The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom || Sharon Salzberg

the Insight Meditation Society. Her podcast, The Meta Hour has a mass six million downloads and features interviews with thought leaders from the mindfulness movement and beyond. Her latest book is called Real Life, The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom. In this episode, I talked to Sharon Salzburg about navigating real life. When we are faced with trials and tribulations, it feels as if we're alone. On top of that, our underlying assumptions about the world and ourselves

can make us feel worse. Sharon shares useful tips that can help us deal with overwhelming emotions and pain. She believes that by cultivating these loving kindness practices, it can help us feel more open and free, allowing our inner lights to shine Forth. On a personal note, this was a really amazing interview. I really love Sharon, and I mean really, she's a really wonderful human and every time I talk to her, I feel her love and openness and it makes me want to be a better person. So,

without further ado, I bring you my dear friend, Sharon Salzburg. Hello, Sharon, it's a I'm good. Are you? I'm good? So good to see you too, and huge congratulations on the publication of your new book. Thank you so much. Life beautiful. Oh you have the book book. I don't even have the book. I do. Wow? What really? Yeah, I have Galic.

You should, Yeah, you should have a copy. Well, uh, it's beautiful and I know there's a there's a part in the book where you said that you went through a period where you were like, I don't know if I have anything more to say after ten books, and maybe you had some self doubt. Well, I can assure you that it's a very timely book with a lot of new information. Well, thank you so much. That means

a lot. No, that's great. Yeah, this idea of going from it's interesting because you have you have a couple froms to things. One is from isolation to openness. That's interesting. I'm just curious why you put that as your subtitle when your book focuses on constriction to expansion. What I feel like something changed the last second in the subtitle.

Am I wrong? No? I think you're correct. I think it was partly you know, the basic model, the basic scheme is going from feeling constricted and trapped and overwhelmed, like defined by the circumstances of our lives, to a state where we see options, where we feel open, we feel more in confined, less constrained. And I think the

word constriction is just not a popular word. And everyone you know, I wrote this book entirely during the pandemic, Like the height of the pandemic, I wasn't traveling anywhere. I was hardly seeing anybody, and not everyone, but many

people were experiencing quite a lot of isolation. In that it just seems more relevant example for people great So, regardless of what we call it isolation, hopiness or constriction expensiveness, there is a journey that you take the reader on and in a lot of ways, it's to deal with real life. Do you feel like there was ever a point in your life Sharan where you kind of woke up and you're like, wow, this is life. Not what I expected to be, but here we are. This is it.

I think that's happened repeatedly for me. I mean that's one of the points I make, and actually quote you in Quitting Maslaw, that these journeys are rarely linear. You know that we go up and down, we feel ebbs and flows. We are going forward, then we fall down and we have to pick ourselves up. We'll let others help us up. We go on again. We were working on self actualization and suddenly we're insecure and we're like way back there, you know, like you know, it's kind

of like that. So I would say yeah repeatedly, and because we have so many images, you know, the most immediate example in terms of the writing of this book was, you know, I traveled all of February twenty twenty in California and got back to New York City in early March. I went and taught to retreat for a few days.

Then I was teaching in New York City the morning of March ninth, twenty twenty, and and people were so anxious and things were bad, you know, they were getting a whole lot worse too, and in terms of COVID, And it was so much anxiety, do so much fear, so much uncertainty, and and I had to thought, you know, I think I'll go up to Barry, Mass where the retreat center I co founded the Insight Meditation Society is, and I have a house right next door. I said to myself, I think I'll go up to Barry and

write it out for two weeks, you know. And it came up here. And of course it was years, you know. And so life is always dealing us kind of uncertainty. And many times I've said to myself, this is how it actually is. It's not the way I imagined it would be, or but this is how it is. You say, the quality of our lives can be limited by the thought patterns that produce much of our construction, such as unexamined assumptions. Is there an idea there that a lot

of our own suffering is in our own hands? Is that a theme that runs through your book. I think that there's a certain degree of our suffering that is in our hands. I also take a really firm stand that something's just hurt. You know, it's not because we have the wrong attitude. It's not because we have disordered thinking, you know, it's not because we need to Broken arm hurts. Broken arm hurts, a broken heart hurts, you know, and

losing somebody hurts, and you know, something's just hurt. And people are so kind of unjust, I find, towards themselves almost by insisting like I should be better. Look at me. You know, I've been meditating for fifty years now. You know I should be calm in all circumstance. I should be, you know, And so it's so unfair, really, it's some things do just hurt. But I think there's a layer of extra suffering we do not have to endure. And

that is something that is about assumption and interpretation. And I am the only one. I'm the only one who ever feels this or this is the only thing I'll ever feel, or this is my fault. You know, I should have been able to control all of life in the universe and not have this happen. And so we kind of pile on and we're not holding that original hurt in a compassionate light or with any spaciousness. You know. It's a lot of interpretation, a lot of stuff and

that we don't need. Really, yeah, we don't need that. That's it's like suffering twice in a way, as people have said, you suffer first and then you're suffering again with your own hand. Yeah. Well yeah, this this book really equips people with tools to deal with real life. And boy, but people need it right now. I want to talk about some of these exercises because they are so valuable. I actually taught my students one on the feeling emotions shaking hands one. Yeah, I absolutely love that.

Can we can you kind of explain that one? That exercise a little bit? How can help us deal with difficult emotions? Well, the kind of the basic nature of mindfulness practice is one where we can open to what is present in the moment, what's genuinely happening, and holds it differently than we normally do. Like, sometimes our experience is painful, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain, and

we do not like it. All that stuff I just talked about, you know, we dump on top of it, we're shamed of what we feel, we're trying to hide from it or we want to push it away. That's one extreme, and the other extreme is we kind of dive right into it, and we become it in a way,

we let it define the entirety of our being. And we talk about mindfulness as being a place in the middle where we can connect fully to what's happening, not pushing it away and adding like shame and things like that, and also not getting enveloped by it, so that you might call right relationship. And in that relationship we have the opportunity to learn and to see more deeply, and

to have compassion and so on. So a very kind of nice way, more poetic way of describing that is from one of my Tibetan teachers, Sonny Rivercha, who called the shack hands, and he described those states are fear, are jealousy, or greed as beautiful monsters. And these beautiful monsters will appear just sit the nature of things and rather than freak out about it or feel defensive or say yes, you know you are the only truth I will ever know, you like to shake its hand, your

accompany it. An equivalent exercise we've done sometimes is also from the Tibetan tradition. They would say, if you're sitting at home and might be minding your own business, and you hear a knock at the door and you open the door and there's greed, or there's jealousy, or there's fear. Invite them in for a meal. Don't give them the run of the house because they'll steal similar word or something. But you don't have to be so upset, so diminished,

feel so diminished in the face of this state. In a way, it's almost like saying your awareness is stronger, it's big enough, or maybe in psychological terms you can tell me you would say you're an adult. Now. This feels terrifying because when you were two when you first sort of inscribed, and it was a question of survival. Now you can handle it. Actually, it's different now, even

though it's intense when it arises. Nonetheless, you know, so invited in for meal and so be hospitable, be calm in the face of it, Recognize it for what it is. Have a little kindness, you know, like there's a reason you're here. Probably, And I described that once in a class I was teaching in someone in the room didn't like it. So I said, well how about I said, how about invite them in for tea? And they said, how about tea to go? And I said, Okay, that's

the extent of the hospitality you wish to engender. That's fine, But it's all about finding that place in the middle because we can and we can forgive ourselves for what we're feeling. We don't have to say, you know, I'm like despicable for having this arise again. And at the same time, we don't have to be dominated by it. You know, your approach is so lovely, thank you, It's full of love, loveful. Your approach is so loveful. I'm just I'm going to invent that word. And there's so

much coldness in this world today. There's so people are treating each other with so much cruelty if if they feel someone else doesn't agree with them, you know, even just like different opinions. And you know, politics is a mess right now. I don't have to tell you that. And people don't see it in themselves. They don't they don't see that they need any of this. They they point the finger and say, oh, that person needs it,

and that person needs it. What advice would you have for us all to look within ourselves and with a critical examination. But with that wilfulness you talk about, well, suffering is so often the key isn't it you know, like, sometimes the suffering is intense, it's graphics. Sometimes it's more subtle, it's kind of more pervasive, but it's often some kind

of dissatisfaction. And I think, not only are there kind of wild opinions going on right now, but there's a certain self satisfaction also that is privileged oral superiority, superiority.

We posted something and don't remember even what, on the Internet that had the subtitle of the book and had the title of the book and then the subtitle the Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom, and somebody wrote me and it was the oddest thing, is like, don't you know that the isolation of experience was all an artifact of New York real estate brokers trying to change

the price of real estate. It was kind of stunned, and I thought, Wow, what advantage was it in your mind to people with money, you know, with power position to drive prices down, you know, like and yet it was something, you know, and something I should do something about, you know, just like really outrageous, you know, And it's it's very hard to have communication in a way that feels genuine or authentic in positionality, you know, in times

of positionality, but in terms of our own situation, you know, we can we can look at our reactions, we can look at our holding holding, you know, like the ways we grasp onto views. Which is not to say that I believe all views are equal, you know, but there's a certain way in which we stop really listening. We only see the person as a kind of object in some way. And it would be I think ever more powerful to really listen to one another, even if we're

not going to agree. And I don't feel the impetus degree really, which is not to say I'm never wrong, because I am wrong, but just to get a sense of the humanity of somebody, you know, what is this serving? Like something I wrote about and have learned about in British psychology and also in Western psychology, is you know,

so many of these states, our adaptations. There were something that maybe served well when we were two years old, or we were young, or we were hurt, and there are old habits now and something we reached to is as like our go to place, but it's not elevant anymore. Two you know, only feel a kind of need should be superior or an excessive reliance on righteousness or or something like that. Maybe it helped us survive once even

you know. And in britih psychology we'd say that about grasping, we'd say that about hatred, we'd say that about fear, we'd say that about delusion, and delusion being a kind of cocoon of numbness. You know, maybe became in very handy you know, at time or two in life, but you don't want it to be your steady state. Now what about shame. I can't see any value for it. I understand guilt. I just don't see value for shame.

I wonder how it evolved. So I had to learn sort of the Western psychological framework, you know, in the British psychology they would say the helpful state or the skillful state, the clo remorse, which just painful. You know. There's a beautiful quotation from the Buddha where he said, if you truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another. You know. So when we recollect the things we maybe did or said or held back from doing or saying, we can feel that kind of lack of self love that was

at the root of it. And it's very painful. But that pain is useful because we can feel it and recognize I don't want to go back there. I don't really want to do that again or again and again, and maybe we need to make amends, or maybe we just need to resolve, like to try to be better, to be different, whereas guilt is what they call the state it's just this kind of incessant self hatred, you know, just like going over and over and over and over what we did or what we said, and we can't

move on because we're just stuck there. So it was like a learning process for me to see that the words are used differently in Western psychology, where guilt is more recognition that act was wrong and shame is the more wholesale condemnation like I am wrong, I am bad, And it's not that helpful, you know. Was it helpful ever? I don't know. It seems like it makes you want

to hide. That might have been a good idea sometimes, you know, hiding, but as a state, it's really kind of like a lacerating self hatred, and it's just it's just not onward leading. Did you say onward leading? Yeah, it's not onward leading. It's not it's not like, yeah, it's very old fashioned British phrase. You know, it's not it's not going to help. Yeah, future oriented, Yeah wow. Do you have an exercise to help people when they feel shame coming up, or maybe any of the ones

that help with difficult emotions. Yeah, well it's the same. I mean, it's it's hard. You know, some things are harder than others, and we have to understand that. But shaking hands, you know, invite the shaman. In that case, I would say a cup of tea, a meal might be a little much, you know, but recognize it. See if you can name it. Naming always helps. Every time your mind, your thought pattern says this is bad, this is wrong, it shouldn't be here. I spend all that

money in therapy, it should be gone. Or meditating all these years, it should be gone. I actually retranslate that in my own head and I say, don't see it's wrong. See it is painful. This is a state of pain. This is a painful state, and it's so devastating, it's so debilitating. It's not gonna help, you know. And I sometimes I quote the Buddha to myself, like, if you

truly loved yourself, you'd never harm another. So the antidote is not to love yourself less, right, It's a it's a call, it's a crying out to love yourself more. And I remind myself of that man. You know, people who are prone to feelings of shame tend to feel not a lot of love for themselves. They tend to these things courtant and correlate, you know, they kind of feel broken at the core, or or to keep it more real, you know, they may feel like not worthy,

you know, of love. Yeah, I mean they are exercises too. They're not necessarily easy, but they're very very powerful, like loving kindness, their gratitude. If you're in the habit as most of us are likely to be, say at the end of the day to like evaluate yourself, like how

did I do today? And if you pretty well only remember the mistakes you made and what you did wrong and all of that, could actually ask yourself with some sense of humor, even anything else happened today, Like anything could in my life, you know, because our minds are our attention is not going to go there most of us automatically, and so it takes not force or coercion, but intentionality, Like what about this that I continually overlook

we practice loving kindness for ourselves. We practice receiving the loving kindness of others, which can feel absolutely horrible for a while, you know, like no, don't look at me, But over time it actually there's a kind of healing that that does happen. It's also true that I think some life practices, like generosity or doing something good for someone else unites us with a part of ourselves that's not the idiot you know that we usually think we are, and it kind of holds us up in a sort

of different level of self respect. There's really a lot of practices that one can do. The mind wanders, and that's just what it does, right. It doesn't a lot when people are going through really difficult circumstances. I think it's fair to acknowledge that it's harder for them to concentrate, even on their breath, you know, it just did even

do the exercises. I feel like there's even a more compassionate not a more, but there is a compassionate sort of understanding that, especially when you're under difficult circumstances, the kind of activities should be not should, but that would could help you. It's harder to do them. It's harder to do them. Does what I'm saying make sense? Yes? And you know, I think there at different levels I

experienced in trying to approach that. One is, you know, trying to if you want to, you know, inculcate a practice when things are not so hard, so that when things are hard, it's almost like strength training. You know, then you've got some sense of inner resource with which to meet what's going on in I was interviewed years ago for is Ironically Good Housekeeping magazine, which if you could see behind the screen you would find as funny

as all my friends. And what I had to say never made it into the interview, but the question was something like, how would you use mindfulness at a time of complete crisis? And what I said was, I wouldn't wait. Don't wait. Many people do wait, and it can be useful even then, but it's like the day after day after day, even boring kind of steady application of awareness

and balance and so on. So then when the bottom falls out of your life, you've got some resource with which to meet it, so that it's just one possible approach, and the other is to understand it's like you know, we can have very circumscribed ideas of practice. You don't have to be sitting like a pretzel, you know, some weird pose. Your eyes don't need to be closed, you don't need to be still. You can be in movement, you could be outside, you could be you know, drinking

a cup of tea, you can be washing dishes. It's just some moments of landing in your own experience and feeling it. And for some people it's not going to be that helpful to be alone. You know, there's just a lot of support in doing any kind of exercise in the context of a community, and you know it would be a lot easier. Yeah, And in terms of community, a big theme in your book is connection and how the need for connection is a really profound human need.

I just bumped up a screen capture I took from reading your book, and I was texting back and forth with my friend Susan Kane about this because we both love this page. And by the way Susan says, it says give her a hug for me. I told her I was talking to you right now, she can give her a hug. So great. But this page you write, when we connect with others. We don't lose ourselves. We

find ourselves all we count. We find the voice within that isn't overcome by fear though that though that may be in the room, or by unworthiness, though that may be there too. We find the voice born of recognizing a bigger sense of possibility, which urges us to engage without the certainty of definite immediate reward, etcetera, etcetera. I go on and on and on, but I love that I sentiment. I do know that when I'm feeling a connection with another fellow human being, I definitely feel more

connected to myself. And that's a fascinating phenomenon, you know, it's fascinating. You know, sometimes you may kind of paradoxically think that you will kind of lose yourself if you're you know, in the love experience or in a flull state with another person. But I don't really find I lose myself. I mean, I feel like I'm very much

in touch with it. It's interesting. Yeah, well, you know of Susan Kanaan introverts in such worlds, you know, like even before the pandemic, when I would hear about like an epidemic of loneliness, and many places in the world. And I used to read these studies of different clinical conditions and how social connection could be a strong healing force in those conditions, and I kept thinking, well, it can't just be like a numbers game, right, like I

only have four friends, I need eight, you know. It has to be some sense of interconnection, because I and probably everybody listening, you know, know someone who there's a fairly solitary life, but seems immensely connected to the world, you know, and they thank people like doing service for them, little deeds that many of us might look right through

rather than look at. And they have a sense of the interconnectedness of life, and they care about the plant it in their way, you know, a bigger way, and they don't seem cut off for alone, even though they're you know, their numbers may not suit, like in terms of intimate buddies or something like that. And so there's something incredibly powerful. It has something to do I think with belonging. You know, when we connect, then then it

leads right back to that somehow. Yeah, But I also think that connection incorporates belonging and intimacy, and they're not always the same thing. I try to separate the two from each other in my book Transcend, because I think a lot of times we can feel like a sense of belonging to something, but not feel like there's a mutually reciprocal connection, a deep what's called a high quality

connection in psychology. It seems to be like you're really focusing on high quality connections and well, sometimes there's not a satisfying reciprocal response, right, and it's just definitely like the nature of life just appointment. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned connection in your book. It's it's beautiful. And you also talk about the light

within us all. You know, you made me think of those guys who go in and teach yoga and mindfulness in inner city schools, don't they isn't the title of their book, The light is the Light within the Holistic Life Undition. They're my great friends. They're awesome, They're awesome, they are awesome people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it just you made me think of that when you talk about the light within in your own book. Can can you talk a little about how people can get in touch

with that light within themselves? Well, the part of the book where I talk about that light is actually one of my favorite aspects of the book, which is some well. It starts out actually by talking about this very very old study where every resident of a nursyn rome was given a plant, and half of them were told, you've

got to take care of the plant. You've got to notice when it needs water, you've got to move it in and out of the sun, whatever, and the other half of the residents were told, here's a plant, just enjoy it. You don't do anything. The nursing staff is just can to take care of the plant. And then after some time they compare these two groups and to not that the ones who were needing to respond to the plant were living far longer, and they were doing

better health wise and orientation wise and so on. And it's always been considered as a as a study in controlled decision making, being able to control your environment. But I read it, you know, and right away thought, well, that's like loving kindness, you know, that's the sense of you could say, intimacy or care caring, and so I always, I always thought, is that And then I went on to talk about since I have personally never kept the plant alive, not once in all these years, it just

doesn't work, not alone. Yeah, you know, but people do. I read about all these plants where you can neglect them, they will live anyway. You know, by and large, you know that there's something very hearty about them. But the description that I was reading ended by saying that is true. But if you actually nurture them, they will do more

than just survive, they will flourish. And that led me to thinking about the light within, which is a very classic Buddhist conceptualization, that the light within is not it's not a fully realized state. It's like a seed form. It's a potential for freedom, for connection, for clarity, for wisdom. That is said, we all have, every single one of us, whatever we have been through, whatever we may yet go through,

it is never ever destroyed. It may be hidden, and it may be hard to find, hard to trust, but it is absolutely there. And that's like rock bottom belief in all of the systems of psychology in the East. And so that's what we build a meditation practice on, that's what we build our efforts on that they're not sort of desperate and hopeless, and you know, there is something there that can be cultivated. And so I thought about it in that same way, it's not going to

die that light. If we neglect it, it'll be there, but if we actually nurture it, we cannot just survive

but flourish. So that's a very precious part for me of the book is that notion, and also reminded me of you know, I'm next door to the Insite Meditation Society right now, which we founded in nineteen seventy six, And in nineteen seventy nine we heard that Dali Lama was coming to visit Amherst, mass which is about forty minutes away, and so we're very young and naive and bold, and we shot off as letter to the private office and said, hey, maybe he'd like to visit us too

when he's around, and we got an answer back saying yes he would. So he came here to the center, which was what it's an amazing experience, and the many stories about that day, and we gave him lunch and we gave him a tour. And when we bought the place, it was a Catholic novitiate, so it's got all these like social amenities, like a one lane bowling alley, so

he went bowling. He did. We had at that time we had like a whole room full of bowling pins and things, and then we brought him into the meditation hall because we had to retreat. That was ongoing. People have been sitting for a bed two weeks. At that point, the Dolly theman gave a talk and then he asked for questions, and this young man raised his hand and he said, so he'd been meditating for like two weeks. And he said, I've decided I can't do it. I

don't have any ability to change. I don't I can't learn, I can't grow in these ways. Like maybe it's worse for twenty five hundred years, but it's not going to work for me. And the Dinama just got this look on his face, which he gets even now when he's a little mystified by a question or a comment like huh. So he looked at him and then he said, you're just wrong, you're wrong, and he went on to describe that conceptualization of our essential nature as having this potential

and someone. It was really funny because all these people came up to me afterwards and said, that's bad pedagogy. You should never tell someone they're just wrong like that. The one person right well. The one person did not complain was the young man for whom it was really really good, you know, and he said, wow, that was great. You know, consider the source right exactly. Wait, so that I'm also curious that so the dialama went bowling with you guys, it was the one lady went by himself.

Were watching though, and he did bol though, h wow, is he good? Everyone asked that, They said how do you do it? So I can't remember. I was like, in some state, why it's bowling? It was a video that's so cool. Yeah, that's a very good question. We were flowing around the video cameras tin out cool. I really, I know we both really like this notion of the window of tolerance that Dan Siegel talks about. Can you talk at about this notion of the window tolerance and

how we can widen that window? Well, you know, it's very similar to everything we've been talking about in that if some state dissatisfaction, just content fear, something arises, we don't often necessarily put a lot of energy into the space with which it's being received. You know, usually we pylon in some way, we judge ourselves. We call it bad. We think I should have gotten rid of this long ago. It's not being received in a way that is very helpful.

And so rather than focusing on the sheer arising of something and feeling we did wrong, you know that it's there that becomes the question. And so you know there's some parable within Britism of something like if you take a teaspoonful of salt and you put it in a small glass of water, because the vessel, the vehicle receiving it is so narrow, the water will be deeply impacted.

Whereas if you take that same teaspoonful of salt and they would say, like or a chariot full of salt, and you dump it in a pond full of fresh water, because of the sort of vastness, the openness of the body of water, it's not going to be so strongly impacted in just that way. Some things are irritants and sometimes we can do something about it, and we do,

we try as long as we can't. But regardless of that, the way it's being received, how much presence, how much balance, how much kindness, is going to make a big difference. And that's like our realm of creativity that we can always do something about. And so I was really interested to redance formulation of that as the window of tolerance. And so, you know, when things are we can fall off, or that that window can be really narrowed in a

variety of different ways. We can get numb, we can dismiss, we can be too far back, we can be too into it, you know, so that we're consumed and overwhelmed. And so it's really the same process. And some of it is really reminding I do it, you know, reminding myself it's okay, this is what is, this is what's here, and starting from there rather than feeling you know, I just can't believe I'm feeling this again. That shouldn't be here,

or this means this, and this means that. I sometimes tell this story about teaching with my colleague Joseph Goldstein, and somewhere Joseph and I were sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea, and somebody came in in some distress and said to Joseph, I just had this terrible experience. So Joseph said, well what happened, and he said, well, I felt all this tension in my john. I realized what an incredibly uptight person I am, and how I

always have it and I always will be. And Joseph said, you mean you felt a lot of tension in your jaw And he said yes, And I've never been able to get close to people. It's never going to change. Joseph said, you mean you felt a lot of tension, John, And I was watching them go back and forth and back and forth, and no matter what the man said, Joseph would say, you mean, you felt a lot of tension in your jaw. And then finally Joseph said to him, why are you adding a miserable self image to a

painful experience. It's like, painfully enough to feel the tension in your job, but on top of that, now you're gonna be alone for the rest of your life, you know, so we look for the advance that helps you're gonna be what the rest of your life? You'd be alone? You can be all alone forever forever? Oh my god. Yeah. What they call it catastrophizing in the cognitive behavioral therapy. Uh huh, we all do it to some degree. Well, I'll tell you what. I like that because catastrophizing is

one of my favorite topics. Using that term. Oh cool. Another colleague of mind support it. Sylvia Borstein uh yeah, describes herself as a recovering catastrophizer and in fact got into meditation practice because she was haunted by those thoughts. And she's eighty six now, so her children are really adults. And she said, she just say this about herself. I'm the kind of person who'll call one of my adult children and they don't answer the phone. So of course

the worst must have happened. I never think maybe they're taking a shower, or maybe they fell in love. They don't feel like talking to their mother. It must be the worst. So now she still has I think, many of the same thoughts, perhaps not as intensely or with quite the frequency, but she has them for sure, and she can laugh at them, or she'll know to check them out at any rate. It's not that bad things don't ever happen, because they do, but you know, instead

of just flying away with that as an assumption. And so I talked to her not too long ago, and she said, I have a new mantra, a new saying I use in life. And I said what is it? And she said, not every bus is going to end up in a ditch. I think, okay, there you go, yeah. I mean people who are really neurotic will hear that and be like, yeah, but a bus, some bus does end up in the ditch. Well, some bus does, I agree, and check it out, you know, before you're sure, Are

you really sure? Yeah? I love that in your book. I love that so gener truth has a quote. Life is a hard battle. Anyway, If we laugh and sing a little as we fight the good fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. I will not allow my life slight to be determined by the darkness around me. I mean, that's that's just. It doesn't get that much more beautiful than that, does it. I don't think it doesn't.

And I I feel especially attuned with that kind of statement because so much of my work in recent years has been with people we call caregivers, you know, whether in their personal life, their families, learn their professional lives. There some ways on the front lines are suffering, like a therapist, you know, or teacher, a nurse, somebody like that, and or these days you know a lot of healthcare workers. Because it starts to feel like that's too selfish. I

can't let in the joy, that's ridiculous. They can how people are struggling. I can how my person is struggling, whoever that is. And yet you know, there's clearly a tremendous way to burn out and people are so depleted and we're also tired anyway, I think. But it's hard.

It's very, very hard to allow oneself to really take in the joy and not it's fleeting anyway, you know, you might as well enjoy it while it's there, uh, you know, and not sort of buy into I don't deserve it, there's too much pain, or this is laziness, this is a self indulgence. It's really essential to understand resilience or or replenishment of oneself. And so that particular statement, I really I resonate with a lot me too. I just love that. I'm going to pin it to my wall.

You know, you talk about dealing with illness and physical pain. Yeah, how can you he with real physical pain? I mean you touch on this throughout you touch on this already a lot throughout this interview, but you talk a little bit more about that, especially like deabilitating pain. Well, it's hard. I mean, I think that's the first thing to really recognize. If you're talking about physical pain as well, as emotional pain. But you know, I would never want to be live

about it because it's very difficult. Then it brings up

a lot of things. But you know, partly something I didn't get to say before, but I was thinking in terms of shame, is there are a lot of social constructs that we also buy into about who counts and who matters and what's right and what's wrong, and you know, what should have us feel humiliated, Like not being able to afford something j always struck me as bizarre, you know, like maybe you you know, doing beautiful things with your money, or maybe you're you know, doing a job, and it

was it was the one that was available, and you can't afford something lavish. But you're you're fine, you know, you're like a good human being, you're having a good life, and yet society says, well, you're not as good as you know someone else. And it's so hard not to buy into all that stuff, but to understand that they're like constructs, they're they're manufactured ideas that we're taught to believe, and we don't have to believe them. We can really

step aside. And that's part of it, you know, is is really determining on doing that, and pain figures into that a lot, and ability you know, to walk, for example,

would be one example. And to understand that we don't we don't have to buy into that in some way, and then you know, working with there are also tools of working with physical pain, working with emotional pain as well, that have a lot to do with almost deconstructing them rather than say it's physical pain, feeling kind of this mass, this has taken over your body, feeling that, which is true. It's a moment of burning, it's a moment of twisting, it's a moment of pressure, it's a mont of this,

it's a moment of that. And none of that sounds good, none of that feels good. But that's in a live system, right with things are moving and changing and flowing. And as one person said to me, but as a very severe chronic pain condition, using that approach, she said, I found this space within the pain, you know, and that's different than this kind of solid entity that is just some massive and permeable and taken over. So it really

can be effective. Yeah, that's really well, that's really profound. It's not trying to get rid of the pain or saying that you love the pain. Yeah, I know. I feel like I to sit with a lot of the things you say. Sharon Salzburg, Oh, we should hang out together more. I agree, I should say with everything you say. You didn't notice that you put you in the book. Well, okay, First of all, I will always love hanging out with you,

so I just want to respond to that. But secondly, I was so deeply touched that you found my work valuable enough to include it in your book and multiple junctions. It was always a surprise for me and I had to do a double take because it's a very surreal experience. Like I was sitting at Cafe Gratitude in Venice today and I was reading your book and preparation for a call today and almost fought in my chair. You know, I get to one of the pages says cognitive psychologists

got barakoff. This is very weird. It's very surreal saying that. Anyway, long story short, thank you. It was very deeply touched. It meant a lot to me. You're well, your work means a lot to me. It's really tremendous. And there's something else I want to say about the pain. Is it just pumped into my mind. One of the hardest, hardest things for many of us in life is receiving help, you know. And this goes back to, you know, my experience of working with caregivers who are givers, you know,

and it's very hard to receive. And that's part of it is that it doesn't make you lesser, and to understand that dynamic a little bit. I think my great model in that was really Ramdas, who I know from my very first meditation retreat in January of nineteen seventy one. That's what we're hat, you know, and we're friends, and

he was such a pioneer in my mind. He was the first person I knew from kind of a spiritual world who was working with prisoners, working with dying people, you know, was really out there in terms of service. And you know, then he had this massive stroke and was living in a wheelchair and moved to Maui and didn't essentially didn't leave it, and he kept teaching even though his speech was quite affected and he had a

phasion and so on. And so once we were teaching the street treat together Marii and I was sitting in the back of like three hundred people and he was speaking, he was on stage, and there were always lots of gaps, you know, and long pauses and things like that. And it was so telling to me because before the stroke he was so kind of extraordinarily articulate. It's like he had a golden tongue. It was like a superpower, you know. And then there were his pauses, but he kept going.

He just got up there and he kept doing it since. One day he was giving a talk and he said that before the stroke, the hardest thing ever for him was to receive. And I thought that is so true, right known him all these years, you know, like he couldn't be complimented, He couldn't give a birthday present, you know. And he said, it was so hard for me to receive.

And he said, heart of than the physical pain, harder than living in a wheelchair, heard of than the difficulties with speech, has been learning how to let people help me. And then he said one of his great books, one of his very famous books, it was called how Can I Help? And he said, now I feel like writing a book called how can you help me? You know?

And I think anyone who knew him towards the end of his life would say he was like made of light, he was made of love because some barrier inside had dissolved, and it's like the love could go out and it could come in. It could go out and it could come in. And it's a very difficult part of accepting the chronic pain condition is that we need to honor that flow of giving and receiving. Definitely, definitely. I found that the documentary about him, I think it was on Netflix,

just so touching and I've never had it. I never had the good fortune of meeting him, but that's it. I love that you two are friends. Yeah, it makes it makes sense. Yeah, oh boy. You end your book on the notion of aspiration and you say that aspiration powers the journey to making that something real, living it more fully. What is that something that you're referring to. Well, I wrote the book in part because it ended up being two years and it will be three years in

a row. That first year was when I was starting to write, I saw this thing on YouTube called Saturday Night Later, and which I loved and I think it's still up and I still love it. Which is you know, it was one of the first I think programs ever created where the writers were not in a room together because everything was done on zoom, so many people were in lockdown. And it's brilliant, brilliant music and very funny

and very learned rabbis. I learned a lot watching it, and one of the things that reminded me of was that this symbolic meaning of the state of the symbolic meaning of Egypt, taking it totally away from geopolitics, the word Egypt means the narrow place, the narrow straits. Narrow is a constrained place, and it's a journey from constriction to openness and freedom. So I thought, oh, there it is,

That's what I want to write about. And the Sator ends on a note of aspiration next year in Jerusalem, again taking it away from from geopolitics, and in Saturday Night say, there's this fantastic quotation from Harvey fire Seeing, which I got permission to use, which was great, where he talks about, you know, to me, Jerusalem means a war, a world without war, a world without poverty, a world where no one is hungry, a world. You know, he describes that world and next year, may we be there?

And I've often said I think we live in a time of blunted aspiration. We don't dream enough about what our happiness can look like, what community can look like, what planet can look like. And it's hard, of course, given you know, some really grim realities, but it seems really important to me, And so because the book followed the arc of the Sator, I wanted to end with aspiration, which is how the Sator ends, and I end with Harvey Phierston, Actually, I love this book. I think this

might be my favorite one that you've written. I'm so excited that you said that. Really, I thought Real Love was my favorite one, he wrote, But you keep getting better and better. Yeah, it really it's just what I needed in my life right at this time, and I think it'd be a lot. I think it's just what a lot of people would need. So I really encourage people to go out and buy Real Life, the journey

from isolation to openness and freedom. I thought I could end with one of my favorite quotes from your book, pulled it out to save to the end of this interview. I've learned that freedom is not about moving away from or transcending all the pain of life in order to travel to an easeful spacious realm of relief, devoid of feeling. We cretle both the immense sorrow and the wondrousness of

life at the same time. Butcherd the quote a little bit, but it is beautiful and absolutely but maybe that was appropriate because you know, the whole point of the quote is not everything has to be perfect. So just such a beautiful quote. And this is such a beautiful book. And we have a beautiful friendship, we do, so we love it. I love you too, you know. It's it's been so great again to know you and supporting each other.

So all the best to you, and thank and thank you so much for again being on the Psychology Podcast. Thank you so much, wonderful, thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot com or on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check that out.

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