Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 350: Mirabai Starr

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

Mirabai Starr, speaker and brilliant author of Wild Mercy, joins the DTFH! You can find more info on Mirabai and purchase links for Wild Mercy on her website. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace (use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site). This episode is also brought to you by Instacart ($10 off your first order when you use code DUNCAN at checkout).

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Washing dishes at a chili's on Tunnel Road. Once in Asheville, North Carolina, I was on so many mushrooms with my friend. We thought there were vampires. We went to the Blue Ridge Mall and talked about the vampire situation. When I look back, I think, holy shit. The podcast is starting.

Do you feel it? It's happening. And on two fuels are connecting your consciousness. Begin, DTFH, now. We, ah, damn it. I left the filter on. Ah. Greetings to you, my beautiful sweeties.

We got a fantastic podcast for you today. Mirabai Star is here with us. I encountered Mirabai initially at the Ramdas retreats that I go to. She's a fantastic speaker. She's an author. She's written a lot of great books. Most recently, she's got a bestseller out

called Wild Mercy. We're going to jump right into this episode. But first, Squirrels. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by the Miracle Workers over at Squarespace.com. If you want to wash your eyeballs in some sacred light, head over to dunkitrustle.com. And there you will see a Squarespace website,

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But when you realize the beauty of Squarespace and you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan and you will get 10% off your first order of a domain or a website. Once again, that's squarespace.com forward slash Duncan. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Duncan to get 10% off your first order of a domain or a website. Thank you, Squarespace.

We also have a wonderful Patreon located at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. If you want commercial free episodes of the podcast and once a month, an extra hour of rambling stuff, then please subscribe over at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. And we have a shop located at DuncanTrussell.com. Lots of cool stuff in it. OK, without further ado, I would

like to welcome to the DTFH for the first time the brilliant Mirabai Star, who has written a fantastic book, Wild Mercy. All the links you need to find Mirabai will be located at DuncanTrussell.com. And now please welcome to the DTFH Mirabai Star. It's been DuncanTrussell, thank you. Thank you so much for I mean, I have a good

background in culture and, and I wanted to talk to you, like um, you're not in a state of Philadelphia, it's just like a lot of my families have been listening to your podcasts and I know that the caliber of people you have on the show is really amazing and also the topic, you know, is often

connected to mind altering substances and maybe that's not so much my, you know, what I have to offer. So I, I appreciate you making space for whatever happens in our conversation. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and it is a joy to read this book while Mercy, for me for a few

different reasons. One, I lost my mother and so I have really enjoyed connecting to her through her book because this is the kind of book she would have loved and I feel her in your writing and two, because watching my wife with the baby has been one of the most profoundly illuminating experiences I've ever had

and I love conspiracies. But for me suddenly to just bear witness to what I, for lack of a better word, I think you could call a conspiracy, which is that somehow this aspect of life, breastfeeding, birth, it takes a secondary position or has taken a secondary position in just about everything. It's, it's when I, you,

in the very beginning of the book you talk about the lifting of the veil in certain moments where it's like you're, now you're in a whole, you're in a new reality, you're in a new sort of, to me what feels like an intentionally censored space, which we know, watching my wife as she is laboring and feeling the energy in the room

and feeling the circle of ancestors that you write about in this book and feeling that sense of like, wait, this is it, but I, this is not what I thought it was and realizing this is the mother, I'm experiencing the connection to the mother and somehow as a guy, I just never, it's embarrassing to say I just didn't

spend a lot of time thinking about moms. If anything, you become a teenager, like give me away from my mom. And so I wondered if we could start off and thank you for letting me do this rather long introduction to my question. I wonder if we could start off by me reading a little passage from your book from,

it's on page 117 and it's the chapter called Sheltering, it's quite short but I thought it could be a good starting off point. Perfect, let's do it. The great mother holds you even as you hold your son or daughter. When you feel incapable of making the next decision or even taking the next breath,

you will turn to that mother, you'll lay your head in her lap, unburden your heart and listen for her guidance and then warm to beside her hearth, you will go back into the forest and pick up your baby and continue your journey. Tell me about the great mother. Oh Duncan.

I feel like I want to ask you questions. What's funny of this impulse is arising to have a real conversation and the interesting conversation partner in this pair is you. And yeah, so first of all, bless this birth of your baby boy and the new relationship

and landscape that you've entered with your wife and bless your broken heart in losing your mother. So I just have to say all that first. Thank you. So the great mama, sometimes it's hard for people to even

get their heads and hearts around the concept of a divine mother because their relationships with their own moms might not have been so great and so it's not really where we go. Well, I have a great mom so it's easy enough for me to go there but I have definitely encountered

other people, men and women and people of all genders who struggle with the mom thing. And so I have begun to expand my whole concept and experience of the sacred feminine to be sister, lover, dear friend. Like it doesn't just have to be mother.

But yes, there is some way in which even if you had a mom that wasn't really there for you, this great mama of the universe is. And I think that we can all find an access point to her. And there is something about this great mother energy

that has been you right. You said it earlier just sidelined. I don't know how you said it but that is true that the feminine has been intentionally covered over by all the world's religions and all the other human communities, not just spiritual traditions but politics, the arts, all the intellectual

pursuits, sciences, everywhere. And so it requires this kind of excavation and it did for me with this book Wild Mercy because I am looking at women's wisdom, feminine wisdom across the spiritual traditions and you think that would be relatively easy to find. I thought it would have been after a lifetime

engaged in multiple spiritual paths and it isn't because there is something so powerful about this ma energy, this feminine transmission, this wisdom that it has been really threatening to the dudes in charge. But she is like right there, completely

accessible when we turn to her. And the thing about this mother energy is that she is ultra compassionate of course unconditionally loving, yes, forgiving merciful, filled over flowing with loving kindness. Yes, all of those attributes belong

to this great mother. And she is also a little scary like Kali. She is fiercely protective. She doesn't put up with any bullshit. She is a ferocious truth teller when truth needs to be told. She speaks out against injustice anywhere and everywhere she sees it.

And she is not that fond of rules and regulations. And so when you are in a situation that has been controlled by the masculine mind where everything has its place and there is a right answer and there are boundaries and prescribed rituals this feminine vastness is really subversive.

Yeah, it is. I think right now there is a sort of anger, a Kali energy that people are feeling and I understand it and I wonder how

it is. Not that individually I am responsible for the repression of feminine mystical traditions or the feminine mystical voices. I think a lot of us are realizing we don't get to decide when you fuck up

when someone stops being angry. You don't get to do that. But I just think this is like thousands of years of this level of intentional suppression of the feminine voice in relation to everything but it is covering the mystical side of it.

How long do you think the anger lasts or will it ever go away? Is there a time when people realize how tragic that is? Secondly, is there ever going to be a time when women stop being angry about that?

I don't think we have gotten to the point of that part yet. It is kind of terrifying to consider. And Kali is a really good example of this fierce feminine energy that you are talking about. But Kali is also an example of probably the most culturally appropriated Hindu deity

by progressive white spiritual people like me. And one of the things that I am constantly trying to stay aware of Duncan is my own impulse to help myself to the spiritual treasures of all the world's religious traditions

because I can. And to continuously disarm my heart and deconstruct my concepts so that I can meet these great wisdom teachings from a vulnerable, naked, open space and not with my own preconceived ideas of how those great transmissions can serve me.

And so Kali is one of them. But here is the thing I am getting about Kali in relation to this anger issue. Is that Kali is ferocious, yes. She wields a sword dripping with blood. She is wearing a necklace of severed skulls and her hair is matted. Her skin is blue black and glistening.

She has blood dripping from her teeth. A skirt of severed arms around her waist. And she is not pretty. She is really scary. But what we forget about Kali is that she is the ultimate unconditionally loving ma. Transmutation of the poisons.

And she takes it all in and she transmutes it into what? Hold on. One second. Are you there? Hang on. For some reason you stopped coming through my headphones. Speaking of one second. Sorry, I'm not sure what happened. Sorry. Let me just make sure this is the first time I use Zoom.

It's a little thing that I think was my headphones. Let me just pause this. I apologize. You are bullseyeed. Something I've been massively confused about forever. So we're going to jump right back into Kali in two seconds. I just want to absolutely make sure that something didn't glitch here. This is the first order of groceries. You don't have to suffer at the grocery store anymore.

You can get groceries delivered to your house in less than an hour. Remember that's Africa Duncan. And you'll get $10 off your first order. So this is the thing with Kali. And I have some of friends who are Kali devotees. And I still I can't understand

where the love is in all that and the skirt of arms. Though I do think it's beautiful and amazing. Something about the wrathful feminine energy demonstrated in that way. It's terrifying. And I have a friend who told me the more you think about it and the more you devote yourself to the more beautiful she becomes.

You know it's funny Duncan while we were talking about this and just in a little pause here I just opened my book Wild Mercy at Random and guess what I turned to? What's that? The section on Kali. So can I just read you a paragraph and see if it

maybe speaks to this? That would be great. To the love. Actually a couple of paragraphs because Rhonda's is in it. So Kali would do anything for the liberation of her beloved children. And so she smites the enemies of sorrow and delusion. She eats our too muchness and spits out

our not enoughness. And then she gets it to Kali. You really want to wake up? Ask her to awaken you. Irritable and moody, selfish and sluggish Kali will relieve you of your burden. Call on her. Come on, remove this obstacle and open the way. But according to my lifelong friend and mentor Ramdas

another feminine mystic in the body of a man you better mean it. Ramdas is talking about Kali's transformational teachings from his Guru, Neem Purali Baba in India. With Maharaj's blessings Ramdas, okay I'm just talking about now what Ramdas brought to America. But to go on with Kali, whatever you give to Kali Ramdas taught me

she will receive. And if you weren't quite ready she will come and take it anyway. Her sword will slice you to ribbons. Her fire will burn you to ashes. She loves you, but the opposite is also true. Just as the feminine cannot be limited by attributes of gentleness neither is Kali exclusively fierce.

There is an exquisite tenderness in this goddess of liberating change. Fire doesn't only burn it softens and melts that which is hardened and stuck. I think about Kali's transformational fire that is like when Maharaj said that a saint's heart melts like butter

more than that it melts when anybody else's heart comes near the fire. And I think that's Kali it's this exquisite tenderness also it's just what can I do to take away your pain and suffering so that you can be fully present and with your heart wide open.

And that Duncan is what leads me to respond to your question about the anger of women and how long does this fire need to burn? And I think that maybe one of the things that we've been missing because I too have been angry all of a sudden really pissed off at men for all the ways

that harm has been perpetuated in this world. And lately I've begun to realize that I need to be able to feel that anger in my open heart. If I can stay connected to my heart and keep my heart open in hell as Ramdas used to say then healing can happen.

If I only stay in my opinionated mind about all the harm that has been done then there's never going to be healing for me or anyone around me. So I keep coming back to that heart space which doesn't mean that I'm not angry in the face of injustice at all. It's not a spiritual bypass

but it is a continual homecoming that makes room. The heart is vast is what I've noticed and so there's boundless space to contain it all the anger and also the hope and the tenderness and that exquisite vulnerability that's also characteristic of the feminine.

Wow, yeah well you know the vastness of the heart reminds me of your chapter on believe St. Teresa and within that you are talking about her discovery of this interior spaciousness or an interior castle and what I love that you did

in this book and I don't know why right now I have a problem with non-dualists it's like the nerdiest thing to be irritated by but and for the non-duals out there forgive me well you understand because you are me so you can't really get to it.

But you know I love the way that you broke down the sort of I don't know what the word for it is when you find yourself around someone who feels how did you put it you basically I'm gonna try to I'm gonna this isn't what you wrote but essentially this like hierarchy of

there's non-dualism and then if you're a duelist you're deluded I think that's what you said in the book it was beautiful whatever you said it was wonderful which is this stuffy snobbiness in relation to people who have decided to be devoted to some person or a god this or a god or a path boxy you've you're on your own enjoy it kid eventually you'll wake up

right and then you said that in your opinion the divine feminine is all about embodiment and it made me think are you saying that there's some kind of implied misogyny and non-dualism I think wow I've never nailed it like that but yes I think there is you want me to respond to that yes please

okay wow that's very very insightful way of putting it Duncan right so the non-dual philosophy because it is a philosophy Advaita Vedanta an ancient philosophical system from Hinduism one of the streams and it basically states that

we are one with Brahman it says in the Upanishads that thou art that there is no separation between god and self and any sense of separation is an illusion and our task is to wake up to our essential unity with God which is wonderful I can totally buy that the problem is it has become really kind of crusty and entrenched

non-dualism has become very dualistic in the sense that it asserts that anyone who actually cultivates a devotional relationship with the beloved god as other is missing the point because there's nowhere to go and nothing to do because we are already there and

we are essentially the same that which we seek the truth about the devotional path seems to be however that because devotion bhakti yoga is about love love opens the heart but it also melts the boundaries of the heart so if I'm having an intensely loving moment

with the divine through chanting kirtan or sitting in silence or walking in nature or making love with my beloved human and all the many ways looking into the eyes of my baby then what happens very naturally in those love spaces is the boundaries

start to thin and dissolve and we actually experience our oneness with all that is philosophical notion or set of beliefs to adhere to it's a living reality that embodiment and the seeming separation of different bodies becomes the holy ground

where spirit pours into matter and we discover the divine in each other and then we forget from these beautiful gorgeous fleeting moments that we are separate hmm yeah wow

I wonder if there's something that the problem is that there's this imbalance happening there well first of all number one the non dual thing it's kind of easier in a weird way

to be everything because in the any human relationship there's this turbulence that can happen that emerges and so it would be easier to be everything all at once this thing that you're I keep thinking what would a world

what would this world look like if everyone read your book and suddenly this shift actually did happen where we did move into a world that was more feminine that didn't think bad things about the mother sitting in a hotel room window

at the Bates or motel room window you know what I mean and where the relationship with the mother had been somehow healed so that when you hear the idea of the mother being the way into the heart of compassion or you didn't even cringe you never met my mom you have no idea but so what does your world look like

how does this not your world our world but this world where the divine feminine suddenly became part of popular culture and became something that men didn't immediately recoil from because a lot of my friends I think if I even said the word divine feminine around them they might puke in front of me you know like divine feminine

go back to your yoga studio what are you talking about you know this is like the world that we're in that you know the divide is quite big well and I feel a little pukey too sometimes when people just spout this spiritual mumbo jumbo including the language around the divine feminine

because it's just another concept that becomes a commodity to over consume we can even just like jettison the whole word divine and just speak about the feminine which is why it's very nature sacred and then we can get around those divides but to actually come back to your question about misogyny the thing

about the masculine way of doing spirituality for millennia across the world's religious traditions has been about transcending the body right that the masculine spiritual path is about seeing the body and the earth as illusions to be transcended whether it's Maya

or in you know Christianity that there's that the rigors of prayer practices are all about beating the body into purification and purifying and perfecting and the feminine doesn't get that so if we come back to that whole non duality thing

that's very much about seeing embodiment as illusion because embodiment is separation right here we are in these separate bodies on this planet with all of its dramas and it must all be all be illusion other spiritual practices catapult us out of this realm of form into some sublime stratosphere

presumably where we are all one and so what that does of course is it leaves the feminine experience in the dust a woman's reality is so much about embodiment but not just women people of all genders are grappling with this absence of of the affirmation

of the sacredness of our human experience and we're all heirs to this kind of bullying spiritual bullying about purification and perfection which is why we think there's always something wrong with us that we're too much or we're not enough and so women's experience is even more I think embodied

than a typical dude's experience he might be more comfortable with this whole idea of non duality and transcendence of the body but what it does is it opens up women to all kinds of abuse really psychological and emotional if not physical and it has probably been responsible

for the climate catastrophe and what's happened to the earth herself and I say herself very intentionally because if we can cultivate this intimate personal relationship with the earth as a cherished relative and fall in love with her again then there's no way we could

use and abuse her you have to man this is crazy to achieve a kind of consciousness within which you're cool with strip mining you definitely can't look at the earth as being anything more than some kind of accidental blob of exploitable matter floating in the middle of space then

if you want to dehumanize a person then you want to do the same thing you know amalgam of like traits or whatever but they're mostly there for my whatever my pleasure to be controlled subverted subdued, herded it's so wild legislated

the thing is my wife and I were having a I guess you call an argument and I don't know if you've ever heard of this but she was pointing out you can leave and be gone for more than a few hours because you don't have to you're not breastfeeding the baby

and within that for men maybe genetically I don't know how many people listening or fathers or mothers but there is all this room to sort of disconnect from the reality of having someone who truly depends on you

like truly truly truly depends on you which is this little baby they have to have milk and they grew inside of you and they're part of you and they love you more than anything so yeah that experience I think I mean would you say that there's no way for a guy to experience that in the sense that I will never

breastfeed I will never have to transform some part of my diet and the milk to give to a baby that's I can't do it and I won't feel that level of being away from the baby and knowing if I don't get back the baby doesn't get milk so this creates in my mind is there a like Dejevary Dune

is this like the that place where only women can go like a walled garden that is completely inaccessible so that all is men we can do is kind of like thing hmm well I guess I sort of understand what this means about the feminine and all this and the connection to the earth and the celebration is the beautiful duality

the sacred duality and the ability to nurture and care but man I I'll never really know it no I don't think that Duncan I really don't I mean for all the people who are listening who are not mothers and never will be either because you're a woman who hasn't had a biological child because you chose not to

or because you were unable or because you're a man or because you're a non-binary gendered person that doesn't have any intention of doing that I don't want you to feel left in the cold from this conversation I mean I think that biological females have a felt

sense of sacred commitment that is available to us maybe a little more directly than other people do but I for one Duncan am an adoptive mother so my children I adopted my two daughters and then I married someone who had three daughters and so I co-raised five girls

and none of them grew in my body or suckled from my body that I deeply connected to them and my daughter who died Jenny was as close to me as any human being has ever been even as more than my own mother who I'm incredibly close to whose body I did grow in

so I think it's important to say that I also want everyone to be aware that when I'm speaking about a feminine spirituality I'm speaking about the thirst for that that's in all of us men are just as much yearning for feminine wisdom and the feminine voice

and a feminine way of accessing the holy here in the world as women are and I think are really ready for it like right now I'm doing a podcast interview and most of the podcasts I've done so this book's been out for four months it's in its fourth printing by the way in four months and I've done many interviews

and the majority of them have been with men and with white men who are the pinnacle of privilege in this world supposedly and what I'm noticing is that these men who have been interviewing me are incredibly vulnerable and are getting out of the way and centering the voices of women

in a really intentional way not to dispense their alms on us poor women because it's our turn but really deeply listening and trying to see what they can do to rearrange the power structure so that the feminine can be centered for a time just as people of color who have been marginalized by our accidental

unconscious racism as white people often really well meaning progressive white people like me don't realize the way we perpetuate racism by virtue of just our access to privilege and so I'm seeing white people wake up to their privilege and I'm seeing men wake up to that imbalance of power

that has done such harm not only to women but to men as well let me just address something very quickly I'm sorry if I didn't mean to create some kind of reproductive like I don't know race where you're only winning if you've got some little baby sucking milk out of you for me it's more like a sense

of like loss like a sense of like holy shit this is a place I don't know how to get to and I don't mean press feeding though I would love to do what that feels like I mean literally like a sense of I mean imagine walking into a library and you've never even heard of a book and it's like what is it I can't get to it

it's really tough for me to get to connect with a feminine and to have an authentic conversation with I think that that energy in the world and I think it sucks I wish I could but when I look at myself and I think about my relationships I'm mostly friends

with guys I I don't know like I feel like I've just sort of ended up or am or privileged my way in or I don't know all the best way to describe it but it's just a feeling of like I'm reading this book and just feeling really cut off and afraid to even talk about it with you because it's not exactly the coolest thing to say

and but just that this sense of like man like whatever this this is it's a it's a few floors up from where I'm at right now I hear what you're saying and I don't totally believe you because I don't think you would have been willing to have this conversation with me

if it wasn't somehow something that you deeply connect with look I think that what we're talking about Duncan is as simple as just accepting that the body is holy because it's the place where spirit meets matter and you get that it's about not disparaging

feelings and emotions you know like a lot of religions have done that even my beloved Ramdas who is my lifelong mentor friend I was with Ramdas when I was 15 and I got the message about the witness you know cultivating the witness who is kind of watching the whole show or what Ramdas calls melodrama of life

but is not caught by it and it's taken me years so I was 15 when I hooked up with Ramdas and followed him around started following him around and I just turned 58 so it's taken me decades to tease out some of the messages the unconscious

not misogynistic exactly but body denying messages in my most beloved spiritual lineage I've got many spiritual lineages I'm Jewish and I feel connected to my Jewish roots I'm deeply connected to a number of Sufi traditions I've been a translator of the Spanish mystics who are Christian mystics

and you know I have a Buddhist meditation practice so I'm all over the place spiritually promiscuous as the way I've always described myself and I'm having to really discern as I do this work now with feminine wisdom what the messages are that oppress and make our human experience wrong

so there's like beautiful value in cultivating a witness consciousness so that we don't get caught in believing everything we think I'm all for that mindfulness practice is a powerful tool for waking up and stepping up but if we use it subtly

to disparage our human experience then all we're doing is perpetuating these patriarchal structures that say the real world God lies beyond everything that we experience in the human condition rather than

it's all available right here so we can keep our hearts open whoa this is so in such a mind blowing conversation it's like we've like this is probably the wrong way to put it it's really forgive me you know anyone listen I'm just trying to be very honest about all this

and not try to seem like it would be easy to say the right thing it feels like pornography and the consumption of pornography and the addiction to it that many people have it reminds me of what you're saying

in the sense that when you're watching this you have to get out of your head that this is a person that these are people you have to like imagine that you dehumanize and that the thing starts and then it ends and that's it and it feels like people are doing that with the planet which is like it's not a thing it's not a thing

or definitely with women and certainly it's so much easier for me to meditate on the non-existence of a fundamental identity and to imagine that there is this kind of phantasmal attachment to a sort of vaporous and permanent

series of habituations called myself then to think no I'm actually a self I'm a me and there's a world and I'm interacting with it and it's primary to whatever this other lofty bullshit is and it's just easier because it hurts to feel

it hurts to be vulnerable it hurts to deal with all the pain you may have caused in your life it hurts to deal with like not being a good son and so it's easier to just be like I'm just a little wisp of God's and it's just like a sensation of some junk and flavored vape smoke and whatever head shop

God's hanging out in and so like this to me I don't know this is the wall I run into is anytime I do get to the point where I start really feeling the feels I shut down I don't want it I would love to want it I would love to be that person but it's like no way after my mom passed in the car

and oh no she hadn't passed she had she was we were just driving in the car she was very close to her and we both wanted to cry and I start crying a little and then my brother starts crying he's like we're not going to do that we're not doing that right now and I'm like I'm not doing that right now and I think I've been not doing that for my whole life

to stop not doing that and maybe that's why these ideas are so like hard for some of us who've been taught that's the way to be a God yeah oh I know it must be so hard I totally hear that and I don't know I don't know what to say you know except that

there are boundless opportunities to feel the feels and so you know you are doing it right now as a new father that heart exploding territory that you're showing up for and so the thing I think that often scares us about this embodied

spirituality is that if we've been conditioned to think that being a spiritual person and I really don't think you suffer from this illusion Duncan but a lot of people do men and women people out of all genders if we have this idea that to be spiritual means a certain set of attributes that like character traits

that we're supposed to have for instance equanimity and boundless generosity and compassion and it's always about the other person and never about ourselves if we have all of these ideas about what it means to be spiritual or enlightened then we're gonna think that we're a constant fuck up everything about us will be too much or not enough

and there's something about feminine wisdom that I feel invites us to accept our messiness, our brokenness, our unskillfulness all the ways that we don't measure up to that patriarchal idea of a saint and just light them on fire and be with what is I just came back from a small intimate

wild mercy retreat, I've been doing these wild mercy retreats all over the place and they're usually women it is true who come together circles of women and we spend a couple of days together and go deep into this stuff and speaking about the paradoxes that are inherent in the feminine way of being the feminine is really comfortable with ambiguity

whether it's a woman or a man or a person of any gender the feminine space is one that doesn't have a problem with not knowingness radical unknowing is okay with her she lives in mystery that is the feminine ocean environment and so paradoxes are perfectly fine like Kali being

ferocious and absolutely unconditionally loving, of course they're all true and so like the title of my book, Wild Mercy mercy evokes this kind of meekness but it's not, mercy is wild and powerful the subtitle of the book is

living the fierce and tender wisdom of the women mystics so the fierce and tender is the terrain of the feminine and this weekend together we're talking about how we can hold these seeming paradoxes of knowing and not knowing for instance it's like the two wings of the bird

and the love and the wisdom and loving kindness you need both to fly what tumbled out of my mouth is that the feminine is about a mighty vulnerability and I think that really sums up what I'm talking about here it's not weak it's mighty and yet it is broken open

and it breaks when our heart when our heart to break is when that openness well when it's potentially available wow that just is beautiful but man it sure sucks you could anything but that

like any it's not dramatic here but it's like you know lately with my practice and working with David Nicktern and reading some Trump of Rinpoche and getting to this idea of the warrior being broken hearted and being not a numb emotionless John Wayne thing but

feelings so fully being so present and never ending sort of beautiful lonely heartbreak happening and within that you radiate out from that place but that is of course that's the ticket price

it's just so annoying because it's inviting you for people like me I don't know why I ended up like this but it's like asking you to jump into rocks it's saying listen you're just going to have to do it you've got it that's because of the conditioning you've received as a dude that you have to do it alone like ride solo and slay your dragons

and the thing about the feminine wisdom and heart is it says yes we get to show up for the full catastrophe here and we don't have to do it alone no one is going to let you fall on rocks because you're going to be held by this net of of interbeing that's called love

because we are we all belong to it we belong to each other and so you're not exiled and banished to this dude land of you know the singular prophet who as I say in my book rides off on its horse and sings ballads that he wrote about himself you don't have to do that we can only do this this together we can only

navigate the land of the broken heart together you know I have this I can't get this out of my head my son has just started doing this thing where after breastfeeding he like clamps on Aaron's nipple and he stopped

but he was doing this for a bit and then just pulling back like her nipples are just a rubber band and then looking at me with this like smile not a sinister smile he just like loves everything about nipples it's the milk it's mom it's milk it's warm it's love and then looking at my wife

and just seeing the patience I'm not saying she wasn't hurt yeah seeing this level of patience that is for me so heartbreaking because I can't go that may there's no mom for me to call yeah like thank you oh I had no idea and I just didn't I never I was too dim

and then you're walking down the street and every single person you see regardless of gender had a mom and then you realize like oh my god the whole thing is being supported by this energy that is so patient that it would without hesitation die yeah for the child and so

that to me is as this realization keeps popping into my head when I can't really smash it down is gotta be one of the most heartbreaking epiphanies I've ever had in my life yeah that's beautiful well I think that this experience of

being supported that I'm suggesting belongs to the land of the feminine is is what enables us to be present to the pain of the world and let it in because it's not just ours to carry and I think that the injustices that are unfolding across

the human community and in the earth in relation to the way the earth has been treated could not possibly happen if we connect with our own all of us men women people of all genders our own feminine soul and allow our ourselves to feel the pain to take it in to gather it like the mother gathers the child

into her broad laugh and let ourselves feel it together and then if you feel the pain of the world you have to step up and act like how could you see someone you love suffering even if it's strangers in Ohio or El Paso or Rwanda but if they're all us

and the nature of this whole fucking mess is love then we love them and we have to act on their behalf and we're not doing it to be nice or to be good progressive people we're doing it because it's the impulse the spontaneous impulse of the heart

it's just I got you this math is from my I went I'm a doctor from the University of Bro science and this math checks out from where from my school but I don't know how to not be cynical about it because I think but I think that so many people

and because we're talking about masculine versus feminine I think a lot of guys have a lot of guilt and a lot of sense of just like I just it's too late from if I spend the smallest amount of time going into that I don't know what you would call it the sub basement the next that realm like inside the secret door inside

the massive iron lung thing that you created around your heart if I go into that thing I'm done I'm done I will no longer be effective as a person but worse than that I'll just have to face it you know I think of like in name think of any powerful authoritarian male figure

in history or existing now and imagine that moment of having like Joseph Stalin or Hitler or Mao you there's many out there right now I mean sit and come to terms with the reality that every single person that they murdered does had a mom right

you just could you can't it's it's the reason I feel cynical is I just don't know how this beautiful idea that you have becomes actionable in a from from for us for us guys for the guys out there maybe you're a sensitive guy who's like heart is completely open or something but like I just

how is it actionable how do we do it I'm sorry to do the most I guess masculine thing which is like okay what do we do do because the masculine paradigm is kind of mechanistic and let's let's fix this busted gizmo right now yeah so I think that there's this fear

of death like if I go there you know I as a dude with a certain amount of privilege maybe I'm white maybe I'm educated then if I go into that sphere of feeling the pain of the world in every cell of my body like a woman does with the pain of her child

then I'm going to die I can't I can't survive that that's kind of what I was hearing behind your question like I can't do that I'll die and so that is true you will die that's what I want to say to anyone who's willing to show up for this kind of dis disarming of the heart it if you disarm the heart that means you're not armed

that means the sword can pierce you and my response to that is yes that is correct that is what disarming is about and that death is a try an utter transformation like right now that I feel that the peril to the planet is so great that mass extinction

is a distinct possibility and all I know is that my task is to keep showing up being present keeping my heart open keeping my sense of humor intact eating well and sleeping well and exercising so that my vessel is as sturdy as it could be for whatever it is

that's going to be required of me and that maybe there is a kind of global dark night of the soul that's descending in which everything that we thought was the way things are is not going to be that way anymore that it's going to come undone and we can only bear witness

with love and try to tend each other as these massive planetary changes unfold and to keep showing up with our hearts open and to keep loving and tending each other because this is real and injustice is a thing it's not an illusion it's required of us

to tend each other not just as broken gizmos that are busted and need to be figured out mechanistically but as part of this web of interbeing that we all belong to Wow I am so lucky that I get to have these conversations thank you so much for your time

and you've given me so much to think about and this book has given me so much to think about you're a brilliant, brilliant writer and it's like you, McKenna you know reading this book you hit these harmonics or something that make me swoon in this weird way

like when I was reading Terrence McKenna you feel like Jesus did I eat mushrooms? What is this? somehow you've done with this book you've managed to really capture something magical and it makes sense after chatting with you and this way you're brilliant so thank you so much Mirabai and if you could please let the listeners

know where they can find you just my name Mirabai Star so it's mirabaistar.com thank you so much beautiful thank you so much and I hope we get to talk again soon oh I hope so too thank you Duncan blessings on you and your beautiful family

thank you very much best to you and your family and I'll see you around take care bye thanks for listening everybody big thanks to Mirabai for appearing on this episode thanks for sponsoring us we'll be back real soon if you like us give us a nice rating subscribe I love you and I'll see you in the steam room Hare Krishna

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