The One You Feed - What We Can Learn from the Wisdom of Harriet Tubman with Spring Washam

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

In This Episode, You'll Learn … Why we need to honor the history of our ancestors like Harriet Tubman How struggle and hardship are universal and also necessary to learn and grow How Spring came to explore and write about the spiritual nature of Harriet Tubman The lesson and legacy of Harriet and how we can learn to break free from the “prisons” of our mind Defining internal, outer. and ultimate abolitionism and the significance of each phase How the north star symbolizes a guiding light of hope and freedom How understanding our nation’s history can help bring more compassion and awareness to what’s happening in current times Why we need to remember that negative media can skew our perception of the world and not realize how much goodness there is The beautiful story of Sujata about the harmonizing of feminine and masculine energy To Learn More, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I think we have to be willing to trust that life is teaching us and often it's through enduring and experiencing suffering and difficulties that allows us to become much stronger. 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 reallyknowreally.com 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. She's the founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center there in Oakland.

She's also the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, an organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. Spring was trained by Jack Kornfield and has studied numerous meditation practices in Buddhist philosophy since 1997. She is also a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council. Today, Eric and Spring discuss her newest book, The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground. Hi, Spring. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric. I'm so happy to be back with you.

Yeah, third time. Third time. So I love when I can connect with guests multiple times over the years. It's a warm feeling I have, and I love to see how people's work evolves and their thinking changes and grows. And we're going to be discussing your latest book called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground. But before we do that, we'll start like we always do with the parable of the wolves. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says,

well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about this topic last night. I was teaching an online class at Spirit Rock where I'm on the teacher's council meditation community in California. And I was talking about the stories of the great leaders throughout time. I was talking about the Bodhisattvas, and I was talking about Harriet Tubman, and I was talking about how important it is for us to tell these stories. We must tell the stories of these beautiful heroes over and over from every tradition, those who represent love and bravery and courage and have great heart. We can't forget them right now. And particularly

in the face of so much violence and so much greed and hatred and delusion. These stories are so important of people who fed the good wolf and led others. And so for me right now, these stories that we tell that we must remember and share, they're very important. Yeah, they are. As you were talking, it made me think of an exercise that I've done with people before. I didn't make it up. It was, it was taught to me, but I don't remember by who, but it's in trying to figure out like what your values are, what's important to you. One way of doing it is to look at somebody you really admire. And what is it about that person that you admire so much that tells you something about what you really value, you know, and it points a direction for you to go. So I agree. I think looking at these people who are so extraordinary, Harriet Tubman being an exceptional example of that is a really powerful pointer to us in pointing the direction towards who we want to be.

Exactly. And the stories from all the traditions, our mythology, our stories of all the heroes and the heroines. And these are stories that we love to tell. As a Buddhist teacher, we tell so many. We're storytellers. We read Rumi's stories and poems from this to that. And we gather and we tell stories from the past and stories about how to live with more joy and compassion. And, you know, that's all we're doing is telling stories, our stories, our personal stories. And so I think it's a good time to be remembering the stories of the goodness of the human heart right now. Yeah, it's funny because we look at these stories

and any good story, there is challenge, there is conflict, there is overcoming. And most of the time, we don't want our stories to look anything like that, right? We want just a story of everything being good. But A, it doesn't make for a very good story. B, isn't the way the world works. And C, isn't really how we grow in life. Yeah. I mean, we all know that we grow through challenge,

but we don't like it. We do have this idea that we're on this elevator, our awakening goes straight up, one floor, then the next floor, and we just go higher and higher, faster and faster. Well, it's really not like that. Sometimes you go straight down to the basement and the hell realm for a

while and then here and there. But I think we have to be willing to trust that life is teaching us. And often it's through enduring and experiencing suffering and difficulties that allows us to become much stronger. It allows us to awaken qualities that we didn't know we had. You need some struggle in this life and nobody is struggle free. Let me just say that. Nobody gets out of this without some scratches and hardship, no matter who you are. But I think it's a time that we have to kind of embrace this idea that, yeah, there will be hardships. There will be the 10,000 sorrows. And if we can lean into them as seeing them as valuable, we'll learn and we'll be resilient in a different way.

Let me ask you a question about that, because this has been on my mind a lot lately. We interviewed a woman. You may know her. Her name's Dr. Joan Cacciatore. She focuses a lot on traumatic grief. A lot of the work you've done, you know, focuses on trauma and healing of trauma. And so on one hand, we have this idea that, yeah, it is through struggle and difficulty that we transform and we grow.

And yet, oftentimes, it's the very worst thing to say to somebody who's in the middle of deep struggle and difficulty or trauma. Like, it's a very worst thing to say to somebody who's in the middle of deep struggle and difficulty or trauma. Like, it's a growth opportunity, right? Like, you know, it makes you want to stab somebody. So I'm curious for you in your own life as you're going through challenges, how do you navigate that? Maybe I want to keep one eye on the fact that there is growth here in this, but I also want to allow myself to be where I'm at and experience the emotion and not try and spiritually bypass it, right? Well, I think you do both. You know, when I'm going through difficulties and as we were having our conversation before we started

taping, I went through this period of tremendous suffering. I got this jungle disease and I thought I was going to die from the treatment and all these difficulties. And what I realized is that I knew in the moment that this might be the hardest thing I'm facing. It was really like a life or death, shamanically, at least it felt like dark night of the soul. But deep down, I did know that this is going to be of benefit. I knew it was impermanent. And so, yeah, it doesn't help when someone's in their darkest hour to go, hey, you're going to love this in six months. You know, no, I just show up compassionately. But I do remind people of their strength in moments of hardship. I do remind them that, you know,

and this is why we remind ourselves by telling stories of those who have endured. This is why we take comfort in, oh, somebody else has been through this experience. And let's talk about the story of how they did it. That does give us a kind of comfort, a compassion. I do recognize in the moment when we're experiencing something, there's the belief that it'll never end and I'll never survive and I'll be like this forever. The ego mind tells us that. Absolutely. But then, you know, that's what I love about our hearts is that they recover. Yeah.

We recover. Let us take joy in that. We recover and we go on, you know, to a new day. There is something about that deeper truth. Yeah. I love that idea of reminding people of their strength and reminding ourselves of our own strength is really important. And our ability to cope and to weather storms without minimizing the real pain and difficulty, but also, you know, remembering exactly what you said, our strength, our ability to cope,

and that we do indeed recover. It's one of the great human attributes is we are remarkably resilient. Yes, especially if you've ever had a broken heart or that's a place where you can really see, you can feel devastated. And then six months later or even shorter, you're back and you thought, I thought I was going to die of this.

And you're like, wow, no, it's just, it hurts, but I'm all, I'm good. I'm good, you know? And I think it's important for us to remind ourselves that when we're in the grip of something, it's not to negate it. It's to say, yes, this is really hard. This is really painful. I'm challenged. I'm at the edge. This is almost more than I can bear. And we meet people there and we were with them. I'm with myself in those moments. So we don't negate what's happening. We're always opening to that depth with them. Yeah. We're going to get into the book in a second, but I want to go a little bit more into the Peru situation. So you have led retreats in Peru. How would you describe plant medicine retreats in Peru? Would that be an accurate representation? Yeah. As a Buddhist teacher,

I created an organization that we do these 14 day journeys where we blend Buddhist practice, embodiment practice, and plant-based medicine in South America. So you've been doing that for a while, and then you got this jungle-based disease that made you really, really sick. And then the treatment made you even sicker. I'm curious, were you at a crossroads about going back and continuing to do that? Because that's the sort of story that

I hear. And I'm like, okay, well, that's why I'm not going to the jungles of Peru. Now, you know, you might be much braver than I am, but I'm just curious, like, how did you sort of think through that and go, you know what, I'm assuming you got to some internal calculus that said the work I'm doing down here and the benefit I get outweighs whatever this risk and fear is. Can you sort of share how you got through that for yourself? Well, the whole thing was very surprising. I've been going to Peru since 2007. I even lived in the upper Amazon in a jungle lodge with no electricity for a year. I was fine. I never even had much of a fever. I had always found Peru in the jungle to be my power spot. I went there and I was restored. I was renewed. I loved Peru. I loved the jungle there. And yeah, I got bit by this bug and it was rare and contracted this

jungle disease that's like a flesh eating disease. Literally starts to go into your body and, yeah, it takes chunks out. Yeah, that's terrifying. Oh, yeah. And if you don't cure it, it goes into your organs and it's fatal and it creates all this havoc. So then you have to do the treatment, but the treatment is like chemotherapy. You have to go many days and endure this, you know, almost the same kind of medicines that are in cancer treatments and it's really toxic and dangerous.

So you have to often be in a hospital where they can monitor your organs while you get this IV for hours of this toxic medicine. And I just have a severe allergic reaction to that. But it did give me a breakthrough. I didn't leave Peru and now I'm based in Costa Rica. I was already kind of thinking of making radical changes. So that did wake me up. You know, when you're lying there and you think you're going to die, everything comes into kind of this clarity. You know, you're like, okay, universe, you know, I'm here.

I'm paying attention. It does put a stop to things. And I think now it went from being my apocalypse. 2021 was just brutal for me. It was just everything dismantled. I mean, it was, wow. Yeah, battles to being this breakthrough year that opened my heart.

And I'm not just saying that to be cheesy teacher. It really did. The worst thing became the best thing because I grew. I changed in a good way from that experience. Yeah, I love how open you are in your writings about current struggles that you have or very recent struggles, because there is a tendency. I mean, I know I have this tendency to talk about a struggle from 15 years ago and how all my inner work has transcended and overcome and all this. I love teachers who are really open about like, yeah. And you know what, just last year I had like three really crappy

months, you know, because I think it shows the truth of what the spiritual journey is like. Yeah. And I think that, you know, as teachers, I'm also forever a student. Yes. I don't tell my students, I don't tell people I work with, I'm awakened. I'm on the path. I'm walking. We're, we're together. We're side by side. And that's just always how I have felt. I have never tried to put myself above others. I'm struggling. There's days that are great, days that are hard. I'm doing the practices I talk about. I'm not just advising them. So I like to talk about what's real and what's authentic. I'm just a human being.

We all are. Yeah. Let's turn our attention now to your new book. It's called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground. How did that book come about? Well, the book, it was a shock to me. I had always admired Harriet Tubman, but I wasn't like a Harriet Tubman fanatic. Who doesn't love Harriet Tubman?

Every year they pull out Harriet Tubman's picture and story and we think, yay, Harriet. Yeah. Like everybody, Black History Month, I would learn a few facts that I didn't know. And I watched the movie in 2019, big Hollywood movie that came out. And again, this great admiration, but this relationship that happened was as big a shock to me as anyone. I mean, I wasn't expecting this. And I could say the spirit of Harriet Tubman began appearing in my consciousness. It was May of 2020. It was a week before George Floyd was murdered.

For those of you, you know, this whole case of police brutality is everywhere again right now because of all these recent murders. But this was in the quarantine at that moment in the quarantine where it was just so hard, right? The whole world was going into lockdown. And there was something I think in the summer of 2020 that it feels like the tectonic plates underneath our feet were quaking. There was a crack, I feel, in the matrix. And I felt like it was a crack of compassion that started to emerge in consciousness through the violence, through the chaos, through the pandemic. And I think Harriet through that crack just appeared in a dream. And I write about this in the first chapter. I write through the book chronicling what happened in as real as language, as clearly and honestly as I can

articulate. Like it's still a mystery how this is happening, how an ancestor can come and begin to share ideas and thoughts and feelings. It's not something that has ever happened to me before. So when Harriet appeared in this nightmarish dream and I was running from my life and I was holding on to something and all I remember was my hands burning and it was the back of Harriet Tubman's dress. And I remember going, what? But then feeling relieved, like, yes, Harriet understands these problems we're having. Harriet has been here before, and this is the right person who can help me. And I remember there was this great relief. And from there, it just ticks on a life of its own, the whole journey, which I share about very clearly in each chapter, how it led up to

the finishing the book. Yeah. And so you have a dream about Harriet Tubman. You become a little more interested. You start this church of Harriet Tubman and it's enormously well-received and it's a beautiful and joyous and vibrant thing. Talk to me about the journey from sort of where that is to starting the book and what sort of things were happening for you. Well, during that time where, you know, the first dream and then what was happening in society, I started feeling Harriet Tubman around me all the time. I started thinking about it. The name would come. I started doing research and I just thought, well, maybe other people are having this experience with Harriet Tubman. I'll put on a Zoom class.

That's what everybody was doing, right? I was like, okay, let's do a Zoom class. And then the class, you know, went viral. It started out as just a five-week class, actually. And it was the Dharma of Harriet Tubman. And unbeknownst to me in that sea of faces, you know, all those faces in the Zoom rooms, my publisher, Patty Giff from Hay House, the vice president, was taking the five-week course. I didn't know. They just signed

up. And so contacted me during that time and said, you have to write a book about this. You had to write a book about Harriet Tubman. And I obviously felt completely inadequate. I was like, what? Are you crazy? I'm not a historian. I didn't study African-American history. This is way too much. It's a Harriet Tubman.

I know I write spiritual books. I don't want to write a historical book. This is way, no, no, no. I'm not the right person. Call this person. Call that, you know, no, no, no. I'm not the right person to call this person and call that, you know, I was referring to other people. I didn't want to take on that. But that's when Harriet kind of appeared shortly after that. I said, well, I'll wait for a sign, but I'm a no, this is way too deep, way too complex. I can't. And then Harriet Tubman's spirit began to appear

in one particular night and a very unmistakable experience I write in the second chapter. She gives me the task. She shows me, oh no, you are supposed to write this book and you agreed to this a long time ago. And it was like, what? And so I don't call the book channeling. That word connotes if I'm going to sit here with you, Eric, and you're going to say, let me talk to Harriet. And I go, Harriet Tubman has speaking now. You know, this is not what it is. This is a conversation with an ancestor. And it doesn't just come on.

This is a deep process. This is something that I call sessions. this is a deep process. This is something that I call sessions. And it's like an agreed upon moment for the greater good. And the stories that Harriet wanted me to help convey was the stories about her heart, her heart message. We know the facts. We know that she was a warrior. We know all these things, but we often don't recognize Harriet as a great teacher. And there's like more to the story of this being than just the slave woman who led some missions and freed some people. No, it's deeper than that. There's a very profound spirit to this ancestor.

And that's what my role, my real task is to convey, to have a different conversation about this being, this ancestor who I will say doesn't just belong to me. This is a primordial ancestor. She's your ancestors. Yes, she happens to be African-American and I'm African-American, yes, but this is beyond color. This goes beyond. She's everyone's ancestor. So I think I'd like to put it in that context because it goes beyond these labels and boxes of gender, color, religion, to you and your interpretation of it. But I think it would be helpful if maybe we do a brief sketch of her life. You hear it, but I don't know that everybody remembers. There are parts of her story I didn't remember as I was kind of going through your book. So maybe we could just spend a minute and you could just lead us through like a several minute sort of arc of her life and what she did, just so that everybody has that picture before we go into some of the underlying pieces. Sure. So when we talk about Harriet Tubman's

life, and another reason that I was inspired about this book was to tell the real story of her life. So there's these messages that conversations and they're all about each stage of her life, right? Where we talk about one thing. So it's all very historically accurate, step-by-step, the dates, the times, everything is very historically accurate. So we know Harriet Tubman was born around the 1820 to 1825, somewhere in there. And her grandmother came over on a slave ship. And then her mother was born and started kind of Harriet Tubman's lineage. Harriet was born and was born enslaved in Maryland and was on a big timber plantation and her whole family was there. And her childhood was just brutal. I mean, it's all of the things that you see on TV shows and specials, just beatings and

the abuse and all of that. Harriet endured a tremendous amount of child abuse and being lent out and an enslaved child that no one cared about and was subject to all of that and felt very, very passionate that she should be free, right? Very much always leaning into that. And then when Harriet was maybe somewhere between 10 to 13, we don't know that much about Harriet's exact age because nothing was documented when slaves were born. There was no birth certificates or we don't know times and all of that. So there's always a little mystery about her exact date of birth. But she had this head injury. She went to a store to get some items. And in that moment, she saw a slave running into the store being chased by an overseer, somebody who oversees the plantations and keeps

everyone in a very brutal working condition there. And he asked her to hold down the slave. She denied immediately. No, I will not hold him down so you can beat him. And he threw a weight that was on the counter and hit her in the head. I think this is the first significant thing. There's like some key things about her life, born into slavery, her whole family, many siblings.

Then she gets this head injury and the head injury, they thought she would die, right? They carried her back to her house. And for two days, she went in and out of consciousness. But Harriet says that was the beginning of an awakening and this incredible connection to the spirit world. It was like something open and she journeyed and saw herself and talked about throughout her whole life, this conversation with the divine. She became clairvoyant. She just had this awakening that happened there. So then she goes on to continue living as a slave, but runs away when she's in her 20s, 26, somewhere around there, 27, finally runs away, makes it alone. Nobody knew what to make of Harriet Tubman because of the

injury. She had narcolepsy seizures and she would just pass out at any moment in the middle of a conversation, just fall into a sleep state. They could never wake her up no matter what they did. But when she did wake up, she would have these stories and they just thought this lady is crazy. She was seeing visions of the future and her role and being a conductor and being free. And everyone thought she was just crazy. And Harriet was a hundred pounds, five feet tall. This was no large person, right? So they thought this crazy woman, but Harriet Sutherland Neff made her way on her own all the way to Philadelphia, walked 120 miles to get there

and then joined the abolitionist society, the anti-slavery society and became a leader. And even though she was a wanted fugitive, began speaking out right away when she got to Philadelphia and she was wanted. And she began her first mission by rescuing a niece and her two children that were on the auction blocks going to be sold away from the farm that she grew up on. And that led her into rescuing people. And then she became one of the most famous conductors and her nickname was Moses. After she conducted on the railroad for 10 years and rescued all of her family members, including her parents in a very daring rescue as an underground operative, she then became involved and was recruited into the civil war. And this is a part of the story that many people don't know about. And also this has been kind of suppressed that Harriet was a great war hero and it was

extremely patriotic, was a nurse. She had this magical ability with making plant concoctions that cured dysentery. She had some gift with it and she was saving countless lives with her medicine brews and her tinctures. But also she was recruited to be a spy for the Union Army. And she was the first woman in history to lead, plan, and execute her own military raids with her own troop of black soldiers and led very amazing, successful attacks on the Confederate stronghold places and rescuing people. And I mean, who does this, right? It's incredible. I mean, this is a woman who's formerly enslaved leading. I mean, it just makes no sense. And then went on to join the women's movement and fought with

Susan B. Anthony for the passing of the Women's Voting Rights Act. And just her whole life was just dedicated to liberation and freedom, that every being born should have the same equal rights. I could say more, but those are some of the main things that stand out. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

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the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Another part of that story that I had never heard was that her mother's slave owner, when he passed in his will, what you can tell that part, I had never heard that. And it's sort of astounding and heartbreaking. Oh, yes. This is like a big one. Yes. So Harriet's grandmother came over on a slave ship. Her name was Modesty. And then Modesty gave birth. And I have a chapter called Harriet's and her grandmother Modesty and the family tree that her mother was born on the plantation, gave birth to Harriet, was married. Harriet's parents were married. Harriet's family was very close-knit. Her parents managed to stay loving and married and died at an old age together. They stayed throughout their entire life in marriage.

And unbeknownst to her mother, Rit, her mother's name was Rit, Rydia, the grandfather who purchased her grandmother and then the whole family came, freed her mother, wrote in his will upon death, Rit is to be freed at the age of 40 and all of her offsprings. Well, when the patriarchal father died, they didn't honor the request and the will. But the thing is, Harriet knew though. Harriet had this unwavering knowledge that her family was being betrayed and saved up money, even though she was a slave, did side jobs, somehow hustled together some money, went into town, hired a lawyer to look into her family records. The lawyer found the record and

said, well, here's the record of the will. You are freed, but there's nothing we can do. There's no court that's going to listen to you. Just go back to slavery. But that burning feeling that, you know, everything that's happening to you is wrong. And that family that was locked into this battle with Harriet's family for all those years fueled Harriet's motivation. And it was so painful to see her mother working when she knew her mother was supposed to be free. And they were all supposed to have been let go, you know, and to live free lives. So that was a very powerful story of betrayal. Yeah. And this family that owned them, oh my, they did everything.

Everything you could think of to Harriet's family, including sold three of her sisters away. And it was a painful dynamic, I would say the least. And it's remarkable that she had the fortitude to, instead of being broken by it, she was fueled by it. Yes. instead of being broken by it, she was fueled by it. Yes. If you just also just use this analogy of you're supposed to be let out of prison, right? You're supposed to be let out of prison, but the prison doesn't tell you. They hide it from you and keep you in jail another 20 years, right?

And go, oh, well, they told the governor said you could go, but we decided to hide that paperwork. And, you know, that's the kind of betrayal this is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's incredible. And the stuff about her in the Civil War leading troops, and it's, she's just truly remarkable. More so even than the basic facts that I knew about her, you know, the fact that she was a conductor on the Underground Railroad and how many people she had rescued. But that other stuff too, it's just, it's kind of amazing. I'd like to shift us a little bit into some of the deeper messages embodied in Harriet's life, in your interactions with her spirit, and how that also

ties in with your Dharma teaching. And so, you know, one of the places I'd like to start is talking a little bit about prisons of the mind. We can clearly see the external prison that slaves are in. We can see the external structures that black people still live in today. I mean, there's external prisons of varying shapes and sizes and dimensions, but there's also kind of the prisons of our mind. Share a little bit more about that, because that's really very much in line with the Buddhist teachings on liberation. I mean, we can definitely see where we're imprisoned by our thoughts, right? And how we can get imprisoned by greed. We can be imprisoned by hatred and delusion.

And that to be walking the path is to be breaking out of all these constructs about who we are, who other people are, and ultimately letting go of greed and letting go of hatred and letting go of delusion and seeing the truth of who we are. But I really believe that these mind states are real prisons and the idea is that we're freeing ourself from them. And I think what stood out for me about Harriet Tubman was she was never imprisoned by the inferiority demon. They tried to beat it into her. You're worthless. You'll never be free. You know, you're a woman. Who do you think you are? And it was this ability of Harriet. Somehow she was never

beholden to the program. She was always like, I'm outside of that. I don't subscribe to that, right? I won't adopt. I'm inferior because I'm black and a slave and a woman. And those were hard conditions to overcome and born into slavery. And your mother was born into slavery and your grandmother was brought over as a slave. I mean, to have a vision of seeing yourself as somebody other than that, to see yourself as you are in the eyes of what do you call God or Buddha, or to see your true nature to rise up. That's what I mean by breaking out of the prison. It's the prison of concepts that limit us to who we are.

And Harriet was trying to liberate people from hatred. Dr. King used to say that. I'm going to liberate you from your hatred. You don't see it as a prison. You like it or you're involved in it, right? Brutalizing others, hating other people is a prison. There's no freedom in that. There's no happy result in that. There's no winning in that. That's a path of destruction. And so that's what prisons do. They imprison us from seeing our goodness. So the whole of the spiritual path is waking up

and letting go and shedding more and more of these cells that we lock ourself in. And now on the outer level, yes, there are people literally in cells, literally experiencing on the physical level imprisonment, but many more are dealing with the prison of their mind. And we can see this now that where we are in this time is a war of consciousness, right? It's like, who's going to win the war? Which wolf wins right now, right? It's so classic. Yeah.

And we all know examples of people in situations that they are not free in many ways, but they are in many other ways, very free, freer than most of us. You know, Nelson Mandela is a historical example of that, but we can read memoirs of people in prison and we can see like, wow, that person, yes, while they were living in terrible circumstances, but inwardly they were free. Nicole on our team, who helps put these episodes together and do research, she really drew a parallel that I'm glad she did about when you're talking about Harriet Tubman and, you know, having to free not only the slaves once they were physically free, but having to free their minds. And it reminded of Edith Eger. I don't know if you knew who she is. She was in the Holocaust camps, I think at Auschwitz. But she talks about that even after being freed,

she had work to do to free her mind from captivity and how many people remain imprisoned in their mind, even after they were set free. Yeah. And even trauma is a form of being in prison still, right? We're still enacting, we're still reacting until we even heal our trauma. We're imprisoned by it. We're imprisoned by fear and what has happened to us, our bodies hold on. So freeing your mind is no easy job at times. It's not easy on the external level, right? But this is the time that we're in now. We're in a time and space where we have to look at our mind and what we're creating, the hell realm. Because exactly, you meet people all over who live in very difficult situations, but are experiencing much more joy. We see billionaires on TV right now

creating hell realms and saying crazy, you know, they're in a hell realm of their mind. They might have a billion dollars, but it doesn't buy you real freedom and it doesn't buy you compassion. It doesn't buy you wisdom. And so there's a guy that I love a lot who's on death row right now named Jarvis J. Masters.

He's at St. Quentin Prison. And he's someone that I love a lot who's on death row right now named Jarvis J. Masters. He's at St. Quentin Prison. And he's someone that I think about every time I drive over the Richmond Bridge, you know, because he's in a tiny unit right there on death row and practicing hour after hour after hour after hour, right? And he's like, if I die here, okay, so be it. I was freed a long time ago. My heart is free. They can do whatever they want to my body now, prison it, beat it, lay it here, even kill it, you know, but I know my heart is free. And so this is what we talk about, the prison of the mind. And this is a high level we're talking about, you know, this is a higher level of consciousness.

I love what you said there about how difficult this is, right? I mean, it is extraordinarily difficult to free ourselves from the prisons of our mind. But in my experience, to do it to whatever extent we are able to free ourselves is valuable. You talk about abolitionism later on in the book, and you say that there's three levels of it, inner, outer, and ultimate. Talk to me about what you mean by that. Yeah. You know, I was thinking a lot about that word abolitionism and abolitionist, you know, those who, that word was so popular when people were seeking to abolish slavery, right? They wanted to abolish this law. They wanted to abolish this mind state, right? And then, you know, the word kind of went out of style a little bit.

It was very popular. The abolitionist society, these were kind of like the activists of our time, you know? So that word abolishing, you know, and I think about that right now, inner abolitionist, is this abolishing our own greed, hatred, and delusion? It's the seeking to abolish that which is destroying us, right? We're going to abolish these habits, these patterns, and we're going to liberate ourselves from them. I mean, as a Dharma practitioner, that's all we're ever doing is uprooting these seeds and planting new ones, right? We're cultivators, we're farmers of our consciousness.

And you've got to be willing to tackle these habits and these mind states. So the inner is the willingness to do the work of abolishing our racism, our cruelty, our inner hatred. And we don't do that with a state, you know, the baseball bat. We're doing this with the heart of compassion, you know, so we're the inner abolition. The outer is just that we become also sensitive to what is happening around us. We don't walk around with blinders on. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry that's happening to you.

It's not happening to me while someone's being murdered outside in front of us. Well, sorry. I'm sorry that's happening to you. It's not happening to me while someone's being murdered outside in front of us. Well, sorry. We seek also to end it in our environment as it becomes an extension. This is an extension of me. And when I see the suffering right outside my house, there's a movement to reduce it, to help support abolishing any place where this hatred is living in society. And so that's kind of the outer, it's that movement to reduce. And the abolitionists, our ancestors, who were some of the greatest abolitionists ever, they didn't live in slave states. They didn't have to, they wanted to abolish it because of its cruelty. So I know for a lot of us right now, I want to abolish the current way policing is done in America and re-envision another way, a safer way, a more loving way. That's something that that word is picking up steam again, abolition. let's abolish this system and create something else. And then

ultimate is just kind of moving on the path of like the Buddhas and the prophets and the awakened beings. It's seeing that all of this is just a dream. Ultimately, it's the abolishing of the ego itself, right? Ultimate liberation is the self. The whole idea is gone and we're just in a sea of compassion and we're just being used in the service of humanity in that way. So I write that as the ultimate level of when the ego has been abolished, now you're really free. Yeah. I love thinking of it in those ways and that we do have work to do inner, outer, and at least a glimpse in occasionally at that ultimate freedom is there. I want to change directions a little bit here and talk about the North Star. What is the historical importance of the North Star and

what's the symbolic importance of the North Star? Why is there a chapter that's very much focused in that direction? cell phones. There's no maps. This is someone who could not read or write. This is someone who was avoiding slave catchers and dogs and bounty hunters and this faith in the stars. This kind of reminds me of when Dr. King used to say, the strong arc of the universe bends toward justice. And the history of the North Star is so interesting. It used to think it was a star of Bethlehem going back that far. And the North Star is an interesting polaris. It doesn't move.

It stays like in the same direction, pointing north. And sailors used it. And it has this amazing history. Native American tribes used it. They would refer to it as their chief star, right? And they would build their lodging around looking at the star. And it felt like a star that was a protector star. So here you have this star system that's leading people. It actually becomes a map, a light, a beacon to what they were figuring was the promised land, but they'd been dreaming a

place out of slavery, out of change into a place where they could be free and not be brutalized. So Harriet's belief and faith in the North Star was profound. She had a great, like, this is, I know I can follow this and I know these stars are helping me. And at night would walk all through the night, slept in the day, hiding and all through the night walk, just following the stars. And because I'm such a stargazer, I love it. You know, I always feel that when I look in the sky and called The North Star, which I found another really interesting parallel there. A question for you historically, was Frederick Douglass is such a hero. I mean, I didn't know that much about Frederick Douglass until I read his, he has three biographies chronicling his long life. He had three biographies chronicling his long life. And I remember when I was writing the book, I read all three of them. I listened to them on Audible and I was like, wow, you know, just his journey is so incredible.

But they knew each other. Frederick Douglass was a great supporter of Harriet Tubman. In fact, Harriet Tubman had taken refuge in Frederick Douglass' home in New York. His home was a stop on the underground. This is all very secret society. Yeah. So apparently she had come through his home on her when she was conducting and had a group of passengers. He wrote very beautiful things about Harriet Tubman and saw her as a great hero. And I wrote a quote in there that he had written about Harriet in his paper, The North Star. And yeah, he called his

paper The North Star after the star, such a symbolism of hope and freedom. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

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Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, Really No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot

on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You say, in its deepest spiritual meaning, the light in the sky, and especially the North Star, represent our own inner light, the light of truth, love, and wisdom. At times, our light can be obscured, like clouds temporarily hiding the moon, but its essence can never be destroyed. Talk a little bit more about that idea.

Well, I think this is really something that came through a lot in the book with Harriet Tubman too. And as with all great teachers, they talk about this innate goodness that we have, that even though right now we are being bombarded with violence and negativity in our media, for every one terrible action,

I believe there's a million more that are not being aired, that are not being amplified. This goodness that we have, like there's this natural movement toward compassion. And I think that Harriet sees this as our inner light. In the Buddhist tradition, they say, you're all Buddhas, you just forgot.

And the whole journey is about waking up to that truth, to who we are. And that light, that in the sky, it feels like the universe. Imagine when these people were walking and praying and they had their hopes and their dreams and this new life and the universe is twinkling, like, follow me, beckoning you. You feel like, yes, there's something greater that's moving me, that's moving this spirit of love and truth. And I believe the universe is a compassionate place

and we are reflections of that. We are cells in the mind of this universe. So that goodness is in us. Now, confusion, wow. We're in the depths of it, right? We're in the depths of it. But that doesn't mean that, you know, the sun is still shining even when the clouds are there. And I believe that. So I believe that there's something about this light, that we are light. We are spirit. Let's transition a little bit from here to a chapter you've got called General Tubman in the Civil War, where you sort of bring out what we've shared a little bit about what

Harriet Tubman did in the Civil War, which is remarkable. But you also then go into the deeper underlying idea of a nation that's divided. We certainly see that today. We hear all the time that polarization is really bad, and it does seem to be. But you point out very rightly, and there's a lot of historians who also point out, this is not new. You say the idea that the United States has ever been truly united is a figment of our collective imagination, a fantasy many of us are slowly giving up on. Black people really understand that America has always had two distinct sides with radically different ideas about what freedom and democracy are. goes back to our founding fathers in a very, very clear way. George Washington owned more than 100 slaves, where another founding father, Benjamin Franklin, freed his slaves and became an abolitionist. And both these guys wrote the Constitution together. And so this divide

is there kind of from the start. Share a little more about that. Yeah, I mean, I think this is why understanding history is so important because people don't understand how did we get here? You know, I think a lot of young people, there's a movement to try to suppress history or to suppress all this information about how the US, how the America came to be with its 10,000 joys and its 10,000 sorrows. We just want

to tell the joys and focus on the Mayflower and the gate, but then no one understands that. But why are we having so many problems if this was so beautiful, right? And I think it's important to know the history, to know that this difference of opinion around life and human rights for all beings goes back to the very beginning. There was a difference. Some agreed and some didn't. And some were totally against this, you know, and we saw that even with Abraham Lincoln, he was very against the idea of slavery. And there was others that were very in favor of it. So again, we have these figureheads over and over who represent this battle line. Like, I don't agree with this.

I don't want this. And then other people saying, this is our way of life. We do want this. And we don't agree with you. So history is definitely coming back. What we are experiencing now, Eric, feels very similar when I studied our history of the lead up to the Civil War that happened in 1860. It started and went to 1864, but everything is mirroring,

including people believing, half the country believing there's another president and the other half, it's astounding. I'm raising the alarms on all this. And I think Harriet is back because there is another war brewing and we all feel that we feel like, where is this going? This can't be going anywhere good. You know, there's a buildup of military happening,

militarization of people in their own homes. So this is what happened. This is what happened in the 1800s. And it's interesting to see that. So I think it's important that we understand history so that we have more compassion to what is happening now. And we can bring more awareness to what's happening now. How do we heal this crack? as to what's happening now. How do we heal this crack? You know, what is it going to take for us to heal this? You know, how can we find commonality around human rights and equal justice for all beings? So this is our challenge for this generation. Yeah, I think so too. And you know, the idea of a civil war, you know, I generally stay fairly far from politics on this show. It is scary in a way.

And I sometimes worry, though, that by us forecasting that's where we're headed. And I'm not saying that's what you're doing. You're just saying there are signs here that mirror it, that we are pushing ourselves in that direction, that we're tallying up our differences. I always think about the stock market. I'm always like, well, I mean, the stock market is like, it's bad because people think it should be bad. Like, I mean, it's this very strange thing that responds. You know, people always talk about the stock market, like, well, the market was feeling fear today. Like, it's this living creature, which in some ways it is. It just always weirds me out though. Cause I'm like, but we're the consciousness that's driving the entire thing. So same thing with the divide that is very real and is here and does need healed,

you know, is like what way of relating to it helps us, like you said, to bridge it, to narrow it, to stop it from getting to the point where we have to fight each other like you said, to bridge it, to narrow it, to stop it from getting to the point where we have to fight each other, you know, because there's nothing good that comes out of that. My belief is, and I know yours is that like, whatever the question is, violence is a bad answer. Well, I absolutely agree with you. And I know that without the civil war, I absolutely agree with you. And I know that without the Civil War, slavery would not have ended. Yeah.

So in order for that system to collapse, it had to be a battle because it was so dug in. Yeah. Right? It wouldn't have. There was no resolution. People were willing to go to battle over it. Right? They were willing. And so I hear you.

Like, you know, all of this is our minds we are creating it we are create the divide we create the stock market it's all our dream right we create our concepts and these are the prisons that people are willing to die for yeah the prisons of our concepts you know and so i don't know what it would mean to have another civil war or if that's eminent. All I'm saying is that when you study the three, four years before, you know, in the 1860s, wow, it almost is an exact replica of what's happening now. The divide is even the same states. It's almost like a history. It's trying to repeat itself all these years later, but now we have more awareness. So what does this mean for a more conscious society? And I think it's

hard to know if talking about it creates something more real or not talking about it. Inevitably, we wind up there. Like what heals? Ignoring it or going, nothing's happening. Let's focus on the joy, everybody. And then there's a, you know, next thing you know, there's a buildup outside your front door and you go, well, how did this happen? Well, it was happening. So it's hard to know what's creating what. Agreed. A hundred percent. There's no right answer there. I want to go back a little bit to something that you said a little while ago, which was, you know, for every terrible act we see on the news, you know, you believe there's

lots and lots and lots of other acts of love and compassion and kindness and decency that are out there. And, and I share a very similar belief. So we know that news can be toxic for us in many different ways. I mean, at the very least, it's just one view of the world. And it's a view of everything that's going wrong in the world, largely, that's what it is. That's its view and its orientation. And so on one hand, being exposed to it too much, will, at the very least, skew our belief about what's happening in the world because we will say, oh, we're only looking at the bad, not again, all the wonderful acts of kindness that if you walked out your front door, you would be seeing. So how do you orient towards being in touch with what's happening, paying attention to the news so that you do know what's happening, but not getting

lost in it? Because I do think that you still have a view of humanity that's, as you said earlier, the universe is a compassionate place. So how do you, in your own life, very practically manage that desire to be informed with the desire not to drown in negativity? Well, I don't have a television. That's for sure. I haven't for years. So I don't have CNN on while I'm cooking and cleaning or whatever people laugh at me, any of it. It is going 24 hours. It's an addiction.

It's an addiction, I think, to the media. And so I'm very aware of what I watch. And also I'm very somatic and very sensitive and, you know, in all the media, whether you're Netflix or Hulu, if you see the amount of violent programming, I still feel like Hollywood's responsible for mental illness by just putting out endless crimes and violence and stories and homicide X and killer this.

And it's all sensationalized, you know, all these serial killers. And I mean, if you're a child and you're just, that's all you absorb. I mean, my God, no wonder our children, you know, are suffering from mental health crises. So watching dehumanization happen hour after hour after hour after hour does something to your consciousness.

It's a form of programming. The world's not safe. It's terrible. People are horrible. They're everywhere. You know, so I limit everything I watch. I am very aware of what I take in and I try very consciously to watch positive things. If I'm going to engage in something on my computer, I'm going to make sure that there's some positive spin on it because I need everything I can get right now.

So I implore people, we need every help we can have, you know, to help us with our minds because this onslaught of violence, it's just, if you really just go look at what's treading all the top things, they're all basically greed, hatred, and delusion magnified and packaged in a glamorous way, sadly, you know? Yeah. Well, I'm in the middle of watching a series called Vikings, which, yeah, the level of violence in it is, for me personally, the battle scenes, I'm like, that's not what I want. It's the story that's happening here. You know, Jenny puts a blanket over her head and I start hitting fast forward to get through it. But imagine an eight-year-old's mind alone.

No, I get it. They're so plugged into TV and online now. You know, they had to live like that for years, absorbing hours and hours of just like, you know, we just dehumanize, you know, you show it over and over again. It creates a violent society. So just something for us all to think about, but we do all the time. I know. Yes. Yes. I certainly can fall prey to it. I wanted to end with,

we started talking about the importance and value of stories and you tell in Chapter 11, which is really about women, you know, the heart of women. And, you know, Harriet Tubman, after working on free and slavery, became, as you mentioned, a part of the women's movement. But you tell a story in there about an important part of the story of the Buddha, Sujata. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yes. So she often gets a footnote when we tell sort of, you know, what happened of the Buddha, Sujata. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yes. So she often gets a footnote when we tell sort of, you know, what happened with the Buddha, right? But share a little bit more about that part of the story and what it means to you.

Well, I have such a good connection with that story. And the story about Sujata always was very meaningful. I remember when I went on a pilgrimage to India, I went to Sujata's village and went to this place where they created this whole shrine. And I took photos and there was an orphanage and I gave a bunch of donations to the orphans and I prayed outside. They had a little image of her with a rice bowl. And it felt like a very special place, but it felt so neglected compared to all these other monuments, you know, it was like Sujata's off over here and it looks kind of like a graveyard and here, you know, it was like, it kind of symbolized the feminine in

the, in the role, like off over here. Yeah. there's this person, Sujata, who basically saved Siddhartha's life. But, you know, who cares? You know, she's over here. But I just remember going and I found such a connection. Yeah, but the story is, you know, the Buddha to be, Siddhartha, was killing himself, practicing in this warrior way and destroying his body. in this warrior way and destroying his body, eating only a grain of rice a day and not sleeping and not bathing and just practicing this kind of aesthetic way that was so violent. He was near death. And in the story that there's a very beautiful story where the gods in the heaven were like, oh no, he's going to die. He's killing himself. And then we have the soy of

Sujata who on that day, the Siddhartha was face planted near death, couldn't even move his body any longer to practice. Sujata comes through the forest, having made this bowl of rice pudding all morning, hour after hour, and was going to make an offering. As is customary in many cultures, when we make offerings to spirits, we make offerings to these altars. We make offerings to our ancestors and the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas. And then saw this mangled man in the dirt, you know, and her heart opened and she then gives this bowl of food and then helps him. And this becomes the balance of the feminine,

the feminine spirit. Like you can't just think that we're a blend of masculine and feminine energies. And she represents the mother, everything he had suppressed, the wife, his mother, the family, I'm alone, I'm a man, I'm going to do this. She kind of comes in and feeds him and then bathes him. And interesting enough in in other stories, in Thich Nhat Hanh's story, they become lovers. So yeah, she nurses him back to health, not just for a day or two days, but over a long period of time because he was so ill from how he had, he needed a long period of restoration. But as you know, these stories, nobody wants to talk about the Buddha having a girlfriend or Jesus being married. Or, I mean, these are like, this evokes, I mean, I don't even want to get into, you know, Islam and what that would mean if a woman appeared anywhere in the story.

You know, it's such a, it's so much destructive energy toward the feminine, you know. So I talk about that story and how Sujata is making a resurgence, the lost women in the Buddha's life, his aunt and the people who raised him. And also the Gospels of Mary Magdalene, you know, are rising. And, you know, the Pope recently said, yes, these are legitimate Gospels. We have destroyed them for a long time, but here, which tell a different story. And so Harriet loves that, that there's this feminine and masculine. They need to work together. One doesn't overpower the other.

It's like the eagle and condor prophecy, right? These energies fly together. One doesn't dominate. These energies fly together. One doesn't dominate. And so this chapter was about Harriet's leaf in the feminine spirit needing to rise and to be in harmony with the masculine. the Buddha story is normally told. It's just sort of like, well, and then someone gave him food and then he went on and, you know, became enlightened and there's more there and it is a real turning point. And so I love the way you brought that out. We are out of time. So Spring, thank you so much for coming on. I always love talking with you. The new book is called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground. And we'll have links in the show notes to where people can get the book and learn more about you and your work.

So thank you so much for coming on again. Thank you, Eric. I always have so much insight and joy talking with you. So thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net

slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor? What's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast,

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