You had a rich and spicy vegetable soup and you're wondering if the audio is spicy. Do I sound spicy?
You sound rich and wholesome which I'm not sure that's a compliment but
nevertheless this altitude. I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking another organism living tissue.
e over metal endoskeleton
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Tim
Hello boys and girls ladies and germs, but who wants to think about germs these days? This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of different types to tease out the habits routines Frameworks practices Etc that you can apply in your own life. This episode is more of a personal therapy session for yours truly in some respects and features Jack kornfield and I want to say a few things.
For we jump into his bio. The first is that my hope is that you will listen to portions of this conversation multiple times. There are a number of exercises that Jack shares that I will be certainly listening to in the upcoming weeks multiple times and I suggest you think of this as a menu from which you can choose different things you can use repeatedly, that's number one. Number two, you will notice that I sound anxious I sound unsure
In this interview and that is very much by Design. In other words. I'm not trying to hide the fact that I also struggle. I think it is unhelpful when people in the public eye do that and it puts them on this illusory pedestal. That is I think ultimately self-defeating and instead. I want to share with you that no matter how much stoic philosophy I read no matter how often I meditate there are times when I struggle and this week.
One of them so with all that said who is Jack kornfield Jack kornfield. You can find him on Twitter at Jack. Kornfield Kor nfie LD at Jack. Kornfield.com. Jack trained is a Buddhist monk in the monsters of Thailand India and Burma shortly thereafter becoming one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974. Jack has also had a profound and direct impact.
On my life and I'm thrilled to have him on the podcast. Once again jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein and the Spirit Rock Center in would acre, California. He holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology and is a father husband and activist. He has a very expanded broad-spectrum toolkit and has worked with veterans his worked with adolescents who self-harm cut.
Etc he has a wealth of experience as a clinician. So he is not limited to meditation practices. I feel that's important to underscore. Jack's books have been translated into 22 languages and sold more than one and a half million copies including the wise heart a lamp in the darkness a path with heart after the Ecstasy the laundry one of my favorite book titles of all time and his most recent no time like the present subtitle finding Freedom love and joy Right Where You Are
our he offers a brilliant online training program and I don't use that adjective Lightly for those who want to learn to teach meditation at Jack kornfield.com, and he is co-leading that with Tara Brach who I also have a very high opinion of and who has been on this podcast. So definitely check out his course at Jack kornfield.com. And without further Ado, please enjoy this what was for me a very valuable conversation with Jack kornfield.
Jack welcome to the show.
Oh, thank you Tim. I'm happy to be back.
I am thrilled to have you back and for purposes of context for people listening and we're recording this Monday, March 9th, 2020 and things are very exciting in quotation marks at the moment and I am perhaps not so secretly going to use this conversation, which is intended to be listened to by my audience as
A therapy session for myself and I will confess Jack that only very recently in the last even few days. Have I ever in my life taken prescription medication for sleeping and I know that I'm not alone and perhaps struggling to not necessarily make sense of but contend with a lot of what is happening.
Currently with the novel coronavirus covered 19 Etc. And I thought we would start with the with the the topic that I had written down here at the very top and that is talking about a large virtual class. You taught recently in China. Could you speak to what that was and what the experience was
like, I taught a class in China of people who had been involved in meditation. So it was through a community of
I know there are many folks who are already under quarantine at home and dealing with the collective anxiety and fears that are happening the incredible disruption that's happened in China, which may well be happening here and looks like it's actually coming to us in a very rapid fashion. So we talked about how to hold it all and you
No to get them to laugh a little bit. I said, you know we have at our Center in California and Spirit Rock. We have a whole group of people who are on our winter spring to month Retreat hundred plus folks who are mostly in their own little rooms. They meditate quietly together. They can't go out. They can't talk to anyone and they paid lots of money to do it. I said and you get this for free.
So
what will it mean I take your
shouts and even though there is anxiety or fear or you know, again not able to sleep all the kind of disruptions what if you were to turn it around and say the universe has provided you with a retreat that you might not have had any opportunity to do in your life in this way and to use it somehow to deepen your compassion your self-care the
Wisdom you have and I said because I use the image that is so powerful and from the Vietnamese and master tick not Han. He said when the crowded Vietnamese Refugee boats met with storms or Pirates if everyone panicked all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remain calm and centered it was enough it showed the way for everyone to survive and I said, so
These are tough times and it's quite obvious. You know that we're in this complex of cultural anxiety and the spread of the virus and so forth. You can either give into or get lost in your fear and anxiety or you can take this as a time to begin to train yourself in steadiness in trust in the ability to have a
Aster and broader perspective and perhaps more than anything was a kind of common Humanity to develop your sense of care and connection more deeply for everyone else. This is the time that the bodhisattva which is a Buddhist term for a being who commits to compassion turns toward the difficult circumstances and makes their own heart a zone of peace.
In compassion and says we know how to hold this we've been training our whole lives for this difficulty and now let us see if we can use this so it's not happening to us, but it's happening for us and that reverses the frame of it. Now, I don't mean this is easy, but it is actually true circumstances can change it said like the swish of a
a horse's tail from something benevolent to something difficult. And when you enter a retreat, especially a long retreat as I did in my own training and Buddhist monasteries, they will often say during this Retreat many people will be born many people will die and your task is to come to that great inner Freedom that can hold birth and death and joy and sorrow and be a benevolent.
liberated Spirit or liberated force in the midst of it all so we have this kind of conversation and people talked about their concerns with their family and obviously their economic Fierce, which I worry about more broadly here in the US how many small businesses will be affected and how many people who live from one paycheck to the next and it just touches my heart even to say it and at the same time maybe this
This wake up also is a call for us here to have Universal Health Care because in fact, you know, it doesn't matter how rich you are. When you go out in your car you go out to the market you're surrounded by all these other people and if everybody around you doesn't have the necessary care that it will inevitably affect you because more and more we can feel how we are tied together. So what?
Do with this. I asked them we can either get lost in our fearful fantasies or we can let them go or give them a safe place the way to work with anxiety to begin with is to acknowledge it anxiety and fear and say thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me. I'm okay for now and put them aside. You can even visualize putting them aside. You can take your fears and anxieties as thought.
It's our images and put them into a bowl or put them into a sword and place them on an altar in your mind and say alright, May the wise ones of the past May the Buddha's in the whoever it is that you admire you hold this for a while. It's not my job to hold this and let me be the person who lives in the reality of the present with a with us centered spirit and a Compassionate Heart and that kind of
Relation got a lot of response as a reminder really what we know
and for people who want to explore the exercise. You just described out actually highly suggest our first conversation because you may or may not recall but we spoke about anger specifically my anger or anger response to certain circumstances which included a discussion of contractor. He's as you put it which we won't ya don't have to get into but
people can explore that in the first conversation. We had I would like to follow up with a question about the distinction and the labels. I'm going to use or somewhat clumsy, but the how to combine what Bruce Tift I believe is named as you wrote a book called Already Free Calls the developmental View and the fruitional view or the developmental framework and frictional.
Work meaning that you have a developmental framework. That one could associate with Western Psychotherapy where you identify problems you work through your problems you improve your circumstances. Maybe you ask for that raise quit that job have the difficult discussion with your spouse, whatever it might be. So it's a personal development / Improvement path and some respect problem-solving path, then the fruitional view which at least as he would put it.
It is improving your ability or changing your lens through which you relate to your circumstances. So for yourself, how old are you now Jack if you don't mind me asking
I'm about to turn seventy five 75. So while it's the wild number because inside of course, I don't and very often we don't feel anywhere near as old as those numbers that you know Roll by and inside. I don't know how it what age I feel it deep.
Already, it's already because it's all just a concept
right. So how do you in let's just say current circumstances think about how much of your mind space or energy to dedicate to relating to the anxiety and fear and so on differently or with an accepting heart and so you don't become lost as you put it in these overblown fantasies in some cases versus the kind of brass.
Acts of problem solving where you're taking steps to disinfect packages, you're taking steps to socially distance, etc. Etc. Etc. Thinking about medications. You might need for the next two to three months if there are shortages. How do you how do you think about or suggest that you blend those two? Because I do see people who fall in a binary way a hundred percent on one side or the other and that doesn't strike me as
ideal. Yeah one side would
Almost too kind of denial and just carrying on or saying well, you know, the outer doesn't matter and the other is to get lost in the future, right? You're fearful 50-year whole fantasies when when the future is still really unknown for us part of what happens for me. And I think as we mature become wiser is that we become comfortable.
Table with Paradox the way to put it most simply as you need to remember your Buddha nature and your Social Security number if there are there are there different dimensions to our are being just as light can be measured as a particle or a wave depending how you examine it and it's there it is in its particle form and you can see it or there it is.
As a wave function in the same way Consciousness itself can be experienced differently. It can be experienced as a field of vast Timeless awareness. It can also be experienced in each moment as the consciousness of what's here almost as if it's a particle and we we imagined beings have this miraculous capacity to hold these multiple dimensions in a wise and
Open heart. So I recommend to people of course be sensible any you know, any good spiritual teacher says what they want from students is, you know, as a student who's dedicated. Yes, and also who has some common sense and not just lost in the illusion. So be practical and in your community be careful because this virus is spreading and it will spread further. There's not a question of it and
Question more is there's a collective in an individual one for us as individuals. How can we go through this and tanned ourselves and others with care and not spiral down inwardly into a place of fear or despair. Alright, and this is possible we've done this as human beings were survivors and we have generations of ancestors behind you that are cheering you on and saying yep we
Live through some stuff tough stuff to and I remember being in the in the forest Monastery and I got very sick at different times as a monk were in that period of My Life Training.
Can you just for people who don't have contacts explain the forest Monastery what you mean
you are when when when I became interested in Buddhism, I went in the 1960s to Thailand where I worked for some time in the Peace Corps on tropical medicine.
And teams and various remote Villages and then I became a Buddhist monk in monasteries of the forests of the area of Thailand and Laos that were still huge vast for us. And in that in those monasteries, we lived very very simply, you know took our alms bowl out to the nearby Village to walk and get whatever food we could and you know sewed and made our own.
On robes and it was a marvelous way of life and one that was ancient and much of it was really the training. We did a lot of meditation. We also did various kinds of communal practices and service and things like that was learning how to be steady and balanced and compassionate to our self and others through all the ups and downs. So, I remember when I was sick with malaria had typhoid, too.
Our various things I went through and I was lying on the kind of wooden floor of my little Hut in the forest and didn't go to the Daily chanting or whatever. So the teacher came to see me and he said, how are you I said, I've got a I'm really sick. He felt me and said you have a high fever I said, yeah. He looked at me quite knowingly said it's probably malaria. I said it probably is he said makes you feel bad.
Bad, doesn't it I said, yeah, really suffering. He looked at me. I said, yes, really suffering. He says makes you think about going home to your mother doesn't it? And I smiled because he was a very funny guy. I said absolutely you said this is malaria all of us who lived in the jungle of had it now there's good medicines and I'll send the medicine monk to help you later. But remember no matter how hard it is, you know how to practice with this. We've all done this
And he smiled he looked and he says you can do this and and he actually urged me to sit up in the middle of it there. I was sweating and chills you said sit with it meditate with it and you'll find your Center in the midst of it all so that was the kind of training and in some way we all have that training in our lives. We know there are choices where we go down the rabbit hole of our fears and get lost and contracted and that's fine. You can say, thank you. Thank you for trying.
Trying to take care of me as you, you know, as you might to your fears, but then you remember that who you are is not limited to that and this is the shift of identity that who you are is bigger than the thoughts and the fears or worries. And when you remember who you really are with which is awareness itself a vast loving awareness, then you can look at the
Stances hold them with great compassion and say well, how do I want to live now? How do I want to follow this? And the beautiful thing is that you learn that you don't have to pick up all those difficult thoughts and carry them around. We were out wandering in the rice paddies on a way to a village to collect alms food one day with my teacher ajahn. Chah and some monks and out across the rice paddies was this great big rock.
A boulder and ajahn. Chah said is that Boulder heavy to us? He asked the question kind of the way a Zen master would and being intelligent young monks. We said, yes, it is master and he smiled and he said not if you don't pick it
up, I knew there had to be a trick coming. I knew there's something coming
it was and it was it was something that we learn inside of how how to witness what's present.
Without being lost in it.
And so let's or let's stay with the question of the spread of this virus because our our society isn't very well prepared, but we can prepare ourselves. We can prepare our hearts so that we're that one on the boat whether we stay in our homes at times that we need to and take it as a time of deepening our our sense of presence and care for others. It also means that we can
Come altruistic. It can bring out the best in us and let me tell you a story.
This was on BBC some not so many years ago. They did a special on the 60th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad in World War II and Leningrad was besieged by the German Army for almost three years through three long Winters and there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people inside many who were close to starving.
And one older woman who had been there as a child was describing the experience and she said we would go out once a week. She said in in the winter. I went out to pick up bread for my mother and myself and the streets were icy and slippery and I stood in the bread line and went and got my piece of bread and as I came out I fell on the ice and the bread fell into the mud.
Oh and I sat there and I wept I was a young girl and another woman walked out behind me who had received her bread and she picked help pick me up and she tore piece of bread in half and wrapped it in a cloth and handed it to me. And then this old woman led the camera down the hallway of her railroad type apartment into the kitchen and opened a cabinet. There was a
Ceramic, which he pulled open and pulled out of blue kerchief and untied it and inside was a part of that piece of bread. And she said what that woman did for me as she gave me the spirit to live through the next year and a half of the of the Seas and I'll never forget it. Well, so we have the opportunity even in difficult times.
Let our spirit
shine. Hmm. Maybe it may be especially in difficult times and and it I've been thinking a lot of an expression recently and how it might apply to me and how I'm responding to current life events or world events for that matter and I don't know the attribution. So I apologize to ever actually said or wrote this but that adversity does not build character it reveals character.
Have you seen any and let's just take for the time being that to be true whether it is or it isn't but let's just let's assume that to be true. Have you seen any patterns in the people who are having the greatest difficulty emotionally psychologically with the spread of this novel coronavirus are and is there anything to be learned from that that can help
people? Well, the first thing to say is that
I've seen people I have a friend who's a doctor who's going around and visiting anybody who is God symptoms and she's you know from from the outside. You might call it heroic in some way. But she said but this is what I trained for. This is the oath that we take is Physicians who will actually be there and so it brings out what's beautiful in lots of people however as you say
If we have a tendency to worry which many people do or if we have a tendency to feel ourselves to be small if our identity is built somehow around the sense of separateness. Then this connect exacerbated what's helpful is to have a bigger perspective the Ojibwa Indian Native Americans have this amazing I find poetic.
To way of putting it they say sometimes I go about pitying myself when all the while I'm being carried by great winds across the sky and and we are in this human Incarnation for a certain measure of time. No one knows how long they have a beautiful and difficult and remarkable dance in this life.
And how we do it we're being carried by vastness and we're not just this personality or our history or the small sense of self. You are spirit that was born into your body. They were you are the loving awareness that was born into this incarnation.
And you get to remember who you are as you start to awaken and it gives you a tremendous kind of Freedom. So my hope is that people will see their habits. And also remember that who they are the Buddhist texts begin with the words. Oh nobly born or you who are the sons and daughters of the lineages of the awakened ones.
Remember who you really are that it will actually bring out what's beautiful in people.
Hmm, you know, I asked that I think this is this is relevant to a question. I asked earlier in so much as you strike me as someone who relates to life and death and mortality perhaps differently than many folks including many people. I've had on this podcast and you mentioned that you're about to turn 75. I think you've got lots of mileage left.
Left and I also know that older segments of the population as it relates to covet 19 at least appear to be more susceptible diesel to severe illness and death and many people including myself are worried about their parents and are not that perhaps in some cases for the first time, but certainly right now A lot of people are looking at mortality or feeling the sort of imminent.
Looming Specter of death in some capacity or the potential of death and struggling with that. How do you relate to death and
mortality?
So I want to tell a little story of relation to my twin brother when he died and I don't remember so well, we did in the last podcast. So if I Repent, okay, no problem. I think it may be relevant. And then from that maybe we can talk about how one learns to face death in a different way. It's over these years ago a few years ago.
My twin brother who was a accomplished and acclaimed scientist and a geneticists and a and a world Explorer. He was a population biologists more than anything else. So he explored the underwater genomes of the Great Lakes of the world and Lake Malawi in Africa and Lake Baikal in Siberia in Lake Titicaca in the Andes and so forth and genetic diversity.
You get all those sort of things. He did lots else. He was in a claim Professor, but he got blood cancer and after a time it morphed into a leukemia that they were not able in the end. He had a stem cell transplant and all kinds of good treatment, but they were not able to stop so I was with him in the
weeks before he died and I loved him a lot. He's a you know, as a twin and a funny, you know high-spirited interesting playful human being but there he was lying and knowing that he was going to die soon and I thought well, maybe I'll teach you meditation I said to him
But he'd been in some pain and you know in all kinds of states and I realized pretty quickly that it was a little late for that. I mean, yes, I could do a couple guided meditations, but mostly it was beyond his doing some inner training. So I said, how about instead if I meditate with you and I'll meditate out loud and so you'll get a sense of how I do this and he was a member of the Explorers Club.
In you know, which has the people who first climbed Everest or went to the North Pole or the South Pole or went to the moon all these great explorers. I said, will they take inner Explorer? She said no. No, we only do the
hours.
Okay. I said well, so I close my eyes. It was sitting next to his bed and I began to meditate and I said, I'm simply paying attention with a loving awareness to what's here and body heart and mind my
My my main practice is that of opening to what so and learning from it and there are different channels or perspectives that open up. So I said I'm tuning in right here and I close my eyes.
And after a minute or so I said my body is feeling cold.
And the coldest centered in my testicles and in my in my penis and you know, right in my groin and it's getting colder, it's like ice and I'm paying as I continue to pay attention and I said and this is death. I feel it because our minds and bodies as Twins were really linked. I feel death growing in my body.
And he said so what do you do and I said you pay attention to it. And so I sat with that for a little bit and I said now I feel my attention moving from the ice in my genitals up to my heart and all of a sudden the temperature changes and I feel my heart warm like an oven and a color kind of red comes and I feel a love that I've had for you since we were in the womb or maybe lifetimes past, who knows but this love
I feel is outside of time that whether I'm with you in your body or not. We love each other and I feel a rest a connection in this love that's huge and warm and keeps us connected forever and I stayed with that for time and I said now my attention is moving it spontaneously up to my head and my head's dissolved and now I feel myself.
To be that space and awareness itself, which is how I practice often in meditation. And I said in this place I can sense that. There's a body here or some sensations of mind and sense of body over there because I can see and hear and feel yours. They're just appearances on the screen of Timeless awareness coming and going and who we are is so much bigger than this. We are the
Of Consciousness itself that manifests in these incarnations and in this I feel absolutely at peace and open and spacious and when I opened my eyes and looked at him he had become much more peaceful. It's as if he had taken in these dimensions and it had reminded him of something that he knew deep in himself because these are the different
Engines of Freedom that come as one trains in meditation and so let me talk about that a tiny bit and then I'll get back to your question about death because there
is no no rush. That's our
interesting as well. There are four dimensions of Freedom that you learn as you train in will call it meditation or in the inner capacities of presence and each of them in.
All of a shift of identity the first is that you become more and more able to be present with the content of your experience with what is called. The 10,000 Joys and the 10,000 Sorrows. So as you all use saving as the example is you sit and meditate you'll have your longing and your love and your pitches and your worries and your
ER and your joy and your creativity and your imagination and your pain in the knee, you know and your resentments and you have all of those things come and the first thing that first dimension of Freedom that grows for you is the what neuroscientists call expanding the window of Tolerance the are able to tolerate your Humanity.
With its broken heart and it's incredible love, you know with unbearable beauty of the world you live in and the ocean of tears and the poet. I believe it's hafez says don't surrender your loneliness so quickly let it cut more deeply Let It season you as few ingredients can and so you sit with your loneliness and you learn to say aha this
This is loneliness and give about to it and say yes. Thank you for your song and you sit with your love and you acknowledge that you sit with a the difficulty or shame that many people carry. I remember working with this man who'd been an orphan and he felt like there was something wrong with him because he was put into an orphanage even though it was nothing that he is a child had done and you learn to tolerate your humanity and that already brings a tremendous kind of freedom.
And then the next dimension of freedom and they're they're not in order. They're different dimensions of because we are we are able to hold were beings of multi-level or Paradox is not just the content but the process or the common Humanity of experience and you start to realize that what you take so personally.
Is just what life is Zorba? The Greek says trouble life is trouble only death is nice. He goes
on
and you start to see you know that there are different kinds of Tears. They're the tears from your own trauma and being, you know hurt or wounded or abandoned or abused at need to be honored and we might talk about trauma more later.
There's another kind of tears that are called the tears of the way. And those are the tears of the Dharma where you realize when You Face your own loneliness or longing or the way that you've been mistreated all of a sudden you realize oh loneliness and longing comes with being human praise and blame come with being human. Joy and sorrow come with being human. I think last time I told you the story of being with Pema.
Children with this person this woman whose partner had committed suicide and how terrible that was for her and Pema telling her to hold it all with compassion. And then I asked in this room of two or three thousand people for people to raise their hands or stand up if someone in their family had committed suicide or someone close to them, you know in two or three hundred people stood up.
And all of a sudden that woman gazed back at them. I asked her to look and they had her in the room became a holy place because there was so much common Humanity of that which the heart has to bear and yet we know we can bear when we are connected with others. And so the second dimension or aspect of freedom is our common Humanity that it's
Not personal that you have suffering or the people get sick or that you have triumphs and successes and you, you know make a name for yourself or or build something beautiful. These are part of what human Incarnation does and you begin to hold it all not as me and mine but as part of this great dance and it's all both impermanent and not so personal. It has both its you know joys.
And it's suffering and the Heart grows wider to hold this and and then the next Dimension which opens up further and kind of talks to that question. You talked about developmental versus fruition practice and I'll get back to it is the dimension of awareness itself. My teacher ajahn chah this great meditation master in the forests of Thailand and Laos.
Had lived in caves and done austere practices and long days and months of meditation and out in the jungles where there are still were tigers and all those things and he'd had deep insights and visions and you know, lots of suffering but also tremendous insights and beautiful states of samadhi and Awakening and he went to see the greatest master of his time.
Another odd, John or teacher named John man and told him about all the things that had happened in his meditation and insights and understandings and beautiful States that had come of dissolving his body into light and so forth and I Jen mom's response was cha, dude, you've missed the point. He said those are just experiences. They're like movies on a screen you said
and you have the war movie and you have the movie of conflict at work and you sit and you have the romantic comedy and you have the documentary. He said they're all happening. They arise and pass. Those are not the point the point. He says it's because none of those can be held onto they all come and go the question is to whom do they happen? Turn your attention back to the one who knows to The Knowing there was a phrase.
use sit 6E Kabuto to the one who knows and become the witnessing of all of this because who you really are is consciousness itself manifesting in the different forms that are experienced but Consciousness itself is timeless and pure and open vast like the sky containing all things but not limited by their
them and when you become the loving awareness itself, then this is the gateway to have an even greater dimension of freedom. And then since I'm going on and on here, I'll add the fourth dimension of Freedom, which is that as you become familiar with and remember and remind yourself and discover that you can be
so loving awareness that you are the witness to things all these things change, but even now as you listen to him and his people are listening to this podcast and you feel your body seated there in a chair or you're in your car or wherever you are listening and you hear the sounds and the other sounds around you, you know in the site's there is a Consciousness that knows these turn your attention from the
To the mystery of Consciousness that is ever-present.
This is the one who knows the knowing rest in it. It is your true home.
And from this place then they're opens one more dimension of Freedom as my teacher in India. SRI. Nisargadatta said wisdom tells me I am nothing love tells me I am everything between these two my life flows and as you become the witness,
Of these words of your body of experience of life.
It's not that you remove yourself from life, but you actually become more intimate with it. You become able to hold it in this great heart mind that word in Sanskrit is Jitter which means both heart and mind that is loving awareness and with loving awareness not only is their spaciousness, but there's also intimate connection and so your love grows for this mystery of life even
As your freedom grows, and so these are the different dimensions of their part of the training that we do when we train teachers in meditation, but these are the different dimensions of Freedom that are possible for us. And as you learn these they allow you to enter the terrain of birth and death with a wise and spacious heart. So I'd be happy to talk more about death, but let me take a pause here because I've been going for a while.
Al and I wonder how all this sounds to you
I enjoy this type of discussion, so it makes sense to me a conceptually experientially and perhaps we'll get to this point or will cover this topic at some point. I think particularly with certain adjunct assistance in ego dissolution. I feel as though I've from an experiential standpoint also perhaps glass
Just on the edges of some of these Dimensions personally and I suppose as as The Shepherd of my listeners in the way. It's landed is both very very fascinating end wondering how for someone who is in pain currently thinking about ruminating upon perhaps just perseverating with the topic of mortality and death the uncontrollability.
He of vastly changing circumstances, perhaps they're separated on opposite sides of the country from their parents or grandparents and recognize that Health Care Systems may be overwhelmed etcetera Etc. Is there is there something that they can do just as a triage practice they may not go through all of these Dimensions, but is there anything they can do in terms of practice or anything?
And share that might give them some reprieve or lessen the severity of that anxiety that's associated with all
that. Yes. There are few things that they can do in it. I'm grateful for the Practical dimension of your question. So first I want to answer personally. I've had a really good life. So I feel in many ways complete.
And so what will happen in terms of death? I don't particularly want to die. I'd like to be there for my grandson Desmond who's now approaching one and a half years old. I want to play, you know tag and ball watch things and you know watch him develop and grow and all that. But I also feel at peace with myself that being said, of course people are going to be afraid and of course they're going to be worried for whether it's their parents, who are
Older or other people they know who are vulnerable or themselves. So here are several different things that are important. The first is to stop and just to sit down for a little bit and maybe put your hand on your heart everyday and remind yourself. Let me hold all of what I'm worried about with a tender compassion bring in the element of compassion because we human beings go through.
Through difficult things. Let me hold myself and my worries and my parents or my friends who are vulnerable. May they be safe and well, you can sort of extend your well-wishing may we hold ourselves with tenderness and compassion? So this sort of brings that altruistic quality and reminds us that we can hold things with kindness not to judge yourself. Even you know, you think oh, well I shouldn't be
So much. Why should this or I shouldn't be anxious again? Just say thank you for trying to take care of me. And then the next step is to notice. I'm okay for now and this becomes really important because your parents are okay for now or the people you worry about are okay for now, it doesn't mean they shouldn't prepare get your masks or sequester yourself, you know or line up the kind of care you might need or medications.
But to live where you are to come back and say I'm okay for now and feel yourself rooted in the earth. Another thing that you can do you feel yourself connected to the Earth is literally to go outside and find a beautiful Boulder or rock or a tree and stand with it and feel the roots of the tree look at it and sense how it goes into the Earth and how that tree lives.
Wind and storm and loses its leaves and regains them and how life keeps renewing itself and stand with that tree.
And feel how you too can root yourself in the Earth how you can stand in the Winds of Change and feel grounded.
And steady and flexible and find those qualities in yourself again. You can take your images of worry and fear thank them for trying to protect you and visualize placing them in a bowl or into some other form and put them on an altar and that altar in your mind can be
Filled with the you know, the image of whoever whatever you take to be sacred. It can be the Buddha and Quan Yin or Jesus or mother Mary, you know or Gandhi or whoever it is or if you have an altar at home because some people do and they put their favorite spiritual inspiration on it. You can write your worries on a piece of paper feel all the energy of those fears in your body.
The emotions of it the stories and then fold the paper up and bring it to your altar and put it in the lap of Kwan Yin or in front of mother Mary and say you hold these now I will do what I can for my parents. I'll take care of myself and my family and Community. I'll let you carry the fears. I'm going to do it from a place of centeredness and courage.
No to as you do this that just as I talked about with with a vastness, don't be squeamish about letting things go you can actually let go of some thoughts and feelings. It doesn't mean they won't be there. They'll come up again, but you can say, you know, not now I put you on the altar I let you go. I put you back into the Earth and and instead.
Ted I'm now going to shift my Consciousness to calm and spaciousness and vastness and feel your breath breathing in and out as it does and feel how life is carried you and let yourself open to a space of steadiness and calm and maybe link your spirit with all those others who are steady and calm and the world.
Right now just as you are the thousands and thousands who found a way to be calm and steady the Physicians and nurses, you know, the fathers and mothers of children who found their way to tend one another with a steadiness in a calm and link your Consciousness with them.
So these are a few of many practices to suggest and this is important to say also that it's a not a one-time thing. That's why they're called practice and not perfect because you do it. You lose it you kind of get lost again. You can't sleep as you said Tim or you get lost in worries, and then you can't sleep and you say all right. Let me sit up and meditate and let me meditate on vastness and let me become.
the bodhisattva of peace and compassion and extend my compassion to everyone else who can't sleep tonight and will meditate together and will meditate on our connection and love and little by little you'll get bored just doing the compassion over and over and you'll fall back
asleep, but it strikes me that this
well a number of things strike me first for people who have not ever tried this the the visualization of placing these various feelings or concerns on an altar or with other advice-giving sources. You respect or physically putting it on your altar is at least has been for me surprisingly effective and not only that but it doesn't have to take a
Long time it's it's the power of the metaphor for me at least has been very effective and certainly Jackie helped me in many other instances over the years the linking of Consciousness with others. I think is something I haven't quite paid enough attention to and that that strikes me also that it could be particularly important and nourishing when people are
say social distancing or self quarantining or otherwise isolated or feeling physically isolated. So I that strikes me is as very good practice and I had a follow-up question, which was could you maybe expound a bit or expand a bit on don't be squeamish about letting things go because I think I need to hear perhaps maybe just you repeat what?
Said or elaborates little bit.
Well, it makes me think about ramdas who we may talk about as we go on as well and that story when he was teaching as Baba Ram Dass and it just come back from India with his white robes and Beads and so forth and doing offering Hindu and Buddhist Meditation some of what we just did and some Hindu mantras and this woman in the front row said hey around us are
Are you Jewish? Come on, it's what's with the Hindu stuff and around us smile. And he said I am he said and I I was as he's pointed out. He said it was bar mitzvahed as I was and there's a lot that I loved in the Jewish spiritual tradition. The acidic Masters are like the Zen Masters you read the stories and the Kabbalah has all these dimensions of Consciousness and then he smiled and he said, but remember I'm only Jewish on my parents
side
and it was
As he was witty comment, but also a profound one because we can get lost in things that were identified with and really take them to be our self. But then in a moment we can also say Ah, that's just common Humanity. That's just and we can step back and not take take it. So personally and in this case
It's like your whole history your parents your trauma, you know, your gender whatever all those things are given to you in this incarnation in a certain way, but in another way who you really are is bigger than all of that. And so then you can also spread out your Consciousness or open to that vastness and say I'm going to connect my talk with everyone in the world who steady and calm right now we will do this together.
So, I don't know if that helps but it does it does
help and you also mentioned a name that I know some listeners will not recognize and that is Quan Yin now speaking as someone who's spent some time at Spirit Rock and actually had some very challenging times in my first silent meditation over an extended period of time which you are very gracious and generous and helping me to get through. There's a very large wooden.
Irving of quan Yin at Spirit Rock who is Quan Yin. And what is the significance of quan Yin for you as a as a symbol or an avatar or an icon?
So part of what's interesting about Consciousness is that it works in the minut particulars, you know your toenails and the the kind of breakfast, uh
This morning, you know and the number of people in your family and what kind of carpet or would you have on the floor that it has the specifics of life but it also has an archetypal Dimension which is to say it has patterns. The archetypes are the patterns of life. There's the pattern of you know houses or places to live whether they're you know huts
Sore or thatched or caves or wooden or concrete or something? They all fit under the pattern or the archetype of of a home and in in the spiritual language the archetypes of Awakened Consciousness, which are sometimes described as you know, great wise beings and so forth are many many kinds and
Onion is a bodhisattva bodhisattvas the compound word. That means Bodie is awakened and satva is being someone who's committed to compassion and the freedom or The Awakening of all beings and there's lots and lots of bodhisattvas. And in fact, I think there's lots of bodhisattvas in my neighborhood people who treat one another beautifully who help uplift one another who have a free heart. We know bodhisattvas, so,
Onion is the name for a Buddhist archetypal bodhisattva. She is the consciousness of universal compassion and sometimes she's through depicted with a thousand arms and a thousand hands enough to reach out to respond to the needs of the whole universe. So we have these images of guanyin because she's
As an archetype. She's a symbol of compassion itself and we can become that the beautiful thing is not that there's some, you know symbol on the wall or carb statue in whatever tradition it is, but that these are really symbols for what lies within us. And so we have
We have all these capacities and depending which ones we take not Han used to talk about. It is seeds in Consciousness depending which ones we water and tend those are what Blossom if we water and tend our anger it will grow if we water and tend and spend time and are our fears or you know our conflict they will grow if we water the seeds of peace.
In US they'll grow if we water the seeds of compassion in Consciousness and tend to it. It will blossom in the invitation of these archetypes is to realize that we have this illness. It's not separate from us. And also I think there's something else people kind of approach spiritual life as a grim Duty. Alright, I jog I meditate you know, I go to therapy I watch
Watch my diet. I'm trying to lose weight. And now I got a damn do the damn meditation stuff, you know, and it's not about that. It's not about like perfecting yourself. Okay. I've got a fix my body and I've got a heal everything and then I've got to fix my personality and perfect it. It's not about perfecting yourself.
It's about perfecting Your Love.
Can you live in this world with love for this uman Incarnation with all its Marbles and its imperfections. There's something bigger than that Zen master ryokan the most beloved poet of Japan. He wrote of himself last year a foolish monk this year no change and there's so much tenderness. That's like wine.
In speaking or here's another phrase from Quan Yin. My old faults like snow falling on warm ground that there's a forgiveness and a tenderness in in that archetype of quan. Yin that says, yes, we're human and yes, we all get afraid we make mistakes and we can water the seed the Magnificent seeds of
ants and care and love all of those are also part of who we really are and then beyond that we are Consciousness having this great game.
And that's where your psychedelics come in my friend as well as meditation because you were you were you were beginning that you know, I was tiptoeing around crustacean. Yeah. Okay,
let's jump in you mentioned one of the arch. They are jessep's of of American psychedelia Ram Dass and a sense at least Yang starting back in his Harvard days in his previous.
Incarnation as Richard Alpert, so could you speak to it could be specific to Ram Dass. It could be in the context of your own life. But what role does or do psychedelics serve if any and and they don't need to be limited to psychedelics could we could put it under the umbrella of sacred medicine or
yeah or something else medicines, you know, I written about this. I've written a number of articles.
That chapter in a book called bringing home the Dharma where I where I write more extensively about this. There is a long tradition as we know in many many spiritual cultures, whether the Ayahuasca cultures of the Amazon the African cultures ibogaine and so forth and Indian cultures of Soma that's woven into The Vedas, you know, or the huichol Indian.
Culture using peyote, you know or the magic mushroom cultures of Central America and so forth. There's this long beautiful human tradition of using sacred medicines to help us remember who we are and because they're so powerful. They're also scary to people because they take apart our our conventional reality.
Which is why when Tim Leary and Richard Alpert back in the old Harbor days where you know turn on tune in and drop out were espousing that at the same time. There was the sort of freewheeling hippie movement of love and peace as opposed to the war in Vietnam. That was a long time ago half a century ago, but it was also threatening to the culture at large that was more focused on.
Getting through school having a job on making a bunch of money on fulfilling your social roles and these sacred medicines. They have different dimensions. But in the deepest way, they let you shift your identity from being that separate sense of self that separate atom in the ACOG of you know, the culture and come back to remember loved.
Who you are to have a sense of mystery and vastness and of course in the meantime depending which ones you take they're also quite cleansing. And so you'll find in taking them that you relive your traumas. And if you relive them in a conscious way, you can release yourself from them. I've worked for 40 years or more together with stanislav grof another of the great Elders in the Psychedelic movement. And now of course.
Course with the with Michael pollan's wonderful book on how to change your mind and the Resurgence of research at Johns Hopkins and UCLA. And why you and so forth It's again possible to see the benefits of these medicines and people are using them in all kinds of ways now they can be misuse like anything we're Americans. We not a misuse anything and for certain people people who
Already, you know psychiatric concerns or histories and so forth. They can actually be dangerous. So I don't mean to say that they're all everything's all hunky-dory and they can easily Miss be misused as party drugs and things like that or people then in wrong circumstances having what they call a bad trip because they don't actually understand it but in general when they're approached.
act as a Sacrament or as a sacred medicine or something in the simplest way to invite us to learn from a deep Dimension are being they can be quite magic and you can take a psilocybin mushrooms, you know or join a circle that is drinking the Ayahuasca tea, you know, and when it's held in the right set and setting where it's quiet and your
Ended by someone else and you're able to let go and open in a safe way. You'll find that. There's a purification that takes place a release of things held in the body and in the emotions of past difficulties and traumas images and Visions will come and then beyond that if you allow it, they're opens a sense of joy and mystery and a connection to the Consciousness that you really are and all these things are possible.
Bill in what I've written almost all the very well-known and respected teachers of my generation from the Eastern side of our, you know meditation and the West teachers like Sharon salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and Pema chodron and you name them. They all started with psychedelics. We all did and it gave us a glimpse into
Something that we then wanted to learn further. The beautiful thing is that there's a great compliment between this and the inner trainings in meditation. When you meditate you learn how to navigate these vast spaces and all the intensity of emotion and healing the come up with a more gracious and understanding perspective and in my many many years of working with
Ram Dass but especially with stand graph where we would lead reads Retreats for hundreds and thousands with holotropic breathwork many people who are also using these psychedelics at the same time or near that we learned and showed people both how to open through this process and at the same time how to use the meditative skills of witnessing of being the loving awareness.
of Tolerance of opening the window of Tolerance of trust and compassion holding whatever arises in compassion so that all the lessons in the openings would actually land in a integrate more integrated and Wise Way in their life, so I'm excited that these are now available in our culture and that people are in a conversation about how to use them in a healthy and skillful way and celebrate that as part of the
the part of our human Heritage of what we can use to remember that who we are in the end is love to who we are as life itself living through us and our connection that we are as my teacher said wisdom says I am nothing and loves as I'm everything that we are Consciousness connected with all things. I remember this image from Alice Walker who wrote of one
Director she said one day. I was sitting there like a motherless child, which I was and it come to me that feeling of being a part of everything and I knew if I cut a tree my arm would bleed and I laugh and I cry and I run all around the house. In fact when it happens, you just can't miss it. There is a reality of our interconnection that is available to us and we all know it, you know.
We know it from walking in the high mountains and having our eyes and senses cleanse and open. We know it from lovemaking and dissolving into one another into the field of love. We know it from being there at the birth of a child witnessing that mystery or holding the hand of someone at the time of death and seeing that miraculous moment when Spirit leaves the body and it's the after that it's just
The corpse and realizing that we're not this body who we are a spirit itself. We know in all these different ways and the sacred medicines are a way of bringing us back to that
Jack. I'd love to ask you about perhaps about mistakes or misuses of these plants and medicines and compounds and so on in the sense that just as there are people
Who use these tools in the right settings with the proper preparation proper supervision guidance and I should say just as a caveat. Neither of us are recommending anyone do anything with severe legal side effects. In other words, many of these compounds are schedule 1 and the United States and otherwise highly policed and scheduled and controlled. So yeah, follow your local legal.
Restrictions and requirements, but just as there are people who use these things in responsible ways. There are also people who are somewhat like a hammer looking for nails in this sense that they try to use these tools to fix everything and anything or they use them. I wouldn't say to escape exactly because these are on some level anti Escapist tools.
You're what you're trying to get away from is almost certainly going to come up and stare you right in the face for an extended period of time which can be uncomfortable. How can these be overused or abused in abuse is a strong word? So let's just say overused.
Well, you know, they can become party drugs and I'm not against parties or people having that kind of dance and loving connection so forth, but they can be used in ways that are superficial if you say that you know, in which
Or they can be using this setting where you can get lost or frightened in the setting because it's not really very well contained or on occasion. The beautiful thing about most of the psychedelics is that they're not particularly addictive which is a great relief. However, human beings, you know, we can still try on take a lot and see what happens and that's not particularly helpful or healthy. That's
Another way of misusing it or trying to get somebody else to do that. They should be approached with respect.
And approached with that respect means also, you know not too frequent and that you have to ask your own heart. Well, what does that mean? How much can I learn from but how do I integrate it? Can I take some time afterward? You know, it's not like piling on and the truth is that none of these things? Is it kind of magic cure as you said that you're just going to fix everything with it because it doesn't work that way.
Each of these are opportunities for healing for understanding for opening to continue and all that blessed. That's great. You want to take the journey and not kind of leap ahead and you started somehow early on talking about the difference between development and fruition the fruition lens of becoming the Consciousness the one who knows you can have that perspective.
And because we are paradoxical you also still need to do the inner work or even if you have had a beautiful vast meditation or a psychedelic trip or something that's opened. You like that still they'll be places that you're caught and they'll be trauma that you carry and that becomes the place to develop compassion open the window tolerance allow that healing to take place and
stand that we're multi-dimensional beings. And so yeah, I mean, these are part of the it's so mysterious. We are mysterious Spiritual Beings and these help open the gate but so does poetry you know, so does looking deeply in the eyes of another person so does going out onto the ocean and seeing its vastness or walking in the high mountains. These are all our Birthright so
Even the mystery of sleep, you know, I mean we want to sleep in you talked about, you know wanting to sleep and I find that when I can't sleep and mostly I'm able to sleep pretty easily I get up and I meditate say okay, it's given to me time to meditate and then I noticed my mind is maybe thinking about something or obsessing or worried or something? Oh, yeah. Thank you for trying to take care of me. It's okay.
And I go back to my compassion practice or to the vastness and after a while I get bored and I go back to sleep. But there's some way in which sleep is mysterious, you know Tim here we are and then every day we long to go unconscious forget about the dream part. We do that's like, oh can I only have a period where I disappear? You know, people are worried about this appearing.
Meditation Hallelujah, can I have a period where I disappear and I'm not so self involved with my life and all the things I have to do and love and hate and so forth. Please give me a little piece. You know, it's it's such a weird thing that that beings being sleep. Nobody looks at these things that it's just like eating you have this hole at the top of your body into which you stuff dead plants and animals
regularly.
Grind them up with these bones that hang down and glug them down through the tube. You know, and you you ambulate it by Falling One Direction and catching yourself and you fall the other side and you catch yourself. I mean, how did you get into this weird thing, you know, so we've lost that sense of mystery sleep is one of the great Mysteries and we love it. So when you have that sense that instead of being success or failure, that's like oh
You get to you get to see this mystery and realize that it's connected with everything.
Yeah, you mentioned Stan stanislav grof earlier. Yeah prof. Who was very fortunate to have on the podcast before his stroke not too long ago, which I think he's largely recovered from in terms of writing but had some Aphasia afterwards much like Ram Dass did although not that severe he I believe
has certainly spoken extensively on these topics and one of his observations. I'm going to paraphrase here that is a believe in his most recent book or actually combination of two books. It related to suicide and attempts at suicide. Perhaps being attempts to free oneself from the ego but thinking that the only path available for that is extinguishing your physical.
And that part of the reason you see efficacy with certain psychedelics as been shown at least in certain clinical studies done with psilocybin the ability to reduce end-of-life anxiety in terminal cancer patients or even address say treatment resistant depression is in part because just as we long for sleep to go unconscious in a sense or go subconscious. It's
that the temporary alleviation of the burden of self-centeredness and this sort of recursive self-referential prison that we can create for ourselves. So I do think that's an astute observation about sleep. I just want to underscore a few things. You said also one is that I do think for anyone who is considering any type of psychedelic experience it is it is incredibly valuable to put
On a little bit of mileage with a regular meditation practice and to practice even in a somewhat volume turned down sense sitting with emotions that may be difficult or thoughts that may be unpleasant for say a consecutive 30-day period meaning daily for 30 days or 60 days minimum before considering a larger psychedelic experience. I would be certainly
IE something I would strongly suggest and it's akin to on some level drinking from the water fountain before you drink from the garden hose before you drink from the fire hose. I think that they can be complementary in a lot of respects. But I do think
it's a very good idea good advice. It's really good advice. And also if you're going to do it the other dangers you want to have make sure that the source of that sacred medicine is clean.
Good and not just Street stuff and you want to have a sitter for people who do it's like going out into the you know, an astronaut you want to containment. So you want someone who's a not taking that to sit with you 10 you give you whatever you need. Keep you warm give you something to drink Foster a sense that you're protected so that what needs to happen inwardly is held in this sacred set and setting and that makes
It's all the difference. Now what Stan said what Stan grof said about about suicide to let me paraphrase it in a pretty similar way that when people feel that they want to commit suicide. They are right that something needs to die. They're mistaken in thinking that it's their body that has to die that they're there but they're facing something that really
Have to die and changing it. Maybe the way their whole way they're living their life. It may be, you know, the history that they have that they have to die to that, you know, you could call it an ego death some sense of identity that they've had that they don't want to let go but they have to some difficulty. So there's some way in which just as you point to the Deep inner work of a psychedelic session where there comes a ego death or a death of the way we hold ourselves.
Laughs and all that we go through is coming to that that transforms us and we realize it's the problem is in our body that problem is actually in our own heart and mind now if anybody's interested in you know, a wise perspective on the nature of Consciousness, the my favorite book of Stan graphs is a book called The Cosmic game, which you can get like everything on online.
And it's a description. He he he described 5,000 people 5,000 sessions saving with people whether they did LSD or holotropic breathing or other sacred medicines and it's a summary of the deepest insights and understandings that have come and it's a very beautiful framework for understanding the nature of Consciousness itself. Now the other thing that you're sort of
Going to Tim has to do with one of our ongoing themes has to do with trauma. And how do we deal with that as it comes up? Whether it's in a psychedelic session or you know in our meditation or just in our lives. So there's that and then I'm also I so we can go there. I'm also remembering sitting with Ram Dass when oh God.
My mind is blank. What's the name of the researcher? Johns Hopkins? Who's been doing? All the Psychedelic research roll it Roland Griffiths is Roland Griffiths, right? So rules the director of the center Rollin Rollin had come to visit Ram Dass was probably last year or two ago and they'd never met in person. But Roland in a way has been picking up that psychedelic work.
That was left off almost 50 years ago by stanislav. Grof who was the last LSD researcher legitimately doing that work it and he was again at Johns Hopkins and so they shared stories and it was actually quite a beautiful afternoon because ramdas told him about the Good Friday experiment with clergy in you know back in the
1960s in Boston and how various clergy members had had experiences of God and experiences of deep religious Awakening in this and then Rolen was a you know describing what he'd learned and it was like a passing of the torch so much love that was there in the room which is of course what ramdas was like in these last years and then Rolen said, he said the thing that makes the biggest difference.
Since for those who come through our studies, whether they're they're healed whether they're able to approach their death in a more peaceful way or whether they had great trauma and that starts to heal or they've had depression or addiction. He said the various groups that we working with. He said one of the scales that were using to measure the experience is a scale for mystical experiences, and he said I can see
Our data quite simply that if someone has any went on and many of our people do a truly a full-blown or a truly deep mystical experience everything shifts in their life. And so this is the invitation from meditation itself or from these psychedelics in the right setting because remember the way that it's done at Hopkins is with a blindfold on and earphone.
And you know so that your your trip is entirely interior and your attended by someone and it allows you to go into the depths of your own being. So this is really different than you know, party tripping or something like
that very different very very different. People can learn more about that program at Hopkins psychedelic dot-org also where you can see not just rolling but many other team members who are absolutely incredible Mary cosima.
Of course, you have Matt Johnson many other scientists and researchers say it's worth looking at the studies in the science that is being done there, which is his really sort of set the bar for how these compounds are researched in the last few decades and hopefully moving forward question for you about trauma. Let's let's jump into it. How how would you suggest people think about trauma you and I
die and I may speak publicly about this more another time, but you and I have had a lot of conversations over the last say for five years and I feel like my response to the current circumstances in the world covered 19 and it's and so on is really an exaggerated display of the hyper-vigilance that is a result of childhood trauma, and I couldn't
Of that in a mathematical proof, but it seems somewhat self evident to me and I would anticipate I would I would guess that a lot of people out there may share that sentiment in some capacity. How should people think about trauma or how do you think about trauma?
So I want to take a pause here, you know, we're talking about a lot of things that are actually very deep in our human experience. We started with virus itself and the fact that we human beings have
Akeley lived through epidemics and that many people have died and it's not just you know, that one becomes calm, but that it's really something huge to be able to try to hold. It's like people living through Warfare. I wish I could say well that's human history as in the past history but its current and we have these streams refugees from war zones in Syria or Sudan or other places or the Undeclared Wars.
The streets and you know Central America between gangs and parts of our country wherever it is. So first, I just want to feel the weight of this in our human life and take a breath and say so this is a this is a, you know, a deep question for us as human beings how you hold this. What's true? Is that in our lives?
Who are listening in yourself and for myself many of us have some significant trauma in our past and if we're not aware of it or don't have a way to manage it then we can become over Vigilant as you described. We can unconsciously manage it through addictions by drinking or drugging or using in all kinds of other ways or
Eating or sex or whatever it is in ways that are unhealthy addictive patterns. We can live our life in a lot of fear. So to understand trauma is is really important and for anyone who's working in the realm of the psyche of the heart and mind whether is a psychologist or spiritual and I can't even divide them. It's just who we are as humans understanding traumas important.
Trauma in the simplest way is speaks of an experience of suffering of some kind of physical or emotional pain of some kind or other that's happened in which our body goes into its fight flight or freeze a kind of survival and then that gets locked into our bodies and hearts and Minds. Sometimes we can have difficulties and process them.
What be there for it feel the feelings feel at all and and live through it and release it and then it doesn't become trauma. It becomes part of our history something that we've learned and that's more how animals do it. Apparently one of the great trauma experts Peter Levine has these videos which show for example a
I think it's have a great big Jack Rabbit being chased by a coyote and it's running as fast as it can in the coyotes running as fast as you can you could see it absolutely terrified and then all of a sudden I don't know some other larger coyote or something comes along and distracts the coyote that's chasing it and the the the hair the rabbit giant hair Ducks down a hole and escapes.
And you see the coyote sniffing around for a while, like where did it go? And then it's Hunters off and then you see the hair come back out of the hole or wherever ducked into and it starts weird. It starts to dance. It starts to jump around as if it's releasing all the tension and all the struggle that was there in that life-or-death chase, and it does that for a while and then it settles down and then it kind of
Hops along and goes on its way well for us as human beings when we're children and you know, whether we're abandoned or abused or terrible things happen, or is it dolts as well where there's an accident or even surgery where they put our put us to sleep put our body knows it and remembers it. We don't release that and it gets stuck.
And to the extent that we have major trauma that's unrecognized or unreleased. As I said, it had it takes over in some unconscious way our life. So let me tell a couple of examples that help give a perspective the release of trauma happens again because we're beings of multi layers or multi-dimensions. It happens.
Different dimensions there is a physical dimension of it. So when you start to remember or recognize as you may already have some memories that there is trauma one part of it and it can be in therapy or sitting with a very good trauma person the people who are trained by Peter Levine somatic experience or EMDR or or Bessel Van Der coax practices and so forth that you
You start to remember as best you can start to tell the story and then feel what it does in your body on your body is going to want to start to move and tighten and release and if you're able to be with someone or with yourself over a period of time and tolerate that gradually what's been held in the body gets released the second dimension of it is the emotions.
And I know this very well from people who faced trauma arising in their meditation on Retreats that I teach and I'll have them close their eyes and the images from the past will arise and then with them come all the emotions of Terror fear of weeping of Rage or grief and all those things that get stuck in that child or in that person even in your body, you know.
There was the the accident or there was the trauma, you know of being abandoned in some terrible way all those emotions arise and to be able to tolerate them and make often with the help of another person make a field of presence and compassion that can allow those to be released becomes important and then there's the mental dimension of telling the story. So having worked with vets who returned back from
Afghanistan and Iraq and Kuwait Middle East especially but other places as well and led Retreats with my colleagues Michael Mead Luis Rodriguez this wonderful Latin poet and activist melanoma. So Mae West African medicine man, when that's returned and it's all the more so from the women who are vets.
They can't tell their stories to their families to the people around them because they're too horrific. And you know what he wants to go home, you know, and I have to tell the stories of the things that that they've been through. It's too difficult, but when we get combat vets together and make a safe place in create a ritual where we light a candle and make a ritual space and say this is where we can hold this.
Suffering in the horrors that you have lived through in the humanity of it and who we really are and they begin to tell their stories. There are two kinds of stories. The first part is I can't tell you what I saw and then they'll go ahead and tell stories and the other combat vets all know this and then the more difficult story is I can't tell you what I had to do.
What I was forced to do and then the real grief comes even deeper because it's a betrayal of our soul in some way, you know to to be forced to kill other people and the fact that they're able to tell their stories and be witnessed. You know that a person can tell the story of what really happened to them as a child and be witnessed with a loving gaze.
And with an understanding of how much suffering that was and how its held in the body and the emotions and to realize that it's not who you are that who you are so much bigger than that. It has an enormously transformative effect. And at the end of these Retreats for veterans, they would then stand up. We'd invite family and community members to come and they would tell a little of their story or read a part of a poem.
They wrote or something.
And finally get some of it out to everyone else to hear and then they would be ritually and symbolically and literally welcome back into the community. We hear you. We Now understand what you've gone through and you are you are one of us we welcome you home and it makes me wonder, you know and worry about all those thousands hundreds of thousands who were just let off the buses back home and no one really.
Help them with the stories in the wounds that they carry and of course I'm talking about military, but I could be talking about you Tim or me where my father was incredibly violent and with throw my mother down the stairs or beat her black and blue so she had to wear long sleeves in the summer. So people wouldn't see how much she was battered by him, you know and how it was to stand there and witness that or have his rage turn on us and it took me a long time to deal with
Pain and the anger I didn't even want to feel how much anger I had because I didn't want to be like him. But then as I meditated I realized it wasn't just out there that it was in me as well. And so these are all dimensions of healing of the body of the emotions and the heart and of the story and one of the great gifts of being with Ram Dass in these last year's is that he became
it became transparent he became a lighthouse of love you would just sit and he would gaze it you with what in India was called the glance of Mercy the eyes of that Guru that being whoever she or he is that looks at you with so much love and you go la blah and I felt this and I've done that and I feel so and your whole story and your pain and your suffering and they just look at you with so much love and you
Member that that's not who you are all that trauma. And so we can do that for one another in these deep healing ways. So that's the beginning of you know your question about trauma.
Thank you Jack.
well, I I think that
Number one, I would like to have you back for a third installment sooner rather than later. I'm ashamed that it took so long to have you back on so that's the first thing I would like to say, you know, no pressure to to accept the invitation now, but I would love to have another installment of this conversation for public consumption. And I think this is I think this is a sensible place.
To talk about what you're up to now and perhaps tie up this conversation because it's provided a lot for people to chew on and think about and hopefully apply and and use I have all sorts of follow-up questions that I will ask another time, but the one that I can't push off is asking you what you are focused on these days.
What is what is that? I'll get to that in just a minute. And yes, I hope next time we can talk about climate change. We can talk about servant leadership because I did some teaching and meditation in the UK Parliament with people from both sides of the aisle and what that was like or working in Palestine and Israel and things like that. I'd love to talk about all those many many more things like this. I want to say one more thing.
around us and then it connects to directly to answer your question of what I'm working on and that is that we held a couple of there have been a whole series of memorials for ramdas as a spiritual friend and teacher and colleague who died in December and I was fortunate enough to teach with him and be with him in December not long before he died and he was so loving that when the retreat ended that the last
day, they give a little set of beads with a thread from his gurus blanket tied into it and all 350 people would pass by Ram Das who is seated there and who didn't have a lot of words because his Aphasia had gotten were sequence because much toward the end of his life and he just gazed at them with so much love that people would stand there and start to weep and at the
Real Krishna Das who is a colleague and a friend and a quite famous musician who does chanting that you hear often in yoga studios around the country and so forth. Christian has told a story. He said I first met ramadasa when I was 18 years old and Rhonda has had just come back from India and was wearing his white robes and his beard and he was teaching and Krishna Das had it was the most compelling spiritual.
Voice I'd ever heard and I just wanted to follow him and I went back to India spent time with his Guru. Maharaji and spent time around Ram Dass in the community and really became part of it and have for years now and he said I can tell you this after those 40 years have passed. He said ramdas became the person we thought he was when we first met
him
and it was it was a really a
Beautiful and Rich comment that talks about all of us because in some way we already know and in another way we're Works in progress right of becoming but it's also it's gorgeous because it means that we can become that love and we come can become that loving awareness. That's who we really are more and more in our life. So the one thing that I will say then to answer your question. I'm involved in other projects in Silicon Valley.
Valley and with trying to humanize the future of technology and Ai and that would be another topic and writing new things and so forth, but I've got a training program for people who are interested in teaching meditation. If you've been a mindfulness practitioner for you know, a few years or or a meditator for some years and you're interested in passing it on to others. It turns out to be one of the most delicious and transformed.
Things you can do with your life and it doesn't mean it becomes your whole life. But one thing that you can do becoming a meditation teacher and so with Tara Brach, we have this online training program to which we poured our very best teachings in our hearts. It's a two-year online program. That's really quite wonderful that you can find out about by going onto my website Jack kornfield.com and involves.
A few in person short Retreats. If you can do them mostly online, you become mentored you become part of a small group and you have a wonderful teacher as a mentor and you have a whole group of others that you're training with and we now have people in 50 countries around the world doing it and it transforms their lives and then they take it into their schools and businesses and communities and health centers and so forth. So it's a beautiful thing to do and
Excited because we've just put everything that we know that good in it and people learn so much and they become part of an amazing community. So that's my current favorite activity or one of the many other one is talking with you Tim and along with you know, getting the holding my beloved Trudy my my wife and Dharma partner and you know lots and bad walking out in this
spring blossoms here in the Bay Area.
Will you have you have many projects? I want to highlight this one for a second because I have spent time with you in person. I have spent time with you on Retreat. I think you are an incredible teacher. You're also an incredible clinician and you have toolkits beyond that of perhaps the prototypical mind.
This or meditation teacher. So I want I want to also just give a nod to the expansive toolkit that both you and Tara have so I want to mention also tarah because at our Brock is the author of a book that was recommended to me that I have also recommend too many many people called radical acceptance, which has had a large impact in my life. So the fact that the two of you are offering this teacher training
in effect for those interested in meditation I think is just a tremendous opportunity and I don't say that lightly I say that as someone who's spent time in live discussion with both of you and spent time in person with you and seeing what both of you can do as practitioners and as teachers so I highly highly recommend that if you've ever thought about not just learning more about how to meditate but as a practitioner how
You teach this how to help others that you go to Jack kornfield.com and take a look and I would say not to make this a hard sell because it's not a hard sell. I don't have any skin in this game. I don't get anything from it. Other than hopefully introducing you to to spectacular teachers that it's very likely that you're going to be spending more time online from this point forward for the next few months and it makes sense.
At least to me to look for opportunities and there are many different options to feel connected and some cohesion with a group that is not in a physical location. So this also presents I think a an excellent option for embracing and cultivating that if it makes sense, so I'll get off my soapbox. But since you're very understated I wanted to at least just draw a couple of months.
Shannon and I also I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate that. We've gotten to know each other and some really important and deep ways and ISO value the work that you do and the heart and care that you put out to all the people that listen. So thank you for the opportunity and thank you to all those of you who listened.
Thanks so much Jack and where else can people say? Hello if they want to say. Hello. I have at Jack kornfield on Twitter's or anything.
Else you would like to mention Jack kornfield.com. Of
course, that's probably sufficient for they week we can wave at the market but you know as we as we walked by but for the moment, we'll issue the hugs and just make a little cleanliness bow to one another as
we go by sounds good jack won't it's always such a pleasure to spend time with you and to learn from you. I really appreciate it. This is done. I think I've probably from
Hitting record to now probably lowered my blood pressure 20 points. So I appreciate that also, and I can't wait for our next conversation. So thanks again for blocking out the time to have a
chat. My pleasure temp take good care
you too, and to everybody listening. Thanks for tuning in and you can find show notes links to everything. We have discussed as always at MDOT blog forward slash podcast. So until next time
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