WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.580
That's what I'm discovering in my cancer diagnosis in the midst of me teaching has thrown me into

00:00:05.580 --> 00:00:10.000
I can't teach without my vulnerability and my fragility and my

00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:14.640
Emotionality and I don't have it all together anymore and not that I ever did

00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:20.660
I'm not not pretending I did but there's something beautifully liberating for me as I'm teaching and really including

00:00:20.660 --> 00:00:28.000
The full range of my human experience that my students are telling me is more potent and more profound than anything

00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:29.920
I was doing beforehand

00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:32.500
(upbeat music)

00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:38.960
- Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump.

00:00:38.960 --> 00:00:40.900
My name is Rick Archer.

00:00:40.900 --> 00:00:43.680
Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series

00:00:43.680 --> 00:00:46.920
of conversations with spiritually awakening people.

00:00:46.920 --> 00:00:49.240
We've done well over 700 of them now.

00:00:49.240 --> 00:00:50.640
So if this is new to you

00:00:50.640 --> 00:00:52.520
and you'd like to check out previous ones,

00:00:52.520 --> 00:00:56.640
please go to batgap.com and look under the interviews menu

00:00:56.640 --> 00:00:59.480
where you'll see them arranged in various ways.

00:00:59.480 --> 00:01:04.400
This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers.

00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:10.720
We don't do ads on the audio podcast and very few ads in the videos, just at the beginning,

00:01:10.720 --> 00:01:12.200
and those are skippable.

00:01:12.200 --> 00:01:18.400
So if you would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the website.

00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:21.080
And there are also volunteer opportunities, I should mention.

00:01:21.080 --> 00:01:25.560
There's a lot of people who volunteer by helping to proofread transcripts, but there's some

00:01:25.560 --> 00:01:27.000
other interesting things going on.

00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:33.800
We have this bot now, it's called the BatGap bot, it's an AI chat bot, which has been fed

00:01:33.800 --> 00:01:40.920
well over 100,000 relevant documents now, including 1,700 of the world's sacred texts,

00:01:40.920 --> 00:01:46.560
and if you're into that kind of thing, there's some interesting volunteer opportunities to

00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:48.840
help with it.

00:01:48.840 --> 00:01:52.040
My guest today is Riyaz Motan.

00:01:52.040 --> 00:01:53.040
Did I pronounce that right, Motan?

00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:54.520
>>Riyaz: Yes, you got it just right.

00:01:54.520 --> 00:01:55.520
>>Rick: Okay, good.

00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:58.840
So you were born in Kenya, like Barack Obama.

00:01:58.840 --> 00:02:02.200
That's a joke.

00:02:02.200 --> 00:02:04.600
And you're of Indian ancestry.

00:02:04.600 --> 00:02:06.920
Your family moved to Canada when you were 10.

00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:09.920
You grew up there, moved to the US as an adult.

00:02:09.920 --> 00:02:14.760
And you feel, I'm just kind of putting your bio here in the second person, that each of

00:02:14.760 --> 00:02:20.760
these lands, peoples, and cultures has informed and shaped your expression and sensibilities.

00:02:20.760 --> 00:02:23.420
You're a product of both East and West.

00:02:23.420 --> 00:02:27.660
Most of your adult life has been devoted to the study and practice of both psychotherapy

00:02:27.660 --> 00:02:33.460
and spirituality, and both of these disciplines have been integral to a path of healing and

00:02:33.460 --> 00:02:34.460
awakening.

00:02:34.460 --> 00:02:38.260
Professionally, your life's work has been to bring together Eastern wisdom with Western

00:02:38.260 --> 00:02:47.820
science and psychology in a systematic alliance.

00:02:47.820 --> 00:02:52.700
After 26 years of mainly practicing as a psychotherapist and many years of teaching and supervising

00:02:52.700 --> 00:02:57.940
students and interns in a transpersonally oriented graduate school, the California Institute

00:02:57.940 --> 00:03:04.620
of Integral Studies in San Francisco, you shifted your work in a more explicitly spiritual direction,

00:03:04.620 --> 00:03:09.940
and you now lead individuals and groups in spiritual work and in day-long and multi-day

00:03:09.940 --> 00:03:10.940
retreats.

00:03:10.940 --> 00:03:12.740
So, let's see.

00:03:12.740 --> 00:03:18.540
In 2022, you shifted your focus away from primarily being a therapist and began focusing primarily

00:03:18.540 --> 00:03:20.780
on spiritual teaching.

00:03:20.780 --> 00:03:27.320
And in April of '23, your teacher Adyashanti surprised you when he gave you Dharma transmission

00:03:27.320 --> 00:03:29.640
and his blessing to teach.

00:03:29.640 --> 00:03:33.960
And so you were feeling a tremendous wave of support and energy in this new direction.

00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:38.940
But then in August of '23, a couple months later, you were stunned to receive a serious

00:03:38.940 --> 00:03:42.660
cancer diagnosis, stage 4 lung cancer.

00:03:42.660 --> 00:03:44.580
So we'll be talking about all that.

00:03:44.580 --> 00:03:50.740
Let me ask you for starters, when Adyashanti gives you Dharma transmission, is it anything

00:03:50.740 --> 00:03:57.340
palpable in terms of some kind of Shakti implant or is it more like, "Okay, Riyaz, go ahead

00:03:57.340 --> 00:03:58.340
and teach.

00:03:58.340 --> 00:03:59.340
You have my blessings."

00:03:59.340 --> 00:04:00.900
>> Riyaz: Yeah, that's a great question.

00:04:00.900 --> 00:04:05.700
I was wondering the same thing, honestly, as I was leading up to the weekend that we

00:04:05.700 --> 00:04:11.140
had set aside for this, you know, and I didn't know what to expect.

00:04:11.140 --> 00:04:18.380
In truth, what I'll tell you is it was a beautiful affair and very ritualized and very deep and

00:04:18.380 --> 00:04:22.620
sacred, but it actually didn't have a lot of fireworks to it.

00:04:22.620 --> 00:04:30.020
Energetically speaking, it actually just felt like a very quiet, beautiful confirmation of

00:04:30.020 --> 00:04:32.620
something that was already happening.

00:04:32.620 --> 00:04:36.700
You know, I'd spent the whole weekend with Adya, he's a good friend of mine, actually,

00:04:36.700 --> 00:04:41.140
and so the weekend we did the transmission, we did it at the end of the weekend and we'd

00:04:41.140 --> 00:04:45.820
spent probably a good 48 plus hours just hanging out, just spending time together.

00:04:45.820 --> 00:04:50.320
And in those hanging out times, we have lots of conversations about teaching, and I had

00:04:50.320 --> 00:04:54.240
lots of questions for him about teaching, because this is all new to me, and you know,

00:04:54.240 --> 00:04:56.480
what an incredible resource he is.

00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:00.220
And I actually felt like something happened in the weekend in the conversation.

00:05:00.220 --> 00:05:06.360
Interestingly enough, like something solidified and was passed on through multiple conversations,

00:05:06.360 --> 00:05:12.280
that by the time the ceremony happened, it was actually just a very quiet little experience,

00:05:12.280 --> 00:05:15.200
and it didn't feel big to me in any way.

00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:16.200
It just felt sweet.

00:05:16.200 --> 00:05:17.200
>>Rick: Nice.

00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:19.920
Well, Ajay's not really a fireworks-y kind of guy.

00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:22.760
>>Riyaz: In some ways he isn't, but in some ways he is.

00:05:22.760 --> 00:05:23.760
>>Rick: Yeah.

00:05:23.760 --> 00:05:28.700
Yeah, I had the pleasure of visiting him at his house a couple times and stayed there

00:05:28.700 --> 00:05:30.600
one night before doing an interview with him.

00:05:30.600 --> 00:05:36.600
And unfortunately, the guy I was rooming with snored loudly all night, so I hardly got any

00:05:36.600 --> 00:05:37.600
sleep.

00:05:37.600 --> 00:05:42.560
Anyway, we're not just going to talk about cancer in this conversation.

00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:44.760
I'm sure there's other things we'll talk about.

00:05:44.760 --> 00:05:46.960
But we could start with that.

00:05:46.960 --> 00:05:47.960
>> It's a big thing, though.

00:05:47.960 --> 00:05:48.960
>> Yeah, it's a big thing.

00:05:48.960 --> 00:05:53.920
And I want to mention that a couple of our mutual friends, Lucy Grace and Marianna Kaplan,

00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:57.360
were your cheerleaders for getting this to happen.

00:05:57.360 --> 00:06:01.800
They were doing backflips and cartwheels on the sidelines.

00:06:01.800 --> 00:06:03.260
Glad they did that.

00:06:03.260 --> 00:06:07.080
So you start, and then I'll have all kinds of questions.

00:06:07.080 --> 00:06:11.640
But you're a healthy guy, you're a hiker, biker, things like that.

00:06:11.640 --> 00:06:15.120
I doubt that you smoke or maybe you did when you were younger.

00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:16.680
No, not even.

00:06:16.680 --> 00:06:18.200
So it must have been kind of a shock.

00:06:18.200 --> 00:06:23.240
I can think of three people who died of lung cancer who never smoked, but sometimes, you

00:06:23.240 --> 00:06:25.240
know, non-smokers get it.

00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:26.240
That's right.

00:06:26.240 --> 00:06:29.360
And yeah, it was an absolute shock to me and to everybody I know.

00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:33.320
You know, most people who said this to me afterwards, like, "You're the last person I would think

00:06:33.320 --> 00:06:36.200
because I'm very healthy, very kind of health conscious.

00:06:36.200 --> 00:06:37.200
I eat healthy.

00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:38.200
I exercise.

00:06:38.200 --> 00:06:39.200
I meditate.

00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:43.200
I kind of try to take care of my mind, body, and spirit.

00:06:43.200 --> 00:06:44.200
I always have.

00:06:44.200 --> 00:06:47.720
And so when this came, it came out of the blue.

00:06:47.720 --> 00:06:51.360
And it also, you know, it's interesting, Rick, you're reading my bio earlier, right?

00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:53.440
And I was listening to it.

00:06:53.440 --> 00:06:57.720
And you can kind of think about your life along a kind of a narrative or a trajectory.

00:06:57.720 --> 00:07:04.960
And I had been feeling up until prior to my diagnosis, like, wow, things are just unfolding

00:07:04.960 --> 00:07:07.680
so beautifully, as you were reading about it.

00:07:07.680 --> 00:07:12.640
Like even the dharma transmission of Adi, it was just like a kind of a confirmation or

00:07:12.640 --> 00:07:17.680
more wind at my back of, "Oh yes, you're at this other new stage and now you're stepping

00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:20.840
into teaching and you have the blessing of your teacher."

00:07:20.840 --> 00:07:24.920
And all the signs of the sort of universes I was reading them to were saying, "Keep

00:07:24.920 --> 00:07:25.920
going.

00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:26.920
This is great.

00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:27.920
This is your dharma.

00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:28.920
We support you in a way."

00:07:28.920 --> 00:07:31.640
That's kind of how I was unconsciously hearing it.

00:07:31.640 --> 00:07:34.440
And then all of a sudden, it's like, you know, the record stopped.

00:07:34.440 --> 00:07:39.600
You know, like there's this big kind of an earthquake, you know, a tsunami, it felt like

00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:41.560
in the middle of everything.

00:07:41.560 --> 00:07:43.600
And it completely just blew everything apart.

00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:44.880
It blew my narrative apart.

00:07:44.880 --> 00:07:50.240
It blew my sense of what my life trajectory was and what my life was supposed to be.

00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:55.280
Even threw into question the kind of sense of incredible support I've always felt and

00:07:55.280 --> 00:07:56.280
I've been feeling.

00:07:56.280 --> 00:08:01.080
I've had a blessed life in many ways, you know, I've had a difficult life in many ways, especially

00:08:01.080 --> 00:08:06.800
the beginnings, but the farther and farther into my life I've gone, and as you were reading

00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:11.840
about all the practices that I've discovered, and the teachers and the helpers, I've kind

00:08:11.840 --> 00:08:18.240
of wound my way, gratefully, graciously, into a life I thought into a pretty happy life,

00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:21.200
pretty fulfilling life, and it just felt like it was only getting more and more so that

00:08:21.200 --> 00:08:22.200
way.

00:08:22.200 --> 00:08:24.640
And then all of a sudden, everything just got blown apart.

00:08:24.640 --> 00:08:29.940
And even that sense of support, could I trust the universe, got thrown into question.

00:08:29.940 --> 00:08:34.340
So it really threw me into an existential morass for a while.

00:08:34.340 --> 00:08:42.820
But I will say that this last year and a quarter since the diagnosis has been profoundly just

00:08:42.820 --> 00:08:48.940
transformative and more difficult this year than any year of my life.

00:08:48.940 --> 00:08:49.940
No doubt about that.

00:08:49.940 --> 00:08:51.340
I won't sugarcoat that.

00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:58.900
But actually, probably the most beautiful, most opening, most transformative year of

00:08:58.900 --> 00:09:03.480
my life as well. There's been so many blessings and I have many moments where I can actually

00:09:03.480 --> 00:09:09.940
feel grateful for cancer, for the diagnosis. I still wish it would go away. It's not like

00:09:09.940 --> 00:09:14.780
I want it to stick around. I want to bow to this teacher, this amazing teacher and say,

00:09:14.780 --> 00:09:16.780
"Have I learned my lessons yet, please?"

00:09:16.780 --> 00:09:18.780
Yeah, right. Got the point.

00:09:18.780 --> 00:09:26.540
It's not an easy relationship, but it is a profound relationship. And my practice is that

00:09:26.540 --> 00:09:33.460
I'd been cultivating and leaning on for many years got thrown into question at the beginning.

00:09:33.460 --> 00:09:34.460
Will they carry me?

00:09:34.460 --> 00:09:35.460
Are they enough?

00:09:35.460 --> 00:09:37.020
Will I still believe?

00:09:37.020 --> 00:09:42.420
And I'm grateful to say that things have only redoubled, things have only deepened.

00:09:42.420 --> 00:09:48.700
I'm so grateful for the spiritual understanding that I have and the practices that I have.

00:09:48.700 --> 00:09:54.300
And that's really the thing that's allowed me to meet this crisis and to actually have

00:09:54.300 --> 00:09:59.260
it be a gift, have it be a blessing, and not feel a victim to it, not feel cursed by it.

00:09:59.260 --> 00:10:02.020
Pete You may remember that Ram Dass either wrote

00:10:02.020 --> 00:10:07.500
a book or made a film, maybe both, called Fierce Grace, after he had his stroke. The

00:10:07.500 --> 00:10:08.740
title says it all.

00:10:08.740 --> 00:10:11.460
David It says it all, and I can very much resonate

00:10:11.460 --> 00:10:17.340
and relate to him and his experience in that book, or movie at least, I remember the movie.

00:10:17.340 --> 00:10:19.980
Pete Yeah. And your slogan for many years apparently

00:10:19.980 --> 00:10:24.380
has been, "Things happen for me, not to me," right?

00:10:24.380 --> 00:10:29.660
I've been saying that for years to myself in practicing, and life happens for me, not

00:10:29.660 --> 00:10:30.660
to me.

00:10:30.660 --> 00:10:31.660
Right.

00:10:31.660 --> 00:10:36.300
I remember, actually, in those first 24 hours after my diagnosis, first 48 hours, like really

00:10:36.300 --> 00:10:39.340
asking myself, "Can I really say that about this?

00:10:39.340 --> 00:10:40.340
This is for me?"

00:10:40.340 --> 00:10:44.980
And, you know, there was a period, it didn't last long actually, probably a day or two,

00:10:44.980 --> 00:10:52.620
real wavering about that. And then something clicked back in and said, "This too. I trust this. I trust this is for me.

00:10:52.620 --> 00:10:56.560
I don't know what it is. I don't know what the gifts are. I don't know what the learning is,

00:10:56.560 --> 00:11:01.000
but I'm going to orient to that." And you know, I'd watched and listened to

00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:06.080
Ram Dass talk about his orientation and the way he practiced with his stroke and his illness.

00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:11.540
And you know, really the perspective he took was that this is part of my soul's curriculum.

00:11:11.540 --> 00:11:13.500
Whatever it is,

00:11:13.500 --> 00:11:18.860
Everything that happens in life, right? The positive and the negative, the most difficult and the most blessed,

00:11:18.860 --> 00:11:22.460
are all part of the soul's journey and part of this curriculum. And

00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:26.620
that's really been the approach. And that's kind of when I say life happens for me.

00:11:26.620 --> 00:11:30.060
It's kind of an approach or an attitude of,

00:11:30.060 --> 00:11:35.580
"Okay, I trust this. Whatever this is, this is meant to be here. It's been laid on my altar."

00:11:35.580 --> 00:11:37.660
Is how I like to think about it. A friend of mine said that.

00:11:37.660 --> 00:11:40.860
And I really like that at the beginning. "It's been laid on my altar.

00:11:41.340 --> 00:11:46.460
and how do I bow to it? How do I learn from this? How do I let it open me and teach me? And

00:11:46.460 --> 00:11:51.020
that attitude has allowed me to really receive tremendous blessings from this.

00:11:51.020 --> 00:11:55.420
Pete Yeah, I think and often say that if you could

00:11:55.420 --> 00:12:01.180
zoom out far enough and see it from a God's eye view, nothing that happens to anybody is

00:12:01.180 --> 00:12:10.380
purposeless or arbitrary or vindictive or any of those things. It's all in the interest of evolution,

00:12:10.380 --> 00:12:14.700
But that obviously can be a very glib thing to say when you consider how horrible

00:12:14.700 --> 00:12:20.780
life can be for people, like telling them this is good for you, you know, being bombed in Gaza or

00:12:20.780 --> 00:12:25.020
something. And of course, this is just really a philosophy. How do we know this? We're absolutely

00:12:25.020 --> 00:12:30.540
sure. But, you know, if you believe that there is some all-pervading intelligence and that its

00:12:30.540 --> 00:12:36.460
ultimate agenda, if you will, is the evolution of all souls and all beings and the whole universe

00:12:36.460 --> 00:12:41.900
to higher and higher stages, then even the rough stuff is in the interest of that.

00:12:41.900 --> 00:12:46.860
Yes, and I can really see that from that zoomed out perspective, and I can hold it that way.

00:12:46.860 --> 00:12:51.180
I think, yes, as you're saying, you know, I think if you try to bring that perspective to somebody

00:12:51.180 --> 00:12:55.500
who's right in the crux of something like that, that can feel really painful or difficult or

00:12:55.500 --> 00:13:00.940
misattuned. But I think having that perspective personally, having access to that,

00:13:00.940 --> 00:13:06.900
that perspective personally can allow us to relate to our experience in a much more generative

00:13:06.900 --> 00:13:12.040
way and in a much more expansive way, in a way that allows us to not feel completely

00:13:12.040 --> 00:13:17.820
a victim to our circumstances, to open to the possibilities that may be here, like we talk

00:13:17.820 --> 00:13:23.020
about, like from a soul perspective or an evolutionary perspective that are really hard

00:13:23.020 --> 00:13:30.540
to get from the personality that is really just designed and interested in pleasure and

00:13:30.540 --> 00:13:37.820
avoiding pain. So it's really important to be able to step beyond the personality's drive

00:13:37.820 --> 00:13:42.020
into some other motivation, if possible.

00:13:42.020 --> 00:13:45.440
And I don't think it's useful to make up, well, maybe it can be useful for people at

00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:50.640
times to just make up fairy tales about how the world works, but ultimately I think it

00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:54.980
behooves us to really understand how it works, if at all possible. But I do think it makes

00:13:54.980 --> 00:14:00.220
a big difference what our understanding is, in terms of the way we live life, and perhaps

00:14:00.220 --> 00:14:03.700
to death. You know, if you think you're going to go to heaven, or you're going to go to hell,

00:14:03.700 --> 00:14:08.480
or you're going to get reincarnated, or you're just going to utterly cease to exist, or all

00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:14.980
those things, each of those perspectives would give a very different flavor to your experience,

00:14:14.980 --> 00:14:19.140
especially your experience of impending death, don't you think?

00:14:19.140 --> 00:14:25.460
>> Exactly. Our stories we tell ourselves impact us greatly, and the mythology that we live

00:14:25.460 --> 00:14:30.340
and live in and live with is tremendously important.

00:14:30.340 --> 00:14:36.300
Have you had a philosophy regarding death or are you very much don't know?

00:14:36.300 --> 00:14:38.180
Well, both, actually.

00:14:38.180 --> 00:14:42.340
I think ultimately, I always land in don't know.

00:14:42.340 --> 00:14:47.060
Around death in particular, and honestly, just life in particular.

00:14:47.060 --> 00:14:51.500
I have all sorts of stories and theories about the way things work, and they guide me, like

00:14:51.500 --> 00:14:52.500
they're important.

00:14:52.500 --> 00:14:59.780
But ultimately, I always come back to just the mystery, the open, allowing of things to unfold

00:14:59.780 --> 00:15:05.220
without a story. Things are always unfolding without a story. It's just something we overlay

00:15:05.220 --> 00:15:10.500
onto it, it can be very useful, very guiding, very comforting, very terrifying, all sorts of

00:15:10.500 --> 00:15:15.380
things, depending upon your story. So I'll just say that, and death is the ultimate place of not

00:15:15.380 --> 00:15:21.220
know, because I absolutely know that I don't know about that. And yes, if you ask me about my

00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:28.580
philosophy about it. I have held a kind of more Hindu perspective on it, kind of a reincarnation

00:15:28.580 --> 00:15:33.460
that's always just resonated for me. I've had a sense of that that's true for me in

00:15:33.460 --> 00:15:40.140
terms of past lives, but I hold that lightly. Interestingly enough, I'm facing my mortality

00:15:40.140 --> 00:15:45.020
in a very immediate way, more than I ever have, obviously, in my life. But for years,

00:15:45.020 --> 00:15:52.220
The last probably six or eight years prior to my diagnosis, I was practicing with deaths

00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:53.780
over and over again.

00:15:53.780 --> 00:15:59.980
I would be on retreat and I would go into the woods in the middle of the night sometimes

00:15:59.980 --> 00:16:06.700
and just face my fear of death and just watch and allow myself to feel my bodily and mental

00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:10.940
contractions and constrictions and fears and try to work with them and breathe with them

00:16:10.940 --> 00:16:12.600
and release them.

00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:15.920
And I did all sorts of other meditations and practices as well.

00:16:15.920 --> 00:16:17.560
And that was incredibly liberating for me.

00:16:17.560 --> 00:16:22.600
And I felt like I was freeing myself to live more fully in the moment.

00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:26.920
And I also felt like I was preparing myself for the moment of death in some ways.

00:16:26.920 --> 00:16:30.760
And then all of a sudden, I don't need to practice anymore because every day death is

00:16:30.760 --> 00:16:31.840
at my doorstep.

00:16:31.840 --> 00:16:35.000
Every morning I wake up and death is my teacher.

00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:40.640
So I've been kind of thrust into intense period of, you can call it practice.

00:16:40.640 --> 00:16:45.560
I think Shankar said, and probably other teachers have said, that it's good to live one's life

00:16:45.560 --> 00:16:50.880
with the understanding that you could die in your next breath, you know, you never know.

00:16:50.880 --> 00:16:55.520
You're kind of like a bird sitting on a branch that could break at any time, which might sound

00:16:55.520 --> 00:16:59.720
morbid if you interpret it wrong, but I think a lot of people live as though they're immortal,

00:16:59.720 --> 00:17:00.720
especially teenagers.

00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:04.280
They think they can do anything and it's not going to matter.

00:17:04.280 --> 00:17:08.920
Yeah, and I think it tells us, I think there's an illusion of certainty, an illusion of a

00:17:08.920 --> 00:17:14.600
future that we can just put off our lives and we can not be as awake to the preciousness

00:17:14.600 --> 00:17:19.600
of this moment, this fleeting moment that is the only thing that's given.

00:17:19.600 --> 00:17:21.120
You and I don't know.

00:17:21.120 --> 00:17:23.880
The branch could break for either one of us at any moment, right?

00:17:23.880 --> 00:17:27.000
I think that was Shankara's point, you know, make hay while the sun shines.

00:17:27.000 --> 00:17:28.600
This is a precious opportunity.

00:17:28.600 --> 00:17:29.600
Yeah.

00:17:29.600 --> 00:17:33.440
And so that's one of the blessings, so many blessings, but one of the blessings of this

00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:37.640
diagnosis is that my days and my moments are shining.

00:17:37.640 --> 00:17:40.660
are alive more than ever.

00:17:40.660 --> 00:17:44.920
There's difficult moments now that I have to face and experiences that are part of it.

00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:50.140
But the preciousness of my life and of my loved ones and of the little simple things

00:17:50.140 --> 00:17:55.720
like a morning in the trees and with the sun and the birds, when you think about it, like,

00:17:55.720 --> 00:17:59.920
"Boy, do I get another one of these?" or "How many more do I get of these?"

00:17:59.920 --> 00:18:03.120
You really pay attention, you really go, "Wow, this is a miracle.

00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:04.120
This is a blessing."

00:18:04.120 --> 00:18:10.720
>>Rick: On this point of not knowing, I was listening to a talk of Swami Sarvapriyananda

00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:15.720
the other day and he told a story about Sri Ramakrishna when he was on his deathbed and

00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:20.520
there were some people in the room and Ramakrishna overheard someone use the phrase "I know"

00:18:20.520 --> 00:18:25.440
in the context of some sentence and he lifted his head with great effort and said, "Never

00:18:25.440 --> 00:18:28.480
say I know, always say I'm learning."

00:18:28.480 --> 00:18:30.120
And he said, "That applies to me too.

00:18:30.120 --> 00:18:33.400
There's no ultimate finality or certainty.

00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:38.000
always learning. Well that's the other thing I'll say, Rick, is that this year, a year

00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:44.160
and a quarter, it's been tremendously humbling because I was coming, as you were describing,

00:18:44.160 --> 00:18:48.400
coming into a period of like, "Oh, I'm starting to teach and I'm feeling called to teach."

00:18:48.400 --> 00:18:52.200
And it wasn't coming from an arrogant place, it was actually coming from a really pure

00:18:52.200 --> 00:18:56.400
service place, but there was a sense of, "Oh, I have some things to share now. I really

00:18:56.400 --> 00:19:02.840
have kind of arrived at a place. I've got some things figured out." You know? I'm laughing

00:19:02.840 --> 00:19:08.720
because it just threw me into such a kind of an upside down, like, I don't know.

00:19:08.720 --> 00:19:09.720
I don't know anything.

00:19:09.720 --> 00:19:14.640
I am going through so much and I am needing so much help.

00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:21.840
I'm emotionally more labile or kind of all over the place than I ever have been.

00:19:21.840 --> 00:19:23.960
So it just felt like I was out of control.

00:19:23.960 --> 00:19:25.680
Perhaps that's the kind of teacher the world needs.

00:19:25.680 --> 00:19:26.680
There aren't enough of those.

00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:27.680
Yeah.

00:19:27.680 --> 00:19:30.680
There's too many people who are cock sure of themselves.

00:19:30.680 --> 00:19:31.680
Exactly.

00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:35.720
I think this has been wonderful, and I think you're right. I think we all could use just

00:19:35.720 --> 00:19:42.800
more humility, more openness. There's a lot of us that can be a little too set in, I know.

00:19:42.800 --> 00:19:46.640
There's another quote I heard recently, which I've repeated several times, but I like it.

00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:52.320
My friend Dana Sawyer used this quote in something. Aldous Huxley, he wrote a biography of Huxley.

00:19:52.320 --> 00:19:57.340
Aldous Huxley said at one point that the greatest contribution of the scientific revolution

00:19:57.340 --> 00:20:02.800
was the development of the working hypothesis. When we were talking a minute ago, I was thinking

00:20:02.800 --> 00:20:08.260
that because it's okay to say, "I don't really know," but it's also okay to have working

00:20:08.260 --> 00:20:12.960
hypotheses like maybe reincarnation is a thing. Now, what's the evidence for that? I don't

00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:15.920
have to believe it. I don't have to disbelieve it. I'm not going to go to heaven or hell

00:20:15.920 --> 00:20:21.600
as a consequence of my belief or disbelief, but it's an interesting hypothesis to explore.

00:20:21.600 --> 00:20:25.000
And you can do that with virtually every idea.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.400
I heard this morning in a talk I was listening to that you're one of these rare people who

00:20:29.400 --> 00:20:35.680
has a particular kind of genetic thing with your cancer that is amenable to one of these

00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:41.200
targeted therapies where they can pinpoint precisely, customize just for you a particular

00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:42.520
kind of therapy.

00:20:42.520 --> 00:20:48.040
I think it was like 4% of the people who have your condition have that opportunity.

00:20:48.040 --> 00:20:49.840
So it's pretty cool that you had that.

00:20:49.840 --> 00:20:54.080
And as of when you did that interview, I don't know when that was, you know, you started the

00:20:54.080 --> 00:20:58.560
treatment that was good for maybe even five years, but it only lasted you six

00:20:58.560 --> 00:21:02.400
months, and then you were going to start a new one at UC Davis. And so how's that

00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:08.120
going? That one petered out as well. Pretty quick. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah, no, it's

00:21:08.120 --> 00:21:11.240
been quite a rollercoaster. You know, the first couple of months of my diagnosis

00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:16.760
was horrendous because the diagnosis was extreme. You know, the cancer had

00:21:16.760 --> 00:21:21.040
spread to multiple places in organs and bones, and it's not looking good. It was a

00:21:21.040 --> 00:21:26.200
a pretty dire diagnosis. And then two months later, as you mentioned, I got this seeming

00:21:26.200 --> 00:21:31.960
reprieve. This ALK positive was the genetic marker that I had and qualified me for this

00:21:31.960 --> 00:21:38.320
targeted medication that I started in October of 2023. And about six months, five or six

00:21:38.320 --> 00:21:42.760
months, it seemed like a miracle. It seemed like most of my symptoms went away, my energy

00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:49.800
came back. I was feeling pretty well. And that was supposed to probably last. Cancer

00:21:49.800 --> 00:21:53.600
always mutates and finds its way around it and you need to go to the next generation of

00:21:53.600 --> 00:21:56.960
the medication and the next one and you hope there's a next one.

00:21:56.960 --> 00:22:01.320
You know, the one I was taking was the latest generation, so I was hoping that it would

00:22:01.320 --> 00:22:06.240
last for years and there'd be another medication on the pipeline or approved by that point.

00:22:06.240 --> 00:22:11.280
And so I've talked to mentors or friends of mine in that community that are eight, nine

00:22:11.280 --> 00:22:16.320
years into this diagnosis and they're on their third or fourth generation of medication.

00:22:16.320 --> 00:22:21.260
So I had that as a potential timeline for me, a hopeful timeline.

00:22:21.260 --> 00:22:23.240
But after six months, it stopped working for me.

00:22:23.240 --> 00:22:24.840
I won't go into the details.

00:22:24.840 --> 00:22:29.560
My particular type has a variation that makes it harder to treat.

00:22:29.560 --> 00:22:35.260
And so I went into the UC Davis clinical trial with the newest medication, the newest generation

00:22:35.260 --> 00:22:38.480
that wasn't approved yet, but it was getting really good results.

00:22:38.480 --> 00:22:41.400
Six weeks into that, they said, "I'm sorry, it's not working for you.

00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:43.800
Your cancer is progressing.

00:22:43.800 --> 00:22:49.320
going to have to move on to harsher treatment, which is what I did in August-September, was

00:22:49.320 --> 00:22:54.040
I moved towards chemotherapy and radiation because it was advancing in certain areas pretty

00:22:54.040 --> 00:22:55.040
rapidly.

00:22:55.040 --> 00:22:57.560
I did chemo and radiation.

00:22:57.560 --> 00:23:02.040
The radiation helped give me some relief, like with my breathing, for example, and a

00:23:02.040 --> 00:23:03.040
couple of other things.

00:23:03.040 --> 00:23:11.020
And then the chemo right after, it interacted with my radiation and burned my esophagus.

00:23:11.020 --> 00:23:15.580
esophagus got burned on the inside to the point where I literally couldn't swallow

00:23:15.580 --> 00:23:20.220
food for about five weeks or so. And so I ended up in the hospital for a few days,

00:23:20.220 --> 00:23:24.500
they almost put a feeding tube in me, but I basically was on liquid diet for about

00:23:24.500 --> 00:23:28.780
six weeks. Most of six weeks I lost a bunch of weight. So I really went

00:23:28.780 --> 00:23:33.220
through it just a couple months ago and got really weak. But I came out of

00:23:33.220 --> 00:23:37.900
that and now I'm in a different phase, Rick. I'm really throwing myself into more

00:23:37.900 --> 00:23:41.780
alternative healing. I was doing that a little bit on the side, more complementary healing,

00:23:41.780 --> 00:23:46.400
more spiritual healing, more energetic, but also taking other supplements and acupuncture

00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:53.380
and things. And now that's become the main thing. Like I am fully in a new mode of healing

00:23:53.380 --> 00:23:59.460
and I let go of the Western medicine as my main hope. It's still there, I haven't thrown

00:23:59.460 --> 00:24:03.840
it out completely. I'm getting a radiation treatment tomorrow to help with some tumors

00:24:03.840 --> 00:24:06.280
on my spine, they're creating some pain for me.

00:24:06.280 --> 00:24:12.760
So I'm going to use that for palliative allopathic kind of reasons, but I'm just kind of really

00:24:12.760 --> 00:24:16.520
throwing myself into healing on these other levels.

00:24:16.520 --> 00:24:19.120
There's just a kind of a different mode I'm in now.

00:24:19.120 --> 00:24:23.240
I don't have the magic pill anymore that I thought I had.

00:24:23.240 --> 00:24:28.360
We were up in Iowa City a couple of weeks ago, an hour north of us, because Irene had a doctor's

00:24:28.360 --> 00:24:33.680
appointment and I went into the food co-op place to pick up some sandwiches or something.

00:24:33.680 --> 00:24:39.640
Irene stayed in the car, and as I was walking out, holding my food, going to the cash register,

00:24:39.640 --> 00:24:44.120
this younger woman with her head shaved and Buddhist robes was walking up towards me, and

00:24:44.120 --> 00:24:48.080
we both stopped in our tracks, and it was like this lightning bolt of synchronicity.

00:24:48.080 --> 00:24:52.660
We kind of just stared at each other, and I said, "Are you from Fairfield?"

00:24:52.660 --> 00:24:53.660
Which is our town.

00:24:53.660 --> 00:24:54.920
And she said, "No, but you are."

00:24:54.920 --> 00:24:56.880
She said, "I've been watching your interviews for years."

00:24:56.880 --> 00:24:58.720
And I said, "Wow, you look so bright."

00:24:58.720 --> 00:25:02.760
So we became friends, and we've had conversations and everything since then.

00:25:02.760 --> 00:25:06.000
And it turned out she's been going through a real cancer ordeal.

00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:12.560
It's interesting, she and also another friend of mine who went through it had an abnormally

00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:16.160
severe reaction to conventional chemotherapy.

00:25:16.160 --> 00:25:19.120
And so doctors were like, "Whoa, what is with this person?

00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:22.400
They're not supposed to have this severe reaction."

00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:25.600
But maybe it's due to the refinement and sensitivity and whatnot.

00:25:25.600 --> 00:25:30.760
I mean, she just had come back from a year in the Himalayas in a monastery.

00:25:30.760 --> 00:25:33.680
That's what people have been telling me as well, is that I'm very sensitive.

00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:37.640
Yeah, I mean some people can smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and it's like no big deal.

00:25:37.640 --> 00:25:42.160
If you smoked one cigarette, or I did, we'd be like, "Oh my God!"

00:25:42.160 --> 00:25:43.440
Exactly.

00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:48.760
When I had this severe reaction within days, my body was telling me, "This is not your

00:25:48.760 --> 00:25:49.760
path.

00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:53.880
The chemotherapy is too intense and the radiation, it's just, it's too much.

00:25:53.880 --> 00:25:55.240
It's not going to be my path."

00:25:55.240 --> 00:25:59.360
You know, this is interesting, you know, I have a spiritual life that's oriented me my

00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:04.040
whole life and it feels like it's what's going to orient me here and maybe the last chapter

00:26:04.040 --> 00:26:09.560
or chapters of my life, it's like, okay, I'm going to really trust my intuition and just

00:26:09.560 --> 00:26:13.240
really follow the guidance of what's being presented to me.

00:26:13.240 --> 00:26:19.860
But that Western paradigm, the medical paradigm, which has certain probabilities and possibilities

00:26:19.860 --> 00:26:23.720
kind of defined and confined, I've stepped out of it.

00:26:23.720 --> 00:26:28.200
I noticed that actually there's a lot of fear in there, there's a lot of anxiety in there,

00:26:28.200 --> 00:26:30.080
And it is actually a good vibration for me.

00:26:30.080 --> 00:26:36.400
The more I interact with oncologists and hospitals and treatments, the less vibrancy there is

00:26:36.400 --> 00:26:38.640
here, the less hope there is here.

00:26:38.640 --> 00:26:44.880
And when I'm in my hopeful, vibrant practices, everything feels better, everything looks

00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:47.080
better and I'm going to give that its full course.

00:26:47.080 --> 00:26:49.000
I'm going to see how far that takes me.

00:26:49.000 --> 00:26:54.480
I'm doing all sorts of practices and taking supplements and different treatments that

00:26:54.480 --> 00:27:00.160
are not met with the Western approach, but I'm kind of all in on that now.

00:27:00.160 --> 00:27:05.480
Have you experienced what many "spiritual people" experience is that when they get sick

00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:10.120
with something, their friends start driving them crazy, suggesting all kinds of alternative

00:27:10.120 --> 00:27:11.520
treatments, you know?

00:27:11.520 --> 00:27:14.600
And some people can be very harsh, "Oh, it must be your karma."

00:27:14.600 --> 00:27:19.120
But other people will be like, "You gotta try flower essences," or, you know, this thing,

00:27:19.120 --> 00:27:20.720
or ozone therapy, or whatever.

00:27:20.720 --> 00:27:23.360
It's like you don't have time to do all these things.

00:27:23.360 --> 00:27:27.760
I've got a whole folder of emails that are just all cancer resources that people have

00:27:27.760 --> 00:27:30.840
sent to me and I haven't gone through most of them or half of them.

00:27:30.840 --> 00:27:31.840
Yeah.

00:27:31.840 --> 00:27:34.320
The beginning was overwhelming, but I still get a lot.

00:27:34.320 --> 00:27:36.000
And now it's really about discernment.

00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:40.400
Like I actually have gotten some really great things that have come through, but I also

00:27:40.400 --> 00:27:46.440
have to filter it out and really always come back to my own knowing, which is ultimately

00:27:46.440 --> 00:27:47.440
what we all have to do.

00:27:47.440 --> 00:27:48.440
Yeah.

00:27:48.440 --> 00:27:51.860
I'm going to send you one more from my Buddhist friend that I just referred to because she

00:27:51.860 --> 00:27:57.740
She has cancer, as I said, and she has been dealing with this Tibetan Buddhist herbalist

00:27:57.740 --> 00:28:01.100
in New Delhi or something like that, which I guess she must have seen in person, but

00:28:01.100 --> 00:28:02.380
she can also do it long distance.

00:28:02.380 --> 00:28:04.300
But she said she's been getting some really good results.

00:28:04.300 --> 00:28:06.700
So, anyway, I'll send you that for what it's worth.

00:28:06.700 --> 00:28:07.700
Okay, thank you.

00:28:07.700 --> 00:28:10.140
You can add it to your folder.

00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:16.260
I read about a woman, actually, who had a powerful healing with a Tibetan Buddhist healer that

00:28:16.260 --> 00:28:18.820
was actually connected to the Dalai Lama.

00:28:18.820 --> 00:28:20.220
This might be related to that.

00:28:20.220 --> 00:28:21.220
I don't know.

00:28:21.220 --> 00:28:26.100
it to you and anybody else who hears this and wants to hear what it is.

00:28:26.100 --> 00:28:27.780
So let's see here.

00:28:27.780 --> 00:28:32.700
I was thinking earlier as we were speaking, and we're talking about death and everything,

00:28:32.700 --> 00:28:35.420
there's that Buddhist saying, you know, "Die before you die."

00:28:35.420 --> 00:28:36.820
I think it's Buddhist.

00:28:36.820 --> 00:28:41.380
And some guy interviewed me the other day, and he was primarily a near-death experiencer

00:28:41.380 --> 00:28:44.940
interviewer, but he wanted to interview me for some reason.

00:28:44.940 --> 00:28:49.840
And I told him I had never had a near-death experience, and it wouldn't be my chosen type

00:28:49.840 --> 00:28:57.000
of spiritual practice, necessarily. It involves almost dying, but I have been meditating since

00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:03.000
1968, and in a way, meditation is kind of a mini-death, because the senses are being

00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:09.240
withdrawn from their objects, and you're totally kind of self-contained and not interacting

00:29:09.240 --> 00:29:17.080
with the world, and I think that over time weakens the attachment to external objects.

00:29:17.080 --> 00:29:23.080
So, if when actual death comes, it could actually just be like a profound spiritual experience,

00:29:23.080 --> 00:29:28.720
you know, this beautiful transition as opposed to something that you would fight and struggle

00:29:28.720 --> 00:29:29.720
against.

00:29:29.720 --> 00:29:35.960
Yeah, I'm fascinated by near-death experiences, partly because I had one, it was quite a near-death

00:29:35.960 --> 00:29:38.800
experience, but it was an out-of-body experience in my early 20s.

00:29:38.800 --> 00:29:42.960
You know, I realized in retrospect, I never realized it at the time, but in retrospect

00:29:42.960 --> 00:29:49.840
was probably my first big spiritual opening and my first glimpse and realization of I'm

00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:51.080
not the body.

00:29:51.080 --> 00:29:54.880
I had an experience where I was hit by a car when I was riding my bike when I was probably

00:29:54.880 --> 00:29:56.600
20 or 21.

00:29:56.600 --> 00:30:00.400
And I was laying on the ground, my friend had gone to get an ambulance or call for help

00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:03.760
and I was laying there alone at midnight or something.

00:30:03.760 --> 00:30:09.080
And I just found myself going up, up, up and looking down at my body and going farther

00:30:09.080 --> 00:30:12.360
and farther and farther up into the heavens or the sky.

00:30:12.360 --> 00:30:15.280
And the most peaceful, blissful experience ever.

00:30:15.280 --> 00:30:20.360
I was completely happy to be letting go and I could see what was happening, I could see

00:30:20.360 --> 00:30:25.440
my body and at some point, something just screamed.

00:30:25.440 --> 00:30:29.000
It wasn't even me, but something in me screamed, "I want to live!"

00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:31.520
And it was a scream, it was like a whole being scream.

00:30:31.520 --> 00:30:35.200
As soon as that happened, boom, back in the body.

00:30:35.200 --> 00:30:39.760
And I was back in the body with a complete calm and peace and sense that everything was

00:30:39.760 --> 00:30:43.900
going to be okay. You know, it was kind of a panicked crisis situation. I didn't know

00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:48.520
if I was going to be okay. I'd just been pretty badly hurt. But the whole evening, my friend

00:30:48.520 --> 00:30:52.760
came back and the ambulance came back. I was laughing with people. I was joking with people,

00:30:52.760 --> 00:30:57.080
even though I was in pain. And I was reassuring my friend who was crying hysterically that

00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:01.720
everything was going to be okay. But that was the beginning of me kind of recognizing that

00:31:01.720 --> 00:31:06.560
there was something, there was something beyond the body, but also became kind of fascinated

00:31:06.560 --> 00:31:10.000
with this leaving the body or death really experience.

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:13.560
And I've had many more experiences similar to that.

00:31:13.560 --> 00:31:19.000
I've interviewed quite a few near-death experience people and read books of some others that

00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:24.320
I haven't even interviewed, and they all say pretty much the same thing, that it completely

00:31:24.320 --> 00:31:28.880
changes their orientation to death and to life.

00:31:28.880 --> 00:31:34.000
You know, it gives them this broader perspective where their life becomes profoundly enriched

00:31:34.000 --> 00:31:39.840
And their fear of death, you know, becomes in a way almost an eager anticipation, although

00:31:39.840 --> 00:31:43.400
they know they don't want to die, but they feel like when they do, it'll be great.

00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:47.120
It'd be nice if everybody could feel that way, wouldn't it?

00:31:47.120 --> 00:31:48.840
There's a lot to be learned from near-death experiences.

00:31:48.840 --> 00:31:54.440
I have a client/friend of mine, former client of mine, that now has created a whole company

00:31:54.440 --> 00:31:59.400
with his brother where they're on YouTube, they're all over the place, they're just interviewing

00:31:59.400 --> 00:32:03.960
people who've gone through near-death experiences, and there's so much to learn from those experiences.

00:32:03.960 --> 00:32:05.640
Yeah, I wonder if I know that person.

00:32:05.640 --> 00:32:06.640
Who's that guy?

00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:07.640
Elliot?

00:32:07.640 --> 00:32:08.640
Maybe I don't.

00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:11.960
He and his twin brother have a, it's called Coming Home.

00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:13.800
Nice, I'll take note of that.

00:32:13.800 --> 00:32:14.800
Coming Home.

00:32:14.800 --> 00:32:19.800
Yeah, I would encourage people to either watch some interviews or read some books about near-death

00:32:19.800 --> 00:32:20.800
experiences.

00:32:20.800 --> 00:32:25.840
I started reading them back in the 80s or early 90s, long before I started doing this,

00:32:25.840 --> 00:32:27.000
and I loved them.

00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:30.000
It really shifted my perspective quite a bit.

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:36.560
Like we were saying earlier, I think one's understanding of the way life works can have

00:32:36.560 --> 00:32:43.920
a major influence on the way we live, the way we live our life.

00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:48.240
I remember I went through a period where I had been convinced that being a monk would

00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:53.640
be the best thing I could do, and when I decided to get married, it took me quite a while to

00:32:53.640 --> 00:32:57.280
convince myself that I hadn't made some terrible mistake, you know?

00:32:57.280 --> 00:33:01.200
wasn't very conducive to a happy marriage, but once I realized that, "Oh, this is actually

00:33:01.200 --> 00:33:05.480
much better for my evolution," then the whole thing changed.

00:33:05.480 --> 00:33:09.040
So the way we view things can be quite influential.

00:33:09.040 --> 00:33:10.600
Oh, dramatically so.

00:33:10.600 --> 00:33:11.600
I can relate.

00:33:11.600 --> 00:33:16.480
It was difficult for me to choose to get married, and then once I was on the other side of it,

00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:18.880
it all started to shift very dramatically.

00:33:18.880 --> 00:33:23.640
But my stories about what marriage was and what my fears were were just creating tremendous

00:33:23.640 --> 00:33:26.680
suffering for me and for my now wife.

00:33:26.680 --> 00:33:30.200
And you know, that lingered for a little while afterwards, but mostly the actual experience

00:33:30.200 --> 00:33:35.640
of being married just started to take over, which was like, you know, the day to day,

00:33:35.640 --> 00:33:39.680
the person I was with really was like, beyond the story once again, which is why I always

00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:43.200
want to want to come back to I think, what's your lived experience?

00:33:43.200 --> 00:33:44.800
What's your actual experience?

00:33:44.800 --> 00:33:50.040
Because, yes, I think our stories about things can be helpful or hindering.

00:33:50.040 --> 00:33:52.000
And I think it's always great to go beyond our stories.

00:33:52.000 --> 00:33:54.560
Like, what's your actual felt experience?

00:33:54.560 --> 00:33:58.620
What's your day-to-day experience of this, which is beyond a story, it's beyond your

00:33:58.620 --> 00:34:03.560
kind of narrative, it's a, you can feel it, you can sense it, you can know it directly.

00:34:03.560 --> 00:34:04.560
Yeah.

00:34:04.560 --> 00:34:09.260
This might relate to a point you wrote down in the notes you sent me, which is a more

00:34:09.260 --> 00:34:14.720
tantric understanding and expression of non-duality versus of a dantic understanding.

00:34:14.720 --> 00:34:16.040
What were you getting at with that?

00:34:16.040 --> 00:34:21.160
Well, there's lots of different directions I can go with that, but I would say that probably

00:34:21.160 --> 00:34:25.480
similar to you as you were contemplating being a monk prior to getting married.

00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:28.160
I contemplated, I did it for 15 years.

00:34:28.160 --> 00:34:29.160
Okay, sorry.

00:34:29.160 --> 00:34:32.160
Yes, you were committed to it.

00:34:32.160 --> 00:34:33.160
Right.

00:34:33.160 --> 00:34:35.120
It wasn't easy, but I did it.

00:34:35.120 --> 00:34:40.440
I had an orientation in the first half of my life, first half of my adulthood, transcendent

00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:41.440
orientation.

00:34:41.440 --> 00:34:43.440
A lot of people in the spiritual world have this up and out.

00:34:43.440 --> 00:34:47.400
It was like, how do I get out of the messiness of this human experience?

00:34:47.400 --> 00:34:49.440
How do I get away from suffering?

00:34:49.440 --> 00:34:53.400
There used to be a Broadway play called Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.

00:34:53.400 --> 00:35:00.200
Yeah, and that seemed like a lot of these transcendent philosophies, Advaita and others,

00:35:00.200 --> 00:35:05.720
were offering a way off, a way to see through the illusion or be free from the illusion

00:35:05.720 --> 00:35:10.160
and kind of live in a more transcendent, peaceful, free place.

00:35:10.160 --> 00:35:13.200
And a lot of my orientation was towards that.

00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:18.920
And it was kind of in some ways I was really loving the Vedantic approach, which kind of

00:35:18.920 --> 00:35:25.320
sees that ultimately we are this oneness and we are just this free consciousness, and that

00:35:25.320 --> 00:35:32.880
the dance of the play of the relative is really insubstantial. In those teachings, there can

00:35:32.880 --> 00:35:39.160
be a way to lose yourself in the oneness and the transcendence and kind of dissolve yourself

00:35:39.160 --> 00:35:45.840
from the multiplicity and the entanglement, so to speak. So for me, at first I was really

00:35:45.840 --> 00:35:52.440
into the transcendent. And when I met my wife, she was very much more of a pagan and a goddess

00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:57.000
worshipping and an earth-loving kind of, her spirituality had that kind of more earthy flavor.

00:35:57.000 --> 00:36:02.840
And we would have these incredible debates and discussions and differences and tension

00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:08.240
between these sort of approaches. But over time, I think like in any good marriage, we've

00:36:08.240 --> 00:36:13.960
rubbed off on each other. And for me now, my spirituality feels more what I would call

00:36:13.960 --> 00:36:21.200
tantric in that sense, where I no longer see the goal as being rising above and seeing

00:36:21.200 --> 00:36:25.720
through the illusion, waking up from the dream, if you will.

00:36:25.720 --> 00:36:32.320
It's actually so much more about waking up in the dream, waking up and being lucid in

00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:35.840
this expression, in this worldly way.

00:36:35.840 --> 00:36:43.600
So there's a way that there's an honoring and a reverence for the material, for the body,

00:36:43.600 --> 00:36:45.600
for form.

00:36:45.600 --> 00:36:51.000
And it's not other than God or other than truth, it's an expression of God or an expression

00:36:51.000 --> 00:36:52.000
of truth.

00:36:52.000 --> 00:36:57.440
And everything then from this perspective is a way to touch God, is a way to know God,

00:36:57.440 --> 00:36:59.560
is a way to know yourself.

00:36:59.560 --> 00:37:05.680
And so that tantric perspective is really for me become so much more alive, the deeper my

00:37:05.680 --> 00:37:11.160
spirituality is gone, the less free I feel from humanity, the more human I feel, but

00:37:11.160 --> 00:37:14.320
the more free to be human I am, in a sense.

00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:15.320
That's nice.

00:37:15.320 --> 00:37:17.960
I think I've gone through the same journey, really.

00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:22.960
When I was heavy into my monk phase, I would always be reading these books by these guys

00:37:22.960 --> 00:37:29.680
who were saying, "Oh, you know, the world sucks and women are terrible," and all this

00:37:29.680 --> 00:37:30.680
stuff.

00:37:30.680 --> 00:37:36.080
And the emphasis was that the world is just this quagmire, it's a sea of mud and you

00:37:36.080 --> 00:37:39.280
just want to get out of it as quickly as possible and never come back.

00:37:39.280 --> 00:37:41.200
I felt that so strongly.

00:37:41.200 --> 00:37:46.840
But now my attitude is, "Hey, I'll just come back as many times as you want me to,

00:37:46.840 --> 00:37:50.760
God, you know, whatever, however I can be most useful."

00:37:50.760 --> 00:37:55.920
It's sort of, in a way, an insult to God if we believe in God and if we define God properly,

00:37:55.920 --> 00:38:01.560
as a sky daddy, but as an omnipresent intelligence that can be discerned in every little bit

00:38:01.560 --> 00:38:03.880
of creation, if you look closely enough.

00:38:03.880 --> 00:38:08.960
It's an insult to just discard that as some kind of mistake or something that is just

00:38:08.960 --> 00:38:15.000
to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible, as opposed to joining in as a participant

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:17.520
in the divine play that surrounds us.

00:38:17.520 --> 00:38:20.160
David Very similar trajectory for me.

00:38:20.160 --> 00:38:24.600
And just to come back to what we started with, the tantric approach.

00:38:24.600 --> 00:38:30.040
What I was saying is that I think that our direct experience, for me, has become the

00:38:30.040 --> 00:38:37.100
portal to depth, to deeper spiritual experience.

00:38:37.100 --> 00:38:42.760
So it's like I'm constantly stepping out of my story or questioning my story and coming

00:38:42.760 --> 00:38:45.320
into what's my direct knowing.

00:38:45.320 --> 00:38:49.480
And often that is less, you know, the stories are in our heads often, and often it's to

00:38:49.480 --> 00:38:55.280
come into a felt sense in the body, come into my heart, come into emotion, but even deeper

00:38:55.280 --> 00:38:59.800
than that, to come into a visceral kind of somatic understanding.

00:38:59.800 --> 00:39:05.680
And I actually trust my body and I trust my heart in some ways much more than my mind

00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:06.820
in many ways.

00:39:06.820 --> 00:39:10.720
And I trust my mind when I'm in alignment with my heart and my body.

00:39:10.720 --> 00:39:17.960
And so there's a way that the mind is an incredible resource, especially when it's not the master,

00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:23.080
it's not, you know, running the show or thinking it knows, it knows, we talked about.

00:39:23.080 --> 00:39:29.440
And when we can actually rest in just our lived experience and be more connected to

00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:35.280
the body, to our hearts, and then the mind just kind of comes in line and all of a sudden,

00:39:35.280 --> 00:39:39.960
there's a kind of a harmonic where it's heart, mind, body, and the knowing, you know, is

00:39:39.960 --> 00:39:45.160
so much deeper in the story, if you will, about what's happening, feels to me more trustworthy.

00:39:45.160 --> 00:39:52.160
Yeah, I'm trying to think of examples of myself having not done that and perhaps observing

00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:55.560
others not doing that.

00:39:55.560 --> 00:39:57.080
There was a joke by Stephen Wright.

00:39:57.080 --> 00:40:02.320
He said, "I broke up with my girlfriend because I wasn't really into meditation and she really

00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:03.720
wasn't into being alive."

00:40:03.720 --> 00:40:04.720
But...

00:40:04.720 --> 00:40:08.000
I can't even quite get that yet, to be honest, Rick.

00:40:08.000 --> 00:40:09.000
I'm kind of...

00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:10.680
Like Stephen Wright, he often will just stop my mind.

00:40:10.680 --> 00:40:12.400
Yeah, that's what he does.

00:40:12.400 --> 00:40:13.400
He's good at that.

00:40:13.400 --> 00:40:18.960
Anybody who hasn't heard any Stephen Wright jokes, look him up on YouTube, he's hilarious.

00:40:18.960 --> 00:40:22.480
You know, there is this thing we've been talking about, of kind of "stop the world, I want

00:40:22.480 --> 00:40:23.880
to get off."

00:40:23.880 --> 00:40:30.000
Sometimes spirituality, often spirituality, is used as some kind of attempted escape mechanism

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:38.560
and people become very disengaged and disembodied and it usually has devastating impacts on

00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:39.880
their daily lives.

00:40:39.880 --> 00:40:45.080
A lot of my training has been as a therapist, and like you were saying earlier, I integrate

00:40:45.080 --> 00:40:47.480
spirituality with psychology.

00:40:47.480 --> 00:40:54.280
I think so much of the movement towards spiritual life or transcendence is a pure movement,

00:40:54.280 --> 00:40:59.380
and it's a recognition of our essence, and we want to embody that or understand that

00:40:59.380 --> 00:41:00.840
or come closer to that.

00:41:00.840 --> 00:41:07.240
But also, that pure movement can get co-opted by the pain of being human, the trauma that

00:41:07.240 --> 00:41:14.080
we've endured, the difficulties of childhood or just of being human in this difficult world,

00:41:14.080 --> 00:41:15.240
and some of us are very sensitive.

00:41:15.240 --> 00:41:22.120
So there's a way that people are trying to get off because it's too painful to be in

00:41:22.120 --> 00:41:26.440
their bodies, it's too painful to be in their kind of nervous systems.

00:41:26.440 --> 00:41:32.240
And I think spirituality in the past used to kind of offer a panacea or a quick exit,

00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:35.560
you know, or a potential way to free yourself.

00:41:35.560 --> 00:41:39.880
And we've seen so many people who will lose themselves in spirituality but have never

00:41:39.880 --> 00:41:45.880
integrated their pain or their suffering, and so that can kind of play out in all sorts

00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:48.860
of ways or come back to haunt them eventually.

00:41:48.860 --> 00:41:54.160
And I love, in many ways, the maturing of what I see in the spiritual world here in

00:41:54.160 --> 00:41:57.200
the West, where there is so much more understanding.

00:41:57.200 --> 00:42:02.720
I know you've talked about this before and have seen this, of understanding of our psychology

00:42:02.720 --> 00:42:09.040
and our nervous systems and trauma-informed understanding, because doing spiritual work

00:42:09.040 --> 00:42:15.620
for trauma-related issues or emotional integration that needs to happen or psychological development

00:42:15.620 --> 00:42:18.000
that needs to happen is not the right answer.

00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:20.440
It actually can distort things even more so.

00:42:20.440 --> 00:42:23.880
Unless it's spiritual work that somehow takes those things into account.

00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:25.360
Well, that's what I'm saying.

00:42:25.360 --> 00:42:30.640
Modern spiritual work, some modern spiritual schools really bring in the body, really bring

00:42:30.640 --> 00:42:35.160
in psychology, really learn to bring these two together because my whole life has been

00:42:35.160 --> 00:42:36.160
about this.

00:42:36.160 --> 00:42:38.180
They work really beautifully together.

00:42:38.180 --> 00:42:45.040
If you can introduce people to a resource, a depth, a presence that is available to themselves

00:42:45.040 --> 00:42:50.000
always through meditation or other practices, that's tremendous.

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:56.760
And if you can also help them look at and unravel and connect and heal some of their

00:42:56.760 --> 00:43:02.440
history or lived kind of trauma that's still going on or patterning that needs attention,

00:43:02.440 --> 00:43:07.480
that can be helpful. And if you bring those together, you can tolerate some of these difficult

00:43:07.480 --> 00:43:14.040
spaces if you are resourced and have a depth that you know you can bring to that or you can come back

00:43:14.040 --> 00:43:19.160
to. And so you can move in and out, like they say, sort of pendulate or titrate between the

00:43:19.160 --> 00:43:23.880
resourced state and the more activated state. So there's a tremendous way that I think

00:43:24.680 --> 00:43:31.960
psychological integrated work actually supports spiritual growth and, you know, spiritual growth

00:43:31.960 --> 00:43:39.640
that is open to psychological work and, you know, and all this just supports the psychological work

00:43:39.640 --> 00:43:45.480
as well. I was thinking about that while listening to another interview you gave, I think that might

00:43:45.480 --> 00:43:49.720
have been prior to your cancer diagnosis because you didn't mention cancer, and you were talking

00:43:49.720 --> 00:43:54.520
about this process you go through and perhaps help your clients go through where they can

00:43:54.520 --> 00:44:01.840
feel into what's going on, and then various things they're feeling get dissolved in the

00:44:01.840 --> 00:44:05.320
presence that they sink into.

00:44:05.320 --> 00:44:09.440
And I thought of a question I might ask you about that, which is that you want to make

00:44:09.440 --> 00:44:15.720
sure somehow that there is enough presence to dissolve the stuff, because if you take

00:44:15.720 --> 00:44:19.120
a handful of mud and drop it in a glass of water, it's not going to go very well.

00:44:19.120 --> 00:44:23.560
it's just going to muddy up the water, but if you can drop the mud in a lake, big lake,

00:44:23.560 --> 00:44:24.600
it's just going to dissolve.

00:44:24.600 --> 00:44:31.040
So you want to kind of become oceanic in some way, and then you can process or dissolve

00:44:31.040 --> 00:44:38.320
tons of stuff, which otherwise, if your consciousness is very constricted, would just muddy it up.

00:44:38.320 --> 00:44:41.920
That's a great analogy, and I think that's very much in line with a lot of the healing

00:44:41.920 --> 00:44:46.240
work that I've been involved in and have taught to other healers.

00:44:46.240 --> 00:44:51.120
And the idea is that if you can, for yourself first of all, cultivate enough presence, enough

00:44:51.120 --> 00:44:58.780
depth of being, then psychological issues, emotional stuff can just kind of be met from

00:44:58.780 --> 00:45:03.680
this sort of open, loving, compassionate presence.

00:45:03.680 --> 00:45:06.640
And there's not much you need to do, it can just sort of dissolve like you're saying,

00:45:06.640 --> 00:45:09.000
if you're just kind of unconditionally with it.

00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:13.880
And so there's a process that I teach where you can do that with others, and you can help

00:45:13.880 --> 00:45:17.720
them to kind of tap into their presence, their unconditional presence, and that might be

00:45:17.720 --> 00:45:21.360
a bit of a training, like a little, almost like a meditation, like where you're helping

00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:26.940
them find that that's beyond their mind and beyond their usual patterning that might actually

00:45:26.940 --> 00:45:31.320
be containing for them and relaxing for them.

00:45:31.320 --> 00:45:36.000
And then once they're developed in that or kind of established in that a little bit, you

00:45:36.000 --> 00:45:41.760
can have them now go towards something painful or something difficult or something traumatic.

00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:46.500
And it no longer is overwhelming and it can start to unravel or dissolve.

00:45:46.500 --> 00:45:48.400
And there's a shared field also, right?

00:45:48.400 --> 00:45:51.100
That's part of the beauty of working with others.

00:45:51.100 --> 00:45:57.160
If you yourself as a practitioner are deeply coming from presence, if you will, kind of

00:45:57.160 --> 00:46:02.980
holding a certain kind of meditative awareness, and then you're inviting your clients into

00:46:02.980 --> 00:46:07.640
that meditative awareness, and then you're inviting some of their difficult material,

00:46:07.640 --> 00:46:12.800
Your ocean might not be large enough to contain that in that moment, but your collective ocean

00:46:12.800 --> 00:46:17.120
is, which is, you know, that presence is actually the same thing.

00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:18.760
It's not yours or mine.

00:46:18.760 --> 00:46:25.480
It's actually us dropping out of our personality into open awareness, just into shared being.

00:46:25.480 --> 00:46:29.000
And that shared experience is something that is contagious.

00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:34.240
You can actually, you know, that's where transmission comes in, or we listen to teachers, or, you

00:46:34.240 --> 00:46:40.020
You know, we feel drawn to people because there's a way that our being is opened by their being.

00:46:40.020 --> 00:46:42.560
And that shared being is a potent thing.

00:46:42.560 --> 00:46:45.480
And so I love creating groups.

00:46:45.480 --> 00:46:50.920
My work has gone from one on one to creating groups and circles and retreats, where we

00:46:50.920 --> 00:46:56.480
drop into a kind of collective space and field where we really start to experience ourselves

00:46:56.480 --> 00:47:01.820
beyond our minds and beyond our personalities, and less separate, and more whole.

00:47:01.820 --> 00:47:07.460
And then from that space, actually, so much learning can happen, so much growth and transformation

00:47:07.460 --> 00:47:08.460
can happen.

00:47:08.460 --> 00:47:13.580
People have realizations about their patterning and about their lives and around things that

00:47:13.580 --> 00:47:17.660
they couldn't have had when they were their separate little me-self trying to figure out

00:47:17.660 --> 00:47:18.660
their lives.

00:47:18.660 --> 00:47:23.400
It reminds me of a quote from Jesus, which was something like, "Wherever three or more

00:47:23.400 --> 00:47:28.100
of you are gathered together in my name, there I am," or something like that.

00:47:28.100 --> 00:47:33.440
You and I both, and probably many people listening, have experienced the power of group consciousness

00:47:33.440 --> 00:47:39.080
if you're in a large group of people engaged in some kind of spiritual endeavor.

00:47:39.080 --> 00:47:44.400
It's much more potent than just going at it singly.

00:47:44.400 --> 00:47:45.760
Of course, it works the other way too.

00:47:45.760 --> 00:47:49.360
I mean, riots and mobs and all that kind of stuff.

00:47:49.360 --> 00:47:55.040
There's a collective consciousness that gets created, and so whether it's positive or negative,

00:47:55.040 --> 00:48:02.360
the thing, and it can be a real boost to one's evolution to be in the company of the enlightened,

00:48:02.360 --> 00:48:03.360
so to speak.

00:48:03.360 --> 00:48:06.480
As a matter of fact, many scriptures say that that's one of the most powerful techniques

00:48:06.480 --> 00:48:12.600
you can do is to hang around people who are, you know, spiritually motivated or even awake

00:48:12.600 --> 00:48:14.920
or enlightened, whatever that means.

00:48:14.920 --> 00:48:15.920
I agree.

00:48:15.920 --> 00:48:16.920
I agree.

00:48:16.920 --> 00:48:19.680
You know, one of the quotes that's come back to me recently, which I really enjoy, is,

00:48:19.680 --> 00:48:25.600
you know, if you want to travel fast, travel alone. You want to travel far, travel with others.

00:48:25.600 --> 00:48:26.640
>> That's a good one.

00:48:26.640 --> 00:48:30.320
>> And I like that one. And I think there's something about spiritual friends and sangha,

00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:36.800
spiritual community that can really help us all carry, you know, as Ram Dass likes to say,

00:48:36.800 --> 00:48:40.960
come back to him, we're just all walking each other home. I love that quote.

00:48:40.960 --> 00:48:43.840
Thich Nhat Hanh, the next Buddha may be the sangha.

00:48:43.840 --> 00:48:50.280
Yes, exactly. That's actually very much in line with what's alive for me, you know, as

00:48:50.280 --> 00:48:55.120
I've been stepping towards teaching more and more, some differences with how I want to

00:48:55.120 --> 00:49:01.080
teach and how I'm teaching from how I've seen a lot of previous teachers and previous generations.

00:49:01.080 --> 00:49:07.340
And I think things are changing. I think that there's a much more maturity in terms of people's

00:49:07.340 --> 00:49:13.580
spiritual understanding and orientation, where people now are looking less and less and needing

00:49:13.580 --> 00:49:18.980
less and less the kind of expert, the kind of guru on the mountain or on the stage to

00:49:18.980 --> 00:49:25.820
bestow them with their wisdom or their transmission, and are much more actually wanting to connect

00:49:25.820 --> 00:49:31.940
with others or spiritually in similar places and are learning and sharing their wisdom

00:49:31.940 --> 00:49:32.940
with each other.

00:49:32.940 --> 00:49:37.840
And I think there's something really beautiful about the Sangha and tapping into the collective

00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:39.180
wisdom of the Sangha.

00:49:39.180 --> 00:49:45.620
And it helps us in many ways, I think, one, trust ourselves more deeply rather than project

00:49:45.620 --> 00:49:49.300
our knowing onto somebody else, a guru figure.

00:49:49.300 --> 00:49:55.820
And there's something about trusting yourself rather than projecting that out onto others.

00:49:55.820 --> 00:50:01.300
Oh, the other pitfalls that come with all the stuff that comes with gurus and hierarchy

00:50:01.300 --> 00:50:02.300
and yeah, right?

00:50:02.300 --> 00:50:03.300
Yeah.

00:50:03.300 --> 00:50:07.520
In a sense, the gurus have really helped bring about this transition that you're talking

00:50:07.520 --> 00:50:12.660
about by being sexual predators and ripping people off and doing all this crazy stuff

00:50:12.660 --> 00:50:15.960
is giving the whole guru thing a bad name.

00:50:15.960 --> 00:50:21.320
And I'm sure there are good examples of gurus, but boy, they sometimes seem to be the exception

00:50:21.320 --> 00:50:23.420
rather than the rule.

00:50:23.420 --> 00:50:25.080
And I certainly wouldn't want to be one.

00:50:25.080 --> 00:50:29.880
I mean, it's a very vulnerable position if you're not in a really good place in terms

00:50:29.880 --> 00:50:35.000
of being impeccable in your thinking and behavior.

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:40.860
And receiving all that projection is a powerful thing and can actually, for the guru, unless

00:50:40.860 --> 00:50:46.660
they're incredibly grounded, really pull them out of their center.

00:50:46.660 --> 00:50:50.960
You know, Adyashanti I would consider to be an impeccable guy, and I don't know what exactly

00:50:50.960 --> 00:50:56.040
caused all this pain and trauma and everything that caused him to stop teaching, but it could

00:50:56.040 --> 00:51:00.440
have something to do with the dynamic of being a teacher and having everybody focusing on

00:51:00.440 --> 00:51:04.280
him, even though he didn't let it go to his head or abuse it in any way, it could have

00:51:04.280 --> 00:51:06.840
really taken a toll on his nervous system? I don't know.

00:51:06.840 --> 00:51:10.760
I think it did. I think it did. I've spoken with him enough and I want to go into his business,

00:51:10.760 --> 00:51:17.960
but I will say that I think there's something about holding the energy and being with that

00:51:17.960 --> 00:51:24.120
many people and prolonged retreats and all of that. It's a lot of energy to run through your system

00:51:24.120 --> 00:51:26.040
repeatedly for years and years and years.

00:51:26.040 --> 00:51:29.320
Yeah, and I just wanted to comment on another thing you just said.

00:51:29.320 --> 00:51:33.960
You may have heard of the Association for Spiritual Integrity. Have you heard of that?

00:51:33.960 --> 00:51:37.240
I know that you've been involved in it, but I don't know the details of it.

00:51:37.240 --> 00:51:42.360
Yeah, myself and actually John Prendergast was sitting there at the lunch table at S.A.N.D.

00:51:42.360 --> 00:51:46.720
when we first came up with the idea, and Jack O'Keefe and Craig Holliday.

00:51:46.720 --> 00:51:50.400
John didn't become one of the original founders, but we started this organization and now it's

00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:56.160
grown to over 700 members and over 50 member organizations, and we've given presentations

00:51:56.160 --> 00:51:57.640
at Harvard Divinity School conferences.

00:51:57.640 --> 00:51:59.720
Right, I had no idea it's grown that much.

00:51:59.720 --> 00:52:01.480
Yeah, yeah, it's doing well.

00:52:01.480 --> 00:52:05.920
But one thing I often say in that context is that there's been so many examples where students

00:52:05.920 --> 00:52:09.400
will sit there and a teacher is up on the stage.

00:52:09.400 --> 00:52:15.080
I'm accelerating the process here, but the teacher is going more and more off the rails,

00:52:15.080 --> 00:52:18.240
but the students lack the self-confidence.

00:52:18.240 --> 00:52:20.240
You know, it's like the emperor's new clothes.

00:52:20.240 --> 00:52:22.800
Nobody dared to say the emperor is naked.

00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:26.000
So they think, "Well, this guy is supposed to be enlightened and I'm not, and so what

00:52:26.000 --> 00:52:27.000
do I know?

00:52:27.000 --> 00:52:29.240
Maybe this crazy behavior is crazy wisdom or something.

00:52:29.240 --> 00:52:31.040
I should just keep sitting here."

00:52:31.040 --> 00:52:35.120
And everybody goes along with it, and then the whole group goes off the rails.

00:52:35.120 --> 00:52:40.600
Whereas if students were more empowered to understand what is and is not appropriate

00:52:40.600 --> 00:52:44.520
behavior, and it's pretty much common sense in many cases, this kind of stuff wouldn't

00:52:44.520 --> 00:52:46.040
get so out of hand.

00:52:46.040 --> 00:52:47.360
I completely agree.

00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:48.360
I completely agree.

00:52:48.360 --> 00:52:52.120
I think it's so great that you're involved in that initiative.

00:52:52.120 --> 00:52:57.360
In these last couple of years as I've been stepping into teaching, I found myself having

00:52:57.360 --> 00:53:00.980
lots of questions about teaching and how do I want to teach and what do I want to express

00:53:00.980 --> 00:53:02.320
and what's true for me.

00:53:02.320 --> 00:53:07.360
And I found myself talking to a lot of my friends and mentors and I'm lucky to have a lot of

00:53:07.360 --> 00:53:11.420
teachers, really well-respected teachers around me.

00:53:11.420 --> 00:53:18.000
And I would say to them often, "Why aren't teachers more transparent about their human

00:53:18.000 --> 00:53:20.680
frailties, about their human vulnerabilities?

00:53:20.680 --> 00:53:22.500
I know all of you.

00:53:22.500 --> 00:53:28.580
all pretty awake, pretty enlightened, and your teachings are impeccable and beautiful, and

00:53:28.580 --> 00:53:34.700
I don't know any of you that don't have some stuff that you're working through in your

00:53:34.700 --> 00:53:37.260
relationships or in other things.

00:53:37.260 --> 00:53:40.700
They're minor, but they're still human is what I'm trying to say.

00:53:40.700 --> 00:53:45.980
And what I was saying to them, and ultimately I realized I was saying to myself, is why

00:53:45.980 --> 00:53:51.360
Why is that not shared more transparently, more vulnerably with our students?

00:53:51.360 --> 00:53:54.700
Because it sets up a different kind of expectation.

00:53:54.700 --> 00:54:00.300
Our students will otherwise project onto us perfection, and they will project an idea of

00:54:00.300 --> 00:54:06.220
enlightenment as being beyond these human tendencies or patternings.

00:54:06.220 --> 00:54:11.860
I think we should actually teach what we teach, and the teaching is pure and beautiful and

00:54:11.860 --> 00:54:17.540
liberating and all of that. But I think we can also be models of what it actually looks like.

00:54:17.540 --> 00:54:21.860
Yeah, I think that's extremely important. We should spend a bunch of time today talking about it.

00:54:21.860 --> 00:54:26.180
And interestingly enough, that's what I'm discovering in my cancer diagnosis in the

00:54:26.180 --> 00:54:32.900
midst of me teaching has thrown me into, I can't teach without my vulnerability and my fragility

00:54:32.900 --> 00:54:37.940
and my emotionality, and I don't have it all together anymore. And not that I ever did,

00:54:37.940 --> 00:54:42.900
I'm not pretending I did, but there's something beautifully liberating for me as I'm teaching

00:54:42.900 --> 00:54:48.500
and really including the full range of my human experience that my students are telling me

00:54:48.500 --> 00:54:52.260
is more potent and more profound than anything I was doing beforehand.

00:54:52.260 --> 00:54:58.100
I'm sure you're familiar with the work of Ken Wilber, his lines of development model,

00:54:58.100 --> 00:55:01.860
where we have all these different lines of development, intellect, emotions, senses,

00:55:02.420 --> 00:55:07.940
consciousness and whatever else. You know, some people think that all these things are

00:55:07.940 --> 00:55:12.340
tightly correlated and they all develop simultaneously, but Kant emphasized that

00:55:12.340 --> 00:55:17.140
they can get way out of sync. And so, you can have quite a lot of consciousness development,

00:55:17.140 --> 00:55:22.180
for instance, and be really quite stunted in some of those other areas. Or, you know,

00:55:22.180 --> 00:55:27.940
there have been great geniuses who were emotionally immature or whatever, intellectual geniuses.

00:55:29.060 --> 00:55:33.940
Personally, my idea of enlightenment would be a holistic and very full development of

00:55:33.940 --> 00:55:37.300
all of these things, and that is kind of rare.

00:55:37.300 --> 00:55:42.100
But I like what you're saying about transparency and authenticity.

00:55:42.100 --> 00:55:49.740
I think it creates a strain and a danger for teachers to try to project an image that is

00:55:49.740 --> 00:55:59.220
not authentic to what they really are, because they have to then hold on to that image, lest

00:55:59.220 --> 00:56:06.060
they disillusion their students by farting or something, I don't know.

00:56:06.060 --> 00:56:10.420
And the more you strain on doing something, the greater the likelihood you're going to

00:56:10.420 --> 00:56:12.460
snap from straining.

00:56:12.460 --> 00:56:14.100
I've seen that so many times.

00:56:14.100 --> 00:56:19.060
>> The thing that stood out to me was like, they don't want to disillusion their students.

00:56:19.060 --> 00:56:23.900
In a way, what I hear you saying is they want to keep their students with an illusion.

00:56:23.900 --> 00:56:29.620
An illusion of what enlightenment looks like or who they are, and also an illusion of what's

00:56:29.620 --> 00:56:32.060
possible, like what we're headed towards.

00:56:32.060 --> 00:56:34.900
And so to me, there's something beautiful about being disillusioned.

00:56:34.900 --> 00:56:37.980
It's funny, I often say the same thing.

00:56:37.980 --> 00:56:39.800
That word has a positive connotation.

00:56:39.800 --> 00:56:42.060
If we want to come out of illusion, let's get disillusioned.

00:56:42.060 --> 00:56:43.060
Exactly.

00:56:43.060 --> 00:56:48.260
I know it's seen as such a negative word, but it's actually always about coming into truth.

00:56:48.260 --> 00:56:54.620
It can be a painful experience to be woken up out of maybe a comfortable illusion, of

00:56:54.620 --> 00:56:55.620
course.

00:56:55.620 --> 00:56:56.620
But it's always a better place to go.

00:56:56.620 --> 00:56:59.460
We want to come into reality.

00:56:59.460 --> 00:57:05.280
And that's what all spiritual teaching is about, is coming into a more lucid, clear

00:57:05.280 --> 00:57:07.980
understanding of reality.

00:57:07.980 --> 00:57:12.820
To me, as teachers, that's what we're wanting to do, is not just teach a theory about reality,

00:57:12.820 --> 00:57:20.600
also embody a certain way of living and expressing that shared understanding of it.

00:57:20.600 --> 00:57:24.500
I think there's something so great about what I see happening actually more and more, you

00:57:24.500 --> 00:57:27.980
know, like you see Lucy Grace, for example, or she's a friend of mine.

00:57:27.980 --> 00:57:33.220
So many teachers that I know now, kind of like peers of mine, they're teaching in a different

00:57:33.220 --> 00:57:34.220
way.

00:57:34.220 --> 00:57:35.220
They're teaching in smaller circles.

00:57:35.220 --> 00:57:36.220
They're teaching in circles.

00:57:36.220 --> 00:57:37.940
They're not on stages.

00:57:37.940 --> 00:57:43.140
And they're including their humanity and they're bringing in the wisdom of the students and

00:57:43.140 --> 00:57:46.100
there's more dialogue and there's more sharing.

00:57:46.100 --> 00:57:50.140
You know, from one perspective, you might be like, "Oh, we're diluting the teachings."

00:57:50.140 --> 00:57:54.740
But I think in a more mature spiritual community, that's actually where it needs to go.

00:57:54.740 --> 00:58:00.780
We need to actually be leveling the playing field and recognizing the wisdom within us

00:58:00.780 --> 00:58:06.300
and being encouraged to bring that out and have that mirrored and seen and validated.

00:58:06.300 --> 00:58:11.480
And then everybody can start to talk about, "Oh my God, like, I have such amazing knowledge,

00:58:11.480 --> 00:58:15.120
and yet when I'm in my relationship, this is what happens," or, "Oh my God, I've got this

00:58:15.120 --> 00:58:19.000
addiction to this thing," and now all of a sudden the students can kind of come out.

00:58:19.000 --> 00:58:21.440
Yeah, they say, "Me too," you know?

00:58:21.440 --> 00:58:25.600
"Me too," and they're like, "Me too," and they're like, "Yeah, it's freaking crazy being

00:58:25.600 --> 00:58:26.600
human.

00:58:26.600 --> 00:58:27.600
It's really hard."

00:58:27.600 --> 00:58:31.680
And you might have all sorts of, like, you're talking about developmental lines, like your

00:58:31.680 --> 00:58:37.120
spiritual understanding might be incredibly great, but your social or intimacy levels

00:58:37.120 --> 00:58:41.760
or vocational or so many other things might be stunted.

00:58:41.760 --> 00:58:47.120
And you need to talk about that too, because I do think about awakening in a more holistic

00:58:47.120 --> 00:58:48.800
way kind of like you mentioned it.

00:58:48.800 --> 00:58:55.400
I'm interested in not just people realizing the truth of who they are in some, in a really

00:58:55.400 --> 00:59:01.400
narrow way where they can, on the cushion, be in nirvana, but then the next moment with

00:59:01.400 --> 00:59:04.240
their partner be totally caught in whatever.

00:59:04.240 --> 00:59:09.980
I'm interested in people being off the cushion, living that truth, expressing that.

00:59:09.980 --> 00:59:12.160
And so how do you embody that and express that?

00:59:12.160 --> 00:59:17.280
That's to me where the rubber hits the road, really, and where spirituality to me gets really

00:59:17.280 --> 00:59:18.280
interesting.

00:59:18.280 --> 00:59:19.280
Yeah.

00:59:19.280 --> 00:59:22.040
Integration is the name of the game.

00:59:22.040 --> 00:59:26.720
Which is not to say that nobody is qualified to be a spiritual teacher because we're all

00:59:26.720 --> 00:59:30.560
equally stupid and we're all bozos, you know?

00:59:30.560 --> 00:59:36.200
And you know, it could be that a teacher has a gift, and they have actually made some spiritual

00:59:36.200 --> 00:59:37.200
progress.

00:59:37.200 --> 00:59:42.080
It just doesn't mean they're perfect in every respect, nor should they try to convey

00:59:42.080 --> 00:59:44.040
that impression.

00:59:44.040 --> 00:59:48.120
And in not conveying that impression, I'm just repeating what we've just said, they'll

00:59:48.120 --> 00:59:54.120
actually present a much more realistic picture of what spiritual development is.

00:59:54.120 --> 00:59:57.960
And that will be of much greater service to their students, because their students won't

00:59:57.960 --> 01:00:04.320
little themselves if they still have some hang-ups, despite their years of practice, and you know,

01:00:04.320 --> 01:00:05.920
we can all work on that stuff together.

01:00:05.920 --> 01:00:06.920
>> Riyaz: That's right.

01:00:06.920 --> 01:00:12.440
And in some ways, I think students are maturing, I think teachers are maturing, and what I

01:00:12.440 --> 01:00:18.120
mean by that is I think that these old models of what teachers are supposed to be, and who

01:00:18.120 --> 01:00:23.520
our current teachers, maybe the older generation, are kind of following, and maybe unconsciously,

01:00:23.520 --> 01:00:29.760
Borrowed from the East, borrowed from India and China and Japan, and a very kind of authoritarian

01:00:29.760 --> 01:00:37.440
guru knows best and is perfect and beyond all reproach, and the students just need to

01:00:37.440 --> 01:00:38.500
obey.

01:00:38.500 --> 01:00:43.600
So there's a certain kind of lineage here and a certain kind of, almost like a template

01:00:43.600 --> 01:00:48.880
that I think teachers unconsciously have been expressing, but I don't think that's necessary

01:00:48.880 --> 01:00:49.880
anymore.

01:00:49.880 --> 01:00:55.960
modernize all of that and make it much more democratic and egalitarian and human.

01:00:55.960 --> 01:01:00.480
>> Probably so. And you know, that's not going to happen overnight, and maybe there's a place

01:01:00.480 --> 01:01:05.440
for hierarchical arrangements in some cases, maybe some people are at a stage of development

01:01:05.440 --> 01:01:09.720
where that suits them. And you know, there are spiritual teachers who literally call

01:01:09.720 --> 01:01:14.960
their students children or babies. I'm thinking of two women saints that I've seen that both

01:01:14.960 --> 01:01:21.040
use those phrases, but it kind of keeps people in this perpetually subservient position.

01:01:21.040 --> 01:01:24.400
You never graduate, you're always a baby.

01:01:24.400 --> 01:01:28.640
I like that though. I like that there's a lot of options out there. That would be nice.

01:01:28.640 --> 01:01:31.080
You know, and different people are at different stages and different people have different

01:01:31.080 --> 01:01:36.980
needs at different points, but that there be a variety of ways that you can be learning

01:01:36.980 --> 01:01:42.720
and developing spiritually and have different teachers or different groups or kind of communities

01:01:42.720 --> 01:01:46.080
that resonate for you and meet where you are.

01:01:46.080 --> 01:01:51.720
I'm kind of thinking of a comparison between this and typical academia where you might

01:01:51.720 --> 01:01:57.120
have a physics professor and you go to him because he knows a lot more about physics

01:01:57.120 --> 01:02:01.400
than you do, otherwise you wouldn't bother to pay the money and go there, but it doesn't

01:02:01.400 --> 01:02:04.560
mean that he's a well-rounded individual in every other respect.

01:02:04.560 --> 01:02:08.880
I mean, even Einstein was said to be a bit of a womanizer, sleeping with his secretaries

01:02:08.880 --> 01:02:10.240
and stuff.

01:02:10.240 --> 01:02:16.160
But then with spirituality, there's a built-in assumption, and I think it probably, it should

01:02:16.160 --> 01:02:23.040
be this way, that spirituality does imply a kind of saintliness or a full development

01:02:23.040 --> 01:02:27.240
of all these other qualities that you wouldn't necessarily expect in a physics professor.

01:02:27.240 --> 01:02:32.700
It's kind of a halo effect that we have around spiritual teachers, spirituality, that somehow

01:02:32.700 --> 01:02:35.200
extends beyond what it should.

01:02:35.200 --> 01:02:37.560
Yeah, but should it?

01:02:37.560 --> 01:02:43.240
Maybe I'm idealistic, but I still hold forth the hope and notion that a truly mature spiritual

01:02:43.240 --> 01:02:49.500
teacher should be quite saintly in all aspects of their lives and behavior, and that working

01:02:49.500 --> 01:02:56.280
out all that stuff that could cause misbehavior and mistreatment of people should be part

01:02:56.280 --> 01:03:01.640
of the spiritual development, whereas it would not necessarily be part of getting a PhD in

01:03:01.640 --> 01:03:02.640
physics.

01:03:02.640 --> 01:03:08.480
Because spirituality by definition is a more all-encompassing type of development, is it

01:03:08.480 --> 01:03:09.480
not?

01:03:09.480 --> 01:03:11.560
Yeah, I think that's true.

01:03:11.560 --> 01:03:13.880
That's true, and so we're kind of saying both things at the same time.

01:03:13.880 --> 01:03:17.800
Because I think there are developmental lines, multiple developmental lines.

01:03:17.800 --> 01:03:20.920
And like, you know, I've heard you talk about this before, I think about it.

01:03:20.920 --> 01:03:25.800
You know, in the past, in the East, you know, traditionally, before you really entered into

01:03:25.800 --> 01:03:32.560
any real deep-depth practices, spiritually speaking, you had so many preliminary practices,

01:03:32.560 --> 01:03:37.960
many preparatory practices. And those were kind of safeguards and kind of allowed students

01:03:37.960 --> 01:03:42.440
to grow spiritually, but they've, because they've actually done some of the preparatory

01:03:42.440 --> 01:03:47.680
characterological foundational work, so that spirituality could actually express probably

01:03:47.680 --> 01:03:52.560
in a more even way, those developmental lines will all kind of be raised by the kind of

01:03:52.560 --> 01:03:54.040
spiritual growth in a way.

01:03:54.040 --> 01:03:55.040
Yeah.

01:03:55.040 --> 01:03:58.000
But in the West, obviously, that doesn't work that way.

01:03:58.000 --> 01:04:03.260
know, or there's no structure for it to set up for it to work that way. I mean, theoretically

01:04:03.260 --> 01:04:05.060
there could be, but there hasn't been really.

01:04:05.060 --> 01:04:10.100
>> Yeah, and that's where I think that there's models now, so many models in the West of

01:04:10.100 --> 01:04:17.100
psycho-spiritually oriented, kind of integrated ways where students can be working on different

01:04:17.100 --> 01:04:18.700
developmental lines simultaneously.

01:04:18.700 --> 01:04:24.480
>> And I guess people are learning that slowly but surely. There's still some pretty sick

01:04:24.480 --> 01:04:28.960
cults and groups like that. There's all kinds of crazy stuff out there still that people

01:04:28.960 --> 01:04:33.920
get themselves caught up in and maybe it's a situation of live and learn. But you've

01:04:33.920 --> 01:04:38.560
probably also heard me say many times that, you know, I'm of the opinion that spirituality

01:04:38.560 --> 01:04:42.440
is just, it's not some cool thing that some people can get into if they want and it'll

01:04:42.440 --> 01:04:47.000
be good for their lives. It's critical for the whole civilization, in my opinion. And

01:04:47.000 --> 01:04:52.280
therefore, I have this strong feeling about anything which might jeopardize the enterprise,

01:04:52.280 --> 01:04:55.280
you know, spiritual teachers giving the whole thing a bad name.

01:04:55.280 --> 01:05:00.800
Of course, I completely agree. Now I think that all the different crises we have on our

01:05:00.800 --> 01:05:06.440
planet are only escalating, coming to a head, and to me it feels like a big part of what

01:05:06.440 --> 01:05:11.040
needs to shift is our consciousness and our awareness. And you know, and so I think that's

01:05:11.040 --> 01:05:15.400
where spirituality really comes in in a big way. And to me, actually, I'll say more about

01:05:15.400 --> 01:05:20.680
this because this is also a passion for me. I really embodied spirituality, really, kind

01:05:20.680 --> 01:05:23.680
Kind of like we were talking about, not an up and out spirituality.

01:05:23.680 --> 01:05:27.800
It's just like, well, it's an illusion, we're just going to wake up from this dream and

01:05:27.800 --> 01:05:31.080
it doesn't really matter what happens to this planet or these people, it's up, they don't

01:05:31.080 --> 01:05:35.480
really exist, or it was, you know, just kind of a flip in time.

01:05:35.480 --> 01:05:40.560
There's something for me, and this has grown in the last probably five, six years especially,

01:05:40.560 --> 01:05:50.600
my spirituality has grown to include the earth, and nature, and all beings, and it's only deepened

01:05:50.600 --> 01:05:56.840
my love for, and my care for, and my connection with, and my sense of interdependence.

01:05:56.840 --> 01:06:04.240
And to me, a spirituality that can wake us up to our essential nature, but to our essential

01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:11.720
interconnection with nature, with wild nature, with the earth, is really necessary, is really

01:06:11.720 --> 01:06:12.720
important.

01:06:12.720 --> 01:06:19.040
A lot of what I've been getting in my deepest kind of openings has actually been coming through

01:06:19.040 --> 01:06:26.560
the earth speaking to me and through kind of an understanding of we as humans need to wake up

01:06:26.560 --> 01:06:32.320
to our interconnectedness because our separation from that, our disconnection from that is actually

01:06:32.320 --> 01:06:39.440
what's killing not just us, but so many species. Yeah, you could say that environmental degradation,

01:06:39.440 --> 01:06:46.720
poverty, war, hunger, all these things are symptomatic of a lack of proper spiritual

01:06:46.720 --> 01:06:51.920
development. They're not just a function of politics or economics or education or anything

01:06:51.920 --> 01:06:58.000
else. It goes deeper than that. That's right. You realize that you're not separate when

01:06:58.000 --> 01:07:02.080
everything's interconnected, you know, it's kind of like if you experienced your body as

01:07:02.080 --> 01:07:06.960
just a bunch of separate limbs, you know, some of those limbs might get sacrificed unconsciously.

01:07:06.960 --> 01:07:11.520
You know, I'm the heart and I'm the head and I'm the shoulders and all of a sudden you're

01:07:11.520 --> 01:07:17.440
neglecting all these parts, and eventually the whole system breaks down from that neglect.

01:07:17.440 --> 01:07:23.640
But when you have a sense of like, the whole body is one, and you are everything, and everything

01:07:23.640 --> 01:07:29.320
is you, you just don't make the same decisions over time that lead to this kind of degradation

01:07:29.320 --> 01:07:31.560
and this kind of situation.

01:07:31.560 --> 01:07:33.640
And so that's what I think we're waking up to.

01:07:33.640 --> 01:07:38.400
And we're waking up to it in painful ways, like our body wakes us up to painful things.

01:07:38.400 --> 01:07:44.240
of a sudden there's incredible pain or disease and you can no longer ignore that aspect of

01:07:44.240 --> 01:07:46.320
yourself, of your body.

01:07:46.320 --> 01:07:47.320
Yeah.

01:07:47.320 --> 01:07:55.500
Do you think that the world might be heading into a period where the pain is amplified because

01:07:55.500 --> 01:08:00.920
it has to be in order for people to snap out of it and do things radically differently?

01:08:00.920 --> 01:08:04.160
I hope so.

01:08:04.160 --> 01:08:05.280
I think that's what's happening.

01:08:05.280 --> 01:08:08.000
I think the pain is being amplified.

01:08:08.000 --> 01:08:09.280
I think that's happening.

01:08:09.280 --> 01:08:11.040
You know, it's just, it's so obvious.

01:08:11.040 --> 01:08:14.920
There's the intensification of being on this planet.

01:08:14.920 --> 01:08:20.760
You have to be pretty unaware, or insensitive to not feel that things are really, really

01:08:20.760 --> 01:08:22.040
difficult.

01:08:22.040 --> 01:08:25.780
People are suffering, beings are suffering, the planet is suffering.

01:08:25.780 --> 01:08:27.880
And we feel that in all sorts of ways, right?

01:08:27.880 --> 01:08:31.040
In terms of, you look at the news and all of that, but you can even just see the way

01:08:31.040 --> 01:08:36.480
people relate to each other or treat each other publicly, you know, especially online.

01:08:36.480 --> 01:08:37.560
It's obvious.

01:08:37.560 --> 01:08:43.480
My sense is that the disease is showing itself to us more and more pronouncedly, and so the

01:08:43.480 --> 01:08:45.480
pain is there more and more.

01:08:45.480 --> 01:08:49.720
Our response to it is a lot of different things, you know, like with a lot of things, you can

01:08:49.720 --> 01:08:53.600
just go more into addiction to try to numb it out or drown it out.

01:08:53.600 --> 01:08:57.840
But I think in the crisis of our moment, as they talk about often, I don't even know if

01:08:57.840 --> 01:09:02.240
this is true, but I hope it's true because I like it, the Chinese characters for crisis,

01:09:02.240 --> 01:09:05.000
right, are danger and opportunity.

01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:10.360
And to me, it's like, yeah, there's a danger here we're in, in this crisis, and there's

01:09:10.360 --> 01:09:14.520
an opportunity that, like you're pointing to, and I'm hopeful that the opportunity is

01:09:14.520 --> 01:09:16.080
that we wake up.

01:09:16.080 --> 01:09:21.720
That we wake up out of a kind of unconsciousness into a greater consciousness and into a greater

01:09:21.720 --> 01:09:26.600
interdependent kind of awareness and compassionate action.

01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:32.080
But that's part of being in a crisis, is you don't know if the opportunity is seized or,

01:09:32.080 --> 01:09:34.360
you know, kind of available.

01:09:34.360 --> 01:09:38.220
That's kind of the big experiment I think we're all living right now.

01:09:38.220 --> 01:09:42.340
They say alcoholics often have to hit bottom before they realize that they have a serious

01:09:42.340 --> 01:09:44.300
problem and need to get help.

01:09:44.300 --> 01:09:50.160
Maybe humanity hasn't hit bottom yet and needs to bottom out a little bit more before we can

01:09:50.160 --> 01:09:52.200
really undergo a shift.

01:09:52.200 --> 01:09:56.860
I mean, not that I'm hoping for a lot of chaos and suffering, certainly not, but I'm just

01:09:56.860 --> 01:10:00.460
kind of trying to read the tea leaves here and figure out what's going on.

01:10:00.460 --> 01:10:04.380
Yeah, I hope we wake up sooner rather than later, but yeah, we might have a ways to go.

01:10:04.380 --> 01:10:06.340
I'm afraid of that, too.

01:10:06.340 --> 01:10:10.080
You might be too young to remember this, but there used to be a nice interview show on

01:10:10.080 --> 01:10:11.080
public radio.

01:10:11.080 --> 01:10:15.820
I think it ran nationwide called New Dimensions with Michael and Justine Toms.

01:10:15.820 --> 01:10:16.820
Yes.

01:10:16.820 --> 01:10:20.340
I can remember the music in the beginning and everything, but then they would start to say,

01:10:20.340 --> 01:10:24.580
"It is only through a change in consciousness that the world will be changed."

01:10:24.580 --> 01:10:26.220
I've always remembered that.

01:10:26.220 --> 01:10:33.260
It has the sort of deepest leverage, consciousness, as opposed to economics, politics.

01:10:33.260 --> 01:10:37.460
And as we know, the deeper you go, the more powerful it is.

01:10:37.460 --> 01:10:41.460
Molecular is more powerful than, you know, just mechanical, and atomic is more powerful

01:10:41.460 --> 01:10:43.780
than molecular, and so on.

01:10:43.780 --> 01:10:44.780
Yeah.

01:10:44.780 --> 01:10:48.020
The biggest shifts always come from a kind of a shift in consciousness.

01:10:48.020 --> 01:10:51.980
And I think we need a big shift, and I think all the little things aren't quite going to

01:10:51.980 --> 01:10:52.980
cut it.

01:10:52.980 --> 01:10:53.980
Yeah.

01:10:53.980 --> 01:10:59.340
maybe it's a both/and kind of a thing, but is it all this spiritual aspiration of people that is

01:10:59.340 --> 01:11:04.620
bringing about a shift, you know, that it seems to be kind of epidemic and social media is facilitating

01:11:04.620 --> 01:11:10.540
it, or is all this spiritual aspiration of lots of people the effect rather than the cause? It's

01:11:10.540 --> 01:11:16.460
symptomatic of some kind of cosmic shift in consciousness that is sweeping the planet.

01:11:16.460 --> 01:11:21.660
>> Yeah, and I think that's true for me and it's true for a lot of people I've seen,

01:11:21.660 --> 01:11:27.420
clients of mine, students of mine, sometimes suffering is the thing that wakes us up and

01:11:27.420 --> 01:11:29.420
makes us look deeper.

01:11:29.420 --> 01:11:30.420
What am I?

01:11:30.420 --> 01:11:31.420
What is this?

01:11:31.420 --> 01:11:35.420
What's available here beyond the entanglement of the senses?

01:11:35.420 --> 01:11:37.820
So maybe that's part of it.

01:11:37.820 --> 01:11:42.860
When I'm at different retreats now or different events and things like that, I see 20-something

01:11:42.860 --> 01:11:49.220
year olds, 30-something year olds, I even see teens engaged in ways that are just radical

01:11:49.220 --> 01:11:51.180
to me, just awake.

01:11:51.180 --> 01:11:56.780
and attuned, aware, and that brings a lot of hope for me, honestly, Rick.

01:11:56.780 --> 01:12:02.740
Like to feel there's young people out there with a radically different consciousness and

01:12:02.740 --> 01:12:10.460
motivated to deepen their understanding, but also to deepen their impact on the world.

01:12:10.460 --> 01:12:14.860
So people talk about this in more New Age worlds, about just the shifting of consciousness

01:12:14.860 --> 01:12:16.860
and the different ages and all of that.

01:12:16.860 --> 01:12:18.420
Rick: Indigo children and all that.

01:12:18.420 --> 01:12:20.140
and say, "Indigo children."

01:12:20.140 --> 01:12:22.140
You know, I think there might be something to it.

01:12:22.140 --> 01:12:23.940
I don't tend to think about that stuff

01:12:23.940 --> 01:12:24.820
or read about that stuff,

01:12:24.820 --> 01:12:28.740
but my actual experience is I've met some amazing

01:12:28.740 --> 01:12:31.340
young people that actually, without even thinking about it,

01:12:31.340 --> 01:12:33.100
just inspire hope in me.

01:12:33.100 --> 01:12:35.420
- Yeah, I agree with you.

01:12:35.420 --> 01:12:38.220
When I was a TM teacher back in 1970,

01:12:38.220 --> 01:12:39.060
I became one.

01:12:39.060 --> 01:12:39.900
We used to always think that,

01:12:39.900 --> 01:12:41.460
"Oh, we all, all we TM teachers,

01:12:41.460 --> 01:12:42.860
we were some kind of group, you know,

01:12:42.860 --> 01:12:45.680
and we all decided to incarnate, to do this together."

01:12:45.680 --> 01:12:47.420
And I think there was a bit of hubris there,

01:12:47.420 --> 01:12:54.100
but nonetheless, I think there is something to be said about souls coming in at an appropriate

01:12:54.100 --> 01:12:58.980
time to serve a function when they're needed, and it's kind of a traditional thing.

01:12:58.980 --> 01:13:03.060
All traditions have stories like that, and maybe there's an influx, and maybe we're not

01:13:03.060 --> 01:13:06.020
even aware of the extent of the influx.

01:13:06.020 --> 01:13:09.500
We're built for these times, you know, maybe those that are coming in are kind of coming

01:13:09.500 --> 01:13:15.420
in with a certain kind of preparation or a certain kind of capacity that hopefully will

01:13:15.420 --> 01:13:16.420
prepare them.

01:13:16.420 --> 01:13:20.420
going to comment on someone I interviewed a couple months ago named Melinda Edwards. You may know her.

01:13:20.420 --> 01:13:27.060
She's a psychiatrist and she hung out with Adya quite a bit. She has an autistic daughter and she

01:13:27.060 --> 01:13:33.220
believes that autistic children are in a way special and they have some kind of gift and some

01:13:33.220 --> 01:13:38.820
kind of something to offer that they're not just messed up kids, that there's something special

01:13:38.820 --> 01:13:45.300
about them and that they're playing a role to help change things in society. And I don't know whether

01:13:45.300 --> 01:13:48.900
there's more autistic kids now than there were 20, 30 years ago?

01:13:48.900 --> 01:13:52.100
There's definitely more awareness now of what they're calling neurodivergence.

01:13:52.100 --> 01:13:58.420
And I love that term, actually. This comes back to your point and your friend's point, which is,

01:13:58.420 --> 01:14:03.060
I'm starting to really understand that as well. Neurodivergence, which we're becoming more aware

01:14:03.060 --> 01:14:11.060
of, is a way that we're honoring different ways different people are just wired. And the old

01:14:11.060 --> 01:14:16.340
tradition was like, well, everybody needs to learn this way and act this way. And, and so if you were

01:14:16.340 --> 01:14:20.340
neurodivergent, if you were autistic or whatever, you were even probably undiagnosed before,

01:14:20.340 --> 01:14:27.140
you just were a misfit, and you would struggle a lot or be ostracized a lot. And now I think in the

01:14:27.140 --> 01:14:30.500
understanding, not only do you get more resources and things, but I think we're starting to become

01:14:30.500 --> 01:14:38.660
aware of like, oh, some people are actually tuned into frequencies and patterns, and things that

01:14:38.660 --> 01:14:45.340
we're not tuned into, like they actually have extra sensory or extra awareness that, biologically

01:14:45.340 --> 01:14:47.180
speaking, why do they come in those way?

01:14:47.180 --> 01:14:48.260
Is it just a problem?

01:14:48.260 --> 01:14:51.300
Is it just that they're maladapted?

01:14:51.300 --> 01:14:56.160
Or is it actually that there's some way that certain animals, like dogs, we use them to

01:14:56.160 --> 01:14:57.420
sniff bones or--

01:14:57.420 --> 01:14:58.420
Yeah, yeah.

01:14:58.420 --> 01:15:03.380
--cover things, because they've got extra senses beyond the frequencies that we have.

01:15:03.380 --> 01:15:09.700
And maybe neurodivergent people actually can see and think and create in ways that we can't.

01:15:09.700 --> 01:15:16.140
Yeah, I have this other friend who has an adopted son who was thought to be a problem

01:15:16.140 --> 01:15:21.600
kid, you know, autistic or whatever his diagnosis was, but he sees auras and he sees subtle

01:15:21.600 --> 01:15:23.300
beings and things like that.

01:15:23.300 --> 01:15:28.240
He's not psychotic, I mean, he's really actually having subtle perception, but he just hasn't

01:15:28.240 --> 01:15:30.460
been very well integrated with this world.

01:15:30.460 --> 01:15:33.340
It's an interesting thing to contemplate.

01:15:33.340 --> 01:15:38.820
of friends, since I'm at it, there's a friend named Sarah Taylor who's been on BatGap, and

01:15:38.820 --> 01:15:44.580
she shifted into a unitive state of consciousness that seems to be abiding quite a few years

01:15:44.580 --> 01:15:49.300
ago, and it has only recently come to her attention that she's neurodivergent.

01:15:49.300 --> 01:15:52.240
And so she kind of talked about that in some interview, and all of a sudden she's getting

01:15:52.240 --> 01:15:57.980
flooded with inquiries from people who say, "Oh my God, I didn't realize this is possible,

01:15:57.980 --> 01:16:02.980
you can actually be awakened and yet have some autism or neurodivergent tendencies.

01:16:02.980 --> 01:16:05.980
A lot of people are coming forward and saying it describes them.

01:16:05.980 --> 01:16:08.480
You know, I think about this in terms of neurodivergence also.

01:16:08.480 --> 01:16:13.480
I think that there's a neuroconvergence, and I'm going to use this play with this lightly,

01:16:13.480 --> 01:16:17.880
where I think we've been conditioned all to kind of see reality a certain way,

01:16:17.880 --> 01:16:20.980
and then we can only see what we've been taught to see.

01:16:20.980 --> 01:16:24.980
And so like subtle side or other things become like,

01:16:24.980 --> 01:16:26.980
"Oh, the special people have those."

01:16:26.980 --> 01:16:29.980
But I actually think, and this is where spiritual work and other things do,

01:16:29.980 --> 01:16:32.980
they just open up our senses and our perception,

01:16:32.980 --> 01:16:35.980
so we start to see things that we never used to be able to see.

01:16:35.980 --> 01:16:37.980
And so you have subtle sight and subtle visions,

01:16:37.980 --> 01:16:41.980
and you can see the future, or you can kind of get intuitive senses of things.

01:16:41.980 --> 01:16:44.980
And for me, a lot's been happening.

01:16:44.980 --> 01:16:48.980
Now when I'm out in nature, everything's different for me.

01:16:48.980 --> 01:16:52.980
My senses are aware of the natural world in a way they never used to be.

01:16:52.980 --> 01:16:58.940
I've always enjoyed nature, I've been a nature lover, but I have all sorts of crazy, crazy

01:16:58.940 --> 01:17:03.260
kind of synchronicities with animals and beings all the time.

01:17:03.260 --> 01:17:09.020
And I have conversations with trees, and I have mystical experiences in the trees, you

01:17:09.020 --> 01:17:13.420
know, and in the woods, and with animals that never used to happen before, very rarely would

01:17:13.420 --> 01:17:16.260
happen, and now they happen not all the time.

01:17:16.260 --> 01:17:21.740
And it's like some part of my being has opened up so that I'm aware of, and it's aware of,

01:17:21.740 --> 01:17:26.900
we're interacting in ways that are so non-ordinary and don't make sense to most people. I don't

01:17:26.900 --> 01:17:31.660
talk about it with most people. And yet, it's the things that the native peoples, the indigenous

01:17:31.660 --> 01:17:35.700
people have been talking about for ages. Their senses were always open to that because their

01:17:35.700 --> 01:17:37.260
culture taught them about that.

01:17:37.260 --> 01:17:40.860
Do you think that somehow what you've been going through with cancer has cracked you

01:17:40.860 --> 01:17:43.180
open to have that stuff, or is it unrelated?

01:17:43.180 --> 01:17:48.460
Well, two things I'll say in response to that. One is I'd say that actually, probably, some

01:17:48.460 --> 01:17:53.920
Some of the psychedelic work I started to do about six years ago, in particular one ayahuasca

01:17:53.920 --> 01:17:59.440
journey was the beginning of a kind of a cracking open to nature and to plant consciousness,

01:17:59.440 --> 01:18:00.440
but also earth consciousness.

01:18:00.440 --> 01:18:04.880
I had a big kind of opening that happened around that on one journey.

01:18:04.880 --> 01:18:09.200
And then I, for a couple of years after that, I would practice a little bit, very occasionally,

01:18:09.200 --> 01:18:17.200
with mushrooms in nature, and very slow doses actually, nothing major, and then even microdosing.

01:18:17.200 --> 01:18:19.480
And then I stopped, all of that stopped quite a few years ago.

01:18:19.480 --> 01:18:22.360
Or mostly stopped, I can't say stopped.

01:18:22.360 --> 01:18:25.700
But I had a period of practice where I was consciously being in nature and opening my

01:18:25.700 --> 01:18:31.440
senses with the help of mushrooms, but mostly not, like I'd say 5% of the time with mushrooms,

01:18:31.440 --> 01:18:35.440
the rest of the time just practicing, just being aware.

01:18:35.440 --> 01:18:41.760
And so psychedelics opened me up to a natural, mushrooms in ayahuasca opened me up to the

01:18:41.760 --> 01:18:48.240
natural dimension of being and the interconnectedness in a way that was radically new for me.

01:18:48.240 --> 01:18:49.920
And so I was already having these experiences.

01:18:49.920 --> 01:18:55.080
And then the cancer diagnosis a year and a half ago, a year and a quarter ago, blew that

01:18:55.080 --> 01:18:56.080
open.

01:18:56.080 --> 01:19:01.040
So now I'm having these what I'm describing as mystical experiences and profound interconnection.

01:19:01.040 --> 01:19:04.080
So the cancer just blew me open, I mean, blew me open emotionally.

01:19:04.080 --> 01:19:07.920
I mean, I cry now probably almost every day.

01:19:07.920 --> 01:19:13.680
before I rarely cried. And I cry for all sorts of reasons, you know, grief or anticipatory grief

01:19:13.680 --> 01:19:19.920
or sadness, but also just joy and gratitude and love and beauty. Like everything cracks me open

01:19:19.920 --> 01:19:24.960
and tears kind of come. And that, what a gift that's been. What a gift to know that I could

01:19:24.960 --> 01:19:30.800
be a human in this way and be this open. And then it's also cracked me open to all these experiences

01:19:30.800 --> 01:19:37.280
in nature. I go out into nature every day when I can now and I feel so connected. I feel like a

01:19:37.280 --> 01:19:41.840
child again. I feel like when you were children or when you see children, they're just like totally

01:19:41.840 --> 01:19:46.000
in wonder and totally in... they're talking to the trees and the trees are talking to them or the birds

01:19:46.000 --> 01:19:52.640
or whatever. It's almost like that. I feel a little foolish, but I don't mind. I let myself just be

01:19:52.640 --> 01:20:00.000
foolishly, wondrously, innocently engaged. And it's amazing what opens up when I allow that.

01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:03.840
I just reminded this little kid I saw in the grocery store yesterday who was

01:20:04.400 --> 01:20:09.600
dancing and singing and he kept running down the aisles away from his father and I was worried that

01:20:09.600 --> 01:20:14.640
he, you know, he'd get too far from his father and all this stuff. But it was just so charming

01:20:14.640 --> 01:20:19.680
watching this little kid so full of innocence and joy. I don't see little kids that much.

01:20:19.680 --> 01:20:26.720
Our last webinar with the ASI, the Association for Spiritual Integrity, was about psychedelics,

01:20:26.720 --> 01:20:31.680
actually, and the whole issue of that. It's a huge thing these days, a huge industry,

01:20:31.680 --> 01:20:36.120
a huge movement, so many people are doing them, and there are ethical issues in that field

01:20:36.120 --> 01:20:41.040
as there are in other aspects of spirituality and religion.

01:20:41.040 --> 01:20:44.600
We don't need to really get into the whole ethical issues thing of it right now, but

01:20:44.600 --> 01:20:49.560
there was one guy who's been a supporter and member of the ASI who just got so upset that

01:20:49.560 --> 01:20:51.760
we were even going to discuss the topic.

01:20:51.760 --> 01:20:56.800
He felt like it's dangerous, it's harmful, the ASI shouldn't go anywhere near it, I'm

01:20:56.800 --> 01:20:59.920
dropping out, I'm resigning from the organization.

01:20:59.920 --> 01:21:05.680
And my attitude was, well, it's been around for thousands of years and all these different

01:21:05.680 --> 01:21:11.380
cultures have found value in it, and obviously it can be very destructive if used irresponsibly

01:21:11.380 --> 01:21:15.920
or recklessly, as I experienced during the '60s.

01:21:15.920 --> 01:21:20.840
But you can't deny how beneficial it's been for so many people.

01:21:20.840 --> 01:21:26.160
In terms of something sweeping the planet, maybe we need that in our toolkit as a way

01:21:26.160 --> 01:21:31.440
of giving large numbers of people a swift kick in the pants to wake up.

01:21:31.440 --> 01:21:36.080
>> Rick Yeah, it's part of what I got in my download that I was mentioning on the ayahuasca

01:21:36.080 --> 01:21:38.000
retreat that I did six years ago.

01:21:38.000 --> 01:21:40.520
It's my first experience doing ayahuasca.

01:21:40.520 --> 01:21:44.120
I was on a track, Rick, I wouldn't have been quite like this person that you were talking

01:21:44.120 --> 01:21:50.000
about, but I was meditation, retreats, that had been my whole life and spiritual life.

01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:53.160
And I've done some psychedelics, but it wasn't really what I was interested in.

01:21:53.160 --> 01:21:57.980
And my cousin, my dear cousin who's 11 years younger than me, was going through something

01:21:57.980 --> 01:22:02.100
and she wanted to do an ayahuasca journey and she called me because she knows I'm plugged

01:22:02.100 --> 01:22:06.860
into the Bay Area and the Caldus community and she said, "I want to do an ayahuasca retreat.

01:22:06.860 --> 01:22:08.740
Will you find somebody really good for me?"

01:22:08.740 --> 01:22:10.100
And I said, "Yes, I will.

01:22:10.100 --> 01:22:11.380
I've got some connections.

01:22:11.380 --> 01:22:16.560
I found a really amazing shaman, amazing person, found an amazing retreat center that she would

01:22:16.560 --> 01:22:18.000
go to."

01:22:18.000 --> 01:22:19.000
And I told her about it.

01:22:19.000 --> 01:22:20.980
And then she said, "Well, will you go with me?

01:22:20.980 --> 01:22:21.980
Will you do it with me?"

01:22:21.980 --> 01:22:23.500
like, "Oh, boy, I didn't see that coming."

01:22:23.500 --> 01:22:27.220
And at first I said to her, I said, "Well, you know, it's not really my thing.

01:22:27.220 --> 01:22:32.000
I get so much from my meditation and from my retreats, but I could tell she really wanted

01:22:32.000 --> 01:22:33.000
me to come."

01:22:33.000 --> 01:22:35.280
And so I kind of came back to her and I said, "Okay, I'll do it."

01:22:35.280 --> 01:22:36.580
And I thought I was doing it for her.

01:22:36.580 --> 01:22:38.740
I thought I was just being her big brother.

01:22:38.740 --> 01:22:40.500
And I'll go along with it.

01:22:40.500 --> 01:22:43.740
You know, I'll probably get something from it, but it'll be there as a support.

01:22:43.740 --> 01:22:48.100
Well, I won't go into the details, but I had the biggest experience.

01:22:48.100 --> 01:22:52.140
And the first night was beautiful and amazing, and the second night was really difficult,

01:22:52.140 --> 01:22:53.140
to be honest.

01:22:53.140 --> 01:22:55.900
And interestingly enough, she ended up comforting me.

01:22:55.900 --> 01:22:57.860
And the roles got reversed and we were laughing.

01:22:57.860 --> 01:23:00.580
I was laughing, "Oh my God, I thought I was here to help you."

01:23:00.580 --> 01:23:07.820
But anyway, what I got in that weekend, really profoundly, was the Earth, really.

01:23:07.820 --> 01:23:13.100
Mother saying to me and to us, "We need you to wake up.

01:23:13.100 --> 01:23:14.520
You're killing us.

01:23:14.520 --> 01:23:15.520
You're killing everything.

01:23:15.520 --> 01:23:17.420
You're killing yourselves."

01:23:17.420 --> 01:23:22.900
And we are here to help you accelerate your consciousness, accelerate your evolution,

01:23:22.900 --> 01:23:24.480
because it needs to accelerate.

01:23:24.480 --> 01:23:26.920
You need to wake up quickly for all of us.

01:23:26.920 --> 01:23:28.540
And that's really what I got.

01:23:28.540 --> 01:23:33.060
And so for me, I actually felt, and that's how I've understood this big psychedelic wave,

01:23:33.060 --> 01:23:39.980
partly, as a kind of a way that humanity is trying to wake itself up more quickly, more

01:23:39.980 --> 01:23:40.980
necessarily.

01:23:40.980 --> 01:23:45.740
Yeah, I believe that it did that in the 60s, and I was part of that.

01:23:45.740 --> 01:23:50.300
It was very destructive for a lot of people, but it really helped to facilitate a dramatic shift.

01:23:50.300 --> 01:23:55.180
Not only the drugs, but the music, the Beatles and everything is just like this huge cultural

01:23:55.180 --> 01:23:59.820
transformation. And it seems to be happening now. And fortunately, you know, fortunately,

01:23:59.820 --> 01:24:02.460
in a more responsible way, I'd say for the most part.

01:24:02.460 --> 01:24:10.620
Yeah, I actually feel like nature is needing us, wanting us, helping us to wake up, you know,

01:24:10.620 --> 01:24:15.660
and it might be through plant medicine and other psychedelics. On my retreats, I bring people

01:24:15.660 --> 01:24:21.020
into the redwoods, I do this retreat center down in Santa Cruz in California.

01:24:21.020 --> 01:24:24.420
And it's at a Buddhist retreat center, Land of Medicine Buddha, that's surrounded by this

01:24:24.420 --> 01:24:26.740
incredible redwood forest.

01:24:26.740 --> 01:24:32.140
And when I went there on solo retreat, about four years ago, just did a solo retreat there

01:24:32.140 --> 01:24:36.560
during the pandemic, I had a profound experience in the redwoods.

01:24:36.560 --> 01:24:40.860
And then in the quiet moments afterwards, I felt this sort of calling to like, I should

01:24:40.860 --> 01:24:42.500
bring people back here on retreat.

01:24:42.500 --> 01:24:44.220
I'd never done a retreat before.

01:24:44.220 --> 01:24:49.160
This was the beginning of the shift that I was telling you about, of leading retreats

01:24:49.160 --> 01:24:51.400
and more spiritual teaching.

01:24:51.400 --> 01:24:54.400
And so I brought a group there, and I've continued to bring groups there.

01:24:54.400 --> 01:24:58.060
I've done a number of retreats there, a couple every year.

01:24:58.060 --> 01:25:00.900
And we go into the redwoods as a big part of it.

01:25:00.900 --> 01:25:05.060
We meditate in the redwoods, and we do kind of guided silent meditation in there, and

01:25:05.060 --> 01:25:07.740
we do some rituals even in there.

01:25:07.740 --> 01:25:10.140
So it's a huge part of the retreat.

01:25:10.140 --> 01:25:15.860
And I had the realization, actually, a couple of retreats ago, that, "Oh my God, the Redwoods

01:25:15.860 --> 01:25:17.380
called all these people here.

01:25:17.380 --> 01:25:18.780
I'm just a conduit.

01:25:18.780 --> 01:25:24.620
I thought I'd been bringing people on retreat, and I have been, but actually I feel like

01:25:24.620 --> 01:25:30.260
it's more true for me to say that the Redwoods have been calling people to them, and I've

01:25:30.260 --> 01:25:32.780
just been their messenger or conduit."

01:25:32.780 --> 01:25:36.620
Because I think that people are having these profound experiences in the Redwoods, and they

01:25:36.620 --> 01:25:37.620
need to be.

01:25:37.620 --> 01:25:43.180
We need to be reconnecting to our natural selves, but to the natural world, and I think that's

01:25:43.180 --> 01:25:46.340
part of the consciousness that is needed.

01:25:46.340 --> 01:25:47.340
Yeah.

01:25:47.340 --> 01:25:50.100
Well, where should we go from here?

01:25:50.100 --> 01:25:55.140
Is there anything that you feel like we should talk about?

01:25:55.140 --> 01:25:56.420
I just feel pretty quiet, actually.

01:25:56.420 --> 01:26:01.660
I just feel a tremendous sense of gratitude talking with you, and actually what was coming

01:26:01.660 --> 01:26:06.380
as I was just stopping was just gratitude to my teachers, to Ajit Shanti, and to John

01:26:06.380 --> 01:26:12.860
Prendergast in particular, I've been so blessed all along the way, and I'm just really here

01:26:12.860 --> 01:26:18.060
to serve, and I feel like I've received so much, and I just want to share whatever I

01:26:18.060 --> 01:26:20.260
can and whatever time I have.

01:26:20.260 --> 01:26:24.880
This is beautiful to be a part of this interview, because this helps me share and will maybe

01:26:24.880 --> 01:26:26.620
help others connect with me if they need to.

01:26:26.620 --> 01:26:30.180
Yeah, in a minute we'll talk about how others can connect with you, but I remembered the

01:26:30.180 --> 01:26:35.340
thing that I hadn't been able to remember, which was that I had heard, and I think I may

01:26:35.340 --> 01:26:42.020
have commented on this show that Adyashanti took some psilocybin or something not too

01:26:42.020 --> 01:26:46.980
long ago. I think he mentioned it to Sam Harris or in some interview, but I didn't actually

01:26:46.980 --> 01:26:50.300
listen to that interview, but I wanted to make sure that was true because if it wasn't,

01:26:50.300 --> 01:26:53.100
I didn't want to have said it. So he said that.

01:26:53.100 --> 01:26:55.180
Oh yeah, he told me the same thing personally.

01:26:55.180 --> 01:26:57.500
Did he describe what he got out of it?

01:26:57.500 --> 01:27:01.700
He described kind of what he said to Sam Harris, which is that nothing really happened. He did

01:27:01.700 --> 01:27:04.940
the Hero dose, apparently, the five grams and that he was...

01:27:04.940 --> 01:27:06.940
It was a Neem Karoli Baba thing, huh?

01:27:06.940 --> 01:27:11.940
It sounds like it. Sam Harris had some skepticism, I think, in response to it.

01:27:11.940 --> 01:27:13.940
Like, I don't know if you really took the full amount or...

01:27:13.940 --> 01:27:16.940
You know, and I trust what Adya said.

01:27:16.940 --> 01:27:20.940
And I also trust that he could have a different experience at another time.

01:27:20.940 --> 01:27:25.940
True. My reference to Neem Karoli Baba was Ram Dass came to Neem Karoli Baba.

01:27:25.940 --> 01:27:26.940
Yes, I remember that story.

01:27:26.940 --> 01:27:29.940
And Neem Karoli Baba said, you know, "Give me the pills."

01:27:29.940 --> 01:27:36.260
like a killer dose of LSD and he probably swallowed them and nothing seemed to happen.

01:27:36.260 --> 01:27:39.380
Yeah, I've heard that story as well.

01:27:39.380 --> 01:27:41.100
Anyway, that's interesting.

01:27:41.100 --> 01:27:42.100
It's a tribute to Adya.

01:27:42.100 --> 01:27:46.540
One thing I love about Adya, which speaks to your point about transparency and sharing

01:27:46.540 --> 01:27:52.300
of personal vulnerability, is he very much always did that in my experience.

01:27:52.300 --> 01:27:56.420
If he had some kind of health problem like Bell's palsy, he talked about it.

01:27:56.420 --> 01:27:58.620
He didn't try to pretend that he was invulnerable.

01:27:58.620 --> 01:28:02.660
You know, there are other spiritual teachers who say things like, "Oh, I never get angry

01:28:02.660 --> 01:28:06.060
and I've never had a bad day," or anything else, but then people who are hanging around

01:28:06.060 --> 01:28:10.300
them, you know, in an inner circle, they say they, you know, they're just rageaholics sometimes.

01:28:10.300 --> 01:28:11.300
Yeah.

01:28:11.300 --> 01:28:16.740
I agree about Adya, and I will say this about both my teachers I've been blessed with, because

01:28:16.740 --> 01:28:21.180
I've known them both as teachers for many years, but also now I just count them as close

01:28:21.180 --> 01:28:25.940
friends with Jon Prendergast and with Adya Shanti, and I've said this to both of them,

01:28:25.940 --> 01:28:31.060
I say this about them, who they are when they're being interviewed, when they're teaching,

01:28:31.060 --> 01:28:36.040
is pretty much who they are when you're having lunch with them or going for a walk or watching

01:28:36.040 --> 01:28:38.340
them interact with their partners.

01:28:38.340 --> 01:28:42.100
It's a beautiful thing, like you were talking about before, like to have somebody who's,

01:28:42.100 --> 01:28:46.860
I wouldn't use this word with each of them, but it probably does apply in some ways, samely,

01:28:46.860 --> 01:28:51.840
but like to have their expression be kind of consistent across the board.

01:28:51.840 --> 01:28:55.280
How they live is what they teach.

01:28:55.280 --> 01:28:58.920
teaching is not so separate from their lived, practiced experience.

01:28:58.920 --> 01:29:05.160
And for me, that's been an incredible blessing to see that embodied and lived, not just thought.

01:29:05.160 --> 01:29:06.160
Yeah.

01:29:06.160 --> 01:29:08.080
That's a wonderful example for all of us.

01:29:08.080 --> 01:29:09.080
Exactly.

01:29:09.080 --> 01:29:13.760
It's a wonderful aspiration for all of us and a possibility.

01:29:13.760 --> 01:29:17.880
Well say hi to both of them for me if you're in touch with them.

01:29:17.880 --> 01:29:21.680
And let's talk about how you interact with people.

01:29:21.680 --> 01:29:27.160
your cancer has not stopped you from having clients and doing retreats and stuff like

01:29:27.160 --> 01:29:28.160
that?

01:29:28.160 --> 01:29:29.160
It has anything planned?

01:29:29.160 --> 01:29:30.160
It slows you down a little, maybe.

01:29:30.160 --> 01:29:31.160
It's partly stopping me.

01:29:31.160 --> 01:29:32.560
It's slowing me down a little bit.

01:29:32.560 --> 01:29:36.000
Just a few months ago, I stepped back from my one-to-one work.

01:29:36.000 --> 01:29:40.040
I used to do a, you know, before I was a therapist, I had clients, and then in the last few years,

01:29:40.040 --> 01:29:43.720
I've been more having students where I'm mentoring them spiritually.

01:29:43.720 --> 01:29:48.320
Stepped back from the one-to-one work a few months ago so I could completely devote myself

01:29:48.320 --> 01:29:52.080
to my healing and that's what I've been doing the last few months.

01:29:52.080 --> 01:29:56.720
But there's still ways that people can interact with me in ways that I am active.

01:29:56.720 --> 01:29:58.440
So I can just kind of name what those are.

01:29:58.440 --> 01:29:59.440
Yes, please.

01:29:59.440 --> 01:30:03.680
The first way is just to attend a retreat or an event with me.

01:30:03.680 --> 01:30:05.880
I do these meditation retreats.

01:30:05.880 --> 01:30:11.360
I've got one coming up in January in the Bay Area and then another one in April.

01:30:11.360 --> 01:30:17.900
They're four-night retreats, mostly in silence, but they're meditation with a mix of a few

01:30:17.900 --> 01:30:21.300
other things, but they're pretty much a meditation retreat.

01:30:21.300 --> 01:30:24.700
There's stuff on my website with more information about that.

01:30:24.700 --> 01:30:28.380
So the retreats are the main thing that I'm really doing, and then I'll occasionally do

01:30:28.380 --> 01:30:34.500
some day-long events and things, and those will be posted for 2025 in the next few months.

01:30:34.500 --> 01:30:40.300
In addition to that, I'm also part of a new online community, it's called Sacred Wild

01:30:40.300 --> 01:30:41.380
Sanctuary.

01:30:41.380 --> 01:30:46.020
This is available on my website as well, where I'm sort of a guest teacher, and I've got

01:30:46.020 --> 01:30:50.260
different live and recorded offerings through that online platform.

01:30:50.260 --> 01:30:56.180
So that's a second way that people can catch up with me currently and ongoing.

01:30:56.180 --> 01:31:00.120
That's online and that's also on my website called Sacred Blood Sanctuary.

01:31:00.120 --> 01:31:05.020
And then the last thing is I have a pre-recorded course available on my session that's at the

01:31:05.020 --> 01:31:06.180
heart of my teachings.

01:31:06.180 --> 01:31:08.000
It's called Healing from Presence.

01:31:08.000 --> 01:31:10.260
So that's available online on my website.

01:31:10.260 --> 01:31:15.020
And actually just this morning I was talking to my website person and we created a $50 discount

01:31:15.020 --> 01:31:21.500
for BatGap people. So if you put in BatGap in the discount code, you'll get $50 off that

01:31:21.500 --> 01:31:22.500
course.

01:31:22.500 --> 01:31:26.460
Will that last a year from now if they go?

01:31:26.460 --> 01:31:32.620
Yeah. It'll be ongoing. There's no time limit for that one. So those are the three most

01:31:32.620 --> 01:31:37.140
kind of obvious ways for people to get in contact with me and work with me.

01:31:37.140 --> 01:31:42.540
Okay. And I'll be linking to your website from your page on BatGap. And so people can

01:31:42.540 --> 01:31:46.540
go from that link to the website and check out all the details.

01:31:46.540 --> 01:31:50.900
And remember that backgap offer that you just mentioned.

01:31:50.900 --> 01:31:52.540
So I guess that's just about it.

01:31:52.540 --> 01:31:56.060
I really enjoyed talking to you.

01:31:56.060 --> 01:32:03.780
I hope you hang in there and stick around for years to come and live a long life.

01:32:03.780 --> 01:32:08.420
And we're all going to die sometime and if I don't meet you in person, I'll see you on

01:32:08.420 --> 01:32:09.420
the other side.

01:32:09.420 --> 01:32:11.100
Sounds good, Rick.

01:32:11.100 --> 01:32:16.240
I'm hoping I stick around for a long time as well, and I'm open to every possibility.

01:32:16.240 --> 01:32:20.820
And I'm also just one day at a time here, and I'm grateful to be here today, and we'll

01:32:20.820 --> 01:32:23.420
see about tomorrow, but I'm really grateful for being on your show.

01:32:23.420 --> 01:32:24.980
Thank you so much for this time.

01:32:24.980 --> 01:32:27.140
Oh, thank you for coming on.

01:32:27.140 --> 01:32:30.540
Okay, and thanks to those who've been listening or watching.

01:32:30.540 --> 01:32:35.220
So I say listening or watching because this exists as an audio podcast as well as the video

01:32:35.220 --> 01:32:36.260
thing on YouTube.

01:32:36.260 --> 01:32:41.500
So if you're the type who likes to listen to podcasts, as I am, I can't sit in front of

01:32:41.500 --> 01:32:47.220
my computer and watch something for two hours without jumping out of my skin, then go to

01:32:47.220 --> 01:32:52.860
Batgap and there's a page where you can sign up for the audio podcast on Spotify or iTunes

01:32:52.860 --> 01:32:56.300
or YouTube Music or any of these other things.

01:32:56.300 --> 01:33:02.500
My next guest is a woman in Israel who had a near-death experience and it somehow gave

01:33:02.500 --> 01:33:08.980
for a download of wisdom about how to raise children in a spiritual way.

01:33:08.980 --> 01:33:14.820
And my guest following that is a woman in Ireland, I believe she's in Ireland, who routinely

01:33:14.820 --> 01:33:20.460
all of her life has been seeing subtle beings, elves and fairies and leprechauns maybe, I

01:33:20.460 --> 01:33:25.400
don't know, it's Ireland, but subtle perception like we were talking about earlier.

01:33:25.400 --> 01:33:27.660
So that should be fun.

01:33:27.660 --> 01:33:31.420
There is an upcoming interviews page on BatGap where you can see what we've got scheduled

01:33:31.420 --> 01:33:35.060
and we usually schedule a month or two in advance.

01:33:35.060 --> 01:33:42.380
You can sign up to be notified when new interviews are posted with the sign-up form on www.bathgap.com.

01:33:42.380 --> 01:33:47.340
Okay, so thanks Riyaz, and thanks to everyone listening or watching.

01:33:47.340 --> 01:33:48.700
We'll see you for the next one.

01:33:48.700 --> 01:33:52.060
[MUSIC PLAYING]

01:33:52.060 --> 01:34:12.980
Thank you.