Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 724: RamDev

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

RamDev (AKA Dale Borglum), contemporary of Ram Dass and founder of the Living/Dying Project, re-joins the DTFH! Check out the Living/Dying Project for more information on RamDev's organization, which provides compassionate support to those facing life-threatening illnesses, and ways you can help! Florida family! Duncan is coming to Tampa! Come see him at Side Splitters Comedy Club, November 21-22. Click here to get your tickets now. Don't miss this one! Duncan is riddled with blood worms, so these are going to be his last shows of 2025! Thank you, and we love you!! This episode is brought to you by: For a limited time, Ridge is having their huge Black Friday Sale. Head to Ridge.com to GET UP TO 47% OFF your order. Check out squarespace.com/DUNCAN for a free trial, and when you’re ready to launch, use OFFER CODE: DUNCAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Go to Quince.com/Duncan for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns!

Hey, everybody, before we get going with this podcast, I've got one more show before I take a break because I got a baby coming and the holidays are upon us. Come see me at Side Splitters in Tampa, Florida. That's November 20th to November 22nd. Let's jump into this podcast. Greetings to you, my loves. It's me, Duncan, and this is the Dunkett Russell Family Hour podcast. And today's podcast is why I podcast. to trick teachers into giving me an hour and a half of free therapy.

Ram Dev, aka Dale Borglam, is here with us today. He runs the Living Dying Project, and my God, he really, what's the word for it? Knocked my wig off? What do they say? He knocked my socks off today. Like, mind-blown. Rom-Dev was really tight with Ram Dass and the Living Dying Project, which, is his foundation. The Living Dying Project offers conscious and compassionate support in the spirit

of mutual exploration to those facing life-threatening illnesses, to their caregivers, and to those facing life's most difficult situations, and to anyone committed to spiritual transformation. Ram Dev is the real deal, friends. So get ready. This is definitely one of my favorite episodes in a long time, and I think it's going to be one of yours, too. Everybody, Howdy welcome Romdev back to the DTFH. Romdev, welcome back to the DTF. So good to be here. How are you these days?

It's been too long. Well, how am I? It's like, it's that time of the year where we're putting out a newsletter and I'm putting the final touches on my book and the end of the year taxes for the nonprofit. So I'm really super busy. People say to me, you're the only person to know who's peaked. in their 80s. So I don't know, I don't know how I managed that, but, you know, when I was younger,

I was a yogi and now all of a sudden I'm out in the world. Well, yeah, I, it seems like something is happening to the human lifespan or the way people are aging, you know, and I see this a lot. There's theories on it, but, you know, like think of what a 40-year-old or an 80-year-old look like in the 1800s. if there even was an 80-year-old. You know what I mean? They looked like they had been blasted by a Medusa.

You know, they're just withered and broken and just a mess, you know. But you look great, you know, vital and, you know what I mean? So what's your theory on that? Is it just we're eating better? Well, first of all, I've had a few things done to me that if like a hundred years ago, I'd be dead, right? or like I had my hip replace from a meditation injury, believe it or not. Is that true? What?

If they couldn't have done that, I'd be in a wheelchair in great pain all the time. What? Or I had prostate cancer. Let's get to the prostate cancer. But you can't just say you had such a serious meditation injury that you had to get your hip replaced and leave it at that. What happened? You fall off the cushion?

Well, you know, the Buddha had a bad back. What? But anyway, I was doing this Goenka kind of meditation where you'd be like meditating for 12 hours a day or more without any walking. It's just meditating. And we were meditating down in Yucca Valley. And I was a runner. And I was out running in the desert and I stepped in a gopher hole or something.

And I really sprained my ankle. Okay. So for a whole year, I sat with the same half lotus instead of alternating. Right. Plus, I was meditating a lot. Plus, I started running again. So it wore down one of my hip joints. And finally, I was in enough pain. I went to the doctor. And he looked at my x-ray and said, you look like you've been an automobile accident. I said, no, just meditating. He said, it couldn't be meditation. But he had no idea that I was like meditating 12 to 18 hours a day at certain points. I feel like you had a go for a whole accident. I don't think you had a meditation accident. Don't you think it's more the running than that. the meditating? It was the combination. Combination.

Right. That because I kept meditating in the same half lotus, it rotated the hips. And then I'm running on these rotated hips. So a lot of the forces coming down on one side instead of in an equal way. Yeah. Anyway, that's my theory. When I first start, my first intro to Buddhism was Zen. and the teacher made us do full lotus.

Like it was intense and wow, wow, that hurts. That is at least at first, you know, you do figure out a way to work with that pain. But it's such an intense posture. It is, but you know, for me, and I think for a lot of people, trying to figure out who you are through looking at your mind is so damn complicated. The mind is so manipulative. And it's really trying to trick you into believing things that aren't true. Like you're separate, something like that.

Whereas the body's telling the truth. And I found that if I can learn to not automatically react to unpleasant sensations, it then carries over to thoughts and emotions and just learning to sit there, not being a masochist, excuse me, not trying to create pain. But if there's a little bit of pain there, instead of automatically getting away from it. Right. But, okay, what does it feel like? My body's uncomfortable.

I can hang out with that. In fact, one of my favorite things to do is lying in my bed completely flat for like an hour. And just feel the sensations. And because I'm really busy, my energy is a little bit dysregulated. And I just pay attention to that. Not trying to fix it. not trying to understand it, but what does it feel like to be in my body right now and be with the minor discomfort? And almost always, then being with that kind of takes me into this place

of spaciousness because I'm not fighting anything. Right. Right. That using sensations as the gateway to presence, to awakeness. I do that. But when I get to that spacious place, which does happen, And usually there's some kind of light associated with it or something. It's very strange. Right when I get there, I'm like, whoa, this is that place and I'm out and then I fall asleep. But it's like, because I, you know, I got into that, what's it called, dream yoga, which sort of talks about this method of, you know, not swimming into a dream. There's a way to sort of just not do that. And something definitely luminous appears.

And then I'm out, man, because I'm always so blue. Like, how am I seeing this right now? It's so cool. And then, you know, I'm petting a monkey. That was my dream last night. Petting a monkey. Well, that could be a good thing. It was great.

I mean, it was a beautiful monkey. Hey. It wasn't Honoman. It was, too, it's like furry. It's like whatever it was. I wish it was Honomin. I wish I could say I had some constant. contact with Hahnemann last night, but it was a very adorable, cute, white-haired furry monkey.

I'm messing this interview up. What am I talking about? Too late to start over, but it's okay. That could be the name of your book. The name of the book is How to Live So You Can Die Without Fear. You know, that, I think, is for a lot of people, just the title instills fear. You know, this idea of imminent, not imminent, hopefully, for any of us, but inevitable, I guess I could say, death. and the idea that there is a way to transition that doesn't have to be so terrifying,

forces you to confront this thing. And it's scary for a lot of people. Well, I mean, to me, you may know I'm a recovering mathematician, right? Yeah. I've got a PhD in math, believe it or not. I believe it. And here's my equation. All fear is fundamentally fear of death.

And fear of death is exactly the place where you're not enlightened. So by being able to really investigate that fear of death is really one of the most direct and profound practices to wake up. Right. And fear of death isn't, I mean, I just got a phone call this. morning that a guy on our board of directors just died. Bless his soul. Brad Price, go with God, Brad. And yes, we are all going to die.

But we don't have to wait until we get like a bad phone call from the doctor saying, hey, I got really bad news for you. Yeah. But like moment to moment, we're having the option of dying into the next moment or grasping and saying, no, I've got to figure it out. I've got to analyze it. I don't like it this way. We underestimate how asleep we are, how we're attached to mind states. So, I mean, even that previous conversation about being with physical discomfort,

not necessarily producing it, but we live in bodies that hurt at times. And to the extent then that you can learn to not automatically tighten against painful sensations, that's preparation for dying. Ah, right. And just moment to moment, I mean, I'm going to out you here a bit. Go ahead. You were late to the podcast, right? You were having a hard time finding a parking place.

You were sending me text. I'm sorry, I'm going to be late. Yes. So in those moments of anxiety, how you dealt with that? That's preparation for dying. It's not like waiting until you've got tumors in your body. But, I mean, when you're dying, it might be you're in a car. And God forbid, your children are in the car.

Right. And boom, there's a truck coming at you. Or maybe you're lying on the floor of CVS pharmacy or Walgreens. And a stranger is breathing in your mouth. Right. So we don't know what the eye is going to be like. Like each moment, dealing with the uncertainty, dealing with the impermanent, it's all impermanent right and yet the ego structure wants to make a solid have a have a solid place

from which to experience life there is no solid place it seems like a person's life can become unhealthily obsessed with their own mortality and a lot of your time when I was younger I used to be much more afraid of death. I'm not saying I'm not afraid of death now. I don't want to die. I don't know if that's the same as being afraid of death. I mean, you know what I mean? I'm not like excited about the concept. But when I was younger, I was petrified with fear of this mystery. And it feels like in that, it's sort of ironic that in this fixation on one's own mortality, all of these things that you're talking about. In fact, your entire life gets diluted. You spend so much time conceptualizing what it could be. And if it's not death, it's some replacement for death,

like you said. There's that great book, The Denial of Death. So you can't even deal with the death, but you're afraid of what's coming next week. You're afraid of taxes. You're afraid of imminent, I don't know, climate collapse. solar flares or whatever you're filling in that with some other thing equally terrifying and you never you never even live a day in your life right that's that's is that close to what what you're sort of teaching is for people it is but i'm saying it can be even a lot more subtle than that i mean all those big thoughts it's just like moment to moment like right now you me the listeners yeah uh can we just be so the first step in meditation essentially mindfulness meditation is you're not grasping at the

content right right then the second step is you change your relationship it's a compassionate loving relationship but just in the beginning content is always changing can we let it be flowing or are we like jumping into more this less of that more this less of that you had that thing on midnight gospel a whole episode about your mother dying. Yeah. And she seemed to be a really remarkable person to me. Thank you. And you seem to really be with her in her dying process in a way that was very opening for you. Yeah. Right. And Trunkberimpeche, a Tibetan, great Tibetan Buddhist teacher, said, until one comes into intimate contact with death, your spiritual practice will have the quality of you being a dilettante.

Wow. So to the extent people are pushing it away, I don't want to feel that, I don't want to feel that. You can meditate and get a little more concentrated and get maybe a better job and a better quality of sexual partners. But until you really are able to be with death, either by actually being around dying people or being out in nature in a certain way,

but that quality of completely dying into the next moment. Leonard Cohen in one of his songs talks about the light comes through where the broken places are. Yeah. Right? There's a crack and everything. That's how the light gets in. There you go.

You got the voice. Now, let's get back to getting better sexual partners. through meditation. I think that would, maybe should be your next book. Best seller, man. But I'm sorry to derail it. I, no, but don't you think people meditate for that reason? I mean, isn't that one of the, I'm sure a lot of people, I mean, that's part of the motivation. Magical powers, being cool, sexual partners, all kinds of cities, whatever your fantasy is about, you know, what you're going to get out of it. I doubt there's many people who get into it for, nothing or for you know to to feel a direct confrontation with the thing you've been ignoring

your entire life so I certainly it wasn't my initial goal and I got it this is something that's been coming up for me personally which is you know I'm a parent I got so many kids now it's crazy and so I have anxiety all the time you I got enough kids and dogs that no matter what something's fucked up man like there's just there's just too many variables there. So there's always some kind of anxiety, some kind of drama is happening. And I've been, you know, attempting to apply what you're talking about to this direct experience with suffering and anxiety and stress. And I get worried. This is where I'm stuck right now. So there it is, the feeling. You know, the thing you're talking about when you're falling asleep, you're in your

body. And sometimes parents out there, I hope you can relate. When you're falling asleep, it's like a supernova of anxiety just appears out of the blue. Something emerges into your mind. You're worried about something the next day or whatever it may be. And it sucks, man. I mean, bottom line, it's just, it's so, um, it's so the opposite of how I would like to feel. And, but, Applying some of these methods, for example, let's not label this anymore. Let's just feel it. What is it? Energy. Powerful energy. It's vital in its own, like, horrible way. I wish that I had the vitality my anxiety has. You know, like that's, I wouldn't have to sleep as much. And in fact, I guess I'm not going to sleep because I'm wrestling with this thing. And so, but then I get worried because I think, wait.

Is this the way to deal with this, or is there some actual change I need to make in my life to mitigate the anxiety? What if I move this around or change this or, you know, cut this from the budget or pick up more shows or what if I have more money or what if, you know what I mean, all the things. And I get worried that somewhere in here, the way you're saying the body always tells the truth, I get worried. What if actually this isn't something that I should be non-labeling? What if this is something I should be paying attention to and making adjustments day to day and maybe it will get better? And let me, last thing, and also, but I've been feeling this my whole life before I had kids. You know, I've always felt this and it sucks. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by Ridge.

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during their biggest sale of the year. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show. And tell them the DTF. F.H. sent you. Thank you, Ridge. Okay, well, it's a delicate point. How much do you have to figure things out and how much not? And in Buddhism, and I'm not a Buddhist, but I like the way they talk. In Buddhism, and they talk about that everybody has something called basic goodness or basic wisdom. Right. And as practice

deepens, supposedly you begin to more and more trust that you'll be able to relate to your children and the problems of money and the whole thing better by by trusting the quiet mind, trusting

the deeper wisdom than the be kind of stuff up in your mind all. At the same time, the anxiety is a healing message. Emotions are healing messages. Even the unpleasant emotions, anger, anxiety, fear, sadness, are trying to tell you something. And it is a process that in the beginning, we don't have a lot of trust in who we are. I mean, you read about it in the books, and there's somebody like Ram Dass or Maharaji

who seems to really exemplify that, but there's still a lot of self-reuth. doubt and guilt and shame and stuff like that. Oh, I'm going to be late to the podcast or something like that. And the first three chakras are about fear, guilt, and shame. The fourth chakra is the heart, which is the gateway to the transpersonal tantra and non-duality. So that until we get in the heart, until we're, people come to me, they say, I want to die well, I want to meditate better, help me get in my heart, but they got this big bag of fear, guilt, and shame over their shoulder. Right. And we can talk about those things, but until one begins to address the anxiety, even in the way you were talking about, of beginning to explore the difference between, okay, I've got to think about this, I've got to make a to do list, they've got to figure it all out, or, okay, it's just energy in my body, just let it be there, and that I trust the next time I have to make a decision.

about how to deal with us, I'll make the best decision. So there's a difference between your body mind saying, hey, child number three has this problem, what are we going to do? And you think about that and you say, what we should do is A, B, and C. But usually the personality just keeps fixated back and forth, back and forth. So that you're thinking about this to the point that you can't go to sleep. Yeah. It's not the thought.

about the thought. It's the ego's stuckness of wanting to kind of torture you rather than you trusting something beyond the ego. And whether you trust this by diving into meditation or having a devotional relationship with a furry monkey or whatever it might happen to be, that people have their own different path. But there is a deeper wisdom in you that you've experienced again and again and again. Yeah. And yet, there's still the neurotic place. So there's this back and forth.

There's this, how much can I trust? You trust something very deeply, and yet your personality gets in the way of that. So it's exploring. Right. Am I acting now from being bothered, or am I acting now from trusting who I am? Okay, let me ask. I'm sorry to cut you off. Do you think?

it is healthy or naive to want that feeling of suffering to go away. And I know that specifically aversion is what it's called in Buddhism. And obviously we don't want to feel bad. But where I go back and forth is because this seems to have been a fairly constant background hum in my life. Right. I don't think it's going anywhere. But then I worry, but maybe that's why it's not going anywhere, is because you don't,

you think it's a fixed sort of reality. I'm not saying it's constant. Sometimes it's not there at all, but it sucks, man. And I would like to be completely peaceful and not ever feel that again. And do you think that getting lost in how to get rid of it is perpetuating it or is just that that line of thinking is just a waste of time? So you're kind of conflating two things. You use both words there, pain and suffering. Okay.

And if you got a body, there's going to be pain. Pain is mandatory. Absolutely. Suffering is optional. Right. So it's learning how to deal with the pain. I mean, even going back to the very beginning part of the conversation about pain in the body, for a lot of people, that's the most direct way to start seeing the difference between pain and suffering. Okay. So I had to go to the dentist a little while back, and there was a cavity under a crown. She said, I'm going to have to drill on a live nerve. I'm going to give you a shot. I said, I don't want this shot. She says it's going to hurt. I said, I know it's going to hurt.

but I'd rather not have my mouth doing this thing all afternoon or the drugs in my body. I'll just relax. She says, it's really going to hurt. I said, no, no, no. So she called in her husband, who is a bigger dentist, and he's trying to talk me. I said, I don't want the shot.

So she drilled on my tooth, and for about 60 seconds, there's really strong, painful sensations. I just sat there and I relaxed, and it was done. And I didn't suffer. Now, I'm pretty good in tolerating pain. because of all that meditating I did. I'm not saying to practice this necessarily at the dentist.

But with emotions, with sensations, when there's something that's unpleasant, that's not necessarily causing suffering. Right. Right. Suzuki, my first meditation teacher, said, Enlightenment has been the biggest disappointment of my life. And what he meant by that, I'm pretty sure. He didn't really explain.

But what he meant by that is he got enlightened that there's still pain in his body. And his children are still doing whatever they're doing. They were running around Zen Center and miniskirts, his two daughters, right? So he got enlightened. There's still pain. Right. You know, there's some idea we get enlightened and everything's going to be perfect. No, you've got a body and you've got Trump as the president and the government.

global climate is doing what it's doing and all these different things are happening and you like it or you don't like it. And so many people are suffering. Yeah. Because they're caught, I don't want it to be this way, but Buddhism has this other notion that is so fantastic that life is hopeless. Yes, I love And what they mean by that is that this moment is the way it is. It can't be any different because it's the way it is. Yeah. You can hope that it's going to be better. But if you hope that it's different than the way it is, you're screwed.

Well, this is like that Jack Nicholson movie. You know what I mean? It's dated. It's old, but it still holds up. He comes out of the therapist's office. It's a room full of people waiting for the therapist. And he yells, what if this is as good as it gets? And it was like his moment of enlightenment, you know, that, and, you know, that I get how that

could be disappointing to anybody when you, when you, when you sort of poke a hole in the idea that just around the corner, you're going to get invited to Hogwarts or you're going to like walk through walls or you're going to, you know, have stigmata. I don't know if that's pleasant, but it seems cool. You know what I mean? But no. I love that. See, I love that. That is very grounding for me. And that does remove a lot of the anxiety right away. Because it's like, yeah, this is just what's happening right now. And getting all lost in another way that you could be is like imagining what if you lived on Venus or what if you had wings? You don't yet. When the Dalai Lama first came to the West, his interpreter thought, this is going to be really interesting to hear what he says to all these Westerners. He's so wise, he knows all about these advanced Buddhist topics. And he came to city after city, and he basically said, everybody wants to be happy, everybody wants to suffer less.

And they'd go to the next town. He'd say, everybody wants to be happy, everybody wants to suffer less. That's all he was saying. And the interpreter said, what's going on here? I thought you could say all these, like, advanced kind of things. And he said, but until people really look at what they really want, that's the inspiration to practice. Everybody does want to suffer less.

Everybody, no matter whether they're on the spiritual path or they're an alcoholic or whatever that, or they're an alcoholic on the spiritual path, both at the same type, you know, whatever they're doing. People want to suffer less. Doesn't mean that pain is going to go away. But imagine a life with no suffering, right? Imagine a life where your kids are having a hard time sometimes and money maybe is questionable and politics, what's going on there and the climate.

And you're dealing with the stuff the best you can. Like the whole point of the Bhagavad Gita is you do what you do, you do it the best you can do and then you offer the fruits of the action to god right you don't know how it's going to turn out that's not up to you that's up to the universe that's up to god right you do the best you can and you let go of it right and it's really really hard when your children i get it i've got it i've got a kid myself right yeah he's in graduate school right now and congrats yeah thanks yale divinity school wow of all places. But the point is that, you know, he got sick, he had his problems, he had this

and that, like all children do. And that parent-child bond is the one where there's the most attachment in the world. I mean, the strongest attachment in the world is a mother and the child, and the second one is the father and the child. Right. Right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well. But still, it's... It's the same process, whether it is stubbing your toe or whether your child is sick, that you do the best you can to deal with the pain, and how much do you trust? How much do you trust what you invoke? Like in Buddhism, when they start a practice period, like a longer practice period, a retreat

or something, they take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. And the Buddha is not the guy in the statue. The Buddha is, enlightenment exists. We're taking refuge in the fact that freedom from suffering does exist. And the Dharma is there's a way to do that that a lot of people have done. And the sangha is, and these people who have been on this path are supporting us. Right. Like, I'm supporting you, you're supporting me, my teachers, my teachers, teachers, all that stuff.

Each moment, all those blessings are flowing down. And so much of the time, when we're looking at spiritual practice, practice as I'm doing things, I've got to do it better, instead of what can I receive in this moment? Yeah. You know that line by Rumi in this poem Love Dogs where this guy is praying to God and God never responds? The guy's all ticked off at God. And he goes to God and he says, look, I prayed and you never responded. And God says, the grief you, he says, the yearning you, express is the return message.

That's so great. The grief you cry out from is the secret cup. Yeah. Right. So it's even the yearning, even though, hey, what's going on here? That's, that, there's a blessing inherent in that if we're able to receive it. It's such a perplexing condition, this being human thing. Because, you know, on one side of the coin, you have what you're describing, which really is a kind of

like infinite embrace like those refuge that taking refuge like I think a lot of us have a general sense and I don't know why maybe it's capitalism maybe it's you know the the for a lot of people there's this looming sense of like man I could get fired I could lose it all at any second everything just like in in the sort of world that we're in that's how it works if they always say most like some terrible percentage of people are just a few bad weeks away from not having a house anymore. And so there's this, what's it called the sort of, damnically, that sword, he would sleep with a sword over his bed, like hanging by a thread that could just drop it any second. A lot of people live in that reality in some way, shape, or form. And so these things that you're talking about

point towards a kind of embrace a that you aren't alone you the type of the sanga it's not going to abandon you the you know the potential for enlightenment or awakening it's not going anywhere and certainly the uh methodology or the sort of i'm trying to think that the Dharma, the way, it's always going to be there for you. And I think for a lot of us, like, we have this general sense of like, yeah, no way. This, in other words, we try to make the things that you're discussing, we try to apply the world situation to the transcendent situation, when it isn't the case at all. I hope that made sense.

It kind of does. I mean, I admit that I'm a white guy with money in the bank and a house in Marin and my kids going to an Ivy League school. And I've got a lot of advantages. And if there are a lot of people who have a way different kind of struggle than I do. But I still say that what we've been talking about is fundamentally true. It's the same process. And I used to go into San Quentin. I had a meditation group there during the AIDS crisis.

And I remember there was this young black guy. I was really angry, you know. And he says, well, why should I listen to you? Who are you? You're just some white guy. You went to college. Right. You don't know what suffering is.

I've suffered. You haven't suffered. Yeah. And I said to this guy, and I was starting to lose the group. I mean, they're looking at him. Yeah, yeah. And I said, you know, I've suffered a lot, too. I didn't suffer in the way you've suffered, but...

But I had a meditation accident. I threw my hip out meditating. I know pain. Well, it was a lot more than that. I feel like I was in the wrong planet and I was stuttering a lot. And I was like, I was really unhappy. I was like really super neurotic for a long time in my life. And I got to where I am now because I was like so damn unhappy that I had to find something

to relieve the pain. Yeah. And everybody's fighting a hard fight. You know, my suffering is not, your suffering was not his suffering. But he got it. He got it. And I said, look, I'm not here to teach you. I'm here to share with you.

We can learn together. I think this is another sad thing. This is a sad quality of the world. We're right now as we get into suffering competitions. And you know what I mean? It's like, ah, you may have suffered, but I, Oh, I'm a much higher level sufferer than you are. And certainly when you're married, that just happens, where you're like, you, you know, you'll tell your wife like, God, I'm tired.

And she's like, oh, you think you're tired? You're tired? I haven't slept in days. You saw you took a nap yesterday. And, but there's a story that Dalai Lama I heard was giving a talk to very wealthy people. I think it was in L.A. You know, it was one of these, like, where they get the Dalai Lama. it comes to your mansion, you know what I mean?

And he's sitting with all these super rich people. And apparently he said something on the lines of, you know, people say his money makes you happy. But he's like, when I went to the bathroom, I looked in the medicine cabinet. There's a lot of pills in there, a lot of pills. And so, you know, the problem is if you do have money and you try to say, look, I'm telling you, man, like it didn't. it's

there's there's just another thing that fills the place of the anxiety that you used to have about money where you thought oh my God

if I had X amount of money in the bank that suffering would go away and it did that that worked but now I'm worried about holding on to the shit I bought

that I shouldn't have and you know what I mean it just turns into another thing and this which is where we get into this central issue you, which is inescapable, you know.

Okay, so one of the main points of meditation is you begin to get, not just think about, but you get it how suffering is created, right? Suffering is not caused by external circumstances. Suffering is caused by our relationship with external circumstances. So suppose as an example, there's two guys. who are driving to job interviews on the same freeway, and they're both equally broke, and they both equally need to get this job, or their life is really fucked. Right.

Right. And the traffic jam comes, and they're both going to be late to the job interview. So one of the guys are saying, why does this always happen to me? Oh, my God, I'm cursed. This is horrible. And he's tearing his hair out. And the other guy is saying, this is really a drag. I need that interview, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I might as well turn on the radio and listen to some great music now and relax. So exactly the same circumstance. One guy's suffering, the other guy's not. Right. Right. So, I mean, even in this lozsche training, they have this saying, drive all blames into oneself. In other words, as long as you're blaming the world for what's going on,

you're blaming the weather, you're blaming the politics, you're blaming your body, you're blaming your family. healing is not happening right right and to say okay i'm feeling the suffering that is caused by my relationship with those outer things right and i can start feeling that and working with that and having some compassion for myself then things begin to move and often they move so so damn slowly that it's just very frustrating and that there's this super frustrating gap between understanding something spiritually and being able to live it. You have a taste of it.

And then for like months or years at a time, you're trying to clamber back there and you can't get there. And you know it's available, but you just can't do it because there's so much momentum behind your personality stuff. Oh, God. Your personality gets so loud. It's like, you know, it's this thing that used to be, you're like number one, fishing war and it's just you start seeing seeming increasingly garish and increasingly like you start you know

all the tricks you're doing and all the and it just ugh not mine but ramdas had had this this thing he said he said if you're a son of a bitch and you're getting enlightened you'll be an enlightened son of a bitch i could quote you on that all the time so so it's not like the son of a bishness is necessarily all going to go away but you don't care anymore, right? It's not, that's not who you are. It's just like, it's just like the frosting on top of the cake, or maybe that's not a good metaphor, but, uh, it's, it's, it's so, so it's like, man in the iron mask, I'm still kind

of neurotic. I'm, I'm, I'm a neurotic guy, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't keep me from loving you in people. You know, I'm still kind of quirky and weird, but it's not like, oh my God, I've got to be. different. I've got to fix that so people like me better. Like here I am, take it or leave it, and I'm trying to, I run the living dying project. Let me give a plug, livingdying.org. We have courses and workshops available. The best website on the internet about conscious dying. And so I'm trying to be this like selfless good human being. And I still judge people and I get caught in this and I get caught in that, just like everybody.

But that doesn't keep me awake at nights. Right. You know, what I do when I'm going to bed is my favorite thing when I'm going to bed that I can talk about. We've got the same favorite. Another thing we have in common. We're not just laying there feeling the pain in our body. Okay.

So the favorite thing is I go as deep. deeply into my mantra, into feeling God as I can, and then I just ask what people in my life need some healing. And these names just kind of pop up. And I don't feel like I'm healing or I'm doing anything, but I just go back to the mantra. Then I think about this person. I think about my son. I think about his mother. I think about my partner. I think about somebody in one of my groups and one of my clients. And I just keep going back and forth so that there's this thing called spiritual healing. Lowest level of healing is you see somebody, let's say they're really neurotic or let's say they've got cancer. You try to fix the cancer. And that's

not a bad thing to do, of course. Deeper level of healing is you're not focusing on the illness, you're focusing on the person. I'm going to fix that person. But the highest level of healing, is you're focusing on the delusion of separateness. Ah, right. That I'm whole and your whole, I'm going to hang out there. So, like, when I was younger and I was like this spiritual, I don't want to use the word Nazi, but I don't know of a better one. I was like really trying to get enlightened.

All these llamas and yogis and swamis and rogis were coming to the Bay Area. And I'd ask them my test question. And the test question was, I've got a friend, who's dying, he's never meditated, he's really afraid, what's the best thing I can do for this guy? And almost all of them said something like, merge your mind with the one mind and merge your mind with the mind of your friend. Wow. Rather than trying to fix his cancer or fix your friend, but trusting the wholeness, which goes back to what we're talking about before, of do you how much so like you come to me to say I'm really anxious all the time right I'd lie in bed

at night thinking about my children and all that like we're talking about before and I can give you meditative techniques or ways to work with anxiety or I could think about oh poor Duncan let me help help him be more loving or I can just I can go into wholeness and then I can be with you and then see what happens right and I even had this osteopath who moved away from town here. And I have a bad neck. There's also the meditation injury. It's a whole other story.

But he convinced me that he could treat me over the telephone. He could adjust my neck over the phone from Los Angeles. And I didn't believe him, but I tried it. And it worked. And I said, well, what are you doing? And he said, I don't even know what's wrong with your neck or anything. I just, you just lie down in your bed for a half an hour and I go into this meditation where I just go into

vast spaciousness and hang out with you and your body wants to be back the way it should be whole your body's natural healing takes over and boom and I figured okay well why do I have to pay him $100 for that why can't I just lie down on my bed and do that myself and a lot of the times I can yeah instead of instead of saying i'm lying down here to fix my neck or i'm dale i've got a problem i just lie down and i go into just complete trust and openness and a lot of times i can do that

well enough that my neck just goes back in the place all by itself this is so interesting to me because it's another of the really it's another of the things i love about meditation and I love about this sort of journey back into wholeness or into the one is it on one hand incredibly difficult on the other hand so easy you know once you pop into that space it's so familiar and everything from that perspective is at least to me sort of brand new it's it's weirdly familiar strangely novel but ultimately just a perfect place and you can totally do that over the over the phone or in podcasts or it just happens and you know when it does happen it's whenever i finally am meditating again and it's like why

ever stopped doing this and there it is you know home the kingdom of heaven whatever you want to call it and to me that that's one of the most perplexing things about it is how on one hand it's really not that difficult at all in fact it's the easiest thing and on the other hand give me a fucking break i need years of therapy i've got to go to 50 retreats i better read some more books got to pick up cutting through spiritual materialism again? What the fuck? You know? So,

so let me say, I don't think it's easy. I think it's really simple. You know what's happening right now. The earth is getting smashed with solar flares. G4. Northern Lights in Texas. People are taking pictures. It's beautiful. But do they understand what it means? The sun just burped out a blast of plasma. I don't know what that means necessarily, but I do know this. If the sun wipes out all organic life on the planet, some aliens come here and they access the internet, at least you'll have a beautiful Squarespace website, something left over.

Yeah, sure, your body will be a smoldering crisp. But just maybe, just maybe the servers will survive. And your Squarespace website will be there for eternity. And who knows? The aliens might even be able to use your website to bring you back to life. Could be. The only people left on the planet are people who had a Squarespace website. I'm sorry, Squarespace.

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of a website or a domain. Okay, that's a better word. That doesn't make it easy. And the reason it's not easy is because what you're talking about is at least temporarily ego death. Yeah. That you're beyond the ego. And the ego believes Descartes.

I think, therefore I am. The ego would rather have you feel fucked up than be in spaciousness because as long as you're thinking about your problems, the ego is saying, hey, I'm engaged here. Would you like to do like a two-minute investigation? Is it okay to do it like a slightly guy? Okay. Okay. So you and everybody who's listening if you want, just your job right now is all you need to do is listen to the sound of my voice. You're listening. You don't even care what I'm saying. Listening, listening, listening. And I'd like to. to ask you to very carefully pay attention to what happens when I shut up. In that gap, is it easier to notice a beingness, an awakeness, that's harder to notice when we're listening and talking and moving and getting all neurotic? Yeah. But this beingness is it something that's always there.

In fact, is it so familiar that we don't notice it? Is there anything you can do to make it be there? Is there anything you could do to make it go away? Or is it, in fact, that awakeness, that beingness that is our true nature? What does it do to your perception of time? What does it do to how active your thoughts are? Is it something you can grasp and hold on to? And in some ways, at least in some traditions,

enlightenment is resting in awareness, watching awareness. Right? So that instead of being all fixated on the content, first stages of meditation, mindfulness meditation, letting go of identification with the content. Like in English, we say, I am afraid.

In Spanish, you'll tango meado. I have fear. In Tibetan, fear is here. So just in the way we language our relationship with emotions in English, it's harder not to identify, become the emotion. Right. Okay. So in the beginning of practice,

we're letting go of identification with the content. Toward the end of practice, we're letting go of the subject. the eye who is meditating. And all that's going on is that spaciousness, that beingness, that's always there, that's easier to notice between the thoughts, between the breaths, between the listening. And it's particularly apparent in that moment at the very end of an exhalation before you've inhaled. The very end of the exhalation, when there's nobody doing anything, you've let go, and you haven't been reborn yet with the next birth, a breath, next breath.

You let go of the breath, you've died in a sense, and that the tiny little moment there where there's nothing, where it's quite noticeable. Yeah. And it's very hard to hang out there for very long. It is. The ego wants to know what's going on. So this is a practice that you don't do for 30 or 60 minutes. You do it for 30 or 60 seconds. Is that what you just did the thing they call pointing out the mind?

Is that what that was? Yeah. Wow. I've always wondered what that was. I knew that. I figured that's what you were doing. Wow. Cool, cool, cool.

Well, it's a little different. I mean, it's generally, it's related to that. Let's just say that. I mean, when you're actually with a teacher, he projects nature of mind. Okay. This was kind of guiding you into at least some analog of that. Okay. But, I mean, in Tibetan Buddhism, there's a very formal way of doing this.

I know. I don't think you just did like an, unauthorized pointing. I mean, but it did make me think of that. That's all. Yeah. It's the same direction, the same thing. So you can, so there you are. You're lying in bed at night. Child number two has a cold. Child number three is having trouble at school. Your wife is so tired. She's getting kind of cranky. You're lying there thinking about all these things. And is it possible then between thought number 112 and 113, you notice that sense of beingness, that sense of awakeness, just the way it is. Simple. Not so easy. Right, right, right, right. Wow, man. That is

cool. So that very often people are on this developmental, gradual path of undoing wounds of early childhood, working through the chakras, working through the historical development of Buddhism, all saying the same thing. In fact, that's what my book is about, that psychologically, somatically, meditatively, even in terms of Christianity or Hinduism, they're all saying the same thing. And seeing how these steps evolve can be incredibly useful, whether you're talking about living or talking about conscious dying, conscious living, just dying. And it's difficult to hang out in that space if again and again fear, guilt, and shame are coming up. Right. Right. Fear is learned from the second trimester in utero

till about one year old. If you didn't feel completely safe, the big people are feeding you and protecting you and housing you, they have their own needs. So if there was any neglect or abandonment or trauma or illness. My earliest memory, it's just imprinted in my mind. I'm feeling ecstatic. I'm crawling across the floor. The light is coming in diagonally from the right side. My dad's over 10 o'clock shaving with a sleeveless t-shirt on. He's got soap on his face. And I can see the pattern on the carpet. And on the carpet, I see this metal object. And in front of me on the wall are two holes that this metal object which is a hair pin oh that obviously goes in there i put it in there and i get the shock of my life oh my god you actually did the thing

every one of my children has attempted it and i've caught him right in the nick of time you pulled it off i yeah but so what did that teach me that following my curiosity could give me the shock of my life right and i had very loving parents some people had not so loving parents who were not really there or really not that engaged in being supportive loving parents. Everybody had stuff early on so that there's this sense of being ungrounded of not receiving the grounding support of earth element that's always available. So you're lying in bed and you're not trusting that even though these things are kind of

spinning out of control that fundamentally it's over. Okay. Everything is fine and you can deal with it. You're Duncan. You can deal with it. Right. I don't know how you're going to deal with it. If I start thinking everything's fine, I feel guilty for that. So it's like you're not supposed to think everything's fine. Okay. No, no, no. So guilt is the next thing from like six months to two years old. People, so fear based, the grounding thing is about it's okay to be here. now. Somebody said, be here now. Right. You can be here. It's safe to be here. And then the next stage of development is not just being here, but moving into the world. And the big people are saying, no, you can't make so much noise because dads try to concentrate. You can't pee on the floor. You can't use your crayons on the wall. You should feel guilty about doing those things that we don't want you to do. And the stage after that is you should be ashamed of who you are.

Oh, fuck. Not just guilt about what you're doing, but shame of who you are. Right. So we haven't even gotten to relationships yet. So there's fear, guilt, and shame. Yeah. First three chakras. And until we do some basic body and fender work,

it's going to be very hard to trust the vulnerability of the heart. Right. When the environment isn't completely supportive. Right. and loving. So it's easy to feel an open heart. You're off out in nature or, you know, the favorite piece of music and you feel good today. But then you're lying in bed at night and the kids and the wife and the body and the politics and the planet and, you know, like that.

Can the heart stay open? Yeah. Not if you are being assaulted. by fear, guilt, and shame that's been unexamined. Right. Right. So the spiritual path is really lovely, but a lot of people want to start at the heart level.

Absolutely. Skip all those first three. You've got to go back to the beginning. In fact, Mirror by Star, who you know, of course. Yeah, sure. Told me that when she was living at Lama a long time ago as a teenager that Romdas came and taught a workshop there, She's even got a tape of him saying this.

He said, we're going to start out this workshop with going into the heart because the first three chakas are too dangerous. Holy shit. Which is an opinion that he later on changed and realized you have to be a human being as well as a spiritual being. But that's a common misperception that we can kind of, I think Trump will call that spiritual material. Or, you know, or maybe John Wellwood talked about, what did he call that thing? Oh, God. It was even his obituary. Spiritual bypassing.

Yeah. Right. That you're trying to use spiritual ideas to avoid and not feel really what's going on. Right. Right. That is so cool. So can we fully admit our humanity? There's somebody with all this neurotic stuff.

But it's contextual. and it's contained in the vastness of who we are. They're both going on at the same time. So, like, imagine I'm with a dying person, and the dying person's having a hard time. They're scared, they're confused, they're on a lot of meds. And on one hand, I can be there and deal with their human situation. I can see, oh, they're having a hard time, they're scared.

I could talk to them about being scared. On the other hand, I can see it's all perfect. It's God unfolding. It's time for them to die. It's just karma. Yeah. Can I do both at the same time? That's the trick.

Can I not lose by humanity? Can I be there in a very caring, compassionate, loving human way and yet not lose that knowing, not the best word, but it's knowing that this is all taking place in part of wholeness. yeah that there's nothing wrong here that's and somebody's dying and somebody's suffering they're both at the same time oh man it's hard oh my god it's so hard i couldn't do it with my dad i couldn't do with my mom i you just both of them i don't want you to suffer you know that's where i went you know like my you know oh gosh like if being with your parents when they're dying with some kind of like

spiritual exam. Oh, man, I've got F, F, and maybe like I, I think maybe a C with my dad. I had a little more practice by the time I was with my mom. Yeah, we had that conversation that many have heard. But the backstory is I was downstairs in the basement of her house, reading the hunger games on my Kindle, just trying, it's just desperately to not be in the moment. Like, I couldn't. I just could not do it man like i oh god it would can you forgive yourself yeah yeah i can i mean i know that's that's your mother's gift to you that's cool yeah yeah yeah and i think part of the gift of her like practicing you know having a practice that's a gift too because like she did she did have her death it was it was a good death you know and it and it was from her like the thing

people heard on that on the podcast or on the midnight gospel that stayed with her it didn't it didn't go anywhere that was to the that was to the end and when when she when i you know she she had this i can't even explain the expression on her face but it was there was a smile it wasn't a smile i don't not to put it, but it was not. Joyfulness. Yes. Yes. There's a, there's, so the, the Tibetans say this really remarkable thing, I think, that compassion is a mixture of sadness and joy. Oh, wow. A joy that transcends happiness and sadness. So, so you still feel sad because they're suffering in the world, but you feel joy because your heart is open. Right. Right. Yeah. it's it's very poignant i mean people people people are suffering i'm suffering you're suffering

and we can have our heart open and feel a joyfulness have you seen that painting jesus in the desert you ever seen that painting i'm not sure i don't think so it sums up josh you can't pull stuff up on riverside can you he can't see it right no i'd have to like show them my computer i'll send it to you maybe we can can you can you put a note we could pull it up. This is, oh, I wish, I want to, you must see this, because it's literally, it's, it's Jesus, I guess this is after he has like, you know, gone through the, like, it's his version of Mara showing up for Buddha, Satan has appeared, turn these stones into bread, jump off the temple and you'll be saved, bow to me, and you'll control everything. And he, like,

it passed all these tests. And it's just him sitting there. in the desert and it's the look you're describing is just this beautiful expression of joy and also just like they're going to crucify my ass like meeting at the same time and it's the most beautiful summation of christianity i've ever seen a painting but yes i know that yes and that oh wait oh he's bringing it over so you could see it hopefully you can see it in the camera Oh Can you see his Yeah, I've never seen that

That's incredibly beautiful I'm going to zoom in on his face You can see his face It's amazing It's kind of like Are you fucking kidding me? Oh Yeah, I get it

Isn't that cool Do you know who painted that? I don't want to brag But it was me That's what I'm right no who painted that's a very famous who painted that

Josh I'm such a dummy I'm so sorry that's okay well Ivan Kromskoi Yvonne Kromskoy okay

I'll send it to you but yeah man that so so there's out in the desert being tempted by the devil, and that's happening to every one of us every day. Oh, yeah, right. Right. Anything but this, man. Anything but this. And then again, I would guess that you and I and most people listening, at one point at one point another, ask God for freedom. Bring it on. I want to be free.

not thinking that God could be this ruthless right yeah yeah I mean yeah I these prayers you have to watch out and you know this is like in the chronicles of narnia aslan is the jesus metaphor some kids whining because where's aslan and this other kid is like aslan is not a tame lion and you You know, this thing that we're talking about is not domesticated. This is not tame. And you know that firsthand. How many people do you think you have, how many people have you helped through the dying process? I have no idea.

I mean, there's all different levels of that. Some I'm right there at the bedside of the moment they're dying. A lot of people I spend time with in the days and weeks before they die, but not necessarily at that exact moment. And then there's many, many thousands of people. work with online all around the world i just don't oh god it's so i mean we're so lucky we have you and we're so lucky we have like the hospice workers and we're so lucky we have these people but i mean that it was they were angels the hospice people who came they i i can't even express like like how oh man well the living dime project actually has trained volunteers who work with people

free of charge all around the world yeah it's just it's such a it's such a the thing you're doing is i think it's revolutionary you know people want to work with kids they got their all life in front of them you know what I mean people like you are like working with people who maybe have a few months maybe a year left and it's a sad thing that there's not more of you out there you know I just I'm sorry to go back to this but I just can't even express it was like I felt like the hospice where it was like a saint or something like they knew not just the situation they weren't looking at it as just my mom they were looking at holistically just just the chaos that surrounds, the high drama that can emerge, the emotions, the heartbreak,

and just the way they just brought real peace into that moment was incredible. Well, it's wonderful work if you can take it. It's not for everybody, but I really believe that having some outer relationship with that, some intercontemplative practice is, is the strongest practice for being in this chaotic time in which we're living. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so many deaths, right? I mean, it's not just the physical death.

It's like there's so many moments I think a lot of people are having where they're gonna, they're grieving for sort of, you know, people call it the before times, you know, before COVID. People actually look back on those times. It was like a different universe, you know, and things are, you know, obviously we're still trucking along here, but it's like we all kind of lost something there. We all lost, I don't know, a sense of security that was maybe a distortion

in like sort of the stability of society, maybe just the realization of like, look, this could happen again. Any second could happen. Any second. A recent survey showed that almost two-thirds of Americans feel that our society is beyond healing. That it's broken beyond repair. Oh, man. That it's going to break apart that's going to be, I don't know about civil wars, maybe too strong a word, but term, but that it's, that the political divide is unfixable.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's not get into politics. We can if you want to. We don't have to get into politics. You can get underneath politics. I mean, that's the thing.

underneath it because it's like that's the sort of I'm always trying to do that because I look it's like obviously there's a part of our mind that judges I'm a salt miner by the way I salt mine and that's not good but like when Mondami won

in New York you better believe I'm salt mining that's when I go to Reddit conservative to look at the conservatives who I want to kill themselves so funny but when when Trump won I'm salt mining on the left too just it's terrible, man. It's, to me, on one level, the fixation on that soap opera is Joseph Heller level absurd. Things that are happening are so absurd. But then at a deeper level, what are both sides

have in common? Fear. Fear. And that's what's going on here. Across the board. And when your team's winning, I guess the fear is mitigated. When your team's losing, the fear is amplified. and that it's just it keeps flopping from one side of the next to the next to the next to the next what is what is what is that that fear is is uh which phase is that what is that number one or number two in the chakra system as we're headed up towards the heart number one so we're at the ground floor here man we can't even get to the guilt part yet and you're right so if you sort of look at all of society from that perspective, we're still contending with the first damn thing. Fear. And we've got two more steps before we get to the global heart, which I think is possible.

Yeah, but it's not quite as linear as you're implying. It's not like you have to be completely grounded and beyond fear to get to working with guilt and you have to be able to complete work with guilt to get to shame. And then you've been, you've got to be able to completely grounded. And then you've got this really strong foundation for going into the heart, but you can be working with all these at the same time. Right. So that maybe you've still got some fear running around, but you also have some access to your heart and you can start having some compassion for your fear or my fear or somebody

else's fear. What do you think, okay, so if- That's what I'm, that- If fear is- What you just said, compassion for their fear. If fear is the demon of the first chakra and then guilt about moving- into the world's second chakra and shame about ego development what do you think is the demon what is the emotion that makes it really hard to be in the heart little quiz here oh i love it

i'm gonna i'm gonna try to answer that just from my own experience This episode of the DTFH has been brought to you by Quince. Oh my God, it's so great. I'm out here in Texas, and it's finally starting to get cold. Right now, it's a crisp, 80 degrees out there. But yesterday, it was like 50 degrees. It's so nice. I can finally start wearing sweaters again, long sleeve, denims.

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Hold on really thinking about it I really wrestle with this man what's the thing where like you start crying and you don't want to cry in front of people you know what i mean like whenever i start getting into my heart i feel weak you know what i mean like when that when the the heart chakra starts opening up when my heart starts opening up I feel like I'm going to I feel like I'm going to die

I can't explain there you go now we're getting close so the enemy of opening the heart is grief right right because you love before and what happened your mother died and your father died and your relationships ended.

I will not believe this bullshit ever again. I am not buying it anymore. Fuck you. How did you take my mama? How did you take? Fuck this. When I was a kid, there was some vision I had of the world. And maybe that was just a bunch of bullshit.

That's what keeps me from getting in the heart. Grief dares us to love again. We've loved before and we've got. really hurt. Rumi has this fantastic line in one of his poems. Grief can be the garden of compassion. So how do we transmute grief into love and compassion? Grief are the difficult emotions that arise when we feel separate. And compassion is the quality of the open heart. So we're transmuting grief and separation into love and connection when we're feeling disconnected from ourselves from each other from god from

the planet we're grieving somebody cuts you off in traffic wow you get all pissed off that's a grief reaction because you're not connected to yourself with that other guy yeah grief isn't just feeling sad because somebody died no so Before we were talking about that background anxiety that you were feeling, which is very close, it's almost the same thing, of a background grief. Yeah, for sure. That everybody's feeling. Everybody's grieving.

Even if your parents haven't died, even if you don't, by some miracle, nobody close to you has ever died. You're a younger person or something. Right. You're still grieving. Yeah. Because you've lost part of your dream already. You've lost some relationship with yourself as you were being socialized. Wow, man.

That's so cool. You just answered this fucking riddle, man. That is so cool. I had no idea. That is amazing. I had no idea. Of course, that's what it is. I just could never put a word to it.

Yeah. Tell me again about better sexual partners through meditation. Well, I knew that would get you. That's why I threw it in there. Okay, but you are married. So we'll put that all in that context. Aaron, if you're listening, I'm just a joke. You know me.

You're incredible. Okay. Okay, so suppose you're a younger person and you're single, and like my son, he's 23 years old, he's at Yale, and he's dating. He goes on to hinge to look for people to date. People are swiping, no, no, no, yes, no, yes, you know. So, I mean, basically, to the extent that you are,

have some let me start over so suppose you're meditating enough that it's changing you a bit you have some a bit more wisdom a bit more inner radiance yeah that's going to be apparent to people i mean here's two people one of them's good-looking and kind of self-absorbed and selfish and uh dense and here's the same looking guy it's his twin brother but they were raised separately and the other guy got into meditation and he's got like a softer face he's he is his speech is a little bit more inviting and and kind sure and there's this energy coming out of him that's kind of attractive there's a confidence yeah that's going to attract people to you whether it's a sexual partner or a job or friends whatever it is that that people want to be

loved. Everybody's running around the world looking to be loved. Right. And everybody's got this question, will you love me? Will you love me? Not not, it's not even conscious, but that's kind of in there. 100%. Right? 100%. And so then you find somebody who's capable of loving you say, whoa, maybe this is it. Maybe here's the chance for me to really feel loved. And all of this is going on subconsciously probably yeah well yeah you you know it's sort of like if you're coming at it from a place of lack or something then you push people away and meditation does seem to like have some stabilizing effect in that regard so you're not approaching the world in a sweaty way which is just doesn't doesn't work that would be cool though man if there was like a I need to

write this down on inventions i'll never do some kind of clamp you put on your balls that shocks you every time someone rejects you on hinge i think they have that listen i don't i i cannot thank you enough for this conversation like i know this sounds dramatic and ridiculous but you really just solved a riddle for me that like i i can't believe it it was right there in front of me the whole time fantastic that is wow grief and you know if we all are going through grief not to like lean into it too much i'm sorry that pandemic that was not that what the fuck like the whole planet shared not only like the death of a belief in how things might go but death how many people died how many people lost their

grandparents or lost i mean so when you look at everything that's happening politically from a holistic point of view as some grief reaction to the pandemic it may it all makes a lot of sense This is just people who have not been who aren't grief literate who don't even know what the feeling is, man. I mean, that's the thing. They might not even know the thing they're feeling is grief, like what you just did for me.

It's like, oh, duh, obviously, man. Obviously. It's like things are pretty great in my life. But then what is this? And it's like, ah, of course. How many people out there are just contending with grief and don't even know that's what it is. They think they're freaked out about politics.

So all the stuff we're talking about, you're asking me, how many people have I helped die and individual grief? All of this stuff can be extrapolated to the collectives. Right. Right.

That our society is grieving. The planet is grieving in a certain way. And there may be nothing more direct and important you or I or anybody can do to address this divisiveness

that so many people feel as unsolvable then really get into an intimate healing relationship with your own fear of death. Yeah. And so that all the stuff

about the selfishness and the, I mean, the tariffs and the ice and the on and on and on, somewhere underneath all of that is this underground, as you're implying, sense of grief, that there's not a sense of connection, that there's us and them. Right. There's separation.

We need to take care of us and not take care of them. Right. And for you and I and every listener and everybody you talk to, to get more into some sense of dealing with my grief, feeling that fear of death, and beginning to gradually, slowly, courageously work with that is probably the most direct thing you could do. It doesn't preclude you from protesting, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or whether. Right. Doesn't either side.

I'm not picking sides here. But doing this work will make you a more effective activist. Right. A more effective Asian of change. And look at the people in the world. who created the most change. People like Gandhi and Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.

and Nelson Mandela. Maharaji, my guru, said when Abraham Lincoln was president, he knew that Christ was president. It was just a really remarkable thing. So when I think I'm Dale doing it and you think you're Duncan doing it, there is that level of it,

but there's also this level of Christ is doing it through us. Buddha's doing it through us, right? And that unleashes a soul power that can create change. And as difficult and as unsoluble, unsolvable and craziest things seem right now, it's not taking into account that the next Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. couldn't show up. Maybe it's one of your kids, you know? maybe it's somebody listening here. I mean, the younger generations graduating into a strange world, to be sure.

Oh, they are. And, you know, I feel really good about my life, but my son, what's he going to do when he gets out of college? It's like, oh, nobody knows, really, what kind of job market, what kind of planet it's even going to be. Right. So, so beginning to address these things from a deeper level. It's insoluble from the level of us, them, we don't like you because you don't like us because, you know, that goes on forever. It's required to, what's required is a change of consciousness. Right.

People call it a poly crisis. There's an environmental crisis, a political crisis, the social justice crisis, on and on. So many crises all at the same time. The planet's going to be getting more screwed up with the weather, mass migration. Is there going to be enough this and that? It's going to get messier and messier before it gets better. And beginning to change consciousness, beginning to realize there is this other perspective that works for everybody. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think you've helped diagnose some. I mean, at first you need the diagnosis. And it's an oversimplification to just say everyone's suffering from unprocessed grief for so many things. But I think just starting right there unifies everybody. It's like, forget it. You're not going to get in some argument with your grandfather about trans rights. You're not going to happen there at Thanksgiving, friend.

You're not converting your Thanksgiving Republicans to being like to what the thing you're in. But if you do look, if you do go one step deeper at your own grief, you wanted the world to be a certain way, it's not that way. It didn't happen. Doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Or your own grief for people you've lost, or your own grief for the you that you lost, or the future that you've... I mean, that's a death. Like, when we're looking out into the future right now, what you just said is, fucking nuts

like my wife and I talk about it all the time it's like what what world are these kids gonna grow up into like no idea I think they're gonna have a robot maybe they'll have a robot in their house I think that they won't be driving

you can sort of go up with like some version of it but all jobs right now the majority of jobs it's a question mark oh you're in college for whatever maybe probably not

maybe and that is a death if there ever was one the death of how the future might be and so whoa everyone's just getting

hit over the head with all this and if you sort of just broadly look at the whole world as like grieving it makes things start making a lot more sense the way people are behaving

the way things of the way people are acting, why people are like becoming so aggressive and so angry. God, if you've ever been in a family where there's issues and a parent dies, holy shit. Big mess.

Big mess. Let me give you that. Let me give you another story. So, uh, I lost it. Sorry, go on. I had the perfect story right there that disappeared from my mind, which happens sometimes. God, that happens to me.

Okay, I got it again. Yes. So I work with people who have critical illness, often people with cancer. And when I first started doing this work, I felt my job was to come in and rescue people. You've got cancer, and I know these techniques to help you feel better, spiritually, emotionally, physically. and here let me fix you. And after a while, I began to notice that I was slowing down the process. Like if you look at the 12 steps, people need to admit they're sick

before they can start the healing process. And I was trying to rescue them before they admitted, I really need help. And maybe that's true collectively. Right. Maybe our society has metaphorical, cancer and that if Kamala Harris would have gotten elected, we'd still be in some kind of denial. Okay, it's going to get a little better. But the trend was definitely downward in a lot of ways with Biden and it would continue with Harris. Okay. No, no, none of those fuck, excuse me for

cursing, no those fucking candidates were going to do anything. Give me a fucking break. That's like giving a Tylenol to somebody with a brain tumor. Give me a break. So, so maybe. So maybe. now the fact that Trump is in there and shaking everything up and everything's fallen apart and the government's being torn down in society and economics in the planet and admittedly a lot of people are going to suffer. But maybe this is what's necessary to get our society or even humanity on the same page to say, hey, we've got to cooperate, we've got to deal with what's going on here right so so that uh and once again admittedly people are going to starve to death people are going to be deported people a lot of a lot of bad shit's going to happen but maybe

that's what's necessary we don't know we don't know well i mean it's what's happened here's the thing it's happening it's what's happening you know what i mean ask yourself when when i when when i ball cancer. You know, I wasn't wondering, is this necessary? It just was. One of my balls had death in it. And, and, you know, it's happening. But I think, you know, what I love about people who work with dying people is, they say different versions of like what Ram Dass famously would say. Dying is completely safe. You know, that, if whatever might be happening here's what we know Machu Picchu

there's a Machu Picchu people tourists go and visit it beautiful one of my friends just hiked out there to see it amazing Machu Picchu used to be not a place tourists would visit that place meant something it was a sacred site people built it now there's jungle around it and all the ruins

in the jungles and you know every once in a while we'll like find some remnant of a civilization. I don't know where they were. So one thing we know for sure. Civilizations collapse inevitably. And so since we know that, at least we can say if our civilization, as we know it is collapsing,

this isn't abnormal at all. It's just part of what happens to civilizations. You know, and in that sense, maybe you could like, I'm just trying to think of a way to connect working with your own death or other people's death with what's happening right now. I think

you've got a path here that I think you've illuminated some I don't know, some way of contending with this this global unrest from a perspective. I haven't heard very much. You know?

Bedside. Bedside. If somebody who's like about to hit the road. The planet's in bed. planet's got a the planet has a life-threatening prognosis here that oxygen machine sound I fucking hate that sound

yeah you can't argue with the oxygen machine it's like a metronome man I don't care what you pray all you want your prayers And that's what's happening. It's like, look, let's say, who knows?

Trump, as it turns out, everything turns around. Economies suddenly booming, whatever. It's like there's a million other things we have to deal with. We have to deal with the fact that we have, AI has come to the planet. Someone's going to like use a CRISPR gene editing machine to make some brand new virus. There's so many impending potential things on top of the thing that people, people are worried about or some not worried about that it's like look man this is what's happening and so pretending it's not we just got hit by three massive solar flares we're

getting hit with one right now the my point being this is a precarious time and maybe it's I don't want I don't really think civilization is collapsing collapsing but massive changes are happening right now and will continue to happen no matter what you do so looking at it from the perspective of a dying parent a dying loved one is really interesting to me and I think you've got something there me too yeah I mean fear of death is at the at the basis of all this us them good bad pushing it away I can't deal with that I need more because I'm scared. I mean, all the selfishness that's leading to all the political unrest,

all the divisiveness is rooted in this separateness, which is fundamentally a delusion. Right. That there is a, when we did that exercise of being in beingness in the gap, when you're in that place, then you're not a Republican or a Democrat. Democrat or a man or a woman. No. No.

You still have a body that's going to vote and you've got one kind of genitals or the other kind of genitals, but that's not what you're identified with. No. No. Not at all. It's apolitical. It is, but weirdly revolutionary simultaneously. You know, that's another perplexing thing about it.

That's a very revolutionary place to go into. you. It's a, you know, it does kind of subvert a lot of the like momentum that you're talking about, the momentum of needing more. The whole damn economy runs on people needing more and being afraid. The whole thing falls apart if people don't feel like they need anymore and they're not afraid anymore. Like what every commercial you see on TV is either something, like you should be scared of this or you probably need more of this. And you deal with those two problems. It's like, man not as many people at target and so it is a direct confrontation with a certain kind of like you know transactional conditioning we've all been inseminated with since births since you can watch

tv and so it is it's not political but it's revolutionary wouldn't you say yes definitely you're the best i want to move in with you I want to ear beat you from dusk till dawn. You're amazing, man. Just what. Well, let's do it again sometime. Absolutely. And listen, you should do plugs, by the way.

You've got these workshops coming up. And you've got your book coming out. And I'd like the strong arm you into writing a blurb for my book. Done. Done. Okay. Okay. You don't have to strong arm me.

You can soft arm me. You were going to write the forward and then you disappeared. I can't write a blurb. Okay, I'm not good. You guys, there's a, I'm not. A blurb, a three-sentence blurb, it's all I want. Consider it done and done. I can't write before.

I'll send you the book. I'll send you the manuscript. Thank you. You want to tell people how to connect with your living, dying project, and anyone who wants to take your workshops? Yeah, so we've got a website. It's the most complete website about conscious dying. And conscious dying is really kind of a scam because it's only conscious living applied to this one thing.

And whether it's, we're talking about spirituality, we're talking about conscious dying. Same thing. Stephen Levine called it the dying project. I changed the name to the Living Dying Project, Living slash Dying. So it's that interface how the fact we're going to die can inspire us to be more alive. and the fact that how we live is going to determine how we dies. Those things are really completely interrelated, of course. So we have a website, livingdying.org.

There's no slash, L-I-V-I-N-G, D-Y-I-N-G dot ORG. And we've got free, I've got a podcast. I've got every other Saturday group that has 1,200 people in it. on Zoom. Not everybody comes. Most people just get the recording. We've got some workshops in the winter coming up that train you to do this work. In fact, you can get CEOs. If you are a psychotherapist or a psychologist or a social worker, anywhere in America, you can get CEOs, or most places in America, depending on your state. What's a CEU? You can get CETU. Continue education units. Oh, wow. Cool. Licensed people need to get ongoing education.

And people in California who are also nurses and acupuncturists can get CEOs. Wow. Cool. Which you're required to get, and you can, most of the courses are kind of dry. You can have fun with me and get your CEUs. Oh, man. And we have trained volunteers to work on a free of charge one-to-one basis with people either in person or in Zoom, depending on where, you live who are grieving dying or need some caregiving support thank you so much a lot of free

materials free lectures all that kind of stuff i'm honored you want me to write a blurb for your book and thank you so much for this conversation it's been great you're fun my mind's blown rom dev everybody all the links you need to find them will be at dougatrussle.com or down below in the description. Dale Borglam, it's also my name. Dale Borglam, that's his human name. Oh, Ramdev's a human name. I don't know what the...

I like these. Both. Dale. Thank you so much, Dale. Ram Dev. My pleasure. Hareda, thanks for listening, everybody.

That was Romdev, aka Dale Borglam. Check out the Living Dying Project. You can find everything you need to connect with him at livingdying.org. If you happen to be in Tampa, in November, come see me at Siamondyning. splitters. I love you guys. A huge thanks to our sponsors and thank you for continuing to watch or listen. I'll see you next week. Until then,

Harry Krishna.