HealthyGamerGG - Why You Can't Accept that They're Gone

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Today Dr. K talks about how to get over someone, how to move on from the past, getting stuck in grief, and what the Buddhists said about Karma.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So you're here. And just like you have matter and energy that cannot be destroyed, you also have gharmas that cannot be destroyed. And that every action you take has consequences into the future. So I almost think about a human life is a thousand different gharmas spreading out into the world and affecting people right, left, center, all over the place. For a year, 10 years, 50 years, it's almost like what we think of is the butterfly effect. Right. So every time you act, you are creating a cause. that is an effect in someone else's life. How do you balance the learn to let go and the never let go slash keep the person in your memories during grief? This is a great question. So when we talk about grief, we tell people to learn to let go. But we also like say you should keep the person with you, right?

So it's kind of confusing because we don't really explain this stuff. We just have like, okay, learn to let go, but like keep the person. Do I keep the person to my memories? Do I keep thinking about them or do I let them go? Like, does letting them go mean that I don't think about them anymore? Like, how does this work? I think one of the most undertaught things in our society is how to grieve. My God.

If we just taught everyone how to grieve, the world would be such a better place. So let's understand this. And like, we're going to dig into a little bit of science here, okay? Off the cuff. So if you look at trauma, there's really interesting research on trauma. And one of the key discoveries about trauma is that when you have a negative, when the human mind experiences a negative event, it tends to ruminate on that event. So we tend to think about it. So my mind goes to the past and I think about it over and over and over again.

Then what happens is we enter a fork in the road. And the mind will either do one of two things. So for the mind that heals after the trauma, it'll do one thing. the mind that fails to heal from the trauma will do something else. So the mind that fails to heal from trauma will continue to ruminate in the past. All it'll do is, like, think about that thing in the past. The mind that heals takes something from that and integrates it into the self. So, like, what we see for trauma survivors is that survivors who take that negative

thing and then, like, use that information to show. shape themselves and the worldview going forward are the ones who do well. Okay? So, like, a really good example of this is if you look at, like, cancer survivors, right? We even have a term for cancer survivor. We don't have, like, you know, this term for, like, rheumatoid arthritis survivors or, you know, like, E. coli survivors or cholera survivors or things like that. We don't have, like, an ethos or an identity around all kinds of diseases.

Right? I'm a car accident survivor. I'm an alcohol use survivor. Like, we don't say things like that, right? So if you look at something like trauma survivor or cancer survivor, what does that mean? That means that this is something that people have done for so long that it's kind of become like a thing that people do, where they take a particular negative experience and they incorporate it into themselves, like looking forward into the future. And when you do this successfully, this is what allows you to grieve healthily, right?

So I lost my dad many years ago, but there are parts of him and parts of his wisdom and stuff like that that I've internalized and I've taken with me and like I still think about him from time to time. But a lot of that grief process goes into my wiring. And as it goes into my wiring and informs my future actions, I've like processed that grief and like he's like, I take him with me. Right. So I haven't let him go completely, but I don't actively think about him all the time. So we know this from trauma that essentially when you take an experience and you let it sort of like become a part of you. And you change your sort of internal like view of yourself and your view of the world. And a good example of this is a cancer survivor because that begins a part of my identity, right?

I'm a cancer survivor now. I survive cancer. I can manage this. Right? I've lived through cancer like I can handle this. So if you think about that sense of resilience that you get, it comes from taking that negative event and incorporating it into yourself. And then when you look to the future, it sort of stays with you.

Whereas people, so when we talk about, like, you know, keeping a part of them with us, that's literally what we mean. What we mean is to take those memories and experiences and, like, you know, time with that person and let it shape who we are now so that we can move forward in the future. Now, when people get stuck in grief, is they're not doing any internal work here. they're just thinking about the person in the past, right? You just think about the person over and over and over again. You're ruminating in the past.

It's not affecting you at all. You're not changing who you are as a person. It's not informing the way that you look to the future. It's not giving you any sort of sense of like how you can live in the future. All you're doing is your mind is stuck in that rumination in the past. So it's not a balance between forgetting them and keeping them in mind. it's actually an integration of those experiences into who you are. And then you carry it with you.

That's what people mean. Like this person lives on within us, right? Like that's kind of a weird thing to say, but like what does that actually mean? There's actually science on this. People have done studies. And what they realize is when you have ruminative thoughts and you direct them towards identity formation and identity change within the self, that's what happens. That's how someone lives on within you.

Those are the steps. And when people get stuck thinking about the person instead of about themselves and how that person affected them, that's when they get stuck in grief and don't move on, right? I can't move on. I fell in love once at the age of 19 and she was perfect and it was amazing. And now 28 years later, all I can think about is that person. That's me being stuck in the past. I'm just ruminating on that person. That has nothing to do with me. So what we know from trauma survivors is that people who healthfully incorporate trauma into their life, are the ones that do better. And in terms of grief, it's the same thing. It's incorporating that person into your life. And there's another interesting perspective on this. I shouldn't say another. I'd say it's corollary, but from a completely different tradition. So if you look at Buddhism, so Buddhism and the Buddhist belief of karma is a little bit different from the Hindu belief of karma. So the Hindu belief of karma is that I've got a soul and I rack up all these karmic debts, and I, people owe me karmic debts, and my soul moves from one body to the next,

and I carry all my debts with me, right? So when a lot of people say, oh, like, you can't carry it into the next life, the Hindus kind of disagree, okay? There are different perspectives. I'm kind of simplifying, so kaffi out there. The Buddhist perspective on karma is slightly different. So they do believe that things from the past, from past lives will affect you. There are things from the past that will affect you, but you don't carry your soul forward. You don't carry your debts. So the way that Buddhist kind of think about it is that you exist in this world. And this once again is a simplification. I'm sure that both the scholars out there may disagree with this. So you're here. And just like you have matter and energy that cannot be destroyed,

you also have gharmas that cannot be destroyed. And that every action you take has consequences into the future. So I almost think about a human life is a thousand different gharmas spreading out into the world and affecting people right, left, center, all over the place. For a year, 10 years, 50 years, it's almost like what we think of is the butterfly effect. Right? So every time you act, you are creating a cause that is an effect in someone else's life. And that sort of makes sense. Like if someone's sitting down and they trip and they fall and they drop all their groceries

and you stop for a second and you help them put their stuff together, you've created like an impact in their life. There's a cause and there's an effect. You've like sewed a karmic seed, which has some kind of effect. versus if I feel bad about myself, I make a smurf account and I poop on noobs all day in my game of choice, I'm also creating a karma, right? I'm affecting the lives of other people. And so one way to think about grief is that that person is gone. That person will never be there ever again. But it's actually kind of like scientifically very easy to say that their effects linger on. Their matter still

exists, their energy that still exists, and even their actions, like, literally exist. If someone leaves you grief, it's kind of acknowledging that that that person is gone, but all these thousand actions that they've taken still live within me, like their impact still will live within me, the good and the bad. And so then the process of grieving is integrating that once again. It's acknowledging, okay, this person is gone, but they sowed all these karmic seeds, which still bear fruit, and kind of acknowledging that, and that like these are gharmas that are left, Maybe they left me money.

Maybe they didn't leave me money. And that leaves me resentful. They said certain things to inspire me. They said certain things to hurt my feelings. They said certain things to emotionally scar me. Right? They were not a very good parent. And they struggled with addictions themselves.

And so I'm going to have to let go that there's ever going to be like a parent in my life who was like, you know, perfect and universally supportive or even decent. And as you work through that, as you sort of recognize that they're gone. but their karmic seeds remain in this world. You can sort of work through that, integrate whatever you want to, heal whatever you want to, and kind of like move forward. But that's also consistent with this sort of idea

that integration of trauma and mourning into the self is how people heal. And we sort of have science behind that. Does that make sense? So in short, so in short, you know, how do you balance forgetting and never letting or letting go

and never forgetting someone, by integrating them into yourselves. And when your mind is stuck in ruminating in the past, that's when you're stuck in grief. When you take what that person did in their life and make it a part of you and change you because of them, then you integrate it into yourself and then you can move forward and then you've like grieved in a healthy way.

ZX-Ping, ZXPing, thank you so much for this. You're very welcome. A lot of first-time chatters today. So Krusty O is asking, so Dr. K, why would you want to create karma's? That's a great question. So, the answer is you don't. So this also is a little bit more from the Hindu tradition or leans more towards the Hindu tradition, but the Buddhists may also agree.

And the traditions are not monolithic, right? So Hinduism, just like Christianity and Buddhism just like Christianity or Islam, has like all these different sects with like slightly different beliefs. Okay. So I'm oversimplifying here. But the short answer is that the whole point of meditation, and this is, By the way, it's like not really disputed, okay? This is just forgotten. But everyone who's talking about mindfulness and the benefits of meditation for anxiety,

of which we're part of it, right? Because it does help with anxiety. But meditation was never designed to help mindfulness. That's not why people did it. That's not why Buddha taught it. So anyone who's like, oh, yeah, you know, I like Buddhism and stuff. Don't ever forget that the reason for meditation is enlightenment. And what enlightenment is, moksha or liberation,

is the freedom from the cycle of karma. So the goal of all that stuff is to no longer create carmas. Because the problem is that any time you create a proton, you create, you know, anytime you have a neutron and you split it into a proton, you have to create an electron. There's like no way around it. So the problem with karma is that it's a cycle, which people get stuck in. And everything that they do where they try to like fix something,

they like create an additional karma. So there's even a story about Buddha, who knows, if it's true or not. Where after he became enlightened, some guy came and he's like, hey, I heard you're enlightened. And Buddha's like, whatever's.

So the guy's like, I love to learn from you. And Buddha's like, okay, sure. So it teaches this guy for a long time for years and years. After many years, the guy's still not enlightened. And he goes to Budda, and he's like, I've been studying with you

for five years and I'm still not enlightened. Then he spits in Buddha's face. He's like, scam artist. And then, of course, like, all of Buddha's disciples get enraged. And they're like, how dare you? To the master? How dare you?

And so they're like, you know, they're about to, you know, beat his ass, I suppose. And then Buddha restrains him. And he's like, relax, chill. The guy's like, I'm done with you. And Buddha's like, all right, adios. And then the disciples are like, why did you let that dude disrespect you, bro? Why you got to let him disrespect you like that? And Buddha was like, that's a karma that he owed me.

And so now, like, the reason I'm on the, this earth is like I've got a bunch of accounts to close out and like that one was just closed out. So we're kind of done with that. So that's something idiotoed me. Whatever. So let him, let him complete that karma. We're not going to react to it. We're just going to let him go on his way and I'm done. I'm cleaning. Closing up shop, right? Closing all my accounts one by one. So you actually don't want to create new karmas in theoretically in the pursuit of Morksh. Now, personally, I don't believe that for myself and most humans. I think when you'll get to that point, you can sort of, you know, close out your accounts.

But generally speaking, I think that what we should do is create gharmas. We should create positive gharmas. That's like something that we should all work very hard to do. So whether that's planting a tree, whether that's helping out a friend, whether that's helping someone pick up groceries that have fallen on the floor, whether that's not smurfing and playing in the bracket that you deserve to play in, right? You do what you can in this world because you're only going to be here for a limited amount of time. So like, what is the state of the world when you leave it? So my matter will remain, my energy will remain, and my gharmas will remain.

So what kind of gharmas do I want to give to the world? Like, if I'm just annihilated even after this life and there's no segment of Alloak or Dr. K that exists after this, then how do I want to spend this life? I want to try to create as much positivity as I can. Right? I can create negativity, but that's not what I want to do. So even many, many years ago, I had the choice. to basically become a monk or not. And I chose to live in the world.

And I chose, okay, like, we're going to dive into this cycle of karma. That's a choice that I make. And so either we're going to go the non-carmic route or we're going to go the karmic route. And I decided to go the karmic route. I think that's a good choice to make. But generally speaking, it's not really the end game. You can think about karma as like side quests, right?

It's like you can get caught up in side quests until the end of time. And this is, thankfully, The world is a place that continually generates new side quests. And at some point, we get kind of tired of doing side quests. And then you do the main quest, and then the game is over. Then you become, you attain Moksha, you attain liberation. And you're kind of done. Does that make sense?

So some people are saying, is this all in Dr. K's Guide? Not really. So Dr. K's Guide has a lot of foundational stuff. So the thing about Dr. K's Guide is that it's like comprehensive. So the problem with doing this kind of stuff on stream is that people may have a thousand questions, which we can't necessarily go into because we've got other things. So the information is kind of scattered all over the place, whereas Dr. K's guide is much more comprehensive.

So if you listen to this, for example, and you're like, oh, that's really cool, I want to understand karma better. And I also want to understand, like, what's the relationship between meditation and karma? How do I integrate those two things? That kind of comprehensiveness you'll find in Dr. K's guide. Right? So we'll teach about karma and we'll teach about meditation and we'll teach about developing a practice. So it's like, it's more complete and it's like more linear.

It's not just Dr. K. Randomly thinking about stuff. First time chatter, Junya Fujiwara is saying, Dr. K, should I have pizza for lunch? This is really important for me psychologically and spiritually. I'd say it depends. But generally speaking,

unless you are absolutely going to enjoy it and have no regrets, then I would say you should not have pizza for lunch. So if you are having pizza to enjoy everything that life has to offer, then have the pizza. but if you are someone who regrets particular choices that you make in life, then don't have the pizza. Because if you don't have the pizza, you'll take the first step towards having, you'll build up the ability to choose things that you don't want.

And the ability to choose and embrace things that you don't want is the most important step to become successful. Is mastery of the self.