Spring Washam on Deep Transformation

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 Spring Washam, who was also our guest on episode one Way Back

in the Day. Spring is a well known meditation and dharma teacher based in Oakland, California, and she's the founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. She is the founder of lotus, fine journeys, and organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom. On this episode, Eric and Spring discuss many things and cover a lot of ground, including her book, A Fierce Heart, Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment. Hi Spring, Welcome to

the show. Hi Eric, It's so great to talk with you again here. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have you back on again. And your latest book, which is called A Fierce Heart, Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment, is wonderful and Goodness knows we can use some strength, courage and wisdom collectively right now. So we'll jump into all that in a minute. But let's start

like we always do, with a parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her grandson and she 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. He looks up at his grandmother. He says, grandmother, which one wins, and the grandmother says

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. Yeah, I love that parable. I've used it in talks and it's just so relevant, I think from my life right now. It really is, especially during these times. Is every day, what are you using to focus on? You know, there's so much fear and anxiety around us, and you know, but yet we can focus on our practices, we can focus on helping people, we can focus on positive energy.

It's really a choice. You know, Heaven and hell's right there and it's just a mind state away for most of us. So choosing to practice and to follow a path that leads to happiness. So that's really what the parable is about. Who wants to be a bad wolf? In a way? It's kind of suffering in that path actually, right right, Yeah, I want to jump right in kind of with a little bit of what's happening in the

world right now. And I'm always really interested in I'm just framing this up for kind of the overarching ideas. I'm always really interested in the role and the balance between action and contemplation, you know, between our our internal

practice and our outer work in the world. Right, And you give a really compelling story near the end of your book where you talk about very shortly after Trump was elected at your sanga in Oakland, which is primarily a sanga that has a lot of people of color, a lot of people who probably felt very disenfranchised by the results of that election, and that you've got two d people in the room and you guys are working on your practice, and outside, you know, people are starting

to riot and protest. And I thought that was a really powerful encapsulation of these two energies in us, the energy to practice to do our internal work as well as the external work that happens out in the world. And so I just kind of would like to start there with you and how you balance and think about those two aspects of life. Yeah, I mean that's really a very powerful question, and I think in spiritual communities people don't know how to balance that all the time.

Right there, They maybe take a stance of, oh, well, I'm being a quantum is so I'll just stay here and meditate and um, you know, I sort of ignore the relative reality. I'll go to the cosmic reality, ultimate reality, which is true. Right, we have these two truths that we have to navigate, which is this conventional karmic level, and then we do have we are made of stars, we are just energy, so we really have to balance

that and I think that that's really key. And in the British tradition they talk about these two great truths and you have to live in that paradigm of this earth, experience this relative level social security, numbers, police brutality. You know, you can't escape that if you live too much and ultimate reality, you tend to be like, well, you know everything's changing, why try to do anything? You know, who

cares about the polar bears? You know, everything is everything, and you get actually you lose a certain amount of compassion. It's not really integrated. And then if you're too much in the relative karmic level reality, um, you can get be too bitter and attached and you forget that where the space too. You know that this is just a moment in time, and we get too attached and to

fixated on that being the only truth. So in some ways I try to have my foot in both worlds here and often my motivation to go out into the world and do things. Is often motivated by compassion, this desire that I have to alleviate suffering. And when it's internal and myself and when it's in the community or something's happening, you know, so I have to say I'm not doing anything. It's compassion that wakes up every day in moves. It's an energy that it tends to itself.

It's like if you're sitting there and somebody fell down in front of you, your immediate response w might be to go grab them, right, like like a child or something. You don't have to think about that, right, It's just it's an energetic response to something that's about to happen. And so for me, that's really how I experience the work that I do in the world. It's like I just wake up and the movement is there. It's going in that direction, you know, to help others or to

provide support. I care about the suffering around and I want to try to alleviate it, even though it's enormous right now. It's like, oh, I'll just get my little scoop and start digging in, you know, and I just it's just how I am. It's just how I'm made. I don't even question it anymore. You do a really great job in the book, and I think it's important

to frame up, like as a person of color. I think you do a really good job of framing up these challenges of racism, sexism, homophobia, all these things that are out there. You've got a couple of lines here. You said, we can do our to this work by calling on the forces of truth and love. That is what we are for. And you really talk about in that sense about being for something instead of against everything.

Talk a little bit about that, you know. I founded the East Bay Meditation Center, co founded it with some friends almost fourteen years ago, and now we're in downtown Oakland. That center filled up with the activist movement, right so we had people of all, you know, feisty and a social justice you know place. Oakland has always been a sort of a catalyst for social change, social movement historically,

you know, over the last decades. And so I had many years working with communities of color and activist communities, and I saw the high levels of burnout and being so rooted in the Buddhist tradition. I realized that unless you you know, you saved the world. Are you say you're an environmentalist. You help the world because you love it. You want to say the trees, love the trees. You're

moving from that place, not against what's happening. It's it's like a different frame of mind how we approach our work. Because if we do it in a dualistic way, if I believe everyone's my enemy, and I move with this aggression out on the streets or online or in the world for a just cause, I'm part of the problem of it in an unconscious way, and myself suffer. And

I saw the level of sadness and burnout. Many people came to retreats or to meet with me or classes, and they were just at the brink, you know, of breaking down. And then that does no one good, you know, so challenging in that way. Yeah, you talk a lot about forgiveness. I'll just read a short section here, he said, as an African American woman, practicing forgiveness keeps me from being consumed by anger. People die from hatred. I beg you not to become one of them. Forgiving every everyone,

for everything is my only practice these days. The heart wants to be free, and the only way is by letting go of the resentments we carry from the past, and so that's a beautiful sentiment. How does forgiveness also blend with still fighting for change? Well, again, I really have to rely on so many years of studying Buddhist psychology, Buddhist philosophy, following his holiness at Dalai Lama and many Buddhist teachers Tick not Han that we're also great spiritual practitioners,

but great activist. You know, his holiness leading the people out of Tibet a genocide, right or I can look at Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or Tick not Han being kicked out of this country over you know, the Vietnam War and the communism and the suffering of the government inflicting on people, innocent people, various types of human rights abuses. And so for me, I really model myself after those rate elders. The fight really within the Buddhist

tradition is against greed, hatred, and delusion. We are uprooting that in all of its forms, and that's what we have right now, an epidetic of greeds. You know, hatred is kind of like whoa, it's unleashed. Here we are back in the Civil war times, we've gone totally back in time. I mean, we're debating Confederate flags soldiers, you know, we're back in it. And and then just delusion. And I mean, look at how much delusions out there. You know,

it's just conspiracy stories, you know. So those are the things that as a dharma practitioner, as someone who's looking to heal my heart and mind, I'm trying to uproot those out of the mindstream so I can see the

truth of the reality, how it is right. And I also could say that in my many years of practice, I've had many spiritual experiences um on the Buddhist tradition in South America, studying with Shamans, that I have had a very profound experience of interconnectedness that when so deep that I saw myself as you know, we're selves in the mind of a great being. Where do you call it energy or the the field or quantum theory? Right,

and so we come from a single source. So I think one of the things that people appreciate about me that's a little bit different voice is that when I'm talking to people, I feel the interconnectedness, even if we're coming from very different perspectives, even if one of my brothers wants to hurt me in some way because they don't recognize me as connected to them. Right, It's somewhat easier for me to have a dialogue or hold the complexity of it because I see it whereas mind states

it's not so much an individual. It's a movement of greed, a movement of hatred, a movement of delusion. It's like, you know, people are just responding to their minds. So I guess in some ways those experiences have fundamentally changed how I have these conversations. And I think it helps because I take things far less personally. Even though it's painful, doesn't mean it's not painful. It just means that I don't have that attack back like I might have when

I was a lot younger. Yeah, I love that and that idea of greed, hatred and delusion. You know, I'm pretty serious Zen practitioner, and we do the Great Vows for all and and the second one. You know, various translations, but greed, hatred, and ignorance rise endlessly. You know, they're going to goes on to say and I vowed to abandon them, but I love that idea that they rise endlessly because it just gives me like, yep, that's what

happens in me and in others. Greed, hatred, It just it just keeps coming, you know, and we can transform it in ourselves to a certain degree, but it's just there. And I just I always find that a helpful, helpful reflection. And I think you've done a nice job of articulating just now and in the book that piece that I'm always trying to hold both in mind, which is the absolute view that says, hey, things are perfect, and perfect

doesn't mean all good. It just sort of means, at least in the way it's often used, they're complete, they are as they are, you know, but there's a deep underlining reality that is okay, And we have this really screwed up reality that a lot of us existing and holding both those things I find such an interesting practice. But it's the people that can hold both that attract me,

you know. It's the people that can hold both that I look at and I go that that's the wisdom I want, because if I just have one, I think, like you said, if you only have the absolute, people do they get very callous to me, Like, you know, you just seem to not care like, well, yeah, of course that awful thing is happening to that person, but that's just you know, that's just God and God in costume playing out the drama. I'm like, well, maybe yes,

but also still hurt, you know. And then people on the other hand go to the other extreme and only see the problems. I feel like, well, there's a big part of wisdom they're missing. So I think you do a think you do a really nice job of integrating and talking about both those things that I find really inspiring. Yeah, and you know, being compassionate and being understanding doesn't be less active. It means actually you're more effective in a lot of ways because people can hear you. This has

to be a revolution of the heart right now. And I keep reminding all these people involved in the civil rights, this new evolution of civil rights, and you know, there's a lot of attacking of even teachers, and it's like, you, guys, this is a heart felt revolution. We cannot beat someone into being anti racist, you know, it does It's never It has to be a deep shift in the heart.

And so I think hopefully we'll will move into that sort of second level of this experience that we're all have been collectively as we grow, you know, I hope so too. I see the same sorts of things, and I just think hatred and despair and anger they're just not energies that lead to healing of any sort. And they they and ultimately, you know, they consume us, you know, they destroy us. And so I do think, you know,

very very similar to you. I think it's we've got to find our way to come from a strong, centered, heartful place, you know what matters to us. You know, like you said, what are we fighting for? Not always what are we fighting against? Yes, and that doesn't mean that means you could stand fully out a protest line, but your experience is different, right. I like to some of the footage I saw yesterday. It was of Oregon,

a group of mothers out there. They were very calm, right, They're like, well, the moms are here, you know, and they're they you know, and they weren't, you know, hitting things or yelling, but they were just present. You know. That kind of movement is what will stop things. And I understand all the emotion. I do understand all the emotion. It hurts to see what's happening, It really really does. We want a just world. In our hearts want justice and we want everyone to have a sense of equality

and safety and living lives of prosperity and freedom. And so it does hurt to see what's happening, so we hold that as well. You know, you were mentioning some of the elders that that you have learned from, But there's an elder who is a great inspiration to you right now that I thought we could spend a couple of minutes on who is Harriet Tubman. Yes, you know, I have this magic going on right now with Harriet Tubman.

I started a couple of months ago, maybe just two months ago, where it was right before George Floyd was killed. It was like maybe two days before that, and my sister and I had this really weird experience so similar to a lot of people were out walking in a neighborhood here in California and West Merin and a woman where I just hiking walking down a road and she really started harassing us, telling us there has been breakings

in the neighborhood. And here my sister are like laughing walking and was like, whoa we were Actually, I can't believe this racism, you know, we were just so, I mean, we knew it, but it was like and I right after that, I had this dream where a soul powerful

I was running down a dark road. And you know how we always have in dream analysis, there's always like we're being chased, 're falling, very classic, right, So I'm being chased and um, I'm running down a road and I'm I'm holding onto the back of Harriet Tubman's jacket and I could tell we're being chased, right, is that sense of Harriet get me out of here. I remember saying that and holding onto the back of her jacket and she's leading me down this road and it's all dark,

I can't see anything. We're at night, and I'm just trusting her with every ounce of my being, like she was navigating, and she says, I'm gonna get you out of here. And then I had a series of feeling her spirit constantly around me like I would I would see images in my mind. I was constantly thinking about her, and I was like, wow, I feel like Harriet Tubman Is spirit is with me. And so you know, for me being also a shamanic practitioner, that's not that bar fetch.

But so I was talking to a friend and I said, you know, I feel so inspired by Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. I'm gonna do a five week class called the Dharma of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. Right, and we Buddhism, you know, Saidharta Gtanama leading to freedom, Harriet Tubman leading people out of you know, down the underground railroad. And I just started studying and the class was such a big deal. Hundreds of people were on

the zoom, people were forwarding it, loving it. And then so I decided to continue. So I have a Sunday class and I named it the Church of Harriet Tubman bringing together Dharma and social justice, right. And I talk about Harriet Tubman in a way that is uplifting because what I feel is that people that Harriet we can embody. But the spirit of being conductors. Isn't that what we have to be right now? Either you're a conductor in your living room with your family, or maybe you're leading

a class, but how do we become conductors? So it was a very uplifting way to to share information about how to stand up with dharma, with embodying the quality of courage you want to talk about a fierce heart. My god, I cannot believe the stories about Harriet's life are I mean, I would have thought they were made up. I mean, I really don't. I can't imagine a more

powerful body slide. But actually so I've been very inspired by Harriet, and I get letters from people telling me their kids are dreaming about Harriet and there and there's a whole wave of her energy. You know, she was supposed to be on the twenty dollar bill. I was going to say, yeah, maybe we'll get our twenty dollar bill, which seems weird and cool at the same time. When you look at the actual bill you can google it and you can see the mock up. It's like, wow,

that is a mine vendor right to love it. Yeah, So I'm encouraging people to connect to their ancestors and these great ancestors of ours because there's so many people I'm learning about, you know, right now, we're studying history, right we're learning about who is that statue over there? Wait? Why? Who? Why do we have a slave trader on the top of the library, and you know, Minnesota or whatever, And it's just something very joyful. So it's full of gospel music,

great dharma. We're evoking the power of Harriet, and everyone's feeling in power. So that's the idea, not to feel deflated. Send me the link and we'll put it in the show notes for sure, because I feel like there's a mission and right now to stop people from falling into despair, yes, and to give the mind something positive. Even my mind needed this. And then my publisher got on the call just to come on the class and said, oh my god,

you've got to write a book about this. So now I'm writing this book about me and Harriet, and that's great. That's great. So it will continue on my journey with this great ancestor that everyone should just check out and be inspired by. So transitioning more to our interior lives a little bit. You use a phrase in the book often that one of your core teachers, Jack Cornfield, uses all the time, which is one of my favorite phrases to reflect upon, which is the ten thousand joys and

the ten thousand sorrows. And you say none of us is free from either. Yeah, I mean it's so true. No matter who you are, if you're rich, you've got rich people's sorrows of your poor, You've got more people's sorrows. No one is exempt. We're all living these lives that are impermanent and material. Reality will never lead to freedom. We know that. So now how much you buy or surround yourself with. You know, we have these experiences. People

we love die. There's change, you know, times of loss, times of gain, times of being attacked, times of being worshiped. You know, we have this complexity, don't we. It's never just all good. Yeah. I just find that such a helpful reflection, like, yeah, we all get the ten thousand joys in the ten thousand sorrows. Like it just normalizes it for when we're struggling. It just goes, oh yeah, this is what happens. Yeah, and it it humanizes us.

I mean, we have one seven billion people on the planet, all just trying to be happy, and we all have similar setbacks. Some deal with way more though, I will be honest, the challenges are enormous and sometimes somebody could have everything in the world and have the most suffering mind. You know. It's again you get this bird and by being born and living this experience. And that's why I always say it's school to deal with it whole life

is school, you know. And these hard chapters that were on right now, um, you know soon they'll be joyful chapters. And some are having joy in the midst of all of this, you know, some feel excited. You know, I can see that position very much. Your book is called A Fierce Heart, and one of the things that you say is that cultivating a fierce heart is about learning to embrace it all, even the most painful aspects of our lives, and that we have to open up to

everything in order to transform it. And so I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about that because one of the questions I'm always so interested in is, really, difficulty tends to do one of two things to people a lot of difficulty. It tends to either transform them into more powerful, more compassionate, and better people, or it makes them bitter and mean and broken. And I'd love to talk about in your mind, what causes somebody to be able to go down that path of transformation versus

the path of sort of being defeated by our difficulties. Well, I have one word for that that I've seen in a lot of people, because often I'm very interested in that because don't We love a hero story. We love the story of the beating down the one against all the odds that you know, shot up out of the you know, mud kind of thing, and we love that. That's very archetypal in our Western mythology, you know, and we love that. Faith, to me is a determining factor

in how you deal with challenges. If you have faith that your life, that the universe is a loving place, that everything is for your growth, that there's a law, that we're surrounded in love and compassion. If you have some faith in that, you will grow from the experience. If you find that you have no faith, maybe someone doesn't believe in anything, non existence, nothing matters, love doesn't exist,

then that experience will turn you very bitter. You'll follow the bad wolf path, and you will act out and create more pain and suffering. But if you can use that trauma or that abuse as something and you believe that there is a loving force, I think that's the key to it. When people really believe that they can all often not all the times, but click into using that difficulty, overcoming that difficulty, and then actually using that as a catalyst to create change in their community themselves.

How they see themselves the work they do. So for me, that's a big factor that I see in people up all face any you know, Buddhism, Hindu, Muslim, Christian. If you can find that, you will rise out of it and you will learn, and you will grow, and you'll be better for that difficult experience. No matter how bad it was, even if it takes you twenty years to heal from it, you'll see it as an experience that was important. Even if it was traumatic, you'll see it

as a it was a shifting moment. The life changed in that moment, and there was a road and we go left or we go right. Very clearly, from that, we spiral down or we spiral up, you know, and maybe we go down and then up. You know, that's okay, it's okay to go rock bottom. Sometimes that's a beautiful road to right. We have to bottom. All there's only one place from the bottom, right, And a lot of

people go down the dark path. There's there's important teachings on the dark path too, you know, the path of you know, suffering and pain. You you can learn there. But faith for me, faith and something bigger that's good. You know, that is a huge motivation, and I have tremendous faith. And you know what, as Dr King says, the long arm of the universe bends towards justice, a long arc bends towards you know, and so we just have to hang in there. And faith also gives us patience.

When I have faith, I'm going to to be patient and try to take it slow and be patient with my difficulties and my suffering and the burdens that are, you know, the things that happen that we don't want. We have patience knowing things will change. That is the nature of this experience. Nothing stays the same. So we have this divine patients that faith brings with that. I

think faith is a really interesting thing. And you said something just there, and you say it several times in your book, and every time I hear it, there's an instant sort of rebellion against it, right, And it's this idea that the universe is for us, because when we look at the world, we see lots of really awful things, right, and we can see lots of instances like they were, you know, serially abused as a child and murdered at nine, Like okay, it doesn't seem like they got the chance.

So I also know I think in a lot of Buddhist cosmologies there is a there's the idea that this goes on over and over through lifetimes. And is that where part of your feeling of good and faith comes from? Is that if we only see it through this very short window of time, we might go, well, it's hard to see how any things are working for the good for us. But if we look at it with the longer timeline, and that timeline might even encompass multiple life lines,

is that sort of where you get that faith? Yeah? I do. You know, I really do believe that the universe everything unfolds lawfully, and i've and deeply the core of the dorma is this lawful unfolding of seeds we plant, grow and who we can't really understand for all of us, who can fathom an eight year old being born and being abused a whole life in dying? Right? What causes that?

And then what causes an eight year old to be born in a beautiful home and given all the opportunities, Well, I really think it does have to do with the lawful unfolding seeds brout. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't care about the eight year old karma unfolds as it should due to causes and conditions. How do I know that the president is supposed to be the president right now? That's what's happening right It's like there's a way in which we rest back and we trust that

things are unfolding. Doesn't mean we don't stand up though. And I do believe in the concept of Buddha nature. I remember I was at my first dharma retreat I ever had with Jack Cornfield. I was like, this was twenty five years ago or something. He gave a dharma talk the first night at a ten day retreat and he said, you know, he came out and he said, oh, nobly born. Those of you don't know Jack Cornfield, maybe

look him up. He's a great Buddhist based teacher here in the Bay Area and just wonderful in so many ways, psychologist and kind of like a shaman in his own way. He said, oh, nobly born, remember who you are. You're the daughters and sons of the awakened ones. And he gave a talk on Buddha nature, and it was like, you know, I love that view of we're all awake we forgot though you know, it's not like kind of

like original sin. You're born bad and you could crawl on your knees for a thousand years, it will never be enough, right, But it was this idea that, wow, you know, I'm asleep because I could see those moments of Buddha nature every now and again, like this expanse of love or this, you know, but then it gets obscured. So I do believe because of that innate quality, even though it's so buried in some people and all there is this great hate and delusion, right, we know that

gets in a way. But because of Buddha nature and because of things happening, I believe lawfully. And that's why I think I'm okay with what's happening, even though it's painful, even though I'm trying my best to help, I see that it's due to causes and conditions far greater, vast time. This is one chapter and a great book. The matrix has been here forever, I think, right, and so here we are. So I'm sorry the matrix circling again and

again and again. I mean, I I don't think in some level of people can resonate with that been here done that feeling, you know, like have we doesn't seem like we've been dealing with the racism for return. I mean we're just looking at history. It's like, oh, yeah we have. You know, we've gotten hundreds and hundreds of years now and here we are in this moment, same place. Wow, full circle. So I do have faith because of that. And maybe it's just my heart that believes in it,

not my mind. It's just like with my heart, I know that being kind and being just and compassionate is freedom. I just know it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great way to say it is that my mind also can get very lost in looking at all the problems and going well, wow, can that be? And you know, I've told this story not it's not a story, but I've given this analogy on the show before. It always works for me because when I try and think about,

like what's the meaning of life? If you try and approach it intellectually, you can't because you're like, well, I'm one speck of a dust on a speck of a dust that exists for you know, a flash of a second. How could any of that matter? And you made this analogy a little bit earlier. But like I walked outside my door and there was a dog laying there who had been hit by a car, Like I would know

I had to take care of that dog. And no intellectual argument, no amount of philosophy, no amount of anything could convince me that it didn't matter to take care of the dog. And so that meaning for me has to come from a deeper place, the sense that it matters, that things matter. Yes, And I think that so many of our troubles in this Western world. You know, I spend half the year in South America. Mostly I would

be living there now had all this not happened. But I'm happy to be here in this time working on what I'm working on. It's a joy for me to do that. But one of the problem is is that I think in the US we're very disassociated from the heart. Right. We live in our mind full of ideas and concepts and who's doing what, and we're monitoring everyone else. We

don't live in the body here, you know. Like I was talking to some friends in Ecuador and they look on our news and they see, you know, the protests of people against masks, and they said, but isn't it just the kind thing to do, even if you don't believe it, you just it's just like you just do it because you care about others, you know, because they care about it, or you know, it's just it's like

a lack of connection. And I feel that even in the Buddhist communities that can be this coldness where we just it becomes intellectual study, but it's not going into the deeper layers of the body. For a real change to happen right now, for people to stand up to what's happening, for people to feel empowered, the heart has to feel it. You know. That's what takes you out into the world. You feel that push. It's not a thought, it's just a movement. The body has it. It just

gets up and there you are. You're helping the dog. You didn't even have to think about it. You're getting the dog. You're moving. We have to be moved more from that place than all these head games that the eco mind plays endlessly. Now, it's sad. It's like we're lost in the story. That's the delusion part. You know. It's like there's so much delusion and it's like, okay, you know, when let's just take care of each other. That's so basic. Why is it so hard? That's the ego?

It's so hard to just be kind, you say. Whenever I feel hurt or triggered, I get down on my knees and ask to see the lesson. What is this painful situation showing me? And when I inquire with sincere interest in knowing, things that have been hidden reveal themselves

and circumstances change. And I just love that because I do think that that's another one of the things that helps us transform difficulty and to grow is to really, at least without using the idea that we're growing as a way to bypass the difficult situation, but if we can at least orient that way a little bit, all of a sudden, are suffering has some meaning. And when it has meaning, it seems to have the opportunity to

be transformative. Absolutely. I mean, I really believe that when I'm the most triggered by someone something has happened and I just feel crushed or or a very emotional or angry, it's like, well, wow, what is that? I get curious and I have a curiosity about my own mind, you know, when there's something that's just caught you know, and I'm just playing it again, and I did that, and I

did that. And if I just settle into the body again, out of the mind, but into the body, and I can listen and feel the energy, feel the rage, feel the fear, feel the outrage or the sadness that can accompany that. If I can drop into the body and become mine, feel of the energy of my body and keep inquiring what is the nature of this pain, like where what is being not seen here? I will find usually a huge attachment to something, and then I'd love to find these blocks in my heart. I celebrate it,

you know. It's like get a tangle out, you know. It's like I'm attached at this and I want that, you know, and I can find it, and then usually I can really investigate that through inquiry, like what do I think that's going to get or and I can usually see some big piece of just me, me me, I I I That's what I want, you know. So it's like if you're willing to investigate. And but I'm also not so afraid of difficult emotions as much as

I used to be. Some people are terrified of feeling anything, right, I mean, is that what we're most scared of Eric is our emotions seem to be I mean, the worst thing that happens to us is thoughts and emotions for most people, and we're terrified. I don't want to feel that. No, And I think I understand that you have to get used to it. You have to get used to feeling. You won't grow unless you're unless you start to be

willing to feel. And you know so many people are so numb, you know, Yeah, And you talk about that in a really helpful way, because you know, my bigger challenge that I've experienced through my adult life has probably been more depression, and depression is more of a numbness, right, And and I love that you talk about I've got the actual quote here. You said numbness has to be met with the same loving self care with which we meet anything else. This is a powerful practice. You're learning

to feel embody and open. And I love that idea of how do I meet numbness? What is that? Actually? Like? Investigating it more closely, I find it a harder one to work with because strong emotion is easy for me to sort of just I'm like, okay, I've got a lot of colors to work with. Here. You know, I'm like doing at painting and I'm like, okay, I've got a lot of good colors, and then numbness. I'm like, oh, well, I have gray. I've got to make this painting out

of gray. That's a harder painting to make. I loved what you said about that. The way to deal with it is the same loving self care. Yeah, we have to be able to develop compassion, you know, And numbness happens in a lot of places. It comes out a lot of relationships, right, and we marry someone and then we feel numb. We don't we don't feel anything, we see things going. We become desensitized to everything, and it's just like, you know what it is is. It's just

a defense of the heart and mind. It comes a lot from people who have had trauma. They just disassociate. They're just not there, They're numb, they're disassociate, can't feel what. They have a hard time with empathy in those moments. That's when people like that are harsh on others for feeling right, and so they are learning. You have to be willing to explore your spiritual life. You have to be willing to put yourself out there you can't as

listen to other people's spiritual lives. You've got to put it in a practice. You gotta get on your road, you know, getting your boat and start you know, navigating down the river, and can be hard. It will you'll face emotion and you'll face the parts that are um and if you can develop compassion, that's when things get really interesting. You know, self compassion. I'm not talking about compassion for other people. It has to be rooted in

how you respond to yourself. More and more I find that lesson so important, and it's one that I feel like somewhere along the line I learned fairly well self compassion. And as I work with a lot of people through coaching programs and different things, and I just more and more I just keep seeing how important that element is. You know how important self compassion is in not just because it feels better because it does, but also in actually being able to transform and change. It's a really

key element. I mean, I didn't understand how deep compassion was when I was very My Tibetan teachers, you know, that is a core practice. My teacher means you're rimpoche did two three or compassion retreats, you know, and they used always like a bag and a passion, and you know, first we don't know what it means, and we're just kind of imitating, right, We're like, okay, I have compassion. Okay, I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. But over time you start to see that it's a skillful response, that it

is the most skillful response. Now again, it doesn't mean that action is not required. No, you can feel tremendous compassion and then immediately follow through with actions that need to happen internally and externally again but internally to be able to meet your pain with some degree of friendliness or care. You know, this is unbelievably hard for people. Eric I taught, you know, retreats on compassion and loving kindness meta, and it was an all owed battle for

some people. It was like, I can't feel anything. Bring day after day, you know, I'd be meeting with students. I'm just frozen. I can do it for my cat, but not me. It's a little alarming, actually, when you look into someone's eyes and you know they have all those symptoms anxiety, depression, not despaired, not wanting to live, you know, and so how do we get that movement happening? Because people don't grow up with these teachings on compassion at all. This is I can't really blame them. That's

not what you're learning as a child. Most people, you know, we don't learn that in high school compassion class, you know, seventh period. Let's practice that really comes through search. It's not something we medicate people here. We you know, doctor them in other ways, but we don't know emotional intelligence. And I think that that is coming. I have a feeling a mental state of these people in this country is going to get so much more fragile. And how

do we meet that? How do we help that? I agree you say that as wisdom grows, we see that we can't control life's unpredictability, no matter how hard we try. People who crave control have the hardest time on this path because the whole journey is about letting go. It's so true. Control freaks can't meditate. There's not a lot of faith. I have to do it. Nothing's gonna just happen on its own. There is no flow to this,

there's no intelligence behind anything. I'm the intelligence. I'm the doer, you know, and that mind is the most difficult on a spiritual path and the most difficult to break through, you know, to see that, you know, there is this profound intelligence happening right now in our bodies. There's incredible

intelligence happening. Right. It's like it's everywhere. It's well at the spheres intelligence right, how the sun rises in the moon and rises in the time, and everything's connected, working together, But people don't feel connected to that. And I think one of the biggest core wounds is this separation from source, a separation from the tribe on some level, right, this constant feeling of I don't belong, I'm not included. You know.

I was talking to my friend Alberto Velodo, a shaman from Chile, written a lot of books on all these topics, and he said, we were having a conversation. I said, what do you think it is in the Western mind has so rooted in the suffering? He said, oh, it's their mythology and I was like, well, what do you mean by that? He said, well, think about the Western mythology. Where does the story start. Adam and E thrown out

of heaven, and that's where the begins. We're outside of something and we feel this kind of bizarre separation all the time. That leads to the overheightened control in this despair of where do I belong? You know, this loneliness from that. Yeah, yeah, I think control is such a big thing, and you're right. This has been a big part of my journey the last really the last couple of years more so, is really like what do I trust in? What do I have faith in? You know,

we really have to find that for ourselves. What is it that I trust in that I have faith in, not what somebody else trusts in, not what somebody tells me I should, And sometimes we have to start really basic with that. I remember when I came back to a the second time. I had been sober about eight years and things went really wrong in my life with a divorce, and I sort of had this fake faith.

I tried to believe what people told me I needed to believe in order to get sober, and I got sober, but when things got really hard, I realized that faith that wasn't there. And when I came back, I was like, I've got to find my own faith. I don't know what I believe, and I had to start kind of small, like, well, I believe in this group of people that if I'm around this group of people, I'll do better. Oh, I believe in you know, and I just found my way.

But it's a question that comes up again and again for me because I think you're right. There is this weird balance in the spiritual life of you know and Zen we talked about. We talk about great faith, great doubt, and great determination, and I find all three. I find all three of them interested. And what you're describing is a lot of people approach the spiritual path with the

great determination. You've got to have that. You've got to have a determination that says I'm gonna practice, I'm gonna do this, I'm as you said, I'm gonna get in my own boat and I'm gonna row. Like there's an amount we have to bring of ourselves to that. But then there's also the great faith that we have to have and what is that faith in? And I think

that's such an important point because it's hard. Control is one of those things in in a we used to say all the time, you know, let go and let God and I and I would go, But I don't believe in God. I don't believe that if I let go of this, anything's gonna pick up. Like if I set the relay baton down, I don't have any faith anything is going to pick it up. And then I finally hit a point where I went, well, you know what,

it's just putting it down that's important. Even if nothing picks it up, it's better than me crushing it in my hand, you know, like it's the holding on that makes me sick. And so I think that that control what you said there is so important because the whole journey is about letting go, and I think I just keep sort of learning that for myself, like more and more unlearning letting go, letting things fall away. I completely

agree with you. And you know, for people who are just starting and thinking about the word faith and thinking it has a set definition, you know, that's something scary. That word is intense. You know, it's like, oh no, here comes the is gonna hit me in the head. I went through all that, you know, but I look at it as like just faith in the good of my own heart. It's also like everything you're being it's

nothing outside. It's like you, if everything is you, there is nothing but you know your experience here it's all our minds, you know. But it's like faith that you that your heart is good. There's goodness there, and I believe in that. And I think that's what you said, get me up out of bed, you know. It's like, no, I believe in this love for myself and others, and I'm going to follow that. And you could just look

at the intelligence of nature. Go to nature, take refuge there, like the mystery of the forest and how everything flows, and just sit by the trees and listen and you'll start to answer the question. Right, it's not going to come from outside. It comes from you. It is you, you know. And so I would take refuge and kindness like you know, because plant those seeds and they grow, because everything is about planting seeds. That's the law of causality. You plant that, you get that no matter how bad

you want something else. You can't get apples and planting lemon seeds, you know, no matter how much you wish for it. You've got to have that sense that your life matters, that you're part of some cellular living system like the trees and the forests are all talking to each other in different ways. I mean, this is real now, So why wouldn't you be connected to that? You know, the great mystery you're we're woven in. How could we

not be? Yeah? Yeah, well that is a beautiful place to wrap up, have faith in your own heart, in nature, and in kindness. Beautiful way to wrap it up and tie it up. You and I are going to spend a few minutes in the post show conversation because I want to talk about a line you say that the ultimate goal of the spiritual path is to uncover the

ways we imprison ourselves. So I want to talk a little bit about that and listeners, if you're interested in the post show conversation once a week many episodes with me where I share a teaching, a song and a poem and the joy of supporting the show. You can go to One you Feed dot net slash joint spring. Thank you so much. It's been so fun to have you back on and connect again. Oh it's been so great to chat with you and as always, it's an honor.

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