Henry Shukman on Paths of Spiritual Awakening

We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't 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. Hello everyone. Just a reminder that all the extra support we're providing during this time is available at when you Feed dot net slash help. The free group coaching each week has been a wonderful way to meet so many of you, and we're forming a really special community there, so i'd encourage you to check it out. Recordings that the sessions are also available, and you can get all the details at when you feed dot net

slash help. Secondly, keeping a good perspective is more important than ever right now, and I recorded a video teaching about three types of perspective and the three things that all unhappy people hold onto. You can get free access to that at spiritual habits dot net. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Henry Shookman, a poet, writer, and associate zen Master who lives in New Mexico, where

he teaches at Mountain Cloud Zen Center. He's published eight books to date of fiction, poetry, and non fiction, and writes regularly for Tricycle, The New York Times and other publications. In this episode, Eric and Henry discuss his beautifully written book One Blade of Grass, Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir. Hi, Henry, welcome to the show. Eric, Thank you so much for having me. I am really

happy to have you on. We're going to discuss your wonderful book called One Blade of Grass, Finding the Old Road of the Heart as Zen memoir in a moment. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed

and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grand fire. He says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says that the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the

work that you do. It resonates very strongly with me, and I feel that there have certainly been times in my life when I could sort of say I wasn't really feeding the right wolf, you know, when I got into places of despair and nihilism, and especially in my early adulthood. For me, you know, it was learning really to begin to realize that there were choices, deep choices one could make about how one lived one's life, how

one experienced one's life. It began for me in my mid twenties, early to mid twenties in a real way, when I first took up meditation, it was then that I realized I didn't have to be entirely driven by the forces that seemed to have been mostly driving me, especially in my early adulthood, which were which were really around, you know, anxiety and stress and craving for acknowledgement, and and I had a lot of ambition in my early life.

I was trying to be a writer from my mid teens actually, and all of it had led to a pretty unhappy life. And the moment I started meditating, meaning that on a daily basis, I was being still for a chunk of time each day, it was as if the dial on my nervous system could turn down, and it was. It stopped being so hyper active and so

kind of overloaded and running so hot and hard. And as my nervous system settled down, I just started to realize that there was space to make choices, to make decisions is not out of impulse and a sense of need,

but more out of well real choice. And you know, gradually, as my practice sort of evolved and went on, and I got into Zen and other kinds of Buddhism as well, in time, you know, I realized when I hear that parable now it's like for me, it's kind of describing practice because it says one wolf is about love and bravery,

and the other is about greed and hatred. And in the Buddhist view, all of us have work known as the three poisons, which are greed and hatred or desire and aversion or desire and ill will and delusion, three poisons. And to start practicing is to start recognizing them and to cease to be under their enchantment, under their spell. And so when I hear the parable, you know, to me, I want to say, yeah, absolutely, feeding the wolf, that that is about growth and capacity and space and love,

you know, always turning away the greater love is. But at the same time, I kind of almost want to say, it's wise to make some kind of allowance for the other wolfings, like like, you know, something in me says it's good to know that I can slip into those old habits and that there they're not banished exactly, it's more that they're allowed for. I didn't know whether that

makes any sense. You know, I had wrestled with negative side quite a bit in the course of my journey, and I feel that it's I don't really want to banish it, and that hasn't worked so well as understanding it, acknowledging it and allowing for it and giving it some kind of space but not letting it take over totally

makes sense. Two things there. I think obviously there's stuff to be learned from these so called negative emotions right there, coming from something for some reason, so there's something to be learned. And then secondly, I think what you said we're so important is that when we just feel bad

about ourselves for having them, we just compound all the problems. Yes, exactly exactly, and it's I've found that in my journey being able to see that underneath a lot of that negativity I wrestled with an early life, there were just some some wounds. You know, there's some basic pains and grieves, griefs and things that somehow I had missed in growing up. And you know there's stories about that I certainly have

worked with in therapy. But you know that to be able to open to what is painful for me, it's been part of my journey into greater wholeness and greater well being. Other than sort of banishing pain, learning how to open up to it and sort of be with it and offer it some kind of space that's proven to be a wiser path of growth and healing for me. Yeah,

I agree completely. One of the things in your story that I resonated kind of throughout it was you you talked about since early on in life you had mild, low grade sort of depression dysthemia. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah, I've heard it. Yeah, just thymia. Yeah. Yeah, you know that you've had that, and and it was your companion for a long time, even as you journeyed deeper into your spiritual life, even as you had some

pretty profound awakening and opening experiences. And that describes me pretty well. I've had some some tremendous opening and awakening experiences and to find myself, you know, a little bit later like, Oh, there's my old friend again, low grade depression. Here he is hanging around. And I just thought we could talk about that a little bit because I really

resonated a lot with it. And I think that that was part of your story that I kept really resoning with which you kept growing spiritually and yet didn't make everything better. And I don't think your message is like, oh, you hit a point where it all goes away, but you do have a message of a certain peace eventually coming.

For me, it was like a kind of a see saw for a long time really between you know, really finding deep, deep peace and a great sort of intrinsic love in every moment, you know at times, and then just being sort of triggered right back into old contraction, into depression or mild depression, and you know, it's the

same old habits. But there was a point in my I would say it was my long training under under certain Zend teachers, you know, who were very kind of patient and kind with me, And I mean it's a moment in time when on a retreat, actually I just had a really you know, for me, it was a very deep experience where just everything, really everything just sort of fell away and there wasn't anything left. And instead of it being like really a nihilistic kind of experience,

it was the exact opposite. It was the cure for all nihilism, I felt. And after it, everything sort of came back in a new way in a and like there was nothing more precious than this moment, whatever it might be. And that was over twelve years ago now, and really something has been different since then. It's not that I perfectly blessed and marvelous or anything like that, but you can I still have habits that I wish I didn't have, you know, but it has been really different.

It's a real different orientation kicked in where I just didn't get so caught by my sense of me. You know, I couldn't sort of say that it's vanished entirely forever, you know. I think it still comes back at times, and but it's not a problem, you know. And I haven't had depression like I used to in quite a long time, not really since that moment. And I'm not claiming any great, you know, achievements spiritually or anything. It's just that things have been remarkably easier and in a

way that I never would have expected. You know. I always thought, basically, no matter what others may sort of find on this path, I'm not cut out for that. You know. I can do a certain amount, I can get a certain way down a path of spiritual growth, but I'm always going to get knocked back by my by my psychology. You know, it's never going to really relinquish its hold. But I was wrong. There was something

really unexpected did happen. And again, I don't want to make it sound like I'm claiming, you know, some exalted status or anything at all, And it's certainly not like I'm you know, my my wife knows you know perfectly well that I can, I can get a bit down, I can get a bit grumpy, but it's so much less of a problem, right, And I guess my question for you would be, you'd had several of these sort of you know, in Zen calmed Kenchow moments, right, these

big awakenings where even your sense of self did fall away, but then it seems to you know, it seems to sort of come back and reconstitute itself in a in a more durable form. Do you think it was the fact that as you matured in your Zen practice, you had a better container for those things and that you were better able to take those experiences and integrate them and live them. Or was there something about the depth of that other experience that was deeper and more final.

I'm kind of curious what you attribute to that sort of that turning point, because you've had are pretty profound awakening experiences. But that's a great question. I'm honored that you would even ask it. But I think the answer is both that definitely the container was being expanded and made healthier through my training and a lot of I mean that really all goes down to my teachers who who were just you know, really wise and kind and

patient with me. So I think there was really as the container, let's say, you know, was more and more ready, you know, it allowed actually possibly I'd say it allowed for something deeper to happen. You know, letting go thoroughly is really sort of difficult for us. I think when I was nineteen, actually I had a sort of random awakening experience out of nowhere, without any interest in that kind of thing. I wasn't I wasn't into spirituality at all.

I was like a I'd grown up in Oxford, England, son of academics, and I was, you know, I was I was all set to be an academic my self

is anything. And then suddenly I just had this random moment of utter union with the world and it was it was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me, and it came out of nowhere, and it was a profound sense that I was just inseparable from the fabric of the universe really was was what it felt like, and that the whole of creation was sort of immediately present right in the moment where I was. It was all me, and I was all it and and there was no separation of any kind anywhere sort

of thing was what it felt like. But when it and then it sort of faded, and I walked around and kind of blissed for a few weeks. And actually I was away from home at the time, and I went home. This is when I was nineteen, and within half an hour of walking into my dad's house, I was broken. I was just a wreck. I had a very in some ways, you know, very privileged culturally privileged, you know, childhood with my parents both being at the

heart of the university and all that. But it had also been difficult because we had a really difficult divorce situation when I was young, and I've had really bad exema from the age of six months, you know, right the way through childhood. And so when I came home at that time after this opening, I was really open and all the unhappiness of my childhood that I had kind of fended off and found ways not to feel in order to function as a child. It all just sort of landed on top of me then, and I

had a kind of breakdown. Actually at the time, I thought, oh, no, this is kind of the end of the world. Whatever is going on is a disaster. When I look back on it, I realized, well, no, this was the other side. This was like got to reckon with the wounds and to only be sort of having a great expansive moment. I mean, that's lovely and wonderful and some ways, you know,

there's some deep truth in that kind of experience. But to have that without in my own case anyway, also learning how to be with my pain and wounds and you know, and and grow in that way as well, you know, it was it just somehow in in my biography I had to do both in a way. What happened then was like the back and forth between oceanic expansiveness that i'd sometimes taste, especially when I started training in Zen, and you know, real contracted anxiety and pain

and depression, which I had also experienced. And finally, I think, you know, through different kinds of work, not just meditation by the way, you know, dreamwork and other kinds of therapy and a lot of yoga, and things. I think it all helped reach a point where I could let go more thoroughly of the whole system, is what it felt like, and no longer needing to sort of go back and forth. Really in the same way I've heard it referenced by Ken Wilber, there's waking up, but there's

also growing up and cleaning up. There's more to a well lived, robust life than just awakening the experiences. There's a lot of other stuff we have to work our way through. At least that's been my experience. I agree there are people, like you know, one or two of my teachers who don't seem to have needed to go through so much on the healing side. But I think they just had happier childhoods. Actually it could be. I think some people are more damaged than others. That's just

a reality. Yes, I think so too. And at a certain point I had this notion that, you know, maybe people who are real deep seekers are more damaged. They're carrying more trauma, they're more traumatized, and that's what makes them one this grand liberation of awakening. But actually I don't believe that anymore. I think because the people I see you know my colleagues in the world of meditation and awakening. You know, there's m who just didn't seem to have the same kind of need for so much

healing work. I don't know. I guess we're all different and it's hard to lay down rules, but it seems smart to acknowledge that, like you said, that we're multidimensional. We've got different facets and different aspects, and to only work on one, like you know, this sort of deep kind of spirituality, it might be an unbalanced thing for some of us. In your epilogue you try to sort of summarize the book in a number of points, and

that was the second point. You said, some of us are going to need other kinds of help along with meditation, and the more that those different approaches understand and respect one another, the better. So that might lead me just maybe to go to three because I think some of these points were a good summation of things. And the third point you said, one common misunderstanding of meditation in the West is that it's an individual undertaking. I fell

for that and fell foul of it. In fact, it's collaborative and relational at least if you want to make real progress. Could you share a little bit more about that and why that's the case? Okay, thank you. I mean I would say, like in my early years as a meditator, you know, basically I was kind of given instructions and told to go and do them, and I did it primarily alone. I had a couple of friends

who also did that kind of meditation. It was TM, by the way, which was really popular back in you know, late eighties in London. It was more or less the only kind around. I did it in the late eighties myself in Columbus, Ohio, of all places, I still can't believe one exist did. There was a t M teacher in Colomazile. Well, they were tremendously successful, you know, Urishi my house really was brilliant to sort of marketing and

giving it a great image. And so yeah, it was the first big form of meditation in the West that really got scaled up to a high degree, I think. But once I stumbled into Zen. And by the way, the reason I got into Zen was that I recognized that it understood, you know, that random moment I mentioned when I was nineteen years old. I knew when I read some some Zen writings I just could sense that it understood what I had experienced then, and luckily enough,

I think I was right. But once I got into Zen in a serious way, I kind of got the sense that you're supposed to have a teacher the way I had grown up, In the character I had, I just didn't really trust anybody, not really, and I certainly didn't trust some trumped up would be spiritual teacher, you know, Zen or otherwise. So I wasn't prepared to entrust myself

to a teacher. So I'd go and do a lot of retreats, and I went to lots of different centers of different kinds of meditation actually, and you know, I'd listened to the teachers talks, you know, they'd resonate to some degree or not. But the idea of actually becoming a student, it just I was too independent, and you know, I I just didn't trust people enough. And and I had a career by then as a writer. I was you know, I was lucky in that regard. I got to work as a writer full time from fairly early

in my life. And there was a reason I had a career like that, which was that I just wasn't prepared to put myself under somebody else's authority if I could avoid it, and so I couldn't. I couldn't see my way to having a teacher until finally, somehow I was just kind of ready and met a wonderful teacher actually funny enough, in my hometown and started studying in a serious way with him. And that was when suddenly the whole thing just went into a whole different gear

because I realized, Man, it's not just about meditating. There's a path here. You know, things can happen whatever I have been experienced by then, and by way of the occasional I think by then maybe a couple of strong sort of awakening or opening experiences that was in a way only the start. Like what what this teacher John,

he was called John Gayner. What he represented was that those were like doorways, and beyond them there's a path, and the path is about going deeper, and it's about integrating what we realize in these experiences, and you know, it's like a whole new life can open up. It's just sort of having the experiences is only step one kind of thing, and that that path couldn't be embarked

on without a guide. And you know that. That was a huge thing for me to first of all, to realize that and second to realize that I wanted it. That was like a huge kind of crumbling of defenses in my psyche in a beautiful way to open up the Wow, somebody might help me in this way. That matters so much to me. But but I've never known where to turn. Really, it was. It was an awesome or I'd known where to turn, but not turned wholeheartedly enough. And suddenly to realize that I could, it was a

wonderful thing. It was. It was really like scales of armor falling off my heart. And so the teacher was a big part. How important was the community around the teacher for you early on? Well, that took me longer to realize, actually, because I was definitely not somebody who sort of terribly light institutions. You know, My my main experience with them was in education, and I was kind

of rebellious, you know. I grew up admiring Peter Tosh and Shake of Aura, and most institutions were things that ought to be torn down as far as I was concerned. So even when I went to a zenda, which is a pretty radical kind of institute in the West, at least in those days. Even then, I didn't really think of it as a home, you know. I thought of somehow something intrinsically threatening about any institution almost, you know. And and gradually, gradually I just got softened by sitting

with people. I think it was mostly just sitting in a lot of company of other people, being silent in the room. I think it just kind of taught me that I had had human beings wrong. Whatever assumptions and feelings and attitudes had had a long time unconsciously and maybe also consciously towards others, they were pretty much all wrong. And sitting in silence with others, I think was the

thing that allowed me to open that up. And I started a just sort of fall in love with not exactly literally, but you know, kind of feel like I was falling in love with with with the room, with the people in the room. It's a beautiful d And I think that's kind of been me most of my life. I've been like, I'll figure this out, I'll read about it,

I'll meditate, I'll do all this stuff. And it's been in the last you know, several years where I've really went a I think it's time to pick a path, pick a community, like try and ground myself and stop being the lone wolf in that regard. Yes, that's a phrase I think I used in my book here and there I was like a snarling lone wolf. Then the wolf again, yeah, yeah, that's the bad wolf, the loner. Yeah, the wolf. Yeah, thinks it's got to do it alone and must do it alone, and and everybody else is

like keep them at your distance. You know. This is something else that resonated throughout your book. You said. Fourth, While for some it may be helpful to find a live in community, we don't have to do that. And further, we don't have to go to a community that that is very non Western. It doesn't have to be These teachings don't have to be presented as exotic. That we can be a lay person, a person in the world and work within our cultural trappings to some degree. Yeah,

I feel that quite strongly. I think that we have that choice that, you know, from my point of view, sort of like the deep teachings of Zen. They don't have to be conveyed in robes with a lot of ritual. You know, I actually happen to have pretty short hair, but you don't really have to have a shaved head,

you know. And really the deep teachings are about what we humans are and how we could best live, or how we can live good and helpful lives, and how we can tame are harmful impulses, and and how we can grow in hopefully in wisdom of different kinds, you know, one kind of wisdom being how to live less harmfully to ourselves and to others, how to love ourselves and others more, and another kind of wisdom being this more like deep experiential openings to the nature of the present

moment that you know, on one level, this present moment is just as it appears. There's you know, things in front of us, like right now, there's a computer screen, and Eric's on the other end of the line, and I know it's Henry sitting here in the sitting room in his home and salafe, and there's a little wind outside and the bare early spring trees are stirring slightly in the classes, you know, and all that's just as

it is. But at the same time, there's an infinite expanse right here, you know, and there's a boundlessness that's utterly beautiful there's a level of total intimacy that you know, even in an ordinary moment, if we're open to it, we can sense that, you know, we're just part of it. We're we're part of one hole which is presenting itself in just this way, just now, and you know, that's always available. It's always right here and right now and learning I mean, the train, and I would call that

another level of wisdom, so to speak. We are humbled by it because it's just awesome to be part of one enormous reality, you know, and we're inextricably part of it. It's it's an amazing thing to realize and too sense, to have the kind of training that can allow us, first of all, to discover that for ourselves. I think

that's an incredible thing. But then to go on, you know, and it's not that easy, I would say for most of us, but you know, hopefully eventually just be able to sort of sense it, you know, maybe not all the time, but often, and you know, whenever we kind of remember to oh, yes, you know, just coming back and realizing this is here, this is you know, this this whole is here right now and all is one and you know, but it's also just each thing exactly as it is, and I find that just so beautiful,

and it fills my heart with love whenever I remember, you know, and to have the possibility of growing in those kinds of ways just doesn't seem to me to need elaborate foreign costumes or elaborate foreign rituals. It just doesn't seem necessary to me. I know that there are other forms of Buddhism in the West that are much more traditional and follow you know, the customs and the litages of Asian forms, and I respect that deeply. I'm personally,

I'm just glad that that's not the only way. Something you just were saying reminded me of a couple of lines you wrote, and I did want to get a couple of lines of the book in because you're such a beautiful writer. You said, you're talking about training as a lay person or a person who doesn't join the monastery. Say, it's not like a monastery. This kind of training. Life

goes on. You have to keep making sense of the ordinary daily grind, but the training starts to infiltrate normal life, and odd moments of joy and minor revelation fall on us as we pushed the toddler on the swing, or step off a cold street into a warm shop, or get into the car and listen to the choking to the starter motor. Everyday sights and sounds start to hit us in a more immediate way, and we meet them

with appreciation. Well, I'm glad I said that that. Yeah, yeah, I could pull out hundreds of these, but this is a good pivot point because you're also a poet, and you are interested in poetry from from very early on, and you talk a little bit about why zen and poetry have such a close affinity with each other. Yeah, you know, and I think that bit you just read speaks to that. Thank you, because it is. It seems to me it is about cherishing the every day, cherishing

the normal, like a moment. Ago is talking pretty sort of cosmically about the you know, the vast, boundless moment or whatever. But actually, however cosmic it may be, it's showing up as just this table cloth just as it is, you know, and the lamb and the folded sweater and the water bottle, you know, and each thing is so precious.

So this level of appreciation, maybe, you know, we could call that another facet of wisdom to be able to appreciate our life in the moment, and that means I think, well, that's so amplified when we see that all things are just sort of freely arising in one great boundlessness. It's it's so beautiful. And you know, we don't have to have maybe open up to that boundlessness to even just get the sense that whatever arises, we know it's going

to pass away, and it's therefore so precious. And two be able though, to be encouraged to find beauty in the most ordinary things is definitely part of the Zen tradition. It's one of the reasons I love it. Other forms of Buddhism maybe have less concerned with externals, you know,

they're more about internal experience. But then really loves to turn the lens outward and to explore our relationship with the world and to see the world as our ultimate teacher, because in the sense, you know, at the deepest level,

it's it's part of us. It is us, you know, in a sense, I don't want to sound too spooky to the listeners, but there's a level where we can discover that, you know, in awakening experience and so on, but even without that, just to sense the wonder of the ordinary, Like if you just think, if you just look at a you know, something simple like a glass of water, whether you know, maybe standing in a bar of sunlight coming through an open window, what an amazing

thing it is to take a step? Well, actually, that's a really amazing thing. You know. There's one famous Zen story where a zen master is walking with some some other kind of practitioner who's maybe sort of more like a sort of magical practitioner, and they come to a river and this other practitioner just walks across it. You know, he can walk on water, and and there zen practitioner wades across the river, and it said something like, you know, you school, if I had known you could do that,

I'd never have walked all this way with you. Like, there's something sort of wrong with valuing superhuman powers because it distracts us from the miracle of this moment just as it is. You know that actually we should really be appreciating the miracle of just being able to sit here and chat. One of the things that draws me to Zend the most is that I'm always pointed back to my immediate experience like I don't have to be somewhere else. I don't have to go somewhere else, I

don't have to do something. It's always pointing me back, like it's right here, right here, right here, right over and over and over and and for someone who spent a lot of his life thinking that it was always somewhere else, it's a great constant reminder. No, it's right here. It's really good for me. Yeah, I'm sure it's good for all of us, you know. And I think that's you sort of talked about. That's what poetry does, right. Poetry is is the practice of really paying very close

attention exactly. I'm so. I was going to come around to that. I forgot exactly. Poetry has that in common, you know, that real close attention and being able to render it in hopefully beautiful speech, you know, beautiful words.

You know, similar probably to somebody who draws. You know, an artist who draws, and they're just giving so much attention to you know, the medium they're working in and to what they're seeing, you know, and whether it's you know, in the mind or in the imagination or in front of them, if it's representational art, that kind of deep attentiveness. When that expresses itself on the page, you know, whether it's a like I said, whether it's an art, visual art,

or poetry or even great prose. You know, when that kind of attentiveness is expressed, I think we can't help responding to it. You know, our hearts are touched by it, and we it wakes up in us our own capacity to be that attentive and to appreciate what is before us. So I think that's one of the functions of art is that it it sort of opens our hearts and our eyes to our own life, you know, a good great Yeah, great art sort of centers us back in the middle of our own life where we can appreciate

it more fully. And so does meditation practice for sure. So the other thing I wanted to talk about was there was a point in your life where you know, you felt like your marriage was a little bit in trouble, you were feeling drawn in other directions, And I just want to read what you wrote. I really love this because it's it's something that comes up in my mind a lot. Also, And you said self help gurus might

say get on with it, do what you want. You don't live forever, you know, basically encouraging you, like, chase whatever it is you want, chase your your dreams. But Zen said, wait a minute, check out who is calling the shots, Who is the tyrant declaring what must and must not be, what we must and must not do. See the bigger picture, who else is involved, who has the most at stake? And will this situation lead to

more suffering all told or less? And I just love that idea, because I do think in the self helped world, which is a world I sort of travel in this show, is in that area. There's a lot of that sense. It's a There's another phrase that that irks me a lot that I hear often, which is like, let go of what's not serving you, as if the point of

everything is to serve us. And I love that you sort of pivoted here and and Zen said slow down and and be more present and think more deeply, and and it turned out to be the right thing for you. You're still, as far as I can, as far as I know at least the end of the memoir, still a very happily married man. But I just thought it was really fascinating the process you went through there. Yes, yes,

thanks for bringing that up. I mean, I do feel that there's discovery that we can make in you know, deep spiritual or contemplative training, that our sense of self is actually an illusion. That it's not that you know, we're not somebody. We you know, we are, and I'm Henry born and such and such a time, living in

such and such a place, doing certain things. But the sense of me that is a kind of like a certain sort of contraction in that I sense in the middle of my being somehow, some kind of core or kernel or nugget that is the me that I've always been. If we go deep in meditation and really examine it, we find that it's not really there. It just appears

to be and so feels like it is. So with that in mind, when we serve ourselves, we're probably likely serving in a sense of the wrong thing, because it's not really there to be to be served in the way we thought, if you see what I mean. But I think it's a tricky point actually because because at the same time, I really think a lot of us in the West need more self love. So it sounds contradictory,

but it's really not. It's just that there are sort of different levels of growth and different levels of love. And on one level, loving ourselves is sort of learning to deeply accept ourselves. And that doesn't mean just really nearly doing whatever we want and trying to gratify all our winds and desires. It doesn't mean that at all.

It means discovering that there's a place within where we're really at home with ourselves, and if we act from there, it's so much easier to act in loving and helpful ways. And actually when we're not there, when we don't know how to be there, we're much more likely to be driven by impulses and desires that are only really there to try to fill the whole because we're not in the middle, you know. So there's a place for really coming home to ourselves and learning self love and self compassion.

But there's also a place for discovering that our sense of self has been very, very limited, and that you know, we belong in a much greater way to a much greater hole, and and that too is a source of I would sort of in sense, even deeper love that we can open up to. So if we're stuck in the mindset that kind of trying to make ourselves feel okay by managing what we get and what we don't get.

We really are going to have a harder time in both those projects, because, you know, coming home to ourselves and just being all right and peaceful and content just being me, that's a big, beautiful thing to find we can do in itself. And then you know, if we're curious about this sort of deeper discoveries of who am I and what is this world and what is this life that these deep contemplative paths offer, then we may find, wow, I'm not even what I thought I was. Instead, I'm

part of a much greater whole. You know that that that's even more marvelous to discover, you know, And neither of them is going to be helped by a life that is driven by trying to gratify some imagined self. I think the tricky part, of course, is sometimes are side conditions should be changed. You know, sometimes we do need to change our outside conditions, and sometimes we need to change our inside conditions. And I think that's what

can be tricky. But I think that I hear a lot of encouragement, a lot of what feels spiritual to me these days, which is very much feels like the spiritual imperative that's being given is please yourself, and and I just I'm just not sure that's really the message, the right message, and your point, what is self anyway?

That that is that that is the deeper obvious question they're wakening is driving at Yes, that's right, and you're absolutely right to bring up, you know, like sometimes we're in situations that are that are abusive or that are really harmful and not wholesome at all, and and something needs to change externally. I totally agree with that, and I'm sorry that I didn't mean to suggest that that's not the case, that it's only about sort of deep

inward discovery. I think you're absolutely right, and in fact, you know, again this is another thing ace of where we really want practice to be manifesting in the way

we live. You know that if it's not being expressed in a wholesome life that is wholesome meaning really harmless to others and to self, If it's not being expressed in that way, you know, well, we we just keep working at it, and you know, we acknowledge it may take a lot of work, and it takes a lot of practice and we're not really seeking to get it perfect. We're just doing the best we can and hopefully getting a little better and being more and more helpful and

more and more fulfilled along the way. Totally agree. I think that's a great place for us to wrap up on that beautiful idea. You and I are going to talk some more in the post show conversation about working with Cohen's, which is a fascinating subject and one close to my heart. So listeners, you can get access to the post show conversations, add free episodes, and all kinds of other good stuff at one you feed, dot net, slash Join Henry Thay, thank you so much for coming on.

I can't recommend your book highly enough to listeners. It's a beautiful, beautiful read, and it's one of my favorites I've read in quite some time. So very wonderful, and thank you for your time. Well, thank you Eric so much. I'm really honored to be on the show. I'm very grateful for this chance to connect with you and learn all the listeners, and thank you so so much. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the one you

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