker 1: you have to explain it, you're not you're not getting it.
Speaker 1: He said that, of course about jazz. So this notion
Speaker 1: that enlightenment is a thing that is somehow gotten, kind
Speaker 1: of like some bonus or some award, I think it's
Speaker 1: also pretty misleading. That said, as human beings, there are
Speaker 1: things we can know or recognize that we didn't previously
Speaker 1: recognize or no, and there are things that we can
Speaker 1: realize we know that we have known but didn't realize
Speaker 1: we knew so um, and so I don't want to
Speaker 1: this or dismiss enlightenment because it's quotes real. Yet at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's certainly not anything that people would
Speaker 1: typically imagine it. Did it right? Well, that's the whole
Speaker 1: thing about it is the idea of you you can't
Speaker 1: put into words something that you can't put into words.
Speaker 1: The the other thing that and I don't remember where
Speaker 1: I heard this and who I had this conversation with,
Speaker 1: but the idea has sort of stuck around with me.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times we we think of
Speaker 1: enlightenment in the sense of the satory type experience, just
Speaker 1: the sudden like whack upside the head and boom, you know,
Speaker 1: an explosion goes off in our brain and we are
Speaker 1: in a different place. And somebody posited that, yes, that's
Speaker 1: the way it happens for some people, and it seems
Speaker 1: very dramatic. They take a dramatic growth step forward. But
Speaker 1: that for a lot of people. The reason that a
Speaker 1: lot of other people might be equally Again, I'm going
Speaker 1: to use this word in quotes enlightened right, or have
Speaker 1: a same degree of realization. It's just that it happened
Speaker 1: so slowly they barely noticed it. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a fascinating idea because I often think about if you
Speaker 1: could take me at say twenty four years old, when
Speaker 1: I was just coming off of being a heroin addict,
Speaker 1: and you could drop me in my brain today, I
Speaker 1: bet that twenty four year old would have his mind
Speaker 1: blown by what it's like to be in my head today.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that being in my head is
Speaker 1: like so amazingly special. I'm just saying the difference from
Speaker 1: the mindset and the way that I operated then until
Speaker 1: now is so dramatic. It's just that I don't mostly
Speaker 1: notice it because it's been a twenty year process or
Speaker 1: twenty plus year process. Just had a couple of I
Speaker 1: think important things. One is simply about the the nature
Speaker 1: of maturation, that as we grow, we grow. If we're
Speaker 1: paying attention, as we grow older, we grow wiser, and
Speaker 1: if we're paying attention consistently and in the right ways,
Speaker 1: that even that wisdom, the quality of the wisdom we
Speaker 1: have changes in terms of the quick versus the sudden
Speaker 1: versus the gradual. I think the best analogy I would
Speaker 1: draw there is you could win a lottery get inheritance
Speaker 1: and be a millionaire. And you can also put aside
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a week from your paycheck for fifty years
Speaker 1: and be a millionaire. And both of those wind up
Speaker 1: at the same spot. At least financially, you have a
Speaker 1: million dollars. Yeah. Either way. That said, I would like
Speaker 1: to add one thing is that the two most in
Speaker 1: quotes profound supposedly spiritual experiences that I've had, really, I
Speaker 1: would argue, are not remotely profound. I had one under
Speaker 1: the influence of Alice d at age Oh god, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just getting five, who were your parents, no
Speaker 1: wonder you wrote a book about spiritual teachers. And I
Speaker 1: had another one doing sun salutations at about age I
Speaker 1: don't know. Again, maybe a year later. They seemed profound
Speaker 1: because one was a whack in the head the other
Speaker 1: was a whack in the head in the body, But
Speaker 1: now at age sixty three looking back, I'd say, well,
Speaker 1: yeah they were. They were both revealed something, and the
Speaker 1: second one was a huge body experience, probably the most
Speaker 1: in quotes profound experience my body has been through. But
Speaker 1: in terms of insight, they actually revealed something that now
Speaker 1: just seems like normal. Relevant background information. I just wasn't
Speaker 1: used to it at that young age. Yep. Makes sense
Speaker 1: to me, and I've had some things that are similar
Speaker 1: in that regard. It's just it's sort of a fascinating
Speaker 1: idea to me because there do seem to be states
Speaker 1: that occur that are profoundly different than my ordinary consciousness
Speaker 1: um and and they are striking perhaps to the degree
Speaker 1: in which they do differ, um, but the insights underneath them,
Speaker 1: to your point, sort of over a period of time,
Speaker 1: start to seem relatively commonplace or normal if you live
Speaker 1: with the belief long enough. And that, I would argue
Speaker 1: is one of spiritual teachers main values is you can
Speaker 1: do you your spiritual teacher with this information, and they
Speaker 1: can say things like, as they often do, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty normal, or or yeah that's don't don't let
Speaker 1: them bother you. It's it's fine, or yeah so what
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you had some insight? Well is that it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Anything else? Uh no? And then and then they send
Speaker 1: you back out into your life. Right. So, one of
Speaker 1: the things that you talk about in the book often
Speaker 1: is a spiritual teacher that I kind of consider, at
Speaker 1: least right now, one of the main people who I
Speaker 1: learn a lot from his audio, Shanti, and he says
Speaker 1: something similar to he says, don't do this, And you
Speaker 1: talk about how it's a common thing that people do,
Speaker 1: which is to really hand over a large degree of
Speaker 1: our personal autonomy. Maybe the word that he would use
Speaker 1: to a spiritual teacher, you say, many of the students
Speaker 1: try to avoid the unavoidable pain of making our own decisions,
Speaker 1: living into their consequences, and growing up. So we ask
Speaker 1: our teachers to make our personal decisions for us. Should
Speaker 1: I take this job or that job? Should I leave
Speaker 1: my husband or stay with him and try and work
Speaker 1: things out. Is it okay for me to eat meat, etcetera, etcetera. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I want to give a thumbs up,
Speaker 1: but a shout out to the shanty. He's he's got
Speaker 1: a lot of wisdom, and I'm thrilled that you had
Speaker 1: him on your show, actually twice, so that's that's great
Speaker 1: the and I would certainly agree with him that one
Speaker 1: mark of a spiritual teacher worth their soul is they
Speaker 1: will not try to take from you or allow you
Speaker 1: to hand over um any responsibilities and decisions that are yours.
Speaker 1: Probably the clearest signs of the Charlotte, or someone who
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a spiritual teacher is someone who either wants
Speaker 1: something from you, or is trying to run your life
Speaker 1: for you, or is trying to make decisions for you,
Speaker 1: or tells you basically you need to get in line
Speaker 1: here and do what everybody else is doing. That's almost
Speaker 1: inevitably a sign that this person is potentially dangerous, because
Speaker 1: after all, ultimately our job as human beings, of course
Speaker 1: is to be decent human beings, but also to grow up,
Speaker 1: to wise up, to open up, to be more fully human.
Speaker 1: And there's no way to do that by handing over
Speaker 1: our responsibilities and our decisions to some other person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting concept for me because as I
Speaker 1: was reviewing, I read your book previously. Um, we were
Speaker 1: going to do the interview and we had to reschedule it,
Speaker 1: and so I was going back through it all today
Speaker 1: in the notes, and something occurred to me that hadn't
Speaker 1: occurred to me before and thinking about this, and I
Speaker 1: started to think about the concept of sponsors in a
Speaker 1: A and it brought me back to thinking about how
Speaker 1: that role can look like a lot of different things
Speaker 1: in a depending on who's doing it, and a like
Speaker 1: anywhere is likely to create hero figures, um or spiritual
Speaker 1: teachers or extremely wise people, and how in sponsorship it's
Speaker 1: always this. And I sponsored a lot of people and
Speaker 1: was sponsored by people. There was this line that was
Speaker 1: difficult because on one hand, you've got a person in
Speaker 1: those cases like me. Take me at twenty four, and
Speaker 1: I've been homeless and a heroin addict, I don't know
Speaker 1: very much about living, and I have a track record
Speaker 1: of disastrous decisions. So having somebody who doesn't necessarily take
Speaker 1: all that and make all my decisions for me, but
Speaker 1: somebody who's willing to maybe take a slightly heavier role
Speaker 1: there than you might want. I wouldn't want that now
Speaker 1: in my life, but at that time there was some
Speaker 1: use in it. But I did ultimately hit a point
Speaker 1: very quickly where I went like, I don't need somebody
Speaker 1: to make all my decisions. I don't want somebody to
Speaker 1: make all my decisions. But boy, I noticed in a
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people that stayed there for
Speaker 1: a long time that really did want that. You know.
Speaker 1: Everything was like, well, I'm gonna ask my sponsor what
Speaker 1: they think. I'm gonna ask my sponsor what they think,
Speaker 1: and I think getting feedback is always a great idea.
Speaker 1: After a while, it just sort of creeped me out
Speaker 1: a little bit. This like I'm gonna run every decision
Speaker 1: I make or everything I think by another person to
Speaker 1: see what they think. And so I think that's endemic
Speaker 1: to this, this question of working with a spiritual teacher
Speaker 1: or a sponsor, because we are dealing with matters that
Speaker 1: guidance is important and useful, right, and it's just like
Speaker 1: how far does that guidance go and and what are
Speaker 1: the limits on it. I don't think it's as black
Speaker 1: and white as we might like it to be, but
Speaker 1: I do agree with you that most often it's easy,
Speaker 1: at least from the outside, to see the abuse of
Speaker 1: that fantastic question. I'd like to speak to several parts
Speaker 1: of it, and so full disclosure, I have written a
Speaker 1: lot of recovery materials. As twelve we're talking about twelve
Speaker 1: step material I've been in a twelve step recovery group
Speaker 1: and a ghost written for a lot of twelve steps authors.
Speaker 1: So I want to speak to both the twelve steps
Speaker 1: and other things related to it. So, for example, the
Speaker 1: twenty four year old who is caught in what twelve
Speaker 1: step people will call stating thinking and doesn't really know
Speaker 1: how to make some some basic decisions. There, it might
Speaker 1: be necessary for the people who love him or her
Speaker 1: to do an intervention, and that would be something completely
Speaker 1: outside of what the sponsor would be at the center of.
Speaker 1: So the sponsorship role might be a piece of what's
Speaker 1: necessary at that particular place and time. That said it, yes,
Speaker 1: there's always whatever. Someone has a leadership role, or a
Speaker 1: mentoring role, or a sponsorship role, or a spiritual teaching role. Um,
Speaker 1: they need to exercise their discernment very consistently to be
Speaker 1: able to make sure that they are never putting their
Speaker 1: desires or needs or concerns ahead of the student. They're
Speaker 1: always got to be when service at the student. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the student or the mentee or whomever to sponsor also
Speaker 1: has to be exercising their own discernment. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the word discernment, which I use a lot in both
Speaker 1: of my books on spiritual teacher, I will give a
Speaker 1: big shout out here to the twelve step programs because
Speaker 1: they use that word discernment over and over and over,
Speaker 1: and that is essentially building the the ability through getting
Speaker 1: to know yourself, through paying attention through hard and sometimes
Speaker 1: not so hard experience, being able to know whom to trust,
Speaker 1: what to trust. We're back to this whole notion of
Speaker 1: fear again, right, When do you trust fear? And when
Speaker 1: do you not? When are you when is it appropriate?
Speaker 1: Defeated and how much? And when is it not? Sense
Speaker 1: of discernment is at the heart of all this, And
Speaker 1: in both my books, just as in twelve step programs,
Speaker 1: I encourage people to build that discernment. And that fits
Speaker 1: very well with any spiritual tradition that has what some
Speaker 1: I'm called a mystical component, where you're essentially challenged to
Speaker 1: be fully prescent and fully engage, as opposed to check
Speaker 1: out into interest state or to check out into mir metings.
Speaker 1: And here's the rest of the interview with Scott Edelstein.
Speaker 1: You write in the book at one point, all of
Speaker 1: us who have spiritual teachers are sometimes tempted to treat
Speaker 1: them as our surrogate parents. This is especially true when
Speaker 1: we face great stress, pain, or uns certainty. And I
Speaker 1: do think it's that that ladder piece that when we
Speaker 1: face great stress, fear, or uncertainty, that we are in
Speaker 1: need of more guidance. I think Discernment is the is
Speaker 1: the key there. And part of I think what's in
Speaker 1: that word is that discernment means you have to have
Speaker 1: knowledge of the situation of the people involved in all that.
Speaker 1: So we can't make some blanket statements because discernment really
Speaker 1: is being able to take the things into consideration in
Speaker 1: those moments. Well, I'd like to add a confession here
Speaker 1: if I may, and that is because you bring up
Speaker 1: the classic situation where we go, I can't trust myself
Speaker 1: right now, and so I need to consult with someone else.
Speaker 1: And I'm in that situation now. So I had fairly
Speaker 1: recently that Steve Hagen on uh, Steve Hagen wrote Blues
Speaker 1: and played in Simple Meditation. Now we're never a couple
Speaker 1: of other books. He's a longtime friend. I vote his
Speaker 1: meditation center, Dharma Field. I would consider him my teacher
Speaker 1: as well as my friend. However, belonged to a synagogue
Speaker 1: where we were. You know, I know the rabbi well.
Speaker 1: So over the last year, things that are happening in
Speaker 1: our world, in this country, in the world in general,
Speaker 1: in this country in particular, have been completely involving the President,
Speaker 1: United States Congress and so on, completely outside the realm
Speaker 1: of anything I thought was even possible. I mean right now,
Speaker 1: and I should add that today's date is July two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, and right now the whole country is grappling
Speaker 1: with the fact that it appears that the essentially the
Speaker 1: entire political right has been played by Russian operatives. Now
Speaker 1: that's something that would if if I wrote it in
Speaker 1: a thriller, editors would go that ridiculous, will never publish
Speaker 1: this novel. Yet that's what's happening. So this means I
Speaker 1: have to be watching my own mind, my own situation,
Speaker 1: because part of my brain is having to deal with
Speaker 1: and every day were reality fits well beyond my imagination,
Speaker 1: and what have I decided to do. I'm actually I'm
Speaker 1: not going to Steve Hagan. Why Because for all I know,
Speaker 1: he's a wonderful human being. I love him, he's a
Speaker 1: great guy. Um, but he's no fan of of of
Speaker 1: what's going on, and I'm actually worried And maybe maybe
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be this way, but I'm worried, um that
Speaker 1: will wind up commiserating about what a mess of countries it.
Speaker 1: So I've decided I'm going to the Rabbi and saying
Speaker 1: I'm coming here and I'm talking to you periodically for
Speaker 1: half an hour, and your your job is to help
Speaker 1: me keep my feet on the ground in my head
Speaker 1: on straight. And for that I decided that he was
Speaker 1: the better person. Might just be a friend, right to
Speaker 1: make that decision. But that's a classic example of how
Speaker 1: to reach out in the right way, at least, I hope,
Speaker 1: the right way at the right time, to whoever the
Speaker 1: right person is. That is a great example also of
Speaker 1: you know, going to the right person for the right thing.
Speaker 1: And Audi Ashanti used as an example of it would
Speaker 1: be useful to think of your spiritual teacher in some
Speaker 1: cases like you would a university professor. If you're in
Speaker 1: a math class with a university professor, they know math,
Speaker 1: and you go there for math, right, but you're probably
Speaker 1: not going to ask that person what car you should
Speaker 1: buy or you know, what girl you should date? Right,
Speaker 1: you go to the right person for the right thing.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: not every question we have is answered by a spiritual teacher.
Speaker 1: That there are other experts in the world that we
Speaker 1: can go to for for different things. And kind of
Speaker 1: a point you make throughout the whole book is that
Speaker 1: if we think that one person has the answer to everything,
Speaker 1: we're probably putting that person on a pedestal that is
Speaker 1: not healthy for them or us. I will add that
Speaker 1: you brought up a really useful caveot, which is that
Speaker 1: if you're thinking is way off, If, for example, um,
Speaker 1: you're seriously down the road of a life threatening addiction
Speaker 1: and so you're just not thinking sright, then it may
Speaker 1: be useful to ask a spiritual teacher or almost anyone who,
Speaker 1: you know, what what kind of car should I buy?
Speaker 1: Should I buy this Maserati? I just got a raise
Speaker 1: from eleven dollars an hour the twelve fifty an hour,
Speaker 1: and the maseratis are on sale. You don't you know,
Speaker 1: a spiritual teacher will probably be able to give as
Speaker 1: good an answer as anyone else as hell milk, And
Speaker 1: you might need it if you're if for some reason
Speaker 1: they believe and they can see that you're thinking is
Speaker 1: way way out of the law. Yep, I agree, And
Speaker 1: I do think that that's what makes some of this
Speaker 1: so confusing, is it's very difficult to peel apart spiritual
Speaker 1: from emotional from mental from I mean, these things are
Speaker 1: all tied together. And so it's not as simple as like,
Speaker 1: oh well, okay, if it's case a, you ask this
Speaker 1: person and for this, yes, that person. I'm I'm certainly
Speaker 1: not insinuating that it's that simple. May I speak to
Speaker 1: your use of the word spiritual there, because I think
Speaker 1: you raised a really profound issue. This word spiritual has
Speaker 1: done as a great service and a great disservice. So
Speaker 1: first the service is it's reunited the secular and the religious,
Speaker 1: which we split decades ago, and which we were foolish
Speaker 1: to split. Um, we should have just become more discerning
Speaker 1: about the two. So now supposedly things can be divided
Speaker 1: into the religious and the secular, which is absurd. Thou
Speaker 1: shalt not murder is not a merely religious concept, but
Speaker 1: it surely is. It's in the Ten Commandments, but it's
Speaker 1: also enshrined in secular law. It belongs in both, and
Speaker 1: so much of the human codes of conduct belong in both.
Speaker 1: So those those gots split out, I think, to our detriment,
Speaker 1: and spirituality term manages to bring them back in. However,
Speaker 1: it does so unfortunately, and this is now I'm going
Speaker 1: to dissa a little bit. Um. It doesn't by watering
Speaker 1: it down because the terms spirituality is very vague and
Speaker 1: it's been co opted by lots of people. Some people
Speaker 1: think that means talking to angels. The other thing it
Speaker 1: means getting shivers going up your spine. Other people think
Speaker 1: it means helping out at the local food shell. And
Speaker 1: what of course it means, I would argue, if you're
Speaker 1: going to put any meaning on it is the good wolf, kindness, bravery, love,
Speaker 1: all those things. Well, by the way, a quick cooda
Speaker 1: on fear, I neglected to say that bravery requires fear,
Speaker 1: and so there's another example of how fear belongs to
Speaker 1: both wolves. You cannot be brave if you're unafraid. When
Speaker 1: a child runs down into the street in front of
Speaker 1: a moving car because they don't know better, that is
Speaker 1: hardly bravery. But when you run out in front of
Speaker 1: that car to push the child out of the way
Speaker 1: to save their life, that's bravery. And as you do so,
Speaker 1: you may be scared to death, but you know it's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do. Absolutely, yes, Courage require some
Speaker 1: degree of fear, otherwise it's not really courage. Near the
Speaker 1: end of the book, you say, and this just made
Speaker 1: me laugh because it's just it's so dry and and
Speaker 1: just a single sentence, and it's so obvious. But also
Speaker 1: there's just something about you said sometimes spiritual study and
Speaker 1: practice can be surprisingly boring. It's true, indeed, it is.
Speaker 1: And what you're suggesting there is that this is a
Speaker 1: fairly subtle thing. But a lot of people to get
Speaker 1: into quote spirituality or study with a spiritual teaching because
Speaker 1: what they really want is some kind of thrill, and
Speaker 1: that can be everything from a kind of pseudo sexual
Speaker 1: body sensation, you know, some kind of spiritual orgasm. Who
Speaker 1: I want to feel the Combelini rise, Who I want
Speaker 1: to feel this? I want to feel that? Or a
Speaker 1: desire for some kind of big head exploding insight. And
Speaker 1: so what they really want is to acquire some kind
Speaker 1: of spiritual good or they might want some spiritual toys
Speaker 1: to play with. I want the power to levitate and
Speaker 1: the power to do this, or the power to do that.
Speaker 1: And let me just say, really clearly, that's all bogus bullshit,
Speaker 1: none of it is. I can tell you what spirituality
Speaker 1: is not, and it's none of those things. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens is people go they
Speaker 1: get very excited at first and either think they have
Speaker 1: an idea of spiritual growth and they either feel like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm getting smarter, I'm getting better, I'm getting this, I'm
Speaker 1: getting that. And if there's anything that might typify growing
Speaker 1: up in the quote spiritual unquote realm, it's beginning to
Speaker 1: loosen your grip on the damn getting in the realm
Speaker 1: of human connection and a human maturation and growing up.
Speaker 1: It's not about getting. It's about giving, and it's about
Speaker 1: doing things together. That's another area that it just makes
Speaker 1: me think back to alcoholism and addiction, because you know,
Speaker 1: even in a itself, it often talks about how that
Speaker 1: alcohol is a substitute for a spiritual experience or a
Speaker 1: spiritual life, and I think it is very easy to
Speaker 1: think of spirituality as being something that can provide some
Speaker 1: experience of being alive, like alcohol and drugs do, but
Speaker 1: it does it in a very different way. The similarity
Speaker 1: there is it's about being connected to things. I think
Speaker 1: that is what at least at the heart of addiction
Speaker 1: for me was was about being connected, and at the
Speaker 1: heart of spirituality that is also the thing that I
Speaker 1: think remains most essential and elemental to me, is to
Speaker 1: be connected to life and it's various components, but I
Speaker 1: also agree with you. More and more, I'm realizing that
Speaker 1: the path of spirituality is one of subtraction rather than addition.
Speaker 1: That's a really lovely way to put it. Subtraction rather
Speaker 1: than addiction. If you don't mind, I would like to
Speaker 1: encourage your listeners to sit with that for a while,
Speaker 1: because Arts just said something deeply important, and it might
Speaker 1: be the only time that happens for like the next
Speaker 1: six or eight episodes, folks, so you might as well
Speaker 1: give a sh There's actually two pieces to this that
Speaker 1: I'd like to call out. The first is, yes, belonging,
Speaker 1: whether the word is connecting or belonging. It is one
Speaker 1: of our deepest, if not our very deepest human needs.
Speaker 1: And that's why one of the reasons the twelve step
Speaker 1: programs are so effective is that you're they don't work
Speaker 1: for everybody, but they are a place to belong. Now,
Speaker 1: that's also one reason why the National Rifle Association of
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan continued because their place is to belong.
Speaker 1: So belonging also requires some discernment. You know, you can
Speaker 1: belong to good will organizations and you can belong to
Speaker 1: bad will organizations. UM but that is one of the
Speaker 1: defining characteristics often of what people call the spiritual quest
Speaker 1: and of twelve Steps and recovery. But there's another one
Speaker 1: that I'd like to also highlight, and that's the giving
Speaker 1: up of all control, understanding that we are not in control.
Speaker 1: That is also a hallmark of all steps, and it's
Speaker 1: a hallmark of what goes by the name of spiritual
Speaker 1: opening or spiritual development or whatnot. And in fact, my
Speaker 1: own favorite book on recovery in the Twelve Steps is
Speaker 1: called Recovery the Sacred Art by Rommy Shapiro. Rammy is
Speaker 1: an ecumenical rabbi. He's the only rabbi I know of
Speaker 1: who's had a piece he's written in best Buddhist writing
Speaker 1: of the year. So he travels around the world. He's
Speaker 1: he is a spiritual teacher. It's been a long time,
Speaker 1: but he was a guest on this show, probably a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty episodes ago, which it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: how long we've been doing this, but yes, he was.
Speaker 1: He's out there, folks, if you want to find him,
Speaker 1: and you can find him. Ramy is a recovering food addict.
Speaker 1: I have eaten with him and I've watched. He's the
Speaker 1: only person I've ever uh but watched to which the
Speaker 1: phrase food seeking behavior erupted in my mind. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could see he's a recovery addict. It's a wonderful book,
Speaker 1: and it is not written for people who have some
Speaker 1: identifiable um addiction what or what we would normally call
Speaker 1: an addition. Uh Well, he said is we are all
Speaker 1: addicted to control, and that that is a fundamental issue,
Speaker 1: and that what we ultimately we all wind up, whether
Speaker 1: we have a substance abuse issue, a supposed behavioral addiction,
Speaker 1: or none of the above, we all wind up on
Speaker 1: our knees at some point going I have no control.
Speaker 1: I need God or the universe or a higher powers helper,
Speaker 1: however you wanted to find that. And I would argue
Speaker 1: that that is a defining characteristic of spirituality in all
Speaker 1: traditions and outside of all traditions, and in recovery and
Speaker 1: in growing up. I agree. I always caveat that with
Speaker 1: the the idea of the Serenity prayer, which is the
Speaker 1: recognition of trying to recognize what we can I don't
Speaker 1: think the word is control. The word and the prayer
Speaker 1: is actually what we can change, what we can influence.
Speaker 1: And so for me it's been interesting because on one hand,
Speaker 1: for most of my time and recovery and all that,
Speaker 1: the lesson I needed most was not the one to accept,
Speaker 1: but it was the one to have the courage to change,
Speaker 1: because I had and still have a tendency sometimes to
Speaker 1: just be like at effort right or just to let
Speaker 1: things go. So for a lot of time for me,
Speaker 1: it was about having the courage to to step in
Speaker 1: and do the change. But lately, for me, what mostly
Speaker 1: I've been working with is just the limits of that
Speaker 1: of really realizing the difference between the ability to change,
Speaker 1: the ability to influence, the ability to have effect. But
Speaker 1: where that that does really stop short of the ability
Speaker 1: to control, and really realizing the limits of action and
Speaker 1: change and improvement and where that stuff just ends. I've
Speaker 1: been I've been dealing with that a lot lately. And
Speaker 1: then this notion of the ability to change really breaks
Speaker 1: out into two uh seeming mirror images, but they're both
Speaker 1: part of the same whole. The first is the ability
Speaker 1: to UH set a goal follow it, which we Americans
Speaker 1: are very familiar with because that's that's baked into our culture.
Speaker 1: You've got you want to change, fine, determined to change,
Speaker 1: work toward it, um envision at YadA, YadA. But they're
Speaker 1: especially in spirituality. There's a more subtle but I would
Speaker 1: argue typically more important and also typically more difficult aspect
Speaker 1: to it, which is not so much the ability to
Speaker 1: change yourself, where you grab yourself and haul yourself somewhere else,
Speaker 1: but the willingness to be changed, where you open yourself
Speaker 1: up to the complete unknown, knowing that you don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, don't know what the solution is,
Speaker 1: don't know what the future will be. Just know that
Speaker 1: where you are right now is untenable, and that you
Speaker 1: ask for help in changing. Whether that help is with
Speaker 1: what the twelve step programs call a higher power, whether
Speaker 1: it's other even beings, and whether you don't even know.
Speaker 1: But that willingness to be changed is I would argue
Speaker 1: all important. I think it's really profound and beautiful. I
Speaker 1: focus a lot, and I think a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: the show is about the ability of us to change
Speaker 1: and and to have a positive influence in the world
Speaker 1: and on ourselves. But I think what you said there
Speaker 1: is so important is that the willingness to be changed
Speaker 1: by things other than our own will is really the
Speaker 1: critical thing. So I'd like to bring this back to
Speaker 1: spiritual teachers because this applies in a variety of ways.
Speaker 1: First of all, someone who goes to a spiritual teacher
Speaker 1: and says, I need to change, change me. The correct
Speaker 1: answer from the spiritual teachers, you're right, you need to change.
Speaker 1: I am not changing. That is not my job. But
Speaker 1: what I can do is watch if you fall off
Speaker 1: a tree limb, or you're going too far out on
Speaker 1: a tree limb. I can tell you that if you
Speaker 1: fall off and hurt yourself, I can help you back up,
Speaker 1: back up again. You don't have to get up. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that the spiritual teacher can do,
Speaker 1: but they absolutely cannot change you and will not change you.
Speaker 1: Um And if they think if they go, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: change you, then run hell away because you're dealing with
Speaker 1: Charlotte and the predator or a narcissist or or somebody
Speaker 1: who's not the real thing. Now, the other thing that
Speaker 1: will often happen is the spiritual teacher. The spiritual teacher
Speaker 1: will just say, if they're not good, oh follow this,
Speaker 1: follow this program, one size fits all, and then you
Speaker 1: will change in the right way. I would be also
Speaker 1: very very careful of all these one size fits all situations.
Speaker 1: On top of that, we can go people go to
Speaker 1: spiritual teachers and say they want to change, but there's
Speaker 1: a paradox built into that, which is, well, why aren't
Speaker 1: you changing already? If I want a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: I will go get a cup of coffee. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to to to stop telling people I want a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee. Someday that's my goal. They will they
Speaker 1: will start saying, well, go get your damn coffee. So
Speaker 1: part of what a good spiritual teacher can do is
Speaker 1: point out where the person is resisting the change that
Speaker 1: they need, and they might say something about it um
Speaker 1: or they might help the students wake up to what
Speaker 1: they're actually doing, what they're saying versus what they're actually doing. Certainly,
Speaker 1: they might teach a particular practice like meditation that can
Speaker 1: be useful. But then that's it's not that they're doing
Speaker 1: it's to make that change. It's just something helpful and supported.
Speaker 1: And then the last thing that people can get caught
Speaker 1: up in is um. People will go to a spiritual
Speaker 1: teacher and say, am I changing? Am I better? Now?
Speaker 1: I'm I am I, this, am I that, And often
Speaker 1: the spiritual teaches job at that point is to say,
Speaker 1: stop worrying about it. No, you're you're hoping. You're coming
Speaker 1: to me and hoping for a grade of A in spirituality.
Speaker 1: And a good teacher is not going to be handing
Speaker 1: out that kind of candy. They'll just keep paying attention,
Speaker 1: just keep watching, just keep living, just keep doing your best,
Speaker 1: and I will try to keep you. I will help
Speaker 1: you when you seem to be either going too far
Speaker 1: straight or when you're lost. I might be able to
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of guidance. That's wonderful. We're
Speaker 1: nearing the very end of our time here. What I
Speaker 1: did want to ask you to do real quick though,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember where it is. I'll find it
Speaker 1: and put it in the show notes. But you've got
Speaker 1: an article somewhere and maybe you can remember where it is,
Speaker 1: um And we're not going to go through it all
Speaker 1: right now. But it's about things to bear in mind,
Speaker 1: or questions to ask, or how to go to a
Speaker 1: new spiritual center. If you're like the new person going
Speaker 1: to a spiritual center, do you remember where you wrote
Speaker 1: that and where that is? Yes? Well, actually, uh, I
Speaker 1: wrote that in nineteen seventy nine or night, and I
Speaker 1: sent that around from from magazine to magazine and magazine
Speaker 1: no one would touch it, and then it took over.
Speaker 1: I took I believe almost how many years with this advantage.
Speaker 1: It took thirty six years or something like that before
Speaker 1: someone would print it. It's now up online. It's called
Speaker 1: when You're the New Kid at the Spiritual Center. I
Speaker 1: think it's on in two or three publications. One of them,
Speaker 1: I believe is The Edge, which I think would be
Speaker 1: the Edge dot com. But it's also appears as the
Speaker 1: appendix in the User's Guide to Spiritual Teachers. And so
Speaker 1: it's a guy for someone who's showing up at a
Speaker 1: spiritual organization that they're not familiar with for the first time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like you're going to a new
Speaker 1: Lutheran church. It might be a tradition you're utterly unfamiliar with,
Speaker 1: or it might even be your own tradition. And you
Speaker 1: might be a Catholic, but this is the first time
Speaker 1: you've walked into a Cistercian monastery, for example, and you
Speaker 1: don't don't know what do e'spect. So it's a brief,
Speaker 1: very practical, very simple guy about what you do and
Speaker 1: what not to do. Yeah, I thought it was really
Speaker 1: useful as somebody who's wandered into more strange situations than
Speaker 1: I can count. By just showing up at spiritual centers,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty comfortable just walking in and seeing what happens,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people get nervous, and I just
Speaker 1: thought it was a very useful guy to kind of
Speaker 1: just to help make that experience go a little easier. Well, Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the book and I really enjoyed this conversation. Um,
Speaker 1: it's been great. Thank you so much. Aaron, Okay, take
Speaker 1: care all right, Well bye yea. If what you just
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