The One You Feed - How to Nourish Your Inner Life with Dr. Jan Lundy

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

In this Episode, You'll Learn: How a deeper spiritual life bring us inner freedom Defining the term “overculture” and how we’re impacted by this strong voice Why many people struggle with the various spiritual traditions How we can learn to trust our own connection to the sacred Why there is often a feeling of relief when we find and go deeper on our spiritual path How we can discern between the good and bad voices that influence us Why “spiritual sampling” can be troublesome How distractions are the biggest barriers to finding our deepest self To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The beautiful part about our spiritual life is that if we give it time and attention, it does reach back. We are met in some way. And I would say relief is actually one of the first things. 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. If you've lost track of what's important to you, you're not alone. We often go through phases in life where we feel dissatisfied or disconnected. And when we get off track, it's easy to get stuck in unhelpful patterns like avoidance or perfectionism. It shows up as negative self-talk, breaking your own rules, procrastinating, or struggling to let go of addictive or otherwise harmful behaviors to make space for healthy ones. I want you to know that all of these are struggles I've had too. And if I can turn things around with the challenges I faced deep in heroin addiction and clinical depression, so can you. What I've learned through experience is that what we know

is not as important as what we do consistently. And bridging this gap is the key to feeling fulfilled at a deeper level. Bridging this gap is the foundation of the Spiritual Habits Program, a non-religious mentorship and accountability experience to establish simple daily practices that help you to be more present, compassionate, and connected in your relationships and life. Over eight weeks together, you'll learn how to make small changes that have a big impact. No matter what life is serving up, you'll experience it in a more grounded, loving, strengthening, and creative way. If anything I've said has resonated with you, go to OneYouFeed.net slash spiritual habits to learn more and sign up. Enrollment for this year's program is open now through March 13th, and I'd love to meet you in it. That's

OneYouFeed.net slash spiritualhabits to learn more and sign up. 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 Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Jan Lundy, the Gerald May Professor of Spiritual Direction and Counseling at the Graduate Theological Foundation. She is passionate about supporting people of all spiritual orientations and none.

As they navigate the big questions of life, consider how to live in a complex world and navigate its many challenges. For the past 25 years, Jan has compassionately served others as a spiritual director and counselor, and most recently as a grief support specialist. She has a private practice in Michigan and meets with people internationally over Zoom. Jan is the acclaimed author of nine spiritual growth books, including the newest one discussed here, My Deepest Me, a 30-day guided retreat to nourish your inner life. Hi, Jan. Welcome to the show. Oh, hello Eric. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I am very happy to have you on. You are a, I guess I'd consider an old friend at this point, not in your age, but we've been friends for a

while. I went through a program that you run called the Spiritual Guidance Training Institute, where I became an interfaith spiritual director. And so we got to know each other then. And I said before we talked, I really think of you as a kindred spirit. And I learned so much from you. So I'm really happy to have you on and talk today. Oh, thank you. And it was so good to get to know you better, too. I got to know your heart a bit and your passions and your joy in serving others. So that's lovely. Yeah. And we're going to be talking about, among other things, your latest book, which is called My Deepest Me, a 30-day retreat to nourish

your inner life. But before we get to that, we'll start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her 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 greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparent and says, 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 in your life and in the work that you do. You know, I love this parable. It's been in my life

for a long time. So this is how I think of it. I think of the good wolf as my essence, the truth of my being. I know it as my deepest me. It is that which aligns me with what I call the virtues of the spirit, compassion, kindness, generosity, peace, joy, unity, simplicity, service, and love. I know when I listen to it, listen to that voice, that it benefits me and it benefits others. The bad wolf, I would say, is the domain of my small, insecure, fearful human self. We all have one, of course, as well as the messages it sends. It's also the collective voice of the over-culture. And maybe we'll talk a little bit more about that, the voice of the over-culture, a dominant voice in society that really does send so many messages that encourages me to be more,

really does send so many messages that encourages me to be more, to do more, to not be satisfied, to doubt myself and my inner truth, to be afraid, to be worried and anxious, primarily that I'm never enough. So listening to this voice creates pain and suffering for me and for the people around me. Listening to the good wolf's voice aligns me with the highest, with the good, the beautiful, and the true. That's what I call it anyway. The real, capital R, of which the Sufis speak, the divine as I understand it. So for me, the tale invites us to pay attention.

Day by day, moment by moment, we are given the choice of which voice to listen to. My calling as a spiritual guidance counselor is to companion people as they listen on a journey of discernment as they live into this for themselves. And hopefully I can help them hear the voice of love. That's beautiful. I love everything you said there. And I want to touch on something you said because it's not a phrase I've actually heard before, which is the over culture. I instinctively kind of think I understand it, but say more about that.

It's not an original term. I actually received it from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who is the Jungian analyst. And she uses that term a lot in her work. Her work has been very influential in my own spiritual journey. in her work. Her work has been very influential in my own spiritual journey. I almost imagine it like an umbrella, this thing that sort of hangs over us as a collective consciousness that holds us down in a way. Its values are of a particular tone and hue, but they are not about accepting one's uniqueness. Artists feel very stifled by it, for one. Writers often do too. Sensitive people. It has a very strong voice that says to be accepted, to be in the tribe, to be welcome and part of the society, you really need to do it

this way. And if you are someone who is creative, who's sensitive, who's spiritually inclined, perhaps maybe even more than religiously inclined, it can be a challenge to live under the umbrella of the overculture. So I have a question again about the overculture. Does every culture have one? Because we have a tendency often, particularly in a lot of spiritual circles or liberal circles, to look back at indigenous times, indigenous people, as having a belief system that was better in many ways. But when you said it's what the tribe says we have to be like, it made me think like, well, surely even then there was an overculture

of some sort or other that for some people just didn't work, didn't fit. Yeah, I would agree. I think it depends on the values of that culture. If the values of the culture really are diversity, self-expression, recognizing the uniqueness and the divinity of each individual, then we are each encouraged to express that uniqueness. then we are each encouraged to express that uniqueness and in our culture it's interesting in western culture the u.s in particular that's all i can really speak of because of yeah being born and living in the united states that the voice seems to be yes you can be all you want to be or feel you can be but but and but. And sometimes the but is very loud.

We're experiencing that a lot of that today, actually, with cancel culture, with ghosting people, with kicking them out of everything from schools to churches. Because despite the fact that we admire people's uniqueness, there's also, there is an energy, there is a force that oftentimes does not support one's genuine individuality. And that is a sense of the sacred, of who you are in the sacred, I believe, of your deepest essence, your deepest truth. I want to come back to values of culture in a little bit. I don't want to lose the thread of that, but I do want to go deeper before we go any further into some words that you're using. You've used the word essence. You've used the word divinity. You've used the word

you're a spiritual guidance counselor. Let's start with spiritual. Why is that a word, as ambiguous a term as it can be, why is that a term that means something to you and what does it mean to you? That's a beautiful question. I do think of it as the essence, the truth of our humanity, actually the truth of our humanity. And Viktor Frankl, the founder of existential analysis and logotherapy, in which I've had a lot of training over the years, advocates that, and I do believe this also, that we are the only creature, the only being on the earth that has a consciousness that can perceive itself and can witness itself. And in the Eastern traditions, I'm thinking of Ram Dass

in particular, aligning with that and calling it, well, that's the soul. That's that part of you that can rise higher and look deeper. And there's no other creature that can do that, that we know of, at least. That we know of. So the spiritual piece is that deeply human piece, actually. Frankl called it the nuos or the spirit. It was difficult to translate that from German to English, but that that is always there no matter what. And it is always guiding us. It is always leading the way. It can always be reached. He worked a lot with people who were experiencing mental illness, severe depression, even schizophrenia and psychosis.

And he said, even mental illness cannot cover up the spirit. We are also going to get to Logotherapy in a little bit in Viktor Frankl because he's enormously influential on so many people, including myself. I want to stay with spirituality a little bit and Viktor Frankl because he's enormously influential on so many people, including myself. I want to stay with spirituality a little bit more. I love that idea, the essence of being human. The reason that question is so alive for me right now is we are preparing soon to launch our sort of flagship spiritual habits program again. And, you know, kind of going out and listening to what people have to say, you know, people in our audience around it, there's a lot of ambiguity and a lot of people

saying, well, I don't know if I like that word, spiritual. And I am always on the fence with it, because it means something to me. But it's a term that tends for most people to either land on, to me, I think one of two extremes. One is they just associate it with religiousness. In America, it's for most people, the Christianity of their childhood. Or on the other hand, we tend to hear that term and associate it with really outlandish, to me, outlandish beliefs, very new age culture, lots of psychics and lots of different things that are further out there. Whereas to me, spirituality is actually just all about meaning and connection. You know, to me, that's what it is. It's about what matters to me and am I connected to it

in a consistent way, which I think goes to sort of what you're saying, the essence of being human. So let's go from spirituality to another word that you use, which is the divine. What does that word mean to you? That's one of those difficult things to define also. And so I just have to be very honest to say that, and I always have this written in my books and preface my workshops or have it on my website that that's the word I use. I also use the word the sacred with a capital S. It's what someone else might call God, might be what someone else calls the universe, spirit, oneness. It even could be father or mother or beloved or friend as in the Sufi tradition. So it is that which aligns them with their deepest truth. It can be for some, a force, an energy, a resting place of knowing.

For some, it can be something outside themselves. And so it can be Brahman, it can be the all, it can be Allah, it can be whatever beingness, it can be so many terms. And so each of us has to find our way to explain what is at the core. That's another term that Frankl used, the core. There is a core that each of us has. And in that core is our deep knowing and our conscience. And it is the job, you know, if we have a job in life to, at least I believe that, to get to the essence, to get to the core, because it is about meaning, making meaning of your life,

making meaning of the moment, especially when it's difficult and it seems like life is meaningless. meaning of the moment, especially when it's difficult and it seems like life is meaningless. And to be living a life that is useful. It is a good life, I would call it, not a completely self-absorbed life that's causing pain to others, but a life that has value and worth, not just for yourself, but for others and for humanity. You have a line in your book. I just want to read this short little section because I think it speaks a lot to what we're talking about here. You say, if we are in tune with our inner life to any degree, we know that there is someone deep within us who is well worth knowing, a version of ourselves that is not encumbered or hindered

by the world. There is also a source, a life-giving font some of us might call God. It is the journey of our lifetime to get to know both entities and ultimately to decipher the relationship between the two. I think that's just beautifully said and really gets to the heart of it for me is this idea of who am I deeply inside? And then what is the source? My Zen tradition would use those two ideas as sort of form and emptiness, right? Form being me and what sort of shape have I taken? And emptiness being that source, that everything, that place which everything comes from. Yeah, thank you. I was kind of struggling with remembering the Buddhist terms for that. I wanted to include that in my litany of names of the divine or basic goodness. So yes, absolutely. I think

that is the journey. And how do we make sense of this? And this is what the major wisdom traditions of the world have tried to do. Also, they've tried to show a way that people can live into those questions. Where did I come from? Who am I? How am I supposed to live? Where am I going when this is all over? You know, what happens when I die? They ask those basic existential questions. And the journey into answering those questions is spirituality, I think. Whether you are, using your examples earlier, in a Christian denomination, or whether you're off here gathering up crystals, there's spirituality in each. Yes. That whole range is spirituality because the spirituality is what are we doing with this? How is it creating a human existence? How are we living as human

beings? Yep. And I think the term spiritual can also, for people who are very leery of anything supernatural, right, which many people are, you know, but even within that, I do think that the idea of spirituality has a place because, again, it is about what is most important, you know, the deepest questions. And you can throw away the question, and I often do, where did I come from? And where am I going after this? Because they feel totally unknowable to me in any real way. So they don't interest me that much. I mean, of course, they're somewhat interesting, but my bigger interest is really that, how am I to live? Absolutely. You know, what does it mean to be a good person? How do I live in a way that is good for myself and good for everybody around me? That's to me what spirituality is all about. Yeah, I would so agree. And I think that's why I've written the books I have over the years too, because people are asking, well, how do I do that? How do I do that? Because do I read this?

how do I do that? Because do I read this? Do I go to this event? Do I listen to this person? How do I get to mine? How do I get to know my inner spirituality, my divine imprint? I think of it sometimes as we've been given each a unique thumbprint. And so, our spiritual life will be the same. It will represent that also. Yeah. Which explains why a lot of people struggle with traditions, with religious traditions, because their thumbprint maybe doesn't match, again, kind of that over-culture even of the particular religious tradition. So the spiritual journey for me is about recognizing my unique thumbprint and learning to trust that this is mine.

And it is my unique connection to the all, the emptiness, the everythingness, you know, whatever we want to call it. And I think it's also okay to call it what we need to call it for our deepening. And that is not always well received by a lot of people. They want to say that there should be a name that everyone can get behind. But in reality, I think we're maybe talking about the same thing, but we're just using different language. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly at the heart of, to me, interfaith work, which you train people, and I was trained in interfaith spiritual direction. And that heart of interfaith work, which you train people, and I was trained in interfaith spiritual direction. And that heart of interfaith to me has always seemed extraordinarily obvious to me, which is,

these are all just different ways of kind of talking about mostly the same thing. And if we focus on what's in common here, there's so much to focus on that we can totally get behind versus focusing on what's different or the words or the language. And interfaith is often very opposite from the idea of fundamental, right? Fundamentalism says, I know the truth and it has to be said and spoken this way. And interfaith, there's many names for this thing. Yeah. And Matthew Fox wrote this wonderful book called One River, Many Wells. And it's such a beautiful way to describe what you're talking about, that each of the

major religious traditions, the wisdom traditions, we call them in the perennial tradition, is like a well that silos down into and gathers from this deep river that runs underneath, which is full of life-giving wisdom, of life-appreciating wisdom. And as you study the different religions and traditions of the world, you see that they all do have compassion in common. They all do have the search for truth. They do have the search for meaning. They do have ethics and values. And so they draw from that deep river up into their own well, and then that well is their unique expression of it. Yeah. The spiritual habits program is sort of my distillation of what those core principles are

that I think underlie all these traditions. And that's just my lens on it, as you would say. But I think that's what, you know, in interfaith work we're trying to do is sort of, at least for me, it's always been helpful to sort of hear it different ways, you know? Absolutely. A different voice, a different voice will touch your mind and touch your heart in a different way. And that's why those of us that are on this path, you know, we are always open to maybe the next, the next person on your podcast, you know, the next author, the next teacher, because is there something there that will guide my journey or take me deeper? That brings up a really good question that you have raised, you know, comes up in your book a few different times. I think it's obviously something that you think a lot about. And it is this basic idea that given now that most of us are

quote unquote freed from having to believe a particular thing, we are then thrust into the modern world where we can believe anything and we are exposed to nearly everything if we're paying any attention. And so that idea that, you know, Matthew Fox is talking about that there's many wells, many ways into this one river. There's also another analogy that shows up in spiritual circles about the danger of digging 101 foot wells, right? I spend two weeks in Tibetan Buddhism and then two weeks in mystical Christianity, and then a week in Islam, and then depth psychology, and then logotherapy, and then trauma therapy. And God knows my podcast is a perpetrator of lots of different approaches. How do you think about that in your own life? When to stay, when to go deeper, when to explore more widely? How do you think about it in your

own life? And then I'd love to see how you help others make that discernment. I love that question because you really just sort of named my whole journey. There is a danger in what you talk about. I call it spiritual sampling. It's going wide and not deep. That gets us only so far. And it doesn't necessarily get us to the place where we can listen to the deepest voice of truth inside of us. That requires staying for a while, deeper listening, maybe using some of the practices from a particular teacher or tradition, and to listen deeply and to notice what is it elevating in you? What is it diminishing in you? How is it strengthening you? A spiritual life that serves you well will be oriented towards freedom and that

it's inner freedom so that you begin to trust who you are. You begin to trust your knowing. You begin to trust your own unique connection with the sacred as it's revealing itself, but it really doesn't reveal itself until you start to go deep. So I've done a lot of what you said. I mean, in my book, Your Truest Self, in one of the chapters I talk about, I was one of those people in the early searching years who danced on beaches in goddess circles, who studied Rumi, who went to centering prayer, you know, who tried it all and did it all. It was like a spiritual sampling of just wild proportions because I was so hungry to know. That's where a lot of people are. But then if you're fortunate, you may come across a teacher, perhaps, like you have,

like I have, influential teachers, teachers perhaps that were even by their presence, their very presence opening you to something more so that you could begin to hear, to listen more deeply, to know what was genuine for you and what's not. Like I can still have that. It's like being a seagull who sees a glittering object and seagulls love those and they love to grab them and fly away with them. And then they end up choking on them. So I can see, oh, that one, I just had it happen yesterday when I was doing a spiritual counseling session with someone. And she was telling me about her

most recent book that she was reading. And she was just enlivened by it. You could just tell it was just giving her life. So after this session, I ran to the internet, of course, and I'm looking it up and I'm reading an excerpt from the book and on the surface, it sounds like it could be something. It could be. And then as I got deeper and deeper, I started feeling in my body, no, this is not it for you. It's learning to trust your body wisdom. Also listening to the resonance of something in your, I would call it your inner energy field, listening to your heart, listening to those voices. We talked about the good wolf and the bad wolf, you know, the wolf that says, you know, maybe you really should, because what you're doing

isn't right. It's not getting you anywhere. And then maybe the voice of the good wolf, the essence says, no, just stay where you are a while longer and wait and listen and kind of rest in not knowing and stop searching, stop searching and go deep and see what happens. And then if you go deep and you find it still not enlivening you and not bringing you greater inner freedom, then leave it, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is certainly a challenge I have faced my whole life being an intensely curious person who loves to learn. I've talked on this show before listeners have heard me talk about how at a certain point I had to sort of say, all right, this is going to be my practice for a period of time. For me, it's just helpful to set

a time limit, right? Now, my time limits are very different than, you know, other people's time limits. I was interviewing a Zen priest out of New York, Koshin Paley Ellison recently. And, you know, in the Zen tradition, they often talk about measuring progress every 30 years. I'm like, okay, well, that's way too long for me. Like, I wish I was that patient, but I'm just not. So for me, in the beginning, it was like six months. I'm going to stay with this for six months. But even that was good, you know, and the way that I then engaged in that practice was very different. I talk about this where, you know, I read a book a week for this podcast, if not more. When I started studying with my Zen teacher, I read one book, a short book for six months. There's a difference in that way. There are times where it does really help to sort

of narrow down and stay focused. I often think about when have I changed the most in life? And one of the times was in 12-step programs. And part of the reason was there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. You come walking in as a 24-year-old homeless heroin addict, like there's a lot of change that's just kind of right there waiting for you, right? But the other reason, I think, was that I went to meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting where we talked about the same exact stuff. Repetition. Yeah. There were times that I was like, if I have to hear them read those 12 steps again, I am going to puncture my own eardrum, right? There were moments where I felt that.

But that repetition, that coming back to it and realizing that every time we would read that chapter in the big book, I was a different person. If I opened to it, if I went, oh, I've already heard this before, well, then that doesn't do me any good. But if I can be open to it, you know, and so I know that in the work that you do and in the work that I've done with Spiritual Habits, some of it is that thing about how can we narrow and stay in a lane. And so this question is so alive for me and where I've ultimately ended up is the proportions change. And I'm not trying to turn this into an equation because equations don't work, but guiding principles where I'll be like, you know what? 70% of the time I'm staying in this lane and 30% of

the time I'm just going to go out and explore and play because we talk about like your own essence. That's part of my essence. That is part of what brings me alive is that exploration, that newness, that looking at the same idea from a different angle, hearing somebody else's. So, but I think everybody has to solve that question for themselves. And it's a really challenging one. It is, but you know, I think you has to solve that question for themselves, and it's a really challenging one. It is, but I think you touched into something so important, is that you found a practice and you were willing to stay. For me, that early practice was very simple breath practice. And it's because I found it at a time, as many people do, their deeper spiritual journey, when you have a crisis, as you did,

and as I did, but mine was my health. And I had developed chronic fatigue and massive anxiety, which was absolutely debilitating. I was a young mother and not knowing where to turn, what kind of resources to pay attention to. But I knew there was something, there had to be something. So I remember literally walking into a bookstore and standing in front of a shelf of spiritual books and just waiting, just waiting for something to grab me and to say, it's me. And it did. And it was Thich Nhat Hanh's book, Peace is Every Step. It was like a long drink of water after being in the desert because I had been trying to do too much, be too much, be everything to everyone and had lost my sense of self. And so to go back to the breath, to go back to the breath was such a relief. Do you mean I only have to do one thing at a time,

Tay? Only one thing at a time? And I can just sit and breathe? It was tremendously healing. And that was the root practice. And everything, I've gone a lot of different places as you have, but I landed in a lane that is definitely rooted in that deep embodied practice of sitting and staying and breathing and feeling the relief of it, of not having to do, not having to try so hard at being. And that's what I really encourage people to do is spiritual practice is really important. Even if it's just sitting in stillness and watching the snow fall down as I was fall from the sky as I was doing earlier today, or just taking those deep, compassionate breaths. The beautiful part about our spiritual life is that if we give it time and attention, it does reach back.

We are met in some way. And I would say relief is actually one of the first things, is we feel like we can breathe again. We feel like we're home. We feel like it can rest a little bit. It's like the deep, there it is, I'm back. And that might be your North Star. And that's okay. And that's enough. And then if you want to go off and do universal dances of peace with Sufis, and or go sit at a Vipassana retreat, you know, with the Buddhists, you can do it. But explore enough and be willing to stay, I love what you said, in one lane long enough to try something to take it deeper, whether it is centering prayer, or it is meditation, or it is walking, give it a chance and let it deepen you. Because that's what a spiritual practice will do. If you give yourself

to it fully without expecting results, it often delivers. If you're not attached to the result of it, to let it work in you, to trust that it could hold you and create space for you. I always tell the people I journey with, you will be met with the right intention and attention. You will be met. 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? 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. You talked in there about not expecting things to be a certain way. I think

one of the places people most get hung up with is expecting that their spiritual practice, either something needs to be happening or they need to be doing better. You talked about the relief of the breath. And what's really interesting is that I was unable to get the relief of the breath for many years because I thought that I didn't just have to be breathing. I had to be focused on my breath and I had to keep my focus on my breath. And that was the point. And when I was unable to do that, which I was very unable to do for quite some time, given, I think, just the nature of often my mind, but I think

almost anybody's mind these days, it wasn't a relief. It was a frustration to me, you know, and it drove me away from spiritual practice again and again and again and again, because I kept feeling like I'm failing, I'm failing, I'm failing, I'm failing, which nobody wants to do something they feel like they're failing at every 30 seconds. So talk to me a little bit about two different ideas that I think you speak very well to here. And I'm going to just read what you said. You said, it's important for me to be patient with myself yet persistent in my practice. Vigilance and faithfulness are virtues of the spirit, as are gentleness and self-compassion. May I practice them all.

Talk to me about how those two things are going together, both vigilance and faithfulness and gentleness and self-compassion. It's such a dilemma that we find ourselves in a culture that is steeped in achievement because most of us have now gotten caught in spiritual striving. So we are trying to get somewhere in our practice. We're trying to accomplish a certain mind state or a heart state. It has to do with staying attuned to that which might take us deeper. So that's the vigilance, staying faithful to it. If you start a practice, stay faithful to it. I'm a lousy meditator, I will tell you that. I hear Pema Chodron in my mind saying that she has a lousy meditation.

My meditation has never been good. Breathing, counting breaths like you talked about made me kind of crazy. Actually, anxious, it can make you anxious. If you're an anxious person and you do a certain kind of breathing, it can make you more anxious. So for me, it was learning to rest in the practice. So for me, breathing, for example, as a practice is I'm just resting and receiving. I'm just resting and receiving. I'm not doing anything. But I feel the gift of that, of receiving, because so many of us are doers. So it's like pointing yourself in the direction. It says if you have a compass and you have that needle pointing to the North Star, and your North Star might be your intention and your commitment to a practice.

But you don't engage in it like it's this adventure that has to have certain goals. You allow it to just be and allow yourself to be in it, and that's the compassionate piece. So if I'm walking, I'll give another example. I love to walk. Walking is a spiritual practice for me. But if I try to turn it into something when I'm walking, like, oh, I must see this or pay attention to this or do these kinds of breaths, I'm missing the whole point of receiving what being outdoors is going to give to me and noticing what I might not be able to see if I'm too busy thinking and focusing on an outcome. So I hope that helps, but it's the gentleness for me that has changed this whole game because I was truly a spiritual striver. And as soon as I stopped striving and waited and rested in the mystery,

you talked about that earlier, rested in the not knowing, I don't pretend to know much of anything truthfully about the spiritual journey. I think I know a little bit, but I really don't know how it works, except to say when I bring myself to that place, I will be met. But I have to do it gently and without striving and without expectation. I'll give you an example. I was doing a pilgrimage through Southern California with my sister. We were visiting the various Catholic missions there.

And I've had an affinity to the Divine F divine feminine for many years. It's been an important part of my life. And of course, in those Catholic churches, especially in the mission churches, there's always Mary, right? Usually the Guadalupe and the brown-skinned woman who protects her people. And I would walk into these churches. I'm not Catholic. I don't have any special devotion to religion in that way. But I would walk into these spaces and I would sit down in the front row and it happened time and time again, empty, empty church, of course. And I would receive a wash of energy. That's all I can call it. As if warm maple syrup was being poured all down my body and into me and tears would come and I would just feel profound love.

I never expected that. I never asked for it. I did not search for it. But it has been a recurring theme in my life that if I make myself available, the divine, however you want to call that, is complete mystery. And it meets us where we are at. And I don't mean that to sound anthropomorphic, like it's a being necessarily, or a God, but something happens. Even Carl Rogers, the great American psychologist, who is the person that we know now, established what we call client-centered therapy. I mean, all the therapy we see today is because of Carl Rogers. And he, if you ever have a chance, you go on YouTube and watch him in session with a client, you think he's a spiritual director, not a counselor. You know, the leaning in, the deep

presence, what he found is when he could be in this place in himself, this depth, and the other person was in their depth, being seen, heard, appreciated, something palpable was happening in the room, which he could not name. But he said, there is a place, there is a place, when I'm in this place in me, and you are in this place in you, especially that person feels unconditionally seen, heard, appreciated, something happens. And we are met by something, some kind of mystery or an energetic field between us. I don't know, but he didn't write much about this. He only wrote about it in the last part of his career, because I'm sure he was very aware of how other psychologists might not abide by that.

But he moved into a spiritual understanding of encounter and how we can be with one another and what happens in that encounter. He alluded to the fact that it was spiritual. Yeah, I think the challenge with the spiritual striving or the challenge with not doing it, right, is that, as you mentioned, we often are turning to spirituality because we're in a great deal of pain. And we want that pain to go away. And so some of the striving may come, I think, from our culture. We are a culture of accomplishment and all that. But some of it, I think, is the very natural, like, I just want to feel different.

I want to feel better. I want the warm maple syrup. That sounds nice, right? Like, because what I'm feeling right now is like, I don't know, cold, icy shards or something, you know? So how do people meet spirituality, a practice, without expectation? And you know, I mean, you've been in these circles a long time. This is a core paradox of spiritual life, which is that it works best when you come to it with no expectation. It works best when you come to it from a place of open... Let me try that again. Works best when you come from a place of open... I can't say that word.

You can leave that one in, Chris, if you want, so people can hear how I generally can't speak. You get the idea. But of course, it's very hard to not have that expectation because we are doing it because we don't feel good. We don't feel okay. How do you think through navigating that sort of perennial paradox? I've navigated it so many times. So many times, Eric. I just navigated it so many times. So many times, Eric, I just navigated it this last fall. I mean, we might call that the dark night of the senses or a dark night of the soul.

We are in pain. We're really struggling. We're not finding a connection. We're not feeling hopeful. We're not happy. Again, this almost sounds religious, and I don't mean it to accept that. I believe it. There's a pureness of heart and a pureness of intention that when expressed, something can change. And I know you see this in 12 step programs. When people come, when the pain is so intense and they know they can't do it any more way they're doing it because it's just like hitting your finger with a hammer again and again and again. When you're in that much agony, sometimes there is a letting go. And in the letting go, we can be found. And I know that sounds religious, but it's kind of the nature of the spiritual journey, that deeper journey.

We get to the point where maybe I don't know it all. Maybe I haven't gotten it figured out. Maybe I've prayed on my knees all the way to the temple and still nothing is happening. Maybe I need to let it go and be found. And again, that almost sounds religious. It's just that there are these hallmarks of the spiritual journey. And this is what I really love talking to people about saying, if you look at the trajectory of spirituality, and in all the traditions, the saints and the mystics of all traditions talk about there may be a time, there may be a place when you do not know what to do. and all you can do is just to be there and to basically give it up. Yep.

Meaning control. Yep. And then something happens. It's amazing. And something happens. Yeah. This is always a relevant topic for me because my nature is I'm a little bit of a striver. I just like to do things and solve problems. And like, that's my orientation. I just like to do things and solve problems. And like, that's my orientation. I'm naturally bringing that to the game. You're talking about something akin to trust.

I've said this before on the show. I've talked about it a couple of different times. I had John Mabry on who was my spiritual director for a while when I went through your program. And I don't know if this is a reflection of John or a reflection of me or the interaction between the two of us, but every single conversation or the interaction between the two of us. But every single conversation ended up back with the idea of trust. What do I trust in? I mean, it's part of what caused me eventually really with 12-step programs to start to have a problem, right? I was like, I don't believe that there's some intervention out there that's going to occur on my behalf.

You know, we used to say, let go and let God all the time. And that really was hard for me for a long time because I was like, I feel like I'm handing the baton to a ghost, right? Like it's just going to drop. If I let go of it, this baton is going to fall. No one's going to pick it up. So that's a perennial thing that goes on in me. But what I did realize, and I finally got, was that it didn't matter whether anything or anyone was there to pick up that baton, because me clutching it as tightly as I was, is what was causing me to be sick. And so, you know, for me, the trust has been almost in just the process itself, almost in the process of there's an orientation to life where I do let go and let be without any idea of what's going to happen if for no other reason, because for my

internal processes, it's a whole lot more effective, healthy way to live. That's a beautiful way to put it. I think you said it so well. And I love the phrase, let it be. That can be a beautiful mantra, rather than let go and let God, if that's not your orientation. Letting be is that letting go of the reins and still trusting in the process of life itself, and trusting in a deeper part of you that might rise up. And I think in the Buddhist tradition, Sharon Salzberg talks about that with faith. It's not about faith in something other out there than yourself, like a deity. It's like, what do you really have faith in?

Do you have faith in your basic goodness? Do you have faith in your own ability to know, to listen, to pay attention, to make choices. And so self-trust is really, really key. It's core to this journey. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, for me, when I came back to AA the second time, the first time I came in and it was 1994 in Columbus, Ohio, and I was in a 12-step program and it was basically God. And it was a very particular type of God generally. And I just went, you know what? I'll do anything. Tell me what to do.

I'll believe it. And I stayed sober about eight years. I went back out. And when I came back, I was like, all right, I can't continue to try and believe something I don't believe. That's part of why it didn't fully last, right? You know, it's partially why I ended up drinking again. It's because I hadn't really solved this problem in a deep and genuine way.

And where I landed, and it's kind of where I still orient today, was that I oriented around the idea of there being certain spiritual principles. And these are the things that we talked about earlier, the perennial wisdom, compassion, generosity, love, truth, kindness, acceptance, that those principles I trusted in. I trusted in that if I did my best to live according to those principles, the best of my ability, I could handle whatever life sort of brought my way. And that turned out for me to be a really sturdy spiritual foundation for someone who's a little bit of a rationalist in many ways, you know, but it absolutely has worked. And from there, I've actually then been able to deepen into more of the mystery, I think. That's a beautiful journey. I'm so glad you've felt free enough to share that with people,

because it's such a great example of what can happen. I often ask people, what do you believe in? And they say, I don't know. But on further inquiry, you know, they do believe in beauty. They do believe in love. They do believe in kindness. They do believe in compassion. So, harness your start of that, you know? Maybe just start compassion practice, you know, maybe just start compassion practice, you know, maybe just start spending more time in nature and in beauty and feel yourself get sort of rooted there. And that can be the beginning. And sometimes that can even be enough. I love that. That's a really beautiful way of thinking of it, which is what do we believe? And we all do believe in some things. If we didn't have certain

beliefs, we couldn't even just live any sort of life, right? We're all oriented in certain directions. I'm going to use that as a place to kind of go all the way back to very early in this conversation where we were talking about the overculture. Because what we believe in, obviously, we are getting a lot of that from the overculture. And you sent me a list of things that were really on your mind lately. And one of them was distraction. You know, that distraction is one of the biggest barriers right now to all of us finding our deeper selves. And you sent me an article by a woman named Margaret Wheatley about distraction. There was something in there that really caught my attention.

We were talking about the values earlier of the over culture. But in that article, it also talks about, it may have been Marshall McLuhan, I can't remember who she's quoting, but a person who talked about how we inevitably, as a culture, will take on the values of our technologies, that our technologies actually have values embedded in them. And if that technology sort of quote unquote wins, permeates culture, then we begin to take on the values of that technology. And I found that a fascinating way to think about where we sit today with our hyper-connected, hyper-distracted, online, short attention span world. Share a little more about that. That is one of my greatest concerns right now, I think, because I also see it in myself.

Yes. I see how easily I can be distracted into other things and even away from my spiritual practice. I think we know we're distracted, but we don't want to admit that we are because the culture is operating in distraction mode. And it's a badge of honor to say how busy we are and how connected we are and on how many platforms we are and how many followers we have, and how we are becoming influencers. And I know that's not a popular position, you know, right now coming from someone like me, but I see it in myself. And just recently, I did an at-home silent retreat for a couple of days, just to disconnect, just to unplug. Eric, I literally have to put my phone and my computer

in a different room behind closed doors. If it is there within time, I will go to it. Yeah. So I know my distraction level can be high because it's the more, well, maybe if I read this in this book, now I should follow, open my computer and follow the link and go down that hole. So for me to get the quality of two and a half days in my created at-home retreat room, I had to put those devices away. I went in with one book and my journal and that was it. And it's a withdrawal from the culture of technology. But I came out feeling like a transformation had happened in just two days, like a deep remembering of a greater calm, the remembering of deeper values.

Even last fall, I would say I developed this habit of just, I had stepped off social media because I found it not satisfying, I guess, for me. And that's just me. I know other people love it and I'm glad they love it, but I found it very distracting. And so then I think because I was used to the habit of distraction, I would go to my phone and I'd go to Google and just scroll all the top stories. I mean, and then I go, why are you doing this? This is crazy. This was such

a waste of time. You spent 30 minutes doing this. You could have been reading a wonderful book. So since then, since last fall, I've really changed this up for myself. And I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm so glad. But what I do also is have other stuff handy. So if I'm going to feel that distractive urge or restlessness or whatever, I'm going to pick up one of the books that I trust. I'm going to go to some of the music that I love. I'm going to just give myself permission to sit and look out the window and listen to the birds. It's a reorientation that has to happen. But each of us, it's hard to admit how that distraction might be making us more anxious or worried or fearful. One of the messages of the overculture ever since 9-11 has been fear.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. So be aware of what you're plugging into that's making you feel fearful, that's making you feel anxious. My anxiety, which actually soared last summer after the death of my mother, who I was curing for, it came back with a vengeance after not being there for a few years. And that was, I think, witnessing someone's death, being aware of your own mortality. I'm on the aging spectrum where I only have so much life left to live in this body. And it was really an existential crisis that created a tremendous amount of physical anxiety. I found myself engaging in kind of trauma-based activities, which is staying busy, busy, busy,

busy, busy. And then you lose your groundedness. You lose your sense of self, that deeper self. It's never gone for me. I had a more staticky connection, I'll just say, a more staticky connection. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So stepping away from social media, stepping away from endless scrolling on Google, restoring my practices. Every morning now, I make sure that I do have my book and my journal, and I always spend some time there.

I'm very lucky that I can do that. I don't have to dash out the door to work someplace else. I work at home as, you know, doing one-on-ones with people in groups. But it took discipline. Yeah. It took the vigilance that we talked about. I had to really want this because not doing it was creating suffering. And so this can happen to all of us.

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

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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 sit in a somewhat fortunate position where I get to talk to lots and lots of incredible and amazing people who do incredible and amazing things. And I will say all of them, all of us are fighting this battle and on and off. You know, I have been amused over the years at the lengths that writers will go to, to stop themselves from being distracted. I mean, people like, you know, back in the old days when you used to plug your computer into

an ethernet port, right? Like gluing shut their ethernet ports. Like, I mean, it's real. I mean, when you were saying like, I had to take my computer and I mean, I was half expecting you to be like, I had to take it out to my car and I had to drive my car down the road. And because it's real, I mean, I feel like my ongoing challenge in this area is my phone. And in the morning, I get the thing kind of out of my life in the morning. I'm like, okay, good. All right. You know? And then it just kind of creeps its way back in first in minor ways, first ways that it's actually helping me. It's, it's aiding me. It's, oh, I'm reading these poems on my phone. But then like you sooner or later, it's like, oh, today's top stories. I'm like, oh no, here we go. Then I get to a point like you're describing where I'm like, this does not feel good and

push the thing back out again. And I just think that is the nature of the world we live in for better and worse. I think most things are, but you brought up a couple of really interesting ideas as you were just talking there. That is a, as somebody who studied behavior change and behavior science so much, you hit on a couple of really key things. And one was environment really matters. You know, if your computer or your phone is near you, you're likely to get on it. And what I'm finding recently, I've been joking about this, is how often I go to my phone or my computer.

It's not right near me, but I go to it with a legitimate purpose or reason. And I open it up and there's something waiting for me. The tab I had open last night in my browser, the other email, the whatever it is, I won't even then remember why I came to the thing in the first place. So I think environment really matters. Our environments influence us way more than we would like to think they do. You were sort of saying the first step to distraction is being willing to admit how distracted we are. I think it's also really important for us to admit how influential our environments are on us, even though we'd like to think, well, I'm stronger than that.

I'm better than that. But well, not really. And then the other thing you talked about that I think is so important is like, what am I going to do instead? Because if I just take a thing away, I'm not going to be on my phone. Well, I'm getting on my phone for a reason, right? So what else can I do instead? And you really listed like, this is what I'm going to do instead. So you gave a couple of really helpful tips there for how to work with this kind of ongoing distraction. And I think it's really important for everybody kind of to understand that we're

all struggling with this so that we can be compassionate to ourselves so that we can be less judgmental. And we can recognize like, yeah, this is part of modern life, but it's an important thing. At least for me, it's a really important thing to try and keep a handle on because it will spiral for me very quickly if I don't keep a handle on it. And all my time will be spent engaged in sort of mindless technology that at the end of, you know, after you read those, you know, hour of articles on Google, my experience is often if you were like, well, what did you just read about? I'll be like, I don't know. I have no idea.

Nothing important. None of it stuck. Yeah. Yeah. What Margaret Wheatley brings up in this article, which was in Shambhala Sun, by the way, which is now Lion's Roar, she talked about an ecosystem of interruption technologies. And that really touched me because now we are talking about the interruption technologies, you know, always being on, on call, someone's texting you all the time. We always have our

communication means with us. Of course, there's lots of benefits of that, but it's an interruption technology, which does not give us the space and the time that we need to do this deeper journey. We're always being called out. We're always being distracted out. I know Father Richard Rohr, being called out. We're always being distracted out. I know Father Richard Rohr, a few years ago, when I heard him speak, said he felt that the greatest call of our day right now, spiritual call of our day, was to turn inward because we are so outward. And you cannot do the spiritual journey outward. The spiritual journey is an inward journey. And I think the other thing that Wheatley talks about, and I love this phrase because it reminds me of Ram Dass, to be everywhere is to be nowhere. If our attention is so everywhere,

where are we? We're nowhere. We're not in our deep beingness. We're not feeling at home in ourselves and likely not even at home in our families and maybe even our workplaces. And that the places that matter, if we are always out there constantly on with everything. One of my big pet peeves is to go into a restaurant where there are 12 TVs. I don't want to have my dinner watching television and especially what somebody else puts on it. And so I avoid those. Walking is another example. When I walk on the track in a beautiful kind of wooded setting, I'm amazed how many people are on their phone or listening to something with headphones. It's just become a part of the culture. This is what she's trying to say is that the

interruption technologies become the culture. And so this is where we are right now. And this is where we're moving even more so unless we decide that we want to do it differently. If you are walking with your headphones on right now, and you're listening to the one you feed, I encourage you to ignore Jan's advice and keep... listening to the one you feed, I encourage you to ignore Jan's advice and keep... It's totally true, though. I mean, I get it. I mean, it's like I have my challenges with all of this. And yet, you know, this part of what we do here, you know, and I think you're bringing up really important points. And I love that idea about the turning inward, right? Because the inward journey, again, however we want to frame it for

ourselves, whether we want to frame it as spiritual or philosophical or psychological, or I mean, these terms to me, there's so much overlap. Call it what you want. What we're talking about is having the time to go inward and find out, like you said so eloquently earlier on, to go inward and find out, like you said so eloquently earlier on, who am I and what is my life about? Yeah. Yeah. Those are big questions and they're scary questions to a lot of people, but I think they're also life-giving questions if you're willing to go in, if you're willing to turn inward. And, you know, I dare say that so many people today are. I mean, self-help books are at an all-time high. The top topic that people want to read about is happiness. There is that deep desire.

And so you have to put in the time, though. And the time, as you pointed out earlier, which I just want to reiterate, is it may start out as what I call spiritual sampling, filling, filling, filling. to reiterate is it may start out as what I call spiritual sampling, filling, filling, filling. But then at some point, we have to learn how to sit, how to listen to what is ours and what is not ours, and what feels authentic. Just sift and sort and to say, this is mine. And not that. This is going to take me to the place where I feel more calm. I feel it. Just thinking about this thing, I feel more calm, happy, at ease in my life. I want to be connected with people in a positive way, a meaningful way. And to follow that thread, you know, just to follow that thread,

stay with it. And the hard thing is when others don't understand it, which is very typical of spiritual seekers, that there's always going to be someone in your life that says, oh, why in the world are you doing that? What is that all about? What is the matter with you? You just need to do this, this, and this. We had somebody in our spiritual habits program whose husband called it. Are you going to your spiritual bullshit class now? Which is my favorite new term for my program. The spiritual bullshit class will be open for enrollment. But you're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. So it is a process of being clear about what you really want. What is your intention for yourself? What are you willing to do to make that happen?

What are you willing to think more about, think less about, do more of, do less of, and just take very simple steps to make a difference in the quality of your own life, particularly your inner life. Because the day that the lights go off in our own being, it's just us. And so how do you make peace with yourself as you are and exit gracefully? Hopefully. I always think of Steve Jobs supposedly as he was dying and his family was around him. And he was a Zen Buddhist, as you know, by practice.

And it was very clear he was starting to leave his body. And as he was leaving, his eyes suddenly opened wide and he said, Oh, wow. And as he was leaving, his eyes suddenly opened wide and he said, oh, wow. And he left. I want the oh, wow. I want the oh, wow. But I also want the oh, wow every day. I want to be able to wake up in the morning with gratitude, even if it's hard, even if it's tough to say, you know what? There's still goodness here. There's beauty here. There's meaning here. And I'm going to align with that. Well, that is a beautiful, beautiful place for us to wrap up. Jan, you and I are going to spend a little bit of time in a post-show conversation because we did not get to talk about logotherapy, which is Viktor Frankl's method of finding

meaning. I may be vastly oversimplifying that, but I can't wait to talk because you have a degree in this. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show conversation and other benefits we offer, you can become part of our community at oneufeed.net slash join. Jan, thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this. I always enjoy our time together. So thank you for spending some time with us. Oh, thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure. Many blessings. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support.

Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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