The One You Feed - Mirabai Starr

Episode Date: February 16, 2016

This week we talk to Mirabai Starr about grief and healingMirabai Starr writes, speaks and leads retreats on the inter-spiritual teachings of the mystics.Known for her revolutionary translations of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Julian of Norwich, Mirabai renders mystical masterpieces accessible, beautiful, and relevant to a contemporary circle of seekers. Her commentaries on the interconnected wisdom of all traditions are lyrical and evocative.Mirabai builds bridges not only between religious traditions, but also between contemplative life and compassionate service, between cultivating an inner relationship with the Beloved and expressing that intimacy in community, between the transformational power of loss and longing for the sacred.Her latest book is called Caravan of No Despair Our Sponsor this Week is MeetMindfulVisit MeetMindful and get a free trialIn This Interview, Mirabai Starr and I Discuss:The One You Feed parableWalking the landscape of loss in a genuine wayLearning to be present even when things are really hardThe death of her 14 year old daughterHow sometimes spiritual teachings fail us and are of no useRealizing that we share our suffering with so many other peopleThe Stages of GriefReturning to joy after great loss, it eventually happensHow tragedy and trauma are not guarantees to transformationThe states of mind that allow us to turn our pain into treasureCultivating curiosity about our experiences, even when painfulThe Dark Night of the SoulThe transforming power of loveHow vast we are as beingsTelling the truth about griefThe holiness of being broken openWhat mysticism isMystical poetryThe desire to experience unionThe four arms of yoga in HinduismApproaching the divine in the way that is best for each of usWhat interspirituality isThe difference between interspiritual and interfaithMirabai Starr LinksHomepageTwitterFacebookSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Grief does break us open, and that broken open state is a holy, holy place to dwell. And so what? Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about

thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to really know really.com

and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead the really know really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mirabai Starr. She writes, speaks, and leads retreats on the inner spiritual teachings of the mystics. Mirabai builds bridges not only between religious traditions, but also between contemplative life and compassionate service, between cultivating an inner relationship with the Beloved and expressing that intimacy and community between the transformational power of loss and longing for the sacred. Her new book is Caravan of No Despair, a memoir of loss and transformation.

And here's the interview with Mirabai Starr. Hi, Mirabai. Welcome to the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to have you on. Your latest book is called Caravan of No Despair, a memoir of loss and transformation. And I have to say that the second half of the book for sure, totally blew me away. Wow. That's quite a thing to say. It is really, really good. It's a very emotional and touching story. And I'd like to go into that right after we do what we normally do when we start, which is the parable. So there's a

grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Oh, it's so deeply relevant to the kind of work I do because I work a lot with conscious grief or grieving as a spiritual path. I mean, not that we would take that on on purpose, but when life delivers these kinds of devastating losses that it can deliver, how do we walk through the landscape of loss in a conscious way? And so much of that has to do with not foisting our preconceptions onto the reality of what has happened to us, but instead just trying to be present for things as they are, even if as things are, is unbearable.

Even if that means showing up for the unbearableness of our devastating losses. And when we do that, when we choose not to think positively about our losses, that's not at all what I'm talking about. But when we choose to really be present with what is and not get lost in victim mode, even though sometimes we do feel deeply sorry for ourselves, and well, we should, but really just be with it, then we're making a choice to feed that wolf that is the wolf of courage and love, rather than the wolf of shutting life out of our hearts. Yeah. And so you have a great deal of personal experience in this space. In your book, you talk about a couple of significant losses in your childhood. What I'd like to focus on, though, is the part that I was talking about, the second half of the book. Do you want to tell us what that loss was? I have had a number of losses in my life, many losses. Some of us just seem to have that path where we're just given loss after loss in this life. And my life is one of

those. Some of you who are listening are identifying with that, I know. But the one that was the most extreme that really catapulted me into a different universe of grief and of spiritual growth was the death of my 14-year-old daughter, Jenny, 14 years ago in October, the end of October of 2001. Well, Jenny died in a car accident. That's going to be the easy way to explain it for now. If we go into the rest of the story later, I'll say more. But Jenny's death coincided to the day with the release of my very first book. And I've done a dozen books since then. But the first book was a translation of Dark Night of the Soul by the 16th century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, who really is writing about the transformational power of suffering.

And these two events happened on the same day in the sense that my version of that classic mystical teaching came out into the world. And my child left this world and I was plunged into a dark night that I never could have anticipated. So it took me 14 years, but I finally wrote that story. Well, you did so very beautifully. Do you want to talk to us about the events that were leading up to your daughter's death? Yeah, okay. So I alluded to that a little bit. So Jenny, who I adopted when she was very small, her birth mother was severely mentally ill. And Jenny was extraordinarily stable as a child. I mean, there was no hint that she herself would become mentally ill in even up until the weeks before she died. She still was like a high achiever. She was a freshman in high school. She was already very

much an activist. She was an environmental activist. And she, um, this was right after nine 11, she became very much interested in human rights and in countering Islamophobia. became very much interested in human rights and in countering Islamophobia. And so she was a very conscious, high achieving kid. But a few days before, before she died, Jenny had a psychotic break. And it was completely unexpected on my part. And so much so that I didn't recognize right away what was going on, especially because most people have the onset of mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia when they're late teens, early twenties, not 14. So I didn't see it coming. And Jenny's psychotic break manifested as it does for many spiritual geniuses as a spiritual experience.

And I recognized that was happening, but I didn't. It took me a couple of days before I knew, with the help of some people who understood about these things, that also she was experiencing mental illness and that it was dangerous. And so my friends convinced me to get her to a hospital. And in attempting to do so, she kept jumping out of the car and I got out of the car and she got into the driver's seat and drove away into the mountains and crashed and died. And so, yeah, so that's what happened. That's the simple version of the

story. The book, of course, goes into it in much more detail with much more nuance, because it is a more nuanced story than I just was able to convey in a couple of minutes. But that's, yeah, that's basically what happened. And so my life really, I was set on a course that I was unprepared for in many ways and in other ways, a little bit prepared for by virtue of having been immersed in teachings about radical unknowingness, because that's what a loss like this plunges us into. There's just no way to have it all figured out and sorted out and explained by any spiritual teaching or any psychological explanation or anything else. There's only the mystery. And that's where I was. Yeah, I've heard you refer to, you know, the idea of people explaining it via the various spiritual teachings as sort of somebody wanting to put a bandaid on your gunshot wound. Right. I did say that in the book. Very good. Yeah. So one of the things I'd like to do, your writing is very lovely. And I'd like to read a section out of the book, if that's okay with you, that happens shortly after your daughter's death.

And you're describing how, you know, immediately after you are surrounded by people, you know, and they're very much around you and propping you up. But at one point, you decide you want to be alone. And, you know, you feel like it's time to kind of go into the grief. And so that's kind of where we'll pick this up. Thank you. Even as I rocked on my knees howling, I detected soft breathing behind the roaring. I leaned in, listened. It was the murmuring of 10 million mothers, backwards and forwards, in time, and right now, who had also lost children. They were lifting me, holding me. They had woven a net of their broken hearts, and they were keeping me safe there. I realized that one day I would take my rightful place as a link in this web, It's very powerful to hear that read to me. Well, it's very powerful to read, I can assure you of that. And it's a beautiful sentiment of, you know, for me, it said a couple different

things. One was that there's nothing to do except grieve what you're going through there. And I think also at the same time, it's pointing to you were able to recognize that you weren't totally in this alone. You know, this wasn't something that happened only to you. And despite how awful different things are that happened to us, I think there's always some comfort in realizing it's not us. It's not a personal thing in the sense of something happening to us because of, you know, who or what we are, but that's a human thing. And I just found that really touching. Thank you, Eric. It's very tempting to go into that solitary place where you feel like this rarefied creature that is enduring something that nobody else could possibly relate to. And so on the other hand, though, when we're experiencing the fire of grief, fire melts things and it can melt the boundaries that separate us

from, from other, other beings and, and from the human condition. Um, and, and that's in fact what happened. It was like the grief was, was powerful enough that it knocked down the walls between myself and my fellow creatures. And I took my rightful place in that interconnected web of being for the first time in my life. So far from making me feel special, my daughter's death delivered me into the arms of humanity. me into the arms of humanity. And, and I, I really got in a visceral way that I was part of a web of being that included many other grieving people, especially mothers. And so as you moved into this grieving process and, and went through it, it was interesting, the book you talk about Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's has got that the idea of the certain stages of grieving. Can you share your experience of how what happened to you if it lined up with that or did not?

I love Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's framework for the kind of universal features of the grief landscape, because it helps us not feel so alone and so crazy when we're going through it. We recognize that it's the human condition and many people before us and many people to come walk through very similar kinds of emotional and spiritual states. Fortunately, Kubler-Ross explained to us, at least later, that it's not like this is some kind of neat timeline and you check off the five phases of, what are they, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Right. It's not linear, and it's not like at the end of this checklist, you're going to be all better. Right. going to be all better. You know, the understanding is that when you've had a great loss, that's

connected to a great love that will continue to inform the rest of your life. But we begin to integrate what happened into the bigger, vast picture of who we are. And it takes its place in the fullness of our being. I mean, it may take a huge place. Like Jenny's death will always occupy a major part of my narrative to myself and also who I am. But it's kind of like learning to live with an amputation and finding a new center of gravity in your life. It's not like the limb magically grows back, but you're able to enter life again with fullness and even joy. I never could have guessed that I would ever feel joy again. And yet now every day of my life

is brimming. I also feel the big black hole where Jenny isn't physically here. So it's kind of all true at the same time. But Kubler-Ross's stages of grief have unfortunate names like denial, anger, bargaining, even acceptance, certainly depression, because they're, they're not pathologies, those stages, they're not pathological states, they're, they're really spiritual initiations in some way. Like each one is a portal. And even though we revisit each one over and over again, and it's more of a spiral staircase, or sometimes we dip into different ones almost minute by minute, especially in the early stages of loss. There is this experience that I've had with each of those five stations, I'd rather call them, that feel like spiritual initiations and they grow me and they bring me to a deeper and more integrated place.

And so I bless those initiations. And here's the rest of the interview with Mirabai Starr. You say that tragedy and trauma are not guarantees for a transformational spiritual experience. describe not like how do you grieve, but what principles or what characteristics do you think help make the losses in our lives that we glean what we can positively from them? What are the states? 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.

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Yeah, well, one of them is dropping down into hopelessness. And I hope that doesn't sound as dark as it could. What I mean by that is kind of what Pema Chodron means, the great American Tibetan Buddhist teacher, when she speaks about groundlessness. It's like when things happen in our lives that are beyond our control and that are as far away from our preference

as they could possibly be, how do we, instead of pushing them away or turning away from them or trying to check out of the experience through all the various means that are at our disposal, various substances and addictions and other kinds of behaviors that take us away from our experience, how do we rest in our groundlessness? Like the ground has been totally taken out from under our feet. In my case, that was that certainly happened. When Jenny died, she was the center, you know, I was in the middle of full on mothering a teenager, and she was gone. No ground left. Everything burned to the ground. And it was like a free fall.

So what Pema Chodron and other great wisdom teachers, St. John of the Cross, whose masterpiece, Dark Night of the Soul, I had just finished translating, invite us to actually rest in not knowing, abide in the mystery, and in fact, even turn toward our overwhelming feelings with a gentleness and a tenderness toward ourselves and cultivate a kind of curiosity about the experience that we're having even if the experience seems beyond bearing. And when we soften and yield and turn toward the tidal wave as it comes crashing over us, something almost magical happens or can happen where we are swept up in that wave and then we are returned to the shore unharmed because we softened because we yielded when we allow ourselves to know absolutely nothing when we don't try to fill in the emptiness the yawning chasm with spiritual explanations or theology or dogma or doctrines or even spiritual practices, even our reliable, favorite, familiar spiritual practices, like for those of us who have been

on a spiritual path and may have certain things that we do every day, prayer, meditation, yoga, reading scriptures, and so on. If they don't work in the depths of our anguish, and they're likely not to, then the invitation is to let them go and to just be with what is. And so that's what John of the Cross says, you know, when you have a dark night of the soul experience, no amount of effort on your part is going to mend what you mistakenly perceive as your brokenness. The only thing that you are called to do is to soften and just be. And into that shattered space, the light begins to seep. And we, because we're present and we're quiet and we're still against all our intuition to do otherwise, we begin to notice that luminosity that soaks up into the shattered container of our souls and fills us with light or doesn't.

I mean, it's grace, according to the mystics anyway. This is a process of grace. But if we're available, then it's much more likely that we will have a transformational experience. So it's not like everybody who has a terrible loss, a tragedy, a trauma is going to have an enlightenment experience. I'm not suggesting that. But for those of us to whom traumatic things happen, tragic things happen, if we're able to be present in our groundlessness, we have much more of an opportunity for that broken open heart to be filled with love. And that is what, that's what transforms us is love. You know, that rings true to me. I don't have grief of the level that you, you know, of that as an experience. But my experiences with

real grief in my life were similar. It was the process of really going into it, being willing to feel it, not trying to talk my way out of it or escape it. It was when I stopped that make me feel like on the other side of it, that I gained something, I obviously lost something, but that there was something gained also. And I've got experiences in my life where I've done that and plenty of times where I didn't do that. And it's interesting how I relate and react to the situations in my life in which I was open to those things. I think that though it's, you know, when we say this, it sounds sort of lovely, right? But what you're describing is not lovely at all. And in the midst of those periods is all kinds of pain and confusion. And like you said earlier,

wrestling and bargaining and denial, and that's all happening. Also, this isn't a, you know, you're not describing somebody who's this perfect spiritual person who sits in the middle of it. It's just an intention to do the best we can with that, right? Yes, Eric, thank you so much for clarifying. And also, by the way, for attesting to having practiced this yourself in your times of great loss, where you really had that intuition to just stay with it. And it's harrowing. I mean, I'm not pretending otherwise. Anyone who reads my book, Caravan of No Despair, will see that there's nothing pretentious about my process. Right. of humor in the midst of my unbearable anguish where I just like shook my head and just went, wow, I can't believe that I could possibly withstand this level of pain. In fact, I remember just the other day that I recalled a memory that I had early on, which is shocking to me now, but

where I said, I'm so glad that Jenny died and not me, because I would never want her to have to experience the pain that I'm experiencing. Thank God it was this way, not the other way, because I couldn't stand, I literally couldn't stand the thought that she would have to endure a fraction of the pain that I was feeling. And so yes, I am not trying to paint a pretty rosy picture here. And so, yes, I am not trying to paint a pretty rosy I hate this, it sucks, to glimpsing this kind of perfection in the whole thing that we'd never want to admit. But there are moments when we see this vast beauty and the gifts. But when someone's freshly grieving, that is the last thing I would ever suggest to them.

Right. So don't walk around with this book and hand it to people who are freshly grieving and say, this will fix you. Well, actually, you know, some freshly grieving people are reading it and it's really helping them because it doesn't pretend to fix anything. I mean, you just read it, you know, it's very honest and raw. And so people who are in that fire are really relating to it and are really grateful for someone telling the truth about how hard it sucks at the same time, that there is light. You mentioned the coinciding of your book about a dark night of the soul being published and you entering into your own. And you have a line where you say, you're talking about the effect that grief has on you.

And you say, what I had been trying to accomplish through years of rigorous discipline had happened overnight, a state of no self. I was ready for the holy encounter at last, but I wasn't in the mood. I wanted to want God, but I wanted Jenny more. Oh, Eric, will you just read to me all day from my book? I've got a lot of it highlighted here. I probably could. Thank you. That's a perfect thing to have read just now because it fits in exactly with what we're saying. Grief does break us open. And that broken open state is a holy,

holy place to dwell. And so what? We'd much rather not have to be going through what we're going through. If we lost a loved one, we'd rather have them back. If the relationship is over that we're not ready to be over, we want it to be still happening. And so there are all kinds of preferences involved that don't magically go away just because we've been lit on fire. Right. And I think a lot of this idea of transformation and the benefits that can come from these awful situations is really a retrospective thing to a large degree. It's when we've gone through that grief and allowed it to do what it will do, that we can then be to some degree on the other side, not saying that that stuff ever goes away, but out of that sort of

acute period that we can look back and see some of these things that happen. But in the middle of it, it's very, very difficult. And, and as your book makes out, even if we can see it, let's do the trade, you know, I'll give you give you back whatever I'm getting here for what I had. Right. And yet, there are moments even early on when we do get glimpses of the gifts, like for instance, what Kubler-Ross talks about with denial is obviously a biochemical phenomenon that happens when we undergo trauma, that where our brains are washed with chemicals that help us to insulate from the experience so that we don't implode and go crazy, you what we're experiencing, the death of a loved one, where we feel, where we're open to kind of magical synchronous things happening, you know, a butterfly landing on our hand and it feels like a blessing from the other side. I mean,

we're open. We become open to these kind of sacred and magical moments in ways that we're not when we're back in our complacent, regular state of mind and we're more cut off. So we're insulated on the one hand, but we're also opened on the other. Right. And a lot of people report those incredibly beautiful moments of connectedness and just glimpsing the beauty of this world in ways that we couldn't see when we were just rushing about thinking that we were in charge of our movie. or a blessing that we can often notice early on in this time of loss and grief is the love of family and community. Those of us who have people who care about us, which most of us, thank God, do, and I'm so sorry if you don't, but for most of us, there are people who we didn't even think knew that we existed, maybe, who come rushing into the broken open space of our life through grief and loss and tend to us. Like our communities gather, our families gather, and we're held by love, by people wanting to comfort us and wanting to help us. And that's one of the things

I hear again and again as a grief counselor that is most moving to people is the love of their families and communities that comes rushing in to hold them at times of great loss. You really do a great job of talking through all that. And it's interesting because you also, there's just so much honesty in the book. You know, you're talking at points about the support you did receive and then some of the feelings you had about like, well, why were other people who I expected would support me, maybe weren't as supportive. And it's just is interesting to see you walk your way through all of that. In some ways, there's no pleasing a grieving person. Either people are like, they make you feel claustrophobic. They're what you know, what is that called? I'm smothering, right, their efforts to help, or, you know, they're not saying the right thing, or they're not saying anything, or they're, you know, what is that called? I'm smothering their efforts to help or, you know, they're not saying the right thing or

they're not saying anything or they're going down a different aisle in the grocery store to avoid you and you know it. Yeah, there's just, we're just inconsolable. Nothing works. so so i'd like to change direction if could, and talk about some of your other work and what a large part of your career has been focused on. You are known for translating great works of Christian mysticism. And mysticism is a word showing up a lot more in places that people like us might hang out. And I was wondering if you could explain from your perspective, what is mysticism? What does that mean?

What makes someone a mystic? The technical meaning of the term is that a mystic is somebody who has a direct encounter with the divine. That is a kind of experience of connection to the sacred that has nothing to do with some spiritual practice or some ordained representative, a clergy person, or having gone through the right ritual. It's an experience of connectedness to God, or often in the language of the mystics, to the beloved, to God as the beloved, and the soul experiences itself as the lover in union with the beloved. And it's a very private and direct experience. So mysticism is a direct experience of the divine. And so the mystics like the ones

that I've translated, like St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich and others had experiences of union with the source of all love and kind of melting into the beloved like a drop of water into into the sea and then returning back into individuated consciousness again but completely changed by that encounter also i think within the buddhist tradition right there's less focus on a god or beloved and more into um you know as said in your book, a sense of no self or into the emptiness or... 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 gonna drop

by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, 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. Connection to everything. That's right. And those distinctions actually dissolve in themselves in the field of mystical experience.

in the field of mystical experience, because mystics who conceive of ultimate reality as beloved are having the exact same experience that a Buddhist is having moments of deep meditation and their individual consciousness dissolves into the one or into the emptiness or the state of unitive being. So I think at that level, it's all the same experience. It's just how we tell the story to ourselves afterwards that makes those distinctions. And the mystics all claim, everyone that I've ever encountered anyway, that the mystical experience itself is ineffable.

It transcends language. It transcends language. It transcends all concepts. And yet the mystics are the ones who can't help themselves, but overflowing their feeling of exaltation from that experience into language, and usually the language of poetry, because discursive prose is an effort to explain reality, but poetry evokes people I know and love have a kind of spiritual experience actually reading the poems. They shift something in us. So one of the things that I think is interesting about mysticism, it is very much the experience, which I think then leads a lot of people on the search for that experience. And at the same time,

a lot of spiritual traditions are also saying that's not what it's about. It's not about seeking a particular state. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, it's one of those paradoxes that I love. You know, I'm quite comfortable with paradox. And paradox characterizes the mystical life. It's the longing that is the path to union. The shattered cup that is filled with the presence of everything we want. And so the paradox of the choiceless choice or searching for that which we know is not outside of us is all part of the

mystical journey. So the mystic is one who knows really in her bones that there is no separation, that she's never been separated from her beloved and never will be. And yet there is this innate sense of longing that drives her into the remembrance of what is her birthright, which is union. of what is her birthright, which is union. And, and also, you know, there's this sense that a lot of people who speak about non dualism or non duality, which is very popular, spiritual philosophy right now, and one to which I subscribe in many ways, but by always telling us that there's nothing to do and nowhere to go, because we're already there and we're already it, just remember, in some ways it denies the human birthright of love, longing, and the satisfaction of meeting the beloved. meeting the beloved. It's like, who was it? I think it was Ramakrishna, the great 19th century Hindu saint who was a little bit of everything. He wasn't just Hindu. He was truly an interspiritual being. But he said, I don't want to be sugar. I want to taste sugar. So there's some beauty to the dualistic experience of being a human being. I mean, here we are embodied, having an incarnation here,

and that involves all the things beautiful and terrible that being embodied involves, which I wouldn't trade. I mean, as long as I'm here, I want to experience embodied spirituality in every cell. I want to experience my relationship with the earth. I want to experience community. I want to find the face of God in everyone I meet, from those on the margins to the people who think exactly like I do. I'm having an embodied experience. And that means beautiful separation as well as blessed moments of union and remembering that there is only one. So it's the paradox of all of it. We're separate and we're unified. And I walk with that paradox in my body,

and I'm okay with that. There's a concept in Hinduism of different ways of approaching the Godhead, so to speak. And one is very much what you're describing, which is sort of a love-based feeling. They also talk about people that approach it more intellectually. And I'm curious what you think about that, because you also have said that you think that a lot of our depression, anxiety, and addiction has to do with the soul's need and longing for transcendence. For myself, a former addict who certainly has striven for the—striven? Is that a word? I don't think so. Well, whatever. A tendency to strive for transcendence, yet I don't have a lot of the feeling of it. It tends to be more of an intellectual exercise. Do you think that that's something that transforms, or do you really think that people go different paths? It's just something that I think about a lot. Well, Hinduism has at least four main branches, right? And they're called yogas. Yoga means path to union with the divine. And Hinduism is so beautiful in the sense that it's, in some ways, it's the most inclusive of all the world's religions, because it really makes room for different kinds of people and

different temperaments, and really recognizes that there are as many paths up the mountain as there are hikers, and we all have our different ways. But these four primary ways are the intellectual that you mentioned, yana yoga, bhakti, which we also talked about, which is devotion or the yoga of love, and karma yoga, which is the yoga of action for those who are much more action-oriented and not interested in sitting on a cushion, you know, gazing within but want to get out and do something. And then raja yoga, which is where Hatha yoga and asanas and a lot of the kind of breathing practices and other kinds of practices that are designed to transform consciousness come in. And most of us find all four of those as strands that are woven into our spiritual path,

but there's usually one that dominates for most of us. And so you're right, Eric, it doesn't make sense to judge one person for being on a kind of non-dual path when somebody else is on, you know, devotional bhakti path, that one is lesser or one is greater. The important thing is to engage in one of those yogas. And we don't have to be Hindu to really get something out of this understanding of cultivating that relationship with ultimate reality. the primary ways in which that Eastern wisdom has evolved in the West has been, it seems like to me, the intellectual side at least is less focused on, and the physical and the love and the devotion, there seems to be a lot of conversation. Or would you consider mindfulness meditation as part of the intellectual practice? Yeah, right. Mindfulness is much more of a jhana practice. But it's interesting what

you're saying because most of the Hindu world is definitely bhakti. Like 80% of Hindus practice bhakti yoga. It seems like most of the world's religions appeal to people on that kind of emotional level that bhakti yoga does, the path of love and devotion. You know, that's what many of the Catholic rituals are, or anybody who goes to church is really in some ways engaging in a kind of bhakti practice that drops it from the head into the heart. I think that's where the human consciousness naturally goes. It takes a certain kind of discipline, actually, to shift into a vaster kind of consciousness that isn't dependent on those forms to connect us to the sacred. Well, we're nearly at the end of our time.

I'd like to ask one last question, and then we can wrap up. And it's another term that, you know, is starting to show up a lot more often, which is interspiritual. Could you define what interspirituality is? Sure, I'd be happy to. First, I'll do so by contrasting interspiritual with interfaith. Interfaith dialogue is about trying to cultivate an understanding of other religions and their views and their scriptures and their traditions in order to understand and build tolerance. But interspirituality is about dropping from the head back into the heart and actually experiencing directly the other multiple spiritual traditions.

So that as a Jew, for instance, I would go to a Sufi zikr and sing to Allah, you know, chanting with a group of people with musical instruments. La ilaha il Allah. There is no God but God or there's no reality but the divine. And in doing so, my heart would open, and I would have a direct experience of what Muslims love about Islam in my own being. So it's about allowing ourselves to have an encounter with the other that is a transformational one, such that by entering into the heart of another's religion, we experience it directly and it changes us in a good way. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking

the time to come on. Like I said, I really enjoyed, enjoy is a weird word for a book like yours. I thought your book was wonderful and very revealing. So thank you for taking the time to come on the show. Thank you, Eric. I love your show and I love what you guys are doing and offering to this world. So thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

Our pleasure. Okay, bye. Bye. you can learn more about this podcast and mirror by star at oneufi.net slash star. That's S-T-A-R-R like Ringo Star or Mirabai Star.