The One You Feed - Ryan Oelke on Awakening in Life

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

Ryan Oelke is the co-founder of Buddhist Geeks and is the founder of Awakening In Life. Ryan is a meditation teacher with an MS.Ed. in Counseling Psychology and has 18 years of experience in meditation. He is also a certified teacher in Judith Blackstone’s Realization Process. In this episode, Ryan and Eric discuss using Radical Curiosity and embodying our experiences to Awaken In Life.If you are interested in learning more about how to integrate and embody spiritual principles into the moments of your daily life, Eric teaches people how to do just that in his 1-on-1 Spiritual Habits Program. Click here to learn more.Need help with completing your goals in 2020? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.But wait – there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you!In This Interview, Ryan Oelke and I discuss Awakening in Life and…Practicing Radical CuriosityComing home to yourself as you are in this momentBeing radically open to what is happening to fully see itHow nothing collapses consciousness faster than judgmentHow being curious implies being engaged with the subject matterAwakening in LifeLife as the opportunity to awakenWays to integrate spiritual principles into the moments of our lifeCultivating capacity through formal practiceHow to use the little moments that might otherwise be “thrown away” during the dayThat focusing on embodying our experience enables it to become more deeply our ownHow awakening in life is a responsive, integral pathA prescriptive path/model vs. a responsive path/modelHaving a deep trust in your own experience Metta DharmaThat the entire point of waking up in life could be to have an appropriate response.Ryan Oelke Links:ryanoelke.comTwitterInstagramFacebookPeloton: Wondering if a Peloton bike is right for you? You can get a free 30 day home trial and find out. If you’re looking for a new way to get your cardio in, the Peloton bike is a great solution. Eric decided to buy one after his 30-day free trial. Visit onepeloton.com and enter Promo code “WOLF” to get $100 off of accessories with the purchase of a bike, and a free 30 day home trial.Best Fiends: Engage your brain and play a game of puzzles with Best Fiends. Download for free on the Apple App Store or Google Play. Calm App The #1 rated app for meditation. They have meditations, sleep stories, soothing music, and Calm masterclasses with may One You Feed Guests. Get 40% off a Calm Premium Subscription (a limited time offer!) by going to www.calm.com/wolf If you enjoyed this conversation with Ryan Oelke on Awakening in Life, you might also enjoy these other episodes:Judith BlackstoneMary O’MalleyAmoda MaaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

people are looking for something, and that's why they're practicing. 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 reallyknoworeally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love.

Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Ryan Olkey, co-founder of Buddhist Geeks and founder of Awakening in Life. Ryan is a meditation teacher with an MSED in counseling

psychology and has 18 years experience in meditation. He is also a meditation teacher with an MSED in counseling psychology and has 18 years experience in meditation. He is also a certified teacher in Judith Blackstone's realization process. Here's the interview. Hi, Ryan. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here, Eric. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on. You and I met, I don't know, it's been a while ago as I was looking at different spiritual directors out there. And, you know, we talked for a little bit and I just really liked the work you did and I thought you'd be a great fit for the show. So let's start like we always do with the

parable where there's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter. 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 granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second and she looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you kind of what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So I'd like to start off by asking you kind of what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well, I think initially what I like about it is that

it invites in a lot of wondering and invites in a lot of inquiry and curiosity. And really, that's kind of the first place I go with this parable is it makes me curious because my life and what I've observed with people I work with is that we have a lot of wolves. I have a lot of wolves anyways. And the question is, which wolf is which? And how do I know that? And sometimes life is really complicated. How do I know that? And sometimes life is really complicated and the struggles and the joys aren't always super clear to me.

And sometimes it takes me time to really discern that. And from that discernment to craft a response. So for me, what I practice a lot in my life and help others with is practicing radical curiosity. So can I sit with both of these wolves for just a little bit so I can get to know them, so I can hear what they have to say? Because if I can do that, then I can really with confidence have a response to make changes in my life. But a lot of times it's so easy to just react really quickly. Sometimes I've been wrong in my life. But a lot of times it's so easy to just react really quickly. Sometimes I've been wrong in my life, you know, that sometimes I think, ah, this is the good wolf right here because it's helping me in this situation. And it turns out, damn it, that was the

wrong wolf. And I should have responded in this way. So I also think because we're so conditioned to want answers and we really need a lot of answers in our life that slowing down and practicing curiosity is a lot harder. So whether it's in, if we seek out, say therapy or a psychologist or a spiritual teacher, we're going to be practicing a lot of slowing down and wondering about our experience, um, starting to come home to ourselves. That's the other thing I think that happens is we come home to ourselves. We come home to these wolves. Even if we're going to just say, we're not going to feed certain wolves here,

there's something really nice about coming home to myself, how I am in this moment, regardless of what's arising, then to be engaged with my experience. That way I can do something with it. So I think there's a lot from this parable that can be opened up in terms of exploration, inwardly and outwardly, but that's where I go with it. Wonderful. Well, radical curiosity was one of the places I wanted to start. I don't know if you'd call it your method or your approach, but you call it awakening in life. And I'd like to talk through kind of what that means. But one

of the parts of it is, is radical curiosity. And you describe a couple of different things. But you say that one of the things about radical curiosity is doesn't mean having a pleasurable or positive or approval towards what we're curious about. And that's, that's what makes it radical, is that it's not dependent on approval or disapproval. And I'm obviously a big believer in which is, can we remain curious? Because when we remain curious, we can learn and we can change. So tell me a little bit more about radical curiosity from your perspective. Yeah, well, you said it great there. As far as what I intend is so difficult. So I want to acknowledge that practicing radical curiosity isn't necessarily easy. So, I think sometimes in the spiritual world, but in the self-help world

too, we can be given a lot of answers that just seem matter of fact, like just do this and everything's going to be great or it'll be easy. But no, that's also not the point. Radical curiosity is the practice, but it can be really difficult at times and maybe other times it's going to be easier. But there's a lot that I preface in that because I feel like, depending on who I'm talking to, this might be readily received and kind of investigated. But other times it can be met with a lot of resistance, and it depends on the context. So, for example, if we're talking about politics, regardless of where people are in politics, people may not be feeling very curious.

There's a lot that I understand about that, for sure, because a lot of us feel like we need some very pointed responses to what's going on. But here, radical curiosity, right? So, radical, first part, is being radically open to what is happening. And being open to what is happening means that I can fully see what's happening or I can more fully see and experience what's happening. If I can more fully see and experience what's happening, I can respond to it. So I think the two extremes here that we can fall into. One is being too reactive where we don't have enough space to step back and really look at our experience. So that way we can formulate,

um, and create and craft a intelligent, wise and compassionate response. The other side is being so radical that you basically disengage from experience. So the answer would be like, Oh, I'm just going to sort of transcend experience or spiritually bypass everything that's arising. And obviously that can feel better because I'm no longer in touch with the pain of what's arising, for example. But it doesn't really change anything about our experience. So here radical curiosity integrates these two really great practices, one of being really open and allowing, and then the other being responsive and engaged. So we're not choosing between the two,

but we're allowing both to be present at the same time. And pretty much like this is a common thread for me in everything I do. I don't know if I can think of a situation where I'm not including some radical curiosity as part of what I'm doing. And again, it doesn't mean it's being static or passive, you know? So, I'm hoping I'm communicating that very clearly because that's usually the objections of being like, oh, so I'm going to, you know, not be engaged in my experience. No, that's not what we mean, you know? It's just including that as an element of how we experience and respond to life. Right. The spiritual teacher Adyashanti said to me once

that, you know, nothing collapses consciousness faster than judgment. And it also makes me think of, you know, beginner's mind idea, like radical curiosity for me is a way of sort of avoiding that collapsing of consciousness and keeping in that sort of beginner's mind. And it's hard to do, like you said. And so I agree. I don't think it's a passive approach, but it's a place to start from for me. I agree. I think a lot of different people have talked about this. This just happens to be something I tend to focus a lot on. But that's why I like to use that word curiosity in there, because it implies being engaged. And the radical communicates the openness around it.

A phrase that I've been using this week, I'm in this integral metadharma training I'm leading, I'm giving people an introduction on integral theory from Ken Wilber. And I had to think of a way to say all this stuff in very little time, you know, like less than 30 minutes, which is really difficult. And an essential phrase that came up for me was, what's happening here matters. So what's happening in our life matters. And this is a phrase that's particularly potent inside of a context of awakening, where we might be cultivating the experience of transcending or opening up

beyond the experience of our everyday life, you know, or tapping into something more timeless. And so radical curiosity includes that too, that what's happening here matters, and therefore I'm going to be radically curious. I want to talk about your awakening in life approach. You break this down into three basic ideas. You talk about, you know, both those words, awakening and in life are really important. And you describe life as the opportunity to awaken. You describe life as what we are awakening through and what we are awakening for. So let's talk briefly about each of those three, because I think it's an interesting model. So

let's talk about life as the opportunity to awaken. What do you mean by that? Yeah. And you know what's funny? So with kind of breaking this down into three parts here, it can be really subtle and really at certain points, almost the three can be synonymous with one another. But in how I differentiate them subtly, opportunity to awaken means that we don't have to go somewhere else. We don't have to find special conditions to wake up. The reason why I say this is because in a tradition like Buddhism, for example, going on retreats is very common, and this is very common amongst many contemplative traditions, whether traditional or contemporary. We seek retreats so we can kind of have optimal conditions in order to practice things like meditation and cultivating the

insights and capacities that exist in those traditions. But the way that I differentiate is I say that those are optimal, so we can seek out optimal conditions for sure. Maybe that'll be beneficial, but we don't need to do that in order to wake up. And the funny thing is, is like, I also say that awakening in life is, it's almost silly in a certain way. Like, I really love the title, but if you think about it, it's like, where else are we going to wake up? Right.

Yeah. Where else are we going to wake up? What else you got? Yeah. What else you got? Where are you going to go where life and everything that is a part of life isn't present. Right. So even if we're meditating on a mountain and we, and there's like nobody around, are we ever not relational? Are we ever not in relationship? You know, I mean, we were born a relationship where even if there's nobody around, we're in relationship with our

surroundings, nature, and still we have the awareness that there are many beings on this planet. So, life is everywhere. So, it's to really counter the tendency to think that we have to find some escape to life in order to wake up. And of course, I guess, you know, we're assuming here that maybe, you know, there's some shared understanding of what we mean by wake up, but we're just talking about traditional paths of waking up where, again, we're waking up to something. You can use so many different terms, something timeless, non-dual awakenings, awakening to selflessness, deep love, deep compassion, et cetera, et cetera. But we don't need to go anywhere to do that. So that's the first bit. I love that idea because I do think that, I'll just read something you said, because I think it really says it well. You say, no matter our circumstances, we have the opportunity to

awaken. It isn't to say that all circumstances will be relatively of the same ease or difficulty to practice or awaken. But indeed, wherever we are, whatever we're experiencing, this is our opportunity for awakening. And I think certainly that's what a lot of spiritual traditions are driving at, which is like this, like now, right now, like this, the only place you could wake up is here right now. You know, and, and I, and I like that. I like that, that you sort of, you know, reframe us back to, cause I think a lot of us are waiting for a particular moment. It's the way we live our lives, right? It's the orientation of, oh, well, when this, then that.

That's definitely it. Yeah. And it's always, I mean, it's kind of the cosmic joke too, inside of the tradition that you finally realize that there is no, well, if this, then that. That's the very thing that prevents us from waking up on that deep level. But it bears repeating and talking a little bit more at length, like we've done here, because people might think, well, I can't do these practices of awakening or meditation or wake up if I have a family or on the bus and at work, that's not conducive to waking up. That might be much more difficult in certain aspects, but it depends on what part of the path you're on too. So, I think when people are at the seeking phase or the very beginning of a path of meditation

awakening, it's all brand new. The desire to go on retreat might be much stronger and more beneficial in certain ways. But then at some point, there's a waking down process where you have to integrate what you've realized on the cushion. And you can't do that unless you're trying to do that in the midst of life. But for me, I say just start that way from the beginning and it's a lot easier. Right. You know, one of the things I am most interested in these days is how do we practice throughout our day as we go through life? Like there's practice time, quote unquote, right? I sit down and meditate for 30 minutes in the morning, or I do some yoga, or maybe I do some spiritual reading. And then there's all the rest of my life, right? And how do we bring those ideas, those concepts, those insights, those practices, those mindsets,

all of it, how do we weave it through all the rest of the hours of our day? And I'm kind of curious from your perspective, what are some of the best ways to do that? I see that as the fundamental challenge is that we limit our practice time to these formal times and then we forget about it all the rest of the day, which of course we do. I'm not, we're busy, we're running around, there's a thousand things coming at us, you know, and so I'm real curious in how you work with people to do that. So a few things come up for me. Let's see if I can remember them all in an intelligent way. But the first is the view. So in a contemplative tradition like Buddhism, the view is important. So if we start with the view that our practice of meditation awakening is to serve our experience of life,

of being in life, then that helps from the get-go. So this may be the original motivation, but sometimes we can get lost in the meditation practices, for example, where what we experience on the cushion becomes the goal. We lose track of why we're practicing. Why are we sitting on the cushion? What's our motivation to practice? But we can experience something on a cushion, right? We can experience some sense of radical openness or selflessness or something like that. And then that becomes the focus. And what can happen is I just keep trying to come back to that over and over. I keep trying to recreate that experience. And therefore, I've gotten lost in the view. Like the end game is what's happening on the cushion, not life. So start from the beginning with how these practices relate and support your life, not the other way around, which is what we've been talking about. I think too, then it's, uh, for me, it's how I practice, uh, that, that aids that. So for example, I have a big emphasis on embodiment and that has become a much bigger focus in paths of awakening and meditation in the contemporary, uh, modern postmodern era. Um,

you, you, you'll hear about embodiment so much more than you did even 20, 30 years ago. Right. Yeah. So for example, everything I do now includes the body. I just can't even, it's just strange and weird for me to meditate and practice in a way where the practice isn't rooted in the body. It's somehow. And the reason why that's important is because essentially that's the same thing as rooting the practice in life. If it's in through your whole body and you're not just sitting on the cushion to sort of get out of the body, it's going to be so much easier to bring what you experience on a cushion

into life because you're including the body. You're including the form that you inhabit in this life. The other thing, you know, I have a small practice that you probably saw there that I call an embodiment transition sequence, which is a bunch of words to describe something simple, but basically like, how do I come to the cushion? And then how do I leave the cushion? If I can create a more seamless experience from life to formal practice, to exiting formal practice and going back in life, there will be a stronger sense of integration, a stronger sense of that this is naturally a part of my life. So I would say that's one response to if you've been doing a lot of formal practice,

how can you start shifting that to feeling that you're bringing this into life more? At a certain point, it's funny, I think a lot of people who've done a lot of practice and gone deep at a certain point, formal practice becomes less important. And people might even stop doing formal practice for a while. There's a realization that formal practice isn't going to awaken me or I'm not going to experience anything deeper by doing formal practice. It's not going to change anything. I can experience what I experience on the cushion at any time in my life. So why do the practice? Now, I'm going to say for like somebody who's beginning a meditation, it might be very natural just to emphasize formal practice

because we're cultivating capacity, right? So if we find it very difficult to just sit with our breath for a few minutes, Like sitting with our breath might be really profound for us in this moment. You might need some formal practice to strengthen the capacity of guiding attention to an object or to focus or to just be present for a few minutes. And you work on that informal practice. And then when that gets stronger, it's a little easier to do that on a crazy loud bus, for example, right? The conditions change. So, I would just want to acknowledge that, that like, you know, it might take some formal practice in order to be able to bring those capacities and insights into life. So,

this is a big conversation. I mean, really everything I do involves the question that you brought up, but these are a few thoughts. One last thing, you know, an embodiment, a practice like embodiment, I really, with any practice, I encourage people to try to do that multiple times during the day in different locations, in different parts of their life, even if it's for a minute. Like for example, dropping into the body. If you're on a bus, you can try that for just a minute, even if it's 60 seconds. Experience being present in your body. You're not experiencing trying to escape the bus experience, but you're just trying to come home to yourself while you're present on that bus or while you're present, whatever

situation is. And you do it in little micro doses. And it starts making it feel much more natural. Yeah, I think that idea is really important. Locke Kelly, his method is glimpses. He says small glimpses many times, but I love that idea because it's not, okay, I sit down and I have this big experience

or I have these big experiences. Not that that's not valuable. Formal practice is a huge part of what's important to me, but that idea of small glimpses many times, I love it. And I study behavior change an awful lot. And I work with a lot of people in coaching practice around that. And that's a pretty big concept, which is you do something often over and over and over a little bit at a time, you know, and that's one of the things I found about really busy people, people who are really busy, who get a lot done, what I found is that those people find a way to use these little moments of time that most people

throw away. And so from a spiritual perspective, the same thing applies. These little throwaway moments, the three minutes here that I get on Facebook and the two minutes that I get on Twitter, you know, one of the quotes early on that I started using at the beginning of the show is, would you be amazed what a series of small steps taken over and over leads to? And I think that with these little spiritual practices, three minutes here, a minute here, like you said, just come back to my body, two minutes, you know, a minute of feeling my feet, like it all adds up. Yes, definitely. And if we're looking at sort of a stage model of awakening, with respect to these mini glimpses or mini practices during a day, for somebody who's in a really active seeking phase, that's wanting and needing a lot of practice, right? You're trying to

arrive somewhere. You're trying to cultivate certain experiences, whether breakthroughs on the cushion or insights. And so in that sense, yeah, you find more and more opportunities during the day to practice. Whereas before, if you thought, well, my life is really crammed and I don't have a lot of time to practice, then you might feel discouraged. So in that sense, it's very supportive doing that. On the under the path, it can really switch where the goal isn't really necessarily to rack up the time or the opportunities to practice. It's more of habituating ourselves to not differentiating between practice and life. And both of these things I just said are really valid. It's really relative to where what person is at on the path. But I really love both. I love both for, you know, if I'm putting people into big boxes,

you know, for the beginner, I love, say, try two minutes and 10 times a day. Great. And then for somebody who's gotten disillusioned with, you know, formal practice and they can sense that there's something deeper wanting to emerge and integrate, try to do these practices in different contexts, you know, even briefly can help dissolve that division we can put between formal practice and life. 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. iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine.

A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

I think one of the biggest challenges is remembering. We get busy doing things, and I think about this often because it's not that I want to always be thinking of like, oh, spiritual practice when I'm doing everything, right? Ultimately, it transcends into actually just doing things and really doing them, right? So this isn't like I have to transform the way I do everything. But I do think that one of the biggest challenges is, and I know this from a lot of people I work with myself, is cup, read a little bit of spiritual literature, do a little bit of meditation, rush off into the day. And the next time I think about any of these ideas is 9pm. And so how do you think people can remember more? Because if we can even just like you said, it's a view to a certain

extent, right? It's a perspective, it's. It's remembering to sort of take perspective and move it out of the normal day-to-day rush, get, I want, I don't want perspective, and just that slight shift into, oh, there's something deeper here. But remembering to do that is so hard. Well, there's a few responses I have. One I've already mentioned, but to elaborate on a little bit more is, well, kind of two in one, the view and embodiment. So one thing I love to ask people is, why are you practicing? How I want to ask that and how I want to elicit the response is to have you, me, be in our bodies when we do that.

So to drop into our bodies as fully as we can, present into our bodies, and have the question presented, and notice what arises. Because it's different, because it's so easy for us to respond, say, for example, from our heads, right? Or from simple reactivity, like a surface-level response. But what is deeply motivating us? What is our deepest motivation to practice? And it sounds so simple. We may think that the answer is obvious, but when we ask the question in this way and respond in that way, something takes deeper root in us to where it will continue more and more throughout our days that we won't forget. But I think it's so easy to skip this

step because it seems so obvious. It seems obvious because if we're already practicing, why ask the question? But one, we may not have thoroughly asked it, or we may not have thoroughly sat with the inquiry. And then not to mention, the response to that question changes over time. So, I have found when people sit with this question in an embodied way, they naturally come back to the practice more throughout their day and throughout their daily life. Because otherwise, I think what people do is you try to go from external reminders, like you externalize the reminding, right? You use timers and things like that, which again, if that is what is needed in this moment, then you make

use of that. But at a certain point, we wanted to switch to where this is just naturally part of our life, right? We're practicing for a reason. We're practicing to shift something in our own experience that we want to become a natural part of who we are. So for me, it's continually coming back to our lived experience and grounding it in our bodies. And when I say body, I don't mean you know exclusively like our uh physical

body but um i think you did an interview with judith blackstone yeah yeah and she talks about inhabiting the qualities of our experience in our body for example knowing we experience knowing in our heads we experience love in our chest we experience power in our stomachs and midsections. This means grounding our motivation in our lived embodied experience. And from there, there emerges some trust, I think. And naturally and spontaneously, we will come back to the practice, the practices that are important to us. I've been quite surprised with that, actually, even with beginners, because establishing a practice can be really hard. But I'm surprised that how many beginners will naturally come back to a practice of embodiment when a meditation is

grounded in the body, at least. So what you're saying is that if you are embodied in a moment, and then while you're there, you reflect on why you're doing this, it strengthens, maybe this isn't the word, but I'll just use it, resolve, or it deepens the practice so that it more naturally emerges. Exactly right. You said it much more succinctly than I did, but that's right. Yes. Yes. It's because it makes our practice more our own, right? Because it's so easy up front, especially as beginners, that we naturally have to look for forms and practices. We look externally for instruction, right?

We have to do that. That's why we study with teachers and peers. But at a certain point, we want it to become naturally part of our own experience, like I said. So, yes. So, if we start from there, especially asking that question, why am I practicing? What is giving rise to practice in this moment, even formal practice? Can I really steep myself in whatever that is, whatever that motivation is, however it

takes form, whether it's in the form of words or whether it's in the form of feelings or physical sensations or images, whatever it might be, but it arises more deeply from our own experience. Excellent. I think this would be a good time to transition into talking about paths, right? And you make a distinction, you refer to awakening in life as a responsive integral path. And then you make a distinction between two sort of approaches. One is a prescriptive path and model, and the other is a responsive path and model. And what's interesting is I think back to when you and I talked. Where I was at that point was I wanted to get more focused on a spiritual path because I felt like for a lot of years, I had what felt very responsive to me, right? I was a very responsive path, totally followed my own intuition and what drew me in. And, and, and, you know, I was a pretty serious practitioner and yet

I felt the need for a deepening and a focus because, you know, I interview somebody different every week. And so I'm over here, then I'm over here and then I'm over here. And we talked and I ultimately landed, um, working in pretty focused way for now in the Zen path, which is fairly prescriptive and also kind of responsive in its own way. So talk to me about prescriptive and responsive and, and how people can sort of think about maybe what do they need? It's a big question. I know I'm raising these like two hour long conversations that we need to do

in seven minutes each, but I've made reference already to relativizing advice and instructions and practices to where a person is at on the path and also just what's going on in your life. Right. So again, you know, I was talking about, uh, grounding your motivation in your own body that by paying attention to what you need right now in your life is another way that it will deepen your practice and integration to life. Um, so if right now you need a prescriptive path, then you follow that, but you know why you're doing that, right? You know, you've, you've sat with it and said, yes, okay. Out of my experience, the movement and intuition

has arisen to say, let's do a prescriptive path. So, I think actually, you know, even in, say, Zen and Buddhism, there will be a natural arc from prescriptive to responsive in the way that I'm describing that. Where up front, you are going to, you know, study certain teachings and practices. You're going to familiarize yourself because this is something maybe you've never done in your life, that you've never sat down, you never meditated before. So, you have to kind of learn what is meditation? What are the different techniques? What are the practices? Why am I doing this? How should I do this? Et cetera, et cetera. There's just no way around learning some form. And to learn some form, you're going to have a prescription of like, this is how things are. This is how practices are. This is why we practice this

first and then this next. And then this is where it's going to take you, right? So, things are known. You have practices, techniques, maps, and models for the path. At a certain point though, even in Buddhism, so if you say I studied and practiced in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, things will be really prescriptive. But when you get to the things like Sokjin and Mahamudra, things become formless a lot in practice. Things become very spontaneous. Where, and in Zen, same thing, you just, the instruction is just sit.

Like that's as prescriptive as it gets. And, uh, which if somebody has never meditated before and, um, is very new to it, um, that might be really, it doesn't even make sense. Maybe they could just sit, but like the instructions, it just doesn't make, doesn't land. So I think one, there's a natural arc from in the path where we might start with prescriptive and then eventually find our way to a more responsive way of practicing. And it also might fluctuate, you know, if we discover something brand new in our practice, like a lot of us have realized how important embodiment is in this, you know, if we discover something brand new in our practice, like a lot of us have

realized how important embodiment is in this, you know, last 10, 15 years. So we might take up some intentional prescriptive embodiment practices for a little bit so we can really familiarize ourselves with that. And then eventually we start intuitively adapting practices to what we need in life. And I think that's where things get really interesting and radical is how we shift from having practices prescribed to sort of designing spontaneously our own practices for what we need in life at any given time. In that sense, what I do with people is that I am not putting out necessarily like this is how it is, you know, and this is the best way to practice and you should practice these practices in this order, in this way. Awakening life is definitely not that.

And it's not exclusive either. So, it's not proprietary. Like if you practice with me, you can only practice this path. And I encourage people to study with more than one teacher because every tradition and every practitioner and every teacher is going to offer something unique and different that can make one's practice more full. So in that sense, awakening life is responsive. Yep, totally, totally. Yeah, I think it raises so many really important and big questions, particularly as we look at what's happening here in the West as these ancient traditions sort of get dumped into the marketplace, for lack of a better word. And you hear a lot of people saying, well, you know, is it good or bad that mindfulness is getting, you know, sort of pulled out of these traditions and just purely secular form? And, you know, you hear complaints about, well,

you know, it's like a buffet. People are going and they're picking a little of this and a little of that and a little of that. And knowing like, is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Is that, do you need a teacher? And I asked Adyashanti this question once. I sat down with him. I said, well, does everybody need like a teacher

that they work with one-on-one? Because I was learning a lot from him, but he doesn't work one-on-one with people, right? He's just, he's too big now. It doesn't work that way. So do you need a teacher that you work with closely individually? And his answer was perfect, which was, well, I don't know. The question is, do you, you know, he wasn't going to answer it. He wasn't going to answer it as a everybody needs or no one needs, or it was, what about you? And when you and I talked, one of the things you said to me was, well, just go and kind of like you said, go sit in an embodiment and then kind of ask yourself, what do you need?

Where do you want to go? And what came out for me was very clearly like, I right now where I'm at, I want like a pretty tight container. I've been out in the wild for so long that what I want right now for a period of time, and I don't know how long that'll last, right? Is this, is this tighter container that has a lot of foundation to it? And that just was where, where I was. But again, that comes from never, you know, for 25 years of practice, never going deeply into one area, pulling a little of this and a little of that. And I'd wade in a little bit and then I'd start hearing some things. I was like, I don't know if I believe that. I don't know if I like that. And then I just kind of waltz back out. And it became clear to me that what I needed was, and I just made a commitment

for a certain amount of time, I'm going to just walk this path for this amount of time. And then I'll reevaluate. And I think, you know, kind of like we're saying, I think it's sort of knowing yourself to know kind of what you need and to trust your intuition. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Ashanti's response was great. If I'm trying to support people in anything, it's to have them sit radically in their own experience and pay attention to what's arising. And there's two things there. One is that there's a deep trust in your experience and everybody's experience. Because if we don't start with deep trust, if I don't start with deep trust in your experience, the whole bunch of actual negative seeds get planted there. It communicates that you shouldn't trust them yourself.

It creates problematic things that can arise in, in we've seen in with guru models of spirituality, communities collapsing, things like that. So, but it's different because we, you know, there's plenty of examples that we've experienced in the traditions that say, you know, that's how you do it. You look to a teacher who has all the answers for being honest, but it's all over in the Buddhist tradition as well, for sure. That's not the only thing that's there, but it definitely exists there. And so to radically turn around and say, well, listen, I trust you and your experience.

So let's sit together. But the thing is I can be helpful. I can be helpful in supporting you in this inquiry. And so to really ask somebody, what do you really, what do you want? What do you most need right now? And to facilitate the experience of trying to sit more deeply in that because it's very vulnerable. So the process there is to facilitate a vulnerable experience as much as we can to sit in what's radically true for us in this moment and knowing that it may very well change in a week or in a month or in a year. And I would say it will change. I would go ahead and say that

I just don't know when it'll change. And out of that, if we're really honest in staying in touch with our experience, certain things will naturally arise that, oh yeah, I want to study with a teacher because I want to get some input. You know, I want some feedback. I want some support. So of course I'm going to do that. So yeah. And with the unbundling of mindfulness and things like that, you know, that's a whole big conversation, but I think these questions definitely come up and, you know, I hope that I communicate that I take this seriously. So in the sense of like, that I say that I work responsive with people, it's not a, it's not, I don't communicate, Hey, it's a buffet, do what you want and who cares? Because really that's going to let people down.

There's suffering inside of that. People are looking for something and that's why they're practicing. But it's on the foundation of trusting in our own experience. 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. 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.

The forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers. So that's why we created The Big Take from Bloomberg Podcasts, to give you the context you need to make sense of it all. Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week buying power column. Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide.

Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I am in a training program for being a spiritual director. It's an interface spiritual director program. And it's a fascinating thing because in that model, there's the big debate in that community between prescriptive and non-prescriptive, right? How much does your spiritual director tell you what to do or how much do they teach? And so on one hand, there's this complete like, well, don't do anything. I'm like, well, and me, of course, I'm a middle way guy. I'm like, well, not doing anything, just sitting in a room with somebody. Well, there's some value in that, but you, you know, but then on the other hand, and I found it really interesting because

one of the people that I work with names, John Mabry has written a bunch of books on spiritual direction. He made this analogy. He said, your job is to be like a couples counselor between the person that you're working with and the divine. And what's important is their connection, use a different word than divine if you want, right? But it's all about facilitating their connection. And what you're saying is what you're trying to do is facilitate direct connection to their own or our own experience. That's the facilitation is how do I get in touch with my own experience in a deep enough way that I can trust it? Because I do think it's always trustworthy, but a lot of us may not know how to get there. And so sometimes that's

the facilitation that we need. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Again, yeah, that deep trust is important because for me, what's interesting is that if I, on my end, facilitate that, an experience where you know that I deeply trust your experience and I'm looking to you to guide your experience and I'm here to respond to you when you need structure and help, right? But that also allows me, I think some room to then be more pointed in my responses. So like I can say, okay, I'm going to speak really directly to you, which could be a prescriptive sort of way.

Um, so I feel like I have more room to do that because you know that I'm still going to trust you to, to make use of what I'm saying or not. That's right. So, yeah. So like I actually can,

for me as a teacher and a facilitator, I feel like I can do both. I can be both radically open, but also really direct and pointed that I don't have to sort of pick between those two. Okay. We're nearing the end of our time here, but I can't help but wade into these waters. And so, um, because I don't fully get it. So I'm going to ask, what is metadharma? Yeah, well, join the club. We're all figuring it out together. I think in that term metadharma, truly, sincerely, this is a living inquiry that I think a lot of people are sitting with.

They may use different terms. It's related to a fourth turning of Buddhism, for example, which Ken Wilber talks a lot about. But really, I think the whole conversation we've been having here has really waded into waters that could be called metadharma. term dharma is coming from Buddhist tradition in terms of how I'm using it, or folks like my good friend Vincent Horn and Michael Taft. And the implication, there's a lot here, so I'm trying to figure out how to say this really succinctly, but in traditional dharma and Buddhism, we're focused on mainly waking up. That's it, right? It's to wake up to how things are radically, That's it, right? It's to wake up to how things are radically, how they always are. This always our readiness of reality.

And then that's the goal. And then you're done. Truly, that's it. Except for maybe to try to help other beings, other people to have that same awakening experience. Metadharma is more pointedly going into the question and inquiry of saying, what's needed beyond that? And how does waking up relate to the rest of life, which is the question we've been exploring today? So, I think I saw that you have a variety of different people on your show, right? So, from different fields of study and experience and practice. So, already implicitly, we're saying as a collective that we value all of these different traditions, all of these different practices, all these different

ways of looking at our lives. And so, to include everything like, for example, psychology and sociocultural studies and practices, to be paying attention to politics and the economy, to including things like neuroscience and the meditation and therapy. When we include all of that with waking up, this is partly what we mean by metadharma is that we're saying intentionally this all should be included. It should not be kept separate. We shouldn't just be waking up and ignoring the rest for sure. But beyond that, the question is like, okay, so this all should be included.

That's the first kind of conclusion that we're going on assumption. Then the question is how? How do we include all this? How does it all relate to each other? So if I do therapy with a psychologist and I'm studying deep meditation and an awakening tradition, how do those two relate to each other? How do those two relate to each other? How do those two integrate and play with each other in my lived experience? Also,

from the perspective of Dharma and a tradition of Buddhism, how does all that relate to the crises of the world, right? So, people might have different relationship to that, but something like climate change and crisis of economy and health and meaning crisis, what does waking up have to do with that? How do we best respond to that with waking up and all these other traditions of knowledge and response? So, metadharma is a simple word that points to all of these inquiries. And there are certain philosophers and theorists who are presenting metamaps of all of these traditions and how they relate to each other. For example, like Ken Wilber in integral theory, as a way to get perspective on the immense complexity of the human experience. So rather, one of my mentors has something, I don't think he posted it on Twitter, or I think it was a tweet, where he said, Hokai Sobel, he said, don't worry, it's just everything and everyone happening all

at once, which is such a great phrase. So, the chuckle there is, for me, the chuckle comes from the waking up part. It comes from that part of me that feels in touch with the okayness of reality. But then it also points to like, holy shit, you know, is this everything happening all at once? And how do we respond to that? So with these meta theories, we start getting a little bit more space and understanding around that immense complexity. But I think we're living through that right now. So this is not something that's totally known. It's something that we're actively exploring together. Well, I think that's a pretty good description. Thank you. It sounds very similar to, you know, integral theory work, but it's trying to sort of say, where do these spiritual

teachings tie back into life and the other developmental paths that are there? Yeah, exactly. And a real simpler way now that I've said that is that, you know, in this integral metadharma training that we're doing right now, me and Vincent Horn, said that is that, you know, in this integral metadharma training that we're doing right now, me and Vincent Horn, we're having four weeks that are focused on waking up, cleaning up, growing up, and showing up. These are four facets that Kim Wilberg has identified as areas of practice. So, that's the way to put it simply in a practical term. Wonderful. Yeah, and I love that model, those four. Yeah, me too. It really makes so much sense to me, you know, because as I look at my journey, it's, you know, there's definitely a lot of spiritual practice.

There's a ton of 12 step work. There's all this psychological stuff there. I mean, there's so many different things that have informed me sort of being who I am in the ways that I am. And yeah, it's, it's all there. And yet you're right. How do, how do they relate? So, all right, I'm going to bring this all back around here and tie it's it's all there and yet you're right how to how do they relate so all right i'm going to bring this all back around here and tie it all together before you and i wrap up which is that you said and i love this you said that you could describe the entire point of awakening in life is to have an appropriate response and you you you quote a koan. And so I'm going to read that and then we'll talk about it. And I'm deep in koan work right now. So I love this. So a monk asked you,

men, what are the teachings of a whole lifetime? And you men said an appropriate response. So talk to me about that concept, because I do think that ties everything we've talked about sort of back together into kind of what the point of all this is. Yeah, well, I'm glad you pulled that out. I love that. It's one of my favorites. It's just so succinct. And sometimes I just want to let things just sit.

Like I would, part of me wants to just stop there and then say, let everybody sit with that. But I think what's interesting, especially in the context of Buddhism, is that that response is an unexpected response, right? I remember when I first heard that and I was like, wow, how cool. Because normally in Buddhist tradition, it's like, how do you get, stop identifying with form? You know, how do you stop, how do you let go of attachment to form, to self? And it's not really a sense of responding to anything except maybe to let go of response and reactivity. But here to say an appropriate response indicates something of intimacy with life,

which is another quote from Dogen. He said, enlightenment is intimacy with all things. Zen has a lot of great of these one-liners. And so, yeah, I think this points to a lot of what we've been talking about that. Why are we practicing? Whatever the reason we might articulate for ourselves personally, but it has to do with something with our life, with living our life, with showing up and being engaged with the life. It's not to check out of life. That's not why we're doing it. Even if that's what we do temporarily, that's not what we're trying to do. So, and even when we talk about how do we practice in this moment? Well, what's the appropriate response for you right now in this moment for practice?

What do you need right now? Prescriptive path, non-prescriptive path, formal practice, not formal practice. And for me, it's continually coming back over and over and over and over again to this question of right now, what's the appropriate response? And to be radically open to that, radically curious that I don't know, that's what I'm going to ask the question, but I trust in life deeply that a response will arise if I am present and I'm curious. And then I let that, let the response arise and follow it. Beautiful. Well, let's leave it there. You and I are going to go into the post-show conversation and I can't leave that Dogen

quote of enlightenment is intimacy with all things just without exploring that a little bit more because that means so much to me. We're going to talk about that and then you are going to lead us in an embodiment practice because I love some of your practices and we're going to do one of those in the post-show conversation. So listeners, if you'd like to get access to that, if you'd like to be a member of what we do, support what we do and get access to all the post-show conversations, ad-free episodes, and a weekly mini episode I do called A Teaching Song and a Poem, go to oneufeed.net

slash support. Ryan, thanks so much. I could have done this for two more hours, but we are- Yeah, likewise. Chris, my editor's going to be like, wrap it up soon. So he's not here. So I have to have his voice in my head. So thank you. Thank you so much. It's been great. And we'll continue this. Likewise. Thank you. Bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.

Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support. 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 Know Really podcast for supporting the show. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B.

As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. That's right. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, we share our personal journeys navigating our 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships and engage in thought provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that will resonate with your experiences. Decisions Decisions is going to be your go to source for the open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections. Tune in and join in the conversation. Listen to Decisions Decisions

on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.