The One You Feed - A Teaching, a Song, and a Poem - 3/13/21

Episode Date: March 13, 2021

Teaching:  "Don't Believe Your Thoughts"Song: The Ghost of Rockschool by Belle and Sebastian Poem:  Everyday Grace by Stella Nesanovich Photo by Rebe Pascual on UnsplashIf you enjoyed this "Teaching, a Song, and a Poem", please consider supporting the show by becoming a member of our Patreon community. You'll receive weekly ad-free episodes, exclusive post-show conversations, and a Teaching, Song, and a Poem every week. Your support allows us to keep doing what we do! Join our community at oneyoufeed.net/joinSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For those of you who aren't aware of the benefits of being a member of the One You Feed Patreon community, I'd like to let you in on a little secret. Every week, Eric sends out a short segment we like to call the TSP. That stands for a teaching, a song, and a poem. What you're about to hear is one of our favorites from this month. These short episodes are one of my favorite things

about The One You Feed, and they bring together three things that we love. A practical teaching about feeding your good wolf, music, and poems that are relevant to the weekly topic. When you become a member of our Patreon community, you get ad-free episodes, exclusive post-show conversations, and one of these TSP episodes every week. We really do need your support because, as an independent podcast, we're competing with some huge studios with huge budgets, so every bit that you give helps us to keep doing what we do. Joining our Patreon community helps not only yourself, but thousands of people whose lives are touched by the content but can't afford to give. So join our community at oneufeed.net slash join. Welcome everyone to another episode of a teaching, a song, and a poem, and a joke this time around. You're going to get a joke. I'm going to give it to you right

off the bat here. It's going to start things off on a good note. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One of them looks over at his friend and says, does this guy taste funny to you? Now we all remember in a blinding moment of insight why we were happy when I stopped doing jokes. So, back to teaching song and a poem. First, a thank you for your support, for being here. I don't know if you get tired of hearing that, but I don't get tired of saying it. I want to say thank you. So I did.

And that goes as a big thank you from me, Chris, Ginny, Nicole, and everybody here at The One You Feed. So the teaching this week, I was working on this fancy teaching about consciousness and how consciousness works. And not that I have that figured out. That's obviously a big question that nobody really knows. But I was going to kind of talk about the clear, open nature of consciousness. And then I realized I'd been having a lot of conversations with coaching clients that sort of revolved around a very similar idea. And the idea was very basic, and it's don't believe your thoughts. My Zen teacher says that to me from time to time. I say,

anything you want to say, he says, don't believe your thoughts. And it's a really powerful practice because our thoughts get us into an awful lot of trouble. We take them as facts, that basic idea of, okay, my thoughts come up, they are something that occurs within consciousness, but I am not my thoughts. They happen regardless really of whether I want them to or not. Sit down and meditate for a few minutes and you surely see this happen. You sit down and meditate and you're like, okay, I am going to watch my breath. So there you are watching your breath and thought after thought after thought just keeps coming. And it becomes kind of clear like, well, I, as I think of myself are not thinking these thoughts, they're just showing up. And so it's very helpful to just get some space and go, okay, thoughts appear to me in consciousness, but just because they appear does not necessarily mean that they are true. Very often, they aren't really even capable of being true because they are interpretations of things, right? The question

that I use in the Spiritual Habits program that I think is so powerful is the question, what am I making this mean? It's sort of an all-purpose question that we can ask whenever a thought comes up, whenever a situation happens, what am I making this mean? It helps us realize that we are having an interpretation all the time. We are always telling ourselves stories about what's going on and what it means. And if we are telling ourselves the story, if we're creating it, then we can choose to not identify with it as strongly. I feel like I've given this teaching a hundred times probably, and I'm sure I have. And yet I do it again and again and again with have. And yet I do it again and again and again

with coaching clients. And I do it again and again and again in my own life. I have to constantly go, oh, look, there's a thought. And I start believing it and I'm attached to it and I'm getting upset by it or I'm getting wrapped up in it. And then I just can take a step back and go, oh, wait, that's a thought. It's not necessarily true. In ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, right, they refer to this as cognitive diffusion. In most mindfulness practices, we think of it as just sort of stepping back and observing the thoughts. But in all cases, the fact remains, we want to just become a little bit more, I think the word skeptical is useful. Yeah, maybe we'll use skeptical. We'll become a little more skeptical of our thoughts. We don't have to outright be like,

they're not true. We don't have to get in arguments with them. We can just become a little bit more skeptical, like, well, maybe that's not true. How do I really know that's true? And another really useful question is, how would I act if that wasn't true? What if I'm completely wrong about this? You know, the classic one for people is that I'm not good enough or I can't do this, right? And it can be really powerful to just say, well, what if I'm completely wrong about that? And very often, very, very, very often we are completely wrong about that. We sell ourselves short all of the time in what our capabilities for change are. me in some way. And some of the things I say, you know, that I'm not one of those people that believes in like five easy steps to change your life and that life becomes perfect overnight. And it's always happy. I'm just not, that's not my nature. I'm a, as Nicole said to me the other

day, she said, I'm a devout negative thinker, which made me laugh. I think a lot of us are that way. You know, we're kind of devout in our skepticism. But it's funny, because we should be skeptical about our own thoughts. We should be realizing that just because they show up doesn't mean they're true. The surprising thing is the more often they show up and the more vociferously they show up, the more we tend to think they must be true. And the opposite is actually true. The more often they show up and the more vociferously they show up, the more we should be skeptical and go, well, hang on. So this is a sort of a long ramble. I could have said it in one sentence, don't believe your thoughts or be skeptical about your thoughts, but that wouldn't have been much of a mini episode, would it? another five and a half minutes of it, but it's arguably better than if I come up with another joke. There's a, what'd the fish say when it swam into the cement wall? Damn. All right, how about a poem? That will probably surely be better unless I wrote it, which I didn't. So that's the good news. This one is called, God, I always pick them with names I cannot pronounce.

called, oh God, I always pick them with names I cannot pronounce. I need more Robert Frost. More of Robert. Such a dumb joke. All right. This one is called Everyday Grace by Stella Nesanovich. That's what I'm going to go with. N-E-S-A-N-O-V-I-C-H. Stella Nesanovich. It can happen like that. Meeting at the market, buying tires amid the smell of rubber, the grating sound of jackhammers and drills. Anywhere we share stories and grace flows between us. The tire center waiting room becomes a healing place as one speaks of her husband's heart valve replacement, bed sores from complications. A man speaks of multiple surgeries, notes his false appearance as strong and healthy. I share my sister's death from breast cancer, her youngest only seven. A woman rises, gives her name. Mrs. Henry then takes my hand. Suddenly,

an ordinary day becomes holy ground. That's Everyday Grace by Stella Nesanovich. I think it is. Beautiful poem. It's that sharing that tells us we're not alone and connects us with other people. So I thought I would use the theme of grace from the last poem and use that for our song this week. So our song is called Boys Ain't Shit by Say Grace. No, I'm kidding. I did search for grace in Spotify and that song did come up. And unlike the Crazy uh episode of a couple weeks ago i'm not going to put you through it so and i'm not going to play any more crazy frog for at least another episode or two so seriously our song this week is uh going to correct an error

i can't believe that i've done have i done 75 these? We're nearing 75 of these. That's kind of amazing. And I don't think ever in all those 75, I have played anything by Bell and Sebastian, which is a band that I absolutely love. They're probably one of my bands in my top 10 for sure. And so I could pick 100 of their songs, but the one I'm going to pick is called The Ghost of Rock School. So this song features some of my favorite aspects of Bell and Sebastian that show up over and over. First, the guy's vocal melodies are, I think they're long, they're complicated, they're intricate, but yet they are incredibly catchy. I think he's one of the best vocal melodists out there. Is that a term? Lyrics are usually really, really good. I love the

instrumentation. I love the way they've got the horns that come in and often will mimic the vocal melody because it's so catchy. You hear a little of that here. and then i love the female harmonies that come in over the uh the last part uh so this is bell and sebastian uh the ghost of rock school and again one of my favorite bands and for some reason haven't even got them in in the first 72 episodes we may get a bell and sebastian fiesta going on from here out we'll'll see. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support of the show. Another episode out on Tuesday, like always, and another one of these coming up soon. Thanks so much. Talk to you soon. Bye. I've seen God in the sun, I've seen God in the street God before bed and the promise of sleep

God in my dreams and the free ride of grace But it all disappeared and then I wake up Was it too late, was it just your fate There's a demon waits at the garden gate If you get past him, maybe Lawrence and Phil Will be waiting to take you to the Ghost of Rock School.