The Tim Ferriss Show - #684: Jack Kornfield — How to Reduce Anxiety and Polish the Lens of Consciousness

Starting point is 00:00:00 Just a quick note before we get started, to experience and practice one of the most important themes from this episode, stick around after the interview for a guided loving-kindness meditation from Jack. He is very famous for these and for a very good reason. This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M-N-T. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike. And I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low-carb, or paleo diet.

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Starting point is 00:06:01 Jack Kornfield. You can find him on Twitter at Jack Kornfield. Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma. That's an understatement, but maybe we'll come back to that. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to have introduced Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barrie, Massachusetts with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. Current projects include CloudSangha.co, which we will talk about, which offers practice groups for all, the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, which has trained 7,000, 7,000, that's a lot, mindfulness teachers in 75 countries, and Wisdom Ventures, a fund investing in companies that promote compassion.

Starting point is 00:06:39 His books, many books, have been translated into 22 languages and have sold roughly 2 million copies. They include The Wise Heart, A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, A Path with Heart, After the Ecstasy and the Laundry, one of the best book titles of all time, Buddha's Little Instruction Book, The Art of Forgiveness, Loving, Kindness, and Peace, and his most recent book, No Time Like the Present, Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are. You can find all things Jack at jackcornfield.com. That's K-O-R-N-F-I-E-L-D.com. And we'll link to, of course, all of his social and everything else in the show notes,

Starting point is 00:07:16 Tim.blog slash podcast. Jack, so nice to see you. I'm very glad to see you, Tim. And I'm glad that our lives have now intertwined over a number of years. So it's been a pleasure in all these different venues. It has been a pleasure. You have been a safety net, a mentor, a guide, a field EMT, perhaps, with some of my situations over the years.

Starting point is 00:07:38 And I really appreciate your years. Well, it's my pleasure, too. We do it for each other. The triage, the wisdom, the teaching. And there are a million different directions we could go. But before we started recording, we were chatting a bit. I was making my tea, asking about good departure points, perhaps the initial liftoff, where we should go. And we landed on a name, and that's Stan Groff. So perhaps you can take that and lead us wherever you may, providing context on who this is, why it matters, why it relates

Starting point is 00:08:12 to your life, and so on. Yeah, thank you, Tim. And I wanted to do this in some way because Stan Groff and the scene that I want to set for you who are listening opens the doorway to a huge number of really interesting questions about who we are, about humanity, about healing, about interconnection, about all kinds of things. So here's the scene. Stan Grof, or Stanislav Grof, as he is sometimes called, is a Czech-born physician and psychiatrist who was the last legitimate LSD researcher in the 1970s. He'd done LSD research in Europe, got samples from Sandoz and took some himself, and it completely changed his life from being a kind of academic physician to say, whoa, there's

Starting point is 00:08:59 something a lot bigger going on here. And he ended up at Johns Hopkins when he escaped from the communist regime, running the last LSD research for people who had cancer and were in hospice, were dying, for vets returning, for clergy, so that they might actually have a little experience of the divine that was off the pages of their texts and so forth. And then he moved after that to be at Esalen for a long time. We collaborated there together for about 20 years. Over the course of our time, to get to the story, and he's a polymath, speaks 12 or 15 languages and reads Sanskrit and is completely well-versed in the European education

Starting point is 00:09:48 of the great music of the world and all kinds of things like that. So when it became less possible to work with psychedelics except a bit underground, he developed with his wife Christina holotropic breath work, which allows people to go to some of those very profound open states using breath. And it mirrored things that I'd learned in monastery in Burma, where we'd done incredibly intense deep breathing for some hours and open to all kinds of states. We worked together at retreats all around the world, and we'd be in a room with 200 or 300 people, huge speakers, I think the Grateful Dead or something like that. Half of the people, 150 lying on their backs on a nice mat, and then a sitter next to them.

Starting point is 00:10:36 And then the music would start with the instructions, very simple instructions, breathe as deep and fast and hard as you can can and keep it going for the next hour or two until for liftoff till you go wherever you go. So people would be breathing away and there would be this incredible music. It might be drumming from the African musicians in the Congo drum jungle or all kinds of world music. And as you looked out over the room, once the breathing had kicked in after half an hour or an hour, it was like walking into Dante's Divine Comedy. It has heavens and purgatory and hell and so forth. So there would be people in bliss, laughing, smiling, their arms spread like they were angels having the most

Starting point is 00:11:27 ecstatic experiences. There would be people in the middle who were working stuff out with their bodies, things that were tight that would want to open and every kind of possible sound would come. There were a lot of people in a birth experience because like psychedelics of different kinds, one of the doorways you go through in your regression is to relive your birth. And so there would be people pushing and being squeezed and going through a process that was both physical, but more than that, it mirrored what their birth was like. And then there would be people reliving incredible traumas of different kinds, birth traumas, childhood traumas, and so forth. And they were encouraged to go through it and let it all out. There would be laughter, there would be the sounds of ecstasy, and there'd be

Starting point is 00:12:18 people crying and screaming, and all at the same time with this pounding music. And you go like, what is this? The result of it to kind of cut to the chase once the music quieted down and people are invited to make some art and then talk about it is that, and Stan's work is this, if you trust the body and psyche and heart and mind to open and you give it the opportunity and the medicine and someone's with you so you're not alone, and mind to open, and you give it the opportunity, and the medicine, and someone's with you so you're not alone, it wants to open. And whatever's unfinished wants to come out, or whatever needs to be expressed, and if there isn't something that's waiting there, then it becomes the doorway to the realms of profound, both awakening, freedom, understanding, beautiful things. And one of the

Starting point is 00:13:07 great sayings that Stan offered as we all began this collective journey was from our friend Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, who said, if you're to do this inner work, you either need a very big story, like the vastness of the universe that has what we could see in front of us, heavens and hells and the hungry ghosts and the jealous gods and everybody all enacting it. Either you need a very big story or even better, no story at all. And this scene was really the scene of the gateway to the human heart and the human psyche. This is who we are, what we carry.

Starting point is 00:13:48 And then we shrink down a bit, as we need to, in our roles to be a parent or an artist or a business person and so forth. But they're really kind of a contraction of this enormous spirit that we were born with and that we carry. So how's that for an opening scene? Divine comedy of expansive states. I think it's a great place to start. And I'll add just a few things to that, and then I will have numerous questions that come to mind. So the first is, for people who may wonder about the scope of Stan's experience, he's probably in some way directly or indirectly supervised at least 1500 sessions. I remember when

Starting point is 00:14:35 I spoke with him quite a number of years ago. LSD sessions? Yeah. Thousands of them. Thousands. Yeah. So the breadth of experience that he has in witnessing in a clinical setting how these things affect consciousness and also outcomes is vast. It's really vast. The second is holotropic breathwork for people who need just a bit more in the visual in terms of conjuring an image of what you just described, the pounding music really can be pounding music. It's really, can be very, very loud. And I've had some really bizarre experiences going through holotropic breathwork, which I don't do that often. And I may be doing something incorrectly, but I tend to have, speaking of pounding,

Starting point is 00:15:21 a pounding headache the day after from the breathwork. However, I've had some really unusual experiences that I didn't go in trying to confirm. So I didn't go in with the expectancy of these experiences. But later I was told that it was sometimes referred to as a yogic sleep. Maybe you have some thoughts related to this. But the experience of breathing as hard as I can, I take these directions very literally. So I'm really going for the gold medal of heavy breathing, sweating profusely, and having the experience of subjectively a gap in time where

Starting point is 00:16:01 I haven't fallen asleep in the physiological sense that most people would conjure, but I've gone blank. And then I come to, and I'm still breathing as intensely as I was, but I had these gaps that would pop up repeatedly. Do you make anything of that? There's a beautiful old yogic text that details eight kinds of yogic swoons. Swoons. Not a word we use very often, but basically it's description of what it's like to leave our ordinary consciousness and either go to a place where it's in the void, where there's nothing or the sense of profound emptiness, but there's still some awareness. There's a variety of them. And some of them have a huge impact on us when we experience it. It's as if, oh, the whole world that we've constructed is a little bit like a

Starting point is 00:16:56 dream. And we'd step out of that dream of our identity, and here we are coming back into this dream. And it puts it in an incredible perspective. It raises a lot of questions also, whether it's my experience that I described. Certainly you can have some interesting responses with, say, tetany and the lobster claws from the breathing when the hands get pulled in. You start puckering at the mouth

Starting point is 00:17:20 just physiologically due to various changes in the blood. But, and I should note for folks, I have quite a few friends who have trained or done weekend courses in holotropic breathwork. It is not standard that people have headaches afterwards. I haven't experienced that. For whatever reason, I just drew the joker card on that, but I have found it very helpful. I've also experienced with breath workers in Baltimore specifically, the approach of holotropic minus 40% intensity, you can still seemingly reach some very, let's call them alternative experiences of consciousness. But if we put that type of practice aside, even my experiences in some cases with, say, surgeries and anesthesia, where I'm given a push of Versed before I go under, and the

Starting point is 00:18:11 last thing I remember is them asking me to switch from, say, a gurney to a table. But they afterwards tell me that I was conversing freely, following directions, cracking jokes for 20 minutes afterwards, which I have no recollection of. Who was that? Who was thatection of. Who was that? Who was that? Exactly. Who was that? If the primary observer that I have sort of constructed as this identity of the self was not that, who was that? So if you look back at your life, you've had some very unusual experiences from the vantage point of, let's just say, most Westerners who are raised in the secular society without mindfulness practice. You've spent a lot of time in silence.

Starting point is 00:18:53 You've had the experience of metabolizing your anger wrapped in all sorts of clothing. And we've explored these in previous conversations, so we probably won't get into all the weeds. But how do you think of, this is a big question, but consciousness as it stands right now? Or is that a bad question? It's a central, a really important question, and kind of connecting it with starting with that scene of seeing Dante's realms all laid out and the people in ecstasy and those in agony and everybody in between. One more thing to say about it, because some people say, well, that's too fast. If you've got a trauma and it's not right. Of course, nothing's right for everyone, but there

Starting point is 00:19:36 are two ways to go with this. One, which was Stan's way, is just, as you said, go for the gold. Just keep going. And the people he trained to sit with you, if something was opening up and it took a long time, they would take all night and sit there with you as you breathe or screamed or wept or just lay there quietly until you felt you had been able to experience it all and come back to a place of presence. Now, some other people say, oh, you have to resource the trauma away. You have to get more quiet and strengthen yourself before you even approach your trauma, and that's better for you. Neither of these are the right way, but I'm glad there is this spectrum. For me, entering that room or doing that work throws me into the place of being the conscious witness of it all.

Starting point is 00:20:28 And my deepest experiences, whether it's through long meditation, I spent more than a year in silence doing this little hut, doing intensive meditation 18, 20 hours a day, or whether it's psychedelic experiences, which were equally profound, or other things, who we are is consciousness. And there's a couple of levels, a lot of levels to it. One, I can say, you're not your body. Clearly, your physical body changes all the time. So it's not who you are. You rent it, you get to use it. You're not your emotions. They're always changing like the tide. You're definitely not your thoughts. At least I hope not in most cases, certainly for me and people I know. Who you are, you could say, is the consciousness that was born into your body and that will leave it. And we could talk about death and how consciousness leaves. But there's a deeper level than that, to know that not only are you that

Starting point is 00:21:25 as consciousness, but more profoundly, it's all consciousness. That at the deepest level, what I've experienced is that there is, whether you call it primordial consciousness or a field of consciousness, that the creative principle that creates all things, and we're a field of consciousness that the creative principle that creates all things and we're a piece of that or a part of that and there are all kinds of beautiful myths that talk about how consciousness wants to explore all the possibilities it can be or it is the creative of the universe there's the void and then out of the void comes creativity and all these myriad forms. When you experience this, and it's not a philosophy, you understand that this is a play. The Hindus call it the Leela, the play of the divine or something like that. And it doesn't

Starting point is 00:22:19 mean you don't have to take care of your part. The play is in theater. The play is in theater. The play of the divine, and it doesn't mean that you don't have to play your part. As Ram Dass would say, remember your true nature and your social security number, right? You have to remember both. And that's part of the very interesting paradox of waking up, knowing that what you are is consciousness itself. You are awareness. You're not all those other things. You are the awareness that's experiencing these things. When you know that, it gives you a kind of freedom, a sense of well-being and freedom within which you can go through all the things you do as a human being, but some part of it behind that is smiling and going, wow, I hope I say this when I die. Like,

Starting point is 00:23:11 wow, what a ride, you know, that it's been quite, and some of it is painful and tragic, but with that perspective, there's a place of wisdom. I'm going to read you something. It's just a not very long, a few lines from the read you something. It's just not very long. Please. A few lines from the Tao Te Ching. All the time in the world. If you don't realize the source, consciousness, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant,

Starting point is 00:23:42 disinterested, amused, kind-hearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king, immersed in the wonder of the Tao. You can deal with whatever life brings you, and even when death comes, it's okay, you are ready. And so it's a kind of 3,000-year-old or 2,000-year-old description of the consciousness where you're both disinterested and amused and at the same kind-hearted and attentive. And it's the wedding of that universal dimension with this mystery of actually being a human being, which is what you've done. Then you can enter or you go to Japan or you say, all right, let's play this game. Let's do martial arts. Let's do martial arts.

Starting point is 00:24:26 Let's do business. But you do it with less fear and attachment and much more with the delight of the game. Right. It makes me think that you're to come back to the play term. You're aware of the movies that you are watching or the games that you are choosing to play, but you have that outside witness perspective so that you don't necessarily identify or grip too strongly onto those things. Exactly. And that includes your own personality. And again, just because I'm thinking of him in this regard, refer to Ram Dass, he talked about his personalities being like his pet, you know, and he would see his neurosis.

Starting point is 00:25:10 And he said, you think that getting wiser and more enlightened, that all would go away? He said, it doesn't. He's just, I've adopted it. It's my pet. I feed it. I say thank you, you know, but I know it's not who I am. And from that place, even the kind of great suffering that many of us have in our lives, the people that we love who've died, we can hold it with great tenderness, but it's not a surprise. It's like, oh, this too, this is part of what it is to be

Starting point is 00:25:41 human. And, you know, someone dies,, and from that perspective, it was their time. So, a quick question for you related to the Joseph Campbell quote that you mentioned earlier. I'd love for you just to elaborate on that a little bit, maybe what it means to you, that you either need a really big story, maybe a cosmovision or a mythology, or better still, no story at all. What does that mean to you? So I have a friend, Roger Walsh, MD, PhD, who's on the faculty of Stanford Medical School, written a lot of books as both a mystic and psychiatrist and other things. And being somewhat scholarly, he decided to read through the entire encyclopedia of world religions, from Ahura Mazda all the way to Zoroaster and everything in between.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Underachiever. Exactly. So I said to him afterwards, I said, so Roger, you read the whole damn thing, what did you get out of it? And he said, what I saw is that every religion has a story of the origin of the world it is a story of some kind about how to navigate gain and loss praise and blame you know good and bad he said usually has a story about death and afterlife they're all very different stories they're quite compelling they're all different stories. And when I was finished, I realized human beings need to tell a story and place it on top of the mystery. Because without the stories, then we would be in the present with the mystery of being

Starting point is 00:27:18 alive with the universe. But for most of us, we want a story. And so these are the big stories that humanity has written. What is the alternative of no story? Because when I think of no story, that actually strikes terror into my heart because I imagine this free-floating nihilism or meaninglessness. And I understand experientially in some of these alternate modes of experience through psychedelics and so on, that you can have the experience of no story, no time, no name, no self. I understand that. Or I shouldn't say I understand that, I've experienced it.

Starting point is 00:27:55 I definitely can't claim to understand it. But what does the alternative mean to you? Well, this is really important because it's as if you're talking to some Zen monk somewhere and they talk about emptiness and you go, oh shit, it's like, how do I deal with that? How do I buy a new car or how do I take care of my family or things like that? So it's a really important question. And there are a couple of, we've talked about a number of levels. One level is the more opinions you have about the way things are,

Starting point is 00:28:31 the more trouble you have. And one of my favorite passages, the Buddhist texts aren't really full of a lot of jokes and humor, but there's one place where the Buddha says, and those who cling to their opinions go around the world annoying one another. You know, and that's an observation that holds truth thousands of years later.

Starting point is 00:28:49 Sounds like Twitter. So we know that. The more we're attached to our view, because whatever you're thinking or whatever you view, there is an alternative. It's not the only view. So on this level, what my Korean Zen master, Dae Seung-san, San Sanim said, is to keep a don't-know mind, or Suzuki Roshi calls it beginner's mind, where you meet somebody fresh, where you go into circumstance first. So that's part of not having the story, but it's a much more positive cast on

Starting point is 00:29:18 it. Then the second is that without having that story, then it's replaced in somehow by a sense of, I don't know quite words, wonder, value, meaning, a sense both of the vastness of things and also the delight in being incarnated as a human being. And so with that, like the Tao Te Ching says, you remember the source, which is you are consciousness. That's who you are. And you get to witness this. You are the awareness, the loving awareness. Then your story might be, all right, I am the loving awareness, as you are, as everyone who's listening, you are loving awareness. And you get to then embody and enact in this world, and then you get to choose how. And it turns out in our direct experience that there are ways we can act that bring understanding, connection, joy, happiness, well-being, and ways we can act that create suffering. In the Buddhist teachings, the Buddha said, I do not answer philosophical questions.

Starting point is 00:30:32 People would have all these, what's the first beginning? What is all the meaning of karma? How do all of this, what's the story? And he would say, I just teach how human beings can release themselves from suffering and fear and confusion and live with the innate freedom that is their birthright. That's what I teach. That is a story. It's my favorite story, I think, in this life because there is suffering and difficulty in incarnation. There are causes that human beings can understand, and there's freedom. When Nelson Mandela walked out of Robben Island prison after 27 years, that's a long time. That was half his life in that prison.

Starting point is 00:31:16 With such magnanimity and graciousness and compassion, he not only changed South Africa, but he somehow changed the imagination of the world. They can put your body in prison, but no one can imprison your spirit or your consciousness. And when you know this deeply, then there comes a different innate kind of story, which is one more deeply of connectedness and care. Stan Grof, to return to our dear friend Stanislav, has written a lot of books. You mentioned he's a polymath.

Starting point is 00:31:52 He truly is. And he's prolific also in his writing. There is one book, it may be two volumes, I can't recall offhand, called The Cosmic Game. One volume, The Cosmic Game. One volume. All right. Why does this book, of all of his books, grab your attention? Or why is it meaningful? It does. I'm glad you named it. Because he explores the very questions you're asking. Not only who are you, but he also shows, suppose we were to have a world

Starting point is 00:32:27 that didn't have loss, didn't have conflict, didn't have disease, didn't have the kind of troubles that we live. What would that world be like? And he explores, and you kind of follow along with his exploration, how it is that the world that we live in somehow has been manufactured and in some way what there is to learn from it. And what's beautiful about it is that he says, I think in the beginning, that he took the records from 5,000 LSD sessions and from the deepest understandings in the height. And a lot of the people who did those sessions were also people who were already meditators or yogis or martial arts masters or, in some way,

Starting point is 00:33:12 and shaman people who had already a very deep spiritual perspective. And he collated them, and he said, here's what we as human beings, when the gates between the worlds open, this is how it looks, which is really compelling. He's so clear that he doesn't want to say, this is how it is or how I think it is. He said, this is what 5,000 people report from the height or the deepest of their experiences.

Starting point is 00:33:38 And you go, oh yeah, I've seen that. I know that that's true. All right. I need to dig back in and get into the cosmic game. So I'll get that on my Kindle for my upcoming travels. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics,

Starting point is 00:34:20 and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop. AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. Let's talk about something perhaps that many people listening will identify with or at least recognize in their daily experience and that is anxiety and maybe we could just define terms and look at anxiety as fear of the future you could also define it differently could be pre-experiencing the worst case scenario. I really don't know how you would like to define it, but

Starting point is 00:35:25 if you wouldn't mind digging into that and share any approaches that you think are helpful, practices, thought exercises for people who are suffering from anxiety, that would be very helpful. I was going to say that word before you said it. So we're somehow riding some current. We'll see where it takes us. And if we're still in the same boat as we go through the raft. Learning how to paddle. We'll see. society, even in places where there was warfare or starvation or things when there were very small groups of people, there was still a kind of basic, I know who my family is, I know where the land is, you know, we'll have the food or we won't. But everything is up for up in certain ways. There's a kind of upheaval now of identity, where we live, who we are, and so forth, that's accelerating. And it's been accelerated, of course, for all kinds of things.

Starting point is 00:36:27 And now we'll get to it. It's certainly been accelerated by technology. And we're on the cusp, on the roller coaster ride. You know the click, click, click, click, click as you're going up to the top to start rolling. As you ratchet up. Right. And the little sign that you got your ticket for said, AI, go on this ride. So we'll get to that.

Starting point is 00:36:46 But anyway, so there's the anxiety, there's the economy anxiety, there's the collective anxiety about climate, there's racial and economic injustice that's really in our forefront. And then there's the human anxiety of our own family and people going through things of loneliness and economic insecurity. So first thing to say, there's a whole bunch of things that might be helpful. The image that I like to start with is an archetypal one of the Buddha seated under the tree of enlightenment. The night of his enlightenment, before he was enlightened, the Indian god named Mara, who is the god of greed, fear, hatred, aggression, all of the forces of suffering, appeared and said, What are you trying to do to the Buddha?

Starting point is 00:37:37 And this is the way it appeared. He said, You have no idea what you're dealing with. And he said, Let me show you this enlightenment stuff. And so he paraded before him, all the most beautiful dancing dakinis and gilded chariots, the Lamborghinis of the time. And the Buddha said, you know, been there, done that. Thank you. Okay. And then he said, well, you, you know, you have no right to be there. And he started throwing flaming arrows and swords and the Buddha lifted his hand and touched them all with compassion and they turned to flower petals. Cool. Then Mara said, you don't even know who you are. You don't know what you're doing. And there's no reason for you to be sitting here. And then Mara came basically in the form of doubt.

Starting point is 00:38:21 And at that point, the Buddha put his hand down and touched the earth and said, will you bear witness to my right as a human being here halfway between heaven and earth to awaken to the way things are? Can you say that one more time? Heaven and earth or heaven and hell? Between heaven and earth. We didn't get to hell yet. If you want to go there, we can go there later. Halfway between heaven and earth in this human form, be my witness that we human beings have the right to see clearly, not with delusion, not with doubt. And then Mara appeared again, and the Buddha just looked at Mara and said, I see you, Mara. I see who you are. And the minute he said that, clearly, Mara dissolved.

Starting point is 00:39:03 Now, what people don't know in the Buddha's text is that after his enlightenment, Mara came back to visit the Buddha quite a few times. You'd think there's enlightened retirement, but Mara's part of the game. And Thich Nhat Hanh has a really beautiful image about this, where he sets the scene of the Buddha sitting in a cave. And again, the Buddha really is a stand-in for your awakened self, sitting in a cave, mouth of a cave meditating, and his attendant is there, and Mara appears. And his attendant tries to chase Mara away. And the Buddha says, Ananda, is that my old friend Mara? Set out some tea, let us sit down. And he says, is that you, Mara? And usually, all that it takes is for the Buddhist to say,

Starting point is 00:39:47 is that you, Mara, or I see you, Mara. And Mara looks and kind of sadly slinks away, if you will. So the first thing about anxiety is to acknowledge that it's entirely human, that there are cultural reasons for it, and that there are physiological reasons, that we have fear and we have fear of loss and all of those things. And to be able to name it and say, oh, this is anxiety. It feels this way in my body. Your hands sweat, your breath stops, your heart. And it's hard to feel. It's unpleasant in the body. And then it has its thoughts. We'll get to those in a minute. And what you can do in naming bar, you can say, oh, anxiety, I see you, I feel you. So that's the first thing. And already you start to step

Starting point is 00:40:34 halfway back from it as the witness. So that already begins to liberate you a little bit. And then the next thing is you can also say, thank you for trying to protect me. Because if you fight against the anxiety, what that is, is more anxiety. Oh my God, I got to rid of it. I hate of it. But instead, it's almost like you take a little bow. Okay, Mara, I see you. Thank you for trying to protect me because that's what it's trying to do.

Starting point is 00:40:59 And you remember that statement from Mark Twain, where he said, my life has been filled with terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened, right? So these are the stories. You meant sort of the advanced stories. Say, thank you, Mara. I see you. Thanks for trying to protect me. Then the next thing is to know that there's something called the wisdom of insecurity,

Starting point is 00:41:22 that it's actually okay to be insecure. My monastic teachers would say, it's uncertain, isn't it? We could ask them all kinds of things. Tell me about enlightenment. My teacher would laugh. He said, it's uncertain, isn't it? He wanted us just to get comfortable with uncertainty. And then what happens is when you realize that you can't know, that you come back into the present moment. And then the next thing to do with anxiety is ground your senses. Feel your feet on the floor or maybe go out in nature, stand there with a tree, feel the roots of the tree and imagine your own feet as roots into the earth.

Starting point is 00:41:58 And notice the wind comes and the storms and all those things happen, but the tree is rooted and it can stay there and you can be the same. You can let the storms of thoughts and fears and so forth arise. So that's another practice you can do. Then you can question your thoughts. And this is more the beautifully spelled out by Byron Katie, for example,

Starting point is 00:42:21 who has these practices of questioning your thought, says, what if that thought isn't true? How can you know that thought is true? And if you look deeply, you can't know it. And you get to a place of realizing that your thoughts are tentative. They're a creation. And you say, thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me. And again, you become the witness of those thoughts. Then a few more very simple things that you can do. You can find where you feel the anxiety most strongly in your body. And once you feel it, you can feel into its elements. Is it hot or cold? Is it hard or soft? Is it vibrating the earth, air, fire? So you really get close into it. You can ask it what stories it tells, because it'll have, fire? So you really get close into it. You can ask it what stories it tells, because it'll have a story.

Starting point is 00:43:14 And then you say, again, not only thank you, thank you for trying to protect me, but you wrap it with kindness, with loving awareness, and say, thank you. I know you're worried. I can respect you and hold you with kindness and compassion. And you know that that's not who you are. This is a part, it's something, it's common for human beings. You say, I respect this, and who I am is honoring you and so much bigger than who you are. And you feel yourself literally being both the witness, the grounded one, the I know you, I see you, Mara, and you become more the Buddha rather than the one who's caught by all these things. Could you say a bit more about asking, for instance, in this case,

Starting point is 00:43:55 the anxiety, what stories it tells? Maybe give an example, whether from your personal experience, someone else's, or just a hypothetical, what that might look like? Because it's the first time I've heard that, and that piques my curiosity. So it's a beautiful question, because one of the things that I've learned all over these years is that you can have, the Sufis call it a sobat, a conversation with the heart. And if you let yourself get quiet, it might be after a little walk in the woods or just sitting quietly, taking a cup of tea or something that you like to drink and letting yourself quiet down or meditating if you want to. And when you get quiet, you can have an inner conversation and there's information that's

Starting point is 00:44:42 waiting there for you to ask. So for example, since we're talking about anxiety and you want to have a conversation with it, you can say to the anxiety, where do I feel you most strongly in my body? Okay, that's a pretty simple one. Then you can say, ask the anxiety, what is the thing you're most afraid of? Usually it will be something like loss, death, something huge. Okay, thank you. Get quiet and say, tell me the story you have about it. And then your anxiety will answer and it will say, well, if you lose your job, which we're

Starting point is 00:45:22 afraid you will, you'll be out on the street, you'll be homeless, people will beat up on you, then you'll be in the hospital or you'll become whatever and there's a whole disaster scenario. And you can say, yes, thank you. I hear your story. Then there's another interesting question. So all these are things you can ask and if you're willing to ask and get quiet and listen, usually your body and your heart will answer. Then there's another

Starting point is 00:45:45 really important question or two that you can ask. What is the most important thing I need to learn from you? And it will give you an answer. I want you to pay attention or I want you to take care of your financial affairs so I don't have to worry so much. Or I want you to make sure you have friends who know where you are, whatever it happens to be, or some bigger story. And then you can step out of the anxiety. And this is a really beautiful one and get quiet and ask, what is my best intention of how I want to live this next month or this next year. If I only had a year to live, what style? How do I want to live this? Because anxiety also has time in it.

Starting point is 00:46:29 And so you're sort of stepping out of time and say, all right, so my time's limited. How do I want to live? What is my deepest intention? And if you pause and ask, your heart will answer. So this may tie into my next question. It might not. But you mentioned this MD-PhD

Starting point is 00:46:47 earlier, and you said, as you told the story of his digesting this gigantic encyclopedia, you said, end a mystic, and then you moved on to say what you said. And since you mentioned Sufism, that also brought the word mystic or mysticism to mind for me. What does that mean to you, someone being a mystic? I'm afraid that it's sort of gotten relegated to the realm of religion. Okay, the Sufis have their mystics and there were the Christian Desert Father mystics or the Zen mystics or something. And that's true. These are people who are really interested in some way in vast spiritual experiences and understanding. But it puts it outside of ourself. We all, in that sense, are open to mystery when we quiet.

Starting point is 00:47:38 How the hell did you get into this body? You know, you take a look, oh, look in the damn mirror. There are these weird round things that we call eyes and protuberances from your head that stick out. Mine stick out pretty far. My ears got made fun of as a kid. You open your mouth and the tongue comes out and there's this hole in your body into which you keep stuffing dead plants and animals and grinding them up with these bones that hang down and right? And glugging them down through the tube. And you move it. It's weird watching how people, you fall one direction

Starting point is 00:48:11 by peds and then you catch yourself and you fall the next. How did you get in there? And if you don't think that's weird, pay attention when you're making love. It's a fabulous thing to do. I'm completely, you know, love it. It's bizarre. It is okay, you know, whatever way you do it, licking, putting this in that part of that body or that and so forth, a little whatever. I mean, it's weird. So how did you get in here? So we don't have to go to the Sufi mystics

Starting point is 00:48:38 or the whatever. It's really more mystery. Is the mystical in this sense, and this is my placeholder way of thinking about it, the direct experience of the mystery or seeking the direct unmediated experience of that mystery? Is that one way to think about it? Yeah, that's a nice way to say it. I might want to change the word seeking to opening to it. And just to be really direct with you who are listening,

Starting point is 00:49:12 you know what I'm talking about. You have had experiences, whether it's walking in the high mountains or taking psychedelics and meditating, if that's your want or your avenue. You've had it listening to an amazing piece of music, or going into an incredible cathedral or a forest of the sequoias and redwoods of wonder. You know it from making love. You know it even more from being there at the birth of a child. You go, whoa, here's a whole new human being. And my beloved wife, Trudy Goodman, who's also a meditation teacher in LA, inside LA, is her

Starting point is 00:49:52 center. She was 21 years old. She was giving birth to her daughter. And by circumstance, she was in a hospital room alone. It was like in the 60s and it was the old style birth basically. And they left her alone and she had no idea. Her body just started contracting and going through these things, incredibly painful. And she didn't understand it in a deep way at all. No one had sort of explained how it would happen. She said, and then all of a sudden it was late afternoon. It was in what the French call le bleu, the blue hour of kind of transition between day and night. She said, and all of a sudden, it wasn't my body. My body was doing its thing, delivering this child,

Starting point is 00:50:35 but I became all mothers. I could feel that I was in a chain of being that went back to a million lives before one mother after another birthing people out of their body and would continue. And there was this incredible sense of being part of this huge mystery of life recreating itself. She said, afterward, I was walking down the street and I look at all these people. I say, they all came out of a woman's vagina. How could that be? I mean, so you want to look at mystery, it's staring us in the face. We are that. Don't have to be a whirling dervish. You don't have to be whirling dervishes. There are all kinds of ways. So we all know this from some way or another, and even more so sitting with someone when they die, because there you are,

Starting point is 00:51:23 especially if it's a reasonably conscious or peaceful death, that person is there and you might be able to talk to them or there's some sense of them being conscious. And then as quietly as a falling star, consciousness leaves the body and it's meat. It's just dead. It's like at the butcher. I mean, I'm being really graphic, but that's all it is. It's just cold flesh. It's so clear that it's just dead you know it's like at the butcher i mean i'm being really graphic but that's all it is it's this cold you know flesh it's so clear that it's not that person and you go whoa the gates between the worlds have opened like who are we so you want that baby it's around you it's here okay i think we're at an intersection okay where i'm going to bring up something just opportunistically because it's on my mind and this has somehow popped up on my radar

Starting point is 00:52:16 i want to say at least twice i don't know what it is i literally have a wikipedia page open but why go on wikipedia when i have you right here? You could use chatbot and it would answer. Well, I could use a chatbot. I could use a chatbot. The human chatbot will speak. Go ahead. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, why use AI when you can use organic intelligence? JKA, whatever. Exactly, JKA. JANA practice? Am I pronouncing that correctly? Yes. What is jhana practice? Okay. So, jhana practice. Now you're getting down into the technical weeds of certain kinds of Buddhist practices. I'm happy to answer. This got sent to me out of left field.

Starting point is 00:52:53 I know. Okay. So, one of the things that's true about the dimensions of deep meditation practice is that we human beings have a capacity to concentrate our attention. In meditation practices, there are two major dimensions. One is the dimension of awareness. It can be mindfulness or devotion or something where you open to the mystery of things unfolding, thoughts appearing, emotions, or you create certain emotions of love, compassion, joy, all of those things. The other is the dimension of concentration, where you focus deeply on one thing generally. It can be a candle flame or a mantra or a particular emotion like love or your breath. And there's a beautiful biblical phrase where it says, if thine eye be single, then the gates of heavens open or something like that.

Starting point is 00:53:48 When you start to get very concentrated, several things happen. Your thoughts start to disappear. To be concentrated means you're focused on an experience like the breath or a light and the thoughts quiet down and gradually they go away. Not easy to do for most people, but it's possible. like the breath or a light, and the thoughts quiet down and gradually they go away. It's not easy to do for most people, but it's possible. And then as you get more concentrated on the breath or a mantra or whatever you've chosen and you do it over and over again, it becomes a doorway. The next thing that happens is that inner forms of light will appear. So there you're sensing your breath. We

Starting point is 00:54:25 use that as an example, but it could be other things. And as you do, the thoughts start to get quiet. And then the sense as you feel your breath is not only is there breath, but around your nostrils or your throat or wherever you're paying attention, your body and the field starts to fill with light because consciousness is made of light, so light will appear. And then with it comes quite spontaneously qualities of deep joy and happiness and incredible steadiness and inner peacefulness. And when these qualities start to arise, they are the gateway to a whole series of what are called jhanas or samadhi states. of peacefulness and well-being that everything else disappears and you're in a realm that's just filled with light and stillness and peace. And you can move around from one realm to another, several different flavors of them. The closest thing I can describe to it is if you're a diver and you're out on the water and there's waves and the sun shining and things, and then you go under

Starting point is 00:55:41 the surface of the water and everything becomes silent. There's waves on the surface. They have nothing to do with you. And instead, you're in this vast, timeless, silent realm. The purpose of training to go into these kind of states is twofold. One is it gives you some skill in navigating in your consciousness and mind. So you don't have to live if there's a lot of whatever it is, anxiety or conflict or things around you.

Starting point is 00:56:09 You can actually stabilize yourself, become quite stable. It gives a kind of faith. Oh, the mind actually can be trained. But the other is that from that stillness, then you can see or listen more deeply. To concentrate is a little bit like polishing the lens of consciousness so that whether it's a microscope or a telescope, when you're very concentrated, at the beginning, you notice their thoughts. Then you notice the thoughts at the end. Then you're more concentrated. You notice at the beginning of the thought, oh, it's about to arise.

Starting point is 00:56:41 Then you notice the impulse for thoughts to come. It's like a little burp that's coming out of the brain. And then you see the space around thoughts, where they're born before they're even there. And then you look into the body, and at first you see hot or cold, and then it pixelates with deeper concentration, and you see all the elements that make it up. So this is like the microscope. Or you point it outward and consciousness becomes vast like the sky and there's no bounds to it. It's timeless. So these kind of states of consciousness give you access to the telescope and the microscope and the information that comes through that doorway. How's that? That's great. You had me at pixelate. So another question about this, and I suspect we've talked about this before. Nobody ever asked me this on the air before, so this is fun.

Starting point is 00:57:30 Yeah, so let's go. So I hear your description, and it grabs my attention and interest, and I would love to experience these states. I consider myself good at being a diligent practicer. So I've trained in sports. I've done many things consistently over extended periods of time. My felt experience of meditation is that it's done regularly on a daily basis in small doses. I experience an improved quality of life, decreased reactivity, but I doubt my own ability to reliably achieve the type of states that you're describing, which is part of the reason. And now I'm not married to that belief, but I think part of the appeal for a lot of people with, say, psychedelics is in most cases with sufficient dosing,

Starting point is 00:58:26 you're probably going to feel something. And that is not to say that should be the sole tool or that people should be a hammer looking for nails with psychedelics because there are risks and trade-offs and so on. That is just a very long-winded way of asking to get to a point where you would feel reasonably confident that someone could achieve these types of states. Are we talking about five years, 10 years, 15 years? In some instances, it's like 10 people pursue this, they do it for 10 years,

Starting point is 00:58:55 and then only three of them experience these states. I fear the possibility that I would dedicate to a long-term practice and then for whatever reason just not have the capability. So now this is a really important question. It's more than about jhana. Sure. Even though I'm happy to talk about it because it's fun to talk about, I'm also a little bit reluctant because it can mislead people or feed into a kind of spiritual, not spiritual materialism, but idealism of some kind. Okay, I've heard about these states, and then, or you go and you read these end stories, and okay, then they worked on their koan and finally whack, the master hits them, and then

Starting point is 00:59:37 they have this great revelation or other things like that. Jhana is completely unnecessary for wisdom. It's the kind of thing that yogis and people who devote themselves to meditation, some of them can do, some can't. It depends. There's sort of light levels and then very deep levels of this. If you want to do a light level jhana, there are several ingredients. One is you probably have to have a certain temperament or inclination to be able to do it. And that's probably a third

Starting point is 01:00:06 of people. Not everybody can do it. And then you need to go on retreat. If you want deep jhana, you need to go on long retreats. What is long? Just because I know your reference point may be different than this. A month or two months or three months, long practice. If you want to have some kind of initial experience, a good friend of mine, a colleague named Lee Brasington leads 10-day retreats and you can have an experience. And it's fun to play with. It's completely unnecessary. Now I want to talk about enlightenment because the point of all this is if you divide it,

Starting point is 01:00:38 there are experiences and then there's understanding or being. And the experiences that we have, you mentioned psychedelic experience, which I deeply respect, whether it's John experience or deep insight and meditations of different kinds that we do, or other spiritual experiences. You can be the dervish, as you mentioned, whirling, and it's such a beautiful thing to see and to do, and the world starts to dissolve. Most of these practices dissolve the separate sense of self. And you're there, as Alice Walker wrote of one character, one day I was sitting there like a motherless child, which I was, and it come to me that

Starting point is 01:01:17 feeling of being a part of everything. And I knew if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laugh and I cry, I run all arm would bleed. And I laugh and I cry. I run all around the house. In fact, when it happens, you can't miss it. So there are all these doorways that open us beyond the separate sense of self, which that sense of small self, it's sometimes called the body of fear, that limited self dissolves. Hallelujah. They're great.

Starting point is 01:01:44 I've played with Jhana, I've taken psychedelics, I've done shamanic things, all these, I've had a bunch of experiences. And part of it gives me a kind of confidence. Okay, I know this territory. Part of it is deeper than that. In the most profound places, as we talked about, I know that who I am is not this body. I know that who I am is consciousness. Then the game is not about the experiences. It's about who you are, who I am as we manifest in the world. And the way that I most express enlightenment at this point is not somebody who's had a lot of these experiences

Starting point is 01:02:27 in all these years. My understanding really is that it comes down to love. I've met swamis and lamas and gurus and mamas and everybody else in between in my industry, and some of them are fabulous. But there's a really interesting thing that you can have these powerful experiences and still be a little bit of a jerk, just getting real about it, you know? And because our consciousness is like a mandala, and we can awaken some dimensions of it. So you have an Olympic-level athlete who's an emotional idiot. You have a professor of nuclear physics, most brilliant, and she can't find her shoes or her body. We can develop ourselves in some areas, but it turns out, unfortunately, that doesn't always go over to another area. And so there's a kind of halo

Starting point is 01:03:17 effect where people think, oh, this person is a spiritual teacher and they've had these spiritual experiences. I'll go ask them for marriage advice or advice for sexuality. They don't know shit about marriage. So this is our human nature. If we're actually to become wise, we need to direct our attention to body, to emotions, to relationships, to thought. We actually need to become wise in those major dimensions of our life. And we can't expect that of people just because they have a certain title or robe or anything else. But having said that, my measure now for myself, are you loving? Am I loving? Are they? And that love isn't just like, oh, sweet Valentine love, but it's can you be in this world and can you love it with all its imperfections? And can you bring that spirit of care and love in the middle of what's tragic and

Starting point is 01:04:12 what's beautiful? That's a liberated heart. So, love, let's underscore this. For people who are listening, this might sound like a really strange question, who are thinking to themselves, well, I love my dog. I love cheesecake. Love my kids, if they have kids, let's say. But maybe they're like, I'm not sure if I would recognize or even know the feeling of what it is to love the world. Maybe they feel like they might be colorblind to the first-person experience of feeling that. Is it just something they can intuit, or could you expand on that? You remember Einstein said that the task for humanity is to widen our circle of compassion,

Starting point is 01:05:06 or you could call it love, to include all of humanity and all of nature in its beauty. And so we start by loving that which is right around us. It's natural. Your dog, your children, the partner, the people you care about, and maybe your neighbors. And now we're talking about, well, what is wisdom? and what is liberation? And it's that widening of the circle so that when you're moving through the world, it's not just that person over there as an object, but they become more and more a part of your family. There's a beautiful monument to a mystical experience, going back to your asking about that. In Louisville, Kentucky, I think it's on 4th Street, 4th and Walnut. And the great Christian mystic Thomas Merton left his monastery and was walking down the street in the middle of Louisville.

Starting point is 01:05:56 And he said, I come from the monastery. We were all trying to be holy and close to God and have all these spiritual experiences the way one does and pray and so forth. And I was walking down the street and all of a sudden it came to me. I looked in the eyes of everyone going by and I saw their secret beauty that was born in them that no one can take from them. That magnificence of spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it. He said, the only problem would be I wanted to fall down at their feet and worship each one that went by. He said, if we could see each other that way, there'd be no more need for war and cruelty. The world would be a different place. So this monument, a public monument to a mystical experience, what it does is it says that this is possible. But more than that, there are beautiful trainings to do it.

Starting point is 01:06:46 One of my favorite trainings is trainings in loving kindness meditation. There's bunches of it on my website and Sharon Salzberg and Tara Brock and lots of other colleagues and teachers. And it turns out if you practice it like anything, it grows. You start with people close to you and then those in a little wider circle and gradually extended and for me for example i'm out on the street or i'm driving or something and i'm a bit of a speed freak you know i can sit quiet in meditation but my my general mo is to get stuff done and move through the world you know and so if somebody's driving slowly and meandering and not being a good driver in front of me and I get annoyed or even on the sidewalk, people are blocking it, not aware that I have something important to get done, whatever.

Starting point is 01:07:32 And I feel a little moment of irritation arise, which it will. I look and I see them not as they are now, but as they were at three, as I imagine them at three or four years old, completely innocent child. They all were that, no matter what things happened to them. And I go, oh yeah, I see who's in there. That's like Mertensy. I see that there's that person doing the best they can, and there's that child that's in there. And instantly my heart changes and I go, oh yeah, I wish them well. May they be safe and whatever dance they're in, may they be protected. And this quality of loving kindness and compassion, it's grown because I practice it some. It's where I want to live, but it's more than that. I see it or sense it as the best expression of enlightenment. All those other

Starting point is 01:08:28 things or experiences, they lead us back to love. And if they don't, I'm not sure that they matter that much. And we can learn it and become it. So would you suggest maybe people use this objective or beacon of love versus enlightenment as a term because the word enlightenment has always bothered me because i've never had someone define it clearly for me in any way let's call it in love and men i just made it up but perfect okay great problem solved we're problem we're into in love and men yeah problem. I also want to just take a side note because Joseph Campbell came up earlier, and he has so many tremendous books. And one of them is called, I believe it's The Power of the Animal Spirits, which is this anthropological and historic overview of animal mythology cross cultures. It's a beautiful hardcover book. It's gigantic. It's absolutely spectacularly illustrated with drawings and photographs and so on. Just to come back to the why you wouldn't ask your fill in the blank, your psychedelic practitioner automatically for marriage advice, for instance. Across the board, shamans in almost every culture are pretty much considered

Starting point is 01:09:45 pains in the ass. Like trickster troublemakers. And here you are aspiring to be a shaman, Tim. You're in trouble. Oh, no. I'm not. I'm not in the shaman MBA program at present. Rule number one of tracking down shamans, if they call themselves a shaman, be very, very, very cautious. Might want to run the other way. It's kind of like if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him kind of situation. But let's shift to a moment to wisdom. And I would love to ask you, and this is a question that you can feel free to dissect in any way that you like, but who would you consider some of the wisest people you have met and why? And or what have you learned from them? I could certainly go down the list and I'll answer you explicitly and then there's some place I want to go from here. But I studied with a guru

Starting point is 01:10:38 in Bombay named Nisargadatta Maharaj and there's a wonderful book of his or dialogues with him called I Am That, N-I-S-A-R-G-A-D-A-T-T-A. And he had a little like beady cigarette stand. He was a kind of modest business person, but he had a wonderful guru that he met and he had some profound realization happen to him. And so groups of us would gather around. And one day when I was with him over a course of a few years, I would go and visit him. Somebody says, you're 80 years old. He was sort of getting toward the end of his life. What do you think about your approaching death? The kind of thing you want to ask a guru. And he looked back completely affronted and he says, you are telling me I will die and the person said well

Starting point is 01:11:26 aren't you he said that's just this body it's made of you know japatis and wheat flour and vegetables and subjuice you think i am joe it's like saying i'm made of mcdonald's is that who you think i am you think i'm these feelings you think i am am, you know, these thoughts? You have no idea. This has nothing to do with me. I was never born and I will never die. Who I am is beyond birth and death. I am the consciousness from which everything is born. And then later he said, wisdom says I am nothing. Love says I am everything. Between these two, my life flows. So he was a pretty wise cat. Yeah, solid response.

Starting point is 01:12:10 And Thich Nhat Hanh said sort of the same thing as he was dying. Oh, God, Thai, as they call him, you're going to die. And he said, I was never born. Look at a rain cloud, and it comes down as raindrops or snowflakes and goes into the rivers and flows into the ocean and then gets evaporated and becomes a cloud again, you think I can disappear? I am you and you are me. We are life itself unfolding. And it's one thing to have him say it, but it was another to be with him and have him look you in the eye and say, this is who we are. So there are, of course,

Starting point is 01:12:46 there's all these beautiful examples. What are the most reliable approaches for eliciting the experience, the direct experience of non-self? And I say that because I don't recommend everyone use psychedelics. There are a lot of footnotes to any conversation on these compounds, which are so powerful. But that is how I've had my most direct experience of what you're describing, which has removed much of my fear of physical death, I fear the descent to death, that's still there. But in terms of the light switch being flipped

Starting point is 01:13:32 and being turned off, I don't have that much anxiety, at least at present, related to that. And I haven't for quite a while. Holotropic breathwork might be another tool. Are there other modalities that you think apply or could be applied to more people than powerful psychedelics? discretion and some caution or discernment. As you say, it's just not a, you know, and definitely not just like, okay, let me take a high dose of psychoselect and see what happens. You want set and setting, it has to be appropriate for you, all of those sort of things. It's really what we've been talking about, that there's a worldwide treasury now. We live in the treasury of the great spiritual teachings and practices. And you can go online and find

Starting point is 01:14:27 masters and sages and lamas and mamas and so forth, many of whom are really, really good. How do you separate the charlatans from the real McCoy, though? It's just like, I don't know, it's sort of like shopping for a car. You know, the minute you walk in, if it's a sleazy salesperson showroom, and it feels like this doesn't feel like it, you go somewhere else. There are so many jokers with large followings out there. Ah, yes.

Starting point is 01:14:57 There really are. Any suggestions for the intrepid used car purchaser who's looking for a llama? I'd say probably start with the name brands, although there's plenty of very widely known Lamas and Swamis and Mamas who've also misused their position. What a good teacher wants is your dedication and your common sense. And if the common sense is thrown out, it's the wrong place for you. You really have to trust yourself as well. Now, you were asking about wisdom. I want to read you a few lines from a great Indian master named Atisha. And they're really instructions because you say, okay,

Starting point is 01:15:36 how do we do this? Yes, you can find practices, meditations, reflections, walking in the wilderness, things that will open your mind and your heart. Here's Atisha's instruction in something like eight lines. And they're really each is a kind of practice. The first one, consider all experiences to be dreams, that there's a dreamlike nature, and it is true. I mean, here we are, you and I are talking in April 2023. What happened to March? What happened to January? What happened to your childhood? Where did it go? Do you remember Y2K? What happened to 2000? It's back with the pyramids and the dinosaurs. Everything disappears back into the void from which it came, and then something

Starting point is 01:16:25 new is born. It's the reason why people keep writing love songs. It's not like there haven't been a lot of good love poems, but the universe wants to keep recreating itself all the time. That's why your body creates 100 billion red cells every day, red blood cells. The universe is a process of creation, but it also is like a dream because it appears today is here and it will be gone like your life of this kind will be gone at some point. So consider all experience to be dreamlike. Next one, be grateful to everyone. So that's an instruction, and it sort of fits with this other instruction, let suffering teach you compassion. Because in Tibet, in some of the Tibetan teachings,

Starting point is 01:17:14 they actually pray for suffering. They say, may I be granted enough suffering so that the great heart of compassion will open in me. So consider all experience to be dreams. Be grateful to everyone because they all have a lesson to offer you. It might be an unpleasant or painful lesson. Let suffering teach you compassion. Next line, don't be swayed by outer circumstances. This is a tough one. They want you to be this and that and all that conditioning. And you can see it and you can use it, but don't let it guide your life. Let your life be guided when you get a little quiet by your own values in your own heart. A few more lines. I love this one. Don't brood over the faults of others.

Starting point is 01:18:02 I could do some work on that one. Yeah. This one can save a lot of agony because people don't act the way we want them to. And they all have their faults. Not us, of course. Don't brood over the faults of others. You can feel how there's liberation in every one of these lines. And you can practice it.

Starting point is 01:18:23 Explore the timeless nature of consciousness, which is what we've been talking about. Two more things. At all times, simply rely on a joyful mind. And we'll talk about joy in a minute. Joy and community too, they're things I want to talk about. And then the last line I really love, he says, don't expect a standing ovation. How do you spell atisha a t-i-s-h-a oh man that's great you know don't expect and it's like we're looking for the universe to affirm us the universe has affirmed you baby you wouldn't be here otherwise Don't expect a standing ovation. So those are all, you're asking how we do it. Those are all actually practices.

Starting point is 01:19:12 They're instructions in some way. And you can take one or another. This year, I'm going to practice being grateful for everyone. The ones that are difficult. I remember when my daughter first got her, one of her first jobs, you know, and she was complaining about, she liked the work and she liked, but the manager, sort of the middle level boss was not good. He was a tyrant. He didn't organize things.

Starting point is 01:19:34 She said, God, it's so bad. We need to get rid of him. I said, Caroline, welcome to the world of work. You think there's a bad boss there? Try another job. There will be someone, he's a stand-in for the archetype of the bad boss. You will find them. So you got to figure out how to live in a place and not brood over it where people are

Starting point is 01:19:54 just that way. Yeah. Joyful mind. I could always use more joyful mind. So joy or joyful mind. So joy or joyful mind. How should we find our way into this vast subject, which I think all listeners could certainly use a bit more of? Yeah. I want to repeat something that I believe I might have said in a previous podcast with you, but it is one of the great poems of the last decades, in my mind, by Jack Gilbert. And it's particularly so because we, at this time, you and I and those who are listening, not only is there the mystery and

Starting point is 01:20:36 incredible beauty of life, with all its sorrow, it still has this unbearable beauty in so many directions. But we also carry in our heart the suffering of the world, and we can talk about that and how one holds it. But this is a poem called A Brief for the Defense. The defense of what, you might ask, by Jack Gilbert. Sorrow everywhere, slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they're starving somewhere else, with flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's also what the gods want. Otherwise, the mornings before lavender summer dawn would not be made so fine, and the Bengal tiger, orange and black, would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they've known

Starting point is 01:21:33 and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure-seeking, but not delight, not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our tension is to praise the devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit that there will be music despite everything. And so that's a line, to make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

Starting point is 01:22:39 What is the name of that poem? It's called A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert. And it really speaks to the tearing open of the heart in our time that we have the suffering of the world and it's presented to us. If we don't have it in our family or in our neighborhood, it's there on our screens and it's there given to us. How do we hold it? And is it okay? Is it okay to be happy? And the Buddha put it the same way. He said, live in joy and love even among those who hate. There's an instruction.

Starting point is 01:23:14 Yes, that's there. Live in love even among those who hate. Live in joy and health even among the afflicted. Live in joy and peace even among the troubled. And that was like my teacher's monastery during the wartime in Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam. It was a place of peace in the middle of all of that. Live in peace even among the troubled. Look within. Be still.

Starting point is 01:23:38 Free from fears and attachments. Know the sweet joy of living in the way. So these are really instructions. Permission. People think spiritual life is a grim duty. I'm going to meditate. I go to the gym. I work out. I have a diet. I've got my trainer. Now I got to go and meditate. And it's not meant to be a grim duty. If you don't have some joy and pleasure in it, that's the wrong direction, baby. It's really an invitation to quiet and calm, to bring in care and compassion. If you go into a refugee camp, they don't want your depression and sadness. They have enough of that. They actually want somebody to come in and say, hey, let's see what we can do with this, even though it's

Starting point is 01:24:25 incredibly difficult. So building on that, and also off of the previous mention of holding suffering, I'd like to shift to community. And the timing is perfect for that. Looking at my personal experience, because I've been in Los Angeles for a few weeks and I made a commitment to myself, which is very atypical for me because I have this productivity fetish and I should put productivity in quotation marks, whatever that means. But I decided that my mantra for this time here was going to be social not solo okay and that meant rather than doing what i normally do which is default no to any type of social invitation i made it default yes and my well-being my sense of inner peace is so much improved since i started doing that now

Starting point is 01:25:24 granted my output is lessened substantially, but at this point, who cares? I think on some level. And it's highlighted for me how even in a city, for instance, it could be anywhere, any city, it's possible to be surrounded by people, but feel entirely alone. And it takes some intentionality, perhaps, to build and be supported by community. So maybe this is a place to talk about CloudSangha.co, Cloud Sangha, but we could lead into it in any way that makes sense to you. Yeah, I welcome this as part of our conversation. First of all, there is an epidemic of loneliness. As you point to it, the Brits have their minister of loneliness now, and I think it's even gotten more extreme since Brexit in some way.

Starting point is 01:26:11 They actually got lonely from the continent, sadly. But anyway, from the very earliest understandings, there is a teaching or a pointing to the fact that we need each other in community, whether it's the Jewish minion or whenever two or more gathered in his name, whether it's the satsang in Hindu or the sangha in Buddhism or within a community in a village around a teacher or a shaman and so forth. We're communal beings. We're raised by one another. We're connected. And so we languish when we don't have connection. One of the great problems in the current time is that there had been a way that many, many people had a sense of community through religious

Starting point is 01:27:00 affiliation for generations before their church, their mosque, their temple, whatever it happened to be, that's dropped away a lot for all kinds of reasons. And it's left people more isolated. And so together with Tara Brock and a couple of friends, we founded a company called Cloud Sangha, S-A-N-G-H-A, Sangha, which means community, cloudcommunity.co.

Starting point is 01:27:28 And you can join for a month or several months to start with and become part of a group of people who meet together every week around themes that you're working with. We have groups for anxiety and how people are managing and learning about it and transforming it. We have groups for people who are parents, you know, and in those groups, you can talk about whether it's, you know, your toddler's tantrum or your teenager's acting out or whatever it happens to be. We have groups for people who are interested in promoting joy in their lives and groups for those who are dealing with grief or loss and those kind of things. And people who join them love them because you can be living in Boise, Idaho or Belfast, Ireland or whatever, and it can be hard to practice on your own. It's hard to meditate.

Starting point is 01:28:19 It's hard to feel a sense that you have a kind of community who are supporting you. And what happens is as people come together and share, they learn as much or more from themselves together as from any teacher. You know, I've done this sage on the stage thing a lot in my life. And yeah, I can put on a good act or show or something. And sometimes it helps people. I love telling stories and I remind them and so forth. But when we're in groups, one of my favorite things to do is to say, what have you all learned about this? Somebody will raise their hand and say, what about grief

Starting point is 01:28:56 or what about climate or what about how do I? And if I respond, what have you all learned? There is a collective wisdom when invited that comes out where people learn so much from each other. And this is really what Cloud Sangha offers. It also has, if you go onto cloudsangha.co, for the fun of it, there's a test you can take, a mindful awareness test to see just for your own fun, which areas are you really attentive in your life and which ones you really wish you had support for and it would make such a difference. We've got great people running them and people who are in them love them. It's one of the offerings in my life now that I'm very, really happy to be a part of and want to invite people to try. Are there practices, tools, and so on that help people to share in communal experience?

Starting point is 01:29:56 What are people finding most gratifying? So there are a couple of things. There are some practices and there's teachings and you can go on that and there will be guided meditations. And there's weekly teachings by several variety of good teachers. But it turns out people will come together and, for example, it will be a group on parenting. Some are doing a mindfulness practice. Maybe some are doing some other form of meditation. They learn TM or maybe they've been doing a Jewish or Christian practice or shamanic practice or something. But there they are, and their toddler is having fits, screaming, as toddlers sometimes do, as they're supposed to. And the common element is much less the focus on what you're practicing as

Starting point is 01:30:38 how do you engage in the world from that place of practice. And people will say, well, I meditate and it helps me be calmer with my kids. And surprisingly, when I'm calmer, my children get calmer. Or they say when my teen is pushing back, if I get into the conflict mode with them, it just builds. But if I do my practice of loving kindness or I do my practice of whatever it happens to be, and I look at them and I see their secret beauty, especially it's a beautiful thing to do when your kid is sleeping. There you've had a little conflict at that age, and then you go in there, they fell asleep, and you go look at them, and you see who they are, who they were as a child. There's something, that original beauty is there when

Starting point is 01:31:25 their personality drops away a little bit, but they share that. And it's less critical what the practice is and much more, how are you applying it and what are we all learning in doing this? And this is where the rubber meets the road in some way. And again, it goes back to that definition of enlovenment or enheartenment or something that's not enlightenment. But how do we learn to love in the midst of all of this? I've come to feel I'm excited about this because I have realized for myself, if I have, and I realize it's not the same thing, but group dinners with, let's just say, three

Starting point is 01:32:01 friends, two, three nights a week, that does just as much for me maybe more in some cases than short meditations on a daily basis just having that support and i'm not saying they're mutually exclusive i do both as of right now but that social cohesion for us monkeys on the spinning rock in the middle of the cosmos, is easy to perhaps forget in the frenzied individualistic prism within which we live inside the United States. It's easy to forget the value of something that is so obviously in front of us, but so often lost in the wake of, in my case, this quest for productivity and so many other things. So I'm excited to take a look at this myself. Cloudsangha.co, and the spelling again for folks, Cloudsangha.co. I have some notes in front of me, and this has been something on my list to ask about, and maybe you've already brought it up. It certainly includes a name that has already come up.

Starting point is 01:33:07 So Ram Dass, formerly known as Richard Alpert. Flunking the Course, Ram Dass and Flunking the Course, this is a cue that I have in front of me. What does Flunking the Course refer to? So Ram Dass was a very close friend for a lot of years. And I've known him in his different incarnations when he was Baba Ram Dass just back from India, having written that bestseller, Be Here Now, that opened a lot of people's eyes about how he'd been the Harvard professor. And then he took

Starting point is 01:33:35 LSD and said, oh, whoa, it's a bigger game than this. And then he met his guru in India and all of that. And he came back in his robes and his beard and beads as sort of the guru, Baba Ram Dass. And one of my favorite early Ram Dass stories is there he was teaching a whole crowd and he was articulate and funny and very self-deprecating, which is part of why we loved him because he would confess his neurosis publicly and everyone would go, oh, me too, right? Because there's a common humanity. And one woman was sitting in the front row, an older woman, and waved her hand and said, hey, Ram Dass. So he called her and she said, hey, there you are in the white robes and doing

Starting point is 01:34:14 this whole Hindu guru thing. Aren't you Jewish? And Ram Dass said, well, yes, I was born Jewish. I was bar mitzvahed. She said, so what about it? And he said, well, there's beautiful things in it. There's the Kabbalah and all the mystical teachings, and there's the Hasidic masters who are like Zen masters. There's a lot that's great in it. And then he looked at her and he said, but remember, I'm only Jewish on my parents' side. And he was very witty, but it was also profound because who we are is not limited by our parents or our history. Who we are is much bigger than that. So, Ram Dass evolved over his life, starting Seva Foundation and working to combat blindness in Nepal and India for now

Starting point is 01:35:01 six million people who've been blind can see and all kinds of other stuff. And then he had that major stroke and ended up living 20 years in a wheelchair with tremendous pain and different kind of infections. But he came more and more and more loving. So when you'd sit with him toward the end of his life, he'd look around and he said, I love it all. I love the windows and I love the floor and I love the people who come in and I love the dirt. He said, I love it all. I love the windows and I love the floor and I love the people who come in and I love the dirt. He said, I just love it all, whatever it is. And people would come to see him and he would love them. And there's a phrase in India called the glance of mercy. When you go to see your guru, if you go to see the right kind of guru, but it doesn't have to

Starting point is 01:35:42 be in India, it can be here. They look at you and somehow they see through you. They see all your life, you, Tim, your strengths and your neurosis and your productivity, the rat and the wheel going around making it spin faster, all that stuff. And they look at you with so much, and they say, wow, you're just an amazing being. And you get this glance that sees everything and says, yes, I love you, and it changes you somehow. And that's what Ram Dass became in the end. Krishnadas, the great chanter and also a fellow student of their guru, Neem Karoli Baba, said Ram Dass became in the end the person we thought he was when he first returned from India. He really became that place of love. Now I've gone on and

Starting point is 01:36:32 on and I haven't answered your question because I've forgotten it as I've been waxing about. Flinking the course. Oh, yes. So I went to see Ram Dass after I'd had a couple of events where I fell over on stage and was unconscious for a while and opened my eyes eventually. And I was surrounded by all the doctors who were part of the audience and so forth. And I got all these workups and I had a lot of tremors and I got misdiagnosed as having something like ALS. I was going to die relatively quickly and I would have dementia with it.

Starting point is 01:37:12 I thought I'd made my peace with dying. Okay, I'm going to die. But then when they said, oh yeah, and dementia too, that flipped me over the edge. I didn't, that's not how I had pictured it. And I got frightened, really. And I remember sitting with my daughter after I got that and crying a little bit and thinking, okay, here we go into dementia land along with tremors and my body going out of control.

Starting point is 01:37:36 And then a couple of weeks later, I got more tests and turned out that was the wrong diagnosis. And I'm okay. I'm fine. I'm just aging like everybody. But I went to see Ram Dass and I told him that story and I said, I thought I was cool with death. I'd done all these meditations in the monastery, sitting with dead bodies and my own practice. And then when the dementia came in, I got frightened and he looked at me, he laughed and he said, oh yeah, I flunked the course a number of times. And the minute he said it, it was like this huge relief because it was just being human. And our body doesn't want to die, even if you know, like you said it. And I think it's true that we've prepared ourself in some ways, but the body doesn't want to die.

Starting point is 01:38:20 It has its own story. So Ram Dass represents for me, and I think for us, that loving witness that can wink and say, wow, we really got into a predicament this time, didn't we? And it's okay. It's just the dance that we're in, and it's fine. He did have a real facility for combining humor with the profound and really pithy short statements. It's remarkable. Yes, he did.

Starting point is 01:38:49 I've been listening to some of his audio recordings. There's a podcast, I can't recall the name, which is effectively sharing archival audio. Yeah, I think it's probably the Be Here Now Network. That's it. That's exactly it. And what an incredible communicator. I mean, incredible human.

Starting point is 01:39:09 I never met him, but incredible. Incredible. Incredible humor and twinkle and sparkle and yeah, all those good things. And yeah, he was human too. So he had his own foibles. And the thing that was most beautiful about it is that he would make them all public. He would say, all right, here's where I messed up this week. And everybody would smile and say, oh, just like me. I remember at some point, and I'm not going to be getting this totally right, so you can correct me.

Starting point is 01:39:36 I don't speak Sanskrit or can't read Pali or whatever it might be. But my understanding is that Ram Dass, Das is the equivalent of servant of Ram, and then you have Krishna Das. Das, servant of Krishna. Right. So is Das simply, is it just a common suffix and therefore that's it? Yes, it is. Or is there deeper meaning behind the choice, I don't know if they made it or their guru or someone else made it, of Krishna and Ram respectively. Their guru gave them their names, looked at you and said, you serve Ram, you serve Krishna. You

Starting point is 01:40:10 know, there's this whole, the cool thing about the Hindu is that they have so many gods, you can sort of pick your favorite. And the way it works, I mean, the problem is that we have God as a noun that's singular, God, okay? And then we fight over it. My God is realer than your God or better than your God or bigger than your whatever. You know, my God can beat up your God. Whatever it is in all these different traditions,

Starting point is 01:40:36 all that you need to do is add an S. There is Yahweh or Jehovah or whatever, and there's Jesus and there's, you know, there's also other versions of God. There's Krishna and Brahman. And if you allow, as the Hindus do, that the divine has many names and many forms, instead of fighting over it, say, let's celebrate. Okay. So Das means the servant. I don't know who you serve, Tim, but you could be.

Starting point is 01:41:08 Sure. I guess I need a guru to tell me what my name is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. Now, one of my teachers was named Buddha Das. He was the servant of the Buddha or the Buddha's teachings or things like that. So it's very, very common. And for those who end up digging into Stan Grof and some of his writing, he has some

Starting point is 01:41:28 really fun stories around the servants or worshipers of Shiva and his interactions with them, which is a whole separate can of worms. Okay. And Stan also has a book, I think it's something like when the miraculous happens, it's his stories of all the wild things that happened in his life that were completely unexpected and that you can't put into ordinary consciousness. Just like we've talked about it before, I've had the experience a number of times of knowing that someone died at a distance and not necessarily that they were ready to die or, you know, they didn't have cancer, but I knew it. They had an accident. Who would know

Starting point is 01:42:10 that? And then I reach out and I found out, yeah, they had an accident. And then I'll ask in a room of, you know, a hundred or 500 people, how many people have had the experience of knowing when someone's died, you know, unexpectedly and a third of the hands go up. And it's because we're connected. It's just the reality of it. So I want to talk about climate and justice. And one of the teachers that I most admire who's in her 90s now and still alive is Joanna Macy. She wrote a wonderful book called World as Lover, World as Self. And she's been doing what she calls despair and empowerment work for decades now. And she did, I remember her going and meeting in the survivors of the Chernobyl

Starting point is 01:43:01 nuclear disaster. And at first they didn't want to talk to her. They said, why are you rubbing our noses in it? You want to calm you American. And you know, we've already had such a hard time. Why should we talk about it all again with you? And she sat and listened. She repeated back what she'd heard. And she said, the only reason I really want to talk to you beside my sympathy, because I too am a mother and grandmother, she said, is because I don't want this to happen to other people's children. And you have a story that the world needs to hear. And then they wept and they said, all right, we'll tell you the whole story. So she's collaborated for years with others

Starting point is 01:43:38 in doing this work that she calls despair and empowerment work. And she describes it this way. She said, we're at a time of what she calls the great turning, where humanity has the capacity and tools to make the world and how we live a beautiful place or not. Things have gotten bad, and it's not just a disaster, it's also an opportunity. And we can all feel that in some fashion or other. So her game is first to get people to feel the grief and the anger and the guilt and the despair and to share it with one another so you don't feel alone and that you can sense that you're part of the web of life that's responding just as if you've cut your hand or your finger. You didn't say,

Starting point is 01:44:26 oh, that poor hand as if it's separate from you. It's part of your body that people could start to feel that they were together in the body of the earth, holding this and responding. And she said, all right, now let's listen more deeply. And one of the things that she did with an environmental activist named John Seed, they created something called the Council of All Beings. into the woods for half a day to wander the woods and the streams with the instruction to sense whose voice you want to carry, who you wish to be a representative of. And it might be someone you meet out there, or it might be that it inspires you. People came together, and sometimes they, even in a shamanic way, would make a drawing or put something on their body that represented what they wanted to do, come back in circle. And then they would speak, but not as themselves.

Starting point is 01:45:34 They would say, I speak for the redwoods. Or I speak for the salmon. And I want you to know that most of my people have died off because of this and that happening. And this is what I want you to hear. I speak for the, you know, and you can name the species or the part of the earth. And what would come out of people was tender, grievous at times, but also tremendously inspired because those voices said, here's what we need to do. This is what we salmon ask of you, and you can do this. This is what we, the Sikoras and Redwoods, want of the world now. And so she shifts the despair

Starting point is 01:46:21 to a sense of interconnectedness and that we become the voices of the earth in its most benevolent and best form. And it seems important to say this because, you know, we started talking about anxiety long ago in this conversation as we wended our way through all kinds of strange places. And this takes us back to touch on that. And the important thing is to know that suffering is not the end of the story. It's the first Buddha's first truth that there is suffering and there are causes. We can see it, greed, hatred, fear, and so forth. And there's an end to it. There's another possibility, which is the empowerment of love, of action.

Starting point is 01:47:10 And part of what makes things liberating, and this has to do with compassion and empathy, is not only what you feel, but then what you're empowered to do when you speak for the salmon or whoever it is. So here's the difference between compassion and empathy. If you're walking by a schoolyard and you see a child being bullied, the first experience inside might be, oh, I feel for that child. That's wrong. I feel their suffering. So you have a kind of connection, an empathetic connection with that child. Oh, I'd hate to feel that. I don't want children to feel you feel with them come means with with passion that's not enough compassion it turns out as a verb you have the first step is empathy

Starting point is 01:47:52 the second step in compassion is you walk over and you talk to them or you go to the teacher or you go into the office and you say, you know, the kids on the playground are bullying touch. And it doesn't have to be a lot. And just like you come to LA and decided to be social rather than solo, and it makes a difference. Reaching your hand out and touching or doing something empowers you and it changes the world. I think that's a tremendous place to leave people with that as a closing comment for Food for Thought. Is there anything else, you and see you seeming so well.

Starting point is 01:49:06 I certainly know when you describe that you're in new phases in your life in different ways, and I can very much appreciate that. And I've had fun. Me too. And as I said, it's not a grim duty. It's actually a celebration. It is a celebration. And I think I'm going to also set a brief for the defense, the poem by Jack Gilbert, as a reminder so that I reread and reread and reread that. It's a really potent reminder. And I think it's catching me at a good point in my life. So hopefully that's true for other people as well.

Starting point is 01:49:43 Jack, people can find you online, Jack Kornfield. That's the K-K-O-R-N-F-I-E-L-D.com. Twitter at Jack Kornfield. Instagram, Jack underscore Kornfield. They can find Cloud Sangha at cloudsangha.co. And we will link to everything that we've talked about in this conversation in the show notes for people at tim.blog slash podcast. And they just can search your name in the most recent episode, probably, unless we do more of these. Someone's listening to this a few years later, they'll be able to find with ease. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Tim. What a pleasure.

Starting point is 01:50:20 So nice to see you. What a pleasure. And to those listening, until next time, be just a little kinder than is necessary to others and to yourself. And remember that compassion can begin with feeling, but can also incorporate and often should incorporate some form of reaching out, some form of connection, some form of action. And thanks for tuning in. I'd like to do a guided loving kindness meditation practice. There are many, many versions of it.

Starting point is 01:50:56 You can find them online from Sharon Salzberg and Tara Brock and Joseph Goldstein and many, many other teachers. And this will be one version, and you can see what works for you. There isn't a right way to do metta. Sometimes the practice of cultivating loving kindness is just to radiate love without words. Sometimes it's to begin by holding yourself with kindness again and again. And tonight we'll use one of the classic practices, which also involves the inner recitation of phrases of well-wishing toward others and toward yourself. And it invites in whatever way you can, the quality of kindness, the images and the words are an avenue to opening the heart. But the most important thing is not to use it to judge yourself.

Starting point is 01:51:57 Sometimes it feels beautiful. Sometimes it's so-so. You know how meditation goes. Sometimes it's frustrating, you know, or it brings up its opposite. How can I feel love? I'm so angry at that person. And then what do you do when you feel that? You hold that too with compassion and kindness.

Starting point is 01:52:19 If it feels mechanical, you hold that with kindness. You just receive what arises and trust that the field of kindness itself is what matters. So sit comfortably. It's hard to do metta loving kindness practice if your body's knees are killing and your back's aching. So you want to be a little bit at ease. And let your eyes close gently for the next 25 minutes or so. And first, as you settle yourself, let the body relax and ease. Let the eyes and face be soft. Loosen the jaw.

Starting point is 01:53:20 Maybe roll your head in a circle a little to release your neck. Let it find a simple upright. Ah. Ah. Let the shoulders relax and the arms and hands rest easily. Feel yourself seated on the earth, halfway between heaven and earth in this human form. And let go, rest where you are, let the earth completely hold you and support you. Let the belly be soft and the breath natural.

Starting point is 01:54:20 And let the heart be soft as well. So that you invite a quieting of the mind and a tenderizing of the heart. And the blessings of loving kindness often recited before one begins the meditation are that it is an antidote to fear and anxiety when we enter into the loving and trusting heart. That when we cultivate loving kindness, others will love us more commonly and animals will notice and care and elephants will bow as we go by, it says. Children will be happier around us and we'll be happier. Our dreams get sweet, our thoughts get easier. We become more gracious with the difficulties of life as we open the heart. Now take two long breaths, breathing in and out deliberately and quite slowly, letting go whatever wants to release, to be open, present.

Starting point is 01:56:27 And now in this present moment, letting yourself settle and setting the intention to awaken the field of loving kindness. Let yourself think of or picture, remember someone that you care about where it's easy. Not a conflicted relationship, but someone where it's easy to feel a natural care and love. It doesn't have to be some super thing. It's just whoever evokes a sense of kindness in you and caring. It can even be your dog. And when you remember or think of this being, likely a person that you care about. Feel the natural care. As you picture them, remember them. Then begin very simply whispering phrases of well-wishing inwardly. May you be filled with loving kindness. May you be safe and protected.

Starting point is 01:58:10 And feel your care as you say these things. May you be well and strong or healed. Be aware of the struggles in their life, the measure of struggles like all human beings. And feel the tender compassion that comes with what they struggle. May you hold your struggles in compassion. And underneath it all, may you be happy. May you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well and healed and strong.

Starting point is 01:59:53 May you be well struggles with compassion and tenderness. May you be happy, peaceful and happy. Feel the natural well-wishing as you see them. Now pick a second person or second being where there's a natural caring and love, again, uncomplicated and easy. And as you remember and picture and sense them, think of them. Offering the same well wishes. May you be filled with loving kindness.

Starting point is 02:01:42 May you be safe and protected. May you be well and healed. Strong. Strong. May you hold your struggles with tenderness and compassion. Courage. Courage. May you be happy. Truly happy. truly happy now let yourself imagine

Starting point is 02:02:59 picture that these two beings that you care about are there in front of you, gazing back at you with eyes of kindness. For they want to wish for you the same loving kindness you extended to them. And together they gaze at you

Starting point is 02:03:25 and they whisper, may you too be filled with loving kindness. Receive it, imagine their blessing, their kindness toward you. They want you to have this. May you too be safe and protected. Feel their care.

Starting point is 02:04:05 They say, may you too be well, healed and strong. May you too hold your struggles with compassion and kindness. And they gaze at you. May you be happy. Like blessing you. May you be happy amidst it all. And you take in these phrases and words of loving kindness and recite them for yourself.

Starting point is 02:05:03 If you like, you can even put your hand on your heart. And just as they wish for you, these people who you care about, they care about you as well. May I be filled with loving kindness as they wish. May I be safe and protected. May I be well,

Starting point is 02:05:45 healed and strong. May I hold my struggles free and happy, heart and spirit. Filled with loving kindness. Safe. Protected. May I be happy. Now, without any more words from me, let yourself go through two or three or four more people that you care about or people that you know or people who are struggling or beyond them. You can spread your loving kindness out to groups of people, places in the world where they're having difficulty, to refugees, to children, women, beings. But start a little closer to home. Do a couple or a few more people you care about, and then become a couple or a few more people you care about and then become a beacon or a lighthouse and spread it more broadly.

Starting point is 02:07:28 Using your own phrases and well-wishing. Spread the metta, the loving kindness. Like a light. Far and near, near and far. you you you you you you you you. As you extend the loving kindness, you become the beacon of kindness, the beacon of loving kindness, yourself and all that it touches. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you you Take one more minute, whatever invites the spirit of loving kindness for yourself and other beings. Invite it now. you Now, keeping the spirit of loving kindness, allow your eyes to open gently. And sense that you can inhabit the consciousness of loving kindness.

Starting point is 02:17:40 Eyes open wherever you go. One of my ways of practicing this is to see the child in each person around me, especially if I'm going about on errands and I see somebody who's having a hard time or making a hard time, getting pushy or aggressive or whatever. And I look and I see them and I try to picture them as a child, as a young child with a certain innocence and their struggles as children have. I know that that child of the spirit is still in there somewhere. It brings the loving kindness alive for me. Whatever the principle of metta is to do it in whatever way most feels natural to you. In whatever way allows you to see with the eyes of tenderness and compassion and kindness. Find your own beautiful way. Enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend. Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter,

Starting point is 02:19:08 my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends,

Starting point is 02:19:34 including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

Starting point is 02:19:51 If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Shopify is one of my favorite companies out there, one of my favorite platforms ever. And let's get into it. Shopify is a platform, as I mentioned, designed for anyone to sell anything anywhere, giving entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business. So what does that mean? That means in no time flat, you can have a great looking online store that brings your ideas, products, and so on to life. And you can have the tools to manage your day-to-day

Starting point is 02:20:30 business and drive sales. This is all possible without any coding or design experience whatsoever. Shopify instantly lets you accept all major payment methods. Shopify has thousands of integrations and third-party apps from on-demand printing to accounting to advanced chatbots, anything you can imagine. They probably have a way to plug and play and make it happen. Shopify is what I wish I had had when I was venturing into e-commerce way back in the early 2000s. What they've done is pretty remarkable. I first met the founder, Toby, in 2008 when I became an advisor, and it's been spectacular. I've loved watching Shopify go from roughly 10 to 15 employees at the time to 7,000 plus today, serving customers in 175 countries

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Starting point is 02:22:29 This episode is brought to you by Element, spelled L-M-N-T. What on earth is Element? It is a delicious sugar-free electrolyte drink mix. I've stocked up on boxes and boxes of this. It was one of the first things that I bought when I saw COVID coming down the pike. And I usually use one to two per day. Element is formulated to help anyone with their electrolyte needs and perfectly suited to folks following a keto, low carb, or paleo diet. Or if you drink a ton of water and you might not have the right balance, that's often when I drink it. Or if you're doing any type of endurance exercise, mountain biking, et cetera, another application. If you've ever struggled to feel good

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Starting point is 02:23:20 again spelled L-M-N-T, can help. My favorite flavor by far is citrus salt, which, as a side note, you can also use to make a kick-ass no-sugar margarita. But for special occasions, obviously. You're probably already familiar with one of the names behind it, Rob Wolf, R-O-B-B, Rob Wolf, who is a former research biochemist and two-time New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat. Rob created Element by scratching his own itch. That's how it got started. His Brazilian jiu-jitsu coaches turned him on to electrolytes as a performance enhancer. Things clicked and bam, company was born. So if you're on a low-carb diet or fasting, electrolytes play a key role

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #684: Jack Kornfield — How to Reduce Anxiety and Polish the Lens of Consciousness

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #684: Jack Kornfield — How to Reduce Anxiety and Polish the Lens of Consciousness

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