The One You Feed - Scott Edelstein on Discerning the Role of a Spiritual Teacher

Episode Date: September 11, 2018

Scott Edelstein on Discerning the Role of a Spiritual TeacherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fear, but on the kindness, bravery, and love side, needs to be fed a very strict, careful, limited diet. 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,

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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 Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms.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. 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 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 Scott Edelstein, who has studied with several spiritual teachers, including Tony Packer, Danon Katagiri, Tim McCarthy, and currently Steve Hagen.

As the friend of several spiritual teachers, he's also spent much time with them off-duty, sometimes serving as a confidant. He's also spent much time with them off-duty, sometimes serving as a confidant. He's a longtime practitioner of both Buddhism and Judaism, and a committed proponent of serious spirituality in all forms and traditions. Scott's work on several spiritual topics has appeared in Shambhala Sun, American Jewish World, The Writer. His new book is The User's Guide to Spiritual Teachers. Hi, Scott. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Eric. It's a pleasure and a bit of an honor to be here. I'm excited to have you on. Your book is called The User's Guide to Spiritual Teachers,

which I think is a topic many of our listeners are going to be interested in. So we will get into it in just a second, but let's start like we always do with the parable. 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. Sure. Well, first of all, the work that I do is as a writer and researcher and editor and collaborator and ghostwriter. a writer and researcher and editor and collaborator and ghostwriter. And I would actually like to edit this parable because I would argue that there's a word here that is not right. That indeed, there is always a battle going on inside us with kindness, bravery, love, and other such things on one side and with greed, hatred, and other such things on the other. But I would argue, and strongly, that fear belongs on both sides. And that fear, but on the kindness, bravery, and love side, needs to be fed a very strict, careful, limited diet. And the reason for that is, fear is partly what keeps us alive, it's partly what keeps us safe.

There are things we need to be afraid of. What happens is people then stoke and feed the fear in an inappropriate way for things that we shouldn't be afraid of. We shouldn't be afraid of immigrants just because they're immigrants. We shouldn't be afraid of people who we see as the other just because they're the other. We probably shouldn't be othering them in the first place. the other. We probably shouldn't be othering them in the first place. But we also should be paying attention to our bodies, to our hearts, to our minds. When we do feel fear, and instead of saying, oh, that fear is bad and getting rid of it, we need to actually discern whether that fear is telling us something useful and important. And I'm saying all this because that discernment is at the heart of the user's guide to spiritual teachers. One of the big problems that often happens with spiritual teachers who are charlatans or predators or narcissists or libertines or whatnot is we assume that because they're a spiritual teacher, we should never fear them. But actually, there's plenty of people in that role who we should fear. And if we paid attention to that fear, it would serve us well.

Yes. An earlier book of yours was Sex and the Spiritual Teacher, why it happens, when it's a problem, and what we can all do. And certainly, there are no shortage of stories of spiritual teachers who take advantage of students. So I agree with you. It's certainly something to watch out for and worry about. I want to kind of just jump into the book because I think there's so many

different things in here that you talk about with spiritual teachers. And I want to start by saying, or something that you have pretty early in the book, you say, Start by saying, or something that you have pretty early in the book, you say, a spiritual teacher is a living, breathing human being with normal human emotions, impulses, and desires. So talk to me about what you're driving at with that sentence, like why that's important. and expectations and foibles, then they would have nothing of value to teach us because they wouldn't be able to, number one, speak from their experience, including their mistakes. Number two, they wouldn't have the necessary empathy. So if I were to look at a cat and go, why are you tearing that mouse to pieces? The cat would just say, you don't understand at all, do you? Because you and I would never tear a mouse to pieces.

But if you're a cat, there is nothing better, more appropriate, more fun than to beat the crapola out of a mouse. So if we're going to assume that our teachers are somehow or spiritual teachers are somehow inherently different from us, then how are we going to apply their experience to our lives? And indeed, the only people who are going to claim that they're fundamentally different from us are going to be Charlies, or alternatively, somehow some supposedly channeled being. But even if the being is somehow being channeled inside of some corporeal timeshare, the same rules of engagement and the same discernment would apply. Yeah, I'm always interested in it.

It's a question I've asked some of the so-called teachers we've had on the show. And it's really about people who make some claim or believe to some degree that they have achieved, use the word enlightenment, awakening, use whatever word you want. And I'm always kind of curious, the thing I'm trying to get out of those folks sometimes is, well, how different is having obtained that? How different is that experience of living than what, say, mine is or other people's? And I find it a fascinating question, because at the heart of the show, we talk a lot about this, and you reference it in the book, this idea of, you know, we're seeking something, and yet at the same time, that seeking often can stand in the way. But there's a reason

that we are on a spiritual journey. There is a place to go, although I get that we could say there's not, but for purposes of keeping this conversation sane, we'll assume there is a place to go, that there is some degree of improvement in our quality of life that occurs. And I just am always interested in like, just how far does that go? It's a wonderful question. And I'm thrilled that you asked it. So thank you. Let me speak to that in a couple of ways. The first is people, I do think, pretty consistently misunderstand enlightenment as some kind of threshold that gets crossed. Some combination of losing your virginity and getting bar mitzvahed are confirmed. as we know everything's constantly changing everything's in flux and flow and so even if a certain experience appears that doesn't mean that that experience is uh stays around forever because nothing stays around forever so uh i think it's more useful to look at enlightenment and we'll come back to what is enlightenment at a moment. As something that comes and goes, for some people it may never come at all.

For others, if it does show up, it then disappears again. It isn't something where you can suddenly, oh, some gate has opened in my brain, and now I can just rest on my laurels, or now everything's easy, or now I understand everything, or now my discernment is perfect. We still have to be engaging moment by moment, listening to our own hearts and minds and guts, making our own determinations. So that would be the first half.

The second is that the whole question of what is enlightenment, and of course, as Louis Armstrong said, if you have to explain it, you're not getting it. He said that, of course, as Louis Armstrong said, if you have to explain it, you're not getting it. He said that, of course, about jazz. So this notion that enlightenment is a thing that is somehow gotten, kind of like some bonus or some award, I think is also pretty misleading. I think is also pretty misleading. That said, as human beings, there are things we can know or recognize that we didn't previously recognize or know. And there are things that we can realize we know that we have known but didn't realize we knew.

And so I don't want to diss or dismiss enlightenment because it's in quotes real yet at the same time it's certainly not anything that that people would typically imagine it to be right well that's the whole thing about it is the idea of you you can't put into words something that you can't put into words the other thing that and i don't remember where i heard this and who i had this conversation with but the idea has sort of stuck around with me. You know, a lot of times we think of enlightenment in the sense of the Satori type experience, just the sudden like whack upside the head and boom, you know, an explosion goes off in our brain and we are in a different place. And somebody posited that, yes, that's the way it happens for some people.

And it seems very dramatic. They take a dramatic growth step forward. But that for a lot of people, the reason that a lot of other people might be equally, again, I'm going to use this word in quotes, enlightened, right, or have a same degree of realization, it's just that it happened so slowly, they barely noticed it. And I think that's a fascinating idea. Because I often think about if you could take me at, say, 24 years old, when I was just coming off of being a heroin addict, and you could drop me in my brain today, I bet that 24 year old would have his mind blown by what it's like to be in my head today. And I'm not

saying that being in my head is like, so amazingly special. I'm just saying the difference from the mindset and the way that I operated then till now is so dramatic. It's just that I don't mostly notice it because it's been a 20 year process or 20 plus year process. You said a couple, I think important things. one is simply about the the nature of maturation that as we grow we grow if we're paying attention as we grow older we grow wiser and if we're paying attention consistently and in the right ways that even that wisdom the quality of the wisdom we have changes in terms of the quick versus uh the sudden versus the gradual uh i think the best analogy i would draw there is you can win the lottery or get inheritance and be a millionaire

and you can also put aside 50 a week from your paycheck for uh 50 years and be a millionaire and both of those uh wind up you know at the same spot, at least financially. You have a million dollars. Yeah, either way. That said, I would like to add one thing is that the two most, in quotes, profound, supposedly spiritual experiences that I've had, really, I would argue, are not remotely profound. I had one under the influence of LSD at age, oh God, I don't know, 19? Five. No, I'm't know, 19? Five. No, I'm just kidding.

Five, yeah. Who were your parents? No wonder you wrote a book about spiritual teachers. Then I had another one doing sun salutations at about age, I don't know, again, maybe a year later. They seemed profound because one was a whack in the head the other was a whack in the head in the body but now at age 63 looking back i'd say well yeah they were they both revealed something and the the second one was a huge body experience probably the most in quotes profound experience my body's been through but in terms of insight they actually

revealed something that now just seems like normal relevant background information i just wasn't used to it at that young age yep makes sense to me i've had some things that are similar in that regard it's just it's sort of a fascinating idea to me because there do seem to be states that occur that are profoundly different than my ordinary consciousness. And they are striking, perhaps, to the degree in which they do differ. But the insights underneath them, to your point, sort of over a period of time start to seem relatively commonplace or normal if you live with the belief long enough. And that, I would argue, is one of a spiritual teacher's main values, is you can go to your

spiritual teacher with this information, and they can say things like, as they often do, oh yeah, that's pretty normal. Or, yeah, don't let that bother you. It's fine. Or, yeah, so what? Or, oh, yeah, you had some insight. Well, is that it? Yeah?

Anything else? No? And then they send you back out into your life. Right. So one of the things that you talk about in the book often is a spiritual teacher that I kind of consider, at least right now, one of the main people who I learn a lot from is Adyashanti. And he says something similar, too.

He says, don't do this. And you talk about how it's a common thing that people do, which is to really hand over a large degree of our personal autonomy, it would be the word that he would use to a spiritual teacher. You say, many of us students try to avoid the unavoidable pain of making our own decisions, living into their consequences, and growing up. So we ask our teachers to make our personal decisions for us. Should I take this job or that job? Should I leave my husband or stay with him and try and work things out? Is it okay for me to eat meat, etc., etc.? I'm thrilled that you had him on your show, actually twice, so that's great. And I would certainly agree with him that one mark of a spiritual teacher worth their salt is they will not try to take from you or allow you to hand over any responsibilities or decisions that are yours.

Probably the clearest signs of a charlatan or someone who shouldn't be a spiritual teacher is someone who either wants something from you or is trying to run your life for you or is trying to make decisions for you or tells you basically you need to get in line here and do what everybody else is doing. That's almost inevitably a sign that this person is potentially dangerous. Because after all, ultimately, our job as human beings, of course, is to be decent human beings, but also to grow up, to wise up, to open up, to be more fully human. And there's no way to do that by handing over our responsibilities and our decisions to some other person.

by handing over our responsibilities and our decisions to some other person. Yeah, this is an interesting concept for me because as I was reviewing, I read your book previously, we were going to do the interview and we had to reschedule it. And so I was going back through it all today in the notes and something occurred to me that hadn't occurred to me before in thinking about this. And I started to think about the concept of sponsors in AA. And it brought me back to thinking about how that role can look like a lot of different things in AA depending on who's doing it. And AA, like anywhere, is likely to create hero figures, or spiritual teachers, or extremely wise people. And how how in sponsorship it's always this, and I sponsored a lot of people and was sponsored by people, there was this line that was difficult because on one hand you've got a person in those cases like me, take me at 24 and I've been homeless

and a heroin addict, I don't know very much about living and I have a track record of disastrous decisions. So having somebody who doesn't necessarily take all that and make all my decisions for me, but somebody who's willing to maybe take a slightly heavier role there than you might want, I wouldn't want that now in my life, but at that time there was some use in it. But I did ultimately hit a point very quickly where I went like, I don't need somebody to make all my decisions. I don't want somebody to make all my decisions. But boy, I noticed in AA, there were a lot of people that stayed there for a long time that really did want that, you know, everything was like, well, I'm going to ask my sponsor what

they think I'm going to ask my sponsor what they think. And I think getting feedback is always a great idea. After a while, it just sort of creeped me out a little bit this like, I'm going to ask my sponsor what they think. I'm going to ask my sponsor what they think. And I think getting feedback is always a great idea. After a while, it just sort of creeped me out a little bit, this like, I'm going to run every decision I make or everything I think by another person to see what they think. And so I think that's endemic to this question of working with a spiritual teacher or a sponsor, because we are dealing with matters that guidance is important and useful, right? And it's just like, how far does that guidance go and what are the limits on it? I don't think it's as black and white as we might like it to be, but I do agree with you that most often it's easy, at least from the outside, to see the abuse of that.

Fantastic question. I'd like to speak to several parts of it. And so full disclosure, I have written a lot of recovery materials. We're talking about 12-step material. I've been in a 12-step recovery group and a ghost written for a lot of 12-step authors. So I want to speak to both the 12 steps and other things related to it. So, for example, the 24-year-old who is caught in what 12-step people will call stinking thinking and doesn't really know how to make some basic decisions. There, it might be necessary for the people who love him or her to do an intervention. And that would be something completely outside of what the sponsor would be at the center of.

So the sponsorship role might be a piece of what's necessary at that particular place and time. That said, yes, there's always, whenever someone has a leadership role or a mentoring role or a sponsorship role or a spiritual teaching role, they need to exercise their discernment very consistently to be able to make sure that they are never putting their desires or needs or concerns ahead of the student. They're always got to do it in service of the student. And meanwhile, the student or the mentee or whomever, the sponsee, also has to be exercising

their own discernment. And in fact, the word discernment, which I use a lot in both of my books on spiritual teacher, I will give a big shout out here to the 12-step programs because they use that word discernment over and over and over. And that is essentially building the ability through getting to know yourself, through paying attention,

through hard and sometimes not so hard experience, being able to know whom to trust, what to trust. We're back to this whole notion of fear again, right? When do you trust fear and when do you not? When is it appropriate to feed it and how much and when is it not? So discernment is at the heart of all this. And in both my books, just as in 12-step programs, I encourage people to build that discernment.

And that fits very well with any spiritual tradition that has what's sometimes called a mystical component, where you're essentially challenged to be fully present and fully engaged, as opposed to check out into some trance state,

or to check out into some trance state or to check out into neuro obedience. 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.

And here's the rest of the interview with Scott Edelstein. You write in the book at one point, all of us who have spiritual teachers are sometimes tempted to treat them as our surrogate parents. This is especially true when we face great stress, pain, or uncertainty. And I do think it's that latter piece, that when we face great stress, fear, or uncertainty, that we are in need of more guidance. I think discernment is the key there. And part of, I think, what's in that word is that discernment means you have to have knowledge of the situation of the people involved and all that. So we can't make some blanket statements because discernment really is being able to take the things into consideration in those moments. Well, I'd like to add a confession here if I may, Eric, and that is because you bring up the classic situation where we go, I can't trust myself right now. And so I need to consult with someone else. And I'm in that situation now.

So I had fairly recently got Steveve hagan on uh steve hagan wrote buddhism played in simple meditation now or never a couple of other books he's a longtime friend i go to his meditation center uh dharma field i would consider him my teacher as well as my friend however i also belong to a synagogue where we were you you know, I know the rabbi well. So over the last year, things that are happening in our world, in this country, in the world in general, but in this country in particular, have been completely involving the President of the United States, Congress, and so on, completely outside the realm of anything I thought was even possible. I mean, right now, and I should add that today's date is July 24th of 2018,

and right now the whole country is grappling with the fact that it appears that essentially the entire political right has been played by Russian operatives. Now, that's something that would, if I wrote it in a thriller, editors would go, that's ridiculous, we'll never publish this novel. Yet that's something that would, if I wrote it in a thriller, editors would go, that's ridiculous, we'll never publish this novel. Yet that's what's happening. So this means I have to be watching my own mind, my own situation, because part of my brain is having to deal with an everyday reality that's well beyond my imagination. And what have I decided to do? that's well beyond my imagination.

And what have I decided to do? I'm actually, I'm not going to Steve Hagan. Why? Because for all I know, he's a wonderful human being. I love him. He's a great guy. But he's no fan of what's going on.

And I'm actually worried, maybe he wouldn't be this way, but I'm worried that we'll wind up commiserating about what a mess the country's in. So I've decided I'm going to the rabbi and saying, I'm worried that we'll wind up commiserating about what a mess the country is in. So I've decided I'm going to the rabbi and saying, I'm coming here and I'm talking to you periodically for half an hour. And your your job is to help me keep my feet on the ground and my head on straight. And for that, I decided that he was the better person. I might just be a friend who I can make that decision. person. It might just be a friend who might make that decision. But that's a classic example of how to reach out in the right way, at least I hope the right way, at the right time to whoever the right

person is. That is a great example also of, you know, going to the right person for the right thing. And Adyashanti uses an example of, it would be useful to think of your spiritual teacher in some cases like you would a university professor. If you were in a math class with a university professor, they know math, and you go there for math, right? But you're probably not going to ask that person what car you should buy or what girl you should date, right? You go to the right person for the right thing. And I think it's safe to say that not every question we have is answered by a spiritual teacher, that there are other experts in the world that we can go to

for different things. And kind of a point you make throughout the whole book is that if we think that one person has the answer to everything, we're probably putting that person on a pedestal that is not healthy for them or us. I will add that you brought up a really useful caveat, which is that if your thinking is way off, if, for example, you're seriously down the road of a life-threatening addiction, and so you're just not thinking straight, then it may be useful to ask a spiritual teacher or almost anyone, well, you know what?

What kind of car should I buy? Should I buy this Maserati? I just got a raise from $11 an hour to $12.50 an hour, and the Maseratis are on sale. You know, a spiritual teacher will probably be able to give as good an answer as anyone else as hell no. And you might need it if for're, if for some reason they, they believe and they can see that you're thinking this way, way out of the norm. Yep. I agree. And I, and I do think that that's what makes some of this so confusing is it's very

difficult to peel apart spiritual from emotional, from mental, from, I mean, these things are all tied together. And so it's not as simple as like, oh, well, okay, if it's case A, you ask this person, and for this, you ask that person. I'm certainly not insinuating that it's that simple. May I speak to your use of the word spiritual there? Because I think you raised a really profound issue. This word spiritual has done us a great service and a great disservice. So first disservice is it's reunited the secular and the religious, which we split decades ago and which we were foolish to split. We should have just become more discerning about the two. So now, supposedly, things can be divided into the religious and the secular, which is absurd. Thou shalt not murder is not a merely religious concept, but it surely is.

It's in the Ten Commandments, but it's also enshrined in secular law. It belongs in both, and so much of the human codes of conduct belong in both. So those got split out, I think, to our detriment. And spirituality term manages to bring them back in. However, it does so, unfortunately, and this is now I'm going to diss it a little bit. It does it by watering it down because the term spirituality is very vague and it's been co-opted by lots of people. Some people think that means talking to angels. Other thing it means getting shivers going up your spine. Other people think it means helping out at the local food shelf.

And what of course it means, I would argue, if you're going to put any meaning on it, is the good wolf. Kindness, bravery, love, all those things. Well, by the way, a quick coda on fear i neglected to say that bravery requires fear and so there's another example of how fear belongs to both wolves you cannot be brave if you're unafraid when a child runs out into the street in front of a moving car because they don't know better that is hardly bravery but when you run out in front of a moving car because they don't know better. That is hardly bravery. But when you run

out in front of that car to push the child out of the way to save their life, that's bravery. And as you do so, you may be scared to death, but you know it's the right thing to do. Absolutely. Yes, courage does require some degree of fear. Otherwise, it's not really courage. Near the end of the book, you say, and this just made me laugh because it's Otherwise, it's not really courage. Near the end of the book, you say, and this just made me laugh because it's just, it's so dry and just a single sentence and it's so obvious, but also there's just something about, you said, sometimes spiritual study and practice can be surprisingly boring. It's true. Indeed it is. And what you're suggesting there is that this is a fairly subtle thing, but a lot of people get into, quote, spirituality or study with a spiritual teacher

because what they really want is some kind of thrill. And that can be everything from a kind of pseudo-sexual body sensation, you know, some kind of spiritual orgasm. Ooh, I want to feel the Kundalini rise. Ooh, I want to feel this. I want to feel that. Or desire for some kind of big head exploding insight. And so what they really want is to acquire some kind of spiritual goody. Or they might want some spiritual toys to play with. Oh, I want the power to levitate or the power to do this or the power to do that and let me just say really clearly that's all bogus bullshit none of it is i can tell you what spirituality is not and it's

none of those things and so one of the things that happens is people go they get very excited at first and either think they have an idea of spiritual growth, and they either feel like, oh, I'm getting smarter, I'm getting better, I'm getting this, I'm getting that. If there's anything that might typify growing up in the, quote, spiritual, unquote, realm, it's beginning to loosen your grip on the damn getting. In the realm of human connection and of human maturation and growing up, it's not about getting. In the realm of human connection and of human maturation and growing up, it's not about getting. It's about giving, and it's about doing things together. 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? 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. That's another area that just makes me think back to alcoholism and addiction, because even in AA itself, it often talks about how alcohol is a substitute for a spiritual experience or a spiritual life. And I think it is very easy to think of spirituality as being something that can provide some experience of being alive like alcohol and drugs do. But it does it in a very different way. The similarity there is it's about being connected to things. I think that is what, at least at the heart of addiction for me was, was about being connected. And at the heart of spirituality, that is also the thing that I think remains most essential and elemental to me is to be connected to life and its various components. to life and its various components. But I also agree with you more and more, I'm realizing that the path of spirituality is one of subtraction rather than addition. That's a really lovely way to put it, subtraction rather than addiction.

If you don't mind, I would like to encourage your listeners to sit with that for a while, because Eric's just said something deeply important. And it might be the only time that happens for like the next six or eight episodes, folks. So you might as well give it a shot. There's actually two pieces to this that I'd like to call out. The first is, yes, belonging, whether the word is connecting or belonging. It is one of our deepest, if not our very deepest, human need. And that's why one of the reasons the 12-step programs are so effective is that they don't work for everybody, but they are a place to belong.

Now, that's also one reason why the National Rifle Association, the Ku Klux Klan, continue, because they're places to belong. So belonging also requires some discernment. You know, you can belong to goodwill organizations and you can belong to badwill organizations. But that is one of the defining characteristics often of what people call the spiritual quest and of 12 steps and recovery. But there's another one that I'd like to also highlight, 12 Steps and Recovery. But there's another one that I'd like to also highlight, and that's the giving up of all control, understanding that we are not in control. That is also a hallmark of 12 Steps, and it's a hallmark of what goes by the name of spiritual opening or spiritual development or whatnot. And in fact, my own favorite book on recovery in 12 steps is called Recovery the Sacred Art. It's by Rami Shapiro. Rami is an ecumenical rabbi. He's the only rabbi I know of

who's had a piece he's written in best Buddhist writing of the year. So he travels around the world. He is a spiritual teacher. It's been a long time, but he was a guest on this show probably 150 episodes ago, which is amazing to me how long we've been doing this. But yes, he's out there, folks. If you want to find him, you can find him. Rami is a recovering food addict. I have eaten with him and I've watched. He's the only person I've ever watched to which the phrase food seeking behavior erupted in in my mind i mean you could you could see he's a recovering food addict it's a wonderful book and it is not written for people who have some identifiable um addiction uh what or what we would normally call an addiction uh what he says is we are all addicted to control and that that is a fundamental human issue and that what we ultimately we all wind up

whether we have a substance abuse issue a supposed behavioral um addiction or none of the above. We all wind up on our knees at some point going, I have no control. I need God or the universe or a higher power's help, however you want to define that. And I would argue that that is a defining characteristic of spirituality in all traditions and outside of all traditions and in recovery and in growing up. I agree. I always caveat that with the idea of the serenity prayer, which is the recognition of trying to recognize what we can, I don't think the word is control, the word in the prayer is actually what we can change, what we can influence. And so for me, it's been interesting because on one hand, for most of my time in recovery and all that, the lesson I needed most was not the one to accept, but it was the one to have the courage to change because I had and still have a tendency sometimes to just be like,

had and still have a tendency sometimes to just be like, F it, right? Or just to let things go. So for a lot of time, for me, it was about having the courage to step in and do the change. But lately for me, what mostly I've been working with is just the limits of that, of really realizing the difference between the ability to change, the ability to influence, the ability to have effect, but where that does really stop short of the ability to control and really realizing the limits of action and change and improvement and where that stuff just ends.'ve been i've been dealing with that a lot lately and then this notion of the ability to change really breaks out into two uh seeming mirror images but they're both part of the same whole the first is the ability to uh set a goal follow it which we amer Americans are very familiar with because that's baked into our culture.

You want to change? Fine. Determine the change, work toward it, envision it, yada, yada. But especially in spirituality, there's a more subtle, but I would argue typically more important, and also typically more difficult aspect to it, which is not so much the ability to change yourself, where you grab yourself and haul yourself somewhere else, but the willingness to be changed, where you open yourself up to the complete unknown, knowing that you don't know what's going to happen, don't know what the solution is, don't know what the future will be. Just know that

where you are right now is untenable and that you ask for help in changing, whether that help is with what the 12-step programs call a higher power, whether it's other human beings, and whether you don't even know. But that willingness to be changed is, I would argue, all important. I think it's really profound and beautiful. I focus a lot, and I think a lot, you know, the show is about the ability of us to change and to have a positive influence in the world and on ourselves. But I think what you said there is so important, is that the willingness to be changed by things other than our own will is really a critical thing.

So I'd like to bring this back to spiritual teachers because this applies in a variety of ways. First of all, someone who goes to a spiritual teacher and says, I need to change, change me. The correct answer from a spiritual teacher is, you're right, you need to change. I am not changing you. that is not my job but what i can do is watch if you fall off a tree limb or you're going too far out on a tree limb i can tell you that if you fall off and hurt yourself i can help you back up back up again you know have you get up there's a lot of things that the spiritual teacher can do but they absolutely cannot change

you and will not change you um and if they think if they go yeah i'll change you then run the hell away because you're dealing with charlotte and they're a predator or a narcissist or somebody who's not the real thing now the other thing that will often happen is the spiritual teacher um the the spiritual teacher will just say if they're not good, oh, follow this. Follow this program, one size fits all, and then you will change in the right way. I would be also very, very careful of all these one size fits all situations. On top of that, we can go, people go to spiritual teachers and say they want to change. But there's a paradox built into that which is well why aren't you changing already if i want a cup of coffee i will go get a cup of coffee i'm not going to to start telling people i

want a cup of coffee someday that's my goal they will know they will start saying well go get your damn coffee so part of what a good spiritual teacher can do is point out where the person is resisting the change that they need. They might say something about it or they might help the student wake up to what they're actually doing, what they're saying versus what they're actually doing. Certainly, they might teach a particular practice like meditation that can be useful. But then that's it. It's not that they're doing it to make that change. It's just something helpful and supportive. And then the last thing that people can get caught up in is people will go to a spiritual teacher and say, am I changing?

Am I better now? Am I this? Am I that? And often the spiritual teacher's job at that point is to say, stop worrying about it. No, you're hoping you're coming to me and hoping for a grade of A in spirituality. And a good teacher is not going to be handing out that kind of candy. They'll say, just keep paying attention, just keep watching, just keep living, just keep doing your best. And I will try to keep you, I will help you when you seem to be either going too far astray or when you're lost, I might be able to give you a little bit of guidance.

That's wonderful. We're nearing the very end of our time here. What I did want to ask you to do real quick though, and I don't remember where it is, I'll find it and put it in the show notes, but you've got an article somewhere, and maybe you can remember where it is. And we're not going to go through it all right now. But it's about things to bear in mind or questions to ask or how to go to a new spiritual center if you're like the new person going to a spiritual center. Do you remember where you wrote that and where that is? Yes. Well, actually, I wrote that in 1979 or 1980. And I sent that around from magazine to magazine and magazine.

No one would touch it. And then it took over, I believe believe almost how many years would this have been it took 36 years or something like that before someone would print it it's now um up online uh it's called when you're the new kid at the spiritual center i think it's on in two or three publications one of them i believe is the edge which i think would be the edge.com but it's also appears as the appendix in the user's guide to spiritual teachers and so it's a guide for someone who's showing up at a spiritual organization that they're not familiar with for the first time you know it's not like you're going to a new lutheran church it might be a tradition you're utterly unfamiliar

with or it might even be your own tradition you might be a cath you're utterly unfamiliar with, or it might even be your own tradition. You might be a Catholic, but this is the first time you've walked into a Cistercian monastery, for example, and you don't know what to expect. So it's a brief, very practical, very simple guide about what to do and what not to do. Yeah, I thought it was really useful. As somebody who's wandered into more strange situations than I can count by just showing up at spiritual centers I'm pretty comfortable just walking in and seeing what happens but a lot of people get nervous and I just thought it was a very useful guide to kind of just to help make that experience go a little easier well Scott thank

you so much for taking the time to come on I really enjoyed the book and I really enjoyed this conversation. Um, it's been great. Thank you so much, Aaron. Okay. Take care. Take care. All right. Be well. Bye. 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,

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