Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 379: Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman, two of the great teachers of mindfulness and meditation in the world today, join the DTFH! You can find more info on Jack & Trudy's meditation classes on their individual sites, JackKornfield.com and TrudyGoodman.com. You can also find further info and classes on InsightLA.org. Duncan's new show, The Midnight Gospel, debuts April 20th on Netflix! Created by Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time) and produced by Titmouse Studios (pretty much every cool cartoon from the last 15 years). This episode is brought to you by: Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site.

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Super cute and extra affordable. Check out the latest in-store, and we're never short on options at jcp.com. All dressed up, everywhere to go. JCPenney. Ah, hello, my sweet pandemic friends. I hope you're hanging in there. As time progresses, I've noticed that I'm becoming

increasingly tweaked at weird moments. Sometimes I feel fine. Sometimes I realize that two days have passed, and it's actually been a couple of hours. Time's all warped and wobbled right now. A lot of us are feeling a bizarre undulation between states of extreme panic, claustrophobia, and downright boredom of the most vicious poisonous

and vile variety. We might be in a situation where we're living with people that we normally don't see as much as we do, and we're experiencing some kind of satanic friction. We might be understanding what Jean-Paul Sartre meant when he said, hell is other people, or we might be completely alone in the frigid wasteland of our apartments or empty homes experiencing

a frothing kind of pandemic-induced horniness with no one or nothing to help us release all that vast, powerful, almost nuclear sexual energy. My friends, the planet is in a weird time period right now, and it's during these times that we most certainly owe a gigantic thank you to all those folks who are right now out there on the front lines. And by those folks, I'm talking about the drug dealers

who are fearlessly delivering. I'm just kidding, making a dumb joke. I guess in a weird way they are drug dealers, the doctors, the nurses, the clinicians, the delivery drivers, the people who are working at the Walgreens and the Rouse and whatever your grocery store happens to be. The people working in the Amazon warehouses,

and if I missed you, I am so deeply sorry, whoever you are that's out there making a living and making money so you can feed your family while simultaneously putting yourself at risk of inhaling the doom cough of some unwitting host of a brand new virus. We are eternally indebted to you, and if I were the grand emperor of planet Earth,

which one day I intend to be, I would give every single one of you beautiful silver medallions and special magical crowns that instantaneously evaporated your morning hangovers or made it so that you could actually have an orgasm in the midst of a high-powered ecstasy trip. I would do everything I could for you, but because I'm not capable of those things

and have not yet risen to the throne of glory, which one day I hope to rise to or at least my great conquering sun will rise to, so at last I can have vengeance on my enemies and bring my friends great fast swaths of land across the planet, which we will rename after characters from the Dark Tower series. The best I can do is offer you conversations

like the one on this podcast with Jack Cornfield and Trudy Goodman. They are on their own kind of front lines and right now, because they have not just talked the talk, but walked the walk for decades when it comes to meditation, mindfulness and spirituality, they have the incredible ability to alchemize all of my neurotic fear, panic and general anger

and anxiety that seems to be resulting from this particular global pandemic that we all find ourselves stuck within. This is one of my favorite podcasts and one of my favorite conversations that I've ever had and if anything speaks to what happens if you dedicate yourself to an actual, authentic spiritual practice,

it's these two's ability to gracefully and instantaneously ease fear and panic and to somehow simultaneously give me and whoever's lucky enough to get to chat with them, the fuel necessary to give ourselves a break because come on everybody, how are you supposed to be actin' normal right now in a situation that seems to be mirroring

the book of revelations? Is it the end of the world? No, I don't think so, but sometimes my mind thinks so if that makes any sense at all and this conversation that you're about to listen to certainly eased a lot of the weirdness and wobbliness that I've been feeling gave me some pragmatic tools

that I've been using ever since I had this chat to deal with those moments where it feels like a horrific abyss has opened up inside of my body which my ass is getting sucked into. If you've been feeling any version of that, then I think you will benefit from listening to this great conversation with Jack Cornfield

and Trudy Goodman. We're gonna jump right into it right after this. Much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. If you wanna let your eyes look into something so beautiful it's been compared to the contents of the Ark of the Covenant currently housed beneath the Vatican,

then go no further than dunkintrustle.com and you will see a Squarespace website. That's right, every single time I upload one of these episodes, I use Squarespace to do the job. They've got everything you need and what better time than during a global pandemic to start on the website for your business or to refine that pulsating pile

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I actually took money from people to help them build websites. I shouldn't have done that. I was using my small knowledge of HTML meeting a lot of hubris and desperation and the result is I sullied the internet with some half-baked websites that honestly I should refund the money

of the people that I took it from. I don't know what they use to make websites anymore because I don't need to know because I use Squarespace and Squarespace is flawless and seamless. It will build a website that will size to any phone or device out there. It will build a website with shopping cart functionality

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some sweat encrusted garment that you could put for purchase on your brand new Squarespace website. Also you don't just have to build a website for business. The internet is a kind of eternal digital canvas upon which you can paint anything you want. You wanna make a website for your friends to comfort them during this bizarre time.

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or you could spend eons going into the depth of the great digital tapestry that is the tool known as Squarespace. And right now if you head over to squarespace.com or slash Duncan and use offer code Duncan you will get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Support those that support the DTFH

and head over to squarespace.com or slash Duncan give it a free try and when you're ready to launch use offer code Duncan and you will get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Squarespace, they are the eternal everything. I made that up, that's not their slogan. Thanks Squarespace.

My sweet loves on April 20th, the Midnight Gospel the show that I've been working on for so long with the brilliant Pendleton Ward and all the geniuses over at Tipmouse Studios will at last appear on Netflix and I really hope you'll watch it. If you like this podcast then you're gonna love the Midnight Gospel.

If you don't like this podcast, who are you? Why are you listening to this? You're still gonna like it. It's not just me obviously, it was an ocean of brilliant animators, compositors, directors, writers and Pendleton Ward who I can only compare to some magical wizard being who for a moment emerged from some enchanted forest

took me under his wing and gave me the incredible experience of watching how an animated show is made from beginning to end. I am so proud of the Midnight Gospel and I'm so excited for y'all to lay eyes upon it. That's April 20th on Netflix. Also, if you love the DTFH

and you'd like to listen to commercial free episodes head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH and subscribe, you'll have immediate access to so much content. It's the inner nexus, the inner trembling musky folds of this podcast and I'd love for you to burrow deep inside of them. Now, without further ado,

please welcome to the DTFH two of the great teachers of mindfulness and meditation in the world today. Both Trudy and Jack are currently offering all kinds of guided meditations, programs and practices on their shared websites and individual websites. You can go to Insight LA, you can go to Jack Cornfield's website or Trudy, all the links you need to find them

will be at dunkintrosil.com and of course, there's simply a Google search away. Also, if you're someone who's been interested in teaching mindfulness, if you're someone who's been interested in teaching meditation, Jack is offering a two year training in teaching mindfulness and meditation.

All the links you need are gonna be located at dunkintrosil.com. So now, everybody, please welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast, Jack Cornfield and Trudy Goodman. Oh wait, I almost forgot. Trudy's gonna be in my show April 20th. So I don't know, is that rude to plug my show

after introducing my guests? Maybe so, but there's a pandemic. So we've gotta be patient with each other. Regardless, please open those heart chakras and send those beautiful, glorious, eternal rainbow rays of your soul shine to wherever Jack and Trudy are at this very moment. Everybody welcome Jack Cornfield and Trudy Goodman.

["Welcome to the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast"] Welcome, welcome on you, that you are with us, shake hands, no need to be blue. Welcome to you, wow, wow, wow. It's the Dunkin' Trussell Family Hour podcast. Yo, welcome to the DTFH. I am so grateful to you for giving me your time.

I've been thinking about this conversation since you generously agreed to give me your time. And I just want to, as quickly as I can, dive into the deep stuff, because I don't know how long my technology's gonna hang in there out here on the beach, but this is something, I've been chatting with my friends, obviously,

with business associates, and everyone that I've been talking to, in some way, shape or form, has conveyed to me that they feel like they're going nuts. Like, and not in a fun way. Like, people are having a different versions of depression, grief, fear, I've never, in my life, experienced anything like this personally.

And I feel completely out of my depth at this point when it comes to talking with folks or trying to offer comfort or anything, because I feel sort of nuts myself. So I was wondering what y'all have arrived at regarding things that we can do to try to maintain some sense of inner stability. You know, I have to say I am so grateful

for the gift of awareness and mindfulness practice, because without having the practice, which has allowed, which allows us to access a more reliably stable and peaceful inner sense of our own being, without that, I would be just as gripped with fear and grief as everybody else. And it's not that I don't have those feelings.

Of course I do, I'm human and we're facing something that no human alive today has ever faced. And we're going through it at the same time in the whole world, you know, which is another very unusual moment in history. And I just am incredibly grateful for this practice. And I feel we're both feeling called to share it and to share the tools and skills that are helping us

and will help you, your listeners too, for sure. One of the things that's the simplest for me is really resting my attention with the breath and taking a few deep breaths to just regulate my nervous system. You know, it's a simple thing Duncan, but it works. You eat in three breaths, down regulates and brings a little bit more calm if we do that together.

It's so simple. Deep, deep breaths. And if you do 10 breaths and really feel what's going on in your body and breathe into that, not trying to make it go away or fix it or just noticing how it is for you in this particular moment of your life. Yes.

And breathing into that, it just helps calm the nervous system. And we'll share more things, but that's just a very simple, basic one that really anybody can do in a couple of minutes anywhere. I love the deep breath idea. I am, some folks that I'm talking to though, and again, I'm not trying to dismiss this,

the deep breath idea is fantastic. It's one tiny thing. You know what, yes. And I get that just a little thing, but what is weirding me out is the tone in people's voices. You know, I don't, I can't, it's like, everyone's just, you know, and again, how much of this is a projection.

But Erin, who by the way says hello to y'all. Hi Erin. She is, you know, going through like periods just being depressed. She's describing it as the kind of grief. You know, we had all this stuff planned for right now. We just moved into a new place and we've been recluses. And because the place we were living at previously,

we just, it wasn't kind of what we wanted to invite a lot of people over to. One of the things we were saying is we're gonna, finally have barbecues and just every weekend people are gonna come over, it's gonna be the best. And now here we are in a vacuum. And then I've been talking to people who've lost their jobs. Income has been cut in half from this

and will probably be cut more. And then obviously the worst thing is people who know people who are currently dying from this disease. So where is, and I asking to mindfulness teachers and to Buddhist practitioners to help me find a place to stand on, I don't know if that's the best question or not, but we all feel so wobbly. The breath is great, exercise, all that stuff.

But I guess I'm digging for something we can find comfort in that transcends breath. Sure, I'm gonna turn it over to Jack because yes, there are other practices and I'm gonna share them with you, but Jack's turn now. I think the first thing Duncan, I'm listening to and this is a shared experience, the level of anxiety and all the fear and anxiety is now morphing into grief

as people feel the losses, whether it's of their jobs or the people around them that are dying or their favorite restaurant or the nonprofits that are aiding people in distress or they're concerned for people on the streets, all of these kinds of things. And you're asking somehow, all right, how do we get through this?

Yeah, because there's a level of, you call it depression and panic. The first step is just to acknowledge this is what depression is like, this is what panic is like. You know, you're not trying to fix it or change it. The many who say, I hate feeling panic, I don't wanna be depressed, you are rejecting it or you're pushing it away.

And that makes it stronger. It's like all those zombie movies or whatever, when you resist the zombies, they get stronger. Right. There's some way in which the very first step is to say this is the experience that we're having. And it's also not unique to you. We can also feel like we're stuck in it.

You know, I'm a wreck, I'm a mess. But in fact, as a human species, we've been through thousands of years of epidemics and floods and earthquakes and so forth. And we know how to survive. We have that survival. It's in your DNA. It comes from your ancestors

and your great-great-great-great grandparents. And you know how to do it. And 99% of us will get through this, although there will be tremendous loss. And so part of it is to recognize that this is what this experience is like. And it's being shared by a whole generation together, like going through a world war.

We are going through this. And there's nothing wrong with any of these feelings that completely matter. And the next step in accepting them is to recognize what it does to your body, that it throws you into fight, flight, or freeze. Because you know, you're adrenaline and all your alarms and how to get away from the tiger.

Only the thing is the tiger's invisible. You know, and it could be on the cardboard and it could be in the air when you're close to another person. But you go into fight, flight, or freeze. And so Trudy talked about regulating these in breadth. There are actually several really good practices that we'll talk about that help to hold this.

But the first step is acceptance of the, is recognizing this is what's happening. Recognizing the first and then accepting and saying, all right, this is where we are. You can't work with something until you see it clearly and say, all right, this is the situation. You know, my heart is tight and my mind is racing. And then you begin a real kind of honest inquiry and look at,

how is it possible that my ancestors, that we can actually hold this with a steady heart, hold all the pain, all the loss, all the stories. And there are ways to do it using the power of loving awareness that can actually, what you're seeking, that can actually be bigger than the experience and allow us to do it.

When you say ancestors, what do you mean? Your DNA, Duncan, comes down through a line from some millions of years, if not, you know, hundreds of millions of years. And the reason that you, weird as you are, weird as I am, have appeared in this particular body, in this human incarnation, is partly through the fact that your ancestors got out of the way

of the saber-tooth tiger. And they were the ones that survived the plague or whatever. And they knew how to do it. And then that was passed on as not just information, but epigenetically, in the survival mechanisms of your body and of your being. And we know how to do this as a collective. We're part of life.

And so is the virus. We're in this dance with it. And we know how to dance with the difficulties and move through. The suffering is not the end of the story. The epidemic is not the end of the story. There's an end to the story that's better, but we have to go through it.

We can't bypass it. Okay, gotcha. So this is the, okay, I gotcha. So this is, well, to be quite honest, this leads me to a question. I guess this is a pre-question to that question. I have been, I think I must be the worst person to be with during a pandemic on Earth.

And I feel like I'm not being supportive enough. And I feel like any attempt I'm making to sort of comfort Aaron is just, I can't, it's belly flop after belly flop. I'm either mansplaining some crap. I'm acting like a virologist or something. I don't understand anything about anything. I don't know what a virus is, to be really honest.

If you put a virus in four other things on their microscope, I don't know if I would be able to identify it, except you see the picture of the coronavirus. It's cute, but I wouldn't be able to, you know what I, no, but then I'm doing the thing where she's expressing, you know, profound sadness, new mom, beautiful child. And I'm trying to fix it, you know, or like saying like a Hakuna Matata, Disney bullshit.

Or, you know, and I feel completely out of my depth. And so what, number one. Do you ever just like hold her hand? Do you ever just sit with her and hug her? Would she let you or is she upset with you? Do you know what I mean? Like instead of feeling that you have to fix it, which I think is sort of a species wired in male,

response, which is very, very helpful in lots of situations, but not this one, not one who is emotionally distressed. All, most people really want Duncan. Most women, I'm speaking, you know, of course this goes across genders, but just as generalization, I want somebody to just be with me in it, to be willing to feel my grief with me,

to not have to fix it. And the steadiness of that kind of loving presence in itself is healing if nothing even is said. It's like the same thing of being with somebody who's sick or dying. They don't really want you to talk to them about your ideas of the afterlife or your prayers, whatever those might be. Sometimes maybe they want that,

but usually what people want is to feel there is somebody who is willing to be with them in the face of something hard and scary. And new mom, you know, gorgeous young child, facing a future that is so unknown right now. And what do we humans do when we don't know? We fill in the blanks with our fears. I mean, that's a survival mechanism.

It's nobody's fault. All right. You know, so I think just that willingness to enter into whatever, no matter how dystopian the fantasy might be that she's in the grip of because it's scary, the willingness to just put an arm around her and say, yeah, yeah, I get it.

I get it. And then the teaching, of course, this is where the teaching of impermanence is not just terrifying because we're going to die. And that's our, you know, human birthright is our mortality. Yes. But it's also that if we're willing to be

with a feeling, it does not stay. It can't even if we wanted it to. It does not stay. It changes. It doesn't always change into bliss, but it changes. And so that's something else. I think what Jack was talking about was not sort of fighting with reality.

This is our reality right now. And right now is the only time we actually have. That's the only time that's actually real. But what's actually real is that we're alive and we're not sick and we have love in our lives. And, you know, what's real, what would be offered by life in this particular moment, if we don't fast forward into the future at all,

is not all bad. And it's not all scary. And so to be able to redirect the attention and open our hearts to the beauty that's being offered, not to be in denial or try to paste a smiley face on scary stuff, but just to see the more holistic, whole, integrated picture of what life actually is, as opposed to our thoughts about it.

Like you said, what's beyond the breath? Give me something that's, you know, beyond the breath. Like the breath. The breath can't hold a candle to my crazy thinking. Right? Yes. But the breath is actually more real than that crazy thinking. And when we're willing to actually feel it

and get into it and receive it and wait for a minute, the emotion we're caught in will relax. It will relax. That is so cool. I'm aware of this. I can be with this. It will relax. You know, to that impulse to protect your wife,

to protect your child, I mean, I get a call from my daughter. And I would go anywhere to, you know, she said, Daddy, I'm in Cambodia. I'm in trouble. I just get on the next airplane. Yes. But she's married to a firefighter. In an urban fire department.

And they have a little, like you, they have a one and a half year old child, my grandson, Desmond. And they don't have protective equipment, which means that when they go out, they'll be, you know, 80% of their work is medical costs. They'll be exposed. And then they'll pass it on to the family.

And they're young and they're strong and they'll probably get through it. And I said, well, will they test you? And he said, you know, they don't want to test everybody because they need all hands on deck. They need all their firefighters. So, all right, here's a moment, you know, where I feel helpless and uncertain like you and so forth.

And what I have to do is take a deep breath and hold all of this with a compassionate heart and say, we're all in this together. Everybody who is aging parents, everybody who's worried for children, everybody who's worried for the neighbor who runs that little bodega or that little store in the corner

and might lose their livelihood. And feel that we can hold all these with a lot of compassion in our heart. Those who are vulnerable and suffering and all of us who are in this together. And when I do, then instead of trying to fix something, I can't because things are uncertain. Trying to manage it and control it

is the dad who's going to fix things. I can't do that. What I can do is hold it with compassion and then I can respond. I can call her. I can do what Trudy said when you sit next to your wife and you're not trying to fix it. You say, yeah, we're in this.

I hear you. And also then she feels that you're steady and you can go, we all can go through this together. That's so beautiful. It's the, you know, honestly, the opposite of whatever. I'm like, to show her I'm there for I've been hanging lights. You know, like assembling things and doing horrible carpentry projects

and some sad attempt to convey some form of protective masculinity, you know, and then it's not working. But it's a good thing. It's a good thing. It's just not good if that's all you do. It's all I've been doing. It's just construction projects.

And then we get in fights and I'm like, don't you see I hung a light. Don't you see I need a sword. You can go mono a mono with the virus and, you know, if I would, I would, you would and we all would. And I think that, you know, what's even scarier sometimes for many, many humans is to go into the sad, frightened, desperate, depressed, grief-stricken emotions of each other

instead of, you know, trying to, and that's real compassion. Compassion means that willingness to be in the suffering with each other without getting overwhelmed and disabled and lost in it. Because otherwise, essentially we are doing other things that are easier or more comfortable for us to do than to just sit with somebody's despair. That's hard.

That is, it's a lot easier to hang a light. That's right. Wow. Okay. I get it. That is, of course, you know, of course that's it. And it's, you know, you hear that and it sounds so, on one level, oh, it's easy. You just sit with someone and hold them, but. It's not.

It is not. But that's where the awareness practice and the willingness to be present with things and let them arise and pass away. That's where the practice actually helps. It shows us how to do that. And, you know, I also, I get, I don't know about Erin, but what helps me is some of the creative and uplifting things

that humans are doing with and for each other right now. I want to read you something that I got. It's from a Belfast Ireland COVID team. And it's called Love in Action. And they said, when you go out and you see the empty streets, the empty stadiums, the empty train platforms, don't say to yourself, this looks like the end of the world. What you're seeing is love and action.

What you're seeing in that negative space is how much we do care for each other. For our grandparents, our parents, our brothers and sisters, for the people we will never even meet. People will lose jobs over this. Some will lose their businesses and their dreams. And some will lose their lives. All the more reason to take a moment when you're out on your walk

or on your way to the store or just watching the news to look into the emptiness and marvel at all that love. Let it fill you and sustain you. It isn't the end of the world. It's the most remarkable act of global solidarity we may ever witness. Wow. So there's another perspective.

Yeah, that is beautiful. That's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. Still heartbreaking, but a better kind of heartbreak. Yeah, you know, we finally stopped. I know one thing for sure is we've got to stop watching the news. And we've been mainstream. We've just been shooting up the news.

Just shooting up. Oh, no, no. Just right in there. And that is not helping. And so there is not. It's a very bad thing to do. It's bad medicine. You can look at the news 15 minutes a day.

I wouldn't even watch it because watching you get all the emotion. Right. Quite honestly, we read it. Shoot your TV, you know, if you're going to shoot anything. Whoa, no, don't shoot the TV. Just shoot the news. And yeah, you can watch some fun movies. But instead, read 15 minutes.

Get the basic update. The rest of it is just commentary. And most of it's written with that intense emotion. It's unprocessed of people's fight, flight, fear, freeze. Right. And all their confusion. And they're trying to make sense of something that's really a mystery. That we're actually in the face of one of the great mysteries of our human life

and our human incarnation. The mystery of time and uncertainty. And the veils of separation where we felt we were separate are actually dropping away. And there's a kind of, as Trudy talked about, a remarkable thing that's happening in our isolation. We see how connected we are and how much we need each other. And so if you can tolerate the uncertainty and the mystery,

which just is a little PS, it's actually always uncertain. We think we know what's going on, but we don't. But now it's really visible. But to open the window of tolerance in the heart to say yes. This is the great mystery. And we are now holding hands together in this mystery. And allowed somehow in holding it to find within ourselves the great heart of compassion.

That is our birthright. That is who we are. We can do this and we have done this. We know it. When a baby is born, when your little baby was born, our first response is love. When a dear one dies, the hand we hold is a gesture of love. Timeless love and awareness is who you really are.

And now is the time to know this interest. Thank you. So wonderful to hear. You know, we watched the Mr. Rogers documentary last night. This is our final, our break from the news. And we clad through the whole thing. Yes, yes. Woke up feeling much better.

Yes. In that, I mean, he was a saint. Every day. Yes, he was. He watched Mr. Rogers every day. Here's the thing, Duncan. You're Mr. Rogers on the podcast. You're Mr. Rogers.

You know, when I look at you, I feel close to you. And I feel like, like the little two and three year olds that watched Mr. Rogers, when he would say, you know, hi, they say hi back to him. They feel like they're with him. And that part of all of us is still alive and well. When we're watching each other and offering these teachings and podcasts, you know what I'm saying?

We're doing that for the child in each one of us. This feeling overwhelmed and too helpless and too little to cope and too sad. Well, you know, the one thing I love about him in this documentary, I didn't even realize how edgy his show was and how he wasn't afraid to confront exactly what was happening in the world directly, not having it or anything. And I do love that.

And to mirror that in some way, shape or form, I must say part of what's really devastating me right now is not just my sense of ineptitude when it comes to, you know, comforting my family, but also, Jack, I think this is kind of what you were saying. I really am dealing with the fact that I'm gonna die no matter what, pandemic or not. And I haven't felt this since I got cancer.

You know, like I haven't been having to deal with this. Like I'm way older than Aaron and clearly way older than my son. And so I'm just thinking, my God, this is no matter what, it's slipping away. And something about the pandemic is like, when I'm not running away from it into like making cornbread or something or fixing a lamp, I'm dealing with this sense of, God, I don't want to die. I don't want to, I don't want to lead my kid.

I don't want to, you know, so I don't, I don't know what, that's a question as much as just help, help me not die. I'll help me deal with this. You know, our body doesn't want to die. I don't want to die. I want to be here for my daughter and my grandson for my beloved Trudy. I'm also, you know, I'm almost 75 years old and I feel in some ways very grateful that I've had a very soul in life and I'm not so afraid to die.

But I also know that the body doesn't want to die. Even if I know that who I am, a spirit, and I've had out of the body experiences and sat with people who are dying and they clinically died and left their body and floated into light and then came back and described it. The things I know about dying to give me a great sense of peace in that mystery, not that I understand it all, but I know that who I am is not just this body. And that we're given a certain amount of time in this incarnation.

That's one part of the equation. And to know that makes the heart more peaceful. To know that who you are, a spirit that you can never not love your child. Whether you're here in body or not, you are the guardian. You are the love that holds that. Nothing can take that away from you. And at the same time, I also know that this body wants to stay alive. And it should for family and things.

And even if I get sick, it's going to say, I want to stay alive. And I respect that. You know, it might panic. It might hold all those things. And that's also a part of our human incarnation. We are in that way, you know, spiritual beings who are born, our spirit, our consciousness was born into this body and we'll leave it. We're bigger than this human life.

We're actually the web of life coming in through us. But also we are this body in some way identified for this incarnation. And that's why it becomes important also to love so deeply. Because this is the only place where you can love in the particulars of your wife and your child, you know, it's the only place in the whole galaxy where you can eat baked Alaska, you know, from the beach in Thailand as you are right now. Right.

And it's magnificent. And where we are somehow, we're also in spring, Duncan. At least in the northern hemisphere. The birds are like singing opera outside my window. It's like people aren't bothering them. They're chirping away that the crocuses and the wisteria and the spring blossoms are having a spring blossom dance party. And life renews itself.

There's something beautiful that we can join. And that's part of our bodies too. So yes, your body will die. I'm sorry to tell you this. But I don't think you're getting out of here very soon. I think you got to stay around, make a lot of podcasts and go to your, you know, go to the wedding of your beautiful baby. Thank you.

I'll go ahead, Duncan. Well, no, please, Judy. I was going to say, but the other piece of what you're saying, I think that it's true for everybody and not just you is that being quarantined like this, being cooked up together, it's like an enforced retreat and it's bringing up everybody's stuff. Things that we're usually too busy with our, you know, our very fruitful distractions, our work and things that we go and do. Those things have been taken away from us.

And those are the things that everybody has found their own ways to comfort themselves or to, to work with avoiding the things they need to avoid, you know, their defenses have, have organized their life. And suddenly those defenses aren't working so well because we don't have the supports for our defenses. And so for you, it's coming up as fear of your mortality and, you know, being the father of a young family for other people. It's questioning what they've done with their lives so far. For other people, it's realizing their marriage actually isn't so healthy,

but the fact that they could each do their own thing all day made them not have to look at that. And for other people, it's realizing how much they can't stand to be with their children, even though they love them. Or, you know, it's all these things are coming up for people and people are having to face unpleasant truths about themselves. And how do they hold? How do we hold the things that we don't love that we are seeing in ourselves? Yes.

How just going into reactivity and dismay and depression and like, oh my God, how do we do that? We do that by being willing to have some self-compassion and tenderness. And often, you know, these might sound like soft, fuzzy things, but they are not. They're strengths. They're spiritual strengths and powers that we actually cultivate when we are doing meditation and spiritual practices of other kinds. You know, we cultivate these strengths.

So I think that that question, you know, it's like grief. There's, I call it crooked grief. Grief comes out in all kinds of ways. It comes out as irritation. I saw this cartoon where the woman is saying to her husband, couldn't you just blink more quietly? No. Everything you do irritates me right now, you know,

getting on each other's nerves is the sort of mildest form of it. But that kind of short fuse and irritation and agitation, it's also one of the ways that grief comes out. Have you guys, have you got cameras installed in the house or something? Trudy, that is the most insight. It's like you've been watching us for the last couple of weeks. That's incredible. That is the description of it right now.

That is you. We're living it too, Duncan. Not you too. But we have, we have been blessed by whatever weird karma made us devote our lives to doing these practices now is our time where they're coming in handy and we can actually say to people, you know what? We're going through what you're going through, but it works. It works.

And of course, everything works. Walking in nature works, making love if you can with somebody or, you know, loving yourself tenderly. These things help. Wow. You know, I gotta tell you, that, just what you just said, I feel like a huge way to flip it off of me is knowing that you were able to just do that list without having had a conversation with me. The list is a lot longer.

Oh, yes it is. But that's, that's it. Crooked grief. That's it. These just tiny little things seem so loud right now. And then that creates a sort of feedback loop or, you know, where because that thing seems loud, if you address it and just addressing the thing seems loud or, and then everything becomes, you know, temporarily screaming, this is us.

And then we realize, we have a baby in one year. We can't be like this. And then we hug and we're back to normal. But what we've got, we've got some, you know, what's showing your baby. People can blow up and still love each other. Right. That's the best thing you can show your baby or one of them. Right.

How many of us never saw our parents fight ever, but at the same time, we never saw other things that we needed to see from them about their love. Right. So don't feel so guilty. Like if you guys lose it and make up, he's getting to see, oh, okay, that was scary. But now they love each other again. This is, this is okay. I can remember that next time.

That's so wonderful. That's so great. I mean, just, this is everything. Y'all are medicine. Thank you. Everything you're saying. This is, my ego is so big and so crazy. And I just want to be this per, I don't know who I think I am.

I'm acting like we're in a, some like apocalyptic highway right now. You know, I've said things like you've got to, you know, we must be strong. I don't, I'm talking in these weird ways. Like now is the time we have to be strong now. This is the time for strength, not weakness. Like what, like there's bandits at the gate. There's, you know, but this is how my ego is reacting to it. It's like worse.

But you can see that it's your ego reacting. What a great thing that you can see that Duncan. Right. You know, that's not all of who you are. You can see, oh, okay, this is a little deluded, but, but I'm on, you know, we're under threat. We feel threatened. And so the ego turns it into a battle and a war and I've got to be a strong warrior. Um, but what is a warrior really?

And what is strong really? Right. It's, I get it. Strong is having the guts to sit with someone who's freaking out and not try to change them or teach them or rewire them like they're an engine or something. Or well, I hope you'll listen to your own podcast. That was beautiful. Thank you.

I don't listen to this. I don't really care for that. Yeah. To love them. And, you know, um, the ego is mostly based on seer. So you just have to recognize that and see it's freaking out and say, it's okay. You're afraid that's fine. At the end of the day, and I've said this, you know, on a number of other

occasions in podcasts, I sit to meditate, Trudy and I will sit together often. And what I notice when I do is I go through the day and I'm doing my teaching and podcast and writing and busy and cooking and, you know, trying to do things. And God, we're way busier than we had been before. It's crazy what's happening. So we have to find a way to regulate. It's not that easy, actually, because it's also, there's a lot of need there, but it's not like we have to save anybody.

It's just, what's the best we can do? But anyway, I sit at the end of the day and I check into my body and my heart and my mind. And when I feel my body first, I feel the places of tension, fight, flight and freeze, my shoulders, my jaw, all the places we hold it. If we don't let ourselves feel it, it builds up and accumulates and we become rigid and much quicker to react, you know, we're like this soldier that's on alert. So I feel my body, I feel the whole of it. And I say, show me what you're carrying.

And I make space to let it open with a loving awareness. Let me feel the tension as deep as it is. Let me feel how big these are. And once I've given some time for my body to show me what it's carrying, to feel it directly, then at some point I bring in compassion and I say, let me hold this the way I would a child who's crying, struggled, hurt with real compassion. And then finally I say, thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me.

Thank you for trying to hold it together. I'm okay for now. I'm really okay. And I find that my body hears that message and goes, oh, I can step out of the, stop the war. I can step off the battlefield. Then I go to my heart and I discover that even though I was not paying attention in the day, there's a deeper grief and sadness or there's fear or there's anger or rage or,

you know, all those huge emotions along with longing and loneliness and love, all those. And I say, all right, heart, show me what you're carrying. And I name it gently. Oh, fear, fear or, you know, anger, anger. I say, show me how big you are. And I can feel the explosion of those emotions as they open. And I give them space. And the interesting thing is when you give space to your experience and it gets bigger and more

intense and you let it, it gets bigger and bigger and then it softens because you're not resisting it. Right. And if you do, then it softens and I bring in compassion. And I say, they're there. You know, let me hold all these emotions like I would a crying child, a frightened child. And I say, thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me. I'm okay for now.

And I do the same for my mind, all the stories and intensity and so forth. And when I'm finished that, I'm still the same person and there's still the same difficulties we find or something, but I'm somehow clearer and steadier. I've become the witness to it. I become the loving awareness that can see all this and allow it and not be swept away by it. And then I get filled instead with this connection to a place of steadiness. This is courage, really. This is courage to be present for life and be present for those that we talk to and love and the things we care about.

And you, are you doing this once a day? Do you do this when you wake up and at night? How often do you all do this together? We don't do it together that much. Usually at the end of the day is when we would do it together. We wake up at different times and we have different rhythms of, like I usually get up a lot earlier than Jack, just by nature. But the main thing is for people to realize to do as many times a day as you can to kind of

step back, receive what's happening, not feel like we have to change it or do something about it. And to at that, you know, in that moment to offer some love, to offer some kind of wish for our health and happiness. Like I've been leading this meditation where you go through the whole body and you wish love to the different parts of your body. I mean, my head be happy. I mean, my shoulders relax and be happy. I mean, my neck be happy.

It sounds silly, but it actually is positive and strengthening for the immune system. Every time we incline our hearts in a direction of caring instead of terror. And that's a choice that we can make whenever we catch ourselves in the grip of terror. And I think what Jack was saying, you know, about how you would comfort a little child. I mean, that is so much the way our awareness can function when your baby cries. You know, how do you teach a baby how to be with itself and how to be with its own being by holding it through all the things it's going through when a baby cries and freaks out as parents? We don't just like drop them like, ew, we hold them instead.

We comfort them and they learn that, oh, there is some steadiness of presence that you can weather the various emotional storms that come, you know, that it's weather. It's like emotional weather. And so there's so many ways and so many teachers offering different mindfulness practices and tools and, you know, right now online, there are so many ways to connect with ourselves in, I think, ways that bring more help and strength to our whole being so that we are more resilient. And that's protective too, not just gloves and masks. And, you know, that's what we do.

Oh, wow. Yeah, okay. Both of you, I love this description of scanning, finding some compassion there. And I love the idea of sitting together. It's so funny because I, you know, in my mind, I get that you will air and won't meditate with me. But then I realized I'm not meditating at all. So of course, she's not going to meditate with you because you're not doing it. But I don't, I feel like I'm being somewhat selfish in the sense that I'm asking y'all for therapy for me in my particular situation, which is with a family.

I wonder if you could offer something to the people who are completely alone right now or at least alone in the sense that they find themselves in a non-rumored situation, non-relationship situation. They're just in their apartment or homes and they can't really leave safely. They can't date. They're just suddenly find themselves shipwrecked on their own little islands. And I don't, I think if I were in that situation, I would revert into some kind of self-destructive

miasmic ooze of catamine and vodka and anything I could get my hands on. So what, what, well, can you offer anything to those folks out there? Yeah, I mean, first of all, you know, some things that are unhealthy, we are going to do when we're alone like that. Whether it's eating the whole bag of corn chips or whether it's hooking up with somebody when we shouldn't or these things will happen from time to time. Right. So to be the first thing I would say is forgive yourself for the stuff you're doing that you

know you shouldn't and just forgive yourself. Because until you forgive yourself for that, it's going to be hard to move on to healthier things because the worse you feel about yourself, the more you need those old comforts and it's just becomes a, you know, kind of vicious circle. And then the other thing I would say is you really need to get out of the house. And even if you're wearing a mask, even if you're wearing goggles, even you're, you know, in your hazmat suit, you need to wave to people when you pass them and make sure you say hi or admire their dog.

That's what I usually do. And, you know, just have that moment of social connection because your nervous system will register that as a positive thing. And it, it sounds like it's ridiculous and unhelpful, but it's not. It's helpful. And these little moments of connection help. The other thing is the natural world, you know, and, and I'm going to read one more quote, if I might, that I found that I really like from a New York Times writer named Margaret

Wrinkle. And she said, the natural world's perfect indifference has always been the best cure for my own anxieties. Every living thing, every bird and mammal and reptile and amphibian, every tree and shrub and flower and moss is pursuing its own urgent life, a purpose and a life that sets my own worries in a much larger context. And the natural world is everywhere. You can find it during a walk on city streets.

You can find it in potted plants on balconies. It's in the branches of the sidewalk trees as they begin to split open and change the grayscape green. It's in the sparrows and the starlings taking nesting materials into the cracks around windows and doorways of commercial buildings. It's in the wild geese crying as they fly in a sky full of drifting clouds. The sunshine always returns. So that, I think, when you're alone, it's really actually in some ways more of a chance

to deepen your connection to yourself and consider a positive retreat time because you aren't having to homeschool your kids and tolerate and figure out what to do, you know, work at home while the kids, I mean, all those things. My daughter has to go close the door to a closet in her house to have a private conversation right now. Do you know what I mean? Like you can appreciate the peace and the freedom that does come with the aloneness and transform that loneliness into solitude, which can be so nourishing

and such an opportunity that in our culture we rarely have with all the technology and connectivity and busyness that we are all experiencing. Right. So it's to acknowledge that yes, it's lonesome and there's a freedom in it that other people might not have. And how can I use that freedom? Okay, that's great. Yeah, and Jack and Tara and I contributed teachings for an at-home retreat for people

who might want to structure a home retreat for themselves. Certain meditation retreats are being offered online. You're doing this right now? Well, it's just something you can download and do yourself. But yeah, I'm going to be doing an online retreat in May and other people are doing online retreats that you can tune into, do part of, do as much as you want. You don't have to travel to a meditation center. You don't have to, you know what I mean?

You don't have to be in silence all day and all night if that's not the right thing for you. Right. Et cetera. If you have a response to this, I would love to hear it, Jack. I would just move into the next question. I'd love to hear what you have to say. Well, I want to piggyback on what Trudy was just saying. On our websites on insightla.org or Trudy Goodman or jack.com or jackcornfield.com.

We've put up a lot of the guided meditations of compassion, of how to work with the body, all kinds of things. How to center yourself and steady the heart. And then some videos that Trudy and Tara Brock and I did together as an example. And I think about people being in solitude or alone. Or even those who are there with someone else but seeking somehow different kinds of connection beside the first step in the connection is actually to be able to connect with yourself. Or that becomes critical how you hold this.

But it's also important then to shift and to reach out in other ways. And so I recommend finding a meditation partner or buddy who you can practice with. You have Aaron, of course, but if you're alone and find someone and say, let's practice every morning or let's practice every evening for 10 minutes or 20 minutes. They can be a gratitude partner where you say, well, tell me two things in the day that actually you feel grateful for in spite of everything that's happening. Or you can let's say, let's do that to every day. Do a loving kindness practice in which you breathe in hope and courage.

And without breath, you breathe out love to that other person. And then to the people in your neighborhood and the people in the community. You breathe in the courage of all the first responders and all the people caring for one another in the middle of this great difficulty. And you breathe out love for all those who are caring and being cared for. And you start to feel that you are participating in sending that energy across the world. But you don't do it alone. You do it with a partner with someone else and you might do it out loud.

And these are just beginning hints of be creative ways to find a different kind of connection out of your solitude. That's more genuine. That's a heart connection in which you can practice together because you support each other. Just like the three of us in this conversation. We're all learning. I'm listening to Trudy and I'm learning things from her. I'm listening to you and I'm learning things.

And so we actually hold each other up. It's the best. This is the highlight of my pandemic right now, by the way. And I don't want to end on a diet. You're not learning to cook or something. What kind of compliment is the highlight of my content? That's like a love song. It's a rather severe thing to end up.

I do think anyone has something to offer you all do with this. Right now, people are having to deal with the fact that their loved ones are getting sick. And they can't be with them. They can't go to them. Not even just with COVID, with whatever. Because you can't travel right now. It's like, so I cannot imagine. My parents, I've lost both my parents.

I can't imagine if they were alive right now. The anxiety I would be experiencing for them. And then if they were to get sick and they were to get put in quarantine like many people are. You know, I've heard of saddest stories. People who are dying. Having to say goodbye to each other with walkie talkies. Or, you know, their phones. Or, you know, recording something just because they can't talk to anybody.

And they're being sedated if they're being intubated. So they're gone. They're just gone. So I wonder if what it, we all have this fantasy when our loved ones are going. When the day comes, they got to at least be with them at their bedside. But I just wonder if you have anything you could offer people. That's the physical reality. And it can be heartbreaking.

Because you love these people and you want to hold their hand. And you want them to know. And sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can virtually. You can actually talk to them. And I have to say, I have chanted and sung and done prayers out loud for people as they were dying. In a distance, I said, would you hold this phone up to Georgia or whatever her name was. And I would do the Tibetan Book of the Dying that go into the clear light.

Or I would do a beautiful chant. Tell her how much her life had meant to me and to everyone. And here's the wild thing. I've also done it with people who were in coma. You know, where they've been like with ventilators, you get put on a deliberately put into coma. As you couldn't tolerate it otherwise. But I've done it with people in coma. And once in a while they come out of their coma.

And they say, oh yes, I heard you. I remember. So don't think that we're not connected, Duncan. They might be connected where we can press the flesh, so to speak. And we miss that. Because we're built to have a connection of hand to hand and skin to skin and belly to belly. And all the things that make us human. Yes.

But we're connected in a deeper web. In your prayers. In your song. And you would call these people and sing to them. You know, and make your song. And it's time to become the medicine to reimagine in this place. That we can still contribute to a better world to be that lamp in the darkness. Or the music to burst out with love somehow.

To be a carrier of hope. Even in your voice, in your song. And if there's a funeral, send them off with a beautiful song. And know that they may still be listening wherever you are. Please hear my song. Please let go into the pure light of your ocean of love. That's who you are. And let me sing you as you go.

You know, so don't think that we're not connected because we are. And yes, it's heartbreaking. And death and that loss is always heartbreaking. It just, you know, touches us so deeply. And we have to respond and we can. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you.

I love you too so much. We love you. We love you too. But we didn't get to see your baby. Oh, he's the baby's in this is I'm actually in a studio right now. And I would love for you to see him. I'll Aaron would love to say hi. Do you maybe we can do a FaceTime at some point or just say hello.

Yeah, let's do that. I don't know if your listeners would like it, but we also could come back a different time and do some practices with people. I would look any if you all have the time. Another thing that I'm aware we didn't really do today and that can be helpful to people. So please, if you have time that you can offer, I would be so grateful for this. This was the best.

This is the best. And it's, I think, I know everyone's gonna love hearing this. And I can't thank you enough for your time. So Duncan, can you take, can you take recorded meditations from our websites or videos and podcasts or things like that? Can you also use them and offer them to the people in the network? I sure can. Any audio you have I could add to the end of this.

Please do that. We could send it or you could just look at, you know, our websites and compassion in the time of coronavirus or Trudy has this beautiful body, loving kindness, healing, loving kindness for the body, things like that. So take them. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And just very quickly, can you please tell everyone where they can find you already set your websites? And I know, Jack, you have this teacher training. Coming up right now. And I wonder if y'all want to... That is also true with Tarah Brock starting in the winter. And the good thing is it's an online teacher training. So we have people in 50 countries from Nairobi and from Pakistan and so forth

who are doing this two-year training to become teachers of compassion and mindfulness in their schools or business or community. And you can look at jackhornfield.com for all of this stuff. Two years. It's a two-year training. You get very well trained and we have a whole group of colleagues and mentors and teachers. So you work closely with a small group of other people and mentors and teachers. And then Trudy has all this great stuff, both at Insight LA, insightla.org

and on her own website, trudygoodman.com. And we also have a mindfulness facilitator program that's starting in... It was meant to be in person. And as soon as we can, we will return to in person. And that's being done through Insight LA as well. Sorry Trudy, I'm sorry. That's okay. I was going to burst out also on 420.

They can see our episode of Midnight Gospel with you and I. That's only two weeks away. Oh, that's so cool. And I was wondering if you would do... If you could turn this into that. Do you know if you can still do that? That was so cool. I'm sure we can.

Absolutely. I would hope so. I mean, yeah, you did such a great job. Everyone, Trudy, is on my show and just killed it as a talented actor. Jack, thank you so much. I can't believe I'm going to be part of Krishna. Let's chat again soon. Anytime you'll have time for this, I would love to do this anytime.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I roam and all of that. Bye. See you. Bye.

Head over to Insight LA or Jack's website or Trudy's website and get to know them. They are amazing. The links are going to be at dunkatrustle.com. Much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode of the DDFH. And remember, if you head over to squarespace.com. Duncan and use offer code Duncan. You'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. I hope you all are happy, healthy, safe, and feeling at least moderately sane out there.

This will pass. I know it. And in the meantime, I really do think that there are a lot of opportunities for us to, at the very least, get better at drinking. But at the very most, to use this time to expand, to connect, and to hopefully train ourselves so that we are even more prepared the next time some global apocalyptic catastrophe hits us. We've got a lot of great episodes of the DDFH coming up. Dan Harmon is going to be with us next week.

And of course, please watch the Midnight Gospel coming in Netflix April 20th. I love you. Until next time, Hare Krishna. Meet the Bedroom Suite by Thuma. The foundation for the perfect staycation. Time spent at home is the ultimate luxury. And Thuma makes it easy to stay in with lifestyle enhancing pieces like the bed, the dresser, and the nightstand.

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