Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 527: RamDev Dale Borglum

Episode Date: September 10, 2022

RamDev Dale Borglum, executive director of the Living Dying Project, joins the DTFH! Learn more about RamDev and The Living/Dying Project on their website, LivingDying.org, or through their podcast, Healing at the Edge. You can check out the Living/Dying Project's Saturday Spiritual Support Group, a sweet, informal community that offers an opportunity to hear the dharma and other teachings. You can also follow them on social media, including Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. The Living/Dying Project is holding a fundraiser to help start their own regenerative farm! Check out the fundraising page for more information, and kick in if you can! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Babbel - Sign up for a 3-month subscription with promo code DUNCAN to get an extra 3 months FREE! DraftKings - Use promo code DUNCAN at sign-up and bet $5 on ANY football game to get $200 INSTANTLY!* ExpressVPN - Visit expressVPN.com/duncan and get an extra 3 months FREE when you buy a 1 year package. *If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (IL/IN/LA/MI/NJ/PA/WV/WY), 1-800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522-4700 (CO/NH), 888-789-7777/visit http://ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY), visit OPGR.org (OR), call/text TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN), or 1-888-532-3500 (VA). 21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/LA(select parishes)/MI/NH/NJ/ NY/OR/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. New customer offer void in NH/OR/ONT-CA. $200 in Free bets: New customers only. Valid 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5 wager. $200 issued as eight (8) $25 free bets. Ends 9/19/22 @ 8pm. Early Win: 1 Early Win Token issued per eligible game. Opt in req. Token expires at start of eligible game. Min moneyline bet $1. Wagering limits apply. Wagers placed on both sides of moneyline will void bet. Ends 1/8/23 @ 8pm ET. See terms at sportsbook dot draftkings dot com slash football terms.

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I'm the Dugga Dressel family, our podcast. I'm so sorry. I got mosquitoes. Holy shit. Fucking studio. I guess the mosquitoes are different than any mosquito I've ever encountered. But I sort of want to do a little dress.

What's going on right now? Here in the styles, the whole spitting controversy. Mother fuck. Did he really spit? That's the question. That's the last one. God, these mosquitoes in Texas are horrible. They don't sound like normal mosquitoes.

Sometimes they chant. Sometimes they just imitate your voice. Perfectly replicate your voice. You just say things that are similar to what you're saying. It's really crazy when you're trying to have a conversation. Gotcha. Back to Harry Styles. Did he spit?

I'm correct. I think a lot of people didn't. Let's think of all America and we all know that. As of all of us, we all know that. Get the hell out of this culture. It's not going to work. God damn it. What the fuck?

This is a little bit of a deep wound. Fuck. Holy shit. I think it's a waste of time. Fuck it. What the fuck? See that? Fuck.

I'm trying to do something. Mother fuckers. I think that was the last one. That was the last. I think that was the last one. Fuck this. I'm getting exterminated. I'm getting exterminated.

Cut to commercial beer though. This episode of the DTFH has been supported by Babbel. I live in Texas now. Why didn't I pay attention in Spanish class? I didn't. I hated it. It was like having my back ripped open with demon claws and hot salt poured in the festering wounds.

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Babbel, language for life. And we are back. I just covered myself in a psychotropic poison that was given to me by Grant Williams from Grant Williams Austin Exterminators. This poison is incredible. The only problem is that it creates an alteration to your vocal chords, which honestly, I don't mind. I like the way I sound right now and I'm completely okay talking like this for the rest of my

life. That means I don't have to deal with any more of these Austin mosquitoes. Even better, this is the perfect voice for me to read an excerpt from one of my favorite Julia London books, Extreme Bachelor. He kissed her laugh, felt himself floating, the feral sensations taking hold. With his mouth in his hands, he slid down her body, leaving a hot, wet trail on her belly. He pushed her thighs apart, kissing them tenderly and spurred on by Leah's gasps and moans. And then he moved slightly so that his mouth was on her sex.

Leah gasped and clutched his head. Michael loved that about her. She was a lusty lover and he slipped his tongue between the slick folds. He held her firmly with his hand and casually. Sorry about that, gang. That was obviously not me. That was the final mosquito in my studio. Terrence Diler from Diler Exterminators brought a chunk of polonium.

You just leave it in your studio and the radioactive material keeps the mosquitoes out. Thank you. If you're having mosquito problems in Austin, all the links you need to find them will be at DuncanTrussell.com. Friends, I hope you will come see me. If you're in Austin, I'm going to be at Vulcan on the 17th. Then after that, I'm going to be at Cobbs in San Francisco. Then after that, I'm headed to Utah.

There's many more dates after that. All of them are at DuncanTrussell.com. Would you like commercial free episodes of the DTFH? You can get them at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. We also have a weekly gathering every Friday and a meditation group that meets every Tuesday morning. I hope you'll join us. That's patreon.com forward slash DTFH.

Today's episode has stuck with me ever since I got to have this conversation with Rom Dev, Dale Borglam. He is amazing. He's the executive director of a living dying project. He is somebody who works with dying people to help them live. It's a really heavy, really deep, really beautiful conversation that helped me connect a lot of thoughts that needed connecting personally. I think you're really going to enjoy it.

If you are interested in connecting with Dale, reach out to a living dying project. A living dying project is at livingdying.org. I hope when you listen to this, you will consider donating to this amazing foundation. Now everybody, please welcome to the DTFH Rom Dev. Rom Dev, welcome to the DTFH. How you doing? So glad to be here, Duncan. I'm so happy that you're here.

I got a lot of questions for you. I'm really interested in the service that you have offered to the world for a really long time. I've lost both my parents and I've had cancer. Me too. Oh, cancer club. And lots of great members. Now I know there's even another wonderful member of the club. I have in the past been horrified at this problem that we die.

In researching you, I was really taken by your acknowledgement of something that came to me in a clinical ketamine therapy where whatever that voice is that speaks to you from the psychedelic realm said to me, your fear of death is actually your love of life in reverse. You're afraid to die because you love life so much. And that's where it's all coming from. And that was the beginning of me not to say it like if a bear came into my podcast studio, I wouldn't want to be like celebrating the fact that I was about to die or something like that. But it really shifted my thinking in regards to what the fear of death is.

And in your work, I have found that when you are sitting with dying people, when you're working with dying people, really it isn't so much about dying as much as how do we live during whatever the amount of time we theoretically have left here in the world. And I wonder if we could just start off with your theory on, I think everyone by now probably knows what death is, but what do you think life is? What is living? Okay. Well, I'm the director of something called the Living Dying Project. It's a living slash dying project.

And to me, it's about the slash between the living and the dying, that the way we live kind of determines how we die. And the fact we're going to die can inform how we'd like to live. So believe it or not, I've got a PhD in mathematics from Stanford. And here's my equation as a recovering mathematician. Okay. All fear is based on fear of death. And fear of death is exactly equal to lack of enlightenment. So that for instance, like the New York Times did a survey a bunch of years ago,

what are you most afraid of? Number one was speaking in public, number three was dying. That's kind of funny on one hand. But at the same time, the part of Ramdev or of Duncan, that's afraid of speaking in public, we might get embarrassed, whatever. That's going to be at your bedside. I mean, the line that I've been using a lot, it's kind of fading a bit, but that when you're dying, Donald Trump is going to be at your bedside.

He's going to be right there looking at you, right? What? That's bad news. Now, what I mean by that is whether you love the guy or hate him, you probably have a very strong and often unconscious emotional reaction to the guy and that place that's in your subconscious, unconscious, that place that you're caught in. I love Donald Trump. I hate Donald Trump. To the extent that you're caught on that, that's going to be there as you're dying.

So that really another teacher of mine, this guy, Trungpa Rinpoche, he said, until you come into intimate contact with death, your spiritual practice will have a quality of you being a dilettante. Wow. So the point here is, actually, the dirty secret is that I kind of feel that dying is often kind of boring. It's slow, it's cumbersome, interspersed with intense moments. Yeah.

But it's pointing to the fact that I'm going to die. I just turned 80, believe it or not. Wow. Congratulations. I guess. It's better than the alternative, isn't it? But what I'm saying here is that the fact that I'm going to die is intellectually obvious. You're going to die, I'm going to die, but we don't know when. Right?

That's intellectually obvious. But if we really, really knew that on our bones, Duncan and Ramdev, how would this encounter with us and with the audience be going right now? If I didn't know I was going to survive the Duncan Trussell family hour, that I might drop dead at something, then I would just want to love you and just embrace you and be that guy, right? Right. And see that you're that guy.

But if it's this intellectual thing where I'm saying, oh, here's about death and here's what I know and all my experience and let me enlighten you and all that bullshit, then it's like it's removed from intimacy. It's removed from aliveness. Right. So the place where you and I get afraid is, in a way, it's good news. Ramdev said this saying that I always hated, but it's true.

That suffering is grace. Yes. Right? I mean, if you want to be free, the place where you're suffering, the place where you're caught is pointing exactly at what you need to do next to open, to surrender, to God, to open your heart. Right. Right.

So I want to be free and I feel like being around people who have intense illness, end-of-life stuff, grief, whatever, is forcing me to admit my own mortality and that I want to be more alive than not just when I'm with dying people, but when I'm with you. If I'm with somebody who's dying and I'm distracted or I'm preoccupied, it hurts my heart because I know I might never see them again. Yes. I might never see you again either.

I don't know. Right. We don't know. I mean, that's the problem, isn't it? I mean, if we knew, sometimes I think about this, like, you know, and like reflecting on what, what some part of the multiverse where let's imagine a planet where everyone knew what happened after you die. And it was like the New Age or say some kind of like celestial spa.

You pick your next incarnation, hang out with dolphins. It's awesome when you're ready to take incarnation again. You reincarnate again. How many people would even be on the planet right now? I mean, there would be mass suicides. How many people would just be standing in line to jump off cliffs? This lack of understanding what happens when we die. It is part of what keeps us here, isn't it?

I mean, not to, I'm sure a lot of people are like, look, I love it here. I don't want to go. You know, I, in earlier phases of this incarnation, I would like look at a credit card bill. I'm like, you know what, I'm going, I'm going back to the spa. Forget this. I'm out of here. You know what? It's that lack of understanding that keeps us glued here and isn't that lack of knowing

whatever it is part of what feeds into that unenlightened fear that you're talking about. It's just this is an impervious, frustrating, annoying mystery. And I get why people get real tangled up in neurosis when thinking of it at all. Yeah. Well, I was listening to your interview with Jack Cornfield that you did a few weeks ago, I guess, or I don't know how long ago recently. And he was kind of talking down off the edge a little bit and saying it's all okay. And I mean, to me, working with fear of death is a very awakening and live-in experience.

So that, like very often when, when we're afraid, we're asleep. Very often when people are feeling fear, they're fixated on the trigger, right? Yes. I'm afraid because of global warming. I'm afraid because of my bank account is going down because of what's happening in the stock market. I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid of that person. And very seldom do we actually experience what it's like to have an emotion, to be embodied

while we're having something intense. So like in English, we say, I am afraid. In Spanish, yo tengo miedo, I have fear. In Tibetan, fear is here, right? So just in the way we think about or language things in English, it's so easy to get caught in the passing emotional state. So that I'm among other things, I'm a meditation teacher, which I think is a very dangerous label. And even the notion of meditation that good meditation, bad meditation is a little bit tricky. People get very guilt-ridden, spiritual guilt.

I'm not meditating enough. My meditation is crap, whatever. But the notion of being able to be embodied. What does it feel like for you to be sitting in the chair with your beard there hanging out on the mic and trusting being embodied and letting the words and the actions come out of that, trusting the heart and the belly enough to let go of all this crap in the mind. I'm afraid of this. I'm working with that. And trust this radical surrender.

People do that with psychedelics. People do that with meditation. People do that with being in nature. But it's a rare person that's really integrating that into daily activity. So to me, the whole spiritual life is not very useful until it can be integrated into what does it feel like when you wake up in the middle of the night and you've got to take a piss, right? What does it feel like when you're in a traffic jam and you've got to get somewhere on time and you're not going to get there on time? What does it feel like when you and your wife are having a difficult day and the kids are yelling and you know, whatever is going on?

Yeah. So that, I mean, all this airy-fairy stuff about floating off into spaciousness and being in the heart and that's great. But this foundation of being in the body, being real, being human. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you mean it's okay, fine. The whole spacious heart, compassion, all that stuff. Great, great.

That's not where we're at now. I'm not feeling it now. You know, as you're saying, kids are screaming, all the other stuff that's going on, all the whatever epigenetic stuff and all the under the surface stuff is swimming around. It's a big bowl of shit sometimes, no offense. And I could see how if you do get caught up in that airy-fairy stuff when you're like in a bowl of shit, then it's not like the airy-fairy stuff is making you feel better. You're just like, oh, great. Well, where's my spaciousness now? Where's the, I had to get up to piss.

I'm not going to sleep for the rest of the night because I have insomnia. And then, you know, so I do know what you're talking about. Is this what you mean by living? Is this what you're saying when you, is this what you mean? Like, just allowing yourself to be, if you happen to find yourself in a hot tub full of your own garbage, just like admit that's what's going on. Okay, so not only are you in the hot tub full of garbage or the bowl of shit, but you're feeling guilty because you think you're spiritual and you can't get out of it. So it's like there's a double trouble there. This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by DraftKings.

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Right. So it's like there's a double trouble there. And here's a quote from Walt Whitman. Sometimes touching another human being is almost more than I can bear. Wow. Yes. Okay. You felt that, I felt that.

Right? You've looked into the eyes of another person and you've wept because you felt so much love. Yes. Have you ever looked in a mirror and cried because you love that guy so much? Probably not. Not because I like that guy so much. Sometimes touching myself is more than I can bear. We won't go down that road right now.

Okay. Okay. So what I'm saying though is that because of conditioning and being socialized and everything and early childhood wounding and all that crap, we end up being stuck in our minds identifying with such a small part of who we are that we've had those experiences of the vastness. We've had those experiences of touching somebody and seeing the divinity and everything. And the divinity doesn't have to be extra special. It can be in the mundane. It can be in walking from here to the other room. It can be just looking at your child.

It can be just about anything at all. And instead we have all these notions. I mean, so many people that come to me who are dying haven't forgiven themselves. There are still feeling that they've been a bad person and they didn't do this enough. They didn't do that enough. Imagine being on your deathbed. Really imagine being on your deathbed and not liking who you are. Oh, wow.

Yeah. And I see a lot of that. And there are some people, though, who at the end of life surrender into a bigger version of who they are. Maybe the body's in pain. Maybe there's confusion in the mind, but they're not so identified with that stuff. So that right now there's Dale and Duncan, Ramdev, whatever my name is. Ramdev, Dale, and Duncan were talking to the three of us, right? I've got two names, everybody.

It's a little confusing. My spiritual name, Ramdev, and Dale, the other guy. That here we are talking, but is there this other reality that we can surrender into? It's not another reality. It's going beyond grasping. It's trusting. It's this radical trust in our humanity of just being who we are, trusting our basic goodness. Trusting that it's okay to be a human being, that we don't have to get somewhere.

Right. I want to just speak from my own personal experience and get real, real. When you're talking about seeing the divinity and the unbearable, the Walt Whitman quote, sometimes the love I feel for my kids is so intense that I can't deal with it. And so it's like my mind instantly conjures up mortality in like feeling this deep love for my kids. And it's not just like, for truly, like I could be jumping on the trampoline with them and they're having fun. They're on the trampoline. I'm thinking, oh, your dad's getting old.

Is my heart okay? What if I just have a heart attack on the trampoline in front of you kids? Oh my God, I'm going to die. You're going to die. You know, they're unaware of this. It's not like I announced this, but it's the strangest feeling to come into contact. Come into contact with that divinity and then not be able to stay there. Not because the divinity's gone anywhere, but because it's too much.

It's intellectually, I could think to myself, you know what, if I could just hang out in the place of unbearable love for my kids and my wife and my own life, that would be a few minutes. You know, I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't mean to get slightly vulgar here, but you ever have to wonder yourself like, what would a 10 minute orgasm feel like? You ever wonder that? Maybe you've experienced it. I certainly haven't.

But you ever just wonder like, boy, if we could extend this just a little bit longer, then I could like, you know, understand what's going on here better. But I can't extend either of those experiences. Orgasm, just because my body won't let me, the intense love I feel for my kids. So which one do you want to talk about? We can talk about extending your orgasms or we can talk about extending, resting in divinity. Let's do orgasms. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

I'm the most shallow person on earth. Let's do divinity. Let's do divinity. Then we'll let's get to the orgasms. I'm excited about the orgasm thing. I'm not going to lie, but let's do divinity. Okay. So you're really looking at the crucial point here that there you are.

You're jumping on the trampoline with your kids. You feel this almost unbearable openness and love and spaciousness. And then the mind jumps in and starts thinking about, oh, I'm getting older. Maybe I'm going to have a heart attack. My kids won't have a father. So that moment right before those thoughts arise are a very instructive moment. I used to do a lot of long meditation retreats. I get into this wonderful, open, spacious, happy mind.

And then all these bullshit thoughts, just random thoughts would start coming. They'd come for a shorter time, a longer time. I'd be aware of it back to spaciousness, thoughts, awareness of thoughts, spaciousness. And I thought, why don't I stay in that open place, the place you're talking about? Why do I keep doing that thing? And I noticed that right before I started thinking, there was fear of death. Not in a big way, not like I'm going to have a heart attack, but that the spaciousness itself was ego death.

And like Descartes says, I think therefore I am. So that the mind wanted to reify my separateness. It couldn't bear just being open. So it had to start thinking about bullshit. That the constricted mind is more comfortable than the boundless nature of who we are. So that there's this ongoing tension moment to moment between the spiritual reality that we are that spaciousness and the ego's need to have a solid place from which to stand that doesn't really exist.

So that to the extent that we're not waiting for the next cancer diagnosis, to the extent that you can begin to be with that quiet voice that says, there's too much space here, let's contract again because that's so comfortable. For instance, they were building a big dam in Egypt that was going to create a lake that was going to drown a lot of large mammals. So somewhere in Africa, I think it was Egypt. So they decided they were going to tranquilize, capture and move a few hundred miles, these big animals. And they did that, they opened up the cages, the animals didn't want to come out

because they were so used to the place they used to be, they didn't want to be in this new place. And we're comfortable with our cage. So the point is, can we begin to feel in more palatable bites, if you will, that subtle fear of being nobody. I mean, Ram Dass at the end of his life talked about becoming nobody, but another friend of mine who was a therapist said, you've got to become somebody before you can become nobody. Ram Dass spent a lot of time becoming somebody before he said,

okay, now I can become nobody. And that becoming somebody is being willing to look at that grasping at solidity of I'm somebody. I know who I am. I have a fixed viewpoint here that I can trust. And as we all find out, people die, cancer comes, children have problems. Life is always changing, it's always impermanent. So that can you begin to trust in simple moments that you can just let go? Like right now, you don't know what your next question is going to be.

I don't know what I'm going to say. It's just coming out, it's just coming out. And then begin to extend that into more fraught emotional situations. But take those simple ones. Can you have the orgasmic non-orgasm here when you're walking in the woods, when you're eating your Cheerios in the morning, right? When you're just lying down to sleep at night. When you light on in the bed, are you putting your head on the pillow?

Are you putting your head in the Divine Mother's lap or Maharajie's lap or something like that, right? Like each moment is this relationship with the beloved, like that Walt Whitman quote, touching another human being sometimes is almost more than I can bear. Yes. Yeah. I want to hyper fixate on this for a moment just to sort of like, you know, because I think this moment, the transitionary phase between what you're talking about, the experience of divinity or emptiness or whatever you want to call it,

and a return to good old comfortable neurosis. There are actually, if you look at it, there's gradients even there. Or there's like a flavor to it. And this is why you will hear bitter sweet or something get brought up. A kind of, there might be, and I don't know, a millisecond where it isn't bitter, a millisecond where it's just that. And then it's like this in the, for me, it always feels like in my heart. This sadness or it's, I don't know if bitter is even the right word for it,

but definitely uncomfortable as you, as you veer away from that place back into the fear. Now it's interesting to me because I don't think I'd ever made the connection or thought to myself. Oh, it's not that you're thinking those things because you're afraid of dying. You're thinking those things because you're, you can't stand to be in this moment. So it's like an same thing. Same thing. Yeah. So that being in this moment, fully in this moment is, is dying out of ego into, into presence.

Wow. It's, it's, it's a, it's an ego death moment to moment to moment, surrendering into spaciousness, surrendering to God, surrendering into love, surrendering into whatever we call that. That bitterness, do you still feel that? Or have you surrendered into it? Does that come up for you? That it comes up for me.

In fact, there's a book now called bitter sweet. That's really a hot book. It's on the New York times list written by some woman. I forget her name, but the Tibetans say, for instance, Duncan, that compassion is the combination of sadness and joy. There's a sadness that they're suffering in the world and there's a joy that your heart is open. And it's a, there's a joy that transcends happiness and sadness. So that being in the world and knowing you're going to die and you're going to, and that very likely you're going to die before your kids are going to die.

And knowing that people are blowing each other up in the Ukraine and knowing that the Republicans want to take over the planet and knowing all these things. It's sad, but at the same time we're being asked in some way to have a joy that transcends that and not getting lost in the sadness. There's a difference. An emotion arises, a difficult emotion, but any emotion arises. There are three possible responses. One is to push it away. I don't want to feel that. That's my response.

Let me have a drink. Let me binge Netflix. Second response. When my brother was told by his oncologist that he was dying, he got the message in an after hours email because the oncologist didn't want to tell him face to face. Whoa. Okay. What? Yeah, right.

He's in the wrong business. That oncologist is in the wrong business. What kind of oncologist doesn't want to tell people that? Like, that's crazy. That's like being a mailman. I wanted to deliver mail. Well, he wanted to put the mail through the slot rather than say hi to the person who's getting mail. So first possible way of dealing with emotion is push it away.

Second is getting lost in it. Oh my God. Oh my God. Look what's going on here. You probably do some of that too. I do both of those. Push it away. Getting lost in it.

There's the third possible response. Having an embodied mindfulness and a compassionate heart. You open to what you're feeling so that that sadness you're talking about. Yeah. Can be something that you get lost in and say, oh my God, it's so sad. There's so much crap going on in the world. Yeah. Or something that you can meet with a joyfulness and an openness.

It's the same sadness, but you're not getting lost in it. See, I resent the sadness. I resent it. I resent it in the way I resent the neighbor's dog that barks too much or the person walking in high heels in the apartment above or whatever. I just resent it. I get mad at it. It's like, what are you doing?

You keep messing up this thing. You keep screwing up the party here. Yeah. If you've been to any Ram Dass retreat, you've heard or if you've read Cornfield or any of the teachers or you've heard again and again, various offer a tea, rub its back, do a dance with it. But I can't really do that. I just am annoyed with it at the very least and generally angry with it.

I mean, I think if I'm afraid based on what you said earlier, when I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to be pissed off. Some part of me is going to be legitimately pissed that this is happening. I don't want to be like that. But yeah, how to fix that or what is the, I mean, okay. So, I mean, that is the big question in spiritual life is how do we not get caught in anger and sadness and fear and things like that? How can we be present?

How can we love awareness itself? How can we cultivate this living relationship with the moment rather than getting lost so that once again, it goes back to that ego death thing of surrendering into the present. That sense of being angry about the way things are is more comfortable in the short term than the surrender into wholeness. But if you really pay attention, it's suffering. It's really uncomfortable to be pissed off. It doesn't feel good.

No. The ego is saying, but this is better, Duncan. This is better than ego death because then I'm not going to exist. And you need me because this is a matter of life and death for us. This is ego life death thing. So that it's, I mean, that's kind of the point of meditation. You're sitting there. The mind is wandering.

The body feels agitated or tired or whatever. All this stuff is coming and going. And is it possible to just be with that, to not think that meditation is about getting somewhere, that life is not a self improvement project. Life is not getting Duncan from schlumpy Duncan here. How dare you? How dare you, sir? There's some assumed better Duncan, you know, that you're thinking there's like a new improved

product out there somewhere if you do the right shit. And I don't think, I mean, we're all stuck in that place to a certain extent. I've been meditating since the 1960s. I lived with Ramadas. I traveled Ramadas to India. I was the director of the Hanuman Foundation. I'll do a plug right now. I'm the director of the Living Dying Project, livingdying.org, where we have

a podcast on the Ramadas Be Her Now Network that Duncan comes to a bunch with Ragu. There's a lot of free information there, livingdying.org, about how can one be with that fear? How can one be with these emotions and not get lost in it? How can we use our mortality to awaken? So to me, it really comes down to what is your motivation? What do you really want? My first meditation teacher, Suzuki Roshi, said, the most important thing is finding the most important thing. He also said, you're all perfect, but there's still some room for improvement.

Oh, Zen. Okay, so what we're saying here, though, is that what is the most important thing for you? Yeah. What is your motivation? What is your deepest motivation when you wake in the middle of the night and you hear the footsteps in, down in your belly there or whatever, right? Or your heart feels constricted. And if, in fact, you are really motivated to wake up, if you really are hungry for truth,

the way you're hungry for air, then suffering is grace. If you're not hungry, then the suffering, you say, I don't want the suffering. I'm angry about it. I'm pissed off. Let me get to another place. But if you're really motivated to be free, if that's what you want, if you can look yourself in the mirror and say, I want to wake up, then those places of pissed-offness are useful.

If somebody comes into a meditation teacher and says, I'd like to meditate. I've never meditated before. And the teacher says, well, do you get angry a lot? And the person says, no, I never get angry. The teacher will say, okay, but in the back of his or her mind, they'll be saying, this guy's not going to be a very good meditator. Because the anger is exactly the same energy that we meditate with or that we have sex with or we create with.

Like so in my life, if I'm not meditating a bunch or having orgasms or being really creative, I get angry. Yes. But if I'm doing something like really creative or really meditating, then that's that same energy. I want to thank ExpressVPN for supporting this episode of the DTFH. You might not be aware of this, but anything you do online is being sold by tech companies. That's right.

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That's expressvpn.com slash Duncan. Expressvpn.com slash Duncan to learn more. Thanks, ExpressVPN. But if I'm doing something like really creative or really meditating, then that's that same energy that's getting used up. That's Shakti, that Chi. You're clarifying something for me that I think I got confused about. I meditate infrequently.

Sorry, David Nickton. But I do meditate at least once a week and I try to do more. Within that slow process, I had this what I thought was an epiphany and now I'm starting to think it was confusion. I had this moment of thinking, oh my God, you think you're creating but you're just doing this to evade suffering because I recognized what you're saying. I recognize that in my creativity, it was the same energy. And I thought, oh, well, that means you're the whole things of fraud

because you're trying to cope with suffering by running away into your creative process. But it sounds like you're saying, no, it's actually your creative process is a way of channeling that energy. Am I misunderstanding you? No, that's exactly what I'm saying. That is cool. That makes me feel so much better. Huh, that's really interesting.

But being really creative, not being phony creative, that you're putting your being into it, you're really doing something. I mean, you hear stories about people, they're writing or they're painting or they don't even hear the phone ring or they forget to eat or something because they're so focused on what they're doing, right? So to me, I kind of imagined at times that I've got this knob on the side of my head here up by the temple and it goes from zero to 100. And at zero, all my attention's out in the world and none of it's inside of my body.

And at 100, it's all inside and none of it's outside. Deep meditation is I'm all inside, I'm not even paying attention out there. Being pissed off in a traffic jam, it's the opposite. But can you start playing with that knob and be living a life like 50-50 or 75-25 where when you're doing this podcast, part of you is am I centered? Is my heart open? Trusting the stuff that's coming out of that rather than just being lost and trying to be the super fancy dunk or something like that.

Super fancy, you just call me a schlub. I don't feel super fancy at all. You're all a schlub. If you all could see me right now, I'm very greasy. My hair's disheveled, he's absolutely right. It's a pure and true observation. I'm sorry, I didn't take a shower today. Well, you know what? I didn't either.

So here we are. Thank God we're on the opposite sides of the country, right? All the time. This is one of the silver linings. People either in person can't smell me because they lost their smell or through the screen. This, you know, when I'm hanging out with people like you, I am more, I can stay in that place more. Like when I was around Ram Dass, I could stay in that place more.

And then when I'm there swimming around, it's like, oh, this is easy. The knob, when you're saying this about the knob, I'm like, oh, yeah, of course, the knob, it's, he's been the knob, you're in and out. But when I'm not, when I'm not, then that knob, you reach for the knob and it's like, it's gone. It's not there. So I don't mean to like create some hierarchy of practice or something like that. But is it contingent on a practice? Is the fluidity or, I don't know, the ability to spin that knob only based on some kind of like severe meditation practice?

Mayor Baba said, love is contagious. Those who haven't got it, catch it from those who do. And when the Buddha was at his cousin and his attendant, Ananda said, oh, Buddha, I have heard that the sangha, the community of seekers is fully half of the path. The Buddha said, oh, no, Ananda is all of the path. Right? So what they're both saying is being alone and trying to twist the knob is really hard work. And that by being around other people, at least occasionally, being at going to retreats or having people you know

where you get together and you feel some inspiration from being with these other human beings, makes it so much easier than trying to do this by oneself. We're living in a... The stuff we're talking about right now is going directly against the grain of the main message of our culture. Right? So it's hard to do it. It's hard to do it without support. Right.

It's hard to say, I'm not so interested in egoic accumulation. I'm interested in surrender and opening and compassion and being open to the suffering of my fellow beings. I mean, there's a lot of this right-wing Christianity where it doesn't feel very Christian at all. Right? It's not about supporting other human beings. It's not about being with the downtrodden. It's about getting your own in a certain way that really irritates the hell out of me, really. Yes.

I know what you mean. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine who was really frustrated with their Christian friends. And I was just thinking, look, if there's any service you could do in the world for Jesus, it's like getting to the source material and then fixing all the way that it did end up in the place you're talking about. The way somehow this thing that does seem like a recipe for floating in that place or being in that love, whatever you want to call it, somehow got convoluted to turning into the antithesis of at least my understanding of it, which may be wrong, I don't know. But I think that you have made me realize something that I never quite got. There's a book, I bet you know it, The Denial of Death.

It's supposition being what you're saying, all neurosis, all the everything is really upstream. It's your fear of death manifesting in all these micro-way, like little ways, little things. Now I'm starting to see, now I get it. Now I'm starting to really get it, which is if you theoretically, based on what you're saying, if somehow you address that fear of death, then it's like pulling the dead dog out of the well or something. It's theoretically, if you get rid of that, then this impulsive, I'm sorry, I'm a terrible interviewer. I shouldn't do it. Are we still back there with the dead dog and the well image?

I've been watching Game of Thrones. You know, I feel like what you're saying is, actually, every single time you're on the trampoline, or you're in love with your kids, or you're having a conversation like this, and the thing creeps in where you're like, shit, I wish this conversation could go on forever. It won't. Or, oh god, I wish my kids or I live forever. Oh god, this isn't going to last. That is death.

You are experiencing death, right? What are you talking about? That is an encounter with the very thing itself. Is that what you're saying? The moment before the thoughts jump in, there's some fear of non-existence, right? So instead, just keep jumping on the trampoline. Just keep playing with life, keep dancing with life, instead of making it a big self-improvement work project where I've got to fix my ego.

I mean, Rhombus had this other line. I'm not sure I completely believe it, but I kind of do. He says, if you're a son of a bitch and you get enlightened, you'll be an enlightened son of a bitch. Whoa. So that's good news for you and me, right? I'm getting roasted here. I'm getting roasted through my own show. Yes, it's good news.

You've got me. You see me. And I said for me and for everybody, I mean, it's not that everybody has that place where they're caught in their personality. Enlightenment is not about fixing the personality completely. It's fixing it enough so that you can be present. But that as I get older and I've been a meditation teacher for five decades, and I'm still as neurotic as I was a long time ago, but I don't care about it anymore. Right.

I'm not lost in that. So I'm not roasting you as a son of bitch. Everybody has that quality of being lost in their personality. Yes. Are you going to spend the rest of your life beating yourself up about that or spend the rest of your life going to therapy and trying to fix it, which a little bit of that is good, but eventually get on with it. Like this whole thing about being the adult child of an alcoholic or something, the operative where there is adult, like can we eventually get on with life?

Right. And it's, I'm not saying that people aren't wounded and they need therapy and they need support and there's trauma and all that. That stuff is completely real. But at the same time, there's a context so that we're two fold beings. There's this human being with the woundedness and the personality and there's this soul level. There's this divine part of us. And we forget about that second part. We get lost in the first part all the time.

If we can remember the second part, the first part, we can hold so much more lightly. The fact that we're going to die, the fact that the trampoline might break. I haven't thought that. I didn't get to that fear. You know what you're making me think of is the times when like my genuine grief about my mother passing turned into a performance like a hall pass if I was being a son of a bitch. So if I've like found myself, you know, being a jerk with my wife, I might be like, you know, I'm grieving right now when I'm thinking to myself, this is not from grief. This is selfish. You're acting like this because you, you're not, you're being a, not an adult.

And then like, you know, those, that's an embarrassing confession. Hope my wife doesn't listen to this episode. She already knows, but the, but the, the, you know, it's like, it becomes like a kind of tattered teddy bear or something that you're like carrying around. Like, you know, this is, it goes from being like, I am genuinely crushed right now to. I'm the genuinely crushed person. That's me. It's some point, right? You have to let that go.

I get that. I get that. That doesn't have to be you forever. So I had the great grace to be with Maharaj and a lot of other great saints. And he said things like, I'm always in communion with you. Another saint said, be peaceful. I am everywhere. Yeah.

There's these great books by Father Greg Boyle tattoos on the heart where he's this priest in East LA dealing with gang members and ex cons and things. And he keeps telling them, they come to him and say, Father, Father Greg, make me a better person. He says, you're perfect the way you are. God loves you just the way you are. It's for you to accept that. So being with Maharaj was very difficult because he kept relating to me by seeing the place that was whole. I was right in front of him. I was horny.

I was feeling inadequate. I was feeling irritated. And he just kept loving me. So that's even going back to that other quote before of we become more loving by being around people who have that love. Is it possible then that that tattered teddy bear you're carrying around gets replaced by realizing that you're surrounded by this unconditional love? That's where it comes. That's you're triggering me now. See, that's what I'm talking about.

The moment I get even close to that, it's like, no way, no way. Like it's, you know, I can only approximate what you must have felt around. Neem Crowley, Bobby, Bobby, Neem Crowley, Bobby is a baseball player. Neem Crowley, Baba, I can only approximate what you must have felt around that person. By the way, I feel just being around people who've been around that person, which is my reaction. That is always like, I don't deserve this. You know, if I pulled off this trickery, that I am getting secondary darshan via people like you and Ragu and Ram Dass. So suppose right now, though, that you just slow down and accept that I love you and God loves you and that your kids love you.

And that that's more important than all the mental shit that we can talk about. Right. And relax into that. And I have a hard time doing that. I mean, I have a very excitable type A kind of personality thing happening. I'm addicted to excitement, right? I used to drive motorcycles in a way that it's remarkable I'm still alive. But the point is that I've had those experiences where I'm beginning to more and more trust that I am loved, that I am supported,

that moment to moment, even when things are difficult, even when health things or money things or relationship things or work things are like floating around, that underneath that there's this support, there's this absolute foundation of care, of love. One can, as a meditation teacher, what I really focus on is the very beginning stage of getting grounded and centered and embodied as the foundation for opening the heart. Opening the heart means becoming vulnerable, becoming spacious. And if you haven't worked with the first three chakras, the place from which martial arts are done, then it's going to be difficult to bear the openness of the heart. If the environment is not being really supportive. So that by getting grounded and centered, by really inhabiting the base, then there's a solid dunk and a solid dale, Ramdev, who can bear the openness. And it's kind of humbling to say, I've got to start at the beginning, even though I've been doing this for 50 years.

Right, right. Yeah, right. I get it. Because otherwise it really is unbearable. You don't have the, you don't have anything to bear it. Your back isn't, I get, I could see that, like how... Could we do a really quick grounding breath or not? Yeah, I'd love that. Okay, so just imagine that as you're breathing out, you're pushing an energetic egg out through the base of your torso, down the very base, out into the earth that supports and nourishes, and it's just an easy natural in-breath. That each time you breathe out, that place between, for a male between the genitals and the anus, for a woman out through her vagina,

just pushing energy out into the earth and feeling that sense of support and nourishment as you breathe in. It's abundant. It's always there. I'm sorry, when I'm breathing in, I'm pushing the egg out, or when I'm breathing out, I'm pushing the egg out. Breathing out, you're pushing the egg out. Okay. You're giving birth to this egg, if you will. Okay. And this is the immediate antidote to fear, to feeling attacked, to feeling startled, to feeling anxious.

It's a way of receiving this boundless grounding support, the mother, earth element, mother, mother, divine mother. That's cool. It's just like dropping down into that support, getting grounded, feeling that sense of ground. And there's very little about this in the spiritual literature, Duncan, because all those books were written by Asian people, hundreds, not thousands of years ago, who walked around barefoot. They didn't have an iPhone. They loved their parents. Right. I was at a Tibetan retreat once, and the guy said, okay, we're going to open our hearts.

Everybody think about your mother. He said, oh, wait a minute. I forgot. This is America. Thinking about your mother doesn't mean your heart's going to open. Right. Which is one sense kind of funny, and in another sense, it's profoundly sad, right? Right. Tragically. So is it possible to stay grounded and to have a conversation?

Is it possible to have that sense of being supported, of nourished, and you live in your life? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it is. The answer is yes. I mean, what? I want to be honest here. I think it is.

But for you, you could say yes. And this is why people like you are so important in the world. So how do we extend our orgasms? I'm sorry. In the beginning, you mentioned it's a possibility. I'm so grateful for, and I'm sorry that the way I think is. I was hoping we were going to get back to this. Definitely.

Thank you. Okay. So I very rarely quote this guy Rajneesh, the guy that had the 49 Rolls Royces and things. Yep. But he talked about, he had a book about sex. He explained it really well. He said, there's two kinds of orgasms. There's the peak orgasm where you get more and more excited.

You ejaculate and then you come back to stasis or whatever you call that. But there's the valley orgasm where you get more and more relaxed. You're in union with somebody, but instead of getting more excited, you're opening, getting relaxed, becoming present. And then it's possible to have an orgasm that goes on and on and on without ejaculating. Orgasm and ejaculating often come together, but they're two separate things. So it's possible to have an orgasm that goes on for an hour. And you're speaking from experience.

I am. Wow. I've heard of this. I've never met anyone, anyone who can speak. Well, it only happened once or twice a long time ago, I have to admit, but it did happen. I don't mean this in some kind of like gross, pervy way, but just only because like, I think we would be, have to be severely repressed or nuts to not admit. We're talking about one of the great human experiences that is most of us have a limited

opportunity of experiencing that. What is that like? What is, what happens 30 minutes in to an hour long orgasm? What are you thinking or where are you? You're not thinking anything. It's the whole point. I mean, in fact, I started thinking, oh, this is great. And as soon as I started thinking that, it started going away.

So I just let go back into that place. I mean, here's another story. I was with Maharaj. I was right in front of him. I was holding his foot, rubbing it, feeling love and devotion and saying my mantra. And then after about five minutes, I started thinking, boy, am I lucky. Isn't this great? And as soon as I started feeling that, he started pulling his foot away.

So I went back to just saying my mantra, love, and he relaxed his foot. And then after a few more minutes, I started thinking, wow, look at me, right? And he started pulling his foot away. It happened three different times. And as long as I was just open surrendered, there was that flow of love between us, which is, I mean, holding his foot is not quite the exact same thing as having sexual intercourse. Probably better. But it's kind of that same thing of surrendering into love.

So that like being with your wife, and instead of getting more and more excited and aggressive or whatever is happening, can you just be excited enough to maintain connection there, if you know what I mean? Yes. And just be opening and opening and opening into love and spaciousness and surrender. It's so cool. It's like, you're, it's so interesting. You know, I, as I'm thinking about this, not the orgasm stuff, I'm sorry for going there,

but the life, I don't know, because I like kind of like, I don't know. I was trying to be funny or something, but the, No, but sex is part of being a human being. There's nothing to be ashamed about. I guess what I'm saying is you're making me in my head. I have this image of someone walking out into the ocean and then thinking, this is great. I'm standing in the ocean and then turning into the ocean and maybe thinking, this is great. I'm the ocean.

And then forgetting there were ever anything but the ocean and there's something in that that feels scary. There's something, I like the idea of the, the possibility of walking back to shore, but this, this, this thing of like that, that I know is going to happen when we die, but that theoretically seems possible while alive. That's something about that seems really, really, I don't mean to go back to the fear thing, but a more refined version of the trampoline fear, I guess you could say a sense of like, well, if I stay out here too long, I'm not coming back.

Have you read the Wizard of Earth sea by Ursula Kay, Le Guin? Have you ever read that book? No. It's a cool book. I read it when I was a kid, but one piece of it stuck with me. Wizards, they could turn themselves into dolphins. They go swimming out in the ocean as dolphins, but the danger of that is if you stay a dolphin too long, you forget you're a wizard.

So many of the dolphins out in the ocean are actually wizards with amnesia who just forgot they were wizards and became dolphins. That's what I'm talking about, that this line of thinking in teachers like you, I feel like there is a quality of luring us out, like luring those animals out. And then somewhere you're like, wait, I can't get back. And I know this is more neurotic thinking, but that's what pops into my head because you're so talented, you've fully brought me into this place. Now it's like, oh shit, if I stayed here too long, there wouldn't even be a Shlubby Duncan.

Okay, but what I'm saying is that being in that place, you'll want to stay there because it's so enjoyable. It's so joyful. It's so full. If you want to go back and be, I don't know what adjective to use here. If you want to come back, you can always come back, but you're not going to want to. I mean, as a very simple example, you look out the window and there's a tree and you see the tree and you just see the tree.

There's nobody, it's not Duncan seeing a tree, not Duncan liking the tree, not saying that's a maple tree or an oak tree or whatever, it's just, there's looking. So that there's a lot of times during the day where you're in that place where there's nobody. It's just pure experience. Yes. And then eventually, whether it's trampoline or looking out the window at a tree, the ego jumps in again. Yes.

And the ego is a wonderful tool. The mind is a wonderful tool. You can still be Duncan. You're going to be Duncan. You're going to be neurotic Duncan, like I'm neurotic Dale Romney, right? But you're not going to be identified with it anymore. And the image with the wizards and the dolphins, the amnesia thing, there's no amnesia. You still remember you've got this body that you take care of and you've got the family you take care of.

And you can always come back to being the guy who's doing that stuff, but you're doing it in the context of, I'm swimming in this vast sea of love and consciousness, right? It's not that you're pushing that other part away. They're both there. Well, what you're saying works with my theoretical lifespan, which is rapidly diminishing, as statistics come out about living in the United States. But what about when you are sitting with a dying person? You can't, when they're saying, if you do the same thing for them that you just did for me,

and hopefully people listening, and they're like, wait, I don't know, I'm not coming back from this. What do you say then? How do you work with someone who is actually, there isn't even an option at some point to swim back to the body, to swim back to the identity? So I say to them that it's not a choice between living and dying. It's a choice between being awake or being asleep. It's a choice between being present or not being present. It's a choice between wholeness or brokenness.

So that I don't know how many more moments you're going to have in this body, but don't we both want them to be as full and loving and open as possible? We don't know what's going to happen after we die. I don't even care what's going to happen after I die. All I want to know is what psychological, spiritual tools and stuff can I do for me to be more awake and help other people around me to be more awake? There's a part of me that really deeply believes that consciousness survives death. I've had a lot of experiences of somebody dies and they talk to me.

I mean, there's hundreds, thousands of books out there, but after death experience and all that kind of stuff. But once again, that's all theoretical. It's like I'm really practical. I want to know how can I live this life, whether the doctor says you've got cancer and you've got a week to live, or the doctor doesn't say that. How can I live today?

How can I live this moment with Duncan Trussell in the most full way so that I'm awake and that I'm connected with you. I'm connected with the people that we're talking to right now. Right. Yeah, anytime I get to hang out here for an extended period of time, it is always like, yeah, you could see how death is just another thing that is like the tree, like the thought. I see, I could see how you would be the best person to die around.

That's a weird person to be. That's a weird one. But yeah, if I would have got to pick, you would be in the top of my list. I mean, this is having been around hospice and I love hospice. Hospice has been such a help to me and my family, not dissing them at all. But this element, you know, it's more pragmatic with hospice. Do you need more oxygen? Do you need what's the medication schedule?

Where's the pain? Where are we at in the process? Right. So, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if someone listening to this is dealing with the real thing, dealing with the terminal prognosis. How does someone, are you all over the country? How do people connect? Yeah, we're all over the world.

We have 100 volunteers, 120 volunteers, I can't remember. Once again, it's living, dying, L-I-V-I-N-G-D-Y-I-N-G dot org. And we have trained volunteers who work, before the pandemic, we worked mostly in person. And now it's mostly via Zoom. We have volunteers in Europe and Asia, in North America, South America, maybe not South America we had, I can't remember. Anyway, so people contact the Living, Dying Project info at livingdying.org. And they say, I'd like to be a client.

I mean, you've got, maybe so many people will be inundated here with potential clients, but... Let's hope the people listening are not, let's hope not. I need my listeners. Well, I always say that I'm in a growth industry here. The demographics are very good. But, you know, I also, so what are the rules here? Like, I mean, we're all dying. I mean, technically, can't everybody reach out to you?

And be like, well, I mean, the doctor hasn't said anything yet, but... We don't have enough volunteers to deal with just people who are anxious about life. But anybody that's got a life-threatening illness, we match up people who have a life-threatening illness with meditators for their mutual benefit. So that the trained volunteers are doing this as their spiritual practice. So that caregiving is work on yourself. It's not primarily about helping or fixing somebody. It's about you waking up.

And in you waking up, you'll be the best caregiver. Where if I'm coming to you and saying, I'm going to help you, I'm going to fix you, I'll be missing a lot of the signals in me that I'm getting lost in. Am I doing it well enough? Whatever. Whereas if I'm being present, this is my practice. I will be the best possible Dale for supporting Duncan or whoever it might happen to be. I got it.

I got it. So this isn't something to replace hospice. It's something that... Yeah. It's definitely a compliment. And it's all free. Wow. Wow.

So we need donations, folks. Okay. Yeah. Yes. It's a really bad business model. Taking care of dying people for free. Yeah. It really is.

I would say, yeah, you might have to work on that. But how are you going to... I mean, Leigh, I could see how... Like, you know, who do you send the bill to? Well, people donate and we get memorial donations and I do a lot of speaking stuff. This has been very enlightening for me. And I'm so lucky. Like, not to go back to, like, whatever the thing is that doesn't just see the tree,

but it's like, that's a... I got to get the sprinklers working. But I just don't... I'm not yet... At a place where I feel like this makes even sense to me that I get to have these conversations is my job. So thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure, Duncan.

Thank you, Ramdev. I really appreciate it. All the links you need to connect with Ramdev. We're going to be at DuncanTrestle.com if you didn't write them down. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Howdy, Krishna. Lots of love.

Lots of love. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. That was Ramdev, everybody. You can find him at livingdying.org. All the links you need will be at DuncanTrestle.com. A tremendous thank you to our sponsors and thank you for listening.

I hope I see you at one of my upcoming shows. If not, I'll see you out there. Until next week, Hare Krishna. With one of the best savings rates in America, banking with Capital One is the easiest decision in the history of decisions. Even easier than choosing Slash to be in your band. Next up for lead guitar. You're in.

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