The One You Feed - How to Connect More Deeply With the World with James Crews

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

In This Episode, you'll learn: How poetry and writing can be a spiritual practice Recognizing the feeling of joy and aliveness that comes from ordinary moments How inspiration can come from the practice of just showing up Why fear is a regular companion on any creative journey The importance of nurturing our inner life and spirit How self compassion is about embracing whatever comes up within you Why it's important to create a regular practice for whatever brings you joy  How poetry can hold both the sorrow and joy at the same time How poetry helps navigate a deeper understanding and knowledge of ourselves and the world.  Why embracing vulnerability and curiosity enhances creative growth To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I've put together these anthologies of poetry, gratitude, hope, kindness, connection, joy. I feel like they're all just ways of feeling more alive and feeling more connected to yourself and to the world. And that's what we're looking for. 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 reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is James Cruz, the editor of the bestselling anthology, How to Love the World, which was featured on NPR's morning edition, as well as in the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. James is the author of four prize-winning collections of poetry, and his poems have been published in the New York

Times, Plowshares, The New Republic, and The Sun magazine. James also co-founded the Poetry of Resilience seminars. Hi, James. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thanks so much for having me. I am excited to have you on. I was telling you before the show, first and foremost, you're a poet. But secondly, you have compiled three of my favorite compilations of poetry. And so the work that you do has been in my life for quite some time, even before I really figured out that it was all sort of one person. So I'm excited to talk to you. We're going to be reading some of your poems. We're going to be talking about poetry and kindness and gratitude and whatever else comes up, but we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a

grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, 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 kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, well, since I'm a fan of the podcast, I've been wondering for a while now how I would answer that question when it came about.

The parable has been with me for a while. I think I first came upon it a few years ago, and I think that was at a time when I was actively practicing feeding the good Wolf. I had gotten sober and was really focusing on poetry, doing something that I really loved for a long time, but had listened to Fear and Doubt for a long time. Let that keep me from practicing it, feeling like I was qualified enough to teach it or make the books that I really wanted to be making to share poetry with the wider world. So the way that it speaks to me most, I think, is for me, it's been a matter of choosing to feed fear and doubt or choosing to move more toward curiosity, joy. And that means usually being much more vulnerable and much more sort of skinless in

the world because I'm someone who has had anxiety his whole life, really struggled with being kind of open to the world and feeling safe enough to share myself with the world. And so that conscious effort of feeding the good wolf has been just moving toward what actually is more painful at first, the vulnerability, the exposure, and really allowing myself to be known. through the editing of several books of poetry, I was sort of brought up in academia. And so it's not easy for me at all to lift up poetry that's more spiritual by nature, that focuses on kindness, gratitude, connection, joy. These are not always values within academia. It's much more focus on poetry that's more difficult. That can seem to be a bit of a puzzle for people. And so even the lifting up of accessible poetry has felt like a risk for me over the years, but it's just become a mission and it's become my joy in life to share that kind of poetry,

whether it's coming from me or whether it's coming from people whose work I really love. And again, it's that stepping out into the vulnerability that I think allows me and allows us in general to feed that good wolf. The point is that it's not always pleasant at first. Yep. Well, first, I am glad that you are choosing to make accessible poetry accessible because, you know, academia is academia. It appeals to a very small number of people. Typically, I believe like you do that some of these poems have the real ability to do wonderful things. So let's get them out there. We're going to talk in a minute

about the value of poetry, but first maybe this should have been obvious to me from your poetry and maybe I suspected it, but I didn't know sobriety. Is that something you're open to talking about? Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah. Tell me just a little bit about your journey to needing to get sober was and, and what getting sober has been like for you in the process. Well, it's definitely been a process and been a very circuitous route over the years. and been a very circuitous route over the years. I haven't had a specific kind of full-blown addiction. I think Brene Brown says that she was addicted to taking the edge off. And that really resonates for me, like just using whatever you can to take the edge off of that sharp anxiety, that discomfort, that social anxiety of being around other people and sharing my creative work with

the world. It's just never been easy to do any of that. And as a shy introverted kid, I think when I first discovered drinking and weed and things like that, it was just such a relief, you know, that there was this thing that could sort of put up a barrier between me and other people or other social situations that felt really threatening. And so the journey towards sobriety, I would say, began for me probably when I went away when I was about 27 years old to Bogota, Colombia, just very randomly chose this place. I did not speak Spanish. I knew no one there. And I think I just needed to be isolated and needed to be in a place that felt a little risky to me in order to just get in touch with who I was and my deepest self. And I wore out a

pair of sneakers just walking around the city every day, trying my best to speak Spanish, being laughed at, you know, left and right. And there was something about that trip that planted the seed of not wanting to escape from my experience anymore, because the whole thing was really overwhelming. I was there for over a month and, you know, it's not like I saw the light suddenly and I was just sober from that moment on, but I think it planted that seed. And so when I got back to the country, little by little, I started realizing that, you know, taking that edge off all the time, not only was affecting me and my relationships, but it was affecting my relationship with my writing and my poetry.

And that's been a big part of my spiritual practice for my entire life. Poetry and writing have been the center of my life for as long as I can remember. I started writing poetry in the third grade because our teacher asked us to memorize poems every week. And I just thought, I would like to write my own and memorize my own and recite them as a shy, introverted kid who struggled with that. I don't know where that bravery came from, but I think it was just this inborn desire to share myself with the world in a way that felt right to me. And so the sobriety journey for me has been maybe a journey back to the bravery of that young child standing in front of all of his classmates and reciting something that came from nothing,

that came from deep inside of him. And so from your perspective, did you need help to get sober or was it something maybe just with a clear focus on what was important to you and people in your life, you were able to sort of just decide, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah. Luckily I was able to do most of it. You know, I can't say on my own because I did have the support of family, really good friends and a very excellent therapist to kind of help me on that journey. And you know, it is still a practice. It's an ongoing thing. And I, I've been sober now for a few years without sort of any relapses, I guess you would say. And that's been really key to my writing and to kind of fulfilling this intention of bringing poetry onto the center stage of the world, really lifting up poetry for other people. Do you think your writing has gotten better as a result of being sober? Because often people are using substances for creativity. Like I know when I used to smoke marijuana,

I could write songs easier. It just happened easier. Now, they may not have been better. I don't know the answer to that question, right? I wasn't enough of a craftsman. And for a lot of people, that's a fear. If I stop doing this, there goes my creativity. And it sounds like, by the way, you're nodding your head. You think it's been a positive for your creativity. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to say better, worse, you know, I do know that the work is more clear and that the work that I produce as a sober person touches a lot more lives. It seems to resonate more with people. And I think that's because when you're sober, as uncomfortable as it can be sometimes, there's just that clear connection with life. And there's that tuning in, even if

you don't entirely want to, even if there's still fear, anxiety, and resistance, there's just this kind of tuning in that doesn't happen if you're more clouded or if you're doing something that's kind of taking you away from that edge. I don't want to insinuate that it's an ideal for everyone to be sober, that everyone needs to be sober to be an artist. That's just my journey. But I think we all know when we're doing something to escape from the things that we need to face. And that's a matter of feeding that good wolf. I think it's so much easier at times to feed the bad wolf. And you'll always find plenty of company to feed the bad wolf. So much support from friends, family, even our culture.

You know, so much support from friends, family, even our culture. Yeah. So sobriety for me is about feeding the good wolf and staying clear enough to just be receptive to the intuition and the insights I've talked to people of many different stripes of recovery from, you know, really hardcore addicts to all across the spectrum, the more I've realized it's a lot of similarities, but there's also there's differences, you know, because when you talk about using drugs and alcohol made things cloudy for you, what was weird for me is the reason I started them was because it did make me feel connected to life. It did bring life alive to me, which is a result of having really deadened everything about myself, you know, in a very subconscious childhood way, right? That I think that the only way I could feel anything was like,

I was a kleptomaniac way before I was ever an addict, right? I just stole all the time. And it's not because I wanted stuff. I mean, some of it I wanted, of course, but it was the thrill of it. Because I think that and breaking into places and just dumb stuff that I did as a child, I look at and I'm like, I think I was just trying to feel alive, you know? Exactly. You know, I love that idea of addicted to taking the edge off. You know, every time I started, it was like driving off the edge of a cliff. I wasn't an edge taker off or I was a like, you know, blow up the whole room. But there's so much difference and different people get there

differently. And I have a lot of admiration for people who are able to stop like you have without having burned their life to the ground completely. Like I really do have admiration for that. In some ways it's harder, I think, because it's not quote unquote that bad, you know, but I think you were in touch enough with an inner life, I'm guessing, to know, uh-oh, this isn't right. Like the second time I got sober, my bottom was way less, but inside, I knew, okay, I'm out of control. This thing kind of has control over me. And so, it sounds like you were tuned enough into your inner life to know something's off here. Yeah, I think I was really lucky to have that connection with an inner life and to have had that throughout my whole childhood and my whole life.

And really to have people in my life who even as I tried to deaden who I was and deaden that anxiety and all that fear that got brought up so often throughout my life, that there were people who were there to remind me who I really am. Teachers who saw who I really was, who praised my writing or who said, you know, what are you doing? Like, you need to do something with this. You need to really pursue this, who kept kind of bringing me back to who I was. So I was lucky in that way. But I think what you get at, Eric, is absolutely true that we're just looking for ways to feel alive. And I've put together these anthologies of poetry, gratitude,

hope, kindness, connection, joy. I feel like they're all just ways of feeling more alive and feeling more connected to yourself and to the world. And that's what we're looking for. We can use all these different words like mindfulness and wonder and awe, but it's that feeling of aliveness. And I think for me, since becoming sober and staying sober, what's been most surprising is that the feelings of aliveness, the feelings of joy are for often very, very small things or very small moments that I normally in my previous life, the cloudy life, I guess we could call it, I would just be speeding past these things going, you know, from one emergency to the next without pausing to really take in, you know, looking out the window on a moonlit night and seeing the

sparkle of snow and just being like, wow, you know, I am so glad to be here for this. And it's just a small thing. It's just a small moment. But I think when you put all of those moments together throughout a life, and when you have a practice of writing to hold on to and capture those moments, then they get to stay alive for you for much, much longer. Boy, there's so much in what you just said there that I want to touch on. The very last part of that last sentence about a practice that allows you to hang on to those moments more resonates a lot with what a lot of more modern psychology is starting to talk about, which is this

practice of essentially that, how do we take these moments that we have that are good? You know, every life is filled with good moments, it's filled with blah, no moments, right? And it's filled with bad moments, right? I mean, and every shade in between. But the good moments need to be first recognized, which we often don't do. But then there is an art and it's one that I'm learning, which is to hang on to them a little bit, not in a clinging, desperate way, but in a way that they go inside me so that they become part of an inner resource that I can draw upon, even if it's not necessarily always consciously. And I think a writing practice like you have, it does that. And it's one of the reasons I love poetry, accessible poetry,

is that it teaches me how to look. Because poets, when they're doing their best work, and the poets that I love, are seeing things that are right in front of me that I'm not noticing or seeing in that way because of habitual thought patterns, because of being busy, because of rushing, because of all the various things. And so I read a poem and I'm like, oh yeah, that's how you can look at the world. Look at that, you know? And so that for me is why poetry is really important. And it's interesting. I'm working on writing for an upcoming book and it's not poetry. But what I have noticed is just the act of having to sit down and really clearly think about these things, they come into sharper and sharper focus.

And the rest of life starts to come into sharper and sharper focus because I'm looking in a way that I'm typically not looking. Yeah, I think it's a matter of training yourself. That is the beauty of writing. It's the beauty of, for me especially, using poetry that's so well suited to capturing some of these moments that we're talking about. I love what you said about the moments, allowing them to go inside yourself. You know, I have this idea that we do store these moments inside of our bodies. We do keep them with us. And writing is a way to embody them further. I think, you know, that's why I do have a writing practice, really. I use poetry as a way of being more present to myself and my life.

And what you just said, too, made me think of an old teacher of mine, former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Koozer. He has always said that if you can awaken inside the familiar and find it new, you need never leave home. Like everything we need is right here. We just need to bring fresh eyes to it. And I think that the act of writing, kind of getting outside of it enough to be a little above it can help us bring fresh eyes to what we're seeing.

That's great. I would love to follow that thread for a second because I pulled out one of your poems. I think it's the poem called Beginner's Mind. But let me wake surprised each morning by the familiar call of a Phoebe, tail feathers twitching with purpose as she perches on the porch light and sings the same song over and over. And I do think that there is this challenge of how do we keep the very familiar fresh? I mean, certainly it's at the heart of my Zen training, right? I mean, Zen is just again and again, look closer, pay closer attention. And yet it's really hard to do. It's the same thing with gratitude, right? I think a lot of

people with gratitude, it's like, well, yeah, I listed the same three things the last eight days. I'm just going through the motions now. And so what are your thoughts on writing being part of it, but other ways of keeping what's in front of us sort of fresh so that we're not always having to get the next thing, which is what our modern culture tends to very much be doing. It's what we're doing with our phones to a large extent. Give me something new. Give me something new. Give me something because the brain loves it. But you live in rural Vermont and your life is of a different size. And I mean that not pejoratively in any way, shape or form. I just mean a different size than the sort of stimulation that many people who

may live in a city get. And so how do you keep things? It was a very long question. How do you keep things fresh and continue to see with the beginner's eye? Well, it's a challenge. I can tell you, I am a meditator as well. So I'm always going back to the cushion. And there are those times when it's just like, here I am again, you know, doing the same sitting practice, focusing on what feel like the same breaths over and over again. And I do have these moments of being here with my husband, taking the same walks on the same dirt roads. You know, our lives here would probably seem so charming to someone in the city, Our lives here would probably seem so charming to someone in the city, but you can get used to anything and you can really lose that sense of wonder and awe and freshness for the world

as it is, especially during the winter at a time when things seem less alive, when things seem less vibrant. So it is that training of learning to see small. It is that training of learning to see small. I think you have to just really focus in on what has changed in the landscape, what looks different. And my husband, Brad, who's lived here for his whole life, who pays attention deeply to all those small things. He's an organic farmer, so he's just kind of tuned in to the natural world.

So he's been a great teacher for me to really focus in on what's different or the things that you've never seen before. Like I have a new book coming out, poetry that's all kind of organized around wonder. And, you know, it's very related to the gratitude and kindness theme because it's still what we're talking about, that kind of being lifted out of your mind and being set back down into ordinary life to know that it's amazing again. And the little essay that opens the book talks about how he and I were on a walk last year along this trail that we always walk. You know, it was fall, the leaves were kind of coming off the trees, that

means winter's coming. So I was feeling a little depressed about, you know, the six to seven months of winter that were on their way and, you know, just kind of resistant to the world around me. And then all of a sudden he's kneeling on the ground, looking at this neon orange caterpillar that I hadn't even noticed that's just inching its way across the trail. He's pulling out his phone to record this caterpillar. And I'm just thinking, I still have a lot to learn about how to approach the world with wonder. And so just being attuned to moments when I've kind of lost it. And when it comes back to me, I find are really helpful because it's usually something

small like that. It's something seemingly slight that really brings me back. And it's really, I think what you're describing in your own writing process, I feel it's true in mine too, that I sit down to write every morning. I usually read a little something to kind of get the wheels turning in the morning. Mark Nepo is a great writer. I know you've talked to him a number of times. And then I just start in writing. And sometimes it's like, well, what am I going to write about? What do I have to say?

And that sort of searching allows me to hone in on some of those moments that I might just have shrugged off like, oh, well, that wasn't anything special. Yeah. You talked in the beginning about feeding the good wolf is willing to be uncomfortable sometimes. And the moment you just described of, I'm going to sit down here and I don't know what I'm going to write for different people. That's going to bring up different kinds of feelings, some more than others, but it tends to bring up a fear of failure to some degree, right? Big or small. It's uncomfortable. I don't know what's going to happen here. But you put yourself in that uncomfortable place long enough for some of the time, something good to happen, right?

You know, I'm finding that with writing practices, trying to do it in a diligent way, like, okay, here are the times I'm going to do it. I may not feel like it. I have got nothing else to say. My brain is blank. But showing up and then realizing saying what I'm writing is great at this point. I'm just saying like stuff is coming that wasn't there before I put myself in that uncomfortable position. And I'm sure that's the joy that writers get is, oh, look, look at what came, look at what showed up that I didn't even know was here. Absolutely. Yeah. And I've learned to generate joy just for words showing up on the page. It feels like a success just to write a little poem or a paragraph or a journal entry or something like that. If words show up, then it's great. And I do the practice of morning pages that Julia

Cameron recommends in The Artist's Way, where you just write a couple handwritten pages in a plain notebook and you just be really open to whatever shows up. And I absolutely resonate with what you're saying. I sometimes laugh at myself because I'll sit down thinking like, I'm tired, I'm annoyed, I'm restless. I haven't had enough coffee, obviously. Nothing is going to come. Nothing good can possibly come of this because I'm just in a terrible mood. And then I just sit there long enough and be patient and just write freely without any pressure, thinking like nothing's going to show up and then something shows up. And then I write in my journal, like I was really surprised by that, you know, over and

over again, you'd think I would stop being surprised. But I think we have this mistaken notion that maybe inspiration only comes when we feel good, or that, you know, it's this shining light that comes down to us. And I think it's a much plainer thing that it's just this continual showing up just like we do for each other in the world. You know, that's, that's what kindness is too. It's just showing up for other people, whether they're strangers, family members, your partners. It is a practice. And that means that by nature, it's just going to be uncomfortable sometimes, joyful other times. And I often keep in mind what Elizabeth Gilbert says, that anytime you embark on a creative project, fear is going to be in the backseat, basically. And you have a choice. Do you let that fear

drive the car? Or do you just say, I know you're going to be with me, but you're not going to decide where we go. You're not going to get to choose the music, even that you're here, you're a silent partner in this. And that's been really helpful for me because it just treats the fear as this thing that is going to be there no matter what, like, you know, okay, here you are again, no big deal. 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

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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. on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You just gave me a funny image of that movie, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, with Steve Martin and John Candy. And I was thinking my fear is kind of like John Candy in the passenger seat in that,

where he's like screwing with the levers. And, you know, it's just like, could you settle it down over there? But hopefully the fear will move more into the backseat. But you said something else that brought something to mind to me. And one of the things that I talk about in behavior change often is that we believe that the order of operation is you get motivated, then you do something. And while that is certainly the way things sometimes do work,

indeed, there are other times that you have to get moving and then the motivation comes. And I think you were just saying something very similar about creativity. And I think. So that's what I think the process is. And while that is one way the process works in the same way that I may feel like, oh boy, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm really excited about it, right? There's plenty of times I just get to the gym and then good things happen. And I think what artists who make art consistently know is we have to have that second piece, which is the, yeah, I show up and then good things might come. It works both ways. That's right. Yeah. And I think that's so wise to point

out. I was just thinking the same thing that it's like working out, you know, very seldom do I say like, oh, I'm so excited. I can't wait to do this. And yet either, you know, in the middle of it or afterwards, I just feel so relieved. You know, it's that idea of getting moving, getting into it. And there's something about that that gets the gears moving for us. And it's my mission, really, in the workshops that I teach, all the things that I do out in the world, working with aspiring writers, to make writing seem like this plain thing. That, yes, sometimes the inspiration does strike us. And sometimes we can actually tell like, this is really good. I'm writing something

that really belongs here. And there are so many times I can't tell you that when I've written something that lived in a notebook for years only to be rescued later. And actually, a poem that you mentioned, Winter Morning, is one of those poems that I thought nothing of it for a long time. I used that to help myself feel better on a winter morning when I was feeling annoyed and depressed, and then only later realized that this was a poem that actually helped people. Well, there is some serious serendipity going on here because I was just about to say, let's get into some of your poetry,

and that was the one I was going to choose. So why don't you read Winter Morning for us? Winter Morning. When I can no longer say thank you for this new day and the waking into it, for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair and the ticking of the space heater glowing orange as it warms the floor near my feet. I know it is because I've been fooled again by the selfish,

unruly man who lives in me and believes he deserves only safety and comfort. But if I pause as I do now and watch the streetlights outside winking off one by one like old men closing their cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors slamming car doors hard against the morning and see the steaming coffee in their mugs, kissing their chapped lips as they sip and exhale each of their worries, white into the icy air around their faces. Then I can remember this one life as a gift each of us was handed and told to open. Untie the bow and tear off the paper. Look inside and be grateful for whatever you find, even if it is only the scent of a tangerine that lingers on the fingers long after you've finished peeling it. Beautiful. Thank you. I want to ask a question that comes out of that poem. And it is the line, the selfish unruly man, I seem to be unable to ask a simple question today

without a bunch of context. Maybe I always do that. But the context is, you know, when I got sober in AA, one of the key lines that really turned on a light in my head was that it said, selfishness, self-centeredness, we think is the root of our problems. Now, I think that that statement has a lot of truth in it, but I don't think it's the only truth, but I think it has a lot of truth in it. And you've written a poem called Self-Compassion. Maybe we get to that poem, right? And so there's this way of recognizing that, yes, I am being maybe selfish. I am only thinking about myself. I am being myopic. And so I'm going to call it that without then turning around and being like, I'm such a bad person. How do you navigate that? You know, using a word like selfish, which to many people

sounds terrible. It's not one that bothers me. I actually think it makes sense to me, but how do you think about that? Well, it's a great question. And I agree that it's not always the most useful word, but I think in this instance, for me, I think of selfish often as being focused on our small self, you know, so being focused on the bad wolf in the context of the parable. And the selfish unruly man in me is the bad wolf that craves just that comfortable situation, the ideal situation, the perhaps stimulation that isn't coming on the winter morning that I'm describing there in that poem. There doesn't seem to be much going on in my life, and yet I'm finding it possible to feel

pleasure in watching my neighbors, in watching some of these simple things go on around me. Whereas I think selfish in a more positive way is focusing on the larger self or tending to the kind of tender, gentler parts of ourselves that need that attention and that need that compassion. But without that kind of filter of focusing on the comforts and the easy parts of life. Yeah, I think that's really well said. I do think it is that focus on the smaller self and the focus on comfort and ease. I mean, for me, it's just this almost ruthless internal focus on how I'm doing and how I'm feeling. And, you know, there's a line, of course, because a lot of what we're talking about is introspection in general. That's a good thing. Having an inner life, you know, there's a line, of course, because a lot of what we're talking about is introspection in general. That's a good thing.

Having an inner life. You know, there's all this stuff. And my inner life can be a place that I absolutely drown in if I'm not careful. You know, it's good that there is one and it's one that I need to nurture. But it is a, they used to say in AA, your mind's like a bad neighborhood. Don't go in there alone. Right? And as an early person in recovery, that was absolutely true for me.

Like any inner life I had was purely a destructive one anytime I went inside. But I had to go inside to recover and get better. So I think it is learning. And I like the way you sort of said that, you know, where selfish becomes a more positive thing is when I'm learning to take care of myself in a deep and true way. And so, yeah, I just think it's an interesting thing to sort of always learn how do I have an inner life without life becoming all about my inner life, I guess would be the way I would say it in a way. Yeah, absolutely. And I think of it too,

you know, it's been tough for me to get to that sort of larger spirited self-focus, you know, that isn't quite selfishness because I grew up with a mother who had a lot of needs, who was ill for a very long time in her life. My father was also ill and died when I was very young. I was 20 years old when he died and he was only 43. And so I've had these parents who required a lot of attention and a lot of attending to, and I was very used to looking after other people and not focusing as much on that inner self. I think in some ways, it's sort of forced me to have a richer inner life because I could go inside where it was safe and sort of

tend to myself there. But I had to learn how to really tend to myself in a larger way as well. And I think of the other poem that you mentioned, self-compassion, that practice that felt so cheesy and ridiculous to me at first, calling yourself honey or speaking to yourself in this gentle way, even putting a hand on your own heart. As a recovering cynic, that all just sounded ridiculous to me and just not useful at all. But it's been such a journey to learn that maybe some of that wouldn't work for some people out there, but whatever the expression of gentleness is that we all deserve that. We really need that. And, and I think if the pandemic taught me anything, it was certainly that, that the idea of slowing down and being more gentle with myself and maybe focusing a little bit more on some of that self-talk that, that you mentioned that can

be so destructive was really, really useful. And I think that's been a real turning point in my own artist's life is just quieting that inner critic and actually focusing more on, well, what brings me joy? If it ends up being published or if this book or this idea ends up coming to fruition, that's great. But just not focusing so much on productivity or so much on getting permission from all the gatekeepers out in the world to do what we love to do. I love that poem because I laughed through it because I was like, I totally relate with this, right? And so for listeners, we're going to read a different poem in a minute, but talking about, in the self-compassion world and many spiritual teachers talk about, you know, how do you refer

to yourself internally? Refer to yourself as honey or sweetheart and, or put a hand on your heart, right? And like you, I mean, when I heard that stuff, I first came across that sort of stuff a long time ago. I was a short number of years sober, five years, maybe, I don't know. And my marriage broke up and I was really heartbroken. But I also realized like, okay, there's some things I'm doing relationally, like I need to go deeper with all this stuff. And so I stumbled into a therapist who practiced what they called it then was inner child work. And it made me just want to use a valley girl phrase, gag me with a spoon, right? Like I just was like, this is just awful, like inner child and no, I'm not going to get a teddy bear and like all this

stuff. But it turned out to be a remarkably helpful practice and self-compassion. I'm so glad to see the research these days that people like Kristen Neff have done on how effective we are with self-compassion. That's right. You know, how much better it actually makes us. It's the second principle I teach in my Spiritual Habits program. And the reason it's there is because so early and so important is, A, I don't think anything improves the quality of our inner life better than just being kinder to ourselves. Like we're with ourselves all the time. Right.

But secondly, it is sort of a missing ingredient in change. I love that. We can change and sometimes do change with harshness, but usually not for very long and usually not in the way we want to. Because true change is a learning process. And when we're being too hard on ourselves, we can't learn. That's right. So for me, it's gone from being one of those things that originally, like you're describing, was this very cringey thing, to something that I found to be revolutionary in my understanding of myself and my ability to function and change and be the person I want to be in the world. Yeah. Well, I love how you talk about it as being an element of change because I couldn't agree

more. I don't think we can hope to change ourselves for the better, change our habits if we don't practice self-compassion. And really, you know, on the simplest level, I think we have to sort of hold on to and let go of whatever doesn't work for us. You know, I'm not going to get a teddy bear either. I'm not going to do inner child work like that. One is being shipped on its way and he's holding a handful of crystals in one hand and now, all right, stop making fun of people who like crystals. Who have the crystals been blessed by? That's what I want to know. I think that self-compassion for me has been a matter of just

being with and honoring whatever comes up. And so the meditation practice has been really great for that because I've taught mindfulness over the years and a lot of folks that I've encountered, you know, they really resist meditation because they're afraid of all this stuff, all these voices and all the craziness that can come up. And it's somewhat the same with the writing practice. I meet a lot of beginning writers who get frustrated by what's coming because it doesn't match what they thought should be coming, or it doesn't match the picture they had in their head or the direction that they were going to go. But I think this gets back to the practice of just surprising ourselves and really allowing ourselves to just embrace whatever arises. And that is the effect

of continually showing up to the page for me as a writer, that I've learned to cultivate some joy in being surprised that I sit down thinking like, if I do start writing something, I know exactly where this is going to go. But I give myself that leeway to just go in a different direction. And when I allow myself to be surprised, I find that the freshness of the piece just really comes alive. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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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 think a lot of what we're talking about here is, I'm going to force it into a lens so we can get to a poem here, is this idea of human beings. And you've got a great poem that I'm going to let you read. So maybe you can read that, and then I'll sort of talk about why I thought this was a place to have it. So this is Human Being. The human part of us wants and needs and breaks, but the being part sees beyond the body's aching joints and joyful noises to the open road ahead. The gravel is covered in a fine layer of snow and ice, with the white sun shining through a tunnel of pines like the

unblinking eye of the source. The human part of us knows that if we keep going, we will slip and slide and fall down endlessly. But the being part says, so what? And pushes us onward toward the light, since it knows there is no way but to move forward, step by step, in our heavy boots. Yeah, I love that poem. And what I was thinking was a little bit along the lines of when we're talking about sitting down and writing, right? There's a human element of that, right? There's a human element. There's a practice. There's a craft. There's a place I sit

down. There's a thing that I do. And then there's a being element of the entire process, which is what being is, and how am I seeing the world, and what do I trust in? And those two seem to come together to me in some of the processes we're talking about. Yeah, absolutely. So I see the human part would be maybe that smaller self that we're talking about. And the being part is this other piece of us, whether we call it a spirit or a soul, but it also wants to be tended to. And so for me, the writing practice does bring those together. Often what I'm writing about is being grounded in the actual world or in everyday life that we all live in. And yet this other being part somehow has an influence over that. And that the exercise of writing from both parts becomes, well,

what can these everyday experiences teach me? What can they show me? And how can every moment, large or small, become a teacher for me. That's how I see it. And I think it's not always useful to see ourselves as divided in this way. But yet there are these two impulses, these two twin impulses that exist within us. The human part does crave that ease and comfort that we were talking about. But what I try to teach people when I talk about writing, I think we all have access to that being part. It's just that the human part gets in the way a little bit, right? It's a lot like the fear

and doubt piece, that fear of failure. But there can be no failure if the goal is to let the being part of ourselves rise to the surface and not worry so much if what we're writing is quote-unquote publishable or if it will even ever see the light of day. The goal really is to let this deeper part of us speak. And so that's why I'm a big believer in journaling, you know, writing in the notes on your phone, like whatever it takes for you to kind of hold on to some of these moments that we're talking about and lets that being part rise to the surface. There's this phrase that I think it comes from Anne Lamott in her writing, but she talks about soul time, that there's this time that we step into usually when

we're having one of these moments that's a lot deeper. We find things kind of slowing down, pausing. Maybe it lasts for a minute, maybe it lasts for even less than that, but we feel some other part of us awakened. And I think poetry does that for us. It's broken up into lines, it kind of forces us to pause a little bit more. And I think that's the purpose, it's just that little bit of slowdown that we get to kind of touch in with our soul or however we think of that. And I think that's the purpose is it's just that little bit of slowdown that we get to kind of touch in with our soul or, you know, however we think of that. Yeah.

That idea of these things being divided is sometimes helpful and sometimes not helpful. I think about in Buddhism, but Zen particular, we talk a lot about the relative and the absolute, you know, and the relative being the human part. It's the day-to-day life. It's Eric sitting here who's at a computer and he's thirsty and he's tired because he didn't sleep well last night and all that stuff. That is absolutely real and absolutely true and absolutely needs tended. And then the absolute is this, call it what you want, something beyond that, you know, something that is not limited in the same ways.

You know, in Zen, we would just say it's everything, right? It's the oneness, it's the unity. And I think it's easy to get hung up on one or the other. Now, most people are way, way, way hung up on the relative side, the human side, right? So that's certainly where we in our culture and our inclinations lean. That's certainly where we in our culture and our inclinations lean. But I think sometimes the being side, people worry, means they have to accept all sorts of crazy outlandish ideas. And I don't think that we do because in Zen, the term we would use is form and emptiness.

Form being humans, emptiness being the absolute. And we say emptiness is form, form is emptiness. It's one thing at the end of the day. And it's helpful to be able to move between those positions, you know, in acceptance of commitment therapy, they'd say it's psychological flexibility, right? The ability to see the world from my very human, small self perspective, and to also be able to see the world in a different, more all encompassing way. Well, and to understand that there are going to be times when you cannot break out of that human relative perspective, right? Because we probably know a lot of folks who are maybe spiritually inclined who beat themselves up a lot and lose all that self

compassion by thinking, I've got to live in the absolute. I've got to be up, you know, 1000% present all the time. And you know, that's a losing game because even if you're trying to be, you know, 99% present all the time, I don't know anybody who can do that. I sure can't do that. If we could get to 10%, I think you'd be an exceptional human. Cause I don't think that's even the goal to me. No, that's not even the goal, but you're right. There is a lot of spiritual, somebody's probably coined this phrase, spiritual shaming, you know, but back to the self-compassion and the spiritual habits program, that's why it's there. I'm like, I don't want this program to be another way to feel bad about yourself.

None of us need more of that. That's right. And same thing with folks who are inclined toward writing, maybe who want to try writing or some other form of creativity. You know, they just get to thinking like, well, I only have this much time per day. I don't really have time for that. You know, anyone that I know who is a practicing writer, poet, whatever, you know, they are not sitting down for, you know, eight to nine hours a day writing and just, you know, you know, all the words flowing out. It's a practice. And, you know, if you can sit down for an hour to a day, I think you're doing pretty well because that's going to add up over time. And I think it's the same thing that I was saying earlier with some of these moments where

we do feel that we're more present, where the soul starts awakening a little bit and just something gets stirred in us, you know, those moments will add up over time. And maybe those divisions that we're talking about, it's just useful to have those because it's good to name when you're in that experience. Right? Like just a couple months ago, I lost my mother and got to spend this really sacred week with her in the hospital before she went. And it wasn't clear that she was dying yet. So that piece did come as a surprise, but she was not well. And there was a part of me, let's call it the being part, that was aware, like, okay, you want to be here for all of this. You want to hold her hand. where like, okay, you want to be here for all of this. You want to hold her hand. You just want to radiate love as much as you can in this hospital room, advocate for her, do all of that. And then

there was this other part of me, even in the midst of these dire circumstances that was like, it's really sunny out there right now. And it's like November. I can't wait to get outside and feel that sun on my skin. You know, my mother is begging me, please don't leave. And I'm thinking like, I need to leave sometimes, you know, I need to practice that self-care and self-compassion piece as well. Well, it's funny that you should say that because by the time they hear this, this will long have happened. And I pray to God it's long have happened because my dad is in the dying process right now. He's had a long battle with Alzheimer's and you know, he's in Florida and my stepmom thinks, and the nurses think he's in his last day or so. I'd seen him and made peace with

that was the last time I was going to see him and I was going to say goodbye to him. But in the middle of this, so I've got all that going on emotionally. And I'm like, are we going to get any time to watch, you know, Vikings on TV tonight? Even with that deep thing going on, there's still the normal day-to-day human concerns that come up. And I think part of a good life is looking at those and going, all right, part of you wants that. The unruly, selfish part of me may want that. Now is not the time for that part, but I'm not going to feel bad that that part arises because it just does in everyone, you know? That's right. And, you know, this idea of, as we're saying, sort of allowing yourself to be where you are with some

also gentle nudging, trying to feed your better wolf a little bit. You know, as you were talking about writing, you know, as you were talking about writing, you know, and you were saying like a full-time writer who's really in it is going to get an hour or two in a day, right? And for a lot of people, they're hearing that, like, there's no way that's going to happen, which means maybe your opportunity to be a full-time writer is not on the docket right now. I try and play guitar for 10 minutes every day. 10 minutes, that's it. Right. But it's an important part of my life. And it doesn't have to go anywhere and it doesn't have to become anything. But there is a little discipline to it.

Because what I realize is 10 minutes, little by little, a little becomes a lot. I know that a certain amount of playing means that, this is interesting, I'm tying it back to the human and the being. There's the human part is sometimes I say, Eric, it's late. You don't feel like it sit down and play. And the reason I'm doing that is because I know that by doing that consistently enough, there are times that indeed the being will come through. Yes. Yeah. I'll pick up the guitar and I'll start to play something. And the thing that happens to me that is so magic is something new emerges. And I'm beyond the point of thinking about like, oh, that's thing's so great. Or I've got to capture it. Or I'm just in love with the mystery

of like, well, look at that. Something new just showed up and that's the being. But I got there because the human part of me shows up often enough for that to happen. That's right. But shows up in a really small way. It is not a big way. You know, the other thing I think we could offer to people is a writing practice of 10 minutes a day can be something that is very sustaining to you in your heart. That's right. I think of it as creating a container.

You know, I think that's what you're talking about is there's this sacred container. I'm making this deal with myself and I'm going to show up for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever you have each day for something that brings you joy and a chance to just let something transcendent pass through you without trying to hold onto it or be attached to it or I'm going to be a star from this. it doesn't have to be like that. But I think you're so right that that builds up over time. And I think it's also really useful to know that a little goes a long way. When I first started writing, that is what I would do. You know, my attention span was such that I couldn't write for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time at a sitting. And the same with meditating, you know, just sitting down 10 or 15 minutes of that kind of restlessness was all

that I could manage. And I think the more you create that container, maybe it stays the same. You know, it sounds like your guitar practice has stayed the same for quite a while for you, but maybe it starts expanding too, if that's something that feels right for you. And I think the other thing that having that container, like knowing when you're going to show up each day, even when you don't feel like it, it allows the being part, the transcendent to flow through you, but it also trains you to be available throughout the rest of your day. Yes. That happens to me all the time because, you know, I'll show up for my writing practice. Great.

You know, three pages of journal writing that will never see the light of day, maybe for a week or weeks at a time. And then I'll just be standing at the kitchen counter and, you know, looking at an old picture of myself and my mother. And then this memory comes out of nowhere that wants to be a poem. And I just stand there and write it. And that becomes something. But I had to be trained to be available for that, to really pause to do that in between everything else, you know, the meetings, the laundry, the dishes, everything else that calls to our attention.

I would like to have us move to another poem before we run out of time here. I'm thinking either Enough, Orb Weaver, or Natural Silence. Are any of those calling to you more than another right now? Another poem I just wrote recently I think would maybe speak to what we're saying. Would you mind if I shared that? It's just a short poem. Okay. Yeah, this one is called Light and Dark. I do think it relates to what we're saying here. Light and Dark. Half awake, I lose myself in a pool of late morning sun and leaf shadows flashing on the floor outside my bedroom, what the Japanese call komorebe, light and dark held in the same container of a single moment, as we hold them in us, learning to love equally a burst of joy, welling up like wind in the crowns of trees, and a sorrow that still

weighs us down, like stones in the shoes, like swallowed clay. Today I stand here at the edge of both, knowing that if I want to walk in the light, I'll have to dance with the shadows too. I love that swallowed clay. Wow. I know exactly what that feels like. Yeah. That's grief. That's despair. That's anything that weighs us down and that lump in the throat that we can't quite get rid of. And yet it goes back to what you were talking about with your father earlier, that the sorrow and joy can actually arise at the same time. The inclination for both certainly arises at the same time. And I think that that's another ability of poetry that maybe goes unnoticed sometimes,

is that it can hold the sorrow and the joy at the same time. There can be a joy in noticing the sorrow and naming the sorrow. And that actually in and of itself can be a form of self-compassion, you know, a way of holding those emotions. Right. You write several things about poetry that I loved from the introductions to a couple of these books. Poems invite us into a closer relationship with ourselves, each other, of these books, poems invite us into a closer relationship with ourselves, each other, and with life. To me, that's the heart of what spirituality is about for me, is a closer relationship with myself, with others, with life. Zen Master Dogen said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things, right? It's just that closeness, that connection. And I do think poetry, at least for me, is a

vehicle there. In my case, it's largely the reading of it, although having been a songwriter, I mean, a songwriter has some poet element, right? You do have words that go with your music. So the other thing that you say about poetry is it helps us dive beneath the surface of our lives and enter a place of wider, wilder, more universal knowing. Yeah. Again, that being part of us, that deeper self that knows more than we do. I think poetry helps us tap into just intuition and instinct. And when I'm writing, oftentimes, I don't even remember consciously some of the things that I end up writing about, like the poem I mentioned earlier about the memory with my mother and her holding me one night and

telling me about owls and the sounds that they make. And I didn't remember that until I wrote it. It existed in this other part of me. And so I think that so many more people are turning to poetry because there is a hunger for contact with that, you know, wider, wilder sense of knowing that's within each of us. And we need ways of tapping into it that don't need to be mitigated by religion or, you know, some of these outer structures of spirituality that don't work for people anymore. you know, some of these outer structures of spirituality that don't work for people anymore. Writing is something that, you know, if you know how to read and write, you have access to it. And I don't believe that writing is this special thing that's just reserved for, you know, a few select folks who are visited with inspiration. I think it's available

to all of us, and so is that deeper knowing. Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up on that very note that this is accessible to everyone. We'll have links in the show notes to where people can get to your website, find your work. You actually teach and lead programs about, maybe you wouldn't call it this, writing as a spiritual practice. But, you know, it's not so much about writing to become a great writer, although I think that's part of what you're teaching. It's about writing as a way of connecting more deeply with the world. So we'll have links to where people can find all that. James, thank you so much. This has been such a really good and deep conversation. I appreciate it. It's been my joy and pleasure, Eric. Thank you.

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