A Teaching, a Song, and a Poem - 3/13/21

A practical teaching about feeding your good wolf, music and poems that are relevant to the weekly topic. When you become a member of our Patreon community, you get every episodes, exclusive post show conversations, and one of these t SP episodes every week. We really do need your support because as an independent podcast, we're competing with some huge studios with huge budgets, so every bit that you give helps

us to keep doing what we do. Joining our Patreon community helps not only yourself, but thousands of people whose lives are touched by the content but can't afford to give so jo in our community at one you Feed dot net slash join, Welcome everyone to another episode of a teaching a song and a poem and a joke. This time around, you're gonna get a joke. Might give it to you right off the bat. Here, it's gonna start things off on a on a good note. Two

cannibals or eating a clown. One of them looks over and his friend and says, does this guy taste funny to you? Boom boom. Now we all remember, in a blinding moment of insight, why we were happy when I stopped doing jokes. So back to teaching, song and a poem. First, a thank you for your support for being here. I don't know if you get tired of hearing that, but I don't get tired of saying it. I want to say thank you, so I did, and that goes is a big thank you for me, Chris, Jenny, Nicole and

everybody here at the One You Feed. So the teaching this week, I was working on this fancy teaching about consciousness and how consciousness works, and not that I have that figured out, that's obviously a big question that nobody

really knows. But I was going to kind of talk about the clear, open nature of consciousness, and then I realized I've been having a lot of conversations with coaching clients that sort of revolved around a very similar idea, and the idea was very basic, and it's don't believe your thoughts. My zend teacher says that to me from time to time, I say anything you want to say, don't believe your thoughts. And it's a really powerful practice because our thoughts get us into an awful lot of trouble.

We take them as facts, that basic idea of Okay, my thoughts come up. They are something that occurs within consciousness, but I am not them. That's thing one, right, I am not my thoughts. They happen regardless really of whether I want them to or not. Sit down and meditate for a few minutes, and you surely see this happen. You sit down and meditate, and you're like, okay, I

am going to watch my breath. So there you are, watching your breath, and thought after thought after thought just keeps coming, and it becomes kind of clear like, well, I, as I think of myself, are not thinking these thoughts. They're just showing up. And so it's very helpful to just get some space and go, Okay, thoughts appear to me in consciousness, but just because they appear does not

necessarily mean that they are true. Very often they aren't really even capable of being true, because they are interpretations of things. Right. The question that I use in the Spiritual Habits program, and I think is so powerful, is the question, what am I making this mean? It's sort of an all purpose question that we can ask whenever a thought comes up, whenever a situation happens, what am I making this mean? It helps us realize that we

are having an interpretation all the time. We are always telling ourselves stories about what's going on and what it means. And if we are telling ourselves the story, if we're creating it, then we can choose to not identify with it as strongly. I feel like I've given this teaching a hundred times probably, and I'm sure I have, and yet I do it again and again and again with coaching clients, and I do it again and again and

again in my own life. I have to constantly go, oh, look, there's a thought, and I start believing it and I'm attached to it and I'm getting upset by it or I'm getting wrapped up in it. And then I just can take a step back and go oh wait, that's a thought, it's not necessarily true. In act acceptance the commitment therapy, right, they refer to this as cognitive diffusion. In most mindfulness practices we think of it as just

sort of stepping back and observing the thoughts. But in all cases the fact remains we want to just become a little bit more I think the word skeptical is useful. Yeah, maybe we use skeptical will become a little more skeptical of our thoughts. We don't have to out right be like they're not true, we don't have to get in arguments with them. We can just become a little bit more skeptical, like, well, maybe that's not true. How do I really know that's true? And another really useful question

is how would I act if that wasn't true? What if I'm completely wrong about this? You know? The classic one for people is that I'm not good enough or I can't do this right, And it can be really powerful to just say, well, what if I'm completely wrong about that? And very often, very very very often we are completely wrong about that. We sell ourselves short all of the time in what our capabilities for change are. Now, if you've listened to the show, which you have plenty,

and you subscribe to this and give us money. It must mean that you relate with me in some way. And some of the things I say, you know that I'm not one of those people that believes in like five easy steps to change your life and that life becomes perfect over and and it's always happy. I'm just not. That's not my nature. I'm as Nicole said to me the other day, she said, I'm a devout negative thinker, which made me laugh. I think a lot of us are that way. You know, we're kind of devout in

our skepticism. But it's funny because we should be skeptical about our own thoughts. We should be realizing that just because they show up doesn't mean they're true. The surprising thing is the more often they show up, and the more vociferously they show up, the more we tend to think they must be true, and the opposite is actually true. The more often they show up, and the more vociferously they show up, the more we should be skeptical and go, well, hang on. So this is a sort of a long ramble.

I could have said it in one sentence. Don't believe your thoughts or be skeptical about your thoughts. But that wouldn't have been much of a mini episode, would it. So you get another five and a half minutes of it. But it's arguably better than if I come up with another joke. There's a what the fish say when it swam into the cement wall? Damn? All right? How about a poem that will probably surely be better unless I wrote it, which I didn't, So that's the good news.

This one is called God. I always pick them with the names I cannot pronounce. I need more Robert rubbed Rabbit, Robert Frost, more of such a dumb joke. All right? This one is called Everyday Grace by Stella Nissanovitch. That's what I'm gonna go with any s A N O V I c H. Stella Nissanovitch. It can happen like that meeting at the market buying tires, amid the smell of rubber, the grating sound of jackhammers and drills. Anywhere

we share stories and grace flows between us. The tire center waiting room becomes a healing place as one speaks of her husband's heart valve replacement bed sores from complications. A man speaks of multiple surgeries, notes as false appearance as strong and healthy. I share my sister's death from breast cancer, her youngest only seven. A woman rises, gives her name Mrs Henry, then takes my hand. Suddenly an ordinary day becomes holy ground. That's Everyday Grace by Stella Nissanovitch.

I think it is beautiful poem. It's that sharing that tells us we're not alone and connects us with other people. So I thought I would use the theme of grace from the last poem and use that for our song this week. So our song is called boys Ain't Shit by saying by say Grace. No, I'm kidding. I did search for Grace and Spotify and that song did come up. And unlike the Crazy Frog episode of a couple of weeks ago, I'm not going to put you through it, so and I'm not going to play anymore Crazy Frog

for at least another episode or two. So seriously, our song this week is uh going to correct an error. I can't believe that I've done. How have I done? Seventy five of these? Get We're nearing seventy five of these? That's kind of amazing. And I don't think ever in all those seventy five I have played anything by Bell and Sebastian, which is a band that I absolutely love.

They're probably one of my bands in my top ten for sure, and so um I could pick a hundred of their songs but the one I'm gonna pick is called the Ghost of Rock School. So this song features some of my favorite aspects of Bell and Sebastian that show up over and over. First, the guy's vocal melodies are I think they're long, they're complicated, they're intricate, but yet they are incredibly catchy. I think he's one of the best vocal melodists out there. Is that a term uh?

Lyrics are are usually really really good. I love the instrumentation. I love the way they've got the horns that come in and often will mimic the vocal melody because it's so catchy. You hear a little of that here, and then I love the female harmonies that come in over the last part. So this is Bell and Sebastian U the Ghost of Rock School, and again, one of my favorite bands, and for some reason haven't even got them

in in the first seventy two episodes. We may get a Bell and Sebastian fiesta going on from here out. We'll see. Thank you for listening, Thank you for your support of the show. Another episode out on Tuesday like always, and another one of these coming up soon. Thanks so much, Talk to you soon. Bye, Goden, sun passing, God on the street, God be far better, and the promisesly God in my dreams on the free right, Grace spit it

out to sip it and then I wake up. Wasn't too It wasn't just Yourfully, the damon waits at the garden gate. If you get pasted him, maybe Lawrence and Fool we'll be waiting to take you to the coast of the broad Smoke