Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 488: David Chernikoff

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

David Chernikoff, spiritual teacher and author, joins the DTFH! You can learn more about David on his website, DavidChernikoff.com, and check out his new book: Life, Part Two. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: ButcherBox - Visit ButcherBox.com/Duncan to receive a FREE 7-pound New Year Bundle with your first order! Squarespace - Use offer code: DUNCAN to save 10% on your first site. Super Speciosa - Visit GetSuperLeaf.com/Duncan and get 20% Off your first order!

Most of us have clothes that we've loved for years, maybe even decades, but it's harder than ever to find clothes that will stand the test of time. If you're looking for more pieces designed to last, you can't go wrong with American Giant. From hoodies and t-shirts to denim and more, they've got everything you need to build a wardrobe that you'll be proud of for years to come.

All American Giant clothing is created with a commitment to doing things better, from the materials they use down to the last stitch in every piece. And everything is made right here in America, in partnership with people and communities. Because keeping things local ensures the kind of quality you'll appreciate as soon as you receive your order.

Discover the American Giant difference today. Shop wardrobe essentials that last a lifetime at american-giant.com and get 20% off your first order when you use code LT23 at checkout. That's 20% off your first order at american-giant.com, promo code LT23. Welcome to the DTFH, as today we take a journey into the inner depths of sound.

Boom, you're listening to the DTFH. Most people have had the thrilling experience of watching the transformation that can happen to just about anything when placed under an electron microscope. Suddenly a piece of moldy cheese transforms into an alien landscape or a discarded condom found in an alleyway becomes the surface of the moon.

But a lot of people don't know that the exact same thing happens when you put sound under an acoustic microscope. Recently I was lucky enough to receive a Edmund Tellens acoustic microscope from the Ministry of Sound in London, England. And I've been astounded to discover the many strange things hidden in sounds we take for granted. Take for example, the chirping of the shamrock swallow,

a very common bird in Western North Carolina. When this sound is run through the incredible quantum computing machine known as an Edmund Tellens acoustic microscope, it transforms into this. Right now I'm slowly turning the acoustic magnification dial or at 30, 50 times, 100 times, and now a thousand times.

It's here that things get real weird. I hate flying. In case that you missed that, let me play it for you again. This time magnifying it a little bit more to make it clearer. I hate flying. Do you hear that? Listen again. I hate flying.

I hate flying. I hate flying. Right there in front of us the whole time, hidden in the sweet song of a bird, the private agony of a creature that dislikes one of its fundamental functions in the world. I was disappointed to find that this was a common theme throughout all animals.

Take the sound of a common house cat, for example. We apply the magnifier to this sound, 50 and now a thousand times. Do you hear that? Let me run a filter so we can hear what the cat is actually saying. I was... In case you missed it, let me play it one more time. I was...

I wish I was a dog. From bear to butterfly, catfish to kangaroo, all the animals that I investigated sonically turned out to be kind of unhappy. So, out of sheer curiosity, I decided to try to grab a sample of the human voice from a stranger and run it through the magnifier to see what was hidden inside of human language itself.

I went through a drive-through and recorded this audio. Can I please get the bacon sausage egg and cheese biscuit, number five? Okay, you said sausage egg and cheese. When we come back, we'll find out what was hidden inside that simple exchange. It's gonna blow your mind right after this. You're listening to the DTFH. I want to thank ButcherBox for supporting this episode of the DTFH.

ButcherBox is a subscription service that takes the guesswork out of finding high-quality meat. ButcherBox sources their meat from partners with the highest standards for quality. No more searching the grocery store for 100% grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, wild-caught seafood, and more. Their sourcing decisions are made holistically, keeping the farmer, the planet, the animal,

and your family in mind. Even better, it tastes great. Also, the prepper in me loves getting a box of meat delivered to my house. Sorry, but these days, there's something about that that just feels really comforting. Every month, ButcherBox ships a curated selection of high-quality meat right to your home,

free shipping for the continental US, no antibiotics, or added hormones. And each box contains between eight to 14 pounds of meat, depending on the box you choose. That's enough for 24 individual meals. For a limited time, ButcherBox is offering new members a great deal for the new year. Sign up at butcherbox.com forward slash dunkin'

and you'll receive the ultimate New Year's bundle in your first box. This deal includes ground beef, chicken thighs, and pork butt. That's more than seven pounds of meat added to your first box for free. Get this New Year's bundle before it's gone by going to butcherbox.com slash dunkin'. Thanks, ButcherBox.

We are back. Can I please get the bacon, sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit, number five? OK, you said sausage, egg, and cheese. Who hasn't found themselves going through a drive-through to get a quick bite to eat in this busy world that we find ourselves in? You order your food, you say thanks, and drive away, and eat.

But what happens if you apply an acoustic microscope to the exchange that you normally might not pay that much attention to? Let's find out. First, I wanted to see if there was anything hidden in my own speech. So I ran my own voice in this exchange through the acoustic microscope.

I applied the same magnification that I did on the animals that I examined. It's 50%, 100%, 1,000%. This is my mouth. This is my mouth. It's here either the microscope malfunctioned or some interference from probably a CB radio got in the way of the signal.

So I decided to move on and place the drive-through attendance voice under the microscope. But this time, I wanted to see what would happen if I put it on maximum magnification and was shocked to find this. You have helped so many times. I have been your model friend. You have been here so many times.

And you have been my father. Last time that we met, we were in a galactic disguise. Right there, hidden in plain sight. An incredible world of magic and music. Always in front of us. Speaking of magic and music, the worst segue ever. With us here today is spiritual teacher and author David Churnikoff who just published

a wonderful book called Life Part Two. He's practiced with some of the greatest spiritual teachers of our time, including Chogym Trumper Rinpoche. And now, he's here with us. Everybody, please welcome to the DTFH David Churnikoff. David, welcome to the DTFH. It's great to meet you. Thanks, Duncan. I'm glad to be here.

I wanted to start off with a passage from the intro in your book, Life Part Two, that really blew my mind. And I thought we could maybe spend the whole time talking about this, which is those who die before they die are free to really live. Wow. This is so, so wonderful. Not just for someone who's, I love LSD and anyone who's taken enough acid.

It's probably experienced that death. But I wonder if we could talk a little bit about sometimes in your own life when you have died in this way. Boy, there have been a number of times that come to mind. One of them was when my daughter was born, actually. I was 41 at the time. And prior to meeting my wife in Nepal, I was planning to do a three-year Tibetan retreat

and become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, actually. I had written off intimate partnerships and decided I wasn't cut out for them in a certain sense. Yeah. And after going through a number of live-in relationships and concluding somehow that I wanted to have a really passionate, engaged life, and it was either going to be with a family

or in a full-time go-forward commitment as a monastic. Yes. And so meeting my wife and then deciding to marry and have a child was in and of itself an example of letting go of a certain sense of identity that I'd had as a solo practitioner. And at the same time, having a child was one of the most powerful decisions I made in my adult life, right?

Yeah. Right there with you. Yeah. I bet you are. And there was a point during my wife's labor, which was quite an extended labor as it turned out, which 63 hours. Wow.

Yeah. So she and I both lived and died a number of times during that period. Oh, my. Was it a home birth or was it at a hospital? It was in a hospital birthing center. Oh, wow. But we had one of the only physicians in Boulder,

Colorado who would have allowed that kind of labor to go on without insisting on a C-section. Oh, my God. Which my wife really preferred not to have, you know. And the moment that comes to mind when you bring up the question you were bringing up was when I saw my daughter crowning after 63 hours in this birthing center. Yeah.

And I had this thought, which seems kind of absurd at the moment, but because I studied the same biology classes that all the rest of us did, right? Yes. But I had the thought there's another person coming out of Marsha's body. Yeah. Right.

Right. Yeah. And my whole sense of self and how I understood myself and the world kind of blew up like a fourth of July firecracker. My God. I mean 63 hours. What was there? I'm sorry to ask for a minute detail, but having, you know,

gone through birth myself, well, obviously not myself. Having been with my wife, what were you eating? Was there a cafeteria in this birthing center? I know it seems ridiculous, but. Well, there was a grocery store across the street from the hospital. Okay. This was right in Boulder. So periodically I would go across the street and pick up some

snacks and such, but I didn't feel like eating much of the time. I was in a kind of altered state, I would say. Yes. Yeah. Yes. That been there. I know that state of consciousness. And I wonder for, let's just forget all the biology classes for a

second, because I don't, at least in the biology classes I took, nobody was talking about the way that it, there's a feeling, at least when my children were being born, it reminded me of sitting in the room with dying people. It was, there's this similar energy that appears when people are about to die that seemingly was at least disappearing when my kids were being born. And in like a portal opening or some kind of dimensional rift is

opening, an odd sense of familiarity with the terrain. But yet I've, I mean, I haven't been there in 47 years, you know, with this last one. So can you, what do you think from, from your, from the wisdom traditions, what do you think the perspective is on those moments where whatever the hell science is telling us just gets obliterated and we find ourselves in this kind of fundamental, I don't know, primordial mind state where it's like a human is coming out of my

wife, or if we're even able to say anything. Yeah. You can see why the first chapter in my book is called Embracing Mystery. Yes. Right. You know, Houston Smith, a great religious scholar, I quote at one point in that chapter in which he said, we are born in mystery.

We live in mystery and we die in mystery. Yeah. And, and I think your question is an interesting one because I think these, these moments on the threshold of birth and death. Right. And I did used to do a lot of work with dying people. So that threshold is familiar to me as well. We put us in touch with the limitations of the rational mind and the

central dimension that mystery plays in a spiritual life. Yes. Right. We have to give up that part of our mind that wants to control the world and wrestle it to the ground on a rational basis and surrender to being part of a flow that the thinking mind can never grasp, but the open heart can embrace. Yeah.

Right. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Squarespace. Thank God for Squarespace in the ancient times before Squarespace. If you wanted to make a website, you'd have to go down to the CD website designer district of your hometown and look around making all the right signs, hanging the right stuff out of your pockets until finally a web designer would snuffle up to you and make some weird clicking noises cut to three weeks later when you finally got to take a look at the website.

You thought they were going to design and it was just some scrabbled splatter that looks like somebody took a bag of cursed runes, took a picture of it and uploaded it to the internet. But now thanks to Squarespace, you can do all the things that you used to have to pay web designers, zillions of dollars for yourself. You can mix and match their beautiful templates. If you want to create members only areas, you could do that. If you want to connect your social media accounts, you can do that.

It's got shopping cart functionality, full comments section. And you can even do emails to your clients using the Squarespace service. I could go on and on about all the incredible things they offer. But if you want to see a website so beautiful, it was called by Hollywood actor, Deke Gritz, the best website I've ever damn seen, then go to Squarespace.com. That's a Squarespace website. And we use it every week to upload episodes of the DTFH.

If you're thinking about making a website or improving your website, head over to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com forward slash Duncan. Use offer code Duncan and you'll get 10% off your first order of a website or a domain. Thank you Squarespace. And surrender to being part of a flow that the thinking mind can never grasp, but the open heart can embrace.

Right. Yeah, it's, it's very difficult to, you know, you know, I don't like the show unsolved mysteries just because Wright going into it. It's like they didn't solve the mystery. I don't want to hear it. I want solved mysteries. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to end the episode being like, okay, they didn't solve it.

Just like it said, we don't know. So there that, you know, that kind of itchy feeling of this mystery you're talking about this, this itchy feeling that no, there will be no resolution here. And if they're, and if you think you found a resolution more than likely, you've just, you know, will allow yourself to sink into some kind of, you know, I don't know what's the word with hyper secular materialist perspective. And then you can say, well, we came from monkeys. There was a big bang or matter being sprayed into time with some weird mild

sentience as a result of so many neurons interacting. So it's not a whatever. It's not a big deal, but that doesn't quite answer the mystery you're talking about, which implies a much different cosmology than that. Yeah, I think the way that we can relate to the kind of mystery that I'm talking about at a birth or the bedside of a dying person is that in certain moments, the boundaries of the ego dissolve in such a way that we become the mystery. And we understand it through the process of becoming one with it,

even if we can't put language to it very well when we come back into our sense of smaller separate self. Right. And, but what about this? Why is it it's, you know, mystery, the mystery is so on one side of it, it can seem daunting. It can seem almost like we're imagining it's not there. It can, you know, all kinds of rationalizations for any,

if you've ever brushed shoulders with it or become it when you come back, you look, you think, oh, that was almost like a dream state or something. That, that can't be real at all. And yet, do you have a sense that you would, you want to become the mystery? You would like to become primarily the mystery, whatever, you know, there's other words for the mystery, though I like that word, you know, unitive consciousness, whatever, spaciousness, emptiness. It's odd, isn't it?

It's almost paradoxical that when we're fully in ourselves, we're afraid of that thing. But when we become the thing and go back into ourselves again, we long for it. It's a love hate relationship. Maybe you don't have this, but I do. It's interesting. My experience is that at certain stages in the process,

we experience a sequential dimension to the movement between the mystery or the emptiness of self and the contraction into the ego identity and the small self or what Suzuki Roshi called little mind versus big mind. Okay. Yeah. Right. And what's happening to me, like I'll be 72 in a few weeks, for example. And I first got involved with all of this as a 21 year old college student.

Right. So that's a fair amount of exploring over an extended period of time, you know, and it's certain in the early part of that process, I would bounce between the two levels in a particular way. And they seemed like either or. Yes. Right. And like you were describing, I yearned for the expanded dimension of my being,

whatever language we put on that. Yes. And I felt somewhat imprisoned when I contracted into my small self with its self absorption and preoccupation and evolutionary biological influences. Yes. Right. That's it. Yeah.

So what's been happening as the years go by is the two are moving into a kind of simultaneity. Wow. Right. Yeah. So that you've heard Ram Dass talk about learning to live on two levels of consciousness at the same time. Yes.

Right. And I didn't understand what he meant by that when I first heard him talk about it in the 70s, for example. Right. And yet at this point, I feel like I have more of a felt sense of what he was talking about because I experienced myself a certain amount of the time standing on both levels at the same time. Right.

So that I'm not pushing away my humanness or spiritually bypassing what it means to be a human being on the one hand. And I'm also not out of touch with the vastness of my true nature or Buddha nature or Christ consciousness or true self or whichever of those kinds of phrases speak to you. Right. Yes. I mean, it's a little bit like roughly analogous to say, if you're interested in community theater and you're playing King Lear and you're on stage, right, you play King Lear

with great gusto and make it as real as possible. Right. Yes. And if your mental health is reasonably stable, you don't forget who you are. Right. Right. And when the curtain goes down, you're able to stop being King Lear and go back to being David or Duncan.

Gotcha. Yes. And so it's more of a background foreground shift that begins to happen where sometimes the small self comes to the foreground and that's the primary sense of identity with the vastness as the secondary. Yes. And other times it's reversed in a certain way. Does that make any sense?

Absolutely. It's the me that wants to do the dishes and the me that doesn't want to do the fucking dishes. It wants to go watch TV. It's like, yeah, and yes, but I mean, not to turn into some completely mundane thing, but yes, I do know what you're talking about. I just, because I have less experience in this regard and my karma wasn't such that I had the association that you've had for your entire life and I didn't, the closest

I came to going off to be a monk was when I was studying Zen in college, my teacher casually was like, I know a great monastery in Italy and I felt that for a second, that feeling of like the plain doors opening up and like this pull, but it just wasn't my thing. It wasn't my karma. And so I didn't dive in that deeply, but what I'm saying is when I catch these glimpses of this thing, and I'm happy to say I have more glimpses now than I did when I was younger, I still don't believe it. It's weird as that's, I go to the small me and then camp out there and think, oh, that's

just some, you're just hoping you're having those experiences. You're just this, you know, 47 year old scoliosis and you're, what are you talking about? But then it comes again, like what you're talking about in a very much like some process, some kind of, in a very gentle way, it's there and like, oh, oh, oh right, this is it. Oh yeah. And then I forget. So imagine that very same process that you just described with one slight change, right? All right.

And the change would be, imagine that the part that you don't believe is the small self. Yeah. Just flip that, just flip that one around. Wow. That's really, that's an interesting thought experiment. What is, what's that from? It just popped up from nowhere. I don't know.

I thought it was some technique. I thought you were about to give me the transmission here. Oh, I, so, but let's, I want to talk more about this. So you, you go from truly, from, from about to do Bill Murray, Razor's Edge, you're about to go into the deep unknown, into the thing to falling in love and having children. And so you really did have to let go of a very, a very romantic kind of life, you know, which I mean, I think in reality, probably becoming a monk, sometimes I wonder if it might be a billion times easier than being a parent.

You know, I don't know. I probably, you know, certainly less diapers and less like, you know what I mean? Like my friend was just telling me, when you become a parent, you become a volunteer fireman, essentially, you know, you really come to understand impermanence in, in not in some grand way, but just like, my God, these three year olds are too, they're always on the precipice of some injury, you know, so, or, or so inevitable, an inevitable howling scream will emerge from somewhere in the house that you have to go run to, but, but so tell me about that. Did you ever in the, in the, you know, from your wife's protracted labor to those, those

chaotic years of being a new dad, did you find yourself looking back on how you almost joined a monastery thinking, oh, I fucked up, I should have gone, I should have gone to the monastery. Definitely had that experience at times, you know, and, and at the same time, my basic intuitive sense was that it was the right thing for me. Yeah. That, because I, what I realized was, like, I was 41, I was 41 when we got married and 41 when we had our daughter, right?

Yes. And, and what, what I realized was that I, I was afraid to really open my heart to other people beyond a certain point. Yes. And part of that was related to my history of having a lot of sudden losses when I was young, some traumatic history along those lines. What did you, what did you lose? Oh, my father died suddenly from a massive coronary when I was 13.

Oh, and he was, he had four brothers, and they all also died from coronaries at young ages. Wow. And, you know, one, one of my closest friends from high school died at 28. Okay. A girl I dated in high school died at 26. Right. I just, death seemed to be one of my teachers, so to speak, for reasons I may never

understand, but there was a way in which I developed a certain up to the point where I chose to marry a certain unconscious fear of getting my hands really dirty in life and making the kind of commitment that you make with diapers and dishes. And, and, and, you know, I'd never wanted to own a home. I, you know, I didn't, I didn't want to worry about money, and I generally had enough to do the things that were important to me. Right. So I kind of lived like a lay monastic from 20 to 40, is what I did.

I did, so I did the life cycle, the lifespan in a different order. Okay. Right. Yeah, I got you. Well, and then we bought, we bought our first home when I was 42. Yeah. And our daughter was born in August of 91. So she's now 30, you know, and lives 10 minutes from us.

And she's just a really beautiful human being. How wonderful. But, but I could tell that I knew how to be a monk is what it came down to. Yeah. I knew how to be alone. I liked being with myself. I liked silence and simplicity. Yeah.

I liked having a lot of control over my choice making. Yes, me too. Things of that sort. But that was a comfort zone. And the inner guide in me said, you need to get out of your comfort zone. Yeah. Right. And you need to, you need to challenge this fear, right, that you can't tolerate.

Like the real fear was, if I did have a child and Mary and one of them died or something happened to them, that I just couldn't take any more of that. Right. Right. Yes. I think I have that thought all the time. I think, you know, I've had an experience, a fair with death, you could say. You know, both my parents got, I had cancer.

And, and so not only now that I'm an old dad, not only do I experience that thing where I'm like, if anything happens to these kids, I will never recover from this. There is no way that I can handle that. I will be just, and then I think of all the parents who have, who are going through that or have gone through that, and then that gives you a taste of the level of suffering that's possible in this world. But then also my other neurotic thought, which I'm sure you must have, is like, what if I die even worse or better?

I guess, I don't know, depending on what day it is, what if I die? Do you, you must have, you must have had that thought too. You're having a father and brothers die of this similar thing. Surely that thought, that was on your mind too, that at any moment you could be, you could die and these children, your daughter would be fatherless. Yeah, I think the sense of fragility and vulnerability that's a part of our humanness is easy to avoid and ignore and deny, essentially. Yes.

But when you have a history with a lot of losses, that denial gets cracked and eventually dissipates and doesn't really exist to the same degree that it would for people who haven't had those kinds of losses. Right. So, so that was part of it. And, and I, and, you know, there's a tendency for those of us who are fathers to identify consciously or unconsciously with our own fathers. Yes.

Right. And, and, and I, I, I didn't want to die at 50 from working so hard as my own father did, right? Yeah. And, and I didn't even realize that was a fear in me until I did a men's group at one point on a weekend with a group of men on fathers and sons and relationships between fathers and sons. And it really came up to me at one point when I was doing some personal work

in the center of the circle with a friend actually who still lives here in Boulder and, and he took me into a very deep place and I just kind of lost it. And I started to scream, I don't want to die. Yeah. I don't want to die. Okay. Can I tell you my, the first thing I was going to say to you for this podcast was that I just didn't have the guts after looking at your book, the way I wanted to

start the episode, I don't want to die. Your book is about, your book is about this, you know, the life part to the second half. I don't want to die. I don't want to, I don't know, like, you know, I'm thinking like, as I'm like getting into the book, like, oh my God, oh God, I don't want to face this like this. So go ahead. I'm sorry to cut you off.

I just had to tell you that was the very first thing I was going to say to you when we met. Yeah. Well, the paradox is the part of you that stepped onto whatever you understand the spiritual path to be does want to die, not, not physically, right, but wants to die out of the limited sense of self that feels like such an isolating prison, a fair amount of the time we're walking around during the day. Yes.

Right. Yeah, I got you. And so, so to bring it full circle, that expression, those who die before they die are free to really live, right? So, so those, the way I hear that and experience it to some degree is those who die out of those who die out of exclusive identification with the small self are born into identification with our true nature. Thank you, Super Speciosa for supporting this episode of the DTFH.

You've heard about Kratom. If you like Kratom, if you're interested in Kratom, Super Speciosa is the way to go because they've modernized the process of consuming and joined Kratom by producing the highest quality Kratom products and all different strengths and strains. Bottom line, I'm not going to make Kratom tea or pour Kratom gunk into some gunky thing. And I don't like going to Kratom bars, but what's cool about Super Speciosa is you can get capsules so you know exactly how much Kratom you're eating. And you can use it as a pre-workout supplement.

You can use it to help you relax or just unwind or feel better in general. Even better, there's only one ingredient, pure Kratom leaf. Super Speciosa Kratom is certified by third party labs. It's rigorously tested for purity and safety and 100% satisfaction or your money back guaranteed. Also, I've been rigorously testing it since they sent it to me and it's awesome. Super Speciosa Kratom is harvested exclusively from Southeast Asia and every harvest is different. Once the current supply sells out, it could take months to re-stock. Right now, Super Speciosa is offering my listeners a massive discount.

All you got to do is go to GetSuperleaf.com forward slash Duncan. Again, that is GetSuperleaf.com forward slash Duncan. Use promo code Duncan for 20% off. GetSuperleaf.com promo code Duncan for 20% off Super Speciosa's Super Kratom. Thank you, Super Speciosa. Those who die out of those who die out of exclusive identification with the small self are born into identification with our true nature. Whoa, whoa, that is so cool.

Wow, I got you. I got you because if we're talking about the two channels is around us, put it. And we're going to make some, you know, dualistic comparison between the two. One is certainly a million times more vital and more. Wow, that's incredible. It reminds me when I was getting trained up for this hospice I did years ago. One of the people who talked to us was someone who had died and and and and said, you know, really emphasized compared to this compared to what happens when you die.

This is this is death. This is not and I would always trip me out. But I get I got you. I got you. You just flip it. That's all you have to do is just flip it. And then you realize, wow. So you're saying, no, that's the death.

Oh, man, thank you so much for that. That's so cool. Wow, that's so cool. Hmm. It's you really turned it on its head. That's what you were saying earlier to me, too. Oh, you mentioned you mentioned you mentioned the Zen tradition, you know, or a little earlier in your own experience, right?

Yes. One of the sayings that they use in the Zen tradition is that Zen will turn you inside out and upside down. Wow. And that's what you just experienced in a way. Yeah, right? Was it a recognition of something that got turned inside out and upside down relative to how you previously perceived it? That's so cool.

Wow. I wouldn't be surprised if some people was saying, you know, this is just wrecked their car. That was a really heavy thing to blast us with. What if I just passed out? That would be so awkward. Yes, OK, I love that. That's beautiful. And I appreciate you telling me that that that was something I was missing.

You know, I've I've read Shogym Trumper Rinpoche a little bit. And he described enlightenment, actually, you know, people get very excited about enlightenment or but really he said it's imagine if you'd been just standing on your head your entire life and then someone helped you stand on your feet. There would probably be a little bit of time where the whole thing seemed incredibly weird, but really it was just super normal. And it feels like that's what another way of putting what he said. Another analogy for this possibility.

But let's face it, let's get deeper into your book. If you don't mind, let's face it. These these epiphanous moments like the one you just gave me. How are they going to help me with my scoliosis that's getting worse? Just like my the chiropractor my mom took me to when I was a teen told me. And I'm like, whatever, I'm not doing these stretches. How are they going to help with, you know, the the the reality that many of us are either beginning to face or facing, which is like this thing that we're

localized in right now, whether we like it or not, it's melting down. Man, it's collapsing. It's like somebody threw us inside of Chernobyl and locked the door. And what are we going to do here? How how are how to how to make such a how to bring the mystery into this process that we've all seen or are experiencing. We've been around old people or we're becoming old people. No matter what, you're becoming an old person.

How how do we what's the practical application, I guess. For me, the one of the keys is to infuse the whole process with compassion. Compassion, the entire process. Like when I was living and studying and working in Nepal with the Saeva Foundation, I had a dream at one point about Avalokiteshwara, right, the Bodhisattva of compassion. Yes. Right. And in the dream, Avalokiteshwara said to me, the crystal mala is the key that's all you ever need to know.

And and the image of the crystal mala, as you might know, in Tibetan iconography, there's different images of Avalokiteshwara, some are called thousand armed. But the primary one and the one that I have, I had a tanka of over there was four armed Avalokiteshwara. And each hand had something different in it. And one of the hands held a crystal mala. Right. So that became a symbol for me of the role, the importance of compassion. And then the next day I went out and I bought a crystal mala that I keep I've had on my meditation table since the 80s.

Wow. And and so the way I think we ground all of this in the practicalities of life and the realities of physical bodies that by their nature are born and exist and then become sick and then die. Yes. Right. Is is that we cultivate self-compassion of a particular kind. And there's a variety of practices that can help us do that. And then in the process of developing self-compassion, we start to see the connection between the unique experiences we're having and the universal experiences that all humans are having. Okay.

Okay. Right. Right. It's like the bridge. It's the that's it's the bridge to the meta. Yeah. It's one it's what one teacher of mine called suffering as a gateway to compassion. Right.

God, it's so hard to have compassion for yourself, though. It's it's an idea. I see what you're saying. It's like, if you can't do it for yourself, how are you going to do it for anyone or anything else? If you can't do it for the thing that you're closest to. But yeah, it's so hard. It's it's it always any time I'm trying to do the self-compassion thing where I'm having a rough day or I'm, you know, whatever the infinite numbers of sorrows that happen to a person. And then I try to do self-compassion.

There's always a part of me like rolling my eyes at that flimsy attempt. You know, like, I always a sense of like, really, what are you going to do? Rub your astral back or something? Come on. What is it? You know, this isn't deal with it. So it's so why is it so hard? How do we?

How do we do it? I like I feel like I do it every once in a while. But God, it's really difficult. Well, I think partly it harkens back to the mystery or the unitive dimension of things that you referred to earlier, right? Yes. Because if if we if we can reconnect with those experiences in which we know we're not separate from reality as a whole, right, there's a certain kind of natural and organic kindness that arises in that space, right? Where we're quote unquote, one with everything. Yeah.

Right. Yes. And even when we come out of those spaces, there's a kind of remnant or memory that remains, right? So so if you go to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and you can see the view of the valleys below. Yes. And in that brief moment, you really get how everything works and how it's all interconnected. Yes. And then you get back on a plane and fly back to the United States and you're going to work on Monday.

You remember what you saw? Yes. You remember that you're a part of that huge interconnected web that you saw from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro? Yes. Right. Yes. And and that's that's the ground of compassion towards self and other. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. Right. There's there's a felt sense of the inherent sacredness of the whole situation when you're standing on that mountain. If you're exerting compassion, quote, exerting, is that mean you're doing it wrong?

Like if I know what you're talking about, I mean, I can refer to these moments, but in the times where I need to be giving myself the most self compassion, it seems like those are the times when I'm farthest away from the view. And and and in that sense, though, I can kind of summon it up kind of when it gets really bad. And sometimes when I'm chatting with people like you, I wonder if maybe because of all the work you've done, maybe you don't get as locked down as some of us do, you know? And I'm sorry if I'm just putting something on you that's not fair, just a dumb judgment or something. But sometimes with my teachers, who are wonderful, I remember my God, these are people who like you have been working and studying and teaching for their whole lives and doing this work. And like you're saying, you're experiencing the dual, you're both channels simultaneously. But for some of us, it's like, you know, suddenly you're just in a box or something, you know, you're in some steel box and you want to you want to. You want to do the compassion thing, but it just anyway, is exertion is on your doing?

Can you do compassion wrong is is what I mean? Is it is, is it am I fooling myself if I find myself like being compassionate to myself feels like lifting a heavy weight? Yeah, the word exertion doesn't really fit for me with self compassion, right? Yeah, I think of it more in terms of inviting or encouraging or practicing, right? Because I think it's helpful to think of self compassion as a skill. OK, right. So let's let's talk about it as being analogous to learning to play the piano, OK, right? When you first sit down and take your first lessons, it seems beyond imagination that you'll ever be able to be an improvisational pianist. Yes, who can who can play beautiful music, impossible. Yes, right.

And and that's how it was for me. I mean, most of us in this culture and this is particular to modern Western culture is my sense, because I had a private practice as a psychotherapist in Kathmandu, and it was different. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Who is your client? What was your client base? I'm sorry. I don't mean to go. You said that, so we have to talk about who are you working with?

The hippies that were hanging out there or like? Well, I'm ex-patriots because, you know, like a significant portion of the Nepal's economy when I was there in the 80s was ex-patriots service organizations, right? And NGOs, all these people that ran NGOs from Italy and from England and from the US, like USAID and, you know, the SAVA Foundation. And and then there were these educated people who were natives of Nepal and India, who had either gone to study in India or come to the US and studied and then come back to their home countries, right? And, you know, there was there was a fair, you know, I had a little office at a place called the Himalayan Yoga Institute, where I where I also taught first taught meditation in the 80s. What was your commute like? Oh, you know, I had a motorcycle, so it was about 10 minutes up a dirt road. Wow, that is nuts.

That is nuts. You're riding your motorcycle to do psychotherapy. That is the craziest. All those temples where you passing temples and you must. Oh, my God, that is wild, man. That is cool. That is so cool. I don't I'm sorry.

I guess I, you know, I have a friend. I have friends who've gone there to like do catamine and stuff like I like I I've heard stories of it, of course. And I've heard about how powerful it is there. I've heard the there's just a lot of energy there, I guess you could say. So I can't imagine what that must be like. Do you think that's a superstitious silliness that it's some kind of a cult motherboard up there? I found I had I had some of the most powerful experiences of my life when I was living over there. OK, yeah, that's what I've heard.

That's what I've heard. And I don't know how much of it was the fact that I'd wanted to go there since I was in my early 20s when I started training as a yoga teacher and such. And I didn't go until 1986. So I 15 years I've been wanting to go there and convincing myself that for career reasons or something that I couldn't. It wasn't the right time and so forth. And by the time I finally got there, I wanted to go to where the roots of these teachings that were so important to me existed. I was ripe in a certain way for something, some kind of profound transformation. Right.

And and I wasn't disappointed. I mean, it was I couldn't have predicted what would happen. But it was a life changing choice on my part to spend three years in that part of the world and just be there. Well, I mean, when you say the what can you talk about some of these experiences? I mean, did you meet? Did you? Yeah, you know, there's people they talk about who are around that area that you can meet. I don't know.

Like, I've just heard stories from, you know, I've heard solve mystery style stories about that place, you know. So yeah. Well, I mean, my primary teacher was a very revered and respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher named Trangu Rinpoche, who's a karma Cognue teacher for people that are familiar with Tibetan lineages and such. And he was a wonderful and extraordinary exemplar of the best of what Buddhist teachings can help a person become. And to have a mentor and a model of that sort over an extended period of time is the kind of blessing that's hard to put words to the gratitude that comes up for me. I mean, if you think about how you feel in relation to having connected with Ram Dass and met someone who was highly realized and showed you the possibilities for a human incarnation. Yes, yes.

The gratitude is just inexpressible. It's so tremendous. If you're lucky enough to get gratitude, if you're not just feeling like there's a simulation malfunctioned that I got to meet Ram Dass. And so it's just like, what, you know what I'm saying? That sense of, I am to Jack Kornfield called me a public neurotic, and that is exactly what I am. And so I can't, like I'm always, if I do, I have incredible moments of gratitude from my teachers, and then I feel embarrassed that I'm feeling the gratitude. And then I just feel like, what are you even feeling gratitude for? You don't even deserve it.

You just weaseled your way to get to meet them, you know? But that, yeah, sorry. I mean, that's that same self-critical voice that you were talking about a moment ago, right? Like that you have trouble working with, right? Yes. And that kind of self-critical voice is more or less endemic in modern Western culture. Yes. There's a kind of perfectionism that we grow up with in the nuclear family, oftentimes.

And I certainly experienced it growing up because I had a very harsh inner critic for most of my young adult and even through midlife, right? I mean, I would go and give a talk to a hundred people and there would be one guy there whose wife made him come and miss Monday night football. And he'd be looking at his phone the whole time or something, right? And at the end, a bunch of people would come up and thank me or say something about how they appreciated the talk. And I would go home exclusively thinking about that one guy, right? And then I was so boring and I couldn't even capture this person's attention or get him to show any interest, right? And so, you know, what one psychologist called the wound of unlove is at the root of that self-criticism that we're talking about, right? And it's a deep one for most of us, no question, right?

And at the same time, that's the source, that and a kind of exaggerated super ego function that we have in our culture with its individualism and its competitiveness. And it's pull yourself up by the bootstraps and, you know, like when I was in grade school, we were graded on a curve. So I was happy if you did poorly if we were graded on a curve because I would do better, right? What kind of way to educate children is that? What does that teach people about their relationships to other human beings, right? You know, it's like educational capitalism of some sort, right? Right, right, and yet most of us, you know, we got a good dose of feeling like we're not good enough. Somehow, we're not doing it right, we're not good enough, we're not lovable yet, right?

And so the question is, how do we use the best of Western psychology and the best of our contemplative teachings and practices to wear that away, like to dissipate it like water on stone, right? So that as we mature spiritually and psychologically and emotionally, we come to see ourselves with the same eyes that we see a beautiful sunset. Right, one of my trainers years ago when I was, I used to teach Gestalt therapy and such, and one of the Gestalt trainers, yeah, no, I didn't, I didn't, but I met some of his main disciples basically who moved from New York to Cleveland where I went to an institute to train. And one of the trainers said to us at one point, he said, when you work with people, you have to learn to look at them the way you look at a sunset, right? He said, you don't look at a sunset and say, that would be so beautiful if the hot pink part were a little further to the right and the turquoise were a little lower to the left. Can we just jump right back into it? It's been recording the whole time. Yeah, I'm, you know, I like where we've been and I'm happy to go where we go next wherever that might be. Thank you. Well, I this is the core for cut off. I wanted to say, you know, that this, the thing that you're talking about that's endemic in our culture, whatever you want to call it, I mean, when I'm being lazy, I'll just say, well, that's the devil.

It's some kind of demonic force that's gotten interwoven into our culture, turned itself into some presentation of masculinity or sophistication or not being puffed up. The way to show that you're humble is not to help other people as to talk shit about yourself or to constantly degrade yourself, at least in some interpersonal never ending hell dialogue. But what I want to talk about is that how to, you know, how to, how to transcend that to create the, the, the bridge, there's no way I'm gonna, I can manifest true compassion for other people. If I, if I'm this thing is constantly going on in my head, or am I supposed to just see this as one of the levels that Ramdas was talking about and let it keep running? I mean, can you, can you, can you turn it off? Do you still do therapy? Uh, I, no, I haven't really done psychotherapy for a number of years. Okay, I'll scratch that off the question.

If I could be your client. Okay, I mean, I still draw on it. I do, I do spiritual counseling and spiritual direction and meditation, mentoring and guidance and things like that. And, and I draw on the psychology training and background. But when it's a non COVID period, I travel and teach a lot and things of that sort. And most people, when they establish a relationship with a psychotherapist, they want to go to a weekly meeting or have somebody who's, who's going to be there in a crisis and a pinch. And, and I don't want to let people down because I can't show up that way when I'm traveling a lot and things like that. Okay.

Well, look, we're going to cut out that last joke. I want to, we're at, I want to rephrase my question. I apologize. It's just, I got a little flustered because of the computer shutdown. Aaron, if you're listening to this, can you cut to this point? This is my editor. Um, here's the, um, here's what I did and I wish I hadn't. You were beginning to describe the teacher that you met in Kathmandu and then I threw us off track by yapping about my own imposter syndrome.

But I felt like we were on the, I could, as I can with Ram Dass and with anyone who's been, who's worked or gotten lucky enough to have the karma to be with a being like that. I could already begin to feel the energy of that person just as your, your love for him was coming through. So I wonder if you could, if you could tell me about how you met him and what that first meeting was like. Perfect. Yeah. Well, this ties right into what you were bringing up about how self-critical we tend to be, right? Because, um, shortly after I got to Nepal, uh, I was very taken by Truongal Rinpoche when he started to offer teachings and he, he, he carried himself in a way that was so unpretentious on one level and so present and so content and peaceful and, and in the moment that it was just inspiring to be in his presence, essentially, right?

Yeah. So I asked his assistant if I could meet with him. And I had just completed training in Berkeley in a Master of Divinity program at the place called the Graduate Theological Union, where I had a lot of interest in comparative religious studies and inter-religion, inter-spiritual studies, you could say, right? So I was pretty confused about where I was with my own spiritual practice and path. And so I wanted to talk to him about that and I made this appointment. I went to see him. I came in and as is traditional, I offered him a kata, a white silk scarf as an, as an offer of appreciation.

And he touched it to the top of his head and put it over my shoulders and gave it back to me as a blessing. And, and I basically said, you know, I'm here, Rinpoche, because I need some guidance. I'm feeling confused about where I am in my spiritual life. And, and I wonder if you could help me find my way, right? And, and he listened to his English was limited at that point. And he had a better passive vocabulary than active vocabulary, because he was new to Westerners. And he said, tell me about your spiritual practice. And I launched into about a 10 minute spiritual autobiography, basically.

And I, and I said, you know, I grew up in the Jewish tradition. I left it when I was about 14. I decided to skip my drug history because I didn't know if that was relevant from his perspective. In terms of the spiritual path, I said, and then when I was 21, I got involved with yoga and I met Swami Satya Dananda, right? And I went through this list of I was four years with this teacher and then I met Trimba Rinpoche. And I took refuge vows as a Buddhist and Bodhisattva vows. But then I decided to leave that community for complex reasons and I met Joseph Goldstein.

And, you know, and I went through like three years of this and five years of that. And Father Thomas Keating and the contemplative Christian tradition. And as I was telling my story, I was sitting on a cushion on the floor and he was on a chair. He was a pretty large man, kind of looking down at me, just holding me with loving eyes. And I was feeling shame, though, as I told my story. There had always been this nagging part of me that we're talking about saying, you're not doing this right. Yes.

You're digging too many holes, you're exploring too many different practices. Yes. And so he basically just listened and, excuse me, by the time I got to the end, I was so ashamed of myself hearing this voice of mine, because I realized I was asking him for yet more teachings after listing all of these teachers, right? Oh, right. And in my own mind, by the time I finished, I was faced down toward the carpet. I was so ashamed I couldn't even look up at him.

Wow. Right. And I was certain he was going to say to me, get out of here, just get out of here, you know. Yeah. And so I peeked up at him this way, and he was looking at me with such compassion and such love, I could hardly believe it. And he leaned toward me and he said to me, very good. Which was the last thing I expected to hear.

He said, very good. All of these things are very good. I think that anything that cultivates wisdom and compassion is very good. Wow. And he proceeded to give me a teaching, a particular visualization practice that he wanted me to do. And he said that one of his senior students would give me the details. Right. Now, when I walked out of there, I was shocked because I realized that for 15 years, I

had been carrying this self-critical voice that said, I wasn't treading the spiritual path properly. Right. Yeah. And what he saw was somebody who simply wanted to wake up and to help other people wake up and was following all these different opportunities that were coming up in the environment we were living in at the time in the US. Yes.

He saw a pure heart of somebody who just wanted to wake up and tread the bodhisattva path. Basically. Yeah. Right. And what happened in that moment was, I saw myself through his eyes. What felt like, I felt like I was experiencing what Tibetans call transmission of mind. Yeah. Right.

And I could see through his eyes, he didn't see any problem whatsoever with the way I had treaded the path or lived my life. Right. Right. So, in regard to your question about what's the how to here with cultivating self-compassion, right? Yeah. Part of it, you intuitively found your way to.

You hang out with people who have really developed an open heart and a clear, quiet mind who mirror back to you your own true nature and your own goodness. Yeah. Right. That's one of the ways we heal that particular wound and we let go of that belief, that little voice inside becomes less believable that we're not good enough or not doing it right or not lovable or whatever it might be. Right?

Yeah. And when you have an ongoing relationship with someone like that, right, that process accelerates of letting go of identification with those parts of the self. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Right.

That's just one example and one process that helps to loosen the grip of that self-critical voice which can seem so real when we're caught up in heavy identification with it. God. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's beautiful. That's the best.

That's the thing that you're talking about that they can do that city or whatever it is where they're able to, it's not just like, I think in the West, we're so used to fake smiles and whatever animal part of ourselves can see right through that shit, but when you're around people like that and they do look at you like that and it is, I know what you're talking about. In stories of Neem Karoli Baba, of course, people talked about what that was like because it wasn't as though they were not aware of all the same things that you were aware of about yourself that were giving fuel to that inner critic, but it's that they were aware

of all those things and it's not a big deal at all. Nothing in fact. I don't think it's like those parts are invisible to them. I think they're, at the very least, their understanding of their own humanity helps them see that in everyone because we all have it. When you were taking psychedelics, did you experience that seeing yourself through the lens of the universe in a loving way or has it only been through people? No.

I mean, I had that experience with drugs at points along the way, and also in nature. There's a way that certain, one reason I live in Colorado is because the natural beauty in Colorado is so healing and so transformational to have in our front yard, basically, living a few minutes from hiking trails and mountains and so forth. I think there's a lot of ways in which we can experience that sense of seeing ourselves with eyes that are not judgmental, but seeing ourselves as part of nature and as part of this vast wondrous mystery that includes everyone and everything and every aspect of our lives. I think part of what people were enamored about with drugs in the 60s and 70s was that that

was a popular entry point to what we're talking about, a glimpse of something. Most people at some point concluded that that wasn't sufficient for stabilizing at the level that they were experiencing things when they were taking the chemicals. Right. Yeah. That seems to be the general problem. Yeah. But the fact of the matter is, for most people, for many people, it was a blessing to be introduced

to this other possibility for understanding oneself in the world and it inspired people to study with teachers and to learn about yoga or meditation or chanting or whatever particular skillful means they were attracted to. Right. Yeah. Yes. Right. Definitely.

I mean, I think that, yeah, I don't stigma to, I love psychedelics. I'll always love psychedelics. You're so fun, but eventually, you do run into that, what Ram Dass talked about, which is like, you don't want to come down anymore. You don't want to have to keep having these crashes or even worse. You maintain some kind of consistent high via the conduit of mushrooms or acid or whatever, and then you start imagining, there's a strange psychedelic narcissism that can creep in where you forget that these states are coming with the help of a chemical or something like that,

and then when the chemical is not there, you're faced with the ground floor stuff, so I get it. Do you, having mentioned all of those incredible teachers that you've worked with, if you had to name a similar, did you ever, did you notice a thread through all of them as similarity in all of them or some kind of fundamental essence of what they were teaching? Well, certainly what I said about compassion, I felt clearly that these people had some compassionate understanding of who I was. I didn't feel judged by them or I didn't feel insufficient in their presence.

Even if I was reprimanded, say, or something, I felt like it was a kind of fierce compassion in some cases, but it didn't come from a place of judgment. It came from a place of love and compassion and acceptance of who I was, including whatever I was working out at the time, basically. Another aspect was a kind of lightness of being. These people had a lot of depth, totally got what deep suffering was about and totally understood how difficult life can be and were not in denial of it, and somehow they were able to maintain a kind of joie de vivre, and a joy in living, and an appreciation for

life as it is, even with all of its darkness at times. Yes, that, that thing, oh my God, when you see that, when I got to see the Dalai Lama once speak, and I didn't know what to expect, I guess I was expecting some, like, I don't know, solemnity or something like that, and he's there with this translator, and they were so funny, and so playful, and so light, but yet so, like, so there, and like, you know, the whole room, like, the energy radiating, you know, off of the Dalai Lama, who isn't the Dalai Lama considered an incarnation of Avalokita Shavar? So you felt that, what that was, it wasn't like the heavy, you know, depending on what

your upbringing is, you might associate, I don't know, spirituality with, like, heavy and tense, you know, people walking around with bibles on their heads, urns of incense swinging, and you gotta shut up, you're bored, your belt's too tight, you know what I mean, but this was like, watching children, like watching the oldest children you've ever seen in your life, you know, playing up there, and wow, that is, yeah, I'm glad, that's a, I want to be like that so damn bad, how did we get there? Yeah, well, you know, maybe you've seen this beautiful book that the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu did together, you know, with a writer, editor named Douglas Abrams, called The Book of Joy,

right? No, I haven't seen this book. If you want to get to where you just talked about, this would facilitate the process for sure, right? Ordering it, great. This is a visit, the Desmond Tutu and Douglas Abrams go to visit the Dalai Lama in Durham, it's helped celebrate his 80th birthday, and for five days, the three of them hang out, and Douglas Abrams is kind of the scribe and the emcee, and asks them questions about what they want to pass on to people, about how they've learned to maintain their joy in the face of all the suffering they've been witness to, right? And it's just an exquisite capturing, you know, you the reader get to be a fly on the wall at a five-day visit in Durham

Salah with his holiness, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, and if anybody had reason to be grim and depressed about suffering, I mean, between apartheid and, you know, the beautiful human rights activism that Desmond Tutu did with the truth and reconciliation process, and what the Dalai Lama led the Tibetan people through, having escaped from Tibet, and how they've been treated by the Chinese, these men certainly had plenty of reasons to be grim and depressed and down on humanity, if you will. Yeah, right. And that they could maintain the joy that they maintain in the way that you're talking about is a very inspiring example of what's possible for us as human beings if we don't look at it through the lens of the small self with a comparing mind and just use it

for more fuel for self-criticism. Yes, yeah, and this, you know, by the way, I appreciate you telling me about that book, but we got to plug your book on this thing, you know, now everyone's going to order the Dalai Lama's book. You've put yourself, you're creating like you're competing against the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu now. It's like you don't want to be there. You don't want to be there, but I, you know, one thing that was flickering through my mind is I was looking over your book, which I haven't finished yet, is when I was young, my grandmother freaked me out. She said something to me. She goes, when I look in the mirror, I see, I don't remember the age now, an 80, 90 year old, a 90 year old woman, but inside, I feel like I'm 16. And that like was just a mind

fuck that like has stayed with me my entire life. I think she was trying to, you know, communicate to me the inevitability of aging or something like that. But what about the, you know, when people see a book called Life Part Two, a book about this, you know, the second part of our lives getting older who aren't old yet, there is a sense of like, I don't need to read that. I'm not old yet. And then you look up and suddenly you're old. This, you know, like the bizarre non-reality of time, you know, that you do know what I'm talking about that. I feel like I was 20, two days ago, you know, and suddenly I've got kids, I'm in my 40s. So is there something in your book that young people can connect to that you think can like, that can help them in some way

on their spiritual journeys? I think there is, right? Because I talk about in the book two different uses of the phrase, the second half of life, right? Carl Jung is one person who this phrase is usually attributed to. And he referred to it in the chronological sense that you're talking about, that is, you know, midlife and beyond, you're in the second half of life. A second meaning of that phrase is that there are certain times in our lives where we go through such dramatic changes that it's like dying and being reborn, right? And we could be 25 when that happens. Right. I have an example in the book about a 26-year-old who I worked with when I was still doing clinical work as a psychotherapist, who was a quite brilliant young fellow who was finishing

a doctorate in psychology and whose PhD thesis was already scheduled to be published if he finished it on time and so forth. And then sadly, he was in a car accident. And although he wasn't physically hurt that badly, he had a bad head injury, closed head injury, right? And so here's someone whose intellect had been his primary positive characteristic his whole life. And after the accident, he couldn't read. He couldn't write, right? He had a lot of cognitive deficits such as word finding problems, inability to read, some expressive aphasia. He could understand most of what we said, but he couldn't express himself so well and so forth, right? My point being, his whole sense of who he was, which was pinned in large part on being one of the smartest people he'd ever

in the room when he was in a room with anybody, all went out the window in one little car flip, right? And so again, this is another meaning of life part two, where life creates changes in such a way that our sense of who we are and how things are is radically shifted. Like at one point, someone said to me in a life coaching session, this is just so hard to digest. It's not even like a new chapter. This is like book two of my life. Wow. But that person was in their 30s. They were not 75 or 80, right? And that could be true after a divorce, for example. If someone gets a late stage cancer diagnosis, right? There's life before cancer and life after cancer for people, right? Sounds like you know something about that. I do.

Yeah. And so life part two could have a lot of meanings to it on a secondary level, aside from the chronological second half of life. Right. You're just talking about that shocking moment where you feel like, oh my God, what is the difference between being awake and dreaming? And my dreams sometimes all of a sudden, I'm in one setting, talking to some people as one thing, and then the next, I'm in a completely different setting. There seems to be, but with dream logic, you're not thinking like, oh, I was just like having a conversation with a lizard. Now I'm on the beach with Ramdas. What's happening here? But in human life, this very same thing is happening, isn't it? If you used to be a kid and you're an adult,

this is a second part of your life. It might as well be. And yeah, I think there is something really disturbing about that, to be honest. We want to believe so much this thing that we're in has like real connective tissue in that, God, Jesus, when you're like you've experienced this before and you had kids, you were in these relationships, you were so in love, you were so sure of this or that, saying the sweetest things to each other, and then suddenly you don't talk to them anymore. It's really disturbing. Have you found a way in this book? Is there a way for us to deal with that that doesn't involve just having a weird form of existential vertigo as we contemplate the complete insane impermanence of whatever particular situation

that we're in? And PS, I'm sorry, I'm ranting, I think every single one of us who is dealing with this pandemic is experiencing a version of like, yeah, guess what, things don't see, things don't just change massively in the individual's life. But as we can see, they happen on a planetary level from time to time too. That's what we're experiencing right now. The question that comes up for me is, what's a wise way to work with this process that you just described, right? Yes. There was a saying I heard in Nepal that I think about when the going gets rough like it is during this pandemic and like these recent fires that we had here in Boulder, actually. And the saying is, the world is like a grinding stone. It will either grind you up

or it will turn you into something beautiful. All right, so my question is, what choices could we make when we're dealing with these difficult times, and we are in some difficult times, that's real, that will increase the likelihood of us going in the direction of becoming something beautiful and not being ground up and becoming something cynical or something nihilistic. Yeah. And this is where the wonderful range of creative spiritual practices that we have available to us come into play for me, right? Yeah. I'm not invested in what specific techniques people practice as much as I am, the outcomes. That is, what I think we need, we need more wisdom and more compassion and more love and more insight, a lot more than we need any particular people

practicing a certain method of waking up. Right. And so this is where we have to tap into our own intuitions and trust that we have a part of us that's an inner guide of a sort, what Ram Das used to call, and the Quakers called the still small voice within. Yes. Right. And something like meditation helps us to quiet our inner world enough so we can know which one is the still small voice and which one is the participant in a bad city council meeting. Yeah. Oh, God, my still small voice is too small. It's like very, very small. Well, you know, Ram Das used to describe it as the still small voice within surrounded by the trumpets of your desires. Wow. Right. And it's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge. And yet, it's a capacity

that we all have that with sincere intention and motivation can be cultivated. Yeah. Yeah. It's true that we also have a remarkable capacity for self-deception. And I talk about in the book on that intuition chapter, I talk about how do we learn to distinguish the still small voice from the voice of self-deception? Right. Right. Yeah. And that's an important spiritual skill that I think we all want to try to develop and cultivate. It's not, I'll tell you what, it's not the one that's telling you to have another glass of wine. That's for sure. It doesn't tell you to like, you can distinguish it, I think, in that way, which is like, but you know, sometimes I get worried, you know, because I only hear the desire trumpets or, you know, I, it is,

to be honest, the still small voice idea has always freaked me out, man. It's like, you know, it's just, for one, why is it so still and small? If it's got something important to say, right? Right. Speak up. That's a great question I've never considered, actually. What's the usefulness of it, you know? Get a fucking microphone. I like that question a lot, actually. What is it? Cat's got your tongue? What is it? Yeah. What's going on, huh? I like, you knew there were trumpets? But I, you know, but I do think that there's like a, yeah, there's something kind of unnerving about the concept itself, you know? I,

you know, I love, what I really loved about your, what you told us about your teacher is how simple he put it. You know, it went from being you giving almost like a, like you were interviewing or something to work with this person, you're a resume, you're giving your resume, and he took all of that and compressed it into, that's good. That's good. And to me, that's one way I've learned to understand that voice a little bit, because it's so non-sophisticated and non, it doesn't have a lot of, there's not a lot of flow charts and Excel spreadsheets to it. It usually is just saying things like, help, you know, that's it. Or you, why don't you help? That's pretty much, you know,

it doesn't seem very sophisticated, but how do you know you're still small voice from your trumpets? Hmm. Well, a big part of it for me is motivation and really, really being willing to examine my own motivation and to see if what's motivating me is some kind of self-interest or some kind of some kind of, am I proving my worth to somebody? You know, is it coming out of a kind of sense of deficiency and a kind of need on the level of the ego? Or is it coming from a place that's deeper, that's trying to, trying to hear what I'm called to do as an instrument of the Dharma, or of love, or of wisdom, or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think paying attention to our motivation and gradually over time purifying our motivation so that we want to be like Hanuman,

you know, in Ram Dass' tradition to be an instrument of something much greater than ourselves, whether we call that the divine, or whether we call that the Dharma, or the Tao, or anything else, right? Yeah. And so when it comes from that kind of place of wanting to be used by the universe to be of benefit to other living beings in the planet, I trust it. And when it comes from a sticky place of wanting people to know that I'm smart or something, or wanting people to think I'm, you know, a certain kind of person, or wanting to manipulate someone's attention or something of that sort, that's what we need to be wary of, because that's going to go down a different path of outcome. God, it's so addictive, though, to all those things you

just described, they're so addictive, you know, like that, that I want something Chogyam Champa Rinpoche said that I have always found quite terrifying is this idea of like, of, you know, putting down your project, putting down your, whatever your product, just forget it. What happens if you just put it down? And he was talking specifically, I think, of the way you hang out with kids is like, forget your whatever your agenda was, or whatever the thing is you're trying to accomplish here. God, this chills me to the bone sometimes. You know, it's like a this, and I'm sorry if I'm keeping you too long, do you have a little bit more time? I do. Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you. This this sense of a relevancy that when you're when you're talking

about the Dharma, when you're talking about the the the any any real spiritual path, and you realize that man, the the price of the ticket. Oh, my God, it's not like this is a this is a low ticket price if you're really into yourself here. This is serious, man. That's like the and so somewhere in there, there's a feeling I'll get of like, my God, seems so boring. I want to be interesting and flashy. You know, I want to be, I want you know, the way you blew my mind earlier on, I want to do that all the time. If I could, if I had the power to blow people's minds, I would just walk through the neighborhood, blowing minds, and then I would, you know, I mean, like, you know, that's the opposite. It's so but is so I guess as we start getting older, you know, and I remember

Ram Dass talked to one of his descriptions of getting older was, you become invisible is the way you put it. Like, so I guess I guess that's what we're, we have to learn how to do is break our addiction to wanting to be so smart and flashy. Is that what you're talking about? It is, it is, right? Because that invisibility is the source of that lightness of being we were talking about earlier. Right. Right. Yeah, you know, which Ram Dass, of course, used to call becoming nobody. Yeah, that's right. Right. And there's a kind of happiness and well being when you realize that you already are the person that you think you want to become. And you already have what it is you think you need to be happy. So you can stop running around

in circles, collecting things that you don't really need. Right. That some part of you was trained to believe you need. Yeah. Right. You were, you were talking about the cost, right? The cost, the high cost of, you know, disidentifying with the small self or the spiritual transformation, right? There's a line in one of TS Eliot's poems where he talks about costing not less than everything. Right. And I got that, I studied with a Zen teacher in Northern California for a while, a wonderful woman named Yvonne Rand, who died, died just a couple of years ago. And I went to Yvonne at one point for an interview at a Seshine. And I was pouring my heart out about some problem that I

had. And I was sort of doing this Woody Allen-esque routine that I do when I'm upset about something. Okay. Bringing my hands and stuff. And Yvonne, Yvonne, who could be pretty sharp and like to cut through things, said to me, he said, she said, you know, let me give you three questions to work with. Right. And this is how I would approach the problem you're describing. Ask yourself these three questions. Right. What do I want? What will it cost? Am I willing to pay the price? And then she said, she said, think about those three questions in relation to your struggle. And I've returned to those questions many times since that was probably about 15, 16 years ago. Right. But notice how embedded in those questions is the understanding that I have to take responsibility

for how I live my life. Right. I mean, I can choose to get up and meditate or I can choose to get up and watch daytime game shows. It's up to me. Right. And it's not a righteous thing, you know, trying to be perfect and righteous. It's more like down deep in my heart of hearts, what do I want to do with this quote unquote precious human birth that Buddhists talk about? Right. Right. Or Mary Oliver's line, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that line says so much. Right. But it reminds us that we are choice makers. Right. We don't we don't choose the events that are going to happen to us, or the events that go on in the world. And yet we have a lot to say about how we respond to them.

Right. And that's that's what determines whether or not we get ground up or turned into something beautiful. And this thing and the way to respond to these things. I mean, I'm sorry to ask you such a dumb, idiotic question that I would want you to simplify it down. But what is if we do want to not be ground up? If we do, I mean, no matter what, I feel like we're getting I mean, getting ground up, no matter what, I've got my God, we're going to get ground up here. Sometimes it just feels like we're in some kind of centrifuge slash meat grinder or something, you know, we're just definitely getting mixed into the paint of the planet, whether we like it or not. But what is the what is the intention?

I mean, I feel like an amnesiac. I you know, if you've seen that movie, Momento, you've seen that thing, I got painted all over the oh, it's good. This guy is amnesia. And he keeps waking up in a hotel room. He's painted all over the walls, you know, like things to like help him understand what how he got into that hotel room and he has to kind of decode it every single day. That's how I feel like I you know, I need a something simple to remind me of this decision, this choice, what is it if you had to articulate the device for us who tend to sink into a really horrific spiritual amnesia just about every day? How do we bring ourselves back to the Dharma? Yeah.

Well, the most recent one I've been working with, I think in terms of what I sometimes call tattooables, right, which are these are short, pithy teachings that read that do just what you're asking, bring me back to what I'm here to do and reminding myself what's important to me, right? Yes. And the one I've been working with most recently comes from a one of the spirit rock teacher, Sally Armstrong, who gave a talk in which she talked about what she called this, the six word Dharma. And the idea was the implication was that she could capture these volumes of Buddhist wisdom in six words and convey the heart essence of the teachings, right? And the friend who told me about this who was at the talk that she gave paused after she

told me that there was a sixth word Dharma. I don't know if she was developing sort of, you know, she was creating suspense or she couldn't remember what they were or what. And then she looked at me and she said, I said, what were the six words, right? And the six words were, pay attention. Don't cling. Be kind. Wow. Wow. Pay attention. Don't cling. Be kind. All right. And that's what I call a tattooable. That's incredible. And that is a tat that is a tattooable. That is exact. That's, that's perfect. But the clinging part, give me a freaking break. You know, the thing that annoys me about the whole non attached, they don't cling thing. Even though I get it, I get it. If intellectually I get it. And the times I've managed to not

cling, oh my God, it's so great. Because, you know, usually when I'm clinging to something, it's like some idea of vengeance or something. Or I'm thinking like, if I don't cling to the fact that this person just did something rotten to me, and I don't keep reminding myself via like increasing levels of secret resentment or something, then I won't be prepared the next time. I feel like a weakling. If I let go, if I let go of the idea that I'm going to like, you know, a hemsa, non violence, right? That it's feel so vulnerable, that don't cling. So when these people who are clearly enlightened and or these people, you, my all my teachers, Ramdas, everybody, don't cling, don't cling, don't cling. It's like, oh, it's like seeing someone on an electric fence and saying,

don't cling. No shit. I'm being electrocuted. The other stuff, the other, the other parts of it, I get the pay attention part. I get the be kind part. Oh, I get but the don't cling part. How? Well, this is where the practices come into play, frankly, right? Because as you develop your mindfulness, in other words, as you become a compassionate witness to your own habits and behaviors, habits of thought, habits of behavior, habits of speech, right? Because you're mindful and you see what's happening, you see the results of particular ways of speaking and acting and moving through the world, right? Right. And so if you act or in a certain way, and it leads to suffering, and you notice it, right? The next time you're in a similar situation, you remember,

you've been down that street, right? Right. And, and you fell in a hole when you went down that street. Yeah. So either you're not going to go down that street again, or hopefully when you see that hole, you're going to walk around it, right? And, and sometimes we have to fall in the hole enough times to get the message, right? Right. But, but we are educable and trainable. That's a fact. That's a fact, right? Yes, it is. And so that's where clinging comes into play. If you cling in some situation on, you know, whether it's to a person or an identity, or a part of, you know, your physical capacities for that matter, in terms of your body changing and so forth, right? Yes. You'll see how much suffering arises in relation to that clinging of mind.

Right. Right. And each time you see that, you begin to see through it just a little bit more, and you gain more foresight into what's going to happen if you do it in the future. Right. Right. So over time, you stop putting your hand in the same fire. Right. It's, but it's a very gradual process. Right. So it takes a lot of patience, and yet it's completely trustworthy. I mean, you don't have to go that down that same miserable street too many times before you say, hell, I'm going to go around the block and go a different way to get where I want to go, right? Right. And then the flip side is the same is true with positive outcomes, right? If you behave in a wise way or a skillful way, or a way that has

flow and ease, and that a way in which you're not clinging, and you see the outcome for yourself and possibly others being a positive one that feels easier, right? Yes. That is a positive reinforcement for behaving that way again. Right. So you can, I mean, in a way, the whole teaching of the Buddha could be summed up pretty simply, right? You know, pay attention, like you would said from the first two of the six words, pay attention to what you say and think you do, right? Notice which things you say and think and do lead to suffering for yourself or others, or both, right? Right. Don't do that, right? Yes. Right. And then pay attention to the things that you say and think and do that lead to well-being and happiness for yourself and others, right?

Practice those things. Yeah. And when you water those, when you water those seeds, the other seeds atrophy over time. Right. And that's my understanding. That's another simplification of volumes and years on cushions for lots and lots of people. Yeah. Yes. But I've seen this in my own experience enough to trust and believe that that's how it works. David, thank you so much for giving me this much of your time. Thank you so much for writing this wonderful book, Life Part Two. Is this available right now? Can people, is this on the shelves? It is. It came out on December 21st. Okay. Wonderful. Everybody, please check out Life Part Two. It's great. It's such good writing, by the way. It's so, just as you can experience

from getting a glimpse into David's mind. It's just like that, very clear, very precise, and beautiful. And thank you so much. It's so great meeting you. Can you tell people where they can find you? Yeah. My website is www.myname.davidchernikov.com. All the links you need to find David will be at DuncanTrustle.com. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm sorry if I kept you too long. Oh, you didn't, and I'm glad we could do this together. Duncan, I've really enjoyed it. Howdy, Christian. Thank you. That was David Ternikov, everybody. All the links you need to find him will be at DuncanTrustle.com. Do you like the DTFH? Do you want commercial free episodes? Then head over to patreon.com forward slash DTFH, and that's what you'll get. Plus,

we gather about twice a week. Just hang out and meditate. I love you guys. We'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. When life gets crazy and when doesn't it, Shoprite helps you keep it all together. Now with a little extra help from Instacart. If you need your groceries now-ish, but your options for going to Shoprite are later-ish or never-ish, you can get everything you need delivered through Instacart right to your door in as fast as an hour. Skip the shop and savor more of your crazy, busy life with Shoprite and Instacart. Visit Instacart.com to get free delivery on your first order. Offer valid for a limited time, minimum order, $10 additional terms apply. A good time starts with a great wardrobe.

Next stop, JC Penney. Family get-togethers to fancy occasions, wedding season two. We do it all in style. Dresses, suiting, and plenty of color to play with. Get fixed up with brands like Liz Claiborne, Worthington, Stafford, and Jay Farrar. Oh, and thereabouts for kids. 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. JC Penney.