Adyashanti on Living in the Service of Truth - Part 2

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Audio Shanty, and this is part two, So for those of you who heard last week's episode, this is the second half

of the interview. He's an American born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening of all beings, and his teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire and recognize what is true in liberating at the core of all existence. Audio Shanty also runs the Omega Retreat, which Eric has taken part in frequently. We are back for part two

of this two part series, so thank you. I'm going to change gears a little bit for a second before we go into how sometimes the seeking and the spiritual practice that's focused on results stands in the way of us finding what we're seeking. But I first have to start with in a recent conversation I heard you you described that part of your gratitude practice is that you make up silly songs that you sing to your wife. And so I'm wondering whether we're any chance of us

getting a silly song. I know listeners everywhere like I want to hear one of these songs. You could probably release a record of them, is all I'm saying. Oh yeah, a record that on one person is gonna listen to. I'm the reason I'm closing about eyes now. People can't see that, but I'm trying to rack my brain because it because they're just totally spontaneous for the most part, um I can't remember anything at the moment, but I mean, they're they're really what they are eric Is. They're just

they're like little moments where I'm just expressing gratitude. Yeah, Like just how wonderful I think muth is and how mysterious because I've spent But we've been married twenty three years now, twenty three and a half years now, and I would say over those twenty three years, twenty three and a half years, our relationship has become more of a mystery to me rather than less. It's just more of a mystery the the depth of that connection and

what that is and what's that based on. And because I had never I don't mean to blow it up into something more or less than it is, but I've never really seen seen it before. I'd never heard about it, I never read about it, still haven't to this day. I'm sure other people experience. But just there's just the way of a depth of connection that's that's just super super profound and more mysterious now to me after twenty three years than ever. And I grew up with my

mom singing songs. She used to wake me up every morning singing songs to meum, and so I think I just sort of and they were often goofy and silly and fun and you know, and I think I just sort of picked that up. And you know, it's just sort of a way of being of expressing happiness and gratitude. And you know, I've often told that. Sometimes I'll ask her, I say, this must just be insufferable. I mean, because sometimes I can make up twenty songs in a day.

I mean, you know, really literally like or more, and they're just little, short, little things. But I think kind if I was on the receiving end of this, I mean, it would be cute for a while. But good lord, she just keeps assuring me that it's okay. So I kept years of it. You know when I read when I heard that, it just sort of made I just I smiled for a couple of hours about that. It's just such a such a genuine, just sort of fun.

It's a way of playing. Yes, admittedly, there's a there's a significant part of me that's still four or five year a little way, which isn't uncommon for men. Women know that, you know, there's part there's a part of us that sort of doesn't grow up. But and sometimes that's not so good. But I think there's a part of it that can be just a sort of innocence, and it does feel I do when I'm singing those songs, you know, I feel like I'm five years old. It

comes from that same place. It's play and it's fun and and yet it's also serious because in the sense that they're all ways of saying I love you, and I just don't think that we can express that too often to one another, you know. You know, it's interesting. I think that playfulness is something that I have really in the last I think I had it a lot when I was younger, and then it kind of went away, and I've really over the last few years really started to think about, like how do I do how do

I do that? How do I play and have fun that that you know, that isn't something that's serious and it's it's been I think it's a big part of for me, has been something I'm I'm continuing to try and work with and and you know, to lighten up. It's nice that you can start to rediscover that a little bit, you know. I think so much of it is just a a willingness for us human beings to just sort of be silly, silly and happy and just

like let that, like kids do right. They just let it out and they're not that concerned about how someone's gonna see, what they're going to think about it, and how it's going to be received and all that and um. But you know, it seems to me that, like I said, people generally like you know, when you when you express appreciation or gratitude or love or or just the fact that you're having a wonderful time. Yeah, you know what

I mean. Um yeah, but I think a lot of it just comes from that sense of just a willingness to be to be silly and to be seen as silly. It was sort of big when my son was little Veggie Tales. Tales, they they've got a segment called Silly Songs with Larry Who's the Cucumber. If you ever want to have just a few minutes of silly fun, I would look up the Hairbrush song. Yeah, it's He's hister. It's just they are silly songs. They are so fun.

I'll put them on occasionally. It's just complete lighthearted silliness. All right, Well, we need I think we really need that also now, like we really we always have, but I think we really need that because you know, our world is just so increasingly serious and for good reason, Like, I get it, we're dealing with some serious, serious challenges. Um, but you know we can if we lose touch with

our innocence. Man, all of our seriousness in the world isn't going to serve us, save us from the from the wisdom we lose when we lose Actually, with that, you have that innocence. And we wrapped up part one by saying we were going to talk a little bit about this sense of how our spiritual striving can get in the way. And you talk a lot about meditation, and you you teach meditation in a different way than a lot of a lot of people do. And um,

I'm just gonna read something you wrote. You say, there's an unspoken, sometimes unacknowledged agenda that you carry into meditation, whether that be to get rid of certain feelings or to achieve other feelings, or to awaken right. And if you're not careful, that agenda will become your meditation. Meditation is the relinquishing of agenda. Yeah, it's nice and easy and simple to write that down. Yeah, to read it, it's like, Okay, I'll I'll sit down and release agenda.

And it's not usually quite that simple. It can be simple, um, but I think a lot of it is comes back to like preconceived ideas of what a spiritual practice is. And I mean I know this because I did everything I teach people not to do. I have a PhD

In seeking. I drove myself literally half crazy, seeking and striving and and I even having a respect for that because sometimes like that's all we can do, no matter what somebody says, As my teacher says, sometimes you just have your dance to dance, and you've got to dance it all the way out, um, which was her way of saying authenticity at the end of the day, rules

like you've gotta be you gotta be authentic. So sometimes you're just seeking and you're wanting, and you're struggling and you're striving, and you hear that might not be the best way to go about it. But sometimes man, that just might be what you need to do. You just might need to burn that out of your system, Like that's what I did. I don't teach it because mostly it burns people out rather than burns it burns the

the trait out of their system. Um. But to simplify in terms of spiritual depth, because there's a million reasons that people can meditate, especially in terms of awakening or enlightenment or something. I think meditation, for instance, is a way of engaging with the mystery of being, the mystery of being, Like, you sit down and before we even think about how do I do this? What am I

supposed to be doing? Whereas my mind supposed to be all that kind of stuff, like the fur the moment that you sit down and you realize, like, I don't even know who I am that's sitting here all this at that moment, I can remember the moment I had that realization, right, I just I don't I don't know who's seeking. I don't know who's striving. I don't know who wants enlightenment. I don't know why I want it. I don't know the guy that's sitting on this darn

cushion that's pushing so hard to make something happen. I don't even know what that is. And for some stroke of luck or fate or something that became hit me as a curiosity like, wow, I'm a mystery unto myself, and I can remember the first time I really realize that, and the first time I was like, I don't know who I am, and that became more interesting than trying to find out who I am. I was like, Wow, what's it like not to know? What is it really

like right now not to know? I know what it's like to struggle to try to know, But what's it like to not know and to just sort of it's the first time I kind of just let myself sort of ease back into that felt sense of the mystery of being and not try to solve it or change it or but just explore it, Like, what is that like? What is my perience of being when I don't have any idea who and what I am? And I that's

I didn't have teachings of who are you? And all that kind of stuff like that wasn't part of the spiritual culture that I So I came to all that kind of by myself. Um. But so this is all a sort of a long way of saying I think spiritual practice can also be entered into as a way of of experientially connecting and exploring the mystery of being. And we start with the mystery of being right through the doorway of I don't know, I don't know who

I am. I don't know what God is. I don't know what a white lightenment is, I don't know what awakening is. I don't know what life is. I don't know any of this stuff really, And can I just stop, like right in the middle of that. And if we can stop in the middle of that, just for a moment, we realize it's not so bad. Actually it's pretty cool, like and it doesn't mean we want to stay in a state of ignorance forever, but just the mystery of

being is pretty amazing itself. Just like man, that is wild, but we're taught we just have to immediately solve it. You know. It goes into that either or thinking either I'm confused or I'm clear, I'm awake or I'm asleep, or I'm this or I'm that, and there's this. But our life has lived in the middle ground those those two polar opposites, those are just sort of conceptual. The

rest is where it's at. And I think spirituality is an experiential encounter with the unknown, and yes that within that there is an innate draw to come to a deeper state of clarity or awakening or whatever we want to call that. But we actually come to that most efficiently by just diving into the mystery of being rather than trying to solve it. It's kind of like meditation.

I remember I did a meditation with a few years ago, and I said, so, we're gonna sit down and just imagine that you had no idea of what meditation was, none at all, and you're gonna sit here and we're all going to meditate. But you don't know what meditation is, and you don't know how to go about it, and

you don't know how to do it. And everyone just looked at me, like, you've got to be kidding, Just try it, And so we'd sit down and be quiet, and I said, so, imagine you don't even know what it is to meditate, and therefore you don't know how to go about doing it. You don't know the first thing about it. Just imagine that. But imagine you were to enter into this that simply. And I said, just sit with that for a moment, and immediately you can feel in the whole room what's happening. In the whole

room is meditation is happening. All of a sudden, everything goes quiet because nobody knows what they're supposed to be doing what meditation is supposed to be. What the right state they're trying to achieve is how they're going about that. We suspended all that and then so then the mind is in a state of openness and receptivity. It's not asserting or denying anything. And that's actually meditation. You know,

because I grew up dyslexic. It's sort of a dyslexic upside down backwards way of coming to meditation, do you know what I mean? And and it's it's amazing that It's not that I would suggest people do that all the time, but who knows, maybe it would be a good idea of it. But it's just sort of a it was sort of a way of trying to show people that meditation is when we enter into the mystery of being and what does that mean? Like here, okay,

here's what it means. Here's how we do it. The mystery means you don't know how to do it and you don't know what it is. Now just stop with that. And then in retrospect then it's like, did you notice that your mind is really quiet? Yeah? Did you notice

how stable and grounded and common? Yeah, that's meditation, but I don't know how to do it again, That's the whole point, right, you know when I have followed you know, you're you've got the book True Meditation, and I mean you basically talk about meditation is about listening and letting go of agenda and just being. And what I found is sometimes that is remarkably profound. Sometimes it is and sometimes I'm like, how is this any different than what

happens all day long in my brain? Right? I just sit there and I'm like, just just feels like what it feels like to be in the world, like do do do do? Do? Do do do do so so on a on a slightly more practical level. Right, So I'm gonna sit gonna sit down, and I'm going to basically allow everything to be exactly the way it is.

And the way it is is runaway train. And I know that you know and and and you know I've got all these quotes here from you that I pulled from the book, and this idea of like, well, if you don't think thoughts are a problem, they're not a problem.

Yeah right. So that but that thinking runs pretty deep, It runs very deep, especially in spiritual yeah right, And so what would you recommend for Okay, sometimes I sit down and I experience and I try and do nothing right, which is essentially at a to strip it down is sort of what we're talking about. Anytime you actually achieve totally doing nothing, you're in the deepest state of meditation possible. Yeah.

And when I've and I have had some mind blowing experiences when I somehow managed to a lot, get to a point where I just let completely go and boom. Yeah. And so the profoundness is is personally you know, has been deeply and transformative for me. Um, I get where

you're going there. So so I'm gonna go and retreat. Right, We're gonna go and retreat, and I'm gonna sit there for six hours a day or so, and I'm going to give you some specific guidance about meditation beyond what I've given so far, because basically what we've been doing here is a sort of I think of it as setting the foundation of meditation. This isn't all of it, right, If it was just like you don't know what it is, you don't know how to do it, you don't know

why you're doing Okay, kid, go at it. Have a good time. Yeah, most people are going to spin their wheels and get nowhere and think about yesterday's breakfast and whatever. So so far what we've done is sort of I'm trying to sort of set sort of a good attitude to to start with meditation, right, it's sort of an orientation and feeling cognitive orientation. Okay, So once you get that background, then you get down to the nitty gritty like, okay, but that's great, but maybe I need a little more

help than that. So sometimes, like you said, that can be just that can be mind blowingly revelatory. And some days you're just endlessly thinking about silly and stupid things, right, not even and not the fun kind, right, not the fun kind. Yeah, it's not not not silly songs with Larry or audio. Maybe maybe maybe even some really painful things, right, really really painful things. So okay, so then this is kind of we're embraced. I think meditation is a sort

of ultimately saying we're embracing a paradox. And that's not easy for a human being to do, to really embrace a sort of paradox. As. Yeah, the foundation is letting it everything be as it is trying not to control things, trying to let go all those things that kind of egos kind of can't do. They try, it's a sere that that they find it really hard to do. So then okay, then you can introduce a little bit of technique to start to give some orientation on top of

that foundation. The reason I emphasize the foundation is because often it's like upside down, it's all technique, all trying to do it right, all trying to you know, as if it was some sort of mathematical equation, you're so SuperFect or something. But but then we kind of come into something more that that's more balanced, and then I'll go like, Okay, how do I do this? Though, like you said, some days it works for me, and some days it's just I'm just in a sort of state

of mental or maybe even emotional chaos. Okay, Well, start by listening to the quiet spaces inside. There's noise. Okay, let the noise be the noise, leave it alone. In other words, stop trying to control the noise. That's kind of revolutionary. Okay, I've stopped trying to control my mind, but it's still all over the place. Okay, so we've just allowed to laid the foundation to whatever sense possible. Let go of trying to control your mind. Okay, now,

but there's and then there's another step. Okay. Now, see if when you're not trying to control your mind, then you can start to hear the quiet spaces inside that your mind is actually happening. Every thought is happening within a space of quietness. If you're focused on trying to get your mind to stop, you'll never notice that your mind is a rising in quietness. So start to notice the quietness. Okay, then someone might raise their hand. Well, that sounds really good on you, but I can't really

do that. I keep getting taken away like every half second by my mind. Okay, then we'll add just a little bit more structure. Right, So we're going to add a little more structure. Okay, maybe give your mind something to do, or your attention something to do other than focusing on on thoughts. And also maybe something that's more concrete then listening to the quiet inside, because maybe that's too tough on a given day, that's just not working

for you. Okay, how about feeling feeling your breath into your in your belly, Just feel it and just make that the rest your attention on your breath. Just that, Okay, So I can rest my attention on my thoughts, or I can rest my attention on my breath. Okay, and then someone will raise your hand. That was great? Are you? We just did a thirty minute meditation of resting my attention on the breath and the quiet spaces inside, and yet I got lost in my mind about five times

in thirty minutes. Right, what do I do? Okay? Okay, So every time you get lost, kindly, kindly, kindly, gently, just encourage your mind your attention back to your breath, or brack to the quiet spaces or listening. Just come into a state of listening. But I still get lost a hundred times. All right, you get lost. But the important thing is when you're lost, there's going to be a moment when you recognize your lost in your mind.

That moment is super significant because you didn't get you don't all of a sudden go, my god, I've been thinking about yesterday's breakfast from any It just occurs. Right, It's not something you did. You just realized I was risk I was thinking about yesterday's breakfast at that moment. This is incredibly important. For meditators, because right here is

where most meditators make a critical mistake. They get upset, they get disappointed, They may be judge themselves like God, I'm doing nothing but getting lost, and and they get sort of judgment toll. When you do that, you're literally conditioning your brain that every time you become a bit more conscious, every time you come out of your narrative for a moment, you're just you're just gonna judge yourself. So you're conditioning yourself every time I come out of

my narrative. It's a negative experience. It's a negative, critical upset experience. Are you conditioning yourself to come out in your narrative very often? If someone's gonna like yell at you and brate you every time you get lost in your mind, how often are you gonna You're setting yourself up to stay lost. So that's why I often put a lot of emphasis is on Yeah, it can be frustrating, you know, for a while if you get lost in

your mind over and over and over and over. But each of those moments two bring the attention back in the most benign way possible. You are you are going to be exercising your humility, right, because you're going to be You're going to enco ounter failure over and over and over, and you're going to see your relationship with failure, right, And so meditation that's it also connects with life because in the part of life is failure, but only over

and over, not exclusively fortunately right. So it's so meditation starts to show us our relationship with failure, things not going the way we want when they want them to go. Otherwise, Okay, how are you going to be with that? You're gonna get all upset, You're going to judge yourself and shame yourself. How what you're going to be? And then you can maybe you can start to turn that little piece of

conditioning around where you go, Oh lucky am I? Somehow I came out of my being lost in my narrative. M cheez, Thanks Universe for gifting me with not being lost, the coming out of my little dream there, because I could have been in a dream forever and a lot of people are they never get out of it seemingly for a minute. Ye, and there you are, you popped out of it. What are you going to do about that? Yeah?

I often think of it like and it was someone else who said, like, if you can celebrate that moment because you woke up that moment of like I was off wondering wait, instead of oh, I was off wondering what's wrong with me? It's like that moment you woke up right, you know, and it's almost you can if you can invert that from oh darn it, I did it again to oh good, I caught myself right. Talk Space is thererapy for how we live today. It's mobile,

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biblically and theologically informed vision of the spiritual life. So go to Upper Room dot org slash welcome to enjoy a free thirty day trial delivered right to your inbox every day. You'll also be able to access a wealth of resources within your account at the Upper Room. Head to the Upper Room. That's U, P P E R R O O M dot org slash welcome for your free thirty day trial. Thanks. I'm sure that this was said in the twenty years that I studied meditation about

how important it was to come back kindly. I think I needed almost even beyond like come back non judgmentally. I think I needed almost like no, celebrate that moment, sure if you're the next step. My nature of judging myself for wandering off was so strong. There was a time many years ago when I would when that phenomena would happen, and each time I would realize I had been lost in my mind. I would just say thank you inside, just that little moment of gratitude, like thank you, gee,

I came out of this. And I don't know how I came out of it, but I came out of it. Jeez. Whatever it is that helped me come out of it, thank you. And you know, sometimes that feels authentic and real and sometimes it feels phony, you know, but okay, sometimes it feels phony, but you're turning around a conditioned pattern and that's the important thing. So I think I

really like the way you emphasize. Sometimes you almost have to go a little over the top and the appreciation part because you're you're is turning around a pattern, right, you know, And I think it's useful. I like to talk about this stuff also in a bigger sense, Like I said, when that happens, you are encountering your relationship with failure, and that's not just a meditative thing. That's

a life thing, Like it's not. It's a pretty good idea to start to bring some intention to your relationship with that because that's going to be really impactful on your life. And then meditation isn't just about meditating. Well, it's like man I am encountering life attitudes, and I'm encountering them such the way that I can start to turn those attitudes around in a way that can actually work for me rather than hinder me at every turn. Yeah,

you had a line that I really liked. You said you could boil all of spirituality down to the art and practice of listening to nothing. And then this next part I loved, and trusting in the difficulty. I love that idea of trusting in the difficulty. Like, it's okay, And that's I think that's what you're speaking to here. It's your relationship to failure, it's your relationship to difficulty.

It's okay. Yeah, because there's a part of we're talking about meditation a lot, but since we are, there's limitations to this idea. But meditation is this very intimate act, right, But if you looked at meditation almost more like practicing an instrument. Like you know, when you start to learn

an instrument, you're screwing up right and left. It's not a pretty thing, right, You're making mistakes over and over, and you're having to do these really redundant exercises and basically you are reconditioning yourself right, your your fingers or your breath or you know, all sorts of things. And but since there's an instrument between you and your efforts there, it's it's a little less intimate than when you're meditating.

There's no instrument. You are the instrument. So it's easy or to kind of get more self critical, right, But if you saw it almost like I'm learning how to play this thing, and it's called my mind and my attention, and you know, just like I would learn how to play a trumpet or a guitar or something, and it's really important. The patterns that I'm setting now are significant.

They're really important. They're more important than an instrument, because you know, at least at the end of the day, you can put your trumpet down or your gud car down, but you can't put your mind down, unfortunately sometimes. So I just like to mention this because I think the more we start to look at meditation is sort of this metaphor for life, and that it shows us our attitude towards all sorts of things in life, towards success,

towards failure, towards disappointment, towards the heart opening. If people can have these extraordinary heart openings, and for one person that's reval a tory and beautiful, and for someone else that's scary and frightening, and it reminds them of all the ways that intimacy can hurt them. And however that unfolds, It's like, Okay, this isn't just about meditation. This is

about your life. This is about intimate encounters that you're going to have in life and what your relationship is when you feel open and vulnerable, and it's important to see how your system relates to that and realize that those are changeable. It's not set in stone. You know that maybe you get a little frightened or you feel a little insecure when your heart opens, but sometimes something like meditation can be a safe place in which you

can experiment with changing your relationship with that. You know, like, Okay, it feels a little weird when my heart opens. It feels lovely and I feel more connected, but there's this sort of strange, ominous danger sort of signal I'm I'm getting And it's like, okay, well, meditation is a pretty safe thing. Can you just experience a little bit of that anxiety or fear you have with openness and vulnerability. Um, after all, you're sitting in a cushion in a room.

Probably nothing's going to happen to you, right, right, But anyway, it's just the way I think making these connections to life is really important. Otherwise our spiritual practices, whether the meditation or anything else, remain this limited thing that's sort of my little spiritual life. I think it's important to say, whatever practice I'm doing in spirituality, how does this connect

with my everyday world? And if it doesn't connect, I got to re examine it because it needs to connect, right, And that sort of takes us back to kind of where we started with this idea of you know, the this you know important question, what's really important? How do I take some deeper realization Asian or deeper thing, and how do I embody that right into my life? That's

that becomes the thing, isn't it. Because we have these revelatory moments and they can remain private, closeted, little moments of revelation that can be transformative and beautiful, or we can even see that as an end like oh I had the experience that's written in the book, Okay, great, I accomplish something right, or we can also see that as a sort of new beginning, Like, Okay, that experience is a nice, pleasant experience of freedom and well being

and release and all sorts of things. But what does that show me? From that perspective? What's meaningful and valuable? From a revelatory perspective? What's valuable in life is greed, hatred and getting everything I can get? Valuable is love connectedness, like what becomes what becomes valuable and what becomes meaningful? And I think that's what we often don't ask ourselves

because we're so focused on the experience. And for a while, that's fine, but we fail often to see that that from that experience, an awakened perspective values different things in life than our condition mind values. It has a different life orientation then our egos have. And just to start to go, what is that? What is that? And what would it mean for me to act on that? On those values that come from my own revelation today? Because I like to bring this back to something's very pragmatic.

You know, Okay, you had a state of interconnectedness and all things that was revelatory in something about you may never be the same, right, Okay, But what does interconnectedness.

Mean when you come home and you're just strung out and tired from a long, hard day's work and you had a lot of challenges, and your four year old kid comes jumping on your lap and want your sole attention, and you're just exhausted and you'd really like to just have a you know, those those moments to yourself and Okay, what is that from the perspective of your your own spiritual insight, what is it value? At that moment about

that four year old it's wants your attention? What becomes important? Yeah, you're tired and you're wrung out, and you'll need to take care of yourself and get some rest, But at that moment, what is it value? I think if we miss that those kind of questions, there can be this lack of connection between our own more revelatory experiences of being and our actual human experience of being. It feels good to support the things that are important to you, So if the one you feed fits into that category

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of your choosing. Thank you, you said earlier servants of truth? Right, How do I be true to and serve what I have realized? Right? Instead of again and again and again. The great and flawed spiritual master True Trumpa wrote a book called spiritual Materialism, right, and then it kind of comes down to that if we keep viewing spirituality as sort of collecting more and greater and grander experiences, it

can become a form of spiritual materialism. To start out by wanting revelation in a deeper sense of connectedness or awakening as an experience. Fine, that's part of how the impulse moves. But it's tricky, you know, because as you I'm sure experienced, you know, some of these revelatory experiences are they're about the most pleasant things you can experience, which makes them about the most highly addictive experiences. Yeah. And as a former heroin act, I'm familiar with chasing

the high, right, It's an interesting relationship. I imagine that's where even though you probably wouldn't want to recreate the road you took to get the wisdom, but that may be the place where where your past experience, as hard one as it was, was, man, just chasing the high isn't a way to a great, happy successful life. Addiction can teach us that. But you know, those people that

aren't haven't been addicted to substances. We can fool ourselves into thinking we're not addicts, and there you are just endlessly chasing the next spiritual experience, but hopefully higher and higher and higher. And it's like, what is the difference between you then and a heroin addict? And is there that big a difference? Like maybe not, And so that's

the balance, of course. It's like, we have these pleasant we have these experiences, the revelatory, their life changing, and if we simply views them as experiences, then we can become sort of addicted to having those, which again circles this kind of back to. At least for me, the way out of a lot of that was to what am I in service to? That? Right if if what I'm in service to and what I'm focused on and I spend all my attention is me and how I feel.

I mean, that was the big revelation in me when I got sober, when I read and it was in the I remember it was in the a a big book, and it basically said selfishness, self centeredness is the root of our problem, right And and there can be a there can be a judgment to that that can rub the wrong way. But when I really but as a statement, it's very true, it's right right. And when I realized like that was it. The whole thing was all oriented

towards how am I feeling? And that when I realized that the surest way out of that for me was to start to really try and care about others. What am I serving. It's a paradigm that has helped me with things like spiritual practice and retreat and all that is how like this experience I'm going, Because of course I want the experience of peacefulness and all that, But but how will that perhaps allow me to come back out of that and serve better and be better able

to help the people I try? Like you know, I think both those things are going on at the same time. It's a reciprocal thing, isn't it. You dive into the well of being so that you can re emerge with something deeper and more beautiful to offer. And I think that gets to your point, and I think it's a really important point, especially in modern day spirituality where just for a lot of people it's sort of been cut

off from its its traditional roots. And part of that is like really great, right, it's it's it's it's freed itself from the bonds of you know, religious dogmatism, and so okay, that's really good. But there's a whole there's another I to that too, right, Some of those, almost all those traditions that I knew of, they all have to have a heavy element of service, which yeat, can become laden with judgment and shame and or trying to be a saint or all that kind of stuff. It

can be. But if you just take the service part, like no mistake that all these traditions realized, there is something extremely important about service, right about serving serving that which we that which we love. And I think so, I think the important the importance of that is no um, no greater for an addict and no less for somebody that doesn't think they're an addict. Like that's what gets us out of the of the loop of having our

life endlessly oriented towards the next experience. That's why I've said at the beginning when we were talking, that it's more important to have ourselves orient it around something like meaning than some than mere happiness. Because of course, like I say meaning, then the way I'm using it doesn't mean like necessarily something you can philosophically state to your

friends very coherently. It's not a something like that, but meaning like when you're in service and it's coming from a true place in you, that's a meaningful experience, right, all of a sudden, your life feels like to me, meaning means is those those moments when you feel like things have lined up, you're at the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. And so often when we're in real service, those things all line up. We feel like we're in the right place, at the

right time, doing the right thing. It just feels like that, And um, I think that's the element that modern spirituality needs to sort of have re reinvigorated, but without the shame, the blame and all that kind of stuff that can come as the old baggage. But um, I think that's otherwise what are we doing. We're just chasing experiences right right.

It's a self it's a self centered, narcissistic pursuit unless it has some sense of the welfare of all beings, you know, And how can we not have a sense of that when we were when we really experience the unity of existence. Yes, right, right, And that is the perspective that when you know, when I've had that perspective, like really the connection and the true unity, it's astounding how natural. Yeah, the idea of of caring about and taking care of and serving others, it feels almost inevitable.

It just flows out of you, doesn't Yeah. And and and then there's other times where it's you know, so it's a little a little you know, a little harder role,

so to speak. I've had a lot of people mentioning that they usually mentioned in forms of a sort of question when I teach on like what we're talking about, and they'll they'll say, but Aji, I've had these moments, these times, you know, often in the wake of some big insight or awakening where like what you're talking about just happened and it was spontaneous and I didn't have

to exercise intension or bring thought to it. It just was like it was like breathing, and like, and what you're saying is sort of bringing like this intention and it seems more heavy handed and da you know all that kind of stuff. You're not saying that to me, But it just brought this to mind, and I'm saying, yeah, you're right. When you're in a really open, clear space, it tends to be very spontaneous and you don't you don't really have to exercise much intention. It's just it is.

It's just like breathing, because it's natural. And what happens when it doesn't feel quite that natural? Right? Uh? And so what a lot of the people have had those experiences, Um, what they will communicate what they want is they're hoping to have an experience that's big enough and complete enough and total enough, so all this will happen without any intention forever. Amen. And hey, man, if you can come to that, good for you, Like great, okay, but that's

not a very reasonable thing to shoot at. That's not a very good ultimate aim. Like if that's what ends up happening, great, And I think the more we are residing in the truth of our being, it does happen more naturally, more spontaneously, with less or little or sometimes no intention at all. And but if that's all we shoot for, I think we're not actually taking responsibility for what we've realized. That's another sort of old fashioned idea.

What does it what would it mean to actually take responsibility for my own revelations if those show me connectedness, what would it mean for me to step up to the plate and take responsibility for my own experience of connectedness and unity whether I feel it or I don't, Because then you're outside of the realm of the addict again, right, it's not whether I feel it or not. It's I'm acting on what I've seen and what I know to be true, and I'm taking the responsibility to step up

and do that. And when it happens spontaneously, great, But when it doesn't, that doesn't mean that you're simply left trying to chase the experience. It leans no, no, no, no, no no. You don't have to wait for the experience. You can step up like right now. And and sometimes if you're quote unquote lucky, the stepping up, you know, it's the it's the saying I you know, listeners have got to be tired of, which is sometimes you can't think your way into right action. You have to act

your way into right thinking. That's a great way to put that. Sometimes stepping up into service right then brings that's right. It opens the door. It opens the door for the feeling to follow that sometimes right as it does something, but yeah, right, when we're engaged in right action, that it always it will it whether we're suffused with this sense of well being, but underneath it, I think when we're really engaged in right action, there's something about

it that feels right, right and connected and aligned. And sometimes you're completely suffused without experience, and sometimes it's a little less obvious, but it does feel aligned. We talked about my girlfriend's mom and you know, the Alzheimer's, and that's we often reflect on, like we're living according to our values and that there's something underneath that feels right. It's a deeper kind of rightness. The surface feels like oh my, you know, like, but the deeper is like okay.

And as somebody who has lived outside of my values plenty of times, I know that that you know, you can live outside your value and things on the surface field good, but if you look a little deeper, you're like, oh, you know, this is kind of the inverse of that, that is, I'm so glad you you mentioned that too, And I think you know your girlfriend and you're dealing with her mother's illness is a great, great example, like

it's not easy every day. It's probably not even easy most hours of the day, and yet you're doing it because I like the word you use, because it aligns with your values, right, with the values that are inherent in your own in your own depth. And there's something about that that even when it's not easy, it feels it feels right. And that's kind of what I'm oriented

trying to get when I talk about meaning. Right, it's hard to define what that is, but you know it when you when you experience it, And I think that's that's certainly something more noble to aim at. Then how do I feel at every moment, like, well, yeah, but maybe maybe maybe your girlfriend's mother, you know, she has Alzheimer's, and hey, maybe I don't feel good at this moment.

Maybe it's really challenging for this moment. But fortunately you have something in your back pocket, right, you have what's what's true and right for you, yea, whether you feel great about it or you don't feel great about it. And I think at the end of the day, like, you get to the end of that day, and that day has meaning and it has value, and you know it.

Nobody has to tell you you've you've done the right thing, because you feel it even if you fall in the bed, you know, completely exhausted, and you know, well, you've been a parent, you know that probably with raising children too, as my mom said, yeah, raising kids, and she loved being a mother, and she says, it's not a picnic every day, right, some days it's it's super super, super difficult. But since there's a higher calling, there's a higher sense

of well being too. Yep, right, there's something that transcends feeling. Yeah, well, I think that is a perfect place for us to wrap up. So thank you so much again for agreeing to come on for yet another time and spend so much time with us. It's been my pleasure. Nice to check with you, Eric, Nice to be with you again too. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to The One You Feed pot cast head over to one you Feed dot net slash support.

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