The One You Feed - Cheri Huber On the Impact of Our Mind on Our Direct Experience

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

Please Support The Show with a DonationCheri Huber is the author of 20 books and has been a student of zen for 35 years. She founded the Mountain View Zen Center and the Zen Monastery Peace Center, both in California, where she and other monks teach workshops and hold retreats. She is also a truth telling, light hearted delight to listen to. In this interview, she talks all about what is going on in our mind and how we can better work with it to produce a better experience in life. Her wisdom is so practical and so powerful. See for yourself in this transformative episode.Visit Bombas www.bombas.com/wolf and enter offer WOLF at checkout for 20% off the most comfortable socks in the worldIn This Interview, Cheri Huber and I Discuss...The Wolf ParableHer book, I Don't Want To, I Don't Feel Like It: How resistance controls your life and what to do about itHow the process IS the outcomeThat now is the only moment there isHow the quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attentionEverything comes into being, togetherShe doesn't believe that there's anything that ISN'T GodOur dualistic thinkingAll of the ways to refer to the egoThe unique ability that humans have to experience themselves as other than lifeThe ego is a survival systemBelieving we are not connected to lifeEverything is a verb! A gerundThe illusion of being separate from lifeMy ego is the no to life's yesAlways asking what's lacking, what's missing, what's wrong keeps the ego as the center of the universeHow we are deeply conditioned for negativityAwareness being able to watch the conditioned mindI hear it in my head, it sounds like me, it must be me, it's who I amApproach the stuff that's going on inside our heads by imagining that it's somebody next to you saying itRecording and ListeningMake recordings of what's true, what I appreciate, what I loveHearing what's true for you in your own voiceTalking ourselves into a life that's trueHow we direct our attention is the be all and end all in lifeWe have these tendencies to see what's negative so we need to bring ourselves to what is true that isn't negativeWe transcend the conditioned mind, we don't resist itThe key is to turn your attention away from the negative voices not to change what they are sayingThe habit of going with the conversation in your head is so powerfulIf we can wake up out of it, we can decide to go somewhere else in our attentionHear Cheri Huber talk about her book,  I Don't Want To, I Don't Feel Like It: How resistance controls your life and what to do about itCheri Huber teaches that the process IS the outcomeCheri Huber explains what she means by this: your ego is the "no" to life's "yes"Do you believe that we are deeply conditioned for negativity or hardwired for negativity?Here's a tip: Approach the stuff that's going on inside our heads by imagining that it's somebody next to you saying itThe quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attentionPlease Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don't ever let anybody in your head say anything to you that you wouldn't say to a four-year-old that you love. 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 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 really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts thanks for joining us our guest on this episode is Sherry Huber, who is the author of many books, including There's Nothing Wrong With You, When You're Falling Down, Dive, and Sweet Zen. Sherry founded the Mountain View Zen Center in Mountain View, California, and the Zen Monastery Practice Center in Murphys, California. She also teaches in both communities. She's

traveled widely and often, leading workshops and retreats around the United States and abroad. Her new book is I Don't Want To, I Don't Feel Like It, How Resistance Controls Your Life, and What to Do About It. And here's the interview with Sherry Huber. Hi, Sherry. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be here. It's a pleasure to have you on. I've been familiar with your work for a long time, probably at least, I don't know, 15, 20 years. So I'm excited to get a chance to talk to you on the show. And one of your more recent books is a great title, particularly for this show,

because we talk so often on this show about how important our behavior is to live the life we want. We kind of have to sometimes act our way into thinking, and I love this title, I Don't Want To, I Don't Feel Like It, How Resistance Controls Your Life and What to Do About It. So we will get into that book in more detail, but before we do, let's start with a parable like we normally do. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He 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 and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He

looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather 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. It's kind of everything. So we have this notion of what you do is what you have. What you give is what you get. And the idea behind that is that one process doesn't lead to another, which is completely counter to all of the conditioning that we've all had. Right. So if you do this, then you'll get that. If you do this, then that'll happen.

Now, if you do this, then you'll get that. If you do this, then that'll happen. Now, if you do this, then this will happen. So one of our little catchphrases is the process is the outcome. Nothing is leading to anything. Everything is here. It's all happening here. And here is the only place there is. And now is the only moment there is. And this is becoming very buzzy in our culture now. But the fact that we're familiar with those little catchphrases doesn't mean we actually know what they're saying. So what are you going to get? You're going to get what you're doing.

And so if you want to be happy, the only way to be happy is to be happy, right? Doesn't have anything to do with money or relationship or job or location or anything else. Nothing leads to anything else. So if we want to be happy, we have to be happy. If we want to live in a kind world, we have to be kind. So that's what that parable is pointing at, right? That whatever we're giving attention to, so another one of our little phrases is, the quality of your life is determined by the focus of your attention. So if we're attending to goodness, goodness is what we experience. That all makes sense. I wanted to ask you about that phrase, one process does not lead to another. Because in reading your books, I fully understand kind of what you're saying, which is that we get ourselves into this mindset that says, I'm going to think or

do this, and then later, it will give me this. And that those things don't necessarily connect. I'm interested because... They don't connect at all. Yeah. and so, yeah, so let's talk through that, because you come from a Zen Buddhist tradition, right? And one of the things that's very much in the heart of Buddhism, right, is that idea of dependent origination. Everything kind of comes out of something else. So I'm just curious how you reconcile those, or what I'm not understanding. Yeah, I wouldn't phrase it that way. It's not that everything comes out of something else.

So I was just talking about this at the monastery last night. People will say to me, because we are ostensibly a Judeo-Christian culture, and I'm a Buddhist, they'll say, so that means you don't believe in God, right? And what I always respond is, I don't believe there's anything that is not God. So it's not that something comes out of something else. It's that everything comes into being together. So it's a non-separate reality. The world of ego is dualistic. So I get caught in a conversation

about, well, should I or shouldn't I? What is the right thing to do? What are the pros and cons about this? And that's the dualistic mind orientation that leads us to feel, whether we're thinking this way or not, it leads us to believe that we are somehow separate from life. So I'm over here and you're over there. And this is I, me, mine. And this is the world that I live in. And things happen to me. world that I live in and things happen to me and it's wrong. It shouldn't be happening because I did everything right and what's happening to me is not what's supposed to be happening to me. That's a dualistic separate from life orientation. So I like to point out that your cat, or better yet, your dog doesn't have that experience because the dog doesn't have that same ability, that unique ability that human beings have to experience themselves as separate from life. So the dog is just living in the present, right?

Doesn't have ideas about getting old, about getting sick, about what if nobody feeds me tomorrow? What does this pain in my leg mean? It just doesn't have the ability to do that. And so it's happy having the experience that it's having. It's happy to be alive, happy my, you know, I'm projecting that obviously, but because it doesn't have the ability to think of anything to compare it to. It's just here with what is. And that's what we're talking about in Zen. Zen is a direct experience of life, not being identified with a someone that is experiencing life.

with a someone that is experiencing life. Yep. And, you know, we've talked a fair amount on this show and explored that idea of there not being a separate self in the way that we think there is. And I want to dig into that a little bit deeper. Before we get too far away from the wolf parable, though, you actually have, you use the parable in one of your books, and then you go on to describe something you call the Feed the Good Wolf practice. Can you share what that is? Because that's, you know...

No, all right. I can't, Eric, because that would require me to remember it. I have no idea. Perfect. Perfect. Well, you've got lots of practices in your books, and there's lots of great ways to look at the world differently. So. We talk about it as the conditioned mind, the separate mind. What is it that we're talking about here when we say ego or any of those various different words? Well, for me, it is that, again, that unique ability that human beings have to experience themselves as other than life. And, you know, there are lots of people who speculate about that, about why that is and that sort of thing. If you're a religious type, then a very

good explanation for that is that it gives us the ability to identify with a small, separate me that's kind of against the world. So I'm going to survive because the ego is a survival system, right? I'm going to survive at all costs. And there I am. And then as a human being, I have the ability to wake up to that, to question that, to see that there's something more, something else available to us, to move all along that continuum and identification with, again, the words, the ground of being, the universe, that which is, the intelligence animates, God, however we want to talk about that. So we move from my will be done to thy will be done. We move from wanting to be separate from life to actually being dissolved into life. And when you say that we are separate from life, on one hand... We believe we are. Right. So... We have the experience that we are. We're not. We can't be. Right. So I just like

to ask probing questions in this area. And so, you know, clearly I am not you and you are not me. I am over here having an experience that, you know, you are not having, right? I've got an apple in front of me and you may or may not. And there's a variety of different things. And my dog, regardless of what he thinks or doesn't think is kind of over there. That's not what we're saying here exactly in that, you know, and I think, I think the way you phrase it, believing that we are not connected to life or, or one with life is really key to this idea. So help me wrap my head around that. On one hand, I'm clearly a separate being, at least as a physical. Yeah. The way it looks, right. Well, yes. So there are a couple of things about it. So I talk to Christians a lot, right? So the image that I would use there is that a person can believe that they are outside the presence of God, but it's not possible to be outside the presence of God, because God is everything.

So in that same way, we believe, usually as a result of the conversation that's going on in our head that is conditioned. You know, if I believe God is good and I'm bad, then God is going to reject me and I'm going to be judged and punished and all of that sort of nonsense. And so, I will experience myself as rejected by God. Am I being rejected by God? No, I'm being rejected by a voice in my head. Yes. Okay, but I believe that that voice in my head is God. So, if we then take it into kind of a more scientific realm, imagine, now we know everything in our universe is atoms, right? Yep.

So, what if they were all pink? How would you experience your dog? Probably as some sort of pink thing. Yes. Well, probably as an undifferentiated pink. Yes. Yeah. And so, that gives us a little sense of how all of these things that we believe are true and real are actually conditioned experiences in the mind. So the way it helps us, I think, from a spiritual or an awareness perspective is, if you were sitting here with me, we would both look out through the window and we would see a tree. Now, because we share a conditioning, right? We've been trained to say, if you have kids, tree, tree, okay? And when the child points at the dog and goes tree, no, dog, dog. And a lot of people, if they're aware of it, when they go to, when they encounter another language for the first time, there's a shock when they find out everybody doesn't call that thing a dog.

And everybody doesn't experience that thing the same way. Some people have it as a pet. Other people have it as something tied up at the end of a chain in their yard. And some people eat them. I was going to say some people have them for dinner, which is a horrifying thought to me, but that's just me. Yes, because you do that how you're conditioned. That's right. Of course, it's not horrifying to them. In fact, they would think you let dinner sleep on your bed. I mean, that's just, that is just bizarre. It'd be like having a cow sleep on the end of your bed. Yeah, who pets chickens? Yeah, exactly. Well, my granddaughter actually.

Well, yeah, I was going to say, actually, I'm going to get all kinds of chicken lover emails here. Feel free to pet your chickens as much as you like. Yes, yeah, yeah. So the point of that is, what we're interested in from an awareness practice perspective is, how are you in relationship to that tree? Is that tree beautiful? Do you love it? Do you think it's annoying? Is it in the way? Would it be better off if it were cut

down? Because it's dropping leaves on my roof as I'm looking at not what we see, it's not what we hear, it's not what we do, it's how that happens. So in the Upanishads, I think it's the Upanishads, it says, it's not what we see. We're not seeking anything about what we see. It's how, what makes us able to see. That's what we're seeking. That's what we want to focus on. Yep, agreed. And you talk about life a lot, right? And us being connected with life. And you've got a, I don't know if you mean it as a definition, but a great, a great phrase here that I'm going to read. And you say that life is dynamic movement coming and going out of appearance. Really? I said that? Yes.

That's very good. Yeah. There's a joke in Zen. Well, I don't know if it's a joke or if the person who said it, I don't know why they were saying it, but a Zen master was given a copy of the New Testament of the Bible and read it and said, the person who wrote that was very near to enlightenment. So, we always have that as a joke, you know, the person who said

that is very close to enlightenment. So, there we have it. That's very nice. Yes. Yeah, I just think that's an interesting way of looking at what life is. And the other phrase I've heard that really resonates with me and I think is a very useful is we tend to look at everything as being a noun versus, you know, things really are, you know, what we think is a thing is really... Everything is a verb. Is a verb. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Everything's a gerund. So, if we realize that and back to the, you know, there's nothing that isn't God, then it all makes perfect sense.

You know, it is our experience. It's just that we have that pesky conditioning, that ability that has been reinforced by conditioning to believe that I am a me that looks out. I'm the subject. Everything else is the object. And we forget that we actually experience ourselves as an object of life. 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 iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

In talking about ego, you say ego rejects what is. It is the process of dissatisfaction. Yes. Talk to me about this idea that it is the process of being dissatisfied, which kind of keeps ego going. Yes. So another way we talk about it is ego, the illusion of being separate from life. Now, remember, this survival system that I've got going over here is the no to life's yes. to life's yes. So life unfolds. You mentioned earlier the interdependent origination, that life manifests. It unfolds in a moment. And so here's life manifesting. I, identified with ego, look at it and go, no, I don't want that. I don't like that. It's the wrong color. I don't need that. I don't feel like it. I don't want to. And if we watch, okay, so there's nothing that can keep a person at the center of the universe more effectively than negativity. So in my little

conditioned mind all day long, the conversation is about what's wrong, what's missing, what's wrong, what's wrong with them, what's wrong with you, what's wrong with him, what's wrong with her, what's wrong with me. And it just circles around. What? What's lacking? What's missing? What's wrong? What's lacking? What's missing? What's wrong? And in that way, it keeps me as that ego at the center of the universe. So the attention is always focused on that conversation. It tells me what to do, when to do it, with whom to do it, what I did wrong about it. It's constantly critiquing, and it is doing that a split second behind life. It's happening so quickly that unless people are really present, they have no idea that it's happening. It seems like they are relating directly to life. But we're not.

We're that one beat behind. Yeah, you've said that appreciation is a life process while comparing and judging is an ego process. And I certainly can relate strongly with that. And, you know, we've talked on the show many times about sort of the negativity bias that's sort of wired into us to some extent. I don't think it is. No. Okay. No, no, I don't believe that at all. I know it's a very popular idea, but I don't believe it. If we go back to that ability to experience ourselves as separate, what keeps that illusion of separation in place is negativity. That's not the same as being hardwired toward it.

It is deeply conditioned, yes. It is karmic, yes. But hardwired? No, I don't think so. Fair enough. It's not my experience. I'll just put it that way. It's not my experience. So certainly then a lot of the evolutionary psychology ideas aren't really in alignment with what you're thinking.

I think that if people go to, let's just put it this way, the deepest place they can get to, they will see something different than what we assume by looking at a fairly surface level of something. For instance, if we just pick two popular religious types, the Buddha and Jesus, there was no indication of that in anything that they said. You're right, they talked a lot about what happens to human beings and how we are and the choices we make and why we make them and what we're up against. But there was no, and God designed you to be negative. And so that's what you're going to have to overcome.

And so I think I trust both of those guys to have looked very, very deeply at how we are constructed and how life itself is constructed and to report back to us about what is so. So does it look that way? Yeah. But it looks that way because we're conditioned to see it that way. We see what we're conditioned to see until we get to the point of questioning, deeply, deeply questioning what we're seeing and what is seeing it. Yes. Seeing from conditioning makes it difficult to see around it, for sure. Exactly. And one of the things, so one of our books that came out a hundred years ago is called How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything. And it's actually a workbook and we're doing that now as a year-long retreat, which is super fun. We do the exercises in it and then we talk about it every morning. And what people are really getting a chance to see is process and exactly what we're talking about, getting to watch how those beliefs and assumptions

appear in the mind and questioning not just the truth of what is assumed and believed, but questioning the process itself. So if I can watch the activity of the mind that I have been conditioned to believe is me, the one thing I can know is I'm not watching that from inside it. So where am I if I am able to watch that? And of course, what we quickly get to is, it's awareness that is able to watch that conditioned mind. So what we actually identify at the deepest level, what we identify as ourselves is the awareness that is not only doing all of this, but is aware of all of this. That is our deepest moment-by-moment experience of ourselves. But we're taught to believe that it's this superficial kind of on the surface of the water, stuff that's going nip, nip, nip, nip, nip, gandy, gandy, gandy, in conditioned mind all day long.

Yeah, I love how in one line you say, and I just thought this was such a way to paraphrase something that I'm often talking about and trying to explain to people, which is you are not your thoughts. But you say the logic goes, I hear it in my head, it sounds like me, it must be me, it must be who I am. And that is the way it works. And I was having a conversation with somebody the other day where I said, I think the fundamental teaching of my life that did more to change me than anything else was just recognizing that that voice and whatever it's chattering on about is not who I am. Now, I still think that in moment to moment way more often than I would like. I am identified with it, but at least knowing when I remember to think about it, I step away from it

and go, oh yeah, that's just a voice. It's just, to your point, conditioning. It's a program. Yeah, it's just a conditioned program that is carrying on and I don't have to believe it. In the same way that if you told me something, I would go, well, is that true? Let me think about that. Yeah, that's a good thing. Yeah, well, I'm not sure that's my... But in our own minds, there doesn't tend to be that sort of degree of questioning. And I think that's, I just love the way you say that.

Like, I hear it in my head. It sounds like me. It must be me. And so, Eric, one of the things that I talk to people about a lot is imagine that all that stuff that's going on in there, somebody standing next to you saying it. Yeah. That's what we need to learn to do. And with the image that you were just offering, we need to approach that stuff that's going on inside the head as if it were being said by the person standing next to us. We'd be horrified, first of all.

We would quickly conclude there is something amiss in that person because they just keep repeating the same silly things over and over and over. They never shut up. Why does this person never shut up? Yeah, that would be the exact reaction I'd have. I'm like, sorry, we are not going on any more long drives together. Right. You need to stay home. Now, before we finish this, Eric, I want to talk about recording and listening. It fits right in here. If I can make a little commercial break. Let's do it because it was on the list. So, yeah.

Okay, good. So, because I think you're familiar with what we practice is what we have, which I think is the one that's all about recording and listening. So, years ago, when I came up with trying to help people see what self-hate is and get people to recognize it, that it is not the voice of God, that voice that's always telling you what you're doing wrong and comparing you to recognize it and that it is not the voice of God, that voice that's always telling you what you're doing wrong and comparing you to other people unfavorably. We had as part of that a recording element where people would record different information for themselves. And I actually had this little fantasy of making recordings for people about what's true about them, and then they would listen to it, right? And then I quickly got to, oh, if you want to be called a cult, that would be a really good pathway to that. So what I started doing then is trying to get people to do it for themselves,

and it has evolved into what I think is the most revolutionary contribution to spirituality and psychotherapy that's come along in a long time. And that is simply this. The two things I like best about it, it doesn't cost anything and you don't need anybody else to do it. Okay. Which I think in the world of religion and psychotherapy are great contributions. So here's what you do. Now, we're familiar with that yada yada that goes on, that repetitious, incessant, negative conversation in the head. And even if people are saying, well, no, mine isn't always negative. Watch.

What starts out positive is going to turn negative because it is its way of existing to remain negative. So just pay attention. It'll turn negative on you. So that's what people are listening to. And it's the source of dissatisfaction, suffering, unhappiness, and wasting a life. And so what is possible for us is to turn our attention to what is true, not what's positive. So this is not affirmations. We're not talking about that, not I'm tall and young and thin and gorgeous. That's not what we're talking about. That's me. What we're talking about is recording. No, it's not.

I don't think any of those things are actually true. I see. Okay. So what we're actually recording is what is true. So I make recordings about what I appreciate, what I enjoy, what I love, what makes me happy. And I listen to that instead of that incessant negativity in the head. Now, because we can only attend to one thing at a time, the way that I can end the focus of attention on that negativity is to turn it to what is so, what is true for me. And I like to compare it to a pendulum. So the pendulum has been way out on the negativity end. And so we're going to go all the way over here to listening almost constantly to what is so for me, what is true about me in my life,

and eventually we slide back to here, where I can just be here without needing to be in a conversation about anything. But it's a process to get here. Yeah, I love that idea. When I read it, I was sort of struck by how useful it would be to hear things that I know are true for me in my own voice. Yes. Yes. Thank you for that. It doesn't help if somebody else says it. It's not the same as journaling. Exactly what you were just talking about, right? I'm hearing it in my head. It's in my voice. It must be me. It must be true for me. Okay, let's have that same voice tell us what is really true for us. Thank you. 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 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. 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 I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So give a couple examples of something that someone might record in the book, what you practice is What You Have. You've got probably 10 pages of different ideas of things we could record. But let's give an example, because I do think it's important to realize these aren't affirmations. These are statements of truth. And so another way to describe it, I think, is you describe it as how you speak when you speak from your center, or you also use the term of mentor, like your inner mentor. So this is the voice of, if you think about yourself when you are most grounded, when you are most, and at least for me, what I would consider my right mind, it's the thoughts that come then.

And it's having those, being able to repeat them to myself when that doesn't happen to be the soundtrack that's playing that day. That's exactly it. That is perfectly it. So, you know, one of the ways that I talk to people about self-hate is don't ever let anybody in your head say anything to you that you wouldn't say to a four-year-old that you love. Now, that would end the conversation in most people's heads right there, okay? Because the kind of stuff they hear all the time, they would never say to a child that they love. Probably wouldn't say to anybody, even somebody they don't love but have no reason to dislike.

And so exactly that. So there you are with your best friend, somebody, your child, somebody you love unconditionally. And you are talking with that person who is having a hard time. That's the one that you just described. So I'm having a hard day. The voices are beating me up. I blew that presentation at work, or I said that thing, or I started a fight with my person or whatever it is, and the voices are just on me. And so I turn to the mentor and say to the mentor, in. So, uh, you know, the voices are really beaten on me. What, um, help me out here. And in the same way that I would say it to you, if you told me that story, it would be, Hey, it's okay. It's, it's all right. You know,

this is, this is how we learn. We do stuff. Sure, we look back on it and wish that we hadn't done it that way. But what did you learn? What did you see about this? Are you more committed than ever not to saying those kinds of things? Or can you use this as an opportunity to find compassion for yourself? Because who are you as a person? Do you get up in the morning and think, I'm just going to go out there and I'm going to ruin as many lives as I can? No, you're a kind, thoughtful, caring person. You're trying to be the very best person.

Okay. So that's one, that's one form of it. Somebody was talking yesterday, it was a particularly beautiful place where we live and she drove across the state. And so, you know, it's spring, and everything is in bloom, and the hills are all green, and the sky is blue, and the white puffy clouds. And she's just having an ecstatic experience. You're rubbing that California thing in again, aren't you, on us Midwesterners? It's not that nice today, though, Eric. It's not that nice today. Okay. So she was recording that. She was recording how it felt to be aware of so much duty, to feel so alive and present and grateful. Okay. So then on that day when things are not going that way, either because something awful happened or just because Jim feel good, then she can turn that on and that conversation will take her right back to that experience.

And we know that that's true. If we pay attention, we know that it's true because it's been happening to us all of our lives. You know, you're out somewhere, you're having a good time, you're on the drive home, and this negative voice in your head starts replaying the evening and the things that you said and how that might've sounded to somebody else and how somebody looked at you. And by the time you get home, that good time of the evening is gone and it's replaced by, of the evening is gone and it's replaced by, ugh. So we are constantly being talked into by that voice in our head. We're talked into whatever our life experience is. And so if we're going to be talked into a life experience, let's be talked into a life experience

that's true. Yep. I agree a agree 100%. I often have that thought, like, if I'm making it all up anyway, to some extent, right? Why not? Why am I? Yes. If you know, if that's what's happening here, if I'm just constructing this reality or these stories, I might as well make it a useful one. That's right. And happy. Because I bet you would tell me that you that you have a great life. Is that true? It is, yes. And that you are grateful for your life. Indeed.

You have things that you love and people that you love. Yep. You're excited about what you do and what you contribute and how you get to participate. Yes, I am. Yeah. And so if you were talking to yourself about that all the time, there would be not a moment when you would slip into some bogus... So here's the other one that I think we can all relate to. You know, I go to work and I have a day and it's full of all kinds of things.

And one of the things is this really unpleasant interaction I had with a coworker. So I come home from work and my person says, so how was your day? And that's the story I tell. I don't tell about all the things that went well and fun things that happened and jokes that I heard. And I don't tell any of that. I tell that one negative thing. That's what we're getting away from. Because, and in the way that we've been talking about, because that's not true. That doesn't, that is not an accurate depiction of my life.

Did that happen? Yes, it absolutely did. And if I look at it from that perspective of, what can I see about that? You know, there might have been a moment when I could have stepped back and not, you know, added my little jab to it or where I could have, you know, whatever I saw about that from an awareness standpoint. But the point of it is that my whole day was actually full of wonderful, life-affirming, good things that happened. And that's what I want to focus on. The analogy I often use is I travel often enough.

And so I'll walk into a hotel room. And inevitably, in every hotel room I've been in, there's some exceptions to this. But there are lots of things that are very pleasant and enjoyable about it, and there's usually something about it also that I don't like. And those are both true, so this isn't a question of truth, right? Because I think people react, I react to this idea of positive thinking when it is about telling ourselves things that aren't true. Or, you know, so in my case, in my case, I'm not, this isn't about it's truth. They're both true. The question is, where's the attention going to go? Yes, absolutely. That is the salient point. But we also, I think, need to keep in mind that

it's true for a conditioned perspective. Yes. Yes. So that conditioned mind comes into the room looking for what's wrong. Right. And if we watch it, we know that that's true, right? That's what enters the room. So is it true for me from center that I would say it's not. What's true for me is there's a bed in here and they look clean and there's a bathroom and there's a, that's what's true for me. For me, also, it has a window that opens. Um, but the difference between when the heart gets to respond to life and when conditioned mind responds to life. So we're really going, that's a really important point that you just made that we can focus on here, that it's letting the heart express its truth rather than conditioned mind to talk about its truth.

Yes, I think that is very valid. And these are the challenges. That's a big one for me is letting the heart speak over the brain. And it's a habit, isn't it? Yes. That's why learning to direct the attention, I think, is really the be-all end-all of life. is really the be-all, end-all of life. Because we have these habits, conditioned habits, to go to negativity, and we have to actively train ourselves to bring attention to the moment, to hear, to presence, to what is true, to that connection, that interconnected experience of life, rather than that constant story in the head. Yep. There's a couple things you say about that, that I think, and we're nearing the end of time

here. You and I will have a post-show conversation where we're going to talk a little bit about resistance and depression. And so, listeners, you know, the usual pitch, if you're a Patreon supporter, you get to hear the post-show conversations. But let's wrap this part of it up, Sherry, and I want to talk about a couple things you say that are right on point with this that I thought are very valuable. One is talking about getting out of the conversation in our head, that it's turning the attention towards the moment or towards where we are and not in the conversation in our head. And I agree with you about training attention is that that is one of those things that is

at least for me, and I'm getting better at it after years of meditation practice, right? I'm getting better at it of getting out of that conversation in my head because what will happen is I'll go, okay, there it is again, I'm carrying on about this or that, and all right, let me pay attention to where I'm at and what I'm doing, and then I do that, and then I find myself, yep, yeah, and then I find myself, you know, a minute later, kind of back in the conversation, and I, you know, pull myself back out again. It's kind of doing it over and over, and then there's another thing that you said, and I'll let you kind of respond to both these, is, and I thought this was a great statement,

you say, we transcend conditioned mind, we don't resist it. And another point you said something about, you know, those voices in your head, they're just always going to sound like that. That's what they're going to do. So the key is to turn attention away from them instead of trying to convince them to talk differently. That's right. Yeah. It's a

process of ignoring, right? Because, yes, that's it. That is what they do. That is what ego does. Ego is a process of maintaining that illusion of being separate from life. It's not ever going to be anything else. So people will say, well, self-hate, shouldn't you have compassion for that as well? And my response is always, well, if you want to, certainly you can, but my encouragement is ignore it. Just ignore it and turn your attention to unconditional love. It's way more uplifting, way more fun. And self-hate is always going to be self-hate. Those voices will always be those voices. There will always be negativity trying to pull at us. It's what you just described in meditation practice. The habit to go with the conversation

is so reinforced. It's been going on forever. Now you're going to try to turn your attention to breath. So fighting that karmic pull to conditioned mind doesn't do any good. Once we realize, okay, I was in the conversation, I'm not in the conversation, or I wouldn't know that I was in the conversation. I'm here. Okay. Thank you. All right. Here I am. Thank you.

I don't have to have any relationship with it at all. Just thank you for being here. Yep. Yes. Get out of the conversation in your head. And I think that is just such a sage advice over and over and over because, you know, at least from my perspective, it's not an anti-thinking thing. It's just that about 95% of the thinking I do is completely superfluous. It serves no purpose. Now, 5% of it is absolutely needed, valuable, and critical,

and then the other 95% is just pretty much nonsense. Well, when we get together again, I will try to convince you that that 5% is also unnecessary. Okay. We'll save that for a different one. All right. Fair enough. One of the things that goes along with what we were just talking about, you know, how do you get into the present, right? That's what people want to know. And this little exercise that will sound so silly, but if anybody would do it, it'll change your life. Okay. So now I want, I want to get out of that conversation in my head. I want to get here into this moment. And so I look out at that tree and I say to the tree,

I love you. Do you love me? And you're here because you know what? The answer is always yes. Yeah. Another one that you share in the book that I think is a really helpful one and is, or that I have found really helpful is you talk about looking for and noticing a particular color. Yes. I find that such a helpful way for me. I can be like, all right, where's all the red in my world right now? And boy, that it's just sticky enough, right, that my mind doesn't slip off of it quite as quickly. And it's one that's been really helpful

to me, and I saw it in your book and certainly thought of it. I'll try the tree thing. Yeah, and you can do it with anything, right? Anything around you, because now we're full circle back to there's nothing that isn't God. So if you're looking for the unconditional, well, it's everywhere. So if you're looking for unconditional love, then look at anything. That's what it is. And it'll mirror it back to you. excellent well my uh my engineer and editor chris is not going to be feeling unconditional love at how long this show has gone on but i have enjoyed it greatly so um we're going to wrap up and then sherry you and i'll continue talking but thank you so much for coming on the show thanks for all your your great books and i'll have links in the show notes where people can find out about you learn more about your monastery, and get all your books. You've got Living Compassion, not Sherry Huber, right?

Yes. Sometimes people go to Sherry Huber and I think, I don't know what they find there, but Living Compassion. Yeah, that's a good one. Thank you so much, Eric. Thank you. It's been a joy. Okay, bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.

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