Speaker 1: Honoring of life really becomes about being clear about what
Speaker 1: our values are and making those decisions with the commitment
Speaker 1: to the least harm possible.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 2: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us. Our guest on this episode is sebin A Selassie,
Speaker 2: a teacher, author and speaker who explores the themes of
Speaker 2: belonging and identity through meditation, creativity, and spirituality. She is
Speaker 2: also a teacher on the ten Percent Happier Meditation app
Speaker 2: sebin A began studying Buddhism thirty years ago and is
Speaker 2: a three time cancer survivor of stage three and four cancer.
Speaker 2: Her book is You Belong A Call for Connection.
Speaker 3: Hi Sebine, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: It's a real honor to have you on. We're going
Speaker 3: to be discussing your book, You Belong a Call for Connection,
Speaker 3: but before we do, we'll start, like we always do,
Speaker 3: with the parable. And in the Parable, there's a grandmother
Speaker 3: who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: a battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 3: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 3: And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for
Speaker 3: a second, and she looks up at her grandmother. She says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really appreciated this question. I gave it some
Speaker 1: thought and in reflecting, I realized that I might have
Speaker 1: had a different answer in the past that really thought
Speaker 1: of those so called bad qualities and that bad wolf
Speaker 1: as something that I needed to kind of excize or eliminate,
Speaker 1: something that was not a part of me, you know.
Speaker 1: And I really take it to heart that the parable
Speaker 1: says that these are both inside us. And as I've
Speaker 1: come to maybe hopefully more maturation in my process and
Speaker 1: in my practice, you know, recognizing that I don't need
Speaker 1: to reject any part of myself, and I can still
Speaker 1: recognize what needs to be nurtured and what needs to
Speaker 1: be maybe soothed or transformed or you know, worked with
Speaker 1: in a different way, because I've really come to appreciate
Speaker 1: everything that's brought me to this moment, including my so
Speaker 1: called negative traits or bad qualities or the bad wolf,
Speaker 1: and really come to appreciate how I might not have
Speaker 1: even gotten to understanding how much I want to support
Speaker 1: and encourage the good parts if I hadn't had to
Speaker 1: deal with the bad parts. Right, so even just that
Speaker 1: good and bad starts to be thrown into question, and
Speaker 1: it really becomes about really understanding my values and living
Speaker 1: in an integrity and alignment with this process of waking up.
Speaker 1: So it's a profound parable because it seems simple and
Speaker 1: just kind of identifying these good and bad qualities, but
Speaker 1: it really leads us into a full exploration of what
Speaker 1: it means to be human.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that. That's a great and nuanced take on it.
Speaker 3: I've joked before that almost I would rather say the
Speaker 3: skillful and unskillful wolf, But that doesn't make for a
Speaker 3: very good parable. It kind of loses some of its edge.
Speaker 3: But like you said, one of the things I love
Speaker 3: about the parable is it does not say we have
Speaker 3: to starve the bad wolf. It doesn't say we have
Speaker 3: to lock him up. We don't have to do anything
Speaker 3: to the bad wolf. It's just let's give a little
Speaker 3: bit more attention. But I also think you're right that
Speaker 3: I like that idea of I think if I look
Speaker 3: at my own life, and so much of this show
Speaker 3: has been me talking about all the things that I've
Speaker 3: messed up in my life and how those things have
Speaker 3: led me to where I am. You know, how our
Speaker 3: pain and our mistakes and our problems. Is that idea
Speaker 3: of yeah, understanding and soothing the bad wolf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it just makes it so much more human. Relatable.
Speaker 1: It gives this potential and possibility that I think is
Speaker 1: really powerful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So something I'm going to be doing a little
Speaker 3: more often is ask you, the listener, to reflect on
Speaker 3: what you're hearing. We strongly believe that knowledge is power,
Speaker 3: but only if combined with action and integration. So before
Speaker 3: we move on, I'd like to ask you what's coming
Speaker 3: up for you as you listen to this. Are there
Speaker 3: any things you're currently doing or feeding your bad wolf
Speaker 3: that might make sense to remove, or any things you
Speaker 3: could do to feed your good wolf that you're not
Speaker 3: currently doing. So, if you have the headspace for it,
Speaker 3: I'd love if you could just pause for a second
Speaker 3: and ask yourself, what's one thing I could do today
Speaker 3: or tonight to feed my good wolf? Whatever your thing is.
Speaker 3: A really useful strategy can be having something external, a
Speaker 3: prompt or a friend, or a tool that regularly nudges
Speaker 3: you back towards awareness and intentionality. For the past year,
Speaker 3: I've been sending little Goodwolf reminders to some of my
Speaker 3: friends and community members, just quick, little SMS messages two
Speaker 3: times per week that give them a little bit of
Speaker 3: wisdom and remind them to pause for a second and
Speaker 3: come off autopilot. If you want, I can send them
Speaker 3: to you too. I do it totally for free, and
Speaker 3: people seem to really love them. Just drop your information
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and I can send
Speaker 3: them to you. It's totally free, and if you end
Speaker 3: up not liking the little reminders, you can easily opt out.
Speaker 3: That's one youfeed dot net slash sms. And now back
Speaker 3: to the episode. There are so many places I could
Speaker 3: jump in here, because your book has so many wonderful things,
Speaker 3: But I think I'm just going to start at the beginning,
Speaker 3: which is to talk about belonging. And I guess I
Speaker 3: was hoping maybe we could start by having you define
Speaker 3: what you mean by belonging in.
Speaker 1: This case, Yeah, you know. I start book kind of
Speaker 1: in that classic thing where you define something by looking
Speaker 1: at its opposite. And so I talk about the fact
Speaker 1: that I am a belonging expert because I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I belonged for so long, and so for me,
Speaker 1: belonging really begins to fill out a sense of wholeness
Speaker 1: that I didn't feel as a young person, and even
Speaker 1: more recently in my life that I always felt like
Speaker 1: an outsider either culturally or racially or socially, or there
Speaker 1: are ways that I felt like I was not enough,
Speaker 1: didn't look a certain way, or have enough things or
Speaker 1: have enough success, or maybe I was too much in
Speaker 1: certain spaces, like I was too political or you know,
Speaker 1: too disruptive to certain spaces or places or communities. So
Speaker 1: you know, belonging was something I was searching for and
Speaker 1: feeling a lot of times that I didn't have. So
Speaker 1: on a social level, like a human level, belonging is
Speaker 1: that sense of ease and wellness and sense of connection
Speaker 1: that we feel with people. And I'm also talking about
Speaker 1: belonging on sort of a more absolute or spiritual level,
Speaker 1: which is that feeling of not being separate from anything,
Speaker 1: so from parts of ourselves, from other people, from nature,
Speaker 1: and really from all of reality. So talking about both
Speaker 1: the relative sense of belonging and also this spiritual or
Speaker 1: absolute sense of belonging, you.
Speaker 3: Say that belonging is not dependent on things being as
Speaker 3: we want them to be. You listen, things off, it's
Speaker 3: not necessary to achieve some definition of success or to
Speaker 3: behave like everyone else, or to have the perfect partner
Speaker 3: or be the perfect size or shape. You even say
Speaker 3: the forces of oppression don't have to magically disappear in
Speaker 3: order for us to belong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you know, a lot of the book
Speaker 1: I spend kind of exploring what are often called in
Speaker 1: Buddhism the two truths, or the paradigm of the two truths.
Speaker 1: This absolute sense of belonging that I was speaking of,
Speaker 1: which is the truth of reality that you know, modern
Speaker 1: physics and ancient wisdom tell us that there's no separation.
Speaker 1: So even on a just energetic level, we're all vibrating
Speaker 1: energy patterns, and that's been shown to be true, even
Speaker 1: if our senses tell us otherwise. And so we belong
Speaker 1: no matter what. You know, that fundamental sense of belonging
Speaker 1: is a fact that it's undeniable. And then there's also
Speaker 1: the relative truth of all those lists of things you
Speaker 1: just read, and including the forces of separation. So I
Speaker 1: kind of repeat this two sentences over and over again,
Speaker 1: that we are not separate and we are not the same,
Speaker 1: and navigating those two truths is really the work of belonging.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't know who your teacher was. I know
Speaker 3: who you said your teacher's teacher was, Joco bec So
Speaker 3: I know you have a zen background I'm in the
Speaker 3: Zen tradition primary, and that absolute and relative is such
Speaker 3: a Zen idea. It shows up there so often, whether
Speaker 3: we refer to it that way as absolute and relative
Speaker 3: or we refer to it as form and emptiness. I
Speaker 3: think it's such an interesting thing to talk about because
Speaker 3: you actually say, how do we acknowledge difference and inequities
Speaker 3: and also hold a firm conviction that fundamentally we are
Speaker 3: all irrevocably interconnected. And I think this is such a
Speaker 3: question I get a lot when I'm working with people
Speaker 3: and coaching. We start to wander into that absolute truth,
Speaker 3: or we start to wander into the idea that like
Speaker 3: everything we're seeing is our perspective, And people will go, yeah,
Speaker 3: but what about Donald Trump? What about this act of violence?
Speaker 3: And it feels like there's never a very good answer
Speaker 3: except to say, we kind of have to hold both
Speaker 3: these truths. But do you have a better way to
Speaker 3: say it than that? Because I feel like I always
Speaker 3: fall short.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's a process, because we're all falling
Speaker 1: short all the time, because there's no perfect balance of
Speaker 1: meeting both, not in most humans I've met anyways. And
Speaker 1: you know, for me, it's really navigating where our imbalances
Speaker 1: may be, and particularly where are aversions and grasping, maybe
Speaker 1: especially when they are quite subtle. Right, so, we can
Speaker 1: have a tendency to want to bypass discomfort, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of discomfort with the relative reality because it
Speaker 1: is uncomfortable. You know, it's painful to witness what we're
Speaker 1: still doing to each other in this day and age.
Speaker 1: You know, in the most in ways. There's a war
Speaker 1: raging right now in Ethiopia, where I was born that
Speaker 1: is based on the most inane delusions of separation that
Speaker 1: you could imagine. You know, any delusion of separation is delusion,
Speaker 1: but the lengths that people will go to kind of
Speaker 1: cling to that idea that there are these fundamental differences
Speaker 1: that require violence and aggression. But you know, those are
Speaker 1: sort of the very egregious acts of separation. But you know,
Speaker 1: we don't even want to look at kind of the
Speaker 1: anger that comes up in response to our neighbors or
Speaker 1: to our family members. And so we can kind of
Speaker 1: lean towards that absolute of we're all one or it's
Speaker 1: all emptiness as a way to actually avoid that. There's
Speaker 1: a subtle aversion in our practice, and then on the
Speaker 1: other side. You know, we can cling to those relative
Speaker 1: realities as if they're true, true, and more true. And
Speaker 1: the thing about this paradox is they're both true. It
Speaker 1: doesn't say that one is truthier, you know. So it
Speaker 1: becomes a really moment to moment subtle awareness of which
Speaker 1: one we're clinging to, which one are we're avoiding. That's
Speaker 1: how it's been for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a big fan of the middle Way. It's
Speaker 3: one of those teachings that has meant so much much
Speaker 3: to me. And we tend to think of the middle
Speaker 3: way as why we just sort of split the difference.
Speaker 3: But the other way that the middle Way, I think
Speaker 3: manifests is you hold these two extremes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I like that. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3: On an absolute level, it's all interconnected, it's all one,
Speaker 3: it's all essentially fine. And on a relative level, it's
Speaker 3: none of those things. And I have to hold both those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I know, for me, a really good sign
Speaker 1: that I'm not holding that is when I kind of
Speaker 1: slip into domination. And I really believe, and I talk
Speaker 1: about this in the book, that separation begets domination. These
Speaker 1: dominating patterns where we cling to being right and there's
Speaker 1: some way in which I like that holding the extremes
Speaker 1: where you really can't be right if you're sort of
Speaker 1: in the extremes of both camps, because you're recognizing the
Speaker 1: multitudes of realities along that whole spectrum in between, right,
Speaker 1: instead of trying to hold to some particular balance in
Speaker 1: the middle. Yeah, I really like that.
Speaker 3: While we're talking about this doctrine and the two truths
Speaker 3: between the absolute and the relative, let's just talk for
Speaker 3: a moment about the absolute. I love how you mentioned
Speaker 3: that both sort of our indigenous wisdom are religious traditions
Speaker 3: of all sorts, and modern science both point us, you say,
Speaker 3: to the truth of our belonging. You know, they both
Speaker 3: point to the fact that separation is a myth for you.
Speaker 3: How has that gone from an intellectual understanding, because again,
Speaker 3: if we study science closely enough, we sort of, yeah,
Speaker 3: you do arrive at this point where you're like, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess you know, it is all energy that's just
Speaker 3: swirling around in all kinds of different ways, whether you know,
Speaker 3: more condensed or slower, But that's all that's happening. How
Speaker 3: has that happened for you experientially? Has it largely been
Speaker 3: through meditation practice that you've had some of those, maybe
Speaker 3: more experiences of oneness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there definitely been experiences, particularly on deep retreat,
Speaker 1: where there's been that understanding of the energetic body and
Speaker 1: the experience in many different ways, you know, so subtle
Speaker 1: sensations to strong sensations, to recognizing you know, tones in
Speaker 1: the body that map to the chakras, and all types
Speaker 1: of experiences that many people probably had. I think my
Speaker 1: earliest experiences were through psychedelics when I was in college,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of people, opening kind of a
Speaker 1: door to the mystical and the awareness that wait a second,
Speaker 1: there's more going on here than the ordinary senses reveal,
Speaker 1: and so that is a really I think powerful window
Speaker 1: into the nature of reality. We're in the right circumstances
Speaker 1: and conditions that allow for that. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: I think also unless sort of let's say mystic goal
Speaker 1: and meditative experiences or not less meditative, but less kind
Speaker 1: of typically what people would think were spiritual awakenings, there
Speaker 1: can be really powerful mental and emotional understanding of this.
Speaker 1: You know, something as simple as being on retreat and
Speaker 1: reaching such a point of stillness that there's an awareness
Speaker 1: that when we're truly present and mindful, and with our
Speaker 1: sensory experience that we can be flooded with love and connection,
Speaker 1: you know, feelings of witnessing the same room and the
Speaker 1: same people in a completely different way. And so it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be like an energetic body experience or
Speaker 1: out of body experience or the walls melting or that.
Speaker 1: It can be just really, you know, a love for others,
Speaker 1: and people experience this on dance floors, you know, at
Speaker 1: festivals or in nature at the beach with their children,
Speaker 1: with their pets. So it's also tuning ourselves to what
Speaker 1: that is actually speaking to and kind of waking up
Speaker 1: our antenna for that.
Speaker 3: There's a phrase that you use in the book that
Speaker 3: I want to talk about because I think this is
Speaker 3: so insidious in modern life, although I actually don't think
Speaker 3: it's a modern phenomenon. It's just maybe been turned up
Speaker 3: a little bit, and you call it compare and compete.
Speaker 3: Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: You know. I connect it to this Buddhist teaching of
Speaker 1: mana ma na, which is a polyword that means to measure,
Speaker 1: and one of the things I love about that teaching
Speaker 1: as I heard it from Joseph Goldstein is that mana
Speaker 1: is one of the very last fetters or you know,
Speaker 1: these bad wolf qualities in us. It's one of the
Speaker 1: very last ones. In the classical teachings, it said to
Speaker 1: release before awakening. So basically that measuring mind, it's often
Speaker 1: called the comparing mind. It's there till the end. And
Speaker 1: I always want to start with that because it's something
Speaker 1: that we have to work with and get used to
Speaker 1: so we can get to like fix it and solve
Speaker 1: it mode that this is something to get rid of,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like the bad wolf, but it's
Speaker 1: actually something that we have to acknowledge as part of
Speaker 1: being human, and we don't want to feed it, but
Speaker 1: you know, we have to learn to kind of live
Speaker 1: with it inside us. And it really is that measuring
Speaker 1: you know, we literally measure everything. There's a part of
Speaker 1: our mind that's constantly in that mode. And what's really
Speaker 1: fascinating about it is that it's said that it manifests
Speaker 1: as both an idea of better then and less then
Speaker 1: and equal to, so it's not just about superiority or inferiority.
Speaker 1: There's sort of an equality fixation that we have as well,
Speaker 1: which you know, for those of us who are interested
Speaker 1: in issues of justice and equity, you know, we really
Speaker 1: have to look at that because it's still fueling a
Speaker 1: sense of separation and so it's still navigating that paradox
Speaker 1: when we work with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting teaching too, that
Speaker 3: better than worse than and equal. I think I've shared
Speaker 3: this experience on the show before, but I had this
Speaker 3: experience of I went to Los Angeles and I was
Speaker 3: interviewing somebody and I went to their apartment and they
Speaker 3: had a really nice apartment in the Hollywood Hills. It
Speaker 3: was beautiful, and I stepped on the balcony and I
Speaker 3: had this moment of looking down at everybody down there,
Speaker 3: and I was thinking, you know, this guy has it all,
Speaker 3: Like look at all those people down there. You know
Speaker 3: it's it's you know, sort of looking down on And
Speaker 3: then I had this moment. I glanced over my shoulder
Speaker 3: and I saw these houses up the hill and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, wait a minute, like this guy's just
Speaker 3: got an apartment. And in that moment, I just got
Speaker 3: this sense. And the sense was whether I'm comparing up
Speaker 3: or I'm comparing down. I'm not connecting, and it was
Speaker 3: that sense that the way out of this was to
Speaker 3: be connected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really see it in my life too, in
Speaker 1: terms of just the way our society is structured so
Speaker 1: that we often aren't in contact with people that are
Speaker 1: that different from us. Right, So we see that in
Speaker 1: terms of the lack of racial integration, our class integration,
Speaker 1: that there can be that measuring just because society is
Speaker 1: structured it that way. And I've really looked at the
Speaker 1: lack of people kind of outside of and I have
Speaker 1: a pretty multi racial group of friends, but I don't
Speaker 1: have a kind of group of friends that spans the
Speaker 1: education spectrum or somewhat a wealth spectrum. But I often
Speaker 1: notice that I feel a sense of separation from my
Speaker 1: friends that are way way wealthier than me, and feelings
Speaker 1: of guilt or that kind of privilege paranoia can crop
Speaker 1: up with friends who have a lot less than me.
Speaker 1: And so just starting to see how it plays out
Speaker 1: in our own lives, and then we start creating these
Speaker 1: bubbles where we feel safer, maybe because we don't have
Speaker 1: to deal with that comparison so much and reckon with it.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: I find it so interesting that that phrase keeping up
Speaker 3: with the Joneses right comes from you know, really comparing
Speaker 3: yourself also but just to the person right next door. Yes,
Speaker 3: it's so endemic. But you say in the book, and
Speaker 3: I love this, you say, we hustle relentlessly to be better, smarter, healthier, cooler, thinner, richer, funnier, prettier, calmer,
Speaker 3: and woker. The error at the end of these words
Speaker 3: is comparison and competition. And I love that that idea.
Speaker 3: Like anytime you've got that prefix at the end, is
Speaker 3: it a prefix a suffix? I don't know those two
Speaker 3: letters at the end. You're in comparison mode.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and you know, to not beat ourselves up
Speaker 1: about any of this. Of course, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: statements ever, and it's in the book, is one from
Speaker 1: Krishna Murti where he says, you think you're thinking your thoughts,
Speaker 1: you're not. You're thinking the culture's thoughts. And just to
Speaker 1: realize that this patterning and conditioning is really just bred
Speaker 1: into us literally, you know, epigenetically, some of these anxieties
Speaker 1: and ways that we bring in, these fears about the
Speaker 1: outside or others or certain experiences, that's passed down. It's
Speaker 1: either passed down genetically or it's passed down culturally or
Speaker 1: socially or in our families, and you know, it's really obvious.
Speaker 1: I spent a year working in refugee camps in West Africa,
Speaker 1: and that was the longest I'd spent outside of New
Speaker 1: York City in over a decade. I lived in New
Speaker 1: York at that time. This was back in like two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, And when I came back, it was
Speaker 1: so wild. I got on the subway and I could
Speaker 1: see all the fashion trends that were popular that year.
Speaker 1: All the women were wearing the same kind of boots,
Speaker 1: and all the guys had like a particular kind of
Speaker 1: haircut or face hair. And there was this way in
Speaker 1: which I could just see this, How does that happen?
Speaker 1: You know, how does suddenly everyone pick up? But it's
Speaker 1: in this comparison. Oh she looks cool and she has
Speaker 1: that maybe I should get that, or this is in
Speaker 1: this magazine or that celebrity, And so it shows up
Speaker 1: in the most mundane ways. The Doublewares product. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've seen that film, but you know this
Speaker 1: certain color blue that everyone has suddenly two really harmful
Speaker 1: ways where the comparison and competition leads to everything from
Speaker 1: eating disorders, to self harm, to suicide, to much more
Speaker 1: harmful also systemic depression.
Speaker 3: That is such a great quote. We're not thinking, Arthur,
Speaker 3: We're thinking the culture's thoughts. And I think one of
Speaker 3: the best things about meditation for me was when I
Speaker 3: finally got over worrying that there were thoughts happening and
Speaker 3: feeling like that was bad, to suddenly really sit back
Speaker 3: in a position of curiosity and be like, what is
Speaker 3: happening in here? Where do these thoughts keep coming from?
Speaker 3: I call them mine, but they're not mine in any
Speaker 3: sense that I can say I chose them exactly. I mean,
Speaker 3: meditation shows us that right away, like, well, I'm not
Speaker 3: choosing to think or not think. And then if you
Speaker 3: go a level deeper as you're saying, you start to realize, like,
Speaker 3: I didn't choose these thoughts. They are the culture's thoughts,
Speaker 3: or they are my parents thoughts, They're this combination of
Speaker 3: all these things. But that's a really freeing At least
Speaker 3: it was for me, a really freeing realization like, oh
Speaker 3: wait a minute, I don't have to take these so seriously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's freeing, and it's also so powerful for what
Speaker 1: ails us as a society. Because it really allows us
Speaker 1: to tackle some of the divisions and some of the
Speaker 1: inequities without those feelings of guilt or accusation. And I
Speaker 1: like this saying that I've heard now from many people
Speaker 1: that it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
Speaker 3: That is a very well articulated phrase. Exactly, it's not
Speaker 3: my fault, but it is my responsibility. You talk a
Speaker 3: lot about implicit bias. You told a story, I think
Speaker 3: it was with Dan Harris about being at a hospital
Speaker 3: and meeting a surgeon. Could you share that.
Speaker 1: Story, oh, with my sister.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my sister's intellectually disabled, so i'm her guardian.
Speaker 1: She's older than me, and so I tend to a
Speaker 1: lot of her medical decisions. And she lives in a
Speaker 1: wonderful community. She needed surgery, so it's part of the
Speaker 1: process in terms of getting that set up. But I
Speaker 1: didn't go to the initial meetings with the surgeon, but
Speaker 1: her house leader was telling me that the surgeon was great,
Speaker 1: that she explained everything to Funat who doesn't have a
Speaker 1: big vocabulary or you know, an intellectual understanding of what's happening.
Speaker 1: But she's very motion like mature, and she was feeling
Speaker 1: comfortable with the surgeon. So she lives in upstate New York,
Speaker 1: and so I went up for the day of the surgery.
Speaker 1: And the hospital is pretty white. It's a fairly rural area,
Speaker 1: and everyone in the preoper room was white except for
Speaker 1: one Filipino nurse. There were you know, white anesthesiologists, you know,
Speaker 1: white assisting surgeon and the other nurses. And then the
Speaker 1: doctor came in, doctor Laborde, and she was a young,
Speaker 1: dark skinned black woman, and I was completely surprised because
Speaker 1: even though I knew she was a woman, because they
Speaker 1: had been referring to her, so I just naturally assumed
Speaker 1: that she was white. And by naturally, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking the culture's thoughts that we hear doctor,
Speaker 1: and we might think male, but maybe we've evolved beyond
Speaker 1: that to think, okay, it could be a woman. But
Speaker 1: you know, even though I've had black doctors, I grew
Speaker 1: up in DC, and you know, I was fortunate to
Speaker 1: have doctors that look like me growing up that I
Speaker 1: just sort of absorbed this idea that this doctor was
Speaker 1: going to be a white doctor. And I was just
Speaker 1: so you know, embarrassed at my own mind, but also
Speaker 1: could thankfully as a mindfulness teacher and someone who you know.
Speaker 1: A week later, I think was giving a talk on
Speaker 1: unconscious bias at a big conference for doctors and nurses,
Speaker 1: medical people working in hospice care. And you know, I
Speaker 1: could also laugh at myself and use this as an
Speaker 1: example that we don't have to take our thoughts personally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, this is not because I'm a bad person.
Speaker 1: It becomes a problem when I don't take responsibility for
Speaker 1: it and start to question that and you know, start
Speaker 1: to work on changing those unconscious beliefs.
Speaker 3: I love that story because I think it shows that
Speaker 3: unconscious bias even among your own race. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not my fault that I thought that, but I'm responsible
Speaker 3: for working on it. And that was a really powerful
Speaker 3: idea I got last year. We had Ibram x Kendy
Speaker 3: on the show and was talking to him and this
Speaker 3: idea that I can absolutely have racist thoughts. You know,
Speaker 3: we tend to say I'm not racist as if it's
Speaker 3: an identity, and it was really powerful for me to
Speaker 3: realize and to start to be more comfortable with saying
Speaker 3: that's a racist thought I had. It doesn't mean I'm
Speaker 3: a bad person, but I have to own up and
Speaker 3: say that's what that was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know that's the maybe later step. You
Speaker 1: have to first even see it, and that's the hard work, yeah,
Speaker 1: because there has to be a willingness to see it.
Speaker 1: There has to be the openness, and then there has
Speaker 1: to be the capacity. And that's really the practice, because
Speaker 1: if you're not used to even examining what's going on inside,
Speaker 1: you know, this stuff is just going to roll by.
Speaker 1: And that's where the defensive NIF comes in because you're
Speaker 1: not even seeing what people are pointing to. And this
Speaker 1: can happen in all of us and also even the
Speaker 1: most practiced of us. That's the challenge that many practitioners
Speaker 1: of color have come up against in spiritual communities, where
Speaker 1: there is the assumption that there's this attention to our
Speaker 1: thoughts and our behaviors and unconscious patterning in particular ways,
Speaker 1: but there's a whole layer that it has never been
Speaker 1: examined and has never been really seen, because you know,
Speaker 1: we need some kind of larger awareness of what it is.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't know what it is. We don't know,
Speaker 1: and so there can be thoughts, speech actions that are
Speaker 1: actually revealing a lot of unconscious bias and it's just
Speaker 1: not even really acknowledged by people.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take minute to
Speaker 3: synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a detached way.
Speaker 3: So let's collectively take a moment to pause and reflect.
Speaker 3: What's your one big insight so far and how can
Speaker 3: you put it into practice in your life? Seriously, just
Speaker 3: take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It can
Speaker 3: be so powerful to have these reminders to stop and
Speaker 3: be present. Cant it. If you want to keep this
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Speaker 3: good wolves together. I think you do a nice job
Speaker 3: in the book of talking about that and saying, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't remember exactly the way you phrase it,
Speaker 3: but it gave me a little bit of laugh But
Speaker 3: it was basically like, hey, unconscious bias is unconscious as
Speaker 3: in you don't know you have it, you know, the
Speaker 3: very definition of it, which is such a great way
Speaker 3: to think of it. It's like, well, yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: see what I don't see.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, But if you have been practicing for a
Speaker 1: really long time, or you know, you feel pretty aware
Speaker 1: of a lot of things, there can be that bypassing
Speaker 1: to bring that up again, to think that you do
Speaker 1: see what you don't see. Yeah, you know, because you've
Speaker 1: seen a lot. And I like to say, just because
Speaker 1: you've seen the nature of reality, it doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: understand anything.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because it's the same thing with cognitive bias. Right,
Speaker 3: we learn about cognitive bias, and yet most of us
Speaker 3: hope that's interesting. I see how my friend Bob has that,
Speaker 3: and I can sure see how my wife has that,
Speaker 3: but it actually doesn't for most people penetrate like, oh,
Speaker 3: I have those, you know. So it's an interesting question
Speaker 3: to sort of be asking on a regular basis, like
Speaker 3: I know I have them. What am I missing here?
Speaker 3: It's a curiosity, It can be a curiosity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I often bring up the issue of fat bias
Speaker 1: or fat phobia, which is something that I have been
Speaker 1: having my eyes open to more and more over the
Speaker 1: years because certain students and people who admit on retreat
Speaker 1: or you know, just different folks pointed things out to
Speaker 1: me that I never knew, you know. And much like
Speaker 1: racial stereotypes or racial biases that are unfounded, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of ideas we have about fat
Speaker 1: people and then not to mention our unconscious biases or
Speaker 1: aversions to fatness that you know, it's really shocking where
Speaker 1: we start to really look at it in ourselves and
Speaker 1: then towards others, and it's been quite humbling. Actually.
Speaker 3: You talk a lot about how belonging really starts with
Speaker 3: our body and with embodied practice. It's a term it's
Speaker 3: being used a lot these days. Embodied say a little
Speaker 3: bit about what it means to you.
Speaker 1: For years, I really practiced mostly with my head. You know.
Speaker 1: There was a way in which I was constantly trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the practice, and there was a real
Speaker 1: disconnection from the body, and which I think is pretty
Speaker 1: common in our contemporary culture, that we are head centered,
Speaker 1: you know, rational oriented, modernist people. That's such a feature
Speaker 1: of modernity, you know, the rational and the cognitive rules.
Speaker 1: And so for me, even just starting to feel that
Speaker 1: I had a body to actually listen to the classical
Speaker 1: teachings in a deeper way, not as they were filtered
Speaker 1: through some of my teachers who kind of pushed the
Speaker 1: mind of mindfulness more than anything. And recognizing that so
Speaker 1: many of these ancient teachings are fully embodied. They're often
Speaker 1: paired with embodied practices, you know, be it chigong or
Speaker 1: yoga or tai chi, that there are ways for us
Speaker 1: to come into an experiential embodied presence that is about
Speaker 1: that energy. When you asked me about connecting to the absolute,
Speaker 1: those are embodied experiences of it. I didn't experience it
Speaker 1: in my head. I experience it as really starting to
Speaker 1: connect to that vibratory energy. So for me, just on
Speaker 1: a fundamental level, like being able to feel the body
Speaker 1: was a hurdle and I really had to learn that,
Speaker 1: and I find that I'm often having to teach that
Speaker 1: to people that they don't quite know how to actually
Speaker 1: sense the body. And that is such a powerful and
Speaker 1: really revolutionary experience that leads on to so much more awareness.
Speaker 1: So that when we start working with thoughts and emotions,
Speaker 1: and especially difficult emotions or traumatic memories, that that capacity
Speaker 1: to be in our bodies lends so much support to
Speaker 1: unraveling that and to actually cultivating a sense of well being.
Speaker 1: We can't really have a sense of wellbeing that's only
Speaker 1: in our heads. There is an ease and a wellness
Speaker 1: that comes only through the body, or especially through the body.
Speaker 3: Embodiment or embodied practices, Do you mean the same thing
Speaker 3: as somatic That's another term that is used a lot.
Speaker 3: Are those interchangeable in your mind or is there a
Speaker 3: distinction there?
Speaker 1: I don't see a distinction. There might be a semantic
Speaker 1: difference that I don't know about. But for me, sometimes
Speaker 1: when people talk about embodied practices or somatic practices, they're
Speaker 1: talking about those movement practices like yoga and taichi. I'm
Speaker 1: really talking about practicing meditation and stillness, but with an
Speaker 1: awareness or an attention to the body.
Speaker 3: You say, for many people it can be difficult to
Speaker 3: know the difference between feeling bodily sensations and simply thinking
Speaker 3: about the body. Is there a ground rule or a
Speaker 3: way that you have of sort of knowing whether somebody's
Speaker 3: actually feeling what's going on versus thinking about the body.
Speaker 3: How do you tell where somebody.
Speaker 1: Is if it's a room full of people, I can't tell.
Speaker 1: So I give a lot of cues and so invite
Speaker 1: people to feel the pressure to understand how the heat
Speaker 1: is being distributed, or you know, if I'm having them
Speaker 1: sense their feet to notice that there's a difference between
Speaker 1: the outside of their feet and the inner feet, can
Speaker 1: they send just one toe at a time, and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of taking them through all these different cues that
Speaker 1: helps them to start to bring in a liveness to
Speaker 1: the sense of their understanding of the body, so that they,
Speaker 1: you know, start to notice sensation, vibration, pressure, pulsing, temperature
Speaker 1: on the surface versus temperature inside. And so giving a
Speaker 1: lot of cues if I'm working with someone individually, you know,
Speaker 1: then I can start to ask them questions and have
Speaker 1: them reflect back to me what they're feeling so that
Speaker 1: I can understand better.
Speaker 3: And have you found that, like mindfulness or meditation in general,
Speaker 3: is a skill that we get better at.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you know, I'm living proof of that that
Speaker 1: I did not have an embodied sense of myself and
Speaker 1: definitely not in my practice for years. And so the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, as I'm talking to you, I
Speaker 1: can actually feel my feet on the floor and that's
Speaker 1: you know, part of my kind of fluctuating awareness as
Speaker 1: we're speaking, is testament to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I have a long way to go,
Speaker 3: but I have also made progress in that area. Where
Speaker 3: in the beginning when it was like feel this, I
Speaker 3: was like, like, do I have feet? I mean I
Speaker 3: assume I do. I remember for a while I practiced
Speaker 3: with these Reggie Ray tapes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's great with that.
Speaker 3: And he would say, like, notice the personality of your
Speaker 3: big toe, and I'd be like, what is what I mean?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 3: That still makes me laugh. It just it's a funny
Speaker 3: thing to say, I think, but I got much better
Speaker 3: at body practice by practicing in the shower because there
Speaker 3: was enough going on sensation wise, enough change in variability
Speaker 3: that I actually had something I could work with, you know.
Speaker 3: And then over time, you know, I got more subtle,
Speaker 3: but I have a long way to go with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I used to work at a meditation center and
Speaker 1: Reggie Rays Group rented it once and he came in
Speaker 1: and it was packed with chain and people everywhere, and
Speaker 1: the first thing he had people do was lie down
Speaker 1: on the floor, and there was really no room, and
Speaker 1: so people were like lying under their chairs and sideways,
Speaker 1: and people's feet were in people's head. And I was
Speaker 1: really impressed by that, because I know for myself, like
Speaker 1: I really, I do have to lie down when I
Speaker 1: feel disembodied, because sitting up there's a way in which
Speaker 1: so much of my energy is keeping my body up.
Speaker 1: And when I'm lying down, I can really feel the
Speaker 1: whole length of the floor, I can feel supported, I
Speaker 1: can feel so many points of contact with the earth
Speaker 1: that you know, that sense of embodiment comes much more alive.
Speaker 3: In the book, you talk a little bit about inter reception,
Speaker 3: the process by which we sort of sense our internal body.
Speaker 3: You also then talk about one of the central practices
Speaker 3: and mindfulness is around vedonna, which is this often translated
Speaker 3: you say, is feeling tone, which is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
Speaker 3: Is inter reception, the scientific name for what we're driving
Speaker 3: at with verdonna.
Speaker 1: Vedana is definitely part of interception. I'm trying to reflect
Speaker 1: if there's any part of interception that's not only vedana.
Speaker 3: And I guess I'm pronouncing it wrong when I say veidana,
Speaker 3: because when I've read about each of them separately, I've
Speaker 3: been like that this sounds like a very similar thing,
Speaker 3: because when I tune into my body, there's often that
Speaker 3: very basic I like it, I don't like it, or
Speaker 3: I don't really notice it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I've always understood veidana not so much
Speaker 1: about liking or not liking. That comes in the classical teaching.
Speaker 1: It's talked about as sankara. You know, that's that's sort
Speaker 1: of the action of liking or not liking. Veadana is
Speaker 1: just a perception, So it's actually just the perceiving quality,
Speaker 1: or it's related to the perceiving quality of just knowing. Actually,
Speaker 1: Vadana and sonya perception both are rooted to panya, which
Speaker 1: is wisdom, so they all have this quality of just knowing.
Speaker 1: They all have the same roots, so they know what's happening.
Speaker 1: That's why they're so connected to interception. So it's just
Speaker 1: knowing whether something is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Sankara. I
Speaker 1: know I'm getting really nerdy here, but I'm a nerd,
Speaker 1: so please. And Kara is the same root as karma
Speaker 1: or comma. And you know, comma just means action, Karma
Speaker 1: just means action. So sankara is the action of moving
Speaker 1: towards or away or not. So that's the liking not
Speaker 1: liking when we move towards something or not. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it helps me just understand that distinction so that I
Speaker 1: can be with something unpleasant without any need to like
Speaker 1: or dislike. Right, that's the freedom.
Speaker 3: It's so interesting how those two happen so fast.
Speaker 1: They're all happening at the same time. So it's not
Speaker 1: even that they are like separate experiences, like all of
Speaker 1: the five aggregates arise at the same moment. Right.
Speaker 3: Interesting. I've never heard anybody say that before. I've heard
Speaker 3: people talk about how they're not really separate, how we're
Speaker 3: sort of making distinctions that don't exist. I've always thought
Speaker 3: of it somewhat sequentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there might be the like stopping time Jedi master
Speaker 1: version of seeing them in their sequence. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: we can separate it out, But for most of us,
Speaker 1: it's just a rising moment to moment to moment to moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In a little while we're going to go into the
Speaker 3: post show conversation. You're going to lead us in a
Speaker 3: short meditation. That's one of your favorite practices around embodiment,
Speaker 3: which is an elements practice. So I'm not going to
Speaker 3: talk about what that is except to say it's a
Speaker 3: great practice. We'll do that in the post show conversation.
Speaker 3: But I think where I want to kind of wrap
Speaker 3: us up here is you talk about being at the
Speaker 3: heart of the Buddhist path are ethical teachings? Really, all
Speaker 3: of our religious traditions, there are these ethical teachings, and
Speaker 3: we tend to like to sort of skip by them,
Speaker 3: particularly in our modern interpretation of a lot of these.
Speaker 3: We don't really like them. We don't like the term moral,
Speaker 3: we don't like them idea. But you talk about them.
Speaker 3: But you described the five precepts in what to me
Speaker 3: was a really interesting way. I had not heard them before.
Speaker 3: You phrase them slightly differently, and I really liked it,
Speaker 3: and I thought I would just maybe walk through each
Speaker 3: of those and you could just briefly talk about them
Speaker 3: for a second.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just didn't note they're not my phrasing.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: The first is to honor life, which is traditionally said,
Speaker 3: as I've read it, do not kill.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I like.
Speaker 3: That phrasing of honoring life. How do those mean different
Speaker 3: things to you?
Speaker 1: Or do they They do mean different things to me.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a way in which gratitude and I
Speaker 1: talk about gratitude earlier in the book, is so central.
Speaker 1: You know, we started talking about the wolf and being
Speaker 1: grateful for the bad wolf as well as part of
Speaker 1: the process. And so there is harm. That's part of
Speaker 1: being human, and so whatever steps we take to do
Speaker 1: the least amount of harm possible, you know, whether that's
Speaker 1: being a vegan or speaking out against war, there's a
Speaker 1: way in which we have to acknowledge that we all
Speaker 1: are going to bring harm in some way or another,
Speaker 1: so that honoring of life really becomes about being clear
Speaker 1: about what our values are and making those decisions with
Speaker 1: the commitment to the least harm possible. And you know,
Speaker 1: for some of us who choose to eat eggs, or
Speaker 1: drink milk, or maybe that means only buying those things
Speaker 1: from humane sources and knowing what our food chain is
Speaker 1: involved in, or you know where our products come from
Speaker 1: and whether they're tested on animals or so. It really
Speaker 1: becomes about a bigger picture of honoring life, not just
Speaker 1: what it means to kill something or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's always that smart, elic response that I get as
Speaker 3: a vegetarian, which is, well, you're killing plants. I'm like, why, Yeah,
Speaker 3: true I am. And we drive back and forth to
Speaker 3: Atlanta to take care of mom, and one look at
Speaker 3: the windshield and the bumper of the car tells me
Speaker 3: I took an enormous number of insect life forms.
Speaker 2: It's there.
Speaker 3: The second is to be generous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to take not what's not freely offered. You know,
Speaker 1: for me, this is such an interesting one because they
Speaker 1: are such different expressions of generosity in different cultures. I've
Speaker 1: seen that being a part of different cultures growing up,
Speaker 1: and the expression of generosity in Ethiopian culture looks so
Speaker 1: different than the expression of generosity in American culture. And
Speaker 1: so that sense of not stealing and being generous becomes
Speaker 1: really about understanding what it means to be in relationship
Speaker 1: and what it means to be in reciprocal relationship, because
Speaker 1: there were times in kind of an American context where
Speaker 1: I was behaving in an Ethiopian way where you always
Speaker 1: offer to pay for everything and you give a lot,
Speaker 1: and that's based in a culture there there's a reciprocal
Speaker 1: relationship of generosity, so that there's always a balancing happening,
Speaker 1: and so you also have to learn what is generous
Speaker 1: and what's appropriate and what's in balance. So I know
Speaker 1: this is different than what the classical teaching is saying,
Speaker 1: but when you said that, it reminded me of you know,
Speaker 1: there's also a being a generous to ourselves, you know,
Speaker 1: and not overgiving in a sense and not overtaking.
Speaker 3: Right. Well, what I liked about these rephrasings is I
Speaker 3: think they are in a lot of senses broader. You know,
Speaker 3: if I say do not steal, that's a law. Be
Speaker 3: generous is a different way of looking at that. The
Speaker 3: next is to respect erotic power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I so appreciate this teaching on retreat
Speaker 1: to refrain from sexual activity, which really feels restrictive but
Speaker 1: creates a container of safety for people who are practicing
Speaker 1: together living together, don't know each other, and we're really
Speaker 1: not sort of giving that attention where it may not
Speaker 1: be desired, and we're helping to see our patterns in
Speaker 1: that way. And at the same time, there can be
Speaker 1: this subtle and sometimes not so subtle message that sex
Speaker 1: is bad and erotic energy is bad, and so really
Speaker 1: learning to respect that energy in a way that also
Speaker 1: allows it to flourish when it is appropriate, rather than
Speaker 1: actually really sometimes stifling it in the name of something
Speaker 1: that is more spiritual or more profound. It's such a
Speaker 1: delicate balance. And so where we are and who we're
Speaker 1: with and what's appropriate is really a communicative process, I think.
Speaker 3: Which leads us into the next one, which is traditionally
Speaker 3: do not lie. But I like this interpretation much better.
Speaker 1: Communicate honestly, yes, and you know, honestly doesn't mean saying
Speaker 1: everything all the time. What I love about these and
Speaker 1: you know, the phrasing in the book has the inclusion
Speaker 1: of the earth and the ancestors and all of these
Speaker 1: qualities that to me denote relationship. And so this one
Speaker 1: especially is about really learning to listen and to bring
Speaker 1: a quality of clarity and kindness to our interactions so
Speaker 1: that what comes out is for you know, the betterment
Speaker 1: of a relationship.
Speaker 3: And then the final one is traditionally said avoided intoxicst
Speaker 3: here says cultivate clarity, which again I really like that
Speaker 3: spin on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, with this growth of interest in
Speaker 1: plant medicine, even in Buddhist communities and with Buddhist teachers,
Speaker 1: you know, this traditional idea that anything outside of ourselves
Speaker 1: is considered an intoxicate that should be avoided. It doesn't
Speaker 1: acknowledge sort of what it means to heal our trauma,
Speaker 1: to grow in wisdom and learn from indigenous ways, and
Speaker 1: so it gives a much broader sense of what it
Speaker 1: means to be clear headed, clear minded, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it too. And it also invites in questions about
Speaker 1: technology and media and you know the other things that
Speaker 1: are dilute our minds besides booze and drugs.
Speaker 3: You know, so listener and thinking about all that and
Speaker 3: the other great wisdom from today's episode. If you're going
Speaker 3: to isolate just one top insight that you're taking away,
Speaker 3: what would it be? Not your top ten, not the
Speaker 3: top five? Just one?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Think about it? Got it?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: I ask you? What's one tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little
Speaker 3: thing you can do today to put it in practice,
Speaker 3: or maybe just take a baby step towards it. Remember,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot. Profound change
Speaker 3: happens as a result of aggregated tiny actions, not massive
Speaker 3: heroic effort. If you're not already on our good Wolf
Speaker 3: for SMS list, I'd highly recommend it as a tool
Speaker 3: you can leverage to remind you to take those vital
Speaker 3: baby steps forward. You can get on there at oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash SMS. It's totally free, and once you're
Speaker 3: on there, I'll send you a couple text messages a
Speaker 3: week with little reminders and nudges. Here's what I recently
Speaker 3: shared to give you an idea of the type of
Speaker 3: stuff I send. Keep practicing even if it seems hopeless.
Speaker 3: Don't strive for perfection, aim for consistency, and no matter what,
Speaker 3: keep showing up for yourself. That was a great gem
Speaker 3: from recent guests Light Watkins. And if you're on the
Speaker 3: fence about joining, remember it's totally free and easy to unsubscribe.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in, I'd love to have
Speaker 3: you there. Just go to oneufeed dot net slash SMS
Speaker 3: all right back to it.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I had never seen the precepts sort
Speaker 3: of put in these words, and I really resonated strongly
Speaker 3: with them. Well, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 3: You and I are going to talk in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation where you're going to lead us through a
Speaker 3: short for la months practice, which, as I said, is
Speaker 3: a wonderful practice that I've recently been exposed to and
Speaker 3: I'm looking forward to that. Listeners, you can get access
Speaker 3: to this post show conversation ad free episodes, a special
Speaker 3: episode each week I do called a teaching song and
Speaker 3: a poem, and other benefits of our community by going
Speaker 3: to one feed dot net slash join Seviani. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for taking the time to come on. I've
Speaker 3: really really enjoyed this conversation, and as often as the case,
Speaker 3: it has kind of flown by, I'm like, well, how
Speaker 3: do we get an hour already? But here we are.
Speaker 3: So I really enjoyed the book, and we'll have links
Speaker 3: to it in the show notes and to your website
Speaker 3: and all that, and I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, It's been great.
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