- You are about to hear an interview with fellow Hoffman, teacher Max Gensler, and Max's fascinating and deep and profound. I'm most struck by the journey that he's been on. He went from feeling, and I quote, a long way from his gifts to having this pivotal moment on a Greyhound bus in 2004. And in that moment, he asked himself this question, what is the difference between those who connect with the spark of the divine and those who don't?
His quest then led him to the Hoffman process in 2005, and as he said it, he walked in as his false self and that false self never came back out. So since the process, his life has continued to be spirit led. This is a gem filled episode, and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Love's Everyday Radius, a podcast brought to you by the Hoffman Institute. My name is Sharon Moore and I'm one of your hosts.
And on this podcast we talk to Hoffman graduates about how their courageous journey inward impacted their personal lives, but also how it impacted their community and the world at large. So tune in and listen in and hear how our graduates authentic selves, how their love, how their spirits are making a positive impact on our world today. In other words, get to know their loves every day radius. All right, max, welcome to the show. - Thank you, Sharon. I'm so glad
to be here. Thank you for inviting me, - Max. I got to learn a little bit about you before we got onto the show, and I gotta tell you, you have an amazing in quotes resume and not even resume, like showing your path to get here. Currently. You are involved in so many fascinating things, so I'd like to learn a little bit more about that. So not only are you a Hoffman teacher, you're also a senior teacher at the integral transformative practice, right?
- That's correct. - What is that - Integral transformative practice? Uh, grew out of a book by Michael Murphy, who was the founder of sen, one of two founders of sen. Uh, he wrote a book called The Future of the Body that just looked at extraordinary capacities and it talked about practices to develop them. It's a very large volume. And then George Leonard wrote a small volume. George Leonard was president of Esalen, president Emeritus at the time we started the nonprofit.
And um, he wrote a book called Mastery. He was a fifth degree black belt in Aikido and in a keto sensei. And they essentially, uh, both would recognize that people would go to Esan and they would have these openings and these experiences and, and they would go back to their lives. And then there was, you know, people kind of go back to baseline. And so they wanted a practice that people could bring into the world.
It was a practice for people, householders for everyday people that they could bring into their lives to continue opening in a way that was integral. And, and actually they used the phrase, body, mind, heart, and soul. And people might hear me use that phrase, which is essentially the quadri. - And so, and you are a currently a senior teacher there? - That is correct. I do less with them since taking on Hoffman.
And I also took on the role of coordinating Essel and Institute Center for theory and research. So I've got a lot of irons in the fire. - You sure do. But there, there seems to be a common thread with all of these irons that you speak of. Can you speak to that? What's the common thread in all the things that you're involved in? All the places you have devoted your life's energy to?
- Uh, the common thread is that it's a belief and other people I don't think have to hold this belief to benefit from whatever practices they do. But the way that I hold it, um, and I'm not inventing this idea, is that there is that of the divine in everything. There's that of the light in everything. We all have our own innate spirit, our own innate genius, our own innate gifts.
And for me, I really didn't conceptualize it this way, but I felt growing up, I was a long way from my gifts and I, I went to quite a few different schools. I was reflecting on this while I was thinking about doing this podcast. I went to I think seven different schools for K to 12, and I kind of took on different personas in different places. I went to a different school every year for I think third through seventh grade.
And, um, I just, I was really different, different school years, and I would try different things on, and I never felt like I was demonstrating who I was. I had this moment, it was in December of 2004, I was on this Greyhound bus, uh, driving between Ithaca, New York and Manhattan. And, you know, I, I'd done a lot of things by then.
I'd done a lot of therapy and coaching and lots of programs, and I'd, uh, was a drummer and I'd kind of gotten a career off the ground doing business consulting and various things. And I was still having this, uh, really difficult time and really just feeling disconnected from myself. And I asked myself the question, what is the difference between people who really connect to that spark of the divine within them and find like fertile soil for that seed to grow in the world?
What is the difference between people who find that and people who don't? And at that moment, I realized that that was the core of what I wanted my primary question to be the rest of my life. Like that is what I wanted my life's work to be focused on. And it was not at all lost on me that I needed to be my own first client. And, you know, I'd done all these different things and um, I, I felt like I got different things out of them.
So like, I'm gonna overly characterize, but like, so therapy, like lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling free associating about my problems or going to a motivational workshop and being like, yeah, let's do this. Let's, you know, and I'm gonna go get the high rise in Manhattan and the Audi and everything's gonna be great, or whatever it was. Or like the, you know, up and out the drive to transcendence. And I wanted something to either find or create something that integrated all of it.
You know, like, like if I'm having a great day, my therapist doesn't have a lot to tell me, or if, you know, I'm, I'm like, you know, at a motivational workshop. And I'm like, but my dad wasn't nice to me. It's like, shut up, go do this or whatever. It's, you know, you know, it's just like this or the up and out of like transcendence, like, oh, just forget samsara, forget about the, like this whole embodied thing, you know, just, just, you know, be in the light or whatever.
And I was like, I really had this sense of wanting something that integrated all of that. And so I had this idea that I was just going to go do like every personal development thing in the world, both because I needed it and be, I wanted to either find or create something that integrated these things. And that was in December of 2004. And as part of my r and DI went and did the Hoffman process in April of 2005.
And in some ways after that, my life really reorganized itself very quickly in alignment with my vision. I, it was kind of miraculous and in other ways it was really slow and in other ways it took a very long time. But pretty quickly I got brought in to starting this or, you know, I was on the, the management team. It was five people including George Leonard, of starting this integral transformative practice nonprofit in 2006.
So that was the year after I had really kind of fallen off the desire to do business consulting. I, I thought I would take two or three months off and then go out and get another consulting gig. And I just found myself so resistant. And I actually took a job substitute teaching just to slow the burn rate while I wasn't doing consulting work.
And I walked into a therapeutic day school as a substitute teacher, and the therapist at that school immediately liked me, asked me to teach their summer school program, and then a sister program of theirs needed a teacher. And so, uh, she said, Hey, I've got somebody. And I got hired for that even though I didn't have a teaching credential. Um, they hired me over credential teachers on her recommendation.
And, and that's been a theme, like I've just been seen at certain times by certain people that it's just, they've brought me into things like the nonprofit with George Leonard that this woman, Pam Kramer just saw me and she brought me into that, that inner circle.
And, uh, it was funny, when I was really thinking about shifting from doing business consulting to nor more personal development work, I called somebody or contacted somebody that was taught workshops at eSalon and as an informational interview, and they agreed to have lunch with me, and I asked them about doing workshops at Essin, and they said, forget it. Like they get so many proposals if you don't have a bestselling book or whatever.
And I told that story the first time I taught a workshop at Essin, which was within, you know, a couple years of that. But, you know, it was just a different way. It was like, I got seen and I got brought in, - What do you attribute these, these miracles really where you, like you say you were really seen, I was seen for who I am. So I got hired over other credentialed teachers. I was teaching a workshop at what I was told I had to have a bestselling book.
What, what do you attribute this kind of mini miracle to? - I attribute it to this shift that happened in different ways. And it kind of happened all at once in the biggest way about three years after I did the process. And it was a shift that we really talked about in the process, maybe from doing to being, you know, I said growing up just not feeling like I was enough.
And honestly, when I began my very extensive path of personal growth, I didn't conceptualize it this way at the time, but I was trying to outrun my shame. I was trying to finally figure out what I could do to be good enough. And I had these things in my mind, like at certain points it was when I have the right car, the right apartment, and, and everything felt like it was a transition in my life. Like, okay, I have this apartment until I can get a better apartment.
I have this car until I get a better car. I have this job until I step up. Like until I finally climb high enough that I'm good enough and then I can be enough. And I had this moment, I was probably about three years after I did the process, and I was on a coaching call with Ed McCune, and I believe Ed said the sentence Max is not a schmuck. And at that moment I just was like, I let go. I was like, wow, you know, I, okay.
And I just, I literally like after that, like for days I just wandered around my apartment like, max, this is your apartment. This is where you live, max. This is your car Max, this is your job, this is what you do. And it was all okay, like, I can touch the lives I touch when I go to my job, I can be as much of a blessing as I can be in my own imperfect way in that moment.
And so it was just like, I can have permission to land in my life, and it doesn't mean that I can't change and grow, but I don't have to get somewhere. And so it was this ability to just, to come from who I am, to live my vision, and who my vision, what my vision really is, can come from who I really am so I don't have to be something else and I can just do my imperfect best to make the contribution that I can make and to experience the ups and downs of life in the way that I experience them.
So what I would say these miracles are, are moments where a spiritual self sees a spiritual self. A moment where I let my authenticity be seen and a moment where someone was ready to see me. There are, and I think the more that we're on our path, the more we have opportunities to be seen and to, and to even see the opportunity that's in front of you.
If I was still thinking about the high rise in the Audi, the therapeutic day school wouldn't have looked like it looked to me, but instead it was like, wow, this is really in alignment with my vision when I was on that Greyhound bus. You know, like part of it was really mitigating difficulty and working with adolescents was such a gift.
Like adolescence is such a moment of transition between how we learn to navigate the world and our childhoods and how we learn to navigate that world of our home system. And I worked with students a lot of whom lived in group homes or grew up in foster care or whatever. And it's that like, how did I navigate that? And then moving to like, who am I really? And the other thing about it is that that has transitions as people who transform know our patterns kick up when we're transforming.
Like the ways that we learn to navigate the world wanna say, Hey, no, this is scary. We're letting go of the way we always did things. And I think that's part of why adolescents are little pattern beings, you know? And, and I worked with, uh, pat, a lot of the adolescents I worked with had some kind of mental health diagnosis, which I just saw largely as just patterns on steroids, you know, patterns with the volume turned up a little bit.
And it was just such wonderful training ground to just be with these beings and to be with myself and to notice myself and to notice like when things get volatile, to slow down and breathe and ground and center and, and just be present. And the, uh, neocortex is slower than the amygdala. I really learned to just breathe and be present in the moment and to, to bring my practice of responding rather than reacting into the world.
- I like this concept of, you know, even though you're in the presence of adolescence and it's probably very, very demanding and taxing work, not only are you there working with these kids and having a positive impact, but also you are looking at yourself. So you had the opportunity to grow and evolve as a result. I, I love that idea. Now, I, I have a little bit of a, a follow-up question.
Something you said earlier on this Greyhound bus in this, in this pivotal moment in your life, the key question is, what's the difference between the people who connect with that spark of the divine, right? And that became your core question, and then you went on this, uh, personal growth journey. So where my question is, is you went from this epiphany on the bus to action. What is that journey like from, for you, from being on a bus to going into action?
- That's an interesting question. I think a couple things. I think it was maybe Ramen and Maharshi that said, the winds of grace are always blowing. You need only raise your sails. So I find when I am coming from spirit and I raise my sales synchronicities show up, so I, I can be very concrete about it. Like after that Greyhound bus, I mean, part of it was just a synchronicity, like the therapeutic day school kind of fell out of the sky.
I also knew that George Leonard and Michael Murphy lived in the Bay Area, and that they were these pioneers of the human potential movement. So it seemed like kind of the best game in town. And I, I, um, hired this woman as a career counselor to help with this transition that I was now thinking about. So I did, that was an action I took, I hired a career counselor, another action I took as I chose a career counselor who I knew was close in with George Leonard and Michael Murphy.
And she was one of the people that saw me. And she has been just the dearest friend and a profound mentor and just, I mean, I, I could cry just thinking about what she did. Sometimes things really sail along and, okay, I'm on purpose and it feels really easy. And then inevitably we hit huge bumps in the road or we hit a wall. You know, I can talk about Hoffman teacher training being extraordinarily difficult in a lot of ways and, and really bumping up against a lot of patterns.
And, and so, and there are times where it's just wanting it and it's a hustle, you know, it's a lot of hard work. And I think the connection to my spirit that, like the person that walked into that classroom at white Sulfur springs in April of 2005 in a really profound way, never showed up again in a good way. Like having done the Hoffman process, I connected to who I really was in a way I never had before. I had a better sense of who I was.
And that is not to say I haven't gone through incredibly dark times since, or difficult times since, or whatever you wanna call it. But I had that compass and I just, I knew what it felt like to come from spirit. I knew what it felt like to come from love, to come from compassion, to come from forgiveness. I knew what my vision was. And so the difficult times were still difficult.
And the other thing is, I just had tools and practices, and Hoffman really met the criteria that I had on the Greyhound bus for being something that works in the difficult times for being something that works to become more effective in the world, to do just better at our jobs and our families and our careers. However, and it also is a drive to transcendence. It's a way to move into the light, but not in a way that's up and out, not in a way that's disembodied.
It's like using our pathology, actually using our patterns, using what's less than authentic about us, and transforming that, recycling it, taking that energy and transforming it into qualities of spirit so that we can dissolve this false self that we take on, that we compulsively learn to navigate the world with and become who we really are. And, and the ongoing process of coming from authenticity and spirit.
So what I would say is there were times where I really had to work hard where I really was hustling, and it was because I knew what I wanted and that I was motivated to do it. And it was a really different motivation. It wasn't the motivation of how do I finally be good enough. It's the motivation of like, I want to bring my light to the world. I want to demonstrate who I am. I want to connect with people in a different and deeper way. I want that to be my work in the world.
So there were a lot of synchronicities and, and, and the other thing about it is, what is the next step? Like, okay, the next step is I am going to call Pam Cramer because she's a career counselor that's close into where I want to go. And sometimes it's just taking that next step and taking that next step. I sometimes say, uh, to coaching clients, it's like being in the woods.
If you see the mountain in the distance, like if you have a vision, even if you're in the woods, even if it's night, I, I don't know, you know what all the bears and rivers and everything else are between here and the mountain in the distance. But if I know what that direction is and I walk three feet, or I walk four feet, then I can see the next three feet or the next four feet.
And then sometimes there's a clearing and there's an opening and it's like smooth sledding for a while, and then sometimes it's, it's rough. - So I love what you said, uh, coming from spirit, all you need to do is raise your sales and synchronicities show up. Would you say that that your ability to, you know, obviously it's a journey, right? So your your awareness of coming from spirit, did that start in 2004 or was it there all along for you? - That's a wonderful question.
I meditated before that, I actually went to a Quaker boarding school. I, I was baptized Catholic, and when I was about 10 years old, my parents converted. I think I was about 10. My parents converted to Quaker. And Quakers believe in the inner light. They believe there is that of God in everyone. And that resonated with me.
Uh, I won't get into, I could go on and on about what I do and don't believe in various cosmologies or religions or mystical traditions, but I like the idea of going inward Quaker services, or they're called meetings. Quaker meeting is people sit in silence. They're non-hierarchical. Anybody can stand and speak. And, and it's predominantly in silence more or less. There's, there are variations. I went to a Quaker boarding school, met people that I love.
So there was some resonance with this for me before 2004, I meditated and all of that. And, and I, and I actually gave a lot of thought to what I, uh, believed and didn't believe. I spent a lot of time taking philosophy classes in college and ruminating about these kinds of things.
And so what shifted, and really, I have to say, one of the most profound shifts in this was doing the Hoffman process was a, spirituality isn't something for mystics on the mountaintops, or it isn't just something for mystics on the mountaintops. It's something that we can connect to and live from in a day-to-day world. This aspect of ourselves, there's something within us, there's some spark of the divine.
There's a spiritual self. It has a lot of different names, and it's across cultures and poets and philosophers and mystics have been pointing to it since time immemorial. And wow, we can connect to that and we can bring that to bear in our day-to-day lives. And that connection was really profound and really clear to me at the process that I, I really became more open to having mystical experiences after the process. Uh, my meditation practice deepened profoundly.
So that was one of the really big things is that it's like, who cares what you believe or don't believe? And, and it's, that has been reinforced for me not to say I, I can geek out on cosmologies all day long and talk about them. And I, I, I like that. But I've also really noticed as a Hoffman process teacher that I've had students that are atheists. I've had students that are evangelical Christians.
I've had students that are Buddhist or Muslim or whatever it is, and they can connect in the way that they connect. I remember one time having a post process call with this atheist that, uh, was really getting a lot of mileage out of the spirit, guided path visualization. And he was talking about, he was getting all these downloads and all these messages that were helping him in his job and his business and all of this. And he said, I don't know how this stuff works.
Which, you know, honestly, no one does. I don't think really as a mechanical thing, but it's, it's been really, it's something to live from, is really what I'm trying to say. That spirituality is something we can connect to and live from, and it's an embodied lived experience. And however you hold it inside, outside, both, there's something there. There's something there. There's this thing that's been pointed to across cultures, and we all have access to it.
- Yeah. And I, I think for you in your life, uh, at least the sense I get is that connection to spirit was always there. Maybe, maybe a little staticky connection or maybe as a younger person it wasn't as strong, but I get the sense it was always there. And maybe, maybe something along the way, things along the way, like the greyhound moment and all these moments along the way, including the process, have deepened your connection to spirit and given you the tools to live, spirit led basically.
And therefore, synchronicities came up and people saw you in the right moment, in the right time, and then your career was so aligned with your values and your spirit and so forth. - Absolutely. And also just wanna give a shout out to the body and to the heart and to the mind and, and listening to all aspects of ourselves and deepening into all aspects of ourself. You know, at the deepest level, I believe it's all spirit, but we have these different doorways in and we can listen to ourselves.
For example, with the adolescence, if something happened that was volatile, I would go straight to my body. Where am I feeling my energy is my throat tight? Is my, are my solar plexus tight? Breathing it down into my center, like grounding and centering length, width and depth. Like just being fully present in my body, moving my body, taking time, giving myself space in that moment to breathe. You know? And, and so I just wanna give a shout out to embodiment.
Michael Murphy has a quote, I love, the flesh itself is waking up as opposed to up and out, as opposed to like, just let's get out of this hell hole of manifestation. Let's, let's wake it all up. Let's wake up our minds. Let's wake up our hearts. - Yeah. And that was something else that I was thinking is that you did listen. There was, you know, I, I love what you said earlier. I, I always felt like I was a long way away from my gifts.
You listen to that, you know, a lot of us have the unfortunate ability to not listen, to not hear, to continue to kind of quiet that voice. And you obviously had the ability to listen and then the ability to go into action. - It's such a paradox. Shoving things down really doesn't work in the long run. And it's also uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to feel the distance between the life we're living every day on our vision is uncomfortable.
It's uncomfortable to feel difficult feelings, but how many times, you know, if we make a practice of it, of just staying with my feelings, of holding my feelings in spirit, letting myself feel, asking myself what do I need, and then taking action on my own behalf so that I'm not just sitting on the couch feeling bad. Like I, I allow myself to feel it, and then it's, and then what do I need and take that action. And I, I'm by no means saying I do that perfectly all the time.
You know, I think one of the things I constantly learn at the Hoffman process, we get lots of all kinds of people in there and people that, you know, people might ask, why is that person here? They're, they're crushing it, you know? And, and it's not that at some point in life, it all becomes unicorns and rainbows. It's, I think for me, it's, we become more resilient. We become more capable of riding the waves, of being in the highs, of being in the lows, and of experiencing it.
And, and, and when we've navigated enough, then we can have more faith in ourselves. - Yeah. And the, the comment about their crush in it, the one thing I would add is from what is the come from, right? Earlier you said, I was trying to not outrun my shame and prove that I can be enough, but I started just being myself.
So from the outside, we could be quote unquote crushing it, but our motivation comes from a place of this is who I am, versus I'm just trying to be whatever I need to be in order to believe that I'm enough. - Yeah. I mean, you know, we hear in the process all the time, I have all the toys and it's not doing what I thought it was gonna do. - Okay, max, we are almost at the end, but I do want to talk about this beautiful thing you do, which is, you are a percussionist.
You're a drummer. Tell me about that. Have you been a drummer all your life? - I fell in love with drums when I was about 11 years old. I heard the drum solo on side four of all the worlds of Staged by rush. I loved drums. Someone I knew was selling a used drum set. I begged my parents and I got a drum set for Christmas, I think 1982. I was 13, I think, something like that. And, uh, I've been a drummer since then, and a percussionist, and I actually haven't been playing so much lately.
There was a period of time when I used to play quite a few jazz gigs in the Bay Area. I got really busy with other things in recent years, but it's always going on. It's a, it's a 24 7 in my head. Well, not quite 24 7, but it's, it's certainly daily. And I will just say, I could go on as long about drums and the path of growth and the path of practice and the path of bringing something into being that's really special and divine.
I'm not, you know, that's, it's like expressing something really deep within us that is recalcitrant Trent to be expressed through words. You know, in some sense, it's all about connecting to our depth, connecting to feeling, to connecting to our hearts, connecting to our souls, and finding ways to bring that forward and into the world. At least that's what it's about for me.
- Amen. Well, as a person who wishes I was a drummer and has visions and dreams of me becoming a drummer, I have utmost respect for that. As, you know, we've talked about it many times and I've actually seen you perform life. So that was really beautiful to see that. And I agree with you. I think drumming is just another vehicle where, where spirit shows up, uh, same way and so do patterns and so do dark side attacks and things like that. So it's just, just another vehicle for us to grow.
- I absolutely think that drumming in certain ways saved my life. And I actually think, you know, you said patterns come up, it's a good place to bash. Ooh, - Good. - Bring some bashing into drumming. Yeah. And, and working through stuff in a way that's not logical or dialogical, like really working through things.
It's amazing how many times, like old jazz musicians, they can barely walk or whatever, when they get, you know, in their advanced years and they, you put 'em behind their instrument and it's divinity. It is God on earth, you know? Um, there's something that just speaks through it. - How lucky to know that you will have that in your advanced years. - Oh, thank you. I don't, I don't know if my drumming chops will be up there, but we'll see. I love it. Yeah. - All it that, that's all that matters.
You know, when our bodies are hurting and they're not working the way they once did, it'll bring your spirit to maybe forget the pain for a, for a, a moment or a minute or a couple minutes or 10 minutes, who knows? Yes. All right, my friend Max, it has been such a treat. There are so many topics there that I could continue to pick your brain about.
You have such an ability to be connected to the macro, very, very macro, but also still be right here in your body and be able to talk about these complex ideas and very easy to understand bite-sized bits. So thank you for sharing with us today, max. - Thank you so much. - Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi. I'm the CEO and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. - And I'm Rasi Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
- Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love - In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to Hoffman Institute.