Speaker 1: There's a huge difference between being here for life and
Speaker 1: being in a conversation about life. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Mary O'Malley, an author, teacher, and counselor whose
Speaker 1: work awakens others to the joy of being fully alive.
Speaker 1: Her inspired and transformative approach to compulsions offers a way
Speaker 1: to replace fear, hopelessness, and struggle with ease, well being,
Speaker 1: and joy through her individual counseling and coaching books, classes,
Speaker 1: retreats and ongoing groups. Mary invites people to experience the
Speaker 1: miracle of awakening. Mary clearly sees both the big picture
Speaker 1: and the details of human patterns and conditioning. She possesses
Speaker 1: an extraordinary ability to understand and connect with people, and
Speaker 1: she is skilled in empowering people to work with difficult
Speaker 1: mind states, resulting in greater inner awareness and presence and
Speaker 1: greater capacity for joy. Her latest book is called What's
Speaker 1: in the Way Is the Way? Hi, Mary, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. I'm so glad to be here here. I
Speaker 1: am very excited to get you on. Your book is
Speaker 1: called What's in the Way Is the Way? Which the
Speaker 1: minute I heard the title, I was like, I think
Speaker 1: I want to talk to her, and after having read
Speaker 1: the book, I want to even more so I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to getting into your book. You cover a lot
Speaker 1: of topics that we spend time on talking on the
Speaker 1: show a lot, and you've got some interesting perspectives on
Speaker 1: all of it. So we will get to that in
Speaker 1: a minute. But we're gonna start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with
Speaker 1: her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us. That are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandmother and she says, well, grandmother,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandmother quietly says, the one
Speaker 1: you fee. So I'd like to start off by asking
Speaker 1: you what that parable means to you in your life
Speaker 1: and in the work that you do. Well, it's been
Speaker 1: around for many years, and it comes from what I
Speaker 1: call duality. You know, there's a good part of us
Speaker 1: and then there's a bad part of us. And I
Speaker 1: think if we look at history, uh, we will see
Speaker 1: that actually fighting the bad always empowers the bad. And
Speaker 1: if you look at the you know, to me, one
Speaker 1: of the most uh important symbols that have ever been
Speaker 1: on this planet is the yin and yang symbol. And
Speaker 1: here is the dark and the light that they aren't
Speaker 1: on opposite sides of a line, that they're actually intertwined.
Speaker 1: And in the dark is a point of light, and
Speaker 1: in light is a point of dark. So in my experience.
Speaker 1: I tried to get rid of the bad, you know.
Speaker 1: And I'm a Taurus, so I have a very very
Speaker 1: strong will. And a great example out of my life
Speaker 1: is that I learned how to take care of the
Speaker 1: heartache of my childhood through eating. I started. The first
Speaker 1: memories is when I was around ten, and then I
Speaker 1: dieted and ate and dieted and ate, and and then
Speaker 1: being a Taurus. Uh, you know, I once went one
Speaker 1: month without food, and two more times, two more times
Speaker 1: for two weeks without food, and a number of one
Speaker 1: week periods without food, because by God, I was gonna
Speaker 1: get rid of this urge to overeat. And it eventually
Speaker 1: brought me to the place where I gained ninety seven
Speaker 1: pounds in a year. And it was only when I
Speaker 1: began to realize that, yes, there are are these two
Speaker 1: parts of me. But rather than trying to starve the
Speaker 1: so called bad, I like to use the word dark, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, much more than bad or evil. Rather than
Speaker 1: trying to starve it or make it bad or wrong. Uh,
Speaker 1: my work is about creating a relationship with it. And
Speaker 1: it's very interesting that the statistic that I want to
Speaker 1: bring into this conversation is that the U. S. Surgeon
Speaker 1: General's report is ninety eight percent of every pound that
Speaker 1: is lost in America is gain back plus some within
Speaker 1: a year and a half. And that's what I think.
Speaker 1: We're beginning to take another step beyond that parable and
Speaker 1: realize that what we fight, we actually in power. And
Speaker 1: it was when I learned how to be in relationship
Speaker 1: with this so called bad part of me that you know,
Speaker 1: just eat absolutely everything uh under the sun, that it
Speaker 1: began to calm down. And now you know, I lost
Speaker 1: the extra weight, and now a body stays the same weight,
Speaker 1: you know, and and I can eat whatever I want
Speaker 1: and have for years. So that's my offering to this
Speaker 1: conversation is that it is in creating a relationship with
Speaker 1: the so called dark side that you actually uh heal
Speaker 1: excellent and your book at its heart really says that
Speaker 1: most of our life, the challenges that we face and
Speaker 1: the trouble that we face are a result of the
Speaker 1: fact that we basically are struggling with the way everything is.
Speaker 1: You basically use an analogy of we are always in
Speaker 1: what you call a peaceful meadow, but that we are
Speaker 1: surrounded by clouds of struggle, and those clouds of struggle
Speaker 1: are largely self invented it, and I think it's really
Speaker 1: important to I wouldn't quite use the words self invented
Speaker 1: that when we were young there, when we first showed
Speaker 1: up here, we were like dry sponges and there wasn't
Speaker 1: a thought in our head and we just absorbed the
Speaker 1: uh energy of the people around us. I'd like to say,
Speaker 1: if our parents were arguing in a soundproof room down
Speaker 1: the basement, we were up in the attic, we could
Speaker 1: feel it. So it is, it's like we send it
Speaker 1: down from generation to generation. We absorbed what I called
Speaker 1: the conditions of or what Eckart Tote calls the mind
Speaker 1: made me. That our mind actually makes this me that
Speaker 1: talks all day long. And if you had a little
Speaker 1: door on your forehead and you could open it up
Speaker 1: and watch what it's doing. It's mainly struggling with life,
Speaker 1: usually little struggles, you know, like the length of the
Speaker 1: stop light or how you're here looks on a particular day,
Speaker 1: but it can struggle. It can go all the way
Speaker 1: into you know, life of death struggles. Just because your
Speaker 1: UH boyfriend didn't call you when he said he was
Speaker 1: going to call you, And so we are I like
Speaker 1: to say, we're addicted to struggle, and yet that's not
Speaker 1: who we are. That's something that was conditioned into us.
Speaker 1: There are so many lines from the book that I love.
Speaker 1: I could probably just read them over and over to
Speaker 1: the audience and they would do well. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to read one right now because this, I think describes
Speaker 1: me very well. One of the mind's favorite ways of
Speaker 1: staying distracted and far away from what you're experiencing is
Speaker 1: to create problems and then try to figure out how
Speaker 1: to fix them. In fact, it could be said that
Speaker 1: your mind is a problem factory, churning out problems all
Speaker 1: day long. It is astounding to recognize that once it
Speaker 1: solves one problem, there is usually only a very short
Speaker 1: period of time before it comes up with another problem.
Speaker 1: And we keep on feeling that if we just solve this,
Speaker 1: if we change our husband, or if we lose ten pounds,
Speaker 1: or if we win the lottery, then everything would be okay.
Speaker 1: But we don't see that that puts these clouds between
Speaker 1: us and the living experience of life. That really what
Speaker 1: we long for is not the uh joy of the
Speaker 1: fancy new car. That's that's you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: fake joy. We long for the joy of coming back
Speaker 1: to life, to actually be here for life, and most
Speaker 1: people are not. They think their way through their lives.
Speaker 1: You talk a lot about sort of like a low
Speaker 1: grade suffering that permeates us, and I definitely have that
Speaker 1: problem mind. I've gotten a lot better at learning not
Speaker 1: to listen to it so much. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that you talk about is that the problem mind
Speaker 1: is largely driven by what you call the storyteller. And
Speaker 1: we we talk on the show all the time about
Speaker 1: the stories that we tell ourselves. And so my question
Speaker 1: for you is, and I'm going to see if I
Speaker 1: can articulate this well, because largely what you're what you're
Speaker 1: suggesting is that we turned towards the things in our
Speaker 1: life that seem problematic and we experience what those emotions are.
Speaker 1: And that makes total sense. And again it's something that
Speaker 1: we talk a lot on this show about. We also
Speaker 1: talk about not believing the thoughts that you have. And
Speaker 1: so I'm curious about Let's just take an example of
Speaker 1: I am telling myself a story about how nobody likes
Speaker 1: me because for whatever reason, nobody was friendly to me today.
Speaker 1: So there's there's two options that I can go to
Speaker 1: their One would be I could go into what that
Speaker 1: feeling feels like and turn towards it. The other option
Speaker 1: is to recognize that what I'm telling myself there is
Speaker 1: probably not true, and so I'm not going into the
Speaker 1: feeling and experience in it. In that case, I'm actually
Speaker 1: trying to, you know, more of a cognitive behavioral therapy way.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sort of recognize the untruth of that thought.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, from your perspective, are those both just
Speaker 1: different tools that we use to get to the same place,
Speaker 1: or help me understand how you balance those two things,
Speaker 1: beautiful question. So down towards the end of the book,
Speaker 1: there's what you call the four lets add. The first
Speaker 1: let is uh let life. There are challenges that each
Speaker 1: one of us have that bring up such deep feelings,
Speaker 1: you know, like the illness of a loved one, or
Speaker 1: our own illness, or or a foreclosure on our house,
Speaker 1: or you know, we're involved in a robbery. You know
Speaker 1: that they come into our house and there's just so
Speaker 1: much they get stirred up that we have very little
Speaker 1: option until we have awakened for a long time to
Speaker 1: actually stand with these feelings and let them move through us.
Speaker 1: And that's where we use the art of living in questions,
Speaker 1: we actually turn it over to life. Then the next
Speaker 1: is let it be, And that's a big chunk of
Speaker 1: this work of where you learn how to actually bring
Speaker 1: your attention into your immediate experience. And you can do
Speaker 1: that in your body, with the emotions, with the stories,
Speaker 1: and you begin to realize the power of focused human
Speaker 1: attention to heal what I call bound up energy. A
Speaker 1: lot of people call and feelings, they're really bound up energy.
Speaker 1: It's all it is. And we're discovering that when our
Speaker 1: energy and our immediate experience come together, then these ancient
Speaker 1: feelings they move through us. That's when you begin to move.
Speaker 1: You move to the next let, which is let it go.
Speaker 1: And the more you do that that there's something about
Speaker 1: not just overriding a feeling, you will see that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: let's say the boyfriend doesn't call. He said he was
Speaker 1: gonna call it ten and he doesn't call it at
Speaker 1: all until the next day, and we have all sorts
Speaker 1: of feelings about that. But if we follow it back,
Speaker 1: you'll see it's rooted in something very young. And so
Speaker 1: if we just say, you know, that's not true, that's
Speaker 1: not true. Uh, we don't go in and and get
Speaker 1: down to the root of it and with our attention
Speaker 1: set it free. But the more you do that, the
Speaker 1: more you come to that place you're talking about, something
Speaker 1: arises and you see that's not that's not the truth,
Speaker 1: and you just let it go. And then that brings well, actually,
Speaker 1: the better way to say it is it let's go.
Speaker 1: But it didn't work in my four lets. So but
Speaker 1: then that brings us to the final let go, that
Speaker 1: you actually begin to open to life, not as you
Speaker 1: want it to be, not as you think it should be,
Speaker 1: but you're actually here for life, and feelings and thoughts
Speaker 1: and sensations are dancing through you, but you are the
Speaker 1: awareness that is present for it all. The warmth of
Speaker 1: the sun, the uh, sadness into your chest, the wonderful
Speaker 1: taste of the morning coffee, whatever. That's who we are.
Speaker 1: And those four lets really help you to see how
Speaker 1: we can move into let go. You say that learning
Speaker 1: to see what your mind is really doing, rather than
Speaker 1: being lost in it, is an important step towards unhooking
Speaker 1: from the game of struggle. Right. The first step is
Speaker 1: understanding that there is something that talks to your head
Speaker 1: all day long and it's very, very busy, and it
Speaker 1: has an opinion about everything, and then beginning to think
Speaker 1: of the possibility maybe this is not who I really am,
Speaker 1: and my job is to make you fascinate. I use
Speaker 1: the word curiosity a lot, ability to be curious. So
Speaker 1: it's the difference between saying, you know, you have a
Speaker 1: meeting at work, you know, and you have to do
Speaker 1: a presentation, and you know, you're sitting in your office
Speaker 1: before the presentation and your heart is pounding wildly and
Speaker 1: you know, sweat as driving down your face. Add what
Speaker 1: most of us would say, Oh my god, I'm so
Speaker 1: I'm so afraid. I'm so afraid. You know what, what
Speaker 1: did I learn that class the other day? You know?
Speaker 1: How can I manage this fear? What awakening is about
Speaker 1: is the discovering the ability to say, ah, fear is here,
Speaker 1: rather than I am afraid. And the more you can
Speaker 1: do that, the more you can see these different stories
Speaker 1: that most of them are rooted in the first six
Speaker 1: years of their your life, you know, that's when the
Speaker 1: foundations of this storyteller were created. And so you get
Speaker 1: familiar with how your anxiousness talks, how your terror talks,
Speaker 1: how your despair talks, your hopelessness talks, how your self
Speaker 1: judgment talks, how you're not enoughness talks. And you get
Speaker 1: to know them enough that they arise and you say,
Speaker 1: oh hi, and they pass right on. And so this
Speaker 1: is the sort of thing that is traditionally very easy
Speaker 1: to say and much harder to actually do. And so
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about the path from I
Speaker 1: am identified with my thoughts and my emotions to a
Speaker 1: place that I am relatively um open and spacious around
Speaker 1: those things. It's it's not, at least my experience has
Speaker 1: not been in the experience of a lot of people
Speaker 1: I know, is you don't go from one one of
Speaker 1: those extremes to the other in you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of days. So so what what would you say to
Speaker 1: people who are just starting on that process about how
Speaker 1: you work with those things because you're maybe not And
Speaker 1: I know the word successful is not really we're not
Speaker 1: trying to be successful, right, but but we're not getting
Speaker 1: much space around our thoughts, were not becoming more spacious
Speaker 1: or more open or more welcoming. It's it's a hard process,
Speaker 1: is what I'm saying. But it's the only game in town,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh. And my main mentor, Stephen Levine,
Speaker 1: was once asked, how long does this take? This the
Speaker 1: mind of how's all the stake, you know? And he said,
Speaker 1: it's the work of a lifetime. And what I say
Speaker 1: to that is that, uh, it really is the way
Speaker 1: out too. It's almost like we've been caught in a
Speaker 1: prison of this separate, conditioned self. And this mind has
Speaker 1: only been around about a million years, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: give or take a few years, so that's a very short,
Speaker 1: you know, segment of time, you know, in universal time,
Speaker 1: and so we're very young as a species, and we
Speaker 1: have been totally identified with this struggling self. And all
Speaker 1: you have to do is look at history or the
Speaker 1: evening news to see what that is like. So the
Speaker 1: first step is beginning to contemplate the possibility that maybe
Speaker 1: whatever talks in your head all day long is just
Speaker 1: a condition self. That's the first step that begins to
Speaker 1: intrigue us. And I would say, well, I I in
Speaker 1: the book, there's uh, at the end of each of
Speaker 1: the ten chapters, there's what's called the remembering section. And
Speaker 1: I really started just by laying a very basic foundation,
Speaker 1: you know what we're doing is different than anything we've
Speaker 1: ever done before. And this is not something you can
Speaker 1: do and you can do it right. But what you
Speaker 1: can do is start cultivating curiosity. You can start doing
Speaker 1: things like, h uh, you're saying that. For five minutes
Speaker 1: every morning, I'm going to sit on the porch and
Speaker 1: my intention is to have my attention with the sound
Speaker 1: of the birds and the Christmas of the air, or
Speaker 1: the smell of my tea. And you'll find that most
Speaker 1: of the time you'll be gone, you'll slip away. That's
Speaker 1: the first step to really see there's a huge difference
Speaker 1: between being here for life and being in a conversation
Speaker 1: about life in this struggling self. When you begin to
Speaker 1: see that, there's a huge difference and you begin to
Speaker 1: see what you're missing, you're missing life, the the experience
Speaker 1: like we knew when we were very young, that there
Speaker 1: was no separation between us and this living adventure of life.
Speaker 1: That's when you begin to feel the passion that you
Speaker 1: don't want to get rid of this storyteller. You need
Speaker 1: it from maneuvering through reality. You don't want to make
Speaker 1: it that or wrong. It's all about becoming curious and
Speaker 1: to give yourself. The gift of just five minutes a
Speaker 1: day where you choose one thing that you're curious about
Speaker 1: and bring your attention back to it. Now a really
Speaker 1: important point. I was a part time meditator for ten
Speaker 1: years and then Stephen Yep, yep, and then Stephen told me,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, if you sit for one hour
Speaker 1: and bring your attention back to your focus one time
Speaker 1: in that hour, that's time well spent. It totally changed
Speaker 1: my experience because before, in those ten years, I was
Speaker 1: trying to sit to get some place. Now and I
Speaker 1: sit every day and half for decades. Now now I
Speaker 1: am sitting, and I try even not to use the
Speaker 1: word meditation. I Sundays call it a returning practice, or
Speaker 1: I call it a listening practice. I'm sitting because I
Speaker 1: want to be curious about what sits here. And the
Speaker 1: more I'm curious about what sits here, and the more
Speaker 1: I can see how it all operates, the more I
Speaker 1: see through it, and here I am back in life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the term curiosity seems to just keep coming up for
Speaker 1: me in I mean, I read a lot of stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to somebody every week, and that just seems
Speaker 1: to be a theme that keeps coming back. This, this
Speaker 1: attitude of being curious about what's happening with ourselves seems
Speaker 1: to be such a powerful thing. If we can, we
Speaker 1: can engage in it. Why is that because anything else
Speaker 1: beyond curiosity is still this fix it problem solving mind,
Speaker 1: And oh my god, it wanted to problem solve. I
Speaker 1: felt like such a failure. I can remember the first
Speaker 1: long meditation retreat I went to it. I would open
Speaker 1: my eyes and oh my god, I knew everybody else
Speaker 1: was in nirvana, and that wasn't And now I know
Speaker 1: that World War one, two and three, Vietnam War. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe a little of the rack war was going on
Speaker 1: in everybody's hand, you know, but it sure didn't look
Speaker 1: like it. But when I became curious, that's when things
Speaker 1: began to open again. And that brings us to the
Speaker 1: second skill. And I used to call it compassion, but
Speaker 1: I now call it spaciousness, and compassion is is an
Speaker 1: attribute of spaciousness. Also kindness and allowing and forgiveness and acceptance,
Speaker 1: all of those. But the more you're curious, and the
Speaker 1: more you can begin to see how young this strug
Speaker 1: link self is. You know, in your head, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the boyfriend not calling, you know, And now
Speaker 1: it's an hour later and he hasn't called, and there's
Speaker 1: a voice inside of you that says, I'm never going
Speaker 1: to speak to him again ever ever. You know, of
Speaker 1: course you tomorrow. But if you listen, you'll hear how
Speaker 1: young that voices. And the more you see that, the
Speaker 1: more you just begin to have space. Oh that's the
Speaker 1: sad one or the rejected one. And the more that
Speaker 1: you bring spaciousness to what's going on inside of you,
Speaker 1: which naturally arises from curiosity, the more all of this
Speaker 1: stuff can just pass right through you. So you talk
Speaker 1: about that, there are I think it's eight core spells.
Speaker 1: You call them that basically we cast over ourselves, or
Speaker 1: you know, we're cast over us as part of our upbringing.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what you mean by spell and maybe
Speaker 1: give us an example of one or two of them.
Speaker 1: I love the word spells, and and this has come
Speaker 1: out of I've worked with people over thirty years now,
Speaker 1: and I've gotten to see into the minds of hearts
Speaker 1: of thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And Stephen
Speaker 1: Levine once said, the very first time I saw him,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I want to create a hat
Speaker 1: and when you put it on your head, it instantaneously
Speaker 1: broadcast over a loud speaker all of your thoughts, and
Speaker 1: everybody in the room groaned. There was really a collective
Speaker 1: groan that moved through the room. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's not only that we don't want other people to
Speaker 1: see what's going on in our storyteller, but we don't
Speaker 1: want to see what's going on in our storyteller. And
Speaker 1: as I began to listen and you know, and I
Speaker 1: create a safe place where people can begin to be
Speaker 1: real and then explore the storyteller, I began to see
Speaker 1: there was eight core spells. And I love the word
Speaker 1: spells because it's something that's laid over the top of this.
Speaker 1: It's not true, and it can be lifted. And let's
Speaker 1: just do the basic thing of let's say your mother
Speaker 1: was very afraid of spiders, so you became afraid of spiders.
Speaker 1: So the eight core spells, the first two are the basic,
Speaker 1: you know, the real core basic foundational spells. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm separate from life and life is not safe. Then
Speaker 1: there's the three you know, operating spells. You know, I
Speaker 1: gotta do life. I gotta do it right, and I'm
Speaker 1: not doing it right enough. And if you watch, you'll basically,
Speaker 1: you know, if you had that little door on your
Speaker 1: forehead and you could watch, you'll see that's what the storyteller.
Speaker 1: It's really trying really hard to get this all together
Speaker 1: so then it would be happy. And that's the fix
Speaker 1: it mode. That that you know. The sad thing about
Speaker 1: the fix it mode is one and a hundred times
Speaker 1: it works, So it's the carrot in front of the dog.
Speaker 1: The problem is that it occasionally works, or it works
Speaker 1: for a very short amount of time, which makes it
Speaker 1: so much harder to see through. It's easy to see
Speaker 1: through something that never works. But that occasional challenge, yep,
Speaker 1: it just keeps us sucked into it. But what we
Speaker 1: don't see is all of that operating all of that.
Speaker 1: I gotta do life, and I gotta do life right,
Speaker 1: and I'm not quite doing it right enough, and I
Speaker 1: got to adjust this and lose weight and make more
Speaker 1: money and whatever. Is all trying to take care of
Speaker 1: what I call the three hidden spells. And before I
Speaker 1: say them, you know, I've worked with people all all
Speaker 1: the way from CEOs of major corporations to uh, to
Speaker 1: you know, developmentally disabled teenagers, to you know, housewives, to therapists,
Speaker 1: and we all have these hidden spells. Eric, And the
Speaker 1: first is because I'm not doing it right, I am wrong.
Speaker 1: And because I'm wrong, I'm unlovable. And because I'm unlovable,
Speaker 1: I am all alone. And if your listeners would take
Speaker 1: a moment and think about those middle of the night things,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're woken up and the mind is
Speaker 1: just going crazy, you know, and you'll see these spells,
Speaker 1: but you'll see it all comes to the real core
Speaker 1: spell of this separate self. I am all alone. So
Speaker 1: you ask for an example, I think that the thing
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is that I really, truly I
Speaker 1: might try to kill myself three times because I was
Speaker 1: completely unlovable. I mean not only was I unlovable, I
Speaker 1: was bad and wrong to my core. And even at
Speaker 1: one time I've been drinking, it was mad at myself.
Speaker 1: And I hit the bad too, you know, just I
Speaker 1: was just so frustrated. And there was a board, you know,
Speaker 1: across the end of the bed under the Dubai cover,
Speaker 1: and I just kept on hitting it and hitting it
Speaker 1: until I passed out and then woke up the next
Speaker 1: morning with a broken arm. So I know those hidden
Speaker 1: spells very well. And I tried therapy, and I tried
Speaker 1: you know, uh, psychologist, psychiatrist, medication, group therapy, hypnotherapy, you
Speaker 1: name it, mental hospitals. And it wasn't until I began
Speaker 1: to become curious, and especially about this judging quality in
Speaker 1: my head that I swear went to law school and
Speaker 1: was president of the debate club, and it could convince
Speaker 1: me of anything. And once I started being curious about it,
Speaker 1: and I actually carried a notebook around because I really
Speaker 1: wanted to see this operating. And I started looking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, I never judge you that voice, did you know?
Speaker 1: So I carried a notebook around and and I went
Speaker 1: and and drew a wheel on a piece of paper,
Speaker 1: huge piece of paper in my bedroom, and on the spokes.
Speaker 1: I began to put all of these different things my
Speaker 1: judger would say. And the more I could see it,
Speaker 1: the more I unhooked from it. I call it look
Speaker 1: to unhooked. So here I am. I now travel the world.
Speaker 1: I write books. You know, never ever had any vision
Speaker 1: of that whatsoever. And every once in a while, that
Speaker 1: judge you will come up when I'm I'm you know,
Speaker 1: very very close family member has been very ill and uh,
Speaker 1: it's very heartbreaking and uh and you know, I work
Speaker 1: full time and try to be there for this family
Speaker 1: member and at times I just am stretched, and when
Speaker 1: I am, the judger will come, but I say, oh, hi,
Speaker 1: are you having a bad day. So that's the power
Speaker 1: of beginning to see. That's why I did the spells.
Speaker 1: It's it's all about learning how to see how this
Speaker 1: storyteller operates. And in the seeing is the movement. We
Speaker 1: don't need to fix it, we don't need to judge it,
Speaker 1: we don't need to rearrange it, rise above it, get
Speaker 1: rid of it. In the seeing is the movement, and
Speaker 1: that's what we're discovering the power of human attention to heal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's one of those things that we
Speaker 1: were talking a little bit earlier about how this isn't
Speaker 1: easy and it doesn't happen immediately. I think there's a
Speaker 1: tendency to do this for a couple hours and go, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't feel any better, whereas really, this
Speaker 1: is a process that we need to keep doing it.
Speaker 1: It's part of the reason I started the show, honestly,
Speaker 1: was to be reminded consistently like that that thing that's
Speaker 1: carrying on all the time in my head is not
Speaker 1: the truth because left to my own devices, I I
Speaker 1: identify pretty strongly with it. And so you know, getting
Speaker 1: that sort of constant reminder to like, Okay, you know
Speaker 1: that's not you take it, take a step back. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is why I do groups and phone counseling and
Speaker 1: retreats and all of that, so we can gather together
Speaker 1: and be real about it. And we discovered that everybody
Speaker 1: else is doing the same thing. It's just so wonderful.
Speaker 1: So a really nifty thing to add into our lives,
Speaker 1: you know, is to become what I call a tightness detective.
Speaker 1: That you begin to realize. You look out in nature
Speaker 1: and you see that everything flows in nature. You know,
Speaker 1: water flows, light flows, day flows into night, winter into spring,
Speaker 1: sap flows, for Heaven's sakes, and you begin to realize
Speaker 1: if you're around a baby, you see that everything flows
Speaker 1: through it, you know, madness, sadness, gladness, you know. And
Speaker 1: then you see us as adults. There was a study
Speaker 1: done once of children that all of them were breathing
Speaker 1: their natural breath, you like dogs and cats breathe the
Speaker 1: whole trunk before they went to preschool. Not one was
Speaker 1: breathing their natural breath by the time they went to
Speaker 1: first grade. So we've all learned how to tighten. And
Speaker 1: it's when we begin to use this tightening as our
Speaker 1: bio feedback mechanism that you begin to see that any
Speaker 1: thought that tightens you is not the truth. It's from
Speaker 1: the conditioned self. And it's almost like we have to
Speaker 1: have that because some of these spells are spells. They
Speaker 1: are very strong. I mean, you know, if I could
Speaker 1: break my own arm through the spell of I am
Speaker 1: unlovable and broken and bad and wrong, you know, that's
Speaker 1: how strong they can be. But you begin to see
Speaker 1: you begin to have these moments where you relax back
Speaker 1: into life, life, and your belly let's go, and you
Speaker 1: your chest begins to open, and you feel this aliveness
Speaker 1: and you're just here. And then somebody hawks their horn,
Speaker 1: you know, and then you know, and then you begin
Speaker 1: to notice, oh, and that helps people immensely, you know.
Speaker 1: And here's a thought in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: and it's just you know, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: awareness kicks in and says, wow, I really think that
Speaker 1: thought is true. But it makes me tight, so it
Speaker 1: can't be the truth. So I had the little statement,
Speaker 1: if it makes you tight, it's of the fight. One
Speaker 1: of the things I really liked in the book that
Speaker 1: you did was sort of very consistently every couple of
Speaker 1: pages was was, you know, invitation to drop back into
Speaker 1: the current moment in a very concrete way, And I
Speaker 1: thought that was really in addition to the practices that
Speaker 1: you did at the end of the chapter, which are
Speaker 1: very well structured. And I think what I like about
Speaker 1: it is one of the things we talk on this
Speaker 1: show all the time about is start really small. If
Speaker 1: you start small with something, you can build into something
Speaker 1: really great. But most of us start with you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to meditate an hour a day, and that's
Speaker 1: just doesn't work. And so you're you're, you're, you call
Speaker 1: them remembering practices build very slowly from a very small
Speaker 1: which is great, and and then just these very small invitations,
Speaker 1: like I said, to come back. And I find one
Speaker 1: of the things that helps me more than just about
Speaker 1: anything a lot of the time is just to come
Speaker 1: back to recognize like what where am I What's happening?
Speaker 1: Like what do I see? What do I hear? What
Speaker 1: do I smell? What do I feel? Just like? It
Speaker 1: sounds so simple, and it is so simple. But getting
Speaker 1: in the habit of doing that, you know, three times
Speaker 1: a day, really makes at least for me, makes a
Speaker 1: big difference. Yeah, me too, because that's what we long for.
Speaker 1: I love that quote by Alan Watts, the very beloved
Speaker 1: Zen philosopher. He said, you know, no matter how many
Speaker 1: times you say the word water, it will never be wet.
Speaker 1: And we long we we got this idea that enlightenment
Speaker 1: was oh coming to this unending state of orgasmic bliss.
Speaker 1: You know. Add really it's about opening right here, right
Speaker 1: now everything we long for, Everything we truly are, is
Speaker 1: right here, and we longed for it, but we long
Speaker 1: for this version of the now. Oh I want the now,
Speaker 1: but the now includes loss, death, pain, and so much
Speaker 1: of this work is what's in the way is the
Speaker 1: way that the more we begin to become curious and
Speaker 1: we notice there's something pretty spectacular we're missing. Yes, it
Speaker 1: it has suffering in it, but you know, it's pretty wonderful,
Speaker 1: this thing called life. And then we notice how much
Speaker 1: we are away from it. Then we begin to become
Speaker 1: fascinated by what takes us away. We're not trying to
Speaker 1: get to the now. I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: people have told me I don't do go being in
Speaker 1: the now? Very well, well, we can't be try to
Speaker 1: be in the now, that's our natural state. All we
Speaker 1: need to do is learn how to see with our
Speaker 1: attention all of this conditioning that we've taken on, and
Speaker 1: it's just when we step back from it, it begins
Speaker 1: to become as ephemeral as a cloud, and you begin
Speaker 1: to understand that the light of your attention is like
Speaker 1: the sun on the morning fog. It literally dissipates it.
Speaker 1: And then here we are now. I just watched the
Speaker 1: clip from Andrea Levine, Stephen Levine's wife, and Stephen just died,
Speaker 1: you know, a few months ago. And to me, Stephen
Speaker 1: Levine is one of the most aware hearts that we
Speaker 1: have on this planet. And she talks in this clip
Speaker 1: about that they really have been able to, you know,
Speaker 1: have a life where they really are practicing all of this,
Speaker 1: and yet in the last couple of years in his
Speaker 1: life it was challenging, of course, and can we you know,
Speaker 1: Stephen would say, die before you die. Can we learn
Speaker 1: how to be here not only for the joys, but
Speaker 1: for the headache, for the heartache when the boyfriend doesn't call,
Speaker 1: for the stomach cramps, or for the anxiousness at the
Speaker 1: light when it's taking too long because now you're going
Speaker 1: to be late to work. Can we learn how to
Speaker 1: be curious about these and bring them spaciousness so that
Speaker 1: when we die, and it's true that all of us
Speaker 1: are going to have that, and as we get older,
Speaker 1: this whole system begins to break down. Can we have
Speaker 1: that breaking down and opening into the next phase be
Speaker 1: a process that enlivens us rather than a process that
Speaker 1: contracts us. And that is the, as you say, the
Speaker 1: only game in town. And you know, the reason that
Speaker 1: I sort of keep coming back to these small steps
Speaker 1: is that it is a path towards, you know, of
Speaker 1: of going from complete identification with our brain to that spaciousness.
Speaker 1: And I think I know I did, and you know
Speaker 1: you talked about it with the meditation. You know, I
Speaker 1: I finally started to get a daily meditation practice when
Speaker 1: I stopped expecting anything to happen from it exactly, you know,
Speaker 1: when I when I just finally went, oh okay, I
Speaker 1: did it. And I think that so many times this
Speaker 1: idea of being able to work with our thoughts, of
Speaker 1: being able to get some distance, of being able to
Speaker 1: see the storyteller. For me, is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that it just took a lot of reps. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying I mean I am in no way, shape
Speaker 1: or form like done with that. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: still happens a lot, and I still get entangled. But
Speaker 1: I think it's so important when we talk about these
Speaker 1: things too, to talk about that that this stuff you
Speaker 1: do it over and over. It's not instant results. It's
Speaker 1: not you know, it's not like taking a drug, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and the ego expects a drug. The ego wants a drug,
Speaker 1: and that's not the path back home again. And in
Speaker 1: my book, The Gift of Our Compulsions, I put the
Speaker 1: uh when I self published it, before my publisher picked
Speaker 1: it up, I put the story of the tortoise and
Speaker 1: the hair in there three times, and of course when
Speaker 1: they edited it they took it out all except for once,
Speaker 1: because it is the plot and that's not how the
Speaker 1: ego works. The ego wants it results right now, you know, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, actually tasting my morning coffee is going to
Speaker 1: make a difference in my life, says the ego, you know,
Speaker 1: and I say, yeah, it is. And I've got a
Speaker 1: little uh analogy that I used is like drops of
Speaker 1: water in a bucket and you look down and the
Speaker 1: bucket is not even the bottom isn't even covered, and
Speaker 1: you say, oh, you know, I'm not gonna do this anymore.
Speaker 1: But if you keep on with it, you know, you
Speaker 1: looked on one day and oh my god, the buckets
Speaker 1: half full, and then one day your foot is wet.
Speaker 1: So it's just that that it's it's not a half
Speaker 1: to it's a something that begins to happen when you
Speaker 1: really see. There's a difference between this story about life
Speaker 1: and actual life. And the strange thing is we really
Speaker 1: want this, but we're also terrified of it because the
Speaker 1: last time we were fully open, we got scared. So
Speaker 1: we need to be so kind with ourselves and we
Speaker 1: need to as you are so beautifully saying, go slowly.
Speaker 1: And we also need to realize that most people at
Speaker 1: this time on the planet still go to their deathbed
Speaker 1: identified with this condition. Self and a lot of people
Speaker 1: in power are totally identified with it, but there's more
Speaker 1: and more people. I'm working with engineers and I'm working
Speaker 1: with it. Just you know, it's really exciting to see
Speaker 1: how I'm working with people at Amazon and at Microsoft.
Speaker 1: You know, there this is beginning to uh come into
Speaker 1: seep into the cracks in so many places. And I
Speaker 1: think people want to make a difference in the world,
Speaker 1: and they don't realize that one of the most powerful
Speaker 1: ways they can help the healing of our planet is
Speaker 1: to heal the war inside of them. So we're nearing
Speaker 1: the end of our time. I want to visit one
Speaker 1: area of the book that I found challenging for me,
Speaker 1: like that that sort of I went, I don't know
Speaker 1: about that, and so I'm really curious about it because
Speaker 1: it's an area that that I often um, well, that
Speaker 1: just it raises interesting questions for me. And you talk
Speaker 1: about the fact that there is an underline intelligence under everything,
Speaker 1: which actually the way you describe it made so much sense, like, oh,
Speaker 1: of course there is, like because I'm this creature, and
Speaker 1: you know, how did I go from a single cell
Speaker 1: thing into this creature? How did I How does my
Speaker 1: heart beat? How does my digestion that there's this that
Speaker 1: there is this intelligence driving everything and that there's this
Speaker 1: underline beauty And you talk about life being for us,
Speaker 1: And I'm good with the intelligent peace up until there's
Speaker 1: almost like a conscious design for me that's out there.
Speaker 1: Like I believe, like what you say that the what's
Speaker 1: in the way is the way. I absolutely believe it
Speaker 1: is those things. It is the barriers and the challenges
Speaker 1: and the things of our life that are the grist
Speaker 1: for the mill um. But I'm curious about UM. I
Speaker 1: guess I'm just curious what you think about you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying that there's a I have that challenge
Speaker 1: with their being sort of a UM like that for example,
Speaker 1: that my girlfriend breaks up with me because that's a
Speaker 1: way for me to um experience challenge in life that
Speaker 1: seems I don't know, I I wrestle with that. So
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious. I'm not even sure that's
Speaker 1: what you were saying, but I just thought it'd be
Speaker 1: a fun thing to talk about. First of all, I
Speaker 1: don't think any of us know really what's going on here,
Speaker 1: and I think it is very helpful to to have
Speaker 1: a set of beliefs understanding that we can never really
Speaker 1: know if they're true, right, but a set of beliefs
Speaker 1: that engage you more with life. Rather than cause you
Speaker 1: to struggle with life if we don't know, we should
Speaker 1: choose stories that give us power versus stories that take
Speaker 1: our power away exactly. And that my experience is is
Speaker 1: the more that I've come out of the clouds and
Speaker 1: the more I see this spectacular thing. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: looking out this window to this this magnolia tree that
Speaker 1: I'm looking right over the top of it, and it's
Speaker 1: all these bare twigs and it's just filled with these
Speaker 1: purple and pink flowers. I mean, and all of that
Speaker 1: was made out of stardust. And what is it that
Speaker 1: took startust and created the DNA molecule. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is. I mean, I think we've given it
Speaker 1: the name God, and we've created all sorts of religion
Speaker 1: around it, which is really mostly the human ego. But
Speaker 1: when I quiet down, I see there is an intelligence here.
Speaker 1: And when I begin to realize that this this came
Speaker 1: all in one fell swoop when I was writing the book,
Speaker 1: that life is set up to bring up what has
Speaker 1: been bound up so we can open up to be freedom,
Speaker 1: so we can show up for life. And when I
Speaker 1: began to get out of that idea that this is
Speaker 1: happening because I did something wrong, or they did something wrong,
Speaker 1: or God whatever God is, fell asleep on the job.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, I was not the victim anymore.
Speaker 1: Now I am being fascinated and it just really uh
Speaker 1: amazes me sometime to watch how with myself and with
Speaker 1: people that I work with, when you begin to realize
Speaker 1: how much this dance is for you. Now, truth is
Speaker 1: always paradoxical, you know. So you know it's is there
Speaker 1: a divine you know, thing underneath it that has everything
Speaker 1: you know set you know in stone? And well, no,
Speaker 1: there's free will and you know and all this, well
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a combination to both of them.
Speaker 1: And what it is is you begin to be fascinated
Speaker 1: by what is showing up, and you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: my mind decide, you know, oh it's more peaceful if
Speaker 1: it sees this, or you know whatever. When I begin
Speaker 1: to notice what any particular situation brings up inside of me,
Speaker 1: and I begin to do what I call in the
Speaker 1: book the you turn, the y ou turn, and you
Speaker 1: begin to notice what is going on. You begin to
Speaker 1: put the pieces of the puzzle together. And the best
Speaker 1: way I can describe it is I describe it sometimes
Speaker 1: like we're in the wind tunnel, great analogy, Yes, picture puzzle,
Speaker 1: you know, and everyone's around the wind tunnel. You can
Speaker 1: just get it right and you're just, oh, man, got
Speaker 1: this flying is wonderful. That we're slammed against the wall
Speaker 1: or clothes are ripped off, and you know, a puzzle
Speaker 1: goes into our eye and and all that. And what
Speaker 1: we're doing in this work is we're stepping out and
Speaker 1: we're becoming curious. And that's the place where life is
Speaker 1: for you. And you just take a piece out and
Speaker 1: when you look at it, you're not the victim to
Speaker 1: it anymore. And then you put it down on the table,
Speaker 1: and more and more that puzzle begins to fill out.
Speaker 1: And you see by these situations that life is putting
Speaker 1: you in that help you to bring up what has
Speaker 1: been bound up. You can see it, you see through it,
Speaker 1: and you're not hooked anymore, and you're not a victim
Speaker 1: to anything. You're now more and more fully engaged. And
Speaker 1: I'm like you, I get hooked. And and Andrea shared
Speaker 1: it so beautifully on the video. You know, you know
Speaker 1: she said, we've done all this practice, and you know
Speaker 1: it was challenging at times. But she said, we had
Speaker 1: this ability to come back to the heart, which is
Speaker 1: our main brain, back to this which which is this
Speaker 1: brain is dualistic, like this doesn't like that. I think
Speaker 1: this is good. That is bad, this is right, that
Speaker 1: is wrong. Look at history. This brain is in gay aged,
Speaker 1: it is sensitive to what is it. It is inclusive
Speaker 1: rather than exclusive, and as far as I can see,
Speaker 1: it's the only way to live. And and by this brain,
Speaker 1: you meant your heart, heart brain. Yes, and we found
Speaker 1: that out. Now it's a brain. Yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of great stuff in your book about that topic. To
Speaker 1: um it. It really is a wonderful, wonderful book. Um
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. I love what you just had
Speaker 1: to say there. I mean, for me, I'm a I'm
Speaker 1: a member of twelve step programs right where there's an
Speaker 1: idea of you turn your life over to the care
Speaker 1: of God. And I'm like, well, I don't know what
Speaker 1: that is. And what I finally recognized for me was
Speaker 1: it didn't really matter. It was the It was the
Speaker 1: letting go of it, you know, taking out of my
Speaker 1: clutched bad hands that I'm not sure what the mechanism is,
Speaker 1: but everything works better when I do that, right, It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that seems to be the the evidence
Speaker 1: that I can see is like me letting go works. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you just imagine, you know, you're you're at your family,
Speaker 1: you know, for Easter or whatever, and you know, Uncle
Speaker 1: Bobby is having a an argument with Aunt Josephine, you know,
Speaker 1: or something like that, and and somebody else's doing something else,
Speaker 1: and you can just feel yourself tightening, and then you go, no, wait,
Speaker 1: life is for me that there's something here for me
Speaker 1: to see all of a sudden. It's not happening to
Speaker 1: you all of a sudden. You are engaged with it.
Speaker 1: And my experience is every single experience has something to
Speaker 1: show you, uh, not only about this condition self, but
Speaker 1: also about how it is safe to open and engage
Speaker 1: with life. And then life becomes an adventure. And that's
Speaker 1: what we long for, you know, when we buy the
Speaker 1: fancy car or have the LiPo section or whatever, what
Speaker 1: we really really long for is to be here. I
Speaker 1: couldn't agree more. Well, Mary, thank you so much. This
Speaker 1: has been a very fun converse nation. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the book. I got an email today
Speaker 1: from um your publisher who said, uh, really, I mean
Speaker 1: I rarely see gushing like that over a book, and
Speaker 1: so it was very it's a special one. So thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. It's my joy. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about Mary O'Malley and this podcast at one you
Speaker 1: Feed dot net slash Mary