Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Hey, what are you up to? What's going on? How are you feeling? Come on, let's talk. Hey, this is Cliff, your host of Destiny. This week we are looking at what you consider doing with less, not being so anxious to be Like the Joneses, the new car, the new clothing, the new watch, even the new house. Some people go nuts and want to do exactly what everybody else is doing,
but doing it so that they have objects. It's interesting because today we are looking at a way to exist that I think probably was emulated or if not emulated, carried over in a very similar way to the period that we considered the Golden Age. And if you look at the yogas we're talking about, Sechya yoga, treta yoga, what they call the Garden of Eden. And what I'm trying to say here is that what it looks like is that those periods were concentrated more on high spiritual evolution,
superior health. I think it was baboo dev misery of believe that people live to be many thousands of years old, and then after that I think that would be Tritah would be five to eight hundred years old, and of course today we lived it will be roughly one hundred. If you're lucky, you get to be one hundred. Most people in the industrial nations living to their eighties. And then that's about it. And how funny that? Why is
that so funny? Why is it so strange? Well, it's because we don't take care of ourself rich foods, we don't exercise. We fill our bias with drugs and pharmacological products because we don't feel well, rather than getting out in nature. So in many ways we've lost our connection with nature. And you know who I'm talking about. I can raise my hand on that too. This winter, we should have got out more. I should have, you know, even though it's raining, even though it's cold, it should
have bundled up and connected with nature. Well, we've lost that. We've lost that ability, and I think it's wonderful. The other picture we get of these golden ages of mankind is the is the lack of interest in items. You know. I think what we've understood is that people live very simply. They live with nature. One of the things I thought was quite amazing is that intention manifestation was almost automatic so what you when you thought of something that you
wanted it and appeared. And if you're living a very simplified existence, you're not, you know. And this is the golden age when there was no computers or internet, that you manifested food, or you manifested conveniences or not sure what that is. We're not sure if people lived in homes or caves or whatever. But when we look at the Pupavoo, the Great Book of the of the Maya, we know that there was a lot of abilities that people had that we consider extreme psychic abilities, like by location.
You could be one place but think about being another location on Earth and be there in another form. You could tap into premonition, you could or psychically aware of the environment you were in. You probably knew exactly when you're speaking to somebody, You probably knew exactly what they were thinking, and if they were friendly or not. I mean, it's you know, your demi gods, you really are demi gods.
And that was a period of time when it was the most harmonious lifestyle and the most harmonious way to live on the planet Earth. So today our program is on lessening, letting go of relationships that don't serve us, material needs that don't serve us, and finding what I think and you'll you can hear it today. What I think is the next phase in evolution. We're moving out of the Dark Age Cali Yoga, which is a you know,
hard period. There's a lot of wars, people are not happy, and material wealth is the way to go into Duwarpura, which is more beneficial, more enlightened. We're beginning to use meditation. We're hearing more and more guests on Earth Ancients talking about energy used in temples people bathed, and energy for health, for fertility, and this is the next phase. So this is something to consider. So today's program is the empty
path finding fulfillment through the radical art of lessening. And my guest is Billy when hey, Spring is just around the corner where there's going to be getting better and better as we continue on into the year. And this means it's time to think about getting away on a vacation. Earth Ancients has the best tours you could ever imagine, and we are talking about Turkey in summer June twenty second through July second. This is our second annual tour
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And join us. We've got a good one for you today.
We're all thinking about how to make a buck, how to live with as many items as possible. Of course, we're following the new president and Elon muh who's one of the wealthiest people in the world, and wondering how we can get there. But I don't think our guest today is going to tell us about why that's a problem. And let me tell you a little bit about the program today. The book we're featuring is The Empty Path, Finding fulfillment through the Radical Art of Lessening. We'll learn
a little more about that in our interview today. My guest today is Billy Wynn. He is the author of The Empty Path. He's a student of Buddhism mindfulness for over thirty years and he received certification under a fantastic guy who lives around here. I'm in northern California, Jack Cornfield and Tara Branch, who are excellent, excellent teachers and
whyse stages. So we're going to learn a little bit more about this information and why it's not necessarily great to be a person who is seeking well health and and rewards all the time. So hey, Billy, welcome to Destiny. Great to have you on the program.
Thanks for having me pleasure to be with you.
All Right, why did you write this book? Billy? You're living in the United States, where the Western culture we're all about collecting information, collecting wealth, doing better than the Joneses. You know, we got to have the new car, the new watch, the new uh sports sports item? Why why uh? Why Lessening?
Yeah, thanks for asking that question. It gets really to the to the heart of the book. And first, so first of all, and it gives me a good opportunity to say that there's nothing inherently wrong and at least, you know, kind of what I'm presenting and the teachings that I'm offering with you know, being wealthy or having ambition or accomplishments, et cetera. It's really about how we relate to those life experiences that I'm trying to get to.
And so Lessening is really about distilling our life experience, creating some space for us to experience most directly the ups and downs and the ins and outs, and the accruals and the losses that life brings to us, and just kind of relaxing our grip, if you will, from
the outcome of those different life events. And actually what I have found and what I talk about to some degree in the book, there's a pretty significant autobiographical component is that that mindset can actually help us succeed in a lot of the you know, endeavors and goals that we have in our life, including potentially financial success. But it's really a shift in mindset about how we're approaching these things that can give us a little bit more ease, equanimity, piece, creativity, energy,
et cetera. That can you know, perhaps paradoxically, actually help us accomplish some of those things that we are otherwise pursuing.
Did you study other cultures and determine that they either were living longer, had more peace and tranquility and more happiness versus the Western lifestyle.
There's some evidence of that, you know, I mean, I think that there well, I'd say the evidence around that is kind of mixed, and I think that you know, there are blue zones and there's been some really I don't talk about that my book, but there are some research around different types of cultures that can promote longevity, and to the degree that evidence is valid, there is some someponent components of it that a slower lifestyle and
more you know, ambulatory lifestyle, for example, can contribute to longevity, but really it's about how we experience life, and you know, are we happier, are we more at ease? And there is some some clinical validation of the benefits of meditation, for example, in reducing cortisol, stress hormones, and improving cognition and those kinds of measurable things. But more what I'm getting after is what do our days feel like? You know, are they Are they joyful entities or are they stressful
and angry? We could all relate to some of a little of all of that, but you know, we tend to to want a little bit more of the former. So that's what the book tries to help us do.
Let's drill down into this a little bit. If we're lessening, we're reducing the stress because we don't have to worry about so many different items or I don't know, bank accounts or whatever. Is is your thinking that having less material wealth not necessarily I'm not going to use the word wealth because that's not what I mean. Material items, things that we have to worry about. Is that lessening the fatigue, the the stress, the problems associated with overwhelm is that what the go is.
Maybe, And so the result of this path, so to speak, if one takes up the book, it tries to work with it a little bit, you know, may not lead to having less things. It may not lead to having less friends. It might, and for many people I think that it does, but that's not necessarily the prescription. What we're lessening is our attachment to and anxiety about, and preoccupation with the outcome of our endeavors, of our relationships,
of our business pursuits, you know, and so forth. And the tool for getting to that, the reason it's called the empty path, is to really closely examine each of these different facets of our life for what they really are. And we begin to see that what we see them as, which is sort of separate, something to be pursued, something that we need in order to make us happy, is
not actually what they are. And that, you know, when we have a settled mind state, we can see things a little more clearly as not not actually so distinct from us, and we can get into all that if you'd like. But and that that, you know, again, doesn't mean that we don't have the meal, or get the job, or buy the car, but the process and the experience of doing that can be less and less stressful and a little a little easier and happier. That's the lessening.
It's not so much, you know, less things, although again it may result in that. It's more about lessening our you know, our our amped up pursuit of all these things and the belief that getting them is what's going to make us happy.
I mean, if we have less to worry about, obviously we're not going to have the same stress and fatigue and chronic problems and cruting health problems that Western culture is dealing with right now. I mean, they annually do serve of the health of Americans, and we are at the bottom of the of the ring in terms of mental, physical, and very likely spiritual health. So I can understand what
you're trying to get across. I would love to hear if you can an example or a case study where you say John Doe was in the corporate world and he did this and that and this and that, and you know, took a path similar to what you're suggesting, and this was the result. Because I think our listeners are curious and I see it from a spiritual point of view, what you're trying to say is that less is more and also less allows for other areas to open.
But if we could, if you could give it, for instance, I think it would really help.
Sure I can. I can give it for instance from my own life that is in the book. That's what I know best, So I could speak for myself. So and there's a couple of different, you know, examples of this, but I think maybe the maybe the best one that that it really speaks to what you're asking for is in my my primary career has been in health policy consulting. And when I first started, I had a job on
Capitol Hill and I went into consulting and lobbying. This was over fifteen years ago, and uh, you know, I was I was the embodiment of American you know, Western hustle and bustle and ambition and uh greed you know, to some degree, and so and it it it bore fruit. You know. I was doing well. We moved to Denver. I was flying back and forth. I was basically commuting to Washington, d C. And I was just perpetually stressful.
I was drinking a lot. I was missing out on the early childhood experiences of my kids and so, and partly due to the you know, I'm grateful because the really, to some degree, the necessity of not living in Washington and wanting to stay in Denver, Colorado. I started to change the way that I approached my work so that it wasn't so contingent on me personally, it wasn't so
focused on lobbying. I hired people and empowered them to take on some of their responsibility, knowing that I would be sacrificing some income, some profit in the near term, but in the long term, now fifteen years later, it has allowed me to write a book and become a certified meditation teacher. And we lived in France a couple of years ago, my family and I for a year. So all these beautiful life experiences that you know, the one point zero version of me in my professional track
could never have been able to do. And as I say in the book, my income has has been constant throughout. So I think there is some you know, that's not a guarantee, you know that anybody who does this kind of practice is going to have that same result, But I have shown that it can work, and I do think some of it has to do with when I'm working with clients, when I'm managing my team, I am I'm not gonna say I never get frustrated. Like I say, I never you know, make a mistake, of course, but
I am a bit easier. I'm more patient, I'm more creative, I think, in coming up with solutions in the professional context, because I'm not you know, clinging so tightly to that next dollar and that next client, that next next outcome, or you know, correcting that employee's mistake and that sort
of thing. So it is that that that shift in mindset which comes out of just you know, whether literally or metaphorically, just kind of taking a step back, you know, from from what's happening in this case, in our professional career. And uh, you know, it's it has it has worked
for me. Again, there's all kinds of factors right for that, but but one clear threat for me has been this uh lessening of my preoccupation with the you know, the immediate reward of the profession and thinking more longer term, thinking about myself as a whole person, thinking about my family and you know, the rest of my life.
I like that, and thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that. Those who are listening, How would you suggest a start? What is what are the key tools that we integrate so that we began lessening.
Sure, So there's two big tracks that are in the book, and so I'll briefly describe it. The first one is mindfulness practices, and so that can mean meditation. That's not everybody's cup of tea. But I do offer a couple of different meditation techniques in the book. There are some other techniques that can promote mindfulness in our daily life that don't necessarily require kind of formal seated meditation, and
so I explore those as well. But the crux of it is to attune more to what's happening in the reality of our lives in the present moment, and trying to resist the impulse we have to rush into judging that experience as positive or negative, something we want more of, something less of, right that the person we really want to call the person we want to avoid that very natural and very persistent instinct. We have to judge things
with mindfulness. We're trying to ease that throttle and let our experience present itself to us so that we can see it clearly before we rush decide whether we like it or not, and you know, want to dispose of it or not. So that practice of experiencing our day to day moments that way more mindfully is a major major component of the lessening path. It creates that bit of space between us and what's coming up for us, a little bit of space between us and our career pursuits,
our relationships or you know, hobbies, what have you. That starts to ease that attachment that we very naturally have to those things and the outcomes that we expect from those things. But that's one, and we can definitely go into that in more detail. But one of them is mindfulness practices. The other is inquiring into this thing called emptiness. Right, the book is called The Empty Path, and so part of my motivation for writing it was I am a Buddhist.
I have studied a lot about Buddhism, and in lots and lots of Buddhist books that I've read, this core teaching. Some might argue the core teaching of Buddhism is really glossed over or ignored all together. And I think part of it is a translation issue. The term emptiness doesn't sound so great, you know, A lot of people think of emptiness like you know, nihilism or meaninglessness or I have to give up all my things or all that kind of stuff. And part of that, again is a
translation issue. But really what it means is that what I spoke to a little bit earlier, which is the appearance of things right here, you know, as separate from us, as kind of having their own kind of identity that is coherent through time, a certain permanence to them. You know. In this case, a book is actually just sort of the surface layer of what it actually is. And if we really kind of settle ourselves and contemplate things more closely and carefully, we can see that the different things
that make them what they are are are innumerable. Right. So there's there's paper, there's production process, there's ink, there's the thoughts, there's the words, there's the editor, there's the agent. There's all these different factors that go into making this what it is, But not any single one of those is what makes it a book. So that's one element of emptiness. Is in Buddhism, we call it no self, but that it gets a little wonky for people pretty fast.
But I think it's better to think of the fact that it's clear to everyone that what's sitting here is the result of you know, dozens and dozens, if not thousands, of different factors and steps and components, and that not one of them can you point to and say, well, that's the bookness, right, that's the bookness. So actually, really
it's kind of an idea that we've put together. So that's one insight into the nature of things that, again, if we cultivate it can help us release our sort of reflex attachment to what we think this is and see it from a bit of a fresher, more creative way. We're going to take a.
Short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guest today, Billy when discussing his new book, The Empty Path. Will be right back. My guest today is Billy Wynn, who's written a new book called The Empty Path, Finding Fulfillment through the Radical Art of Lessening. I want to get into emptiness here in a second, because you spend a good deal of time discussing that. Let's get back to my mindfulness.
We have had people talk about mindfulness on our program here in the context that you're presenting you're asking, and please correct me if I if I go over the cliff on this a little bit. But you're you're saying that being aware, being mindful, being present is a key to understanding your I was going to say your empty path or you're lessening. So this is really a key. Can you expand on.
That a little bit? Sure? Sure, so I'd say that the you know, tik not Hans says, we have an appointment with our life. It's the present moment. You know, don't miss your appointment with life. And so one one thing that actually becomes a parent and with with mindfuls practice is just how unmindful we are the vast majority of the time. And that's that's okay, that's the human experience we're we are like I use the analogy like
a pinball and a pinball machine just bounce seeing. You know, we want the pleasant chimes and the dings and the rewards and the bells and we don't want to slip down into the bottom and have to start the play over again or you know, so uh, we we most often live our lives pursuing things we think will make us happy, and you know, avoiding things that we think will will make us said, or you know, unhappy, and uh,
it's it's it's just a constant hustle. And what the heart of what the book's book says is that as so long as we think it's these things outside of us, external to us, these factors around us, that in fact we have very little power to control. If we think those are the things that are going to make us happy, then that's a self fulfilling prophecy that we're going to be unsatisfied, because actually the you know, the fulfillment is inherent, you know, with each of us and all in all things.
As I try to explain in the book, so mindfulness practice helps us slow down that reactive state of pursuing the happy things and avoiding the unhappy things and the pleasant things and the unpleasant things, which is takes a lot a good bit of practice because it's pretty much, you know, how we're trained to behave by our society from day one. So setting aside some time for dedicated
mindfulness practice and meditation is a very helpful technique. But I do offer some ways to do it kind of in real time, you know, in a conversation or when we're working or what have. You can help put a little break into that reactive cycle of I like this, I don't like this, and help us see things in a fresher, newer way, which is really how they are. Things are always presenting themselves a new They're always changing, you know, our relationships, our tasked, our mind is always
changing and evolving. So you know, we think it's the same that it was a year ago, but it's really not so. So this mindfulness practice is a way to pause and see things fresh, which is closer to how they actually are. Then all the preconceived ideas and judgments and you know, expectations that we tend to apply to things again as we're you know, snapping these judgments of pleasant or unpositive and positive or negative. So and we could you know, like I start with mindfulness of the breath,
which is a very common and pervasive technique. And the beautiful thing about that is that you know, you can cultivate it and dedicated meditation, but it's always available stop light, you know, on a phone call, in a podcast, you know, we can we can kind of find a quick recentering tool with our breath. So that's one reason it's so popular.
Yeah, excellent, Thank you for that, you know, you bring up in your book and this is curious for me, and I'd love to hear the explanation for it, lessening our relationships. And when you brought that up, I was like, you got something here, because I think that not only do we spend too much energy on certain relationships that aren't benefiting this, but also even with our loved ones, we can go out of our way to be perhaps diverted from the true nature of that connection. So talk
a little bit about that. That's a great it's a great path.
Thank you, Thank you. Yeah. And I think, I mean, our relationships are really especially with the people that we love, our own family and so forth, is where the rubber really meets the road. And I think we can all relate to. You know, this is the person that actually cared the most about in the world. Why am I frustrated with them? Why am I raising my voice at them? Like what is going on here? And it's it's because
we're so closely attached, you know. And so what I try to talk about in the book, and I use one analogy I really like to use. I'm sealing from the minister who married my wife, and I he talked about this is not just about marriage, but this was of course in the context of marriage. The marriage not is kind of the typical metaphor for marriage. And he explained to you, if you think about it, that's a very stagnant, constricting, you know, way to think about our
relationship and you can't move that. People can't ship, they can't move, they can't grow. And he said, maybe it's better to think of a marriage like this, and so that way there's freedom to you know, kind of flow and grow and change as we all do over time, and to allow the other person to continue to evolve and to be who they are rather than say no, no, you're going to be this way. I need you to
be this way. That's that's what love is, right, So that starts to you know, explain this different way of thinking about relationships. And I just spend quite a bit of time on it. You and I talk about codependency, and I don't mean that in a really clinically, you know, really negative way. I actually try to present it as the way that most of our relationships are in the sense that we think that our happiness and our emotional state is to some degree dependent on how another person.
Perhaps our partner is treating us right and vice versa. Oh, it's my responsibility to help make my partner happy, and you know they need this from me, so I need to do that, and that to me is a is
a mild form of codependence. Whereas if we recognize that actually we are responsible for our own mind state, they are responsible for their own mind state, then then we're talking about freedom in a relationship where we're honoring each other to be the people that we actually are and want to be, which is closer to love, I suggest than you know, our our traditional mindset about it.
I like that for personal relationship, especially with your spouse or your your girlfriend or boyfriend or your partner, how do we lessen the business relationships and the friends that may not service very well without hurting the other person?
Yeah, yeah, so I think that the key is to uh recognize right that they're again, you know, their their their their success, their well being, their emotional state is not our responsibility. Now there's a little bit of a parenthesis here of like, you know, it's our employee or it's our child, or you know, there are some cases where we actually do have some you know, responsibility that we accept for that person for their professional growth or
or what have you. But in terms of the you know, kind of emotional components, I think that this is where boundaries are very important, you know. I mean we uh in a in a professional relationship, it's beneficial to be cordial, to be patient, to be kind to you know, to have some concern for that other person's well being and so forth, but also to say, you know, at a certain point, how they feel about their job, how they feel about their life, how you know, how ambitious they
are or not ambitious they are. You know, is their responsibility, right and so and I think that that the result of that is more ease and patience in the relationship. Right. The expectation that that person be something that we want them to be is what can create a lot of that tension and animosity, I think in our relationships, professional or otherwise. So again, it's the lessening our relationships has a lot to do with drawing emotional boundaries between ourselves
and others. And those boundaries look a little bit different based on what the context is. But at the end of the day, it's really allowing someone to be who they are and to accept responsibility for how they are in that relationship, you know, and vice versa with us taking responsibility for ourselves.
Yeah, you're talking about something that's always been a challenge for me when I was in the corporate world, which is you meet somebody who's on your team who just came on board, and you look at them and automatically you give them a title in terms of that's the brown haired, blue eyed dude with the funky clothes, and I'm going to treat him with a certain respect and of oh, you know, but I also don't have a
lot of time, and I can't. You know, we we throw so much these new relationships that I think that we can it can be a problem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I offer some techniques for that. First of all, of course, we all could relate to that, right and and and I mean, to some degree or another, we all have expectations of other people. And and you know, you know, it's interesting because again it's sort of a self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, nobody can magically fit into this expectation we've kind of imagined for them, and it's
never the actual reality of that person. It's always much more complicated and nuance but uh uh oh, in the in the in the now, I just kind of forgot my tramp on. I'm sorry.
We're talking about the h We're talking about the office people that we interact with.
And oh, yes, thank you. Sorry sorry. Some techniques for uh dealing with that exact type of situation. So one is too pretend that you've never met the person before, you know so, and this is actually helpful in our in our close intimate relationships as well, even though it's harder, but to you know, it's like, Okay, I have a meeting with with Bob, you know tomorrow. I'm going to go into that call and I and I you know,
I have been working with Bob for a year. I think Bob is you know, lazy, or I think Bob is or I think Bob is a high performer, or you know, I think Bob is you know uh uh this is you know, his calls to whatever. But if I go into that next conversation the next day and do my messages set all of that a crude, you know, judgment aside, I'm probably going to have a more constructive and productive conversation with Bob the next day, right because
I'm not I'm not bringing in the baggage of the relationship. Now, what Bob does is up to Bob, right, But for me, I can adopt this mindset of a like, we're going to start on a clean slate, and you know, we'll have an agenda or whatever it is we've got to talk about. But in terms of my expectation of how Bob is going to act, I can set that aside.
So that that's one There's a couple of different techniques I put in the book, but that's one for trying to kind of refresh these relationships that can get pretty entrenched pretty fast.
We should also mention that throughout the book you have spread what you call reflections, which I think are a great tool to kind of reinforce the material. Talk a little bit about how the reflections work on the reinforcement of the material.
Sure, I appreciate that, and I some of my friends and family have gotten advanced copies of the book and you have, and I've gotten started to get some some feedback. And one thing that's been pretty consistent is like, this is not the kind of book you pick up and bust. It's not like a Grisham.
Actually have I think your reflections even have some journaling in them, which is, you know, really sit down and contemplate what you're dealing with.
Yeah, so that I do encourage people, you know, usually about twice per chapter to just you know, take a pause. There's maybe a half page of guidance on what you might do, but really it's a place to say, this is a good place to stop and just take a moment, whether it's the way that I recommend or your own way to just just be with and process what you
just read. And sometimes there's a new meditation technique, or sometimes there's a new you know, a little morsel of Buddhist wisdom, or maybe there's a fairly heavy, you know, experience I've shared for my life that maybe it connects with something you know, in that person's life that we really need to honor. Again, it's part of the path of lessening. It's to you know, let that settle a bit before we just rush on to say, well, what's the next thing. You know, I told myself I was
going to, you know, finish this chapter tonight. Well you don't have to finish the chapter tonight. You can you can give it the space that it needs to really kind of sink in and mean something for you.
Yeah, I like that. Excellent you have and I want you to describe this a little bit. You talk about the importance of forgiving but also being forgiven, and I have had an issue with that in situations where I had a family member who I just got extremely angry at and I didn't want to talk to them, and I actually avoided them for almost a couple of years and it didn't serve me, and so I forgave them personally and face Bason, and I forgave myself for being
that way. But talk about the importance and the energy around forgiving and being forgiven actually acknowledging.
That, Yeah, thank you very much so and for me. And there's a reason that comes kind of later in the book, because for being forgiveness is really at the heart of every section of our emotional lives, you know, which really is our life. So I give it a
full chapter's worth of consideration. And part of that stems from for me a bit, you know, of all the things that cause us suffering, I think that regret and uh, you know, a feeling of unrepaired harm in our lives, whether something we've caused or something someone calls to us is is likely our biggest source of suffering. Maybe that I think that's been the case for me. And so what I what I talk about, you know, is that for one thing, forgiveness is is kind of a natural
way of being. It involves a recognition of what happened, It involves an investigation of you know, kind of the details of the relationship and all those things really matter.
But it also takes this fresh look of saying, you know, how I relate to this experience, how I relate to that person, or how I relate to myself having done this thing in the past that I might regret, is really up to me, right, and it's it's it points us to what empowers me to enter into the next moment a little more freer, a little more kinder, right, with a little more love and patience in the way that I really want to be in the world. And
the answer to that is usually forgiveness. That doesn't mean that we just snap our fingers right and say, oh, you know, this person who did these terrible things, I now forgive them and it's all over. You really really have to go through this mindful process of examining all
the things that happened. And you know, I have a similar experience with someone very close to be in my life, and part of that process for me was writing a letter to that person, which I think I'd probably mentioned in the book is a pretty typical practice in these kinds of scenarios to really really go deep onto what happened from my perspective and the horror that it caused
from my perspective. Now, I did not send that letter to that person, and part of it was because I realized that I was still attached to how they would respond, right, and that's not the point of forgiveness. Right forgiveness, at least as I presented and offer it for people to investigate, is it's not about whether or not the person deserves it or we think, you know, it's not about how the person's going to react when we forgive them, or if it's going to change their life or they're going
to set a new path or any of that. That that is all a version of attachment and to some degree, control of that other person. It's really about us deciding in our heart that we are now at peace with what happened. And you know, whether you know that it was not our responsibility. It was their responsibility. What is our responsibility is where do we go from here? Right? And that's not that other person's responsibility. And that's really the way that it ought to be, is that we
don't seed them that responsibility. So it's coming back to center and trying to look at what happened with a with a calm and patient heart to look at uh uh, you know, not glossing over any of the of the hard realities of what may have transpired, but then taking a look again to say, you know, where do we go from here, and what's what's serving the best, what's
serving this relationship best? And it does get into I do offer again the practice of there's both the mindfulness techniques but also trying to examine the different facets of the situation for their emptiness that they might reveal if we really take a careful look at them, and that can also help us relax that attachment to you know, whatever it was that transpired.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guest today, Billy Whinn discussing his newest book, The Empty Path, will return to you shortly. H My guest today is Billy Wynn. He has written a new book called The Empty Path, Finding Fulfillment through the Radical Art of Lessening. And we're getting a sense of what the quality is of life when you don't have to worry and collect items for reward as an adult. This
is this is pretty in depth stuff, Billy. I'll tell you, I would just I'm listening to. But we get into the Hindu system of you gas and these earlier civilizations that actually appear to will practiced a life that you're describing, this lessening, This not being so concerned about objective wealth and satisfaction through collecting items. It was more about how we interacted with other people, our relationships, and how we carried ourself. And this just feels very much like the
Trita and Satya yoga period of earlier early man. You know, it's like, this is so fascinating about this book, my friend, is It's like you are bringing back to us this earlier phase of humanity that just seems to be so much more in touch with Earth but also individually in touch, you know, and walking this path you know, almost christ like beings, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well I appreciate you saying that. I mean, Saint John of the Cross said to become that which we are not, we have to go by the way that we know not. And so in other words, this is about the resolution of our suffering, you know. So, and to really approach that, we have to try a different path, you know, the prototypical mode of life, and not really just for the West,
although West is maybe it's kind of easy. Well, us living in it, it's certainly easy for us to relate to and see, but really, you know, the experience of humankind is this this rushing around in circles to try to find happiness outside of us, and it's just inevitably inherently unsatisfying. And one point I want to make clear, and I do appreciate that kind of analogy and archetype to the to the ancient you know, Vedic people in India,
but it's available to us right now. You know, That's one thing I'm trying to make clear, and definitely right right just here and now, in the nittigree of the stressful job and the family and the ups and downs and the hardship, you know, you know, none of those things needs to block us from the peace and the beauty and the love that is always right here all along. It's just a question of not whether or not we really can pay attention to it.
Yeah, well, thank you for that. I appreciate it. You bring up a topic that is really a problem in our culture, and this is the and you actually call it, the culture of competition. And this is very, very damaging. As a kid, we're always showing, you know, beat the other guy, no matter what the cost, that kind of attitude. How does competition influence this and how do we begin moving away from having that kind of a mindset.
Sure, so, well it's interesting. Son's fourteen, and I see this, and yeah, all my best efforts to the contract. He's as competitive as as anybody. You know, that's just that's just the way it is. So but I see it, and we all you know, it's not to separate or judge, you know, others from myself. Well, we all experience this, you know, in big and small ways. But it is
interesting to see through his eyes. You know, he's on a team and the team has the red jersey and all the kids on the other team have a blue jersey, and it's like, you know, I mean hate is a strong word, but they're the enemy, you know, right, I mean they're the enemy. Yeah, it comes just short of hoping they get hurt or something. But it's almost like that, right, And so clearly that's not a healthy you know, it's a natural and common mindset, but I think it's easy
to say it's not a reasonably healthy one. So how
do we begin to relax that, you know dynamic. Well, yeah, we can pause and take a look a little more carefully, rather than sort of jumping into our role, you know, as the opponent or the competitor and having this mindset of you know, zero sum, you know, game of scarcity and if that person gets that, that I'm not going to get that, and you know, that sort of mentality to say that, first of all, we are already uh, you know, fulfilled and satisfied and sufficient and enough from
the very beginning. You know, we don't we don't need different things. You know, we are whole and complete human beings. It's how we're made, whether you believe that from the spiritual perspective, we're just just accepting that that is who and what we are to you know. We so the idea that we are competing for scarce. You know, victories is an illusion and it's what we buy into. We sometimes you think it's fun, but it can easily go too far. And another aspect of this that that comes
up is is othering. I talked about other ing in the book. Right, so again this whole I've got the red jersey on, you've got the blue jersey on. Well, you are separate from me, and all I'm going to see you as is this kind of caricature of a human being. Right, all you are is my enity. It's kind of reminds me of a I love the scene in that movie There Will be Blood where the oil guy his son comes to him and his son has decided this is near the end, decides to go into
the oil business, and he's Daniel da Lewis. He's like, that makes you a competitor, right like, and that's all from then on he's no longer his son. He's a competitor. So it's a beautiful, I think, illustration of how how how powerful and dangerous that mindset can be.
Yeah, exactly, good analogy. How do we cultivate the practice of emptiness on a daily basis? I'd love to have some examples because I'm trying to get my mind around this.
Uh you know, yes, I hear you. And it's not easy, you know, unfortunately, because we're so trained to live in the other mode.
Well, it's it's how we exist. It's how we're educated and how we are raised. It's you know, get the get a buck, get a buck. Even when you're retired, it's like, you know, invest correctly, Oh you didn't, You better get some more money. You know, you got to go back to work.
Watch the ticker every day, and yeah, even the golf game becomes really competitive and stressful. And so yeah, I hear, I hear all that. So a couple of a couple of things, you know, One is that I do recommend sometime of dedicated meditative practice. It can be five minutes, it could be you know, we we tell ourselves we don't have enough time for that, but we're wrong. We do.
We've got five minutes, We've got ten minutes. And what helped me was that early on I started, even just in five ten minutes, I started to notice that I was more relaxed. You know, it started to feel good even for bro brief minutes, you know, during a five or ten minute meditation practice, and when I was just getting started, and that was enough to say, Okay, there's
there's something to this. This is this actually can work, even though the time I was my mind still racing around and I'm not sure I'm doing it right and my back's a little sore and all that kind of stuff.
Were you doing a Buddhist practice? Uh, Billy.
I started with mindfulness of meditation, which which is kind of secularized in the US, but it does does sort of, you know, descend from Buddhist practices. Curious, Okay, yeah, sure, kind of in the insight with the the tradition that I know, certified to teach in the Insight and meditation tradition, which is again very closely linked Buddhism, but it's been secularized for broader audiences, in which I think is a
great thing. I mean, you know, you do not need to be a Buddhist, and you do not need to abandon whatever spiritual path you're on to apply mindfulness practices to your life, you know, in a very productive way. So so I started with that, and you know, you if you give it a little bit of time, you will see a little bit of calm. You know. Again, the key to success that I that I always point to is to put down our judgments and expectations upon meditation.
Should be like before we start, right, forget about the cover of the magazine you saw off the grocery store shelf, like forget about the sunset, and you know, the kind of nervonic way that people think you're supposed to be. That's not how it is. The practice of mindfulness is simply finding a place for quiet, to start to focus on our breath and for our mind to wander off over and over again, and to gently bring it back.
That's really the crux of the practice. And so people think they're not cut out for it when their mind starts to wander, and it's actually that's just what it is. That's the practice of noticing that. So that's one thing. Another very key, and this is also accessible throughout the day,
is sort of sematic awareness or embodymit practice. So in this I think it's in the second chapter where I talk about this, but a more formal way to do this is like a body scan, got five ten minutes to go, you know, start I start at the feet, some people start at the head and just kind of go through and just tune into each portion of your body and see how it feels. There is one way
to reacquaint ourselves with our body. Especially we tend to be very cerebral, right neck up is how we live a lot of our lives, and we think that our thoughts and our problem solving and all that kind of stuff is actually the reality. Well, you know, ninety percent
of us is from the neck down. That's also walking through life with us, and it can just be a helpful reminder to kind of come down out of that thought cycle and reattune to the presence of what's actually happening in our lives, which our body is more directly connected to. There's two examples I could go up.
Okay, other excellent the books called The Empty Path Finding Fulfillment through the Radical Art of Lessening. I guess today's been Billy. When who did you write this book for? Billy? Who is the reader? What's the audience you're looking to attract?
Well, I think if you are looking to find a little bit more ease and satisfaction and fulfillment in your life. So you know, and my publicist did tell me to say this, but pretty much everyone that My hope is that there could be some teachings in here that will benefit you. Now, you know, the most natural reader, may you know, maybe they've tried meditation a few times at least. Maybe they've you know, heard a few things about Buddhism
and they think it's interesting. You know, maybe they you know, have been on a you know, done done yoga. It's something like this. It just cots to these different things that are sort of a step toward this end of the spectrum of the path that I'm presenting. But you know, it's really designed for for anyone at any stage of life. My daughter is eighteen and first year in college, and I think that she and some of our friends could benefit from it. She'll read it.
Did she get a copy of the book.
I've given it to her this weekend. I'm gonna see her in New York. So yeah, she asked for it. I'm not forcing her to read it. But you know, so I think really anything, even retirement, you know, if you're thinking about well and obvious, a lot of people experience a sense of loss and and unfulfillment and retired it and so saying, well, what's already here, what can I be grateful for what's what's you know, what's kind of naturally fulfilling about where I am right now, and
reattuning to that can be very helpful. So I offer it for for all, and you know, I hope it connects with people.
You know, It's funny. I have been meditating for deal over thirty years. I got into transigental meditation when it was the thing, and it's a mantra based meditation, and there's certain mantra based meditations that are out there. But I think you're suggesting pretty much whatever works, as long as you can quiet the brain quite the mind. I didn't check do you recommend one or two noted meditative practices or I didn't see any guidelines for that, but maybe they're in your book somewhere.
Sure, so there is some reasonably detailed instruction on meditation practice going into the mindfulness of breath practice that's offered in the first chapter each of the And I'm glad you raised this because there's there's ten chapters and each one offers a guided meditation. There's recordings of those on my website at Billy Winn dot com and in the book that people can you know, because sometimes you don't
want to read while you're meditating. You want to hear something maybe, And and I guess what I want to make sure I say is that I don't think anybody is going to do all ten of those all the time, right, So it's it's it's a bit you can I invite people to try them and see what starts to resonate with them, and you know that might be the thing that they might not be mindpulos to the breadth, that might not be mindpulos to the body, might be the
meta loving kindness meditation, which is another instruction in one of the chapters. So, uh, you know, at the end of the day, what's going to work is what feels right and is integrated into somebody's life most naturally. And so this is really, as I call it, part of the path of lessening is to decide what in these pages actually connects with and works for you, and that that can be the thing that you take with you.
Okay, you guys heard it. Billy win w y n N dot com and Billy is going to provide you with guided meditations. And that's a great, great, great lead to get the book because obviously you read the book, you follow it up with the medication meditation. If you haven't meditated before, Billy is going to guide you, which is really a big plus because a lot of people don't know how to meditate or they can't sit still long enough to meditate. And I have friends that are
like that too, So fantastic, Billy. Much success on this book. And for those of you listening, you can get a copy on Amazon. How else can people learn about you? Give us your other resources?
Sure, there's Billywinn dot com. The book's also available on bookshop dot org. You know, some people don't like Amazon, and really, you know, most online platforms are going to It comes out on March eighteenth, and the best place to learn about it is to go to my website, Billy Wynn dot com. I am having events in Denver and Boulder in my hometown area of Norfolk, Virginia in the coming weeks where I'll be talking about the book
and signing it for folks who are there. All that information is on my website and the guided meditations and other stuff. So yeah, and folks to visit.
Thanks for joining me. Hey, much success on this book. Really a little great in depth look at peace of the mind, body, and spirit. Fantastic congratulations.
Thanks for having me. I really really appreciate it's great chatting with you.
There was something very refreshing about his explanation for that state of mind to be more present, to be more aware of those around you and your environment. I mean, I was, I was thinking about these earlier periods of time. We don't really know, we have no there's no way to write about people's personalities before the Greeks, before the Sumerians. But in that earlier epoch that we were always talking about, But you got to wonder, how did people think, How
did people exist? Objects weren't that big a deal apparently, you know, And so reflection was big, you know. And I would think that forgiveness was a part of their life as well, in that Satia and treats to period the Golden Age. But you didn't make those kind of mistakes. It was just you were. I would think that you were much more in harmony as a human being and
those around you and as well as nature. So if we're rebooting and heading back into this Golden Age, you know, many thousands of years from now, this book could be a representative of that coming age and the techniques he offers and the reflections in different chapters are really great for getting in touch, you know. And what a great gift that he's giving you by providing guided meditations. If you're not one for meditating, he's providing guided meditations. That's
unheard of most of the time. You have to go to audible or a special pay site and pay twenty bucks for the honor for the privilege of listening to a guided meditation. And I have to say, and I haven't really brought this up enough, guided meditations are the best way to get involved, to get started with meditating. So as you close your eyes, and if you're like a lot of people, your mind starts wandering and running interference. Someone walking you through or guiding you through a meditation
is the best way to start. Then you're guided into going to those deeper, lower levels and you automatically train your brain to relax, to sink, to expand. So that's a real nice gift that Billy offered. Again, Billy win w y n N dot com. And that's where all these guide of meditations are. Hey, we do a few tours every year. We try to do three usually it's Egypt, Turkey, Mexico. But in twenty twenty five we're going to be in
Easter Island in a week. We'll be there from the fourteenth of March to the twenty sixth, and then we're going to be in Turkey June twenty second through July second, and then to cap it all off, will be in Guatemala for Day of the Day, which is the end of October of this year. We might do that, or we might do that. We haven't confirmed the dates, but we might do the second week of November as well, or excuse me, the first week of November. Whatever we do,
let me just tell you our tours are fabulous. They are cost effective, typically half the price of other listed contemporary tours, complete coverage, all your food, all your beverages, all your travel, all your passes, and these wonderful guys that we recruit to you know, choice the way, and these are likely most of the time these are archaeologists, filled researchers. Sometimes it's an author or two, and then our guide, our hosts. So we got Turkey coming up,
consider it, We're about half full. This is a wonderful tour. We all meet an instant Istanbul June twenty second, and we'll be seeing Darren Kuru, the underground city Cappadocia, some amazing, amazing museums. I was very surprised at the museums, pleasantly surprised at how sophisticated they were in Istanbul. Throughout the Turkey, they were all wonderful. We're going to be going to go Beckley Teppe, the oldest temple in the world, or to driving up to Carahan Teppe. We're gonna go to
Spice Market and some bizaars. It is a fabulous elimitad tour and we'd love to have you with it. For more information and all the details, go to earth ancients dot com, Forward slash Tours. Let me know if you're interested, and if you have any questions whatsoever and you want more information, send me an email. Send it to earth Ancients the number four of the letter you at gmail dot com and we'll get right back to you earthcents dot com, Forward slash Tours come on and join us.
All right, that's it for this program. I want to think My guest today Billy Winn discussing his new book The Empty Path. As always, the team of Gail tour Mark Foster, and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys rock all right, Take care of you well, and we will talk to you next time.