The Rich Roll Podcast - Good Grief: Guru Singh On Death & Loss

Episode Date: May 21, 2020

Welcome back to another edition of Guru Multiverse — the latest in my ongoing series of spiritual deep dives with Guru Singh, my treasured friend and favorite wizard of all things mystical. For those newer to the show, imagine a modern-day Gandalf who rocks like Hendrix while dropping pearls of wisdom that beautifully fuse Eastern mysticism with Western pragmatism. A celebrated third-generation Sikh yogi, master spiritual teacher, author, and family man, for the past 40 years Guru Singh has been studying and teaching Kundalini Yoga. He is the author of several books, a powerful lecturer, and behind-the-scenes guide to many a luminary, including Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, and artists. A peer of rock legends like Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, Guru Singh is also a talented musician who began his recording career on Warner Bros’ Reprise label in the 1960s. When he isn’t recording tracks with people like Seal, he’s bringing down the house on the daily at Yoga West, his Los Angeles home base. As the pandemic has reminded us, the human body is delicate — a fragile soul vessel susceptible to a host of diseases and disasters. And it simply does not last forever — no matter how much we endeavor to deny or repress this universal truth. Today we explore the experience of being left behind. The emotions that follow. And the powerful lessons contained therein. Marking his 10th appearance on the show, this is a deconstruction of grief and loss. The potency it contains to both create and destroy. And the potential energy it holds for grace, gratitude and transformation. We talk about our relationships with our bodies. How to master our physical containers while also practicing non-attachment. We get raw about losing those we love. Owning our pain. And rejoicing in grief. Although this exchange was recorded well in advance of the pandemic (back in August 2020), Guru’s wisdom is timeless, easily digested and more pertinent now than ever. You can watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the conversation streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you've experienced loss and the grief that accompanies it, may Guru Singh's gentle and loving energy, soothing words, and new perceptions guide you through your difficulties. Peace + Plants, Rich

I think what people find in tragic challenges is a part of themselves they didn't know existed. I think that people step up in crises in a way that they're not familiar with oftentimes. And a new character arises in the midst of grief. So I would just say the expression good grief is real. The mourning process is important. Everyone will go through it in their own way. There are tools that you can use to help you through it. Most importantly is communication,

conversation, healthy isolation, mixing that together, not getting into any one to deviate from one form into a total denial or a total refusal or anger mode, but to really go through the process fully and it becomes good grief. That's Guru Singh, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast.

The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, all you beautiful, imperfect, striving, mortal members of the human race, just trying to find a little bit of grace amidst the chaos, a little positivity in the darkness, a little immunization against the fear and the many contagions out there, both viral as well as social, political, and emotional. My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast, and I got to admit, I'm struggling a little bit right now.

For the most part, I'd say that I've maintained a fairly optimistic and sometimes grateful disposition throughout this pandemic. And that's for good reason. I'm about as lucky and as privileged as they come. I live in a beautiful place, surrounded by my family, which I love and that loves me. And I can still do the things I love most, like this podcast, which I've always run out of my house, like running my backyard trails, like riding my bike, like enjoying my kids. I really have zero right to complain, which is why I feel a little bit guilty about my current state, because I don't know about you, but all of this is starting to wear a little bit thin at the moment.

I am really having a bit of a hard time feeling motivated or enthusiastic as the state of affairs continues to metastasize. And like a lot of people, life now seems to revolve around Zoom, Zoom work meetings. I do group therapy on Zoom. My AA meetings are on Zoom. And now, as I near the end of my stash of episodes that I recorded pre-pandemic, Zoom podcasts. And look, it's all fine, but it's also not what any of us signed up for. And despite being myself an introvert by nature, somebody who actually needs a fair degree of solitude, I'm finding myself more and more just craving real human connection. And for me, that's what the podcast is about. It's about communing,

trying to have this authentic experience with another real human sitting across from me, not a facsimile on a screen. I think we all need this. Fundamentally, it's what makes us human, that connection with another being. But like everybody, I'm trying to adapt. I am adapting, but it's just not the same. And I'm suffering a little bit. I find myself withdrawing, isolating a little bit more than usual, a little bit depressed, fighting a bit of the darkness, paralyzed at times. When it comes to even things, simple things like responding to emails and texts or scheduling new conversations. And I feel guilty about it because, like I said, I really don't

have anything to complain about because so many people have it so rough right now. And at the same time, I hold myself to this high standard. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be hyperproductive, to use this moment of forced repose to execute on projects I ordinarily don't have the bandwidth for. So it's all a little bit disorienting. And I guess what I'm saying is I'm just trying to be a little bit gentle on myself to allow it to be what it is to double down on my gratitude practice and let go of expectations and just breathe a little bit. Not sure why I'm sharing all of this with you guys. And I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that if you find yourself feeling a little bit off, if you're

feeling down, if you're beating yourself up a little bit because you don't feel like you're measuring up or you don't feel like you're appropriately rising to the occasion, I feel you. And I don't have the solution other than to say that it's okay. And it feels good to talk about it. So if you relate, don't hold it in and try to find a way to let somebody else inside, even if it's on Zoom. Okay. My guest today is my treasured friend and favorite wizard of all things mystical, Guru Singh, making what I believe is his 10th appearance in our ongoing series of spiritual deep dives. For those newer to the show, Guru Singh is a master spiritual teacher and third-generation Sikh yog, who's been studying and teaching kundalini yoga for over 40 years at this point. And he's known really for this keen ability,

acumen to convey and communicate abstract and often ethereal principles of Eastern mysticism with a very relatable Western pragmatic style. Today's discourse, which was recorded pre-pandemic all the way back in late August, if you can believe it, when the world was very different, is a deep and at times heavy exploration of something I think is fundamental and universal and timeless about the human condition, something that is more pertinent now, perhaps, than ever in our current planetary predicament, and that is grief and loss, the potency it contains to both create and destroy, and the potential energy it holds for grace, for gratitude, and for transformation.

A few more things I want to mention before we begin, but first... We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the

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And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in

my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place

and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage,

location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life and recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com. Okay, from material back to the ethereal. If this pandemic has reminded us of anything, it's that the human body, this vessel that our soul resides in, is delicate. It's fragile. It's susceptible to a host of diseases and disasters.

And no matter how many scientific advances people like David Sinclair make, it simply doesn't last forever, no matter how much we endeavor to deny or repress this universal truth. So today we're going to explore the experience of being left behind, the emotions that follow, and the powerful lessons contained therein. We talk about our relationships with our bodies, how to master these physical containers while also practicing non-attachment. We get raw about losing those we love, owning our pain, and finding a way to rejoice in grief. Although this exchange was recorded pre-pandemic, Guru's wisdom, as usual, is timeless

and ironically more pertinent now than when we recorded this back in August. If you've personally experienced loss and the grief that accompanies it, may Guru Singh's gentle and loving energy, his soothing words, and new perceptions help guide you through your difficulties. It's always an honor to sit in the presence of this beam of light, and my hope is that you feel the same. So without further ado, this is me and Guru Singh.

All right, we're ready to do this. We're ready. Good to see you again, my friend. Great to see you. Always a pleasure to spend time with you. We have to spend more time when we're not recording though. When we're not recording. So the last time I saw you was when- We have this relationship, right? We talk to each other through microphones. And then that's followed by lots of texts from you that go unresponded too. So I apologize once

again for being a terrible correspondent. Well, you know what I did? I found the way through. What? Your wife. Going through Srimati. Yeah. I know. I said, okay, just in case he's not noticing these, I know you will. Well, here's the thing.

When texts have now become the new email, and I look at my phone and there's all these texts. I know. And once I read them, if I'm not in a place to respond in that moment, I can't mark them unread. And then they just go into the ether. Yeah.

You know, so. I know. So it's almost better not to open them. Right. Until you're sitting down and you know you're going to be able to respond. I know. So yeah, that's why it was honest what I said to you. I said, you know, we completely understand.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I have no angst, you know, attached to the fact that you never answer. Well, that comports with who you are. There you go. But never answer is way too much of an overstatement. Well, the last time you were here, which was a couple months ago, I think. Yeah, Matt. A couple months ago.

Last time you were here, which was a couple months ago, I think. Yeah, Matt. A couple months ago. We had a couple conversations. And then as you were leaving, Julie was here and we were chatting and hanging out. And it was only then that you mentioned that you had suffered a fairly tragic loss. Your daughter had given birth and that child only lived like a day and a half, two days before passing away. And we had just spent several hours together. You were regaling me with stories and you seemed to be completely fine. And I had no idea that something like that had just transpired in your life.

So I thought that it would be instructive and helpful to explore that, to talk about that a little bit. Because none of us get out of life alive and we're all met with loss at different times in our lives and trying to figure out how to process our grief and move forward in the best way that we can through these unforeseen tragic things that occur in all of our lives. One of my great teachers in life has been our children, our son and our daughter. And in working with this, because it was Tiaga, his name, was born on June 13th, and he was having trouble breathing and never really maximized his lungs and was on a ventilator for a while.

And then as the, probably about 30 hours into his 36 hours of post-birth life, his heart rate dropped to a place where they were realizing that he wasn't going to sustain himself. And so that's when our daughter asked that they just take him off everything and she could hold him and really connect so that at least she could have that experience of deeply connecting with him for however short his life was going to be. And as I say that our children, as you know with yours, are such incredible teachers if we allow their messaging

to come through our presentation of who we are as a parent. our presentation of who we are as a parent. And so my wife and I talking to them, we changed all of our plans and flew into Seattle. In talking to them, they're saying that they chose celebration over tragedy so that they could get the most out of, the most positive experience out of whatever length of life the young child was able to have.

And that's not a 24-7 event because when you're strong and able to make the conscious choice, you choose to navigate these challenges, these tragic challenges, in the most benevolent way possible. And then you have those moments, which you and I and Julie shared, in which you feel the depth of what we call the loss. It's almost like a season in the forest when the leaves die.

To the bugs perhaps, or the leaves themselves, it's a tragedy because their lifespan in that way is going, gone. But if you look at the bigger picture, you know there's years after years of leaves coming back through the life force of the tree. And at this point, the life force of the family. So the family loses this grandchild, this child. We've got our children. We've got our in-laws.

We've got our grandchildren. We've got two beautiful grandchildren. And so what I learned a lot from our daughter, Hattie Perk, is that she was choosing when she was going to go down, right, into grief. And grief is not a bad thing. Grief is an important thing. And that she wasn't going to go down into it to take the children down, to take the other two children down. So she was managing her emotions. Then if they were choosing to go down into the emotion of we've lost our brother and we're very sad, then she would go down in there with them and they would explore that space. And so it requires tremendous effort. Yeah. It's one thing to say we choose celebration

over devastation and to kind of intellectually try to inhabit that, but then actually to practice that is a very different thing. And that's a practice, isn't it? I like the word you chose there. Because what you were saying earlier is that, you know, we went through two hours of, you know, video recording, and, you know, we were good. We were on point. We were not being distracted by anything. And then in that moment of communicating about this loss, then we went

into that space. So I find that it's not always by choice. Sometimes the emotion will just hit you. Right. And that's okay. I let myself go into that. And you have to feel like you're in a safe space to go into that. And so that's the other side of the coin that it's taught me. Make every space a safe space. In other words, if I'm in front of a class and all of a sudden it hits me,

and I've got anywhere from 100 to 1,000 people in front of me, I'll go into that space and I'll communicate about that space because I want to make sure that I'm practicing what I preach, so to speak. what I preach, so to speak. You forwarded a letter to Julie and I that your daughter wrote to Tiaga, which is beautiful, but also heart-wrenching. I appreciate you sharing that with us. And it kind of walks one through her emotional process of trying to deal with this birth and this loss.

But what struck me about it was just her composure and clarity, I suppose, over not necessarily, I think the word I was gonna say, being okay with it. I mean, obviously, I don't think that fully describes the experience, but acceptance, I guess, or surrender to what actually is. And there's something really empowering about that, I think. And I was very touched by her words. And those of us, all of us, those of us,

you know, there's no exclusivity here, that have been touched by death. What we recognize almost universally is there's no turning it back. You know, death is death, and it's so final, and it's so absolute that if there's not acceptance, ultimately, then there's just a lot of pain that continues and continues and continues. And one of the things that in the Buddhist teachings was about if you sit with anything, with any pain long enough, it will ultimately turn into joy.

And that's quite clearly because if you're sitting with this thing that is absolutely final, eventually you will come to the acceptance, using your word, the acceptance of that finality, and then you have to surrender into that acceptance. So using both of those good words that you led with are really important. Grieving, mourning is a physical process as well as an emotional process there and quantum physicists are communicating about the touch of gravity that when

two objects no matter how small or large they are you know they could be star systems matter how small or large they are. They could be star systems colliding, or they could be two people hugging. What ends up happening is that the gravitational field, be it as gentle as it is in human beings, creates a wave. And that wave, and they've measured, seems to go on without an end. It doesn't seem to diminish over time. And what the spiritualists have called this over the thousands of years is the ectoplasmic threads that connect us. And so grieving is a process in which you're releasing those connections to the physical form so that you can re-establish a connection with the soul body or with the vibrational body,

whatever one wants to call it. It doesn't have to be a belief in God and all of that. God and all of that. It's just a, it's just a, get a relationship now, not with this, with this small baby, but get a relationship now with this sort of endless soul. And I'll tell you, ever since Tiaga came and quickly left, I've got a new buddy. Sometimes I get angry. I'm not always super pleasant around this friendship. Sometimes I'm really upset that you left me here, Bubba. You did not. I was hoping that you were going to stick around and be a pal, be a co-teacher, be a whatever. So I go through that. And it's interesting you bring up our daughter because she chooses not to go through that.

Yeah, I was going to ask how she's doing now. She's doing incredible. she's doing incredible. That doesn't mean that she doesn't have moments in every day in which she has to be incredibly sad. But she's an inspiration. What was really wrenching about the letter that she wrote was that initially it seemed like it was going to be okay. Like when the baby was first, when Tiago was first born, clearly there were issues.

He was blue. There was, you know, evidence that things were not okay. But the doctors seemed like they were going to be able to manage this and there was no reason to panic so that creates a sense of hope or you know a calming effect like okay like this is tricky right now but it's going to be all right and then to have it turn and then a day later to learn like no this is not going to be okay yeah you. The emotional roller coaster of that. A day later, they moved from the NICU, which is the neonatal intensive care unit, into hospice, right?

So then you move from trying to do everything to save the life into doing whatever needs to be done to allow the life to pass. And that all happened within a 36-hour period. So you think about time being an illusion. If your whole life is going to be concentrated down into 36 hours, be concentrated down into 36 hours. That's a phenomenal illusion. So how do you make sense of all of this? Faith and trust.

Not faith in something or trust of something, but just having the faith and trust in that this has happened, therefore it has happened. It's a little bit like that moment, I'm sure, when you hit the wall in an ultra race, right? Where you suddenly realize that you've gone way too far to turn back. It's like, you know, you've gone three quarters of the way across the river swimming and it's not a good idea to turn around because you can't make it. And so in the midst of what's going on, all of this energy, there's no turning back. I think what people find in tragic challenges is a part of themselves they didn't know existed.

I think that people step up in crises in a way that they're not familiar with oftentimes. And then it's a matter of being able to sustain that really higher view of things. The doctors at one point said, you know, that they could sustain this life for a little bit longer. It wasn't going to be, you know, an open end. They were talking pretty much, you know you know hours not days or weeks and that's when you know that's when our daughter just said actually i need us to remove all of the equipment because i haven't had a chance to bond you know i haven't had a chance to bond yet and that gave the medical facility,

it was the Seattle Children's Hospital, incredible facility, that gave the doctors and the nurses and the medical assistants such a relief because they've probably been through many instances where if they give that choice, they know that it's not a permanent fix, but that they can sustain the life for maybe eight, maybe 10 hours more, whatever. And for them to hear that somebody was already in a mode of acceptance was really relieving to them.

The people that were in the room said that you could feel just the tension just drop. Yeah, I would imagine most people won't let go and just say, you have to keep going for whatever reason, like because of denial or what have you. Keep pushing forward, keep pushing forward, a sliver of hope that maybe this can change. Yeah, I can't imagine, I cannot imagine having to navigate something like that. And I've had other friends who've endured similar experiences and I've seen marriages

and partnerships and families destroyed by this kind of thing. I mean, I think probably, I don't know what the statistics are, but I would imagine more often than not, partnerships break up over these kinds of tragedies because the two people, you know, can't find a way to see a way through the grief

in a way that keeps them connected. A new character, what you're saying is really spot on. A new character arises in the midst of grief. Because we're not out there, what do you want to do today? Well, let's go have some grief. Nobody says that. Let's go have some grief. Nobody says that. Let's go have some fun is what most people say. And so we're accustomed to our relationship that's based around a good time.

And so when our relationships, whether they're husband and wife, parents and children parents children and grandchildren these relationships are all set in motion around the things that we do together and so when all of a sudden we are all now every single one of us going through extreme grief which is you know what we were going what we've been going through extreme grief, which is what we've been going through now, there's a different person that arises in each one of us. And we have to be very accommodating and very accepting and very surrendering to that new person. I know that my wife and I, the grandparents, or one set of the grandparents,

you know, we'll be going through our day and then all of a sudden I'll notice her or she'll notice me. And we're not, you know, we're not in that same energy. And we've found that just by being there for each other, we don't have to share the emotional moment in a likewise emotion. But just to be there and just to say, oh, let's stop for a moment. Let's, you know, if we're driving, we'll pull over. If we're eating, we'll sit, you know, be still. If we're in the midst of doing something, you know, we'll take care of that. And it has taken, and our family, like many families, have been drawn even closer together around this. To witness this through the eyes of our other two grandchildren, a five-year-old

girl named Narayan and a three-year-old boy named Sahaj, and to experience what a five-year-old brain and a three-year-old brain is doing with this information. Because their mom was pregnant, their mom's getting bigger and bigger and bigger, their mom their mom was pregnant they you know their mom's getting bigger and bigger and bigger their mom's going to give birth they're going to have a little you know brother or sister and you know they're all planning in their little way how they're going to be relating to this event and then the event turns out like what happened they have to adjust they have to and that's one of the things about our daughter and our son-in-law

that is just remarkable how they have been navigating the three-year-old and five-year-old emotional world so that they can fully process their experience. Yeah, with the limited capacity that they have at that time. I would imagine the best way to, as a parent, to help a child of those ages do that is, on the one hand, you want to normalize life. Not everything stops because of this, and you want to keep their life. Like, you know, not everything stops because of this. And you want to keep their day-to-day somewhat consistent. But on the other hand, you don't want to create an environment of denial around what's happening either.

There has to be a sensitive way of grappling with the reality of what's occurred, but doing it in a way that a mind of that age can process in a healthy way. And what they have been communicating with the children and when the children are around is that, you know, we choose to honor Tiaga for the time that he was here and what he meant to us and what we planned on being with him now has to be transformed into, you know, he's with us in spirit, he's with us in however one wants to relate to that. Little Sahej, they went out and they planted a tree for little Sahaj, they went out and they planted a tree for Tiaga on some of the family property on Woodby Island in Puget Sound. And after they planted the tree and both Narayan and Sahaj were fully involved, fully engaged in doing it, it was kind of like on the side of a little incline,

the three-year-old boy just marches up to the top of the hill, turns around and faces everybody and says, I have a brother. He died. And he walks back down the hill. Oh, man. Wow. So it's like, okay. I will say that to have, you know, they always say the worst thing a parent can face is the death of one of their children. And I will say that all around the world with all of these parents that are facing these things on a daily basis because it's a big world and this happens a lot,

that a child that is 36 hours old doesn't have as deep a connection in memory. It does in soul body, obviously, but in memory as one that is years old, a decade old, or what have you. And so the level of how one would process grief is going to depend upon the amount of time that one has been engaged with this person. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, what I've seen is one parent will, I mean, no matter how many tools you have in your emotional toolbox and how deep your faith is, this will test you beyond anything you've ever experienced. And it's not uncommon for one partner to get stuck in one phase of the grieving process and be incapacitated and unable to kind of move on to the next phase, whether it's victimhood or anger or denial. And you'll have another partner who's trying to normalize the situation. Look, we got to move on with our lives.

And that's where the split occurs. There's a rift and a cavern, an emotional cavern between those two people that over time becomes more and more difficult to bridge. bridge and these people end up becoming estranged from each other and ultimately moving in different directions and and breaking up hence the split of the family so i think it takes a tremendous amount of presence and consciousness and hard work and this is just me you know imagining because i've never this is not my own I've never had this experience myself but the challenge of trying to move forward and maintain that togetherness and that connection probably is one of the most difficult things that a couple could could ever have to do together. Very well spoken. And a really important framing

of what happens in many instances. Grief, tragedy, jams, so many different emotions up together that oftentimes the split, the cavern, as you called it, the gap between people is because the different emotions that are all being rushed to the surface don't match up. to the surface don't match up. Usually when two people are relating, it's a bit of a dance where they're not stepping on each other's toes. When all of the emotions come screaming to the surface, literally, that's when you're not doing a dance, you're collapsing. And because of the burden of this emotional experience. And what I found to be really important is a lot of talking. We would be sitting in Seattle with our children

and we'd really honor each other's perspectives. And I found that as we kept the conversation going, that all of those emotions that were being crammed into a tiny space, no room to resolve, started opening and giving space. And then you start noticing similarities and familiarities between how you're feeling and how somebody else is saying they're feeling but aren't necessarily showing it. And so a lot of the differences start to break down and reveal the samenesses. learn to unpack their emotional sensations by sitting quietly, sitting mindfully, and

allowing each of the emotional characters to have a voice so that you can start to go through and start to pick out, okay, what is the voice that is going to work here? Because it's like a room full of, you know, it's like a, what do they call those things where politicians come and have that, you know, a room full of people and they've all got an issue. A caucus or something like that. Yeah, right. And everybody's yelling and everybody wants to be heard. And that's a bit like what the emotional body is up to in these deep emotional moments. My sense is that there's an overpowering instinct to isolate.

Like when you're in that much pain, much like a dog that's injured, you want to go, you know, the dog's going to climb under the bed and want to be left alone. Somebody who is in that much pain wants to separate themselves from other people. And that process of, as you explained, being present with that emotional landscape requires a very mindful, proactive, grounded approach to trying to dissect what's happening inside your heart and in your head. But I would suspect that the experience of being in that place is one in which there is an overpowering, you knowing looping of the mind where you're just replaying some narrative over and over and over again

in a way that's very difficult to override so that you can get a little bit more clarity so you can ground yourself. Interesting. As adults, we tend to sophisticate our emotions, which means that we tend to translate them into something that is presentable. And then when an event such as a tragedy happens, all of that cover comes off. Now we're afraid to show anything because we have no idea how it's going to turn out. One of our grandchildren was feeling really awkward one morning very early on after this event and just started pounding this pillow. I don't want Tiago to die.

I don't want Tiago to die. I don't want Tiago to die. I don't want Tiago to die. And this went on for, I don't know, maybe 90 seconds. I don't mean like continuously, but it was like every so often, I don't want Tiago to die. And as we were just sitting there, we weren't saying, we weren't trying to fix it it we were just sitting there being with that child and then the child just sort of sat for a moment took a deep breath and moved on they didn't go into you know frolic and joy but they moved on. They didn't go into, you know, frolic and joy, but they moved on. And you know, the five sequences of processing death, one of them is anger, another is denial, and that was pretty much kind of an expression of the two. One, you know, angrily expressing denial,

of the two, one angrily expressing denial or a request for it to be denied. And the beauty of actually seeing it right out there in front of you in a very young expression was very, very clear because what she was saying was exactly what I was saying often. I'm upset. I'm angry. This isn't the way that I foresaw this. This isn't right. This isn't, you know, all of these things. And I was able to work with that information. I'm not saying that I was controlling it.

I was able to work with it. There is no controlling these emotions. And when I was watching her go out, I thought, yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Right. Yeah. And it's just like, I mean, like we all have this particular length of life. And at some point we go. And when we go, you know, people are left behind. And fortunately for me, you know, I died when I was 20 in a hospital. and I had some insight, some experience as to what goes on after this body shuts down.

And so I have a lot of belief system and faith and I've built a whole infrastructure around what I see as the crossover between life and death or life in the body and life after the body. So, you know, have some tools in that regard. But that's something that everyone has to set up for themselves. Everyone has to process. It's almost like we all have to be faced with, you know,

a pile of lumber and sacks of cement and, okay, you're going to build a house, now what? Yeah. That experience when you were 20, I don't think we've ever talked about that on the podcast. Can you walk us through that? Yeah. I had an undiagnosed appendix pain that had gone on for a few months. And then one night, the middle of the night, it ruptured, and that just set you on fire. But the appendix is in a particular position in the body.

It's in a nerve ganglia, meaning a crossroads of many nerves, and so it radiates pain all over the place. It's one of the hardest events for medical science to diagnose. It's a big killer in the third world, so to speak. And so it took them 10 to 12 hours to actually decide, hey, whatever it is we're going to cut in, and we believe it's a ruptured appendix, let's cut in and go for it. And so by that time,

septicity had gone throughout my... Yeah. So peritonitis sets in. After they close me up, peritonitis sets in. My gut blows up. The pressure shuts down my vital organs and they had to resuscitate me. I was out for a minute and 45 seconds

according to their clock. For me,itate me. I was out for a minute and 45 seconds, according to their clock. For me, it seemed like I was out for days, weeks, months, maybe even years, because there's no time without the system that keeps track of time, and I'm not pointing at a watch. I'm pointing at the physical body. And I had experiences with people on the other side, if you want to use that cliche. And the people on the other side told me a whole lot about what I was to do and what I hadn't been doing. And the nonsense that I was going through was of my own design.

And I had better accept these realities. And so it was an incredibly valuable teaching experience, not that I would recommend it to anyone. Was it the traditional white light kind of thing? No, I didn't get the good death. I got the, you stupid idiot, you've been playing a role your whole life. If you're going back and you are going back,

you're going to have to nail it. You're going to have to go back there and you're going to have to exude the strength to be truly you as opposed to, oh, everything is perfect and you're guided by this and guided by that. So maybe I went to hell and everybody else with a white light goes to heaven. Wow. So was this message being delivered by people you recognized? It was being delivered by people I ended up meeting two years later. An indigenous tribe in the way back of the Copper Canyons, what's called the first migration of the Aztecs. There were two major migrations.

The Taharmara? Taharmara. Yeah. Well, that's the first migration of the Aztecs. There were two major migrations. The Taharmara? Taharmara. Yeah, well, that's the second migration. There was the Born to Run. Yeah, that's the second migration, which is right on the edge of the Copper Canyons. Copper Canyons is five times more vast than the Grand Canyon. Yeah, it's huge.

And, you know, dozens of dozens of dozens, maybe even hundreds of people have been lost in there, never returned. And so the first migration went way back in. And they were the ones that migrated the moment the high priest began to do human sacrifice because that was a major corruption. That was just a total major corruption. and the second migration was when the conquistadores came you know the spaniards came into mexico and were you know wiping everyone out and so the tamara are the one that are there and the are the one they're the way back and so in the way back there what are called undiscovered

what are called undiscovered, undiscovered populations, undiscovered tribes. And it was a village of about 300 people that I ended up getting to a couple of years later after I had gone through. Did you go there consciously mindful of this experience that you had? Is that what drew you to that place? No, they were completely, it was one of those moments in which you go, oh my God.

So you have this vision. People standing in front of me that I had met after life on the other side, to use that frame of reference. And here they were now standing in front of me. And what had taken me there, I was a musician, I was a recording artist for Warner Brothers. And things were getting crazy. I was one of the guys that went through the 60s without drugs. How dare you? How dare me? They say if you went through the 60s, you probably don't remember it. Well, I remember it very, very well. You're one of the only ones. Yeah, right. And so, and the scene, the music scene, San Francisco music scene was getting pretty tipsy. And so I decided to take a break from it

after recording some things, them being on the air, having certain, the COINTELPRO work come down on me because my work was anti-war and they were trying to control the anti-war messaging in the San Francisco Bay Area. And so in 1966, 67, I took a break and I went to stay with some people in New Mexico who said, we want you to come with us to our home in Old Mexico. And I thought, oh, cool.

You know, a little trip to Guadalajara or wherever, you know, we'll just do. So we drive down into old Mexico, and then we go off-road for a couple of days, and then we go hiking for another four days. Getting into the Copper Canyon is not an easy thing. We had to go through a cavern, drop down through a cavern. So we're in the pitch black, and then we come out inside, you know, deep down in a cavern. So we're in the pitch black and then we come out inside the, you know, deep down in the Copper Canyon. There's parts of the Copper Canyon that has three seasons all going on at once. There'll be, there'll be hail snow on top of the mountains and all the

way down to tropical, um, middle of summer in the bottom. So it's a remarkable place. So what happened was I met these people during that minute and 45 seconds on the other side. They told me what I had to do in life and that I had to quit trying to be someone else, trying to be like someone else, or being held back by the fact that I couldn't see myself being what I was trying to imagine myself being. I mean, it's like the death that you went through when you went through from being a lawyer to being who you are today, from being an unhappy lawyer to being a happy guy at 24 miles into a marathon.

Yeah, but I didn't get a visitation though. Maybe not in the same exact way. Yeah. All right, so you're starting to have this sense of that, which in certain respects, I think you could argue is what lured you down there, right? So you're down in the Copper Canyon. Well, I'm with this guy who's, he and his wife

had, and she wasn't with us at that moment, but he and his wife is, I had stayed with them after a concert that I did in Albuquerque. And they said, you know, come on, you got a break now, come on to our land, we want to show you. And so they showed me this incredible land, which I then, after when I decided to take a break from the music, and I thought I was going to be gone two weeks, right? I was gone 11 months. Everybody, because there's no communication, it was an undiscovered tribe, so there's nothing happening inside and outside that world. Everybody thought I had gone off and died somewhere, yeah? So the end result was that I met the people in the flesh that I had met before, and they knew when they met me before that I was going to ultimately meet.

And so that's the kind of magic that goes on in the indigenous world. So when you met these people and you had this moment of recognition, were they having that same experience? Like, were they, oh, he's here? And what they knew was that they were going to bring me, ultimately they were going to get me to come in person to them in person. So they had the meditative capacity to go outside their body and be out in the non-physical zone. And I'm not going to use any specific names just so that we don't brand it.

And in the non-physical zone, we meet, we have communication. I end up with defibrillator paddles getting sucked back into my body, so I leave them, so to speak, behind. And then I go through my life, which is now very tenuous, and I go through my life, get is now very tenuous. And I go through my life, get out of the draft, go through process, end up having a musical career, taking a break from musical career, coming to their son and daughter-in-law, so to speak, going with them down into where they actually are physically, had then four passages, rites of passage, you know, vision quests that they set me through.

But what it gave me when Tiaga passed, it gave me a greater sense of comfort as well as a greater sense of discomfort because I got to come back in and continue my journey. He wasn't to do that. He wasn't able to have that where his body gets somehow resuscitated and he can move on. And that's like what our daughter was saying in that letter that she wrote, that in the early stages, the doctors were all feeling positive.

So one of the things that also comes up in grief is the tenderness of life and how intricate this physical body is and how important what we feed it is, how we rest it is, how we exercise it is, how we emote through it is, how we think within it is, you know. And so instead of being kind of haphazard in life, you tend to, through the process of grief, become more articulating and more accurate. And hopefully you can sustain that because life in general is not articulate and is not always accurate. Yeah. I think the flip side of the person who then has moments of joy or moments where they forget what has happened and they're able to be happy.

And then they kind of snap back in when they remember what has occurred and then are then visited by guilt or shame for feeling happy again, right? Like, am I allowed to experience joy? And if I do, what does that say about how I feel about this thing that has occurred? just hit probably the most common is that guilt, shame of feeling good about feeling bad or feeling good instead of feeling bad. Or feeling bad about feeling good. Feeling bad about feeling good. What was it that you said? And you were correcting yourself, you said, is she okay?

Is she okay with this? You were using some kind of a word like that. And those are the ways what we have to be able to do and really encourage ourself, which is the heart center. Encourage ourself, core in French is heart. So when we encourage, we bring into our heart, we get some willpower invested. And to encourage ourself to unwrap that process. Feeling good, feeling guilty about feeling good, feeling bad about feeling good. And then also, take it one step further, feeling good about feeling bad. I'm doing the right thing as I'm feeling bad, right?

And we need to unwrap these so that we're not caught in the whirlpool of the emotion, but we're actually navigating. We've got some kind of a vessel that we can navigate the whirlpool in. And that's not easy, but I will tell you that what has helped me the most in navigating the highly emotional moments is breath, breath work. And what does that look like it looks like becoming mindful of breathing just all of a sudden i'm feeling all of this emotion i'm going to allow myself to feel that emotion now it's come to a time when i am i have something that I have to do I have something that I have to be able to present then I will go into my breath and I'll just start very consciously very deeply

breathing and all of a sudden I'm not in touch with so much my life as I'm in touch with life itself. And that suddenly lets me feel, okay, soul enters the body. Soul is born in the body. Soul is only able to use the body for 36 hours or 36 days or three and a half years or whatever it is, and then soul leaves the body or life, however one wants to relate, life leaves the body. So in physics, there's a rule that is considered universal, and that is that energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed.

And so as the life enters the body, it's an energy in these cells. And as the life leaves the body, it's an energy that has left these cells. And that energy, the body is is dead but that energy still exists so then as i'm working with my breath i'm connecting with that energy and that's who tiaga is now that's i don't believe there's anybody that can do that better than someone who has experienced this firsthand and is choosing to get beyond it in a very healthy way. that she is saying, and my wife and I are choosing the same path, choosing to stay connected to Tiaga, not to Tiaga's body. Yeah, I think the way that we culturally relate to these kinds of things has developed, has sort of metastasized into a very unhealthy psychological disease, for lack of a better word. And I think that's a function of the fact that in our modern lives, we have insulated ourselves from so many of the primal rhythms of, you know, what that, you know, ancestrally defined us as human beings. So intellectually, we understand,

yes, we will die, bad things happen, et cetera. But meanwhile, I'm in my house and the air conditioning's on and I go to my job and it's about just living our lives. And we feel like those things happen to other people or, yeah, I'm going to die, but maybe I won't. Maybe that just happens to other people. And we've whitewashed society to such an extent that we don't see, it's very difficult actually to be connected to the passing of another human being. You might go to a funeral, but do you see a dead body or have you seen a dead body in your life? Like, I think I only have once in my entire life. And so it's removed from your line of sight, from your field of vision completely. And when it's not present in your day-to-day existence, when it does occur,

it comes as a shock or some kind of aberration. And I think that that has created a very unhealthy relationship to this one thing that we cannot escape. And I think it's important, like that was a very beautiful story. And I think it's a very healthy relationship to a situation that you certainly didn't want

to have happen, but these things do happen, how can we as a culture create a healthier relationship to the passing of our loved ones or just death in general? And I think we have to invite it back in. It's such a taboo, it's not even socially polite to talk about it. And I think it creates an awkwardness. Like in this very situation that you're in, outsiders don't know what to say. Do we visit them?

Do we bring a casserole? What do we say when we're there? Oh, it's easier to just, let's just leave them alone for now through their grieving process because we're uncomfortable and we don't know what the appropriate action is to take because we don't have experience with this.

Two ways of working with this in today's world, one is hospice and another one is after death is the wake, both of which are incredibly healthy and healing. We have an associate who is, you know, they're birth doulas, and she is in a category of what's called a death doula. And they attend to the dying in hospice. And one of the things that her task is is to get the relatives to feel as comfortable with whoever it is that's passing as they were when they were living. That by this time in hospice, death is inevitable. It's not like we're looking for a miracle or we're trying a new form of whatever medicine, but death is inevitable. let's be good with what this person is now able to communicate or experience, right?

And if all they can experience, if they're no longer able to speak or perhaps not even able to hear, the holding of hands or the telling of stories. Maybe they can't speak, but they can still hear. So the telling of stories of what you remember about them in front of them, you're telling these stories. And so the process of dying has some consciousness that is arising in these Western industrial nations, much of which comes from the old traditions, even the indigenous traditions.

And for example, take that of the Judaic system of having a wake, sometimes the Christians, sometimes the Hindus, sometimes others, the Buddhists, they'll have a wake after the death and everybody will gather. And yeah, people are crying. People are sometimes wearing dark glasses because they're embarrassed about showing how swollen their eyes might be.

But it's a time when people sit around, they share nourishment, they share food, and they share conversations about, do you remember when? And golly, it seems like it was just yesterday that we were all with so-and-so and we were doing this and doing that. And sort of sharing those aspects of a person's life after they have passed or sharing with the idea of hospice. So both of these need to have a true and an assertive revitalization so that we can really start to have the experience of someone else's experience so that even if we have not personally had the experience, at least we've shared it

or shared space with somebody that has. I would strongly suggest, by the way, because you're right, going into isolation is very instinctual. And there have been times during these past two or three months, I guess it's two and a half months almost now, that all I want to do is just get in bed, pull the quilts over, put my head under a pillow, not on a pillow but under a pillow,

and just go black, right? Just go black. I don't want to have to respond to anybody. I don't want to do anything. And sometimes I will just go off and meditate in, you know, as isolated a place as I can find. But I also find that if instead of going to that isolation, if I will take myself into a conversation, that I'm much more present. You know, I pride myself in being very present in most moments, and I've found that there's a degree of presence that even I hadn't had before this experience. And so both isolation and conversation are healthy, but too much of one and not enough of the other is probably not the healthiest way of doing it. Yeah, I think it's completely normal and fine if you want to get in bed and pull a pillow over your head. But if you can't get out of bed for a month, then it becomes an issue, right?

Like, I think it's a function of, you know, accepting where you're at and being okay with that. Like right now, this is what I need to do, as long as you're progressing at whatever rate through these various phases. And I think isolation is fine as well, as long as you can break your way out of that and get to a place where you're able to be with other people and communicate.

You're looking at your visual aids. I have a visual aid here. And so big visual aid. big visual aid. So here's our presence. This is the what is. And here's our preference. This is the what we want it to be. And so if you think of a tree, a tree has a growth point and a tree has a center point.

The growth point is the area of the tree that's going to be giving new birth to growth, right? And we also have a growth point and a center point. Our center point is our groundedness in what we would call the what is. And our growth point are all of our aspirations. What are you going to achieve? What are you going to do? How are you going to be? Et cetera. In grief, the preferences get all distorted because some of the preferences of, I don't want Tiaga to die, are not possible to be met. And so what ends up happening is that you've got to be able to live with the acceptance of your preference while sitting in the presence of your groundedness. And in that way, you have to navigate what's called the difference.

So it's presence, preference, and difference. what's called the difference. So it's presence, preference, and difference. And it's this difference that it says ruled by water because it's highly emotional. And what you end up with is you end up with this, if you can do it, and we're not successful, as I say, 24-7, but when a tragedy is upon you, if you can sit in your presence and be in that state of

not wanting to isolate, but wanting to, even if you isolate, you're just, you're inside yourself, and then begin to work with your preferences, which ones of them are realistic, preferences, which ones of them are realistic, which ones of them are not realistic. And as each person gets this sort of formation to work, then relationships can work. So if a couple is finding it awkward to be around each other because of a tragic loss, be around each other because of a tragic loss, then that couple, each one, each member of that couple needs to come into their center point, which is if you want to physically, it's called the Dan Tian in Chinese medicine. It's that point that's between the navel and the tailbone, It's between the navel and the tailbone, that diagonal halfway down. So it's inside your body.

That's where the true navel point is. And so you feel this gut feeling of centeredness and you propagate it. You develop it. You nourish it. That's why in a wake, they would serve a lot of food so that people could come to that place, that digestive place. Not only are they digesting the food, they're digesting the event. And then in the preferences in a wake, you're talking about all those wonderful times you had together. And you're preferring to remember those wonderful times while not getting lost in that memory as if it's an illusion, but staying grounded. son too, really instrumental in guiding the family towards is that we choose to celebrate Tiaga's life in the midst of all of the emotions that are going to be arising in the process.

So I use that just so that people could see kind of graphically that we're not just talking like concepts here. Yeah, so for people that are listening and not watching on YouTube, Guru Singh held up a placard. An enormous. At the bottom, it said presence. And then above that, it said preference. In between is the difference defined by water emotions turbulence turbulence yeah of all of that um no i get that you know and i think that's beautiful so um harder to practice than to talk about i would imagine

much harder yeah um all right we need to wrap up this edition of the Guru Multiverse. So I would just say in wrapping that the expression called good grief is real. That grief, the mourning process is important. Everyone will go through it in their own way. There are tools that you can use to help you through it. Most importantly is communication, conversation, healthy isolation, mixing that together, not getting into any one to deviate from one form into a total denial or a total refusal or anger mode, but to really go through the process fully and it becomes good grief. to this and they're in that spot, they're navigating loss, they're in their grief and they feel stuck. Like I just cannot escape this prison. I'm so angry.

The world has wronged me and I cannot see my way to the other side. You know, what is the, you know, what is the path? Like what can you say to that person and what practices? You've talked about breath, you've talked about communication, but what do you say to that person? A cosmic law is it for every action,

there is an equal reaction. So for every circumstance, there is the polarity. They're in a place stuck. This is wrong. Never should have happened. I'll never break out of this. Right next to that is not stuck. This was not wrong, even though it was horrible. Something is here. If you can open up to the possibility that the law of physics, the law of the cosmos is that for every action there's an equal polarity, an equal and opposite reaction, then that will give you a little working space. Because in stuck, there's no space. And you have to give yourself the gift of finding some amount of space

that will allow you to make some movement. Knowing in some way that the law of physics, the law of the cosmos, is that the other side still exists. That will then trigger hope. And you can start to slowly work your way out, breath by breath, step by step. Yeah, the adage that everything that shows up is for your growth, I think is true.

There is an opportunity in everything for transformation, for greater self-actualization. But to deliver that message to somebody who's in that space is not going to be well-received. It's going to be an F-you moment. It's not the right thing. It's not the thing to say to somebody who's in that. But to deliver to them, I don't ever go, look on the brighter side, you know? But I do go to the place where, even in talking with myself, as terrible as this is, there is other things taking place. And if I can find my way to the other things

without being in denial of what the tragedy that's happened, then I can begin to get a segue, a movement, a shift. Well, I think that's a good place to end this session. Thank you. You are a blessing, my friend. I appreciate your message and your compassion and your wisdom, and it's always a gift to talk to you. So thank you.

Yeah, and I do want to make clear that no matter how advanced one might seem, these kinds of situations cut you off at the ankles. And there is no perfect way through. Everyone does it the way they can do it. Yeah, it's messy no matter what. Wow. Beautiful. All right. Until next time. Peace. Plants.

Namaste. Sat Nam. Sat Nam. Beautiful man that Guru Singh, gift to humanity, and for anyone out there struggling with Man that Guru Singh, gift to humanity, and for anyone out there struggling with loss, whether it be the loss of a loved one, a job, an experience, a way of life, I hope his words brought you some sliver of peace. If his message did resonate with you, reverberated in your soul, I encourage all of you to follow him on Instagram at GuruS Yogi and on Twitter at Guru Singh and of course, GuruSingh.com. Or you can even bask in his shining presence at Yoga West in LA once this pandemic resumes and you find yourself in the greater Los Angeles area.

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a couple of few more days. I don't know exactly when as scheduled, you know, the deal with another great episode until then may you find some peace and grace as we inelegantly attempt to navigate this strange moment together peace Thank you.