Sense of Soul - Tao of Inner Peace

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast we welcomed Diane Dreher, PhD, she is the author of five nonfiction books including the best-selling Tao of Inner Peace. She is an award-winning university professor and positive psychology researcher whose work on hope has been recognized internationally. Diane has a master's degree in counseling and is credentialed as a positive psychology coach with the International Coaching Federation. She is also a lecturer and fellow of the Positive Psychology Guild in the UK. Diane’s books, workshops, and webinars blend the wisdom of the past with powerful strategies from contemporary psychology and neuroscience to help us meet the challenges of our time with greater courage, creativity, and hope. Diane's books have been translated into ten languages and her work has been featured in USA Today, Entrepreneur, Redbook, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Science of Mind, radio and TV talk shows, and web sites on leadership and personal growth.  Visit her website: https://www.dianedreher.com https://www.northstarpersonalcoaching.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianedreher/ https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/65249.Diane_Dreher Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon!! Our community of seekers and lightworkers who get exclusive discounts, live events like SOS Sacred Circles, ad free episodes and more. You can also listen to Shanna’s new mini series, about the Goddess Sophia! Sign up today and help support our podcast. As a member of any level you get 50% off Shanna’s Soul Immersion Healing Experience! Right now we are doing an Empath workshop, come join us! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Try KACHAVA! Your Daily Superblend. For your gut, your brain, your muscles, your skin, your hair, your heart. Your whole health. Use this link below!  https://www.kachava.com/senseofsoul

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 we have with us Dr. Diane Dreyer. She is the author of five nonfiction books, including the bestseller Tao of Inner Peace. She's an award-winning university professor and positive psychology researcher whose work on hope has been recognized internationally. And we are so excited that she's joining us to share her wisdom with us today. Thank you so much for being with us, Diane. How are you? Great. You know, I'm looking forward to our conversation. Yay. Where do you live? San Francisco Bay Area, Los Gatos, 60 miles south of San Francisco, over the hill from Santa Cruz.

Where are you all? We're in Colorado. Oh, beautiful. Super excited to talk about the Tao. I've always been very attracted to it. It was one of the first things that I would say like outside of Christianity that I actually ventured into. And it was only actually through some classes that I took in massage school. Oh, yeah. I'm a certified massage practitioner. I've taught yoga. You know, we're on the path, right? Yeah, I didn't know that was going to happen to

me. Such a surprise. Well, you know, we take one step and it leads to another and then now here we are. But yeah, the Tao is very inclusive. It deals with energies. It puts us in touch with the cycles of nature. Yes. It's actually possible to be a practicing Taoist and also have a, be a Buddhist or a Catholic or, you know, it's simply the wisdom of nature, which we're all part of, whether we're aware or not. One of the oldest books ever, which is the Tao, isn't it? Yep. Over 25 centuries ago. Yes.

And, you know, I think that's wild because, you know, it's not as commonly heard of as the Bible. So where and when? I'm curious, the history? Good question. The Tao Te Ching has been translated more than any book in the world, except the Bible. And I believe that biblical teachings, you know, reached people in Western Europe and the Western part of the world, but the Tao reached people in the Eastern part of the world. And for a long, long time, people in the West didn't know anything about the East. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I was there. Now we're all connected, but, you know, it took a while for people, you know, in Western Europe to venture out beyond their local places. And then they started finding new civilizations and new possibilities. The Jesuits sent missionaries to Japan in the Renaissance,

and they were going to bring their truth to the East. It wasn't a, you know, a conversation. It was a, you know, kind of conversion. You're actually a historian when it comes to the Renaissance specifically, right? Yeah, it's the historical approach to Renaissance literature. I love that. Oh, there were people in the Renaissance and the 17th century who were rediscovering the truths that are in the Tao, but they just didn't know the Tao. Exactly. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? So I have a question for you. A lot of the rabbit holes I've gone down over the last few years was trying to find what the original scripture in the Bible meant because it had been translated so many times. Is this the same? Is this book similar because

it's been translated so many times? Do you think the original meaning has gotten lost or has been changed like the Bible? Oh, Mandy, that's a very, very good question. Yeah, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and then translated into Greek and then translated into Latin and then translated from the Latin into English, German, French, etc. And we know that there are words in one language that don't exist in another language. So that could be a problem. The Tao Te Ching was written in Chinese characters, and those characters are still there. The characters then get translated into whatever our language is. So the Tao means there's a nice character for the Tao.

The Tao means the way or the path, and it can be translated as the way, the path. De means virtue. Qing is a sacred book. So it could be the way of virtue, the way of life. You know, people have translated even the title of the Tao Te Ching many different ways, but we can always go back to the original Chinese characters and see what they said, whereas we can't do that with the Bible. Right. Okay. Can you tell us about Lao Tzu? Lao Tzu was an ancient wise person who lived during something called the Warring States period in ancient China. And he was a contemporary of Confucius, who was much more conservative. Confucius talked about following the rules, living in conformity with culture,

honoring your family, you know, staying within kind of the bounds of civilization, and living a virtuous life that way. Lao Tzu was sort of like the Henry David Thoreau of ancient China. He went out and he sought consolation in nature and studied nature and saw in nature this wisdom of water, which is gentle and nurturing, yet with perseverance can cut through solid rock. The cycles of the seasons, the fact that there are energy patterns within and around us. And so his wisdom, his take on how to find meaning, purpose, and a sense of stability, you know, something that he could depend upon in a very confusing time like our own, you know, was to go back to nature and be inspired by nature. So that's who he was. We don't know much more about him because it was 25

centuries ago that he wrote, and nobody wrote his biography at the time, but that's what we know about Lao Tzu. Did he write anything else? As far as I know, no. And his teachings were delivered as he left this life. They were delivered. The Tao Te Ching was delivered apparently near the end of his life, which kind of encapsulates all of the wisdom that he gained from nature. Okay. I want to take a step back really fast. How did Diane get to this place? Were you always, you know, just curious? Were you a curious child? Did you love history? Did your mom take you to like a Renaissance festival? And from there you were like off and running? Well, yes, yes and no. Yes, I've always been curious. Apparently, there's a

via character survey that we can take via character.org created by the positive psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, among others. And they looked at all the world's history and literature and found 24 character strengths that are common to all humanity. Courage, curiosity, spirituality, you know, the capacity to love. Many, many others, you know, 24. My top strength is curiosity. And love of learning is another one. But when I was 10 years old, my father was stationed, he was an Air Force colonel at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. And so we moved from this country to a completely different culture where our house on the base, the windows were made out of seashells, not glass. Okay. Mango and papaya trees grew in our yard. We had a number of people who came to work in the house and the young man who was our chef

and also housekeeper, my mother loved all this attention. She didn't have to do any housework at all. He would polish the floor by dancing across the floor with a coconut husk and let the coconut oil polish the floor. So I helped him and we'd be dancing on the floor with our coconut husks. It was a different world. My father brought back art from Hong Kong and Tokyo. He was a pilot and would fly there on missions. And all of a sudden, you know, here was this beautiful Chinese brush painting and this incredible calligraphy. So at 10 years old, I was trying to do Chinese brush painting and calligraphy. It opened up my eyes to the fact that, you know, the Western world is this, but

there is a much larger world out there. And we can learn a lot from the wisdom of the East. So I've been learning about the wisdom of the East since I was 10. But I did meditation and started reading the Tao when I was in college. How amazing that they took care of like Air Force that way. Like you guys had a chef. You had, I mean, wow. Like that was on the base. That was on the base. My father was a colonel.

Not everybody in the Air Force officers had. We had a Baltimore, our chef and, you know, housekeeper. We had a lavendera who came to do the laundry. We had a person who came to do the yard work. And it made me feel guilty, actually, that all these adults were doing all this work and nobody in the family, all I had to do was make my bed in the morning. That was it. She loved it, however, because she had a lot of time to go to luncheons and go shopping and play golf and you know live the life of uh luxury and then we got transferred back to the states and

everything was back to a relative western normal dang it your mom had to start doing laundry again yeah she had to do laundry she had had to wash the dishes, you know, cook. So then did you not have like a strong religious family then? Like they didn't, you didn't go to church on Sundays? They did that. We didn't have people who did that for us in the Philippines. My father was a very devout Catholic. So how did he feel? But like you said, the Tao is more of a practice. It's not really a religion. Yeah, there's, there are two forms of Taoism. There's Taoism as a philosophy, and then Taoism as a religion. And I follow Taoism as a philosophy. But there are some people who have very elaborate practices of religious Taoism and they sit in meditation

and they, they focus on different parts of their bodies and, you know, this kind of cleansing, healing practice. Okay. Kind of like Buddhism, you know, I mean, more, more into the sense of interior life and meditation. But my father was a very interesting man. He actually practiced yoga. And I don't know how he learned that because he was born on a farm in Louisville, Kentucky. But he did. He could get into the lotus position and he did yoga every morning. That's amazing. Even when you were younger? Yeah. It seems to indicate that he learned it somewhere. Maybe he learned it from nature or from the goats in Kentucky.

Who knows? There are these practices that are universal, I feel. I agree. We can connect with them in lots of different ways and at different times. I mean, they're part of the atmosphere. Yeah. I have my son who is autistic, who dreaded going to yoga and he was devastated, but he got put in that. Now actually loves it and does it often. He will drop down into a pose and I'm like, whoa. Yeah. And I'm about to sign him up for glasses because he loves it so much.

That's wonderful. It is. Yoga means to yoke or to join. And it's, you know, it's to join all the parts of us to give us a sense of unity with, you know, mind, body, spirit. Yeah. I think I'm definitely going to encourage it because it's like you have to follow whatever they are passionate about. And he was very passionate about not going. And then once he went, he really enjoyed it.

Yeah. So tell us your book. You didn't just write this book. You wrote this book a while ago, didn't you? I think I must have been writing this book for most of my life, but the first edition came out. Yeah. It seems to have gone through different incarnations like like many individuals, perhaps. I wrote it first in 1990. Another edition came out in 2000. The e-book came out in 2021. And the new audiobook edition just came out this year. Because my in our world and that there are these lessons. So we have this beautiful audio book, which is, you know, a lot of people listen to audio books now instead of reading books.

They can, some of them, my friends walk, take walks in nature and listen to the audio book, figure that one out. So, yeah, many many many different editions and I'm thinking of writing a workbook uh to go along with the original book that would be short practices that people could could use that would be helpful that would be helpful but it isn't it's not that hard of a read no that's what I love about it you know know, is that your book, as well as the original Tao, well, in its translation, can sit right with anybody. Yeah. And what's wonderful is that the Tao is yin and yang, right? Day and night, east and west, breathing in and breathing out. It reconciles the polarities in our lives, self and other.

If we could realize that and look for the larger whole that contains the two opposites, mountain and valley, the landscape, listening and speaking, communication. The DAO challenges us to look beyond one polarity, one extreme or the other, and to see how they both fit together into a larger, more holistic pattern. And any of us can relate to that. When we're in a conflict with ourselves or with someone else, there are two opposite polarities, and maybe the solution is to find common ground where they touch. So do you think the West has anything to offer the East when it comes to wisdom? Oh, my goodness, Mandy. The West is very, very yang. Yeah.

And the East, until recently, has been more yin, more contemplative, more reflective, more introspective. Yeah. Too much introspection and not enough action we have stagnation action without reflection we have mindless action so i think the west offers problem solving dealing with externals yeah make things we're real good at that and we're very very busy. Yeah, all this yang energy, let's make action now. Let's do it. We're in some of the East, let's let's meditate. And so I think we need both. Well, and when you were describing, you know, the bigger picture and the polarity, and learning how to intertwine them. That's what I was thinking. I was thinking maybe we're yin and yang and we can learn from each other.

Absolutely. Yes. There's not one way, especially with the complex problems of our world today. We need both and. Both nations of the douth that there was a business philosopher w edwards deming who came up with this total quality management you plan you act you know and then you produce whatever your product is so that there are three seasons beginning middle and then

completion of the project and in the west that's what we think of you know yeah you get an idea you work and then you complete the project Deming said there's a fourth stage which is to look back and see what you've learned from the process in fact fact, that into the next cycle. Right. After World War Two, he came up with this theory, and he was going to present it to the Detroit automakers. And they said, Why should we do that? You know, we're fine. We're just putting new fins on the car and, you know, let her rip for the next production. And so nobody in this country really was willing to think about that fourth season of contemplation. Four seasons in nature, spring, summer, fall, and winter, the period of, you know, dormancy to reflect, right? And then there can be another spring so he took his theory to japan the japanese

said yes okay this makes great sense this this goes and so they they produce their product they what they learned from it they produced a better product the next time and from the 1950s until you know quite recently Japanese products have been you know Japanese cameras uh electronics cars kept getting better and better and then they threat the west so yeah yeah yeah yeah well let's let's talk about the the elements let's get into that because we just had someone on not too long ago where we talked about the elements um in india which i found were similar to the ones of the dao except for they don't have metal actually where does metal come into and why oh that's interesting yeah well I have a friend who's an acupuncturist, and she definitely goes with all five of the elements. And, you know, they're all necessary as part of creation.

And I think we each have a dominant element, fire, metal, et cetera. It's helpful to know what our dominant element is and then to recognize that we need the others to maintain our balance. So it's a question of, okay, both and. Yeah, I think it's important to know your opposite especially which mine is metal yeah yeah mine I think is wood the opposite yeah yeah that would be close second for me as well so I guess you could have too much of something or too low of something I guess it could be just like a chakra in some way like like within yourself that has maybe, you know, a depletion or an excessive amount of energy into a certain element.

I would think that mine is fire, actually. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a good energy if it doesn't get too extreme so that anything that is extreme is an imbalance, right? We're too much. We're leaning too far in one direction and it throws the whole system off. So to recognize our dominant entity, our dominant talent, our dominant strength, and to, you know, to honor it and respect it, but also realize, oh dear, that's my fire getting carried away here. You know, I am too energized. I'm too enthusiastic. I am not patient enough. I need to be more earth, et cetera. To be more water,

I need to be more flexible. But do you think that sometimes it's appropriate to be unbalanced? We've had on a guest probably at the very beginning who said too much attention has put on being balanced. That sometimes if you have like a project at work or a project in life, it's okay to get into that fire because that fire is going to motivate you. That fire is going to light a fire under your ass, literally. And so for a moment, it's okay not to have the balance because it's fire is going to light a fire under your ass, literally. And so for a moment, it's okay not to have the balance because it's what's going to make you thrive in that moment.

To be healthy is homeostasis and our bodies seek a balance, you know, physiologically, psychologically, et cetera. But when we've got a big challenge to just sit there and say, I need to be balanced now, then we don't respond to the challenge. It's like the stress reaction. Okay. Stress is adaptive. It's a survival mechanism. If a car comes toward us when we're in the crosswalk, we need to jump out of the way. I mean, we need to take immediate action. And so with the stress reaction, our immune system and our digestive

system shut down, we get tense, our muscles tense, you know, we get all this adrenaline, so we can get into fight or flight. We need that. But when we're in chronic stress, all the time stressed, it's very bad for our health. And what also happens with stress is that our higher brain functions are offline. You know, we're not saying, as the car is speeding toward us, what kind of car is this? Oh, my goodness, it's a Tesla. No, we don't do that. We, you know, it's survival. So when our higher brain functions are shut down, we make very foolish decisions. We're reactive, we're defensive, we're anxious all the time. And I think that there are a lot of people these days who are under chronic stress. Lots of reasons, COVID, political unrest, all the terrible news that we get about people shooting each other and about the war in Ukraine and everything. It's enough to make people chronically

stressed. But then we can't access our higher brain functions to solve our problems. And we make foolish reactions and make things worse. It's important to realize when we're in balance and why. And what Mandy said, absolutely, if you've got a big project and you've got to just push on through it, but then to get back in balance. Yeah. Like mountain and valley, they're both there. They're part of the day and night. We experience them on a regular basis. Before you practice this, what did hardships look like and how'd you handle them versus

how you do today? And what guidance would you have for listeners? A heartbreak I experienced when I was in college. I was working my way through the University of California, Riverside, working at our local newspaper, the Press Enterprise. And I absolutely loved college. I was a first generation college student. I was self-supporting. It was my declaration of independence and moving out into the world. And my boyfriend, who was also working his way through college, was a year ahead of me. So in the spring of my junior year, as we were standing outside under the stars, he proposed to me. And of course, I said, yes, it was very romantic. And his next statement was, good, now that we've gotten that settled,

you'll drop out of school and work so that I can go to grad school. And I said, he said, if you love me, you'll drop out of school and work so I can go to grad school. And I said, why can't we both go to grad school? And he answered, you're being selfish. And he broke up with me that night. Good. Oh, I'm that guy. Yeah, right. And I thought, okay, so I was stuck in the false dilemma, either or, all or nothing, win or lose. And we get stuck in that with a lot of problems. We feel like there are only two possibilities. And this world offers us so many possibilities, infinite possibilities,

if we have eyes to see. Well, he went to grad school in Texas, and I finished my senior year and got a full graduate fellowship to UCLA. So we both got our PhDs, but we got them in different places and at different times. Now, what could have happened is that we could have seen Yen and yang, his dreams and my dreams, as part of a larger whole. We could have been a more emotionally mature couple. And instead of saying all or nothing, because you're a female, you must support me because I'm a male and, you know, whatever. We've got a little sexism there. Sexism, racism, ableism, all that, that's power over. Power with is cooperation and finding the larger possibilities, finding common ground.

We both could have worked. He could have worked for a year, saved his money and gone to grad school the following year when I did. We could have both gotten fellowships, part-time jobs, who knows, but those were off the table because he saw only all or nothing, either or. And probably it was just as well for me that we did not end up going on together if that was his worldview. But at the time it was heartbreaking because I couldn't see, couldn't see that I would have to choose between my own vocation and the person I loved. That doesn't seem to be a realistic choice. We should be able to have love and meaning in our lives.

And I think the Tao shows us that there's a larger possibility there when we listen to each other. When we ask, you know, we listen to ourselves and say, what do I really need right now? And we listen to the other person. What does that person really need? Not what the person's ego demands, not what we're afraid of, but you know, what do I really need underneath it all? And then somewhere there's got to be shared needs, common ground, and you can build from there. And this is a lesson that personally and politically, we all need to learn from the Tao. I love it. So it's, the Tao teaches compassion, communication, empathy. What other things does it teach? Oh, it teaches wonderful visions of leadership, which are inclusive. There's a quote from the Tao that says, with the best leaders, when the work is done, the project completed, the people all say we did it

ourselves, which is a little quote from the Tao that Carl Rogers used to carry in his wallet, because he felt that as a therapist, and in his later years as a peacemaker, he started the Carl Rogers Peace Project, and would bring people from hostile parts of the world, you know, together, different factions to listen to each other, to do active listening, to find common ground. And he felt like together, we can create a whole lot more than any one person can ever do by him or herself, because we have multiple perspectives. And so the Tao, 25 centuries ago yet, affirmed a vision of leadership that is democratic, inclusive, holistic. The leader is a facilitator, listens to all the people, and together they come up with solutions.

So I find that rather amazing, given how old that quote is. Now, the Tao does not speak of a god. Is that right? A god figure or godhead. It's nature. Nature. The universe. The universe, nature, the energies within and around us, cosmic energy cycles.

There's no worshipping a divine being per se. Have you ever heard Gnosticism compared to Taoism? Oh, yeah. That's an interesting point. Yeah. Very, very similar. Yeah. I think that's why Taoism as a philosophy can be practiced alongside any religion because, you know, unless it's an

extremely narrow religion, but because it's just the wisdom of nature, you know, plant a seed and it's amazing. I've just been planting seeds in my garden. The seeds germinate, these little sprouts come up, and I planted green beans, and they know enough to climb up the stakes that I put in the ground. They have these little tendrils, and they climb up the stakes. How do they have the wisdom, right? They know that they need to be supported, but I don't need to do that. I can go out and sure enough, there's one of them that's climbed up. You know, it's about, what, 12 inches now of climbing up the stake. And every day it climbs up a little more. There's an intelligence, a wisdom, a power, a life force all around us and within us.

And the Tao really affirms that. Wow. Yeah. Yesterday I gardened for the first time in my entire life. I had the house to myself for the first time in a month and I went out and I planted pumpkins and watermelons and green peppers and strawberries and cucumbers and squash. And I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm excited. And it was so fun. And it was really interesting to read about each one because some of them you had to soak in water

first overnight. Some were so tiny, you could barely see them like the strawberry seeds. Some were so big and then some can grow through heavy soil. Some need soft soil. Some need to go down two inches. Some need to go down a quarter inch. Like it was so fascinating to me. I can't wait. That's terrific. I actually wrote a book called Inner Gardening, which is gardening is a spiritual practice, which it's part of my, you know, Western philosophy, medieval saints and philosophers

talked about, you know, the book of nature, which is like the book of the Bible, and that we could learn from the book of nature, that there are, there are messages, there are lessons there for us. And one of them, I think, is, is trust and faith, you know, to realize that, you know, you plant the seed, right. But something else germinates the seed and each plant has its own individual way of being. Yes. Like you want to know what word kept popping in my mind, the whole like couple hours I was doing was magic. Yeah. It's literally like these tiny little seeds are magic. And like you said, in an intelligence and how gifted are we? Like I can cut open a green pepper that I bought at King supers, take the seeds out and go plant them in my garden and grow more green

peppers. Like we just seem to really take these things for granted because as I was opening each one of these little envelopes of seeds, I was like, I paid like $7 for this. I could have gotten these little seeds off of the fruits and the vegetables that I've been buying for years. Like, it's just, you know, I had a lot of aha moments. It was super fun. And it's also exciting. I told my husband, you'd be so proud of me. I garden today. And he said, I'll be even more proud of you when we're eating these yummy foods in fall.

I can't promise that, but hopefully. I guess it's an affirmation of faith that I need to plant the seeds and not all my seeds will come up. So you plant enough so that you've got enough. I was looking one day at a tomato plant, thinking, here's this tomato. And in each tomato, there are all these tomato seeds, right? It looks like, I don't know, you know, maybe 30 or 40 inside one tomato. So that one tomato can give you 30 or 40 seeds. I haven't stopped to count them.

And each one of those seeds could be a new tomato plant that could plant, they could create more tomatoes. I mean, there's this infinite capacity of creativity in nature, in the universe. You're so right. I love that. I love that word you used, infinite capacity of creativity, because, you know, you're right. Nature can teach you so much. I opened one and I didn't even realize I bought it, but it was tape, you know, like a strip of paper and the seeds are in there. And then you just lay the whole entire strip under the ground. And I started thinking about how every single one vegetable, and this is,

this is really out there had different boundaries. The pumpkins boundaries were that I, you don't crowd me. I need you to be a certain amount of inches and feet away from me. And then there were other vegetables that thrives closer together. It's just so interesting. Yeah, like people. I mean, people who are really contemplative, they need a lot of quiet time. And they're introverts. And there are other people who are extroverts, and they need a lot of people and a commotion around them. And you know, we're all individuals. So are so are the plants in our gardens. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh, let me share one more thing. See, I'm getting excited. Now. I didn't know that pumpkins grow at night. They do all their growing at nighttime. Does it probably take so much energy to do it in the sun?

I don't know, but I was fascinated. And then I started thinking about, wait, is there something to that with the Cinderella story? Well, there are people who are night people and morning people. And I guess some plants are too. Some plants actually bloom at night. Jasmine, but I didn't know that about pumpkins. I just planted some pumpkin seeds and they came up. I'm going to have to go out in the morning and see what each morning and see what they've done. Did you use all the seeds that I bought you? I did. I did. I went to show work. Shanna, I loved the strawberry basket you bought

me because I, you soaked it overnight and then you'd fluff the soil with a fork. The strawberry seeds, you could barely see they were so tiny. They were like microscopic. I couldn't even believe it. I was like, wait, where are they? You know, when we're in touch with that creative and the creative potential of nature, we absolutely transcend the very limitations that our culture can be very easily put on us. And we're creating life so how you know how beautiful is that that you can create life anytime you want by planting something yeah and and we work with the the power of the universe because we need to make sure that they get the right amount of

sunlight you have to plant them in the right place. Some plants like more sun than others. You have to make sure they have soil and water. Not too much, because then you'll drown them. And not, you know, not a drought either, which we have out here in California. So we have to, you know, a certain amount of balance. They need, we need, and that we work with nature. We don't make it happen. We're, again,

cooperating, power with, and then we benefit from the harvest. But there's a harvest of insight and inspiration that comes during the whole growing process. Everything is different. Everyone is unique. Everyone requires some, maybe something different, maybe even some are more involved than the others. That reminds me of my two new neighbors are two donkeys and I named them Jack and Samuel. And Samuel is incredibly timid. And it's taken me like two weeks to get him just to even come to the fence. And I have to really talk soft and I have to move slow. Jack is like the second he hears me come in, he runs down and he's like making noises and so excited. And to see their two different personalities has been so fun. They're so different, but they're the same animal. Rightin and yang right yeah they're so cute mandy and i both just got puppies they're sisters and my mine are like yin and yang

they're black and white they're boy and girl one's you know very laid back and and very intellectual and the other one's kind of goofy and same sporadic and jumping and yeah it's like very interesting to see and she just wants to play he's just like leave me the hell alone oh my gosh at night they want to snuggle. Oh, that's so cute. So I have a question I've asked a few people. Do you think if there was not duality, if everyone was balanced, if we all got to that place of just pure balance, do you think this world can function in a place of just pure love? Wow. That is a question for the ages, for the universe. I think we are evolving toward greater love and inclusiveness, but we're evolving through a lot of fear and anxiety. People are in a state of fear. They can't feel love. They're into self-protection. They've got to hide. They've got to run away. We need to put more active,

compassionate love, beginning with ourselves, in order to change, to raise the level of energy around us. We have to raise the level of energy within us, which is why, you know, the Tao of inner peace, but the inner peace is required for outer peace. Okay. To be in a state of balance, if we're talking about scales, you know, one side of the scale is totally balanced with the other side and nothing is moving. I don't think we'll ever be in that state because we live on a planet where we have night and day. We have mountain and valley. Life and death. Dynamic balance that, you know, we move from one extreme through the other, but we don't get stuck in either extreme.

So that static balance would be, perish the thought, very boring. You know, nothing new would happen. And we have new things light to the world. There are always going to be challenges. A tree fell on my neighbor's house. This was unexpected. Okay. Yeah.

They had to deal with that challenge. And they dealt with it beautifully. They said, well, we were thinking of remodeling our house and now we get a chance to do the wood from the tree. Yeah. Right. About nature though. Cause if nature is our greatest teacher and we can see its balance, well, now that humans have tampered so much in a negative way with nature, I mean, we had snow at the end of May here in Colorado and it broke a lot of the branches. I mean, my tree, I'm going to have to cut off a lot of it because it wasn't prepared to hold the weight of the snow because it just got its new leaves. That is not the nature of that's not the law of nature, right? That's not the natural balance. Something has been altered and we're responsible of that.

So maybe it's the wisdom in it is it's reflecting back how we're treating ourselves. Yeah, we're in relationship with nature. And in Chinese philosophy that not all the Chinese currently believe that. Of course, some of them have gotten very yang, but trying to industrialize and move forward. But in the Chinese character, the figure for person is an upside down V. And the character for nature is that upside down V with two parallel lines running through it, one at the top and one in the middle. So that a person is an integral part of nature in Chinese calligraphy.

It's there. And in our language, we don't have humans being part of nature. I think we need to recognize that we're intrinsically linked. We are in relationship with nature. And if one member of the relationship is imbalanced, it imbalances the relationship, which is our civilization, our human beings. We have been in a state of great with instead of power over dominating nature, thinking that it's not a living system, but it's just a source of commodities, material for profit. It's not. And that starts with each individual.

Yeah. Each individual. And when we recognize our oneness with nature, it's good for us. I mean, there's this Japanese practice of forest bathing. There are all kinds of research projects that show that just being out in nature relieves stress, activates our immune system, helps us think more clearly. People, students who would walk around in nature get better grades because their brains work better. I mean, there's a study a long time ago

in a Philadelphia hospital where patients who'd had abdominal surgery, one group of patients had a view of trees outside their window. The other people on the other side of the hall looked out at bare brick walls. Guess what? The people with a view of trees used less pain medication, had fewer side effects, and were discharged earlier. Just looking at trees out the window apparently helped them have a vision of healing. So we can be healed by respecting nature. And nature can be healed from its imbalance, you know, snow in May, etc.

When we are aware of the imbalance and do things to work again, to put things back in balance, which means obviously not to produce so many greenhouse gases and upset the balance of nature. That just made me really think about some crazy stuff. Like I was sitting there thinking like psych wards, you know, there's no trees. They just put them in a small room or people that are put in solitary confinement or jail. They need to be out in nature more. They need to be able to see out their windows. They need to be able to have sunlight. I mean, if we want to rehabilitate these people, then we need to offer them those kinds of solutions. We're actually doing them wrong. Yeah. Imagine if they had, instead of solitary confinement, they had teams of people because we need to interact with other human beings as well, the Dow says that

we're part of community, working in a garden so that they would be, you know, working in a garden with their, you know, neighbors. There have been studies that show in inner city neighborhoods, which have lots of crime and vandalism, that when they bring a community garden into the neighborhood and people start working in the garden together, it cuts down on crime. It also cuts down on domestic violence. I guess people are less stressed and they feel better. It's better for their mental health. So you're absolutely right. And then what would be really cool is that they could grow vegetables in the prison and they could eat organic vegetables and they'd be healthier on many levels. They should have like at my mom's place that she just moved into, it's like a 62 and over community. They have an entire garden outside and it's all, you know, individual squares and they're all numbered and each has their own pump of water.

You can grow whatever you want. But I thought that that was so beautiful because I, you know, a lot of people enjoy doing that. And when you live in certain environments that doesn't have that available, it's full out there. It's called horticultural therapy. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. That people have recognized that. Guess guess what we need to be in

touch with nature and nature needs our respect and nurturing at this point anything we can do to sort of change the system get in there and be subversive i think it's a good idea yeah i was researching about the story of Sophia. She falls into the earth, right? And she becomes, she's the first story of Mother Earth, supposedly her name itself. Gaia, meaning earth, and Sophia meaning wisdom, earth wisdom. This is what the Tao is, is earth wisdom. And I know that he wrote about the great mother, didn't he?

Because I swear, I just recently saw that in one of the books I was studying. Yes, the yin and the earth have been translated as the great mother, the feminine spirit. And in our very yang society, we don't stop long enough to acknowledge we're too busy being Yang. But that wisdom is has been with us for absolutely centuries. It's part of who we are. Yeah. It's a creation. Yeah.

It's so beautiful. And it's so intertwined. You can find it no matter where you are in whatever culture. Yes, because it's part of what it means to be alive on this planet. Except that a lot of people are not necessarily aware of that fact. And what I like about the Tao Te Ching so much is that it emphasizes awareness. We must become aware that we are part of nature. There is a beautiful quote, when we value ourselves as part of nature and value nature as ourselves, we're at home in the oneness of Tao. That the sense of recognizing that we're part of this larger whole, this creative

yin power of nature, gives us something that gives us comfort, it makes us feel at home. And I see a beautiful dog there with Mandy. Again, relating to animals, you know, brings out something in us, this playful spirit. Relating to nature brings out something in us, a sense of being part of something larger than ourselves. When we're imprisoned in our egos and we feel like, you know, we're just an isolated individual, we can become very, very sad, very confused, very anxious. When we recognize our oneness with the creative power of the universe and realize that it's there for us in so many ways, we become at peace and able to live more fully. Beautiful. Is there any difference between that Dao, the D or the T?

I've always wondered that. Oh, well, you see, Shanna, since these were Chinese characters. Yeah. And since Chinese has different dialects and different accents, just like the Americans do, people sound the same in Brooklyn as they do in Houston or in the Pacific Northwest or in the deep south. So that it's Tao and, you know, but it's very often spelled with a T. So it's like Kwan Lin.

I find that with her, too. Yeah. Kwan Lin. And I'm like, OK, is it KW? Is it QU? Well, because when people came from the West to the East, they tried to write down what the words sounded like. Yes. Right.

In our alphabet. Yeah. And so we used to have Peking in China, and now it's Beijing. Oh. And now more recently, the Tao is spelled D-A-O instead of T-A-O because of that. Okay, well, thank you. I think I probably looked that up back then trying to figure that out, and I never really got a great answer. So thanks for that. Oh, good. Yeah. I have a question. Earlier in the interview at the very beginning, Shanna had mentioned that you were a Renaissance historian. Actually,

I have a PhD in Renaissance literature with a historical approach to the literature. There are lots of ways of studying literature, but UCLA PhD program taught the literature within its historical context. Wow, that's so cool. I had no idea there would even be some sort of degree out there on that. That's amazing.

Yeah, my dissertation was on spiritual development in the Renaissance. Oh my gosh, I feel like we need to have you on again just to talk about the Renaissance, because I mean, hello, that's so fascinating in itself. Oh, I'd love to, because I'm thinking that we're ready for a new Renaissance on our planet. I think so too. Can you tell our listeners where they can find your beautiful book and the Audible? Certainly. My new book is available and there's a free sample that you can get by just going to Diane Dreher or the Tao of Inner Peace on amazon.com and you can click on it and you can

actually hear what the audio book sounds like. And the other versions of the book are available there, too. And if they're interested in visiting my website, it's Diane Dreher dot com. D-I-A-N-E-D-R-E-H-E-R. And they can sign up for my seasonal newsletter, which has a new Dow lesson for every season of the year. Oh, awesome. Well, so just so you know, us Colorado people need it to be like winter one day, spring the next, summer the next, then winter again.

Like our seasons are all messed up around here. On one day. We're all for one day. Yeah. Mother nature is so unpredictable in Colorado, but it's so fun. One time I drove to the mountains and I literally went through all four seasons on the way to our drive up to the mountains.

That's amazing. Last two would be absolutely blown away by that. Quick journey through the cycles of the season. Right. And now it's time for Break That Shit Down. What I would like to leave, we're in the middle of challenges that seem so vast. And things seem to be happening so quickly, including the seasons. And yet, each of us has a power within us to make a difference.

The Tao tells us that a tree that grows beyond your reach springs from a tiny seed. A building over nine stories high begins with a handful of earth, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That each step, each small step we take in the direction of our dreams, in the direction of greater good, makes a positive difference in the world. Well, thank you so much for joining us. You've been a blessing to us and to the world and to our listeners. And we just feel very honored to have you. Thank you. It has been an honor to join you and I wish our listeners. And we just feel very honored to have you. Thank you. It has been an honor to join you and I wish you well. And thank you for all the good and all the light you're sharing with the world.

Peace be with you. Peace be with you. Thank you so much. It was so great to be with you today. Thank you. Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe.

Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.