0:00

If I could get somebody in a room with me

0:02

and just do a moment of magic and have them

0:04

awaken and stay that way, That's what I

0:06

would do, right, we would just start a McDonald's

0:08

of awakening. Welcome

0:18

to the one you feed. Throughout

0:20

time, great thinkers have recognized the

0:22

importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes

0:24

like garbage in, garbage out, or

0:27

you are what you think, ring true.

0:29

And yet for many of us, our thoughts

0:31

don't strengthen or empower us. We

0:34

tend toward negativity, self pity,

0:37

jealousy, or fear. We see

0:39

what we don't have instead of what we do.

0:41

We think things that hold us back and dampen

0:44

our spirit. But it's not just about

0:46

thinking. Our actions matter. It

0:48

takes conscious, consistent, and creative

0:51

effort to make a life worth living. This

0:53

podcast is about how other people keep

0:55

themselves moving in the right direction, how

0:58

they feed their good Wolf m

1:14

thanks for joining us our guest on this

1:16

episode. For the second time in history,

1:19

I believe Audi a shanty. The guest

1:21

was the hundred and sixty

1:23

six episode that we did. Uh.

1:26

He's the author of the Way of Liberation,

1:28

Falling into Grace, True Meditation,

1:31

and the end of your World. Audio

1:33

Shanty is an American born spiritual teacher

1:36

devoted to serving the awakening of all

1:38

beings. His teachings are an open invitation

1:40

to stop, enquire, and recognize

1:43

what is true and liberating at the core of

1:45

all existence. Audio Shanty

1:47

also runs the Omega Retreat, which

1:50

Eric our own the One You Feed

1:52

podcast. Eric has taken part in

1:54

and before we get started, we really

1:56

want to get to know you guys better.

1:59

So the One You Feed podcast is competing

2:01

with other shows to get the most responses to

2:03

a quick survey. It only takes

2:05

a few minutes literally of your time, and

2:08

you can do it straight from a smartphone.

2:10

So please help us out and support the show

2:12

by going to Wondering dot com

2:14

slash survey and filling

2:16

it out. That's wonder e w O

2:19

N D e r y dot com

2:21

slash survey as usual. Thanks

2:24

for all of your support. Hi Addio,

2:26

Welcome to the show. Thanks Eric, Nice to

2:28

be back with you again. I'm really excited

2:30

to have you on a second time, and to be able

2:32

to actually do it both times in person

2:35

has been wonderful. I don't get that opportunity

2:38

a ton with people, so but our

2:40

first interview went so well, so many people

2:42

loved it that, you know, I was really excited to get

2:44

to do this again, and we talked about we'll

2:46

make this a two parters, so great,

2:49

thank you. I'm happy to kind of put

2:51

it onto the end of the last one we did, which

2:53

is so wonderful. Yeah, so it's

2:55

kind of nice we get it chance to kind of tie

2:57

up all the loose ins. Yep. So I don't think I'm

3:00

going to do the wolf parable like we normally

3:02

do. Um, you talk through that once,

3:04

but I want to start off by

3:06

telling you a little bit about an experience

3:08

I had with you and then kind of

3:10

go into questions from there. So, UM,

3:13

I attended your Omega retreat

3:15

this last year and it

3:18

was wonderful in a lot of different ways. And

3:20

I had a period of time there

3:22

where I had what I think

3:24

we would typically refer to as an awakening.

3:27

I sort of became one with

3:29

everything for three or four

3:31

hours. So really

3:34

remarkable experience. I

3:37

want to talk with you a little bit about

3:40

where do people go from

3:42

there, and I want to talk a little

3:44

bit about that was an experience,

3:46

and I don't think an experience is what we're

3:48

chasing, and I know even chasing anything

3:51

is problematic, but I want to I want to

3:53

talk a little bit about what the realized

3:55

or awakened state in perpetuity

3:58

is like versus that

4:01

moment of awakening, which had a high degree of ecstasy,

4:03

which I don't think is what we're

4:05

talking about here long term,

4:08

not in the long term, no, because so much of

4:10

the not all of it, but so much of the ecstasy

4:13

is the ecstasy of sort of first discovery,

4:17

and that's that's beautiful.

4:19

You know, you only get one first discovery

4:22

of anything, and so a lot of it is

4:25

is just that the sort of I call it kind of byproduct

4:28

of having a perceptual

4:30

shift, which when you were

4:33

when you just very briefly described

4:35

it to me, you decaid I was at one with everything. So

4:37

that tells me something as a teacher, really important.

4:40

That tells me that you you had

4:42

a shift of perspective which

4:45

gave rise to experience rather

4:48

than an experience simply

4:51

an experience. That's the kind of the

4:53

one of the main differences between something

4:56

that we might call awakening would be has

4:58

to always involve some real shift of perception,

5:01

got it, Not any old shift of perception,

5:03

but yet very least. Yeah, I think a

5:05

lot of the ecstasy for me was the

5:09

phrase that kept going through my head was thank

5:11

God, that's over, like

5:14

just the burden of carrying

5:17

myself. And

5:20

you know that has ebbed and flowed

5:22

since then, and I you know, it's been difficult

5:24

to stay in anything. And again,

5:27

not even the ecstasy, but just to stay in

5:29

that in that place. But it

5:31

was interesting. I came back and all

5:34

of a sudden, a lot of things that I had

5:36

been doing just didn't

5:38

interest me. An example would

5:40

be I had been, um, someone had talked

5:42

about writing a book for the show, and

5:45

I had been working on that. When I came back, I went,

5:47

that's not a priority for me right now, because

5:49

I realized that, at least to some degree,

5:52

that was driven by my desire to be an

5:54

author. Now

5:56

I've come back around to that and I think I'm approaching

5:59

it from a different place. But it was just it was

6:01

a fascinating experience. So in

6:04

fact, I think a lot of the most fascinating

6:06

fascinating parts of that kind of experience

6:08

are actually more of what what

6:11

falls away, Yeah, and

6:13

then what appear, what appears like the unity

6:16

and stuff can be can be wonderful, But it

6:18

is really interesting of that you

6:21

see almost in retrospect what

6:23

you were doing that was more self

6:26

oriented or motivated. And so

6:28

when that gets to be seen through those

6:31

whatever was self motivated takes a hit.

6:34

You can, like you said, you can, you can decide

6:37

discover a new motivation that may

6:39

not be so self motivating oriented.

6:42

But yeah, I walked out wondering

6:45

do I want to do this show? I mean, and

6:48

and that didn't last very long because I think

6:50

I've been able to keep my motivation enough

6:54

of my motivation about the

6:56

benefit it brings to myself

6:59

psychle logically and spiritually and and other

7:01

people. But it caused me to think about it differently. So

7:04

one of the things I'm interested in is

7:08

you've talked about this. Everybody talks about

7:10

this paradox of I really

7:12

want to awaken, but really

7:14

wanting something seems

7:17

to stand right in the way of

7:20

awakening. I mean, my experience of awakening

7:22

there happened when I I don't know how

7:25

I did it, but I truly

7:27

said, whatever, I'm

7:31

gonna let everything be exactly

7:33

as it is. I had been fighting sleeping, I

7:35

had been fighting back pain during meditation

7:37

and I finally just went yes.

7:40

Yeah, So there's

7:43

a desire to awaken, you

7:45

pursued it with great fervor, as you've

7:47

talked about. So

7:50

how does one do that? How

7:52

does one honor that desire to awaken

7:54

which does feel like a natural thing to

7:56

some extent, but not find themselves

7:59

in the trap of always going I wish I was

8:01

awake. Yeah, it's a great question

8:03

because it's just so relevant to so many people.

8:06

And you know, at the end of the day,

8:08

we can I can talk about you

8:10

know, almost like the ideal orientation,

8:13

but none of us gets to make that decision,

8:15

right there's we do not get to make that decision.

8:18

My my orientation was striving,

8:21

seeking with about as much gusto

8:24

as you could, you know, conjure up

8:27

without going totally insane. Um,

8:30

is that the best way to do it? No, clearly

8:33

is that the way that I had to go through. It

8:35

seems like it. So I always have

8:38

an eye like, where is somebody what's

8:40

authentically real for them?

8:43

For some people, what's authentically

8:45

real is diving into the seeking

8:48

energy so that it can run itself

8:50

off as fast as possible. With

8:52

somebody else, you can just point out why

8:54

it's unnecessary to approach it their way been

8:57

approaching it, and they can shift to a

8:59

different approach. So it's

9:01

what I found is doing this for twenty

9:03

two years, is that there

9:06

is no blanket statement, no blanket

9:08

teaching that you can give to everybody. You

9:11

know, I can say, well, yeah, the more you're striving

9:13

towards you, you're actually blocking the realization

9:15

that you're looking for. But

9:18

sometimes that's what we have to go through before

9:20

until we hit the moment like you had the retreat,

9:22

where a number of things start

9:24

being difficult to all at the same moment, and maybe

9:27

something says, Okay, I

9:29

just gotta let go of this. Yep, I

9:31

can't keep resisting in these

9:33

all these ways. So you said something at

9:35

that retreat that I thought spoke really well

9:38

to this dilemma and has helped me a little

9:40

bit. Was I think it was your teacher

9:42

who told you that the use

9:45

of will was to get you

9:47

to the meditation cushion. But once

9:50

you were there, that's the place

9:52

to let go. That's a great if I said that, I'm

9:54

really happy I said it, or whoever

9:56

said it, well done. You don't

9:58

have any memories, so I can't take at it for it.

10:00

But um, that's

10:02

a really actually that's a good way of that

10:04

is a pretty good way of putting it. Um,

10:07

that's the thing that you can't really put in language.

10:09

Right, we're writing a balancing

10:12

edge of too much

10:14

will where it all becomes striving and seeking,

10:17

and of course then you're always focused on what's not

10:19

happening or what hasn't happened yet,

10:22

or the other opposite, where you become so lackadaisical

10:26

you just kind of think, well, it'll happen when it happens,

10:29

and you'll utilize non dual terminology

10:31

to help you be lazy about it, you

10:34

know what I mean. So those are the two extremes.

10:36

Somewhere in the middle is where most of us actually

10:39

experience our life. But somewhere

10:41

in the middle that doesn't fall into the nice conceptual

10:43

boxes. It's a little bit more

10:46

probably like a flow state, you

10:48

know. That's the the idea of effortlessness

10:51

is really trying to get almost to something

10:54

more like a flow state, rather

10:56

than just make no effort and you know,

10:59

right, have another doughnut and crack a beer and

11:01

watch TV and hope something that happens.

11:03

That would not be the right,

11:07

and I guess the reason it's so hard to describe

11:09

or talk or not the reason. But if you look

11:11

back, you know you're in the Zen tradition. I mean,

11:13

they've been discussing this question forever.

11:16

You know, if you're already perfect, why are you meditating?

11:18

You know that that sort of concept, and so it's

11:21

just a dilemma is the wrong word?

11:23

Well, I guess it is a dilemma in some ways. And

11:25

so that leads me to my next question. You

11:28

primarily had as a teacher

11:30

someone who was completely

11:33

unknown, a wonderful woman

11:35

lived in a house very

11:38

you know, just just her, and it was a very

11:40

small group, and you were very intimate

11:42

with her. Your

11:45

world is you teach

11:48

a lot of people. I

11:50

don't know how many people were there in Omega. I want to

11:52

say several hundred, you know, I don't

11:54

know what, it doesn't matter, somewhere between three and three

11:57

probably. Yeah, so a lot of people. So

11:59

people aren't working with you one

12:01

to one. You've mentioned this is simply

12:04

not tenable anymore. My

12:06

question for you is, for somebody who is

12:09

seeking awakening, how important

12:11

is one on one time with a teacher

12:14

versus interaction with a teacher.

12:17

That's kind of like what most people have with

12:19

you. It's a

12:21

good question. Um

12:24

again, I don't really have a sort of final

12:27

answer to that question. Um.

12:29

It always comes down to each of us individually,

12:32

right, The question isn't does in

12:35

the broad sense does humanity need is

12:37

a close working spiritual teacher or

12:39

you know, it's it's like, well do I that's

12:42

what's really Yeah? What what does it feel

12:44

like to me? Do I feel like I

12:46

I'm at a point where I could really use some

12:48

more personalized guidance, or

12:50

maybe I have something I want to discuss but

12:52

I don't want to do it in front of three people, or

12:56

you know. So I mean, of

12:58

course, when I started teaching, neither me or my teacher

13:00

ever dreamed that it would

13:02

take the form that it did. I think both of us thought,

13:04

without even really talking about it, that it would look

13:07

something pretty much like being into my living

13:09

room. Um

13:12

so yeah. People do often

13:15

get a false sense,

13:17

though, of my relationship with my teacher

13:19

ever there, Even though I went there every

13:21

weekend, I probably asked

13:24

her ten to fifteen really direct

13:26

questions in the fourteen years I knew her. That

13:29

had to do with my spiritual practice.

13:32

We weren't kind of sitting around chumming

13:34

chumming it up and talking about it all day

13:36

long. You know. It was a place where we went to meditate

13:39

and do some chanting, and she'd give a talk, and

13:41

then every once in a while she'd give a like

13:43

a day long and then she'd see us privately.

13:46

So yeah, it always goes back to the individual,

13:48

doesn't it. You know. I'm that's

13:51

the thing about. The longer I do this, the

13:53

harder it is to articulate any part

13:55

of it, because I see that the opposite of what

13:58

I could say could almost be equal be

14:00

true of almost anything I say.

14:03

You know what I mean. So, you

14:05

know, do do people need teachers? Well? I

14:07

don't know, dude. That's not really

14:09

a relevant question, is it is? For anybody?

14:12

It's do I where do

14:14

I feel like I am? Do I need interesting?

14:17

Do I need that? Ye? That's a great way to think about

14:19

it, because there's certainly certain

14:21

traditions that have that idea

14:23

of that awakening almost comes

14:26

from the teachers. Which I

14:29

don't get that sense in your teaching that

14:31

that's at all what you're saying. No,

14:34

it's not. It's not what I'm saying and I

14:36

mean it's kind of a paradox because and then

14:38

the whole definition that is a

14:40

direct transmission from teacher to student

14:42

outside of words and scriptures. Right,

14:45

that definition has been there for hundreds and

14:47

hundreds of years, and it

14:49

can easily lead to a false impression.

14:51

Because look, if I could get somebody in a room

14:54

with me and just do a moment of magic

14:56

and have them awaken and stay that way,

14:59

I mean that that's what I would do, right, We would just

15:01

just start a McDonald's of awakening, you

15:03

know, come hang out with the teacher for three minutes,

15:06

and there you go. It doesn't

15:08

actually happen that way,

15:10

you know, it just doesn't happen. I think what I what

15:12

I see as what's

15:15

often called transmission, and if it's useful,

15:18

we can transmit energy, we can transmit

15:20

experiences from one another if we know how to

15:22

do that. Not that I'm giving you something, I know

15:24

how to evoke it, right,

15:26

A comedian knows how to evoke laughter

15:29

from you. Are they giving you the laughter?

15:32

No, but they're they're involved

15:34

in in some relationship. So

15:37

I think of it as the teacher acts

15:40

almost like as an unconscious mirror. They're

15:43

mirroring back something for the student.

15:45

In that sense, it's a transmission where I'm not giving

15:48

you something that you don't already have. Of

15:50

course, how could I give you your true nature? Right

15:53

right? I could give you all sorts of experiences

15:55

if I was skilled at doing that, But

15:57

I couldn't. I couldn't actually give

15:59

you what you are. That's,

16:02

by the definition of that would be pretty

16:04

impossible. Nor

16:07

is it a good idea to try. By the way,

16:10

early on, I don't know if we discussed this last

16:12

time we were together, but very early on I

16:15

realized, almost by stumbling upon

16:17

it, that that I could cause

16:19

most of the people that came to me to have a

16:21

kind of wakening experience. And

16:24

it wasn't that I was giving them something and I would just

16:26

sort of wake up a sort of presence, turn

16:28

the dial up on it so it'd be so

16:30

bright they would kind of overwhelm whatever

16:33

mind state or you know, whatever place

16:35

they were in. Fortunately,

16:38

I realized very early that even

16:40

though to me that seemed to be a good thing,

16:42

like, what's what couldn't be good about

16:45

that? But um,

16:47

but I saw really differently there was something

16:51

it's very hard to put your finger on it. But there's something

16:53

different about when when

16:56

I was really almost intentionally trying

16:59

to wake somewhat up,

17:01

and then when it happens sort of on its

17:03

own, with no

17:05

intention, there's something

17:07

that was more pure

17:10

about it when it didn't involve my

17:12

intention. Um,

17:14

there is something much more lasting if

17:16

it didn't involve my intention. I was going to say,

17:18

maybe it's a cause of brief experience,

17:21

and then not last because

17:23

I'm not going to standing next to anybody

17:25

overwhelming their presence. It's like magic

17:28

mushrooms, right like here you are, you

17:30

know, and then right so I

17:32

I just id stopped doing it, even though from

17:34

my point it seemed like I had all the all the

17:37

right motivations. But what I saw

17:39

was even the motivation for

17:41

the teacher that's trying too hard to

17:43

make something happen in their student isn't a good

17:45

idea, and it's not a good

17:47

idea for a student because awakening

17:49

just simply doesn't end up to be good for everybody.

17:53

If you're not ready for it. It can be so disorienting

17:57

that it can actually make life more difficult.

17:59

You you

18:35

talk about how people will have a

18:38

realization or awakening experience

18:40

moment, whether it be ten

18:43

seconds or ten hours, or ten days or

18:45

ten weeks, right, But the unconscious

18:47

patterns will pull

18:50

them back out of that space. So

18:52

I'm curious about what some of those unconscious

18:55

patterns are and how do people work

18:58

with unconscious patterns. Yeah,

19:01

and I'm sure I did explain it to you just

19:03

as you depicted it for me. But I want to make

19:05

it. I want to make a little bit of a change.

19:07

It's not so much that you get pulled out

19:11

of the awakened perspective,

19:13

as it sort of gets clouded. It's

19:16

a very small thing, but but in

19:18

the end it actually makes a big difference in one's

19:21

approach because you're still there. You're

19:23

still there. You can't not be there. I

19:25

think that's one of the things that awakening shows you.

19:27

Even if I feel like I'm not there um

19:31

at the same time, strangely I know that I am.

19:35

But that's not really good enough, right, because we don't

19:37

want to just know it. It can almost be frustrating.

19:40

It can almost be frustrating, right.

19:42

So what pulls us back mostly

19:44

any um, any unresolved

19:47

emotional conflict that

19:49

could be between ourselves and us,

19:52

between ourselves and the world, whoever

19:54

whatever it is. Anything that's sort of unresolved

19:58

has doesn't mean it will, but can have

20:00

the power to that contracting

20:03

energy can kind of you know, it can

20:05

happen within seconds. Right you're

20:07

driving down the road, you're feeling open and

20:09

spacious and lovely, and then somebody

20:12

you know cut you off or almost hit you, and

20:15

who knows how you're going to react. You know, it's

20:17

it doesn't give it. It's not always some really

20:19

big, complicated

20:22

dark pattern as much as it's just sort

20:24

of that emotional triggering.

20:27

So what I'd like to tell

20:29

people is, you know, awaking and will will

20:31

blow a certain amount of one's conditioning, unnecessary

20:34

conditioning sort of out of their consciousness.

20:36

For everybody. It's different. For some

20:38

person, say blows out five, for

20:41

somebody else that blows out you

20:43

never know. But the

20:45

stuff to pay attention to is what's

20:49

reoccurring. Have I seen this

20:51

pattern, you know, like ten times in

20:53

the last month, Okay, then I need

20:55

to pay attention to that. I actually need

20:57

to kind of maybe intentionally

21:00

go meditate on that energy,

21:02

like intentionally allow myself to

21:04

feel that and if I have to

21:06

think things to feel it, or go

21:09

back to memories to feel it, fine, go

21:11

go back there. Do it. It's almost like a

21:13

willing suspension of higher

21:16

truth, so you can get

21:18

down into where it hasn't

21:20

penetrated, right, because it's easy

21:22

to stay on the outside and just kind of say to yourself,

21:24

well, it's a passing thought form

21:27

and you know, being a very

21:29

transcendent mindset, but that doesn't necessarily

21:31

help it. So you get it evoked

21:33

and then you see if you can really just

21:36

um be with the be with the

21:39

energy of it, because that's our resistance. Right,

21:41

this isn't pleasant. I want to I

21:44

don't want to be with this, so it

21:46

goes somewhere else. But most of

21:48

all this stuff is if you get

21:50

one simple principle, and it is somewhat

21:53

oversimplified, but I think it works an

21:55

overwhelming majority of cases. Anything

21:57

that's happened to us could be yesterday,

22:00

could be forty years ago. That

22:02

was too big for us to remain conscious

22:05

why we experienced it. It

22:07

gets trapped in our system, that's what happens,

22:10

right, And so it gets turned into some

22:12

other emotion, or it just gets stuffed

22:14

or something, and it's those things are just sort

22:16

of they're waiting for you as if like

22:18

the universe inside you were saying, Okay,

22:21

can you experience this now? Can

22:24

you just experience this? And if you can,

22:26

then it can go through you and you can start

22:28

to find some release, and

22:30

if you can't, then you tend to go

22:32

just in circles. Again. Yep,

22:35

that's such a big learning to be able to

22:37

do that. It is like it's one of those

22:39

really easy things to say, but when

22:41

it comes to the moment, it doesn't

22:43

always seem that simple. But it

22:45

does work. Yes, you tell a story

22:47

about when your first moment

22:50

of a huge heart awakening was

22:52

when you had to put your your dog to sleep, and

22:55

um, I just had to do that the other day, sorry

22:57

to hear them. Yeah, it's the second

23:00

and in like eight months. So it's been a tough year

23:02

dog wise. But I

23:04

have learned over time to

23:07

just be okay with it in

23:10

the sense of like, be okay

23:12

with I'm fine with being sad,

23:16

you know what. I'm not going to try and turn away from that.

23:18

I'm not going to try. And somebody asked

23:20

me, are you at peace with it? And I said,

23:22

well, that's so I'm not sure how to answer

23:25

that, because philosophically or morally

23:27

or you know, yes, dogs

23:30

die, they get cancer, it happens, right,

23:32

There's nothing the moral order has

23:35

not been ripped apart by

23:37

this event. But I'm very

23:39

sad, so I'm not done with that, you

23:42

know. But my favorite thing I've

23:44

heard you say, and I don't know it was in a book or heard you say

23:46

it, but you know, let everything be

23:48

exactly the way it is. And

23:51

and that is such a powerful teaching and

23:54

almost is easier for me in some ways

23:56

to apply to big things like that than

23:59

it is the trivial

24:01

moment to moment, day to day. Strange,

24:04

isn't it that my little comforts? Yeah?

24:06

Well, the big stuff we often are we re

24:08

confront like, I have really no option.

24:12

I either push against us and suffer or

24:15

or I don't. The little stuff you can

24:17

get, the little illusion, Well, I could kind

24:19

of put this off

24:21

or you know, it's easier to do a little dance maneuver

24:25

um. But it is. It's one of those

24:27

teachings. It's just so deceptively

24:29

simple. And you

24:31

know, I've been teaching it for twenty two years

24:34

and I still find out what that teaching

24:36

means. I'm still

24:38

discovering a deeper understanding

24:41

of what the teachings that I've been teaching for twenty

24:43

two years is so, and

24:45

I often have found that to be the case. The

24:48

truest in the sense of the most

24:50

useful sort of statement. There's often

24:52

a simplicity about them. Sometimes

24:55

they're so simple that something that just say no,

24:57

no, no, it couldn't be we

24:59

have to have something more complicated than that. But

25:02

often the most helpful stuff

25:04

are the simple things

25:07

that we're just kind of missing, you

25:09

know what I mean? Ye, simple, not easy,

25:11

simple, not easy. But in

25:13

the end, like your dog passes, right,

25:15

it's easier to let yourself feel

25:18

as bad as you feel, or feel whatever grief

25:20

you feel without trying to shut it down. It's

25:23

easier to do that in the end than

25:25

to be trying to shut it down for the rest

25:28

of your life. That's right, Yeah, yep, yeah,

25:31

And I think I learned that. I've

25:33

referenced her from time to time, Pema chodren

25:36

Um her book When Things Fall

25:38

Apart. I learned that letting

25:40

it like just giving myself to that moment,

25:42

because one of the best things I ever learned to do, I think,

25:45

because I feel current with

25:47

things in my life. You know, his

25:50

death didn't bring up all the pain from

25:52

the last dog because I grieved the last

25:55

dog, that's right, you know. And

25:57

the last dog didn't bring up all the grief of

25:59

my marriage or that marriage falling

26:01

apart, because that had been you know, it's and

26:03

I wasn't that way for a large part of my life.

26:06

I think every little thing that happened had,

26:09

you know, a powder keg of emotion

26:11

behind it, just waiting to blow. Yeah, And

26:13

that's the nice things about we can

26:16

we can actually transform

26:18

yep. So another thing

26:20

that you did at the retreat, and

26:22

it's a it's a hand gesture. I can't listeners

26:24

won't be able to see it, but it was a really

26:27

a really useful thought for me. And it was

26:29

something your teacher used to say to you all the time. And she

26:31

would say, less of this, which

26:34

is a clenched fist for listeners, and

26:36

more of this, which is an open

26:39

hand for listeners. So

26:41

talk to me about that in general. And I'm curious,

26:44

is that still one you work with? Sure,

26:46

it's you know, it's another one of those deceptively

26:49

simple teachings and then until

26:51

you start to really kind of contemplate it. And

26:54

I like the physical part of the gesture. I mean, anybody

26:56

listening could put their hand in front of them themselves

26:58

and make a fist and okay,

27:00

that's what it means to hold on. That's how it physically

27:03

feels. And then you let your fists go and

27:05

you open your palm and it's like, okay,

27:07

that's what it feels like to let go, because

27:10

sometimes we literally kind of

27:12

forget it, not in our minds, been in

27:14

our bodies, our bodies like I'm trying

27:16

to do something, but if they don't have a reference

27:18

for what that feels like. But yeah, my teacher

27:21

told me that when I was well

27:23

back to where we started, you know, hundred

27:25

miles an hour gun and for enlightenment with

27:28

everything I had, and I couldn't

27:30

hear that teaching at the time. I

27:32

literally just wasn't in a place where I could

27:34

really hear it and utilize it. But

27:37

I came to it nonetheless, you

27:39

know, I came to it nonetheless because well,

27:41

nothing else works. It's

27:45

pretty simple, right, Going

27:47

through life with with lots of resistance

27:50

just doesn't work. Right. It's

27:53

not fun, it's it's not

27:55

self expressive in any positive sense.

27:57

It doesn't win you better friends. It just it's

28:00

like not workable. Yeah, but you

28:02

know, each one of us has to find that out in

28:04

the grist of our own experience.

28:08

Finding that out isn't always easy, yep,

28:11

you know, because we usually do it through a few

28:13

pretty overwhelming moments. Yep.

28:16

I think that's why I think the serenity

28:18

prayer, I know it's we only hear a short

28:20

part of it is maybe the

28:22

wisest thing I have ever heard, because

28:25

it covers that there's work

28:27

to be done here, and

28:29

there's plenty of times where you can't work you gotta

28:32

And of course then that wisdom is the

28:34

precious gold to tell

28:36

the difference. But I can be on either

28:38

of those extremes. I have an ability

28:40

to be like effort right. Yeah, that's

28:42

not spiritual development, that's not I

28:45

don't know what it is, but it's not a healthy pattern,

28:48

right. So that means I've got to engage

28:50

in the desire to change, you

28:52

know. And then there's plenty of things where letting

28:55

go is clearly the important thing.

28:57

And I had a thought about this, and I think

28:59

it was after you did that and then this,

29:01

and I thought about the phrase letting go, and

29:04

I almost thought that in some cases it

29:07

might be better just to think of let because

29:09

letting go sometimes we can't, right,

29:13

so let go, and I'm trying to

29:15

let go, but it's not going, you

29:18

know, whereas let is sort of like

29:21

okay, yeah, like I like that, you

29:23

know, here it is. If it goes great, If

29:25

it doesn't, okay, but I'm

29:27

not in control of that. You're clear on

29:29

what you can and can't do that. I'll

29:31

often say something very similar to your let,

29:34

which is nice and short, Okay, if you can't

29:36

let it go, can you let it be? Yeah? Can

29:38

you let it be? There? Just that, and

29:41

that's kind of like your it's yeah,

29:43

right, let it Can I do that? Because usually

29:46

if we really honestly look at that

29:48

one, more often than not the answer

29:50

is yeah, I can let it be. And

29:53

then gosh, what would that feel like to let

29:55

it? Because that, to me, that's the crucial step, Like

29:58

what's the sense? What's the feel? So it's

30:00

not intellectual anymore. It's

30:02

like when you unclench your hand, you can

30:04

feel it, it feels different, Yeah, right,

30:07

you don't. It's the kind aesthetic

30:09

experience of that I think is what we need.

30:12

Kudos to your teacher for a very beautiful

30:14

way to look at it, you know, because

30:16

I've been banging a rate in a really tough nut

30:19

there for a while. Yeah,

30:22

your heart, you know, I I can think of plenty

30:25

of times where I was trying to let go with a clenched

30:27

fist, you know, like I knew

30:29

I should let go. I knew

30:31

I would be better off if I let go. I

30:34

just didn't have the ability to do it right. And

30:36

sometimes that's that's the truth, right,

30:39

Yeah, I just can't do it right now. I

30:41

think it's always good to normalize

30:44

that for people, because I think I

30:46

felt like I was failing, you

30:48

know, evolve people,

30:51

spiritual people, people in recovery, they

30:53

let things go, and that's

30:55

not working right now, So I

30:57

must be failing. And you know, I wasn't

31:00

any failing. If there was any failing, it was

31:02

in the being too hard on myself. And

31:04

sometimes failure ends

31:06

up to be the part of triumph.

31:09

Yeah, Like sometimes you just you gotta failure

31:12

way through some stuff. You can't

31:14

do it all like neat and pretty and spiritual.

31:17

Sometimes you just sort of fail your way through

31:19

it. And but

31:22

if you fail your way through something consciously,

31:25

that can actually cause

31:27

a sort of transformation. If

31:30

you fail through something unconsciously

31:32

with nothing but resistance, we tend to not

31:35

transform much much from it. Yeah,

31:37

but I love that that serenity prayer. I think

31:39

that that ability to discriminate

31:43

between what you can do and what you can't

31:45

do. You know, no know

31:47

what you can do, but just important

31:49

to what you can't do. And I think it's really important

31:51

in any kind of spiritual practice that we have

31:53

some real clarity about exactly

31:56

what we can do, exactly what we can do.

32:33

You used to work with students one on one,

32:35

and I know that everybody's different. So

32:38

not asking for a blanket statement,

32:41

but some degree of practice seems

32:43

to be part of the equation or useful

32:46

in the process. Absolutely essential

32:50

cases. In that case, how

32:52

would you think about building

32:54

a practice? You know, what would it consist

32:56

of? How often or how long or Again

32:59

I'm not looking for exact answers maybe as

33:01

so much as a way to think through it. Yeah. Now

33:03

I appreciate the question, Eric, because

33:06

I have thought this because

33:08

my impulses, you know, to try to really

33:11

help people find their own way, and

33:13

so it's to not give direct answers

33:15

to a question like that. And yet

33:18

you know, I've also seen that

33:20

that's not always the best response either, because

33:23

sometimes people just can't find their way. Yeah,

33:26

you know, they just And I think one of the things I've

33:28

learned from working with lots

33:30

of people, you know, in the coaching work I

33:32

do, is that ambiguity is

33:35

the mother of procrastination in

33:38

a lot of cases. Right, if I don't know what

33:40

to do, now, I got to figure out what to

33:42

do and do it. If there's some clarity

33:44

about that first part, then all I have to do is muster

33:46

up the energy to do it, and we get stuck

33:48

in that first part. Right, So for me, I

33:50

would just say, yeah, if somebody wanted to engage

33:53

in this or probably any spiritual teaching,

33:55

but I'll keep it restricted to mind for the moment

33:58

that Yeah, I would suggest that they do some

34:00

meditation every day. I

34:02

would love him to do, you know, at least a half

34:04

an hour morning or evening. If I someone

34:07

said, what's ideal, I do a couple of times

34:09

a day would be ideal. Um,

34:11

don't push it to the sense that you start to

34:13

hate it, however, because you don't want to get a relationship

34:16

with the very notion of meditating as

34:19

something that's arjorous and awful

34:22

and something you don't want to do. I've been

34:24

shaking that off for years while

34:27

for an old Zen guy, it took me for a while

34:29

to like rediscover like, actually sitting

34:31

here can be really really nice. Yeah,

34:33

yeah, it hasn't got to be. It's nicer when

34:36

it's not eighteen hours a day like the Zen folks

34:38

do too. It is well they make, you know,

34:40

get in trouble with Zen folks, but you know, us

34:43

and Zen, we can't make a kind of fetish out

34:45

of meditation. It's

34:47

it's it's the Zen object of worship.

34:50

Yeah, you know. And and part of that is really good

34:52

because at least you're doing something, you're

34:54

not just sitting around talking about it. That

34:57

sense, it's really really good. But when

34:59

it becomes too emphasized, then maybe

35:01

it's not so good. So I think spending

35:03

some time in quiet is really that's the magic. That's

35:06

the magic, that's that's what allows something

35:08

inside of you that you don't have any conscious access

35:11

to, something starts to occur

35:13

within us beyond below

35:16

what we're perceiving. Simply when we're

35:18

sort of intentionally attending

35:21

to a quiet space, there's something

35:23

that happens underneath that. That's very

35:26

spiritually powerful.

35:29

Who knows when it will manifest. But so that's

35:32

pretty easy, right in the sense of to

35:34

tell someone will meditate, try to meditate

35:36

some every day. The other one

35:38

is just as important, but not so easy

35:41

to turn into a formula, because

35:43

that's the kind of the inquiry part.

35:46

And the inquiry can just be taken as sort of

35:48

a tool like this is just

35:50

what I do because it's supposed to be the thing to do,

35:53

or I like to have inquired be a manifestation

35:56

of something more native

35:58

to you. Right. So, if somebody

36:01

comes up and they say I'm working on the question, who

36:03

am I? You know, I often ask them why what

36:06

does the question mean for you? Why are you interested

36:09

in the question? Because I want to see if the

36:11

question is actually there's if

36:14

it's really relevant to them. Um.

36:16

If I do find it's relevant to them, then we have something

36:19

to work with. If not, then we find something

36:21

that is relevant. It's harder to take

36:23

that and make it into a formula, right

36:25

because it's almost like a wonderment at

36:28

being. Yeah, just the

36:30

mere fact of being a kind of a wonderment,

36:32

and that by saying wonderment I don't mean to put

36:35

a spiritual whitewash. It doesn't mean that it's

36:37

always fun to do that.

36:40

You know, at a certain point, when the resistance goes away,

36:42

then it's pretty darn and enjoyable. But I've

36:45

often thought I would love everyone that came to see

36:47

me have had like two or three really good

36:50

years of pretty arduous meditation under

36:52

their belt, and two or three

36:54

really good years in college

36:57

courses that taught them nothing but how to

36:59

think l for themselves. And

37:02

those are kind of polarized opposites. One right,

37:04

it's kind of not thinking, and the other

37:06

one is how to really think very clearly,

37:09

because I think we often don't learn

37:11

that either. An inquiry

37:14

is a way of using your thoughts and

37:16

your perception in a really

37:18

clear and really really precise way. You

37:21

talk about it has to be precise, has

37:23

to be precise. That's why I always orient

37:25

towards Okay, what are you doing here? What do

37:27

you want? Exactly precisely?

37:29

What is this about for you? So

37:32

that's part of it. And yeah,

37:34

if we're gonna get precise, that's the key

37:36

that you have to be precise. You

37:39

know. It's like someone can ask themselves

37:41

like when i'll do this, it retreats. You may

37:43

have seen me do it where I'm working

37:45

with somebody through say who am

37:48

I? And they'll

37:50

go who am I? And they're

37:52

not used to being as precise as I usually

37:55

want them to be, And so I'll say, Okay, what happens when

37:57

you ask that question? Well,

37:59

I don't come up with an answer. No, that's not the first

38:01

thing that happened. What's

38:03

the thing that has the right answer that you know you're

38:05

supposed to arrive at. What what happened

38:08

that caused your mind to say I didn't get

38:10

the right answer? Something was being experienced.

38:13

Well, when I asked myself who was I didn't

38:16

find anything. Okay,

38:18

Now that's interesting, isn't it? But

38:21

all that just that right at the top, that can all

38:23

be missed. If you're not precise who

38:25

am I? I don't know, maybe you have to ask

38:28

the question another hundred thousand times. But

38:30

if you're really precise, you asked the question,

38:32

but you're looking at what that question is

38:35

evoking in your experience. Yeah,

38:38

that's what you're really looking for. What

38:40

is it evoking in my experience? Present

38:42

time? Then there's no future to it. That's

38:45

it. You know, you talked about the ability to think

38:47

very well for themselves. You

38:50

know, one of the things that I've heard

38:52

you stress over and over, and it's one of those things

38:54

that I think can hear it

38:56

deepen and deepening levels. Like I

38:58

think you've said something to the effective spirituality

39:01

is the direct investigation

39:04

of your experience,

39:07

Like we have to be willing to look

39:10

closely for ourselves and

39:12

be willing to trust what we find there,

39:15

even if what we find there isn't

39:17

where we think it should be. Like

39:20

you know, sometimes if I look for myself,

39:23

I think I find something. I

39:25

know the answer is it's not supposed to be there,

39:27

right, So trust in

39:29

that for me has been

39:31

important in going that's what I

39:34

see and feel. Now, I can keep working with it and

39:36

eventually go past it. But if I skip

39:38

that, and I'm certainly not trying to say like I've

39:40

got this figured out in any way,

39:43

I'm just trying to stress the importance

39:45

of trusting ourselves to some extent

39:47

and looking at our experience,

39:50

not yours, not some enlightened

39:52

beings. What's happening with

39:54

me right now? When I ask

39:56

his questions experience,

39:59

when there's a lot of that going on, you know what I mean.

40:02

So I think you're right in the sense of our

40:04

experience is where it's

40:07

at, and it's one of those really simple

40:09

things, right, But when you go to do

40:11

it, you realize it's not so simple at all.

40:14

I'm so used to comparing my experience

40:17

to everything around me that I

40:19

never have my experience for more than like a quarter

40:21

second before I'm comparing it. So

40:25

um, Like you said, if if if

40:27

you were doing this inquiry and you you came

40:29

back and said, a, yeah, I really feel like I'm

40:32

coming up with herself, I would say,

40:34

Okay, well let's explore that. Tell me about

40:36

that, and we dive into that. It

40:39

may sound like because I've done it for

40:41

myself, but I don't necessarily go when I'm

40:43

worth somebody with a preconceived

40:45

idea of what I think they're supposed to see. Whatever

40:49

they see is that's what they see.

40:51

Um. As long as their own experience,

40:53

then we can just keep looking through

40:55

the layers of that. Right. As

40:58

I tell people, the only way to get us

41:00

wrong is to not be ruthlessly

41:02

honest about what's happening in your experience.

41:05

The only way you can get it wrong is to not do that.

41:08

But outside of that, you're

41:11

not getting it wrong. Yeah. Boy,

41:13

is that hard to do for people? Yeah, it brings

41:15

to mind for me how we are

41:17

afraid to be wrong, how

41:20

much we want to have

41:22

the right answer. And also,

41:25

you know, you talk a lot about not turning your authority

41:27

over to someone else. You know, the word spiritual

41:30

teacher has a sense of like

41:33

my teacher, and most of our experiences

41:35

with teachers is you've got to give them

41:37

the right answer when they ask

41:39

a question, there's a right answer. And

41:41

so the very idea of saying

41:44

my experience of that is very different. I

41:46

know what the right answer is because I read the book, but

41:49

I'm not having that experience. And I

41:52

just think that's so hard for us, is to is

41:54

to say I don't know it is or that's

41:56

not what's happening. Well, we've we've mythologized

42:00

the role of the spiritual teacher, which doesn't help us

42:02

out. What do religions do

42:04

with their authority figures. They dressed them up

42:06

to look like kings and queens. That's

42:09

what they do, right, whether it's Christianity

42:12

or Buddhism or whoever it is, you dress

42:15

the authority up as if they're a king and queen,

42:18

and then we wonder why we have

42:20

so much projection going on around Whereas

42:24

having been with my teacher as long as I have been,

42:27

there is something that goes beyond the bounds

42:29

of like say, relating

42:31

to a spiritual teacher is like a college

42:34

professor or something, which I think

42:36

is actually a pretty healthy place to start. Relate

42:39

to your teacher kind of more like that, kind

42:41

of more like if you were in a college. You

42:44

know, over time, you know, my relationship

42:47

part with my teacher became more just

42:50

something. There was a different element that was

42:53

added. It was more like a profound

42:56

combination of respect and gratitude

42:58

got mixed in over time. But

43:00

that was over time, right, It wasn't immediately

43:03

manufactured out of nothing, which would have just

43:05

made it a projection. So

43:08

I think when people initially

43:10

go to teachers, they're probably best

43:12

too. They're going to assume any

43:15

kind of stance something

43:17

more like listening to a college professor, at

43:19

least initially is probably a good idea, yea.

43:22

And to always remember that or be

43:24

aware of that balance between

43:28

you go to a teacher for hopefully

43:31

some wise counsel and advice,

43:34

right, so in that sense, you're open and

43:36

you're available, and maybe you'll even try some

43:38

of it. But the balance

43:41

part is, at the same time, you're

43:44

not pretending like you're a spiritual

43:46

child or infant, right, You're

43:49

you're looking at the advice. You're seeing

43:51

if it seems good and rational and worth

43:53

doing for yourself. And so there's all these many

43:56

decisions that are actually

43:58

getting made all along the

44:00

point I would just say make them consciously.

44:03

Yep, you know, um, because

44:05

there's just the thing where we make

44:08

spiritual teachers like kings and queens.

44:10

It does not serve awakening.

44:14

It just doesn't It doesn't

44:16

help, yep, you know, it just doesn't

44:18

help. And it makes people, of course very vulnerable

44:21

to replaying whatever unhealthy

44:23

relational patterns they've had in their life. Yeah,

44:25

they'll tend to do it with their teacher. It's been

44:28

a long time since Martin Luther did

44:30

what he did, right, But it was that you, the

44:33

regular people, have access

44:35

to the Word of God yourself. You

44:37

can read the book. You don't have to go through

44:39

these people. Um right,

44:42

excellent. Well, let's wrap this up for part one,

44:45

and when we come back, more questions

44:47

about practice and self inquiry m

45:00

M. If

45:05

what you just heard was helpful to you, please

45:08

consider making a donation to The One You Feed

45:10

podcast. Head over to one you Feed

45:12

dot net slash support. The

45:15

One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely

45:17

thank our sponsors for supporting the show