Speaker 1: Grief does break us open, and that broken open state
Speaker 1: is a holy, holy place to dwell. And so what
Speaker 1: welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Mirabi Star. She writes, speaks, and leads retreats on the
Speaker 1: inner spiritual teachings of the mystics. Mirabi builds bridges not
Speaker 1: only between religious traditions, but also between contemplative life and
Speaker 1: compassionate service, between cultivating and inner relationship with the beloved,
Speaker 1: and expressing that intimacy and community between the transformational power
Speaker 1: of loss and longing for the sacred. Her new book
Speaker 1: is Caravan of No Despair, a Memoir of Loss and Transformation.
Speaker 1: And here's the interview with Mirabi Star. Hi, Mirabi, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to have you on. Your latest book is
Speaker 1: called Caravan of No Despair, a Memoir of Loss and Transformation.
Speaker 1: And I have to say that the second half of
Speaker 1: the book for sure totally blew me away. Wow, that's
Speaker 1: quite a thing to say. It is really really good.
Speaker 1: It's a very emotional and touching story. And I'd like
Speaker 1: to go into that right after we do what we
Speaker 1: normally do when we start, which is the parable. So
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Oh, it's so deeply relevant to the
Speaker 1: kind of work I do, because I work a lot
Speaker 1: with conscious grief or grieving as a spiritual path. I mean,
Speaker 1: not that we would take that on on purpose, but
Speaker 1: when life delivers these kinds of devastating losses that it
Speaker 1: that it can deliver. Um, how do we walk through
Speaker 1: the landscape of loss in a conscious way? And so
Speaker 1: much of that has to do with not foisting our
Speaker 1: preconceptions onto the reality of what has happened to us,
Speaker 1: but instead just trying to be present for things as
Speaker 1: they are, even if as things are is unbearable, even
Speaker 1: if that means showing up for the unbearable nous of
Speaker 1: our of our devastating losses. And when we do that,
Speaker 1: when we choose not to think positively about our losses,
Speaker 1: that's not at all what I'm talking about, but when
Speaker 1: we choose to really be present with what is and
Speaker 1: not get lost in victim mode, even though sometimes we
Speaker 1: do feel deeply sorry for ourselves, and well we should,
Speaker 1: but really just be with it. Then we're making a
Speaker 1: choice to feed that wolf, that is, the wolf of
Speaker 1: courage and love rather than the wolf of shutting life
Speaker 1: out of our hearts. Yeah, and so you have a
Speaker 1: great deal of personal experience in this space. In your book,
Speaker 1: you talk about a couple of significant losses in your childhood. Um.
Speaker 1: What I'd like to focus on, though, is the is
Speaker 1: the part that I was talking about the second half
Speaker 1: of the book. Do you want to tell us what
Speaker 1: that loss was. I have had a number of losses
Speaker 1: in my life, many losses. Some of us just seem
Speaker 1: to have that path where we're just given loss after
Speaker 1: loss in this life. And my life is one of those. Um.
Speaker 1: Some of you who are listening are identifying with that.
Speaker 1: I know. UM. But the one that was the most extreme,
Speaker 1: that really catapulted me into a different universe of grief
Speaker 1: and of spiritual growth, was the death of my fourteen
Speaker 1: year old daughter, Jenny, fourteen years ago in October, the
Speaker 1: end of October of two thousand one. Oh Well, Jenny
Speaker 1: died in a car accident. That's going to be the
Speaker 1: easy way to explain it for now. If we go
Speaker 1: into the rest of the story later, you'll I'll say more,
Speaker 1: but it Jenny's death coincided to the day with the
Speaker 1: release of my very first book, and I've I've done
Speaker 1: a dozen books since then. But the first book was
Speaker 1: a translation of Dark Knight of the Soul by the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century Spanish mystic John of the Cross, who really
Speaker 1: is writing about the transformational power of suffering. And these
Speaker 1: two events, um happened on the same day, in the
Speaker 1: sense that my version of that classic mystical teaching came
Speaker 1: out into the world, and my child left this world,
Speaker 1: and I was plunged into a dark Knight that I
Speaker 1: never could have anticipated. So it took me fourteen years,
Speaker 1: but I finally wrote that story. You did so very beautifully.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk to us about the events
Speaker 1: that we're leading up to your daughter's death? Yeah? Okay,
Speaker 1: So so I alluded to that a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: So Jenny, who I adopted when she was very small.
Speaker 1: Um her birth mother was severely mentally ill, and Jenny
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily stable as a child, I mean she was.
Speaker 1: There was no hint that she herself would become mentally ill,
Speaker 1: and even up until the weeks before she died, she
Speaker 1: still was like a high achiever. She was a freshman
Speaker 1: in high school. She was already very much an activist.
Speaker 1: She was an environmental activist and she um. This was
Speaker 1: right after nine eleven she became very much interested in
Speaker 1: human rights and in countering Islamophobia, and so she was
Speaker 1: a very conscious, high achieving hid But a few days
Speaker 1: before before she died, Jenny had a psychotic break, and
Speaker 1: it was completely unexpected on my part, and so much
Speaker 1: so that I didn't recognize right away what was going on,
Speaker 1: especially because most people UM have the onset of men
Speaker 1: of mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia when they're
Speaker 1: late teens early twenties, not fourteen, So I didn't see
Speaker 1: it coming. But UM and Jenny's. Jenny's psychotic break manifested,
Speaker 1: as it does for for many spiritual geniuses, as a
Speaker 1: spiritual experience, and I recognized that was happening, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: It took me a couple of days before I knew,
Speaker 1: with the help of some people who understood about these things,
Speaker 1: that also she was experiencing mental illness and that it
Speaker 1: was dangerous and so uh, my friends convinced me to
Speaker 1: get her to a hospital, and in attempting to do.
Speaker 1: So she kept jumping out of the car, and I
Speaker 1: got out of the car, and she got into the
Speaker 1: driver's seat and drove away into the mountains and crashed
Speaker 1: and died. And so yeah, so that's that's what happened.
Speaker 1: That's the simple version of the story. The book, of
Speaker 1: course goes into it and in much more detail, with
Speaker 1: much more nuance, because it is a more nuanced story
Speaker 1: than than I just was able to convey in a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes. Um. But that's yeah, that's basically what happened,
Speaker 1: and so my life, really, I was set on a
Speaker 1: course that I was unprepared for in many ways and
Speaker 1: in other ways a little bit prepared for by virtue
Speaker 1: of having been immersed in teachings about radical unknowingnus, because
Speaker 1: that's what a loss like this plunges us into. There's
Speaker 1: just no way to have it all figured out and
Speaker 1: sorted out and explained by any spirit virtual teaching or
Speaker 1: any psychological explanation or anything else. There's only the mystery.
Speaker 1: And that's where I was. Yeah, I've heard you refer to,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of people explaining it via the
Speaker 1: various spiritual teachings as sort of somebody wanted to put
Speaker 1: a band aid on your gunshot wound, right, I did
Speaker 1: say that in the book. Very good. Yeah, So one
Speaker 1: of the things I'd like to do. Your writing is
Speaker 1: very lovely, and i'd like to read a section out
Speaker 1: of the book, if that's okay with you, that happens
Speaker 1: um shortly after your daughter's death, and you're describing how,
Speaker 1: you know, immediately after you are surrounded by people you know,
Speaker 1: and they're they're very much around you and propping you up.
Speaker 1: But at one point you decide you want to be alone,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, you you feel like it's time
Speaker 1: to kind of go into the grief. And so that's
Speaker 1: kind of where we'll pick this up. Thank you. Even
Speaker 1: as I rocked on my knees howling, I detected soft
Speaker 1: breathing behind the roaring. I leaned in, listened. It was
Speaker 1: the murmur ring of ten million mothers backwards and forwards
Speaker 1: in time and right now, who had also lost children.
Speaker 1: They were lifting me, holding me. They had woven a
Speaker 1: net of their broken hearts, and they were keeping me safe. There.
Speaker 1: I realized that one day I would take my rightful
Speaker 1: place as a link in this web, and I would
Speaker 1: hold my sister mothers when their children died. For now,
Speaker 1: my only task was to grieve and be cradled in
Speaker 1: their love. It's very powerful to hear that read to me, Well,
Speaker 1: it's very powerful to read I can assure you of that,
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful sentiment of you know, for me,
Speaker 1: it's said a couple of different things. One was that
Speaker 1: there's nothing to do except grieve what you're going through
Speaker 1: there um And I think also at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's pointing to you were able to recognize that you
Speaker 1: weren't totally in this alone. You know, this wasn't something
Speaker 1: that happened only to you. And despite how awful different
Speaker 1: things are that happened to us, I think there's always
Speaker 1: some comfort in realizing it's not us. It's not a
Speaker 1: personal thing in the sense of something happening to us
Speaker 1: because of you know, who were what we are, But
Speaker 1: that's a human thing. And I just found that really touching.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric. There it's very tempting to go into
Speaker 1: that solitary place where you feel like this rarefied creature
Speaker 1: that is enduring something that nobody else could possibly relate to.
Speaker 1: And and so on the other hand, though, when we're
Speaker 1: experiencing the fire of grief. Fire melts things, and it
Speaker 1: can melt the boundaries that separate us from from other
Speaker 1: other beings and from the human condition. UM. And and
Speaker 1: that's in fact what happened. It was like the grief
Speaker 1: was was powerful enough that it knocked down the walls
Speaker 1: between myself and my fellow creatures. And I took my
Speaker 1: rightful place in the in that interconnected web of being
Speaker 1: for the first time in my life. So far from
Speaker 1: making me feel special, my daughter's death delivered me into
Speaker 1: the arms of humanity. And and I really got in
Speaker 1: a visceral way that I was part of a web
Speaker 1: of being that included many other grieving people, especially mothers.
Speaker 1: And so as you moved into this grieving process and
Speaker 1: went through it, it was interesting in the book you
Speaker 1: talk about Elizabeth Coogler Rosses has got that the the
Speaker 1: idea of the certain stages of grieving. UM. Can you
Speaker 1: share your experience of how what happened to you if
Speaker 1: it lined up with that or did not. I love
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Coogler Ross's um framework for the kind of universal
Speaker 1: features of the grief landscape because it helps us not
Speaker 1: feel so alone and so crazy when we when we're
Speaker 1: going through it, we recognize that that it's it's the
Speaker 1: human condition, and many people before us and many people
Speaker 1: to come walk through very similar kinds of emotional and
Speaker 1: spiritual states. Fortunately, Kogler Russ explained to us at least
Speaker 1: later that it's not like this is some kind of
Speaker 1: neat timeline and you you check off the five phases
Speaker 1: of uh, what are they? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Speaker 1: It's not linear, and it's not like at the end
Speaker 1: of this checklist you're going to be all better, you know.
Speaker 1: The understanding is that when you've had a great loss
Speaker 1: that's connected to a great love that will continue to
Speaker 1: inform the rest of your life. But we begin to
Speaker 1: integrate what happened UM into the bigger, vast picture of
Speaker 1: who we are and and it takes its its place
Speaker 1: in the fullness of our being. It may take a
Speaker 1: huge place, like Jenny, stuff will always occupy and you're
Speaker 1: part of of my narrative to myself and also who
Speaker 1: I am. But it's it's kind of like um learning
Speaker 1: to live with an amputation and finding a new center
Speaker 1: of gravity in your life. It's not like the limb
Speaker 1: magically grows back, but but you're able to enter life
Speaker 1: again with fullness and even joy. I never could have
Speaker 1: guessed that I would ever feel joy again, and yet
Speaker 1: now every day of my life is brimming. I also
Speaker 1: feel the big black hole where Jenny isn't physically here,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of all true at the same time.
Speaker 1: But Coogler ross is stages of grief have unfortunate names
Speaker 1: like denial, anger, bargaining, even acceptance, certainly depression, because there
Speaker 1: they are not pathologies, those stages, they're not pathological states.
Speaker 1: They're they're really spiritual initiations in some way, like each
Speaker 1: one is a portal. And even though we revisit each
Speaker 1: one over and over again, and it's more of a
Speaker 1: spiral staircase, sometimes we dip into different ones almost minute
Speaker 1: by minute. In the especially in the early stages of loss,
Speaker 1: there is this experience that I've had with each of
Speaker 1: those five stations. I'd rather call them that I feel
Speaker 1: like spiritual initiations, and they and they grow me and
Speaker 1: they bring me to a deeper and more integrated place,
Speaker 1: and so I bless those initiations. And here's the rest
Speaker 1: of the interview with Mirabi Star. You say that tragedy
Speaker 1: and trauma are not guarantees for a transformational spiritual experience.
Speaker 1: I'd be curious if you could describe not like how
Speaker 1: do you grieve, but what principles or what characteristics do
Speaker 1: you think help make the losses in our lives that
Speaker 1: we glean what we can positively from them? What are
Speaker 1: what are the states of mind that bring that about?
Speaker 1: Do you think, yeah, well, one of them is dropping
Speaker 1: down into hopelessness. And I hope that doesn't sound as
Speaker 1: dark as as it could. Um. What I mean by
Speaker 1: that is kind of what Pema Children means the great
Speaker 1: American Tibetan Buddhist teacher when she speaks about groundlessness. It's
Speaker 1: like when things happen in our lives that are beyond
Speaker 1: our control and that are as far away from our
Speaker 1: preference as they could possibly be, how do instead of
Speaker 1: pushing them away or turning away from them, or trying
Speaker 1: to check out of the experience through all the various
Speaker 1: means that are at a disposal, various substances and addictions
Speaker 1: and other kinds of behaviors that take us away from
Speaker 1: our experience, how do we rest in our groundlessness? Like
Speaker 1: the ground has been totally taken out from under our feet.
Speaker 1: In my case, that was that certainly happened when Jenny died.
Speaker 1: She was the cent you know. It was in the
Speaker 1: middle of full unmothering a teenager and she was gone.
Speaker 1: No ground left, everything burned to the ground, and it
Speaker 1: was like a free fall. So what Pama children and
Speaker 1: other great wisdom teachers St. John of the Cross, who's
Speaker 1: whose masterpiece Dark Knight of the Soul I had just
Speaker 1: finished translating, invite us to actually rest in not knowing,
Speaker 1: abide in the mystery, and in fact even turned towards
Speaker 1: our overwhelming feelings with a gentleness and a tenderness toward ourselves,
Speaker 1: and and cultivate a kind of curiosity about the experience
Speaker 1: that we're having, even if the experience seems beyond bearing.
Speaker 1: And when we soften and yield and turned toward the
Speaker 1: tidal wave as it comes crashing over us, something almost
Speaker 1: magical happens, or can happen, where we are swept up
Speaker 1: in that wave, and then we are returned to the
Speaker 1: shore unharmed because we softened, because we yielded. When we
Speaker 1: allow ourselves to know absolutely nothing, when we don't try
Speaker 1: to fill in the emptiness, the yawning chasm with spiritual
Speaker 1: explanations or theology or dogma, doctrines or even spiritual practices
Speaker 1: even are reliable favorite familiar spiritual practices, like for those
Speaker 1: of us who have been on a spiritual path and
Speaker 1: may have certain things that we do everyday, prayer, meditation, yoga,
Speaker 1: reading scriptures and so on. If they don't work in
Speaker 1: the depths of our anguish, and they're likely not to,
Speaker 1: then the invitation is to let them go and to
Speaker 1: just be with what it is. And so that's what
Speaker 1: John of the Cross says. You know, when you have
Speaker 1: a dark knight of the soul experience, no amount of
Speaker 1: effort on your part is going to mend what you
Speaker 1: mistakenly perceive as your brokenness. The only thing that you're
Speaker 1: called to do is to soften and just be and
Speaker 1: into that shattered space, the light begins to seep and
Speaker 1: we because we're present and we're quiet, and we're still
Speaker 1: against all our intuition to do otherwise, we begin to
Speaker 1: notice that luminosity that soaks up into the shattered container
Speaker 1: of our souls and fills us with light or doesn't
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's grace. According to the mystics anyway,
Speaker 1: this is a process of grace. But if we're available,
Speaker 1: then it's much more likely that we will have a
Speaker 1: transformational experience. So it's not like everybody who has a
Speaker 1: terrible loss, tragedy of trauma is going to have an
Speaker 1: enlightenment experience. I'm not suggesting that, but for those of
Speaker 1: us to whom traumatic things happen, tragic things happen, if
Speaker 1: we're able to be present in our groundlessness, we have
Speaker 1: a much more of an opportunity for that broken, open
Speaker 1: heart to be filled with love, and that is what
Speaker 1: that's what transforms us as love. You know that that
Speaker 1: rings true to me. I don't have grief of the
Speaker 1: level that you you know of that is an experience,
Speaker 1: but my experiences with real grief in my life were
Speaker 1: were similar. It was the process of UM really going
Speaker 1: into it, being willing to feel it, um not trying
Speaker 1: to talk my way out of it or escape it.
Speaker 1: It was when I stopped that makes me feel like
Speaker 1: on the other side of it that I gained something.
Speaker 1: Obviously lost something, but that there was something gained also.
Speaker 1: And I've got experiences in my life where I've done that,
Speaker 1: and plenty of times where I didn't do that, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting how I relate and react to the situations
Speaker 1: in my life in which I was open to those things.
Speaker 1: I think that though it's you know, when we say this,
Speaker 1: it sounds sort of lovely, right, but what you're describing
Speaker 1: is not lovely at all, And in the midst of
Speaker 1: those periods is all kinds of pain and confusion and
Speaker 1: like you said earlier, wrestling and bargaining and denial, and
Speaker 1: that's all happening. Also, this isn't a you know, you're
Speaker 1: not describing somebody who's this perfect spiritual person who sits
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. It's it's just an intention
Speaker 1: to do the best we can with that, right. Yes, Eric,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for clarifying, and also, by the way,
Speaker 1: for attesting to having practiced this yourself in your in
Speaker 1: your times of great loss, where you were where you
Speaker 1: really had that intuition to just stay with it and
Speaker 1: it's harrowing. I mean, I'm not pretending otherwise. Anyone who
Speaker 1: reads my book Caravan of No Despair, we'll see that
Speaker 1: there's nothing pretentious about my process. I am completely naked
Speaker 1: in how incredibly difficult and and painful and beyond belief
Speaker 1: some of what I had to endure was and and
Speaker 1: how sometimes I just had a kind of almost a
Speaker 1: wrise sense of humor in the midst of my unbearable anguish,
Speaker 1: where I just like shook my head and just went, wow,
Speaker 1: I can't believe that I could possibly withstand this level
Speaker 1: of pain. In fact, I remember just the other day
Speaker 1: that I recalled a memory that I had early on
Speaker 1: which is shocking to me now, but um where I said,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that Jenny died and not me, because
Speaker 1: I would never want her to have to experience the
Speaker 1: pain that I'm experiencing. Thank god it was this way
Speaker 1: and not the other way, because I couldn't stand. I
Speaker 1: literally couldn't stand the thought that she would have to
Speaker 1: endure a fraction of the pain that I was feeling.
Speaker 1: And so yes, I am not trying to paint a
Speaker 1: pretty rosy picture here. And it's also not like a
Speaker 1: one time bolt of light that that enters into our
Speaker 1: shattered hearts and fixes us. There's no fixing because there's
Speaker 1: nothing really broken. This is the human condition, and it
Speaker 1: is terrible and it is beautiful, and we're vast enough
Speaker 1: beings that we can hold that whole spectrum from the
Speaker 1: most messed up. I can't stand this. I hate this.
Speaker 1: It sucks too glimpsing this kind of perfection in the
Speaker 1: whole thing that would never want to admit. But there
Speaker 1: are moments when we see this vast beauty and the gifts.
Speaker 1: But when someone's freshly grieving, that is the last thing
Speaker 1: I would ever suggest to them. Right, So, don't walk
Speaker 1: around with this book and hand it to people who
Speaker 1: are freshly grieving and say this will this will fix you. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, some freshly grieving people are reading it and
Speaker 1: it's really helping them because it doesn't pretend to fix anything.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just read an Eric, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's very honest and raw, and so people who are
Speaker 1: in that fire are really relating to it and are
Speaker 1: exactly grateful for someone telling the truth about how how
Speaker 1: hard it sucks at the same time that there is light.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the coinciding of your book about a Dark
Speaker 1: Night of the Soul being published and you entering into
Speaker 1: your own and you have a line where you say
Speaker 1: you're talking about the effect that grief has on you,
Speaker 1: and you say, what I had been trying to accomplish
Speaker 1: through years of rigorous discipline had happened overnight, a state
Speaker 1: of no self. I was ready for the holy encounter
Speaker 1: at last, but I wasn't in the mood. I wanted
Speaker 1: to want God, but I wanted Jenny Moore, Eric, will
Speaker 1: you just read to me all day from my book?
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of it highlighted here. I probably
Speaker 1: could thank you. That's a perfect thing to have read
Speaker 1: just now, because it fits in exactly with what we're
Speaker 1: saying it. Grief does break us open, and that broken
Speaker 1: open state is a wholly holy place to dwell. And
Speaker 1: so what you know, we'd much rather not have to
Speaker 1: be going through what we're going through wed. If we
Speaker 1: lost UM, a loved one, we'd rather have them back.
Speaker 1: If the relationship is over that we're not ready to
Speaker 1: be over. We wanted to be Um still happening. And
Speaker 1: so they're all kinds of preferences involved that don't magically
Speaker 1: go away just because we've been lit on fire, right,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of this idea of transformation
Speaker 1: and the benefits that can come from these awful situations
Speaker 1: is really a retrospective thing to a large degree. It's
Speaker 1: when we've gone through that grief and allowed it to
Speaker 1: do what it will do. That we can then be
Speaker 1: to some degree on the other side, not saying that
Speaker 1: stuff ever goes away, but out of that sort of
Speaker 1: acute period that we can look back and see some
Speaker 1: of these things that happened. But in the it'll of it,
Speaker 1: it's very, very difficult, and and as your book makes out,
Speaker 1: even if we can see it, let's do the trade.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll give you, give you back whatever I'm
Speaker 1: getting here for what I had. Right. And yet there
Speaker 1: are moments even early on, when we do get glimpses
Speaker 1: of the gifts, like, for instance, what koobl Ros talks
Speaker 1: about with denial um is is obviously a biochemical phenomenon
Speaker 1: that happens when we undergo trauma, that where our brains
Speaker 1: are washed with with chemicals that help us to insulate
Speaker 1: from the experience so that we don't implode and and
Speaker 1: go crazy, you know, go insane with the with the
Speaker 1: power of the pain. Right, But that also can manifest
Speaker 1: as a kind of grace space where we feel connected
Speaker 1: to our loved ones who have died, if that's what
Speaker 1: we're experiencing u the death of a loved one, where
Speaker 1: we fal where we're open to kind of magical, synchronous
Speaker 1: things happening, you know, a butterfly landing on our hand
Speaker 1: and and it feels like a blessing from from the
Speaker 1: other side. I mean, we're open. We become open to this,
Speaker 1: this these kind of sacred and magical moments in ways
Speaker 1: where we're that we're not when we're back in our complacent,
Speaker 1: regular state of mind and we're more cut off. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're insulated on the one hand, but we're also
Speaker 1: opened on the other And a lot of people report
Speaker 1: those incredibly beautiful moments of connectedness and and just glimpsing
Speaker 1: the beauty of this world in ways that we couldn't
Speaker 1: see when we were just rushing about thinking that we
Speaker 1: were in charge of our movie and and the other
Speaker 1: thing that had That is a grace or a blessing
Speaker 1: that we can often notice early on in this time
Speaker 1: of loss and grief is the love of family and community.
Speaker 1: Those of us who have people who care about us,
Speaker 1: and which most of us think God do and I
Speaker 1: am so sorry if you don't. But but for most
Speaker 1: of us there are people who we didn't even think
Speaker 1: knew that we existed. Maybe who come who come rushing
Speaker 1: into the broken open space of our life through grief
Speaker 1: and loss and tend to us like our communities gather,
Speaker 1: our families gather, and we're held by love by people
Speaker 1: wanting to comfort us and wanting to help us. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I hear again and again
Speaker 1: as a grief counselor that is most moving to people
Speaker 1: is the love of their families and communities that comes
Speaker 1: rushing in to hold them at times of great loss.
Speaker 1: You really do a great job of talking through that.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because you also there's just so much
Speaker 1: honesty in the book. You you know, you're talking at
Speaker 1: points about the support you did receive and then some
Speaker 1: of the feelings you had about like well, why were
Speaker 1: other people who aspected would support me? Maybe worn't is supportive,
Speaker 1: And it's just it's interesting to see you walk your
Speaker 1: way through all of that. In some ways, there's no
Speaker 1: pleasing aggrieving person either. People are like they make you
Speaker 1: feel claustrophobic there, you know, what is that called I'm
Speaker 1: smothering their efforts to help, or you know, they're not
Speaker 1: saying the right thing, or they're not saying anything, or
Speaker 1: they're they're going down the different aisle in the grocery
Speaker 1: store to avoid you and you know it, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just we're just inconsolable. Nothing works. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to change direction if we could, and talk about some
Speaker 1: of your other work and what a large part of
Speaker 1: your career has been focused on. You are known for
Speaker 1: translating great works of Christian mysticism, and mysticism is a
Speaker 1: word showing up a lot more in places that people
Speaker 1: like us might hang out. And um, I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could explain from your perspective, what what is mysticism?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? What makes someone a mystic? The
Speaker 1: technical meaning of the term is that a mystic is
Speaker 1: somebody who has a direct encounter with the divine. That
Speaker 1: is a kind of experience of connection to the sacred
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with uh with some spiritual
Speaker 1: practice or some ordained representative, a clergy person, or having
Speaker 1: gone through the right ritual. It's an experience of connectedness
Speaker 1: to God or often in the language of the mystics,
Speaker 1: to the beloved, to God as the beloved, and the
Speaker 1: soul experiences itself as the lover in union with the beloved,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a very private and direct experience um.
Speaker 1: So mysticism is a direct experience of the divine. And
Speaker 1: so the mystics, like the ones that I've translated, like St.
Speaker 1: John and Across Saint Risa Vabula, um Julian of Norwich
Speaker 1: and others had experiences of union with the source of
Speaker 1: all love and kind of melting into the beloved like
Speaker 1: a drop of water into into the sea and then
Speaker 1: returning back into individuated consciousness again but completely changed by
Speaker 1: that encounter. Also, I think within the Buddhist tradition, right,
Speaker 1: there's less focus on a god or beloved and more
Speaker 1: into um you know, as you said in your book,
Speaker 1: a sense of no self or into the empty nous
Speaker 1: or connection to everything that's right. And those distinctions actually
Speaker 1: dissolve in themselves in the in the field of mystical experience,
Speaker 1: because mystics who conceive of ultimate reality as beloved are
Speaker 1: having the exact same experience that a Buddhist is having
Speaker 1: moments of deep meditation, and their individual consciousness dissolves into
Speaker 1: the one, or into the into the emptiness sunyata or
Speaker 1: the or the state of unitive being. So I think
Speaker 1: at that level, it's all the same experience it's just
Speaker 1: how we tell the story to ourselves afterwards that makes
Speaker 1: those distinctions. And the mystics all claim everyone that I've
Speaker 1: ever encountered anyway, that the mystical experience itself is ineffable.
Speaker 1: It transcends language, it transcends all concepts. And yet the
Speaker 1: mystics are the ones who can't help themselves but overflowing
Speaker 1: their feeling of exaltation from that experience into language, and
Speaker 1: usually the language of poetry, because discursive prose is an
Speaker 1: effort to explain reality, but poetry evokes the very states
Speaker 1: that it's attempting to speak of. So mystical poetry is
Speaker 1: is metaphorical, and it and those metaphors are powerful. And
Speaker 1: I mean that's why when we read a poem by
Speaker 1: Roumi or Rilca or Mary Oliver, we often have I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, guys, but but I and many
Speaker 1: people I know in love have a kind of spiritual
Speaker 1: experience actually reading the poems. They shift something in us.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think is interesting
Speaker 1: about mysticism it is very much the experience, which I
Speaker 1: think then leads a lot of people on the search
Speaker 1: for that experience, and at the same time, a lot
Speaker 1: of spiritual traditions are also saying that's not what it's about.
Speaker 1: It's not about seeking a particular state. Do you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts on that. Yeah, it's one of those paradox
Speaker 1: is that I love. You know, I'm quite comfortable with paradox,
Speaker 1: And paradox characterizes the mystical life. It's the longing that
Speaker 1: is the path to union, the shattered cup that is
Speaker 1: filled with the presence of everything we want um And
Speaker 1: so the paradox of the choiceless choice or searching for
Speaker 1: that which we know is not outside of us, is
Speaker 1: all part of the mystical journey. So the mystic is
Speaker 1: one who knows really in her bones that there is
Speaker 1: no separation, that she's never been separated from her beloved
Speaker 1: and never will be. And yet there is this innate
Speaker 1: sense of longing that drives her into the remembrance of
Speaker 1: what is her birthright, which is union. And and also,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this sense that a lot of people
Speaker 1: who speak about nondualism or non duality, which is very
Speaker 1: popular spiritual philosophy right now and one to which I
Speaker 1: subscribe in many ways, but by always telling us that
Speaker 1: there's nothing to do and nowhere to go, because we're
Speaker 1: already there and we're already it. Just remember, in some ways,
Speaker 1: it denies the human birthright of love, longing and the
Speaker 1: satisfaction of meeting the beloved. It's like, who was it?
Speaker 1: I think it was rama creation of the great nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Hindu saint who was a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just Hindu, he was truly an inter spiritual being.
Speaker 1: But he said, I don't want it be sugar. I
Speaker 1: want to taste sugar. So there's some beauty to the
Speaker 1: dualistic um experience of being a human being. I mean, here,
Speaker 1: we are embodied, having an incarnation here, and that involves
Speaker 1: all the things beautiful and terrible that being embodied involves,
Speaker 1: which I wouldn't trade. I mean, as long as I'm here,
Speaker 1: I want to experience embodied spirituality in every in every cell.
Speaker 1: I want to experience my relationship with the earth. I
Speaker 1: want to experience community. I want to find the face
Speaker 1: of God in everyone I meet, from those on the
Speaker 1: margins to the people who think exactly like I do.
Speaker 1: I'm having an embodied experience, and that means beautiful separation
Speaker 1: as well as as blessed moments of union and remembering
Speaker 1: that there is own one. So it's the paradox of
Speaker 1: all of it. We're separate and we're unified, and I
Speaker 1: walk with that paradox in my body and I'm okay
Speaker 1: with that. There's a concept in Hinduism of of different
Speaker 1: ways of approaching the God had so to speak, and
Speaker 1: one is very much what you're describing, which is sort
Speaker 1: of a love based feeling. They also talk about people
Speaker 1: that approach it more intellectually, and I'm curious what you
Speaker 1: think about that, because you also have said that you
Speaker 1: think that a lot of our depression, anxiety, and addiction
Speaker 1: has to do with the soul's need and longing for transcendence.
Speaker 1: For myself, a former addict who certainly has has striven
Speaker 1: for the striven is that a word? I don't think
Speaker 1: so striving that doesn't sound right either, had well, whatever
Speaker 1: a tendency to strive for um transcendence. Yet I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of the feeling of it. It tends
Speaker 1: to be more of an intellectual exercise. Do you think
Speaker 1: that that's something that transforms or do you really think
Speaker 1: that people go different paths. It's just something that I
Speaker 1: think about a lot. Well, Hinduism has at least four
Speaker 1: main branches, right, and and they're called yoga's. Yoga means
Speaker 1: path to union with the divine, and Hinduism is so
Speaker 1: beautiful in the sense that it's in some ways it's
Speaker 1: the most inclusive of all the world's religions, because it
Speaker 1: really makes room for different kinds of people in different temperaments,
Speaker 1: and really recognizes that there are as many paths up
Speaker 1: the mountain as there are hikers, and we all have
Speaker 1: our different ways. But these four primary ways are the
Speaker 1: intellectual that you mentioned, Yana yoga, Bakhti, which we also
Speaker 1: talked about, which is devotion um or the yoga of love,
Speaker 1: and uh Karma yoga, which is the yoga of action
Speaker 1: for those who are much more action oriented and not
Speaker 1: interested in sitting on a cushion um, you know, gazing
Speaker 1: inside within, but want to get out and do something.
Speaker 1: And then Raja yoga, which is where hatha yoga and
Speaker 1: asanas and a lot of the kind of breathing practices
Speaker 1: and other other kinds of practices that are designed to
Speaker 1: transform consciousness come in. And most of us find all
Speaker 1: four of those as strands that are woven into our
Speaker 1: spiritual path, but there's usually one that dominates for most
Speaker 1: of us. And so you're right, Eric, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to judge one person for being on a on
Speaker 1: a kind of non dual path when somebody else is
Speaker 1: on you know, devotional bok de path. That one is lesser,
Speaker 1: one is greater. The important thing is to engage in
Speaker 1: one of those yogas, and we don't have to be
Speaker 1: Hindu to really get something out of this understanding of
Speaker 1: cultivating that relationship with ultimate reality. It's interesting to me
Speaker 1: that in a culture that tends to be so intellectual
Speaker 1: and thought oriented, that the primary ways in which that
Speaker 1: Eastern wisdom has evolved in the West has been it
Speaker 1: seems like to me, the intellectual side at least is
Speaker 1: less focused on and the physical and the love and
Speaker 1: the devotion. There seems to be a lot of conversation
Speaker 1: or would you consider mindfulness meditation as part of the
Speaker 1: intellectual practice? Yeah, but right, mindfulness is much more of
Speaker 1: a Yana practice. But you know, it's interesting what you're saying,
Speaker 1: because most of the Hindu world is definitely bak the
Speaker 1: like of Hindus practice Boka yoga. It seems like most
Speaker 1: of the world's religions appeal to people on that kind
Speaker 1: of emotional level that that baka yoga does. The path
Speaker 1: of love and devotion, you know, that's what many of
Speaker 1: the Catholic rituals are, or anybody who goes to church
Speaker 1: is really in some ways engaging in a kind of
Speaker 1: bakty practice that drops it from the head into the
Speaker 1: into the heart. I think that's where the human consciousness
Speaker 1: naturally goes it. It takes a certain kind of discipline
Speaker 1: actually to shift into a vaster kind of consciousness that
Speaker 1: isn't dependent on those forms to connect us to the sacred. Well,
Speaker 1: we're nearly at the end of our time. I'd like
Speaker 1: to ask one last question and then we can wrap up.
Speaker 1: And it's it's another term that you know, it's starting
Speaker 1: to show up a lot more often, which is inter spiritual.
Speaker 1: Could you define what inter spirituality is? Sure, I'd be
Speaker 1: happy to first, I'll do so by contrasting inter spiritual
Speaker 1: with inter faith. Interfaith dialogue is about trying to cultivate
Speaker 1: an understanding of other religions and their views and their
Speaker 1: scriptures and our traditions in order to understand and build tolerance.
Speaker 1: But inter spirituality is about dropping from the head back
Speaker 1: into the heart and actually experiencing directly uh the other
Speaker 1: multiple spiritual traditions, so that as a Jew, for instance,
Speaker 1: I would go to a Sufi zicker and sing to Allah,
Speaker 1: you know, chanting with a group of people with musical instruments,
Speaker 1: lah ilah Allah. There is no God but God, or
Speaker 1: there's no reality but the Divine, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: my heart would open and I would have a direct
Speaker 1: experience of what Muslims love about Islam in in my
Speaker 1: own being. So it's about allowing ourselves to have an
Speaker 1: encounter with the other that is a transformational one, such
Speaker 1: that by entering into the heart of another's religion, we
Speaker 1: experience it directly and it changes us in a good way. Excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I really enjoyed uh enjoys a weird
Speaker 1: word for a book like yours. I thought your book
Speaker 1: was wonderful and very revealing. So thank you for taking
Speaker 1: the time to come on the show. Thank you, Eric.
Speaker 1: I love your show and I love what you guys
Speaker 1: are doing and offering to this world. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for inviting me our pleasure. Okay, bye bye, you
Speaker 1: can learn more about this podcast and Mirrabi Star at
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Speaker 1: a r R like Ringo Star or Mirrabi Star