Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 496: Radhule Weininger

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Radhule Weininger, psychotherapist and translator of esoteric ideas, joins the DTFH! You can learn more about Radhule and check out her books on RadhuleWeiningerPHD.com. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase! ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package. Feals - Visit feals.com/duncan and get 50% off and FREE shipping on your first order.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. It's my dirty little angel. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Greetings, friends. It's me, D. True Cell, reporting into you from Tacoma, Washington.

If you happen to be listening to this the week of March 10th, I hope you'll come see me. I'm at the Tacoma Comedy Club. And then March 31st, I'm gonna be at the Helium Comedy Club in Portland for that weekend. Then April 15th, praise God. I'm gonna be in Austin, Texas at the Vulcan Gas Company. And then May 13th, I'll be seeing you at Copper Blues

in Phoenix. Lots more dates coming up. You can always check duckatrustle.com to see where I'm gonna be headed. Today's guest is Radalee Weininger. And what's wonderful about her is that she's a psychotherapist who has studied all the Western modalities and spent time as a monastic studying Buddhism.

People like her are so important because they act as translators. You could take some of the esoteric ideas that show up in the Eastern traditions and communicate them using the relatively newer language of psychotherapy. A lot of what I learned from Ram Dass comes from my friends telling me the mystical things he told them,

really beautiful ideas about the soul and ego identity. He even gave some of them spiritual names. But the core bit of advice he gave to me was, you need therapy, which I didn't take seriously, but I definitely wish I had. I spent years after he told me that haphazardly meditating and going through various embarrassing spiritual phases until finally after my second kid,

I realized that I couldn't go on being so neurotic and angry and wobbly and freakish and weird and secretly resentful, waking up in the middle of the night, gritting my teeth, having vivid, strange memories coming back from my childhood in the midst of psychedelic experiences. And I found a great therapist

who helped me deal with some of that stuff that I had been unsuccessfully sweeping under the rug. And now I'm a perfect, completely healthy, balanced individual with no problems at all. The cosmology of the East is so vast that it is easy to overlook whatever particular incarnation you happen to be going through.

Why worry about your childhood when it is but one of an infinity of childhoods? It's the kind of thinking that leads to what's called spiritual bypass, where rather than deal with the painful realities of this life, you turn your eyes towards infinity and pretend that you aren't absolutely nuts. What I love about Ram Dass is what I love about Radley.

They're both mystical therapists who took the obscure, sometimes incredibly confusing ideas of the East and the obscure sometimes incredibly confusing concepts that show up in Western psychology and synthesize them into something that is powerful and pragmatic and most importantly, accessible, accessible.

I can't even say accessible, accessible for dummies like me. We're gonna jump right into this episode with Radley, but first, this. A big thank you to Athletic Greens, not just for supporting my podcast, feeding my family, bringing food to the beautiful lips of my children and my wife, but also for keeping me healthy.

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forward slash Duncan to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Thank you, Athletic Greens. And now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH Rodolay Weineker. wegen maar Joe Welcome, welcome on you That you are wearinghats

Shake hands on me to be blue Welcome to you It's the Duncan Chesson Video! Welcome to the DTFH I'm very excited to chat with you and I'm very sorry for the turbulence proceeding whatever this conversation is going to end up being Well, thank you for inviting me

So I, you know, you are a really great writer very incredibly talented at translating some ideas that I have run upon in Buddhism in a way that's like I can connect to them more and I wonder if we could just start off with the basics Can you tell us what a lurp is? Okay, a lurp is a long-standing, recurrent, painful pattern and I think in the past they have been talked about

by Jung and Freud as complexes or in the East they were called Samskaras or I think in Bali Shankaras And so there are these knots in our psyche these wounds, these splinters in the flesh that are just sitting there and then, you know, their behaviors and feelings and memories and traumas at the core

and then events and behaviors and relationships all come together in these knots and I think in the East they call them seeds you know, that are there kind of implanted and when the right or the wrong causes and conditions come about then they kind of come to flourish or blow up or whatever we want to call it That part, that's the problem

I don't mind the seeds themselves they might be a little uncomfortable but it's the blow-up part the unexpected blow-up part that is for me, incredibly problematic I got kids, I'm married I can't do these unexpected blow-ups you know, it's just, this is why I'm in therapy

Are you there? We left off talking about these seeds, time bombs karmic time bombs or something that just for me, when I'm meditating and anytime I start thinking this is it, you're getting enlightened I'm like, oh no, that means I'm a few days away from one of these things exploding out of me

and my wife going, you meditated today why are you acting like this? The seeds are exploding, Erin so I've been very curious about this idea of karmic seeds and I would love to hear your thinking regarding if it's possible to get them out and I know this is a question that pops up in a lot of traditions and a lot of different ways

but what are your thoughts on that? Can we change our karma? Can we get the seeds out before they sprout? Well, I think it's kind of more a longer term endeavor when I'm now, gosh, meditating I started 1980 when I was really young in a monastery in Sri Lanka and I started pretty much around that same time

psychotherapy I had two car accidents, I was a young student and so I started then and I have to say life has gotten easier and when I get triggered around abandonment or rejection or feeling left out my pet lerbs then it seems these lerbs are not any more in the driver's seat

they are more like in the back seat or maybe at some times I think they're in the trailer but then they kind of climb over and you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, lerbs. Yeah, I mean, sometimes when I'm going to my therapist who does, I love that I can never remember the name of it, EMDR I wonder to myself

is this just something that Buddha stumbled upon this way, the way trauma gets stored in us and the meditative process is just a way of sort of doing trauma work but it's the symbol set because of the time period it comes from is sort of mystical and seems kind of magical when in fact it's just an early form of dealing with trauma

Do you have any thoughts in that regard? Yeah, that's right. It is a way of dealing with trauma and you know, I have my own suspicion about the Buddha you know, the Buddha's mom died when he was just a few days old every scholar says, oh, it was not a big deal he had a good step mom, it is a big deal.

Huge. And then, you know, having this dad who's kind of controlling you know, who doesn't ever have him go out and play you know, I'm sure he had his lips when you can just hear the story and think, oh wow this boy is gonna rebel, right? And so it makes sense that he went out and looked for freedom, you know

when his dad said, oh, there is no suffering you know, man, he had lost his mom he had a controlling dad he said, no way, I don't believe that God bless you Express VPN for supporting the DTFH If you ever stopped to wonder why internet access is so much cheaper these days like 30 to 40 bucks a month

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visit expressvpn.com slash Duncan to get three extra months of Express VPN protection for free that's e-x-p-r-e-s-s vpn.com slash Duncan to learn more thank you Express VPN you you know when his dad said oh there is no suffering you know when he had lost his mom

he had a controlling dad he said no way I don't believe that right he goes out of the forest picks up an eating disorder almost dies really that is what happened from a I'm sure as a therapist when you're looking at that

I mean it's a kid who is suffering from the trauma of losing the genetic mother my wife has become really interested in the trauma of adoption and even in surrogate parents how apparently this is like really difficult for it you can't just give birth to a child and then hand the child off

and expect that the child doesn't know that this is a different person than the being it's been within while it's growing so yeah I never thought of that like yeah suddenly he's gotta step mom his dad is like abusively controlling you could even say like this is

he wants him to be a warlord and he's keeping him locked inside so yeah wow that's amazing that's a very interesting and controversial take on the psychology of the Buddha well you know when I was my mom hit me in a children's home for two years because she was scared of her Catholic family

and then kind of said she had adopted me you know so talk about trauma and you know people came had come through the war you know they were in Germany and you know it was really talk about transgenerational trauma so I don't know I feel with the Buddha

yeah I do too I just have never made you know I love that you're making the connection but you know one of the things I love about Jesus is this is a Messiah that's kind of trying to get out of the deal you know in the Garden of Gassethamese like I'm not into this

because they're anyway out finding a loophole I find that to be the most human beautiful response to a terrible destiny but with the Buddha it's easy in these stories that he sort of gets mythologized is almost a perfect all the way through just this perfect flawless being

at least from the versions of it that I've read so I love this idea of a kid who's just pissed at his dad who's trying to differentiate or something well and then when you look at it the Buddha had a lot more time than Jesus Jesus had three years the Buddha had supposedly 40 years

you know so he had time to work on his lips wow right he did have more time unless you buy into the mystery school Jesus stuff which who knows but that's not the point the point is these in all wisdom traditions and in modern psychology there is the identification of these kinds of tangles that end up within us you know some of the traditions

the tangles happened lifetimes ago some of the traditions it's epigenetic this is the West's version of reincarnation as we have epigenetic lips within us but regardless there's some possibility of no longer being controlled by these things and experiencing some form of liberation can you summarize your technique for dissolving

or I know you have a many steps and I thought maybe we could just run through them a little bit sure you know I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm a meditator meditation teacher for almost well even longer than a psychologist and so I try to bring both of it together because I think as Westerners we need both understandings

you know the Buddhist way is very process focused very just see the impermanence of it and the emptiness of it and the West is very much so what actually happened with your mother and so we need a little bit of both you know we need to be heard what actually happened you know you can't just say oh just get detached

and I just identify or it's all empty or so you know it doesn't hit the spot and on the other hand we could easily get stuck there without changing really the way our life flows so I tried to find a path especially with these longstanding patterns and that's the other thing I felt that sometimes in our mindfulness literature

we don't talk about longstanding patterns you know we talk about moment by moment non-judgmental awareness but the deep stuff yes Buddhist scholars and people really who dig into it know about it but we stay with the moment by moment so now back to anger arising and passing away so I just I often didn't feel actually Jack

who's Jack Hornfield who's my mentor for over 20 years he has been very great you know he has been very interested in my you know in my path and my wounds so I say he was really wonderful but we need to be understood and we need to move on and create new neural pathways and new habit patterns and so the way I would do this is the first step is to know that we have gotten lurked

you know and we know this in our bodies you know how it feels like maybe a knot in the stomach or tightness in the chest or in the jaw or hot or cold or we lose all our energy or maybe there's too much energy and then maybe strong emotions emotions that are bigger than maybe a situation would expect why did they make such a big deal over this

it was just a good thing and then rumination you know getting off into the spinning thing forever it's really important and then our usual trauma responses such as nightmares, dissociating, you know narrowing of awareness all of that so it's important to notice we have gotten lurked and it's a little bit like saying okay

you have a staff infection you know like I was a medical doctor in my first life so you know like you know like medical model a little bit you know yes we have this and so now we know what we can do about it we have a diagnosis you know this is a lurk and then you know what we learn from moment by moment mindful awareness awareness of our body

of our thoughts of our feelings and knowing that everything is passing by you know everything is impermanent and comes and goes and that we can stay with our feelings that is okay if we just stay with the felt sense of our feelings then like a people mover in the airport they slowly pass on and you know so mindfulness is really important mindful awareness

and then awareness as something which I learned more from my Tibetan train teachers that awareness is also something that is just a priori there you know that is not just moment by moment and so that awareness is also something that we can rest in you know something you might have felt in a long retreat

sure we have glimpses you know when awareness breaks through in nature at a long retreat making love or whatever you know we do for this timeless formless moment to occur this episode of the DTFH has been supported by my favorite CBD company feels feels it's a better way to feel better their premium CBD will keep your head clear

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feels.com slash family hour thank you feels sure we have glimpses you know when awareness breaks through in nature and along with treat making love or whatever you know we do for this timeless formless moment to occur and stop you there for a moment yeah number one doesn't happen to me when I'm making love not obviously not bragging about that not a good sign number two I'm curious because you anytime I get a chance

to chat with someone who has a an understanding of Western psychology and Western medicine and as much of an understanding of Eastern mysticism particularly Buddhism I'm always curious about your thoughts regarding awareness as a what do they say unconditioned awareness a kind of fundamental quality of emptiness do you have any thoughts regarding the biological nature of awareness in other words do you think that awareness is a byproduct of being a

having a nervous system complex nervous system or are we do you what are your thoughts regarding awareness is it some endogenous biological result you know I don't know I think you know I've been studying now I studied for 15 years also with Alan Wallace and then with Dan Brown yes yes I mean these are superstars yes so I'm Dan Brown for the last five years I'm I don't know six one week seminars a year you know I he's he's getting old and his health isn't good so I do

everything you know he's just an amazing teacher and so the more and he's both a psychologist and a really amazing teacher so I come to think that awareness is something that is already there yeah you know that that is that everything is interconnected that awareness isn't something that just located in our prefrontal cortex that we actually can unhook from our prefrontal cortex manager mind and and rest in this wider perspective and the more I'm learning this

these pointing out instructions and I'm really getting the hang of it I think they have incredible health benefits you know if you can really rest in this wider place of awareness and live our life from that I think it's we have to be aware that we shouldn't use that to escape I think sometimes happens you know people say oh awareness by by world you know yeah universe come universes go but yeah I think it's important I think it's important that we bring it back you know in a

in a loving engaged way so and then I think you know my my husband is a hospice doctor hospice wow creative care doctor and he meditates that way every day he goes to the hospital he meditates while he walks for two and a half miles to the hospital and so and then he says he's able to be there in resting in this field you know it was incredibly difficult situations and and and so I think as life may get harder in the future there's a good possibility with climate change

whatever's going on you're in a body if you're in a body it's hard probably probably probably life's going to get harder in the future you could guarantee if the UFOs come and re seed the earth and fix the climate and all worse stop if you're in a human body but you know these things fall apart right and so I think if we have this perspective of being having our mindfulness skills moment by moment but also the resting in the wider perspective skills kind of connecting

into this field of awareness that is already there or this quality then I think we can be so much more effective and don't get burned out and and I think as Bodhisattvas or as you know with our service we can be you know really be present without taking it so personal I really love that you mentioned this possibility which I've only heard one other time when I was reading about monastic life I don't I think I was on a forum for monks or people who want to become monks there was

something in there about how like some monks and I can't remember which particular lineage of Buddhism it was but some monks were actually getting scolded because they were only going into the awareness field or only going into the state of Nirvana and there was they were saying like you know this isn't this can be an addiction like once you learn how to do it you can disconnect just like what you're saying I wonder if you could talk about that a little more how deep have you gone into

that state of consciousness have you ever gone through periods of finding yourself addicted to that whatever you want oceanic emptiness the unconditioned awareness yeah I could say especially along retreats you know that I figured out even though they were Teravada retreats I I guess I figured out how to get into this place of awareness and so I just remember just being there and not wanting to go home you know it's like can I say and I seem to have had maybe because of my

orphanage experience or I had this big accident and a bit of a near death experience after that so maybe I had an easy access to that place so I remember that but since I studied with Dan he is very much into bring this back you know this is bring this back as you are and that's my inclination you know I'm really as a psychologist as a environmental social activist I'm really interested in bringing it back right living from this place of of love but it has to come from this wider

perspective otherwise we just get burned out yes yes I thank you for that I you know I think people like me who get glimpses of it not out of like we're victims or anything but surely out of a lack of any kind of discipline like people like you have but enough glimpses of it to be like oh that is amazing yeah I think it's good for people to hear that when you talk of the Bodhisattva vow pops up which is we're going to forgo this possibility until all beings are liberated they're

not saying it is though there's they haven't they haven't found access to that place you're talking about it's almost something built into at least Tibetan Buddhism to keep people engaged in the world in the sense that there is such a possibility of just blinking out and this is a near-death experiences and I don't know if this is what you experienced but one of the recurring themes when people are dying is that they don't want to come back it's like my it's like sometimes the way one of

my children feels about preschool you know they you want to some days he doesn't want to go and like it's a similar sense did you have that experience of not wanting to return to this wow yeah I remember the next morning and you know that was nineteen eighty seventy nine eighty and I didn't know what was happening to me I was just in this white space really beautiful space and the next morning I thought oh shoot here I'm back again you know and it was like oh brother here I am

you know yes so yes definitely I can feel that and there is this little bit I remember after long retreats feeling this little bit of ache you know I feel already homesick for the next time you know so yes but then I personally also really have a love for people and whether we really exist or not you know my name Tibetan Buddhism we talk about it's just a conceptualization and or yes we are not really what we think we are and and who knows you know and but I think our pain the pain my clients

have in my office or my I have three children that are now young adults wow um that pain is at least it feels awfully real oh yes and and I think it would be really Monday said you know there's universal and there is mundane reality or personal reality and yes maybe it's both true but on a personal level it really hurts absolutely the world is hurting you know oh my I'm just I feel so fortunate my therapist didn't get enlightened all the way or decided to dissolve into infinity

because you know the advice I the spiritual advice I got from Ram Das wasn't go meditate he said you need therapy and I ignored it for years because I'm like oh come on I want to do a mantra but truly it's the only like I mean I love you're making me feel a little bit of courage because I don't even know why no one especially in Buddhism it's not like there's necessarily blasphemy but you know one of my realizations have being in therapy is that this is helping me in ways meditation has not

and in a real down to earth like memories that I'd forgotten that I needed to address and all the stuff so I love that you are um you know upholding a new tradition that's forming right now which is the the tradition of western psychology and in a lot of ways it's a very beautiful thing and a very good thing and I think people feel like they're going to save money or something by going to meditate because you know insurance won't cover therapy a lot of the time you know so

people are like look I'll just get into meditation and then nothing happens necessarily um and also I love that you're pointing out that there is something good about the world though sometimes I wonder I hear these Tibetan um invitations when you listen to the form of Buddhism that's for the monks saying leave your home leave your family leave it all behind forget it all take refuge and just you're done you're done and sometimes I hear that and wonder if the sentiment that

you are reflecting that Ramdas reflects that Jack cornfield reflects that a lot of the heart based teachers reflect which is this is a school this is a place where we're growing evolving and learning and we're here to help take the curriculum there's a million different versions of it sometimes I wonder is that just attachment is that just another way of tricking yourself into staying connected to the world and the dream of being a self um I wonder what your thoughts on that yeah isn't

that a little bit though a mind uh how would I say a mind how do I say that politely um don't say it politely you can call me an idiot I'm fully comfortable with that Jack cornfield call me a public neurotic is that a mindfuck right and so you can edit that out if you want or you can keep it in you can curse on this podcast but thank you for being polite and so um see I don't know I maybe I'm just kind of agnostic when I'm okay knowing that I'm I'm just human and

maybe I can't wrap my mind around it but um the Dalai Lama was once asked how does he cope with all the suffering that happened to Tibetans in uh in Tibet you know with the Chinese taking over yes being without a country and I took my kids actually three times to Damsala and we worked with people who just came out of Chinese prisons and taught English and it was a great experience for them you know they were teenagers and so he said um I trust in the sincerity of my heart's

intention I trust in the sincerity of my heart's intention think you know we don't know really what to trust you know yes left or up and down or this book or that book but we can trust in the sincerity of our heart's intention right right yeah it's like a north star or something it's um and it's it's in the like I can feel that I know what that is I know exactly what you're talking about and that isn't a void or that isn't something that's sort of that would want to go off into

the nothingness I see that I see that and you know again not to push the point too much I mean this is the this is one of the paradoxes and beautiful aspects of the system the systems that we have in Buddhism this sort of systematic dissolution of identity up until you get the heart sutra which is all you know saying actually this also is empty too you know and so and again I agree with you it's a mind fuck most importantly it's just like playing a game with your mind or something like

even that heart's intention isn't there's some possibility that the thing that that's really just the last thing keeping you connected to ignorance that that's the last thing keeping you connected to um to to the world and and it's in the same way like you first stumble upon the Dharma and you think no way my thoughts are my thoughts you work with your thoughts long enough like I don't think those are me I don't know what it is but it's not me and and similarly my body is my body well I certainly

have a different body than I did years ago so I'm some kind of weird river of body but I can't say this thing that I am is an static yeah and and you know and over this over time though you become more and more comfortable with it until you get to that kind of thing where even that couldn't that also just be sort of a delusion a way to connect to the dream I'm sorry to go nihilist on you here I'm looking for a correction well yes it might be going a little bit into nihilism but I think

one of the ideas is and also the experiences that um an aspect of this field of awareness is love you know they are the the qualities of luminosity of knowing of formlessness of timelessness but also of love which is um and not just personally there but it's a priori it's already there and if you really rest in that field then then it's there it's not cold you know it's not right round it is it and so and you know honestly I I often wonder what is the heart actually the

the question uh mystic who I got to know here at some point um since the above go do you know her no I don't know a non-dual Christian mystic and uh she calls the heart the organ of psychospiritual connection and I quite often you know the heart is it's physical it's energetic it's electrical it's magnetic it's uh it's it's the what connects the particular with the universal but I mean I can't really wrap my mind around it but I feel there is something there and um so how can we and

I think Ram Dass was amazing with that he has love that wasn't just oh I like you you know that was that love that was already there yes yes absolutely yes I I mean this is yeah and and I don't want to keep going on and on but I I I don't even care who cares if I'm wrong that this is the thing so what so you believe in love and what you turn so you were wrong you shouldn't have been kind to people you shouldn't have been helping people everything was nothingness it was some weird dream or something

so what what do you what do you got to lose you know you helped a lot of people in this waking dream so I think if you're gonna put you know bet on something I'm gonna bet on love over annihilation any day of the week and because of because the result of that produced you know that creates a certain way of being in the world that I think if more people were just you don't even have to believe in it you know I think that's where people get confused is they think oh I don't feel love

I don't feel anything I'm numb from the neck down I've been there you know what I'm talking about right people are numb from the neck down and so they hear this love stuff and they're like whatever I don't know what you're talking about that's ridiculous but I think you don't have to necessarily have an experience of it necessarily I think there's a way for potentially even sociopaths to put their money on love and just wing it all the way through what do you think well I think you know we know about sociopaths

that they are really traumatized you know when that's one thing we know from research so I think if you your eyes are clouded or you know you have dust on your eyes as a Tibetan say to a degree then it's hard to really see what is there and I think the more we kind of in some ways meditation whether it's the moment by moment by moment kind or the resting in the field kind is the sensitivity training yes we are becoming more and more sensitive to to ourselves to others to life and you know I think in Mahamudra

at Sok Chen one of the very high teaching is to see that everything is sacred yes you know everything is lively awareness empty what is it in the heart so true emptiness is form and forms emptiness right yes and so to see everything as sacred and I just remember being in Damsala and there were these cave yogis that lived forever in these caves somewhere in the mountains and sometimes they would come into town and they were just beaming oh and they wouldn't be cold and loose they were just wow you know it's like I want that

yep yeah I saw one of them once when I was in Damsala I know what you're talking about you're just I know exactly what you mean they're definitely not the way I had pictured them this is the only reason I bring up the sociopath thing and we talked about it before the podcast this sort of and Jung does talk about this the shadows projection on the global stage in this current world events that we're all experiencing it makes me think we need someone to come up with a way to articulate Buddhism to sociopaths you know a way to to get people because

you know I my friends who are psychologists they one of them we often talk about well actually you know the qualities of sociopath work very well as a president of I'm sure you've heard this it works very well as an executive works very well as a president works very well as a leader who has to kill people or fire people or make decisions that destroy people's lives you can't really be heart based and successfully pull off invading another country or any of the things that we're witnessing do you think you know and this is why I'm bringing up sociopaths but generally

and I love that you're compassionate enough to say well sociopaths have a lot of trauma because generally they get kind of brushed off as some kind of not even human thing like a praying man as disguised as a human but do you think there is some way to zogchen do the instantaneous whatever it may be some possibility of zinging in the dharmic throwing star under the consciousness of some of these people so that it just doesn't work what they're doing anymore that there's some way that they reconsider everything I don't know I don't think we can manufacture that you know when you brought up Jesus

before you know there is the solace turns Paul's story yes you know who was this Roman soldier or whatever he was and he fell off his horse and lightning struck and he was changed so we know stories like that and you know we don't know how that works together with what we talked about in the beginning this karmic seats yes right so we don't know but we know that at every at the core of every nerve is trauma and or earlier traumas can be triggered when outside circumstances occur right you know so if people have been really wounded then maybe yeah who knows what gets reignited you can either really

shut down or you can either really open up right right you know chatting with you about this makes me think somehow we have created the perfect condition for never ending war by producing a system within which trauma ridden people with it not a little bit of trauma not the kind of trauma I'm dealing with with therapy which I wouldn't call a little bit but it's not like I'm you know I'm not numb from the neck down unfortunately though sometimes I wouldn't mind it so much but we've produced a system where numb from the neck down people they're the ones who end up running countries and if what you're saying is true they're

riddled with these time bombs that are certain to go off according to some kind of rotten pressure meaning that as long as that system is in place we can only expect never ending war right because our leaders are like walking mine fields riddled with unexplored trauma that they've confused is their strength and so this this seems like maybe this is just part of being a human is that built into human civilization is this never ending conflict yeah and you know I think for the first time and the movie don't look up really made that clear right we are now endangered as a species as a human species so that's in a way the first

time that that's happening and right there is an opportunity in that you know that might that might have a certain that could bring up more awareness or it may not we don't know but you know I wrote once an article that was actually published in lines were about Sisyphus did you ever hear about oh I love the myth of Sisyphus Camus myth of Sisyphus yeah some people some people listening might not know though so maybe you could quickly thank you Sisyphus was the Greek hero who had because of whatever he did he was condemned to roll the stone up the hill forever ever and ever and then the role the stone would always roll

down again and so often he was seen as the hero of futility you might say and then Camus existentialist actually one of my heroes I love Dr. Ryu and I love Sisyphus and so he as Camus said how about we see Sisyphus differently we see that Sisyphus finds meaning in the moment in the phenomenon of rolling the stone up the hill and what does he do when he walks down the hill as he rolls the stone back up the hill and and just really gets his meaning in the moment yeah regardless of outcome and then in my article which I'm glad to send to you I said please how about we see Sisyphus as a Bodhisattva you know it's not just my

personal stone it's the stone of human existence right roll up this hill again and again and maybe like a hospice or palliative care doctor we make ourselves a little bit free of outcome you know we roll the stone because we roll the stone and we do it yes presence and this love and and and that's it you're making me think of the low jog mind trading one of the phrases is abandon all hopes of fruition right this has got to be Camus Sisyphus is mantra right like there's no fruition from rolling the stone nothing's coming of it and and you know the hopes the hope of fruition is torturous isn't it when it when not just

from the perspective of my own spiritual path God knows I can't have any hope but certainly when we're looking at the world you know that the sense inside of us those who have felt their heart and the terrible realization my God if more people felt like this I think the planet would look completely different than it does now and then the reality where you look out and you're like oh yeah no nothing's going to change is it and that hurts so maybe yeah I love that seeing the human society it's kind of grim but I guess you could say Camus was slightly grim in his own way but something grim about abandoning about giving up any hope but

you can do it from a you know if you're actually coming back to awareness if you found out the secret of resting in awareness you know then then it's not so grim you know because you don't feel so women side you feel interconnected with the web of life right and then you you walk through maybe the battlefield from that perspective right and you don't expect that you can fix everything or anything right because that's not your job is it is that's not all these people out there they can fix everything but I can't right yeah well it's everything it's broken wow wow I you know it's I'm trying to be sensitive your time it's

450 I know that you have an appointment or my time it's 450 I can go until the hour because my people come here to me but let me turn this phone off one second thank you see because I changed rooms I had a phone that wasn't turned off so now it's turned off well I love that we have gone completely global in our discussion of trauma and I think that's wonderful I need things like that just because I'm hooked on the news and I have to stop watching it because I do feel like it's I don't think it's doing anything for me or most people but can we for the last little bit of the podcast can we bring it back to the yes to heart medicine and

to some ways that people who are interested in what you're talking about are people who are becoming aware of these seeds and I'm sorry to ask you for some some in 10 minutes for some simple methodology of healing drama from from your perspective okay can you give us some some simple some things that we could at least start looking into to begin to work with these seeds you know the basic mindfulness practice is very effective you know because it gives us a way to know that there's an inner besides an outer there is a balance which we can cultivate inside of ourselves I think self-compassion is hugely important

because you know we can really get get on our case why not get over this why am I still triggered by this yes why don't I just let this one off me why do you did I overreact like this why did I make this mistake you know are you reading my thoughts this is literally what I was thinking you're like this is the litany of my thoughts is it yeah so in a way having this kind of sense of warmth and and you know kindness towards ourselves and then also towards others for our human condition and for you know we are just humans and it may be even forgiveness you know letting ourselves off the hook not right not condoning but

not holding grudges towards ourselves or others forever it's too hard life is too hard to hold grudges so that really helps and then you know the practices of being with our pain the felt sense of our pain and knowing when we really like when we start to get into this rumination saying to say how does it feel in the body you know maybe a tightness in the chest yes or something knocked us in the stomach and to just kind of hold that and keep breathing and then it will just pass by and I think I described that really a lot in my first book hard work the path of self-compassion I really went into that and then I think also

holding the wider perspective letting the mystery in this is really important to learn to do that right so because it's like you know Jack Cronfield has his image of if I put a spoonful of salt into a glass of water it's very salty yes when I put a spoonful of salt into a lake it's not salty yes so if we make the container wider the psycho spiritual container as I call it then we come from this wider perspective and maybe as last thing I would say service serving others sharing our healing sets us free whoa do you think that service sharing your healing telling people how it's it's working that I've never thought of that

as you know all the fruits of our healing you know because I was in this orphanage because my relatives maybe weren't so kind because I went to therapy I'm now more able to be compassionate with others who maybe felt rejected or left out or right you know doesn't mean I have to tell them about my story incessantly but I understand you know my heart space becomes bigger because of right you know so and then to be there for others whether it's your neighbor or your child or somebody at work or in your activist group or wherever that is and I think service sets us free because it makes us in a way less self-involved we

know that we have some kind of efficacy or strengths that we have courage yes we we are interconnected we're basically services interconnection in progress you know interconnection in progress I love that look four minutes this is an important question though and it play it's exact I'll make it quick if we haven't mastered self-compassion for me it's the hardest thing I can summon up compassion for other people or at least fake compassion for other people but if we haven't fully mastered this compassion you're talking about it do you think is it phony to then go into the world and try to do the service that you're talking

about isn't necessary to figure out the self-compassion thing first before extending it out into the community like you're talking about I think it's a work in progress you can do it side by side you know this whole thing I have to first do this that I can do that I don't quite believe in that okay because we can kind of get stuck in solipsism or you know self-involvence forever but I think side-by-side side by do things by side by side thank you so much and I'm I'm so grateful to you for your pages I'm sorry about the scheduling issue it is such a I'm so excited to read your article and I'm so lucky to just get

anytime with you at all thank you very much can you please let people know where they can find how they can connect with you yeah there are a few ways one is I started a non-profit and we teach now mindfulness and hard for this in schools and we have this meditation form it's called mindful heart programs dot org mindful heart programs dot org and we teach a lot of the resting and awareness as it's bridged with you know the mindfulness we know and then my personal website is Radley weiningerphd.com and can always email me Radley at gmail.com that's fine what thank you for that I that's a very generous thing to give your

email out wow thank you Radley this has been a joy chatting with you all the links you need to find her will be at dugatrustle.com Hare Krishna thank you so much for your time thank you that was Radley everybody all the links you need to find her gonna be at dugatrustle.com a big thank you to our wonderful sponsors and thank you for listening I'll see you in a couple of days until then Hare Krishna a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny 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 penny a good time starts with a great wardrobe next stop jc penny 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 penny