Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 256: White People, Drop the Shame and Get Curious | Shelly Graf

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

In this episode, we go there. All the way there. All those horrifying little thoughts that white people might have - eg: Have you ever felt superior to, or suspicious of, black people? - let's drag them out of the subconscious and look at them. We don't need to submerge them or swat them away. But here's the thing: can we do it with some semblance of mindfulness and even friendliness? This isn't an exercise in ritual shaming; guilt and shame are just self-centeredness cul-de-sacs. After all, we didn't summon these thoughts; they were injected into us by the culture. So fellow white people, instead of just looking at the race discussion as something supremely discomfiting, let's also look at it as an opportunity to do what we’ve been attempting to do in meditation all along: to know our minds better so that we don’t blindly act out all of our conditioning. Our guest this week is the magnificent Shelly Graf. Shelly was recommended to me by my TPH colleague, Matthew Hepburn. Shelly is a social worker and a staff dharma teacher at the Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis. To be clear, Shelly doesn't pretend to be an expert who has it all figured out - simply a meditation teacher who has committed to deeply engaging on the issue of race. So in that spirit, here we go: Shelly Graf. Where to find Shelly Graf online: Website: https://commongroundmeditation.org/ STwitter: https://twitter.com/cgmed Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CommonGroundMeditation/ Check our our new, free collection of meditations called Relating to Race in the Ten Percent Happier app: https://10percenthappier.app.link/RelatingToRace Other Resources Mentioned: Refuge (Buddhism) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refuge_(Buddhism) Karma in Buddhism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma_in_Buddhism Maitr? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitr%C4%AB Ruth King - https://ruthking.net/ Episode 164: Ruth King, Being Mindful of Race - https://open.spotify.com/episode/5p3BTgqKgke7PYSUbzvPrR Three Marks of Existence: Anicca, Dukkha, Anatta - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_marks_of_existence M?na - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81na Common Ground Meditation Center - https://commongroundmeditation.org/ The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture - https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/white-supremacy-culture-characteristics.html Detour-Spotting for White Anti-Racists - https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/olson.pdf List of resources from Resmaa Menakem - https://www.resmaa.com/resources Racial Affinity Group Development Program - https://ruthking.net/learning-with-ruth/ra-gdp/ Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App access for Health Care Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/shelly-graf-256 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, before we dive in, one quick item of business. During this time when so many of us are thinking so much about issues relating to race, I wanted to point out that we at the 10% happier app have created a whole series of free guided meditations designed to help you engage with these issues. So as I said, it's free. We'll put a link in the show notes.

Go check it out. All right, let's get to this week's show. In this episode, we go there. We go all the way there. All those horrifying little thoughts that white people might have, for example, heavier perfil superior to or suspicious of black people. All those horrid little thoughts. The goal here is to drag them out of this subconscious and take a hard look at them.

We don't need to submerge them or swap them away. But here's the thing, we can do this work with some semblance of mindfulness and even friendliness. This is not an exercise in ritual shaming, guilt and shame, or just self-centered cul-de-sacs. After all, we didn't summon these thoughts. They were injected into us by the culture. So my fellow white people, instead of just looking at the race discussion as something supremely discomforting, let's look at it instead as an opportunity to do what we've allegedly

been attempting to do in meditation all along, to know our minds better so that we don't blindly act out all of our habit patterns and conditioning. Our guest this week is the magnificent Shelley Graf. Shelley was recommended to me by my TPH colleague Matthew Hepper and Shelley as a social worker and a staff Dharma teacher at the Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis. To be clear, Shelley does not pretend to be an expert who's figured it all out. Simply a meditation teacher who has committed to deeply engaging on this issue of race. So in

that spirit, here we go with Shelly Graf. Shelly, very nice to meet you virtually. Yeah, it's good to meet you too, Dan. So I'm really curious to start with some background. You really sit at an interesting intersection here between deep meditative practice, dorm or practice, and really looking at this issue of whiteness. How did you arrive at this place? Why was this so interesting to you? Yeah, it just, it actually has always felt like a natural intersection for me. Perhaps it has some roots and how I grew up as a child and a working class neighborhood and with a lot

of experiences and friends of other cultures, cultures different than mine. And that certainly had its roots and continued throughout my life. And I chose a profession as a social worker and therapist working in communities of color, naturally concerned with issues of poverty and all that comes from that. And so I found my Dharma practice after already having experience and career.

So your life was already, you were already deeply sort of engaged in the work of being a white person, spending a lot of time with people of color. That was already in process by the time you started practicing meditation. Yeah, it wasn't something that I had to try to do as a way of learning. My life was fairly integrated even at the beginning of my Dharma practice. In a fact, that's something that I supervise interns now in my professional career. It's one of the things that I always suggest. Young people come with a desire to learn a lot of things,

and a lot of professional things, clinical things, and what I say is like the most obvious thing will just find yourself in authentic relationships with people of color and see where they go, right? Where you don't have more power than someone else or yeah, you're just caring about loving, befriending, joining, in activities with other people of color and watching your relationships unfold from there. Given the way American society has been structured, there are a lot of white people who may feel

they don't have many opportunities to interface with people of color. I don't know how that can be. Yeah, I think, you know, if you live in a state, opportunities to interface with people of color. I don't know how that can be. Yeah. I think, you know, if you live in a state like, let's just say, I mean, I have until a week ago, lived in New York City, it would be impossible. You would have to really work hard not to interact

with people with different pigmentation. But if you live in Maine, the way to stay in the nation or Vermont, which is up there or somewhere in the upper plains or something like that, it may be possible to not be able, you may feel that you don't have the opportunity to enter into authentic relationship. And I'm just curious what you would say to somebody in that position. Yeah, it's hard when I say I don't know how that can be. I really was thinking about now in the age of technology. There are so many ways to talk to people virtually.

And perhaps there's not a lot of opportunity face to face in some communities. But there are ways to read and listen to people of color. And it may not be the ideal. But there are still to read and listen to people of color and it may not, you know, be the ideal, but there are still opportunities for that, especially in this age of technology and squadcast and zoom and Google Duo or whatever other platforms people use Instagram, things like this. And let me ask what may seem like a incredibly obvious question. I'm trying to frame this so that prospect becomes deeply sort of compelling to people. Why should people really embrace that opportunity to get out of their bubble?

Yeah, and I guess I don't want to let us off the hook that easily, right? Even if we don't live in communities where there are a lot of people of color, but I think we all need to be grappling with this question of how we belong to each other. The world is a mess in so many ways and we contribute to that every moment of our lives, either in our silence or in our engagement. So if we are people who are especially practitioners, meditation practitioners, interested in liberation, we have to be interested in all of the ways that our internal and external experience collide, all of the ways that greed and hatred and delusion manifest in the way that we live our lives. And we learn that through our interactions with each other.

Just like it doesn't work to wake up as a solo practitioner, never interacting with other humans, it really doesn't work to wake up to social and oppressive forces in our world that influence all of us all the time in that same kind of bubble. So we have to find ways to engage and learn and listen. Well, I'm with you on all of this, but the one sort of archetypal image of a meditator, though, is exolopracticitor in a cave in the Himalayas. So what should we do with that idea that may be lingering in the back of our minds. Yeah, I mean context really matters.

So, I would love retreat practice. I've done a lot of retreat practice. I do sit solo on my cushion, eyes closed, that kind of thing often, and really value that. And in addition, also, if we only did that, then we would be missing a large part of the path. So the mind training is one part of the path, but there are also other parts of the path

that are also very relevant. So when Buddhism came to the West, our esteemed teachers prioritized certain aspects of the path over other aspects of the path. And so learning how to fully integrate with all aspects of the path is important. Yeah, just to put a fine point on that, if you want to approach it from a strictly Buddhist standpoint, you know, the Buddha talked about the three jewels, the three key components of walking the path, the Buddha, sort of the idea of the awakening is

possible, the Dharma, the teaching that the Buddha left us, and then the Sangha, which is the community. And so all three are incredibly important, and you can think of the Sangha as basically everybody drawing breath. For sure. We're not being able to draw breath. Right. Yes. Yeah. And so our ethics, our ethical conduct, the way we live our lives, the way we walk and talk, and the impact of those seeds that we plant, or those intentional seeds that we plant in our hearts really matter. Right. And if we don't learn how to watch our minds and all of our daily activities, then we are not really showing up for our own awakening in each other. It really seems like we have forgotten to prioritize in terms of sangha how we belong to each

other. Like, not as a question that we have to know the answer to right now, but as a really important inquiry. question that we have to know the answer to right now, but as a really important inquiry, it's easy to say, you know, I know my family belongs to me. I'll take care of them, I'll stick my neck out for them. Perhaps I'll even die for them. But is that true for all human beings? And why not if it's not true? So why is it okay for us as white people to stay silent about some of the atrocities in our culture, in our systems? If I really understand that you belong to me, like even right now in this conversation, if I really understand that you belong to me and I belong to you, then I'm going to be

willing to say hard things or ask hard questions or make mistakes and hope that you will feel the same way that I belong to you and you'll challenge me back and then we'll learn and grow. It's really a difference of prioritizing our learning instead of being humans that are just going to get it right all the time. Can you unpack or expand upon the notion of belonging to one another? What exactly does that mean? Well, we have ideas about what it means to be interconnected, and we can sort of understand our interconnections that, for example, we do our practice, we sit on the cushion, we do our meditation or mindfulness practice,

and also we contribute to our social world in terms of work and our family engagements. We have friends, and so our practice naturally spills out of us, right? It's not something we can ever just keep for ourselves. It doesn't work that way. Even if we try to wouldn't work, because the habit of mindful awareness will always grow and strengthen as long as we're practicing. So right now, even if I tried, I couldn't just let go of mindfulness because this heart knows that it cares. I want to be skillful. I want to abide in goodness even while I'm having this conversation with you. So there's always an impact. So in terms of belonging, here

in this moment, I know that you belong to me because I'm making an effort to be engaged and contribute to something. And there's the part that even in this small interaction, you know, it will have a lasting impact on us. However long, I don't know how long, maybe in 10 years, I'll remember something how long, maybe in 10 years I'll remember something about this conversation and then it will contribute to the next moment. So this is the the power of karma or planting seeds that will support ongoing efforts that we make as human beings to be skillful people. Disnotion, I came to it, I'll admit.

This is not something I'm proud of, but I did not come to meditation to be a better person in the world. I came to meditation because I was making myself miserable. I was really stressed and anxious and sometimes depressed and particularly around work stuff. And it was a development and practice over time that my motivation started to shift to wanting to play a more positive role in the world. And even then, there is an undercurrent of self-interest in that Joseph Goldstein, my meditation teacher, talks about this virtuous cycle that happens

through the cultivation of meta or friendliness to other people, where as your relationships with other people improve your own inner weather improves and as your own inner weather improves so then do your relationships with other people. And it just goes from there. And so what goes through my mind is I'm listening to talk is that I think it's possible for many listeners depending on where they are in this trajectory, may approach a conversation like this thinking, yeah, I didn't come to meditation to engage with the problems of the world. I came to calm myself down a little bit, etc., etc., etc. But

what I've seen in my own practice, and I do see this with others too, is that the deeper you go, and I'm not even talking about, like, so deep that you're you know, on a three month retreat or in the before mentioned cave in a Himalayas, just the more you do it, the more obvious it becomes that if you really do want happiness understood in a really full way, happiness, peace of mind, connection, well being, then your relationships are incredibly important. And that can start with the people in your immediate orbit. And then I think you, I've just seen in my own personal trajectory, you get to where, what you're describing, which is seeing that we're sharing this planet with an enormous number of other people who are suffering, and their suffering is not disconnected from ours.

Anyway, I just said a lot there, but does any of that land for you? Yeah, it does totally. And what I'm reminded of is something that my teacher Ruth King says that white people tend to see the stars and people of color tend to see the constellations. Right? So some people come into this naturally thinking about the collective and others of us come naturally thinking about our own suffering. But at some point we need to learn how to see both, that one is connected to the other. And so it may seem that like, I come to this practice because I'm really struggling because I'm really anxious or whatever the cases that was true for me. I came because I wanted to suffer less too.

I had a lot of anxiety. But what naturally happens is other people start to reflect back to me or to us the impact of our practice. Like, oh, I see that you're practicing because you're nicer. Or I see that you're practicing because you're more kind or more patient or whatever the case. And so in that moment we can actually see that our practice has an impact on others, even though that wasn't the way our mind saw our intention to practice. So it's always there that we have an individual and collective responsibility,

both responsible to ourselves and to each other, but we don't always see that. So just a difference in perspective, or a difference in view. A word about Ruth King, she's been on the show before I recommend people go back and listen to that interview. She's phenomenal, has had a big impact on me as well.

We'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. Why do you think, Shelley, that white people tend to see the stars instead of the constellation? Yeah, it's, you know, whiteness is an elusive thing. Its job is to be invisible. So we often don't see how that is, but we can start to wake up to the ways that we sort of act out the its tenets. So individualism, prioritizing this kind of idea of objectivity, disconnection, and all

kinds of other ways. There's a great list online of the aspects of white supremacy culture and rolls out like quite a lot of them. And so it's good if we can keep these in mind all of the time and wake up to the way they course through our bodies and our hearts. But it's because I think of the air that we've breathed in as white people, especially, but we all breathe in this air of white supremacy, culture here in the United States, that we sort of miss that we're doing this. Like, we act out our dominance in this way. We see ourselves as individuals responsible for our own destiny. We think other people can do the same thing.

We miss the structural forces that influence. This week, we actually miss the history of this country. We miss all of the ways that this country was founded on slave labor and stolen land and how those values that were alive then actually then moved to perpetuate systems that continue to cycle through the same values and have the same impact. So we come by this really, really naturally. These aspects of whiteness that you describe, a push for individuality, objectivity, disconnection, and particular sort of disconnection from body and more, you know, sort of getting in our own heads, which loyal listeners will remember Lamarado is talking about

this recently that we revert to the heads because we don't want to feel the pain, which is freely and readily available if we tune into our bodies. Are these not aspects of other cultures too? to, I mean, would you not find this in, I don't know, in Asia or in Africa or is there something about just being white that is part of this? Or is it when you talk about whiteness or you're talking about the culture that grew out of our history of slavery in stolen land, et cetera, et cetera? Yes, that, the latter. So when I say whiteness, I'm not speaking about white people, but really about the systems and the patterns and the values that influence all of us,

just like, you know, like air. We're just breath in this stuff and we don't see it, we don't know it. So it takes an active effort and a commitment to really see what we don't see, which is why it seems that Buddhist practitioners or mindfulness, meditation practitioners have an important part to play in our collective effort to awaken to racial injustice, because we know how to do this. This is what we do. We sit, we practice, so that we can see more clearly, more deeply. Wake up to knowing what we don't know. more deeply. Wake up to knowing what we don't know. Yeah, so we can use the same way to the same practice to wake up to perfectionism and defensiveness right here in the body, with the body. Right? We can use it to wake up to the ways that we feel like

were the stars instead of the cons- oh, look at this right now. I'm seeing the stars. I'm not seeing the constellation. Look at that. Oh, look at this trying now I'm seeing the stars I'm not seeing the constellation. Look at that. Oh look at this trying to cling to power. So I don't know if this is the way it is and other cultures but I can say that this is might been my experience here. And this the longer I practice and the more I am interested in waking up using my entire integrated life for awakening, for liberation, the more this becomes really obvious to me. And it feels less personal, which is really liberating. Right? Like, oh, this isn't just my fault. This is bigger than me.

It's not personal. Shelley didn't make a big mistake here. Shelley has a responsibility, but Shelley didn't make a big mistake here. Right. And this is how we can do the end run around the deeply unhelpful white guilt, which to harken back to another guest on the show a few weeks ago, the Reverend Angel Kiyota Williams talking about how guilt is a really kind of a dangerous

cul-de-sac in this process, where you can get stuck in guilt, which is making it all about you and paralytic, as opposed to looking at your own inner biases with some dispassion not taking them so personally, then you don't get hung up in the guilt and then you can take more constructive action. Is any of what I just said there correct to you?

Yeah, I think so. You know, shame and guilt is something that white people when we start to wake up, it's really gonna be there. So yes, and we have to expect that we're gonna work with this territory, right? So we can understand that sort of wallowing in shame and guilt really centers whiteness.

And we can know like okay this is shaman guilt and how do i work with it skillfully so that it doesn't bring me down so that i can still stay in the game so that i can still be engaged yeah and you know again dan i i think like you mentioned before just learning how to connect with the body where our whole life happens right here in and with the body is really key. We need to be able to feel shame and trust that it's impermanent like every other experience, let it move, help it move, support its movement through the body so that we don't get stuck there. The same is two for guilt. I want to dig more deeply into some of these aspects of whiteness that I've heard you tick off here, defensiveness, clinging to power, disconnection, a sort of sense of individuality,

being in your head instead of your body. Can you hold forth on some of these because I'm just so curious to hear more? Because I recognize myself in a lot of them, all of them, correction, all of them. Yeah, so which one do you want to dig into? Let's go with defensiveness because at my worst, which is not uncommon, I can be very defensive. Yeah, how does that show up for you?

Somebody's trying to give me some useful feedback, and I go right to there telling me I'm a terrible person. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, this is it. I find the same thing in myself. It's very quickly about me. I'm very quickly the center of the universe. Right? And if you've been paying attention to what's happening in the country these days, the protest movement, the revolution is very alive and Minneapolis right now, I'm not there, but I live there and so I'm quite connected to how things are. And it's just really easy to see both in my own heart and as I watch video and live stream

of other white people can immediately getting defensive about, you know, some of the inconveniences of protesting in the street, the inconvenience of having to do life differently, the inconvenience of being afraid, right? How quickly that defensiveness springs forward as if I have a right to something, right? But missing that other people perhaps have the same right, but without the same privilege. Yeah. So lots of ways, defensiveness can show up. So when defensiveness shows up for you,

as somebody who's done no small amount of meditation, how do you work with it? Well, I immediately try to notice it in the body. So, any mind state arises, any attitude of mind arises, any feeling, emotion arises. How do I know that? Well, I know it because I can feel it. Where do I feel it? Oh, I feel it right here in this heart, in this body.

And once I can feel it in the body, I have some say. Now, I'm mindful, I'm aware of it. So it's not, I'm not subject to its rule. You know, it's not just gonna take me for a ride because I'm clear, like, oh, look at this. This is defensiveness and it feels like this. It has a force, it arises in my chest. It comes up into my throat. Sometimes it feels like this, it has a force, it arises in my chest, it comes up into my throat, sometimes a strength around it that feels similar to anger or frustration.

Sometimes I want to lash out, like that's what I want to do with it. I want to put somebody in their place or I want to claim my position as a sense of self-righteousness. It's there. I want to do something about it. That's going to say, no, I'm here. See me. And I'm right. I think I'm right. And so instead of doing all of that, I get to watch that happen and work with the body, move the body, walk a little bit, breathe. You know, it can happen right there in the midst of a conversation where I, you know, like just move your head a little bit, move your arms, strike your shoulders, roll back, take some breaths, allow that energy to move and change and shift.

Now I'm not imprisoned by it anymore, but I'm mindful of it, so I don't actually have to be afraid of it. So my job I don't feel like is to get rid of defensiveness or perfectionism or individualism or anything like that. I just have to watch and as I watch and respond skillfully with love but for myself and for others in that moment I can see like oh this isn't mine. This is just arising because the conditions are right for this and given this white condition to experience, I know something about that and I know how common it is for this to arise. I'm just going to let that happen and I'm not going to take it personally.

And I'm going to trust that this isn't mine, this isn't Shelley. You know, it's no different than really working with all of the patterns and habits that are specific to each of us. Right? I can say what they are for me, and you can say what they are for you, and they're slightly different for each of us. Some of us might be more controlling types, and others might be more inclined to fear, or something like this. For me, anxiety has been something that I have worked with a lot all of my life, really. And today, having worked with it for many decades, I met a lot easier to watch anxiety, arise, and pass, and still continue to do my life.

15 years ago, that wouldn't have been the case. I wouldn't have been able to keep talking like this, or to stay in the flow of my life in any way. It would have really taken me down. But now, because there's a lot of practice at just watching experience arise in the body and letting it go, not taking it so personally realizing this is just a force of nature. And it's been here a long time. It may be here forever. It may not. Who knows. But I don't have to have a idea that I need to get rid of this. I can just care about it, work with it, help it move. And this is the same way that I would work with any of these aspects of whiteness

that course through this body, this heart in very similar ways. I realize it's not me, see how it's not me. Oh yeah, this is an aspect of structural forms that have arisen based on this country's interest in domination, superiority. No, it's not Shelley. Oh, look at that. And it comes and goes just like everything else. And it's painful. Oh, it doesn't feel good, right? We're noticing Dukha and Nichen and Nata right here. Doesn't feel good.

And because it doesn't feel good, I want to take care of that. Hating it or hating myself isn't going to help. Yes, that's just a version which clogs the system up and makes it more self. Where you get tied in a, just a subsequent series of knots adding that into the system. I think for me, what I heard you describe about noticing the defensiveness in the moment and then being able to kind of metabolize it, let it move on through. I am not as skilled a practitioner as you often when the defensiveness arises in the moment for me, I act on it and say something dumb. It's later when I'm reliving the conversation that I might have a

chance to notice, oh, yeah, yeah, I got caught there. Then I can let it, sometimes I can let it arise and pass without getting caught and then maybe I can go back to the person I was defensive with an apology. That's the best case scenario. Well, that's good, too. Still good to practice. Yeah, one of my teachers would call that post-micleness. So let's talk about perfectionism. You've described perfectionism as an aspect of whiteness.

And again, whiteness, and you're not saying it's not an emergent property of simply having white skin. It's an emergent property of having white skin and growing up in this culture with its history, you describe perfectionism as being one of the aspects of this whiteness. Why perfectionism and how do you see that coming up in your mind and the minds of other white people? Perfectionism. I mean, it certainly manifests for me in lots of ways, but just kind of the ordinary, conceit ways, measuring myself up to others, trying to be good, trying to be better, kind

of that striving energy of that's really forceful and trying to get somewhere rather than surrendering and learning something, being more curious. So you know, climbing professional letters, as manifest like this for I think lots of white people. I know a number of black Americans, all if not most of them are pretty ambitious. Is that because they've been co-opted by whiteness or isn't there something about the human spirit that does want to achieve? Maybe, you know, I don't know about that. I don't know. There probably is something about the

human spirit that wants to achieve in this culture, in this culture for sure. I can't say that's true everywhere else. And in fact, like I said before, it seems that from what I've heard from other people in different cultures, that there's other motivating factors for people. Sometimes the collective is really important. Sometimes that achievement orientation is not the most focal thing. So what I can say is that it definitely seems to be true here in the States in Western culture. And this radical thing is that whiteness, the values of whiteness, the structure, the forms, all the ways that whiteness manifests here in the United States impacts everybody. So yeah, ambition is important to many people.

And striving energy and that need to be perfect is something that we all breathe in, trying to achieve, trying to get somewhere, always trying to prove ourselves that we're good enough. That is something that we're all breathing in and taking in with varying degrees of skillfulness. So some people reject it completely and go in a different direction. Other people are fully in it and doing that. And then probably the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle working with it, trying to find some balance and using our energies to keep forwarding our lives and also taking rebalancing ourselves by surrendering and just allowing at the same time. This is an interesting issue for me because I think one of the One of the big questions I was trying to address when I

wrote my first book and just sort of Really started taking my first four days Into this I mean I said earlier in the conversation that a big reason why I came to practice was I was feeling a lot of stress and anxiety And a lot of that stress and anxiety was showing up in work TV news is incredibly competitive And I found myself in these just really painful cycles of, it's not only is it competitive, but when you're a, it's small. So when you're a TV news anchor, there aren't that many jobs available. And so you're competing against a small number of people. And so you get stuck in very painful

cycles of comparing myself to other people. Why this person get that job and why this person get that assignment and just driving me nuts. And I'm not that I've completely conquered it. So I wanted to address that. I also didn't want to defang myself in some way and I wanted to continue to be able to be successful in the competitive career. I agree with everything you just said about perfectionism and how pernicious a force that can be and yet I do even after a decade plus of reasonably

robust engagement with the practice find myself wanting to achieve and questioning whether that's all bad. Yeah. I mean, the Buddha talked about conceit, so we can say with some degree of certainty that, you know, this is not a, not something that's very special to Westerners, but something that impacts all humans. And it does seem like the most important thing is the ongoing inquiry because context matters.

So yes, conceit and an offshoot of that ambition, that includes the energy to make something happen or to try to go for something, the drive, striving energy. That has certain influences here in the United States that perhaps, for me, feel very significant. So this country being founded the way that it has been and driven the way that it is driven with our consumerism and capitalism and the influences of whiteness that are here, you know, make it a really interesting place to continue to explore.

You know, what is this? What is perfectionism? How does it manifest? And why is it here in this heart-mind? And maybe not why, but perhaps how would be a better question? Yeah, because it's probably not specific to Dan or Shelley, right? Again, it's a way to see nature. So how do we explore something like this, like perfectionism, as a force of nature, rather than an individual problem that we have to solve? I still find myself struggling with maybe what I'm hearing for you is it comes down to motivation. So for example, I can,

I'm writing a book. I want this book to be really successful. Maybe I can take a look at why? Why do I want it to be successful? Because I want it to help a lot of people, or because I want the ego gratification of knowing the book was the best seller. Would that be the right way to sort of take what you were talking about and make it very practical? How does that feel to you when you say that? It feels right. Yeah, it feels like that's the right place to be focusing the, or a useful place to be focusing

this inquiry around this perfectionism and ambition that I find coursing through my own mind. And this dialogue, this debate I've been having internally of like, oh, I still want to 60, I still want to be able to pay the rent on an apartment for my family. I still want to be able to take my family on vacation. I want certain things. And is that bad? And also trying to get a sense of somewhere in the motivation, there seems to be something really important and kind of seminal that really ripples out through the actions that follow it. And so if I can hone in on the book, for example, on my desire for it to be a useful document

for other people that is engaging and transformative for then, rather than walking around with images in my mind of kind Amazon reviews and some sort of, some prominent perch on the best seller list, that seems like a happier, more productive place to be the former rather than the latter. I don't know if I'm answering your question. That's a good question. I'm just appreciating your exploration on this. Yeah.

And how, yeah, it's really practical and alive for you So this is where all of each of us we get to start by figuring out what is most alive and practical and then answer our like Get interested in that and think with a lot of honesty like oh, is this about that really? Now I like the idea Sometimes I like to kid myself. I like the idea of Shelley who is always altruistic. And I will pretend like some of my decisions are in line with the greater good, but they're not always.

So using my practice to be really honest and sincere about that too, because I care about that. I care about knowing how things really are. Yeah. And actually, you know, I always say to myself before I teach, like, sweetie, it's going to be a mixed bag tonight. Some wisdom, some delusion, and you know, it's not going to be other than that. So just surrender to being a learner in this moment. Yeah, so it sounds like, you know, what you're doing, just in your own exploration with, what does it really like to write this book? More 10% happier after this. More 10% happier after this. shares of our freshly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts.

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the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. I know I don't have all day with you, so I'm trying to strategize about the right place to go. or Wondry app. I know I don't have all day with you, so I'm trying to strategize about the right place to go now. I have at least two things I want to talk about with you before I... I'm sure you have other things you need to do. Let's pick one more aspect of whiteness to explore. You talked about power and a clinging to power as being an aspect

of whiteness. Can you talk about what you mean by that and how and whether you see it showing up for yourself? So, I see this show up a lot for me and my kind of need to control, especially the shows up in work. I have deadlines and kind of a bound by time to finish things and get to the next thing. And I don't like it if something interferes with my plans. So in moments when something interferes with my plans, my instinct is to try to control the situation so that I can do what I need to do. And nobody else interferes or nothing else interferes with what I have going on. So just trying to think of practical ways, maybe that a lot of people can relate to,

one way of seizing power. Another way is wanting to be right or feeling like I'm right in conversations with my partner, my loved ones, friends, and as soon as someone else says something that I don't think is right, just trying to shut that down in some way, right? Another way that power shows up. And then also translating that to what's happening in the world these days, or in the country these days, especially in Minneapolis. One of the things that feels really important to me is how to metabolize or aspects of

power and not, again, not be imprisoned by them to see it manifesting not just here on an individual level, but also on the collective. And so as I'm watching or engaging with some of the things that are going on, like I'm also watching my mind disagree with people. And so one of my rules is for myself, or practices, really, is to just listen to people of color, listen to what they're saying, and watch my mind, defend my own ideas and opinions and question, but don't act on it. Use my mindfulness practice to watch that flow and don't act on it. And actually just follow, sometimes follow the lead of people of color.

Do my own work, my own investigation, not just do that blindly, but follow the lead so that I'm not having to have power over, but power with more often. If that makes sense. It does, because it's actually making me think about one of the things that I've struggled with to the limited extent that I've done this work of trying to use mindfulness to wake up to biases as they're applied to race. Let me just go back a second. We're talking about power and the need to be right. For sure, I see that showing up in my life in a million different ways. And it's very painful, actually, not only for me, but for everybody who is in a amount of orbit.

But as specifically as it pertains to engaging with people of color in this work or engaging with other white people in this work, I do find myself sometimes reverting to my, very frequently reverting, sort of getting intellectual about it. Well, wait a minute. So what is she talking about really when she says whiteness?

And does that, can we really trace that back to the founding of this country? And, you know, has that been peer reviewed? This idea of whiteness and is it, can I actually trust that? Can I actually go with that and blah, blah, blah, I still have those questions. You know, is that somebody's a penguin or is this, you know, been studied in the labs blah, blah, blah. I see myself going there. And I have struggled at times with doing this work. You hear theories on school to like whiteness. And I feel like, so do I have to just swallow all of this and not challenge it? Or can I ask questions? But if I ask questions, am I going to be accused of getting too intellectual

about this? And so I sometimes get stuck in there. Anyway. Yeah. I actually think this moment calls for more sophistication, you know, just like you're pointing to. It's not, it's not a quick and easy answer. And in fact, some of the it's kind of the heart's quickest way, the white heart's quickest way to happiness is to go to the intellectual because we're so entrenched in needing to be smart and know things, deliver

information and be right, you know, all of these ways. So like when that happens, we just can know like, oh yeah, this is totally normal for this to be happening. And then ask for a more sophisticated understanding. For me, this is what I do. Like, okay, the mind wants to intellectualize this and have the right answer, but what's a more sophisticated way to know? Use the body. Because the body will give me clues as to what's actually happening in my heart at a way at a deeper level than what the thinking mind can come up with. So as these questions are coming up for me, I might just do my best to stay connected with the movement of the body and just track what's interesting. So there might be one of these questions that arises.

Like, is this really true? And then if I look at the body, I might feel the pull of something unpleasant, something that I'm not proud of. It could be some aspect of ill will, hatred or anger or something that's like, you know, fixed there for me. So I can get curious about that. It's a way to interrupt that pattern of intellectualizing for me. That's what helps. Well, what I also heard from you there is in terms of a sophisticated approach is So you can have questions And you don't have to squelch the questions per se, but you don't need to get them answered right now always and sometimes you can listen

Yeah, and it's not a hostile listening where you're No, I do fear sometimes that white people in these discussions are just scared and so don't say anything and nothing changes because they feel more under attack or frustrated or their opinions are all driven underground and they perform some sort of political correctness. But what I'm hearing from you is actually really listen in those moments and you know there may be a time to explore some of the intellectual ideas, but you know, when you're watching the news, when you're listening to a podcast, whenever, interacting hopefully face to face with people of color, to do this sophisticated, more sophisticated thing of really listening and tuning into your own body as this is happening,

and finding the right time to explore the more intellectual stuff. Yeah, and that's a level of sophistication that we really need practice with. So if we just come to a conversation and try to do that, try to do all of that, it's going to be hard. But if we have a lot of practice with following our breath and tracking what's happening in our body and noticing the felt sense in the body, when we have thoughts and feelings, emotions, then we'll come to that conversation with a lot more to offer,

right? That's like doing our work part. By the time we get to the conversation, that will be more useful and will be more skillful. Yeah. So I actually think that the sophistication that's required in this moment is complicated. So yes, listen to people of color, but don't just defer all the time to people of color, do our own work so that we have something to contribute because that could be just deferring all the time to people of color, kind of puts the, as I, you know,

this is my understanding, puts the responsibility on other people, people of color, to do all of the work for us. So if we don't come to the table with any ideas and share what's moving for us, then we're not taking responsibility for resolving this crisis right now. So we want to be able to do both. Yes, listen and follow the lead of people of color and do our

work so that we can contribute something to the conversation and that we have a fighting chance of being skillful and we do. What's coming to mind for me right now is early on in this, I was on a text chain with two black friends and one of them asked me an incredibly provocative question about it. I don't, just what I mean by that is that it's a question that has rattled around in my mind ever since as like a Zen Kowon, like just a fascinating and maybe unanswerable, but in a useful way question.

And the question was, what are you doing to fix this problem? Yeah, great question. And I didn't answer it. I just went on and I just carried on with a conversation and a few texts later, he was like, notice how you didn't answer that question. Yeah. And I didn't want to engage with it. And I don't know that I can give you my 10 point plan for how I personally am going to

work toward fixing this problem. I can rattle off a few things that I do in the subsequent days or week and a half or whatever since I received that text that it's become clear to me how I can work toward being a, I hope a positive force here, but that's important coming up with concrete answers, but it's also really keeping the question alive in my own head has been really useful. Totally. Probably more useful. Yeah.

I think this, the work of being engaged is something that I never want to forget. So I appreciate not just the question, but the coming back to the question. And we actually should do this for each other, Dan, you and me and the other white people that we're engaged with. Like, what are you doing right now? So that it continues to be a question that is really alive and inquiry that's alive for us all the time. And this is what I aim for. I want my engagement and anti-racism work to be as important to me as it is to eat and brush my teeth and take care of my body every single day.

So the question like what am I doing now? I want to have an answer for that. And it could be, it could be anything. Because there are so many ways to be engaged. And we can explore them all. And there's also ways, you know, engagement also can look like taking time to practice mindfulness in a retreat or set aside a day for that,

because that subtleness of heart and mind will only support the next thing that we're doing in our engagement. So lots of ways, like writing, signing petitions, writing letters, having meetings with our city council, participating in direct action, reading books from people of color, and consuming alternative new sources. That's very important too. So so many things, but we can pick one and just do it. And then ask yourself in the next moment, well, what am I going to do now? What is this moment

calling for? Using it as a practice like our inquiry. What is this moment calling for for me? What do I need to stay in the game? So shout out to Willie for giving us the co-on that could keep us in the game. Yeah, thanks Willie. For a long time. Sure. So I always like to ask toward the end of it and interview what did I fail to ask? Well, I'm just curious about this question of staying in the game and what are the things that maybe you would both say that we're doing to stay in the game to challenge the forces of whiteness even? Yeah, this is a big question for me and I'm curious what you might say to that.

Well, one thing that this may sound tactical, in other words, may sound too specific and maybe not applicable to other people, but staying in the conversation and staying in the conversation both privately and publicly, and by publicly, I mean on this podcast. There was a moment recently, the person who produces this show, there's a pretty big team of folks who work on the show, but the lead producers, a guy named Samuel, also White. And he said to me at one point, after we had done a few episodes on this, you know, I think we need a long-term plan

to make sure we're on this story, you know, not in a haphazard way, but in a really systematic way. I guess systematic has become a loaded term of lake, but you know, really have to really just make sure that we're continuing to do the work. And I was just that a little bit. I didn't say anything at the time, but I didn't really latch on to the question in the moment. But I have subsequently, this is not uncommon for me to sort of dismiss something internally or externally when it's first

proposed and then later embrace it as if it was my own. But I really think that for me is something that I feel like is a small but perhaps impactful way to continue challenging. And then also just to keep alive Willie's question. It's like I feel like that should be, I should write that down and put it up on the wall in my office or something like that. Yeah, yeah, I think so too. We need reminders. We need, because it's Yeah, yeah, I think so too. We need reminders.

We need, because it's not, it doesn't feel as personal. Our privilege is such a buffer for us as white people. So we need to have these reminders for ourselves. Post-it notes. Yeah, I took a workshop a while ago, couple of meditation centers in Minneapolis, Common Ground, the place where I practice and teach in another called Clows and Waters and Center.

We collaborated on bringing a somatic experiencing practitioner to offer a workshop. She does amazing work with white people. She's a person of color. It's very generous work, But teaching us how to use the body to stay in the heat, to stay in the discomfort, to stay in the confusion so that we can be stronger in our leadership roles and in our engaged work. It's really, really useful. But just that pointing back to the discomfort that's always going to, it's going to be a part of it for us. So expecting that things are going to get easy or pleasant or, yeah, it's just not going to, I don't think it's going to happen.

So reminding myself that it's important to both remember and be willing to stay in the discomfort. Yeah, another thing Willie pointed out to me in a subsequent phone call that I had with him was, um, he as a, as a black person, he's very used to being uncomfortable, right? Especially since he's been in white dominated space as much of his life. And he's like, uh, you guys are going to have to get used to getting uncomfortable, being uncomfortable because it's right now it now, it's a black story, but they're calling this the black me too, for, I don't know how people feel about that analogy, but he's pointed out, there's gonna be a Latin next to me too,

too, and there's gonna be an Asian me too. And we're heading toward a world where it's not gonna be as comfortable as it's always been to be white. And so I think making a commitment to embracing that discomfort is important and to the best of your ability. So I happen to be in a leadership position in a company, 10% happier. We had before this committed to doing this diversity work internally and I think we need to triple down on that.

And that means being uncomfortable. And I think it's useful for all of us, white people to just start being okay with the discomfort. Yeah. And I would add like noticing how we've been hurt by white supremacy in this culture. How has it really hurt me? Because in my privilege, I don't always feel that.

So I have to consciously use it as an inquiry as I walk about in my life. Like how have I been hurt by this? What kind of answer surface for you when you ask that? Well, a disconnection for my own heart, for one, you know, how disconnected this heart has to be in order to continue to ignore the needs of people of color in order to remain silent.

Right? I mean, we just can, yeah, maybe we shouldn't bring back up the murder of George Floyd, but if people have seen that video, you know, the officers who stood by stoically, seemingly, and watched a man take another man's life, you know, the kind of white supremacy that has been absorbed into the heart and body that allows a person to disconnect from their capacity to care. That is alive in me too. So I want to notice that when it's there. So that is one major way that I've been hurt by white supremacy, this heart that knows how to disconnect.

And another way is just the difficulty in having authentic relationships with people of color. You know, it's so painful to care about people and feel the divide between us at times, like as a white person I want to, and yet there's a natural mistrust that's there, and perhaps we'll always be there, right? Even in my most intimate relationships. And so to feel like, oh yeah, this isn't, again, it's not personal, but this is because of white supremacy and the way our country has stayed the course

since the beginning of our inception. I'm sensitive to your time, Shelley. It's now 11 my time, 10 years, I think. Yes. And that was all we had booked. And I'm sure as a busy person, you have to move on to your next thing. So just to check in on, is there some big thing that we should have covered that we didn't or do you feel like it's an okay place to close right here?

I think it's an okay place to close but I'd like to ask how you're doing after having this conversation. I, to be honest with you, I feel invigorated. Yeah. Because I actually think that it's empowering to look at something and see it as clearly as you possibly can and obviously that you'll get better resolution over time, the more you practice with it. But and to think, okay, yeah, well, there are things I can do here. Yeah, I feel the same. They may not fix the problem, but they,

you're never gonna fix the problem, but that's the beauty of that question. How are you feeling? Yeah, I feel I feel in live and by the conversation. Yeah, I appreciate your willingness to have it and inviting me on here. So thank you. I want to say to your credit that you referenced the fact that you struggled with some anxiety and how you try to give yourself a little pep talk before you teach. And you were a little bit anxious. I hope you don't mind me saying it before coming on to do this interview. And yet, I don't want to feed the perfectionist part of

your whiteness mind, but you did a great job. So I really appreciate it. I think Dan, yeah, it was more than a little bit nervous just for the record. Didn't show. Thanks. Shelley, I'm so happy to have met you and I'm gonna send Matthew a robust thank you now for now. So thank you again for spending all this time with us. Yeah, thank you so much. Give Matthew a hug for me.

Virtually, I will give Matthew a virtual hug. Yeah, right, right, right. Take good care. Big thanks again to Shelley. So you know, Shelley uses the pronouns they and them. So they have a whole bunch of really, I think, potentially deeply useful content that they have created over the years and we have put links to that stuff in the show notes. So go check that out again. Big thanks to Shelley and while I'm thanking people, I want to thank the people who work incredibly hard to put this show together. Samuel Johns is our lead producer. Our sound designers are Matt Boynton and Anja Sheshik of Ultraviolet Audio. Maria Wertel is our production coordinator. We get a massive dose of useful guidance and input and feedback from TPH colleagues such as Jan Poehent, Ben Rubin,

Nate Toby. Also a big thank you as always to my ABC comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohem. We'll see you on Wednesday for an episode that we're calling the Dharma of Harriet Tubman. The guest is Spring Washam. See you soon. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.

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