Sense of Soul - Sitting in the Stillness

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Sense of Soul Podcast welcomed Martin Wells a psychotherapist in the NHS for over 30 years and mindfulness teacher. Inspired 10 years  ago by a French psychiatrist and non-dual mystic Martin had a profound shift in perspective, allowing Martin to understand non-duality as being at the heart of mindfulness and psychotherapy, Martin Wells is author of the  bestselling book “Sitting in the Stillness”, which is a collection of stories from the therapy room. Each one invites the reader to go beyond these personal accounts to the universal, beyond the agitations of the mind to an infinite stillness of being. Visit www.mysenseofsoul.com  Check out our new Ancestral CLEAR workshop and much more!   

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we are so excited to have Martin Wells. Martin had a core belief that he was an outsider. Driven by this core belief, he started on a search to belong and be accepted. Over a period of 30 years training in social work, psychotherapy, and meditation, he started to feel respect and accepted, but he still felt like maybe he needed to search some more. His journey led him to write a book about what he discovered. His book is called Sitting in the Stillness. Welcome, Martin Wells. We're so excited to have you.

Thank you. Yeah, and you know, I was thinking to start, I was very touched about the story of your mother and your father. So if you just talk a little bit about how they met and what your childhood looked like. Sure. Well, my mother was a refugee at the end of the Second World War. She's German. And the Allies completely bombed her city in August 1944. So she had to flee to northern Germany. And at the end of the war, my father was stationed in northern Germany, and that's how they met.

So they came back to England in 1947. Mum was 18 years younger than dad, so she was about 23, he was 41, something like that. So she had to adjust to life in England being German and living in North London. And I came along three years later. So I was born in 1950 and grew up in North London. And my brother is seven years younger. So he came along seven years after that. So how old was your father when he had your brother good question yeah exactly he was he was i think he was 53 he was happy to have a young wife as if he was yeah yeah they were a handsome couple they did look good together that's an amazing story so shanna

and i have recently well i have recently shanna years ago went on a journey with her ancestry and I'm digging into mine right now. So when I read the history, I was really touched by that story and I was curious, did your mom have any trauma? I mean, that sounds very traumatic to have to leave everything new. Yeah, yeah, very traumatic. She went with a friend to northern Germany, but her parents headed for Austria. And her father never made it. He had a heart attack on the way to Austria. So she never saw her father again. She was 19. And her brother died on the Russian front and was never found. His body was never found and he was 21. So yeah, it was an amazing story. She's a resilient human being. She was 97 the other day. Oh, wonderful.

Is she alive? Yeah, yeah. She's fine. Yeah. She lives on her own, lives independently. Oh, yeah. She's like, if that shit ain't killing me, I'm not going to let age take me down. I know.

Exactly. Exactly. I love it. I want her on my podcast. Oh, my gosh. I bet. Talk about resilient. And did she have to go to therapy?

And did she have to, like, how do you get over something like that that is one of that is stories I I just can't even imagine yeah no she's never had therapy and I don't think it was sort of that era's way of managing things and she managed it's very quite a stoic sort of way of managing, but it's very effective. And my dad was the same, really. And they never spoke about the war or and she never spoke really about the difficulties she had being a young German woman in this country at that time, which must have been really, really difficult, I think.

Well, and you said in your book that it was difficult for you, too. You felt like you're an outsider and you even talked a little bit about how when you were out and about with you know on the playground you felt like you kind of had to hide a side of who you were yeah yeah and I probably wasn't that conscious of it at the time but but looking back it it was um it was very much a feature of growing up that that I didn't talk about or didn't even tell myself that my mother was German weirdly that might sound really strange mightn't it but but in some way I convinced myself I was entirely English what is so sad is that that is very common for these past generations. I had

discovered that I had a great grandmother who passed as white. And here in Louisiana, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with what that means. But yeah, she in the deep south of Louisiana had to basically choose whether she was going to be white or black. Wow. To never tell anybody, but it's so sad to have to turn away and deny your culture, your,

you know, heritage traditions, your name, your name, even, you know, absolutely. Yeah.

It's quite something to do as well isn't it's amazing how the human mind and and the human personality can adapt in that in that way quite extraordinary I think yeah you use the word costumes like you wore these costumes I'd never thought of it as a costume I always just said these masks that I wore in my past. Like, you know, I wore all these different masks. I wore, you know, the stay at home mom. I wore the empath. I wore the alcoholic. I wore the, I mean, I wore so many different masks as like a chameleon to fit in wherever I went. And you called it costumes. What did your costume look like? Well, I was a very good boy.

So it was a sort of era of childcare where children should be seen and not heard. So you sat quietly at the dinner table. You behaved yourself. You didn't answer back. You didn't have sort of smart answers for things. You kept them to yourself. So I learned the costume was really one of compliance,

of passivity, and of swallowing any difficult feelings. So if I was ever angry, I swallowed that. If I was envious, I would swallow that. Anything of that sort of feeling would have to be kept behind the costume, kept behind the mask. What's very interesting is when I was doing some research on your book and looking through your book, I found that I had a very similar experience with mindfulness that I've shared. Oh yes. But I've shared with the

listeners like a zillion times. So I probably will cut it out, but I wanted to tell you, um, just how very much, yeah, when you have a podcast and you're on twice a week, they tend to hear the same story. But, you know, it's interesting because you mentioned mindfulness and freedom. And that is the two words that started it all for me. Interesting. I remember after my first class, just coming home and calling Mandy. And this is like maybe five or six years ago. I was like, Mandy, I was like, I've never felt so free in my life. And I just wanted everyone to feel what I was feeling. Because I just thought to myself, if I, who has so much clusterfuck in my

brain, if I can do this, make this space to feel this free, anybody can do it. Sure, sure. No, absolutely true. Martin, can I ask you a question? And maybe I don't know if I got this right, but you did a lot of groups and meditation groups for a long time, but it never really sat or resonated with you until you went on this search. And then when you went on this search and with all these clients in your book that you talk about, that's when it really resonated with you. Is that correct? It was more the ending of the search that was the resonance. Because I don't know if you know, but there's broadly, there's two types of meditation path. One's called progressive, and one's called direct path.

I've been on what was called the progressive path for many years. And part of that path involves a search like if I if I do more of this I'm going to feel happier or more free or better or something and and what what really resonated was was meeting my French colleague Jean-Marc who just presented the notion of stopping and being true to who we are in that moment of time and ending the search really because in a way all that we're searching for is already part of who we are so there's nowhere else to go and nowhere else to look. He is the founder of the former International Association of Spiritual Psychiatry, correct? Yes. So I loved how he said that the drama in all of us is that we look for what we are and what we

are not. Yes. The little example I always like is the sculptor who was asked how did he sculpt the horse and he said I just took away the bits that weren't horse yeah this type of practice or meditation is looking clearly at what we are and what we're not and the way to get to who we are is to discriminate about what we're not so we're not our thoughts we're not our story we're not even our personality that that's just a a mask something that we present to the world the title of your podcast you know we're closer to a sense of soul or being that is none of those things. So a lot of the work and the stories in the book are about people thinking they need to do this, they need to succeed in this area, or become this, or get better at this, and then realizing that all of that is like a mirage,

that something that you're going towards that isn't actually real. And what is real is the essence of who we are were you actually specifically targeting mindfulness in your sessions No, not really. It evolved much more as, in a way, along this theme, people saying, oh, this is what I am. I'm a failure, or I'm a depressed person, or I'm bipolar, or I'm unacceptable, I'm unlovable, you know, all the sorts of things that people carry around with them as a core belief. So firstly, it was to hear that, to hear what stories people told about themselves. And then it was to challenge that notion, which mindfulness does in a sense, simply by, well, you'll have experienced that in that freedom. If I'm not my thoughts or any of these things I used to think I was, then who or what am I? There's the freedom. I'm not bound by a story. Even a successful story is binding.

And I didn't know what to expect that first mindfulness class. Yeah. And I sat there and I was like, oh my God, I cannot even breathe right. And then I was like, I could be doing better things right now. This is such a waste of time. I can't even listen to the guy because all I'm doing is worrying about not being here. And then in that moment, I was like, oh my God, the things that I was saying to myself was so negative. That was so huge for me.

It was the first time I even recognized that there was a witness. Yes. And that is so liberating. That moment is absolutely liberating. It was life changing. Yeah, I'm sure. And you know what's interesting is that kind of spiraled Shanna into this awakening. And for me, it was presented in a totally different way. I had a near-death experience.

And while I was recovering from being in a coma, I was forced to be mindful because I couldn't even lift my arms. I couldn't lift a spoon. It was like I had to be mindful. It couldn't even lift my arms. I couldn't lift a spoon. It was like, I had to be mindful. It was such a blessing. Yes. Isn't that fascinating how we each come to it in different ways? So interesting. What is non-duality? Well, it comes back to the statement that you read about from John Mark, which is, we think we know what we are by following what we're not. Basically, it means one, everything is one. But the mind can't appreciate that because the mind is also a great separator and separate. So the best we can do is really talk about not two so not not separate not not two but one in a sense

that's why when we're thinking about the story then it's not that i'm not the story i'm not separate i'm not a separate individual as disconnected from others. Everything is one. But our language and the way we view things through this mind, we can't appreciate that. It's beyond the mind's capacity to know that oneness. But the mind can know not to, not this, not that. It reminds me of one time someone had said the shoulds are like that too like you know we're always adding in these things and what did he say mandy he said if you keep putting shit on everything you'll shit all over yourself

randy said that that was so funny yes i loved how he said that. That's good. You're right. There's all these things like we should do this or not this or we're always adding in all of these concepts to everything. Yeah. So Martin, would you describe the mindfulness and the stillness the same? Like you get the stillness within the mindfulness yes yes i mean that the observer that shanna's talking about the witnessing aspect of us is it's got a hundred different names but one of them is a fundamental stillness or a silence of a spaciousness it's called all sorts of different things but yes it's that fundamental being that that is is not troubled by anything in a sense it's it's it's free of all disturbances you also i think called it the space of nothingness yes yeah to feel that nothingness is a challenge but it's also liberating because then there is no story there's there's nothing written on the next page that traps us. It's a blank page. It's an open space, like the next moment. How can stillness in our life, how can it benefit,

say, the busy person, the busy mom, the busy dad, the busy young adult that is trying to keep up with the Joneses? Well, there's two aspects to it, really. One is to understand that as inherently what we are. That's more of an understanding and a realization that what we are is not this sort of just mind, body, separate, random experience that inhabitates the planet. We're more than that. We're something else than that so that understanding is a part of it then there's the practice of it which you talked about in terms of your mindfulness experience and also you talked about in terms of your experience uh being in the in the hospital bed these these are moments and it's it's quite extraordinary how we get to them,

but these are moments of really knowing that stillness. Before those experiences, someone could have said to you, oh yes, fundamentally you're still, you're at peace. But until you've experienced it, that's just words really. They're helpful words because they describe the nature of the human being, but it's the practice and the understanding together that really help us to know that deeply. And there was a perfect moment of stillness after you said that. Yeah, exactly. In the space between the words. Thich Nhat Hanh says, it's a practice.

Yes. I love the way he says it. Every time I'm like, say it again, say it again. Practice. So there was a part of your book that threw me through a loop. You have to explain this to me. I was like, wait a minute. So Shanna and I always talk about this journey and this path that we're on.

Yeah. So in your book, there's this delightful paradox is what you said, which I found there was a lot of those where I had to stop and go, wait, I'm confused. That although there is no path to take, we need to take a path to discover this. If we hadn't taken the path, we wouldn't know that there wasn't one. Exactly. You got some Buddha stuff going on in there. He has so many amazing ones. So you have quotes from some of our favorite people. There's so many in your book that I loved,

but can you explain that, that there's no path? What does having no path mean? Well, again, it brings us back to stillness really, because stillness isn't something that I might go and find tomorrow or on some course that I do or some book that I see or teacher that I go to. Stillness is already here and fundamental to this being and your beings as well, every being. So there is nowhere to go other than here but we need to start off often taking a journey like oh is it over there or can I find it there in order to realize that it's already with us so there's the paradox that we often need to take a path to realize there there isn't a path there's nowhere to go there's do no one to be and that's really just saying there isn't anywhere

other than here in this moment that stillness is to be found yeah i like that but i also think of coming home to yourself yes it's just here and it is that feeling of home when you have that, I have nowhere to go. You're home when you have nowhere to go. Exactly. Exactly that. And that's another classic paradox, isn't it? When you've got nowhere to go, then you realize that you're at home. And have always been at home. Right. I really want to talk about something that was relatable and I love reading about it. I mean, it's a lot about what your book is. And that is rewriting your story and realizing what's fiction and what's not. I think it was Sarah in your book that you talked about the gift.

And the gift is sometimes contained in the crisis. And to awaken from the dream state of the personal narrative. So that personal narrative, I just recently revisited because I had one about myself and I decided to rewrite that narrative. Can you just talk about that? Because how does one decide what's true and what's false and how do they rewrite that narrative? Yes. Well, in some ways, we can almost say that anything that comes from the mind or the world of thought or the world of belief is false because it's arisen out of conditioning and it's arisen out of maybe our defenses in relation to our families and caretakers so all of that in a sense is a story based on our experiences so we can almost start with none of that being true

you said it shanna when you had the mindfulness experience you realized the sort of thoughts you had about yourself and then of course there's a witness immediately saying, these are thoughts that I'm having about myself. And it's a bit like Tolly once said, I can't live with myself anymore. Then he thought, well, who's the I that can't live with myself? Who are these two people I'm talking about? And basically, he was saying, I can't live with this story anymore. I can't keep reenacting this story of success and failure. So in the sense that we're talking,

it's called a sort of self inquiry. So we can ask ourselves about the thoughts. Is that true? Is it real? Is it part of my story? Is it something that my parents said and thought about me or my teachers or my family? It's a very powerful, like a hypnotic induction into the story. And so for people that want to start doing this, would you suggest they journal? I mean, what would be a start for someone who's listening? Who's like, oh my gosh, how do I do this? Yeah, I'd start with a basic mindfulness practice of noticing and accepting. So notice whatever thoughts come as you sit. It doesn't have to be a formal sitting practice. You could be walking along the beach or in the forest or something, but just notice the thoughts that come, accept them, just accept that they're arising out

of your consciousness and i no longer think it's necessary to rewrite the story because any rewriting is also another story unless you rewrite you know the sky's the limit and i'm going to be completely open and transparent and yeah fine fine but, if we come back to the essential self, we're fundamentally so creative, so able, so loving, so compassionate. We don't need to rewrite that. We just need to be true to the essential self. Yeah. Then what comes writes itself. I had done some cognitive therapy prior to the mindfulness, but they did work very well together, obviously. Yes. So once I was able to learn some of the tools for cognitive therapy,

and one of them was a fact or fiction exercise where thoughts would come through, bring awareness to them, and write them down or consider, is this true about myself or is this not true about myself? But I would just write it down and kind of go on. But then here's the thing. Once you look back at it, it's telling a story. Yeah. And you're like, oh my goodness, that's where that came from.

You just, if I loved to journal through it, because even though it didn't make sense at the time, once I really was mindful to all of it, I really, really was putting it together. And yes, very important. Because you could see these things came from a specific place in your past. Like you said, these stories that we're telling ourselves, they're from somewhere. Yes, yes. My wife had a memoir published last year

and she, at the end of the memoir, writes about the importance of writing itself as a way of expressing the story, the feelings around the story, and eventually letting it go as a story. So we don't need to bypass it or transcend it in that sense. It's a natural process of expression and then a letting go of the story. Yeah, so true. You don't have to rewrite it completely. It does it for itself. It's pretty amazing. And the problem with things like CBT is, I mean, they are very effective on a functional level.

They're written usually by psychologists who have a view of the human being as mostly cognitive, cognitive, emotional, behavioral. And that's only a tiny part of what this being is. I agree. Yeah? behavioral and that's only a tiny part of what this being is i agree yeah yeah because once i added it with the mindfulness is when it actually worked yes exactly exactly that yeah wow i'm just sitting here like you're right i'm a little mind blown and you know for me i guess when i said rewriting it was more of just looking at things that I was told that weren't part of who I was. It was from the outside world. So it was more like letting it go and realizing that wasn't me. That was just a story I was being told.

Yes, exactly. Okay, here's another one that threw me off. Okay. It seems we need to be at our most vulnerable to realize what is not vulnerable. It's another paradox, eh? A good one. We're discriminating between the human mind and body, which of course is the ego and the personality, all of which are vulnerable in all sorts of different ways. And if we defend against that, we imagine ourselves, maybe we can tough it out or be

strong or get through life without having to have our feelings or go to some darker places in ourselves. But once we really allow that to happen, paradoxically, what comes into view, there's an aspect of us that is not vulnerable. How could the infinite be vulnerable? How could infinite space be vulnerable? How could silence be vulnerable to anything? So it allows us to drop into the fundamental being

that isn't vulnerable. But there tend not to be shortcuts. So that's why in the book, there's lots of stories of people really hitting the rock bottom of their lives before they realize that aspect of them that's not vulnerable. Well, I think Andy and I will have to share with you just our vulnerable story. You talk about paradox. I mean, I grew up thinking that the word vulnerable was a weakness. Don't be vulnerable. Never show nobody that you're vulnerable.

It's one thing that I definitely did well, too. I'd be very stressed or whatever, but I never let anyone know I can play it off fairly well, but great actors, maybe I should have been an actress. And, but really never even showing my children that life sucks. And it was hard, which is putting on a mask. You know, now that I'm mindful, I'm very aware that, you know what, my children seeing me stressed is not a negative thing. Because that way, when they get older, they're not like shocked as shit that life is hard. I thought that was being vulnerable. And I thought it was negative.

And Mandy, on the other hand, she's like, you need to be more vulnerable. I'm like, girl, are you crazy? When you tell me I need to be vulnerable, I've been trying not to be vulnerable my whole life. I'm so vulnerable that it like makes her uncomfortable. She was taught that vulnerability also was a chance for people to take advantage of you. But through Alcoholics Anonymous, I was taught acceptance. And when I really knew what acceptance meant

and I had no shame in my past, there's nothing that I can tell you. I mean, all my dirt. I'm like, don't tell them that. I just believe that, you know, sharing is caring and it's an opportunity to help other people if you're vulnerable. So it was interesting interesting her and I were raised completely two different ways because my mother and my grandmother are also very vulnerable interesting isn't it yeah not mine you'll never hear even someone in my family fart that ain't gonna happen nothing's coming out oh my gosh that's true I just loved in your book also how you hit so many things. I mean,

there's just so much greatness in it. I actually posted on my Facebook yesterday, something that you wrote, how you said, you know, breakdowns are how we reach breakthroughs in that it's okay. It's okay to have a breakdown. And then I also loved how, you know, our world, we're taught to go around the crisis. And you talk about going through it. You have to go through it. Yeah. There is one thing that I think we should talk about because of the state of where the world is. Yeah, sure. Yeah, as lightworkers, we all wish that people could understand oneness.

And you talk a lot about how we create the separation. Yes. It's a feature of the human mind anyway, in a sense, like in the story of Adam and Eve, in a sense. As soon as we know I, then we're separate. We're no longer part of the Garden of Eden. And in that sense, of course, in a wider sense in the world, we're no longer part of the Garden of Eden, then we can set about

destroying it because it's not a part of us. Now, if we were really, really connected to the natural world, for example, we couldn't do what we're doing to the natural world we couldn't destroy what is really a part of us you know it'd be like hammering a nail in your own foot in a sense so it's that separation that causes so many problems and then on a psychological level of course we have it in terms of racism and differences between countries and religions you know all these things matter and make us so different and of course on one level they absolutely don't but we we've got cultures and I think particularly in the western world that are highly individually based on competition on on rivalry on ego and look at both of our leaders you know um ego is is running the world at the moment and

you know just sort of impossible it's true of all of us it's true that we can all get centered in ego we can all be separated and we can all just be concerned with our own little world and forget the wider world again if we're truly mindful and truly in our own stillness, then that's not possible either, because then we're going to be compassionate and loving by nature. That is so true, Martin. That was one thing I experienced as well, and I could not get away from it, and I couldn't deny it. With that came a lot of emotions, and not just looking at myself and how I had believed and thought my entire life, but how this had gone on for generations. And I just was so angry. And sometimes I still get so angry.

And I am so against separation. and I always try to remind people that you know our soul this energy whatever you want to call it it has no judgments like that it doesn't even have a gender it doesn't have a race it does you know yeah it doesn't have all of the things that we see with our physical eyes it doesn't even give a shit about it no no none exactly exactly nature doesn't care does it it's it's just being its perfection moment by moment perfectly balanced you know absolutely so martin you said something that i love that life is the true therapist at first i was pissed i'm like are you telling me i didn't have to spend thousands and thousands that I love, that life is the true therapist. At first I was pissed. I'm like, are you telling me I didn't have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars?

Ask for a refund. Get a refund. I could have just gone to life and asked life, what the hell? I want a refund. I mean, Mandy, you didn't have enough lessons? Come on. I really love the poems of Rumi. His poetry often speaks to just allowing what comes to come through the door, sort of classically with the poem, The Guest House, where you welcome every guest, even the one who's taking your furniture.

Just allow it all in because all of it is exquisitely balanced and designed to open you up to what's next it doesn't mean we're going to like it or want it or approve of it but but then who would like a breakdown or really choose a breakdown that's not the point the point is liberation and life's uncompromising if liberation is what we've signed up for then all that isn't that falls away and sometimes ruthlessly via being in a coma or or a really challenging experience and that's the form that it comes in. And we participate in that. You know, one of the things that happens a lot in mental health work, particularly in the sort of national health service system, is people come along thinking they've failed in some way. So they've got an illness, they've got some sort of breakdown,

which they see as a failure. Understandably, that's our cultural view but we don't see the leaves falling off the trees in autumn as a failure you don't go and try and stick them back on that's the whole point of nature there's a perfection to all that that happens including the breakdown of things and the breakdown of what we're caught with individually as well. It's an amazing process and we're part of that creativity. It's extraordinary.

So what I found interesting is that prior to trying the cognitive therapy and the mindfulness, I just wanted it all to go away when that breakdown came. I didn't want to feel it yes i didn't want to feel it i didn't want to experience it or sit with it through that i wanted to go the hell away i just wanted to take a little happy pill is what i called it back then and call it a day but then before i knew it not only could i not feel the stress i I couldn't feel shit. I couldn't cry when people died. I couldn't laugh with my children like I used to. Not that I'm saying medication is not well,

I will definitely say there are times that we need that. But it had gone on for so long, Martin. I took those pills for seven years without doing any work. And I tell you it was the best thing when I was brave enough to face that breakdown face and go through it and feel it feel it yeah yeah for it to go away otherwise you're just numbing it you're just yeah in the band-aid you're just putting it off basically yeah yeah true wow I'm just like really enjoying this conversation. Thank you. Me too. Yeah. We had on a guest a few weeks ago and I felt like my brain broke, like literally broke. And there's a lot about the self inquiry, trying to lose yourself. I do understand it now, especially after editing her episode,

I was really sitting with that. I was even adding pauses so that everyone could also just have a little bit longer time to process. The brain didn't break. But the brain was being restored after editing. And so you've mentioned

non-existence of the self. Yes. Can you explain that for us? What do you think is a self? Well, ultimately, there's no self in the way that we think of the self. That's an illusion, a mirage. But there's something that we might think of as each person's individual fragrance, their own being out of consciousness the form that that consciousness

takes for each being if we explore again inquire into into our ourselves we won't find anyone really there other than the story of me or you and that's what we confuse as the self and the non-self if we're to give it a name it's more like a universal consciousness out of which each being comes as form maybe we'll send him the original episode and have him break that shit down for us i don't want my brain to break i think yours could handle it, honestly. Like Zen quotes get you thinking. I like them. I do.

Because it makes you search just a little bit more inside. People say, you know, Buddha just said things very simply, but we look for something so much far deeper. There's that paradox. Sometimes it is just what it is. Yeah. No, absolutely. And that's hard for us, isn't it? Complex, sophisticated beings to just be with it as it is. Overthinking.

Overthink everything. Add a little sugar and spice to everything. We just like to get in our own way and make everything more difficult than it really is. Martin, you had a lesson in there that was beautiful and it was about listening. Can you talk about what it means to truly listen? Yeah.

The book's title comes from a question I asked a Buddhist nun. She was teaching in our hospital. I said, how would you describe what you do? And she said, I sit in my stillness and I invite people into theirs. Often when we're listening to other people, we're also listening to the noise within ourselves. That maybe we think, oh, I should say this or I should say that. Or I shouldn't be as vulnerable as I listen, or how come I'm crying?

So because we're listening so much to the inner voices, we're not listening so well to the other person in the room, the other being in the room. And I think that's what Jin Ho meant by I sit in my stillness so I'm not too taken up with my own inner chatter and then I invite people into their stillness this is something I practice during my therapy at times and so my amazing therapist one time said, watch their mouth as they're talking to you, right? I go home and I'm going to try this, right? I'm like, dang, my kids need some chapstick. Oh my God. I love you. You're so funny. Now do you see why I love her and she's my best friend?

She's funny. Absolutely. Mindfulness is becoming very popular right now. Yeah. First of all, why do you think that? I think it's a counterbalance to what we were talking about earlier. I think deep down, a lot of people know that we've lost our way, that ego isn't going to make us happy. Celebrity isn't going to make us happy, celebrity isn't going to make us happy, fame, fortune, none of the things that we prize in our Western world is going to make us happy. And I think, understandably, there's a strong movement towards the Buddha, particularly, who did speak about how to be happy, and not the sort of happy that comes from acquisitions, but the sort of fundamental happiness that each of us already is again,

already is that happiness, but we don't know how to do it. Yeah. We don't know. We've forgotten. Yeah. You don't have the, have like bring your parent to school day. Yeah. That's terrifying terrifying you didn't go oh yes i did i must i went and taught mindfulness to that whole class first graders it was in first grade same shoes i i hope i did i don't know they did well and many of them talked about it for like the next two years with me whenever they saw me. I love that. Back before Shanna was mindful and when she was in the chaos of life that she was creating,

she would get up and like take her child to school and she looked down one day and saw that she had on two totally completely different boots. Two colors, one high, high one short like who can do that she was not mindful all right shanna you're gonna appreciate this one are you ready oh wait wait wait what are you doing uh-oh no yeah i'm not gonna do anything she's too vulnerable no you can edit it you can edit it out if you want no way so shan i take a wild guess who was in his book my buddy carl young i swear he might have been one of the smartest people on earth I can't find anything that he didn't have like some profound thought about did you did you know Martin that Shanna even discovered after I'd been reading the big book of AA for like eight years that he was part of

that as well I didn't know that no yeah really no yes it was homies with bill and bob was he yes they got a lot of their inspiration directly from him well it makes sense it's a wonderful system so me and anna love synchronicity and that's why i have to bring this up because you put a twist on it um so you have a in, it says synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in time and space as meaning something more than mere chance. That was from Young. Yeah. And then you say, instead of seeing life as a collection of random events and chance meetings with others, we could see these as manifestations of a unified whole yeah we'd see everything as interconnected and nothing acting separately or individually

yes okay i need you talk about that yeah how does synchronicity create wholeness well no it's it's more the other way around is a manifestation of wholeness so everything being one then of course what happens over here is not random it's part of a massive, infinite whole event, really. And there's an English astronomer, I think I might quote in the book, called Fred Hoyle. And he said the chances of this, well, just us now having this conversation, sitting on this little planet as it revolves around the sun, are extraordinarily small the equivalent of

lining up 27 fruit machines pulling all the handles and they're all coming up cherries that's the likelihood of all this and it's so exquisitely balanced so much part of one whole again beyond the mind's capacity to know that it's just amazing and after i read the bit about fred hoyle because there's so many factors you know the distance from the sun the fact we've got an atmosphere and a molten core a moon that stabilizes us in a certain way and i read afterwards that even jupiter plays a part in that, because Jupiter's gravitational field is so strong that it hoovers up unwanted asteroids at the edge of the galaxy to protect the rest of the galaxy from collisions with large pieces of rock. So everything, everything is so perfectly balanced

in order for this to be happening. And, of course, we're a microcosm of that. So each of our bodies and the relationship of the body to air and water and the elements, unbelievably balanced and harmonious. Yeah yeah it seemed too good to be true yes extraordinary and and yet we forget that and and think that you know the the mind knows better or ego knows better and you know we forget we forget again what we are which is extraordinarily creative beings part of this amazing tapestry of connection beautiful very beautiful so martin how does one who is really

busy has eight hours of work is constantly being pulled a million different ways, who is not comfortable in that nothingness, who doesn't even know, like, it's uncomfortable. I've had a few people tell me it's really actually very uncomfortable for them to not have their brain going. Yes. How does one like that come to a place of wellness? Well, I think there's an element of going through it because i think that's a really important thing that people feel uncomfortable with the nothingness or not doing anything just sitting just being there part of the practice is to continue with that which doesn't necessarily mean a you know a seven day silent retreat but if it does, then fine, because these things are worth sitting with and worth practicing. Thich Nhat Hanh, who you mentioned, once said, if we're to have peace

in the world, we need to be able to enjoy it. And I think that's what he was talking about. We don't enjoy peace easily, and we tend to create little dramas and little things going on to make us feel alive and important etc so we need to be able to enjoy peace and that in this instance might mean sitting just in the space in the silence allowing ourselves to be there. And this is something that I find a lot of people that have very stressful jobs seem to think that if they do this, then they're not going to get enough done. Is this something you can practice in the morning and then take it with you throughout the day? Or is this something you can still be productive and still do your job but still be in that stillness throughout the day yes exactly more the second really it's not that being in the stillness sort of stops us and we don't become a like a jelly in the corner sort of thing not doing anything

it's more that our actions come from stillness and they can still be actions they can still be movement but the source of them is stillness and that's really qualitatively different from actions that come from should from a driven sense of i should be doing this or doing that one of the exercises that i first started to kind of experiment mindfulness with was just washing my hands. And then that turned into washing dishes. And because it was stuff that I do like twice. Well, I wash my hand more, but I mean, I have to do dishes sometimes

two, three times a day. I have a big family. It's ridiculous. The next time you do something else, maybe like vacuuming, instead of filling that space up with a bunch of worries and about what you're going to do next, you might find yourself really being in the moment with your freaking vacuum cleaner. It's amazing what can actually, what you might discover there.

Yeah. Well, I love what you said, because I think that a lot of people don't understand that, that you can have action and stillness. I mean, there's another paradox, right? But it's having that action come from that place of stillness. I've never been able to piece that together. So thank you for that. I can pass that on and explain it to them because those two in your brain, you're like, wait, what? I have to sit and be still, but I've got a million phone calls to make today for my job. How do you do both? So that really kind of bridged that for me. Thank you.

Tell our listeners where they can find this amazing book. Yeah. It's on Amazon and I think Barnes and Noble is, is the American company. I think probably you can find it as well. And your website is? It's nonjewelmindfulness.com very good thank you very much it's been a pleasure yeah for me too Martin we do this thing on our podcast called BTSD And now it's time for break that shit down.

Trust who you are, be who you are. That'll take you to a fundamental stillness. Thanks so much, Martin. It's been a pleasure. You're welcome. Thanks for inviting me. I've really enjoyed it. Yes.

Now you have to go eat supper. I do. All right. Be mindful washing those dishes. Thank you so much. Thank you too. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week.

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