Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 429: The Upside of Apocalypse | Lama Rod Owens

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

We’re now entering year three of the pandemic, and even though we’re in a very different stage of the game, there are still so many questions: Is it safe or ethical to return to “normal”? How do you deal with people who have different views on safety and vaccines? What do you do if you’re just bone tired of this whole mess?Today’s guest is Lama Rod Owens, who was trained in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism, holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and is the author of the book Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. Lama Rod has been kind enough to come on to the show during moments of crisis. I spoke with him shortly after the murder of George Floyd and also during the 2020 elections. As you’re about to hear, one of the core arguments he will make is that apocalypse (and he has a broad understanding of what that word means) can present an opportunity. This episode explores:The benefits of having an existing practice in times of heightened anxiety and uncertainty.Developing a direct, open relationship with fear.Working with regret.Why taking care of yourself is not selfish.Lama Rod’s take on social media and watching TV as a way to reset. The obstacles to empathy. A more expansive definition of the word violence. A jarring New York Times article that posits that the recent rise in pedestrian deaths could be in part due to social erosion created by the pandemic.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/lama-rod-owens-427See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, it's part two of our two-part series on the second anniversary of the US shutting down because of COVID. Back on Wednesday, we talked to New York Times, Senior writer David Leonhardt. Today, we're getting a wisdom or Dharma take on the situation as we enter year three of this pandemic. Just to say, obviously, we're well into year three in parts of the world where the virus hit first. But as we hear in the U.S.

Enter year three, even though we're in a vastly different stage of the game right now, there are so many questions. Is it safe or ethical to return to normal? How do you deal with people who have different views on safety and vaccines? Then you, what do you do if you're just bone tired of this whole dumpster fire? My guess today with whom we're going to hash out these and other issues is Lamar Rod Owens, who was trained in the Kagu school of Tibetan Buddhism, holds a master of divinity degree in Buddhist studies from Harvard Divinity School and is the author of the book Love and Rage. Lamarad has been kind enough to come on the show in moments of crisis.

As you may remember, I spoke to him shortly after the murder of George Floyd and also right after the 2020 election. And as you're about to hear, one of the core arguments he makes is that apocalypse, and I should say he has a rather broad understanding of what that word means, but apocalypse, he says, can present an opportunity. I'll let him explain what he means by that. In this conversation, we also talk about the benefits of having an existing practice in times of heightened anxiety and uncertainty, developing a direct, open relationship with fear, working with regret, while taking care of yourself is not selfish. Lama Rods take on social media and watching television, the obstacles to empathy, a more expansive definition of the word word violence, and a really jarring article in the New York Times that posits that the recent rise in pedestrian deaths

could in some way be linked to social erosion caused by the pandemic. We'll get started with Lama Rod Owens right after this. What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions, award-winning author, founder and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast.

Every week Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant, Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life Project on your favorite podcast app. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur.

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Lama Rado, and welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me back. It's a pleasure. So here we are, two years into this dumpster fire. And I got a bunch of things I want to ask you about, but let me just start by getting a sense of where you're at. Are you still living with a significant amount of anxiety or is the pandemic over?

You're not thinking about it. I am certainly thinking about the pandemic, but I am not living with so much anxiety right now. I think because of just having practiced for over 20 years at this point, just with this comfort of my own mind, all the anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, despair, I mean, these were the first things that I had to focus on.

My practice went and I began in my 20s. And that is the law of practice. If you do it and commit to it, it actually begins to support you in ways that you're not even conscious of right over time. But that kind of support isn't available if you're not committed to the practice. So I've been really fortunate to really be experiencing a lot of openness, a lot of expansion, and a lot of commitment to maintaining a personal practice of just really daily moving through. You know, whatever grief and anxiety and fatigue comes up, it doesn't become this overwhelming experience because I can just meet it, experience it,

and then let it go. So that's the promise of the practice, is that if you stick with it, whatever comes up in your mind, whatever difficult emotions, there's sort of nobody home to take delivery of the package as it were, that you don't have to get caught up.

Exactly. Exactly. It's like, I don't bite the hook as much as I used to, right? But if you keep biting the hook, then there's a kind of like overwhelm that we experience. Like, things just kind of get solid and heavy, right? Because of that reactivity of biting the hook. So it's just like constantly letting it go, constantly going through the practice of grief, constantly figuring out how to care for myself, right? And to care for myself only because I want to care for others during this time, right? If I link both of those aspirations together, then it creates a really powerful practice

that I'm only doing this for myself because I want to do this for others. I've been calling that the cheesy upward spiral that if you take care of yourself, your relationships with other people get better than you're happier and this, et cetera, et cetera. Exactly, exactly. You're not a burden for people when you're caring for yourself, right? Not to say that like we don't rely on others for care, but what I'm saying is that I am really

involved in understanding what I need right now. And a lot of folks right now don't understand that, right? Because the urgency of the moment kind of pushes people to be selfless in a way that isn't actually about caring for ourselves. That selflessness actually erases some basic resources that we really need to be well and to be of service to others. But I think this kind of support and care for others is best accomplished through first understanding what we need in terms of care. It's the old trope of, you know, put your own oxygen mask on. First, there's a reason why cliches become cliches because they're true. And I see what you're referring to that it's easy for people, especially those

with an activist bent in a moment of overlapping crises, like the one we find ourselves in right now, to just be, as you said, selfless. But you run out of road eventually. Yeah. I think it reminds me of something that James Baldwin wrote about, which was this kind of practice of rest. If we don't care for ourselves, we actually won't survive the war. And I think of this time that we're in as being a time where my longevity is being tested. Like, I want to stay around as long as possible to be of help, for as long as possible.

Therefore, I ask myself, what do I need to maintain that? Right? It's not so much about just like investing everything right now because we're responding or reacting to the urgency. It's saying like, how do I survive? Because my survival is linked to actually creating the causes and conditions for future folks, for my descendants, to have a better entrance into this world.

I always feel slightly guilty when I get into this kind of conversation because I see in my mind quite a bit of the kind of selfishness that crosses the line, past self-care and into like, unconstructive self-concern, insensate self-concern where you're just really totally locked up in yourself. Do you see none of that in your own mind? Well, I think what you're referring to is fear. So it's like fear can actually trap us into a real kind of unproductive selfishness.

You know, but it's fear. And so I look at fear and I keep asking, fear, okay, what are you actually keeping me from doing? Right? And what am I actually afraid of? And then I think more about what I will regret if I allow fear to dominate the choices that I make. And regret is something that I really, it's a very strong thing that I work with in my practice. Like what's really important for me is to come to the end of my life knowing that I did everything that I could do, to live well, to be happy, to help others, to be happy, and to be a part of as much change as possible.

But the other end of this too, that it's kind of tricky is that sometimes when we actually kind of But sometimes when we actually kind of get into the space where maybe we're backed into the space by fear, that fear can be quite functional because the fear actually may be trying to tell us something that we need to pay attention to, that maybe we're not ready for the thing that we want to do, that we're not ready to engage in certain things because we actually don't have the resources to engage in certain things because we actually don't have the resources to engage. And if we do engage in something without the resources that it may create harm for ourselves and for others, so fear is tricky like that. And this is why we have to develop a really direct open relationship with fear, right?

But it's just not us moving through this discernment. It's the discernment that we actually have to consult others around as well. So this is where other people come into play. Like we need to ask people what their perception of our choices are, like how do they perceive what we're doing? And particularly people who love us,

I wouldn't ask people who can't stand us. What we should do, and particularly people who love us. I wouldn't ask people who can't stand us. What we should do, but like people who love us are invested in our well-being, our happiness, our safety. Let me just stay with the issue of fear, that I think at this point in the pandemic, from what I can tell, there seem to be a lot of people who are like, this thing is over for me. I'm not dealing with it.

And there are a lot of people who are like, this thing is over for me. I'm not dealing with it. And there are a lot of people who are like, actually still really scared, whether they're immunocompromised or they know somebody who is or they just, the situation so unpredictable. What guidance do you have for people who are dealing with a lot of fear right now? Yeah.

Well, this isn't new or unique. We all live in these personal realities where we're fine, but there are other people who are terrified of something because of conditions that impact them differently. And so what would I tell people? Well, it's, I would first say that like we're all still in this together, regardless of the actions of others, regardless of how people say, well, I'm over it, I'm done, this is over it, it's not over. And I think that it's important for those of us

who are still just like really in the heart of a lot of fear and precaution, right, to make the decisions, to care for ourselves and to set the boundaries that we need. It's important to say, you know what, I don't care. What, what you're doing and how free you seem to be, like I have to make choices to care for myself, like choices to mask, choices to do whatever,

you know, isolate, to stay away from people, like you still make those choices and it has to be okay because that's what you need. But you know, even beyond that, I think that for those folks like who don't share the same fear, again, it's like we're missing this really profound practice of empathy. And it's hard to empathize when you're overwhelmed by everything. Like, why would we open ourselves to imagine or reflect on the discomfort of others when we're overwhelmed with our own discomfort? And that's a huge shutdown. There's going to keep us actually from connecting to the real legitimate fears of a lot of folks, but that's always kept us

from connecting to the real fears of people who are experiencing fears that we actually don't share or connect to ourselves. Another one of my little silly taglines is the view is so much better when you pull your head out of your ass. And so how do we pull our heads out of our ass is how do we achieve this empathy? How do we stop getting so stuck in our own stories that we can't relate? Well, I think it goes back to this fundamental discussion around care. We don't have enough care to feel safe enough to actually open our eyes, to open our hearts to the experience of others. Like we're exhausted or we don't have the inspiration or we don't have the examples that we need that will help us to model with

this kind of opening what look like. I think also many of us, it's also rooted within the ways in which we were brought up in our families and our communities. Like we maybe some of us weren't ever offered the tools to do this work. That we were told to actually keep bypassing, to keep distracting. Within, I would say, American culture and Western culture, perhaps in general, but definitely here in America, it's, we're definitely a culture of distraction. Like when you're constantly distracted, you don't really have the space or the time to

develop the tools to really experience a deeper awareness of who and what we are and also to experience a deep connection to the needs that we really need to be working with. I think we're afraid of hurting more. Like we don't want to hurt more, but my experience of this kind of empathic practice is that it's not that like I'm actually taking on the pain and the discomfort of others is actually I'm actually opening to the real reality of my pain and discomfort. Like an opening to my reality, I'm able to say, you know what, I'm not the only one who's going through this, right? Others are going through this. So the real, I think, obstacle to empathy is actually beginning to empathize with ourselves first, right?

Because it goes back to distraction and so forth and bypassing. We just want to be comfortable. We want to be happy. We want to just live good lives. This is like this ideology of Western culture, particularly capitalist cultures, where it's like, I have a right to be happy, particularly if I have the capital. It's a by that happiness. But it just ends up being a matter of over consumption. We keep consuming and consuming. It doesn't

do anything. You can be a trillionaire, which we will begin to see trillionaires in our lifetime. Will they be happier than other people? I would say not. Maybe they have fewer obstacles, but doesn't mean that you're happier. Right? But it's the loss of the importance of being in a relationship to our internal world, to the experience of our minds, to the experience of our bodies, and the fear of what it means to develop that relationship. Because really, what we're putting at risk is how we're tiny hold on comfort and stability in a world that can be quite uncomfortable

and quite unpredictable. And yet actually, I think if you invite in that discomfort, you end up freer than you would be if you were playing whack-a-mo your whole life and just trying to snuff out any arising of discomfort or pain. Kind of reminds me of a, I don't know if you know, she's also been on the show, but I don't know if you know

her personally, Seven A. Celacii, the meditation teacher. Oh, I know, yeah, I know Seven A. I turned 50 over the summer. I'm an old man and she gave me a painting from my birthday and the name of the painting, which I've been puzzling over since she gave it to me. It was painted by a friend of hers, but the name of the painting, which is hanging in my office, the name of the painting was my open heart, keeps me safe. It's like a bit of a Zen ko on.

It's like, yeah, I get it. In some way, opening up to all of the chaos and cacophony of your own mind, your own pain, is a safer move, although counterintuitive than pretending it's not there and having it drive you from the darker precincts of your mind. Am I making any sense? Yeah, absolutely. It sounds counterintuitive to open the heart and to say that's the best and safest place or experience to have because the open heart is a vulnerable heart, right? And for many of us, we perceive the world as being quite dangerous. So I think what that teaching is actually helping us understand is that when we open our

hearts, we're actually dissolving fear. Aversion takes a lot of energy. Aversion is also hate. Right? Hate, aversion. That takes so much effort to maintain because you things, because the reality of things is fluidity and interconnectedness. Everything's flowing together. Everything's connected. But when we start experiencing fear, letting that fear turn into hate, we actually begin to disrupt a natural experience of the world and of our lives. And that, for me, in the past, that's created this experience of being blocked. It's like being constipated.

Right, you just get really backed up and you start reacting to the extreme discomfort of being backed up where things aren't flowing, right? And then you create narratives and storylines based upon all of that reactivity to discomfort. So reactivity to discomfort is always going to create more discomfort. Like there's no way to create comfort and safety and openness when we're just to visually reacting to the pain.

So when we start having an open heart, like when you reverse that energy, you start letting things flow. And you realize there's this incredible amount of space that begins to open up. Like the kind of space that allows things to come and go. Right. And when I have this space, I can become aware of things like sickness and issues around justice and violence. Like I can hold that because there's a lot of space to hold, right? And when there's a lot of space, I can move from reactivity into responsiveness. I can choose to respond in ways that are helpful, not just react in ways that are avoiding.

Right? And when I can respond to something that I can choose to do something that helps to alleviate, right. Instead of running away from this shoes of environmentalism and climate change, like I start actually turning into it and saying, okay, what can I do for myself, what can I do for my communities to start actually being productive instead of running away and saying, well, someone else is going to take care of this. You're talking now about engaging with the world and as we come up on this two-year anniversary of the pandemic, I think that, and you've written a lot about the issue of rage, you have a great book called Love and Rage, it's not hard for many of us to look around at how other people are handling this pandemic or at the disproportionate effects of this pandemic on certain populations. And to get really pissed and judgmental, outraged. What are your thoughts on how best to work with that while not allowing it to overwhelm you.

Well, it goes back to care. It's like I'm figuring out what I need in order to create the space to hold these experiences. And not only that, like it's not just the care, but it's also the fearlessness. Like we were just talking about, it's like fear takes a lot of energy. Fearlessness can also become a kind of energy, a force. And that fearlessness is really based upon empathy, but it's actually more precisely based on this deep compassion where we know that every once suffering, we know that everyone's trying to do the best that they can do to be in the world in a way that feels safer and more liberated, but not knowing how to really take care of ourselves,

like we find ourselves really struggling to figure out how to connect to people and their experiences in the world, particularly when those experiences are hurt and anger. I would imagine another thing you might say is not to make the outrage, if we see it, they anger the fury bad, not to get mad at ourselves because this natural emotion is coming up. Yeah, well, that's the key. We have to come back into a view of ourselves and the expressions of our, rather the experience of our emotions as natural. This is what happens. Like, we have minds, we have bodies, their emotions, thoughts, sensations. Of course, this happens,

right? Again, I think if we don't understand how to care for ourselves, then that's going to disrupt I don't understand how to care for ourselves and that's gonna disrupt this practice of resiliency. Resiliency is based upon space. Like, do I have the space to make a different choice? Or am I just reacting over and over again to discomfort? Or am I just bypassing the whole thing altogether? If it's bypassing or just reacting, we're still not getting to the

roots of the practice, which is learning how to experience and to offer space to. I totally agree with you on taking care of yourself. But when the rubber hits the road, I can hear some people saying, yeah, but Lamarad, my mother-in-law, is impossible on issues related to the pandemic. I can't even make it through a conversation with her without losing it. Yeah, then why have the conversation to begin with? Why do you keep going down the same path knowing it's gonna end at a dead end?

You know, I hear this a lot. I get these questions all the time, but so and so doesn't believe in this and that. Listen, I have family members in the same position, like in the same beliefs around vaccines and pandemic. And I just said, you know what? Fine. Because if I keep pushing it, it just turns into violence. And I think one of the things that we're unfortunately having to contemplate is that not everyone's going to make it, like not everyone's going to make it.

Like not everyone's going to be in the same page. We live in a huge world collective of billions of people. Not everyone's going to be on the same page about everything. And we have to get to this point of just saying, you know what, no matter how much I try, there are things that will not change. So what's the alternative? For me, the alternative is just to keep an open heart, to model the choices around safety and health and so forth that are important to me.

And I hope that people will just see me as an example without feeling as if I am forcing them into making choices that they're uncomfortable with. And that has helped me to maintain really important relationships, not just about the pandemic and so forth, but just other things that I just really disagree with. Amongst friends and family, I just say, you know what? It's fine. Because the day I still love you, and I want you to have the agency to make the choices that you feel like you need to make.

How do you draw the line between acceptance and resignation, a kind of writing somebody off that masquerades is compassion? Yeah. Well, I think it's about being really clear about how far you're willing to go and how far you have gone. I think when someone's choices and getting them to make certain choices becomes more about you instead of like them, I think that's a really important

thing to notice. Like I have noticed often that like I've made other people's choices very personal. You know, yeah, definitely there are people making choices that create violence for me. That's a different thing. But like what I'm talking about is just people who hold these opinions that are just actually maybe hurting themselves more. And I have had to be very clear about, okay, if I keep pushing, then it's

going to actually create much more harm in a relationship. And what I'm trying to do is to reduce harm and often to reduce harm, or sometimes to reduce harm rather, is to understand when I have to kind of back back and say, you know what, I've done everything that I can do. So I'm just going to hold space, be really open and then connect to the grief around people doing something that is sad for me that I experienced hurt from. You use the term violence a couple times. I'm assuming you have a broader understanding of that word than just physical violence.

Right. Well, it's harm, right? It's when my personal boundaries have been crossed by someone or something and not being able to reconcile that boundary crossing and so it ends up creating hurt for me. Like woundedness or some of the words I use are disappointment or confusion. It's a loss of trust for others, but it's also sometimes can be a loss of trust for ourselves because we lose trust in the power and the validation of our boundaries. So someone can cross our boundaries creating hurt for us, then what's the point of having boundaries to begin with?

And do I deserve to have boundaries of people keep crossing it? So that's violence right there. So that violence can be again physical, but like we keep connecting the physical aspect of violence to real violence, but real violence is any harm, emotional harm, right, as well as physical harm. I think sometimes emotional violence is invisible for many of us because I think we've been taught to say, yeah, of course, like people are going to be mean to you. People are going to say really mean things. People are going to experience misunderstandings

about something that you're doing. And we're just kind of conditioned to accept that. So we don't see that as much. We just call that living. Sometimes we call that family as well, but we have all this emphasis on physical violence, because that's the real hurt. Most people don't use this term or this word, but our bodies are actually quite sacred for us. We have built a lot of structure around maintaining the well-being of our bodies, right? Even if we're not connecting it to that consciously.

So when people violate the boundaries of our bodies, then it becomes real personal. Like this is mine, right? And another way to think about this too is that like we have this experience of self, right? That experience of self is actually quite positive in the body, like the body is the self. Like this is my physical self here, like without my body, I have nothing.

So when you have that link, the body becomes central and are understanding of violence. Our minds may be not. Right? Like beyond the body, I have no idea who I am. But when it comes to my body, I know what this body is. I've lived in this body. So if you touch this or do something, then there's going to be issues. So the our sense of what violence has become limited, just in the same way

that our sense of ourself has become limited. Yes. Absolutely. Coming up, Lamarad and I discuss a recent article in the New York Times that talks about the social erosion that has been caused by the pandemic and links that potentially to an increase in pedestrian deaths across the U.S. We're also going to talk about a practice to help you navigate feelings of being overwhelmed and overburdened.

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the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. On the subject of violence, if you're up for it, I want to talk a little bit about the article that we both saw, and I think we're both quite struck by in the New York Times on the morning of the day that we're recording this. The article, I'll just describe it and then I'll be very interested just to hear your thoughts on it.

The article was about the apparent increase in pedestrian deaths across the United States and some experts are blaming this on the pandemic specifically in terms of a rise of substance abuse as a consequence of the pandemic and also quite interestingly in erosion of a rise of substance abuse as a consequence of the pandemic and also quite interestingly in erosion of social connection, this sense of disregard for others that can set in when we're artificially isolated. Please, I read the article I thought of you immediately sent to you and I've just be really interested

to hear what you think of it. Yeah, well, let me tell you, I complain about the deterioration of people's driving every single day. Well, I have a weird thing in my practice where I can sense how people are through their driving. Cause I consider myself a really good driver. Cause basically I don't wanna have an accident and die.

So I'm like very cautious about driving. There's a big thing for me. I can just sense people like where their minds are, what they're thinking about, how they're distracted because they're making choices that are actually quite dangerous. And this is why I think I have to be super, super aware and clear when I'm on the road in a car,

because there are people who are just losing attention. And I think that loss of attention is really about just being overwhelmed. Like we're trying to do 10 things at once. Like we're in the car. We're having conversations, we're on the phone, we're listening to music, we're listening to the podcast. But it's just like we're trying to navigate the roads

in general. We're worried about this, We're worried about that. And of course, that's going to create potential for a lot of mishap. But you know, from the article, it was really interesting to learn about the ways in which people are so focused on one thing, they let up on another. Like we're so focused on the pandemic that we let up on our driving skills. Because that's like the pandemic is real, but like in this driving thing, I don't need to put a lot of attention into this. This can cost. And I think that's a real thing

that happens. Like when we're really going through something intense, like we just, we shift all of our energy into working with that situation and then everything else loses awareness and attention. This is if we just kind of go on autopilot for these other things, right? And that's a sign that like we're just overburdened, overwhelmed, right? It just takes too much energy and effort to be well.

It's like you have to keep working, you have to pay housing and food and health care. So much of our resources are linked to work. Well, that's an incredible amount of pressure. Then on top of that, we're just tired, we're just tired. Like, this is too much. I'm saying, this is too much, particularly for those of us who don't have a practice to navigate this. Is this too much for me? No. Like, no, because I have a practice. I have support. I have networks. Right. And I just grew up struggling. Quite honestly, you know, I grew up black and queer in America. Like, I was never comfortable. So I was always on guard for everything, like anything could happen. Not that that became overwhelming for me because I learned to work with it and practice.

It just, it became a heightened sense of awareness and sensitivity that I don't experience this comfort from, but it's there. I'm just aware, right? But when you've never had to really struggle like this and to hold multiple realities and situations at once, this is quite a lot. And for it to be ongoing is actually extremely depleting for us. Yes, everything you just said, it seems possible that for many of us, there's only so much we can be concerned about at once. And so we start letting basic things like not hitting people on the road slide. The other aspect in the article that I found equally,

if not more disturbing was just this notion that two years into this thing, we may not care about each other as much as we used to. And it was really interesting because I think in the first year of the pandemic, it seemed like we did care more about each other. It felt like people were trying to help out as much as possible. We were checking in on one another. We were being really like intentional, you know, about making sure there are neighbors and our friends and our families were doing well. I think again, like it gets this point where it's like you're just tired and you're like, I just don't have the energy to keep checking in on

others because I don't actually have the energy for myself, right? There's a depletion there. But then of course, everything that's happened, and it just hasn't just been the pandemic, it's been this kind of re-emergence of movement for Black Lives Matter. It's been the insurgents last year. It's been more political and financial disruption. So it's not just the pandemic, but it's like, do I trust people?

Now, my neighbor could be plotting the downfall of this country or they can be intentionally trying to hurt me because they feel like they're a part of some movement. Those are real distrust that's happening. We just don't know who we are, right? And of course, you don't know who people are because you don't have the empathy to explore who people are. But that exploration of people is really about connecting to this fundamental experience, which is like that everyone's just trying to make

the best decisions to be well. Those decisions don't actually mean that they're doing something that is great for the collective, for all of us. But that's the confusion of trying to meet our needs. Like, are these really needs, do I really need, for my movement to overthrow the government? Like, is that a need or are you just like terrified that things are changing and you can't change with the times, you can't change with the culture?

Because being who you are and identifying in the ways you identify is the only thing that you know. Right, again, it goes back to this fear. Like fear just, it creates this like block, like it disrupts fluidity and connectivity. And again, I think the more we're blocked, the more intense that fear has to become to keep that block in place. Because over time, the force of what's being kept blocked is so overwhelming. And this is why people who are trying to change feel like it's so impossible.

Like when we're trying to work through issues around racism and patriarchy, these personal issues that we've been kind of indoctrinated by, people will often go like, I can't possibly change. Like this is too much. Like it goes to the root of everything that I am. You know, it's because we just haven't had the tools to work with it. You know, and I wanna say too that like so many of us,

we just didn't have a chance to get the tools. Like we were so insulated with their cultures and communities within family like we just there was no way. I think that was the case for those of us who grew up before the internet. It's not like you can just hop on the phone and get information. It may be the wrong information but at least you have access to a lot of information but when I was growing up it was like if I couldn't read in the book or see it on TV, like I wasn't connected, I didn't know it existed.

So I get the immensity of what people are facing to change. Change their minds, change their attitudes to open up, but it doesn't mean that we give up. Fear has come up repeatedly in our discussion. Is there a meditation practice that you prescribe for skillfully working with fear? I think the meditation practice that I offer are really just about experiencing the fear.

Like what does it actually feel like? Because we're very distant from the experience of fear. We're distant because we're just always reacting. Reactivity is not experiencing, right? It's like getting close to a fire. We feel the heat and we pull back. But with fear and with any emotion really is about, how do I actually get curious about what this experience is?

What does it feel like in my mind? What does it feel like in my body? What kind of discomfort is this really? What are the narratives associated with that discomfort? So it's opening to that. For the first time, for many of us, it's opening and feeling the fear. Like actually discovering what fear is instead of all the narratives that have created around the fear, right? And I do that too within a context of kind of deep love. I just want to connect to experiences of feeling cared for. We may call this inner factor practice or loving kindness practice, where it's

we're allowing ourselves to experience being cared for by imagining the people who care about us the most holding us are just radiating this care right around us. And then that gives us the support. It helps us to feel less alone,

where we're moving into experiencing fear. I feel connected to people and beings who love me, and therefore it becomes easier for me to go into this place that I'm just really hesitant to experience. This has to be done carefully because you don't want to get overwhelmed. Exactly. I really encourage people to start with something like a basic fear, like something small, and that's of course that's different for everyone. Start with what feels manageable and then slowly you build the capacity to work with much more intense experiences of fear, but you have to start small. But it works.

This is the way to get into any practice is to start very simply and build ourselves, our practice up, right? And I think with fear, it's like, yeah, it feels like we just need to jump head first into it and that's not it. We're actually going to create more barriers to practice because we won't have the skillfulness and the wisdom

to really manage the experience of fear. So bits at a time. Coming up, Lamarad talks about rebuilding your resiliency by setting boundaries. He talks about that as a form of self-care. And we're going to talk about reconnecting with things that bring you joy and happiness right after this.

Fear has come up repeatedly in the conversation. The other word that you've used quite a bit is fatigue, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, but I want to just articulate it and let you take a whack at it and I apologize because it may put you in a position to repeat some of the things you've already said. But for those who are like, look, we're now entering year three, I can't do it. I'm just exhausted.

I can't handle it anymore. How do you generally respond when your students complain in this way? Well, it goes back to care. Those statements are really speaking to our lack of resiliency. Our resiliency is just like shot. Resiliency is like buoyancy, elasticity. It's like how we bounce back, how we naturally come back over and over again.

And when we lose that kind of elasticity, you know, then we know we're in trouble. Another way to describe is like suspension on a car. If we don't have like good suspension, then we're just going to be feeling every bump on the road and it's not pleasant. It won't be pleasant. I think that's a really good way to talk about folks right now. We've lost that suspension and again, it's like I have to say over and over again, you need to figure out how to experience being restored. You need restoration. It's gotten overwhelming. What are you gonna do to spark

joy or inspiration or rest? Because again, as I was saying earlier, this is about longevity for me. Like, I want to make it to the end of my natural life. Because I want to stay here as long as possible to help. To do that, I have to get really clear about what I need right now. And this is important to say to, which I think we've already hit on is that like, some of us just don't have the capacity to struggle within an environment of stress. Like this because we just weren't raised like this, we just never had to deal with this kind of social collective pressure. I'm not saying that like this is like the case across the board for like, but I would say you know that a marginalized

community is there is a familiarity with this kind of struggle and resiliency and those tools that we've developed, but marginalized communities are deeply impacted by everything that's been happening in the pandemic. And so we're beginning to see, right, the rise of suicidalities within a lot of communities, traditionally historically marginalized communities. And I know that's like really counterintuitive to say, well, you know, if you're done, take care of yourself. But like, there's a basic wisdom there to be, well, I need things.

It's not necessarily material things, like more clothes, a bigger house, jewels, better technologies, not necessarily that. It's like basic boundaries. I just like, I can't keep taking on so much emotional labor for so many people right now. And that's been a boundary that I've had to create for myself and my practice.

That can't be so accessible anymore because it really impacts my mental health. Like I can't get to my self-care because I'm so frantic trying to make sure everyone else is cared for. Aside from meditation, what's on your list of go-to's when it comes to this kind of radical rest

that you've been talking about during the course of this conversation. Yeah, saying no. I greatly reduced my public work. So I'm not doing everything. I'm not on every podcast. I'm not teaching for every group. I'm not giving the keynote at every conference. I'm not working personally with a lot of individual folks by I am working

more with groups like small groups that's been actually quite important for me. Investing in my own personal practice and your besides meditation it's yoga, it's exercise, it's really creating a sense of home making. And that's a huge part of my personal practice and personal care is like creating a home that I want to be in. Because home is refuge for me. And this is how I, as an introvert,

this is how I experience restoration is being alone, being in silent and recharging. Right, so I protect the boundary of my home. Do say, no, I'm saying, you know, I'm going to actually have more time just to be still to be silent, to do things that are fun. And fun is incredibly important. I think a lot of us have really struggled to reconnect to the things that we experience pleasure and fun from because of the risk of transmission. A lot of us really, particularly for extroverted, like you really enjoy being with groups and going out. And all kinds of things, and that's completely disrupted, and that takes a lot of restorative

energy off the plate. We can't get to that because we're still practicing social distancing. So then you find other ways to experience restoration. When it comes to rest, what's your personal take on things like social media and Netflix, Hulu, et cetera, et cetera? Well, I think entertainment and social media can be a little different. I think social media can be a site of a lot of depletion. I think it can take quite a bit to stay well and be active on social media because it is a platform where people aren't necessarily holding a lot of boundaries around their emotional toxicity.

I would say, right? So people just put everything out there and then we absorb that. So I think it's really important for all of us to have boundaries around social media. I certainly do. In terms of like entertainment, streaming services, I think it's really important to use those services skillfully.

Sometimes we have to take a break from the world and go into another world that's created by our favorite shows. I personally need the golden girls to transport me into this fictionalized world with fabulous older women who are just really loving and kind and funny and messy and all the stuff, right? That's restorative for me. But I don't get lost in that.

This is the key here. Like, this is the difference between self-indulgence and self-care. Self-indulgence means I just, I go somewhere fun and I stay there. You regardless of if I need to stay there or not, right? Self-care is about maybe doing the exact same thing, but it's doing it because you want

to come back to doing something really important. You want to come back to relationships, come back to important work and so forth. So you step out of that world into this world. And then when you feel restored, then you have to make a choice to go back. And then you keep repeating the cycle over and over again. That's resiliency. It's just repeating over and over again. It's going back and forth, but developing a deep sensitivity to what we need.

And the moment because if we don't get what we need, we won't be able to do the important work of supporting others, particularly supporting supporting people who rely on us, like really rely on us, like our families, our partners, our kids, and so forth. I think a lot of people, whether they have kids or not, feels so overwhelmed that finding time for self-care is a profound issue, or at least feels like one. Well, I think that speaks to the ways in which we're not living in strong enough communities. I was raised really communally. I was raised with my mom.

My mom was a single parent, but we had a whole network. She had a whole network of friends and siblings that when she needed a break, I would go to their homes, you know, like I would be cared for by an aunt or an uncle or an older cousin or a good friend. And when they needed a break, they were sending their kids to our house. We have to start sharing resources again, because everyone's differently resourced. Because you have kids, and you're overwhelmed,

doesn't mean the other family, maybe next door to you, is experiencing the same thing. And maybe you begin to communicate and work out something where you can send your kids over there and you can get a break and do something, even if it's for like 30 minutes or an hour. That's what we have to start thinking about. I may not have a week to take off from my family,

or from my work, but I can maybe figure out 30 minutes or an hour every day to do something that I enjoy. So we have to start thinking about that, living communally, instead of in like separate units. I've just done a conversation recently with a dad and I think he's got lots of support in his life, but his feeling was, look, you don't understand. From the minute I get up, and to the minute I go to bed, I'm just completely stressed and I'm fielding numerous requests, and I just don't have any time to take care of myself and as a consequence, I'm dealing with crippling anxiety.

And he was like, he was building a wall that he almost didn't want me to provide any suggestions for him to be able to deal with himself. Because we're comfortable in that anxiety. You can actually be very comfortable and discomfort because it becomes familiar and that familiarity is quite stabilizing for us. Like we know what this is. Like anxiety is a pain, but we know what it is. I can take a lot of comfort in knowing what it is. Like anxiety is a pain, but we know what it is. I can take a lot of comfort

in knowing what it is. But I think there's a deeper issue. I think we have to start questioning why we're living lives where we're so overextended in the ways that we are. If I have family, and kids, and work, like why is my work so overwhelming? That I don't have time for myself or for my kids or to do 15 to 30 minutes of something for myself. I think that's been a shift that many of us have been thinking about. I've certainly been thinking about that. Like, how can I make different choices

not to have my work dictate my life and my relationship to my family? There's something there that I think is being disrupted in our culture. I think people are tired, not because necessarily of the pandemic, but I think we're tired of like having to work more and more to get less. You've said that we need to talk about our, and these are your words, allegiance to capitalism, which could prevent change from happening. Yeah.

Asking myself, okay, where am I over consuming? What do I have in my life that I don't need? What can I do without the less I take care of myself, particularly the less I am entuned to my inner world of thoughts and motion sensations, the more I am likely to over consume materials as a way to do emotional labor for myself. I want to do the opposite of that. I want to develop a really rich, direct, kind, loving, caring practice for myself, to take care of myself. And then when I am in a relationship to the material world, I can disrupt the ways in which I'm over-consuming. I'm not trying to use it to take care of myself. I'm

taking care of myself in practice. So I can go out into the world and say, you know what, I don't have to have every streaming service ever. You know, I don't have to have the newest cell phone. I don't have to live in the biggest house. I don't have to have the newest car. I don't have to have all these clothes. Just so forth and so on. Like, and I begin to reinvest in things that are restorative for me. And restorative for other people. Like when I'm consuming less, I find that I have more energy for people. I'm much more likely to hold space in a way that feels fuller, more authentic. So I'm not addicted to materialism, to care for myself. I have a practice that holds myself,

because when you have a practice that holds yourself, you easily begin to hold others, because the ways that hold others is just an extension of what I do for myself. Right? If there are people, for instance, that you're in a relationship with, and they just do not pay attention to you, they're just like, not there for you, then that's instance, that you're in a relationship with and they just do not pay attention to you. They're just like, not there for you. Then that's a sign that they're not there for themselves, that they're overwhelmed with something. So undermining this culturally enforced sense of never-enoughness, always-behindness,

can help you detach. And it doesn't mean living in a forest, when there will electricity,, although go with God if that's what you want to do. But it's that you're not all of a sudden looking to the external world to the consumer culture to fill some bottomless hole. Absolutely. I think a good healthy dose of redistributing wealth, but also be helpful. It's coming back to this real authentic care for people. We're just coming back to the sense of if I'm over-resourced,

can I offer this extra resourcefulness to others in some way? There's one last thing I wanted to ask you about before we go. Before we had this conversation, my people talked to your people, my team talked to your team, and I got a little memo from your folks about topics that were interesting for you to possibly to explore during this conversation. I think we've covered most of them, but there's one I don't know that we've covered. And it was the word apocalypse.

That's the most important word. And when you use the term team, you make me sound much more important than I am. So truth is, I don't like to work and so I just have other people do it for me. Yeah, I was talking about the apocalypse for years. I just felt intuitively that there was a huge shift happening, right? An apocalypse means shift, really. It means unveiling, particularly, right?

It means it just truth, truth, like truth and vils itself. This is what's happening. This is what's going on, right? And it's so overwhelming. It has this intense place in like popular culture and also in theology because the truth is so overwhelming, particularly when you've been avoiding the truth forever, right? Someone comes along and just throws back the curtains. I like that's a huge shock. That's traumatizing.

It's a huge, overwhelming shift in our perspective. And that shift in perspective really disrupts the sense of self and ego because the ego needs stability to short self-op. Like, I need to know things are going to be the same from moment to moment in order to figure out who I am. Because if that changes, if the world changes, then I'm in flux. And that's the energy of the apocalypse. Like, I'm in flux because my ego is trying to reestablish itself, but at the same time, there's this overwhelming clarity that's emerging, offering this truth that like, I actually don't know how to make sense of.

So there's a way in which two years into a pandemic with all the other tectonic shifts we're seeing at the same time, we can look at as an opportunity to touch into the underlying reality, which is we're always in an apocalypse because everything's changing all the time. But there are times in which this shift is much more severe because the shift is happening in many different areas of our life at the same time. It's not just one thing that's shifting, it's multiple things shifting at once. And it's hard to stay stable when everything's shifting at once. Back to self-care.

Which is constantly, every second we should be turning into what we need. What do we need right now? What do I need? This is my question. What do I need right now? How am I doing? How's my mind? How's my body? What do other people need around me? These are just questions. These are questions that I keep very close to me as much as possible throughout my day. Because I know that if I am not resourced, then I'm just not helpful. And if I go over a line of just being really exhausted, then I just shut down. It takes days for me to come back online. If I am just shooting right through my boundaries. And many of us live entire lives of shooting right through our boundaries, because we don't

have the practice to give us the self-awareness to know when we've shot through them. Yeah, exactly. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. One truly last question, which is, I know a lot of the people who say the show know you already, but for people who want to learn more about you, where can they find you on the internet, your books, any resources you've put out that you want to let people know about. Well, you can definitely find me at my local target down the street, which is one of the ways I take care of myself is by going to Target. You can find me online, my website is

llamarod.com, and I do a lot on Instagram, so that's at llamarod official on Instagram. And if you go to my website, you can sign up for my newsletter. I have lots of things I offer throughout the year, particularly courses that I host on my platform based upon my book, based upon meditation work, and so forth, and so on. And I'm also featured on the call map as well as a content creator there. You mentioned your book. The book is called Love and Rage. You are also a contributor to another book called Radical Dharma. Right. And my third book, which will be out late next year, is called The New Saints. And it's an exploration of what being virtuous looks like in a contemporary world. We've come back on the show when that book comes out. Yeah, I don't think I have a choice.

Now what do you mean by that? I am more than happy to come back on the show. Diplomacy, I just heard that. I'll have that out with you over text. But for sure, I would love to have you back when that book comes out, if not earlier. And just thank you again for doing this. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again to Lamarad, always love talking to him. Thank you as well to the people who work so hard

on this show, Samuel Johns, Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Kashmir, Justin Davie, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartel, and Jen Poyant. Also, our Cashmere, Justin Davy, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartelle, and Jen Poyant. Also, our comrades over at Ultraviolet Audio, who do our audio engineering, we'll see you all on Monday for a brand new episode. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts.

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