Tara Brach - "Getting Over Yourself": A conversation with Tara Brach and Stephen Josephs

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Executive coach and author Stephen Josephs has worked with many top business leaders, guiding them in transcending the egoic conditioning that limit their impact on other people, and on societal change. In this conversation we look at what he's learned about inner freedom and awakening from his own trauma, from 60 years of spiritual practice, from models of adult development, and from the poetry of Lao Tzu. Stephen and Tara have been close friends for over 50 years, and she considers him her first inspiration for a dedicated practice of meditation. His website is stephenjosephs.com.

Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference. To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste. Greetings. Welcome, my friends. Executive coach and author, Stephen Josephs, has worked with many top business leaders and he guides them in transcending the egoic conditioning that actually limits their impact. on other people and also their capacity to impact social change. And so in this conversation, we look at what he's learned about inner freedom and awakening and being in the role, whatever role we're in, at work, at home, in a way that is expressing our inner freedom.

And he speaks about his own inner trauma and how different practices have helped him with trauma, he draws on 60 years, 60 years of spiritual practice. He draws on models of adult development that show that there's the egoic levels and then there's what's beyond the ego. And he draws on the poetry of Lao Tzu. Personal disclosure, Stephen is a best friend of over 50 years and he was my first real inspiration in terms of meditation. He really helped to evoke in me a love of meditation. I hope you'll enjoy. Welcome, Stephen.

Thank you for doing this with me. This is a delight. So I wanted to jump right in. I have the first kind of main thing I wanted to ask you about, you meditate more than anyone I know for the most part. I mean, you have done hours and hours of practice a day for something like 60 years. And for those listening, Stephen and I met about 50 years ago. So, he's one of my oldest, bestest friends. And speaking to you, Stephen, you are pretty much my first inspiration about meditating. And you guided me. You were a teacher. Still are.

So, and I think what I came away with and what you transmitted was a love of practicing. So I wanted to just start with, you know, what got you going and so dedicated to practice? What does it do for you? Well, it started in desperation. So I had, I got off to a rough start in life and there was some trauma involved. And I wanted to bring that into the conversation because I think a lot of people experienced that and maybe my journey will be instructive to them. When I was about three months old, my mother was very nervous that I was going to die because she had a boy who did die of Sudden, of SIDS, you know, at three months. So she was, was very concerned about me. And my father, watching her be so nervous, said, let's go on a vacation

and we'll just, we'll leave him with a nurse. It was a good idea. It turned out the nurse was rough. And I started refusing food. And when my parents came back, I was being fed intravenously. So that's tough at the beginning because there's no self and other. There's no sense of anything. And it's hard to get your nervous system set that way early on. And I didn't really know how upsetting it was until I was in my 20s. And I was deliriously. in love with this young woman, and I used to ask her to marry me all the time.

Finally, she said, yes. And we woke up the next morning after that, and I looked at her, and a voice in my head said, get the F away from me. I wouldn't want her to touch me or look at me. And this voice in my head was so loud and vicious. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't mature enough to talk to her about it. And I went to psychologists who couldn't help, and our relationship imploded.

And I was just convinced that I would never be able to find love with anyone, that I was incapable of it and deeply flawed. So I ended up going to a tantric yoga retreat where Yogi-Bubhi Bhajan was claiming that, you know, he was this Mahan tantric and he set us up in lines of men and women facing each other, chanting mantras, and holding difficult positions for hours, you know. And I find that, I find that liberating. That was the only way I could connect with a woman without being terrified. So I thought, wow, this could be good. And that started me off in 3HO.

And I spent 10 years there. I had also studied NLP and neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis. And I began to understand through hypnosis the messages that we were getting from Yogi Bhajan. They seemed to be quite poisonous. And so my wife and I, who had had an arranged marriage, And that was my other key to success was that I could get some simulation of intimacy through this arranged marriage. And, you know, I thought it would all work. But after 10 years, we left. And at that point, I was still feeling the results of that early trauma. You know, what I think of meditation sometimes metaphorically as, you know, if you imagine we're standing outside a dark room and we'd like to see what's inside that room, but we'd really like a clear light that we could shine everywhere.

But we don't have a clear light. What we have is a slide projector with all the slides of our beliefs, our traumatic experiences and whatever. and that's how we're searching around the room. And so the question is, how do we drop the slides was kind of my question. It started out that way, but all the way through, I think that practicing, in the beginning, it soothed me. And I thought that was important. And it's only later in the process that I found more profound benefit from meditation. But that's how it started.

Well, it makes sense. When you speak, I mean, that's one of the things that meditation can do. If you learn to just focus your attention and keep it really steady, it can calm and soothe your nervous system. And I love your metaphor. I just think it's so cool just to sense that we're habitually looking at the same slides over and over again. The same beliefs about what's wrong with us or how we're separate from others.

or what we can't trust. And so, as you described, as you matured, you started to be able to shine a light so you could see when those slides are showing and be able to let go of them and actually see what's make your way around the room. And I want to come back to the different ways you use meditation because I feel like you have explored a real weave

that has, I would say, healed in a very deep way, the trauma you just described. So I want to kind of come back to some of the practices. But in addition to meditating for, you know, six decades, you've also been doing executive coaching for 40 years, for a long time, and you've been drawing on spiritual practices. So many of us want our work life to weave with, you know, our spiritual lives. And you've done that. You've wedded the two. And could you just speak a little on what you do as a coach and how you integrate some of these meditation practices? Well, for the first 20 years, I used meditation sometimes with my executive clients, but I didn't really realize the value of it until I went into partnership with a very brilliant man,

Bill Joyner, and he introduced me to the idea of psychological stages of adult development. And understanding those stages really explained a lot to me. So there are stages of adult development, just like there are stages of development with kids. So a five-year-old, cognitively and emotionally is different than a 10-year-old and different than a 12-year-old or an 18-year-old. year old. But with adult development, it doesn't automatically come as easily with age anymore. And people can reach a plateau. And so in our work, we wrote a book called Leadership Agility. In our work, we described two stages that are very common among leaders or executives in corporations

today. So one is the expert stage and the other is the achiever stage. And the expert is really their sense of self is demonstrating that they're experts, that they know stuff, that they have the answer. And the achiever is in the same way ego involved, that there's a sense of self that depends on recognition that they led the charge. And, you know, those stages are. are really useful in one way. They help us develop our skills and capacity. So if I were going to get operated on by a cardiologist, I'd want her to have gone through this stage in her life

where she was trying to be the best heart surgeon in the entire world. And that's how she got her chops to make the pun. But there are stages beyond that. The trouble with those egoic stages is they don't recognize other people in a way that they could. And because of that, they don't use the collective intelligence of teams and groups in their organization. They can't really reverse roles with someone else and have that be meaningful. And it's difficult for them, their timeline is shorter and they don't see the ripple effects of their actions.

But it doesn't mean that you need to progress beyond those stages to be a successful leader financially. There are plenty of people like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, for instance, who were just driven and drove other people really hard. And their financial success is inarguable. On the other hand, I don't think I'd have. like to spend much time in Elon Musk's head from what I hear about him. So there those stages are, we call them heroic stages where you're the hero in your own drama, but post heroic stages are really where all the wealth lies. So tell us more about that because you did a very cool

kind of project where you interviewed leaders and found out about what was beyond those ego stages. So, yeah, so please share. Yeah. So when we were looking for people to interview, I would ask people that I knew to recommend people. And I had three questions. I would ask, is there someone you know that we could interview whose leadership has made a difference? and you admire them personally, and they've been in the game long enough to get over themselves.

And I would watch their faces fall with that last criterion, because it's rare. You know, about 10% of leaders are at that stage. There is one I interviewed. I think I've told you about this one before. This man was an angel investor, So he had sort of a portfolio of beginning companies, and he would advise, you know, executives from those companies or entrepreneurs. And he described how he listened.

So he would listen to their problem, and then he would come up with an idea and then drop it and continue to listen. And then they'd come up, they'd keep talking, and he'd come up with another idea. and then he would drop that. And then finally, he would wait until he described it as as though he was filled from light from above. And only then would he engage with the other person. I love it. I love it. I mean, how many of us are already planning what we're going to say?

Already planning, barely taking in a thing that's going on. And there is something about being listened to, being heard, being seen. I think of the leaders that are not caught in the heroic levels that are beyond that is that anybody that's with them is going to leave feeling better about themselves. Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's like a huge deal. It is. And those people are such a pleasure to work for.

and with. And the thing that can trap people is sometimes they get too wealthy or too famous, something, and it acts as an insulation for them. And they can't get good feedback anymore because people are aware of the power of that person and it distorts their world. And that's really tough. And I don't know if I want to tell this story, but I had an experience with that early on in my career where I had that kind of celebrity dangled in front of me. And I just said, you know, I'm back to my trauma story. I thought, I'm not going to do it. People offered five movies for me to be, I'd be the star of the movie. It was going to be a vehicle for my stardom. It was about a young classical guitarist who goes to Europe and loses

himself in the rock and roll scene. And I'm sitting at Sardis and they're saying, yeah, this is it. You know, like you're going to be a star. And I said, no, I don't want to do it. I can't believe you did that, Stephen. And I know you. I could have been so close to it all. Yeah. Well, I was sitting there and I was thinking, you know, I'm 20-something years old. I forget what it was. And I said, I don't know who I am. And if I do this, I'm never going to know who I am. And I thought also, you know, I should forget the movie and go straight to rehab. Because that's where I would end up. Why waste time? We know we're going to be there. Yeah. That's hilarious. But, you know, it makes so much sense. Because what I'm hearing you say is that we get so caught in our own narrative about being special or being the achiever or knowing the most. And when the world is reflecting that back, yes, indeed you are special, it becomes a jail and it separates us. And the only way you can be in the post heroic, you know, be not as caught in.

the ego is if we're really truly beyond the narratives, which is the same. I mean, as I listen to you, it's exactly the same as the unfolding on any spiritual path. It's just to free ourselves from the stories, the stories that are grand and the stories that are, you know, the inflation and the deflation both. Right. So it's reminding me of Lao Tzu, who's one of my favorite. poets and philosophers. So he has this one that goes, which means more to you, you or your renown, which brings more to you, you or what you own, and which would cost you more if

it were gone. And he also has another one. Well, wait, with that one, just, it's, it's So, you know, the Buddhists talk about praise and blame, which means more to you? You are your renown. And I'm just slowing down on that because we're such social creatures that are worth or our renown. I mean, it's very deep in our conditioning to go for that, to go for impressing. Like when I often invite a reflection of somebody that you've been with recently that you really respect and how much of what you were doing was in some way to get a certain kind of response from them of, you know, approval or respect or admiration.

It's very hard to put that down to not in some, I mean that what Lao Tzu is suggesting is a really big deal to not care about our reputation. And I'm bringing that up because I had an experience some years back where it was right in my face where I was doing a keynote at a conference and going to be on a panel. And I felt imposter syndrome like really coming up strong because it was actually some of what we're talking about, about trauma and clinical applications of it. meditation and so on. And I had friends that were on the panel that were so much more the expert. So my fear about not being the expert really hooked me on that, you know, what matters more

me or my renown. Well, I really wanted my reputation to look good. And I knew that going in, Steven. So what I did was I kept asking what most matters, what most matters, what most matters. And I got to the place for what most mattered is that in some way I'd be helpful and that I wanted to have, with each person I contacted, I wanted them to feel that I cared about them. And I had to keep on going back to that again and again, all that matters, may this be helpful and may others feel my care. And it was so interesting. So I'm pausing here because in working with leaders, I would imagine that people's reputation,

how the others look at them would be a very big deal in what you'd be helping them to kind of relax the grip around in order to get to who they really are. Yeah. Yeah. I started thinking about Leonard Bernstein because I had this interaction with him where for some reason I was in Key West and I drove him two hours to swim with dolphins. And it was really great because he jumped in the water. He was just like a 10-year-old kid with these dolphins. And then I had him for two hours.

I'm just trying to imagine Leonard. because all I can imagine is in the tuxedoes and in front of groups, you know, swimming with dolphins is a great image. I love it. He just loved it. So I asked him, I got to ask him anything I wanted to about music. So I asked him, well, so if you're a guest conductor and you're conducting a symphony that you've conducted many, many times, how do you prepare for it?

And he said, well, I get in a room with a piano where no one can hear me, where I can howl and yell, and I put the score on the piano, and I play all the parts, and I move around, and I just, I sing every part and tell what comes to me is the composer's intent. And once I have the composer's intent, everything falls into place after that. I don't have to prepare beyond that. And so, and I was reminded that by you are connecting with your intent. And it's such a beautiful thing to do that. I do it sometimes where I'll think of the opening for a presentation.

I used to do presentations. I don't do them so much anymore. But I would memorize the beginning of it and say it again and again, just like Leonard. did with the opening of the symphony. And I would check in my own self, where was I incongruent with this message? You know, where did I not quite believe myself? Or maybe the message needed to be adjusted so that it was more in line to what I really thought. And I would use these methods of kind of finding the little part of myself that was reacting and and dissolve it so that I became totally congruent with the message by the end and really helpful to do. I would do that

with my clients too. So you're beginning, I was going to ask you to talk a little more about how you bring meditation with problems that people have at work and you're describing one which is just get in touch with what your intention is because if you're aligned with your intention

it's like one Zen master said the most important thing is remembering the most important thing you know it's like if we're aligned you know the the intelligence of the universe flows through us

So one is to get people aligned, but as you mentioned, there's objections like, yeah, but I want to look good or yeah, but I want more money or yeah, but I want that other person to cooperate with me. And so how do you bring meditative, contemplative practices? Can you start sharing some of that? Yeah. So when I was my 10 years in the ashram, I really tried to. get to some place spiritually. I was like the poster child for spiritual materialism. And I really, you know, tried to do it that way. What I learned with later practices, Taoist practices, is that you could dissolve things that got in the way. I wanted to tell you about how I work with someone in preparation.

for, say, a difficult conversation or a negotiation. Yeah. And, you know, what you're asking pertains to that. So what I would do with them is they would describe that they're going to talk to someone. So if you and I were doing it, say, we'll invent this person you're going to talk to named Bob. You know, and then I would ask you, so what are you going to say to Bob? And you would tell me, you know, how you plan to friends. the conversation and open the conversation.

And then I would write all that down dutifully. And then I would say, okay, so the way to prepare for this is have you become Bob as much as you can, you know, to speak as he does and to move in your vocal cadence without being a caricature, be Bob. And then I would start to say, so Bob, tell me who's at home for you. Tell me how you started your business. tell me, you know, and then I would say, you know, once they really got into how Bob felt in the world, then I would say, what's its stake for you in your conversation with Tara?

And then, you know, and then that answer would come up. And then finally, I would say, okay, I happen to know what Tara is going to say to you. Do you want to hear it? So deep inside this role, then you would get back what you were intending to say. And then invariably, people have the response of that could work. That would never work. So then they adjust it. But then the next stage of it is to say, is there anything about Bob that's off-putting to you?

And then I get answers like, you know, he's a self-important jerk, you know, stuff like that. And then you would say, okay, so just imagine that you are behaving the way Bob does when he's at his worst. I know you don't. It's probably why you don't like it in him. But just imagine it. And then what emotions would have to be driving that behavior in you for you to act like that? Not just the circumstances, but the actual emotions that are driving things. And then you get in touch with that.

And you get in touch with that by feeling it in your body. So one way, a lot of people can feel something in their body. but they don't really understand what the emotion is. They can't really pinpoint it. So when I was getting out of the ashram, I had spent 10 years bypassing every emotion I ever had so I could be devotional. And I invented this little technique for me,

which is you take the feeling, so you'd say, oh, I feel this in my solar plexus, is this kind of tightness. And then you say, well, if that tight energy, and your solar plexus could rise to your face and animate your facial expression, let that happen. So the person would do that, and they would go, you know, that's mine. What's this? And then by reading your face from the inside, you can name it. So they would...

I just want to pause here because I think that's a gem. you know, this strategy to get back in touch with your feelings of being able to take something and express it in your face and then really sense more explicitly and directly somatically what is going on. I just think that's a powerful approach. So just want to bookmark that one. It helps. And also with a lot of my executive clients, they aren't aware of what they're feeling. And so that's a little. But then the next part of it is, is how do we dissolve those things? So I think that, you know, I always think that, you know,

we can fall into a perpetual project of self-improvement. And we're not necessarily so nice to ourselves when we're doing that project. So one thing to do is to be able to take whatever arises and meet it kindly. And that's why I love the work that you do with rain and after the rain. I mean, it's quite beautiful in the allowing and compassion that's there. And I think ultimately the message in all of that work is whatever arises is ultimately at its core looking for this divine connection with the universe in this kind of oneness. And so the idea of dropping yourself is to experience that, at least the way I understand it,

over and over and over again, that even these things that you feel that are uncomfortable and drive difficult behaviors and things like that. At their core, you can feel them sort of evolve and drop their protective qualities or protective mission and open up to something sublime and beautiful. And so once we do that over and over and over again, this critical mass starts to shift over to the side of I actually have confidence that everything that I do is, you know, how plants are heliotropic. This is more of like union tropic, that everything is going in that direction. And that's a beautiful thing to experience. So I want my clients to experience that. I want me. I want myself to do it too.

And that's been important for me. Yeah, again, I want to kind of just slow down because what you're saying feels to me at the heart of all healing is that it's not, we don't heal regardless of the difficult stuff. It's almost by opening to those energies and trusting that in opening to them, there's a transfiguration that happens. It's like when I say to fear, thank you for trying to protect me. Like I get that that fear is life-loving life, that there is no emotion that's not about life-loving life. That when our body starts realizing that we start trusting the weather systems that are inside and when we open to them, they actually transform to be more intensified awareness and love.

they do transform in that way. And I feel like when you describe dissolving of meeting it, compassionately, opening to it, inviting it to join, to rejoin the whole, that rejoining is a deepening of awake and loving presence.

Yeah. It's beautiful. So I have a question. I kind of want to roll back because what you just did is you kind of took us to what the possibility is. That when you can get people to roll reverse, that empathy, it's kind of you're activating that part of the brain that's empathetic.

When you can get them to bring attention and learn how to feel things in the body, then there's actual deep awakening. Let's go back to the conversation and with Bob, because the question I had was, So the Bob in my life has in some way betrayed my trust and I feel, you know, enraged and hurt. And I feel very strong feelings. And I'm wondering if, you know, I'm going to in some way talk and try to have a clearing with Bob. But if those emotions are strong and you asked me, well, what's going on for Bob and be Bob?

I would have, my emotions would block that initial step towards empathy. So I'm wondering, how do you, how do you, let's say somebody's having those feelings? How would you start working with them? To sort of peel off the top layer. So I want to just, one of the methods that I really love is Connie Ray Andreas's wholeness work. And it pertains to this really well. So what she would do, and what I would do using this work, is I would say, so there's this idea that you're having these emotions, and then there's sort of a reaction to having them. Like I, you know, whatever that is, I don't want to have them. I don't want these to get in the way. I don't want.

So that's where you start working. In her work, you would say, where is the one who doesn't like that. to have these emotions. So let's slow it down and stay with this example. And first of all, to the bobs of this world, forgive me. It's not you. I just don't want any misunderstandings here. Right. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think the most crippling suffering

in the world is coming from polarization, mistrust, you know, the whole thing. So I come to you and I say, you know, somebody in our firm has behaved in a way that I feel like completely, it violates me, it harms me. I feel like they've betrayed me. I'm having all these feelings. And I'm really angry. They did wrong. They are bad. I'm not as much in those moments thinking, oh, and I shouldn't feel that.

That may be, that is often a part of the mix. I mean, you know, judging what's going on. but I am in that sense of feeling angry and betrayed. Yeah. Well, then, so rather than going to the place that I suggested, I think what you would do is just work with the physical sensation. Never mind what it's about. Go for the constellation of sensations in your body.

And then start to dissolve them. And so, you know, I studied, one of the things that I've studied for the past 30 years and continue to study is with a teacher named Bruce Francis, who is a Taoist teacher. And he teaches Taoist martial arts and meditation and stuff like that. And he would, his method of dissolving is to, start above your head and start to just dissolve bit by bit in your body all the way down. Connie Ray is more specific. So she has something. So for instance, if you contact that feeling now, where in your body does it live?

Well, usually when it's anger and feeling, because I'm not, I'm feeling a lot of love and loving being with you, so I'm not immediately here with it, but it's a kind of a clench and a heat and a pressure in my chest and my belly. Yeah. So the way you would work with it, and just, I'll just walk you through it and you may not dive into it, but just for reference for people who are watching. So you have this feeling here, this clutching here, and then you really feel it as a constellation of sensations and the heat that's there. And then you say, well, where is the one who feels like this? So where that comes from her is the idea that teachers like Ramana Mahashi and people would say, no eye, no problem, you know, get rid of the eye. So she had a way to operationalize that getting rid of the eye. So when you say, where is the one who feels like this?

then often when people get the knack of that, they say, oh, actually, it's right here. You know, it's just above my head. And really, what's the size and shape of that thing, that energy? Oh, you know, it's this, it's round. It's a little heavy, and it's bluish, you know, whatever they say. And then you, then that's there. And then you could say, well, you could say, I experience this. where is the eye that experiences that?

And then you get these layers of them. The more you practice, the fewer layers there are. But eventually it's like seeing to yourself while you're meditating, you know, you're aware of your breath. And then you say to yourself, where is the one that's aware of her breath? And then you say, oh, it's right here. And then you say, what would happen?

Would it be? and then you explore that a little bit and you'd say, would it welcome the invitation to dissolve, melt, and relax into and as the field of awareness that's all around and throughout? And then if it says yes, then you just do that and dissolve. And then you would go to the next place over here.

That was the eye that felt this in here. And you add the same invitation. You just ask, would you welcome the invitation to dissolve, and ultimately relax, and that lets go. And then all of a sudden, this in your chest is usually very available to dissolving. Maybe there's some little part left, and that's another facet of it. But what's interesting about this is it releases you from the burden of having to revisit your story over and over again, you know, because that's the thing that keeps it in place. But in narrative therapy,

there's this one question I really love, which is after the person really gets into the narration of what their whole life is about. You just say, in what way is your story lying to you? You know, because it's never the whole deal. And if you believe that story, 100%, you're never going to go anywhere. So you just, you know, in Bruce Francis's work, he talks about these eight bodies. So there's a physical body, an emotional body, an energy body, a mental body, a psychic body, a carmic body or causal body, and a body of individual body, and then the Dow. And things can reside at any of those frequent. So when we're talking about our original thing about, you know, what do you do with the slides in your projector when you're trying to see the room?

They can, a big part of my practice has been physical. So I'll do Tai Chi and Bagua, which is even stronger. And what Bruce has taught me is that you let that stuff rattle your cage from the inside until, because all that energy spiraling, through your system wakes it up, and it wakes it up to things that have been neglected and buried, and then you go and dissolve. You know, it's a pretty whole-body experience of that dissolving. You know, you're, because you've, you have really mastered integrating different systems, and I'm just hearing it.

And for those that are listening, there's always the inquiry of, well, how do you know when to do which? And so, like, for me, if I go back to the, what, I keep thinking, what about Bob, you know, that movie, but if I go back to that, there will be times that just opening into that energy, as Bruce teaches you, just feeling the energy and letting it be all that it is, what happens is that you sense that, you know, once you really give it space and more space and more space, it morphs. And anger often will morph into, you know, a real sense of grieving. Like there's something that was taken from you. And then if you keep opening to the grieving, you'll find that embedded in that is a sense of that there's something about life you're caring about.

And I find for myself that if I can keep open to, opening to anger and not get caught in the narrative because I really hear you, but open to the energy of it, that anger always is because there's something we care about. And if I can get to that place, it's what you were talking about before, Stephen, that there's, whether we want to call it a positive intent or a life-loving life, it's the energy behind the anger is trying to wake this body mind up to a larger belonging. It always comes down to that. So sometimes there's tracking back, just the way I describe,

sometimes there's more directly what you were talking about where you invite the anger to the energy to dissolve into a larger belonging. And when that happens, you sensed that it already was a part of it, that there's nothing. no energy in us. It's like waves in the ocean that doesn't belong. And that starts having you trust what's going on in your body. So I'm just aware as you're talking that these are just, they're different gateways

to really trusting the energies that are coming up in us. And sometimes we do need the stories because if we use them wisely, they do become a portal to help us feel more fully the energies in our body. So if I like go through my mind of all the ways that Bob has mistreated me and then I start getting stirred up and then I say, okay, thank you story and I come into my body, that's actually very skillful. But the problem is people don't leave the narrative. As you say, they keep looking at the slides versus shining a light on the room. Yeah, yeah, beautifully said. You know, I think also the story is useful early on because if people grow up in abusive families, they swallow a story that's the story of that family and they don't even

understand how bad it is. You know, so they need to get into the story just you know, Gabor Mata spends a lot of time there, you know, just trying to get people to understand what happened to them. So if you have this story, there's some explanation for it and of how you're feeling now. So it took me a long time to get to that story of why I had that voice in my head that was so horrible. and I got that through psychodrama stories and acted them out. And also in psychodrama, they often use that principle of make it bigger, make it bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

And it does do what you describe. It's the opposite of resisting. And whatever we resist gets locked in, what we stop resisting and we invite actually starts moving. movement's the deal. You want things to move. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that staying with the story, it's almost, it's a kind of alchemy. There's energy locked up in it. Yes. And if we can learn how to liberate it, you know, that's a wonderful path. So I feel like what we're doing, and I really heard something that you said that really helps is to sense it a bit developmentally that there's a certain amount of time we all need to spend in being able to sense what the story

wants us to pay attention to and to go into our body to feel the layers that, you know, under the angers, the grief and to start getting familiar with the unlayering, the undoing, unknotting of those kind of clenches in our body. But then you also spoke to something that wakes us up in a whole different way, which is starting to turn the attention from the particulars of the story and the energy to who's experiencing this, to the kind of ghost self in the background that's bearing witness. It's like Sri Narargarata talks about, you You know, if you watch your mind, you'll notice that there is a witness there. And if you become aware of the witness, you'll discover a light that is your own true nature and frees you.

So we keep stepping back to sense that there's nothing solid. The story that was telling us who we were was just a story and that there's this beingness, this vastness, this field of infinite field. that is beyond words and more of the truth than any story. So I love how you are describing what you've gotten from Connie Rae, Andreas, and I will write a note on to that book, how you do that stepping back to sense what's beyond the narrative of a small self. And I wonder if this might be a good time, Stephen, for you to, to just guide us a little more directly

so that people who are listening can get a taste of that further evolving of practice where we can kind of, some, it's called the non-dual, where we're getting over ourselves in a really liberating way. Sure. So, yeah, let's do that. So let's just kind of settle in, however you settle in, if you're driving a car, keep your eyes open. Please, please.

And, you know, just align your body. Good way to do that is to let the space in the base of your skull just gently expand and float up a little bit so that your head is nicely centered over your neck and the weight of it goes through your neck, and your chest falls a little bit, softens, so that the weight goes through your chest, through your diaphragm to your belly, and then bring your awareness to your belly and simply breathe. And give a quality to the breath, where the quality of the breath is just the

this beautiful sort of dissolving energy. It's easy to relax as you exhale, you let everything go and just fall into alignment. And on the inhale, as your belly expands, just feel any tension or constriction in your belly. Just give way to the breath. Just dissolve in response to the breath. And then also breathe into your lower back.

The torso is like a cylinder that breathes in all directions. So breathing into the belly in the back opposite the belly and even the sides. And on the inhale, yield to the breath so that with each successive inhale, there's a little bit more room for the breath in your torso. And then bring your awareness so that it also includes your belly and the level at your diaphragm. Same thing now, breathing into the belly and the diaphragm, front, back, sides. And rather than trying to push anything out, you relax and let it expand as it wants to and only as far as it wants to.

and then breathing further up to the chest, the heart center, breathing between your shoulder blades. So now the breath can incorporate the belly, the diaphragm, and the heart center. You can even imagine if you want a pearl of light going from your belly up through a central channel from your perineum to the top of the head. so it rises on the inhale and settles back down in your belly on the x-ing. And then further up to your collarbone, inhaling, inhaling into your shoulders and armpits, yielding to the breath on the inhale.

Let any constriction just offer itself up and yield to this healing chi that rides on the breath. And then finally all the way up to the top of the head. Slow the breath down. Soften it. Lao Tzu says, the universe like a bellows is always empty and always full. The more it yields, the more it holds.

So now letting your awareness expand through your torso and head so that it's out to your skin, bringing your awareness to your eyes. Let the breath dissolve any tension in your eyes. And imagine that you could let the breath occupy the space that your eyes occupy, as though your eyes are just all spaced now. any constriction is let go. So what's left is a kind of stillness and just the capacity to see without seeing anything in particular. And you also bring a dissolving breath and awareness to the space that your ears occupy, both ears and all the space between them. And you rest in the

space that your tongue occupies. And as you breathe, relax into your own. tongue, the roof of your mouth, the floor of your mouth, your jaws, the base of the skull, everything at that level, letting breath penetrate and relax all constriction there. And then last, can you rest in the space that your brain occupies under the dome of your skull, the space that your brain occupies, your eyes occupy, your ears, your tongue, base of your skull, all of it. The space in your torso, all of it. Feel into the space in back of you, in front of you, to the sides above you, even into the earth. and you just be in the space that's outside you,

and be in the space that's inside you, and be the space that is inside you, and be the space that's outside you, and rest in it as continuous space. So there's movement in your breath, and yet stillness underneath all movement, and silence underneath all sound. So as that space, Latsu says, by never being an end in himself, by never being an end in herself, she endlessly becomes herself. When you want to end a meditation

like this, simply take a breath that fills your whole body out to your fingertips, toes, in top of your head and exhale back into your belly and then inhale into your whole body and exhale. You can open your eyes and stay in the space. Thank you for that. It doesn't have me have a lot of words right available. That's just a lot of space. Thank you. Thank you. I feel less kind of coming to the home stretch and I'm just so grateful for this time together and for just that sense you bring of the what's possible in our evolving. And so I want to invite any final words you might have because we're all, all of us have all those emotions that are seeking to belong, seeking that unity.

Yeah, any final words you'd like to share? Yes, I thought about final words, and there was a little piece I wrote about God and the serpent talking to each other after Adam and Eve got expelled from the Garden of Eden. And they're sort of the cherubim and seraphim are striking the set, and their God and the serpent are having a little talk. And so I wanted to read this little part. God says if they, meaning Adam and Eve, knew,

if all they ever knew was oneness with me, they couldn't appreciate the profound joy of it. They need to experience separation for comparison. The path to oneness is like lovers reuniting after a quarrel. And then the serpent makes a couple of jokes. And then he said, and the serpent says, and what's the reason for death? And God says, there is no focus without a deadline. Old age, sickness, pain, make you ponder the purpose of life.

And the serpent says, and what is the purpose of life? And God says, to realize you have never spent a moment outside the garden. So here we are. Thank you, my friend. For all who are listening, will you post also the serpent dialogue on your website? Okay. So we will have Stephen's website available to you and posted so that you can find out more about his executive coaching and meditations and all the resources. that are on that website. Thank you all friends for listening. And again, beloved Stephen, what a pleasure.

Thank you.