The One You Feed - Dorothy Hunt on The Heart of Awareness

Episode Date: October 3, 2018

Dorothy Hunt on The Heart of AwarenessSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When we want the truth more than we want life to look a certain way, the truth begins to reveal itself. 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, We'll see you next time. 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 reallynoreally.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. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid.

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Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dorothy Hunt, who serves as spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha, teaching the spiritual lineage of Adyashanti, who invited her to share in the Dharma in 2004. Dorothy is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy and has practiced since 1967. Her published works include Only This and Leaves from Moon Mountain. Her new book is Ending the Search, From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness. Hi, Dorothy. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me, Eric. You're the author of a book called Ending the Search, From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness. And I'm really excited to jump in and talk more about the book. But we'll start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson, and 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 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 grandmother and he says, 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. Sure. Well, I have various ways that I might look at that parable. I mean, the most obvious one is that reality, to me, is the wholeness of being. So we're going to have everything that is in the wholeness of being. So, you know, in that sense, the one is whole, you know, and the one that I would call reality or what's most deeply true about us is actually feeding us with its own awareness, its own experience, its own really love of being. You know, I think that's why we must have this world in our lives,

that something in us being itself really just loves to be, and it can be everything. That being said, you know, it's this infinite potential that could be anything. And as such, you know, we carry the seeds of everything within us. So we have the seeds of kindness and compassion and awakening and love and all of that. And then we the seeds of kindness and compassion and awakening and love and all of that. And then we have seeds of hatred and greed and fear and all those so-called negative things. And really, we get to see which ones we water, which seeds we want to water with our attention, because anything that we give attention to, we give reality to. There are millions of things happening right now in the world,

but you and I are giving our attention to this conversation. So it's true with those seeds that are in us. And so often we're apt to just project the negative to other people and say, well, it's them that's the problem, you know, us and them, without really realizing that we wouldn't see it over there if it weren't in ourselves. So it's kind of a humbling process, this thing called awakening, to see that everything is an inside job. It's an inside job in the sense of, you know's what's out there is is in here it may not be expressed in the same way because we have these very unique

expressions but but there's something that's awake to the whole show and and to me that's that's where that the deeper dimension of peace and love and compassion is going to be found it's not going to be found in the mind that thinks it's separate from all of that. So those are just a few thoughts about the parable. Okay, great. We'll get more into this, but you are a teacher in, I don't know if I'm going to get the words right, you know, I don't know if this is how you would refer to it, but you've learned from a couple of different people, but one of them is Adi Ashanti, who listeners of the show will know because he's been on here a couple times. And so listeners will know that. And so I'm just saying that to sort of frame it up and to frame up that

your teaching is similar to his in that the key focus is on awakening to our true reality. So just to give listeners sort of an overview of where we're headed, I want to start off with just talking about the title for a second, Ending the Search from Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness. I'd like to first start off and talk about what spiritual ambition means to you, what that term means, and then what is its, for lack of a better word, its more useful cousin? If ambition isn't it, what is? Because, well, we'll get there. I'll let you take from there to start. Spiritual ambition is the desire to get something for the me. Most people really come into the spiritual search wanting to feel better, wanting some way out of suffering, wanting to be someplace

else or someone else or something should be different about life or their life or whatever. And so there's an ambition when we begin to want something that we think isn't here, you know, that we want to get. We want to get it. And so frequently we're looking outside at teachers or books or practices or whatever, all of which are fine, but we're looking out there for something that is already in here. And so when we begin to be quiet, perhaps, or have spiritual practice of some sort that invites us to turn our looking backwards, to turn and look for who's looking, who's searching, who is that? You know, well, it's me. It's me. And then, you know, if we take it a little step further, then who is that?

You know, who is it that's searching? then who is that you know who is it that's searching so that in the book there's quite a bit of attention to self-inquiry as it was introduced to me through the teachings of Ramana Maharshi but Adyashanti certainly talks about self-inquiry as being one of the practices that I think all of us eventually will come to who or what is this person called myself, you know, if we really want to awaken to the truth of what we are, because otherwise we just maintain an identity with only one body mind and one set of, you know, thoughts, memories, consciousness, and so forth, as that's the extent of who we are. And so we're always searching for what's beyond or what's faster than that or what will bring us out of where we are into someplace else.

So ambition is really to get something for me. But when we wake up to who or what we truly are, we realize that one doesn't exist in the way that we thought. It's not who we really are, those thoughts about ourselves. And so, you know, the ambition piece becomes, over time, subsumed by the realization that what we are, what I am is what you are, what your listeners are, what life is. Bottom line, there is a unified reality. So I want to read a line of yours, because I think it touches on this, and this is one of those things that's come up on the show a bunch of times, and it's just a paradox, and yet I keep trying to talk about it as if that will resolve the paradox, which I know it won't, but it's still

important to talk about. And you say, you desire spiritual awakening, yet may be told by those you imagine are awake that either your desire is not great enough, or your desire is the obstacle. And I think that is the paradox that for me sits right in the heart of all this, is that it is some degree of desire, you call it a spiritual impulse, being a gift to us, that there's this impulse towards awakening, towards wanting to know the truth, and that may be to varying degrees driven by a desire to escape suffering. And I agree with you, I think that's where it starts for most of us, and there's still an element of that that remains. But it's the desire or the spiritual impulse to even look, to even take the time to ask the

questions, to do any of that is what at least sets the ground for most people. There are cases of people who just spontaneously wake up, but most people who wake up, it's as a result of some degree of effort that's being put forward. So I'm just wondering if you could talk about the role of desire, effort, and grace in how all of this happens. Yes. I always loved what Nisargadatta said about effort. He said, if effort's required, effort will appear. If no effort is required, no effort will appear. And so there are different times in our spiritual quest, we might say, where there's perhaps intense effort for some people.

But then there's a time where that effort is seen to be, or at least we begin to realize that that effort is not actually helping, that it's just taking us further and further from the moment we're in from the the silence or the peace or the joy that's already here if we just stop long enough to notice what's already in in the true heart that we share so there's a time for both and you know you said what what might take the place of ambition in your earlier question, and I would say perhaps it's intensity, the intensity of our desire for truth or our desire for whatever it is, whether it's for God, for the meaning of life or love or, you know, whatever it

is that really is the juice behind our spiritual search. And sometimes the effort gets us to a certain place, and then we can't go any further. It doesn't take us farther, because the efforting of our egoic identified consciousness will only take us to the edge of the known, because it doesn't live in the unknown, and what we're seeking is basically unknown. So, you know, we can use practices and types of meditation and, you know, various things that we've been drawn to. We can use all those things, but realize that at

some point, you know, they can only take us so far. And then we have to look beyond. We have to look into the unknown. And it's at that point that a lot of seekers, you know, back up because the mind doesn't much like looking into the unknown. It gets scared. So, you know, we may get to that edge many times before we're willing or have the grace, because I think it all is grace. I mean, grace is here all the time, basically.

It's just like Ramana Maharshi says, grace is an ocean. It depends on the size of the container that you take. You know, if you only take a thimble full of that ocean, that's what you'll experience. So our capacity to receive grace can change as this goes on. But, you know, we're invited when we take that backward step, when we look more deeply into the question of who or what am I or what is life, what is truth, you know, we'll come to a place where there's the not knowing. And are we willing to stay put and just allow the silence to reveal whatever it wants to reveal? And then, you know, at that point, we've become so much more receptive that it's not a matter of efforting anymore. It's a matter of receiving. It's a matter of receiving. forth effort. And by effort, I mean, devoting time, energy, money to go to places where I can be more quiet. And yet the moments themselves have come when in the midst of that, there's this, I don't know how to make it happen, letting go, right? Completely. And so then what I wrestle

with is I get back into the world. And it feels like there is more effort required to go and find the quiet and do all of that. And that it feels like sometimes in the world itself, when I let go of effort, what doesn't happen is quiet and silence and deepness. What happens is I suddenly become very interested in whatever the various interests I have in life, some of which are healthier than others. And the one that came to mind was guitar and playing music, which is a wonderful thing in a lot of ways, but it's not headed in that same direction. And so I'm kind of in that, like, I don't know if I want to use the word stuck because I don't, I don't think that's quite the word, but I'm in a, what feels like some sort of limbo state to me sometimes lately. I think that life is like that in the sense of expansion and contraction, and contraction not being a dirty word, not necessarily something that's wrong, or maybe a better way of saying it would be, you know, there's a realization, there are these moments or glimpses of our true nature, and then there's this sense of how is that getting expressed, you know, because each of us is an expression of this mystery from my perspective, you know. Every single one of us is an expression. And it's, you know, there's a creation in it. There's a creative process that's happening.

in it. There's a creative process that's happening. So when you play guitar, if it's something that you love, then to me, that's an expression of the divine in whatever ways. If we think that our spirituality has to only look a certain way, then we might be judging the human dimension of our lives in a way that's maybe not necessary. 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 brian cranson is with us how are you 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 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. I'm going to read another line of yours because I wanted to discuss this and you

just led us right into it or we led ourselves into it. If you're drawn to interior silence, this is your soul food. If you are drawn to music, this is your soul food. If you are drawn to service, this is your soul food. I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to be drawn to silence. I just ask if you could explore that a little bit more, because although I agree that these other things are soul food in a way, they don't seem to, at least in what I've seen, and again, and in my life, they don't seem to lead in the same way to what we would think of traditionally as an awakening. So I'm just kind of curious about your thoughts about, is there a path for people who don't want to be silent but are interested in truth? What does that look like?

Well, I think everyone will probably find a little bit of a different way. You know, if you're really interested in truth, then spending time in silence and stillness is incredibly useful, incredibly helpful. It doesn't have to look like I have to be on my cushion so many hours a day or whatever. But even just many times in the day, we can just stop and be quiet and notice. Is something already quiet before we try to be quiet? Is something already still? Is something already actually? Is something already

actually even at peace? Why don't we just stop to notice? But sitting in silence with an intention of finding out what is true, what is real, who am I, whatever those existential questions might be for any of us. And they have to be important, you know, if they're not, they're a deuce in it, you know, and we're probably not going to continue. So the reason I wrote that as I did is that everything is an expression from my perspective of what we are. There's nobody, nothing that's happening that's out of the expression of wholeness. That doesn't mean everything is coming completely directly from our deepest nature, obviously. There's a lot of misunderstandings, innocent misunderstandings, ignorance about our unity and so forth in this world, as we all know. But, you know, we're here to be ourselves, you know, because when we discover who or what that is, we see that that's what everything is and everyone.

And so there isn't a sense of it should look a certain way. When we discover who or what that is, we see that that's what everything is, and everyone. And so there isn't a sense of, it should look a certain way. But I do think if you are interested, if one is interested in truth, then you'll put your attention, just like you're saying you've been doing. You spend time on retreats, or you found a spiritual teacher that you resonate with, or whatever. And that seems to be kind of guiding you at this point, right? Yes, it is. I kind of wonder about, back to your earlier question about enough desire, lack of desire, you know, but yes, in general, yes. Obviously, I am very focused on this in general because I do a show about it every week and, you know, so yes, in general, right? Yes, yes. I guess that's safe to say. week. And, you know, so yes, in general, right? Yes, yes. I guess that's safe to say.

I do think that desire is not wrong. It's just, let's discover what it is that our deepest desire is. Whenever I meet someone for the first time, whether it's as a psychotherapist in the old days or now as a spiritual teacher, I will frequently ask, what's the deepest desire of your heart? Because it sort of is the rudder you know that's guiding us whether we know it or not and to become conscious of that what is the deepest desire you know if it's to make a million dollars well go for it but usually if one questions is that really your deepest desire you know then you know that they will find or we will find something that's deeper than that it's like what what do you think that they will find or we will find something that's deeper than that uh it's like

what what do you think that will bring well bring freedom right bring happiness or whatever it is we imagine right to really be willing to go through the levels of desire and and discover what's really most important you quote that idea that the problem, like you said, is not desire. It's the depth of your desire or selling yourself short in your desire in that you're not desiring enough. I mean, that's not quite the right word, but it's the best one I can use, right? Yeah. It was Nisargadatta, if I recall the quote that you're talking about.

He said, by all means, but increase and widen your desire to have nothing but truth, you know, will fulfill it. Because what's wrong is that our desires are so limited and limiting. They're going to arise if they arise. So part of coming, I think, into a different relationship with ourself is realizing that things are as they are. You know, what is is what is. It doesn't mean that the what is of now is going to be what is of the next moment. But if we can accept that this is actually here, yeah, I thought I wanted this. I had someone who came to see me some time ago, and they really were interested in non-duality

and really wanting to work from that perspective and so forth and so on. And we got about maybe three months into the therapy, and he said, you know, I really don't want this. You know, I said, great, great. You know, we know what we need. You know, can you follow your own inner teacher? Can you follow your own inner guidance and go find what it is that you want, if this isn't it? So he left, you know, and I, you know, with my blessing, it wasn't like, oh, this is somebody who's resisting and I should keep them and blah, blah, blah. I just have a

deep faith in how life is moving. There's an intelligence that's at work in life, whether we notice it or not. But, you know, I gave him my blessing and he went off. And, you know, about six months later, he came back and he said, you know, I think I really do. You know, he needed to go find that out in some other way. And he's, you know, had these beautiful openings and so forth since then. But part of it is honoring our inner knowing, I think, and so many of us grew up thinking that we couldn't trust that, or that it led us in the wrong place, and sometimes it seems to.

Sometimes it sure does. Yeah, but also our suffering often brings us to our knees and to a place of surrender that would not have happened, apparently, without those difficult and challenging things in our lives. I think that's completely true, and it rings true in my life. And that idea about knowing what you really want, I think one of the challenges that a lot of us face in this world, I do, I know a lot of people that I work with do, is that maybe that ultimate desire is to awaken to our true nature and to find, you know, peace and wholeness. And yet we go through a process of being misled about what's actually going to do that. Oh, this is what I want. And

then sometimes we, you know, we get it and we go, no, that's not it. Or at least for me, it's been this increasing refinement of what it is I'm really after and starting to see through the illusions of what doesn't do that. It sounds like it should be this linear process. And I think the overall trend for me is towards an increasing refinement, but you take a couple steps forward, then you take a couple back. And then, you know, overall, it's still moving in the right direction, but it's just not like one step after the other. It's like just straight there. It's a more of a zigzagging path, at least for me, has been.

Well, for most people, I think that that is true. And it's also a path that's fraught with failure. And ultimately, you know, waking up to our true nature is the failure at maintaining separation. But, you know, some of us apparently need to do and be and go and experience whatever it is, you know. And then we're called back. Something like you were speaking of earlier that I speak about in the book, this impulse that's quiet. It's not necessarily demanding. Hey, look at me, look at me.

You've got to figure out who you truly are. It just quietly calls us. And we have these experiences that feel like they're pointing toward something that all of us have had. You know, like those moments where something vaster and freer and more peaceful than our mind could ever be, show themselves, reveal themselves. And then we want more. And then, you know, it will lead us wherever it does. But I think ultimately it goes back. And it's not a straight path necessarily. And yet it's always been what we are.

It's like that very well-worn,-worn analogy of the ocean and the waves. But no matter what's happening on the surface of our mind, it still is the ocean moving. It still is the heart of awareness, the source, whatever name we're going to call it. Without that, we don't even know what our experience is. So it's feeding itself, all of these experiences. There's a current that's moving underneath the surface of things. And if you're willing, if one is open and has the movement to really just keep diving down through experiences. And sometimes we have to live them out, but sometimes we don't.

We can just really, really look deeply at what this experience is. Maybe it's a negative experience. What's underneath that? What's underneath that? What's underneath that? You know, and you can't help. If you go deep enough in any experience, you can't help but bump up against your true nature because that's at the ground of everything. 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 tonight.

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 really, no, really.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign 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. I want to read something else that you wrote that I think speaks a little bit to the conversation we were having about happiness and what we think will make us happy. You say, when we do experience moments of happiness, when a desire is fulfilled and the mind is content, we imagine these moments were caused by something outside of ourself.

But the reason we are temporarily happy has nothing to do with what just happened. We are temporarily happy because we temporarily do with what just happened. We are temporarily happy because we temporarily stopped wishing to be someplace else. Our mind rested for one moment, stopped its craving and straining for one moment, and we simply experienced our natural state, the heart of awareness. Yes. And to realize that at some point, you know, whenever it is we do, And to realize that at some point, you know, whenever it is we do, you know, we can even pose the question, well, what would it be like if every moment or more and more moments I wasn't trying to be in another different moment? What if I were actually able to just notice that there's something present to this one? You know, and that presence we think is our mind, but actually there's something that's this one. And that presence, we think, is our mind. Actually, there's something that's present to the mind that's moving.

So we keep looking back in a deeper place or a more mysterious place that's present no matter what. And when we stop wanting to be someplace else, we're here. And that's what our true nature is. It's always here now. It's here. It doesn't live in time. It's timeless. So it's always that kind of eternal now sense of being right here right now for this. You know, my very simplistic view of meditation is simply being here for what's here, you know,

because that is our true nature. It's here for what's here. And then when we're not trying to have a different moment, we often will be moved in ways that sometimes are unexpected or maybe challenging if we have difficult things to face into. But nonetheless, there's a movement that comes from a different source of strength and power and wisdom. You wrote in the book that you say, someone once asked me, what did Adyashanti give you? And you answered, nothing. He gave me nothing. And that was his greatest gift.

Can you elaborate on that? The no-thing, the no-thingness. We want to get something from this spiritual search, right? We want to get something for the me. That's the ambition we were talking about early on. You know, and to realize that there's nothing there for the me because this process sees through. It sees the transparency of the me.

And in no way is judging or refusing these human expressions. In fact, there's a much greater understanding and compassion for them, even expressions that we think of as negative in ourselves or in the world. But, you know, he doesn't give you, here's six easy steps, you know. It's like really encouraging his students to find out for themselves. He's an amazing teacher, but he doesn't spoon-feed. At least it never happened in my experience with him. It was more just an invitation by where he was coming from to meet him there. And that's the nothing we can really...

It's not nothing in the way the mind thinks of it. It's the emptiness, it's the openness, it's the ungraspability or the unspeakableness of our true nature. We can't really define it because the mind can't go there. The mind of thought, you know, not big mind, but the mind of thought can't go there. And so once we bump into that, you realize there's no way that I could say what this is. And yet, we feel it, we intuit it, we sense it. But it's nothing that you can define. Something you said there resonates with me with Adyashanti too is also, I think, possibly the biggest teaching for me has been to truly examine my own experience, not what I've read in the books that should be happening, is to truly just try and stay with what is it like for me, truly and really. for me, truly and really. That's an encouragement that has been really helpful for me,

particularly as someone who has read, I mean, I've read more spiritual books than, it's just, it's preposterous, right? I think a lot of us fall into that. And so, I've heard all this stuff. I know intellectually the right answers, right? But it's that I move away from my direct experience to those ideas. And I think what, for whatever reason, it's not like he's the only person who has said that there's something about the way he says that and has emphasized that, that worked for me, that got me to, to stop to some degree and try and stay with my own experience, which is, you know, that comes and goes, the ability to do that. And there's the other thing about him, and for me, is there is some mixture of deep kindness, wisdom, but there's also some fierceness to it.

And that appeals to me in some way, that it's not this soft thing, which a lot of the language in this space can get to be that way. And there's something to that that has drawn me towards him. Yeah, I mean, part of that, I think, is the Zen training as well. You know, there's a certain fierceness about that kind of training. He doesn't come off as fierce in any kind of punitive way. It's just, it's a loving compassion that sometimes, you know, if one is familiar with Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, you know, who carries a sword, there's a sword that cuts through illusion.

And that can feel very challenging to our egoic mind, the mind of identified thought. And so I think that when truth is moving, it's not asking permission to, should I say this? Should somebody like it? Should they not like it? It's just moving. And so when we're in a position of being the so-called teacher, realizing that you can't really teach what you are. You can only point and encourage people to find out for themselves, which is what you were saying has been so helpful. And I think it is. It's when we want the truth more than we want life to look a certain way, the truth begins to reveal itself. And until then, we're just always trying to have life look a certain way. have life look a certain way. And so when we really get bitten by the bug, so to speak,

of, you know, really desiring what's true, more than anything else, more than anything I've read, more than anything anyone's told me about, more than anything I think someone else might have experienced, I have to find out for myself. And that's a really important piece in the so-called spiritual journey. It really is. It's become clear to me how important that is. And one of the things that drew me to Buddhism initially was that idea of don't believe what I say just because I say it, try it out for yourself. That has been so helpful for me because my mind will start to say, but wait a minute, is that really true? I don't know about that. And I can just go, well, this isn't an intellectual point to be debated. I just have to look and say, is that true for me right now? And here's what is true.

Yes, because if there's anything that, truth as it's moving in the body-mind organism, if there's anything that I think shows it's there more than anything else, it's authenticity. It's here, now, authentic, honest. It isn't trying to put on a false face. You know, our identified images of ourselves, we're always trying to do that, you know, be seen a certain way. But this is not like that. This doesn't have to, it's not upholding any identity. It's not upholding an identity with the absolute. I am God and I am the only thing that exists and I am, you know, or I'm just this poor little helpless, you know, human being that doesn't have any power. You know, it's just an identifying with anything. It's not trying to defend anything.

It isn't identifying with anything. It's not trying to defend anything. That's an incredible strength when we come into our own experience of perhaps when our defenses become more porous or dropped altogether. It can feel vulnerable at first. This openness feels wonderful when it's the vastness and all in all and all of that. wonderful when it's the vastness, you know, and all in all and all of that. But when that openness starts moving in the body mind, it can feel vulnerable, especially at first, because we're operating without so many, you know, defenses and so many masks, you know, we're moving from behind the mask in a more authentic way. Yeah, I would say that mirrors my experience for sure. Well, Dorothy, we're near

the end of our time here. And I really have enjoyed the conversation. Again, your book is called Ending the Search from Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness. We'll have links in the show notes to your website and all the ways that people can find you and your work. And you and I are going to have a conversation after this in the post show. And so listeners who want to be part of that and hear that, if you go to one, you feed.net slash support and become a patron of the show at the $10 level, you get to hear all of the additional conversations as well as extra mini episodes and all that. But Dorothy, thank you so much for taking the time. I've enjoyed it. Well, it's. But Dorothy, thank you so much for taking the time.

I've enjoyed it. Well, it's my pleasure, Eric. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, take care. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net.

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

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