Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 257: The Dharma of Harriet Tubman | Spring Washam

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

I had always known Harriet Tubman as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, repeatedly risking her own life to lead slaves out of the South. But in this episode, my friend, the great meditation teacher Spring Washam, draws the link between Tubman and the Buddha, who also made it his business to lead people to freedom. Spring is teaching a new, five-week, online course called The Dharma of Harriet Tubman, through the East Bay Meditation Center. In the course, and in this interview, she uses stories from Tubman's life to teach the kind of meditation that will equip us with both the ferocity and warmth that we need in these trying times. Spring is one of the most important teachers for me in my own personal practice. We are an odd couple - she freely uses words such as "heart" and "soul." She likes to get all ooey-gooey and touchy-feely, with a giant side dish of shamanism. In fact, I often suspect that, since she knows this kind of talk makes me a little uncomfortable, she triples down on it when I'm around. But make no mistake, Spring is hardcore - both in terms of her meditation practice and her personal background. You can go back and listen to some of the prior episodes with her (we will put links in show notes), but the short version is that, in her upbringing, she experienced divorce, poverty, addiction, abuse, and racism - and emerged to be a meditation teacher and author (her book is called "A Fierce Heart"), and one of the most impressive human beings I have personally encountered. So if someone as badass as Spring is drawing inspiration from Harriet Tubman, so can we. Quick note: this conversation was initially scheduled just to be a personal phone call, but when I saw an email from Spring announcing the Harriet Tubman course, I asked her to let us use our scheduled time to record a podcast. Where to find Spring Washam online: Website: https://www.springwasham.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/springwasham Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teacher.springwasham/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/springwasham/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvoIv70jZKKXT2-ctKGhr7A Book Mentioned: A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Heart-Finding-Strength-Courage/dp/1401959393?tag=smarturl-20 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: Register to Spring's course, The Dharma of Harriet Tubman & The Underground Railroad: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-dharma-of-harriet-tubman-and-the-underground-railroad-tickets-107495600234 Samsara: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%81ra The Eightfold path: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path Siddhartha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha Harriet (2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqoEs4cG6Uw Bodhisattva: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva The Underground Railroad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad Mahayana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahayana Bodhicitta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhicitta 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/spring-washam-257 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, another quick reminder that we've created a whole series of free guided meditations relating to the issue of race. As I said, they're available for free. Inside the 10% happier app, there's a link in the show notes. Go check it out. We're really proud of this work. And I'm proud of our team and our teachers for getting this excellent material ready so quickly. as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, repeatedly risking her own life to lead slaves out of the American South. But in this episode, my friend, the Great Meditation Teacher, Spring Washam,

draws the link between Harriet Tubman and the Buddha, who also made it his business to lead people to freedom. Spring is teaching a new five-week online course called the Dharma of Harriet Tubman. She's doing this through the East Bay Meditation Center in the course and in this interview, which you're about to hear. She uses stories from Harriet Tubman's life to teach the kind of meditation and mental practices that will equip us with both the ferocity and and this is important, the warmth that we need in these trying times. Spring is, and now speaking personally, the warmth that we need in these trying times. Spring is, and now speaking personally, one of the most important teachers for me in my own practice, where you are, as you will hear, a bit of an odd couple, she freely uses words such as heart and soul,

and she likes to get all Uli-Goo-Ian-Tachi-Fili with a giant side dish of shamanism. In fact, I often suspect that she knows that this kind of talk makes me just a tiny little bit uncomfortable. She triples down on it when I'm around. But make no mistake, do not be fooled. Spring is hard core, both in terms of her long-term meditation practice and her personal background. You can go back and listen to some of our prior episodes where we dive into her biography. I'll put some links in the show notes, but the short version is that in her upbringing, she experienced the separation of her parents, poverty, addiction, abuse, and racism and nonetheless emerged to be a meditation teacher and author her book is called A Fear's Heart and

really one of the most impressive human beings I've personally encountered. So if somebody as bad as has Spring is drawing inspiration from Harriet Tubman, I think that's a sign that we all can. Quick note, this conversation was initially scheduled to be just a personal phone call. I was just reaching out to catch up with Spring,

but then I saw an email that she sent out to sort of a mass blast announcing the aforementioned Harriet Tubman course. So I asked her to let us use the time we had scheduled for a personal chat to record a podcast and she agreed. So here we go, Spring Washer. Well, nice to see you again. I know. It's nice to see you too. I know. It's nice to see you too. I'm glad we can laugh a little bit, given that everything, all of this heavy stuff that's going on, speaking of all that, just to follow up with my initial impulse for setting this call before we decided to make it public.

My initial reason for reaching out to you was just kind of really to check in and see how you're doing with everything that's going on. So maybe let's start there. Yeah. You know, I've had a lot of ups and downs, like I think all of us, you know, I definitely went through, I left the retreat as I remember we were talking about me being at insight meditation society and then the closing insight meditation society. So leaving kind of all disorganized and in a state. But I feel really good about where I am now. You know, I've gone through a lot of stages, but I think those were important.

I went through a lot of grief early on and March from like mid-March to mid-April. I was sort of in this grief ritual building these big fires. I was lucky to be up with Alice Walker on her land. And so we had this huge fireplace and we went to burn fires and it felt very symbolic, very, very important for me to do that. And now I feel much more available and embodied and here and present. And I feel like, okay, I got my wings back on or something, my shoes on the right direction, I'm ready to go. So I think that I finished my retreat in some way up in the mountains. And yeah, and I think like all of us, I have just so much shock and amazement about what's happening and hope and there's a

mix of tears and laughter. Oh, man, if I don't keep myself laughing through all of this, it's not going to happen. You've got to have some jokes along through this revolution now, folks, you know, because otherwise my God, it's too much, you know, and so, and yet there's a dedication to being present and showing up and being in my community and offering different kinds of teachings and experiences that can be helpful right now as we move into this next phase of this global experience,

not only pandemic, but civil rights movement is here at the doorstep. I never probably ever left, but it's been dormant, at least to some degree. And now here we are, I would never have anticipated this, but this is the journey ahead. So But this is the journey ahead. So here I am Dan fierce hearts united Fear's hard. We should say it's the name of of your book So I've cared just to go back so you were out on a met what was supposed to be a very long month's month's long Meditation retreat when the pandemic broke out and so then you flew to the west coast Because you were sitting on the east coast at the inside meditation society and then you flew to the West Coast because you were sitting on the East Coast at the Insight Meditation Society and then you flew to the West Coast hooked up with a friend,

Alice Walker, and you described kind of grieving for a while. Then months into the pandemic, we had this way you called a revolution or the the civil rights movement, the some have called it the uprising after these killings of, you know, Brianna and George Floyd and Ahmed Arbery. I'm just curious, like since this process has begun, how are things going for you? How are you reacting to the news at this point? Well, I think I had the very similar experience that many had. I was just heartbroken.

It was the series in a row that did it. It was like George, the way he died, the way those police were, the way it just broke my heart. I was crying and upset and sad and concerned that we wouldn't come together, that there wouldn't be some kind of movement around it, that it would just be another gut-wrenching experience. But I'm going through that, and I'm using that heartbreak.

It's like I'm using that heartbreak for justice and waking up. So I'm with it. My heart is always you know, it's like I use that heartbreak for justice and waking up, you know, so I'm with that. My heart is always hurting now, but I've gotten used to it, you know, and I just hold it in my hand a lot, and then I just keep on moving. That's all I can do. And I'm not going to stop. There's been this movement of people that I feel very inspired by and I just want to join that.

I just want to keep on, you know, I'm not contract into fear, which is what a lot of people do in these moments. We shut down. I don't want to shut down. I want to stand up. And that has felt a power that I've never known before. Just this kind of immediate, like, you know, I mean, I think that's what the fifth symbol is all about. Like they're trying to smash something and then there's this movement of the arms up, you know, the hand up, like, no. So I've been holding that in the heartbreak

at the same time, which is so darnic, isn't it? You know, this is the, all my years of Buddhist training, I hope you are paying off. I'm cashing in on it now. What do you mean specifically? Like, how does your Buddhist training show up at a time when you're trying to maintain your kindness and compassion and capacity for love while also standing up and saying no. Well, you know, I think of it in terms of the teaching

about samsara, like we're swimming in this ocean of suffering and what's trying to be uprooted all the time is greed, hatred, and delusion. And so I try to hold it from that perspective, right, that there is this force, whether you call it MARA, you know, that it's all around, you know, and we're trying to wake up. And so for me, I can call on that ultimate truth, universal truth, and some level that we're all working to uproot that if your spiritual practitioner you want to see

where your delusion is. For people on the spiritual path, you want to see this in the mind stream, get excited even though it's so painful, but we wanna see our delusion, We want to see the veils. We want to see the programs. We want to see what is keeping us from understanding the truth of interconnectedness. We want to see that.

So that's what keeps me going. That feels very dark and also the truth of impermanence. Man, the ground has never stopped shaking lately. It just feels like whole systems collapsing, moving parts. Everyone's trying to just find ground, but the truth is there isn't ground, there isn't, there isn't. And so just taking refuge in this constant change in each other, in the word for change and impermanence. That's been a real life teaching for me in a different way. So things are moving less on the conceptual and more on the experiencing direct no ground. Oh, okay, no system, okay. So this

is profound and painful. I just want to point out, oh, I hear. Oh, yeah, guess who gets the join our call? I'll just come say hello to spring since you're already. Look. Oh, hello. That's spring. She's, you know how you have teachers, Danita and Harry. This is one of my teachers. Okay. No, get out of here, Toshi. out of here Toshi. I'll see you later. I love that he bombs our you know it's perfect. This is real life. This is real life. This is real life. Sorry for the interruption. So when you talked about getting about being involved, you know like standing up here, what does that look like? Are you out protesting?

I haven't joined in protest yet, but I plan to. I plan to take part in some of the protests that will be coming up in Oakland. I'm out here just about 40 minutes away from Oakland and I'm a Marin. And so, yeah, I do. I plan to do that. I plan on. And what the best thing I'm doing right now is just holding space, offering classes, teachings. I'm pretty much all day putting together content that feels important, feels timely, feels healing for people. So this is also my form of activism, form of activism is just, you know, rallying together and speaking out on podcasts, shows, sharing thoughts with others, just

teaching, I think is what the world needs right now and putting out these shows like yours. And I love your podcast with Lamarad, by the way, it was edgy and it was great. He's an amazing human being. Oh, I adore him. Yeah, Lamarad Owens, oh, for sure. I just remembered what I was going to say when my son interrupted us. Okay. Which is, I just wanted to point out that even though you've been, you are a dedicated, dedicated dedicated long time practitioner and

teacher and even though you've got all this sitting under your belt, so to speak It's not like you're non-stop calm cool collected. You're still crying, grieving, feeling frustrated and that's just a thing an important thing to point out. This kind of that level of meditation doesn't numb you out and make you impervious to the vexations and vicissitudes of life. Right, yeah, no, I feel things very deeply.

I feel sadness, I feel fear. When this coronavirus came out, I felt afraid, afraid for my health, afraid for my communities, afraid for, you know, spend so much time in South America, afraid there, you know, I was gripped in it for, for a while, you know, it still comes in waves and sorrow comes in waves and people that harm other people. I just can't even imagine waking up every day with a thought of harming another.

It's just, it's something so, I guess, revulsion. It just brings a sense of revulsion, the idea of harming others and to see it on videos, it's just, yeah, my body just responds with tears. It just pours out. I don't know you're going to have time to think about it. It's just the expression of this energy constellation that we call self. It just happens in response.

My job is just to be present with that. Whatever needs to be expressed, whether it's joy or sorrow or fear or terror. Yeah, it doesn't. My emotions are not shut down at all. I feel deeply, I always have been that way. Have you noticed any difference? I knew you have these two sides of your family,

your dad's side, black American, your mom's side, white American? Have you noticed any difference in how either side of the family is reacting to the video? Yeah, you know, my family is really interesting. My African-American side, obviously, they're like all families. They're like the Floyd family. They're southern, black, deeply religious, deeply involved in, you know, their church and caring about African American men. And so their hurt.

My mother is a little more oblivious to it. She's always been sort of like out on the edges. And so I have a long history with both of my parents. So my mother, I think, is getting up to speed. But she's like a lot of white America. She's trying to understand what it is. Obviously she was hurt and devastated and upset about the video.

But for her to understand systemic is a little more challenging. So I'm trying to help her at times understand the complexity of the systemic oppressive system and how that operates and how we all participate in some way in that rather whether they oppress or they oppress. We're all dancing in this. One can't survive without the other, you know, and so we're learning about that more and more together.

It's interesting. The mom is having trouble rocking this, even having raised children who would be socially categorized, culturally categorized as African-American. Right, the story that Barack Obama told in his book where he said his grandmother who loved and adored him was borderline racist. That's kind of how that side of my family is a little bit. Not racist, overtly, no, but there's a lot of stereotypes and a lot of, they grow up in

the culture. I can't really say they're wrong or anything. They're just a product of the conditioning. So sometimes you can have black children, but that doesn't make you anti-black or understanding the deeper conditioning here. My family on my mother's side, they're really trying to get a handle on it. You know, and some of them have been going to protest and hunting to beach. And, you know, there's a little gatherings happening and they they're going, but they're like

everybody, there's something that's opening here, the dialogue on every side. If you're open-minded person, you're trying to understand what's happening and to make sense of the hurt. You see this huge amount of pain and you don't, you're like, okay, what am I not understanding? You know what? Okay, what? Let me try to sort it out. So if you have a heart, you're looking at this issue, like, because you want to understand why the whole world is protesting. You know, like, wow, what is this? What is happening? So they're very much like that.

They're trying to understand. And they care. They're caring there. But our lives are different. I'm a black woman, even though, you know, I'm biracial, but my experiences are not hers. They're very different. You talked about one of the ways that you're standing up and getting involved right now, you're going to participate in the protest, but you're also talked about creating content.

I want to talk about this new course. You're launching because that's what provoked me to ask you if we could turn our personal chat into a public chat because this email came over the transom, where you were sending out an email to folks to let people know that you're doing this five week class or series of classes and it's called the Dharma of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. I'm just curious, how did you come to that subject?

Well, it started happening a few months ago where when I was up with Alice Walker and she has a whole library of just books and every possible writer for, you know, last 200 years in African-American history. But it started to happen when I started, I had a dream where I was running, and you know, people have the classic dreams of falling or running. Kind of Freudian psychology. Like we're running for something or falling off a cliff.

But I had this really incredible visionary dream where I was running and I was holding on. It was almost like a lucid dream a little bit. I was holding on to the back of her jacket and somehow I knew it was Harriet and we were running on a path that was totally dark. I couldn't see anything. I was almost just blinded, but she could see and I remember holding on and I had the very clear sense

we were being chased. Oh yeah, we were running for like, you know, how she probably ran her whole life as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. She spent years running miles with people. So there I was behind her and I was like, go hair yet. And I remember. And she said, I said, get me out of here.

And she said, I will. And I thought, oh, and then I just started to think of her every moment and the underground railroad and her life. And then I watched the movie that came out in 2019. And I started to talk about her as this great ancestor. Like this woman was so amazing. I mean, her life, I feel it's not even all the stories about her. Haven't even been told. And suddenly I kept obsessing on this her friend

and mine and my friend said, well, why don't you do a class? And it was like the dharma of Harriet and how the underground railroad represents in some way the Buddhist path is also an underground railroad. On some level, the eight-fold path is like against the stream. Look, there's this road. Get on it. While everyone else is stream. Look, there's this road. Get on it.

You know, while everyone else is at the top, there's these, so I started to just formulate this class series because I want to talk about it. I want the strength that Harry had. What I need is that kind of power. Like how this tiny woman who was born a slave, beaten down, I mean, just wow, I mean covered in scars and was able to not only get away, but then go back and create a whole channel

with the other abolitionists and go back and personally see out so many people escaping slavery. And then to go back at the end of her life and fight in the civil war and be a spy and lead the troops. I mean, who does this? I mean, like in rescuing more slaves. You know, I'm like, Harriet, I just need 5% of that kind of courage. Because isn't that what we're all want right now is courage?

The courage to stand on a police line, the courage to actually go against this administration, the courage to blow the whistle, to tell the truth, to stand up at your job, to denounce something that is horrible, even if it's happening in front of you, that actually takes courage because there is a backlash happening right now

for people in a way I have never seen. So for me, it was like, I'm calling on Harriet. Like I would call in all the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas. Like, so, Darta, Katana, help. Harriet help. So both of these roads of the Afuls Path and the Underground Railroad, can we open them wider? There's people trying to, There's a caravan coming.

Let me help. So it's really deep me in this Harriet one. I mean, I'm in this one. I feel that her energy is all around and I'm just thankful. Let's say more about Harriet because I don't know. I mean, I was obviously a new Harriet Tubman was, but I wasn't steeped in her personal history, and I started doing some reading today. I hadn't yet seen that movie. I do love the actress Cynthia Rivo plays Harriet Tubman. But I was doing some reading today. You were talking about, so she was born a slave, and she was beat on the regular back covered in scars. But actually, the, it seems like one of the worst things that happened, it was that somebody threw, she was in town one day and some slave owner was trying to restrain a slave who was trying to escape and told Harriet, even though Harriet didn't belong to this slave owner, told Harriet, hey, help me.

She said no. And the slave owner threw a two pound weight at her head and she had seizures and horrible nightmares, the rest of her life. She even had to go under the knife and to have surgery at some point to relieve some of it later, way later in her life. So she was really, she really survived a lot. Oh yeah, the stories of her childhood and the sad thing about it was that she was supposed to be freed upon the death of her mother. That was all set, promised to her. And he ran, you know, the owner, the one enslaving her said, no, I will not release you.

And they used to loan her out all the time. And she was just tiny little girl. And she kept getting sick. They would have her out doing things. And she almost died a bunch of times and she was beaten often whipped. Her body bored like so many by the time she was 12. She was covered in scars just from beatings and less beatings. And so that's what makes me love her yet. So then she gets to be older and she's observing just the brutality of her own life.

And she gets it and she's married. And there was a beautiful love story with her husband because she loved him a lot. But he was freed, but he lived on this plantation. So I'm studying even more about her life. And it's hard to actually find all the pieces. That's why I wanted to teach a five week class that happens two hours on Sundays. So we can dive into the real story of what is happening. The movie that came out in 2019, I think is really good.

I had strong doubts about it. All of us were like, oh, they don't hollywood the Harriet movie, but they did a really good job. But there's no way to cover everything. So she leaves her husband, she says, I'm not going to stay like this, he doesn't want to go. She goes on her own, gets all the way to Philadelphia. I mean, heroin truck and they were looking for her

and she gets there, she gets out and she meets with the abolitionist and she starts telling her story. And then she decides, I'm going back. I'm going to go get more people. You know, I'm going to keep going. And they tried to talk her out of it. And what was so beautiful about it is, you know, and she always takes a lot of delight and saying,

I never lost one passenger. And people were having babies on the way, hard attack. I mean, it was like, I mean, imagine just running and fear all night long, not having enough food, not having, you know, and then at one point, she even told this group of slaves, well, we got to walk to Canada. Sorry, everybody, let's go.

I mean, imagine this woman covered in scars, malnourished like her whole life. And she said, I never believed I was a slave. They enslaved me out of their cruelty, but I never believed it. And I just love that spirit. And then the Bodhisattva Dan, the Bodhisattva heart that says,

I'm gonna go and get others. I won't stop. I mean, I had to like, you know, restrain her at some point when she was like 85 from going again. I mean, it was crazy, you know, and still she died like in her 90s. So, and she was also friends with a lot of these beautiful abolitionists. One of my classes is gonna cover allyship, the abolitionist, and how they were essential

in the underground railroad functioning. These white people that were so against slavery, I mean, they just deplored it, and they risked their life continuously. And some died helping her, some were found out and also were hung, but she had this whole network of friends. So her story, I think, that's why I'm telling it. And I'm gonna talk about it and I'm still studying. I've ordered some books that are taking a long time to come on Amazon, but I'm going to be trying to piece her life together more co-hangerously.

We'll do our best, but. Bezos, if you're listening, speed the delivery of those books, please. Yes, let's get him. I think the reason why she went to Canada was that they enacted the fugitive slave act. And so even free states were being forced to hunt down escaped slaves. So then they started harry it. And the others on the underground railroad started bringing people to Canada because they

had a strict no slavery law at the time. Yeah, so that's how bad this country is. They were actually going back, taking people out of homes that they were living in, trying to arrest other free people and drag them back into this brutal system. So we have to look at the history. This is what makes African-American history

so unique to this country is laws like that. Again and again and again just focus on blackness, black people, legislation, so much legislation around black lives and the harm, you know, and so, so Harriet didn't let that stop her. When she would go back, she'd be like, yeah, we got another thousand miles everybody, but let's do, I mean, imagine that kind of gumpshin. I mean, who does that? So you were talking about the bodhisattva, for the uninitiated, can you just define

what a bodhisattva is and why it's relevant here? Yes, because that's a big part of what I'm gonna be talking about when we talk about Harriet's life, is the idea of the bodhisattva. So the archetype of the bodhisattva means, one translation means enlightened hero, right? So bodhi means heart and light and heart, right? And saffa is hero, so the enlightened hero.

And so in the tradition, in Mahayana, tradition of Buddhism, one practices to become a Buddha, to become awakened so that they can be of help to others. That is the single focus, the quality that's called bodhicitta, right? You cultivate that aspiration. May I become awakened for that I can help others. Harriet had that.

May I give free so I can help other people, so I can teach freedom. And one of her most interesting quotes was she said, I would have freed a thousand more slaves if only they knew they were slaves, which is a really deep, comment, right? Mental slavery. So she follows a mindset too. So the Bodhisattva is what many of us on the Buddhist path are aspiring to being, to alleviate suffering, like the prayers of Shanti Deva, may I be a bridge for all

those who want to cross medicine for the sick, may I be a bridge for all those who want to cross a medicine for the sick. May I be a light for all those in darkness? That is the archetype. And so that's why I feel that Harriet for black Americans at that time, they started calling her Moses because they saw her floating on water, walking in water, water dancer is another way they refer to her. And then just historical with Moses, you know, in the desert with Jewish people, you know, liberating. And so I feel that Harriet is a great bodhisattva. I don't know a courage more powerful, maybe like Mahako Sinanda and Burma was that way, you know, was a monk,

but I feel that what's interesting is that, Harry, it was a woman and had been born a slave and was so brutalized to have that kind of, you know, self-confidence to, because she was at one point the most wanted and hated person in the South. They were had huge teams of slave catchers. Everybody was looking for her photo was everywhere and she was always hiding in plain sight. But no like here I am, come on let's go. You know it was like amazing. So there was something really profound about her spirit. And there's something profound about being a bodhisattva right now. Like people are really feeling inspired by that archetype. Like how can I be of service? And sometimes at times that does mean

we walk into hell for a heavenly cause. It's not martyrdom, but our practice always is about what's true. And discovering truth, and right now truth and justice is the Dharma of the hour in my mind. You know, it's the truth of Nelson Mandela, it's the truth of Dr. King, it's the truth of all the freedom fighters. There's deep Dharma in that of standing up and be willing to,

you know, Tibetan monks and nuns used to die because they refused to denounce the Buddha. Right? There's like, no, there's a, there has to be a line at some point where it's like, I won't give in to this kind of like, evilness and hatred, right? And we're willing to say, all right, whatever, maybe it, whatever happens. That gets right to one of the questions. So I'm looking at the right up you did to get the word out of the course. And one of the questions. So I'm looking at the right up you did to get the word out about the course. And one of the questions, in fact, the first question you posed here that you're going to be examining in the courses, how does a modern day bodhisattva remain fierce while also practicing non-harming? And you would vote Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther

King, who were, as I understand it, and I'm certainly not a historian but pretty devout pacifists non-violent. She fought in the Civil War and was leading raids and so as far as I know that she wasn't strictly focused on non-harming but but correct me if I'm wrong here and what your understanding of all of this is. Yeah, I think for most of Harriet's life, now she wasn't a soldier. She was leading troops and getting information and passing a lot of information back and forth. At the time, what I've come to study and understand about her life around the Civil War time was that she went with some of these black troops out because a whole bunch of slaves were stuck in the middle, right?

Because there was a revolution going on and people were fleeing and all these people that had been enslaved, you know, the owners left, the military was coming in and they were kind of stuck in the middle. They were like refugees in a way, right? They were in this war zone. And so one of Harriet's mission was to get them out, right, before they were killed by the other side, the soldiers, Confederate soldiers.

And so I don't think she was involved in actually killing people. I can't know, but most of her life, she was nonviolent and very associated with the abolitionists. She was not out there shooting. She carried two guns, though, her whole life because she had to. And there was never anything where she shot anyone,

but she would, when she was the conductor, if someone started freaking out, she did pull guns on them and say, you gotta keep walking, you can't get us on the trouble. You know, and think good, and she probably did, you know, if someone was, but she wasn't somebody who advocated a violent revolution, although it takes that to end this slavery.

It took that, a civil war, to stop doing that to people. I mean, it really did. And so I think that she helped her as much as she could, but she was most known for being a spy and giving information. Yeah, I believe she was most known for being a spy and giving information. Yeah, I believe she was a spy and a nurse in the Civil War. She did everything that was needed. I'll go help, I'll get these people. I mean, I just can't believe someone would be that strong. So how can you keep talking about her strength and her courage?

you keep talking about her strength and her courage. And how can thinking about, or you sort of refer to calling her fourth the way you might call forth the Buddha's and the bodhisattvas in your own meditation practice. Right. By the way, you've had a big impact on my meditation practice, but you still haven't gotten me there to calling forth.

I'll get there at some point, because you tend to go wherever you go. But how can we draw courage from her just by talking about her or reading about her? What's that process look like? Okay, so that leads me into the part really talking about ancestors and energies that we call upon. Right. So Harriet Tubman is not just my ancestor. She's yours too, Dan. She's the world's ancestor.

And like all great stories, we draw strength from them. We draw truth. I mean, we're all just telling stories here. But we can call on ancestors. And this comes from my shamanic work, Dan. And I really believe that we're surrounded by devils and celestial beings. And just because we are in this form of matter,

this physical body, but we're in a multi-dimensional universe. And I do feel that our ancestors, our fathers, our mothers, our great, great, great, great, great grandfather is the person that we are today. It's connected to the person that we are today. So that is our eye color and hair that gets passed down. We get passed down programming's ideas. We know this on, this is epigenetics now. This is like science is showing that, right?

So hair, it is not a long overpassed away ancestor. She's very current in a lot of us. And so what we do is like, there's a way in which we're evoking the truth of her movement, the spirit of her courage to stand up. And so when I'm in meditation, Harriet just comes now. It's like I'm in meditation, Harry just comes now. You know, it's like, oh, okay, great. You know, and when I feel like she's trying to do is to help us energetically

in the great story of life is get back on the Underground Railroad. She's trying to align all the abolitionists, which are anti-racist, modern day anti-racist now, to help. Like, yes, people are being murdered. We've only seen a shred of it. Those are just the videos. You know how many are unvideoed, Diane? Like, how much brutality is unvideoed? I mean, the story is if you just go into a black neighborhood and talk about police, it's a trauma. It's like, you know, many have been subjected to cruelty and all sides to Latin people and also other people, why people, of course, it's, you know, there. So for me, what I'm doing is I just,

I'm trying to call on that quality that I want in myself, that deep truth, that deep courage. And I believe that our ancestors are a part of this healing. They are. There's un, you know, America has to reconcile with its demons. These aren't going away. You see, the energies are alive, Dan.

They haven't gone away. We're fighting over the Confederate flag right now. That's a battle that has gone on for how many years, you know? It's not gone. So the past is here. These energies are here. We're looking at monuments of old soldiers that we are like, why is he standing there? He was a slave trader. Right? It's like, no, all these energies are here. And on the energetic level, we are calling on those who can help. So this is deep shamanic time too for me.

Okay, so let me see if I can just put that in my own language as somebody who's not yet so shamanic. I say not yet because you keep bringing me and our history together into places where I didn't think I was going to go. So maybe I'll end up shamanic at some point. But I guess probably more Western materialists haven't seen any evidence for spirits or devas or anything like that, but I'm open to it. But even if you set that aside with hopefully some openness, I suspect that just hearing the stories, as you said, of Harriet Tomman can instill one with courage and just injecting that into the sort of stream of consciousness in your own mind and really doing it with some

deliberate, you know, in a deliberate way, like taking this class, like reading books and committing yourself to contemplating her life in a systematic way, you can drop on that, I would imagine when courage is required. Oh, I think so. I mean, I've been drawing on it the last few weeks so much, the last three weeks. And that's what we want to be doing. Right now, we have our stories. This is all our collective story of 2020.

Wow, what a story this is. And so, you know, we're bringing in heroes and heroines into the story. How can it lead us on the path of truth right now? How can we be helpers? To me, Harry, it's more relevant in this moment than any time. And you know what's really interesting, you know, there's this battle that they were going to put her on the $20 bill, but the Republicans, the current administration killed that idea, which I think is a little weird to have her on money, but also kind of funny that she was doing, you know. But she was on there, right? At least from...

Well, they, they've, not right now, not right now. Okay. No, no, no. So they were like, oh no, not, no, they've not right now, not right now. No, no, so they were like, oh, no, not, no, no. But the fact that it was the energy with her is sitting so strong. And then a friend of mine, who's a filmmaker in LA was telling me about the Harriet Tubman movie being made that came out in 2019.

Everyone watch it. You'll be inspired. That at the same time, that movie, when it first got pitched to do a Harriet movie, there were 20 other scripts. Other people were at the, it was a collective rise into wanting to make her movie. It was like, all these scripts were out

and everybody was like, you're making a Harriet movie, wait, I'm making a Harriet movie. So there's something that at this time you see, and I believe in that kind of thing, like the spirits and the energies, there's forces bigger than just the earth, and I feel like this great movement is gonna happen, and we need the abolitionists.

We need the bravery. We need to be willing to stand in the face of like, maybe some real intense energies of this hate. It's just hatred, but it's dangerous at moments. And so yeah, I believe in all that. And if it's all empty, which on some level it is, it's of what I need to get through. I need to hang on to that. Of course, it's just a dream, but in this relative level, I need Harriet right now.

I need to find some kind of ability to pick up people and like, let's go. Let's get out of here through, you know, also the dormitory of the heart, too. It has to be compassion. It's not rooted in that. It's not, it's not real. Just to say, your whole life has been about that. Putting people on a rail road, a variety of railroads toward varieties of freedom.

Right, we're conductors, Dan, you too. And to be conscious about that, like we are conductors of something here. We are trying to get people through these passages to happiness, compassion, care, out of the pain. We are conductors, all of us. I gave a Dharma talk about this on Monday night at Spirit Rock, and I talked about,

what are you conducting in your life? Be conscious, you know? Like here we are. Like you will be leading your child is behind you. Your wife, your family, your friends. You know, everywhere we are leading people to some kind of freedom. So it's like real, there was a real experience

of that with Harriet, and then there's the archetypal. More 10% happier after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just going to end up on page 6 or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wonder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud.

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It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. I realize I don't think I totally close the loop on this one question you asked here about

how we as modern day bodhisattvas can stay fierce while also practicing non-harming. We talked about how Harriet did it or whether she did it or whatever. We talked about her, but we haven't talked about how we operationalize this in our own lives, given everything that's going on right now. How do we, this balance between ferocity and kindness? Well, we stay consistent. We can really rely on the nonviolent doctrine of persistence. We can look at the movement of, you know, desegregation, right?

They were breaking laws intentionally, sitting at lunch counters every day, every day, every day, but in a nonviolent way. So the persistence is our endless cry for truth. It's like injustice. It's like, no, that's not the Constitution. No, that's not the Constitution. We're willing to agitate and protest in a nonviolent way. And I like the, I understand the violence

that happened early on in the protest. And there's a lot of things happening in that. So, you know, many factors are involved. But it's moved to more of the nonviolent approach now, right? It's like, okay, this is a long-term movement now, right? And the police and this, you know, what's happening? They're getting questioned and people are looking at what they're doing and what we're funding them to do. All of this is like coming into awareness, right?

So my hope is that we say on the nonviolent, but persistent. That's the key. We don't just go, you know, oh, yeah, okay, well, that was fun. We tried and then, you know, we're back doing, you know, I don't think that can happen because we're in an election cycle. And this rhetoric and hatred is about to be unleashed on a level that we might have thought was over, but it will be like 1800s kind of energy. It will be similar to that. It already is. We were battling over you know symbols that are connected to Harriet's battle. So how do we do it? Nonviolently. We do it because we love it. Don't go out in the streets unless you love this.

Why do I stand up because I love George Floyd? I think these are my brothers and sisters, you know, injustice everywhere is as it breaks my heart. Do it because you love it. Don't do it because you feel guilt and shame and blame. That's not sustainable. Go out because you want to be a just world and you say that to your kids and you go there.

Fight for the environment because you love mother earth. This needs soul force to sustain it. So your anger can be transformed. Initially, courage could take you straight out on the streets, but then there has to be a deeper sustaining force there. And that's how we do it. We say, I stand here because I love George, and he deserves to be alive. Right?

No one deserves to live in terror. These are our children. You know, we do it for that. I love listening to you talk. What I hear there is a non-violence, not only physical non-violence, but also like a psychological non-violence. You're doing it not out of hate, but out of love.

Yes, and because in the end of the day, we're trying to end hatred. It's hatred that causes people to murder and enslave. So like if we go out and I understand rage, I mean, we can experience that, we can feel that, we can work with that. But to sustain an anti-racist movement on pure hate is a little bit, it's just not going to sustain itself. We'll turn into that, which we don't want to.

Well, you know, what we have to do is we have this has to be a movement of the heart. You can't beat people into anti-racism. It's the heart that starts to wake up to it. Non-violence is the way to sit down in front of police officers and say, I love you. I pray for you, brother, and to have them get on a knee and have them maybe put their weapons down and say, and talk. This needs to be a dialogue. We need to see where together. And how do you disarm people? It's the heart.

You can't force people to be nice. The heart has to see something. It has to feel something. It has to, this is an embodied movement. It's a body of like, your body knows what is just. And so I believe a long-term non-violent approach will have huge benefits. I mean, the Buddha said something about this.

I believe he said something like hatred will never cease through hatred. It only through love. And I think we will see this as we grow because these protests are not going to go away. Is there something with these young people? My goodness, they're on fire. And they're so wise. You hear them speaking 16, 15, understanding all of this in a way that I just love this

generation, Dan. I'm inspired by them. When you talk about the body knowing, it's easy for that concept to lapse into cliche. Let's rescue it from cliche. What do you mean about the body knowing here? Because my mind is a baby. My mind is just complains. It's like one year old, two years old, right?

It can't even fathom what is happening right now, right? It goes into stories and fear and terror. So what I do is I bring it down into my heart. Now we got some deep roots here. My heart can handle the complexity of the destruction of this virus, of systemic racism, of the environment being rolled back and destroyed, and cruelty, and the overwhelming greed, and the harm of it. My mind can't handle that. My mind goes straight into anxiety attack, right? But my body, if I bring it down into my heart and I feel it in my heart, my heart can actually grow

in capacity and can hold this enormous suffering. And also this joy of something happening, Dan, it's not just all terrible. Here you go. She won in the end now. Let's be clear about that in the short term. She's slavery ended, the selling of human bodies stopped. Now, there was a whole hundred and a year more work to do, but she ended the institution of what she was bought and sold into, what she was bought and sold into,

what she was born into. So we gotta look, you know, the heart, the heart is in the body. You can't get to it by thinking thoughts. You have to feel moved. Some people, you know, there was a leaked video of the guy who has that fitness company CrossFit. And he said, why should I care about George Floyd?

That's the reason. Like, it's not, it's not here. It's not in the, like, why should you care? Oh, his heart doesn't care. Right, other people, they were like hit by a baby gun in the heart, like, ah, like they felt it, even children did, right? So you can't, the mind, it's so limited

in understanding these issues. The heart knows the justice. So therefore we have to live in more in an embodied way right now. We can't sit around and do analysis and crunch numbers. We can, but that's not really, that's not going to solve this. Put it like that. It's not going to solve it because you're just not going to get a critical mass of people

on board if you're only speaking at an intellectual level. People need to have feelings about it. People have to, for people to go out and risk their lives to stand up to this administration when they could be called out online and persecuted and hunted down or maybe, you know, like, all of that takes like, you have to rest in your heart to know what you're doing is right. Like calling Kaepernick heart, right?

Like, I know what I'm doing is right. And, you know, I'll just wait this out. Now everybody's coming back. Like, you're right. You know, it's like, yeah, you gotta feel this in the heart. It's the way it's, no one will be motivated. This issue of the heart, before we started rolling here,

I was telling you that I feel like I've been spending a lot of time either recently because I've been going back and listening to and watching video clips of this one-on-one retreat that you and I did almost two years ago. I can't believe it. I know. So, you're going to be the star of a key chapter in this book. I'm writing now about love and in this chapter you and I do a one-on-one loving kindness, compassion, meditation, retreat. And so in writing that chapter recently,

I've been really, you know, living in all the videos that we shot of the conversations that you and I had. And we talked a lot, you may not remember this, but I do, just because it's fresher for me right now. Some of my hangups about the word heart, and which are a little juvenile, but whatever, I'm always trying to think about how can we talk about this in fresh language. And where I landed, and this has just had a really lasting impact on me,

is just that there is so much wisdom for lack of a less grandiose term south of the neck. And so you could say, you hear it in language, heart being one term, but knowing something in your bones, in your gut, in your viscerally. These are all references to parts of the body, south of the neck. And I really do see that over and over

again that the that you know times when I've been depressed and didn't know it but my body knew it and I was having trouble getting out of bed or just like sort of an ominous feeling that I had that was sub-intellectual in some way and you know it in your gut instead of knowing it in your head. And so, yeah, there is just, I don't know where I'm going with this other than to amplify your point about the heart, that there is unbelievable power in that. And anything I just said there makes sense to you. Of course, Dan, what do you mean? I love it. Of course it makes sense.

I mean, this is what I'm trying to teach all the time. You know, it's like, hello. And the Buddhist community is not, um, they get stuck here. They get stuck in the head. You know, this is why sometimes they can't access this. But, you know, I got to tell a story from that retreat because I'm so excited about that book coming out. And those videos, they'll be so timeless, Dan, whatever, Gin, whatever era you release it, you know, with this new book. My favorite part of that retreat was you at the end where you were at the, you know, after we were about seven, eight days in,

you were like rubbing your heart like, I feel something, it's kind of like a pain. I'm like, right, now we're getting down into these layers. Remember when we talked about it at the wisdom conference? And you were like, I don't understand what's happening. I was like, it's the heart, Dan. The barriers are coming down. It was really annoying.

It was really annoying because I've been fighting with you about the word heart, the whole retreat. And then at some point, I was really starting to tune in to some of the pain of, I don't know, I was just noticing various things coming up in my own mind that were really painful. And you had told me to put my hand on my heart, which I very reluctantly started to do when I was practicing. And I noticed that that's where the pain was. Welcome to my world, Dan. I always have this ache in my heart for truth and justice. You know, and also just non-harming

when I see the world in the environment. You know, I just, I've gotten used to it. It's probably why I was drawn to the title of Fear's Heart. You know, it's like, okay, this heart of mine and all of our hearts are like this. They're just buried under barnacles of programs and this association and living in the mind. So the more we're getting people closer to it, we start to really tune in. And like you said, intuition comes or you start to learn much more south.

much more south, south of the neck, down, down. That's where it's that. And it's hard to the programming of the Western mind is so locked in thinking, thoughts. And it just keeps us away from this this incredible wellspring of not only power, but love and wisdom. We're getting there. I'm a tough case, but yes, determined. Let me just go back to Harriet, somebody who is even more determined. And I'm just looking at some of the themes you want to explore in this course that I think are really interesting. One of the themes is the prison of the mind. What do you mean by that? Well, I talk about prison of the mind a lot, just in talks that I like to give about the programming aspect. So, we're a culture that has programs, white supremacy is a program.

Also, black and brown inferiority is also a program. They're enforcing both sides. The thing that was interesting about Harriet that no matter how many times they beat her down, right? And tried to say, you're a slave, you're not saying, she never believed it. As soon as she left, she was like, they enslaved me, but I'm not a slave, you know.

I don't know, you know, what they're trying to do. You know, it was like, where? There was no prison going on. She was always like, I, this is, no, I'm a free woman. This is a lie. I'm no, no, no, no, no, no matter how many beatings, it's just like, like she wouldn't help the story with the owner.

She refused to help participate in that. The idea that. The idea that we're looking at our conditioning, our programs are our conditioning, right? And so the belief in whiteness as being superior and everything else inferior, that's a program. But also it takes two people. I have to buy into the notion that I'm in fear year. That's my programming as a black woman, right? So we're dancing. I go, oh, right, you're better. I go, I'm worse.

And we kind of play out on a national level these things, right? These dances. So prison of the mind is I have to look at where are we at with that program? Because it's up right now, right? Where are we at? And let's look at these prisons and can we see beyond them the conditioning, the programs, you know, and so that's all white supremacy is. It's a program, but it's a fierce one

and it's unleashed on the whole planet and it's just, it's just like an illness. I just destroy everything beautiful. It just hurts everything in touches, including the earth. Most white supremacists are extremely destructive towards mother earth, too. Towards women, towards beauty. In any way, it destroys itself. That's the program. It's a self-destruction but not it because you're hating what's you?

I am you and that is so not seen. You know all the things you're doing to me you do to you. You know and her Aries to say that everything you do to me is done to you and so To have patience with that. So we're gonna look at that programming at some stages in the class, take a whole class, and each week will be a different one. We'll talk prison of the mind on one, we'll talk about the light, and each time we'll weave in Harriet's story and the Dharma as a deeper level of trying to integrate that,

so how does the Dharma also show us the programming? How are we getting free? How are we waking up? You know, these are just ego programs. Why supremacy is the biggest ego program in town, right? I mean, talk about like, out of control, one, right? So anyway, these are just my thoughts. I think I just love to share them. So that's kind of where we're going to go with that piece of the class content. You know, we talked about white supremacy. And you're such an interesting person to ask about this because in recent weeks we've been doing a lot of content around, you know, talking to a black teacher or talking to a white teacher. And yeah, we're talking to somebody who has both. Yeah.

I think, you know, I know that this audience is overwhelmingly white and they've been trying to provide some provocative content for this group. And I can imagine there are some people here who talk about white supremacy and the idea that one of the programs that runs among white people is this sense of superiority. And I can imagine people hearing that and saying,

well, I don't think I'm better than anybody else. What would you say to that? I would say that the first level is always going to be denial, right? But it's just take a breath and just look at it as a program and that a lot of us were swimming in this for hundreds of years. It's like there's that old joke about the fish being in the ocean

and being like water, we're slumming in water. What do you mean? You know, I'm like, hello. Like, it's like, yeah, so sometimes I think the word supremacy is such a hard word because we imagine Nazis. We think of nationalist, owl with flags. And the programming often it's most destructive Nazis, we think of nationalists, out with flags. But the programming often it's most destructive

is in the subtleties. I'm sure a lot of people who do a lot of damage are like, but I love, you know what I mean? Like subtleties of how citizens are treated, how our neighbors are treated and how we are always at first in the line, but we don't really question it. It's like, you know, like, if you talk about race,

it's always about someone else's race. Like, I'm white. What do you mean race? We're talking about you. You're the black one. That's race. Right? Like, you know, there's all that, right?

And it's like, there's a, there's subtlety. But I don't, I think what happens is that white people get so sad and shameful that they can't open to it, right? And so let's look at truth. It's a program guys and the part of the program is getting cracked all around right now, right? Because it's being exposed all around right now, right? Because it's being exposed, because it is like an illness, and we want to see it.

So I would tell the listeners that maybe the word supremacy might feel like a slap. I'm no supremacist. Of course, most people aren't supremacist, but there's a range of unconsciousness that acts almost as seriously hurtful, though. So you got the people on the front lines, but you got a million other people pressing buttons

behind the scene that are actually more damaging. The people on the front are just like, yeah, we know you're crazy, but then you have a system behind it that is actually much more impactful. So we just want to start looking at it. Where do I feel superior? Where do I make assumptions? And where do I feel superior, where do I make assumptions,

and where do I not really care about, you know, it's like if that were white children, that'd be a different story. Oh, they're Mexican, well, they can just stay in the cage, you know, I have my own life to live. You know that, like it's, yeah, and we do have our own life to live in that true too, you know?

So it's just a supremacy word have our own life to live in that true too you know so it's just the supremacy word I think is freaking people out maybe we should rename it the white program, whiteness programming but then it takes out the violence but there's a violence in it so we have the language we have right now and it may not totally work for the future, but for right now, I would say don't back up too quick. Be curious. Get curious. Especially beyond the spiritual path you want to see this. Like where is this delusion in me? Where is this hatred swimming? Where are these? Yeah. Okay. Let's liberate the mind and liberate the heart. The heart knows the truth. You have to be disembodied to enact total supremacy.

You have to be, because the heart will say, no, no, no, no, what are you doing? It'll start aching when we start doing horrible things on the body like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. No, no, no, no. It'll tell us way before. So we have to be in our head and overwriting the body to enact things like this.

You know, so don't be scared of supremacy. We have to look at language. We'll think about that. This is a debate I've been having with Sevena Celassi, another meditation teacher, but setting aside the debate over the language, what I heard in your answer was something that But setting aside the debate over the language, what I heard in your answer was something that I also heard in an answer from a meditation teacher by the name of Shelley Graf who I interviewed in Minnesota. Yes, yes. Who said, yeah, this stuff is really hard to see if you're willing to see it, but one thing that can really help you to see it is to know it's not personal. if you're willing to see it, but one thing that can really help you to see it is to know it's not personal. You didn't create these programs, nor did you inject them in your own mind.

You're running these programs that were injected, culturally or by your parents, et cetera, et cetera. And so then you can have some warm, think curiosity that allows you to look at, yeah, maybe I am walking around with this idea that I'm superior because of my pigmentation, but you don't need to revert to guilt and shame, which of course is just more self-centeredness. You can go to curiosity and interest, which allows you then to have a different relationship to it and maybe transcend it.

Yeah, and I think one of the things that happens, I want to name too funny things because we and you had talked about this before. One of the things that happens is when people wake up to the program, there are two reactions. One is guilt and shame, and I think it's okay to experience that for a stage. It's just not to get stuck there. There may be things that when you have this insight, you start to see a whole history of actions, right? And that actually is okay. We need to reconcile our participation. So there is like a, there is a journey to that. That for some people they go, oh my gosh.

And I think that's what a lot of the support groups are for around white people and healing racism. They could actually go to these places and share when they were in the influence of it. It's almost like a AA meeting or something. A lot of stuff gets spilled out, right? And it's like, whoa, for people that aren't in AA, they're like, whoa, this is a lot of sharing.

And so there has to be space for that, actually, for when you first wake up. The other thing I want to point out is also when people wake up to it, they become like a zealot of it. And they want everyone to get that program. They're so, they can't believe that they uncovered this jewel, and they get really excited. And so what happens is they can also start kind of hitting people in the head and yelling

at the water cooler. But that's only the first stage. And so they have to calm down and then actually long-term. You know, so those are two important things, because people actually waking up to this might collapse for a little bit when they see their actions that have been harmful. Because I have been feeling a lot of people have done things

that they wouldn't have done had that not, had they not been conscious of what was going on. So there has to be places where that support can happen and there can be real truth and reconciliation around this. Like I feel like police officers need counseling right now for themselves. Like how are we feeling? Like that was my first instinct was like go help the police. Talk about their violence, you know, and how they're actually deal with it. You know, that instead of just, you know, you know, yeah, we want to deepund them, but

we want to humanize them too. Like, that's trauma to kill people in that way. That's like, that's, that's a lot, you know. So anyway, those are my thoughts about that but is there anything I should have asked here but didn't well I want to know more about your book and where when the world will get to read it and I feel like when it comes out we'll all be so tired of being mean to each other about, we'll just grab it and read it. So I want to hear more about that.

Just if you feel like it, if it's not, it's still too much in the process, then, you know, but I don't know. The book is best case scenario would come out not this New Year's, but the next one, but it could slide. I'm trying to practice something that you and I also talked about a lot on that retreat, which is self-compassion and doing it in a way that I'm not making myself. I don't want to write a book about kindness during which I'm unkind to myself.

Yeah, yeah, I got you on that. Well, I so look forward to that, Dan Dan because I think that to the audience like that's just be kind. You know for love's sake we're all going through so much just say it high to your neighbors to you know extend an offering of just care. You can do it social distancing but there's also a kind of like aloofness behind the mass that just creates more trauma for people. You know, be willing to just have a heartfelt moment with someone while you're standing in line for your milk. You know, it's okay. We're so human.

So I guess that's the only thing I would leave, I'll leave it on, but yeah, thank you, Dan. Thank you. Thank you for letting me take what was supposed to be personal time and making it public, but I think it's going to help a lot of people. So thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. And I don't think it would have changed that much. I think I would have been still all geeked up on the hairy it. And I would have been the same and asking about the book and how we I don't know that would have been much different I think maybe we've had a few more like little curse words maybe hair in there but for the most part this is pretty much

what we would talk about. Well anyway I still appreciate it it was great so great job. Thank you. Thanks again to Spring. By the way, if you want to sign up for her course, I encourage you to do so. There is a link in the show notes. The course actually started this past Sunday, but it's not too late to sign up. You can watch the first of five installments. You can watch it on demand and then catch up and watch the rest of them live

as the weeks progress. So go check that out. The Dharma of Harriet Tubman. Before I go, another reminder, also go check out the God in Meditations in the 10% Happier app on the subject of race, really proud of that work. And as we conclude here,

big thanks to the team who work so hard on this show, now two and a half times a week, two episodes and one bonus on Friday. So it's a massive workload and these folks do an enormous amount of work and they care a ton. Samuel Johns is our lead producer, our sound designers Matt Boinganya Sheshek of ultraviolet audio, Maria Wartel,

is our production coordinator, and we get a ton of input from our TPH Comrades, Jen Plant, Ben Rubin, Nate Toby, Liz Levin, also a big thank you to Ryan Kessner and Josh Cohen from ABC. We'll see you on Friday for a bonus. Take it easy, everybody. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

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