Speaker 1: If I could get somebody in a room with me
Speaker 1: and just do a moment of magic and have them
Speaker 1: awaken and stay that way, That's what I would do, right,
Speaker 1: we would just start a McDonald's of awakening. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good Wolf m thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us our guest on this episode. For the second time
Speaker 1: in history, I believe Audi a shanty. The guest was
Speaker 1: the hundred and sixty six episode that we did. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's the author of the Way of Liberation, Falling into Grace,
Speaker 1: True Meditation, and the end of your World. Audio Shanty
Speaker 1: is an American born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the
Speaker 1: awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation
Speaker 1: to stop, enquire, and recognize what is true and liberating
Speaker 1: at the core of all existence. Audio Shanty also runs
Speaker 1: the Omega Retreat, which Eric our own the One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast. Eric has taken part in and before we
Speaker 1: get started, we really want to get to know you
Speaker 1: guys better. So the One You Feed podcast is competing
Speaker 1: with other shows to get the most responses to a
Speaker 1: quick survey. It only takes a few minutes literally of
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Speaker 1: going to Wondering dot com slash survey and filling it out.
Speaker 1: That's wonder e w O N D e r y
Speaker 1: dot com slash survey as usual. Thanks for all of
Speaker 1: your support. Hi Addio, Welcome to the show. Thanks Eric,
Speaker 1: Nice to be back with you again. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to have you on a second time, and to be
Speaker 1: able to actually do it both times in person has
Speaker 1: been wonderful. I don't get that opportunity a ton with people,
Speaker 1: so but our first interview went so well, so many
Speaker 1: people loved it that, you know, I was really excited
Speaker 1: to get to do this again, and we talked about
Speaker 1: we'll make this a two parters, so great, thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to kind of put it onto the end
Speaker 1: of the last one we did, which is so wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of nice we get it chance to
Speaker 1: kind of tie up all the loose ins. Yep. So
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm going to do the wolf parable
Speaker 1: like we normally do. Um, you talk through that once,
Speaker 1: but I want to start off by telling you a
Speaker 1: little bit about an experience I had with you and
Speaker 1: then kind of go into questions from there. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I attended your Omega retreat this last year and it
Speaker 1: was wonderful in a lot of different ways. And I
Speaker 1: had a period of time there where I had what
Speaker 1: I think we would typically refer to as an awakening.
Speaker 1: I sort of became one with everything for three or
Speaker 1: four hours. So really remarkable experience. I want to talk
Speaker 1: with you a little bit about where do people go
Speaker 1: from there, and I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that was an experience, and I don't think an
Speaker 1: experience is what we're chasing, and I know even chasing
Speaker 1: anything is problematic, but I want to I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what the realized or awakened
Speaker 1: state in perpetuity is like versus that moment of awakening,
Speaker 1: which had a high degree of ecstasy, which I don't
Speaker 1: think is what we're talking about here long term, not
Speaker 1: in the long term, no, because so much of the
Speaker 1: not all of it, but so much of the ecstasy
Speaker 1: is the ecstasy of sort of first discovery, and that's
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. You know, you only get one first discovery
Speaker 1: of anything, and so a lot of it is is
Speaker 1: just that the sort of I call it kind of
Speaker 1: byproduct of having a perceptual shift, which when you were
Speaker 1: when you just very briefly described it to me, you
Speaker 1: decaid I was at one with everything. So that tells
Speaker 1: me something as a teacher, really important. That tells me
Speaker 1: that you you had a shift of perspective which gave
Speaker 1: rise to experience rather than an experience simply an experience.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of the one of the main differences
Speaker 1: between something that we might call awakening would be has
Speaker 1: to always involve some real shift of perception, got it,
Speaker 1: Not any old shift of perception, but yet very least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the ecstasy for me was
Speaker 1: the phrase that kept going through my head was thank God,
Speaker 1: that's over, like just the burden of carrying myself. And
Speaker 1: you know that has ebbed and flowed since then, and
Speaker 1: I you know, it's been difficult to stay in anything.
Speaker 1: And again, not even the ecstasy, but just to stay
Speaker 1: in that in that place. But it was interesting. I
Speaker 1: came back and all of a sudden, a lot of
Speaker 1: things that I had been doing just didn't interest me.
Speaker 1: An example would be I had been, um, someone had
Speaker 1: talked about writing a book for the show, and I
Speaker 1: had been working on that. When I came back, I went,
Speaker 1: that's not a priority for me right now, because I
Speaker 1: realized that, at least to some degree, that was driven
Speaker 1: by my desire to be an author. Now I've come
Speaker 1: back around to that and I think I'm approaching it
Speaker 1: from a different place. But it was just it was
Speaker 1: a fascinating experience. So in fact, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the most fascinating fascinating parts of that kind of
Speaker 1: experience are actually more of what what falls away, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then what appear, what appears like the unity and
Speaker 1: stuff can be can be wonderful, But it is really
Speaker 1: interesting of that you see almost in retrospect what you
Speaker 1: were doing that was more self oriented or motivated. And
Speaker 1: so when that gets to be seen through those whatever
Speaker 1: was self motivated takes a hit. You can, like you said,
Speaker 1: you can, you can decide discover a new motivation that
Speaker 1: may not be so self motivating oriented. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: walked out wondering do I want to do this show?
Speaker 1: I mean, and and that didn't last very long because
Speaker 1: I think I've been able to keep my motivation enough
Speaker 1: of my motivation about the benefit it brings to myself
Speaker 1: psychle logically and spiritually and and other people. But it
Speaker 1: caused me to think about it differently. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm interested in is you've talked about this.
Speaker 1: Everybody talks about this paradox of I really want to awaken,
Speaker 1: but really wanting something seems to stand right in the
Speaker 1: way of awakening. I mean, my experience of awakening there
Speaker 1: happened when I I don't know how I did it,
Speaker 1: but I truly said, whatever, I'm gonna let everything be
Speaker 1: exactly as it is. I had been fighting sleeping, I
Speaker 1: had been fighting back pain during meditation and I finally
Speaker 1: just went yes. Yeah, So there's a desire to awaken,
Speaker 1: you pursued it with great fervor, as you've talked about.
Speaker 1: So how does one do that? How does one honor
Speaker 1: that desire to awaken which does feel like a natural
Speaker 1: thing to some extent, but not find themselves in the
Speaker 1: trap of always going I wish I was awake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great question because it's just so relevant to
Speaker 1: so many people. And you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, we can I can talk about you know,
Speaker 1: almost like the ideal orientation, but none of us gets
Speaker 1: to make that decision, right there's we do not get
Speaker 1: to make that decision. My my orientation was striving, seeking
Speaker 1: with about as much gusto as you could, you know,
Speaker 1: conjure up without going totally insane. Um, is that the
Speaker 1: best way to do it? No, clearly is that the
Speaker 1: way that I had to go through. It seems like it.
Speaker 1: So I always have an eye like, where is somebody
Speaker 1: what's authentically real for them? For some people, what's authentically
Speaker 1: real is diving into the seeking energy so that it
Speaker 1: can run itself off as fast as possible. With somebody else,
Speaker 1: you can just point out why it's unnecessary to approach
Speaker 1: it their way been approaching it, and they can shift
Speaker 1: to a different approach. So it's what I found is
Speaker 1: doing this for twenty two years, is that there is
Speaker 1: no blanket statement, no blanket teaching that you can give
Speaker 1: to everybody. You know, I can say, well, yeah, the
Speaker 1: more you're striving towards you, you're actually blocking the realization
Speaker 1: that you're looking for. But sometimes that's what we have
Speaker 1: to go through before until we hit the moment like
Speaker 1: you had the retreat, where a number of things start
Speaker 1: being difficult to all at the same moment, and maybe
Speaker 1: something says, Okay, I just gotta let go of this. Yep,
Speaker 1: I can't keep resisting in these all these ways. So
Speaker 1: you said something at that retreat that I thought spoke
Speaker 1: really well to this dilemma and has helped me a
Speaker 1: little bit. Was I think it was your teacher who
Speaker 1: told you that the use of will was to get
Speaker 1: you to the meditation cushion. But once you were there,
Speaker 1: that's the place to let go. That's a great if
Speaker 1: I said that, I'm really happy I said it, or
Speaker 1: whoever said it, well done. You don't have any memories,
Speaker 1: so I can't take at it for it. But um,
Speaker 1: that's a really actually that's a good way of that
Speaker 1: is a pretty good way of putting it. Um, that's
Speaker 1: the thing that you can't really put in language. Right,
Speaker 1: we're writing a balancing edge of too much will where
Speaker 1: it all becomes striving and seeking, and of course then
Speaker 1: you're always focused on what's not happening or what hasn't
Speaker 1: happened yet, or the other opposite, where you become so
Speaker 1: lackadaisical you just kind of think, well, it'll happen when
Speaker 1: it happens, and you'll utilize non dual terminology to help
Speaker 1: you be lazy about it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So those are the two extremes. Somewhere in the middle
Speaker 1: is where most of us actually experience our life. But
Speaker 1: somewhere in the middle that doesn't fall into the nice
Speaker 1: conceptual boxes. It's a little bit more probably like a
Speaker 1: flow state, you know. That's the the idea of effortlessness
Speaker 1: is really trying to get almost to something more like
Speaker 1: a flow state, rather than just make no effort and
Speaker 1: you know, right, have another doughnut and crack a beer
Speaker 1: and watch TV and hope something that happens. That would
Speaker 1: not be the right, and I guess the reason it's
Speaker 1: so hard to describe or talk or not the reason.
Speaker 1: But if you look back, you know you're in the
Speaker 1: Zen tradition. I mean, they've been discussing this question forever.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're already perfect, why are you meditating?
Speaker 1: You know that that sort of concept, and so it's
Speaker 1: just a dilemma is the wrong word? Well, I guess
Speaker 1: it is a dilemma in some ways. And so that
Speaker 1: leads me to my next question. You primarily had as
Speaker 1: a teacher someone who was completely unknown, a wonderful woman
Speaker 1: lived in a house very you know, just just her,
Speaker 1: and it was a very small group, and you were
Speaker 1: very intimate with her. Your world is you teach a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I don't know how many people were
Speaker 1: there in Omega. I want to say several hundred, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what, it doesn't matter, somewhere between three
Speaker 1: and three probably. Yeah, so a lot of people. So
Speaker 1: people aren't working with you one to one. You've mentioned
Speaker 1: this is simply not tenable anymore. My question for you is,
Speaker 1: for somebody who is seeking awakening, how important is one
Speaker 1: on one time with a teacher versus interaction with a teacher.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like what most people have with you.
Speaker 1: It's a good question. Um again, I don't really have
Speaker 1: a sort of final answer to that question. Um. It
Speaker 1: always comes down to each of us individually, right, The
Speaker 1: question isn't does in the broad sense does humanity need
Speaker 1: is a close working spiritual teacher or you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's like, well do I that's what's really Yeah? What
Speaker 1: what does it feel like to me? Do I feel
Speaker 1: like I I'm at a point where I could really
Speaker 1: use some more personalized guidance, or maybe I have something
Speaker 1: I want to discuss but I don't want to do
Speaker 1: it in front of three people, or you know. So
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, when I started teaching, neither me
Speaker 1: or my teacher ever dreamed that it would take the
Speaker 1: form that it did. I think both of us thought,
Speaker 1: without even really talking about it, that it would look
Speaker 1: something pretty much like being into my living room. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah. People do often get a false sense, though,
Speaker 1: of my relationship with my teacher ever there, Even though
Speaker 1: I went there every weekend, I probably asked her ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen really direct questions in the fourteen years I
Speaker 1: knew her. That had to do with my spiritual practice.
Speaker 1: We weren't kind of sitting around chumming chumming it up
Speaker 1: and talking about it all day long. You know. It
Speaker 1: was a place where we went to meditate and do
Speaker 1: some chanting, and she'd give a talk, and then every
Speaker 1: once in a while she'd give a like a day
Speaker 1: long and then she'd see us privately. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: always goes back to the individual, doesn't it. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm that's the thing about. The longer I do this,
Speaker 1: the harder it is to articulate any part of it,
Speaker 1: because I see that the opposite of what I could
Speaker 1: say could almost be equal be true of almost anything
Speaker 1: I say. You know what I mean. So, you know,
Speaker 1: do do people need teachers? Well? I don't know, dude.
Speaker 1: That's not really a relevant question, is it is? For anybody?
Speaker 1: It's do I where do I feel like I am?
Speaker 1: Do I need interesting? Do I need that? Ye? That's
Speaker 1: a great way to think about it, because there's certainly
Speaker 1: certain traditions that have that idea of that awakening almost
Speaker 1: comes from the teachers. Which I don't get that sense
Speaker 1: in your teaching that that's at all what you're saying. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not what I'm saying and I mean
Speaker 1: it's kind of a paradox because and then the whole
Speaker 1: definition that is a direct transmission from teacher to student
Speaker 1: outside of words and scriptures. Right, that definition has been
Speaker 1: there for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it can
Speaker 1: easily lead to a false impression. Because look, if I
Speaker 1: could get somebody in a room with me and just
Speaker 1: do a moment of magic and have them awaken and
Speaker 1: stay that way, I mean that that's what I would do, right,
Speaker 1: We would just just start a McDonald's of awakening, you know,
Speaker 1: come hang out with the teacher for three minutes, and
Speaker 1: there you go. It doesn't actually happen that way, you know,
Speaker 1: it just doesn't happen. I think what I what I
Speaker 1: see as what's often called transmission, and if it's useful,
Speaker 1: we can transmit energy, we can transmit experiences from one
Speaker 1: another if we know how to do that. Not that
Speaker 1: I'm giving you something, I know how to evoke it, right,
Speaker 1: A comedian knows how to evoke laughter from you. Are
Speaker 1: they giving you the laughter? No, but they're they're involved
Speaker 1: in in some relationship. So I think of it as
Speaker 1: the teacher acts almost like as an unconscious mirror. They're
Speaker 1: mirroring back something for the student. In that sense, it's
Speaker 1: a transmission where I'm not giving you something that you
Speaker 1: don't already have. Of course, how could I give you
Speaker 1: your true nature? Right right? I could give you all
Speaker 1: sorts of experiences if I was skilled at doing that,
Speaker 1: But I couldn't. I couldn't actually give you what you are. That's,
Speaker 1: by the definition of that would be pretty impossible. Nor
Speaker 1: is it a good idea to try. By the way,
Speaker 1: early on, I don't know if we discussed this last
Speaker 1: time we were together, but very early on I realized,
Speaker 1: almost by stumbling upon it, that that I could cause
Speaker 1: most of the people that came to me to have
Speaker 1: a kind of wakening experience. And it wasn't that I
Speaker 1: was giving them something and I would just sort of
Speaker 1: wake up a sort of presence, turn the dial up
Speaker 1: on it so it'd be so bright they would kind
Speaker 1: of overwhelm whatever mind state or you know, whatever place
Speaker 1: they were in. Fortunately, I realized very early that even
Speaker 1: though to me that seemed to be a good thing, like,
Speaker 1: what's what couldn't be good about that? But um, but
Speaker 1: I saw really differently there was something it's very hard
Speaker 1: to put your finger on it. But there's something different
Speaker 1: about when when I was really almost intentionally trying to
Speaker 1: wake somewhat up, and then when it happens sort of
Speaker 1: on its own, with no intention, there's something that was
Speaker 1: more pure about it when it didn't involve my intention. Um,
Speaker 1: there is something much more lasting if it didn't involve
Speaker 1: my intention. I was going to say, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: cause of brief experience, and then not last because I'm
Speaker 1: not going to standing next to anybody overwhelming their presence.
Speaker 1: It's like magic mushrooms, right like here you are, you know,
Speaker 1: and then right so I I just id stopped doing it,
Speaker 1: even though from my point it seemed like I had
Speaker 1: all the all the right motivations. But what I saw
Speaker 1: was even the motivation for the teacher that's trying too
Speaker 1: hard to make something happen in their student isn't a
Speaker 1: good idea, and it's not a good idea for a
Speaker 1: student because awakening just simply doesn't end up to be
Speaker 1: good for everybody. If you're not ready for it. It
Speaker 1: can be so disorienting that it can actually make life
Speaker 1: more difficult. You you talk about how people will have
Speaker 1: a realization or awakening experience moment, whether it be ten
Speaker 1: seconds or ten hours, or ten days or ten weeks, right,
Speaker 1: But the unconscious patterns will pull them back out of
Speaker 1: that space. So I'm curious about what some of those
Speaker 1: unconscious patterns are and how do people work with unconscious patterns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure I did explain it to you just
Speaker 1: as you depicted it for me. But I want to
Speaker 1: make it. I want to make a little bit of
Speaker 1: a change. It's not so much that you get pulled
Speaker 1: out of the awakened perspective, as it sort of gets clouded.
Speaker 1: It's a very small thing, but but in the end
Speaker 1: it actually makes a big difference in one's approach because
Speaker 1: you're still there. You're still there. You can't not be there.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that awakening shows you.
Speaker 1: Even if I feel like I'm not there um at
Speaker 1: the same time, strangely I know that I am. But
Speaker 1: that's not really good enough, right, because we don't want
Speaker 1: to just know it. It can almost be frustrating. It
Speaker 1: can almost be frustrating, right. So what pulls us back
Speaker 1: mostly any um, any unresolved emotional conflict that could be
Speaker 1: between ourselves and us, between ourselves and the world, whoever
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Anything that's sort of unresolved has doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it will, but can have the power to that
Speaker 1: contracting energy can kind of you know, it can happen
Speaker 1: within seconds. Right you're driving down the road, you're feeling
Speaker 1: open and spacious and lovely, and then somebody you know
Speaker 1: cut you off or almost hit you, and who knows
Speaker 1: how you're going to react. You know, it's it doesn't
Speaker 1: give it. It's not always some really big, complicated dark
Speaker 1: pattern as much as it's just sort of that emotional triggering.
Speaker 1: So what I'd like to tell people is, you know,
Speaker 1: awaking and will will blow a certain amount of one's conditioning,
Speaker 1: unnecessary conditioning sort of out of their consciousness. For everybody.
Speaker 1: It's different. For some person, say blows out five, for
Speaker 1: somebody else that blows out you never know. But the
Speaker 1: stuff to pay attention to is what's reoccurring. Have I
Speaker 1: seen this pattern, you know, like ten times in the
Speaker 1: last month, Okay, then I need to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1: I actually need to kind of maybe intentionally go meditate
Speaker 1: on that energy, like intentionally allow myself to feel that
Speaker 1: and if I have to think things to feel it,
Speaker 1: or go back to memories to feel it, fine, go
Speaker 1: go back there. Do it. It's almost like a willing
Speaker 1: suspension of higher truth, so you can get down into
Speaker 1: where it hasn't penetrated, right, because it's easy to stay
Speaker 1: on the outside and just kind of say to yourself, well,
Speaker 1: it's a passing thought form and you know, being a
Speaker 1: very transcendent mindset, but that doesn't necessarily help it. So
Speaker 1: you get it evoked and then you see if you
Speaker 1: can really just um be with the be with the
Speaker 1: energy of it, because that's our resistance. Right, this isn't pleasant.
Speaker 1: I want to I don't want to be with this,
Speaker 1: so it goes somewhere else. But most of all this
Speaker 1: stuff is if you get one simple principle, and it
Speaker 1: is somewhat oversimplified, but I think it works an overwhelming
Speaker 1: majority of cases. Anything that's happened to us could be yesterday,
Speaker 1: could be forty years ago. That was too big for
Speaker 1: us to remain conscious why we experienced it. It gets
Speaker 1: trapped in our system, that's what happens, right, And so
Speaker 1: it gets turned into some other emotion, or it just
Speaker 1: gets stuffed or something, and it's those things are just
Speaker 1: sort of they're waiting for you as if like the
Speaker 1: universe inside you were saying, Okay, can you experience this now?
Speaker 1: Can you just experience this? And if you can, then
Speaker 1: it can go through you and you can start to
Speaker 1: find some release, and if you can't, then you tend
Speaker 1: to go just in circles. Again. Yep, that's such a
Speaker 1: big learning to be able to do that. It is
Speaker 1: like it's one of those really easy things to say,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to the moment, it doesn't always
Speaker 1: seem that simple. But it does work. Yes, you tell
Speaker 1: a story about when your first moment of a huge
Speaker 1: heart awakening was when you had to put your your
Speaker 1: dog to sleep, and um, I just had to do
Speaker 1: that the other day, sorry to hear them. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the second and in like eight months. So it's been
Speaker 1: a tough year dog wise. But I have learned over
Speaker 1: time to just be okay with it in the sense
Speaker 1: of like, be okay with I'm fine with being sad,
Speaker 1: you know what. I'm not going to try and turn
Speaker 1: away from that. I'm not going to try. And somebody
Speaker 1: asked me, are you at peace with it? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: that's so I'm not sure how to answer that, because
Speaker 1: philosophically or morally or you know, yes, dogs die, they
Speaker 1: get cancer, it happens, right, There's nothing the moral order
Speaker 1: has not been ripped apart by this event. But I'm
Speaker 1: very sad, so I'm not done with that, you know.
Speaker 1: But my favorite thing I've heard you say, and I
Speaker 1: don't know it was in a book or heard you
Speaker 1: say it, but you know, let everything be exactly the
Speaker 1: way it is. And and that is such a powerful
Speaker 1: teaching and almost is easier for me in some ways
Speaker 1: to apply to big things like that than it is
Speaker 1: the trivial moment to moment, day to day. Strange, isn't
Speaker 1: it that my little comforts? Yeah? Well, the big stuff
Speaker 1: we often are we re confront like, I have really
Speaker 1: no option. I either push against us and suffer or
Speaker 1: or I don't. The little stuff you can get, the
Speaker 1: little illusion, Well, I could kind of put this off
Speaker 1: or you know, it's easier to do a little dance
Speaker 1: maneuver um. But it is. It's one of those teachings.
Speaker 1: It's just so deceptively simple. And you know, I've been
Speaker 1: teaching it for twenty two years and I still find
Speaker 1: out what that teaching means. I'm still discovering a deeper
Speaker 1: understanding of what the teachings that I've been teaching for
Speaker 1: twenty two years is so, and I often have found
Speaker 1: that to be the case. The truest in the sense
Speaker 1: of the most useful sort of statement. There's often a
Speaker 1: simplicity about them. Sometimes they're so simple that something that
Speaker 1: just say no, no, no, it couldn't be we have
Speaker 1: to have something more complicated than that. But often the
Speaker 1: most helpful stuff are the simple things that we're just
Speaker 1: kind of missing, you know what I mean? Ye, simple,
Speaker 1: not easy, simple, not easy. But in the end, like
Speaker 1: your dog passes, right, it's easier to let yourself feel
Speaker 1: as bad as you feel, or feel whatever grief you
Speaker 1: feel without trying to shut it down. It's easier to
Speaker 1: do that in the end than to be trying to
Speaker 1: shut it down for the rest of your life. That's right, Yeah, yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I learned that. I've referenced her from
Speaker 1: time to time, Pema chodren Um her book When Things
Speaker 1: Fall Apart. I learned that letting it like just giving
Speaker 1: myself to that moment, because one of the best things
Speaker 1: I ever learned to do, I think, because I feel
Speaker 1: current with things in my life. You know, his death
Speaker 1: didn't bring up all the pain from the last dog
Speaker 1: because I grieved the last dog, that's right, you know.
Speaker 1: And the last dog didn't bring up all the grief
Speaker 1: of my marriage or that marriage falling apart, because that
Speaker 1: had been you know, it's and I wasn't that way
Speaker 1: for a large part of my life. I think every
Speaker 1: little thing that happened had, you know, a powder keg
Speaker 1: of emotion behind it, just waiting to blow. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's the nice things about we can we can actually
Speaker 1: transform yep. So another thing that you did at the retreat,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a hand gesture. I can't listeners
Speaker 1: won't be able to see it, but it was a
Speaker 1: really a really useful thought for me. And it was
Speaker 1: something your teacher used to say to you all the time.
Speaker 1: And she would say, less of this, which is a
Speaker 1: clenched fist for listeners, and more of this, which is
Speaker 1: an open hand for listeners. So talk to me about
Speaker 1: that in general. And I'm curious, is that still one
Speaker 1: you work with? Sure, it's you know, it's another one
Speaker 1: of those deceptively simple teachings and then until you start
Speaker 1: to really kind of contemplate it. And I like the
Speaker 1: physical part of the gesture. I mean, anybody listening could
Speaker 1: put their hand in front of them themselves and make
Speaker 1: a fist and okay, that's what it means to hold on.
Speaker 1: That's how it physically feels. And then you let your
Speaker 1: fists go and you open your palm and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what it feels like to let go, because sometimes
Speaker 1: we literally kind of forget it, not in our minds,
Speaker 1: been in our bodies, our bodies like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do something, but if they don't have a reference for
Speaker 1: what that feels like. But yeah, my teacher told me
Speaker 1: that when I was well back to where we started,
Speaker 1: you know, hundred miles an hour gun and for enlightenment
Speaker 1: with everything I had, and I couldn't hear that teaching
Speaker 1: at the time. I literally just wasn't in a place
Speaker 1: where I could really hear it and utilize it. But
Speaker 1: I came to it nonetheless, you know, I came to
Speaker 1: it nonetheless because well, nothing else works. It's pretty simple, right,
Speaker 1: Going through life with with lots of resistance just doesn't work. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not fun, it's it's not self expressive in any
Speaker 1: positive sense. It doesn't win you better friends. It just
Speaker 1: it's like not workable. Yeah, but you know, each one
Speaker 1: of us has to find that out in the grist
Speaker 1: of our own experience. Finding that out isn't always easy, yep,
Speaker 1: you know, because we usually do it through a few
Speaker 1: pretty overwhelming moments. Yep. I think that's why I think
Speaker 1: the serenity prayer, I know it's we only hear a
Speaker 1: short part of it is maybe the wisest thing I
Speaker 1: have ever heard, because it covers that there's work to
Speaker 1: be done here, and there's plenty of times where you
Speaker 1: can't work you gotta And of course then that wisdom
Speaker 1: is the precious gold to tell the difference. But I
Speaker 1: can be on either of those extremes. I have an
Speaker 1: ability to be like effort right. Yeah, that's not spiritual development,
Speaker 1: that's not I don't know what it is, but it's
Speaker 1: not a healthy pattern, right. So that means I've got
Speaker 1: to engage in the desire to change, you know. And
Speaker 1: then there's plenty of things where letting go is clearly
Speaker 1: the important thing. And I had a thought about this,
Speaker 1: and I think it was after you did that and
Speaker 1: then this, and I thought about the phrase letting go,
Speaker 1: and I almost thought that in some cases it might
Speaker 1: be better just to think of let because letting go
Speaker 1: sometimes we can't, right, so let go, and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to let go, but it's not going, you know, whereas
Speaker 1: let is sort of like okay, yeah, like I like that,
Speaker 1: you know, here it is. If it goes great, If
Speaker 1: it doesn't, okay, but I'm not in control of that.
Speaker 1: You're clear on what you can and can't do that.
Speaker 1: I'll often say something very similar to your let, which
Speaker 1: is nice and short, Okay, if you can't let it go,
Speaker 1: can you let it be? Yeah? Can you let it be? There?
Speaker 1: Just that, and that's kind of like your it's yeah, right,
Speaker 1: let it Can I do that? Because usually if we
Speaker 1: really honestly look at that one, more often than not
Speaker 1: the answer is yeah, I can let it be. And
Speaker 1: then gosh, what would that feel like to let it?
Speaker 1: Because that, to me, that's the crucial step, Like what's
Speaker 1: the sense? What's the feel? So it's not intellectual anymore.
Speaker 1: It's like when you unclench your hand, you can feel it,
Speaker 1: it feels different, Yeah, right, you don't. It's the kind
Speaker 1: aesthetic experience of that I think is what we need.
Speaker 1: Kudos to your teacher for a very beautiful way to
Speaker 1: look at it, you know, because I've been banging a
Speaker 1: rate in a really tough nut there for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your heart, you know, I I can think of plenty
Speaker 1: of times where I was trying to let go with
Speaker 1: a clenched fist, you know, like I knew I should
Speaker 1: let go. I knew I would be better off if
Speaker 1: I let go. I just didn't have the ability to
Speaker 1: do it right. And sometimes that's that's the truth, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just can't do it right now. I think it's
Speaker 1: always good to normalize that for people, because I think
Speaker 1: I felt like I was failing, you know, evolve people,
Speaker 1: spiritual people, people in recovery, they let things go, and
Speaker 1: that's not working right now, So I must be failing.
Speaker 1: And you know, I wasn't any failing. If there was
Speaker 1: any failing, it was in the being too hard on myself.
Speaker 1: And sometimes failure ends up to be the part of triumph. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes you just you gotta failure way through some stuff.
Speaker 1: You can't do it all like neat and pretty and spiritual.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you just sort of fail your way through it.
Speaker 1: And but if you fail your way through something consciously,
Speaker 1: that can actually cause a sort of transformation. If you
Speaker 1: fail through something unconsciously with nothing but resistance, we tend
Speaker 1: to not transform much much from it. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: love that that serenity prayer. I think that that ability
Speaker 1: to discriminate between what you can do and what you
Speaker 1: can't do. You know, no know what you can do,
Speaker 1: but just important to what you can't do. And I
Speaker 1: think it's really important in any kind of spiritual practice
Speaker 1: that we have some real clarity about exactly what we
Speaker 1: can do, exactly what we can do. You used to
Speaker 1: work with students one on one, and I know that
Speaker 1: everybody's different. So not asking for a blanket statement, but
Speaker 1: some degree of practice seems to be part of the
Speaker 1: equation or useful in the process. Absolutely essential cases. In
Speaker 1: that case, how would you think about building a practice?
Speaker 1: You know, what would it consist of? How often or
Speaker 1: how long or Again I'm not looking for exact answers
Speaker 1: maybe as so much as a way to think through it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I appreciate the question, Eric, because I have thought
Speaker 1: this because my impulses, you know, to try to really
Speaker 1: help people find their own way, and so it's to
Speaker 1: not give direct answers to a question like that. And
Speaker 1: yet you know, I've also seen that that's not always
Speaker 1: the best response either, because sometimes people just can't find
Speaker 1: their way. Yeah, you know, they just And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things I've learned from working with lots
Speaker 1: of people, you know, in the coaching work I do,
Speaker 1: is that ambiguity is the mother of procrastination in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. Right, if I don't know what to do, now,
Speaker 1: I got to figure out what to do and do it.
Speaker 1: If there's some clarity about that first part, then all
Speaker 1: I have to do is muster up the energy to
Speaker 1: do it, and we get stuck in that first part. Right,
Speaker 1: So for me, I would just say, yeah, if somebody
Speaker 1: wanted to engage in this or probably any spiritual teaching,
Speaker 1: but I'll keep it restricted to mind for the moment
Speaker 1: that Yeah, I would suggest that they do some meditation
Speaker 1: every day. I would love him to do, you know,
Speaker 1: at least a half an hour morning or evening. If
Speaker 1: I someone said, what's ideal, I do a couple of
Speaker 1: times a day would be ideal. Um, don't push it
Speaker 1: to the sense that you start to hate it, however,
Speaker 1: because you don't want to get a relationship with the
Speaker 1: very notion of meditating as something that's arjorous and awful
Speaker 1: and something you don't want to do. I've been shaking
Speaker 1: that off for years while for an old Zen guy,
Speaker 1: it took me for a while to like rediscover like,
Speaker 1: actually sitting here can be really really nice. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it hasn't got to be. It's nicer when it's not
Speaker 1: eighteen hours a day like the Zen folks do too.
Speaker 1: It is well they make, you know, get in trouble
Speaker 1: with Zen folks, but you know, us and Zen, we
Speaker 1: can't make a kind of fetish out of meditation. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's the Zen object of worship. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And and part of that is really good because at
Speaker 1: least you're doing something, you're not just sitting around talking
Speaker 1: about it. That sense, it's really really good. But when
Speaker 1: it becomes too emphasized, then maybe it's not so good.
Speaker 1: So I think spending some time in quiet is really
Speaker 1: that's the magic. That's the magic, that's that's what allows
Speaker 1: something inside of you that you don't have any conscious
Speaker 1: access to, something starts to occur within us beyond below
Speaker 1: what we're perceiving. Simply when we're sort of intentionally attending
Speaker 1: to a quiet space, there's something that happens underneath that.
Speaker 1: That's very spiritually powerful. Who knows when it will manifest.
Speaker 1: But so that's pretty easy, right in the sense of
Speaker 1: to tell someone will meditate, try to meditate some every day.
Speaker 1: The other one is just as important, but not so
Speaker 1: easy to turn into a formula, because that's the kind
Speaker 1: of the inquiry part. And the inquiry can just be
Speaker 1: taken as sort of a tool like this is just
Speaker 1: what I do because it's supposed to be the thing
Speaker 1: to do, or I like to have inquired be a
Speaker 1: manifestation of something more native to you. Right. So, if
Speaker 1: somebody comes up and they say I'm working on the question,
Speaker 1: who am I? You know, I often ask them why
Speaker 1: what does the question mean for you? Why are you
Speaker 1: interested in the question? Because I want to see if
Speaker 1: the question is actually there's if it's really relevant to them. Um.
Speaker 1: If I do find it's relevant to them, then we
Speaker 1: have something to work with. If not, then we find
Speaker 1: something that is relevant. It's harder to take that and
Speaker 1: make it into a formula, right because it's almost like
Speaker 1: a wonderment at being. Yeah, just the mere fact of
Speaker 1: being a kind of a wonderment, and that by saying
Speaker 1: wonderment I don't mean to put a spiritual whitewash. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's always fun to do that. You know,
Speaker 1: at a certain point, when the resistance goes away, then
Speaker 1: it's pretty darn and enjoyable. But I've often thought I
Speaker 1: would love everyone that came to see me have had
Speaker 1: like two or three really good years of pretty arduous
Speaker 1: meditation under their belt, and two or three really good
Speaker 1: years in college courses that taught them nothing but how
Speaker 1: to think l for themselves. And those are kind of
Speaker 1: polarized opposites. One right, it's kind of not thinking, and
Speaker 1: the other one is how to really think very clearly,
Speaker 1: because I think we often don't learn that either. An
Speaker 1: inquiry is a way of using your thoughts and your
Speaker 1: perception in a really clear and really really precise way.
Speaker 1: You talk about it has to be precise, has to
Speaker 1: be precise. That's why I always orient towards Okay, what
Speaker 1: are you doing here? What do you want? Exactly precisely?
Speaker 1: What is this about for you? So that's part of it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, if we're gonna get precise, that's the key
Speaker 1: that you have to be precise. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: someone can ask themselves like when i'll do this, it retreats.
Speaker 1: You may have seen me do it where I'm working
Speaker 1: with somebody through say who am I? And they'll go
Speaker 1: who am I? And they're not used to being as
Speaker 1: precise as I usually want them to be, And so
Speaker 1: I'll say, Okay, what happens when you ask that question? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't come up with an answer. No, that's not
Speaker 1: the first thing that happened. What's the thing that has
Speaker 1: the right answer that you know you're supposed to arrive at.
Speaker 1: What what happened that caused your mind to say I
Speaker 1: didn't get the right answer? Something was being experienced. Well,
Speaker 1: when I asked myself who was I didn't find anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now that's interesting, isn't it? But all that just that
Speaker 1: right at the top, that can all be missed. If
Speaker 1: you're not precise who am I? I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: you have to ask the question another hundred thousand times.
Speaker 1: But if you're really precise, you asked the question, but
Speaker 1: you're looking at what that question is evoking in your experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you're really looking for. What is it evoking
Speaker 1: in my experience? Present time? Then there's no future to it.
Speaker 1: That's it. You know, you talked about the ability to
Speaker 1: think very well for themselves. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I've heard you stress over and over, and
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that I think can hear
Speaker 1: it deepen and deepening levels. Like I think you've said
Speaker 1: something to the effective spirituality is the direct investigation of
Speaker 1: your experience, Like we have to be willing to look
Speaker 1: closely for ourselves and be willing to trust what we
Speaker 1: find there, even if what we find there isn't where
Speaker 1: we think it should be. Like you know, sometimes if
Speaker 1: I look for myself, I think I find something. I
Speaker 1: know the answer is it's not supposed to be there, right,
Speaker 1: So trust in that for me has been important in
Speaker 1: going that's what I see and feel. Now, I can
Speaker 1: keep working with it and eventually go past it. But
Speaker 1: if I skip that, and I'm certainly not trying to
Speaker 1: say like I've got this figured out in any way,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to stress the importance of trusting ourselves
Speaker 1: to some extent and looking at our experience, not yours,
Speaker 1: not some enlightened beings. What's happening with me right now?
Speaker 1: When I ask his questions experience, when there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that going on, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: I think you're right in the sense of our experience
Speaker 1: is where it's at, and it's one of those really
Speaker 1: simple things, right, But when you go to do it,
Speaker 1: you realize it's not so simple at all. I'm so
Speaker 1: used to comparing my experience to everything around me that
Speaker 1: I never have my experience for more than like a
Speaker 1: quarter second before I'm comparing it. So um, Like you said,
Speaker 1: if if if you were doing this inquiry and you
Speaker 1: you came back and said, a, yeah, I really feel
Speaker 1: like I'm coming up with herself, I would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: well let's explore that. Tell me about that, and we
Speaker 1: dive into that. It may sound like because I've done
Speaker 1: it for myself, but I don't necessarily go when I'm
Speaker 1: worth somebody with a preconceived idea of what I think
Speaker 1: they're supposed to see. Whatever they see is that's what
Speaker 1: they see. Um. As long as their own experience, then
Speaker 1: we can just keep looking through the layers of that. Right.
Speaker 1: As I tell people, the only way to get us
Speaker 1: wrong is to not be ruthlessly honest about what's happening
Speaker 1: in your experience. The only way you can get it
Speaker 1: wrong is to not do that. But outside of that,
Speaker 1: you're not getting it wrong. Yeah. Boy, is that hard
Speaker 1: to do for people? Yeah, it brings to mind for
Speaker 1: me how we are afraid to be wrong, how much
Speaker 1: we want to have the right answer. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about not turning your authority over
Speaker 1: to someone else. You know, the word spiritual teacher has
Speaker 1: a sense of like my teacher, and most of our
Speaker 1: experiences with teachers is you've got to give them the
Speaker 1: right answer when they ask a question, there's a right answer.
Speaker 1: And so the very idea of saying my experience of
Speaker 1: that is very different. I know what the right answer
Speaker 1: is because I read the book, but I'm not having
Speaker 1: that experience. And I just think that's so hard for us,
Speaker 1: is to is to say I don't know it is
Speaker 1: or that's not what's happening. Well, we've we've mythologized the
Speaker 1: role of the spiritual teacher, which doesn't help us out.
Speaker 1: What do religions do with their authority figures. They dressed
Speaker 1: them up to look like kings and queens. That's what
Speaker 1: they do, right, whether it's Christianity or Buddhism or whoever
Speaker 1: it is, you dress the authority up as if they're
Speaker 1: a king and queen, and then we wonder why we
Speaker 1: have so much projection going on around Whereas having been
Speaker 1: with my teacher as long as I have been, there
Speaker 1: is something that goes beyond the bounds of like say,
Speaker 1: relating to a spiritual teacher is like a college professor
Speaker 1: or something, which I think is actually a pretty healthy
Speaker 1: place to start. Relate to your teacher kind of more
Speaker 1: like that, kind of more like if you were in
Speaker 1: a college. You know, over time, you know, my relationship
Speaker 1: part with my teacher became more just something. There was
Speaker 1: a different element that was added. It was more like
Speaker 1: a profound combination of respect and gratitude got mixed in
Speaker 1: over time. But that was over time, right, It wasn't
Speaker 1: immediately manufactured out of nothing, which would have just made
Speaker 1: it a projection. So I think when people initially go
Speaker 1: to teachers, they're probably best too. They're going to assume
Speaker 1: any kind of stance something more like listening to a
Speaker 1: college professor, at least initially is probably a good idea, yea.
Speaker 1: And to always remember that or be aware of that
Speaker 1: balance between you go to a teacher for hopefully some
Speaker 1: wise counsel and advice, right, so in that sense, you're
Speaker 1: open and you're available, and maybe you'll even try some
Speaker 1: of it. But the balance part is, at the same time,
Speaker 1: you're not pretending like you're a spiritual child or infant, right,
Speaker 1: You're you're looking at the advice. You're seeing if it
Speaker 1: seems good and rational and worth doing for yourself. And
Speaker 1: so there's all these many decisions that are actually getting
Speaker 1: made all along the point I would just say make
Speaker 1: them consciously. Yep, you know, um, because there's just the
Speaker 1: thing where we make spiritual teachers like kings and queens.
Speaker 1: It does not serve awakening. It just doesn't It doesn't help, yep,
Speaker 1: you know, it just doesn't help. And it makes people,
Speaker 1: of course very vulnerable to replaying whatever unhealthy relational patterns
Speaker 1: they've had in their life. Yeah, they'll tend to do
Speaker 1: it with their teacher. It's been a long time since
Speaker 1: Martin Luther did what he did, right, But it was
Speaker 1: that you, the regular people, have access to the Word
Speaker 1: of God yourself. You can read the book. You don't
Speaker 1: have to go through these people. Um right, excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: let's wrap this up for part one, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, more questions about practice and self inquiry m M.
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