Sharon Salzberg || Real Love

introduce Sharon Salzburg on the show today. Sharon is a New York Times bestselling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In nineteen seventy four, she co founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barry, Massachusetts with Jack Cornfield and Joseph Goldstein. She's the author of nine books, including her latest book, Real Love, The Art of Mindful Connection. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Sharon,

and well, thank you for having me. What a real treat to be able to talk to you, and so a little surreal, I had to admit, considering I listened to you when I meditate every day on Insight Timer. So to actually have like a to interact with the

whole person behind that. It's pretty exciting. I thought we could talk a little bit bit why you have been devoting your life to this, and from what I can read and what you've writ about this is that you've experienced some considerable turmoil as a child that made you realize early on the power of meditation to overcome personal suffering. Is that right? Yes? I mean it wasn't so much that maybe that I realized the power of meditation, but I had some kind of blazing intuition that if I

could learn how to meditate, I would be happier. And so I went to India when I was a junior in college. It was through university program, kind of like your junior year abroad. I created an independent study project. I said, I want to go to India and learn how to meditate. To that, So, so off I went. That was in nineteen seventy. That was in nineteen seventy. Yeah,

and you were, I have a court here. You're driven by an intuition that the methods of meditation would bring some quarity and peace, and so you had a hunch that that would be the case. Yeah, well I did. I had no way of you know, verifying that until I actually did it. Well, it's a good thing that that worked out. It could have been not worked out, right,

So that not worked out. And it was a long time ago, you know, it was I was going to school in Buffalo, New York State, University of New York and Buffalo, and you know, I first kind of heard about meditation was in the air a little bit because of you know, the Beatles and music and things like that. But I first really heard about it in an Asian philosophy course, and you know, I looked around Buffalo and I just didn't see where to find it, you know, to actually learn how to do it. And it was

a different world then, it really, well, I wasn't even existing. Yeah, it was really a different world for you. Oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's funny. I was like, I almost like instinctly wanted to respond, Yeah, it was such a different world back then,

me tell you. And then I realized, I don't know what the world was like for me then, So this is interesting, before you really discovered what meditation could do for the mind and body, and could you describe it all what you sort of felt like, like, what your consciousness was like before? Yeah, I mean I was eighteen, when I was a junior in college. I'd gone to college when I was sixteen, and I think if I was going to try to do it in one word,

it would probably be fragmented. Yeah. You know, I was in a lot of turmoil. My life had been chaotic, my mind was chaotic, but I didn't really understand, you know, I didn't understand the layers of the anger and the grief and you know, everything that I was feeling, and so it was just kind of fragmented. And it was only when I began meditating that I began going through those layers and experiencing all those things directly. You know,

that's so interesting you use that word. I'm a positive psychologist and I do research, and we're actually just creating a skin called the Whole Person Scale, and one of the items is I feel fragmented. That's very interesting because people don't often use that word. I know, I know, And I felt like it was like a construct that was worthy of capturing scientifically, different from life satisfaction or positive emotions. It seems like something different that so far

we're finding some really important correlations with the scale. Oh, I'm so excited. Yeah, cool, Yeah, I bet you score pretty highly on the scale. Now, I hope. Yeah, you'd hope so right, there'd be five years, there'd be so you'd hope there'd be some development there. Yeah, no, I'm sure there is. So tell me about this other turning point you had in nineteen eighty five at a meditation

retreat in Burma. I started practice in January of nineteen seventy one, and that was really like a mindfulness practice, and I heard about this other kind of parallel practice

you could do cold loving kindness. And I heard about it at the end of my first intensive ten day retreat, and it was offered almost just like a ceremonial way to say goodbye to end the retreat, you know, may I be happy, May you be happy, and just kind of silent recitation and charging your body in that particular school, charging your body with these sensations, you know, of loving kindness. And I got really intrigued by the practice, and I heard that there was a way of doing it intensively

and a systematic structure. So it was only in nineteen eighty five that I got the chance to do that with the guidance of a teacher. So I went to Burma for a three month period of intensive practice and doing loving kindness practice. So it's not it's not like, you know, divorced from mindfulness practice, but it is its own methodology. So somewhere in the course of that three months that I was there, I had this turning point.

I have a feeling. Like many turning points, it doesn't sound like much in words, but it was really very significant. And that is I realized that up until that point, I had somehow considered love almost like a kind of commodity. It was like a package in someone else's hands, and I would get this image almost like the delivery person was standing on my doorstep with the package of love and they glanced down at the address and say, nah, I'm going somewhere else, and then there would be no

love in my life and I'd be completely bereft. And the turning point was realizing that's not the way it is. Actually love is a potential within me. It's a capacity and ability within me, and other people or great art or different scenes might enliven it and awaken it and enrich it or threaten it, but it's mine. It's actually

within me. And that was a huge life transition, and it was matched seven years later when I saw this movie called Dan in Real Life, and there's a line in the movie that my most recent book is probably almost completely based on, which is love is not a feeling, it's an ability. Yeah, you know, we probably share a mutual affinity towards the humanistic psychologists, and like Eric from Art of Loving, sort of conceptualization of love was very

much along those lines as well. Right. Yeah. I keep meeting very young people who say to me, I just read the most incredible book on love by Eric Somebody. I was like, oh, yeah, I know, you mean Eric Somebody. It's funny. Well, you know, your concept of real love really incorporates that idea of love comes from within, you know. And again tying it back to the humanistics first just a moment. You know, you used a phrase being love in your book, and Abraham Maslow used the phrase be love,

you know, being love. He called it unneeding love. And it seems to just be such dovetails so nicely with the ideas you captured in your book. Yeah, thank you. I think there's something about the generosity of the spirit that is love, but it warrants a lot of examination,

you know. I tell the story book about somebody I know, a man who told me he felt his move toward a more liberated kind of love, a more real kind of love, was in a way moving off the seat of privilege, you know, and not sort of listening to his wife primarily in terms of how his needs might be satisfied. But you know, sometimes giving up things weren't that convenient for him, but it meant a lot to her, and so he would kind of give her the power.

And we're friends and we used to meet all the time. He needs to tell me these stories about his marriage, and I would say to him, you know, there's an awful lot of people in this world, notably women, but not only women, who never get to express their needs. You know, for them, a move towards more liberated or real kind of love is not giving over to the wishes of the other, you know, and ceasing to be attached to its own. It's giving voice to begin with,

to what they want. So I also tell the story in the book about a friend of mine named Gina who literally outlived her cancer prognosis, maybe by forty years or something like that. And she told me that when she was first diagnosed, and she was looking at absolutely everything in her life. She said, I realized that I was the kind of person who'd be sitting in the car with my husband and I'd be boiling hot, and the most I could ever bring myself to say was

are you warm, deer? And she said that changed, you know, so that fascinated me. That balance for each of us, or each of us at different times might look different, and the core value is authenticity. Yeah, no, for sure.

And you know this striking, this balance of getting outside yourself while not sacrificing yourself is such an interesting I'm just very fascinated with that trade with that it doesn't have to be a trade off, right right, Well, it shouldn't be a trade off, really right right, real love, it's not a trade off. Yeah, yeah, so interesting. You

know this idea that a paradox. You discuss multiple paradoxes, you know, one sort of the more that we can give love and kind of get outside of our needs of it, the more actually will be like to receive love in return, is one fastening paradox. Another one I really enjoyed reading about was what you called the attachment paradox. Can you talk a little bit more about what the attachment paradox is and relationships between modern day scientific notions

of attachment and Buddhist notions of non attachment. Yeah, I mean, that's very funny because in Buddhist teaching, in Buddhist psychology, the word attachment is really used as the root cause of suffering, and you don't you don't want it. I mean, you're not seeking to amplify it or cultivate it because it's bringing so much suffering. So, but attachment has a very specific meaning, which is more in the sense of control.

You know, if you think of the generosity aspect of love, we know that there are lots of different ways of giving a gift. You can give someone a gift and it's really a freely given gift. And you can give someone a gift because you say they have something you want and you think, oh, maybe if I give you that, you'll give me that. And you can give a gift really with a timetable of how soon you'd like to be thanked and how loudly you'd like to be thanked.

And you know, there's so many ways of giving a gift. And so because extra things, the strings, the expectation, the need for reciprocity. I mean things like that. They're human and they're understandable, but they cause a lot of suffering because those things are not in our control. We're trying to control something we can't control, like someone else's behavior, someone else's reaction to us. And I think it's also a mistake to think of attachment, even within the Buddhist context,

it's bad or wrong or terrible. It's suffering. It's a state of suffering good. I like that. I really do like that, because this, even though it's framed as secure attachment, it's not really attachment in the sense of like a clinging all right, that's right, very different than that. And so yeah, so even though there are these semantic differences, I think there's more similarities. Philip Shaver and his colleagues

I have written about that there's more similarities than differences. Ye, the Buddhist notions and contemporary science of ess that's great. I say this because we just had Chris Freley on the podcast actually the episode just before Years, and he talked about the latest science of attachment, and so it was so refreshing and cool to read your book and then see it link to that literature. So let's talk a little bit about the practice of loving kindness. What

is loving kindness? Well, loving kindness is a term. It's a translation of a word, the word and Polly, the language of the original Buddhist text is metam etta. Loving kindness is the usual translation. It's something of an awkward term because, I mean, whoever talks about loving kindness in a casual way? And my concern is that it might make the quality itself seems somewhat arcane or separate. I've had translators scholars say to me, you should just say love,

and of course now I seem to be. The literal translation of the word is friendship. But there too, I have some problems because for me, friendship and implies going out to dinner together or going to the movies together, hang out together. And the quality of meta does not actually dictate any sort of action. It's an interstate of connection. It's recognizing our lives are connected, so it's like including

rather than excluding. It's looking at the sometimes really rigid sense of self and other and us and them that we can carry around and realize that's just a construct, you know. In a more real sense, we live in an interconnected universe and our lives, that you have something to do with one another. That doesn't mean you like somebody, doesn't mean you're going to say yes to their entreaty. It doesn't mean any money or spend any time with them,

But within yourself there's that sense of connection. This is such an interesting that you can love someone and not even like them. Yeah, well, I mean in reality, don't we find that? You know? Yeah, no, for sure. And when I do your meditations, you say, you know, now that's brought in the circle to someone that maybe you don't like very much. And I mean, I'm not this is I'm not directly quoting you, you know, but you say, that's the general idea. You know that's brought into soll

we don't. And then you say, like, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, then show some capassion to yourself because you're not showing you're actually suffering by not extending love to this person. Could you umpact that a little more? Because I feel that's so fascinating. The first time I heard that in the meditation, it just really got me thinking, you know, well, it's funny. When I was writing this last book, Real Love, I spent a lot of time

trying to hear people's stories and insights about love. So I was meeting with groups or I was, you know, soliciting that stuff online. And the last group that I did was in Barry, Massachusetts, and this guy, I said to me, you know, my whole life, I've been taught and I've thought of liking somebody as kind of the ordinary, expected, obvious,

you know, way of connecting. And of course you like everybody, but loving somebody that is rare, like you know, hard, hard, hard to attain, and you know, kind of the supreme accomplishment. And he looked at me and he said, you're reversing it. You're saying we can love everybody and hardly like anybody

at all. Maybe, And I said, oh god, you're right, you know, because he was right, you know, but that doesn't mean love in the sense of a door or like or want to spend time with, or the proof of you know, it's this fundamental sense our lives are connected, and it's like moving from self and other more to a sense of we. And it's maybe not be hard

an emotional at all, but it's like a shift in worldview. Yeah, I think that's right, And you know, I like the idea that no matter how sort of I don't know, lack of a better word, how horrible a person seems to be, they're suffering, and then if you reduce their suffering, you're actually making the world a better place as well

as themselves. Yeah, let me ask you about this though, what about Like, you know, there's a concept we study in our research sometimes called grandiose narcissism, and those who score very high and grandiose narcism would never say that they're suffering. They think, you know, everyone else air suckers

for suffering. So what I'm trying to wrap my head around is like, for certain particular portions of the population, like those individuals, like if I said to them, like I just so you know, I added my attention last night that I want to reduce your suffering, they'd be like, you know, don't do that. I'm fine, I'm great, I'm the best. You know, what do you do with that kind of logic? It seems like, well, I mean, you know, I wouldn't address them, you know, because the point isn't

trying to change them. But somebody just brought that up to me the other day. How incredibly frustrating. It is like, because this person doesn't seem to be suffering, not only do they feel that they're suffering, look like their stuff, right, you know, it's just like so frustrating, Like come on, all I can do is agree, like, yeah, it's really frustrating, you know. But I think part of that is is also a worldview. It's a sense of what a human

being is capable of, and which is a lot. You know, it's like not just getting by, not just squashing other people, and not just living in a dog eat dog world and not just making money, you know, but you know, a human being is really capable of kind of greatness of heart and real presence and real contribution. And you don't have to be famous, you know, just an ordinary person like really contributing to the well being of others. And then you look at the choices some make and

for what they think happiness is. And and it's also so ironic that in the end we all die, you know, that we have to give up everything, and you think, wow, you spent a whole life being lonely because you were just taking potshots at everybody and you know, and trying to put them down. And it's an interesting way to have spent an entire life and die that way. You know, So there lots of ways of feeling compassionate even when this person seems incredibly self satisfied. I agree, I very

much agree. But you know, sometimes, like I was joking with my with my research call the other day because I was like, you know, I'm making kind of making this argument in this paper that those who score high on dark triad characteristics. I don't know if you're familiar with that, narcissism, psychopathy, and machavelianism. It's kind of the common variance of all three. So it's like really dark dark triad that in some ways I was making the

argument that they're not fully human. But then I said, wait, I'm dehumanizing the dehumanizer humanizers. That's rue. That's like they treat it with other people, so they're not human. Is that wrong of me to make an argument that what I mean by they're not full human is exactly what you said is that they're missing out in so many other aspects of humanity that could bring them joy and happiness.

That's what I mean by that. But yeah, no, I think it's something very important what you said in that if you see people like that harm precisely because they objectify others and they don't recognize the humanity of others. And you know, if you kick a table, you just kick the table. If you kick a human being and think that they're like a table, that's a big problem.

And that's the state of disconnection we face, you know, sometimes within ourselves or in others, and that is so dangerous, and you sort of don't want to perpetuate that, you know, by doing the same thing to someone else, even the people who are doing the very thing. You know, you don't want to be engaged in that kind of dehumanization or objectification, you know, as though they don't count as

oh they're nothing. And so that's another reason too. Even though it's very difficult to offer loving kindness to people like that, well, I think it's a paradox when you're a researcher because even if I don't want to make those arguments, my data is showing that to be the case. So how do I describe in a way with loving kindness? Maybe we should take lessons in grad school and how

reporter findings with great loving kindness? Oh I like that, no one's ever thought of a course on that, and I'm really going to think that through when I write these papers up, because we are showing that you know that these characteristics of extreme selfishness are negatively correlated with growth related measures. Yeah, and I think that's an important thingding of compassion, isn't it. Yeah? I think it's very

worthy of compassion. No. Absolutely, I found a quote that relates to what you're saying, that a quote from you. Do you mind if I quote you for a second. Okay, We're capable of much more than mediocrity, much more than merely getting by in this world as human beings. We're actually capable of greatness of spirit and ability to go beyond the circumstances we find ourselves in, to experience a

vast sense of connection to all of life. To settle for wallowing ourselves off through in difference, or the temporary high of getting what we want by whatever means, or the petty excitement of besting someone however we can, is actually quite sad. So I love that spirit. And then I wonder could someone who is in that, like in that state of that petty excitement, for instance, could they feel like it's be to hear someone say it just so you know. It's almost like someone say I prayed

for your soul. You know what I mean. It's like, just so you know, I meditated about how I want you to have greater compassion. You could see how that person could take that right. Well, I would never say that to them either, you know what I mean. You seem to have a very outward expression of your loving kind of like you know, I don't ever go up to somebody. I mean, the classic joke is you were my neutral person. I felt absolutely indifferent to you when

I met you. Then I set you loving kindness. No, I kind of care about you, you you know. But of course we don't do that. We don't say it out loud. You know. I tend to wear my heart in my sleep, so I guess you did. I think I get in trouble sometimes because of that. That's hilarious. So that is a common joke in the in your community. I love it.

I absolutely love it. Okay. So I love this quote from psychotherapist and meditaran Linda Carroll, which you quote in your book, saying, loving yourself is holding yourself accountable to be the best you can in your life. Narcissistical off has nothing to do with the accountability. So tell me a little bit about the important role of responsibility and

accountability in cultivating great law in your life. Well, some of this is it all ties to like a very deep question, which is what do we mean when we say love or we you know, loving kindness for ourselves or for someone else? Because for a lot of people that were that idea, you know, implies a weakness, a certain sentimentality, being conflict avoidant, overlooking faults, just trying to dwell in what's nice since we you know, and I can mean a lot of different things, and that's a problem.

You know. It was kind of clarifying that, and so, you know, and people. Somebody brought this up to me the other day. I was doing a talk with a musician and songwriter and teacher of those things, and she described some of her students who I don't really feel like studying, you know, I'm going to be good to myself, you know, I feel like I don't want to learn the tradition of the history of like lineage of this song writing thing, you know, I just want to I

want to be spontaneous, you know. And she was very funny, and of course we can confuse it with that kind of indulgence, and it usually it is confused or being a doormat, not fighting against anyone else, or just being complacent and passive. And you know, so I think it merits a lot of consideration, like what do we mean by love? What do you mean by love for ourselves?

And I really, like Linda Carroll said, in that sense of responsibility or accountability, it's like, if you really loved yourself, maybe you would what you love yourself more you were cultivating that, maybe you would try in whatever domain you know, you felt was out of your reach unreasonably. So yeah, it is a very good point. You know, we've been trying to measure a loving orientation, you know, on a scale, and we create a new scale to measure a loving orientation.

You would love this stuff, you know, Like I want to tell you, I'll share papers and stuff with you when they're published. But one interesting correlation we found, and I'm basically this is like not even published yet, I'm telling you, like top secret stuff in front of a large audience that's listening to We found an interesting correlation between those the most loving people show the highest level

of what's called survivor guilt. But what that actually means is that you feel guilty if you achieve or success great success, and others are not achieving your success. You almost you do feel guilty for your successes, as well as a form of guilt called omnipotent responsibility guilt, which is the most loving people feel responsibility for the suffering

of anyone that's around them. And it's been arguing literature these are actually adaptive forms of guilt, but in their extreme manifestations, of course, you don't want to constantly feel guilty for being your full expression of yourself. So it's a potential. It seems like having a loving orientation can

come with great joys and a full existence. But there are some things to be aware of well that I find really fascinating because right away, of course, my mind to go to psychology and meditation practice, and the first thing that came to my mind was this quality called equanimity, which is actually usually taught in conjunction with loving kindness, and equanimity is a balance, and in that context it's

the balance born of wisdom. So it's like perspective. So that means that every action, every moment of loving kindness or compassion you want supported by wisdom, right, you don't want it, you know, you don't want those ever separated. And so that's really how we practice. Otherwise, loving kindness becomes attachment, like may you be happy by Tuesday night.

You know, I've got a big list of people to make happy, or it's up to me to ease your suffering, you know, which is a kind of funny construct but very prevalent. Or I mean maybe that's part of survivor's guilt, you know, like I if I delight in the you don't even have to be a loving person to have that, you know, Like you know people who have a very hard time absorbing pleasure or savoring yeah, now the delights that come their way because there's too much suffering in

the world. So they're not actually doing anything about the suffering, you know, but it's just feeling bad. And so what's that about. It's very interesting to look at, you know. So my mind went right away to equanimity and bringing in that kind of balance, like I will care for you, and I care about your pain, and I will do what I can to ease you, and it's not in my hands in the end, this is not my universe

to control. What about the balance between loving kindness for oneself and for others, you know, so that it's multi dimensional, it's not just in one direction. Or what's really interesting you know these days, is what about having compassion for someone and feeling so completely divergent from their views and their actions that you just resolve I'm going to fight them, but maybe not with hatred in one's heart, you know,

but from a different place. I like that. But yeah, you do tend to find a correlation between having a loving orientation towards others and having a loving orientation towards yourself. And the flip side, those that have an sert of an antagonistic orientation towards others tend to have an antagonistic orientation in terms of stuff. You know, they turn it inward. We turn inward what we put outward as well, you know. Yeah,

so there is a correlation there. So it does seem like cultivating real love in any form will have benefits in like a larger system so to speak. Right, Well, I mean I think about that a lot, actually, And that's interesting that you say that, because I seem to work a lot with caregivers, people who either in their personal lives or their professional lives or serving the needs of others, and there is such massive burnout that said

about it. Yeah, and so exactly, And so you know, these are people who have tremendous empathy and they have great love for others. Often, but what's not happening, you know? Yeah, and I mean the research shows a loving highness. Compassion is the antidote tempathy burnout. Yeah, you know, with tour ur card and when says he feels when soone's suffering, or you see someone in pain, he doesn't feel pain.

He feels a sense of warmth. And I guess that's more motivates you to actually do something right, to actually approach it, approach the person as opposed to hide statement because you feel so upset. Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. So tell us a little bit about it. I really love the part in your book about the stories that we tell ourselves, well, stories others tell about us. What's the role of stories here in connection to love? Well,

I really like that part too. It's at one point I had an editor who after I'd written stories we tell about ourselves? So that's enough. But I was really determined to go on, You're funny stories. I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did go on. Thank you well. It has a lot to do with the role of assumption

in our minds. And I also tell the story Worry in the book somewhere about a friend of mine who was a writer and a speaker, and he gave a talk somewhere, and in the course of the talk he mentioned how when he'd been younger, reading prist had been very important for him, and reading remembrances of things passed. And so after the lecture, he'd gone out to dinner and he was sitting in this restaurant and the small

group approached him. This woman kind of emerged from the group to talk to him, and he took a look at her and he thought, oh, she looks really kind of uneducated, and you know, maybe not that smart or something like that. And the first thing she said was I was at your lecture. So his heart sank. You know, what's she going to say? And she said, I really liked your lecture. It's just that I find I get a lot more out of reading Christ in the original French,

you know. So that was a moment I was like, oh, okay, you know, and it's fascinating those assumptions that come up about that person, about that type of person, about ourselves, you know, gender, raise anything, you know, and so one of the great gifts of mindfulness, of course, is to be able to see these things so they're not unconscious or half conscious, and then we can just look true or not so true or based on what or you know, maybe I'll just listen for a while and see if

it's true or whatever choice we make. It's actually very empowering. And so one of the biggest feeders, of course, of those assumptions is those stories, you know, and we tell stories about ourselves. You know, we need to be perfect, we need to be better than perfect. You know, that wasn't good enough, or it might have been great, but it wasn't good enough, you know. And so those stories

really so deeply affect our every moment. And then the stories others tell about us, even if the stories others tell about life, you know, like I don't know if this is in my book or nove but it's a story I often tell them teaching about going to Washington, d C. Often to teach for a while and one year a friend brought me to the area the basin world. This is big concentration of cherry trees, and well, we only got there at night because they were so busy

and they all kind of bloom at once. That's cherry blossom season. And a friend of mine, having heard that the previous year I'd only got there at night, was determined to get me there during the day, and we did it. We managed to get there during the day, and I just thought, this is so beautiful, so many trees and these delicate pink blossoms, and it's so gorgeous. And then my friend said, oh, no, it's past the peak. And I thought, oh no, I'm having a bad experience.

This isn't good enough. It's not the peak. Right as soon as they said that, it changed the whole flavor of things, the whole thing. Yeah, you know. So there's so many stories about us, about life, about someone else that we carry and our goal and we're not going to dismantle the narrative making capacity, nor would we want to, but we want to be able to see those stories so they're not these kind of hidden assumptions. I love that.

I love that. Yeah, I tend to be very influenced by the energy of someone I'm with and sort of what I think they think of me, And so in a lot of but again I don't I'm not a mind reader, so I don't know exactly what they think of me. So in a lot of ways, I'm doing like I'm trying to guess the story. I'm doing a lot of work, a lot of acrobatics there. That is just only going to increase my own suffering, aren't I

I just realized that I'm talking to you. There's like second level like suffering, intentional suffering, like not only do I not really know what they're thinking, but because I then think something negative that what they're thinking and then influences what I think about myself, my own narrative I would tell myself, and I'm sure I'm sure not alone and the only one who does that, you know, of course, Yeah,

that's so interesting. Yeah, we would reduce a lot of our suffering, like right away if we if we just dropped a lot of this great. Okay, So you talk also about welcoming emotions, welcoming our sort of full breath of emotions. Do you think that, and again, in this whole person's scale that we're creating. We have this idea if I don't feel real or I feel split off for myself, and you talk about that as an important thing in your book in terms of having real love.

So what is the connection there between sort of imposter syndrome and real love? Well, I mean, I think if you you know, if you don't think of love as a state, you know, with all its implied you know, characteristics or qualities euphoria, delight, rapture, whatever, we associate with love as a state, but you think of it more as the way we approach things, you know, so it's more relational. You know. How am I with my toothache? How am I with myself when I, you know, meet

a stranger? How am I with a stranger? And again, if you don't think of love as like gouey, you know, but as powerfully connected, Yeah, you know, then you can see that to think of you know, I have anger. It's bad, I'm wrong, I'm horrible. It's not really like that, you know, the process, the path isn't really like that, you know. But more, how am I with this anger? How am I approaching it? How am I with myself in the face of the anger. That's really the point.

It's the point of my fulness is the point of loving kindness. And so you know, just sort of feel I shouldn't feel what I'm feeling it's all wrong. Is not that helpful? Because we are feeling what we're feeling, you know. That's authentic and much more empowering is the question, how am I with what I'm feeling? Right? Am I sort of just being with it or trying to control it? Yeah? And you have this phrase. This is so cool emo, diversity the whole spectrum of human emotions. I love it.

Did you coin that phrase? I don't think so. I don't know where I heard it. I must have heard it somewhere, maybe not. There's another one I used in a previous book, Unit Tasking. I'm not sure if I made that up either. That's great. So I think that we'd be remiss if we didn't run through your reign model a little bit. Yeah, just quickly, because this can be this I can be applied to a multitude of

someone's life. So it's a really valuable tool. Yeah. I mean, so we say mindfulness, like when something comes up and we're working to be mindful of it, we want to avoid two extremes. One extreme is hating it and fearing it and being as shaved of it. Let's say it's anger. It this wave of anger comes up, you know, we don't want to just get lost, and being afraid of it and trying to repress it and you know, make

it go away. So that's one extreme. The other extreme is diving into it and letting it tick over and being completely defined by it, like such an angry person that I always will be right. So we say mindfulness is the place in the middle where we're neither like getting lost in what's happening, nor are we trying to push it away. And that sweet spot in the middle is sometimes described by this acronym rain RAI N, and different teachers actually have different rs, different words for the

R and different words for the end. So it's kind of evolving model. But what I used in the book was R is recognized, seem like, oh there's anger. The A is acknowledging. Some people would say accepting. You know, some depends on how you use the word except but like, yeah, this is what's happening right now. You don't have to fight it. I don't have to get lost in it. It's like this is the truth of their present moment.

I is investigating, and in this sense it would not mean, you know, trying to figure out why in the world I'm still angry after forty five years of meditating or something. But looking into the anger, like first feeling it in your body, what do I feel? And looking in sort of like looking into the anger moving. And when we see that, when we look without holding on, without pushing away, we see, oh, there's a lot in there, there's sadness in there, there's fear in there, there's a sense of

helplessness in there. Usually, so we see it's a composite and it's really a compound, and we see that it's constantly changing. You know, this quality that came up that seems so impermanent, I mean, so permanent and so impervious to change and so rigid and so solid. Look at that. It's moving, it's changing, it's shifting. And then the end is non identification, you know, like you don't have to

say I am such an angry person. You see that this was a passing state, right, It came and went due to conditions, and so that's rained some I've heard some teachers lately describe the end as nurturing, like nurturing yourself anyway, you know, even though this is not the emotion you were asked for. Anyone gave you a menu. So there are lots of ways of kind of doing it, but I find it's a really kind of good way of sensing what mindfulness is. Absolutely And are you familiar

with the act and commitment therapy? Acceptance and commitment therapy A little bit, yeah, a little bit. Some of those ideas are being applied, you know, in therapy for a really good effect and tied to that notion of psychological flexibility, which of course they drew so much on the Buddhist philosophy. So a lot of this stuff is drawing on Buddhist philosophy and to very good effect. Mm hm. So I have another quote from you don't just love When I

quote you, sure we can surprise, I said that. Yeah, that's so funny. I yeah. So we cannot will what thoughts and feelings arise in us, but we can recognize them as they are, sometimes recurring, sometimes frustrating, sometimes filled with fantasy, many times painful, always changing. By allowing ourselves the simple recognition, we begin to accept that we will never be able to control our experiences, but that we

can transform our relationship to them. This changes everything. So I feel like I'm the pull quote editor here, you know. Thank you very much, So you want to be very mindful your time. In the last couple of minutes, I'd like to just jump into the demean of romantic relationships, like what happens when we take love and we kind of and we actually like the person as well, So we like, we like and love, but that comes together we have great admiration for a single person that we

want to have deepened in a romantic passionate way. Let me just talk bring up another paradox here, because it's talked about lot, but I kind of personally think it's kind of a false paradox and I'm curious to get

your thoughts on it, you know. Like one of my favorit writers, Estra Parrell, the psychotherapist Erotic Intelligence, talks about this fundamental tension between the need for excitement and mystery and then security and familiarity, and how there are two naturally opposed forces, you know, and so that's why we tend to lose passion in relationship over the long haul because we have too much intimacy. That's sort of that model. But can you maybe speak to that that a little bit. Well,

that's interesting obviously, you know, romantic relationships are extremely complex. Yeah, there's no one kind of romantity. Yeah, but you know, from a meditative point of view, it's also interesting just to look at this simple role of attention, like how often do we stop paying attention to our partner, you know, or our person or whatever people or whatever it is you know, yeah, you know, any amounts of wordom or complace since you're taking someone for granted or whatever. You know.

So I think mystery doesn't necessarily only come from that sense of you know, excitement doesn't necessarily only come from the unknown. It comes from discovery sometimes, and we'll discover each other. Right. I just love that. Okay, I just love that. Yeah. And that's yes, And that's so much tied with a sort of every day all every day wonder. That's curiosity that is self sustaining. Oh that's beautiful. What a great way to reconcile that. Yeah, thank you, Sharon,

thank you. Yeah, So you just gave hope to lots of people that want to have like fifty year relationships at the least. Okay, so let me quote you again here. Time is both the implacable thief who steals away the gifts of life and the sacred messenger who bestows them. Even as we live with the knowledge that each day might be our last, we don't want to believe it. Yet when we're able to open to the truth of even our most shattering losses, we find moments of unimagined grace.

Oh my gosh, did you did say that, right? I did? I guess I said that. It's so poetic, so pletic. So I kind of wanted to end on that vibe, you know, like I wanted people to leave this episode today kind of feeling a vibe. But did you want to elaborate that at all in real time or riff on it or improvise? And that was very beautiful? Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, getting older is a trip,

you know, and it's the most surprising. It's like shocking, you know, especially since I went to Indue when I was eighteen, and so many of my really close friends I met when I was eighteen years old and that was a long time ago, you know, so you feel like it's all just racing by, and yet you know, when we are present, it's almost like this timeless realm, and it's a whole other way of being, and we

have both, you know, both are true for us. Originally, my book ended in the story of tibetan teacher of mine whom I had gone to see in Taiwan, and he was very frail, and we had seen him, and you know, we're struck by. It was a small group of us, struck by how incredibly ill he seemed. And then he told us he was moving to from the heart of the city to some suburb or something, and we could come se him in another couple of days.

So a couple of days went by, and we're all standing in front of this hotel with flowers and fruit and offerings for him. And I was so depressed and unhappy, and I kept thinking I might only see him one more time, and it might just be one more time. And then we walk into these little cabs and every cab got lost. I was just wandering around the streets, and then all of a sudden, I was thinking, all I want in life is to see him one more time,

you know. And the one more time, which it seemed like the worst thing in the world, suddenly seemed like, wow, that would be the biggest blessing. And in fact, you know, we did find him. We saw many more times, you know, because he lived quite a number of years after that until he died. But it was so interesting. One more time seemed one way, then it seemed another way, totally different.

I mean, I think it sucks that we can't he would say, you know, it's just surrender, you know, but that we can't control a moment in the way that we can't capture it forever, We can't bottle it. It it sucks, It sucks. It kills me something, you know, not thin you know. I it's hilarious because you know, I I just have these moments where I kind of know in some senses that will be the last time I'll see you. Like my I had a very dear

mentor a very dear mentor who's old. And I was right, you know, I just I was like, what if this clapse, this glimpse of this person right now? This this is it? This is it? Like how can I just freeze frame this?

You know? And and it was it was it. It It was the last time he died of complications of an operation, so so to kind of turn this into something maybe more uplifting, mindfulness may be our only tool to get as close to the freeze frame that I'm yearning for a possible Yeah, and I think it's also you know, that transition to you know, wow, I would be grateful for one more time was an important transition, you know, not to take things for granted and not to just

be complacent. But this life is an incredible gift. And sure as well, it was a gift to chat with you today. Thank you so much, Aaron, I really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought provoking as I did. If something you heard today stimulated you in some way, I encourage you to join in the discussion

at the Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com.