Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Sharon Salzberg: Treat Your Anger with Lovingkindness

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Sharon Salzberg (meditation pioneer, NYT bestselling author) breaks down what successful meditation looks like, how to extend lovingkindness to ourselves in the social media age, and what it really means to have compassion for our enemies while standing firm in our fight for others. She opens up about how her traumatic childhood and studying philosophy brought her to her career path today, why her first reaction to meditation was anger, the truth she has personally found in meditation, and how she managed to not allow early meditation critics to stand in her way. Sharon explains ways to combine introspection with lovingkindness, how balance and presence can lead to self-compassion, and the positives and negatives of anger. She and Mayim discuss the differences between meditation and prayer, the commercialization of meditation vs the foundation of mindfulness, the importance of slowing down to enjoy moments of happiness, and why we are more connected than we realize. Sharon reveals the role love and relationships has played in her life and shares her own personal meditation practice. Sharon Salzberg's latest book, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/reallife/ Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring the show and to Haesue Jo, Licensed Therapist and Head of Clinical Operations at BetterHelp. #ad BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The idea of love has gotten so diminished, you know, that we think of it as sentimentality or a weakness rather than a great force that can transform. So when we talk about loving kindness, it's not determining the action we're going to take, right? It's determining the heart space which we are dwelling in, as you said. You know, whereas one of my friends put it about somebody had like a grudge against that he went over and over and over and over and over and over and over. grudge. He said I'd let him live rent free in my brain for too long. What would it be like to be free of that? And that holds a different worldview, genuinely, so not forcing yourself to. I think it would free up a lot of energy with which to try to make a difference.

You know, what we're coming from a very different place. And I think it's powerful. Love is powerful in that sense. Because it's based on the truth of how connected we are, that we live in an interconnected universe, it or not. And science certainly shows us this. And, you know, epidemiology shows us this. Economic shows us this. Environmental consciousness shows us this. And that's a lot of what loving kindness really means. You know, like we acknowledge that degree of connection. And the idea of self and other in us and then we see as a construct. But that doesn't mean you're going to just let somebody behave the way they behave or not fight or not protect somebody. And that's

the confusion many people have, you know, countless people who said to me. I don't know about this like opening your heart thing, because then I can only say yes. I can only let them move back in. I can only give them more money. I could only let them keep hurting me. And I don't think it means any of that. We know that such a thing is tough love. We know this such a thing is fierce compassion. You know, our actions might be intense and have a strong boundary and really saying no, and partly that's based on a balance of compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for someone else. It's Myambialic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down.

Hi, I'm Myambiolik. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown, a place where we break things down so you don't have to. How about we're going to break down, how to be a happy. You're human. This is it, people. This is the episode. Jonathan, what's happening today? We are speaking to the one and only Sharon Salzberg. And if people don't know who Sharon is, you need to know who Sharon is. She is a pioneer in the field of meditation. She is a world-renowned teacher. She's a best-selling author of, I think, a dozen books now. She was the first person that my friend Carla turned me on to when I was like, I can't live this way anymore. I don't know how to meditate how. She is one of the first to bring mindfulness and loving kindness meditation as a practice

to mainstream American culture over 45 years ago. She's also the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Also, her most recent book, Real Life, The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom is available now. We'll talk to her about that. And literally about everything you need to know about meditation, like the yeses, knows, wise, insides, and outs. This This is a conversation that is literally a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me and for you to get to talk to this kind of leader and guide and teacher. It's so exciting to welcome Sharon Salzberg to The Breakdown. Break it down. Thank you so much.

It is really an incredible thrill to see you in the flesh, albeit on a screen. You know, I think I've seen, you know, one picture of you because I've read your books, but, you know, have spent more time, obviously, with the words. So it's also just really, it's incredible to see that you exist as a human being and not just the author that I sort of pictured when I read your books or obviously when I've heard your voice. You know, for me, you were the first book that I read about meditation. My friend Carla Nomburg, who we've also had.

on the podcast, introduced your work to me. Jonathan also is a practitioner of all things, holistic, meditative, and loving kindness. So I mean, she's a big deal. Good Lord. You are, you know, the pioneer in a field that now has, you know, essentially become part of a cultural vernacular in ways that I think many of us are concerned about and excited about at the same time. But I wonder if you can sort of tell us a little bit about what put you on this path. You had a very

a series of complex things in your childhood that, you know, created turmoil. And I don't know if you use the word trauma, but complexity, you know, to say the least. But maybe you can talk a little bit about, you know, I'm so curious how you became Sharon. It's so sweet. It's lovely to be. with you. This is really, both of you. This is really great. I grew up in New York City, and I did have a really painful one could say traumatic childhood. And I wrote this book years ago called Faith, which is really my faith journey. And in writing it, I realized looking back at my childhood, that my parents divorced when I was four, my mother died when I was nine, and that by the time I went to college, which was at the age of the age of

16, I'd lived in five different family configurations, every one of which had changed because of death or devastation or something awful happening. And then I went to college. So even more difficult in so many ways, I would say really truthfully, was the kind of strange silence that surrounded all of this for me. I ended up at the age of nine living with my father's parents, whom I hardly knew, and there were Eastern European immigrants and seemed to have a belief that if, for example, they never mentioned my mother's name again, that would be less painful for me.

So I taught not too long ago, well, now three years ago, because I haven't done anything in three years in person, but I taught about three years ago in this oncology ward in a hospital, and I realized how difficult it was for me still to say the word cancer in a normal day.

tone of voice because you had a kind of cancer, you know. And so between everything that happened, you know, my father came back briefly when I was 11 because my father, my grandfather had died. And then he was not the man I remembered from when I was four. And he had very severe mental illness and alcohol problems. And it was home for maybe six weeks, took an overdose of sleeping pills, but survived. And then it was the second of my parents and I saw it spun off in an ambulance and to be hospitalized.

So this, too, has never spoken about. And so I felt, obviously, weird, different. You know, my family didn't look like anybody else's. And then when I was in college, which was in Buffalo, New York, and when I was a sophomore, I took an Asian philosophy course And honestly, as far as I can tell, it was happenstance.

It was a philosophy requirement. I looked at it and I thought, that's convenient. That's on Tuesday. Let me do that one. And it totally changed my life. Because for one thing, in talking about the Buddha, you know, the description was the Buddha said that there's suffering in life. This is natural. This is a part of life.

And this didn't seem to me to be grim or depressing. It was like, for the first time my life, I felt the. message, you belong. It's not just you. You're not weird. You know, you're not so different. Everybody in some place or another some degree or another was suffering. And then I heard in the course of that class, there were these methods, there were these techniques you could do. And if you practice them, they're called meditation. You could be a lot happier. So that was really the puzzle moment. I look back at that all the time. It's like I was by then 17 years, I was extremely timid. I was very frightened as a person. I'd never even been to California.

And I looked around Buffalo. I did not see meditation anywhere. And I thought, I'm going to go to India. I'm going to do an independent study project. I'm going to create it. Presented to the university, I'm going to go to India and learn how to meditate. Now I look back and like, what was I thinking? You know, like that's crazy. But I think that's why I ended up writing a book called faith about that moment of like not leaving myself out anymore and moving right into the center possibility. I'm going to see. This is going to work for me. And that's what I did. I went to India. Okay. So, I mean, that's an unbelievable trajectory. I do want to, I want to go back and just ask a couple questions. Were you an only child? Got it. And without telling your age.

I am going to say that divorce in those days was unusual. Do you know anything about kind of the circumstances surrounding your parents' divorce in the first place? Not very much. My father disappeared when I was four. You know, it wasn't like he was a part of my life or visited or anything, which is why it ends up being quite strange

to be living with his parents, you know, at the age of nine. there was, you know, tremendous rancor and anger. I could say that. You know, I remember that. And I don't sort of remember the times before I was four, you know, and what it was like. But it was, of course, there was stigma. And, you know, it was very, it's all very difficult, I'm sure. Right.

And what do you remember of your mother, of Blessed Memory? I imagine both of your parents with all of the things that they dealt with were also exceptional and intelligent and insightful. I know a little bit about how genetics works. So I know that you are also a product, you know, of those people. Were you raised religious? Was your mom creative? Was she intuitive? What do you remember? Sadly, I mostly remember stress. She was a single mother. We lived with her. brother and sister, all of us in a one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. And it was just like a lot of stress, you know? Mm-hmm.

It was only, you know, much later, of course, you know, that I was looking back. And it was, in part, it was writing faith. And it was a real turning point from me. I thought, I always told this story. I've always thought of this story from my point of view. And then I thought, she was like a 30-state. or 37-year-old woman who's dying, you know, with a nine-year-old child. It was just a, it's actually not my story.

It's her story. And that was, you know, that was quite a moment for me. I, when I was a child, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up at various phases, I'd say a playwright or a geneticist, neither of which I'd become. So somehow I was fascinated by that as well. Were you scientifically inclined or were you more kind of literature inclined? I was more literature inclined, although I did pass the exam to get into the Bronx High School of Science, but I was like too scared to go, you know.

I am curious if you grew up with any, you know, religious consciousness, yeah, or spiritual consciousness. My parents are from the South Bronx. My mother, well, they're both first generation Americans, but my mother was raised by Eastern Europeans and did not speak English in the home. So my mother had a very specific, you know, view of orthodoxy, which was that you don't eat out, you can't wear this, you can't look like this, and you can't be an artist. And my father was much more an assimilated, you know, experience, and they're a little bit older than you. But yeah, I'm curious what notion you had of either a spiritual experience or did you think about God, you know, when your mother passed? Like, did that come into your consciousness?

Growing up in those years with my mother and her siblings, we were not practicing Judaism. I mean, we were Jews because that was the nature of things. But, you know, we were certainly not practicing. When I moved in with my grandparents at the age of nine, they were very observant. So there was no lights on Sabbath. But none of that registered in a meaningful way for me, except possibly. Passover, which figures into my most recent book, because it was like, oh, that was the appearance of a family, you know, that was like a different kind of togetherness.

But did I have a sense of God? I think I did. Like, if I look back at those, and there were really lonely years of, you know, my grandfather having died, my father having come and gone again, you know. growing up. I knew a few things. I knew them so deeply within. I knew that there was a better life somewhere for me. I just knew that. And in a way, it's like saying, I knew there was love in this universe. I knew it. And that people love me, of course, but it wasn't exactly a free flow of energy between us, you know. But I knew that there was love in this world. And that I was going to

have a better life. And I knew I had to get out. I knew how to survive. until I could leave. And that turned out to be going to college quite early. My MBLX breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data.

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$199 for the full experience, which is much more affordable than anything else out there. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health with superpower. Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention my ambiolics breakdown to help support the show. I don't know about how people go to college at 16. I'm assuming

you were an accelerated student and there are ways that it happens. And you didn't go far, but that is far from the Bronx and from even, you know, Manhattan proper to go all the way up to Buffalo, which is practically Canada. What was that experience like? I mean, you were also, again, I'm not telling your age, but you were there at a time when, maybe you like to tell your age. Well, I turned 70 this year. Amazing. Happy birthday. Which I found so startling and amazing.

It's like, I can't believe it, even as I say it. So if we think back to when you were 16, this was also a time when, you know, the notion of women's liberation intellectually was sort of burgeoning and the notion of a young 16-year-old really at any college, a young woman, you know, had its own kind of power. Did you think of yourself as a trailblazer kind of intellectually at that time, especially because you were obviously precocious? No, I didn't think of myself as a trailblazer, but it was a very political time. The campus was very political. I went back to Buffalo after like, you know, 50 years, not too long. Well, more than three years ago, but you can tell my, I have this through your gap in my consciousness. But a few years ago, maybe four, I went back to Buffalo to give a talk, which I found hysterical.

You know, they're having a mindfulness festival. They wanted me to give a talk. I don't know. Okay. You know, I tried here. I looked around. It wasn't here. And, you know, the friend who had stayed in Buffalo had gone to law school there and was driving me around the campus.

And I'd say, oh, yeah, I was tear gassed over there in some demonstration. He said, I was tear gassed over there and some other demonstration. It was just like that. The Vietnam War was going on. It was highly politicized times. In some ways, there was a kind of gap between the high-level. these spiritual people who were all taking drugs and, and the, you know, political people who were out there rioting and trying to change the world.

Were there spiritual people not taking drugs? Possibly. But they, I think that was a later development because there was no, there was like no method. There was no, you know, you had some yearnings, often some very sincere, deep, deep yearning. and what were you going to do with it? My parents, as I said, were a little bit older than you, and they were anti-war activists and documentary makers.

But because they were just enough older than you, drugs had not yet hit the scene, meaning they were holding sit-ins, you know, to allow students into black students in public schools. And when they first went to the West Coast, my father said he couldn't understand why everybody had to be high to be, political and transcendental.

And, you know, he and my mother found it very off-putting because they were, you know, East Coast, you know, Jewish civil rights activists making anti-war films. And then Sergeant Pepper came out and my father said it was an explosion of the culture. And then we've had my mother on this podcast and she talked about the time she took mescaline and what did she say, like the ground had lips. The ground was talking to her, you know. She felt the earth breathing. She felt the earth breathing.

And she said, and if I think, about it. I can tune into it again right now. Anyway, so you decided to go to India and, you know, a lot of people listening might not, again, realize the time frame we're talking about. There was no internet. You were not looking up what India looked like. There was not, you know, kind of a global tourism industry welcoming progressive young people to far off countries where they could, you know, better themselves. What was that like? What was that Like, I'm literally curious practically what you did. Did you just like book a ticket?

Did you know where you were going? Did you go alone? What did you wear? Did you have open toad sandals? This is very exciting because for years and years, they've said, you know what I want someone to write a book about is those years, you know, because it was such a cultural moment. So there was no internet.

There were no cell phones. somebody asked me the other day, well, did you use like Lonely Planet's book on a cheap indie or something? And they said, there was no lonely planet. We were literally just on the lonely planet. Yeah. Probably felt like.

Which is also fascinating because the discovery was often face to face. You know, you ran into somebody who said, hey, I heard about this teacher over the other end of India. You want to go? You know, and you're like, oh, yeah, maybe I'll go there. You know, I, I,

knew there were a couple of people from the school had gone to India, so I knew it was a thing you could do. I had a real yearning to learn Buddhist meditation. I don't know why. It just was clear to me. I wanted to learn meditation. I wasn't interested particularly in the philosophy or comparative religion at that time. I wanted to know, how do you do this thing? And get happier. and somehow I knew it had an answer for me. And so I created this independent study project. There were like three or four of us who were going. It was not all alone.

We figured out like you get to Europe, somewhere in Europe. And then you go by bus and train and however. Hold on. I need you to walk us through it just a little bit more specifically. So you, quote, get somewhere in Europe, go through, quote, all those countries in the Middle East, and you just like planes, trains and automobiles it all the way till you hit India. Well, there were people, it happened, I think, just around the time we were going, or maybe just after, who were taking like these hippie buses where you'd get on the bus in London

and you'd get off a New Delhi. That's the peace train, my friend. So we got off in England, took the Orient Express to Istanbul, and I have a very distinct memory of standing on the banks of the Bosphorus River, which the bank I was on was called Europe. The bank I was looking at was called Asia. And thinking, I wonder what it's going to be like. And a lot of it was really scary.

It was very difficult. You know, I'd never been in a country where, like, a man would just, like, grab you on the street, you know? And there they were. And when I got to India, it felt like a kind of homecoming. It was just something in me relaxed. Like, this is right. I heard the Dalai Lama lived in this town called Darm Sala. I heard he was a Buddhist.

So I thought, okay, I'll go up to Darm Sala and see if I could learn how to meditate there. So before I left Buffalo, maybe three or four days before I left Buffalo, this Tibetan Lama named Chunkhramichhach came to Buffalo. It was his first trip to North America. I don't know how he ended up in Buffalo. And he gave a talk at a nearby university. So I went. And they asked for written questions.

So I wrote out the question. My friends and I are leaving for India in like four days. We don't know where to go. we want to study Buddhist meditation, where should we go? And so he had this big pile of questions in front of him. And he reached his hand and pulled up my question. Oh. And read it out loud.

And he was silent for a few moments. And then he said, I think you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident. And that was it. Like no handy monastery guidebook, no addresses, just, I think you had perhaps best follow the pretense of accident. And it's exactly how it happened. got to India, got to Darmsella.

There was a teacher there, a llama of, you know, very great renown. And it was just one of those circumstances where it didn't work. Like I'd go to the class. And here I am with that kind of very specific wanting to know the how to. I'd go to the class and they'd say, translator had to go to the dentist, the other end of India. Come back in two weeks. So I'd come back in two weeks.

And then it would be like, oh, the llama's, you know, busy. You want to read this text? And I said, well, no, not really. I want to, you know. And it was in Darm Sala that I was in a Tibetan restaurant. And I overheard a conversation where these people talked about an international yoga conference that was going to happen in New Delhi. So I thought, oh, I'll go there.

That's where I'll find a teacher. So I went there and it was a miserable experience and the low point of which was when the yogis and swamis were up on the stage, pushing and shoving against each other to be the first to grab the microphone and speak. And I thought this is so dismal. But one of the speakers at that conference was Dan Goldman, who like thousands of years later wrote emotional intelligence. But he was at that conference delivering a paper.

He was a graduate student in psychology at Harvard at the time studying meditation and psychology. And he mentioned that he was on his way to this town called. to do an intensive 10-day like immersion retreat in meditation and that it was really going to emphasize the how-to and everything I've been wanting. And I heard him and I thought, that's it. And it was it. So in effect, he was like the Piper. You know, there were, I don't know how many of us left that conference and went off to Bodhaya and sat the same retreat. So I want to ask because when I first started being interested, interested in meditation and when my friend Carla, well, when I crawled to her on my knees

saying there has to be another way to exist and she directed me to you, you know, the first thing I thought and the first thing that many people will say, many well-intentioned people will say, is I can't do that. I can't sit. I don't want to like, I don't want to learn how. I just like, I can't do it. It's not for me. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about what, What that kind of, the first time that you, I don't want to say meditated successfully because it feels like that's, you know, placing a judgment on it. But the first time you felt that you kind of understood, what was it? What did it feel like? And for people who would say, it's not for me, I can't do it. That's not, you know, what did that experience give you that you now can give to other people? I would say the idea of, you know, successfully meditating. That took a while. you know, but from the moment I started in that retreat in Bud Gaya, I felt this truth here. You know, this is what I've been looking for. My doubts are really, I can't do it or, you know, if I'm doing it right or something like that,

but I just felt and I've never not felt that there was truth there. It was helped also by Goenka, who was my teacher, who on the first night of that retreats. This is really my beginning, says, the Buddha did not teach Buddhism, the Buddha taught a way of life. So this is no way about becoming a Buddhist. This is open to anybody, you know, any faith or no faith tradition. And that was very helpful for me. He said it's about the power of your own awareness.

It's about this method or the method you're practicing. And anyone can utilize it. So that was a real cornerstone. And that was really crucial. I was, you know, I was 18 years old. I was hugely judgmental. I'd been through all that, and I'd never been in therapy at that point. And so I was pretty shocked and very judgmental about everything that arose.

I'm somewhat famous amongst the group of friends that I'm so close to that I met at my first retreat, where he marched up to Goenka once and looking him in the eye and saying, I never used to be an angry person before I started meditating. By laying blame exactly where I felt it belonged. It was clearly his fault that it was. feeling all this anger, and needless to say, I'd been hugely angry, but I hadn't ever quite faced it or seen it. So I would say the successful part came when I could combine that sort of introspection and the highlighting of my interior world with a real loving kindness and

compassion instead of all that judgment. And that took a while because I didn't believe it. You know, I didn't believe in it. I thought, well, it's garbage. You know, that's what they say the like the real beginners because they can't do the real thing, you know. Describe that process of, you know, identifying or becoming aware of this anger that you were carrying around and then the practice of treating it with loving kindness. What was that like? It could have been quicker than it was, but it wasn't very quick for me. And the fact, you know, it's maybe a little bit of what we count on with a really supportive friend or a parent or a therapist or somebody that I had teachers, you know, who were extremely loving

and who in a way were mirroring back. Like I went up to Gawinkan accused him of planting anger seeds in me, you know, and he just laughed, but I didn't feel rejected by that. You know, I didn't feel shunned in some way or less than anybody else. So those mirrors existed in the form of really, really fine teachers. It was a while before I could come to it within myself more completely, but it was there. And when they define mindfulness, even way back when, you know, it would be something like to be aware of what your experience is in the present moment without clinging or condemning, you could say. These days, I say without judgment.

And that's not easy. you know, when you have a lifetime of habit, even a short lifetime that way, of habitually putting yourself down or feeling like you failed or being humiliated or ashamed of what you're feeling. And so it became quickly clear to me that there was some, what was missing was this kind of loving kindness for myself and, you know, and that I would have to, in different ways, develop it. So just stepping back for one second, for anyone listening who, may not be totally tracking. What we're saying is that the pattern is to have an internal experience that maybe you're not even aware of, like you weren't aware of the anger at all.

And then once you start to slow down and make space to identify what you're carrying, what's inside, what your internal world is, you notice the anger. And the normal conditioning is to then mentally evaluate that through some form of judgment. analysis or commentary on it. And what you're talking about is first identifying it, making room and space to know what you're carrying, and then to say, how do I move away from a judgment or a commentary on it into a loving kindness of it? And that you're not trying to actually shift it, although shifting it may be the end result of treating it with loving kindness, but the first step is to really reflect back like a loving teacher or parent or care.

giver would be to address and hold that internal experience. And so is that accurate? Yeah, that's well put and accurate. And thank you for that. What's hard for many people to believe in so much of the commentary of like, I can't do it. I tried it once. I failed at it. It comes from a kind of expectation that a good meditation is going to look like, well, you know, I felt a little restless in the beginning. And then this, this piece. this unfathomable peace just descended. And then it began to like shimmer the edges and became bliss. And then it was bliss and peace and bliss and peace.

And that's good meditation in our minds. You know, and to hear like, yeah, I was really angry, but I had a different relationship to it than I had before. That doesn't feel that good to us, but it is good. Because everything is about the relationship. So I changed mugs, cups just before I came in here, which is too bad. because the previous mug I had,

had an image of Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip on it. Someone had sent me. Because one of the things we sometimes say is that if you have a really unhelpful kind of belittling inner critical voice, give it a name. Give it a wardrobe. Give it a persona. Her name is Mayam.

She looks exactly like me. She wears my clothes. That's right. So I, I named, with apologies to any Lucy's who are listening, I named my inner critic Lucy based on that character. Because once a friend had rented a house for several of us to do a retreat in, I moved into the bedroom, set aside for me.

And there was a cartoon on the desk. And in the first frame of the cartoon, Lucy is talking to Charlie Brown, and she says, you know, Charlie Brown, what your problem is? The problem with you is that you're you. And then in the second frame, poor Charlie Brown says, well, what in the world can I do about that? And then in the third and final frame, Lucy says, I don't pretend to be able to give advice.

I merely point out the problem. And somehow, whenever I was walking by that desk, my eye would fall right in that line. The problem with you is that you're you because that Lucy voice had been so dominant in my earlier life. But you can see just sort of the years of mindfulness practice coming into play because something great happened for me right after I saw the cartoon.

And my first thought was, it's never going to happen again. And I greeted that thought with, hi, Lucy. Chill that, Lucy. Just chill. Have a seat. So that's the relationship. It's a different relationship. And what it's hard to believe, but that's the experiment we make,

is that that's a more effective way of dealing with Lucy than wanting to pulverize her, wanting to annihilate her, wanting to destroy her, which actually doesn't work. And so in a very oversimplified form of a Tibetan practice, they'll say, in effect, invite Lucy and for a meal, keep an eye on her. Don't let her have the run of the house

because that's dangerous. But you don't have to be so afraid. Your awareness is big enough. Your heartfulness is big enough to actually be in the presence of Lucy. and deal with her. You can have a little tenderness there. And so I use that example teaching in a group

and invite Lucien for a meal. And they didn't like that. So I said, well, how about inviting Lucian for a cup of tea? And they said, how about a cup of tea to go? I said, okay, that's the extent of the hospitality. But it's the same principle. You know, and our mistrust of it makes a lot of sense. But that's why it's an experiment.

This is kind of a two-part question. First is in this notion of inviting this part of ourselves in to keep it close, not to pulverize. Is that in your experience or opinion, is that we try to push these things away and keep a distance, and we pretend that the distance that we're keeping is sort of us being free of them? I think that's one common tendency. The other one, of course, is you're right, Lucy. you're always right. I'm worth nothing. You know, just to, I mean, to use kind of a Buddhist example

or an example from that way of thinking. The Buddha said, the mind is naturally radiant and pure. The mind is shining. It's because of visiting forces that we suffer. And there are a couple of important things in that statement. One of these forces, like our greed or fear or jealousy, you're only visiting. You're not inherent to our being.

They're born out of conditions. They may visit a lot. They may visit nearly all the time, but they're still only visiting. And the other thing is, the Buddha didn't say it's because of visiting forces that were horrible people. He said it's because of visiting forces that we suffer.

So I think of myself right away, sitting at home, minding my own business, is a knock at the door. So I'd go answer the door, and there's, you know, jealousy or, you know, a terrible fear or something. And I can either fling open the door and say, welcome home. It's all yours.

Thereby forgetting who lives there. Or he's so freaked out that I desperately shut the door, trying to pretend I never heard the knock, only to find that they come in the window or they come down the chimney. Somehow they make their presence known. So a kind of skills question is, what do we do with the door? We've heard the knock, and there it is. and we practice, we practice more balance,

we practice more presence, we practice more kindness, and it turns out it's a more successful way of dealing with the visitor. There's so much there, you know, that's so specific. You know, I think one of the things that I was scared about before I was turned on to your work in particular, was like literally not knowing where to start.

And I also had this notion. And I literally don't even know where I got it. I had this notion that like meditation was just like sitting in silence and hoping that you had some revelation. And, you know, I was raised, you know, in the Jewish tradition. And we have silent prayers, you know. We have prayers that actually have bowing and movements attached to them because they do originate from Eastern practices that have. been lost over thousands of years. But, you know, I knew that when it was time for quiet prayer, I would always, you know, pray for my family, right? And I remember when my grandmother would come and

stay with us when I was a kid and I had a trundle bed, you know, that was usually for like a friend or grandma. And when she, you know, she would assume that I was asleep, but I would always, you know, kind of like wait and I would listen to her wrestling around the room. And she would, um, she would list, you know, my grandfather who had died, she would list everyone in the family that she wanted to bless. You know, and so I would hear this. So I knew that you're supposed to think of other people, but it did not occur to me, you know, to use meditation as a practice for strengthening,

you know, myself in this case. I'm curious in particular, and Jonathan kind of alluded to this, and I do also want to mention your most recent book, which is real life, The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom. It's available now. I wanted to mention that, and also you've done a lot of specific work on the notion of enemies. And I would say I spend a sizable amount of my day

thinking about people that I either feel resentment against or feel anger towards or feel wrongful. by, and in many cases I'm correct. I'm just going to say that for the record. But, you know, I let a lot of, I mean, this is something I'm working on. I let a lot of people take up, you know, space in my head rent-free, as we say. And, you know, there's kind of two questions in here. And one is, does what you teach, what you practice, what you have found as a personal revelation, does it still work in a world that has ever more distractions, ever more, you know, almost incitement to lean into gossip, to lean into judgment, to constantly be, you know,

judging ourselves in the harshest way possible, like literally, you know, a mirror being held up to us, right, by social media? That's kind of the first question. The second question is, is there a difference between loving enemies that you speak about versus like I have a deep disdain for bureaucracy and people who wield power against the helpless or the unspoken for? And I feel very justified in having that enemy in my brain. So I wonder if you can kind of answer, you know, each of these questions, the first being, you know, so much has changed about the world in ways that are different than, you know, other generations and also similar. So I wanted to know about that. And then in particular, in terms of the enemies that our culture

kind of encourages us to have and me in particular that I feel justified to have. I want to encourage that sense of justification. Actually, oddly enough, to a certain extent. I think, if I look back at my work, you know, especially writing, I think that one of the of the things, I was not conscious of this at the time, but one of the things I really have tried to do is redeem words. Like who writes a book called Faith, you know, like if you're not like a, you know, deeply immersed in a kind of certain kind of tradition, you know, which I was not. And love, loving kindness, kindness, because it seemed to me that

well, kindness would be one example that for many people and many of us were kind of raised this way, it's at best a secondary virtue. We didn't all have grandmas like that, you know, like, that, you know, if you can't be brilliant, you can't be courageous and you can't be wonderful, like, okay, be kind, it's nice, you know. It's not great, but it's good, but it is of greatness, in fact, if we take it in a certain way. And love is tricky as a term, you know, what do we mean by? love. What do we mean by having loving kindness or compassion for an enemy? It's tricky. It should not mean agreeing with them or losing all the sense of your own principles or your own values because

it's ridiculous. Like, why get up even earlier in the morning to cultivate that? You know? But it can mean something else. And I think it does mean something else that I think is also reflective of our time that the idea of love has gotten so diminished. that we think of it as sentimentality or a weakness rather than a great force that can transform. It also is, again, within the body of these teachings or this approach, what it is when we talk about loving kindness, it's not determining the action we're going to take, right? It's determining the heart space which we are dwelling in, as you said, you know, whereas one of my friends put it about somebody had like a grudge against that he went over and

over and over and over and over the grudge he said I let him live rent free in my brain for too long yes what would it be like to be free of that and so holds a different worldview genuinely so not not forcing yourself to i think it would free up a lot of energy with which to try to make a difference you know but we're coming from a very different place and i think it's powerful love is powerful in that sense, because it's based on the truth of how connected we are, that we live in an interconnected universe, like it or not. And science certainly shows us this. And, you know, epidemiology shows us this. Economic shows us this. Environmental consciousness shows us this. And that's a lot of what loving kindness really means, you know, like that we acknowledge that degree

of connection. And the idea of self and other in us and then we see is. a construct. But that doesn't mean you're going to just let somebody behave the way they behave or not fight or not protect somebody. And that's the confusion many people have, you know, countless people who said to me, I don't know about this like opening your heart thing, because then I can only say yes. I can only let them move back in. I can only give them more money. I could only let them keep hurting me. And I don't think it means to any of that. We know that such a thing is tough love. We know this such a thing is true. We know this such a thing is fears compassion.

You know, our actions might be intense and have a strong boundary and really saying no. And partly that's based on a balance of compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for someone else. So for me, a lot of it comes down to this idea and reality that life is very short, you know. And when you ask me how old I am, I think, can't be that old. But I am, you know. How did that happen? One of my big bugaboos is when I have to enter my birth year online and scroll down for like a year and a half, you know, and I think, why did you start it?

Like, you know, 2005 is like, and I'm still scrolling down. And, you know, it's the strangest thing. And yet it's true, the great poignancy of life. Is this really how I want to spend my day? Days? You know, it was just going over and over and over. over and over and over someone else's actions. Probably not. But I don't want to just lie down and take it either or let others be hurt in the kind of spectacular ways that are being hurt right now.

And so to really explore it, I think, is a fantastic thing. Like, what do we mean by compassion? What do we mean by kindness? And can it be a source of strength? Let's just sort of jump forward. You know, you, how long were you in India? I stayed longer than my allotted year. I went back to the, my joke is usually being Buffalo, New York. Many people went and not that many people came back, which is true. I went back. I managed to get two years of independent study credit in Buffalo.

So I was in India for a year and a half. I was back for about six months. I went back to India for another almost two years. Wow. So at some point, you do. come home, as it were. I'm sure home felt very different to you, though, because you had really grown up, you know, in a different culture, not just the culture of India, but a culture of, you know, a community that was on this journey, this path with you. You know, you were one of,

you know, a group of individuals, you know, who, as I describe it in Old Testament terms, you know, went up to the mountain and then came back down, you know, and you were introducing something to this culture that many people thought probably was nuts out there, you know, woo-woo. And I'm not so much curious of like, how did you get through that, although I do think that's very important. I'm curious what it felt like to be told that you didn't know what you didn't know what you you were talking about or that you were out of touch or that you were trying to create something

that doesn't exist and like no one's going to go for I mean I'm just telling you all the things that I'm assuming people told you I'm guessing I'm guessing but I'm curious what was it about Sharon you know that person that girl that child who couldn't say you know her mother's name right who was told to be quiet what in you decided that all those people were not the voice that you were going to listen to? I think it never occurred to me to listen to them, ever. Because by then, I'd had years of experience. So what are they talking about?

I mean, I had reclaimed my life. I was happy. In fact, as you may have read somewhere, you know, when I left India in 1974, I left with the idea that I was coming back for a brief period. And then I was going back to India and spend the rest of my life there. be happy. And I went to see one of my teachers, this woman named Deepama, or Deepa's mother, that's like her nickname,

was living in Calcutta, who'd been a very important person for me and had had huge suffering in her own life and had then come into meditation as a result of that. And so I told her I was coming back here to the States for a very brief period. And she said, when you go back, you'll be teaching. And I said, no, I won't. I said, yes, she wants it, no, I won't. I said, yes, and I said, no, I won't. It's insane, you know, like I'd never do that.

And then she said two things that were very important. She said, you really understand suffering. That's why you should teach. Which was the first time anyone had ever said to me, basically, there's actually value that came out of all those years, you know, of feeling so alone and so difficult. And then she said, you can do anything you want to do, what you're thinking you can't do it's going to stop you.

So I left her room. We'd probably call it a tenement room, walked down four flights of stairs thinking, no, I won't. I'm not going to do that. Sure enough, you know, she was right and I was wrong. And it all evolved from there. It would never have occurred to me to listen to all those people.

It would be anything, a kind of compassion of like, and probably feeling like I can't explain it well enough. I can't, you know. I can't portray it as it. actually is. It was more a question of, and we didn't have a sense of mission, which I think is, I think, a feature of ours, you know, my most immediate community. And that's not true absolutely everybody, but if you take like Jack Hornfield and Joseph Gulls, you know, I, you know, in thinking about the establishment of the retreat center, which is right next door, through the

woods, our mantra, somebody else suggested to us that we start a center. And we said, oh, yeah, is interesting. And our mantra was we can always close in a year. No one is interested with just closing a year. And, you know, when we finally did open, somebody's dad gave them a car. That's how we had a car. And we charged $6.50 a night

in order to come here and fed people on that, you know. And we knew nothing. I don't even know if I knew where the mortgage was. You know, like that's in contrast to something like John Kappen's. sin who was actually sitting here at the Insight Meditation Society. And he said, you know, you can take this whole body of knowledge, take it away from kind of the spiritual world, bring it into science, call it mindfulness-based stress reduction. First you bring it to health care, then you bring it to education.

And he said he got a whole 25-year plan on his head. He got up, he wrote it down, and he did it. But that wasn't us. You know, it was just like, let's, yeah, we'll try. What the hell? And obviously it takes, I mean, whatever it is, it takes all aspects of this, right? Meaning it took your foundation, literally your foundation, not the actual physical foundation, but it took that work, that journey.

It also takes kind of a diversity of experience. And I guess that leads sort of to my next question, you know, there's, there's a tremendous commercialization of meditation. And in many ways, it's reaching people that it never would have reached before. And in other ways, you know, I wonder, and I'm not asking you to be critical, but I'm curious, you know, if you have any sort of, you know, personal insight or guidance that you like to provide to people who might be. you know, kind of confused about where some of the foundations of mindfulness and loving

kindness and, you know, sort of the deeply rooted in Eastern philosophy kind of traditions that you are trained in and sort of the commodification of it, I mean, for lack of a better word. It's best when applying a method is rooted in some kind of analysis of one's values. It doesn't have to be Eastern philosophy. really doesn't. Just like Gawanko, my first teacher, saying the Buddha did not teach Buddhism. Or Jack, Cornfield, had a teacher in Thailand. He had a kind of parallel life in Thailand while we were in India.

A teacher named Ajan Cha, who's a real character. And Jack said to him, you know, I'm going back and people were not, by and large, Buddhists and, you know, it seemed a little alien. And Ajan Chal said to him, called Christianity. you know, it was like there wasn't a holding. I'll also say since we get into trouble these days about cultural appropriation, you know, that our teachers were happiest at the thought of our bringing it back and teaching. And that's what they wanted.

Obviously, there are issues, you know, and there's everything going on. Like, in many ways, I think of people as people. And I can't say about the motivation of the HR department that is bringing in a meditation teacher. But I don't often do that, but on the occasion, I have done that, gone into a corporation, or mostly it's been nonprofit organizations, but whatever. I've never met anyone who said to me,

I would like to be more soulless so I can be more productive. It's all I'm worried about my alcoholic brother. I can't sleep at night because I'm so stressed out. out or, you know, people are people. So I think the accessibility is fabulous. I mean, I had to go to India, you know, like, I think it's great. I get really concerned because for some people, the primary value is really spreading things. You know, it's got to have wide scope.

It's not enough of five people do it deeply. You know, it's got to be 5,000. And the way. that can be done. It can be done through technology. But it can also be done why, like somebody once said to me, this is a neuroscientist friend of mine who was doing research and some high stress populations using mindfulness. And one of them, she said, they don't want to bring in external people anymore. They want to have people from within the organization doing the teaching. So they want to teach a training program. So I said, how long is the training?

And she said eight hours. And I said, you can't do that, you know? Or, you know, I've read, there was one study I read that didn't make any sense to me in terms of that particular study said that mindfulness practice did not affect unconscious bias in any way. And that just made no sense to me. Just like, because if something has been unconscious and becomes more conscious, that's, different, you know. The observation of unconscious bias is in itself, like a, it's like a, it's like a paradox. That's right. So then I read a critique of the study by another scientist who said, please take note, the length of time of the intervention, in other words, the length of time of

the mindfulness practice was five minutes. And when the principal investigator was challenged on that, he said, lots of studies are just five minutes. So that's what. So that's what we're what I get concerned about. I get concerned about teachers who've been trained for eight hours, you know, and what the student is actually getting. And I actually would get concerned, no matter how long you've been practicing,

teachers who feel they're done, that they're no longer students and that they're not learning. And they don't have a sense of community, even helping one another. And so there's a lot out there, you know, that's happening. But I try not to, Only dwell on that, but actually take the light and the rest. I wonder if we could play a small game because you are a playful person, which I think is an important part of your practice.

I wonder if I have four emotions I want to ask you about. Anger, sadness, joy, and fear. And I wonder if you could, just for each one, tell us how you process those things. So number one, anger. How I practice them? Meaning, no, how you process them, meaning what do you, like, if I were a person who's never, you know, thought about a different way to think about things, I'm curious, like, for you to give us, like, a little bit of a thumbnail of like, what do you do with anger? Like, what do you say to your anger? What do you say to each of those emotions? So first is anger. Okay, well, the second or third comment I'm going to make is going to be.

be identical for all of them. You know, so it's just a question of the lead-in. I'd say that the first thing I would say with anger, I'd actually remind myself of some of the imagery in the Buddhist psychology, which is anger is like a forest fire, which can burn up its own support, which means

it can leave the host devastated. Right? It's also got a positive quality to it, which is energy, and it's got, as you were alluding to, before, boundary setting. And sometimes, sometimes truth-telling, you know, like, the angriest person in the room is insisting, look at that, you know. And so what we want to do is capture that energy and not get lost in

the rest. So I'd remind myself, you know, let's just focus on what can be done. Very good. You're doing great, Sharon. Thank you. Number two. Number two, sadness. I'd say this is a natural thing to feel. Because I did not believe that for a lot of my life. you know, don't go there. What about joy? Because I think one of the things that people know about wise folks, there's often a tempering of joy, meaning not rushing quickly to, you know,

ecstatic thinking, feeling, or experiencing, how do you, yeah, how do you deal with joy? I would probably say to myself, slow down. Just take a breath because I would, you know, have that same tendency, you know, like, let's get on with things. You know, there's a lot to do. And it's like, no, let's just enjoy this because it's important. And finally, fear.

Well, fear is my favorite in that it's the one I spent the most time with probably. Although joy is quite there as well. One of the things that happens in mindfulness practice is that you get to observe kind of the compound nature of different emotions, layers of. and layers of different things in them and also their nature. And so one of the things I've seen with my own fear is that unlike the world's pronouncements

that we're afraid of the unknown, I actually get afraid when I think I do know. And so the stories I tell myself, like, I'm going to go back to New York. I haven't been there months. I'm going to go back to my apartment. I'm going to turn on the water. The faucet, didn't I read somewhere

and get Legionnaire's disease? If you turn on the water, hasn't been on for a long time. What are the symptoms? I'm like to know in the middle of the night and now have Legionnaires disease, right? but if I remind myself, even in the midst of that, you know what? You don't know.

Then I relax in this space and this openness. And so I often will say, like, is this true or do you know? Or, you know, one step at a time or something like that. And not, you know, in none of those cases, I mean, not to joy, but the others, not to denounce what I'm feeling, which is the real key, but to be present with it in a more open way. That's beautiful. I wonder if you can speak a little bit, and this is not to dig into your personal life, but I wonder if you can speak a bit to what role love has played in your life. Obviously, you've had,

you know, camaraderie and really, really intense, and I would imagine, maybe this is just my fantasy, I would imagine that you have built friendships that are very grounded. I mean, I'm sure that there's, you know, there's human error in every interaction. But, you know, when I, when I look at the people that you learned with, studied with, many of those are the voices that I listen to. I'm an incite timer person, so that's where I listen. That's to you and to Jack and things like that. But I'm curious if companionship has been part of your life, if you've sought that, or if you have, you know, camaraderie that satisfies, you know, the human need for that kind of affection or love? Yeah, I mean, I haven't been in a relationship for many, many years, you know, that had

been part of my life. But I think really it's the way you described it. It's like my chosen family. And it's very deep bonds and very deep bonds of friendship. And several books ago, I wrote a book called Real Love. And I remember when it was just a manuscript and it was going out. This one publisher said, the love market is saturated, you know, meaning the relationship market is saturated. It's all about how to find a relationship, how to end a relationship, how to keep a relationship.

But part of being as countercultural is I have been, as I feel so many needs are met by being part of a community and very genuinely so. So I haven't sought that, you know, other kind of relationship in a long time. When you did first start teaching, number one, how did you get over the fact that you were pretty certain that you weren't going to teach?

And then the second part of that question is, how was it received? Like, how did you go about formulating your perspective on teaching and, like, were people, open to that at this time or were they're like, you talked about meditation and they were like, what is that and why do I need it? It wasn't the last thing because otherwise we wouldn't have encountered them, you know, because we weren't proselytizing in any way. You know, we were invited to different places. So when I got back to New York and my friend Joseph Golsson, who I'd met in

India, had come back maybe six months before, Ram Dass, who had also met at my first, retreat was teaching. It was the first summer of Neuropa Institute. It was, it's inaugural summer. And Ram Dass had a mega class of like a thousand people. And he had these little subgroups, like the chanting subgroup. And he had invited Joseph to leave the meditation subgroup. So Joseph had a job in an apartment in Boulder, Colorado. And so there were a group of us in New York who said, You know what? We had each done whatever we wanted to do or needed to do in terms of family and stuff like that.

And so let's go visit Joseph. So at one point, nine of us moved into his one-bedroom apartment. And if you know, Joseph, he's like extremely meticulous. He was not happy. But as he tells the story, it's like he really struggled and then he stopped thinking of it's his apartment. And he was fine. So Jack Cornfield was living down the hall.

that's where we met. Everyone was teaching at Noropa, you know, who had already been there. And then Joseph was invited to stay on for the second summer session. So I stayed on kind of as his TA. And just at the end of that, we got invited to teach a month-long retreat, which was the first retreat in this country. So back to how I was, I was completely terrified, especially of speaking. The form of our intensive retreats is usually you practice all day. There's teacher contact, his questions and answers, but at night there's one formal discourse

in the hall. It could not speak. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do public speaking. And so there was Joseph at 30 nights. He had to speak. And all these people would go yell at him like, why don't you let her have a voice?

Why don't you let her speak? And he'd say, I'd love a night off. Go talk to her. You know, it could not do it. I was just terrified. And I could speak to people one-on-one. I felt so strongly about everything I'd gotten from the meditation.

And then it was a long time later that things should have shifted in my mind a lot through loving kindness. And I didn't feel such terror anymore. But the people we encounter and the retreats were small. And as often it was people who'd been in India with us or whose friends had been in India and they'd always wanted to go and they couldn't. And then, you know, through the years we kind of watched the way. the first wave is maybe retired people who wanted a new lease on life.

And they started showing up. And then we here and Barry right down the road from this Trappist monastery. And Father Thomas Keating was the abbot at the time. It was very liberal. And he would come visit and send monks. Then there were waves of rabbis and monks and all kinds of people. And then the artists came. the scientists came. And that was the breaking point where, you know, I mean, really, without all

of that research, I think it would be a different world right now. Well, it's interesting the research specifically. We spoke to Sam Harris in the early days of the podcast. I was a grad student with Sam Harris. So we were both neuroscience students together, two very different Jewish experiences, as it were. And what was kind of interesting about that part of the conversation was that mine was trying to get Sam to talk about sort of the health benefits of it. And in many ways, it's become overly medicalized certain aspects of meditation. It's like, well, you do it for this many minutes and it's going to lower your blood pressure

and it's going to reduce this and it's going to adjust that and you know, you're going to have these medical outcomes. And Sam's perspective on it, which was that even if it didn't do any of that, it would be so important for the exploration of our existence as humans on this planet, that it should still be a priority to pursue. And I'm curious your perspective of the medicalization of meditation. In one hand, it does allow people to access it and understand the benefits, and it's marketed to them as something to pursue. On the other hand, it's somewhat taken away the mystical and it's maybe put these linear equations to it

that you do this to get that versus some of the smaller changes with changing your relationship with Lucy or adjusting your inner world by incremental degrees that add up over time. Well, I would always be concerned about people having wrong expectations, you know, because we can be so harsh with ourselves. Like, you know, somebody's saying my blood pressure went up or, you know, I didn't cure this disease or whatever they had hoped or thought or couldn't make my mind totally blank. I couldn't wipe out all thoughts. You know, so that kind of attachment or that kind of pursuit is tricky and can be really dangerous and ultimately really disappointing.

So that's not great, but I don't mind the, I mean, people want to know does this mean something in my real life, my actual day-to-day existence? And that's important. And it's only because of that research that we have a vocabulary in a way, you know, to say, yeah, you know, it can. And then people, you know, I don't know how to talk to my, people say, I don't know how to talk to my Pratchety cousin. or somebody that really need it, you know, but they say, well, show them this, show them this thing or show them that study here. So I've been a fan. And also, you know, to undertake meditation because it's different for most of us, demands a certain level of motivation.

So where's the motivation going to come from? And my day, it was so hard to find. It had to come pretty well from a whole lot. of suffering. Yep. You know, who's going to go to India? Like, and, you know, not speaking the language and, you know, and not knowing where they're going except somebody who's really in a lot of pain.

But as time went on and the methods got more and more accessible, it could be just a profound level of curiosity about life or wanting to live in a deeper level. It didn't have to be quite that. But still, it takes some motivation. And so when John Kepidson started Mindfulness Space, stress reduction. He started in a Worcester, which is about 40 minutes away from where I am now from the Insight Meditation Society. And I was so curious, like, what's he up to? So I went to Worcester for, like practically his first group. And they were all people, they were all covered by

insurance. They were all given up by their own doctors. They just didn't know what to do with them anymore. You know, they had irritable bowel syndrome or migraines for 40 years or, you know, some really painful condition. And the doctor's suspected stress had something to do with it. But so they sent them to John, you know, who had this little crummy office in the basement of the medical building at UMass. And I watched, you know, these people.

Like, you know, I've had headaches for all these years and I feel better. And you need a very skillful teacher, an approach, not to overpromise or not to get into that little loop, you know, blaming yourself if you don't have instant results. But yet, they have skillful teachers, you know, and I really watched. And I know how hard it is to keep up a practice every day. I was actually going to ask, what is your practice now? And, like, I'm going to believe that you're asked this a lot, and I'm sure it varies. and I'm sure in any given day. But, you know, I've been trying to work my way up

from, like, one time, you know, to two times because they say like two times, 20 minutes, twice a day. Like, that's the magic zone. And I keep waiting for everything to be lifted. But I'm curious what your practice is. At least one sitting in the morning, and it varies from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. I also...

in different ways have added, you know, just trying to do something mindfully, like drink this cup of tea mindfully and not multitask at the time I do it, or take a few breaths and just stop before the next phone call or something like that. And it used to be that when I would sit in the morning, it would be, usually it is a kind of mindfulness practice of just open awareness. and then I would try to do loving kindness practice walking down the streets of New York, sitting on an airplane,

sitting in a subway, sitting in a doctor's waiting room, wherever I was. And now I'm not on any airplanes anymore, you know, and I'm not doing all those things again yet. And so I just try to bring it into the day. Like in the beginning of my lockdown period here,

I made several resolves, many of which I didn't ever fulfill. Like, I'm going to learn Spanish, which I never did. Or I had seen someone on TV who said something like, I always thought if I only had the time, I'd really thoroughly clean the house. Turn out that wasn't the problem.

I said, I really didn't do that either. But I made a resolve to be kinder. And that I really tried to practice. So that involved things like, don't just press send on the email after you've written it. Like, wait, read it again. See if you want to change something. And then press said.

And usually I did want to change something because it's such a strange medium. And so things like that, the moment's my moment thing, I like to sprinkle in quite a lot. And I do think, I mean, many people will say that if you read Amishi Jaws book. She has a lab. She's a neuroscientist. She has a lab at the University of Miami. She says 13 minutes, three to five times a week. 13 minutes, three to five times a week.

Yeah, and I say, first of all, I don't know if it's that healthy to go for the bare minimum. And second of all, for me, three to five times a week doesn't work. Because if it's that, it'll be Monday and I'll think, I'll start on Wednesday.

It'll be Wednesday. I'll think, I'll do it three times on Saturday. And I'd never do it. But every day is every day. So self-knowledge figures in this as well. If I do it every day, that's better. And I think there's something about the cumulative effect.

that people may not really get or it's not clear. It's a muscle. Like I say it's like a muscle. It's an exercise. It doesn't just like the first time you do it. It doesn't work. That's like trying to lift a 50 pound weight. Well, I've had a few times in my life where I've been in a situation where I've had

the structure where I was required to meditate twice a day, half an hour, twice a day. And weekends were only half an hour once a day. And after two weeks, the difference in my life, how I think, how I feel, the level of synchronicity, the level of ease that would happen. I'm not saying all my problems were fixed. They weren't. But there was such a significant difference from the cumulative effect that it sort of hit me in a way that I never, like I had always understood.

But having put that time in, it's like when you start to go to the gym and you're like, oh, I feel really bad after the first exercise, but then you're like a month and you're like, oh, that thing that I did at the beginning of the month, I can do a lot better now. It's really quite amazing. And that's where I get a little bit concerned by people who are like, I'm going to do this a couple times and it's going to sort of fix something versus it happens to fix things when you build the practice because you have those incremental shifts and we don't realize how much stress is being held by our internal worlds that we're sort of continually putting a hand to distance ourselves from.

And that's what I think has been fascinating by the medicalization and the concrete analysis of meditation and the scientists coming in is that we're getting such a better understanding of the mind-body connection and how these things that we hold and don't look at impact us on a physiological level. Going back to something you had brought up earlier, I think, this is part of sort of the tendencies within Buddhism. It's also just a personality trait. I mean, a lot of emphasis is often placed on the problem

and resolving the problem in a new and radical way. You don't have to worry about the mystical, spiritual elements because they're emergent properties of the changes that we make and how we're paying attention. And so I realized that some time ago my favorite word was poignant. and now my favorite word is emergent. You know, so sometimes if you really emphasize, not for everyone, but for some people,

if you really emphasize the kind of mystical, unified view, it's scary, it's off-putting. It's not how they're experiencing the world. It's not their day-to-day reality, and they feel left out. They feel more left out. Whereas if you talk about their stress, you know, and their issue,

and they address it, they'll be in a whole other place. And what really merge is the level of realization. So not to put you on the spot, how do you pitch it today? You walk into a room, let's say it's at a nonprofit, let's say you don't know exactly what people need or, you know, it may be that there's, you know, the organization is curious about it, but they're not bringing you in to achieve a certain result. How do you get people interested? What's the pitch?

I see meditation as a skills training. First of all, in concentration, being less fragmented, less kind of divided, less distracted, certainly, and being more aware, being more mindful. So what happens when we're mindful? It's not just being with our experience, like noticing I hear a sound or I feel fear, but it's being with it in a certain way so that we can continue to explore it. So it's developing curiosity, it's developing interest. not being subject to immediate reactivity so we can check things out for ourselves.

And then loving kindness or compassion. Because if you talk about interconnection as the basis of that, that's the reality of things that's often overlooked. So my favorite question when I do go into an organization or a company to teach is how many other people need to be doing their job well, for you to do your job well. And for that, sometimes that hasn't worked. And I say, okay, do you commute to work?

How do you get there? Do you ever think of that train conductor or the auto mechanic? And sometimes, or if you work at home, certainly, there's technology. And have you eaten today? Did you grow all your own food, you know? Just kind of, let's take apart our reality and we find one another. Let's take apart our reality and we find one another. I'm going to have that tattooed on my face.

I hope you approve. I mean, I really were so grateful for all the time you've given us. We will absolutely wrap up. I had one final question, though. You're a spiritual mother to essentially an entire generation. I mean, you just are. And I'm curious with like the family that you came from, you know, when you think of where you came from. And especially, you know, being an only child and sort of, you know, experiencing that sort of, you know, isolation.

and all the things that you talked about, did you ever sort of receive any acknowledgement or, you know, kind of awareness from, you know, sort of your blood family? Like, no. So I'm curious about that, you know, because, you know, you have this enormous legacy. I mean, it's tremendous.

And I am so inspired not just by you and all that you do, even before I knew anything about what you came from. You know, I've been, you know, guided by you. But I'm curious what kind of reflections you have about, you know, when you think of that little girl, you know, who didn't know where she fit. And you think about what you've built. And you did not have children. But like I said, we, like so many of us are your, you know, your children in this tradition. And I wonder sort of what you think of of when you think of kind of this legacy that you have and how that relates to not having that,

you know, from, let's say, feedback from your family. Yeah, I mean, first of all, thank you so much. It's really beautiful, you know. It always honestly comes as a little bit of a surprise to me. You know, and I think, really? I've read my books. Well, look at that. I'm such an admirer, and they know who I am.

Really, that's true. Like, oh, okay. I have a goddaughter. actually, who became my goddaughter. She was, I met her when she was like three or four years old. And she announced to her mother that I was her fairy godmother. And her mother said, you know, you have to ask. So she said, you can ask, but she is, you know.

So they asked. I said, yeah, you know, so I have had that kind of relationship, you know, with someone. And it's been extraordinary. in so many ways. And, yeah, I mean, I think there probably Salzburgs out there, you know, who are just more distant cousins who probably know I am, but, you know, we're not in touch. I think about a legacy because of how we were, you know, as I described,

it's like, we can always close in a year. You know, it was not like the sort of vision of, oh, we're going to, you know, be in every corporation or, you know, or something. It was so far from that. And I feel tremendous joy at that and also a little mystification. And also it's sort of like it was a time when I had a bucket list of certain people I wanted to meet. I met every one of them. So I went to Joseph and I said, do you think I'm going to die?

and he said, make a new list. You know, so there's a part of me that honestly feels, this is my legacy, I've done it. This is my 12th book, the one that just came out. I'm immensely gratified that people are saying they really like it because I think I had this secret fear that I'm going to say, she just stopped at number eight, you know? She's just saying the same thing over and over again

because it's hard to say something new when you're dealing with, like, ancient truths. Yeah. So I reflect on that kind of a lot. Like, I don't feel like I have to accomplish something. I haven't accomplished. And yet, I'm live, I'm teaching, I'm writing, I'm being, you know. So I don't know what's going to come next.

And maybe it'll be really different next. It has been such an honor to speak to you. And I want to personally thank you. One of my, one of the meditations that I listen to most is your voice. And the thing that you say is such a gift to me. And I think of it when I do any meditation. And I do excel in guided meditation as opposed to silent, but Jonathan has really been teaching me more to sit,

and I'm better at it now. But one of the things that you said, and I just wanted the opportunity to thank you, you know, you have this very casual voice, meaning it doesn't sound overly serious and it doesn't sound overly frivolous. It's like perfect, you know, when that's all I'm hearing. And there's something you say in this meditation is like, basically you start it by saying,

this meditation is not about like how you sit or how you don't sit. It's not about like accomplishing something. And it's just like it fills me up every time I hear it because it reminds me like it's not a big deal. Like we're just, we're human beings. We're not human doings. We're here having this unbelievable conscious experience. of our existence and where we sit and what's around us. And the fact that anything exists is amazing and that we can perceive it is phenomenal.

But ultimately, it's not about you doing it right or having judgment about how you're doing it. Like, you know, just sit down and be quiet and listen and stop. So I'm grateful that in this life I got to tell you personally that now I have the full picture. of that voice that tells me this is not, you don't have to worry. Like, just sit and be quiet. So thank you. I'm still on a journey,

but you've been an enormous part of it as you have been for generations of humans on this planet. So thank you. Well, thank you both, really. It's been wonderful. So someday we'll be together in the same room, I'm sure. And you will adopt us,

and we are your new children. Excellent. Barry Mass, spelled B-A-R-E. She name dropped very subtly a few people that if you weren't listening closely, you may not realize the significance of those people. Like, she was just like, oh, yeah, we were hanging out with Ram Dass. Like, Rob Das is a really big deal. Yeah, she was part of a very specific era, which, you know, many would say evolved,

you know, because of literally World War I, the Depression, World War II, you know, the Holocaust, many of these leaders were, you know, from Jewish families. So there's a really interesting, you know, political and cultural association with a lot of this kind of thinking. But, yeah, this was a generation that existed as, you know, Westerners who believed that the East had something to offer. and if you know anything about the Beatles and George Harrison's exploration into exactly this, they say that is what kind of broke the Beatles' consciousness open

and became the foundation for music reflecting a change in consciousness. You know, the Beatles didn't create this change in consciousness. They were reflecting a lot of what George Harrison in particular, just as a human being, happened to be exploring. So Ram Dass, you know, was born Richard Alpert in 1931. And, you know, he was and she was and Jack Cornfield.

All these people were this generation that was blowing things wide open. And it was not a psychedelic, it was not a psychedelic driven movement. Because I think a lot of us also look at like, ooh, Lollapalooza and I don't know, what did the kids do? Coachella and Burning Man, it's like, let's do lots of drugs and feel connected to the universe. 100% that might happen for you. Well, maybe not. maybe 75%, I don't know. But what these people were doing

was tapping into your endogenous, you know, the endogenous system that our bodies are born with to experience the universe on a transcendental, phenomenal level. What I found interesting, the reason that I asked her about anger, sadness, joy, and fear is because I feel like

what was really beautiful is what a similar thread she runs through most emotions. And for me, I ride the roller coaster of emotions. That's like how I roll. So like when I'm angry, it means I need to like justify it and argue it and defend myself and explain it to everybody. And I'm going to say it louder and I'm going to say it more and I'll write an article about it and I'll post about it on social media and I will feel self-righteous, even if it's like a really good thing. Like I know what's right. That's how I process anger. Or my other option is I shove it down and don't

talk about it and wonder why my body gets sick. How does that work for you? It's not working so good. In terms of sadness, when she said, like, it's just a natural part of being, you know, our tendency and mine for a long time was like, where's the pill to fix it? Or let me pour a drink, you know, or I think this means I should eat and not stop, right? Like, that's where a lot of our sadness goes. And I remember when my father of blessed memory died,

it was the first time that like I really understood that like, oh, this is normal. Like really, it took death. It took that kind of death to be like, oh, but what if all sadness was like, oh, this is normal. I'm having a reaction to something that is sad, you know? In terms of joy, when she said that the response to joy is slow down, she does not know me. Like my response to joy is speed up because it's going to run out. we're all going to die in a second. She's never seen you watch a basketball game.

No, but for me, like, I want every emotion to the nth degree, you know, like I, there's no tempering. I don't have a damper pedal. And in terms of fear, you know, I mean, this is my constant companion. This one I understand. Look, obviously, I develop, try to develop a relationship with it and not let it run things, but from a genetic standpoint, fear makes a lot of sense. It's like, yes, you should be afraid. Bad things are going to happen. You have to be afraid of them to avoid them. Hold on one

second. Hold on, child an accountant. Hold on one second. My father is literally risk mitigator, risk evaluator, build strategies. You can't build strategies unless you're afraid. Right. That's right. fear for many of us is the basis for building strategies that in many cases close doors. You know, it makes us not able to try. Or it keeps you safe. It depends on your perspective. No, but in all seriousness, in all seriousness, it can absolutely go extreme in a direction that prevents opportunity. Well, what my therapist was recently reminding me, like, fear is a construct, meaning things will happen, we will feel emotions, we will have, you know, worry and anxiety. But the notion that that gets to guide an entire framework that you construct, which often is future casting, meaning we're often worried or fearful about, like, things that don't yet exist, right?

And you're right, Jonathan, it's protective. And it's put there so that when you hear wrestling in the leaves, you know to look really quick and have the blood go to your legs, you know, not your brain or your genitals because you need to run and not think or love, right? But, you know, I think especially in our culture, fear in particular, like that's the one for so many people that can go haywire. You know what helps things going haywire?

Meditating. I kept thinking when she was talking about, you know, all the amazing benefits. I kept thinking of like the people in my life who I know are like, I'm never going to meditate. I'm never going to go to yoga. Fuck you. Like there are people who are people who feel that way. Like don't talk to me about my feeling. Like I'm fine.

Like leave me alone. And the fact is that is true for the world that people like that construct. But what was interesting is what she said, you know, when suffering. leads us to the point. It doesn't, it shouldn't take suffering to lead us to the point of being ready to confront things by meditating. But part of it is that if you are not aware of what ails you, if the response that you have is, I will never try something new, fuck you, stop talking to me about it, that's for hippies. There may come a time in your life when you bump up against something or someone that says, the way you are doesn't work for me, right? And again, you can then still exist

in that world with people who it does work for. But there comes a point, you know, and for many of us, it's when our bodies start to give out. You know, my father had terrible anxiety, especially as he had a progressive degenerative condition. You know, that was what a large medical organization tried to point him towards. Like we, basically, they were like, we can't do more. You've got to do your own work. And I love her notion of bringing meditation into the real world and having it not be this sort of separate practice all the time. She says she gets her, you know, once a day

and then she brings it into the real world. Oh, no, but she's constantly living mindfully. I have a lot of weird questions that I didn't bother her with, but maybe if she lets me write her biography someday, I will ask her. Like, I want to know what her apartment looks like. I want to know what movies she likes. I want to know like like what TV show?

Like did she watch Big Bang Theory? Does she watch TV? I wouldn't need to if I were her, right? I would feel like I would have all the entertainment that I need. Like I'm curious who her bestie is, you know? Like who's her like go-to ride or die friend? Like out of all the popular meditation teachers, what's the sitcom version of that group?

I want Romeo and Michelle. Like I want to know who's her girl or her girl. or her guy, you know? And I'm like curious, you know, whatever. I have so many questions. Like, I want to know, like, does she have a lot of clothes? You know, has she chosen to like, I mean, I just have like those moves? Is she a minimalist?

Like, remember we had timber on and he owns like six shirts and two pairs of pants? And like, that's it. Like, I'm curious if she has that kind of practice and whatever. I have all these, like, silly questions. Like, how does she choose her glasses? Like, does she feel like certain things are too flashy? Like, does she like to be flashy? How does she decide?

Like, how to wear her hair? You know, like, why doesn't she shave it? On that note, send us your silly questions at Bialik Breakdown on Instagram. Send us the questions you would like us to ask one of the greatest pioneering meditation teachers in the world. What's your favorite food if you were on a desert island and could only bring one album? I'm curious. Does she like spicy food? Does she like Indian food?

We are back with another segment sponsored by. BetterHelp, we're joined once again by Hesu Joe, licensed therapist, and head of clinical operations at BetterHelp with another set of fun questions designed to foster productive thought-provoking dialogue around mental health and therapy. Something we talk about a lot

are patterns. What are some of the patterns you see people struggle to break? There's a lot of therapist memes out there right now for this kind of thing. Like dating the wrong person or like shooting themselves in the foot or...

This kind of pattern I see is quite common with a lot of people. And I say common because, like, I've gone through this too. It's very universal. Like, I think a lot of therapists have experienced it in their personal lives. And that is the tolerance, your personal tolerance of poor treatment from other people for a variety of reasons. But often it comes from a fear of being rejected. So this is a pattern that's very difficult to break because you sometimes keep positively being reinforced by holding. your tongue and refraining and not really being honest and forthright with how you really feel

about something. And what I mean by you are being positively reinforced is that the person stays around. So you think it's because you're, you know, holding back and you're not being upfront with this person. So, you know, I've seen far too many people tolerate poor treatment of themselves with, you know, this idea that that is how they're showing up and how they're loving their partner or their friend or whoever it is. I think I've also seen the pattern of folks basically continuing to suffer partially because of a fear of confronting very painful truths. And so I say this because, you know, I know folks in my personal life that choose either to try therapy but not stick with it or like just kind of avoid it all together. And what I think is happening is because they know it's going to be really hard.

Therapy can be very difficult. It kind of unearths and uncovers things that you've been leaving in the dark for a long time for maybe sometimes good reasons. But this is a pattern that's hard to break too, is not doing so well, but scared of having any days that are any worse than that. So then not confronting those things and just staying. in this space of not doing so well for a very prolonged period of time. And hanging on to grudges. In other words...

People love a grudge. People love resentment. It feels so good. This person did that to me and they shouldn't have. That's right. Or I'm never going to hang out with that. Or I'm never going to get over that. Or also just being passive-aggressive.

Yeah. Or just hostile. Yeah. You feel with a grudge. Not being able to let things go. If you can't let things go, that's when you start holding grudges. And that's when you are holding,

yourself back from all kinds of beautiful things in this world. Right. A lot of times people feel like, well, I'm justified in holding this grudge. I'm like, here's what they did. And I think what, what therapy kind of can help you break the pattern of is sort of believing that other people are responsible for your happiness or you feeling okay about something. When the fact is, if you're holding a grudge, you actually are the person in charge of being able to release that, which really only hurts you. They say resentment is the poison pill that you take. Resentment is the, resentment is the poison that you drink thinking it hurts someone else. There you go. You know, we've been in an exceptional time in the history of the human experience. We've just

gone through, you know, a global pandemic and, you know, for most of the world, some sort of lockdown and a tremendous amount of discussion and information and disinformation and confusion. What have you seen in particular in the last few years that has kind of kicked up a new set of mental health challenges for people that maybe wouldn't have sought out help before? I mean, early on, I'm not seeing as much right now, but like, you know, early COVID times. I think we all kind of talk about and think about this period of our lives as just like the dark ages and relationship stuff. You know, like, especially during lockdown, not having a lot of places to go and being kind of. And confined to the walls of your home with the people that you live with, it brings stuff up.

Because now you can't physically escape. You can't go engage in what used to be available to you as like healthy coping mechanisms. Like, I'm going to go to the park. Or actually, park is fine. But, you know, can it go do a lot of activities? Right, right. And. Or like people used to go to the gym or, you know, physical activities that they could do together, which is a huge outlet, right? Yeah. And get some space away from this person. So when you don't have that space and you're kind of forced to, I use this word before, but like confront something that you've been maybe not wanting to in a long time. So, you know, relationships ended. Some relationships

were catalyzed and, you know, some families healed from something. Some families became broken over something. So I think relationships really were affected during that time because, you know, our lives got flipped upside down. Our work situation, school. situation became very, very different, unpredictable, scary. So relationship stuff, for sure. And then, you know, when you're when you're stuck inside, not being able to go anywhere and do anything, and a lot of times that looks like being stuck with your own thoughts. So people that have effectively pushed down past trauma or things that have historically maybe gotten in the way of life, they've been able to push that away, distract themselves by doing something. It was like right in your

face. Yes. Yes. It was front and center and something that you're always thinking about. And, you know, your home becomes everything, including your workspace, all this kind of stuff. So there's not as much separation between work and home for people that that applies to. I think that created something weird, you know. I definitely worked a lot more because I used to have a very separate distinction between home and work. But when all this stuff happened, it all all became the same thing, the same place. So it became more difficult to honor my own boundaries with time. So that's my personal thing, but I have observed it in my clients and other people, too. Sure. A sense of humor is a really important part of Jonathan and my concept of our

emotional and mental well-being. You know, Jonathan likes to have a certain number of jokes per minute or per conversation in order for him to feel, I guess, regulated to some extent. Can you talk a little bit about a sense of humor for you what that means? What are the things that make you laugh that you feel contribute to kind of your overall well-being? I agree that having sense of humor is very important. And in the therapist community, you hear that all the time too. Some therapists have pretty dark senses of humor that are probably influenced by everything that we go through. Sometimes something is so painful that what feels like in the moment the only way to get through this,

or get over this is to make light of it and to be able to laugh about something. I mean, it's no secret, right, that, like, comedians are often very dark inside. And I think that that says something here. This humor, being able to laugh about something, it brings joy back to even dark spaces. So, in any case, things for me. I do love stand-up comedy. That's something that makes me laugh, of course, but I also enjoy, like, ridiculous reality TV. reactions. Another thing we talk about all the time. I say to Maim, be like a duck, allow it to roll over you because water doesn't. Exactly. What do you not react to anymore that you used to?

This is a tough one because I still, I think I, I still react to most things. I've been told I'm very animated, not a good liar because everything just shows up on my face. I feel my feelings really strongly, and I also show them very strongly. So I generally still react to things. But I guess something that happens in therapy, you know, when my clients tell me after spending so many sessions, processing something, unpacking, getting to a place where they feel so good about themselves, they're empowered, they're independent. And then, you know, we start the session with like, so I texted my ex. Like, this is something I used to like, you know, No, react to. Your eyes would bug out.

You'd be like, you'd react to that. Yeah. Yeah. And now if it happens, which it definitely does, um, I notice my own reaction internally is different from like, why are you going to do that? It's, it's now like, yes, yes, of course this happened. This is a skill that we who are not therapists also can do well to cultivate.

And it's actually one of the things that you learn in a healthy therapist and client relationship is the therapist is the therapist is, the therapist is also modeling a kind of behavior for you. And, you know, I've been told, you know, the expression is kind of like, you want to respond and not react. And if you're in a place of kind of emotional intensity or agitation, that's going to be a reaction that often will be sort of your your gut instinct of how you're feeling, like the voice inside your head. But taking time to calm your nervous system down, as we've talked about, to be able to respond, prevents, you know, you from kind of like vomiting everything that is sort of like that gut feeling. Is that kind of

accurate? Yeah. I'm thinking of like distress tolerance, good for therapists to certainly engage in practice in those kinds of skills. But I think it's good for anybody. Instead of trying to make the world a less scary place, be okay yourself that you can handle things. I think it's great for humanity to try to make the world a less scary place. But I think there's always going to be scary stuff out there. and to attempt to live through your life completely avoidant of anything that might scare you, that's not a great quality of life either. I think there's probably a very fine line between that,

knowing exactly what you're not comfortable with and staying away from those situations, and not really being familiar with what you're uncomfortable with, but just kind of moving through the world as though you're uncomfortable with everything. What's something you want to do that you haven't yet done besides be on our podcast? Yeah, that was it. This is a hard one because some part of me is recognizing I want to say something that sounds like great, like a bucket list worthy thing. But at least right in this moment, something that I haven't done that I'd like to do is see the northern lights, which means I need to leave my comfort window of 68 to 72 degrees. But I would do it for this natural phenomenon.

Nature is awe-inspiring, and we can, I mean, I learn from nature all the time. Like, nature is intelligent, and nature overcomes disaster and crisis, and nature, at least right now, still, thankfully, prevails many times. And for these kinds of lights to be produced naturally in these colors, it kind of blows my mind. And so, like, tropical fish and birds also, like, sometimes I can't believe that the world created those kinds of colors. And so it's something about that where just, like, really intrigued. And every time I've been face to face with some natural awe-inspiring beauty, something changes inside of me a little bit. And it's humbling. It's a reminder that, like, I'm but a tiny speck in this, like, hurling rock-through space.

my problems are generally pretty trivial at the end of the day. Rounding back to things we can learn in therapy to what you want to do, you've got to get out of your comfort zone a little bit, which is a skill, have a little distress tolerance for the cold and the uncertainty of not being able to hang out, and off you'll go. I'd like to thank our partners again at BetterHelp for sponsoring this segment, and a huge thank you to Hesu Joe, licensed therapist and head of clinical operations at Better help. It's really been a pleasure talking with you.

Visit betterhelp.com slash break. To learn more, that's better, help.com. Slash break. Hesu Joe's input is general psychological information based on research and clinical experience. It's intended to be general and informational in nature. It does not represent or indicate an established clinical or professional relationship with those inquiring for guidance.

Also, just because you might hear something on the show that sounds similar to what you're experiencing, beware of self-diagnosis. Diagnosis is not required to find relief, and you'll want to find a qualified professional to assess and explore diagnoses if that's important to you. If you were a loved one are in crisis and uncertain of whether you can maintain safety, reach out for support. Crisis hotlines, local authorities, have a safety plan that can be done with a therapist too. Jonathan, there's a lot I enjoy about the work that we do together, but I have to say that experiences like today, I would never get to speak to Sharon Salzberg if it was not

for you suggesting we do this podcast and for being present and helping us get here. So that was really, really incredible. And yeah, I really feel a lot of gratitude and loving kindness towards you. Oh, that's very sweet and special. We never know who we're going to talk to. Every week is a new surprise. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have because you'll be meditating every day. We'll see you next time. It's my and Bialyx breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a It's PhD or two One, fix you one, and now she's gonna break down