The One You Feed - Albert Flynn DeSilver on Writing as a Path to Awakening

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Albert Flynn DeSilver is an American poet, memoirist, novelist, speaker, and workshop leader. He is the author of several books of poems, a memoir titled “Beamish Boy (I am not my story): A Memory of Recovery and Awakening”, and the book discussed in this episode:  Writing as a Path to Awakening: A Year to Becoming an Excellent Writer and Living an Awakened LifeIn this episode, Albert Flynn DeSilver and Eric talk about using writing, poetry, and contemplative practices as a way to guide us on the path to awakening to our true selves.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Albert Flynn DeSilver and I Discuss Writing as a Path to Awakening and…Attention and action are needed to transcend our conditioningAwakening means waking up to the reality of existence, that we are not our mindsWaking up to our true nature as opposed to conditioned natureHow writing is a creative act that can wake us up to full potentiality or higher truthWriting and meditation as contemplative practices that support each other.Poetry is a way to talk about that which can’t be spoken ofHow reading poetry is a very different and visceral reading experienceWriting with a sense of curiosity and explorationFreewriting exercises – setting up to write what’s there, internally and externallyRealizing we are in collaboration with all of the energy around usUsing prompts for writing for awakening practiceGaining perspective and distance from the voices in our headSetting yourself up for success with intentionalityThe paradox of being “the greatest invention ever” and “completely insignificant”Albert Flynn DeSilver Links:albertflynndesilver.comFacebookTwitterInstagramBombas: “The most comfortable socks on the planet” – Eric Zimmer. Visit www.bombas.com/wolf and enter offer code: wolf to save 20%SimpliSafe: Get comprehensive protection for your entire home with security cameras, alarms, sensors as well as fire, water, and carbon monoxide alerts. Visit simplisafe.com/wolf for free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Indeed: Helps you find high impact hires, faster, without any long term contracts and you pay only for what you need. Get started with a free $75 credit to boost your job post and get in front of more quality candidates by going to www.indeed.com/wolfIf you enjoyed this conversation with Albert Flynn DeSilver, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Ellen BassSue Monk KiddSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Even if I was stuck yesterday, tomorrow I may not be stuck. Or even if I'm stuck this morning, if I go for a walk or go for a run, maybe a bike ride and come back, maybe I'll be unstuck. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear.

We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together our mission on the really no 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 really no really.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The really no really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Albert Flynn DeSilver, an American poet, memoirist, novelist, speaker, and workshop leader. Albert is the author of several books of poems, the memoir Beamish Boy, and the book that

him and Eric discuss here, Writing as a Path to Awakening. Hi, Albert. Welcome to the show. writing as a path to awakening. Hi, Albert. Welcome to the show. Hello, hello, Eric. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to have you on. We are going to be talking about your book, Writing as a Path to Awakening, a year to becoming an excellent writer and living an awakened life. So we'll go into all those details here in a moment, but let's start like we always do with a parable. There is a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter. She says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.

And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second. She looks up at her grandmother. She said, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Wow. I love the parable. And I love the fact that you've created this whole podcast around it. It's really beautiful. You know, to me, it's so much about that internal world, you know, the wolves, this metaphor of the wolves inside of us. You know, the wolves of fear, the wolves of doubt, the wolves of comparison, the wolves of rage. And also we have these wolves of hope and insight and love and kindness. And the work I do as a writer and mindfulness and meditation teacher is really reminding us to feed

what nourishes us and what nourishes the world, which is love and kindness and generosity. And yet part of being human, of course, is that we do have these two wolves inside of us. And it's very real to have deep grief and deep uncertainty and deep fear. And yet, attention is really this pivot point. Ultimately, we have a choice. Sometimes it feels like we don't have a choice, but, you know, mindfulness and contemplative meditative practices teach us and remind us that we do have a choice of where we place our attention. We can choose to place our attention on the good wolf, the kindness, the love, the generosity, even in the face of the bad wolf, so to speak, rearing its head. And even if the good wolf is sort of in the corner, you know,

licking its wound and having its tail curled under itself, we can still choose to move our attention toward that which nourishes us and that which is hopeful and kind and generous within ourselves and outward to the world. I love that. And I love the idea of attention being the pivot point for so much of that, because I do think we are making a decision a lot. Where is my attention? Now, our attention may go certain places habitually and unconsciously. It has an orientation, but ultimately we can be more aware of that and go, okay, well, my attention, oh, my attention is over here again. Nope, that's not the place that I think it's productive for it to be. I want to move it over here. We launched this Spiritual Habits one-on-one program, and one of the foundations of it is really working with our

intention and then our attention, right? By working with both of those levers, we can make such a huge change in our lives. And one of the important intentions is, you know, what do I intend to do with my attention? What do I want to pay attention to? What do I want to focus on? Because that, as you so eloquently said, really determines so much of the quality of our life and really which wolf we're feeding. Absolutely. And the trick is the conditioning. What are we conditioned into being? And for any of us, which is probably most of us who have experienced some form of trauma or abuse or neglect or addiction, you know, this is all part of the human experience. So many things get so deeply imprinted on a very deep psychic level and even a bodily level, you know, to this place where

it gets like so interwoven in our bones and our tissues and our muscles, literally. So, it takes a lot of work and attention and action to transcend that and to move through that and to just keep coming back as a practice. You know, you almost can't let your guard down in certain circumstances. I just know in my own experience, you know, it has to be this regular daily practice. Otherwise, You know, it has to be this regular daily practice. Otherwise, I will get swept by my own conditioning. And of course, the influence, influences of a then there is the pull of everything else, and both those things contribute. Let's turn our attention a little bit to your book. Writing is a path to awakening. So I think it would probably be helpful for us to start by defining or talking about what do you mean by awakening in this sense? about what do you mean by awakening in this sense? Yeah, well, awakening really means just sort of like we're talking about waking up to the reality of existence, of fullness,

to a truth of unity, a truth of awareness that we are not our minds, you know, that we're not separate. You know, we're so conditioned minds, that we're not separate. We're so conditioned to believe that we're these separate individuals bumping about and against other individuals that are distinct entities from us. And on a certain practical level, yes, that's true. But on a larger level, what happens when we enter into a level of spaciousness that is inclusive, where we don't focus so much on the differences, but we focus on the similarities and the inclusions and how we're alike? You know, awakening to me means waking up from this dream of separation into a more holistic, unified, connective space of consciousness. And so you're using the word awakening here in the spiritual sense of waking up to what people might call our true nature, our true being, who we really are. At one point, you say the practice

of writing is an exploration of consciousness, a practice towards deeper self-awareness that moves us along the path of awakening to our true nature. Yeah, because I think there's the conditioned nature, and then there's the true nature. The journey of life is sort of shedding all that conditioning to wake up to this higher sense of ourselves and our full potentiality. And in the context of this book that, you know, I sort of revolved around creativity, but the writing piece is really just a metaphor. It could be using any creative act to wake up to that higher truth, you know, dance or sculpture or entrepreneurship or, you know, whatever it is that is an act of unification and consciousness expansion is what I'm speaking

to is the tool for that sense of clarity and insight. This awakening that you're talking about, at least my experience of it as I've had awakenings and I've had these experiences, a deep awakening to this vastness, this underlying truth, and this sort of beyond thinking and beyond the stories that I create about who I am. That's the direction that meditation often takes us, right? Often meditation is, you know, letting go of thinking, trying to let go of concepts, trying to drop into some deeper underlying reality, whereas writing is very often a thought-based process, a story-based process. It's calling on what's often thought of as a different part of our mind. And so I'm kind of curious because you're really bringing writing and meditation and contemplative

practice together. So how are they complementary and not incompatible? Yeah, such a beautiful question, because there is this reconciliation we have to sort of deal with. We're artists or writers, we're engaging the mind in thought, engaging the imagination, and really exploring that knowledge base of experience to explore story and to express story. And like you say, with meditation, it's more of a process of letting all that stuff go. The question becomes, can we hold both realities to be true? So, even in the wolf parable, it's all about having both those wolves in our world, in our experience, in our inner world. And can we hold both things to be true and not get too sucked into either extreme, right?

Because knowledge and the mind of the imagination is an important and rich and amazing tool for creativity and creation and technology and knowledge expansion and all of that stuff. And yet, if we get too into our heads, too into that extreme place of thinking the mind, then we neglect the spiritual truth, the expansive truth. We can get so sucked into mind, so sucked into ego, that it becomes extremely violent. And there's this underlying just disconnection and over kind of invention of false realities. I can think of no better example than the current occupant of the White House, who is an example of a human mind gone so off in an extreme that it's like a complete invented fantasy reality that just has no basis in grounded connectivity, love, support, unity, all the things that are elemental to being human.

You know, and you think on the other extreme, you know, someone like the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa, or I know there's many examples out there of true spiritual beings who have devoted themselves to love and compassion and are just living expressions of that very concept. And when you're around them, you can feel this energy of inclusion and of acceptance and of love. But both those things are true, right? And we all have elements of both those things within us. Anyway, so our lives become like, again, that question of which one do we choose? So for you, both these are contemplative acts, the meditation and writing, and they support each other.

Absolutely. Now, I begin all of my workshops, I mean, my own writing practice as well, but all of my workshops, they begin with contemplative meditative practice before we get into the writing. That might be mindful movement. It might be classic silent meditation practice. It might be some sort of contemplative energetic body flow and body scan kind of a thing. But I found that that's the way to enter into a more expansive sense of possibility and access to our creativity that we don't necessarily have an opportunity to connect with when we're sort of stuck in our latest, greatest, big idea. In your book, you've got a line, an idea that I really love. You talk a lot about poetry in your book, and you say that

poetry is the language of possibility. Tell me a little bit more about that. Poetry is a way to talk about that which can't be spoken of. I think, was it T.S. Eliot who said, poetry is a raid on the inarticulate? I've always loved that. It's like, okay, you put this sort of thrust of creativity and intention towards that which can't be fully expressed, expressing the inexpressible. I mean, that's the ultimate journey of the poet, I think, and really of any great artist. And how do you do that? What does that mean? Anyone who's really read poetry deeply and not just sort of scanned through it has this experience of that, of knowing the unknowable, of being sort of guided towards

some essence of beauty, of wisdom, of connection that you may not be able to articulate or connect with any knowledge base, but there's just some kind of inner knowing that's being pointed to, that's being expressed. And it's like this emotional flowering that happens when you read a great poem like that. And that gives us a sense of possibility in the world. Like it's not just language. It's not just knowledge. It's not just names. But there's something else going on here.

I think poetry for a lot of people is a little inaccessible. So what are ways to engage more deeply with poetry? Because as you said, it's pretty easy to sort of pick it up. If you just give it a quick pass, it just is like, whatever, like nothing, right? Like it takes a deeper engagement. What are some techniques that you suggest for people to engage with it more deeply and more contemplatively? I think the best way is to just slow down and really be with a poem and in a different kind of way than you would. It's a different kind of reading experience. You know, you don't read a poem to consume it in the same way you might a great story or a short story

or a play or something. There's something about a poem that is visceral and has a bodily component to it. I mean, really, poetry originally comes out of the oral tradition. It comes out of song. And so, it's a bodily expressed thing. It's only been in the last however many thousand years that it's gotten onto the page and gotten even further abstracted. thousand years that it's gotten onto the page and gotten even further abstracted. I would invite people to listen, to recite out loud and to listen. Listen to the silence of no words coming back and allow the poem to kind of land without an agenda, to kind of pin it down with understanding. Because really, it's about enjoyment. Someone once interviewed Gertrude Stein, who's the great modernist poet. She was an experimentalist, super abstract. She wrote

these poems that were just so wacky and all this repetition and cadence. It didn't make any sense. There was no narrative sense to her works. But there was a level of enjoyment and a level of rhythm and a level of musicality that was visceral, that when you read it out loud, you're just like, wow, this is cool. I don't know what's going on here, but I love it. You encourage people to do what they do poetically. And I love this line with a kind of grace and beauty woven in. So it's not that everybody should be a poet, everybody should be writing poetry, but how do we bring a sense of doing more of our life poetically? And like I said, I love the last part of that, which is with

a kind of grace and beauty woven into it. Well, I think that's where it comes back to being mindful, being intentional, slowing down, bringing this sense of awareness and spaciousness, not just to special acts that you like, but even the difficult acts of life, the difficult situations. Even when you're revved up, even when you're charged, can we become more spacious? Can we weave in that grace and beauty in a kind of poetic manner that helps us navigate a potentially tumultuous emotional situation or emotional landscape? And that's where the practice comes in. You know, the practice of conscious breathing, the practice of grounding yourself in the earth and just being present, being spacious. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist

who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's gonna drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really, No Really.

Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's turn our attention to, okay, I want to, awakening is something that's important to me. Most listeners of the show have some sense of like, yes, I'd like to awaken to my deeper nature, my truer nature, a more accurate

view of reality. Call it what you want, right? Let's talk about using writing to do that. In general, what are some ways to embark on this process? I think the best way is just to grab a notebook, pick up a notebook, get a pen, and meet the page with a sense of curiosity and exploration and adventure. Allow yourself just to write what's there and what's real for you, to just sort of journal and chart your experience, even in a very basic way of what's going on in your world, both externally and internally, and to kind of keep track of that in a daily way. One of the best ways to get sort of beyond the overthinking or the egoic mind is to do

free writing exercises and stream of consciousness, which is really kind of just sort of setting yourself up intentionally to write what's there, what's really in the immediate experience internally, and even externally. You know, I have my students will time, will time them for could be five minutes, could be 10 minutes, could be 15 minutes. And there's just some constraints that need to be put out, you just have to keep the pen moving. You don't worry about spelling or punctuation. You don't worry about if it's any good. You let go of any sense that you'll have to show this to anyone. This can just be between you and the great mystery.

And that it's just an experiment. And you just go and see what's there. What am I thinking about? Who am I really? You know, what are some of the things that I've thought about that I've never really spent time investigating a little further? And you just start there with the page or you start even with reading. I'm reading a little bit more deeply and letting yourself be inspired to go to the page from there. That's where I started. Someone sent me to a poetry reading that I wasn't expecting because I had no association or connection with poetry. And there I was at this incredible reading,

hearing things like I'd never heard before, experiences of poetry that totally redefined the medium right before my eyes. And I got inspired. I picked up the book and I started reading it. And I just let the language be an inspiration for me to think about my own contribution. Like, I have thoughts, right? Why is this person's thoughts any more important than my thoughts? I'd like to play this game. You know, I'd like to see what's going on in my heart mind.

Let's see what's there. You've got a line that you say that I thought was very helpful because I struggle with free writing. And you have a line that says, a judgment about the practice of free writing and whether or not it works for you has already shaped your perception and turned it into a belief before you can shut off your mind for long enough to even get some words down on paper. And, you know, I've heard of morning pages for years, sit down and just write stream of consciousness. And, and I feel

like I sit down and I start and I do it for a little bit. And then all of a sudden, like, it just freezes up. So what are your recommendations when that seems to be the struggle? Like, put a blank piece of paper in front of me, and it seems to all of a sudden bring on early stage dementia for me. I can't remember anything. It's a challenge. Absolutely. No, it's very real. So I want to honor the truth of that and know that there is a solution. And the solution for me is always silence. Taking time to just be in silence, step away from the page, and just go and sit in silence, and just let that, don't try, but just let the busy mind go. Just focus on the breathing,

focus on the bodily sensations. Allow things to just move through you in their own time and come back to the page later. Also, another thing that's really helpful for me is walking in nature or if you live in the city in a park and just being in contact with the non-human world. I'm having that distance because the non-human world is just filled with voices and energy and information. And when we open up to that and we get quiet in ourselves, we have this resource and we realize, oh, it's not just us here. I'm in collaboration with all these non-human elements, the clouds, the clouds and the rocks and the flowers and the bushes and the blue jays. And that poem I read this morning on the subway and that novel that I've been trying to get through for the last three weeks, all of this is grist for the mill, as my father used to say. It's all part of, like, we sort of think of ourselves,

we're conditioned to think of ourselves as like the writer, the person who has to come up with all the great ideas. But when we see ourselves as more expansive, then we realize we're really in collaboration with all these other ideas that are happening and going on around us. And it's not that we have to invent something totally precious and new and original, but that we can collaborate in a way with all that a short time period, say five minutes, and build up to longer periods of time, then follow a specific prompt. So maybe you could give listeners two or three prompts that are good sort of initial writing for awakening prompts. If they want to sit down and try this practice of sort of free writing for five minutes,

you know, based on a prompt. What are some good starting prompts? A couple of favorites off the top of my head. One is just the phrase, the gateway. Whatever that means to you, go, you know, just follow that phrase, those two words, the gateway, and see where it takes you. Another one that I love is from Walt Whitman, The Song of Myself. A prompt can be anything. Sometimes for me, they're fill in the blank. Sometimes they're just a phrase or a couple of words. The Walt Whitman entry point for me is The Song of Myself is the song of blank. You just sort of fill in that line, just keep going. And some of these exercises are in the book.

Another favorite prompt for me is simply writing a letter to your current emotional state as if it were an entity. So, thinking about like, oh, what am I feeling right now? So, you're checking in internally and then you're animating that emotional state, like whether it's fear or joy or confusion, or sadness or boredom. What would you say to it? How would you interact with it if you were really writing a letter to it, if you're really asking it questions or telling it how your day is going or whatever, and just see where that takes you. And it's extraordinary when I offer these prompts, which are very simple, in the context of a workshop or retreat where people have had time to kind of just settle down into their bodies

and open up to their imaginative hearts. It's just incredible what comes out. Those are some good prompts. Yeah, they're fun. And to play around with them is a lot of fun. And you can keep going imaginative hearts, it's just incredible what comes out. Those are some good prompts. Yeah, they're fun. And to play around with them is a lot of fun. And you can keep going back to the same prompts because every day we're in a different mood. We're constantly changing as physical beings. We're constantly evolving. There's more informational input. There's memory that is changing and maybe we're losing some of our old memories. And so, it's always new. There's memory that is changing and maybe we're losing some of our old memories. And so it's always new. It's always fresh. And that's an exciting thing. That kind of changed my perception around writing too. It's like, oh yeah, even if I was stuck

yesterday, tomorrow I may not be stuck. Or even if I'm stuck this morning, if I go for a walk or go for a run, maybe a bike ride and come back, maybe I'll be unstuck. Another prompt you have is a nice one was write for five minutes about something being born. I can't remember who at the time. You know, I mean, as writers and teachers, amorphous community that is the writing and teaching community, there's a lot of like overlap and sharing of ideas. You know, nobody owns these ideas. Like nobody owns language. And I know when I was first starting out as a writer, I used to think I had to create this original thing that nobody had ever seen before. That was like completely fresh and new and amazing.

It was a lot of pressure, you know. you know and when i finally realized like there's nothing new under the sun that i can sort of work with what is already out there but as it's filtered through my experience what would that be like it's very freeing very freeing I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the I heart radio app on apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the parts of your journey is you had a drinking problem. I don't know if you refer yourself alcoholic or not, but you, but you drank for a long time and you mentioned,

you said this, uh, somewhere I heard you talk about like, you know, that shame and drinking. There's, you know, you drink and then there's the shame, you drink and then there's the shame. And it creates this cycle that drives the drinking on. I want to take that and extend it a little bit too, because I think a lot of people, when they try and write or they try and be creative and what comes out isn't really wonderful, there's a sense of shame that comes with that too. There's a sense of, oh, I'm not any good at this in the way that shame does. Shame takes that one level deeper. It's not, oh, I'm not any good at this right now. I might get better at it. I'm not good. I'm not creative. I'm not artistic. It drives it to that slightly

deeper level. And so I just kind of wanted to talk about dealing with that because that does come up with people around creativity a lot. And when we start trying to create or we start trying to write or we start doing any of these things, it can come right up. Absolutely. No, it's a huge issue. And that's why meditation is such a powerful tool. And time walking in nature, and contemplative movement, all of these things help give us perspective on those voices in our head, and give us some distance over time from those voices in our head, and know that they're not me. This is not who I am. These are voices. They're there. Okay. Hello, I see you. I acknowledge you. But you're not invited to this

party. Like right now, the party is between me and the page and me and my creativity and me and my imagination. And I don't welcome you. It's hard to be in conversation with those voices if you don't have a certain level of awareness to know that they're even there. Because otherwise, then you just sort of get hurt and shame-ridden every time you sit down to meet the page. This is why I do think it's so important to just come back to the meditation over and over again. And they're both practices, right? There's the practice of mindfulness, of showing up for contemplative breathing, which is not easy. Sounds pretty easy to just sit there and do nothing. But it turns out, no, it's actually quite difficult to actually stay there and stay with the discomfort.

But the beauty of that is the revelation of spaciousness and insight and distance. And so, when those voices of doubt, shame, and comparing mind, they do come up, then we can let them go. We can put them aside and sort of get back to the work of being present to the page. You know, the other thing I'd say about that is just keep showing up and keep trusting in the process. Because you'll find the more that you show up time after time after time, day after day after day, you will see some really interesting, amazing work come out of you, and you will be surprised, and you will be enchanted. Not all the time, but it will happen over time, the more you stay with

it. You know, context is everything. Setting yourself up for success with intentionality and with spaciousness, like we began this conversation, it makes a huge, huge difference. spaciousness, like we began this conversation, it makes a huge, huge difference. So if you can get out and go to a writing workshop, or these days, join a writing workshop online, getting support, making connections in community goes a long way to assuage those voices of shame, doubt, fear, worry, and comparison mind. Excellent. That's really sound advice and a good way to look at it and approach it. I want to end here with something you wrote. I love this line, and it's something I have been thinking about a lot lately, particularly in my spiritual practice. And you're sort of talking about this deeper level of awakening, this deeper level of knowledge kind of of who we are. And you

say, you know, you are the greatest invention ever, and you are completely insignificant. Yeah, that's just a total mind trip, you know? Total mind trip. I love it, though, because I have had some fairly deep spiritual experiences over the last couple months where I've had these things where I've realized, as I'm thinking about moments or things or events, it's all like, this is utterly and completely insignificant and somehow, at the same exact time, utterly sacred and beautiful and wonderful. utterly sacred and beautiful and wonderful. It's both those things, which is that weird paradox that doesn't make sense. But when I read that line of yours, I just kind of lit me up because I was like, I have been thinking a lot about this. I'm the greatest invention ever and completely insignificant. Yeah. I mean, you think of the scale of the universe. I mean, the scale of planet earth, the number of people, it's inconceivable. You can't wrap your head around it. And yet we take things so seriously, right? We think of ourselves

as so important. And my poem is like the most important poem and it's got to be published. And on the story goes. And there's a truth to the fact that each person is a unique expression of divinity, of the great mystery, and should be honored and loved. And it's this total miracle of life. That's so true. And yet, at the same time, we are temporary beings. You know, we have our time in this embodied form for however long we have it. And then we disappear back into the great mystery. I mean, you think about like, well, where did it go? Where did they go? You know, I think about my parents who both passed on, you know, who were so solid. They were such absolute, concrete, solid people in my experience. And then they just disappeared physically. But I mean, spiritually, there's that larger connection

that we can delve into. But I think just holding both of those possibilities and both of those truths can be very liberating and really put us at ease. Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's being able to hold both of them, because if you hold either of them only, it either leads to sort of nihilism of like, nothing matters, I don't matter, nothing matters, or this overly inflated sense of self and more of them together, even though they don't make any sense. And that's that deeper part of spiritual life, deeper awakening is that these paradoxes seem to start showing up and to allow ourselves to live with those. You've got a line, you say, how do you define God, truth, emptiness, or even

awakening? The short answer is you don't. Instead, you write around it, pointing in its general direction. It's a beautifully futile practice of yearning towards becoming and arriving at where you already are, which I think sort of summarizes this whole paradox idea and this whole ineffability idea. Now, it's fun to hear that read back. F ability idea. No, it's fun to hear that read back. One sort of thinks like, well, who wrote that? Which is sort of part of the thing I was saying earlier, like, that this is a collaborative process, you know, and this isn't just Albert writing, you know, some profound book about

creativity and spirituality. It's a collective process. I stand on the shoulders of the giants that came before me, be that Natalie Goldberg or Jack Corfield or whoever. I mean, not to compare myself to that level of expression, but it's all part of the collective creative expression. And of course, we assign individual names to these books for just logistical purposes. But ultimately, I think more and more, the older I get, the more I think of it as a collaborative process. I think it totally is. Everything is much more collaborative, I think, than we give it credit for or realize it is. It's much more interconnected than we ever assume.

Yeah. And there's a lot of baggage around the writer, you know, and a lot of conditioned old baggage of sort of the lone writer scribbling away in their little cabin, you know, and being all tortured and wounded. It's like, okay, that's an old paradigm that we can let go of. And, you know, especially in this day and age, like this last book project, there were so many different people involved along the way. You know, yes, there were times when I was alone in my studio or on my couch, working on the book and writing away. But it wasn't that long compared to how much time also I spent with my editor, and us being in conversation and working through

sentences and paragraphs and then going on to talk with my copy editor and da-da-da-da. And on it goes, like talking to my friends and my trusted readers along the way. And all of that just, oh, it's like, oh, this is such a relief. I don't have to do it all on my own. Well, Albert, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. I think this is a great place to kind of wrap up. But thank you so much for sharing your ideas with our readers. We'll have links in the show notes to your book, to your website, to all your events where people can find out more about you. So thank you so much. I really appreciated and enjoyed this conversation.

Likewise, Eric. It's been an absolute joy and I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. I really appreciated and enjoyed this conversation. Likewise, Eric, it's been an absolute joy and I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support,

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