Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 143: Scott Edelstein, When Spiritual Leaders 'Stray'

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

Spiritual leaders often have great influence over their followers but there are times, author Scott Edelstein says, when some leaders will use their position of power to manipulate, shame and abuse others. Edelstein discusses how spiritual leaders can "stray," even become predatory, and suggests ways for a healthy student-teacher relationships, which he lays out in his book, "Sex and the Spiritual Teacher." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT I'm Dan Harris. There's a scandal of sorts brewing in the Buddhist world and it involves a former guest on this show. Sakyong Mipam Rinpoche, who wrote a book about the art of conversation and is the leader

of Shambhala International, was on this show a couple months ago and has subsequently announced that he's stepping aside amidst an investigation into his alleged sexual abuse of students. And it goes beyond that for Shambhala International, which is a big organization and, you know, at least by meditation standards, a pretty big organization has centers all over the place, all over the country and in Canada and perhaps even beyond. But according to Tricycle, which is a Buddhist publication, the entire governing council of Shambhalla is stepping aside and the Sakyam himself is going to stop teaching and step away from his administrative duties until the investigation is finished. So this is

quite a compelling peg. That's a term of art from the news world. We use this term news peg, which is kind of an event in the news that gives us a reason to do a story, a spaz, what any specific story that we might be interested in, we try to peg it to current events. So right now, for example, around the Supreme Court nomination that President Trump has just made, we might do stories pegged to that looking at, say, the issue of abortion or campaign finance. So I just throw that out there by way of an example that this what's going on with our former guest, the Saki Young, is a good peg for our current guest,

this week who is Scott Edelstein who has written an entire book or two entire books about the issue of spiritual teachers and their behavior and what you as a practitioner or potential practitioner need to know. He's written a book called Sex and the Spiritual Teacher and also the User's Guide to Spiritual Teachers, so we could hardly have found a more timely guest. I will say before we play his interview that the interview was recorded before this headline broke, but we're we've expedited the posting of this interview because of the aforementioned news.

So we'll get to Scott in a minute. But first though, let's do some voicemails. And let me just give you my little caveat, which is that, as you know, I'm not a meditation teacher. Not a spiritual leader, not a mental health expert, just a guy who writes books about meditation and does a little bit. And so I'll do my best to answer these questions, which I've not heard in advance. So here we go. Here's call number one. Hi, Dan. This is Madeline from Southern California. You've recently mentioned a lot about the research you did on habit formation and behavioral change.

I was wondering if you could share any authors or book recommendations you have for listeners who are trying to form better habits or change habits for different areas of their life. In particular, I have young toddler at home and I'm curious if there's any books or research about how the formation before little ones to make sure we're in so good habits as they grow up.

Thanks so much and love all your work, bye. Thank you. I probably overstated how much research I did into behavior change. I did do a little bit, but it wasn't super exhaustive. That said, the book that comes to mind is one from a former guest on the show, who's actually she's been on twice, Gretchen Ruben. She wrote a book called The Four Tendencies, which I have found to be really useful. And she comes

up with this classification for all human beings that she's of the view, there are four types that when it comes to habit formation, there are four types. I can't recall them all right now. Like they're one of them's a rebel, another's in a bliger. Anyway, I found it very useful to think, to classify myself within that, and to then think about the tips she has for each type of person

about how to instill healthy habits given whatever your tendencies are. And she does talk if memory serves about being able to kind of diagnose, that might not be the right word, but diagnose what tendency your children might have and how to then work with them. So check that out, the four tendencies. Call number two. Hi, Dan. This is Sean from Salem, Oregon,

and I'm not sure this is really a question, but I'm sure you can expand on this as a road that was kind of an aha moment. I had, well, recently sent me to your podcast and reviewed the Katherine place. I have to admit, when I first heard the intro regarding bringing up with your phone, I thought, I'm not sure if I really want to listen because I really don't care for my phone already, and I just kind of see it as a necessary evil. My aha, however, came as that in the last few weeks, I'm really trying to figure out how do I make more type

of meditation, which I know is a common question. And I already knew that I would voluntarily take out my phone to look at social media purely at a boardam, not even to be an asset participant, just to bore your impact. I'm really conscious of it. Like I allow myself to be bored with my phone, give myself the excuse. So just a few minutes, I just want to check out Stand of the day. That's it for me. I think you can already see the aha that I had from that. But so now my check out time is my meditation time because I have no excuse. I had previously discovered Jeff Lauren's 10-broth meditation on your 10% happier app, which I love.

And I mean that just taking 10 breaths sometimes can be enough. But to me, I think that's a good thing. for 10-boss meditation on your 10% happier app, which I love. And I mean, that just taking 10-boss sometimes can be enough, but to now have 15 minutes that I know I think it is really, I guess, a mix may help. So I just want to say thank you for that. And you never know. I just stick around and listen to an episode that you might glean from it.

And there were many more gems in that cap on price and interviews. So I just want to and listen to an episode that you might glean from it. There were many more gems in that Katherine Price and interviews. So I just want to say thank you. So interesting that you bring up Katherine Price because I happen to be re-listening to that episode because I've been thinking a lot about my own relationship with my phone. And there are so many gems in that episode.

She's really smart. So Katherine Price wrote a book called, How to Break Up with Your Phone, and we posted it a few episodes ago, if you're confused by the reference, worth going to check that out. And so, yeah, I think you're a home moment is great. I mean, in the world of habit formation,

there's this expression. I think it's QRoutine Reward. I think it's Q routine reward. I think that's what it is that you when you're thinking about creating a habit, there's the Q or maybe this is already true, just of your existing habits, there's the Q. So in your case, it's your feeling bored. There's the routine, you reach for the phone, And then the reward is you get the little hits of dopamine of novelty from whatever social media likes have accrued or you're actually, you're not posting, you're but whatever new pieces of content have been posted by the people you're digitally stocking, which we all do. So you hacked that and you found that the queue is you're feeling bored and you changed,

you substituted the routine with I'm going to meditate and you have an entirely different reward. And that is textbook awesome. And that's, I mean, that is something that's scalable into so many, first of all, scalable and adoptable by so many people listening, but also it's scalable in other aspects of your life. Let me just say one, so bravo. Let me just say one last thing, which is that I am not a Luddite. Nor is Katherine Price, interestingly.

I am, you know, allowing yourself the luxury of 15 minutes of looking at Instagram, I do not begrudge you that. However, what I think you've wisely seen, and I think this is something we all need to examine, is that those 15 minutes probably weren't making you happy. And if the 15 minutes are making you happy, then I say go for it, look, jury eight in those 15 minutes. I'm not anti-pleasure, but I am anti-voluntary misery, and it sounds like you had the wisdom and the self-awareness to see that those 15 minutes could be better, more fruitfully used. So, like, I'm not anti-indulgence, but it's worth seeing

that these little indulgences, it's like people ask me all the time about the fact that I gave up sugar. And I just came to the realization that this thing that I thought was an award was making me miserable. So it's not that I'm an ascetic. It's just that I'm stopping the process of banging my head against the wall. Anyway, I love, I know it wasn't a question, but I love what you had to say. So thank you for calling and saying it, and it's interesting that I've been thinking about

the same stuff. All right, let's get on to the topic that we, the rather juicy topic that we brought up at the beginning, which is that sometimes the people who put themselves, or find themselves in the position of being spiritual leaders, I'm not in love with the term spiritual, but people who teach us meditation or teach us all sorts of things in this space that is often referred to as spirituality, sometimes they abuse their power. And it's a good thing to know if you're going to be, if you're shopping for, for lack of a better term guru. And Scott

Edelstein, who is a writer and a freelance editor, and he, he's also been a practitioner for a long time of meditation and has followed a couple of prominent spiritual leaders. He has taken it upon himself to write a couple of short slim volumes on the subject. As I mentioned at the top of the show, there are sex and the spiritual teacher and then he followed up with the user's guide to spiritual teachers, which just came out in 2017 and has a lot of provocative things to say. So here he is, Scott Edelstein. I know a little bit about what we're going to about today, but I wanna start where I always start, which is how did you start meditating?

Ah, I actually started in 1974. I was a student at Oberlin College, and Oberlin, they still have this for all I know, they had something called the Experimental College. Remember, this was the 70s. So in addition to the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Music and Servatory, you could get up to five credits in these alternative classes,

some of which were taught by faculty, by students, and so on. And there was something called Zen Meditation. And you got two credits for it. So I learned it there. What, why did that seem attractive to you? Well, I'll give you two reasons. Okay, the first is a nonverbal reason, right? It just attracted me. Why?

Yes, you were attracted to your wife. Yes, I was attracted to my wife and I could give you reasons, but I'd be mostly pulling those out of my butt. The fact was I felt the attraction. So I felt an attraction. I buy that. To meditation. I buy it. But over and above that, I had, I would say, you know, I don't want to, in any way, equate myself with you, but I will say I had a high energy, nervous son of New York Jews personality. And that just created, stress, it created anxiety, and I said, I'd like to see what this is about. And I took to it immediately. It made intuitive senses the wrong word,

but it felt right in the body, it felt right in the heart, the mind and the gut. Did you see any changes in yourself as a consequence? Yeah, I mean, yes, but you know, this whole culture looks at everything in a kind of, either medicinal or prophylactic way, either preventing something or improving something or fixing something.

Modern culture. Yes, point taken. So, I never looked it that way. I mean, yes, I could roll out all the benefits of all the ways that had ostensibly made me better, better human being, made me more human, made me who I am, but you could argue that it wasn't so much the meditation. And I would say, who cares? You know, you can make a great argument for how sex reduces stress, but that is not the

best argument for sex, right? Let's talk about procreation of the species. Let's talk about intimacy. Let's talk about joy and so on. So sure, I experienced all the things that you and others talk about in terms of how did this improve you? How did this make you healthier, happier, more connected? How did it improve your life?

But honestly, Dan, I think that selling meditation way short. You bake an excellent point. And I feel like this is one of the shortcomings, not only of my public messaging, but of my personal practice, that at some point, maybe just meditate for the joy of getting in touch with the fact that you exist.

And my co-author on a book I wrote about this, Jeff Warren, has made this point to me quite effectively. Well, effectively in that I heard him to me quite effectively. Well, effectively, in that I heard him, not so effectively in that it made a difference in my practice, which is still occasionally a little strivy and utilitarian, but it's so useful to hear you make that point. Can we go down that road a little bit? Let's go, yeah. Because I'd like to go in two different directions. The first is, you know, you will be a unique place in our culture, in terms of who you are and who will listen to you and why they'll listen to you

So I also don't want to pathologize people who are in what as you said quote selling meditation short because in fact What you have done is brought a whole bunch of people to something that they would never have considered and and so I want to thank you and give you credit and And I'll tip my hat. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. And so what with that in mind, almost everybody gets into meditation for the in quotes wrong or lesser reasons. And of course, you know, you don't expect a 12 year old to understand all the things that a adult would understand, or you don't expect an old person like me who's now 63 to have the same understanding of life of someone who's 40 or of someone who's 85. So the over time in meditation almost everyone starts out with it as a kind of utilitarian

way. Oh, I feel better when I do it. Oh, I'm a nicer person when I do it. All that stuff. So and bringing people in in that way is wonderful. That said, over the years, other things start to show up, other things start to appear, and some of them are even non-verbal. And some of them, and I'm going to say it, some of them would be classified by some people

as mystical, but they're not remotely mystical. They're absolutely realistic, but they're aspects of life, human life, and just life as a being that start to show up and become clear. And so as we do this longer, we have more wisdom to share, and that's exactly what you will be doing year by year, is as a deeper wisdom to share and communicate and other people will be brought in behind you. And the best part is that because you started where you started, people will not accuse you of going off the deep end.

So it's a wonderful opportunity. I'm going to test that. Please. Please. And I'll be watching. When you say stuff that people are tempted to call mystical, what are you talking about? Well, I'll give you an example.

All right, so there's a writer named Steve Hagen. Now, Full Disclosure, he's an old friend of mine and he wrote the book, the best-selling book, Buddhism, Plain and Simple. That came out when you were just a kid, came out I think in 1999 and still doing very well. And then he wrote a sequel, a couple of sequels, but one is called Meditation, Now or Never.

It's a quite wonderful book, it's about meditation and it teaches the same kind of meditation that you practice and that you teach, but then it goes into all some of these other things that start to show up. Like you start to recognize that this whole notion, well of course, you're gonna recognize this, this whole notion, well, of course, you're going to recognize this, this whole notion of what we call a self, this, this idea of

I, you start to see what a, what a crazy construct that is. And it starts to break down. Subject and object start to break down. You start to, and, and this is not some woo-woo thing. You don't have some, um, experience like, um like flashing lights or any of that stuff. So it's the exact opposite of mysticism because you're looking not at some other thing. You're looking at the reality that was there all along, but you start to see nuances of it. You start to see, for example, I mean one of the common things is that you have no control. But many adults start to realize that. This particular moment is the result of hundreds of thousands of different forces that come together, and that no matter how much you try, you're not going to be able to control

it. But over and above that, you start to see that this idea of being a self moving through life is not what's going on. There's something else, much less explicable, much less quantifiable going on. At the same time, in other words, these two things are not opposites. You're not flipping from the deluded state to the enlightened state. The two things are the same. Now, I could cite people like Wang Po, I could cite people like Christian Emerty, but I won't bother. The fact is, this is what's going on. You asked for

some examples. I hope those will suffice me more. You know, it's great. And I think anybody who will have heard you just talk, preceding paragraphs, which were so well stated, will understand that you got pretty deep into the practice post-Oberlin. So, give me, give me just a sense of what that entailed, you know, how, what were you doing to get so deep? Okay. Well, one of the, I will say that one of the things you understand over time is that deep is a completely inappropriate word for it, you know, fair enough.

You know, just like when if you were to start talking about sex as a, as just, it's such so good for your, for your LDL cholesterol and stuff. I mean, it might be good for all these things, but I mean, after a short time, it just became part of my life. So I would never think of it as deep or shallow. I mean, it's something I do on an almost daily basis. I did it while waiting in the lobby for you

to meet with you today. I do it routinely. Actually, one of the things that I would say is a result of it, is that I just say, I mean, you can call it a prayer if you want. I would call it just a simple acknowledgement over and over and over throughout the day. I say to myself, now, you're not in control.

And every moment is gonna be fresh fresh and new and you don't know what it's going to be and you need the help of the entire universe for it. Now you could call that a priority God. I don't see any need to use those words but you could use them if you wanted to. I don't mean you in particular. I mean anyone but it's the acknowledgement that the whole universe is coming together in this moment and this world we live in is being created freshly every moment. And that there is no script for it. We just have to be as present as we can and live into it. And so that is that awareness and that living. some people would call going deeper into meditation. I would say it's what life calls of us,

it asks us to do at all times. It's simply a way of living. Now did meditation get me there? I'd have to go back in a time machine, be me before, not meditate and see what happens. Can't run that control, it's hard. I don't know whether it was age or meditation or who knows what.

Yeah, no, I've talked about, personally, I don't know why I'm less of a jerk now than I used to be. I think it's probably a mix of maturation, meditation, marriage, it's multifactorial. Yeah, here, here. And it does help to marry someone who asks the best of you. And that's my case. Yeah, well, we have that in common. All right. So, but I guess what I was getting at more is when I talked about the going deep in the practice, I just meant that you really committed yourself to it and I wanted to get a sense of what that looked like. Did you stay in the Zen school?

Did you go off to Tibet? How did you organize your meditation career? Well, in terms of committing myself to it, you know, it is true. that what did you organize your meditation career? Well, in terms of committing myself to it, it is true, commitment is an okay word to use or discipline is an okay word to use. I confess that in my own case, I never thought of it that way.

In the same way that I go to the gym, but I don't think of going to the gym as I'm doing this because it's good for my health. I do it because as I got older, my body started feeling crummy and it felt better when it worked out. So after I took this course, I moved to Minneapolis and I actually, I was just graduating college. Why Minneapolis?

Well, I'm about to answer. Oh, sorry. No, it's good. It's all good. So, I was up for a screenwriting fellowship. I was a finalist for a screenwriting fellowship in LA. And I asked a friend, the person who would talk this meditation course, said, well, if I wanted to get to know more about meditation, where should I go?

And he recommended a Zen teacher in Minneapolis and a Zen teacher in LA, both of whom later he got caught up in scandals. They're students. And though, yes. And we can come back to that, if they will. But because I didn't get the fellowship, I went to Minneapolis and wrote to the Zen Center there, and the teacher there. And he provided a great introduction to me.

His name was Dining Category, and he ran the mid or he was the head teacher at the Minneapolis Center. And so that was my kind of graduate school. I went there for a couple of years and they had what they call trading periods where you do I think four meditation periods a day and a talk and so you roll out about about 3am. It's not monastic but it's not exactly like going to the corner church or synagogue either. So I think I was meditating maybe three hours a day and doing other things, listening to

talks, writing some talks. So there was a cohort of us that did this on and off. And I did get official what they call lay ordination. But it's the rough, the very rough equivalent of Barmatzvah or confirmation in Zen Buddhism. But that's a pretty big commitment. I mean, you graduate from college and you go off and get up at 3 o'clock in the morning and that's a, you, I mean, you make quibble with this, but that sounds like going pretty deep. Well, at the time, one of the great things about being young is you don't have enough to compare it to.

Right. Although now that I'm older and I compare it to the life of a news anchor, God, that's way easier than getting up at every possible hour and getting on a plane and flying all over the world. They pay us better. Yeah, that point taken. Yes. So I did that for a couple of years pretty seriously.

And then felt all right, it's time to move on, but I've continued to practice ever since then. And since then I have wound up being the editor or literary agent for many spiritual teachers, and gotten to be friends with many of them, and in many different traditions. And even though I seriously got into that, later on, thank God in Judaism, rediscovered meditation, and then many other traditions over the last 30 years have rediscovered it after kind of pushing it away. And so it's been a pleasure to see that it's showing up now ecumenically as well as secularly. Yeah, I think that's really that's really true. So correct me if I'm wrong, your first book was sex in the spiritual teacher

Well, I'm a writer by trade so my first book came out in 1975 or 76 came out a long time ago But my first book in this area the first book on the subject was sex in the spiritual teacher in 2011 And why did you want to write that? Because I wanted to make a difference because what goes on When when spiritual teachers stray and I should be very clear here that Um, there's the spiritual teachers are like members of every other profession They range from really wonderful to really terrible and abusive Here's somebody who people will bow down to who people will get on their knees before who people will follow

But not only will these people follow you wherever you go, and do whatever you say, but they have no way to cross-check you. In other words, if you say, I am the best hairstylest in the world, okay, show me what you can do with Dan's hair, and they better do a good job. But if you're a spiritual teacher, you can go way off the rails and people will follow you. Have you seen the Netflix? It's a wonderful, it's very recent. Well, well country. Wild, wild country. If you're spoken about it on the air.

No, I haven't. Please, would you tell your listeners a little bit about it and then I'll add more. Sure. It's a must see. So this is not in the Buddhist tradition. Correct. It's in the Hindu tradition. It involves a spiritual teacher who came to be known as Ocho. And it's a multi-part, I think six-part Netflix series. I think very well done.

And they find all this contemporaneous footage of him. He started in the in the 70s in India. Well, I don't know. He may have started before that. But the story really starts in the 70s in India, where he's a very popular teacher attracting a lot of Westerners. He runs into some trouble that I don't fully understand in India, maybe having to do with bookkeeping or whatever, goes with his followers to a remote patch of land in Wyoming. Organs. Organs. Organs, right.

Of course, how could I forget that? Organs. Organs. And immediately tensions flare up between the locals and Ocho's followers and it also comes out and I can only tell a fraction of the story but also comes out that there's lots of weird sex stuff going on and drugs and it ends in tears. And bioterrorism, he was the first bioterrorist in america he poisoned the salad bars at a bunch of rest now was it hammer was it his henchwoman so let me be clear there were two people now he's

known as o-show but he was then known as russian shri bhajuan russian and he appears to be in you know if you're a therapist you're not allowed to diagnose someone with any kind of uh... mental illness however i am not a therapist, so I'm come out there and say, it gives every appearance of being a malignant narcissist or having been one. And then he had a second in command who also appeared to be either some high conflict person, maybe narcissists, maybe sociopath who knows her name was Sheila. And they're both a Sheila's interviewed widely and I'm grateful that she gave these interviews in the documentary but there was all kinds of criminality going on within that group and all kinds of that he was not indeed in the Hindu

tradition. His was a just a mix a mashup of a bunch of silly little things. But the point is that people followed him in droves. In a way similar, there's other people who are being followed that way today. And perhaps you've heard of Chogam Trunkpa, the Buddhist teacher. Well, so we've had a lot of followers of Trunkpa on this podcast, including his son. Yeah. So you know, you definitely want to talk about him. You know. So the same kind of cult like situation same kind of followers who would let him get away with anything who didn't question him And we see that over and over with political figures and it's the same thing going on With with some spiritual teachers now. I'm talking about the narcissists and sociopaths here

There are lots of great spiritual teachers out there and some mediocre ones I'm talking only specifically about these people now. And I was very concerned that there were so many of them out there. No one had written anything other than, there's a very good, but I don't want to know a book called Safe Harbor, written by some Buddhists about Buddhist spiritual teachers who go astray sexually with their students. And you can get it now, you can download it.

Look, it says, safe harbor, you can download it for free, but no one had written about it extensively. And to be 100% clear here, the book was originally planned to be written by my assistant at the time. She had been the administrative assistant at the Minnesota Zen Center. And when things went down with some scandals about Kadi Geary, who was the teacher there, she said, oh, I want to write this book. I said, go for it. And then she after a while, she said, I don't want to anymore.

I said, can I write it? She said, sure, go for it. And so, you know, we found a publisher, Wisdom Publications in Boston. And I give them a lot of credit because they are a Buddhist publisher at heart. They do other things, but that's their central focus. And they let me go ahead and speak about Buddhist teachers and other teachers who go astray. Now, let me say one more thing, and that that is when I say go astray, I actually separate the categories. There's not one root. There are people who go astray and then there's some who are predators from the beginning. I actually make 11 different distinctions between predators, narcissists, false brahmins, false brahmins. What does that mean? Somebody who thinks

they're entitled. They're not a real brahm, but they think they're entitled to whatever it is that they want to grab or take. And how are you defining Brahman? Oh, you know, the Brahman is the kind of upper class from India, and the reason I call false Brahman is it's a faux Brahman. Nice to. Who say, I can... Who say, I can... Well, it's a class that says, I can do anything I want because I'm a Brahman. The rules don't apply to me.

Gotcha. And then there's people who just lose their way, I call a Brahmin. The rules don't apply to me. And then there's people who just lose their way. I call them errants. And then there's people who say, I call them exceptionalists, people saying, well, I wouldn't normally do that, but, and they make excuses. And in all these, I'm talking about people who've got, in some way, a sexual relationship with one or more students, and in the case of the predators and the libertines, it's usually with a whole string. This doesn't mean that spiritual teachers should be

celibate, I mean, if you're a Catholic one, yes. Right? But doesn't mean you have to be, it doesn't mean you can't have a partner, doesn't mean you can't be having great sex with your partner half the day. This isn't about sex, This is about abusive power. And over the years between that and the new book, the Seer's Guide to Spiritual Teachers,

I've learned a lot more about personality disorders, particularly sociopaths and narcissists, and malignant narcissists, and recently have made the connection that those are the most dangerous people, and those are the ones who, in large numbers, really kind of tend to become spiritual teachers. One way to get deeper into this actually would be to pick up on what you said about Chaudy

and Crunkba. Let me just set up for people who don't know who he is, although there are plenty of podcasts where we talk to his followers, if listeners want to go back, we talk to his son on one episode, we talk to the son on one episode. We talked to the editor or the publisher of Mindful Magazine who's a follower of his, although we didn't get into too much detail. A Lodero Rinsler who's a popular Buddhist teacher, Ethan Nick turn another popular Buddhist teacher, all of whom are followers of this guy, Trunkba. So he is a Tibetan actually escaped from Tibet in a quite traumatic fashion during

the Chinese invasion and went on to go to England where he actually took off the robes and went into a suit and tie and was and wrote a bunch of books that are, I'll admit I actually haven't read any of them, but are widely well regarded, including spiritual materialism, cutting through spiritual materialism, cutting through spiritual materialism. And so he then went to the United States and Canada and built something called the Shambhala School. And they now have Naropa University and Shambhala School, and they now have Naropa University, and Shambhala Publications,

and teaching centers in major cities all over the United States. And it's a really well-subscribed lineage, and has gone on to actually be quite a kind of straight laced from what I can tell, organization, although Trunk by himself was anything but straight laced from what I can tell organization although trunk by himself was anything but straight laced he embodied what he called crazy wisdom. He drank himself to death from what I can tell. Yes, correct. Slept with a lot of his followers including married followers.

Correct. And here's where I get to the the the the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the enlightening to me. Oh, show said nothing that I found compelling. Indeed. Choyam, Trunkba, Rinpoche clearly knew a lot and wasn't just smart, but seemed to be wise and seemed to at least to me as again as a guy was, you know, not an expert, but you've been around. Been around, see you've been around. The guy who's done some deep meditation. So to me is such a mystery. And I would differentiate him from Oshawa,

who I'm ready to believe could be some of the things you said about him, but Trumpa, I don't know. Okay. Well, I would love to speak to that and actually Dan, you've brought a really important point that I'm delighted to have the chance for us to talk about. So the first is here, here, on everything you said about Oshou versus Trunkba. Because Trunkba was, you can't argue that he was a spiritual genius whereas Oshou had

nothing of substance to offer. Here is the part that so many people have trouble with, and this is why I wrote those two books, because the question comes up over and over. How can you be so wise, so insightful, possibly be a spiritual genius? Or enlightened. And, well, yes, indeed, enlightened. And although enlightened is such a loaded term, and a lot of people misuse it and a lot of people who are sociopaths and narcissists use it to manipulate other people. But how can you have all that

wisdom and at the same time such a lack of wisdom that you're just touching students on the shoulder and say you're gonna give me a b**t tonight. I'll see you in an hour. I'll expect you there. So how is that possible? Okay. And the answer is, I'll give you a couple of answers. Number one, how is it possible that the cute little kitty that's purring in your lap will get up in five minutes and tear the head off a mouse and have the best time of its life? But the real answer, of course, is that we're human beings. We're contradictory. This is, that is who he was. Stop trying, not you. Anybody should stop trying to think that we're human beings were contradictory this is that is who he was stop trying not you anybody should stop trying to think that you're either one or the other

it is entirely possible to be quite wise and quite foolish at the same time i mean think of all the all the people the brilliant people who got um swindled out of all their money by Bernie made off right you think they would be smart enough not to know that. So that is the history of religious experience is people who are often very wise and sometimes very unwise simultaneously. And that's not gonna change. And you're looking at me with a kind of bewildered expression,

and when people do that, my answer is you need, not to you, Dan, in particular, but to everyone, you need to get past that bewilderment because if you're stuck, as long as you stay stuck in that bewilderment, you give those kind of people potentially, give them power over you. I'm not, I'm actually not that bewildered.

I'm just, I just, I don't know, no, no, no, I mean, I, I, I, that was not meant to be critique. It's more that, how can I say this? So I don't know what I feel about enlightenment. Okay. The description of it in the scriptures, the Buddha scriptures is quite comprehensive, the uprooting of greed, hatred, and delusion. And so if you've got these people, I don't know what Trunk Buset or didn't say about the extent of his enlightenment,

but the advertised benefits of enlightenment are pretty panoramic. And so to me, it's surprising, on one level, that you could still be capable of such bad behavior. And of course the answer is, yes, they can, that we have been fed a bill of, we've been fed BS about enlightenment being a threshold that is crossed.

And yes, you can read some Buddhist scriptures where Buddha talks about never returners and things like that, but it isn't true. Enlightenment is not some permanent state because nothing's a permanent state. Think about it. So to say that someone somehow wasn't enlightened and now today is, and now that they've crossed that,

for it's not like losing your virginity, where you know you had that experience and that counts as, okay, I'm no longer A, I'm B. So you can have this profound enlightenment experience and then counts as, okay, I'm no longer A, I'm B. So you can have this profound enlightenment experience and then slip back. And it happens all the time and you can go back and forth and back and forth and that's what all experience is. Just like we can with all of their experience, we can be happy, we can be sad, we can swear we'd never do something and then we find ourselves doing it.

So if the conditions are right, you just like no matter how much meditation I do, if the conditions are right, I will be capable of heinous behavior. Well, I don't know if I do I want to take a stand on that. Here's what here is what I would say. I suspect that's true. Why don't you riff about that a little bit because I think you I think you you you you I would have some wisdom to offer. Depends I mean depends on you to find heinous. But if somebody were trying to or succeeding at harming my son. There you go. Yeah. I don't, I don't, what I, would I follow the Buddhist precept of non-harming

in that moment? I think, probably not. I think I would probably want to harm whoever was attempting to or succeeding at harming my son. So I feel like, you know, or if you gave me a ton of power immediately, how would I, how would that go? I mean, I already have power, privilege, and migrant situation, no question about it.

But you gave even more. Would I misuse it in ways that I can't foresee right now? I can't rule that out. I have enough humility about my makeup to know. Well, let me add three pieces to that, anywhere of which could be relevant. The first is, one of the things that we know about mental illness is it can appear at any time in life and with some mental illnesses, they kick in as you get older. So, I'm just going to give you one scenario.

I'm not projecting it onto any person in particular. But let's imagine you're a well-known spiritual teacher and it turns out that you have bipolar disorder in your family Now I've I've had two friends who had bipolar disorder in their in their family who were were they just lived really Good same lives until their late 40s and then the bipolar kicked in and one of them bodygun to kill himself The other one wound up being hospitalized And that was that then only then did I learn that they had this And one of them bought a gun to kill himself, the other one wound up being hospitalized. And that was, then only then did I learn that they had these genes. They told me afterwards.

So it could be that somebody has some kind of gene for some kind of mental illness that kicks in at an older age. So that's one possibility. Now, remember, I don't want us to be grasping it at good answers because that could be totally false, but I'm giving you one possibility. Now remember, I don't want us to be grasping at good answers because that could be totally false, but I'm giving you one possibility. Here's another. You mentioned Trumpa, and he was an alcoholic. He drank, as you say.

He drank himself to death. Now I've written a lot on addiction because I'm a professional writer and I've done a lot of writing for Hazelman Foundation, which does a lot of work on publishments, books on addiction and so on. And one of the things you know is that when an alcoholism, once you reach a certain point, it starts to screw up your brain. You no longer think straight, you no longer act. Exactly. So, that's another possibility.

But let me give you a third, which is going to come not seemingly out of left field. I make most of my living, even though I'm a writer and I'm a literary agent and I'm an editor and a writing consultant, I make most of my living as a ghost writer. So I can tell you, you go, how was this book so wonderful? And yet, well, I can tell you that some wonderful books were not so wonderful before they got into the ghost writer's hands. Even so, the brilliant books could have been written by other people. Well, in trunk, let me, since you brought you brought up in terms of Trump, they were his actual talks.

So, you know, the, the, the center of what that, of, of what's in these books came out of his mouth. And of course, he didn't invent all this. He wasn't Gotama, the guy we now call Buddha. He had a long tradition behind him where he learned some of these things as well. But if you have a good editor or a good ghost writer or a good collaborator, then that person brings the best out of you, it could often take material that still has wisdom in it, but it isn't as cogent and it isn't as this and isn't as that and isn't as successful. And that, of course, that's our job as ghost writers.

Right? So, certainly he worked with somebody on cutting through spiritual materialism, but I'm not singling out Trump for that, and I'm not singling out that book for that. That's often the case with books by many spiritual teachers. You talked a little bit about the history behind the first book on this subject that your assistant was going to do it and then she decided not to. You said I want to do it. Did you have personal experience that made you really want to...

Did you see bad behavior on your teachers. Yes. Yes. So, so, so, Categuiri, who was my, uh, who was my teacher for several years at the, the Minnesota Zen Center, and I want to make it clear, he wasn't a predator, he wasn't a narcissist, he wasn't a sociopath, he was the real thing, but he slipped. And he, and so he, he was what I would call an errant. Okay. Uh, well, he, he? Well, he had a long time relationship with one of his priests, and he was married, so he was doing this outside of, you know, so he was in quotes cheating on his wife, okay. And then there were reports of other things as well. I'm more concerned about the one with the priest because that, that the priest came out and said, look, this is what happened. Okay? And but then if it's that same

era, more and more stories were coming out about more and more teachers. And one of the things that you just, you know, again, I don't want to compare myself to you, but as you're a journalist, you go out and you cover stories that need to be covered. As a writer of books, I see something that needs to be addressed, that hasn't been addressed. So I say, I want to write a book about it, and then I pitch a book proposal about it, and then I find a publisher, and then I write it. And I felt like this could, both of these books, could make a significant difference, help people keep their feet on the ground, help

them develop some discernment. But these were also, these books are also not just about protecting your personal borders from people who will cross them. These are also primarily about people hoping to understand themselves so that they have realistic expectations of what a spiritual teacher is and isn't and can do and can't do and what to ask and not ask. And if you get to be friends with any spiritual teacher, get a beer in them and they'll be assuming they're allowed to have beer and then they'll talk to you about oh the students they have all these crazy ideas about what I can do

and what I can't and what I should do you know should I take this job, Rochie? Should I take this job so and so should I, should I leave my partner? That is not a spiritual teacher's job. A spiritual teacher's job is to help you become more human, to wise up, to grow up, to open up, to be, I would just say, to be more human. And to be clear, you are now a spiritual teacher, Dan, because you teach meditation. You go under that category. One of the great things, I mean, I have a lot of complaints about that word spiritual, but one of the great things about the word spiritual is it's found

away to reunite the secular, what we call the secular, the false dichotomy of secular and religious. economy of secular and religious. And so your spiritual teacher so is any yoga teacher, so is somebody who teaches MBSR mindfulness based stress reduction. Much more of our conversation right after this quick break. Hey, I'm Ericia and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wunderys Podcast, even the rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love

and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Rue off course. In our series Rue Paul Born Naked, we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. Two-part question. Why do we have this deep need for

guru spiritual teachers and what kind of damage does it do when they mispaid Slash victimize? That's that's a wonderful question. So there's two different needs. We, of course, we all need human connection. And of course, we all need to grow. We need to grow up. That's how we're, that's what we are as human beings, with potential to keep growing. So what's so helpful about a spiritual teacher,

and I'm talking about someone like you who wants to be of service to other human beings who can help provide guidance. And you don't want their love, you don't want their money, you don't want that, you're not trying to get something from them. Is that true? Well, are you, are you, do you tell me? Are, I mean, you don't need to be out there teaching with Joseph.

Yeah, but I sell books, so that's wanting money. Oh, sure, but are you requiring everybody to hand over money? Are you sitting here as a good book? No, no, no. Sure, that's totally fine. I'm a professional writer. I love it when people buy my books, but you don't require them too. And even if you require them to read it, they can go to a library.

That's right. But the other thing is that I don't want love, but I do want love. Do you want love from the people you teach? Well, love depends on how you define it. I'm like any other human. I susceptible to flattery and praise and like it when people like what I do. Okay. So I'm actually that's a fantastic point. So let me let me parse that a little bit. If it looks like that with the spiritual teacher wants something from you, that is probably the easiest, clearest sign that there's something that's a yellow flag if not a red flag. So who would you rather have as a student when you teach meditation?

Someone who kind of comes up to you and says, Dan, I'd like your autograph and Dan, I just think you're so wonderful or someone who seems to really want to be a better person and really interested in the meditation. Now the latter. Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm not saying you have to be pure as the driven snow, simply that you're or that you can never have a selfish impulse. I mean, if anything, meditation teaches us that our heads are full of selfish impulses. Just walking here, right, from the subway stop. Ooh, I want to eat that. Ooh, I want to eat that. Oh, I'd like to have sex with her. I mean, you know, all these things, these things bubble up, but they're just, they're just thoughts. And so

it's not about the motive, but it's about what you could call the prime motive or what's, what's going on. If somebody wants your money, if somebody wants your attention, if somebody wants your, if they're not putting your, if they're not first being of service to you, something's wrong, and that's the easiest and fastest way to tell if a spiritual teacher is somebody worth paying attention to. Now let me speak to the second part of the question, which is why do people become devoted,

not to why do people want to learn and be better and to grow, because we Any adult human being wants to do that and that's why it's so important for them to go To someone like Joseph or you or just just someone who understands the role Which is hey Joseph is Joseph Goldstein my Meditation teacher who is really amazing. Yeah, he's the real thing He's honesty straight forward. He's not trying to get things from people. Honestly, I'm told, he mostly just likes to ride his bike.

Is that his? That's right. He wants to be kind of a little alone, but meditating, riding his bike. He is not... He and his co-founders of the Insight Meditation Society, which is a really flourishing organization in central Massachusetts and its sister organization, spirit rock, and California, they deliberately did not, they deliberately tried to avoid the gurus.

Yes. So there were many teachers and nobody was, you know, the center of attention because they knew that was a recipe or they thought that might be a recipe for trouble. And let me give a shout out here because his close collaborator, Jack Cornfield, he and Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzburg, Jack Cornfield, they all kind of brought in large part teravada Buddhism and meditation to America. It was Cornfield who published the first thing about sex and spiritual teachers in nineteen roughly nineteen eighty four eighty five i might

have the year on but it's around there and it was about um... you can google it uh... just do jack cornfield sex guru and it was a wonderful article published in yoga journal and so i stand very much on jack shoulders in writing this book. And that was sort of the first foray into it many, many years ago. So to speak to what you said about why do people follow slavishly,

not follow in a kind of sane, healthy growth way. So for this, I would encourage people to look at Bill Eddie's blog on psychology today. The new one is called Wars and Parades or something like that. But what in his whole that's the newest of them. But the whole blog is called Five Types of People Who Can Ru in Your Life and he's got a book by that same topic. He's probably the world's leading expert on personality disorders. But his whole thing is that he's suggesting, and right now there's some evidence for it, but it's mostly theoretical, is that he suggests that you a certain percentage of human beings, and he calls it the wannabe king theory.

And he admits it's still a theory, which we know it's got anecdotal evidence on a little bit of research behind it, but we don't know yet. That a percentage of people, that's just who they are, that's how they're born and that's not how they were raised, that's their natural predilection. Now, maybe there's some nurture to it, it's not, but it is at least partly nature. And one of the reasons we know this is that people who were raised in the same family you can have like uh... three siblings to with them turn out normal and one has there either a sociopath or a narcissist or some other personality disorder and they want to be king or queen

and that's what they do and they become these uh... kind of uh... all encompassing leaders uh... these drunkards these russian issues these trunkpots, these russian-ishis, these take your pick, these amas. There's just a thal, they're always there and they will always be there. They'll always be a percentage. And now this suggests, he also goes on to say that roughly 30%. There is a little bit of evidence now, some studies for this, that 30% is a kind of lock-in-key mechanism. And that is that maybe what, 8%, 9% will turn out to have this personality that may become a political leader, they may become a religious leader, but roughly 30% of the human race seems to have a similar predilection

to follow them. So people wonder, why is everybody following this crazy person? He's got 15 plus rolls of rice, this is Oshon now, which was used to be called Rijanis. And he has them doing these nutty things and he's poisoning people, why are people following him? And the answer is it's not cognitive. It has nothing to do with what he says or why, or there's just some precognitive lock and key mechanism that's been activated. And you can see it if you watch that Rajani's documentary.

Yesterday, my cousin who was born in 1939, he had just had a birthday, and he was given a New York Times dated from March of 1939. It was the day after Hitler had just moved into Austria. And one of the they interviewed in Austria and he said, I will do whatever Hitler says, he can do no wrong. Just like what people said about Russian nation. Just like what people said about Trumpet.

And actually in that same New York Times article, they actually get two estimates of what portion of the population believed that. One was 20% and one was 33%. When spiritual teachers stray to use your term, what kind of damages does that do? Oh, that's a great question. It honestly depends on the person. I've had people say, oh yeah, trunk pus seduced me. I really enjoyed it. So it doesn't necessarily do any damage, but it can, it cannot. The biggest thing though is,

it depends, it depends why they're doing it, how they're doing it, because it's rare that the thing about trunk bun, I wanna give him some credit for this. He was a liberty. He was not, he would just say, he would have one of his Vajra guards, one of his assistants tap somebody on the shoulder and say, you're having, you're sleeping with Trump. He didn't hide it. He wasn't doing this type of

secret. Exactly. So he wasn't keeping secrets from anybody and he wasn't manipulating anybody exactly in that way. He was just being who he was. So, you know, a lot of people, of course, you had the chance to leave. And the poet W. S. Marwin, he wrote a very interesting account of, he went up to a retreat with Trumpist people, and it was all very cult like there, and he and his girlfriend actually wound up leaving. But there was some kind of orgyastic sex going on and crazy partying and they invited him down and he refused and they broke his door down. I mean, it was nuts.

So what all depends, the damage done is a combination of two things. Number one, who you are and your expectations. And number two, who the teacher is. But the worst cases are those where a teacher, you know, let's imagine you, I'm the teacher and you're the student, and I decide I want to have sex with you. And I start using my authority as a teacher, and I start using what I know. First, I start treating you specially, and I go, you know, you could really go far. You could be enlightened in this lifetime.

And I start, oh, you really? you could really go far. You could be enlightened in this lifetime. And I start, oh, you really, yeah, and I make you my star student, okay? And I maybe give you some position of power, maybe you're my assistant, my secretary, my attendant, my something, okay? And it's clear that I've singled you out as something special. There's an endless array.

In fact, in Sex and the spiritual teacher, I talk about all the different seduction techniques. There's actually a list, sex as a special blessing, sex as a spiritual teaching. You know, I'm gonna teach you something special through this, okay. Or, oh, don't you want to be enlightened? I have something you don't, I'm going to give it to you and guess what? That involves. There's a long and venerable list of

these because they've worked generation after generation. And the harms it has to do with the degree to which the person has been violated and the relationship has been violated. Let me say one more thing because you brought up crazy wisdom. That's one of the standard things. It goes like this. You know, I'm just practicing crazy wasn't you don't see it because you know, you're not advanced like I am. But I know it's going on. I can see it. It's crazy. This is crazy wisdom. I'm going to you crazy wisdom. I'm going to you to enlightenment. I'm going to you know and to any objection is that's right. I

have crazy wisdom. You don't which boils down to unless you do exactly what I tell you. You are going to be sort of just an everyday joe blow scared because that is people's deepest fear when they go into this. And when they get into something like meditation, is that, well, you know, it really turned out that it was just to take your pick. Jesus or Muhammad or Moses all along, and I should have just done whatever my parents did, because they're telling me that I'm the one who's done some weird thing. So the, let's just before we close here, let's talk about the sequel, which is,

you use the, users guide the spiritual teacher. So yeah. You're not saying don't hook up with the spiritual, I mean, link up with the spiritual teacher and study with them because I I'm sure you would say there's an enormous amount of value to be to absolutely But what what do we how do we how do we choose so we first and foremost you need to build your own discernment You need to get in touch with what are you feeling? What are you watching so and what do you want and what do you want? That's wonderful. Thank you and

So let me ask this you're I, I mean, your son's still much too young for this, but at a certain point your son's going to say, I want a girlfriend or a boyfriend, depending on how he would he grows into. And he said, and you'll say, what do I do? What do I look for? And one of the things you're going to say is, well, take it slow. Don't jump into anything. So I'm drawing an analogy here to say these are the same kinds of things you would say. Don't go just on, if you feel a strong pole, that means fine. Pay a little more attention there. Don't run away from the pole, but don't just go with it because you feel a pole. Because the pole could be good. It could be bad.

Watch the other people around this person. What are their students, if they're a teacher? What are they like? One of the things that happens, if you look at Joseph's students, they're not crazy people. They're not, and it's got, and your appeal, obviously, as somebody who teaches with him, is, oh, here's a guy with his feet on the ground.

He's not crazy. He's not, he's a guy we can trust and he's got a family. He doesn't have a hair, he doesn't have 17 rolls of voices. None of that. So look at how the person lives. Look at the people around them, whether it's their friends or their students. What are they asking of you? Do they put your interests first? In fact, the reason I wrote both of these books was so that people wouldn't just go, oh my God, it's all too scary or it's too dangerous. All right, if people have been heard too much, I'm just going to join the Lutheran church

where my parents go, no, I want people to explore. I want people to investigate different spiritual traditions. And by spiritual traditions, I mean everything from the supposedly secular, like mindfulness-based stress reduction, all the way up to serious Catholicism, serious Judaism, you know, mystical Christianity, whatever they feel called to, a sufism, if they're in there, they feel called to that. But all the same rules apply. First of all, trust yourself, build your discernment, don't run, don't just go by feel. Don't just go, oh, I feel a pull, so I will run, I will run after it, because that is probably, I mean, feel the pull, go ahead and feel the pull,

but just take your time. And if there is something real that's being offered, then that will, then you'll feel it. You'll know it more over a period of months. Just like you would, would you, would you, if your friend said, oh, I just, I just met this wonderful man or woman. We've went on each other for two months, but I know it's the real thing.

I'm going to get married. You're going to clap your hand on your forehead and go, oh my God, don't do that. Don't do it right now is what I do. To it right now. Yes. I haven't thought deeply about this, but one of the things that strikes me,

one of a rule of thumb I use when it comes to spiritual teachers is, do they have a sense of humor about themselves? That's a great one. Yes. Do they, in fact, in both books, I have a long list of what things to avoid and what things to look for. Just like that.

Yes, sense of humor. If they're willing to say I was wrong, and I'm sorry, if they can't say I was wrong, just straight out, or I'm sorry, or I made a mistake, run away. That's the first and foremost. If they can't laugh at themselves, absolutely. And there's a long list. If they ask for a lot of money, if they wall off their community from the rest of the world in any way, shape, or form, if they develop their own inner language, that only they understand. If they want you to sacrifice so much for that for the group or for them

that it hurts your health or mental health that's also a problem of course if they demand strict obedience that's an issue to and so on by love the sense of humor when that that is one of the most important as we close here uh... let's go into what i call jokingly the plug zone. Can you just plug Away here shamelessly tell us about where we can find you on social media if you're there website

Which books you want us to know about give us everything sure So first of all the books are sex in the spiritual teacher And the user's guide to spiritual teachers and of course you can get them anywhere on the online or in bookstores and you bookstork an order it if they don't already have it in. And the website that supports them is called thespiritualteachersite.com. And it's some interviews with me,

it has information about both of the books. I would encourage people also to, I mean use the internet to Google anybody that they're interested in, whether they're a teacher or a writer or a spiritual leader. And if you start to see the same kind of comment appearing, trust those because there is wisdom in many people's comments. Over and above that, with social media, I confess that I haven't taken them down yet, but I presume you've heard about Jaren Leneer's.

Do you know Jaren Leneer? He's been a longtime visionary. He invented virtual reality. I mean, literally, he invented it. So he's a longtime techie. I think he works for Microsoft now, but his new book is called Ten Arguments about Leave or something like Ten Arguments for Leaving All Social Media and he's off and they're very compelling arguments. So my social media sites are going down.

But the website is still there and people can contact me through it. And yes, you know, some of you are going to send me hate mail because I've said something bad about your spiritual teacher, but that's the other thing we all have to do. We all have to tell the truth to each other. We all have to be discerning and not just take everything we hear at face value. Yes, we need to investigate it for ourselves, which by the way is what Buddha said on his deathbed, right? He said, don't follow anything just because some particular person said it or you read it in a book, question it, test it out about against your own experience.

And then if it looks and feels and is demonstrated to be wholesome, follow it. And so that's the advice I would give to everybody, and that's the advice that undergirds both of the books. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much, Dan. It's been pleasure. OK, that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast. If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics you think we

should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Tohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, Prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey

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