Special Episode: Resilience During Challenging Times

Right here in the US. We have an election that's coming up that is causing a great deal of strife and unrest and anxiety. We've got ongoing coronavirus which is getting worse here in the U S and many European countries I know are entering into new rounds of lockdowns. We've got forest fires here in the US and other parts of the world as climate change continues to increase, And as I talked to people out there, there's just a sense of anxiety, a sense of foreboding, and a

lot of stress. And so I wanted to just do another episode where we talk about how to take care of ourselves and how to be resilient during challenging times. We were lucky enough to bring back some great guests of the show, we've got spring wash them back, who I think is one of the people who speaks to the balance between activism and contemplation as well as anyone. Ralph de LaRosa, who is a psychotherapist and meditation teacher

and also speaks to these topics really well. Parker Palmer, who's in his eightieth year and has infinite wisdom to share with us. And Ellen Bass, the wonderful poet who I think always has great things to say about the state of the world and the inner life. I really loved talking with all of these about resilience during challenging times, and I hope you get as much out of it as I did in creating it. Thanks so much, and here is the special episode, Welcome to the one you

feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. 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. Our first guest on this multi guest episode is Ellen Bass. She's an award winning poet and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. You can listen to a full interview with Ellen on the One You

Feed podcast on episode three forty two. Hi Ellen, welcome back. I'm happy to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. Eric. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to talk with you again so soon. What I'm doing with this episode, as I said to you a little bit before, is we're just kind of

talking about resilience right now. I think with the election in the US, with the pandemic worldwide, I think there's a lot of people who are feeling a lot of strain right now, and I just thought it'd be fun to do another episode where I brought back some of our favorite people to kind of talk about their perspectives on being resilient during these times. You know, what, what are you doing? It is helping you well, there's a

few things that helped me a lot. One is I'm very grateful to be somebody who writes poetry right now, because poetry is one of the same havens my life, a place to connect with my experience, whether it's a distressing part of my experience or whether it's a joyful part that I want to linger with a little bit longer. So being able to be in relationship with my experience through making art it has has really been important to me.

And I think the place where I feel the most grounded, and also being in nature as much as I can, and I'm unfortunate I live in Santa CRUs California, and there are places where we can go where if you go early enough in the morning or late enough at night, there aren't very many people around. And so just remembering that the trees and the ocean are not thinking about the election. I mean, it will affect them, it will do indeed, but they're not glued to the daily breaking

news in the same kind of way. So I think remembering that although there's so much that has been lost and that we are continuing to lose, that all is not lost, that there's still so much of the living world that is still here for us to save. And then the third thing that I've been doing is being active. I have a poem in in Anthology and New Anthology that came out called all we Can Save, Truth, Courage

and Solutions for the climate crisis. And I love this anthology because it focuses on what is possible to do and what needs to happen, and that really speaks to me my basic I'm a warrior, and my my basic motto in life in order to survive starting out as a warrior person is and that's worrior not warriors. You know, you know, in case you wonder what I with my old New Jersey accent, you know, as I worry and

my motto is work more, worried less. And so I love this anthology because one of the editors was being interviewed and the interviewer asked her about hope, and she said, fuck hope. I want plans, I want strategies. I want things that we can do to make this better. And I really feel that way. So um Like during the election, every night, my wife and I have been writing letters. We reached our goal of five two voters in Swings States who don't normally vote underrepresented voters and in everyone.

We just poured our little hearts out. Was through an organization called Vote Forward that has finished this project now, but you're supposed to add a little bit to this template. And we just hand wrote these letters every night because it kept us from getting too anxious, feeling like we're doing something. And for people in this country, there's still so much that can be done. Um, if you have election anxiety, instead of being glued to the news, and I know how tempting that is. I mean I feel

it too, and instead of just complaining. Actually, every friend of mine who starts complaining, I've said, what are you doing? And you're not doing anything. I said, don't talk to me. Don't talk to me about your your worries and your

complaints if you're not doing anything. So there's still phone calls to be made, in texts and for all of us, you know, all over the world, there's still so much attention that needs to be paid in little ways and in big ways so that we can save our environment, since this is the only earth we have to live on. So that's my motto, and that is how I cultivate Resilience is work more worry less. I love that phrase.

It is one of my sort of unspoken mottos in life, which is whenever I find myself worrying about something, I ask myself, is there anything I can do about it? And it seems like, no matter how small, taking some positive action towards it helps. And again we're not talking about here is like escape your feelings in your work. What we're saying is, if you're going to fret, fret

usefully right like fret forward, it really does help. I've been thinking a lot about being glued to the news cycle and how I actually think we think we are doing something positive for the world, but I actually think we're not. I actually think we are diminishing ourselves and we are giving into despair. And I I love that idea of f hope right on one hand, because I think the type of hope that's just like, well, I

hope things get better is not any good. The deeper hope of the belief that positive action will lead somewhere. It feels so important right now. It's been so much on my mind. How do we not give into despair? Because I see a lot of people doing it. I feel I see a lot of people sort of thrashing about in despair, And I love everything that you said there about what can we do? How can we contribute? And I think there's always a way. You know, one of my other beliefs is there's always a path from

where you are. There's always a way to take a positive step forward. You know, this isn't like, you know, you can do any thing you want, but there's always a step that takes us closer towards what matters to us. I believe that too so much, and I think it's about how creative can you get in making a step that is small enough to actually be able to take it. Some of us are in positions sometimes where we can take huge steps and a really big impact, and sometimes

we can't. But everyone, if you can be creative enough, there is something that you can do that's positive and it takes a step in the right direction. And I think that that is a kind of intelligence to be able to try to find, Okay, if I can't do this, what can I do? And if that's too big, then what can I do? And if that's too big, then what can I do? Right? And I think that it's

true around making an impact in the world. I think it's true about being a more healthy person, about personal growth, about any kind of progress that we want to make. If we can just get that step small enough, then I believe that there isn't anybody who can't take a step. Very well said, And you know the other thing I've

been reflecting on lately. I just got done giving a presentation on Abraham Joshua Heschel, who is a great Jewish thinker, and one of the things that some of his work drove me towards was this idea of even as we look out at the world and we see so many things that are difficult, I'm reminded of the fact that everywhere, all the time, there are millions of acts of love and kindness happening constantly. Parents loving their children, children loving

their siblings, adults taking care of their aging parents. You know, it's just someone petting a dog, feeding a cat, like there's love and beauty around us all the time. There's plenty of other stuff too, But but I've really been reflecting, and we've got to see both. We've got to make a conscious effort to look for the love and beauty that's there. And that's some of what you do in poetry, it's not all you do. I love what you said

about experience, about going into my experience and examining it. Yes, I I think that what you're saying about that love everywhere and what is beautiful everywhere is so true. The writer Deborah Gortney, who is married to the writer Barry Lopez, who many of your readers listeners may uh No, he's a naturalist and a great writer about the environment. And Debrah is a beautiful nonfiction writer. And they live in southern Oregon, and everything around their house was burned to

the ground. Their house stands, but everything around it scorched, and acres and acres of land that they had been conserving that was going to be preserved forever burned down to the ground, and all the various meticulously cared for archives burned to the ground of his decades and decades of his work all around the worlds. So, you know,

a devastating loss. And she sent me this week a picture of this scorch charred earth and a single green fern that had already grouted out of it against this just char and this fern just unfurling itself as ferns have done for millennia. So if we can just get ourselves facing to do what we can to preserve of our climate, then everything is possible. Because the ferns and and everything else, you know, the life force wants to

make more life. That's what it's all about. And hopefully we humans will not be so stupid that we make it impossible for us to live because those ferns are going to be here, that's right. The consoling thing I fall back on is, you know what, I would hate for it to happen that we screw it up so that humans can't live here. But life will go on. It's just this beautiful, powerful, relentless force. And I think that we are so close to a point where we are going to be able to make steps forward to

save our climate for humans. Yeah, the young generation is so aware. There's so much positive sunrise movement. And I always have hated when old p Bill kind of pass it off to the younger generation to solve the problems that have been created before they were born. But I think that the reality is that they are smart and that they see it, and that they are going to be leading us forward. And the technology is there. All we need is the political will agreed. Agreed, Well, Allen,

thank you so much. I could do this for another hour, but it's supposed to be a short interview, So thank you so much for coming back on. It's always a pleasure, always wonderful. Talked to Eric, Bye bye bye. Up next is Parker Palmer. He's a writer, teacher, and activist and the founder and senior partner of the Center for Courage and Renewal. He was last with us on episode two sixty. Hi, Parker, welcome back. Very good to see you. Such a pleasure to have you on. I'm always happy when we get

to spend any time together, so thank you. Good to be with you. So what we're doing with this special episode is just kind of talking about resilience during these times. I don't need to list all the things that are going on. I've done it a couple other times for listeners. They know, you know, talk to me about your strategies for being resilient during challenging, difficult, uncertain times. It's a great question, and and for me, it has a lot

to do with awareness of what's happening. For starters. I mean, there are obvious things happening. There's COVID that's happening directly or indirectly to everyone in the US. We have an election coming up, so that's happening directly or indirectly to everyone. Lots of perturbations in the atmosphere. And then there are also the personal things that we sometimes factor out in our in our minds because these larger things get so much attention in the media and from the people we

talked to and so forth. But in my case, um, I'm eighty one years old, and that's an age at which you can no longer delude yourself that you're immortal. Uh. And I have those famous underlying conditions, and I have family members that need attending to. And I'm also exactly at the point in my eighty first year when my dad died at age eighty one. And I think for most people, date of death as it were, is a significant milestone or marker on one's own journey. So I

need to be aware of all that stuff. It's you know, it's not just the headline news that might kind of drag me down. I think for me, Eric, when I put all that together, the next step is to say, Okay, I need to take care of myself. And if someone else offers to help me take care of myself. I need to accept that too, which is hard for the people who have always wanted to and care to others,

but we're quite certain they didn't need it. And so where I go with that is to remind myself that anything we can do to take care of ourselves is ultimately being done on behalf of other people. If I can't keep my head on straight in these times, it's not just me that pays a price. Everyone whose life

I touch pays a price. And so I say that that little mantra that anything I can do to take care of myself is ultimately being done for other people, because I think so many folks feel like, well, it's selfish to engage in self care when so many people are suffering. But it seems clear to me that you can't do anything to address the suffering of others if you can't take care of yourself. So I guess I'm saying there's a little ground clearing needed before we can

cut to strategies and tactics. For me, I think the first thing is I need to and many have said this, I just believe it's flat out true. I need to cultivate gratitude um in any shape, form or fashion that I can. The temptation is to go way over to the dark side of the moon, or no sunshine gets to you at all, and that's not good for the

human self and again for others. So I think for a lot of us that means gratitude for small things that we normally may not pay attention to, and depending on our age, we may not pay any attention to them at all. Um. I can remember when I was in mid career, working very hard to establish myself, and I would not at that time in my life have been struck with gratitude by the thing that struck me the this morning. Just to take a very contemporary example, I got up at five am. I went into our

second floor bathroom. I looked out the window. There was just enough light, not a whole lot, but just enough to see the glowing peach or orange colored leaves on this triflora maple that sits in the middle of our backyard. There's a lovely, lovely sight. It's not you know, it's

not a forty foot magnificent tree. It's modest and size, but there was this glow of orange ish light in the middle of that dark backyard, and I just thought, that's beautiful, and I want to take a moment to appreciate the beauty before I brushed my teeth and get into my home office and get to work, which is where I would have gone directly forty years ago. Whatever age we are, I think we need to cultivate gratitude

for small thing. So that meant that when I came in here, booted up my computer and checked the news, which I sometimes just don't do because it's so discouraging. I don't do it at that hour in the morning. I wait until I've recovered from the three a m. Mine that says everything is apocalyptic and catastrophic, look at it later in the day. But anyway, when I came in to check the news this morning, I had this kind of foundation stone of gratitude for a cycle of

life and death that's going on in my backyard. Because those leaves were green and beautiful. Now they're orange and beautiful, and soon they'll be gone. And in Madison, Wisconsin, where I live, the snow will be deep and the attempts

will probably be very low. I'll take one more, one more step with that and that is to say that I get a lot of solace and resilience from getting out into the natural world at every opportunity, at least once a day, if for nothing more than a walk in my neighborhood and sometime in a nearby park that we have. It's ringed with trees and has large areas of grass, and sometimes kids playing at a at a safe distance where I won't be a danger to them

or them to me. The natural world, with its, as I said, with its cycle of living and dying and then living and dying endlessly, provides great reassurance for me in terms of my age and in terms of the possibilities for new life in the world around me. There's no magic wand I can wave over the people who are suffering serious illness and death in their families and among their ends, and have been doing so at an

accelerated pace over the last eight or nine months. But there is one thing I know about many, many people who have that terrible experience of losing someone dear, and that is that for a while it feels like they can never live happily or well again, that their life is over because this person so close to them on whom they had depended and with whom they had walked through life is now gone, and they have grieving to do,

sometimes for quite a long while. But eventually many of those people emerge with a heightened sense of gratitude for life itself and a realization that not in spite of that death, but because of that death, their hearts have been broken open, not broken apart. They have become larger people. We have become more compassionate people, more empathetic people, and God knows we could use a bunch of those right now,

especially in our political life. People who aren't just saying, well, yeah, all this stuff is going on, but look at my four oh one k. They're actually feeling the suffering of others that they may not be experiencing so directly. And they have this broken open heart which has grown larger, that larger self that I mentioned to receive that suffering

and to respond to it empathetically and compassionately. And I think whatever it is that takes us to that point, and and it's often some sort of personal loss that takes us powerfully to that point, if we don't turn bitter and just let our hearts explode and throw them in the process as like a fragment grenade of the

ostensible source of our pain. I think what happens then is that we actually do things, maybe just put words into the world, take actions when that's possible, that our actions of compassion and empathy, and that as such actions always do have a feedback loop of actually making us

feel better about our lives, better about ourselves. Empathy, compassion, that fundamental orientation toward life, That attitude becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where you become more like the thing that you are speaking about or acting upon, even on those days when you do it, even though you can't quite fully mean it because your own life hurts so much. There's just something about empathy and compassion in action that

is self healing and self rewarding. Yeah. I was talking with the wonderful at Ellen Bass as part of this conversation series, and she said her monitor during these times, I may not get it exactly right, but it was essentially work, don't worry, which meant the things that she was worried about. Could she find any positive action to take in the face of that? Instead of just complaining?

She said, is there anything positive I can do? In this In this case, which is always in a strategy of mind too, is like, you know, no matter how small, if I can find some positive action towards whatever is really worrying me or bothering me, I feel better out of proportion sometimes to the size of the action I take. Yeah, exactly. In fact, I want to tell you just a second one. I love Ellen Bass's work, and I even a particular poem came to mind. I think I got it right.

I hope I got it right, but yeah, I guess. The first point I want to make is that we have to learn to value those small actions, just as we have to learn to value those small things for which we can be genuinely grateful. Um. So many of us, you know, measure our actions by how big are they, how much of a splash do they make? But the

small actions count. Ellen Bass has a poem I can't remember its title, in which she talks about punchline is something like when Newton's apple fell towards the earth, the earth shifted slightly, we think of we think of gravity. It's a beautiful poem, and I'm sure if it is to say shaw or however you pronounced that word, we're always seeing you know. Uh, there's got to be a truth to it, because gravity isn't a one way street. It's it's mutual. That's what keeps the solar system in place.

So I love this notion that, yeah, the massive of the earth pulled the apple off the tree and gave Newton this brilliant insight. But as that apple fell, Earth shifted slightly towards the apple. That's how we can look at our small actions. I love it. That's a great way to tie those things together. And a quote just came to mind for me when you were talking about these difficult things having a transformative effect on us, and it's something I was recently putting some stuff together about

Abraham Joshua Heschel, and I used this quote. The pious man is at peace with the life in spite of its conflicts. He patiently acquiesces in life's vicissitudes because he glimpses spiritually their potential. Meaning every experience opens the door into a temple of new light. Although the vestibule maybe

dark and dismal. I love that last part. The vestibule may be dark and dismal, So it's not like these events that transformers it's not like as we go into them, it's like, oh, this is lovely, I'm gonna be changed. It's like, no, it's awful. It's dark, and it's dismal, and and still as you keep walking you emerge. Yeah, exactly, I totally agree. Yeah, these are experiences that you wouldn't ever ever want to have again, if if you could avoid them, and you wouldn't ever ever wish on anybody.

But as I learned an outward bound forty years ago, if you can't get out of it, get into it. When I was is that where that phrase comes from? But I was in my case, it did. I was. I was on an outward bound program up at Hurricane Island off the coast of Maine, and I was in the middle of that dreaded repelling exercise and I froze

in the middle of the wall. And this young woman, the instructor is very able, athletic young woman down below, who was trying to keep me alive, said, is everything okay, Parker, I'm frozen in the middle of this ninety foot cliff face And uh, I still I believe it. But it's very, very funny, and it's kind of squeaky adolescent voice. I said, I don't want to talk about it, which is typical male response, you know, to any kind of any kind

of embarrassing situation. So she said, well, then it's time for you to learn the outward bound motto on Hurricane Island. And I thought, oh god, yeah, I'm about to die, and she's giving me a bromide, you know. And she said, if you can't get out of it, get into it, and I'll never forget. Those words were so patently true that my feet started to move and I made it down just fine. And I haven't been scared of repellings since then. You know, you and I have talked before.

I think eric about a couple of my experiences with the profound clinical depression, and that's a place I never want to go again. And I hope nobody has to go there, but although people do and people will. Um. But that was that dark vestibule that seemed to open into an endless dark tunnel. But when I managed to sweat my way through that, through a lot of despair for months at a time, you know, often wondering if this was the day to end it all, um, and

emerged into the light. No, no magic, involved. I don't have a formula. Some people get lucky, some people don't. But when I emerged into the light, I thought, there's a big lesson here. It has to do with tenacity. It has to do with groping in the dark. It has to do with trying to keep whatever little spark of life you can find, and they are tiny in

depression and rare. And it has to do with some kind of primitive phase that you can get through this if you understand that if you can't get out of it, you might as well get into it. As my Zen teacher often says to me, he says, the Zen medicine for being depressed is to be depressed. That's real helpful, but it is. But it is. You know, it's not the only medicine, and it's not the only medicine we should take, but it is a type of medicine. And I like that idea of tenacity, And I think tenacity

is important right now. I think tenacity to to hold to the belief that there's a way through the challenges that we are seeing in the world, the challenges that we're seeing in our own lives. A tenacity that says, all right, I'm gonna keep looking for ways to make it better. I'm going to keep looking for solutions. I'm going to hold on to the sparks of hope that

are there. Yeah, I absolutely believe that. And I think it's valuable sometimes in cultivating one's own tenacity to look back on the hardest experience we've ever had that required tenacity. In my case, it would be one of those deep dives into clinical depression and to realize that we made it through again, we were lucky, we made it through to not only survive, but to thrive on the other side of that profound darkness. And if we made it through one such passage of life, we can make it

through another one. And in my case, I can also remember that when I made it through that darkness emerged to the other side, I also realized that I would never ever again face such a threat to my existence, of psychological and spiritual threat to my existence. That what's to be afraid of when you've made it through something like that? Um. And so you know, I'm one of

those people. And I think there are a fair number of us in this country who has spent the last four years watching some of our most profound values some of the things we care most deeply about trashed day in and day out, just trash. And a lot of my fellow citizens seem to be thrilled by that. I'm devastated, but this is not the worst thing I personally and existentially have ever faced. And that has really helped me

keep hope alive, in hope in action. And that's you know, that's taken me to some hard places, to some conflicted places, to some very challenging places. But as yours end teacher would say, that's the cure. You know, the cure is going there, and you can't get out of that, then get into it. I love it. I love it. Yeah, I've I've heard that phrase a couple of times recently and I was like, I love that phrase, but I had no idea where it came from. So now at

least have one source for it. Um. Thank you Parker so much for taking the time. It is always such a pleasure to have you on. And I know that you're busy and I appreciate you fitting us in great to talk. Eric. Thanks for asking all these good questions. Keep doing it. I will, okay, we will you too. Next we have spring wash them a well known meditation and dharma teacher. Spring is a founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. Hi, Spring,

thanks for joining us. Hi, I'm happy to be here. Eric. It's good. Yeah, it's wonderful to talk to you. It's such a short time after our last one. Normally it's like, well, we wait for a new book to come out, but we've got you back and that makes me happy because

I love talking with you. What we're doing here on this special episode is kind of talking about you know, here in the US it's election season, a lot of emotions are running high, but obviously there's lots of other world challenges that we're all facing, and so I think a lot of people are are struggling right now, and so I'm just wanting to talk a little bit about how to be resilient in the face of all the challenges that are going on, and really also from the

angle of we want to be involved in the world. We want to contribute to the world, right and yet we don't want to be overwhelmed by the world, are sent into despair a boy the world, And so I'm just interested in how you're navigating those challenges. Yeah, one thing I do is limit I don't have a television. I get my news from you know, kind of checking headlines on then, and you know, I do headline checking just reading, but I try it very hard to limit

the voices that are constantly on from outside. I mean, it's noisy, and everyone's buying for your attention every possible way, and so it's and to do that, they usually use the high drama, high you know, high stimulation, and so be aware of that. That's the first thing I would say is be hyper aware of what you're consuming, what sources, how much, what is on? Is it on all day? Is it background? You know, So that would be one

way to help us stay resilient. You've got to change the channel and started listening to different types of energy, consuming different type of energy. I agree. I've had to be really careful. And even you know, my my social media feeds, I don't spend a lot of time there, but they're somewhat well cultivated to try and be things that are encouraging and positive. And even there, it just

feels like a mess right now. And I've been thinking about that idea too, of at what point is consuming more causing me to behave differently, and if it's not going to change what I'm going to do in the world, is it actually harming the world by me consuming more? Because I think one of the things where we get stuck is we're like, no, I can't I've got to be involved, I've got to pay attention. I've got to know what's happening. So we feel like we're supposed to

do it. And I've been noticing in me and in coaching clients that sometimes beyond a certain point, that continuing to pay attention actually makes us less effective in the world. I agree that kind of mania and and chaos out there is driving a twenty four hour news cycle. It's feeding on the constant emotional stimulation of our autotomic nervous system, the primal brain, the It's a kind of energy to it that we haven't seen before. It's very toxic, and

we have to be careful. The election battles and and all that ensues, you know, the race, politics and the divisiveness, and I think it's a time that we're particularly vulnerable because we are living our lives in digital world. A lot of us we can't go we can't fly around. We can't, you know what I mean, it's hard to unplug right Your normal channels are closed, our normal outlets, I mean, we have our homes and nature for people who live in environment where they have that. But I

really to be really resilient right now. It's easy to read headlines and stay involved and then and then for the next month or two, limit highly limit the amount of that you're reading. You're taking in the words, the newspapers, the battles, the fights, the disclosures. It's all gonna be

one direction, you know. Here hopefully we might get some good news depending on what I don't know what what realm you're living in, but whatever the election results are, it's going to bring out more of the underbully regardless. You know, that's go away. Well, that's right, that's right.

I think that there's there's certainly a feeling like if we could just get through this election, it will get better and in some ways, but I think some of this is how do we function in a world that has a lot of this sort of challenge in it. I think we've been very lucky here in the US for a long time that life has been relatively stable now Again, lots of people have been oppressed throughout all that.

So I don't mean to try and deny that. But if you look at other times in history, it's been relatively calm and stable here and it's not right now. And and so I think that phrase the new normal is way overused. But how do we stay resilient in really challenging times? And this is the time. These are the sort of times that hopefully our practices have been training us for. Yeah, and also I think a lot of us have become resilient since March. You know, the

shutdown happened, We became resilient. Oh my god, what's gonna happen? I gotta you know what I mean? There was a certain like cleaning the lens and a strength. I think that it's almost like preparing us for the uncertainty of this moment. You know, we're tougher than we were in March on one level, right, it's like, yeah, this is uncertain and we're not saying that from an abstract level.

We're saying because like we've lived through some stuff in the last four or five months, right, And so the resiliency is there, and we do need to rely on our practices in our community and and there's a way which this is just another aspect of practice. How do you live in the world but not be of it? You know what I mean? How do we live in the world but we still carry our values in that

and we can tune out the noise. There are ways we're not victims of that, you know, and yet there's still things that we may need to be in touch with and we may need to know about. It's like, what do they call it in the Dharma? They call it writing the razor's edge. You know, I think we have to get through that time. I think it'll probably be like that to the solstice. Yeah, that's a great phrase, right in the razor's edge to really think about right now.

And you know, I think that question of how do I balance practices that are provide me with personal resilience but also my personal resilience, how does that feedback into my community and my activism, right And I think that's really key to depending on where you are and what the nature of your work is and how you know, a lot of people are engaged in world changing word, community building, social justice, and it's just really hard right now.

So whatever you can do to stay sane, balanced and centered. You're gonna have to use it now not to fall into just incredible emotional reactivity, which is this It hurts and it's paralyzing, and not to really fall into fear. I think it's the fear factor that's being fed over and over, fear of the other, fear of this, fear of that fear. You know, there's so much fear that that fear. You know, scared people often are dangerous, and so we need to be careful with that. So how

do you work with fear? Because any honest look at the world and you can go, well, all right, yeah you're afraid, making you know, could make sense. So how do you work with fear skillfully? Well, you know, I understand it more of a mind and a thought emotional. It's almost like automatic. When I get into certain kind of thoughts, the fear appears. Sometimes I work with it just energetically, but I try to understand it as it's a mindset. It's a mind state, not a mindset of

mind state, an emotion that's passing. It's impermanent. It arises, you know why. It Sometimes it rises at two o'clock in the morning or three o'clock in the afternoon, or when I'm on a beautiful walk you know, who knows. You know, it's like, these are energies, and so I think we have to be really careful that when these energies arise, that we don't construct a mega story on

top of that. You know, we start off with a little tiny fire of fear arising, and then we throw on you know, kerosene eucalyptus trees, logs fly, and then we have a raging forest fire of fear. Because fear can be fed. It can be fed it and to know the difference between experiencing a momentary appearance of it and to feel it in the body or to feed

it unconsciously, it can turn violent. Yeah, I've really been even more than ever reflecting on how important it often is just to come back and go, okay, where I am right now is okay, I am okay exactly, things are okay, Like coming back here, reality is okay. It's always a good idea, but I found it particularly important as of late. Yeah, because people could live in a million dollar house full of Buddha statues and terrorized, and someone else can be in an urban environment feeling much

more free and spacious, you know. And so it's the mind, and so we have to remember what am I thinking? What am I feeding? I mean, it goes so aligned with your work and your podcast and the themes what am I feeding? Is that am I allowing this fear? Just are projecting onto others? And then you know, and then the violet starts there, you know, versus just feeling vulnerable waking up and be like, oh, this is is vulnerable. Yeah,

there's a lot going on. It's uncertain meeting it with compassion versus feeding it unconsciously because a lot of the energies right now, it's all being swept up in groups like that, trying to make sense of reality and then of these fear based stories, you know, and some of the stuff we do need to be aware of. Constitutional rights are being trampled, you know. It's like, so there's that, you know, and but how we relate to it on

a moment to moment level. Yeah, I thought of you specifically when I thought of this show, because these are important times and it's important that we are engaged and involved. You're one of the people I think straddles that being very engaged and active and keeping some sense of personal sanity, like not living life from a place of outrage and yet still having enough energy to really be involved and do things. So that's that's I want to talk with you.

So thank you so much for coming on. This was a short and sweet well may it be of benefits all beings everywhere. Hallelujah. That's right. Our final guest on this episode is Ralph de la Rosa, a psychotherapist and private practice in New York City. Ralph specializes in helping people resolve their childhood traumas, anxiety, depression, and intimacy issues. You can hear a full interview with Ralph on episode to fifty three. Hi, Ralph, welcome back. Thank you so

much for having me. It's good to be here with you. Yeah, it's lovely to talk with you again. Um. I'm always happy to get people back soon and talk to people more. So, it's nice to see you again. And what we're doing with this episode is just in general, talking about how do we deal with the emotions that a lot of us are feeling during these times. Right, We've got an election here in the U s that has a lot of people very wound up. We have fires all over

the play is we've got a pandemic. There's just a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear, a lot of anger, and I just want to offer people some tips for dealing with that in a skillful way. Thanks again for the opportunity, because it's this is needed. We don't live in an emotionally intelligent society. We don't live in a society that teaches us that it's okay to have emotions, that our emotions have logic and rationality to them. There's always a reason for feeling the way that we're feeling,

and it's natural. It's natural to be upset, it's natural to get anxious, it's natural to be angry. We're hardwired for these things. They're not going anywhere, you know. And the thing that I come back to is over and over again and in so many different ways, is how mind and body parallel each other. There's mirrored processes in in both. So anything that we find to be true for our biological being, we can find a similar truth

or a parallel truth in the heart. And what I'm pointing to today here with that, it's just as the body needs to eat, masticate, digest, and metabolize food, and that's a good thing for the body to go through because through that process of metabolization, the body gets energy, it gets resources, it gets you know, creative spark. Uh. That food is how we get the essential nutrients to

detox all the bad stuff that we take in. And uh, those nutrients are how our body does organ and tissue and bone repair as well, which is very very good. And in a similar way, I really think this is true for us psychologically in terms of digesting and metabolizing

our experience and our emotions. Too often, if something is distressing, troubling, uncomfortable, the prevailing prescription is to find a way to go around and find a way to tamp that down, find a way to change the channel, but basically anything but

to be with and to allow it. And I find that many of these habitual approaches to working with ourselves are actually one and eighty degrees in the exact wrong direction, and in terms of our health and well being, that that really the answer to having these emotions so much of the time is to learn how to make space for them, allow them, to be with them, and to

truly relate to them. And when we do that, by you know, it could take so many different forms journaling about them, having a friend on your contact list that you know, you could say things that aren't necessarily the greatest things you have to say, where you could really be raw and reel with that person. But also I'll just be transparent and say that I've just been making

time to cry. I've been making time that, you know, if I have fifteen minutes and something that's coming up, I'll just lay right down on the couch and just let it come and let it have its way with me for a little bit. And when I talk about digesting our experience, diggesting our emotions, that's what I mean. It's really just simply being with them, even being in them. You know, it's not good to get to the point that one is overwhelmed or something is overtaking you. We

don't want to act on our anger. We don't want to make life decisions from a place of extreme loneliness or extreme worry about the world per se. But if we can just make space to feel our feelings right now in a similar way, it might seem like we're licking our wounds or we're just allowing our sadness to dominate our life or worry about things to dominate our life. And it's really amazing that like our emotions have a life cycle their birth, they have an existence and then

they die off. And so in this way, I've been finding that a lot. Even scheduling times sometimes with therapy clients, I'll say, you know, make make fifteen minutes in the morning where your brain is allowed to go absolutely bananas with worry, and then that time is done for the day and you can say to that part of you you've had your chance. You'll get it tomorrow again at

eight am. But in the same way, we're metabolizing, like those emotions have energy to them, just like food and calories do that we get insights, we work things out, we start connecting dots in our lives, um we find perhaps that we're motivated right like anger is a really good example of essential nutrient that is meant to lead us to action, to setting a boundary, or to maybe funneling that energy into getting out the vote in these

last two crucial weeks or getting involved. Dharma Vote dot Org is a really wonderful organization that's reaching out and really trying to turn around on likely voters right now. But to metabolize our emotions to repair our lives with them.

By that, I mean, for example, ram Dash talks about this a lot, that grief can be one of the deepest connect points between us humans, that when we share a grief with one another, it brings us closer and it tends to be more powerful than even joy sometimes or the more what we consider to be the more

savory or desirable experiences. But the other piece, and this is the last thing I'll say here, is just like digesting our food, then clear space for more food, right Like, if you think about like eating meals without actually properly digesting them, then you just keep eating anyways. Like that's a disaster. I really think part of our situation right now, why we're so overwhelmed is lack of digesting our experience,

a lack of spending time with our experience. And we're just piling it on because it's coming at us like rapid fire right now. And it's all toxic stuff. It's all distressing stuff. It's all stuff that's been sitting in the fridge for way too long, so to speak. Yeah, and sometimes I talked to clients about, you know how

when we're holding our emotions that haven't been processed. It's like a pot of water that keeps getting fuller and fuller, and the pot can hold a lot of water, but it's finite, and pretty soon, you know, you get to a place where that pot is completely full and like a shock glass of water, like a little one ounce you know, thing of water will cause that pot to overflow. And it's not really about that little shock glass of water,

it's about everything that came before. Yeah. I love that idea because you know, a lot of what people talk about, and I talk about it with people, is limiting the amount of that bad news that we're taking in, right, Like, I think we need to be judicious about it, right, But you talking about it from the other angle. So one approach like is we'll stop eating, right. The other approaches digest what you eat and then you can eat more.

And I think that's a really good point that you make that I think we are just taking it in, taking it in, taking it in without really processing it.

And so it sounds like a lot of us would do well to both process a little bit more and maybe slow down the intake reminds me of something slightly different idea, but like, the third guest on the show is a guy named Todd Henry, and he said something along the lines of if you were to change your ratio of consuming and process and he's talking about reading and learning. He's like, you know, we just read, we read,

we read. He's like, if you are just to change that and spend fifty of the time reading and fifty of the time really processing what you read and thinking about how you apply it to your life, it would

change everything. And I don't even think we need to take it that far, right, but I do think we have a tendency to consume more books, more news, more self help stuff, And a lot of the work that I've been doing with the programs we've had and with people is about really taking those things and using them. And what you're talking about is just another form of that. It's like, all right, slow down the consumption and do some processing of what's coming in, allow yourself to deal

with the emotional impact of it. Yeah. I have a fifteen minute a day in cap on taking in news and media. Just fy I, because if I'm not going to act on it, then why take in anymore? You know, we we kind of got it at this point. We know, that's right, It's right, it's all shocked and no surprise at this point, right. But yes, that reminds me of in the Tibetan tradition to they have a principle that when you do when you study dharma, you're you're actually

supposed to review things three times. You read it once to just kind of get the GISTs, you read it wise to really kind of get the meaning, and then you you read through it and process that a third time so that you actually internalized, digest and metabolized, like

we're talking about here. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been I've been working in the Zen tradition pretty singularly focused for the last eighteen months or so, and it's just interesting that I just am finishing my fourth book in eighteen months, right because I'm just reading it in a totally different way, you know, I'm reading it slowly and over and over and just it's a completely different thing than the way

that most of my other reading is. Or I'm just kind of going along and just bringing it in, bringing it in. Yeah. Yeah, it's really kind of a pain, to be honest, but it's worth it. It's worth that price of admission. Of your time, your energy. But with the with the touch stuff that we're dealing with two, you know, it's even less intuitive to spend time with that, but I think it's still essential nutrients. It all has

something to teach us in some way. You can limit the amount of media that you're taking in, but you know your friends are still talking about it. Anytime you're on social media, you know, take three deep breaths before you open your phone, man, because you don't know what's waiting for you. There's only so much limiting that we can really do, and we're about to hit a point where where we're all inundated, whether we like it or not. I think I think it's reasonable to be anticipating that.

I think about it. Christ me too, is we we do suffer from affect phobia in that we have this implicit sense that I can't feel sad, that's going to take me out in somewhere, or my life will become unmanageable in some way. I've been really reminding people that, you know, open hearted people are tough people. We've got a bad rap. We are the ones who sign up for vulnerability and for the riskier life and for you know, the uncertainty, for example, of meditation. Meditation is inherently uncertain

and vulnerable by nature. We actually have more heartiness than we give ourselves credit for. We can take some anger, we can take some loneliness and sadness somewhere, we can deal where it's okay. In fact, our bodies are designed for us to go through these things and to bounce back better for having gone. Yeah, I've been reflecting on that a lot also, for whatever reason, with some clients this week around reminding ourselves of our ability to handle and cope just do that, like I can do this,

I've got this, I can handle this, I've done it before. Like, just reminding ourselves of that capacity really helps. Yeah, there are parts of us inside that are very childlike and that don't know, really haven't internalized that we have survived, and we've survived and not only survived of what's come before. We're still here swinging. We're still in the ring. That's right. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Ralph. You and I are going to get a chance to have a longer conversation here

in a couple of months, which I'm really looking forward to. Yeah, thanks again for having me really appreciate it. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One you Feed podcast. When you join our membership community. With this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support now. We

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