Speaker 1: How can we expect our meditation practice to bear fruit
Speaker 1: if we're ignoring you know, one of the most primary
Speaker 1: things about us in our meditation Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Ralph de la Rosa, a psychotherapist in private
Speaker 1: practice in New York City. Ralph specializes in helping people
Speaker 1: resolve their childhood traumas, anxiety, depression, and intimacy issues. His
Speaker 1: work has been featured in CNN, g Q, Self, Women's Health,
Speaker 1: and many other publications. And podcasts. He was named among
Speaker 1: SEMA's next generation of Meditation teachers. His new book is
Speaker 1: The Monkey Is the Messenger Meditation and what You're busy
Speaker 1: mind is trying to tell you. Hi, Ralph, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Ah, thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Your new book is called The Monkey is the Messenger
Speaker 1: Meditation and what You're busy mind is trying to tell you.
Speaker 1: And we're going to get to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, there's lots of great stuff and
Speaker 1: I love the book, but let's start like we normally
Speaker 1: do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with
Speaker 1: her grandson and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a
Speaker 1: second and looks up at his grandmother and he says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah, it's a beautiful parable,
Speaker 1: and it's a one that outlines um a way that
Speaker 1: any of us could approach the path of spirituality or
Speaker 1: conscious evolution or personal development, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: And I think the beauty of it really lies in
Speaker 1: its start simplicity. You know, it's pointing out that we
Speaker 1: do have our more survival oriented states such as rage
Speaker 1: and fear and numbness or dissociation, and then we also
Speaker 1: have these other parts of us that are capable of
Speaker 1: profound compassion, insight, inspiration, calm is kind of more desirable
Speaker 1: mind states, if you will, or higher order emotional functions,
Speaker 1: if you will. But you know, the truth is, we
Speaker 1: are beings with neural networks that are the most sophisticated
Speaker 1: things in the known universe. We're far more kaleidoscopic, I think,
Speaker 1: and and more complex than just sort of that the binary.
Speaker 1: So uh that's presented in the parable. Although I love
Speaker 1: the parable. So to answer your question with a question here,
Speaker 1: what if the so called that wolf is actually a
Speaker 1: really good wolf deep down that's just gotten confused, you know,
Speaker 1: not just that, but what if it's a wolf that
Speaker 1: could really help us out, or perhaps a wolf that
Speaker 1: desperately needs our help, and and here we are sort
Speaker 1: of trying to starve it out of existence. So I
Speaker 1: think that it's true that, yes, we do have defensive
Speaker 1: sides of us that are born of our limbic system
Speaker 1: and the stress response, and that definitely contrast with the
Speaker 1: more open, kind of deeper nature that's inherent in all
Speaker 1: of us. And I also think that we have a
Speaker 1: third kind of wolf, wolf that we really don't look
Speaker 1: too too terribly often, wolves that we try to avoid,
Speaker 1: or really wolves, and those would be the wolves that
Speaker 1: that hold our hurts and our vulnerabilities and our shame
Speaker 1: and our traumas. And I think that the so called
Speaker 1: bad wolf, or really the defensive wolf, the wolf that
Speaker 1: gets pegged as our ego in the Eastern traditions, are
Speaker 1: actually trying to protect maybe those more vulnerable wolves that
Speaker 1: we have that sort of block our deeper nature. That's great.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start off by something you say early on,
Speaker 1: which is the truest sentence I know. There's all is
Speaker 1: more to the story. Indeed there is. It's so tempting
Speaker 1: to take life at face value sometimes, right, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so tempting to to slip into binary thinking. For example,
Speaker 1: you know, good versus bad, But there's always deeper layers
Speaker 1: to everything. What we respond to in our world. What
Speaker 1: I was trying to point to with that sentence is
Speaker 1: what we respond to in our world is so often
Speaker 1: our perception. But our perception is so limited in nature,
Speaker 1: and you know, we don't have access to the full
Speaker 1: truth most of the time, if not all of the time.
Speaker 1: And you know so, so our brains and our bodies
Speaker 1: neurochemically respond to whatever it is that we're perceiving and
Speaker 1: taking into account that you know, our perception is so
Speaker 1: highly limited, I think our lives are always calling for
Speaker 1: a deeper investigation of what's really going on exactly. The
Speaker 1: book is idle. The monkey is the messenger, So talk
Speaker 1: to me about the monkey. How is the monkey the messenger?
Speaker 1: And you sort of hit this a little bit as
Speaker 1: you sort of describe your thoughts on the parablel but
Speaker 1: I'd like you to be, you know, just go into
Speaker 1: a little bit more detail. You say that the monkey
Speaker 1: is on our side, that it's not the problem, and
Speaker 1: it never was the problem. So maybe first what is
Speaker 1: the monkey and then in what way is he on
Speaker 1: our side or she on our side. Yeah, so the
Speaker 1: monkey is referring to the buddhas metaphor of of the
Speaker 1: monkey mind. You know that we have this mind that
Speaker 1: is sort of wild and untamed and undomesticated, and with
Speaker 1: these thoughts that, just like a monkey swing from swinging
Speaker 1: from vine to vine, you know, we have these thoughts
Speaker 1: that don't really stay in one place for two terribly
Speaker 1: long sort of jumping around, and and just like maybe
Speaker 1: a monkey would not really caring about the mess that's
Speaker 1: left behind in its wake. And so you know that
Speaker 1: that monkey, my endedness can definitely be the scourge of
Speaker 1: meditators and and seen as an obstacle or perhaps a
Speaker 1: primitive sort of dirty beast that we would do well
Speaker 1: to get rid of or to go around in some way,
Speaker 1: or at least learn how to ignore. And I really
Speaker 1: wanted to write a book that asked a different question,
Speaker 1: that asked the question, what if we were to take
Speaker 1: the monkey mind as our teacher, or to apply a
Speaker 1: growth mindset to that universal experience of repetitive thought and rumination,
Speaker 1: would have anything to show us? And the more I
Speaker 1: sat with that question, the more answers I started coming
Speaker 1: up with, and and eventually those answers filled up a
Speaker 1: whole book. So, um, I mean the monkey. I think
Speaker 1: the most simple example I could point to in terms
Speaker 1: of the monkey actually being on our side is, uh,
Speaker 1: the way in which monkey mindedness is driving people in droves,
Speaker 1: I mean, really in an unprecedented fashion to the practice
Speaker 1: of meditation, right that the we know that that distraction
Speaker 1: and mind wandering is corrosive to our emotional well being.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I think really as a society,
Speaker 1: emotionally we're kind of bottoming out, and with that bottoming
Speaker 1: outcomes us seeking more life affirming choices and asking deeper
Speaker 1: questions about who we are and you know, what is
Speaker 1: this life really for? And in that way, it's kind
Speaker 1: of convoluted, it's kind of layered. But the monkey mind is,
Speaker 1: you know, creating this situation in which we're compelled to
Speaker 1: go deeper with our lives. And that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: You say that the monkey mind drives people towards meditation
Speaker 1: and away from it, and that the monkey is both
Speaker 1: asking us to meditate but making that meditation difficult. So
Speaker 1: you know, certainly, on the one hand, monkey mind, as
Speaker 1: you're saying the benefit and We'll get into some deeper
Speaker 1: benefits later, but I think the initial benefit, right is
Speaker 1: it drives us towards meditation, but if we're not careful,
Speaker 1: it also will drive us out of meditation, certainly. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's another big piece of my motivation for writing this
Speaker 1: book was just seeing so many people disheartened and and
Speaker 1: frustrated and turned away from the practice of meditation because
Speaker 1: they thought they were quote unquote doing it wrong or
Speaker 1: they couldn't quote unquote empty out of thought or clear
Speaker 1: their minds. And you know, that's such an inherent aspect
Speaker 1: of the practice. And even that isn't a bad thing
Speaker 1: that the monkey mind is such a challenge, that are
Speaker 1: incessant thinking is such a challenge in meditation. There's all
Speaker 1: kinds of benefits associated with having the experience of distraction
Speaker 1: and then returning from it over and over again. Um,
Speaker 1: it's really an opportunity to work on our relationship to ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity to work on our relationship to life
Speaker 1: when things don't go our way, or when things are
Speaker 1: catastrophe or you know, when we drop the ball or
Speaker 1: feel like failures in some way, and then there's a
Speaker 1: lot of neurological benefits associated with that process of getting
Speaker 1: distracted and returning what my first teacher called the dance
Speaker 1: of forgetting and remembering in meditation. You know that that
Speaker 1: this is We know from science that that dance is
Speaker 1: actually strengthening the prefrontal cortex, which is the executive command
Speaker 1: center of the brain and just associated with tenacity and
Speaker 1: willpower and sense of value, sense of self and so
Speaker 1: many really really important mental emotional qualities in our lives. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the monkey is making life difficult, and that's asking us
Speaker 1: to meditate. And then the monkey is making meditation difficult,
Speaker 1: and that too, is a setup for something that's really
Speaker 1: really good. Ultimate. One of the things that this book
Speaker 1: does really well that I love is I think you
Speaker 1: really bring psychology and meditation together in a unique way
Speaker 1: that I've not seen um done in quite this way.
Speaker 1: And so I'm just gonna read something you wrote because
Speaker 1: I think it sort of sets the two sort of
Speaker 1: polls and and we can work between them. But you
Speaker 1: say psychologists might help someone reframe and rewrite their thinking
Speaker 1: to train the monkey, so to speak. Meditators often have
Speaker 1: an equally one dimension approach. They try to kill the monkey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was Jeffrey Rubin who said that psychology
Speaker 1: is really good at showing us what our experience means,
Speaker 1: and meditation is really good at teaching us how to
Speaker 1: show up for that experience. Yeah, like meditation is good
Speaker 1: at showing us how to be here, and then uh,
Speaker 1: psychology teaches us how we got here, teaches us how
Speaker 1: to look and discover how it is as we are
Speaker 1: showing up in this present moment, and that the two
Speaker 1: don't really overlap, and um, that there are two sides
Speaker 1: of one coin, so to speaking, I think it's different.
Speaker 1: I think, um, it's really a ven diagram with a
Speaker 1: lot of with a huge area of overlap in that
Speaker 1: we can learn how to process what's going on with
Speaker 1: us in meditation. I think we should maybe elaborate that
Speaker 1: a little bit for users, because users, for listeners, um,
Speaker 1: because what you get too late in the book is
Speaker 1: really bringing some foundational meditation teachings that a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have studied meditation for a while will be
Speaker 1: familiar with. Whether it be Um shamata, or it be
Speaker 1: Um loving Kindness meditation, or it be tongue lend meditation,
Speaker 1: or whether it be somatic meditation. You bring these different
Speaker 1: practices together, but ultimately at the end you tie these
Speaker 1: into working with are repressed and difficult emotional states in
Speaker 1: the middle of meditation. And again, I think that's for
Speaker 1: me where the bringing together really worked for me, because
Speaker 1: it wasn't that you do meditation over here, then you
Speaker 1: go do psychotherapy over here, and you know, maybe they
Speaker 1: complement each other, but you actually are putting them together
Speaker 1: in one practice. You know. Perhaps a better distillation of
Speaker 1: the passage from the book that you highlighted before that
Speaker 1: also relates to what you're bringing up now is that
Speaker 1: both of those statements point to coping, coping with them
Speaker 1: in some way, just trying to smooth out the rough edges,
Speaker 1: trying to make the ride a little bit less bumpy
Speaker 1: in some way. And neither of those statements, you know
Speaker 1: of like either trying to kill the monkey or or
Speaker 1: just trying to sort of re orient the monkey or
Speaker 1: or recondition the monkey. Neither of them point to what
Speaker 1: I think is really on the table here when we
Speaker 1: do inner work of any kind, and that is transformation
Speaker 1: and and healing at the root level um and I
Speaker 1: think that that is available both in psychotherapy and in
Speaker 1: meditation with the right approaches and what they were ultimately
Speaker 1: designed to bring about in our lives, especially meditation, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, this is my my mission now is to
Speaker 1: bring sort of a deeper emotional intelligence and a trauma
Speaker 1: awareness really to the modern mindfulness world um and and
Speaker 1: display that that you know, these worlds can come together
Speaker 1: in our experience. Right. It's one thing to talk about
Speaker 1: it theoretically, but it's another thing to actually enter into
Speaker 1: an experience where those emotions can come up and are
Speaker 1: given the space to come up, and in fact are
Speaker 1: invited to come up. And then the technique, the inner technology,
Speaker 1: the know how to be with and process and even
Speaker 1: interact with those deeper emotional realities extant within us, can
Speaker 1: bring about a deeper level of change such that what
Speaker 1: we're coping with on the surface level can actually dissolve
Speaker 1: a bit. Which that's a pretty layered statement, and just
Speaker 1: to unpack that a little bit. You know, when we
Speaker 1: talk about coping, we're talking about working with our triggers,
Speaker 1: and our triggers are on the surface, right, But our
Speaker 1: triggers are only on the surface, you know, our our
Speaker 1: susceptibility to being piste off or depressed, or or to
Speaker 1: feel unworthy by some sort of event in our lives
Speaker 1: that only exists on the surface, that hot button, if you,
Speaker 1: because it's connected to something down in the in the
Speaker 1: at the root level, down in the depths of our being,
Speaker 1: some sort of unprocessed and unhealed hurt or or terror
Speaker 1: or or or shame or or something else. And so
Speaker 1: my experience has been we can absolutely go to that
Speaker 1: route and work at that level so that the trigger,
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of taken care of on its own.
Speaker 1: So people will be familiar with that idea of going
Speaker 1: and working with um source issues, whether that be you know,
Speaker 1: typically in psychotherapy, where you go and you sort of
Speaker 1: look at, Okay, here's the pattern that's happening in my life.
Speaker 1: Let me trace that back to potentially immutately, some forms
Speaker 1: of therapy will say, let's trace that back to what
Speaker 1: was happening with you, what happened in your childhood, what
Speaker 1: were your formative experiences. UM. So that's like a form
Speaker 1: of of therapy that a lot of people will be
Speaker 1: familiar with. But let's talk about how adding the practices
Speaker 1: of mindfulness and meditation to that make that process stronger.
Speaker 1: There's a lot here. It really is The first thing
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is there's this general principle of
Speaker 1: mindfulness around how we sort of take a step back
Speaker 1: from the contents of our minds, be a cognitive, emotional,
Speaker 1: or otherwise. We don't have to be all up in
Speaker 1: our experience, kind of bound up with what's going on,
Speaker 1: and then that dictating how we feel and how we respond.
Speaker 1: That we can in the process of of meditation, and
Speaker 1: especially with if our meditation entails some level of embodiment
Speaker 1: to it, we can sort of take a step back
Speaker 1: and put a little bit of space between us and
Speaker 1: what's going on, so that what's going on with us
Speaker 1: isn't so dictated by it. Then I think there's a
Speaker 1: real strength and power and certainly a resilience that is
Speaker 1: engendered by having a daily practice, which is I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just no substitute for having a specific amount of
Speaker 1: time carved out to sit down with yourself and go
Speaker 1: inside every single day and engage in the process that
Speaker 1: you know, it might go great, it might you know,
Speaker 1: be awful, or it might you know, seem to just
Speaker 1: fall apart, but we show up for it, and we
Speaker 1: show up for ourselves every day, and that in and
Speaker 1: of itself will open so many doors, and and certainly
Speaker 1: it can open a door to a whole arena wherein
Speaker 1: we can work with ourselves at this deeper level that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. So those are those are just two
Speaker 1: out of so many ways I think mindfulness really bolsters
Speaker 1: the work of transformation. And here's the rest of the
Speaker 1: interview with Ralph Taylor Rosa. You use the word embodiment
Speaker 1: there for a minute, and I'd like to spend a
Speaker 1: minute there because at some point in the book you
Speaker 1: say something along the lines of that doing meditation that
Speaker 1: emphasizes embodiment is often the best way to get over
Speaker 1: some of the early hurdles that people face in meditation.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that maybe what embodiment is in this
Speaker 1: sense and why it's so helpful in that way? Sure? So,
Speaker 1: what I mean by embodiment is simply inhabiting our physical
Speaker 1: being with our awareness and our attention, which we can
Speaker 1: just use our capacity to feel sensation. You know, even
Speaker 1: for the listener right now, you can as you're listening,
Speaker 1: you can begin to feel the soles of your feet
Speaker 1: and all of the you know, aliveness that is coursing
Speaker 1: through your toes and your arches, etcetera. And in that
Speaker 1: same way, we could use that capacity to feel to
Speaker 1: draw our attention down into the body, out of the
Speaker 1: head where we spend way too much of our time,
Speaker 1: and down into kind of these recesses of the torso
Speaker 1: and limbs and and appendages and whatnot. And it's in
Speaker 1: that process that we are not only getting out of
Speaker 1: our head in terms of where our attention seems to
Speaker 1: be focused. Um, you know, I I talk about this
Speaker 1: a lot in classes lately. There's this John mulaney uh
Speaker 1: Netflix special that came out not too long ago where
Speaker 1: he he says that this body, this is just what
Speaker 1: carries my head from room to room. But that's how
Speaker 1: so many of us live as if we're floating head right.
Speaker 1: But there's not only taking our where are attention seems
Speaker 1: to be centralized in placing it somewhere else in a
Speaker 1: our being. But there's actually a bit of neuroscience that
Speaker 1: shows that when we do that, we switch from left
Speaker 1: hemisphere dominant brain activation and more towards a right hemisphere
Speaker 1: dominant brain activation. And what that means for the lay
Speaker 1: person is, you know, the the right hemisphere of the
Speaker 1: brain is non linguistic in nature, it is pre language.
Speaker 1: It's also more abstracted, more it's a region of our
Speaker 1: brain that's more in tune with the interdependence and the
Speaker 1: oneness of all things. The major point here is that
Speaker 1: it's non linguistic. It doesn't chatter, it's not involved in
Speaker 1: that inner dialogue that so many of us, you know,
Speaker 1: are are tormented by or can't sleep at night because of.
Speaker 1: And so when we begin to descend our awareness and
Speaker 1: attention down into the body, it takes some training, but
Speaker 1: you know, almost right away will notice that the moments
Speaker 1: that my attention is in the soles of my feet,
Speaker 1: or in my belly, or wherever our moments that I'm
Speaker 1: not in the chattering mind, necessarily, to me, that holds
Speaker 1: great promise and signals a direction that that meditators certainly
Speaker 1: ought to go in, really, because I mean, how can
Speaker 1: we expect our meditation practice to bear fruit if we're
Speaker 1: ignoring you know, one of the most prime marry things
Speaker 1: about us in our meditation, just hanging out at the
Speaker 1: tip of our nose and returning from distractions in our head.
Speaker 1: You know, over and over again, that's actually, to me,
Speaker 1: seems like a pretty limited approach. You know, there's much
Speaker 1: more available to work with. For me, working with the
Speaker 1: body and meditation has been an absolute game changer in
Speaker 1: this regard, and I think that leads us into the
Speaker 1: concept of emotional healing as part of meditation, because there
Speaker 1: is so much research that points to that emotions are
Speaker 1: held in the body. Um. You spend a little bit
Speaker 1: of time in the book talking about how when we
Speaker 1: in the West use the word unconscious right in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, a lot of people think that what
Speaker 1: that really means is the body. And so by going
Speaker 1: into the body a it's a way to work with
Speaker 1: the chattering mind, perhaps more skillfully for people who really
Speaker 1: struggle with that. It starts to take us in the
Speaker 1: direction of this emotional healing that you you get to
Speaker 1: in the book. Yeah. Absolutely. We certainly owe a debt
Speaker 1: of gratitude to the work of Bessel Vanderkelk, who has
Speaker 1: been one of the top researchers of trauma and embody
Speaker 1: based therapies in the healing of trauma for quite a
Speaker 1: long time, and just I think three or four years ago,
Speaker 1: his book The Body Keeps the Score came out and
Speaker 1: really put him on the map in a mainstream kind
Speaker 1: of way. But yeah, we we have so much research
Speaker 1: now that shows that the idea of cellular memory was
Speaker 1: not just kind of hippie stuff after all, that really, um,
Speaker 1: everything that we've been through is really held in our
Speaker 1: physical being. That the body is very much like a diary.
Speaker 1: When we turn to these more somatically focused or body
Speaker 1: based forms of meditation in placing our attention there, this
Speaker 1: is you know, I think part of why our attention
Speaker 1: slips away from us when we place our attention you
Speaker 1: in the soles of our feet and our bellies and
Speaker 1: so on, is that if we're holding emotional wounds or unresolved,
Speaker 1: unprocessed emotional material in our bodies and we're doing like
Speaker 1: a body scanning meditation, for example, then we are necessarily
Speaker 1: interacting with that storehouse of all that we've been through,
Speaker 1: and we can logically expect that at some point things
Speaker 1: are going to start making their way to the surface.
Speaker 1: And again, you know, the monkey mind is not our enemy.
Speaker 1: It's asking us to meditate, it's even asking us to
Speaker 1: turn towards embodiment, and then in this situation that things
Speaker 1: might begin to percolate up from the depths, so to speak.
Speaker 1: That's also not a terrible situation. If we know how
Speaker 1: to work with it, it's actually a huge opportunity. Right.
Speaker 1: I want to change directions just a little bit, because
Speaker 1: you say that the guiding prince of all of this
Speaker 1: book is radical non pathology, the notion that there is
Speaker 1: ultimately nothing wrong with any of us, And I'd like
Speaker 1: to kind of talk um. This gets back to the
Speaker 1: monkey a little bit, right, not viewing the monkey as
Speaker 1: an enemy but a messenger um. But this idea of
Speaker 1: radical nonpathology, and it also ties to a theme that
Speaker 1: runs to the book that I love, which is this
Speaker 1: idea of connection versus disconnection. And how often you say
Speaker 1: we cannot fix disconnection with more disconnection, we cannot heal
Speaker 1: it with shame, rejection, resentment, neurotic anger, aggression. So I
Speaker 1: like to talk a little bit about that idea of
Speaker 1: non pathology, and then the attitude or the spirit that
Speaker 1: we bring to not only our meditation practice, but these
Speaker 1: difficult parts of ourselves. From an evolutionary point of view,
Speaker 1: why would there be any aspect of us that is
Speaker 1: bad or works against us? And some way, if we
Speaker 1: look at the organizing principles of who we are at
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs or
Speaker 1: the neurological basis for that hierarchy, which really, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: is the drive for safety um of the reptilian brain,
Speaker 1: or the drive for feel good rewards and gratification, which
Speaker 1: is really the midbrain or or the mammalian brain, or
Speaker 1: you know, if we go to the neo cortex and
Speaker 1: the human brain, the sort of organizing principle of the
Speaker 1: neo cortex is love and belonging in connection. Those three
Speaker 1: fundamental drives or needs you know, for safety, gratification and
Speaker 1: belonging are at the level of motivation, at the level
Speaker 1: of impulse, the drivers of all that we think, say,
Speaker 1: and do. At the surface level, things can become incredibly
Speaker 1: twisted up and distorted. We've been conditioned, you know, by
Speaker 1: so many adverse experiences in our lives. But at the
Speaker 1: level of motivation, everything in our being is driven by
Speaker 1: those three things, love, gratification and safety. You cannot tell
Speaker 1: me that somebody who is trying to be safe, or
Speaker 1: trying to find connection, or trying to go where life
Speaker 1: feels good in some way, You cannot tell me that
Speaker 1: those impulses are bad or evil in nature, that that
Speaker 1: just makes no sense. And so despite obvious appearances, despite
Speaker 1: you know, the way that it looks like we have
Speaker 1: a good wolf and a bad wolf, for example, I
Speaker 1: think that really we have a good wolf and another
Speaker 1: good wolf who's gone bad so to speak, right, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that that's so important because you also
Speaker 1: lead this in you talk about how you know, our
Speaker 1: thoughts tell a compelling story, the story of me. And
Speaker 1: if we look at all of our thoughts, certainly case
Speaker 1: for me, right, they are I think all of us,
Speaker 1: they're mostly about me, right, and we can look at
Speaker 1: that and is often painted in religion or other things.
Speaker 1: Is that's wrong, or that's a fundamental flaw, or that's evil.
Speaker 1: But to your point, it's almost all you say. I
Speaker 1: love this. You say it can be collapsed into one
Speaker 1: or two categories. How can I be happy and how
Speaker 1: can I avoid suffering? Which is this fundamental at the
Speaker 1: root of Buddhism. Right. A lot of it just says,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that's what's happening. We're either trying to
Speaker 1: be happy or avoid suffering. We're moving you know, away
Speaker 1: or from either of those things and recognizing that that
Speaker 1: is normal behavior. Um, and that what looks pathological, whether
Speaker 1: it be addiction or neurosis or lots of other things.
Speaker 1: Is are misguided attempt to be safe or comfortable or
Speaker 1: survive or whatever they were, These defenses such as they
Speaker 1: made sense in a certain context, and when they get frozen,
Speaker 1: that's bad, but we're not bad for having them, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. Richard Schwartz, the creator of the internal family
Speaker 1: Systems model, even talks about how suicide ideation is just
Speaker 1: a desire to make the pain stop. It's just a
Speaker 1: desire to feel safe and to feel good again, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's just a really really extreme expression of that,
Speaker 1: you know, that is given rise to in somebody by
Speaker 1: you know, the sense of hopelessness, in the sense of like,
Speaker 1: maybe that's the only way that I have left for
Speaker 1: it to really stop. So even that suicidal ideation is
Speaker 1: in a sense a convoluted expression of our our inherent goodness,
Speaker 1: of our Buddha nature. You could even say, right, and
Speaker 1: I think you know, we rereleased an episode not too
Speaker 1: long ago about of gab or Mate, and one of
Speaker 1: the things he says that I just love is the
Speaker 1: question is not why the addiction. The question is why
Speaker 1: the pain? What was the original pain caused this thing
Speaker 1: to come about. That's the path to healing. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm such a huge fan of his work and I'm
Speaker 1: so thankful as a former addict myself, and um, he's
Speaker 1: really shown the light on the fact that there is
Speaker 1: not an addict out there that doesn't have a significant
Speaker 1: trauma history. There just isn't, you know. And so why
Speaker 1: the pain being the central question opens up so many
Speaker 1: more doors than you know. You've got a problem, go
Speaker 1: fix the problem for sure, right, And so all this
Speaker 1: points to a it's helpful for us to understand this
Speaker 1: in general. It's helpful for society to understand that, but
Speaker 1: it's most important for us to understand this about ourselves,
Speaker 1: because when we start casting off these parts of ourselves
Speaker 1: or painting them as wrong or evil or to be
Speaker 1: suppressed or pushed away, that's when we all get into
Speaker 1: more trouble. We can't heal that way. It's never worked.
Speaker 1: It's never even worked once. I can't tell you. I mean,
Speaker 1: anger has been such a huge through line in my life. Um,
Speaker 1: it was gifted to me by um my dad, and
Speaker 1: the way in which he could just be so intimidating
Speaker 1: and had this booming voice in this huge presence, you know.
Speaker 1: And that was a really effective way for him to
Speaker 1: sway things to his advantage, you know. And I unfortunately
Speaker 1: picked up that conditioning by his modeling of it. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've looked in the mirror so many times
Speaker 1: after having had maybe a dysfunctional argument, or maybe like
Speaker 1: going out on a night of drinking because I was
Speaker 1: really piste off or something like that. I've looked myself
Speaker 1: in the mirror so many times with so much hatred
Speaker 1: of that part of me that gets so angry. And
Speaker 1: I have said to myself, I mean for decades, if
Speaker 1: I could only get rid of this anger, if I
Speaker 1: could only get rid of this rage problem, then you know,
Speaker 1: I would be so much better, My relationships would function
Speaker 1: better or whatever. And it never went anywhere. I sometimes
Speaker 1: use this example of you know, um I could I
Speaker 1: could say that the same thing about my right hand
Speaker 1: as I as I once did about my anger. You
Speaker 1: know that it causes so many messes in my life,
Speaker 1: like if I'm gonna over eat, I'm going to use
Speaker 1: my right hand to do that, or if I'm going
Speaker 1: to have a cigarette, I'm going to use my right
Speaker 1: hand to do it, or if I'm gonna throw a punch,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use my right hand to do it, or
Speaker 1: if you know, or whatever, we could go down the
Speaker 1: line with it. You know how many problems my right
Speaker 1: hand seems to be connected to in my life? You know?
Speaker 1: But like, is the solution there then to surgically remove
Speaker 1: my right hand? It makes no sense. And yet we
Speaker 1: try to do that with parts of our psyche, with
Speaker 1: with parts of our heart. Really so much rather than
Speaker 1: running towards and maybe to use a metaphor just like
Speaker 1: working working with a kid who's really upset, sort of
Speaker 1: bending down and getting eye level with that kid and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, what's going on here? How can I help?
Speaker 1: Is there something you need? Can I hold space for you?
Speaker 1: Is there a story that needs to be told and
Speaker 1: understood here? I mean, That's that's what I mean when
Speaker 1: I say bringing you know, the world of psychotherapy into
Speaker 1: our meditation practice, is that we can do that with
Speaker 1: our emotional selves, to really get eye level with them
Speaker 1: and hold them like children and enquire in that empathetic
Speaker 1: sort of way. It's much more pleasing than trying to
Speaker 1: surgically remove your anger. That's for sure. You talk in
Speaker 1: the book about meditation practices like loving kindness or um
Speaker 1: I never I can never pronounce it, right, I've read
Speaker 1: it a thousand times. My Tree, My Tree, which is
Speaker 1: sort of loving kindness towards ourselves, right, and you you
Speaker 1: talk about those practices as being really really helpful in
Speaker 1: getting us to a point that we can work with
Speaker 1: these things that we think are bad about us. You know,
Speaker 1: when we get triggered, there's sort of two ways that
Speaker 1: that experience could go. Like when rage or fear, or
Speaker 1: or depression or anxiety or or something else is activated
Speaker 1: in us, especially in the case where it's coming from
Speaker 1: a core wound or a trauma or some sort of
Speaker 1: core issue, and it's really indicative of the past experience
Speaker 1: that we've gone through in some way. You know, in
Speaker 1: that moment of activation, we could either be become more traumatized,
Speaker 1: right by by internalizing yet another experience of of heartache
Speaker 1: and upsetness or whatever it is, or by the mess
Speaker 1: that we go out and make if that emotion should
Speaker 1: become our boss and we you know, fly off the
Speaker 1: handle or numb out or dissociate in a really toxic way.
Speaker 1: But there's the second option, is we could use that
Speaker 1: experience for healing, because we can only actually heal at
Speaker 1: the depths when we're triggered. And the ingredient, the key
Speaker 1: ingredient that sort of turns it around from a re
Speaker 1: traumatization to an opportunity for healing and growth is emotional warmth,
Speaker 1: be it love, compassion, empathy, kindness, friendliness, curiosity, calmness. If
Speaker 1: we can bring those sorts of energies to our afflicted situation,
Speaker 1: then we're really moving in the direction of wholeness and
Speaker 1: of something beautiful. To be quite honest, right, that core
Speaker 1: idea of the monkey is now a problem. Is the messenger,
Speaker 1: these triggering experiences, these difficult emotions, are messengers to us
Speaker 1: um and if we choose to engage them in that way,
Speaker 1: and like you said, in a in an emotionally warm way,
Speaker 1: then we have a chance to work with them. And
Speaker 1: we can look at this in both the way we
Speaker 1: treat ourselves, but we can also look at it in
Speaker 1: how a good therapist treats us right as a model
Speaker 1: for how that might work right, because that's what a
Speaker 1: good therapist is doing, right, is creating that atmosphere of
Speaker 1: emotion to warmth and safety and all that that allows
Speaker 1: us to work within, and we can provide that to ourselves.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that therapy is not important points, but
Speaker 1: I'm saying it's also useful to learn to do that
Speaker 1: for ourselves. It's so important, I think too. Um make
Speaker 1: our internal atmosphere hospitable, a place we actually want to be, right,
Speaker 1: a home. You know. Again, here's this principle of having
Speaker 1: a daily practice, you know, a place that you could
Speaker 1: turn to no matter what's going on and sort of
Speaker 1: kick off your shoes and flop down on the couch
Speaker 1: and like, ah, here's the place where you know, I'm
Speaker 1: all good with myself, even if it's been difficult out there. Right.
Speaker 1: You write in the book you're talking about meditation practice.
Speaker 1: But we can take this to exactly all aspects of
Speaker 1: our life. But anytime we abandon, ignore, or struggle against
Speaker 1: any part of ourselves whatsoever, we are enacting aggression. We
Speaker 1: become bullies in the playground of our practice, unconsciously believing
Speaker 1: that this is somehow a way to boodhood. As my
Speaker 1: first meditation teacher, Vinnie Ferraro puts it, we try to
Speaker 1: hate ourselves into enlightenment. Yeah, that would be Bennie Ferraro,
Speaker 1: who I was just teaching at Spirit Rock for three days,
Speaker 1: and on my last day there, he was actually leading
Speaker 1: a day long retreat just downstairs from me. And what
Speaker 1: an amazing full circle, uh that was to experience that
Speaker 1: and to see him on my way out, and yeah,
Speaker 1: hating ourselves into enlightenment. You know how many of us
Speaker 1: live in abusive relationships with ourselves and think that that's
Speaker 1: some going to wear some sort of fruit. Yep. So
Speaker 1: let's turn now to a practice you have for working
Speaker 1: with I think you say, the inner critic, you know, discern, affirm,
Speaker 1: and debrief. So let's let's bring that up as an
Speaker 1: actual practice to maybe do some of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. Sure, sure absolutely would you me to just
Speaker 1: go ahead and unpack the discern, affirm and debrief Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So the discern part is really about taking this mindset
Speaker 1: of there's no part of me that's working against me.
Speaker 1: That um that even the inner critic or or other
Speaker 1: harsh kind of self abusive voices that we are sometimes
Speaker 1: subject to, and ironically enough, often in the most kind
Speaker 1: of clutch moments when we're about to give the presentation
Speaker 1: or about to be seen in some important way, you
Speaker 1: know that that voice is actually attempting to stop us
Speaker 1: from being vulnerable, for stop us from taking a risk,
Speaker 1: stop us from being seen in some way if we
Speaker 1: really look. And so the discern pieces is around, you know,
Speaker 1: this mindset of like, hey, this is actually a part
Speaker 1: of me that is trying to help and it's just
Speaker 1: gone off the rails. And then the affirm piece around
Speaker 1: working with the inner critic. You know, emotions are thought
Speaker 1: of as irrational, and I think the opposite. I think
Speaker 1: they're incredibly rational. They're always following, following a logic of
Speaker 1: some sort. It might not be our logic, but it's
Speaker 1: a logic to our emotions and why they are the
Speaker 1: way they are and why they're expressing um themselves in
Speaker 1: the manner that they are. And they're in turning within
Speaker 1: and working with my own inner critic and and kind
Speaker 1: of identifying some of the key things inner critics tend
Speaker 1: to say, such as your unworthy, you're not good enough,
Speaker 1: you're unlovable, you're a failure, you're a fraud, you're going
Speaker 1: to blow it. There's there's actually a logic to all
Speaker 1: of those things. Those things are true in a way,
Speaker 1: and we could point out lots of examples. Um, for example,
Speaker 1: your failure, well, you know what it's that's actually true
Speaker 1: in that I have failed before, and if I take
Speaker 1: this chance or give the presentation, that is definitely a possibility.
Speaker 1: It's always a possibility that I'm going to fail. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for pointing that out to me. You know,
Speaker 1: or you're not good enough? You know, not good enough
Speaker 1: is based is a judgment that only exists in the mind,
Speaker 1: by the way, doesn't exist in observable reality. You can't
Speaker 1: you show me a box full of not good enough
Speaker 1: for example. That's a binary judgment, right in which you
Speaker 1: know in the problem with binaries is there's always a
Speaker 1: winner and there's always a loser. And so in order
Speaker 1: to be good enough, that would mean that I have
Speaker 1: to win all the time. And there's always going to
Speaker 1: be Beyonce, you know, there's always going to be somebody
Speaker 1: who blows me away at whatever I'm doing. That's just
Speaker 1: a fact of life. I can't win all the time.
Speaker 1: And so the good enough not good enough, uh, what
Speaker 1: I call sometimes the involuntary talent show that we enter
Speaker 1: into in our minds is really it's a it's a
Speaker 1: losing game. And so here again, the inner critic is right.
Speaker 1: You know, I am not good enough sometimes and there
Speaker 1: are other times that I'm great. It's called being a person.
Speaker 1: In this process of discern affirm debrief that I teach
Speaker 1: to people and I use in my work with clients,
Speaker 1: we start agreeing with the inner critic, which at first
Speaker 1: sounds really counterintuitive and can be a little bit triggering.
Speaker 1: But the rationale here is, you know, if somebody's screaming
Speaker 1: at you and you start agreeing with them and say,
Speaker 1: you know what, you're right, let me give you an
Speaker 1: example of why you're right, they have no more cause
Speaker 1: to scream at you, and they might be open to
Speaker 1: listening to what you have to say. And therein we
Speaker 1: opened the door. The affirm step opens the door to
Speaker 1: work out some of the distorted thinking and that's embedded
Speaker 1: in the inner critic, such as the fact that, hey,
Speaker 1: you're actually trying to protect me from vulnerability because you
Speaker 1: want me to be safe, and okay, that's my motivation
Speaker 1: to actually we're on the same team. We can have
Speaker 1: this dialogue within ourselves, like how about we work together
Speaker 1: instead of against one another? Or you know, hey, did
Speaker 1: you know that? Like even though yes, I might get
Speaker 1: hurt by this, and that might suck. And I've been
Speaker 1: hurt before and it was horrible, you know, But do
Speaker 1: you remember that last time we got our hearts smashed
Speaker 1: into a million bits, we came out of that okay.
Speaker 1: In fact, we came out of that better than okay,
Speaker 1: because heartbreak tends to lead us to life affirming choices,
Speaker 1: right like when the ship hits the fan, we that's
Speaker 1: when we go and find our therapists or take our
Speaker 1: meditation practice more seriously, or you know, take our friendships
Speaker 1: more seriously, or or you learn to play the guitar
Speaker 1: again or whatever. So hey, inner critic, you know what,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for trying to keep me out
Speaker 1: of this vulnerable situation in which I might get hurt.
Speaker 1: But if I do get hurt, I'm pretty sure I'm
Speaker 1: going to be okay. In fact, I might just come
Speaker 1: out better than I went in, you know, right, And
Speaker 1: I think what's so important about what you're describing here
Speaker 1: that discern so kind of trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: is you know, back to where the monkey here trying
Speaker 1: to tell me? Right? And then the affirm is that,
Speaker 1: like you said a lot of times, when we get
Speaker 1: into an argument with ourselves. It doesn't do any good.
Speaker 1: We don't believe it anyway. So by affirming it, it
Speaker 1: also is that connection process, right, that process of being
Speaker 1: kinder to ourselves. And I think what a lot of
Speaker 1: us do, I certainly have done for a long time.
Speaker 1: If I don't watch it, is I go right to debrief, right,
Speaker 1: these these voices start up and I go, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna be fine, versus recognizing like, Okay, you know
Speaker 1: I'm having an emotion and sort of validating that that
Speaker 1: emotion is normal given who I am, where I come from,
Speaker 1: that it makes sense that it's okay to have it.
Speaker 1: And then when that is done, like you said, it
Speaker 1: does seem like the collective me can move on to
Speaker 1: problem solving in a more unified sense. Yes. And what's
Speaker 1: more is we're establishing a relationship and a report compassionate
Speaker 1: rapport with that inner critic energy within us, so that
Speaker 1: the next time it comes around, you know, we have
Speaker 1: something to work with. I'm at this wonderful point with
Speaker 1: my own inner critic where if I'm giving a talker
Speaker 1: or something in that that voice comes in and says, hey,
Speaker 1: you're really blowing this man. They don't like you at all.
Speaker 1: They're not getting it, you're using too much filler language.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, I can just say thank you so
Speaker 1: much for trying to keep me safe within myself, and
Speaker 1: that energy just dissipates and I can get back to
Speaker 1: being fully present for whatever it is I'm doing in
Speaker 1: that moment. That's the promise here of building a clearer
Speaker 1: and more explicit, compassionate relationship with these energies within us,
Speaker 1: emotional energies within us, as opposed to just like you said,
Speaker 1: skipping ahead to the to the debrief, step in and
Speaker 1: kind of arguing or or disagreeing. Right well, I think
Speaker 1: that is a great place to wrap up. We're kind
Speaker 1: of out of time here. You and I are going
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more in our post show
Speaker 1: conversation about breath work. You describe lots of different types
Speaker 1: of breath work and how they can be helpful. I
Speaker 1: think they're great practices. We're going to cover that in
Speaker 1: the post show conversation. Listeners, if you're interested, When you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash support, you can get access to
Speaker 1: all the post show conversations um Ralph. I will have
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to your book, to your
Speaker 1: website to all your materials, and thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to come on. I loved the
Speaker 1: book and I've really enjoyed this conversation fantastic. It was
Speaker 1: truly my pleasure, truly my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Eric,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bye bye m If what you just heard
Speaker 1: was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to
Speaker 1: the One you Feed podcast. Head over to one you
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