Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 338: Discomfort: A Counterintuitive Source of Hope | Sebene Selassie

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

As you may know, we are in the midst of a two-week series on hope – a concept we are trying to rescue from the realm of rote cliche and empty bromides. Our belief is that hope, when properly understood and practiced, is not baseless optimism or naivete, but a powerful skill.  Today’s guest, Sebene Selassie, has earned her capacity to hope the hard way, surviving multiple rounds of advanced cancer. She is also the author of an excellent book called You Belong, and is one of the most popular teachers on the Ten Percent Happier meditation app. And as part of the work we are doing to train people in the skill of hope right now, she has recorded some brand new meditations for the app. If you’re a subscriber, tap on the “Singles” tab in the app to check those out, or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/HopeIsASkill. You’ll also find a variety of other new meditations and talks – all of which revolve around the theme of hope as a skill. In this interview, Seb talks about: hope as it relates to Buddhist concepts such as karma, impermanence, and the Eightfold Path; what it means to not be in contention with reality; the difference between “let it be” and “let it go;” and what hope means in the context of the climate crisis. We also talk about a private conversation that she and I recently had that was very challenging for both of us, but also gave us both cause for hope.  If you enjoy hearing from Sebene and want to try her meditations on the Ten Percent Happier app, but you’re not yet a subscriber, now’s the time! In addition to getting immediate access to Sebene’s meditations in the “Hope is a Skill” topic, there are tons of resources for starting, rebooting, or going deeper into your personal meditation practice. Just click here to get started https://www.tenpercent.com/, or download the Ten Percent Happier app today, for free, wherever you get your apps. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sebene-selassie-338 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. Hello, hello. I recently had a rather challenging personal conversation with my friend and teacher Sevena Celassie. She's a great meditation teacher. I'm sure you're familiar with her. She's been on the show many times.

She's all over the 10% happier app. I was really nervous, I'll admit, going into this conversation because I care about this relationship a lot and I didn't want us to get into a fight. I didn't want to blow it. In the end though, I was incredibly impressed with and deeply relieved by how Seb handled the conversation.

It's amazing to watch somebody who respect as a teacher sort of handle life's ups and downs in real time. And I was quite moved. So a few weeks later, after that conversation, we actually booked Seb to come onto the show to talk about what I thought was a, you know, an unrelated subject of hope. And to my surprise, she thought maybe we should publicly discuss that private conversation because she argued, and I actually came to really agree that the fact that the two of us who come from really different backgrounds could work out a potential conflict so amicably. That is truly cause for hope. We are, as you may know, in the middle of a two-week series on the subject

of hope, a concept we're trying to rescue from the realm of Roat, Cleashay, and Empty Bromide. Our belief is that hope, when properly understood and practiced, is not baseless, optimism, or naivete. it is actually a powerful skill. If you missed part one of the series, which we posted just a few days ago on Monday, with George Mumford, I recommend you go check it out. George is a former addict who went on to become a renowned meditation teacher. He worked with legendary athletes such as Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant. Like George, Sebinay has earned her capacity for hope the hard way. She has

survived multiple rounds of advanced cancer. She's also the author of an excellent book called You Belong. And she is, as I mentioned earlier, one of the most popular teachers on the 10% happier app. And as a part of the work we're doing to train people in the scale of hope right now, Seb has recorded some brand new meditations for the app. If you're a subscriber, just go to the singles tab inside the app to check out those meditations. You'll also find a variety of other new meditations and talks, all of which revolve around the theme of hope

as a skill. In this interview, Seb talks about hope as it relates to Buddhist concepts, such as karma, impermanence, and the eightfold path. What it means to not be in contention with reality, the difference between letting it be and letting it go, she explores what hope means in the context of the climate crisis. And as mentioned, we talk about that private conversation that she and I recently had that was challenging and hope producing for both of us.

Okay, let's dive in now with Seven Ace Alassie. Seven eight, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Nice to see you, Dan. Thanks for having me back. Anytime. We were talking before we started rolling here about hope. And you made a distinction, I think, it's pretty useful between hope and a big grand global sense and hope in a real local individual sense. I wonder if I could get you to just talk about that a little bit, that distinction.

Yeah, I think when this idea for this series first came up, I was thinking of hope to counter kind of the despair or the doomsday thinking that we can sometimes get into with all that is happening in our world and all that we're made aware of, which is really intense. And it's good to cultivate hope in the face of that kind of, oh, we're all headed to our imminent destruction sort of messaging that we might receive. But I was thinking about, you know, also the hope that I cultivate just in my capacity. And how much that really buoys me and helps me not only face that bigger sense of hope in the face of all that is hard and difficult out there," quote unquote, but also just the challenges

of my day-to-day life and seeing that I can meet things that are difficult or uncomfortable with, you know, more ease, with more ability. And I was saying before we started that you and I had an exchange recently that really gave me a lot of hope and faith in relationship and intimacy. And it was not comfortable. Like it was really, really challenging and I have great gratitude for you for kind of bringing it out because it was really you kind of pointing something out to me that, you know, it was not skillful. Like I was being unkind, not seeing aspects of how I was behaving, that was harming you, and it was very humbling. And I felt like my practice really showed up. Like I was able to hear you and really opened my heart and kind of do a vipassana or meditation

out loud of what I was experiencing in the moment. And we you know, went to some really vulnerable places, I felt, and some honest things we've never said in our friendship or relationship. And it was, I came out of it like really hopeful. And I didn't think of it within that term, like in terms of hope at the time, but reflecting back on it now, there was something really hopeful about it. at the time, but reflecting back on it now, there was something really hopeful about it. Hopefully that when the rubber hits the road, your practice can show up and you can handle whatever life throws at you with some ease and skill. Yes, that's one part of that hope. really hope in the possibility of growing an intimacy with someone in cultivating real

friendship, which is said in Buddhism is the whole of holy life, you know, that spiritual friendship is how we get through this. Like that is actually how we're going to wake up. And it was such a living example of that. It was also hope in two people who are kind of radically different in a lot of ways, like born on different sides of the planet, grew up in really different circumstances. And you know, some of the distance that showed up in that difficulty in our relationship had to do with race, class, gender, and you being in my eyes like a rich white guy who's super successful, you know, and kind of dismissing some of your feeling and humanity in that process. And so, like, just also hope in building bridges and creating real sense of community too. So we can talk about the

per- to the extent to your comfort, what we can talk about this conversation in a second, but it sounds like this discussion that we keep talking about, but not actually saying much of the details of it checked both boxes, the big hope and the little hope. Yeah, in a way it did. Yeah, and I'm curious to hear, you know, how it was for you, but really, I was sort of situating you as someone who I could characterize in a particular way.

You know, I wrote something about you that was ostensibly funny, but it wasn't. And it was kind of making fun of your social location, let's say, and where you're coming from and kind of dismissing that, you know, you might not appreciate that and you had feelings about it. And again, big credit to you for addressing that head on with me and also making space for, we had to really make the space. This wasn't a passing conversation. We set a date, we both cleared our calendar, we had time, we really settled into like really

exploring this. I have so much to say about this. I'm going to try to show a little restraint. How much do you want to say? You said a little bit already by way of background. I don't want to blurt it all out in a way that would make you uncomfortable. So how much? Yeah, you can say whatever you want, totally. Yeah, I'm completely fine with it.

So, first thing to say is at a high high level, I was just so impressed with you. It just made me love you even more to watch you. You know, I came to you with a really difficult issue and I didn't know how I was going to go And I was so impressed with what I saw from you. So rather than being a big tease about it, let me just tell everybody what exactly happened here. Really, it was kind of a small deal when people hear the details of this. So I don't want to overplay it.

It wasn't some major rupture or some major issue. It was more like, well, for me at least, they really threw into stark relief. How important this relationship is to me. So there were a couple of events. The most recent was that I got an email from you. It was a very thoughtful email. You said, look, I posted something on Instagram about the term woo-woo. And your view is that that term can be quite dismissive. Actually, I don't want to go too deep into what you said there. Maybe you could take over for just a second,

and then I'll pick up on the back end. But can you tell us a little bit about what you were saying online about the term woo woo? Yeah, it's just kind of saying, it's not always used in this way, but I've used it in this way, and I know others have, there was a big response to it, that we can use it to kind of distance ourselves from

something that is not kind of scientifically verifiable. It feels like a little out there, but that often those things, those practices or those beliefs come from indigenous wisdom, from communities of color, and so there can be this taint of colonialism and a real colonized mind kind of thinking when we use that term, because we're kind of distancing ourselves from something that is not accepted by a dominant culture. Yeah, actually, that's a point I really agree with, and I think that on occasion I've been on the wrong side of history here. I don't know that I actually use the term, woo, woo, that much these days or ever. I'm not sure that I've ever used that much, but still. And to say, I'm not really backing away from my personal

desire for evidence, but I think writing things off reflexively is something that I have a history with and I don't think that's a good thing. And so your point of view, the one you expressed online is something that I'm sympathetic with. And so you sent me an email saying, look, I posted this thing and then there were a whole series of comments that followed on

from that posting and some of the comments were quite pointed about you, Dan, and in the thread on Instagram. And you actually took a screenshot of somebody who said some pretty some really harsh things about me and you showed me your response to that commenter. And it was a very thoughtful response to what the person was saying. And I remember reading it and it was first thing in the morning. I had opened up my email

and I was reading through. And when I read the harsh words from the commenter, I of course went to a very defensive place because that's a very well developed muscle in my mind, being defensive. And then when I looked at what you wrote, it wasn't that I was angry. It was more like I got a little sad and I think scared because in your response to the person who was saying something really quite harsh about me, you didn't in any way acknowledge like, hey, I know Dan, he's my friend and he's not a monster. And that's where I went within my mind at least. And then of course, I also went to this defensive place of thinking, well, I don't even use the term woo-woo that much. But my deeper response was that I was scared that somehow that you're not in any way sticking out for me might represent some deep feeling

on your end that you were unsure about me on some level. And this is important to add because there's some context here. I mentioned this earlier, there are actually a few events. There was the email chain that we're talking about right now, but before that, there were a few other things that you had written about me that got me a little bit concerned. Just one example is that in your book, which is called You Belong,

and just a side note here to plug it. Everybody should read You Belong because it's an amazing book. But in that book, and just a side note here to plug it, everybody should read You Belong because it's an amazing book. But in that book, there was a quick reference to a little debate that you and I had had over the term white supremacy. And I remember the two of us were at lunch and we were talking about the word white supremacy.

And you mentioned in the book that I had said that I was worried about you're using it and then you made kind of a tart comment about the fact that that I'm white. And I kind of remember that conversation differently. It wasn't that I have a problem with the term white supremacy, but that I was just a little worried that some of the people who you most want to reach might get triggered by the term. So I remember my point being a little bit more nuance than you represented it as and I hadn't said anything to you at the time, but it was kind of on my mind when I read your email where you were. I felt that when this person said harsh things about me, you didn't really defend me in any way. And then just one last thing here. Before that thing about me in your book, you actually

wrote a book proposal for the book years ago that you were sending out to publishers and you sent the book proposal for me to take a look at. And inside that proposal, there was at least one really pointed criticism of my work, which I hadn't expected to see in there. And for the record, the criticism had to do with some of the way that I can reflexively reject some of the traditional ways in which Buddhism is presented, and your thought was that there might be some sort of implicit sexism in that. That actually is a point I really agree with. I was just surprised to see it there.

And it wasn't something you had mentioned to me personally. So I guess, I don't want to think this is maybe going to make me sound like it's over defensive, but it wasn't that you said anything in any of these places that I deeply disagreed with. It was more just that I wondered, you know, the mind is a great storytelling machine. And I just added all of these events together and started to get paranoid that maybe Seb doesn't like me, which really scared me because I really like you. And so I kind of sat for it with it for a little bit

and tried to figure out what, what if anything I was gonna do. And I've mentioned that these guys on the podcast before I have these communications coaches that I've been working with for about three years now and they really helped me when I have difficult conversations coming up, they're Buddhist folks. They kind of meld Buddhism with communication skills.

Their names are Mudita Nisker and Dan Clermann. And I mentioned to them that I was sad about what happened and I wanted to talk to you about it, and I wanted to not screw up that conversation. So we actually like planned it out and role played, which is what they too. Because that's how worried I was. And it was really helpful to talk to them because it clarified what I wanted to communicate. And what became clear to me is that unlike so many times when I have a beefless somebody and I go into the conversation wanting to get a pound of flesh,

that in this case, I really, it wasn't that I was angry. It was more that I was scared. I just wanted to make sure that our relationship was okay. And I remember the day we hopped on the phone call, we had like set a time, I don't know, we can't afternoon and I was really nervous. And I kind of opened up with my little slightly memorized opening message.

And your response was amazing. You displayed all of the skills that Dan and Mudita teach without actually being a student of theirs. You did everything that they teach me to do, which is to reflect back to somebody what they've said in your own words, to use your language to demonstrate that you understand what I had said, and then you kind of reported back to me in real time what your feelings were. You talked about how you were nervous and you felt badly.

My heart was beating really fast. Yes. Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot. And I've been talking a lot right now. So I want to pause for a second and let you jump in and see if there are any holes that you want to fill. To bring it back to hope, right? Like we're kind of pointing to the fact that it's a skill

and it's not like we're building the skill of hope. Like that's a particular capacity that we have to build on its own, but we're really building the capacity to be with our experience. And that means that we have had to practice, right? We're not bringing like all our bad patterns and habits into our experience. We're really practicing with, okay, what is happening right now? Can I see it clearly? Can I meet it with kindness and care?

Like the very basics of mindfulness, right? And so rather than kind of go ricochet into defensiveness, which is definitely something that I lived with for years and had to unlearn the hard way. And this kind of defended heart energy where we're so afraid that we're going to get hurt again, as we have been over and over since we were little kids, that we don't actually want to open to what's right in front of us.

And so for me, this on a personal level is what we have to bring on kind of a collective level, right, is to actually stay calm, to stay clear, so that we can have the response that is open-hearted, but grounded in our strength and power, so that we can respond accordingly to what's needed in the moment. And I can say, you know, there are many times where I do not respond that way in the past. And those skills that your communications teachers are teaching you are really the skills of this practice. Like they're the skills of being able to meet each moment in this way, with clarity, with kindness,

with wisdom, with compassion. The dogs of Bushwick are barking. I really agree with you about the two levels of hope and how this interaction really, I wouldn't have thought of it this way until you framed it this way, that it really does check both those boxes. It made me feel like, oh yeah, I can successfully communicate when a lot is on the line. This is a friendship that means a lot to me. I can communicate in a way that doesn't destroy everything.

I felt some more hope in my ability to conduct myself well. And then I, in watching you, I felt a greater hope in faith and trust in just humanity. Like people who are very different can talk to one another and use difficulty to get even closer. Yes, and that's really the key that these are hardships and challenges, like personally and collectively, and their opportunities, right? To one thing that I talked about in kind of preparation for this with one of your producers was this idea of hope

is really about trust and not being in contention with reality, like not resisting things how they are. And so much of that defended heart of what's happening in the world outside us or what's happening in our personal relationships is that fear of like, this is too much, you know, this is really intense, how can I open up to all of this? There's so much suffering, there's so much history, there's so, yes, it's true. And we have to kind of give ourselves time to process that and digest it and compost it. We need time to understand things, why things are the way they are. It can be helpful to kind of have perspective and certain knowledge base, but it's also an opportunity to not be in contention with that, to say,

okay, these are the causes and conditions that led to this moment. That's why things are the way they are. I don't need to think it's like a mistake somehow or like, you know, there's a certain energy we bring to it, like it shouldn't be like this. Well, it is like this, and that's where we find ourselves in this moment. How do we meet it? But if our energy is like drained by, like, no, I can't believe it's like this.

Why is it like this? I can't. I can't stand it. It's too much. It's a somewhat natural response when it's the first time we're waking up to particular issues or a particular situation or challenge. And this practice helps us ground and process

and compost and mourn and understand so that then we can actually meet it with, again, more clarity and kindness. I love composting as a metaphor here. It's great. So how do we meet it? As a teacher, what's your advice to people who, you know, heard this story and, you know, the two of us talking and maybe able to interpolate back

into their own lives of small or large issues, global or local issues, personal or political issues, where they haven't been able to kind of to just open up into whatever discomfort they're facing. How do we do this? Obviously we're gonna talk about practice facing. How do we do this? Obviously, we're going to talk about practice because that's what we do here. And so there's a certain level of commitment

you have to make to cultivating this practice, this practice being the capacity to see what's happening and to know ourselves well. And so to be able to see clearly what our defenses are, what our habits are, what our patterns are, and some of those are deep. You know, they're really stuck. And meditation might not make them all magically go away, likely not. They didn't for me.

So it might also, if we're dealing with it in our personal lives, this despair that we're never going to get out of these cycles with our family members or our friends or in our love relationships or at work, we might need to start looking at, okay, what's my contribution to this? I'm not gonna be able to have hope if I can't start to shift my reactivity or my activation or my triggers, right?

So some of that work is just on the cushion, as we say, to start watching like what comes up for us? What are our habituated thought patterns? Like, how is that manifesting in the body? And how do we come to some level or measure of balancing? There's no kind of balance that we ever reach, but it really is like recognizing kind of what throws us off and what techniques and methods and modalities help that. So it might include therapy or trauma work or somatic work.

So that is really like on kind of the micro level for us. I've been really considering since these past four years of like constant barrage of what I call the bad news. I think we shouldn't label news just bad news. There's an expression in news, we don't report on the plane that lands safely. Yeah, exactly. That would be amazing. Like every plane that landed safely got like a headline. You know, so there has to be also a discipline in what we take in, how we take things in

so that we know we're staying informed, but we also know that it's our own compulsions and our own incapacity to create boundaries that is throwing us off balance and causing us to lose that sense of hope or trust in the present and in the future, really. Would you have a point of view on what kind of practice best equips a person to be able to do what we're describing here, which is to generate hope in your own capacity to just be as cool as possible with whatever happens in your life in terms of the global news situation or in your own backyard with your immediate circle. Is it the passina mindfulness practice

where you sit and watch your breath and then whatever comes up, you make a note of it and go back to the breath or is it loving kindness where you're deliberately training the muscle of warmth and care? Yes. That's what I believe. It's yes. Yes, it's both of those. And I would add, you know, I'm a big proponent of integrating what I would call integrating study and practice. So wisdom is the fruition of this practice, right? It is a perfection of wisdom. It said, is the expression of compassion.

And when we come to like a clear understanding of the nature of reality to get like mystical and deep, we will see things so clearly that we'll be able to have the appropriate response to everything. So that's a little maybe out there for people, but we need a little bit of wisdom to even get on the path. but we need a little bit of wisdom to even get on the path.

We need a little bit of wisdom to start practicing. People come to practice because they're like, this issue is not working for me anymore. Right? I need something else. People come because they're suffering and they're looking for something different. That takes wisdom. That takes an understanding that there's got to be a better way. And so combined with our practice,

are what we call insights. That's why this tradition is called insight, is these aha moments. And you're so great at articulating that and bringing people on to discuss that. What is it that we're learning? And then how do we kind of re-incorporate that back into the practice?

And one of the kind of key starting points on the path and in wisdom is just right understanding. Why is understanding? Like, understanding that things are the way they are. Under that umbrella teaching is basically everything. Like, all the Buddhist teachings are in that concept. So we start to understand like, oh yeah, things are impermanent, you know,

things rise and pass away. I'm not gonna be in panic forever. Like sometimes, you know, we get panic and we think this is never gonna stop. Like are this anxiety or this sadness or this feeling of loneliness, but it's gonna pass just like everything else passes, including the so-called good moments, right?

And also in that wise understanding is the teaching of what's called karma, which is really just a word that means literally action, and it's naming causes and conditions, right? There are countless causes and conditions that got us to this moment. So if you take something as seemingly hopeless as the climate crisis, like there's

a reason why we are in this moment of climate calamity and all of these changes that are affecting communities in really intense ways and seemingly no end to this destruction of the planet. Well, yeah, that can be really overwhelming and feel like, why did this happen? You know, this shouldn't be the way it is. Well, it is the way it is because we've been doing all these things that have led to this imbalance in nature. And so from there, we can meet it rather than again being a contention with it or resisting it, but you know, actually having then the next step response. So for me, yes, the practices are important, like training in the meditation and training in both mindfulness and loving kindness. So seeing clearly, but also meeting things with care and kindness,

but it's also really understanding the nature of things, like the nature of reality and actually using our practice to start to understand that on a personal level and then applying that more deeply to everything. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think you're saying that acceptance as a first step, you're not talking about a sort of quietude or a passivity. It's seeing things as they are and then making wise decisions about how to help. Yeah, and seeing things as they are is really seeing things clearly. I've told you about this retreat center that I teach at out in New Mexico and been going there for a number of years now.

It's a wilderness retreat center. It's really isolated up in the mountains. It's really beautiful, kind of wild nature. And I went for a couple of years in a row and it was really lush, you know, tie up even though it's in New Mexico. It's the mountain, so it's forested. So there are trees and wildflowers and grass.

And then one year I went and they didn't get a lot of snow that year, they didn't get a lot of rain, and it was dry. And I just had this feeling of like, oh my god, this is going to be destroyed. Like if a fire comes through here, everything's going to be gone. And you know, just really like went into kind of a doomsday place and practiced with that and just started to like appreciate, you know, the cycles of nature. The next year went back, like totally back to like lush and green and soft and flowers everywhere

more than I've ever seen actually. And I was like, oh, right. There's always change happening, like when I fixate on it being one way and that that's what it is. And there's no way out, like I'm actually not in tune with just the nature of nature that things are always changing and things have always been changing. And what we pay attention to starts to help us really understand that. I think with the climate crisis,

which you and I have talked about offline quite a bit, I do find myself shutting down. It's like just too big to compute or too depressing to contemplate that I have a hard time, you know, like dedicating bandwidth to it. Does that sound familiar to you? Yes, I'm familiar as in, I've experienced it

and familiar as in that something that that I think is our real work. So I'm super interested in this as you know and it's kind of where I'm putting a lot of my attention personally and as a teacher and really cultivating our capacity to saw that out, right? What you're describing is kind of numbing or that's a similar defended heart energy that we might bring into our relationships. It's just to our relationship to nature. And for me, actually, there's a part of my practice that tended to be very personal and kind of solipsistic, to be honest for a long time. And maybe that was necessary to

like start working on those patterns of defensiveness and all these things that I couldn't see unless I really looked deep within and did a lot of therapy. And that's important. And then there's a part of my practice that's really like human-centric. So working in personal relationships and my marriage or friendships, my communities, and working on Sangha relationships, you know, doing a lot of work around race and identity, as you know, and gender to kind of cultivate better relationships amongst humans. And now I'm really looking at like, what is my relationship to the natural world and to all nature? And how does that also play a part in my trust and faith and softening that defended heart? What do you recommend as a teacher, as a meditation teacher, to people like me who have a hard

time holding in mind with some balance, the magnitude of the, and I say this as somebody who's, you know, I've traveled all over the world covering the climate crisis. I've been in the Amazon many several times. I've Australia, Papua, New Guinea, all of Asia, Africa, India, all over this country. And so it's my job in many ways to report on this. But I find that sometimes I'll read a story about it and realize, I haven't thought about this in weeks because something is stopping my mind from going there regularly because it's just too painful or scary or depressing or whatever.

So what are the potential moves that we can make to be able to engage with it more consistently without burning out? more consistently without burning out. For me, it's kind of the same process of starting within and realizing what barriers I have within myself to this relationship to nature, just like I might have a barrier to a relationship to my fragile parts or to kind of opening up to issues that other people present to me. I'm a big proponent of the mindfulness of elements practice, which 10% was brave enough to let me record a few years ago, which I think a lot of people in the company

thought of as a little out there. But it's a classical practice. It's there in the first foundation of mindfulness. It's right there with mindfulness of breathing. And it's a really powerful practice because it starts to help us dissolve those barriers and recognize, you know, using these four kind of metaphors for our experience, earth, water, fire, and air. We start to realize that there's actually no separation between us and what we call everything else. So kind of really feeling into that and using that as a jumping off point to have relationships

with things besides, you know, our own thoughts and obsessions and our relationship with other people, which is still usually about our own thoughts and obsessions, because it's usually just projections, right? And start to have relationships with animals. I know you have many cats and, you know, that start to have relationships with animals. I know you have many cats and you know that's a starting place with plants and even if we're in the city, you know, we're surrounded by nature, not to mention that the elements practice starts connecting us to everything as nature. So the fire in my stovetop is also the element of fire, not just the sun,

right? Or the water in my shower is also the water element, not just the rivers and oceans. So we start to cultivate like a really moment-to-moment capacity for what does it mean to be in relationship with nature? And that includes like our surroundings. I know I gave you a book about trees. Two books. Two books about trees. And you know, starting to like have a relationship to the natural world is I think it doesn't make the climate crisis disappear, but it starts to make it less just an abstract concept and actually a lived experience that we have also in right relationship and responsibility. And from there, you know, we might start making different choices, we might get active,

there are all sorts of ways to get involved, but we can't sort of jump the step into the collective or the global without having sort of looked at this in ourselves. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. First though, if you are enjoying hearing from 7a and want to try her meditations in the 10% happier app, but you're not yet a subscriber, maybe now's the time. In addition to getting immediate access to 7a's meditations in the hope is a skill topic that we've just put up on the app. There are tons of other resources for starting rebooting or going deeper into your personal meditation practice. Just download the 10% happier app today for free wherever you get your

apps. Okay, we'll take a quick break as I said and we'll be right back with much more from 7a Celessi. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wunderys podcast, even the rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles. After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a

rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threaten to veer Rue off course. In our series Rue Paul Born Naked, we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. One of the books you gave me, who is just, I've mentioned before on the show, one of the best novels I've ever read.

And I had never even heard of it before it showed up in my mailbox from you. The overstory by Richard Powers. Richard, if you're listening, come on the show. And it's ostensibly a novel about trees, but it's about humans and their relationships in the natural world. And it's extremely plotty, unbelievably well-written, actually capable of producing, in my opinion, the same sort of awe that one can feel looking at nature and feeling small. I found that I could feel reading the quality of this person's writing. Like I can't believe a human being is capable of conjuring this kind of beauty on the page.

And there's just one sentence that comes in mind that I think about a lot now that I've moved out of the city to be in nature more. There are no individuals in a forest. And that just comes to mind as I'm just walking around this sort of exerb and neighborhood where my family and I now live and it does go back to a point you made earlier, which is as we're trying to boost our own capacity, I believe you said earlier, to handle whatever happens in our lives, which can, and that capacity can become the source of hope. Practice is important, but overlaying it with study, too. They're working several parts of the mind at once. I can engage the prefrontal cortex, the reading books or articles that Seb sends me, but

I can also do the elements practice, which is speaking to sort of maybe a different deeper part of the mind or the brain. And over time, it just can increase one's capacity to be able to handle stuff. That's not right. Yes, definitely. And there's something really important about relationship here, again, coming back to where we started, that it's not kind of in isolation. There's such a myth of individualism and doing this on our own, but it's listening to podcasts and talking about this with friends and exploring the work of others that is so central to cultivating that hope. And I think it would be very hard to cultivate hope in isolation unless you were kind of

in light and awake and being already. I feel like I would be remiss if I let you get away without saying more about the elements practice because you touch on it nicely. But for people whose curiosity may be peaked, obviously we can send them to the app if they're subscribers to get those meditations. But since we're here now, this is an ancient Buddhist practice, the, I'll shut up and can you pick it up from there and just to say more about how we can actually do this thing.

Yeah, when we talk about, you know, mindfulness, we're talking about the teachings that are in what's called the Satyipatana Sutta. It's a teaching on what's translated as the foundations of mindfulness. And it said that there are four of them. And the first one is body, and it moves on to, you know, working with the mind and emotions and sensations and our responses to them and other things. But this first category body is actually the biggest category. And it's why we spend a lot of time there is because we really need to be able to be in

our experience and not yanked around by our thoughts before we can really cultivate true mindfulness. And it's interesting that the elements are one of these foundations of body, like mindfulness of body. And it's a really simple instruction to be aware of these four elements in the body in your experience. So you're aware of Earth. I really use the model that's taught by Venerable Bekuenalio, who's a translator and teacher.

He's a German terabadden monk. And he really instructs for you to feel Earth as kind of flesh and bone and fat and muscle, so like the density and solidity of the body. And as you know, Dan, the instructions in the Satyipatanasuta for mindfulness are to be aware internally, to be aware externally, or to be aware both internally and externally.

And that's like a key part of the teaching that we don't often get taught that yes, we're experiencing these things within ourselves, but we're also relating it to the rest of us because this is ultimately a teaching in interconnection, right? And with the elements, it's really powerful because we can sense this solidity of the body, but then we can also sort of reflect on the solidity all around us, like the earth underneath us, the chair I'm sitting on, this desk, you know, the computer, everything that's solid around me is also earth element as a metaphor, right? And then we move to

the water. And so we can sense all the water in our body. And we're actually mostly water. I think we're something like 60 or 70% water, which really doesn't make any logical sense, right? We feel solid, but we are molecularly actually like 99.9% water. Water is a very small molecule, so there's way more numbers of it in our body. And so we can feel the saliva in our mouth, we can feel the moistness behind our eyes, we can feel moisture, sweat on the body, or start to kind of sense into the fact that our bones are actually even the hard

part of our bones, or like 25% water, so we can feel kind of the fluid nature of the body. And then we can reflect externally that the planet is mostly water, even though, again, it doesn't make logical sense, but that's why the saying water is life is so powerful because it's true. And then we move to the fire element, which is temperature in the body, so we can feel heat and that kind of transformational energetic quality of fire, which is really powerful and relate that to the sun and to, you know, the fire and heat and energy all around us.

And kind of, I like to think of it as the potential for change and transformation. And then finally, the air element, which were many of us are familiar with from meditating with the breath. And that is like a really powerful one for me. This ephemeral, like totally subtle experience, like you can't grasp air, like you can't feel it the way we feel, even heat, you know, it's really, really light, but it's so profound, we can't live without it. And it's a thing that connects us to everything. We are literally breathing each other's air, not just contemporaneously, like throughout time, because we pretty much have the same oxygen molecules

circulating around the planet throughout history. So we're breathing the same air as the Buddha. I'm gonna see if I can connect this in some way. I really like this practice given what we discussed earlier in the conversation about my noxious capacity to reflexively reject anything that isn't, you know, scientific, took me a while to get over myself and embrace this practice. But I'm going to try to connect it to hope for a second. And it seems to me, and I'll try this out and see if you think this is right. We've talked about a number of ways

of generating hope. One would be building your own capacity to be with whatever comes up. The other is improving your ability to be in relationships because doing things as a team is easier than than trying to do it as an isolated ego. But another might be back to that phrase of isolated ego, seeing how porous the boundary is between you and everything else, getting out of your head in that way, can make you sort of less tight in some way that, I don't know, counterintuitively, it makes you less, there's some lightness and hope that comes from feeling, I don't know, less central? I love that, less central. And also, I love mystery and the possibility that is afforded to us when we don't think that all of our lives and all the solutions will come from kind of rational, logical steps, although we need those. But there's something also so powerful about kind of trusting in something we could

say bigger than us or more than just these little egos. What came to mind is the image of Gandhi, like bringing down the British Empire with nothing, but like his staff and his one robe, just doing simple things like walking to the ocean and collecting salt or refusing to eat. And so when we can kind of imagine a different possibility, when we've freed up our energy and feel that connection and feel that sense of trust, maybe new possibilities will open up to us. That's the realm of like invention. And maybe, you know, there's a kid right now

who is learning to meditate because they're bringing mindfulness into schools. And that kid, she'll be the one that's gonna invent the thing that's gonna help us reverse the climate crisis. It frees something up so that we're not constricted thinking that we're doomed or sort of condemned to the path that we found of ourselves on, we can actually find a different route. There's just the thing that somebody said to me once

that I've never shaken. I might have referenced this before on the show, so if I'm being repetitive, everybody I apologize, but there was a period of time where I was doing a lot of hospice volunteering and Was it elderly gentleman and who was able to get out of his bed? So he was not sort of On death's door per se, but he was you know pretty close and pretty ill and I was talking him and And he was not particularly spiritual. I think he had been a college professor and I said he's scared.

And he said, you know, I, uh, my view is shifted. I kind of see myself as part of a larger system. So I don't feel that much fear. I don't know why that's coming to mind right now is somehow hopeful. Yeah. Yeah. We are part of a much larger system throughout what we call time, which Einstein told us is an illusion in space and cosmos and our ancestors survived pandemics and brutality and oppression and they survived because we're here. And so there's something very hopeful to me

in that possibility that kind of frees up the energy so that while we're here in this system, we can contribute to it in the ways that are most meaningful and really most beneficial. Two other comments are coming to mind now that are right on, I think right on point from what you're saying. One is there was some tumultuous period of American history. I can't remember what it was like maybe the 2016 election or whatever.

I remember emailing or texting with Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher, friend to both of us, and asking him how he was doing. And he said, I'm doing two things. One is I'm titrating my news intake. And the other is I'm slotting into geological time. I thought that was very helpful. And the other comment that's coming to mind is I've only heard it second hand, but the Dalai Lama went to

a center for compassion at Stanford University and spoke to the staff. And I think people were saying something like, well, the world is so messed up right now. You know, how are we supposed to view the effectiveness of what we're doing in light of all the horrible things? And he said, you know, you kind of maybe think that the benefits might not show up in your lifetime. Yeah, it makes me think of, I know we talked about this before we came on, that this sentence or phrase let it be. And it's paradoxical quality because there's such a, in both both of those in what the Dalai Lama was pointing to and Joseph was pointing to, there's this trust and patience. And a lot of us when we hear the meditation instructions, we might have heard the phrase let go. And there are some teachers who give a corrective to that and say, let it be. Because let go still has this quality of like, can have this quality of a version or control to it.

And so it's not that we're just passively saying everything's okay, and we just have to accept it how it is, because we see that changes need to be made. You know, if we want to reverse the climate changes, we're going to have to make some choices and probably hard choices. If we want to end racial injustice, we're going to have to talk about changing systems and reparations or whatever we're working towards for that. And let it be to me has this kind of paradoxical quality

because it is saying let it be, like don't be in contention with reality. Don't defend your heart, tighten up and just kind of close off because it's too painful to see or are hard to open up to. Let it be like open to it. But it also has this kind of like almost mystical like incantation quality to it. Like let it be is also hopefully bringing something else into being, like let it be so, let it be different. And so that balance of those two let it be, I think really speaks to what

Joseph and the Dalai Lama were pointing to for me. So I can notice anger frustration fear in the face of whatever's happening right now. And I can not try to fight it or feed it, just let it be. And I can also, on another level, maybe envision a world that is otherwise, let that be too without being too attached to making it happen tomorrow. Yeah, and then it's really, that's the practice, right?

Because it's moment to moment. And you know, it might be I'm feeling a version or anger, rising, let it be, and let it be. I want to cultivate actually kindness or, you know, love or care. So it can be really simple and local and personal, and it can be let it be, okay, this is how things are. We live in this country that is reaping centuries of injustice and inequality and violence and oppression that has brought us to this moment. Okay, let it be, let me recognize that and open myself to it and let it be that we can have actually a different society that's built on the values of integrity and justice

and love and quality. How are you applying all of these things that we've talked about here about, all the many levels of hope as a skill? How are you applying that to where we are right now in this pandemic? Why we got interested at 10% happier in hope right now is because it's such a precarious moment for hope because things seem to be going reasonably well. There's kind of light at the end of the tunnel, I guess. But then there are lots of things that could screw that up. Mutations, bad leadership, infighting, and among the population or various populations

are in any number of ways things can go pear-shaped at any time. So how are you applying or are you applying everything we've discussed to now? Yeah, I really resonate with what Joseph was saying that I have to really be careful not to take in every piece of news and changes in situations. I stay informed very much so, and I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a policy maker. So how do I stay informed without kind of

needing to micromanage what's going on out there without any actual power? Right? So like having opinions about every aspect of things, I've really actually started to develop a gratitude practice towards politicians and policymakers and people who've taken this on. It is a huge responsibility in it always, but in this moment, and people in Washington, whatever we think about them, they're actually the only ones who've actually taken on the job to work together across the aisle, across these huge growing chasms of ideology. So having so much appreciation and participating

as a citizen where I can in my voting, in my donations, in my volunteering, whatever it might be, and recognizing actually what I'm in control of in terms of hope about the future is my health, the health of those around me, checking in on friends, even when I feel like isolating, or just kind of retreating to the bath, or to a Netflix marathon, like committing to the family Zoom, or kind of retreating to the bath or to a Netflix marathon, like committing to the family Zoom

or kind of reconnecting certain folks who seem to be dropping off, like checking in with friends who live alone or isolated, you know, that's the hopefulness I can control as well as teaching, you know, and offering my teachings to the level that feels manageable for me that I'm not burning out, I'm so grateful that I have a way that I feel that I can contribute and all of us can.

But I often get the feedback that it is helping people and that's really like a privilege. I can confirm it helps a lot of people, including the person you're talking to right now, your specific teachings. So for sure, that's true. And I think there's something to be learned and applied for everybody there, which is that, yeah, we, none of us can control how this thing's going to go. But we can't control what we're doing on a moment's moment basis. And, you know, even little things that may not seem like they're going to put a dent in the universe of checking in on somebody that actually is end nobling and empowering and Can be the source of hope. It's not unrealistic reckless hope that yeah

You're gonna end the pandemic tomorrow by going shopping for your old-jirly neighbor, but it's hope that yeah you can feel useful and better right now and And it can give you hope in the fact that human beings have the capacity to be decent Both hopes. Yeah. Yeah, there's something I've been kind of connecting to a lot lately as this kind of real relationship between intimacy and imagination because it's kind of the one side of let it be and the other in a way and it coming back to our, how we started this conversation, that

intimacy between us allowed for like imagining, you know, the deepening of our friendship. We're now planning to have like a little walking tour of my neighborhood, which you've never been to. And there's sort of these possibilities that can only happen when we get intimate with our own experience and intimate with the experience of others. That is, it doesn't have to be this huge project. Like, it can really start to open up in small and maybe mysterious ways too. That might be a beautiful place to leave it unless you feel like I've failed to ask a question that I really should have asked, or is there some place you would have liked

to have gone that I haven't steered us to? I think it's a beautiful place to end, yeah. Everybody should read not only the overstory, but more importantly, seven days book, you belong beside the book, which I will plug for you and I love plugging anything else to mention if people are interested in learning more about you learning more from you. You know, they can go to my website, subnicellossy.com and I'm doing stuff and I'm on Instagram, hopefully saying nice things about Dan. You don't need to say nice things about me.

You can say whatever you want as long as I feel like we're still friends. That's totally fine. Well, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me, Dan. It's always great. Thanks again to Seb. If you enjoy this conversation and you want to learn more about how to practice what

we talked about today, go and check out Seb's brand new meditations that just dropped in the Hope Is a Skill topic In the 10% happier app, we'll include a link to the meditations in the show notes. And you can download the app today for free wherever you get your apps. This show is made by Samuel Johns, DJ Cashmere, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and Jen Plant with audio engineering from ultraviolet audio. As always, a hearty salute to my ABC News colleagues Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohand will see you all on Friday for a special bonus meditation from Seb on The Topic of Hope.

Hey, hey, prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. Okay.