The One You Feed - Lodro Rinzler- The One You Feed

Episode Date: January 17, 2014

This week on The One You Feed we have Lodro Rinzler. He is a teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage and the author of the books "The Buddha Walks into a Bar" and "Walk Like a Buddha". Over the last decade he has taught numerous workshops at meditation centers and college campuses throughout North America. Lodro’s columns appear regularly on the Huffington Post and Marie Claire online and he is frequently featured in Reality Sandwich, the Interdependence Project, Shambhala Sun, Buddhadharma, and Good Men Project. He is the founder of the Institute for Compassionate Leadership, an authentic leadership training and job placement organization, and lives in Brooklyn with his dog Tillie and his cat Justin Bieber.In This Interview Lodro and I discuss...The One You Feed parable.How you can be sort of a mess and still ok.Basic Goodness versus Original SinDo psychopaths have basic goodnessHow the death of one of Lodro's close friends led him to spend time in Columbus, OH- our hometown.How to build a committed group of people in a community.AlcoholHow alcohol is like a chainsaw.How fixed expectations cause us trouble.Lodro's relationship advice.Lodro Rinzler LinksLodro Rinzler homepageLodro's YouTube pageLodro Rinzler author page on AmazonInstitute for Compassionate LeadershipSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

But let's practice meditation so that we're practicing for being present for the rest of our lives. Or we're falling in love all over again. Or, you know, we've got to have a difficult conversation with this guy that we're seeing because he didn't make us come. 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 reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Lodro Rinsler, practitioner and

teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage. He's the best-selling author of The Buddha Walks Into a Bar and the new book, Walk Like a Buddha. Over the last decade, he's taught numerous workshops at meditation centers and college campuses throughout the United States. Lodro's columns also appear in the Huffington Post and Marie Claire Online. You can find out more about Lodro in our show notes at oneufeed.net slash Lodro. Hi, Lodro. Welcome to the show. Oh, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for joining us. So our podcast is based on the parable of two wolves, which I know that you know, because you included it in your most recent book. on the parable of two wolves, which I know that you know because you included it in your most recent book. And the parable goes something like there's a grandfather who is talking with his grandson, and he says,

In life, there's a great battle inside both of us between two wolves. One is a good wolf, which represents kindness and love and joy, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents greed and fear and hate. And the grandson thinks for a second and looks at his grandfather and says, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So our podcast is, you know, what we try and really at least start off focusing on is what does that parable mean to you in your life and in your work? You know, it's so interesting. So I was, you know, I was raised Buddhist and I've been practicing meditation all my life. And I've been teaching meditation for about the last 12 years. And it was, I just heard that

parable maybe a year and a half ago. And it really spoke to me. And it's one of those things, I'm sure you guys have had these sorts of moments too, where you hear something and say, oh, I've been trying to say that for so long. And for me, yeah, it was really, you know, the statement of purpose. And, you know, I think a lot of what my work revolves around is not necessarily the esoteric aspects of Buddhism, but it's about making it accessible. And, you know, with the introduction of meditation practice and really trying to get people to do that regularly is basically me saying, can we actually evolve and be kinder, you know, more compassionate human beings? Can we start feeding that as opposed to

the habitual way that we've always been, you know, trying to put ourselves before others, the ways that we've been trying to be aggressive to ourselves and others, all of that. So it really did speak to me because I think that's the bottom line. When I think about my own spiritual life and my own meditation practice, it comes down to am I actually becoming a kinder person out of this? And if not, what am I doing here? Excellent. Yeah, one of the things you start your book off by saying, and I'm going to read you a quote, which I think is a really, it's a very sort of startling way to start a book, but I thought it was worth talking through here. And you say, straight off the bat, I should mention that I'm sort of a mess and also okay. Sometimes I'm sad or angry, and yet I'm

also confident that at my core, I'm a Buddha. Could you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by that? Yeah, thanks for asking that, because that was a very intentional way for me to lead. And as you mentioned, this is my second book. My first book was called The Buddha Walks into a Bar. And I mean, at this point, you know, I'm 31 years old. I'm not the learned monk at your local monastery that's been, you know, you climb the mountain to go see. I'm a person. I'm a guy, you know, just a regular guy that's been meditating for a long time. And I try and make that very clear, particularly coming off of the, I think people actually skip over that, but particularly coming off the first book, you know, there's a lot of people coming to me and saying, you know, I look up to what you're saying here.

Can you give me X, Y, and Z advice? And I'm always happy to discuss people's situations with them. But I don't think of myself as some sort of great expert. It's not like I'm the guru that people should go to by any means. I'm a person who contemplates these things a lot and likes to be in discussion with people about it. So there are moments where I still feed the wrong wolf. And I'm very straightforward about that, that I make mistakes and that I'm not some wonderful figure that is done with that path of mistakes. It's something I actively engage in and learn from.

of mistakes. It's something I actively engage in and learn from. But at the same time, I do have this deep experience and belief in what within the Buddhist tradition we call Buddha nature or within the Shambhala Buddhist tradition we call basic goodness. This idea that, you know, inherently we're not basically messed up. Inherently we're actually basically good, that we're actually, know nice kind genuine people and that's our birthright and it's just that we get confused at times we're habituated to feeding the wrong wolf and then as a result we end up um perpetuating more confusion that was actually the next the next question i had for you was to talk a little bit more about that that concept of basic goodness, which is really sort of within Shambhala and a lot of other areas.

And it's sort of, it's pretty contradictory towards what we see here in the West normally, right, the concept of original sin. It's almost the exact opposite of that. And in your book you talk a little bit about how you can apply that idea of basic goodness to absolutely anyone. So if you could, maybe talk a minute about how applying that concept of basic goodness to yourself is helpful, and then also how applying it to people who are difficult in your life is helpful. Sure, happy to. So as you said, I mean, you know, there's a, I wouldn't even necessarily call it a Christian point of view, almost a consumer point of view, that we're never quite good enough, that we're always basically flawed and we need another product or another relationship or another job to actually make us whole. And the Buddhist point of view is that that's not necessarily true, that we're actually already whole and that if we could just get to become more familiar with ourselves, then we would really experience that more deeply. So that's the practice of meditation that's discussed within both my books, The Buddha Walks into a Bar and Walk Like a Buddha, where we go into one of the Tibetan words of meditation, which is gom, G-O-M.

And it becomes translated more directly as become familiar with or familiarity, i.e. we're starting to become more familiar with our own mind, the ways that we actually act out to continue to go with the parable, the ways that we feed the wrong wolf, all the habitual stuff that sort of allows us to get in our own way. And if we could actually start to discern what those are, then we could start to not necessarily buy into that same habitual framework. We can actually create new patterns that might actually be a little bit more helpful for us. We can actually learn to feed the right wolf sometimes.

So this is, in addition to just sort of becoming familiar with our neurosis, we also become more familiar with this concept of basic goodness. It doesn't become a concept. It becomes an experience where we actually start to say, oh, you know what? This is underneath all these layers of confusion. I actually feel somewhat peaceful. Like maybe that's really who I am. So that's the concept of basic goodness for ourselves. And then the interesting thing is we have this moment where we look out and we say, gosh, I guess everyone else has this too. It's not just me that is basically good or has the ability to wake up or is the innately kind, good, worthy individual. It's everyone. So I talk about you're a jerk of a boss,

that that person really ultimately is basically good and ultimately confused, just like we are. Or all the way up to, there's a section in there on psychopaths and sociopaths, people that, you know, I've gotten a lot of flack for saying this, but you know, these are human beings. And from the Buddhist point of view, they possess basic goodness. And people say, you know, they're not even real because they don't possess empathy. I think it becomes very theoretical, very philosophical. And I was having one of those discussions while I was on book tour. I was in North Carolina and I was being driven back to where I was staying by this woman. And she said,

you know, I was actually sort of moved by what happened there today. And I said, oh, you know, what I sort of get, it was getting a little old hat talking about this whole, like this Hitler possessed basic goodness thing. And she said, you know, I'm married. Both me and my husband have children from previous marriages. We raised them together from middle school. One of them started spinning out a little bit in his early 20s. And the story progressed to the point where she revealed that this, She revealed that her stepchild ended up joining with his friends in the murder of a young boy.

And he is in jail. And she said that she had been practicing meditation before that happened. And when this happened, it sort of shook her faith in basic goodness. How could this individual that she had raised, how could he possess the ability to do what he had done? And she started visiting him after a period of time when she felt like she could. And after a period of time, she actually started to see him reveal who he previously was a little bit. Once he had sort of relaxed into that environment, he started asking about the household animals. He started actually requesting art supplies because he wanted to paint again. Things like that, where all of a sudden, he wasn't this hardened criminal. He was her child again. He was this being who really did have that capacity to love and be loved,

which he hadn't seen in many years. So I was deeply touched by that story. And it made it less theoretical for me, at least the fact that even people who are able to commit atrocious crimes ultimately do have the ability to reveal their own basic goodness. Do you think, does Buddhism posit any of the reasons that people can go so far from basic goodness into sort of such an extreme as you were just talking about? Because if you start from a concept of original sin, it's not that far to doing something necessarily bad, whereas it seems like a pretty long journey if you start out basically good. What do you think are some of the things that, that happened to us along the way? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's tricky because I, I mean, even in that story I just told, you know, this woman, it basically, what it sounded like is that this, her son started hanging out with the wrong crowd. And it's like, well, you know, is that all it takes sometimes?

I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, is that all it takes sometimes? I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, I can talk in sort of broad brushstrokes where I do feel like people are certainly products of their, of their environments. And I do feel like, you know, within systems, we actually have systems that are reify certain values and some systems reify the values of, um, making a lot of money and some systems reify values of, you know, trying to be tough or trying to make a name for yourself in other ways. And, you know, I think one of the more interesting things for me is not necessarily to sit there and say, okay, here's why people get to the point where they can create, you know, atrocities. here's why people get to the point where they can create atrocities. Or here's that line between mental illness and people not being able to help themselves or people who are just products of society and video game violence.

It's more interesting for me personally to start to dive into those communities and start to work with individuals on the ground. So one of the things I've been trying to emphasize is doing more and more volunteer work myself. I work with the Reciprocity Foundation, which is a homeless aid organization here in New York that takes something of a holistic approach to homeless youth. And, you know, I've definitely been trying to encourage other people

to do similar things. I also started something called the Institute for Compassionate Leadership, which is sort of like my idea of an incubator for young people in particular, but anyone really who wants to create social change and they're not exactly sure what they want to do. So they come through our training program that's part community organizing, part meditation, part traditional leadership skills, and actually start to get focused on how they want to create change in the world and volunteering and then ultimately getting meaningful work in that field. So for me personally, I've tried to step a little way from the how could this possibly happen and get more into the how could we treat it a little bit more. Yeah, trying to figure out how things happen is often a, there's no real point to it. I think the Buddha himself, right, said something like, if you've been shot with an arrow, it doesn't

make sense to sit around and think about who shot the arrow and what was on the arrow and, you know, what their family was like, you pull out the arrow. I completely agree with that. I, you know, I'm sure that there's going to be some listeners out there saying, well, if you don't understand the system, how can we create change? And I am happy to admit that I'm sure there are smarter people in higher positions who will help really start to shape the system. And, you know, I'm happy to know some of those people, but I, I personally, my, my view, my role is on the ground and I feel like I'm more of on the ground foot soldier, I suppose, some great philosopher. So speaking of, you just touched a little bit on community organizing and on the ground a little

bit. Uh, I realized in your, in reading your book that you spent a fair amount of time in our hometown here. We're from Columbus, Ohio. Yeah. Yeah. Share a little bit about your time here and maybe what you were doing and what you think about Columbus. Sure. I mean, I ended up in Columbus in something of a circuitous way in that I lost a friend in July of 2012. And that person had been a longtime Obama staffer starting in the Senate race of 2004. Obama staffer starting in the Senate race of 2004. And in my own complete, you know, valley of grief, not knowing exactly what I should do, some of his colleagues pushed me to go where I could make a difference and carry on his work. And I ended up in Columbus, Ohio. So, I mean, honestly, if you put a gun to my head and said, why Columbus?

I would have said, because people said, go to Columbus. And, you know, I was very influenced. It's a swing state. Yeah, a swing state. And I mean, once I got there and actually realized the work that my friend had been doing for so many years and just, you know, you could love Obama, you can hate Obama. But the actual tactics that were employed, you know, they were developed by a professor at Harvard known as Marshall Gans. that were employed. They were developed by a professor at Harvard known as Marshall Gans.

It was really, in that first week, what they asked me to do is to go into the neighborhoods within which I was supposed to be organizing and meet with 10 people in an authentic way. And that was my homework assignment. That was my whole job. That was my paycheck.

Go meet with people in your community and just listen to their stories. Get to know them. Tell them why you're there. And then at the end of it all, maybe they'll say, how do I get involved in this whole Obama thing? It seems like you're passionate about it. I'm passionate about it. What can I do to help? And more often than not, they would. So, you know, you do enough of those over time and you start to build out this small army of people who really want to do good work and you can actually empower them in certain ways to phone bank or knock doors or whatever it might be in a given case based on their capabilities and interests. And over time you would build a whole network within communities that I'm happy to say is still there in many situations.

Groups that still get together to do community change, even after the situation of the election. So, you know, it's actually doing this great work where you meet with people authentically, you listen deeply, you get to know them in an authentic way. And then you get to work with them in a way that both of you feel good about. So it was a wonderful experience. I mean, it was a great way for me personally to sort of transform my grief in some small way. But, you know, I loved Columbus, actually. I really did. I think of it often and think of it fondly, despite the fact that I was in a lot of pain while I was there.

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 Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

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

No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to change directions a little bit and go back to, you touched on it a little bit earlier, that one of the things that I think you're known for is sort of dealing with Buddhism and people kind of where they are and touching on a lot of subjects that are not typically covered in your usual Buddhist texts, things like tattoos and going out on the town and drinking and sex. And in your book, you start off the section on sex with a story about you giving a teaching, and there was a woman there who was 50 years old. And can you pick up the story from there?

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. When I go on these book tours, it's really like a city every other day and I'm, you know, I'm sort of on all the time and I was exhausted at that point, but I flew into Seattle. I'm at a meditation center and, uh, yeah, this woman in her fifties, I said, what do you guys want to talk about? She raised her hand. She said, I, you know, I'm going through divorce. I started dating again. I thought, think approximately I know where this is going. And she said, you know, when I'm with a guy and he orgasms and I haven't, but we're laying there and he asked me if I did, he always wants me to say that I did even though I haven't. So I don't know if I should lie to him, you know, because honestly, like, I don't, I don't want to have to like sit

there and sue this ego. But at the same time, like, I didn't, I don't, you know, it's like, I didn't, I didn't orgasm. So like, I don't, I don't feel like it's genuine communication for me to lie about. Anyway, what does Buddhism have to say about all this? And I mean, you know, my friends like to joke that this is the only time that they've ever seen me speechless, which is probably, probably true. But it was, you know, I thought this is amazing in some sense. I mean, I, my mind was blown and I probably wasn't extremely helpful to her, but it was amazing that, you know, this is definitely the first time that that sort of discussion had taken place in the hollowed walls of these meditation center.

And why shouldn't we actually be able to talk about things like sex and dating and work and how our boss is a jerk and how we're going through divorce at our spiritual center? Why shouldn't we be able to say, here's how I'm actually applying my meditation practice, my religious beliefs to any of these areas of my life? Why should I feel like I have to hide the fact that I go out to a bar on a Friday night with friends and sort of break my world into two? So, you know, I've been this big advocate for just saying, okay, let's practice meditation, but let's practice meditation so that we're practicing for being present for the rest of our lives. So that we could be present when our loved one is in the hospital and we're holding

their hand, or we're falling in love all over again, or, you know, we've got to have a difficult conversation with this guy that we're seeing because he didn't make us come. You know, it's like, why shouldn't we be able to talk about these things? And, you know, there's definitely traditional Buddhists out there that are like, how dare you, sir? And I'm okay with that. I mean, I think all I'm trying to do is, it's not, I'm not trying to upset the Buddhist. And I'm okay with that. I mean, I think all I'm trying to do is it's not, I'm not trying to upset the Buddhist teachings. I'm saying, can we really apply it to our modern world? And what does that look like for you personally? Great. A question I had for you and kind of going down that line a little bit further, you sort of are, you know, in addition to being known for those

things, you know, the also sort of the drinking Buddhist, right? And, you know, both your book titles sort of reference the concept of drinking. And, you know, also the lineage Shambhala that you're from, you know, the founder of that, you know, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a known drinker. And I think a lot of accounts sort of say that that ended up with being what killed him. And I'm curious how that all fits together for you. And it's clear in your books that it's a subject you give a lot of thought to. And so I'd just like to explore that a little bit more. And one of the things that I think about as I look at all that is there's a lot of potential risk there. What do you think the reward is? That's a great question. You know, I'll be very, very honest with you and I'll share some stuff that I actually haven't in the books at all. But, you know, so yes, to give a little bit of a history background, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a brilliant Tibetan Buddhist teacher who drank heavily. And many people would say, you know, that's, you know, he drank himself to death in some ways. And I'm not going to excuse

that or apologize for it in any way. And I'm also going to say that, you know, I believe that both things could happen, that you could be a brilliant individual and not take care of your body. You know, I've seen it happen in many, many shapes and forms. And to say that spiritual teachers are not, you know, are going to all of a sudden transcend that boundary is, it's not always true. You know, his background and, you know, some other backgrounds of teachers that I love and respect, I struggle with. I do, but I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I was actually reading something he wrote today about communication within romantic relationships. I thought, you know, this is just so brilliant. And it's so sad to me that, you know, he died so young. And it's, I have a really difficult relationship with that, with that push-pull. But what I will say, you know, that's

my personal relationship with him, but, you know you know, he is brilliant or he was brilliant. And, um, if he was still alive, I don't know what my relationship would be like with him. I have, on one side of my family, I come from a long lineage of alcoholics. So I, my father was not an active alcoholic during my lifetime. He was recovered before I was born. But there were many waves of destruction that were left because he was an alcoholic. And I was very aware from a young age of what it meant to actually look at your relationship with alcohol and that I was always in I am always in danger of um really alcohol alcoholic prone genes so in addition to the whole Buddhist thing of like you know you know what's what's the deal with lay practitioners versus monastics drinking?

And, you know, I could go on on a long tangent about, you know, the precepts and how they've been interpreted in numerous cultures over time. I mean, that's in the book and you can read about it. But for me personally, ever since I started drinking in my late, late teens, you know, it's always been a i have to look at that relationship it's not something i can take casually so for me personally it's always been um it's been something that i've had to analyze pretty closely to this day you know i mean now that i'm in my 30s is my relationship with alcohol is much different than it was when i was in my early 20s and uh it's always something that i look at and refine. And I mean, it gets to that point that I sort of emphasize repeatedly in both books, which is why do we do what we do? And it doesn't necessarily have to

just relate to alcohol, but it could relate to sex. It could relate to online shopping. Online shopping is not a bad thing if we really need a new printer. We should buy a new printer. But if we are spending all of our time and all of our money in an addictive way and we're not exactly sure why we're buying all these things, then that's actually harming ourselves and others. So when it comes to alcohol, if you're going to go out on a Friday night, why are you drinking? If someone hands you a shot of tequila and you're out with friends, are you drinking because you've had a hard week and you want to forget about it

because that's going to take you down one road? Or are you drinking because your friend just got a promotion and you're having a celebratory shot and then you'll probably call it early, whatever, that'll take you down a different road. So knowing why we do anything that we do is important. And I mean, like you said, alcohol is an extremely dangerous thing. I think in Walk Like a Buddha, I mentioned that, you know, it's like taking out a chainsaw. If you don't know what you're going to do with it, and you're just going to wave it around, you're going to harm a lot of people, including yourself. But if you actually know what you're doing there, and you have a specific idea of what you want to see happen, you're more likely to actually do something that is not harmful.

Ideally, something that's productive. 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 why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah, it's clear you've spent a lot of time there. And I think one of the most interesting responses to, you know, talking about sort of the tragedy of, you know, of Trungpa Rinpoche was Pema Chodron just sort of the tragedy of you know of trunk perinpoche was Pema Chodron just sort of saying I don't know you know she had yeah you know I I don't know what to say about it and that's that's as far as I can get and I I thought that was that was very interesting I want to there's another quote in your book that I'd like to read and then ask you to give us you know a little bit more elaboration on.

It says, we spend so much of our time thinking through exactly what we want to see happen in the future. When we get to that point in time and everything is not exactly as we imagined it, we end up disappointed. This is the nature of life. The more fixed expectations we carry, the more we are likely to be let down. I mean, you know, there's so, we spent so much of our time just lost in the future. We're either reliving a conversation that we, you know, took place early in the day, or we're planning out the rest of our lives and what should happen. I've been, particularly when it comes to romantic relationships,

which seems to be like 90% of what people actually want to talk to me about. It comes down to, you know, I have this fixed idea of who my partner is and what I think should be happening and it's not happening. And the question becomes like, how did you get there? Because you spend so much time with your partner or your friend or your parents or your kids and you say, all right, that's who this person is. You solidify it. You say, you know, they are this hair color and they do these sorts of things and they like this sort of ice cream. And then we forget that as, you know, we continue to age and grow and evolve that these other people are doing the exact same thing in ways that we often don't even realize because we see them every day.

So we actually start to develop fixed expectations. You know, my partner always does the laundry and I always do the dishes. And then when your partner doesn't do the laundry, you get really disappointed. Your expectations are not being met. And I mean, that's such a minor version, but, you know, you used to be such a romantic in our relationship and now you're not you always used to do xyz and now you do you know abc instead and because that's such a fixed thing in your mind you are met with disappointment so what i'm what i'm trying to encourage and what i think meditation naturally encourages when people practice it is this fresh start point of view where we actually

reside with what's going on as opposed to what we think ought to be going on we actually start to just be with the people that we're with and we can continue to be inquisitive about who they are or inquisitive about our job situation or our vacation or whatever it is without necessarily saying here's how it's got to be, otherwise I'm not going to be happy. The more we can relax with our situation as it is, the more we can actually enjoy it. So that's what I mean when I say that these fixed expectations start to drag us down. It's that sense of, you know, I've built out this house

that I think I need to live in, and if the house looks different than I thought it was going to look, I'm miserable. Whereas if we just sort of gradually continue to build and sort of see it for what it is and, you know, do what feels natural, then we're going to enjoy where we are. So that's, I mean, this may be a flawed analogy, but, you know, I think that's the overarching beauty of the meditation practice, that it allows us to be with what is as opposed to what we think ought to happen or what we quote unquote need to happen. Yeah, I think that's, I really like that fresh, would you call it fresh view? Yeah, fresh start point of view. Fresh start point of view in a relationship. I think that's really poignant advice.

And the other thing I think the real danger of sort of expectations in the future is this idea that this thing will make me happy. And then like you say, we get there and we're not happy. And instead of being able to question that and go, well, maybe it's the way I'm thinking, it tends to be like, oh, I thought that the Honda Accord would make me happy, but clearly it's probably a Lexus that's going to be needed because I don't feel happy. And, you know, I've certainly been guilty of that in my life of getting towards something, not feeling any better and just thinking, well, okay, just keep going to the next thing. So we're getting close to the time here. What I'd like to do is read you another quote from your book that I think really hits on the topic of feeding our good wolf, and then allow you to give any kind of closing comments after

that. So, you say, in any moment we have a choice. We can give in to society's exhortations to be despondent because we will never be good enough to succeed in love, work, or family. Or we can listen to our own basic goodness, allowing that intuitive voice to guide us towards awakening to our full potential. We can hear that voice urging us to realize that we can accept ourselves exactly as we are, that we are already complete. And I think that's a pretty good rehashing of feeding your good wolf. Yeah, as I said at the beginning of this time together, I do feel like this good wolf analogy really encompasses what I've been trying to talk about for quite some time,

because we always have the ability to relax with what is the ability to actually connect with our basic goodness and act from that point of view. It's always there. The wolf is always there. And it's just that we're so habituated to actually feeding our negative patterns that we don't even see that they're negative anymore. So, you know, for people listening, I do encourage you to try meditation and to try to become familiar with your mind so that you can connect more fully with this wolf of kindness, this wolf of goodness that we always have with us. this wolf of kindness, this wolf of goodness that we, that we always have with us. Excellent. And we will have links out on our show notes to your site. And I know you have some basic teachings out there that people can view kind of right away in a YouTube channel. So we'll definitely link out to those things. Is there anything you feel like you want to say that we haven't covered? No, that's great. I mean, I'm always happy to chat with people

after these sorts of things. And as you know, through both of my books, I may open the intro with saying I'm sort of a mess, but also okay. But I close the intro with, you know, when you're done with this thing, reach out because I love the dialogue aspect. As I mentioned before, I'm much more of a dialogue guy

than a teacher guy. So I'm always happy to chat with people. Excellent. Well, thank you very much for joining us. I enjoyed the conversation. I enjoyed your books. And, you know, it's always great to have people presenting different views of spirituality and life and making it more accessible to people. So thanks for all that you're doing there. Okay, sounds good. Thanks again. All right, take care. Have a good evening.

Take care, guys. All right, bye. Bye. You can find out more about Lro and the one you feed podcast in our show notes at one you feed.net slash lodro