Speaker 1: That mindfulness cliche exists because there's some truth to it.
Speaker 1: There is a way in which spiritual practice can be narcissistic,
Speaker 1: where I just think about my own well being, or
Speaker 1: I don't want to let in any bad vibes, so
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get involved in any of the contentious
Speaker 1: political issues. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other will keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is j Michaelson.
Speaker 1: He's a columnist for The Daily Beast and a frequent
Speaker 1: commentator on MSNBC and npr. J is also a teacher
Speaker 1: and an editor at ten Percent Happier, a leading meditation platform,
Speaker 1: as well as the author of six books on the
Speaker 1: contemplate of practice, including the one we discussed here, Enlightenment
Speaker 1: by Trial and Error ten Years on the Slippery Slopes
Speaker 1: of Jewish Spirituality, Postmodern Buddhism, and other mystical heresies. Hi J,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. I am
Speaker 1: excited to have you on. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, one of which is your latest book,
Speaker 1: which is called Enlightenment by Trial and Error ten Years
Speaker 1: on the slippery Slope of Jewish Spirituality, post Modern Buddhism
Speaker 1: and other mystical heresies. But before we get into all that,
Speaker 1: let's start like we always do. There's a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandfather and says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So you and I share
Speaker 1: an affection for this parable. I've actually thought from it
Speaker 1: many times. I love it, and uh, it really conveys
Speaker 1: some of the essence of what I consider to be
Speaker 1: spiritual practice, which is not having some illusion that the
Speaker 1: big bad wolf, let's say, will disappear or should disappear.
Speaker 1: You know, so if I only meditate enough, then I'll
Speaker 1: only think happy thoughts and kind thoughts. Just doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way, but instead that there's some agency involved. You know,
Speaker 1: we all have the better angels of our nature and
Speaker 1: the ones that maybe served some evolutionary purpose or evolutionary
Speaker 1: function or were important but maybe don't service now. You know,
Speaker 1: we may or may not have so much control over
Speaker 1: the presence or absence of those wolves or angels or
Speaker 1: what have you, but we do have some agency over
Speaker 1: which we nourish. And um, that's been very true for
Speaker 1: me in my life. You know, I have an unusual
Speaker 1: professional life, and that I spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: as a journalist and a lot of time as a
Speaker 1: meditation teacher. So in one of my jobs I make
Speaker 1: people more stressed out, and then the other I maybe
Speaker 1: help them calm down a little bit. And so I
Speaker 1: see that on a day to day basis myself. Journalism
Speaker 1: for me is a form of activism, so it's very
Speaker 1: important to me. It's kind of a central piece of
Speaker 1: my work in the world. But I do also know
Speaker 1: how my mind and heart feel and body after doing
Speaker 1: a lot of that work, especially over the last few
Speaker 1: years and through the pandemic as well, and so you
Speaker 1: can feel on a day to day basis what it's
Speaker 1: like to feed one of the wolves, and certainly over
Speaker 1: the long term that's been my experience as well. So
Speaker 1: it's it's that letting go of a certain delusion of
Speaker 1: enlightenment or awakening that I don't think ever really happens.
Speaker 1: And a bunch of pretty enlightened people, but they say
Speaker 1: a human beings and we do experience the range of
Speaker 1: emotions and we do have the range of desires that
Speaker 1: we have, but they make wiser, more compassionate choices around
Speaker 1: which ones to feed. I think that's a great jumping
Speaker 1: off point, and I want to use it to go
Speaker 1: into one of my sort of fundamental questions that I
Speaker 1: wanted to cover in this And you describe in the
Speaker 1: book some really powerful, exalted states that you have realizing
Speaker 1: the oneness of everything. All of that right, And I
Speaker 1: say all that to frame up this question. I heard
Speaker 1: you talking with Dan Harris not too long ago, and
Speaker 1: you said that you thought his title of his book,
Speaker 1: ten percent Happier, was one of the most genius things
Speaker 1: he ever did to frame up what meditation practice can
Speaker 1: give us, which is ten percent happier. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you, though, about that view of ten percent happier
Speaker 1: and then the view on the other hand, of enlightenment,
Speaker 1: where we really realize that we are not these separate
Speaker 1: beings and that we are connected to everything. And that's
Speaker 1: a whole lot more than ten percent happier. And so
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious how you hold those two things.
Speaker 1: Is that we meet in the middle. When you said that,
Speaker 1: it sort of made me sit up and go, I
Speaker 1: want to ask him about that. We'll call it, We'll
Speaker 1: call it him. Yeah, I love that question. Um. One
Speaker 1: of the things I love about Dan actually is that
Speaker 1: you know he and I operate in the world of
Speaker 1: meeting people where they are and maybe taking them a
Speaker 1: step along the path. But he secretly would love to
Speaker 1: write the next book called percent Happier and just meeting,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of interviews with people who are really
Speaker 1: realized beings. That's probably not his next book, I should say,
Speaker 1: but he's talked about it with me a lot. It
Speaker 1: just is something that attracts him in a way. And
Speaker 1: I've had the good fortune to spend more time doing
Speaker 1: long retreats and things like that than than Dan has.
Speaker 1: He's had the good fortune to write a number one
Speaker 1: New York Times bestseller. So we both had some good
Speaker 1: fortune in our lives, you know. So I've come in
Speaker 1: contact with some of those folks and it is, you know, profound.
Speaker 1: But I think do another excellent all star book title,
Speaker 1: Jack Cornfields After the Ecstasy the Laundry. Part of what
Speaker 1: I was trying to do in the Enlightenment book was
Speaker 1: my own version of that. You know that there are
Speaker 1: these amazing states and there are realizations and that that stick.
Speaker 1: But to do another metaphor like the two wolves, you know,
Speaker 1: the mind is like tofu It takes the flavor for
Speaker 1: what it's marinated in. That's from one of my teachers,
Speaker 1: are by Zone and Chapter Shalomi, who I later found
Speaker 1: out took it from Rama Krishna. By the way, you know,
Speaker 1: we swim in the world that we swim in and
Speaker 1: it affects us, and that itself is an insight into
Speaker 1: kind of the condition nature of ourselves and the non essential,
Speaker 1: non self nature of who we are. So now I
Speaker 1: work for a ten percent Happier company and it is
Speaker 1: meeting people where they are. And I love my kind
Speaker 1: of so called more advanced teaching where I'll teach you know,
Speaker 1: sort of advanced kinds of meditation in Buddhist contexts. It's
Speaker 1: very nourishing for me and hopefully for my students as well.
Speaker 1: But there's something really profound about the number of people
Speaker 1: that we reach at ten percent Happier. So I added
Speaker 1: the weekly newsletter that goes out just over a million
Speaker 1: subscribers to that newsletter, which you know, for something meditation
Speaker 1: or spirituality oriented, is a lot bigger than most of
Speaker 1: the platforms that are available, and that's really exciting. And
Speaker 1: I think to sort of demystify the goal to say, no, well,
Speaker 1: don't worry about what if you would be ten percent happier.
Speaker 1: I'm just being a ventriloquist for Dan at this point.
Speaker 1: But what if I told you if you spend an
Speaker 1: hour day or even twenty minutes a day, you might
Speaker 1: get ten percent happy or ten percent more compassionate or
Speaker 1: kinder or more available in a relationship? Would you do it?
Speaker 1: I really do think that's profound because you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of these practices and techniques and goals were monastic,
Speaker 1: and they were meant for people to really devote their
Speaker 1: entire lives too. And the dent kind of work really
Speaker 1: takes a certain kind of dedication and effort that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily compatible with how the vast majority of people on
Speaker 1: the planet live our lives. And so that for me
Speaker 1: is how I do that dance. I've had some times
Speaker 1: where I really felt like, Okay, liberation is the goal,
Speaker 1: and how can I get there? And here's what I
Speaker 1: want to do, And I'm going to set that intention
Speaker 1: and just see what unfolds. And then you know, the
Speaker 1: time I'm in now, you know, raising a small child
Speaker 1: and and being in a family that's not the aspiration
Speaker 1: for this part of my life. Excellent, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's a great answer and I love that idea too,
Speaker 1: of ten happier or at the very least, I think
Speaker 1: it goes back to the wolf parable a little bit, right.
Speaker 1: And what I like about the parable is it sort
Speaker 1: of says, hey, we all have these two things inside
Speaker 1: of us, and you know what, they're not going away,
Speaker 1: and so all this work that we do does move
Speaker 1: us down a path to being kinder, more compassionate, happier people,
Speaker 1: and we still have, as you said, all the range
Speaker 1: of human emotions and experiences. I totally agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think anyone who's done some degree of practice, whether
Speaker 1: it's yoga, meditation, or whatever, experiences that you know on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. But I can say again, from being
Speaker 1: a ten percent happier, there is this very pervasive myth,
Speaker 1: right that meditation is just about finding your zen and
Speaker 1: no bad thoughts should arise, or you should never feel angry.
Speaker 1: Not only is that not realistic, it's not even something
Speaker 1: we want, you know. Of course, we want to have
Speaker 1: our hearts broken by the suffering in the world. Of
Speaker 1: course we want to be outraged, right, We just want
Speaker 1: to be able to relate to those parts of ourselves,
Speaker 1: to that wolf in a more skillful way, so sometimes
Speaker 1: it's appropriate to give voice to that outrage. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: not so helpful, so that skillful relating is where the
Speaker 1: action is. But there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: selling a kind of mindfulness cure all. Some people have
Speaker 1: called it mcmine fullness that you know, just do this
Speaker 1: and you'll feel great and uh, don't worry about your
Speaker 1: life or anything like that, and those things will take
Speaker 1: care of themselves. And that's just not my experience anyway, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, at the heart of all these spiritual traditions, yes,
Speaker 1: there's realization, but there's also responsibility. I took those two
Speaker 1: words from you, realization and responsibility because you're describing the
Speaker 1: Jewish mystical path. You say it's running and returning like
Speaker 1: the angels and Ezekiel's vision, profound experiences of the divine,
Speaker 1: ethical obligations to one another. Realization and responsibility. You phrase
Speaker 1: that so much better than I do in the books.
Speaker 1: So thank you for this. Yeah. No, I think those
Speaker 1: are the polls in which we live, and you know
Speaker 1: some of us, certainly I did. When I was much younger,
Speaker 1: I had a choice, and I considered the monastic life
Speaker 1: in a Buddhist context, and I have many friends who
Speaker 1: did do that for some period of time, maybe before
Speaker 1: coming back, and I did do some long retreats. But
Speaker 1: you know, just the karma of where I am in
Speaker 1: this world is one in which that running and returning
Speaker 1: model has been really helpful. That it's not even just
Speaker 1: after the ecstasy the laundry, because I think there's implicit
Speaker 1: in that, and this isn't Jack Hornfield's view, but implicit
Speaker 1: in just those words could be a sort of denigrating
Speaker 1: of the laundry. Right, It's like, oh, so my goal
Speaker 1: is to just have more ecstasy and less laundry. Now,
Speaker 1: again that's not what Jack says in the book, but
Speaker 1: I could see someone reading it that way, and that's
Speaker 1: not quite great either. It's like, after the ecstasy, the
Speaker 1: ethical responsibility to make a better world, or to pass
Speaker 1: on some world to our children and grandchildren. That puts
Speaker 1: them more on an even keel. And certainly, the Jewish
Speaker 1: mystical tradition is really almost unique in that there was
Speaker 1: hardly any monastic tradition within the history of Jewish mysticism.
Speaker 1: That's unusual, and so not only is monasticism not put
Speaker 1: on the highest level, it barely existed it's only just
Speaker 1: a few exceptions, and so these practitioners always had to
Speaker 1: navigate the poll of worldly life, which for them had
Speaker 1: to be sanctified with holiness and with applic Asian on
Speaker 1: the one hand, with the attraction of the mystical on
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, that's interesting. I never understood that that
Speaker 1: there had not been a monastic tradition really in Jewish mysticism.
Speaker 1: Let's transition for a minute to an article you wrote,
Speaker 1: I think for the Daily Beast, and it's a review
Speaker 1: of Leonard Cohen's latest record. And I used to say
Speaker 1: this on the show all the time. I don't think
Speaker 1: I say it much anymore. Earlier listeners of the show
Speaker 1: will have heard this, which was that Leonard Cohen was
Speaker 1: the one guest I most wanted to have on the show,
Speaker 1: and of course he's passed and that didn't work out.
Speaker 1: But you're reviewing sort of his final record was put
Speaker 1: out after his death. His son put it together with
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that Leonard had already done and
Speaker 1: married some things to it. And you talk about a
Speaker 1: song on it called The Goal, And I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could sort of share what struck you so
Speaker 1: much about that song. So it's another thing you and
Speaker 1: I have in common. I just have a passionate love
Speaker 1: for Leonard Cohen's work in life and inspired by him.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll just read a couple of these lines that
Speaker 1: I had quoted in that in that review, just so
Speaker 1: people can hear them. There's a little twist that he
Speaker 1: does with I think what our expectations might be about
Speaker 1: a song about the meaning of life, and he kind
Speaker 1: of inverts those expectations. So he speaks or sings the following,
Speaker 1: settling at last, accounts of the soul this for the
Speaker 1: trash that paid in full. No one to follow, nothing
Speaker 1: to teach except that the goal falls short of the reach.
Speaker 1: So this is clearly a work of a poet late
Speaker 1: in life, right, nothing left to follow, nothing to teach
Speaker 1: except those last two lines, or maybe an inversion of
Speaker 1: the usual. We know that if we reach for a goal,
Speaker 1: we might fall short, and so we're used to that
Speaker 1: kind of dichotomy that the reach falls short of the goal.
Speaker 1: But he says that the goal falls short of the reach.
Speaker 1: And for me, I think, first of all, there's just
Speaker 1: something wonderfully enigmatic about that. What my reading or interpretation
Speaker 1: or response to it is something about the fact that
Speaker 1: there may not be that grass ring that we're reaching for.
Speaker 1: There may not be a grand meaning of life or
Speaker 1: the grand answer that will make all of the problems
Speaker 1: go away, But there's the nobility in the reaching and
Speaker 1: that there's something really profound about that human expression. So
Speaker 1: is there an essential truth of the soul and of
Speaker 1: love and of the meaning of life? Maybe maybe not,
Speaker 1: But there's that yearning, that reaching that still is beautiful,
Speaker 1: and that for me, I think is again for someone
Speaker 1: late in life. There's not a cynicism there. It could
Speaker 1: be heard that way, especially with his gravelly voice right,
Speaker 1: no on to follow and nothing to teach, But I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a cynicism there. I think there's a
Speaker 1: profound contentment that at the end of a very long
Speaker 1: and multi layered life which also included time as a monk,
Speaker 1: but which also included a lot of time as a
Speaker 1: sensualist and a lover, poet and musician, there's a kind
Speaker 1: of completion, even though there's no more of an answer
Speaker 1: now than there was at the beginning. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a little of what you wrote there because
Speaker 1: I think it also ties back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about before, about this idea that meditation just is
Speaker 1: going to make us happy. Use the term, mike, mindfulness, right,
Speaker 1: And I think what you right here speaks to this
Speaker 1: a little bit. And you said in the twenty centuries
Speaker 1: that challenging, even bleak dharmic teaching, which is what Leonard
Speaker 1: Cohen was just giving us, has been transmorgified into the
Speaker 1: more reassuring cliche of mindfulness. That we should live in
Speaker 1: the present moment, which is true enough. But the more
Speaker 1: complete picture which Cohen here provides as the only thing
Speaker 1: he has left to teach, is that we live in
Speaker 1: the moment, because that is all there is. Reaching beyond
Speaker 1: ourselves is havel hel You go ahead and say Ecclesiastices,
Speaker 1: I was close. I I butcher that one all the time,
Speaker 1: as said, vanity, emptiness, and illusion, And I just love that.
Speaker 1: And again I don't find it bleak. I find it
Speaker 1: comforting and grounding. Yeah, I've always been mystified by the
Speaker 1: readings of Ecclesiastes, you know, bizarre philosophical book of the Bible,
Speaker 1: as cynical or negative. You know that all the rivers
Speaker 1: run to the sea, but the sea is never full,
Speaker 1: and that you know our lives are kind of like
Speaker 1: building castles in the sand that get washed away. That
Speaker 1: to me just feels like reality. And then the question is, well,
Speaker 1: what do we make of that reality, and how do
Speaker 1: we live in it? How do we live in a
Speaker 1: chord with that truth? For me, that naturally brings to
Speaker 1: questions of suffering and alleviating suffering, and how do we
Speaker 1: live a life that creates value for ourselves and others
Speaker 1: in the absence of some objective truth like oh, well,
Speaker 1: if you just do this particular thing you fulfilled with
Speaker 1: the deity has required a view, You're good, You've done it.
Speaker 1: I mean, Ecclesiastes is kind of radical in the context
Speaker 1: of a monotheistic anthology of texts like the Bible that
Speaker 1: it does say that there's sort of a line tacked
Speaker 1: on at the end, which is, you know, just do
Speaker 1: the right thing, do what God tells you, and it'll
Speaker 1: that's what you should do. But even then it doesn't
Speaker 1: provide that kind of reassuring answer. It's not like you
Speaker 1: do that and you'll go to heaven and live, you know,
Speaker 1: in eternal life and bliss. It's just this is the
Speaker 1: world in which we live, in which things are impermanent
Speaker 1: and things are changing, and how do we live in
Speaker 1: a chord with that? I also find that optimistic rather
Speaker 1: than pessimistic. Yeah, the last psychedelic experience I had, which
Speaker 1: I will not share what decade that might have been
Speaker 1: in It could have been yesterday, it could have been
Speaker 1: when I was twenty, I'll leave that up to interpretation. However,
Speaker 1: after it was over, I found myself running to that
Speaker 1: book because for whatever reason, it just kept coming to
Speaker 1: me all through it. That sort of summarized the experience
Speaker 1: for me. I don't know what it was. I'm not
Speaker 1: normally driven to find a book out of the Bible,
Speaker 1: but that was the one. That's an amazing story, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, and picking up on something we said earlier.
Speaker 1: Those kinds of medicines can really open a certain door.
Speaker 1: But then when the door is open, now there's the
Speaker 1: question of where do you go? Do you go through
Speaker 1: the door, and the door doesn't mean do more psychedelics necessarily, right, So,
Speaker 1: like Allen Watts said, once you get the message, you
Speaker 1: can hang up the phone. It's kind of how ramda
Speaker 1: Us I think became romda Us. Right. So having profound
Speaker 1: opening variances and insights and then kind of well, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how do I get to this as more of a
Speaker 1: part of my life as opposed to just when I
Speaker 1: have this experience. He says at one point when he
Speaker 1: was doing large amounts of LSD with Timothy Leary, that
Speaker 1: he'd have these amazing experiences and then at the end
Speaker 1: he felt like he was putting on these clothes again
Speaker 1: of this body and this form and constriction, and it
Speaker 1: was really painful for him coming down from those amazing places.
Speaker 1: And that's what kind of spurred him to think, there
Speaker 1: must be a different way here. There must be a
Speaker 1: way to have an integration of those experiences with the
Speaker 1: rest of life. That leads me to other area I
Speaker 1: want to go, which is talking about these spiritual experiences
Speaker 1: that we have. I've had some of them, You've had
Speaker 1: some of them, these moments of oneness, these moments of
Speaker 1: sort of ecstasy and seeing everything, and then generally we
Speaker 1: don't stay there. And you talk about that these states
Speaker 1: can be great except when they lead us to continuing
Speaker 1: to chase them and expecting that that's the way things
Speaker 1: should be, right, and that it sucks if you're not
Speaker 1: having as many of those as possible, right, that could
Speaker 1: really become a trap. And it's funny when I talk
Speaker 1: about this subject because on the one hand, I want
Speaker 1: everyone to have those experiences however they access it, whether
Speaker 1: it's through spiritual practice, whether it's with psychedelics or other medicines,
Speaker 1: or whether it's in you know, any kind of deep
Speaker 1: interpersonal practice and relational practice. So wherever it is, I
Speaker 1: want people to have peak experiences. And so I don't
Speaker 1: want to like jump over that to the negative side,
Speaker 1: but there is that at a certain point, it's just
Speaker 1: another experience, right. And if there's an old teaching story
Speaker 1: from kind of pre Hindu religion in India that Great
Speaker 1: Yogi went into this concentrated mind state somebody, which is
Speaker 1: kind of an amazing unit of mind state, and he said,
Speaker 1: as sort of a feat to show his students how
Speaker 1: accomplished he was, he was going to go in I
Speaker 1: forget the number'd say for ten years or something like
Speaker 1: that extraordinary period of time. And just before he enters
Speaker 1: the state, he says to one of the students, I'm
Speaker 1: feeling really thirsty. That's all right, I'll just go into somebody.
Speaker 1: And he goes into the state. Sure enough, ten years later,
Speaker 1: on the dot he wakes up. The students are all
Speaker 1: waiting because they're amazed, and you know what the teacher
Speaker 1: is going to say. And the first thing he says
Speaker 1: is I'm feeling thirsty, which is to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: you go out, no matter how profound the experience, you're
Speaker 1: going to return to this human body and too to
Speaker 1: our conditions, and we'll feel thirsty or tired, or despairing
Speaker 1: or joyful or lusty or whatever we're gonna feel. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't make that go away. And I haven't done
Speaker 1: a somebody state for ten years, but I think applying
Speaker 1: that to my own lesser states, there's a profound teaching
Speaker 1: in that. And again, to me, it brings me back
Speaker 1: to the work that I'm doing now, which is less
Speaker 1: focused on ten years in an ecstatic mind state and
Speaker 1: more focused on, you know, people emerging from a pandemic
Speaker 1: and trying to live with a little less fear or
Speaker 1: dealing with some of the trauma that we've amassed over
Speaker 1: the last period of time and haven't had an opportunity
Speaker 1: to process because we've been to in it. And that
Speaker 1: feels very continuous for me. It's very different in a
Speaker 1: way from kind of going on on these deeper stages
Speaker 1: of the path, but it feels very harmonious. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: makes me think of a few things. One is a
Speaker 1: spiritual teacher, Audio Shanti, who has been really important to me,
Speaker 1: once said something to me that I thought was really
Speaker 1: helpful because I was sort of describing this like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we had these experiences and now I'm not really and
Speaker 1: he had a beautiful phrase and he said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever bit of it remains, let's say you get five
Speaker 1: percent of it, devote yourself to that. And I loved
Speaker 1: that word. Devote you know, devote yourself to what you
Speaker 1: saw that was true in that state. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was a really beautiful way of sort of reframing,
Speaker 1: because it's not then about getting back there, it's about
Speaker 1: what did I see that was true? What did it
Speaker 1: tell me about the nature of life? And how do
Speaker 1: I live my life that way? That was a really
Speaker 1: beautiful teaching. I love that. I think for me it
Speaker 1: brings back to the wolves a little bit, that both
Speaker 1: of the wolves have very coherent stories about what the
Speaker 1: world is and how to live in it. And when
Speaker 1: I've been marinating in one wolf land, I tend to
Speaker 1: believe those stories. The use of the word to vote
Speaker 1: is a really interesting one that maybe it's just a memory.
Speaker 1: It's at times of what it was like to be
Speaker 1: in the other wolf consciousness and like, oh yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: that wolf led me to a lot more love. Be interesting.
Speaker 1: What would that then translate into into the life that
Speaker 1: I'm in now? And it might look pretty mundane compared
Speaker 1: to growing a long beard and going to Nepal, like
Speaker 1: for a period of time, I might look almost indistinguishable
Speaker 1: from just trying to be a better person in life
Speaker 1: around a day to day basis. You know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be special with bells and whistles, but there's
Speaker 1: still that that devotion. That's a lovely turn of phrase.
Speaker 1: You just mentioned a beard there, and I almost did
Speaker 1: not make this interview on time because I wandered at
Speaker 1: the last minute into an article you wrote. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's an article, it's a story called the Beard.
Speaker 1: And I was utterly captivated. I was like, I've got
Speaker 1: to stop reading this, but I was really well done.
Speaker 1: It's really good. Oh thank you so much. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of a frustrated fiction writer in certain ways. I've written
Speaker 1: now eight books of nonfiction, but I really am proud
Speaker 1: of my short stories, and that one was just put
Speaker 1: out in a new magazine called iron A y I
Speaker 1: n that's online, And that's for me trying to illuminate
Speaker 1: the shadow in a certain way. And partly it was
Speaker 1: my own shadow when I wrote that story. But the
Speaker 1: way we can cut ourselves off from that source of
Speaker 1: nourishment and devotion, which is kind of the tragedy of
Speaker 1: that character in that story. But thank you. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad someone read it. You never know the short story
Speaker 1: if you get a reader or not. I read it,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking this is just gonna be like
Speaker 1: a very short thing. And I would scroll and be like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a long way yet to go, and yet I
Speaker 1: was like, I gotta keep reading. I identified with the
Speaker 1: character without giving too much of it away. The main
Speaker 1: character is a woman and her husband has a long
Speaker 1: beard and she doesn't like it. It bothers her in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, and she wrestles with this, and
Speaker 1: I was kind of hoping that the resolution I would
Speaker 1: get to at the end would teach me to deal
Speaker 1: with the petty irritations I have in life, Like I
Speaker 1: get irritated by something that I'm like, there's no reason
Speaker 1: to care about this. It shouldn't bother me. And yet
Speaker 1: inside it's like somebody's tightening down a wrench, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh, I was kind of looking for resolution. That's
Speaker 1: not what the story does. It's still an absolutely wonderful
Speaker 1: and amazing story. Though. Yeah, I don't want to give
Speaker 1: away the ending, but I don't really write happy endings
Speaker 1: in my fiction. Save that. I save that for the
Speaker 1: spiritual books. There's something about making the darkness visible. I
Speaker 1: think that's part of a collection. There's ten stories. If
Speaker 1: there's any literary agents or publishers listening right now, that's
Speaker 1: a part of a collection. And uh, it is partly
Speaker 1: about that. I think what's tragic is that, in a
Speaker 1: different context or mindset, what the character uncovers doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be dark. I mean, she's uncovering truths about arrows
Speaker 1: and about her own desire, but she can't escape that
Speaker 1: frame in which it's dark arrows and which it is shadow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because she can't see it as part of light. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to jump back to where we were, which
Speaker 1: is that we're talking about these states when they pass,
Speaker 1: and I just want to read something you wrote about
Speaker 1: this because I think it also shares the wisdom that
Speaker 1: the woman in the story I think needed, which is,
Speaker 1: you just can't relive these peak experiences after a while.
Speaker 1: I've tried, I've tried really hard. It just leads to suffering.
Speaker 1: The only thing you can do over and over again
Speaker 1: is let go. Let go of everything, every desire, every identification,
Speaker 1: every place your ego is hiding out and saying I'm this,
Speaker 1: let go, let go, let go, and keep on falling.
Speaker 1: I love that we've got to let go of spiritual achievement.
Speaker 1: And it's the opposite of the holding on, right, So
Speaker 1: there's this holding on too. I had this state, I
Speaker 1: was on this retreat, I had this realization I had
Speaker 1: this thing. And there's that subtle or not so subtle
Speaker 1: holding right, like I'm grasping onto that experience in the past.
Speaker 1: And for me, it was a tragic paradox over about
Speaker 1: a five or six year period where that was kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh if I could only I just okay,
Speaker 1: let's remember I was sitting like this, I was feeling this.
Speaker 1: I was doing that, trying again and again to recreate
Speaker 1: and not in a matter of devotion, as Adya Shanti said,
Speaker 1: but kind of like let me get back in there,
Speaker 1: let me get back in there, And that's the opposite, right,
Speaker 1: that's the holding and not the releasing. There is a
Speaker 1: certain faith I think that arises that the next moment
Speaker 1: will also be now. In a way, there's a fear
Speaker 1: that saturates that holding onto the past experience, like, well,
Speaker 1: this next moment is not going to be as great
Speaker 1: or available, or I can't be as present for it,
Speaker 1: or the next moment won't be now, So let me
Speaker 1: hold on to this old now from before which was now.
Speaker 1: In that way, I won't have to be without my
Speaker 1: special feeling that I had back at that past time.
Speaker 1: There's maybe a little hesitancy in those moments to just
Speaker 1: trust the next moment could also open up, and it does,
Speaker 1: maybe in a somewhat different way. But the more of
Speaker 1: the letting go for me that takes place, the more opening.
Speaker 1: And so it's this great paradox that kind of the
Speaker 1: way to re experience that peak experience is to just
Speaker 1: let it go and be as open as possible to
Speaker 1: this moment that's unfolding right now. Yeah, it's a total
Speaker 1: paradox because those moments for me have always come as
Speaker 1: a result of me somehow I have no idea how
Speaker 1: to do it, or I would just do it totally
Speaker 1: letting go, like totally letting go. And that's for me
Speaker 1: when I have sort of completely taken my hands off
Speaker 1: the wheel, that things open up. And yet, you know,
Speaker 1: it sounds easy let go, but it's about the simplest
Speaker 1: thing to say in about the hardest thing to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love to use that metaphor. On my very first
Speaker 1: meditation retreat, I think it was the first or second
Speaker 1: night unscient meditation retreats. A lot of people have very
Speaker 1: vivid dreams, and I certainly do. And this one was
Speaker 1: I was in some car trying to drive, and it
Speaker 1: was really hard, and it was a dream and it
Speaker 1: was hard to see, and there was this and I
Speaker 1: kind of looked over and my teacher from that retreat
Speaker 1: was sitting in what I had thought was the passenger
Speaker 1: seat but actually was the driver's seat, and he said,
Speaker 1: why don't you just let me drive? And then I
Speaker 1: let go, and then in the dream it unfolded into
Speaker 1: this beautiful kind of sci fi landscape with gorgeous colors
Speaker 1: in the sky, and you know, this whole revelation in
Speaker 1: dream language and that's been really helpful. Again, it's back
Speaker 1: to the wolves and which one do we hand the
Speaker 1: microphone to, which one do we allow to drive in
Speaker 1: a particular moment. Sometimes we do need the more protective wolf.
Speaker 1: We do need those faculties of Actually, I need to
Speaker 1: draw some boundaries here, and you've got to do my taxes.
Speaker 1: Luckily we got an extension this year. I don't have
Speaker 1: to do that. Was you know, I don't do my
Speaker 1: taxes with the mind of the expand did mystic I
Speaker 1: don't think they'd come out too well. I'd probably get audited.
Speaker 1: So there's times when that's necessary, and then there's times
Speaker 1: where if we can let these other faculties drive a
Speaker 1: little bit. One of the things I've seen show up
Speaker 1: in your work a lot of different ways is some
Speaker 1: variation on and I think we're talking about it here,
Speaker 1: the middle way. This finding a place maybe not even
Speaker 1: between two opposites. Sometimes the middle way, I think as
Speaker 1: you hold two opposites and it equals the middle way.
Speaker 1: It's not always a sort of a split in the
Speaker 1: different But you use a metaphor in the book, you
Speaker 1: say that one thing that always stuck with you is
Speaker 1: a description of a certain kind of fish that can
Speaker 1: only survive in brackish water at the juncture of the
Speaker 1: fresh water of the river and the salt water of
Speaker 1: the sea. Too much salt or too little, and the
Speaker 1: fish would die. You're describing yourself, and you're describing your
Speaker 1: desire to sort of live in these different worlds. But
Speaker 1: I think it also applies to so much of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about that comes from Andrea Jid's novel The Counterfeiters,
Speaker 1: which I read when I was nineteen and college, And
Speaker 1: in the context of The Counterfeiters, it was a lot
Speaker 1: about kind of how far away from the comforts of
Speaker 1: mainstream society. It's sort of a coming of age novel
Speaker 1: with several characters, and they all go on different journeys
Speaker 1: of coming of age journeys, and some kind of swim
Speaker 1: out too far and get lost and fall into crime
Speaker 1: and or abuse or things like that, and others stay
Speaker 1: too close to home and seem not to ever kind
Speaker 1: of blossom. And so it's this exploration of how far
Speaker 1: of eve home. In a certain way, there's a whole
Speaker 1: sort of sexual and gender element to it. Andre Jide
Speaker 1: was one of the first writers in the West to
Speaker 1: talk about gay life in a way that was sort
Speaker 1: of representative of reality that very early twentieth century. But
Speaker 1: there's also this spiritual element, and I think that's been
Speaker 1: a piece for me all along. And I think that's
Speaker 1: right about the Middle Way, that it's not necessarily splitting
Speaker 1: the difference, but sometimes it's running and returning, So it's
Speaker 1: having aspects of both in one's life. And I'm an
Speaker 1: angiogram seven the enthusiast. I want to have every possible experience.
Speaker 1: So if I ever write my memoir, which I probably
Speaker 1: won't do, the working title is couldn't decide? Did it
Speaker 1: all anyway? Um? And that's certainly been true, you know.
Speaker 1: I it's kind of amassed a lot of like graduate
Speaker 1: degrees in three or four different careers. And I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily recommend that version of the Middle Way to others,
Speaker 1: but constitutionally I've come to see it as as part
Speaker 1: of me and that's been really nourishing in a way.
Speaker 1: And again lately, for the last ten or so years,
Speaker 1: it's been a lot about how do I integrate those pieces,
Speaker 1: So what's the way to be involved in the world
Speaker 1: as an activist but also drawing on the spiritual and
Speaker 1: contemplative traditions and work that I've been lucky enough to
Speaker 1: encounter that feels really good. And as you know, as
Speaker 1: you know, family life is a great venue to explore
Speaker 1: ones on spiritual practices and and so a lot of
Speaker 1: it has kind of come in a way, kind of
Speaker 1: full circle, you know, just being present with difficult emotions,
Speaker 1: not necessarily handing them the microphone, but not rejecting them either,
Speaker 1: not trying to make something go away, not necessarily giving
Speaker 1: it voice and giving it expression. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's as interesting a book necessarily as going off to Nepal,
Speaker 1: but probably would sell more copies actually because I think
Speaker 1: it's more real for more people and how people are
Speaker 1: actually living their life. Yeah, And I think I've certainly
Speaker 1: had a fair amount of that to lots of interest,
Speaker 1: wanting to do lots of different things. I teach a
Speaker 1: program called Spiritual Habits, and the middle way is one
Speaker 1: of those. And you mentioned sort of activism and contemplative practice,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a middle way, right, is that
Speaker 1: you practice both those things. And I think the activists
Speaker 1: we most admire, if we talk about historically, at least
Speaker 1: the big ones that we talk about all had some
Speaker 1: element of contemplative practice to them. Whether we're talking about
Speaker 1: Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were activists, but they were deeply committed to the
Speaker 1: inner life at the same time. And it seems that
Speaker 1: when you have both those things, you are better able
Speaker 1: to function. I think both contemplative practice and activism are
Speaker 1: strengthened and enhanced by each other. That's been my experience,
Speaker 1: and it is true that many people have different experiences
Speaker 1: of that mindfulness cliche exists because there's some truth to it.
Speaker 1: There is a way in which spiritual practice can be narcissistic,
Speaker 1: where I just think about my own well being or
Speaker 1: I don't want to let in any bad vibes, so
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get involved in any of the contentious
Speaker 1: political issues of the day or take sides. You know,
Speaker 1: we've seen that a lot in the last year or so,
Speaker 1: where a lot of folks have just not been able
Speaker 1: to plug in in a way that is responsible. I think.
Speaker 1: For me, though, it's what you just said, it's always
Speaker 1: been that the two have enriched each other. For ten years,
Speaker 1: I worked as a professional LGBT activist. That was my
Speaker 1: that was my job, and at that time I was
Speaker 1: also doing a lot of meditation and my own work
Speaker 1: and stuff, and and those two really enriched each other.
Speaker 1: I had a lot more mental spaciousness to be effective
Speaker 1: as an advocate and an activist, knowing again when to
Speaker 1: respond and when maybe not to respond, and how to
Speaker 1: respond and having that ability. Dan Harris again calls it
Speaker 1: kind of a superpower where you can actually decide how
Speaker 1: you want to respond to to a moment, which seems
Speaker 1: maybe pretty basic, but it's it's pretty valuable, you know,
Speaker 1: in doing that kind of work. And that also to
Speaker 1: me grounded my spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition. This
Speaker 1: is one of the commonalities between my two my Buddhism
Speaker 1: and Judaism. There's a no that we do practice for
Speaker 1: the benefit of all beings. That it doesn't end here.
Speaker 1: That's not how it's supposed to go. That it's supposed
Speaker 1: to flow through us and change our actions in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really helpful. If the arbiter of
Speaker 1: how well I'm doing in my various virtual work is
Speaker 1: how happy I am subjectively myself and impact are taken
Speaker 1: too account, anyone else that seems off base that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any of what these guys were teaching
Speaker 1: over these thousands of years. And yet I do know
Speaker 1: from first hand experience that for some folks that's kind
Speaker 1: of the cult of sect they find themselves in. That
Speaker 1: sounded pretty judgmental, but I'm actually holding back how I
Speaker 1: really think. Well, it's interesting. I've talked before about there's
Speaker 1: a popular phrase in yoga that every time I hear
Speaker 1: it grates on me. I think I understand what it's
Speaker 1: meant by it, but it's let go of anything that's
Speaker 1: not serving. And that phrase always grates on me because
Speaker 1: I always think, Wait a second, shouldn't I be asking,
Speaker 1: like who am I serving? What am I serving? Right?
Speaker 1: Not what's serving me? That's not life's job. Know again,
Speaker 1: I get it. You're letting go of things we could say,
Speaker 1: the bad wolf traits that aren't helpful. I mean, I
Speaker 1: get what's meant by it, but it does reflect a
Speaker 1: certain tendency towards saying, hey all about me. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so right. And again I do value what we think
Speaker 1: is the correct reading of that, which is just as
Speaker 1: you said, I have these habits which I developed, and
Speaker 1: maybe they helped protect me as a child, but it's
Speaker 1: not serving me anymore. That would be good to let go.
Speaker 1: I'm totally a hundred thousand percent on board with that.
Speaker 1: But right the idea that everything in the world is
Speaker 1: my servant and it's in the service of my personal
Speaker 1: happiness and well being. Yeah, I'm holding my tongue because
Speaker 1: I don't want to say what I really think about that.
Speaker 1: All right, I know we're screeching up on three year
Speaker 1: old daughter coming home time here, so which you know
Speaker 1: that could go well though, and if that happens, it happens,
Speaker 1: let her come on in. Yeah, you could make a
Speaker 1: cameo we hit on Leonard Cohen. But I want to
Speaker 1: talk about music real quickly. Obviously you wrote an article
Speaker 1: about Leonard Cohen. He's been important to you. You mentioned
Speaker 1: you used to be in a garage rock band that
Speaker 1: played at CBGBs. You listed that as a life accomplishment.
Speaker 1: I consider it the same. Congratulations. Do you still play
Speaker 1: music barely? Yeah? I do a lot of music with
Speaker 1: my daughter. It's just been about time. Yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: it's it's a loss for me. Yeah. My partner actually
Speaker 1: does remixes of Fleetwood Max songs into dance tracks, So
Speaker 1: he's making a lot more music than I am these days.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Well, I can tell you that the age
Speaker 1: that your daughter is in the years immediately after that
Speaker 1: were low points for me musically, and then as my
Speaker 1: son got older and I had a little bit more time,
Speaker 1: it sort of came back a little bit. And I
Speaker 1: certainly played by myself very regularly, and you know, we
Speaker 1: compose all the music that makes up all the breaks
Speaker 1: in the show, and so we have a little fun
Speaker 1: with it. Part of what I'm doing a ton percent
Speaker 1: happyears developing a new podcast, and we need new music
Speaker 1: for the top. So maybe we could hire you for
Speaker 1: a gig, could do some music for us too. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I miss it. I was just thinking about it. I'm
Speaker 1: about to reach my fiftieth birthday and so that's causing
Speaker 1: you know a little bit of reflection and stuff, and
Speaker 1: it feels really good. Actually, I'm totally ready to be
Speaker 1: if it feels great. But this was is one of
Speaker 1: the things that you know, I used to spend a
Speaker 1: good chunk of every day making music, and now it's
Speaker 1: it's really rare, and I do miss it. So hopefully,
Speaker 1: when you know things in the world quiet down a
Speaker 1: little bit, and in my house, quiet down a little bit.
Speaker 1: There'll be more space for that. To quote Ecclesiastics again,
Speaker 1: there's a season, you know, there's a time for everything right,
Speaker 1: and the season of life may not be the music
Speaker 1: making season for you. Besides Leonard Cohen, are there other
Speaker 1: musicians that you turn to regularly that are sources of
Speaker 1: comfort or peak experience, or ever you want to say it.
Speaker 1: You know, over the last year, where I've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time at home, like a lot of other people,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to more and more kind of electronic
Speaker 1: music that takes you on all kinds of journeys. There's
Speaker 1: an artist from San Francisco named Christopher Willitts w I
Speaker 1: L L I T S who I love. Uh. He's
Speaker 1: friends with another San Francisco musician named Tycho who is
Speaker 1: much more famous and well known, who I also love
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of Brian Eno influenced ambient. One
Speaker 1: of Brian ENO's former collaborators musician named Laraggie, who's also
Speaker 1: a spiritual teacher, and his work over the last ten
Speaker 1: twenty years has just been incredible. He often plays a
Speaker 1: zither which goes through electronic processing and really takes you
Speaker 1: on a journey. And for my fiftieth thirthday, we're going
Speaker 1: to actually have a live in person concert with a
Speaker 1: musician named Ancient Ocean who does again sort of wonderful
Speaker 1: ambient music. So that's that's where I've headed in the
Speaker 1: last year. Obviously, you know, it's usual canon of Dylan
Speaker 1: and lou Reid and you know people like that who
Speaker 1: are sort of still in the pantheon. Yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: what about you, let's see. You know, there's a songwriter
Speaker 1: Josh Ritter I really love. I think he just writes
Speaker 1: amazing songs. I've really been into. I think he's a
Speaker 1: San Francisco musician, Chuck Profit kind of just good old
Speaker 1: rock and roll stuff, but something about him there's a
Speaker 1: there's a depth to his work that I I've really
Speaker 1: been enjoying lately. So those are two that come to mind.
Speaker 1: I haven't followed up with Chuck Profit and a while,
Speaker 1: so now I'll put that on my mental to do list. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: his latest record I think is really good. All right,
Speaker 1: So my last question here is I'm just gonna read
Speaker 1: again something from the book. You say, remember remember, remember
Speaker 1: all the Jewish religion does is remember. All the Buddhist
Speaker 1: path does is remember, and so remembering I think I've
Speaker 1: heard that that's one definition of mindfulness is to remember,
Speaker 1: and I think remembering is one of the hardest things
Speaker 1: to do to go from Okay, let's say I get
Speaker 1: to the point where I do a daily meditation practice, great,
Speaker 1: really good work. But I've got all the rest of
Speaker 1: the hours in my day, and how do I remember
Speaker 1: some of these spiritual principles, these things that matter to me.
Speaker 1: How do I bring them into the rest of my life?
Speaker 1: And I'm just curious for yourself how you do that,
Speaker 1: or any advice you have for other people, because I think,
Speaker 1: like you said, remembering is the heart of the challenge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the main thing I want to say about
Speaker 1: that is an encouraging word for folks for whom that remember.
Speaker 1: Brain can feel like a burden. You know, It's like
Speaker 1: it's like always there, you always have to do it.
Speaker 1: It's like kind of this annoying, yeah, this burden that
Speaker 1: that you kind of carry. The good news from cognitive
Speaker 1: and contemplative neuroscience is that eventually the brain automatically learns
Speaker 1: to remember. And you know, I don't spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time translating neuroscience into meditation. But I think that's
Speaker 1: a really important data point. In a pre scientific language,
Speaker 1: we would just say it becomes intuitive. And one definition
Speaker 1: of enlightenment in a Buddhist tradition is the intuitive knowledge
Speaker 1: of the foe noble truths. So you know the four
Speaker 1: noble truths. They're suffering. There's you know, clean cause of suffering.
Speaker 1: There's a way to end it here it is. That
Speaker 1: was pretty easy, pretty fast. Now you know the noble truth.
Speaker 1: But to have an intuitive knowledge means that the brain
Speaker 1: or the mind has kind of rewired itself in a
Speaker 1: certain way and it remembers almost on autopilot. You know,
Speaker 1: you remember that this moment is unfolding in radiant pure awareness,
Speaker 1: or if you don't remember it on a conscious level,
Speaker 1: it takes just a quick second to bring it act.
Speaker 1: That for me feels like the most encouraging thing. For me,
Speaker 1: that was the most encouraging thing, the knowledge that or
Speaker 1: hope that eventually these changes become intuitive and you don't
Speaker 1: have to remember to remember, because it's actually the remembering
Speaker 1: isn't so hard. It's the remembering to remember it's so hard.
Speaker 1: I forgot to remember it sounds very Jewish, right now,
Speaker 1: I forgot to remember again. Now I have to say
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that I forgot to remember anyway, And that
Speaker 1: is the case. But the mind does really shift, right,
Speaker 1: The mind does change over time with any sustained practice
Speaker 1: and again meditations when I'm familiar with it, and the
Speaker 1: mind remembers to remember on its own, And that's really
Speaker 1: a change when this shift becomes intuitive and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be constantly kind of attended to. But I'm
Speaker 1: also reminded, you know, in the meantime one Tibetan Buddhist
Speaker 1: teaching that it's it's all about small moments. Many times
Speaker 1: you might meditate a thousand times a day for three
Speaker 1: seconds each um and that would be a fantastic practice.
Speaker 1: Also again as a parent of a three year old,
Speaker 1: that's the only kind of pract this getting it, uh,
Speaker 1: and that shift of mind. It's just sort of letting
Speaker 1: go or Sharon Salzburg, meditation teacher says, sort of settling back.
Speaker 1: You just settle back just a little bit. I probably
Speaker 1: do settle back, yeah, maybe a hundred times a day
Speaker 1: because it's natural going back to what we talked about
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. As you immerse yourself in the world,
Speaker 1: and you know sound recording technology and the to do
Speaker 1: list and the things that have to happen, And that's
Speaker 1: dualistic thinking, and that's what makes life happen. We couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly there's a wonderful Jewish talmutic saying that without they
Speaker 1: said they use the language of the evil inclination, but
Speaker 1: the selfish inclination, the part that wants more and divides
Speaker 1: the world into what I like and what I don't like.
Speaker 1: Without the evil inclination, no one would ever build a house.
Speaker 1: There would be no world, we wouldn't have life. And
Speaker 1: that seems profoundly correct to me. And it's natural that
Speaker 1: when we enter that consciousness, that constricted consciousness or dualistic consciousness, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to remember that there's also the other side
Speaker 1: of the coin. But it can happen again in just
Speaker 1: a matter of moments. And I think for me, somewhere
Speaker 1: ten years or so into my meditation practice, that kind
Speaker 1: of became the aspiration not to be in some steady
Speaker 1: state of bliss because that doesn't happen, but to be
Speaker 1: able to reduce the amount of time necessary to remember
Speaker 1: and for it to become gradually, because you can't make
Speaker 1: it happen consciously, but gradually for it to become intuitive.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of a couple of things. I
Speaker 1: don't know that he came up with this phrase, but
Speaker 1: I think Rick Hanson, at least to me, popularized the
Speaker 1: phrase of talking about going from states to traits. It's
Speaker 1: kind of what we were talking about earlier. You know,
Speaker 1: if you do this, it becomes sort of habitual. I
Speaker 1: love that Tibettan idea of you know, lots of little moments,
Speaker 1: the spiritual habits course I teach sort of the basic
Speaker 1: The heart of it is that little by little, a
Speaker 1: little becomes a lot, you know, and we just add
Speaker 1: up these little bits and it translated into something. And
Speaker 1: we know that from other habits right, eating right, or
Speaker 1: exercise or whatever. You know that we do have this
Speaker 1: capacity fortunately as human beings where creatures of habit. But
Speaker 1: we can also gradually, over time change those habits. And uh,
Speaker 1: it just takes a little while to do that. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't just do it by thinking yourself into a
Speaker 1: healthier body. You actually have to do some work. Yeah, well, Jay,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: This has been a really fun and enjoyable conversation for
Speaker 1: me likewise, really a delight, and thank you for spending
Speaker 1: time with my written work. I'm honored that you gave
Speaker 1: it such a deep reed, so I appreciate that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's absolute pleasure to you. You're a wonderful writer. Thank you.
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