Speaker 1: And so I've thought about it in that same way.
Speaker 1: It's not going to die that light. If we neglect it,
Speaker 1: it'll be there. But if we actually nurture it, we
Speaker 1: cannot just survive but flourish. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome Sharon Salzburg to the show.
Speaker 1: Sharon is a meditation pioneer, a world renowned teacher, and
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author. She's the co founder of
Speaker 1: the Insight Meditation Society. Her podcast, The Meta Hour has
Speaker 1: a mass six million downloads and features interviews with thought
Speaker 1: leaders from the mindfulness movement and beyond. Her latest book
Speaker 1: is called Real Life, The Journey from Isolation to Openness
Speaker 1: and Freedom. In this episode, I talked to Sharon Salzburg
Speaker 1: about navigating real life. When we are faced with trials
Speaker 1: and tribulations, it feels as if we're alone. On top
Speaker 1: of that, our underlying assumptions about the world and ourselves
Speaker 1: can make us feel worse. Sharon shares useful tips that
Speaker 1: can help us deal with overwhelming emotions and pain. She
Speaker 1: believes that by cultivating these loving kindness practices, it can
Speaker 1: help us feel more open and free, allowing our inner
Speaker 1: lights to shine Forth. On a personal note, this was
Speaker 1: a really amazing interview. I really love Sharon, and I
Speaker 1: mean really, she's a really wonderful human and every time
Speaker 1: I talk to her, I feel her love and openness
Speaker 1: and it makes me want to be a better person. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I bring you my dear friend, Sharon Salzburg. Hello, Sharon,
Speaker 1: it's a I'm good. Are you? I'm good? So good
Speaker 1: to see you too, and huge congratulations on the publication
Speaker 1: of your new book. Thank you so much. Life beautiful.
Speaker 1: Oh you have the book book. I don't even have
Speaker 1: the book. I do. Wow? What really? Yeah, I have Galic.
Speaker 1: You should, Yeah, you should have a copy. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful and I know there's a there's a part
Speaker 1: in the book where you said that you went through
Speaker 1: a period where you were like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I have anything more to say after ten books, and
Speaker 1: maybe you had some self doubt. Well, I can assure
Speaker 1: you that it's a very timely book with a lot
Speaker 1: of new information. Well, thank you so much. That means
Speaker 1: a lot. No, that's great. Yeah, this idea of going
Speaker 1: from it's interesting because you have you have a couple
Speaker 1: froms to things. One is from isolation to openness. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious why you put that as your subtitle
Speaker 1: when your book focuses on constriction to expansion. What I
Speaker 1: feel like something changed the last second in the subtitle.
Speaker 1: Am I wrong? No? I think you're correct. I think
Speaker 1: it was partly you know, the basic model, the basic
Speaker 1: scheme is going from feeling constricted and trapped and overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: like defined by the circumstances of our lives, to a
Speaker 1: state where we see options, where we feel open, we
Speaker 1: feel more in confined, less constrained. And I think the
Speaker 1: word constriction is just not a popular word. And everyone
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote this book entirely during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: Like the height of the pandemic, I wasn't traveling anywhere.
Speaker 1: I was hardly seeing anybody, and not everyone, but many
Speaker 1: people were experiencing quite a lot of isolation. In that
Speaker 1: it just seems more relevant example for people great So,
Speaker 1: regardless of what we call it isolation, hopiness or constriction expensiveness,
Speaker 1: there is a journey that you take the reader on
Speaker 1: and in a lot of ways, it's to deal with
Speaker 1: real life. Do you feel like there was ever a
Speaker 1: point in your life Sharan where you kind of woke
Speaker 1: up and you're like, wow, this is life. Not what
Speaker 1: I expected to be, but here we are. This is it.
Speaker 1: I think that's happened repeatedly for me. I mean that's
Speaker 1: one of the points I make, and actually quote you
Speaker 1: in Quitting Maslaw, that these journeys are rarely linear. You
Speaker 1: know that we go up and down, we feel ebbs
Speaker 1: and flows. We are going forward, then we fall down
Speaker 1: and we have to pick ourselves up. We'll let others
Speaker 1: help us up. We go on again. We were working
Speaker 1: on self actualization and suddenly we're insecure and we're like
Speaker 1: way back there, you know, like you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like that. So I would say yeah repeatedly, and
Speaker 1: because we have so many images, you know, the most
Speaker 1: immediate example in terms of the writing of this book was,
Speaker 1: you know, I traveled all of February twenty twenty in
Speaker 1: California and got back to New York City in early March.
Speaker 1: I went and taught to retreat for a few days.
Speaker 1: Then I was teaching in New York City the morning
Speaker 1: of March ninth, twenty twenty, and and people were so
Speaker 1: anxious and things were bad, you know, they were getting
Speaker 1: a whole lot worse too, and in terms of COVID,
Speaker 1: And it was so much anxiety, do so much fear,
Speaker 1: so much uncertainty, and and I had to thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I think I'll go up to Barry, Mass where the
Speaker 1: retreat center I co founded the Insight Meditation Society is,
Speaker 1: and I have a house right next door. I said
Speaker 1: to myself, I think I'll go up to Barry and
Speaker 1: write it out for two weeks, you know. And it
Speaker 1: came up here. And of course it was years, you know.
Speaker 1: And so life is always dealing us kind of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: And many times I've said to myself, this is how
Speaker 1: it actually is. It's not the way I imagined it
Speaker 1: would be, or but this is how it is. You say,
Speaker 1: the quality of our lives can be limited by the
Speaker 1: thought patterns that produce much of our construction, such as
Speaker 1: unexamined assumptions. Is there an idea there that a lot
Speaker 1: of our own suffering is in our own hands? Is
Speaker 1: that a theme that runs through your book. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a certain degree of our suffering that is
Speaker 1: in our hands. I also take a really firm stand
Speaker 1: that something's just hurt. You know, it's not because we
Speaker 1: have the wrong attitude. It's not because we have disordered thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not because we need to Broken arm hurts.
Speaker 1: Broken arm hurts, a broken heart hurts, you know, and
Speaker 1: losing somebody hurts, and you know, something's just hurt. And
Speaker 1: people are so kind of unjust, I find, towards themselves
Speaker 1: almost by insisting like I should be better. Look at me.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been meditating for fifty years now. You
Speaker 1: know I should be calm in all circumstance. I should be,
Speaker 1: you know, And so it's so unfair, really, it's some
Speaker 1: things do just hurt. But I think there's a layer
Speaker 1: of extra suffering we do not have to endure. And
Speaker 1: that is something that is about assumption and interpretation. And
Speaker 1: I am the only one. I'm the only one who
Speaker 1: ever feels this or this is the only thing I'll
Speaker 1: ever feel, or this is my fault. You know, I
Speaker 1: should have been able to control all of life in
Speaker 1: the universe and not have this happen. And so we
Speaker 1: kind of pile on and we're not holding that original
Speaker 1: hurt in a compassionate light or with any spaciousness. You know.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of interpretation, a lot of stuff and
Speaker 1: that we don't need. Really, yeah, we don't need that.
Speaker 1: That's it's like suffering twice in a way, as people
Speaker 1: have said, you suffer first and then you're suffering again
Speaker 1: with your own hand. Yeah. Well yeah, this this book
Speaker 1: really equips people with tools to deal with real life.
Speaker 1: And boy, but people need it right now. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about some of these exercises because they are
Speaker 1: so valuable. I actually taught my students one on the
Speaker 1: feeling emotions shaking hands one. Yeah, I absolutely love that.
Speaker 1: Can we can you kind of explain that one? That
Speaker 1: exercise a little bit? How can help us deal with
Speaker 1: difficult emotions? Well, the kind of the basic nature of
Speaker 1: mindfulness practice is one where we can open to what
Speaker 1: is present in the moment, what's genuinely happening, and holds
Speaker 1: it differently than we normally do. Like, sometimes our experience
Speaker 1: is painful, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain, and
Speaker 1: we do not like it. All that stuff I just
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, we dump on top of it,
Speaker 1: we're shamed of what we feel, we're trying to hide
Speaker 1: from it or we want to push it away. That's
Speaker 1: one extreme, and the other extreme is we kind of
Speaker 1: dive right into it, and we become it in a way,
Speaker 1: we let it define the entirety of our being. And
Speaker 1: we talk about mindfulness as being a place in the
Speaker 1: middle where we can connect fully to what's happening, not
Speaker 1: pushing it away and adding like shame and things like that,
Speaker 1: and also not getting enveloped by it, so that you
Speaker 1: might call right relationship. And in that relationship we have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to learn and to see more deeply, and
Speaker 1: to have compassion and so on. So a very kind
Speaker 1: of nice way, more poetic way of describing that is
Speaker 1: from one of my Tibetan teachers, Sonny Rivercha, who called
Speaker 1: the shack hands, and he described those states are fear,
Speaker 1: are jealousy, or greed as beautiful monsters. And these beautiful
Speaker 1: monsters will appear just sit the nature of things and
Speaker 1: rather than freak out about it or feel defensive or
Speaker 1: say yes, you know you are the only truth I
Speaker 1: will ever know, you like to shake its hand, your
Speaker 1: accompany it. An equivalent exercise we've done sometimes is also
Speaker 1: from the Tibetan tradition. They would say, if you're sitting
Speaker 1: at home and might be minding your own business, and
Speaker 1: you hear a knock at the door and you open
Speaker 1: the door and there's greed, or there's jealousy, or there's fear.
Speaker 1: Invite them in for a meal. Don't give them the
Speaker 1: run of the house because they'll steal similar word or something.
Speaker 1: But you don't have to be so upset, so diminished,
Speaker 1: feel so diminished in the face of this state. In
Speaker 1: a way, it's almost like saying your awareness is stronger,
Speaker 1: it's big enough, or maybe in psychological terms you can
Speaker 1: tell me you would say you're an adult. Now. This
Speaker 1: feels terrifying because when you were two when you first
Speaker 1: sort of inscribed, and it was a question of survival.
Speaker 1: Now you can handle it. Actually, it's different now, even
Speaker 1: though it's intense when it arises. Nonetheless, you know, so
Speaker 1: invited in for meal and so be hospitable, be calm
Speaker 1: in the face of it, Recognize it for what it is.
Speaker 1: Have a little kindness, you know, like there's a reason
Speaker 1: you're here. Probably, And I described that once in a
Speaker 1: class I was teaching in someone in the room didn't
Speaker 1: like it. So I said, well how about I said,
Speaker 1: how about invite them in for tea? And they said,
Speaker 1: how about tea to go? And I said, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: the extent of the hospitality you wish to engender. That's fine,
Speaker 1: But it's all about finding that place in the middle
Speaker 1: because we can and we can forgive ourselves for what
Speaker 1: we're feeling. We don't have to say, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: like despicable for having this arise again. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, we don't have to be dominated by it.
Speaker 1: You know, your approach is so lovely, thank you, It's
Speaker 1: full of love, loveful. Your approach is so loveful. I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm going to invent that word. And there's so
Speaker 1: much coldness in this world today. There's so people are
Speaker 1: treating each other with so much cruelty if if they
Speaker 1: feel someone else doesn't agree with them, you know, even
Speaker 1: just like different opinions. And you know, politics is a
Speaker 1: mess right now. I don't have to tell you that.
Speaker 1: And people don't see it in themselves. They don't they
Speaker 1: don't see that they need any of this. They they
Speaker 1: point the finger and say, oh, that person needs it,
Speaker 1: and that person needs it. What advice would you have
Speaker 1: for us all to look within ourselves and with a
Speaker 1: critical examination. But with that wilfulness you talk about, well,
Speaker 1: suffering is so often the key isn't it you know, like,
Speaker 1: sometimes the suffering is intense, it's graphics. Sometimes it's more subtle,
Speaker 1: it's kind of more pervasive, but it's often some kind
Speaker 1: of dissatisfaction. And I think, not only are there kind
Speaker 1: of wild opinions going on right now, but there's a
Speaker 1: certain self satisfaction also that is privileged oral superiority, superiority.
Speaker 1: We posted something and don't remember even what, on the
Speaker 1: Internet that had the subtitle of the book and had
Speaker 1: the title of the book and then the subtitle the
Speaker 1: Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom, and somebody wrote
Speaker 1: me and it was the oddest thing, is like, don't
Speaker 1: you know that the isolation of experience was all an
Speaker 1: artifact of New York real estate brokers trying to change
Speaker 1: the price of real estate. It was kind of stunned,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Wow, what advantage was it in your
Speaker 1: mind to people with money, you know, with power position
Speaker 1: to drive prices down, you know, like and yet it
Speaker 1: was something, you know, and something I should do something about,
Speaker 1: you know, just like really outrageous, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: it's very hard to have communication in a way that
Speaker 1: feels genuine or authentic in positionality, you know, in times
Speaker 1: of positionality, but in terms of our own situation, you know,
Speaker 1: we can we can look at our reactions, we can
Speaker 1: look at our holding holding, you know, like the ways
Speaker 1: we grasp onto views. Which is not to say that
Speaker 1: I believe all views are equal, you know, but there's
Speaker 1: a certain way in which we stop really listening. We
Speaker 1: only see the person as a kind of object in
Speaker 1: some way. And it would be I think ever more
Speaker 1: powerful to really listen to one another, even if we're
Speaker 1: not going to agree. And I don't feel the impetus
Speaker 1: degree really, which is not to say I'm never wrong,
Speaker 1: because I am wrong, but just to get a sense
Speaker 1: of the humanity of somebody, you know, what is this serving?
Speaker 1: Like something I wrote about and have learned about in
Speaker 1: British psychology and also in Western psychology, is you know,
Speaker 1: so many of these states, our adaptations. There were something
Speaker 1: that maybe served well when we were two years old,
Speaker 1: or we were young, or we were hurt, and there
Speaker 1: are old habits now and something we reached to is
Speaker 1: as like our go to place, but it's not elevant anymore.
Speaker 1: Two you know, only feel a kind of need should
Speaker 1: be superior or an excessive reliance on righteousness or or
Speaker 1: something like that. Maybe it helped us survive once even
Speaker 1: you know. And in britih psychology we'd say that about grasping,
Speaker 1: we'd say that about hatred, we'd say that about fear,
Speaker 1: we'd say that about delusion, and delusion being a kind
Speaker 1: of cocoon of numbness. You know, maybe became in very
Speaker 1: handy you know, at time or two in life, but
Speaker 1: you don't want it to be your steady state. Now
Speaker 1: what about shame. I can't see any value for it.
Speaker 1: I understand guilt. I just don't see value for shame.
Speaker 1: I wonder how it evolved. So I had to learn
Speaker 1: sort of the Western psychological framework, you know, in the
Speaker 1: British psychology they would say the helpful state or the
Speaker 1: skillful state, the clo remorse, which just painful. You know.
Speaker 1: There's a beautiful quotation from the Buddha where he said,
Speaker 1: if you truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another. You know.
Speaker 1: So when we recollect the things we maybe did or
Speaker 1: said or held back from doing or saying, we can
Speaker 1: feel that kind of lack of self love that was
Speaker 1: at the root of it. And it's very painful. But
Speaker 1: that pain is useful because we can feel it and
Speaker 1: recognize I don't want to go back there. I don't
Speaker 1: really want to do that again or again and again,
Speaker 1: and maybe we need to make amends, or maybe we
Speaker 1: just need to resolve, like to try to be better,
Speaker 1: to be different, whereas guilt is what they call the
Speaker 1: state it's just this kind of incessant self hatred, you know,
Speaker 1: just like going over and over and over and over
Speaker 1: what we did or what we said, and we can't
Speaker 1: move on because we're just stuck there. So it was
Speaker 1: like a learning process for me to see that the
Speaker 1: words are used differently in Western psychology, where guilt is
Speaker 1: more recognition that act was wrong and shame is the
Speaker 1: more wholesale condemnation like I am wrong, I am bad,
Speaker 1: And it's not that helpful, you know. Was it helpful ever?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seems like it makes you want
Speaker 1: to hide. That might have been a good idea sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, hiding, but as a state, it's really kind
Speaker 1: of like a lacerating self hatred, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: just not onward leading. Did you say onward leading? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not onward leading. It's not it's not like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very old fashioned British phrase. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not going to help. Yeah, future oriented, Yeah wow.
Speaker 1: Do you have an exercise to help people when they
Speaker 1: feel shame coming up, or maybe any of the ones
Speaker 1: that help with difficult emotions. Yeah, well it's the same.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's hard. You know, some things are
Speaker 1: harder than others, and we have to understand that. But
Speaker 1: shaking hands, you know, invite the shaman. In that case,
Speaker 1: I would say a cup of tea, a meal might
Speaker 1: be a little much, you know, but recognize it. See
Speaker 1: if you can name it. Naming always helps. Every time
Speaker 1: your mind, your thought pattern says this is bad, this
Speaker 1: is wrong, it shouldn't be here. I spend all that
Speaker 1: money in therapy, it should be gone. Or meditating all
Speaker 1: these years, it should be gone. I actually retranslate that
Speaker 1: in my own head and I say, don't see it's wrong.
Speaker 1: See it is painful. This is a state of pain.
Speaker 1: This is a painful state, and it's so devastating, it's
Speaker 1: so debilitating. It's not gonna help, you know. And I
Speaker 1: sometimes I quote the Buddha to myself, like, if you
Speaker 1: truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another. So the antidote
Speaker 1: is not to love yourself less, right, It's a it's
Speaker 1: a call, it's a crying out to love yourself more.
Speaker 1: And I remind myself of that man. You know, people
Speaker 1: who are prone to feelings of shame tend to feel
Speaker 1: not a lot of love for themselves. They tend to
Speaker 1: these things courtant and correlate, you know, they kind of
Speaker 1: feel broken at the core, or or to keep it
Speaker 1: more real, you know, they may feel like not worthy,
Speaker 1: you know, of love. Yeah, I mean they are exercises too.
Speaker 1: They're not necessarily easy, but they're very very powerful, like
Speaker 1: loving kindness, their gratitude. If you're in the habit as
Speaker 1: most of us are likely to be, say at the
Speaker 1: end of the day to like evaluate yourself, like how
Speaker 1: did I do today? And if you pretty well only
Speaker 1: remember the mistakes you made and what you did wrong
Speaker 1: and all of that, could actually ask yourself with some
Speaker 1: sense of humor, even anything else happened today, Like anything
Speaker 1: could in my life, you know, because our minds are
Speaker 1: our attention is not going to go there most of
Speaker 1: us automatically, and so it takes not force or coercion,
Speaker 1: but intentionality, Like what about this that I continually overlook
Speaker 1: we practice loving kindness for ourselves. We practice receiving the
Speaker 1: loving kindness of others, which can feel absolutely horrible for
Speaker 1: a while, you know, like no, don't look at me,
Speaker 1: But over time it actually there's a kind of healing
Speaker 1: that that does happen. It's also true that I think
Speaker 1: some life practices, like generosity or doing something good for
Speaker 1: someone else unites us with a part of ourselves that's
Speaker 1: not the idiot you know that we usually think we are,
Speaker 1: and it kind of holds us up in a sort
Speaker 1: of different level of self respect. There's really a lot
Speaker 1: of practices that one can do. The mind wanders, and
Speaker 1: that's just what it does, right. It doesn't a lot
Speaker 1: when people are going through really difficult circumstances. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to acknowledge that it's harder for them to concentrate,
Speaker 1: even on their breath, you know, it just did even
Speaker 1: do the exercises. I feel like there's even a more
Speaker 1: compassionate not a more, but there is a compassionate sort
Speaker 1: of understanding that, especially when you're under difficult circumstances, the
Speaker 1: kind of activities should be not should, but that would
Speaker 1: could help you. It's harder to do them. It's harder
Speaker 1: to do them. Does what I'm saying make sense? Yes?
Speaker 1: And you know, I think there at different levels I
Speaker 1: experienced in trying to approach that. One is, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to if you want to, you know, inculcate a
Speaker 1: practice when things are not so hard, so that when
Speaker 1: things are hard, it's almost like strength training. You know,
Speaker 1: then you've got some sense of inner resource with which
Speaker 1: to meet what's going on in I was interviewed years
Speaker 1: ago for is Ironically Good Housekeeping magazine, which if you
Speaker 1: could see behind the screen you would find as funny
Speaker 1: as all my friends. And what I had to say
Speaker 1: never made it into the interview, but the question was
Speaker 1: something like, how would you use mindfulness at a time
Speaker 1: of complete crisis? And what I said was, I wouldn't wait.
Speaker 1: Don't wait. Many people do wait, and it can be
Speaker 1: useful even then, but it's like the day after day
Speaker 1: after day, even boring kind of steady application of awareness
Speaker 1: and balance and so on. So then when the bottom
Speaker 1: falls out of your life, you've got some resource with
Speaker 1: which to meet it, so that it's just one possible approach,
Speaker 1: and the other is to understand it's like you know,
Speaker 1: we can have very circumscribed ideas of practice. You don't
Speaker 1: have to be sitting like a pretzel, you know, some
Speaker 1: weird pose. Your eyes don't need to be closed, you
Speaker 1: don't need to be still. You can be in movement,
Speaker 1: you could be outside, you could be you know, drinking
Speaker 1: a cup of tea, you can be washing dishes. It's
Speaker 1: just some moments of landing in your own experience and
Speaker 1: feeling it. And for some people it's not going to
Speaker 1: be that helpful to be alone. You know, there's just
Speaker 1: a lot of support in doing any kind of exercise
Speaker 1: in the context of a community, and you know it
Speaker 1: would be a lot easier. Yeah, And in terms of community,
Speaker 1: a big theme in your book is connection and how
Speaker 1: the need for connection is a really profound human need.
Speaker 1: I just bumped up a screen capture I took from
Speaker 1: reading your book, and I was texting back and forth
Speaker 1: with my friend Susan Kane about this because we both
Speaker 1: love this page. And by the way Susan says, it
Speaker 1: says give her a hug for me. I told her
Speaker 1: I was talking to you right now, she can give
Speaker 1: her a hug. So great. But this page you write,
Speaker 1: when we connect with others. We don't lose ourselves. We
Speaker 1: find ourselves all we count. We find the voice within
Speaker 1: that isn't overcome by fear though that though that may
Speaker 1: be in the room, or by unworthiness, though that may
Speaker 1: be there too. We find the voice born of recognizing
Speaker 1: a bigger sense of possibility, which urges us to engage
Speaker 1: without the certainty of definite immediate reward, etcetera, etcetera. I
Speaker 1: go on and on and on, but I love that
Speaker 1: I sentiment. I do know that when I'm feeling a
Speaker 1: connection with another fellow human being, I definitely feel more
Speaker 1: connected to myself. And that's a fascinating phenomenon, you know,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating. You know, sometimes you may kind of paradoxically
Speaker 1: think that you will kind of lose yourself if you're
Speaker 1: you know, in the love experience or in a flull
Speaker 1: state with another person. But I don't really find I
Speaker 1: lose myself. I mean, I feel like I'm very much
Speaker 1: in touch with it. It's interesting. Yeah, well, you know
Speaker 1: of Susan Kanaan introverts in such worlds, you know, like
Speaker 1: even before the pandemic, when I would hear about like
Speaker 1: an epidemic of loneliness, and many places in the world.
Speaker 1: And I used to read these studies of different clinical
Speaker 1: conditions and how social connection could be a strong healing
Speaker 1: force in those conditions, and I kept thinking, well, it
Speaker 1: can't just be like a numbers game, right, like I
Speaker 1: only have four friends, I need eight, you know. It
Speaker 1: has to be some sense of interconnection, because I and
Speaker 1: probably everybody listening, you know, know someone who there's a
Speaker 1: fairly solitary life, but seems immensely connected to the world,
Speaker 1: you know, and they thank people like doing service for them,
Speaker 1: little deeds that many of us might look right through
Speaker 1: rather than look at. And they have a sense of
Speaker 1: the interconnectedness of life, and they care about the plant
Speaker 1: it in their way, you know, a bigger way, and
Speaker 1: they don't seem cut off for alone, even though they're
Speaker 1: you know, their numbers may not suit, like in terms
Speaker 1: of intimate buddies or something like that. And so there's
Speaker 1: something incredibly powerful. It has something to do I think
Speaker 1: with belonging. You know, when we connect, then then it
Speaker 1: leads right back to that somehow. Yeah, But I also
Speaker 1: think that connection incorporates belonging and intimacy, and they're not
Speaker 1: always the same thing. I try to separate the two
Speaker 1: from each other in my book Transcend, because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times we can feel like a sense
Speaker 1: of belonging to something, but not feel like there's a
Speaker 1: mutually reciprocal connection, a deep what's called a high quality
Speaker 1: connection in psychology. It seems to be like you're really
Speaker 1: focusing on high quality connections and well, sometimes there's not
Speaker 1: a satisfying reciprocal response, right, and it's just definitely like
Speaker 1: the nature of life just appointment. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that you mentioned connection in your book.
Speaker 1: It's it's beautiful. And you also talk about the light
Speaker 1: within us all. You know, you made me think of
Speaker 1: those guys who go in and teach yoga and mindfulness
Speaker 1: in inner city schools, don't they isn't the title of
Speaker 1: their book, The light is the Light within the Holistic
Speaker 1: Life Undition. They're my great friends. They're awesome, They're awesome,
Speaker 1: they are awesome people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it just
Speaker 1: you made me think of that when you talk about
Speaker 1: the light within in your own book. Can can you
Speaker 1: talk a little about how people can get in touch
Speaker 1: with that light within themselves? Well, the part of the
Speaker 1: book where I talk about that light is actually one
Speaker 1: of my favorite aspects of the book, which is some well.
Speaker 1: It starts out actually by talking about this very very
Speaker 1: old study where every resident of a nursyn rome was
Speaker 1: given a plant, and half of them were told, you've
Speaker 1: got to take care of the plant. You've got to
Speaker 1: notice when it needs water, you've got to move it
Speaker 1: in and out of the sun, whatever, and the other
Speaker 1: half of the residents were told, here's a plant, just
Speaker 1: enjoy it. You don't do anything. The nursing staff is
Speaker 1: just can to take care of the plant. And then
Speaker 1: after some time they compare these two groups and to
Speaker 1: not that the ones who were needing to respond to
Speaker 1: the plant were living far longer, and they were doing
Speaker 1: better health wise and orientation wise and so on. And
Speaker 1: it's always been considered as a as a study in
Speaker 1: controlled decision making, being able to control your environment. But
Speaker 1: I read it, you know, and right away thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's like loving kindness, you know, that's the sense of
Speaker 1: you could say, intimacy or care caring, and so I always,
Speaker 1: I always thought, is that And then I went on
Speaker 1: to talk about since I have personally never kept the
Speaker 1: plant alive, not once in all these years, it just
Speaker 1: doesn't work, not alone. Yeah, you know, but people do.
Speaker 1: I read about all these plants where you can neglect them,
Speaker 1: they will live anyway. You know, by and large, you
Speaker 1: know that there's something very hearty about them. But the
Speaker 1: description that I was reading ended by saying that is true.
Speaker 1: But if you actually nurture them, they will do more
Speaker 1: than just survive, they will flourish. And that led me
Speaker 1: to thinking about the light within, which is a very
Speaker 1: classic Buddhist conceptualization, that the light within is not it's
Speaker 1: not a fully realized state. It's like a seed form.
Speaker 1: It's a potential for freedom, for connection, for clarity, for wisdom.
Speaker 1: That is said, we all have, every single one of us,
Speaker 1: whatever we have been through, whatever we may yet go through,
Speaker 1: it is never ever destroyed. It may be hidden, and
Speaker 1: it may be hard to find, hard to trust, but
Speaker 1: it is absolutely there. And that's like rock bottom belief
Speaker 1: in all of the systems of psychology in the East.
Speaker 1: And so that's what we build a meditation practice on,
Speaker 1: that's what we build our efforts on that they're not
Speaker 1: sort of desperate and hopeless, and you know, there is
Speaker 1: something there that can be cultivated. And so I thought
Speaker 1: about it in that same way, it's not going to
Speaker 1: die that light. If we neglect it, it'll be there,
Speaker 1: but if we actually nurture it, we cannot just survive
Speaker 1: but flourish. So that's a very precious part for me
Speaker 1: of the book is that notion, and also reminded me
Speaker 1: of you know, I'm next door to the Insite Meditation
Speaker 1: Society right now, which we founded in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy nine we heard that Dali Lama
Speaker 1: was coming to visit Amherst, mass which is about forty
Speaker 1: minutes away, and so we're very young and naive and bold,
Speaker 1: and we shot off as letter to the private office
Speaker 1: and said, hey, maybe he'd like to visit us too
Speaker 1: when he's around, and we got an answer back saying
Speaker 1: yes he would. So he came here to the center,
Speaker 1: which was what it's an amazing experience, and the many
Speaker 1: stories about that day, and we gave him lunch and
Speaker 1: we gave him a tour. And when we bought the place,
Speaker 1: it was a Catholic novitiate, so it's got all these
Speaker 1: like social amenities, like a one lane bowling alley, so
Speaker 1: he went bowling. He did. We had at that time
Speaker 1: we had like a whole room full of bowling pins
Speaker 1: and things, and then we brought him into the meditation
Speaker 1: hall because we had to retreat. That was ongoing. People
Speaker 1: have been sitting for a bed two weeks. At that point,
Speaker 1: the Dolly theman gave a talk and then he asked
Speaker 1: for questions, and this young man raised his hand and
Speaker 1: he said, so he'd been meditating for like two weeks.
Speaker 1: And he said, I've decided I can't do it. I
Speaker 1: don't have any ability to change. I don't I can't learn,
Speaker 1: I can't grow in these ways. Like maybe it's worse
Speaker 1: for twenty five hundred years, but it's not going to
Speaker 1: work for me. And the Dinama just got this look
Speaker 1: on his face, which he gets even now when he's
Speaker 1: a little mystified by a question or a comment like huh.
Speaker 1: So he looked at him and then he said, you're
Speaker 1: just wrong, you're wrong, and he went on to describe
Speaker 1: that conceptualization of our essential nature as having this potential
Speaker 1: and someone. It was really funny because all these people
Speaker 1: came up to me afterwards and said, that's bad pedagogy.
Speaker 1: You should never tell someone they're just wrong like that.
Speaker 1: The one person right well. The one person did not
Speaker 1: complain was the young man for whom it was really
Speaker 1: really good, you know, and he said, wow, that was great.
Speaker 1: You know, consider the source right exactly. Wait, so that
Speaker 1: I'm also curious that so the dialama went bowling with
Speaker 1: you guys, it was the one lady went by himself.
Speaker 1: Were watching though, and he did bol though, h wow,
Speaker 1: is he good? Everyone asked that, They said how do
Speaker 1: you do it? So I can't remember. I was like,
Speaker 1: in some state, why it's bowling? It was a video
Speaker 1: that's so cool. Yeah, that's a very good question. We
Speaker 1: were flowing around the video cameras tin out cool. I really,
Speaker 1: I know we both really like this notion of the
Speaker 1: window of tolerance that Dan Siegel talks about. Can you
Speaker 1: talk at about this notion of the window tolerance and
Speaker 1: how we can widen that window? Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: very similar to everything we've been talking about in that
Speaker 1: if some state dissatisfaction, just content fear, something arises, we
Speaker 1: don't often necessarily put a lot of energy into the
Speaker 1: space with which it's being received. You know, usually we
Speaker 1: pylon in some way, we judge ourselves. We call it bad.
Speaker 1: We think I should have gotten rid of this long ago.
Speaker 1: It's not being received in a way that is very helpful.
Speaker 1: And so rather than focusing on the sheer arising of
Speaker 1: something and feeling we did wrong, you know that it's
Speaker 1: there that becomes the question. And so you know there's
Speaker 1: some parable within Britism of something like if you take
Speaker 1: a teaspoonful of salt and you put it in a
Speaker 1: small glass of water, because the vessel, the vehicle receiving
Speaker 1: it is so narrow, the water will be deeply impacted.
Speaker 1: Whereas if you take that same teaspoonful of salt and
Speaker 1: they would say, like or a chariot full of salt,
Speaker 1: and you dump it in a pond full of fresh water,
Speaker 1: because of the sort of vastness, the openness of the
Speaker 1: body of water, it's not going to be so strongly
Speaker 1: impacted in just that way. Some things are irritants and
Speaker 1: sometimes we can do something about it, and we do,
Speaker 1: we try as long as we can't. But regardless of that,
Speaker 1: the way it's being received, how much presence, how much balance,
Speaker 1: how much kindness, is going to make a big difference.
Speaker 1: And that's like our realm of creativity that we can
Speaker 1: always do something about. And so I was really interested
Speaker 1: to redance formulation of that as the window of tolerance.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, when things are we can fall off,
Speaker 1: or that that window can be really narrowed in a
Speaker 1: variety of different ways. We can get numb, we can dismiss,
Speaker 1: we can be too far back, we can be too
Speaker 1: into it, you know, so that we're consumed and overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: And so it's really the same process. And some of
Speaker 1: it is really reminding I do it, you know, reminding
Speaker 1: myself it's okay, this is what is, this is what's here,
Speaker 1: and starting from there rather than feeling you know, I
Speaker 1: just can't believe I'm feeling this again. That shouldn't be here,
Speaker 1: or this means this, and this means that. I sometimes
Speaker 1: tell this story about teaching with my colleague Joseph Goldstein,
Speaker 1: and somewhere Joseph and I were sitting in the kitchen
Speaker 1: having a cup of tea, and somebody came in in
Speaker 1: some distress and said to Joseph, I just had this
Speaker 1: terrible experience. So Joseph said, well what happened, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I felt all this tension in my john. I realized
Speaker 1: what an incredibly uptight person I am, and how I
Speaker 1: always have it and I always will be. And Joseph said,
Speaker 1: you mean you felt a lot of tension in your
Speaker 1: jaw And he said yes, And I've never been able
Speaker 1: to get close to people. It's never going to change.
Speaker 1: Joseph said, you mean you felt a lot of tension, John,
Speaker 1: And I was watching them go back and forth and
Speaker 1: back and forth, and no matter what the man said,
Speaker 1: Joseph would say, you mean, you felt a lot of
Speaker 1: tension in your jaw. And then finally Joseph said to him,
Speaker 1: why are you adding a miserable self image to a
Speaker 1: painful experience. It's like, painfully enough to feel the tension
Speaker 1: in your job, but on top of that, now you're
Speaker 1: gonna be alone for the rest of your life, you know,
Speaker 1: so we look for the advance that helps you're gonna
Speaker 1: be what the rest of your life? You'd be alone?
Speaker 1: You can be all alone forever forever? Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What they call it catastrophizing in the cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, we all do it to some degree. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. I like that because catastrophizing is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite topics. Using that term. Oh cool.
Speaker 1: Another colleague of mind support it. Sylvia Borstein uh yeah,
Speaker 1: describes herself as a recovering catastrophizer and in fact got
Speaker 1: into meditation practice because she was haunted by those thoughts.
Speaker 1: And she's eighty six now, so her children are really adults.
Speaker 1: And she said, she just say this about herself. I'm
Speaker 1: the kind of person who'll call one of my adult
Speaker 1: children and they don't answer the phone. So of course
Speaker 1: the worst must have happened. I never think maybe they're
Speaker 1: taking a shower, or maybe they fell in love. They
Speaker 1: don't feel like talking to their mother. It must be
Speaker 1: the worst. So now she still has I think, many
Speaker 1: of the same thoughts, perhaps not as intensely or with
Speaker 1: quite the frequency, but she has them for sure, and
Speaker 1: she can laugh at them, or she'll know to check
Speaker 1: them out at any rate. It's not that bad things
Speaker 1: don't ever happen, because they do, but you know, instead
Speaker 1: of just flying away with that as an assumption. And
Speaker 1: so I talked to her not too long ago, and
Speaker 1: she said, I have a new mantra, a new saying
Speaker 1: I use in life. And I said what is it?
Speaker 1: And she said, not every bus is going to end
Speaker 1: up in a ditch. I think, okay, there you go, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean people who are really neurotic will hear that
Speaker 1: and be like, yeah, but a bus, some bus does
Speaker 1: end up in the ditch. Well, some bus does, I agree,
Speaker 1: and check it out, you know, before you're sure, Are
Speaker 1: you really sure? Yeah? I love that in your book.
Speaker 1: I love that so gener truth has a quote. Life
Speaker 1: is a hard battle. Anyway, If we laugh and sing
Speaker 1: a little as we fight the good fight of freedom,
Speaker 1: it makes it all go easier. I will not allow
Speaker 1: my life slight to be determined by the darkness around me.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's just. It doesn't get that much
Speaker 1: more beautiful than that, does it. I don't think it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And I I feel especially attuned with that kind of
Speaker 1: statement because so much of my work in recent years
Speaker 1: has been with people we call caregivers, you know, whether
Speaker 1: in their personal life, their families, learn their professional lives.
Speaker 1: There some ways on the front lines are suffering, like
Speaker 1: a therapist, you know, or teacher, a nurse, somebody like that,
Speaker 1: and or these days you know a lot of healthcare workers.
Speaker 1: Because it starts to feel like that's too selfish. I
Speaker 1: can't let in the joy, that's ridiculous. They can how
Speaker 1: people are struggling. I can how my person is struggling,
Speaker 1: whoever that is. And yet you know, there's clearly a
Speaker 1: tremendous way to burn out and people are so depleted
Speaker 1: and we're also tired anyway, I think. But it's hard.
Speaker 1: It's very, very hard to allow oneself to really take
Speaker 1: in the joy and not it's fleeting anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: you might as well enjoy it while it's there, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and not sort of buy into I don't
Speaker 1: deserve it, there's too much pain, or this is laziness,
Speaker 1: this is a self indulgence. It's really essential to understand
Speaker 1: resilience or or replenishment of oneself. And so that particular statement,
Speaker 1: I really I resonate with a lot me too. I
Speaker 1: just love that. I'm going to pin it to my wall.
Speaker 1: You know, you talk about dealing with illness and physical pain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how can you he with real physical pain? I mean
Speaker 1: you touch on this throughout you touch on this already
Speaker 1: a lot throughout this interview, but you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that, especially like deabilitating pain. Well, it's hard.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's the first thing to really recognize.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about physical pain as well, as emotional pain.
Speaker 1: But you know, I would never want to be live
Speaker 1: about it because it's very difficult. Then it brings up
Speaker 1: a lot of things. But you know, partly something I
Speaker 1: didn't get to say before, but I was thinking in
Speaker 1: terms of shame, is there are a lot of social
Speaker 1: constructs that we also buy into about who counts and
Speaker 1: who matters and what's right and what's wrong, and you know,
Speaker 1: what should have us feel humiliated, Like not being able
Speaker 1: to afford something j always struck me as bizarre, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe you you know, doing beautiful things with your money,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're you know, doing a job, and it
Speaker 1: was it was the one that was available, and you
Speaker 1: can't afford something lavish. But you're you're fine, you know,
Speaker 1: you're like a good human being, you're having a good life,
Speaker 1: and yet society says, well, you're not as good as
Speaker 1: you know someone else. And it's so hard not to
Speaker 1: buy into all that stuff, but to understand that they're
Speaker 1: like constructs, they're they're manufactured ideas that we're taught to believe,
Speaker 1: and we don't have to believe them. We can really
Speaker 1: step aside. And that's part of it, you know, is
Speaker 1: is really determining on doing that, and pain figures into
Speaker 1: that a lot, and ability you know, to walk, for example,
Speaker 1: would be one example. And to understand that we don't
Speaker 1: we don't have to buy into that in some way,
Speaker 1: and then you know, working with there are also tools
Speaker 1: of working with physical pain, working with emotional pain as well,
Speaker 1: that have a lot to do with almost deconstructing them
Speaker 1: rather than say it's physical pain, feeling kind of this mass,
Speaker 1: this has taken over your body, feeling that, which is true.
Speaker 1: It's a moment of burning, it's a moment of twisting,
Speaker 1: it's a moment of pressure, it's a mont of this,
Speaker 1: it's a moment of that. And none of that sounds good,
Speaker 1: none of that feels good. But that's in a live system,
Speaker 1: right with things are moving and changing and flowing. And
Speaker 1: as one person said to me, but as a very
Speaker 1: severe chronic pain condition, using that approach, she said, I
Speaker 1: found this space within the pain, you know, and that's
Speaker 1: different than this kind of solid entity that is just
Speaker 1: some massive and permeable and taken over. So it really
Speaker 1: can be effective. Yeah, that's really well, that's really profound.
Speaker 1: It's not trying to get rid of the pain or
Speaker 1: saying that you love the pain. Yeah, I know. I
Speaker 1: feel like I to sit with a lot of the
Speaker 1: things you say. Sharon Salzburg, Oh, we should hang out
Speaker 1: together more. I agree, I should say with everything you say.
Speaker 1: You didn't notice that you put you in the book. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: First of all, I will always love hanging out with you,
Speaker 1: so I just want to respond to that. But secondly,
Speaker 1: I was so deeply touched that you found my work
Speaker 1: valuable enough to include it in your book and multiple junctions.
Speaker 1: It was always a surprise for me and I had
Speaker 1: to do a double take because it's a very surreal experience.
Speaker 1: Like I was sitting at Cafe Gratitude in Venice today
Speaker 1: and I was reading your book and preparation for a
Speaker 1: call today and almost fought in my chair. You know,
Speaker 1: I get to one of the pages says cognitive psychologists
Speaker 1: got barakoff. This is very weird. It's very surreal saying that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: long story short, thank you. It was very deeply touched.
Speaker 1: It meant a lot to me. You're well, your work
Speaker 1: means a lot to me. It's really tremendous. And there's
Speaker 1: something else I want to say about the pain. Is
Speaker 1: it just pumped into my mind. One of the hardest,
Speaker 1: hardest things for many of us in life is receiving help,
Speaker 1: you know. And this goes back to, you know, my
Speaker 1: experience of working with caregivers who are givers, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's very hard to receive. And that's part of
Speaker 1: it is that it doesn't make you lesser, and to
Speaker 1: understand that dynamic a little bit. I think my great
Speaker 1: model in that was really Ramdas, who I know from
Speaker 1: my very first meditation retreat in January of nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: That's what we're hat, you know, and we're friends, and
Speaker 1: he was such a pioneer in my mind. He was
Speaker 1: the first person I knew from kind of a spiritual
Speaker 1: world who was working with prisoners, working with dying people,
Speaker 1: you know, was really out there in terms of service.
Speaker 1: And you know, then he had this massive stroke and
Speaker 1: was living in a wheelchair and moved to Maui and
Speaker 1: didn't essentially didn't leave it, and he kept teaching even
Speaker 1: though his speech was quite affected and he had a
Speaker 1: phasion and so on. And so once we were teaching
Speaker 1: the street treat together Marii and I was sitting in
Speaker 1: the back of like three hundred people and he was speaking,
Speaker 1: he was on stage, and there were always lots of gaps,
Speaker 1: you know, and long pauses and things like that. And
Speaker 1: it was so telling to me because before the stroke
Speaker 1: he was so kind of extraordinarily articulate. It's like he
Speaker 1: had a golden tongue. It was like a superpower, you know.
Speaker 1: And then there were his pauses, but he kept going.
Speaker 1: He just got up there and he kept doing it since.
Speaker 1: One day he was giving a talk and he said
Speaker 1: that before the stroke, the hardest thing ever for him
Speaker 1: was to receive. And I thought that is so true,
Speaker 1: right known him all these years, you know, like he
Speaker 1: couldn't be complimented, He couldn't give a birthday present, you know.
Speaker 1: And he said, it was so hard for me to receive.
Speaker 1: And he said, heart of than the physical pain, harder
Speaker 1: than living in a wheelchair, heard of than the difficulties
Speaker 1: with speech, has been learning how to let people help me.
Speaker 1: And then he said one of his great books, one
Speaker 1: of his very famous books, it was called how Can
Speaker 1: I Help? And he said, now I feel like writing
Speaker 1: a book called how can you help me? You know?
Speaker 1: And I think anyone who knew him towards the end
Speaker 1: of his life would say he was like made of light,
Speaker 1: he was made of love because some barrier inside had dissolved,
Speaker 1: and it's like the love could go out and it
Speaker 1: could come in. It could go out and it could
Speaker 1: come in. And it's a very difficult part of accepting
Speaker 1: the chronic pain condition is that we need to honor
Speaker 1: that flow of giving and receiving. Definitely, definitely. I found
Speaker 1: that the documentary about him, I think it was on Netflix,
Speaker 1: just so touching and I've never had it. I never
Speaker 1: had the good fortune of meeting him, but that's it.
Speaker 1: I love that you two are friends. Yeah, it makes
Speaker 1: it makes sense. Yeah, oh boy. You end your book
Speaker 1: on the notion of aspiration and you say that aspiration
Speaker 1: powers the journey to making that something real, living it
Speaker 1: more fully. What is that something that you're referring to. Well,
Speaker 1: I wrote the book in part because it ended up
Speaker 1: being two years and it will be three years in
Speaker 1: a row. That first year was when I was starting
Speaker 1: to write, I saw this thing on YouTube called Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Later, and which I loved and I think it's
Speaker 1: still up and I still love it. Which is you know,
Speaker 1: it was one of the first I think programs ever
Speaker 1: created where the writers were not in a room together
Speaker 1: because everything was done on zoom, so many people were
Speaker 1: in lockdown. And it's brilliant, brilliant music and very funny
Speaker 1: and very learned rabbis. I learned a lot watching it,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that reminded me of was
Speaker 1: that this symbolic meaning of the state of the symbolic
Speaker 1: meaning of Egypt, taking it totally away from geopolitics, the
Speaker 1: word Egypt means the narrow place, the narrow straits. Narrow
Speaker 1: is a constrained place, and it's a journey from constriction
Speaker 1: to openness and freedom. So I thought, oh, there it is,
Speaker 1: That's what I want to write about. And the Sator
Speaker 1: ends on a note of aspiration next year in Jerusalem,
Speaker 1: again taking it away from from geopolitics, and in Saturday
Speaker 1: Night say, there's this fantastic quotation from Harvey fire Seeing,
Speaker 1: which I got permission to use, which was great, where
Speaker 1: he talks about, you know, to me, Jerusalem means a war,
Speaker 1: a world without war, a world without poverty, a world
Speaker 1: where no one is hungry, a world. You know, he
Speaker 1: describes that world and next year, may we be there?
Speaker 1: And I've often said I think we live in a
Speaker 1: time of blunted aspiration. We don't dream enough about what
Speaker 1: our happiness can look like, what community can look like,
Speaker 1: what planet can look like. And it's hard, of course,
Speaker 1: given you know, some really grim realities, but it seems
Speaker 1: really important to me, And so because the book followed
Speaker 1: the arc of the Sator, I wanted to end with aspiration,
Speaker 1: which is how the Sator ends, and I end with
Speaker 1: Harvey Phierston, Actually, I love this book. I think this
Speaker 1: might be my favorite one that you've written. I'm so
Speaker 1: excited that you said that. Really, I thought Real Love
Speaker 1: was my favorite one, he wrote, But you keep getting
Speaker 1: better and better. Yeah, it really it's just what I
Speaker 1: needed in my life right at this time, and I
Speaker 1: think it'd be a lot. I think it's just what
Speaker 1: a lot of people would need. So I really encourage
Speaker 1: people to go out and buy Real Life, the journey
Speaker 1: from isolation to openness and freedom. I thought I could
Speaker 1: end with one of my favorite quotes from your book,
Speaker 1: pulled it out to save to the end of this interview.
Speaker 1: I've learned that freedom is not about moving away from
Speaker 1: or transcending all the pain of life in order to
Speaker 1: travel to an easeful spacious realm of relief, devoid of feeling.
Speaker 1: We cretle both the immense sorrow and the wondrousness of
Speaker 1: life at the same time. Butcherd the quote a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it is beautiful and absolutely but maybe that was
Speaker 1: appropriate because you know, the whole point of the quote
Speaker 1: is not everything has to be perfect. So just such
Speaker 1: a beautiful quote. And this is such a beautiful book.
Speaker 1: And we have a beautiful friendship, we do, so we
Speaker 1: love it. I love you too, you know. It's it's
Speaker 1: been so great again to know you and supporting each other.
Speaker 1: So all the best to you, and thank and thank
Speaker 1: you so much for again being on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, wonderful, thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot
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Speaker 1: YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.