Latest / The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks / Healing Versus Awakening | Zen Teacher Henry Shukman

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Healing Versus Awakening | Zen Teacher Henry Shukman · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Quote, if we're in a fully awakened state, trauma's not a problem.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: In a sense, it's not trauma.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: It just becomes something beloved.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: It becomes washed through with love and acceptance.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's healing.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Henry Schuckman.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: We embark on our healing journeys with intentions to remove the thorns in our sides, because thorns are problematic.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Initially, it seems that the way to go about this is to grab the tweezers, if you will, and squeeze them out one by one until we are rid of them all.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is generally the attitude that the Western mental health paradigm takes towards trauma and mental illness.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: When we look to the East we see a different approach taken towards suffering, one in which those thorns become enveloped in unconditional love and acceptance, thereby draining them of their potential problemness altogether.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Awakening and healing are often used synonymously, even though, in truth, they mean two different things.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: You could say that healing is the process by which we become whole again.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: The word implies a fixing of that which is broken, a bettering of that which needs improvement, an integration of that which has been separated.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Awakening, on the other hand, refers to the realization of the non-dual nature of reality, the recognition that on the deepest level there is nothing to fix because nothing can be broken.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: There is nothing to improve because it's already perfect.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: There is nothing to be integrated because it is, always has been, and always will be whole.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So does this mean then that all of our attempts at healing are a waste of time and that we should just drop everything and head straight for awakening?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: According to Zen teacher Henry Schuckman, the answer is no.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Unsurprisingly, there is a middle way, and he has walked it.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: Henry is an amazing meditation teacher who has used a combination of various meditative practices alongside psychotherapy, plant medicine, and other healing practices to synergize these two processes in his own life for maximum effect.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: From overwhelming eczema to profound non-dual realizations, and then into deep despair and back again, Henry eventually forged a path that has led to a long-lasting sense of wholeness and peace that radiates throughout the interview that follows.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: In this discussion, we cover Henry's spontaneous awakening experience and the darkness that followed.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about what happens to trauma when we awaken.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: We discuss the ultimate antidote to loneliness, where to start with non-dual practices, how to work with coins.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: I share my own experiences with Henry's Guided Meditations.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about awakening and if it's possible for regular people, as well as many other tools and resources on Zen.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: This episode was initially published on the High Existence podcast, but I think it will be very useful to every member of the Stoic Handbook Podcast too.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite conversations that I've had.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And before this conversation started recording, he expressed interest in ancient philosophy.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sure we will do a round two at a later date on that topic.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're interested in meditation, Zen, Cowan's Awakening, and Trauma, you'll undoubtedly take a lot from this episode.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Without further ado, here is my conversation with Henry Schuckman.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: So, uh Henry, first of all, I just want to say a big thank you.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge honor for me.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: One of the coolest things ever is being able to meet meditation teachers that you've learned from.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I recently completed the Cohen Way on the Waking Up app.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Love the Waking Up app.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: Love the conversations you've had and the Q ⁇ A's you've done with Sam Harris on that app.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't know what to expect.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I like the idea of it, the title of it, but I had some resistance to coins because I've just never looked at them, never really kind of taken them seriously.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought I wouldn't get that much out of them.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just a truly incredible journey, very, very inspiring.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: I want to get more into depth on that shortly, but I think a good place to start would be to kind of reverse engineer how this all came to be.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I can't imagine that when you were a child, I could be wrong.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: You thought that you would eventually become a Zen meditation teacher, um, guiding people through um journeys about columns.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd love to hear about how this project unfolded uh from when you were a young child.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, hey, thanks so much.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much for having me on the show, by the way.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: I really um I love what you're doing.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's fascinating and touches various things that are dear to me.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um really great.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate you reaching out.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I didn't know you'd you'd done the whole Koan Way course on the Waking Up app, so that's that's kind of cool as well.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, it's uh man, it's it's been a journey.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I let's see, key points.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um by the way, I go over a lot of this in my book One Blade of Grass, um, which which fairly recently came out.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's uh sort of narrative about my my journey of healing and and awakening, if if I can make that claim.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I I had um yeah, I had really, really severe eczema from the age of six months, um, which you know left a deep imprint on my psyche.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't really get through it until my late twenties, more or less, and um it was it was bad enough that I was hospitalized at times, and um eczema, by the way, for people who don't know, is a s is a skin disease.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it can be very minor.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people probably will feel they've had some eczema with a rash or something, but this was really uh severe or m uh in my early childhood all over my body and occasionally in later times too, and and really nasty and disfiguring and extremely uncomfortable.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of a lot of it itching at a level that is just sort of mind-blowing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Be it like I try to convey it sometimes, like a thousand 10,000 mosquito bites or something.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's just all all consuming at times, and um and no doubt very, very difficult for caregivers like my parents, who were also um you know going through their own troubles and difficulties.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was quite um traumatizing.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, to this day, I know I still kind of in a sense sort of I need to keep very open-hearted to my own trauma, actually, to this day.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's um I'd say various things have resolved in unex unexpected and marvelous ways.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um but uh you know the the open-heartedness, you know, the the open-heartedness that um the practices I've done sort of encourage is key still for me and necessary, you know.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I hope in assume it is for all of us in a sense.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I I um you know, having had I had an upbringing that was very academic, you know, both my parents were professors at Oxford University.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was myself quite an academically motivated kid.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I also sort of realized that I loved poetry from a fairly young age and aspired to be a poet and a and a writer and a traveler, and I really liked this sort of um model or example of the beats for a start, who, you know, in their books were like Kerouac and Ginsburg and and Gary Snyder and so, you know, somehow sort of uh being free-floating beings who traveled and wandered and were in the wilderness and wrote about it, you know.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of that sort of blew my mind as a way to live.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and um actually when I was 18, I I I managed to, well, through uh help of my dad and some a colleague at his college in Oxford, actually, I I went to Argentina to work on a gap year before before I went to college.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and at the end of I was there about six months and I wrote a lot while I was there and and worked, and then I backpacked.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the trip, I had um I didn't know this was what it ought to be called at the time, but I had a kind of totally spontaneous and fairly profound awakening experience, meaning that I suddenly discovered that I wasn't what I'd thought I'd been.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was part of one unbelievable whole reality that included everything and that was kind of empty and um sort of transparent, and and um I discovered the way it felt was that I just I belonged in the entirety of the fabric of my being to the whole universe kind of thing, and I was stone called sober, you know, it happened just out of nowhere, and um and um I wasn't interested at all in that kind of experience.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean it it hadn't registered in my consciousness at all as some kind of possibility to that people would go through that you could seek or anything like that.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just I was I was I was pretty sort of rationalist, you know, and um although I love poetry, so but but this thing happened and um I knew that I'd sort of seen a deeper truth than the one I normally lived, and and it was it was utterly utterly beautiful and utterly transforming and and I for weeks afterwards I was in a kind of living a a different a different a different experience altogether where everything was light and translucent and I was kind of like a cloud or sort of nothing or you know and and but but I felt suffering in the world more much more keenly than ever before.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: My heart was very sort of tender somehow in the midst of all of this, and there's a lot of love in the experience and in the aftermath of the experience.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so that was fantastic, even though you know I sort of didn't know I had no frame of reference in which to in which to place it, but this but this undeniable sort of reality of things had shown itself to me.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then then I went home.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as I pretty much as soon as I went home, I had a I had a kind of breakdown, really, a real tumble into a deep, deep despair.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: When I look back on it now, it's you know, it's easy enough to say basically the the challenges and difficulties and trauma of my childhood, which I'd always sort of dissociated from or managed to hold at bay or kind of tried to sort of suppress in some way so that I could function, you know, in as a as a kid and as sort of you know, in some sense norm looking normal in the world I was in and able to do what was expected of me and so on.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um all of that pain and and and unhappiness sort of uh overwhelmed my now open heart, so to speak.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it could be called a pretty clear-cut case of re-traumatization in in some schools, they look at it that way.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it fits really.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then uh, you know, I was I was so um sort of overwhelmed with despair really at having lost this marvelous new sense of things, this sort of you know, this whatever that awakened awareness was, although I I didn't know it had that name, you know.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed like I'd completely lost it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and for several years I was I I just kind of limped along, um, semi-functional.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Functional kind of, but not but but dragging around a load of shame and guilt and misery, you know.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then I actually the way out of it for me, what how it opened was by starting to meditate.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I did um I did TM first.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: They they had a deal, you know, TM's pretty pricey.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And but in London in the mid 80s when this was, um the main the I I don't know, the easiest game in town to find if you wanted meditation was TM.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a special deal for graduate students, which I was right right at that time, um, which is 90% off, actually, the normal price.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I did it and and I just started meditating sort of religiously twice a day, which is what they told you you had to do.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it had an immediate impact on my well-being.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I my my nervous system was just immensely relieved finally to have a chance to unwind, to dial down, to rest and restore.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, fairly soon after starting to meditate, I realized um kind of uh, you know, damn, I need some therapy.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I could I could I could actually start to face my own unhappiness.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I started therapy, and you know, really that was how it began.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the the the meditation as a just a a steady sort of staple never never left me.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I I never stopped doing it since then.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: And therapy in various phases and different styles of therapy, and um it all um it all it sort of led it, you know, life my life started to sort of get on track a bit.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I actually did become a uh full-time writer and I traveled.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I sort of got the life in a sense that I'd been hoping for as a teenager, you know.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um and along the way, in my when I think I was a few years later anyway, I sort of stumbled into Zen, and I realized kind of right away that whatever it was that had happened to me when I was 19 years old in that awakening experience, this tradition of Zen totally knew about it and sort of totally acknowledged it and respected it and regarded it as important, and and I kind of got the inkling that they they knew and and they taught a way of not just having it be a freak, random, spontaneous thing that happened out of nowhere, but a way to actually learn how to live out of that reality.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was I was you know that's that's what I wanted, and and um I so I started to get into it, and so that's that's in a nutshell, that's how I found my way to Zen.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: The journey within Zen was then a whole other deal, but but that's that's how I found my way, let's say.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, there are so many different really fascinating threads there.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's the the awakening experience, there's the really difficult time with the eczema, um, there's the therapy, the breakdown.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: I I see all of these pieces as obviously working together to to create the journey that led you to to where you are now, like us all being like vital parts of the puzzle.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um I like your emphasis on recognizing trauma um as something to to be aware of and to work on.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: So for some people who are interested in spirituality, they their whole practice is really you know identify trauma and actively try to overcome overcome the trauma and to try and become more whole.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: And they have no real inclination to like understand non-duality or or awakening, right?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yet they still might have a meditation practice that helps them with their with their trauma recovery.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: How do you see the relationship between awakening and healing?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, is there you know, do are they separate things?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do that do they work together?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um just curious what what you think the relationship is.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, to be honest, I I feel in a certain way that's that's been the story of my life is exactly that relationship.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: What is it?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: How does it, how do how do they, how do they work together?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a there's so many ways I might respond, but here's here's one that's just coming right now.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's like in a certain way, you know, the trauma, our readiness, I mean, how much we're able to embrace it, how much we're able to love it, how much we're able to be open to it, seems to me to be in a kind of way possibly a gauge of our awakening, so to speak.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if we're fully if we're in a fully awakened state, trauma's not a problem.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, it's not trauma.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: It it's it it becomes it just becomes something beloved, you know, it it becomes washed through with love and and acceptance and and I somehow I think that's the healing.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: The the healing I don't know, I might say something different tomorrow, but in a certain way, maybe the healing you know, as I think the mindset that healing means you've got you've got rid of something.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Somehow I I don't feel that's quite right.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um on the other hand, a mindset of like I mean I know it's a cliche, but that the wound is the gift, you know, that being able to sort of go into our woundedness and find there in the midst of it, um, you know, a profound acceptance, um, which y you know, I've used the word love a lot already, but I do think that there's a there is a quality of of deep uh uh I don't know, wholeheartedness, open heartedness, brokenheartedness.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: The the the this kind of healing connotes where you know you're you're brokenhearted but happy in the brokenheartedness.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like broken heartedness and wholeheartedness cease to be sort of separate.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's if if this is making any sense.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm I mean I I don't think I've answered it enough actually because because your c your question is just so on point, you know.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's so on point for us as as beings.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like fine, all the things I've just been saying, they kind of probably could be said without any experience of the non-dual.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what the the non-dual piece is critical because if trauma and uh the you know various trauma researchers talk about Bessel van der Kolk and others, you know, we'll talk about how a sort of key ingredient of trauma is not just that you're in overwhelming it overwhelming experience, overwhelming difficult experience, but that you feel totally alone in it.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what non-dual experience does is it eradicates lonely aloneness, you know, whatever it else it may be, I think all non-dual experience, whether because there, you know, there are sort of different flavors of it, I think, and this might be a contentious thing to say, but I don't actually think that all non-dual traditions have exactly the same sort of uh sense of what non-dual experience is like.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: There are I mean we could go into that, but I think there are different flavours and different dimensions of it in in a certain sense.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Probably right down at the core there aren't, but um but just let's say for now that there may be, but what they all surely have in common is an eradication that that that's not the right word, a discovery that there's a level where you know we cannot be separate.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we can certainly feel like it, but in in this level of experience we discover that no matter how we may how alone we may sometimes feel, how separate we may sometimes feel, there's always a reality right in here and now, you know, right in this very moment, where we are not and cannot be separate.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that is an incredible thing to discover.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of in the context of trauma.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, you're put, I mean, you're disgu you find yourself to be sort of held by everything and utterly, infinitely sort of supported and loved.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so if that if that level of belonging, of belovedness, and a kind of infinite safety that comes with that, if that can meet with traumatic experience, I mean it it melts it.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it you can see how it it's just sort of uh it absorbs it completely.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: So so on that level, this sort of deepest kind of um healing, I feel is is is where yeah, aloneness is is totally absorbed in utter wholeness, you know, and so so then you don't have to get rid of trauma, you don't have to work through it.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: You you you it's it's you've discover that it's that your trauma is uh th th utterly held and accepted and allowed and embraced and and and yeah, and that's that's a kind of wonderful it's a it's a healing on another level from most psychotherapeutic modalities which I don't want to knock.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I I think somatic work and stuff is fantastic, but it it doesn't necessarily um I mean it's it's tricky 'cause there's a lot of psychology that sort of uh likes to align itself with where they hear, you know, talk of non-duality and they kind of sort of wanna be they wanna they wanna claim that, you know.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: But they they I I don't know, I don't want to be actually generalizing and saying anything critical, but but it could be that there's ways that psychology doesn't actually it it you know it really isn't about that level.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's it is more dualistic, it's more about healing a self.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's immensely valuable too.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh that's a be that was very beautiful.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, that was that was a joy to listen to.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: I uh I have to I have to say with with trauma, um I heard you you you talking about in an in an interview with meditation, you can sometimes like whatever intention you bring to the meditation, you might actually get that.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember for for a long time I was meditating almost as a way to kind of like push down trauma, you know, like meditating for self-improvement, because like I I don't know, like I didn't want to look at the trauma, you know, I didn't want to deal with it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um so as someone listening to this, and you know, I'm always interested in in working on my trauma, and a lot of people will be listening to this going, well, that sounds very beautiful.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Where would where would someone begin in kind of merging like non-duality with with trauma?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Would it be just that the the general practice practices that you recommend anyway, or would there be something else involved?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh that's a fantastic question as well, and that's been one of my life questions, you know.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'll tell you what.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, one I think there's different ways to go.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: One one is simply to acknowledge that there's different levels of work, you know, and and to do you know, to you can have I mean yikes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me it's such an important question.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see if I can do it justice.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um there can be um there's a place for I mean first of all, if you got a meditation practice, meditation has different purposes.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one purpose of meditation is exactly as you were saying earlier, it can be to just you know dial down the nerve the nervous system.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I that was my language earlier, but you said, you know, you can meditate for developing mindfulness for stress reduction, and fantastic.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great thing to do, of course it is.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: We should we should we we we we should all be doing that, you know.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there are much deeper possibilities within meditation, and some traditions clearly know this, and some um aren't so focused in that direction.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're more focused on therapeutic uses of mindfulness, and again, I think that's fantastic, but um but so it's sort of you know the framing of meditation does matter.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, conversely, there are meditation traditions that are all about non-dual experience and great, but possibly they may overlook.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they may not have uh framing that allows psychological healing.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they may they maybe focus on look, you know, you're feeling shitty, but you're not really a self.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: So just find out that you're not a self and all that will go away, right?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and I mean that it's actually it's not unreasonable, actually.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: It really isn't.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: But in practice, um in practice, uh it can lead to, you know, what we call spiritual bypassing, where you know, you you sort of you you try to like you were saying, you try to basically use meditation to sort of get away from things you don't want about yourself, and and sort of try to kind of get rid of it through meditating, getting good the kinds of experiences you do want in meditation.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and and um many who come with that kind of I've been there myself, by the way, I mean, in that mindset, and many times if we've got that kind of mindset, it could be that difficult things come up and we sort of meditate hard and try to sort of because this isn't what I'm supposed to be experiencing, and you know, try to get to the good feelings, the good states and stuff.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, you know, maybe that material is coming up, it wants to be released, it wants to be processed, it wants to be allowed.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, there could be an opportunity being missed for precisely healing in meditation.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So having a it's tricky because what my solution, which I don't know how perfect it was by any by the way, was to have a meditation practice.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I found my way to a meditation practice that probably was more focused on, you know, awakening.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Really, Koan training is kind of focused on awakening.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and meanwhile, I did various kinds of deep psychotherapy, you know, and the combination of the two somehow seemed to be pretty helpful for me.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I just I don't know.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I certainly don't think that's the only way.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: You see what I mean?
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I just did a sort of kind of a double track kind of thing, you know, I mean sort of therapy for for all the shadow stuff, and and of course the meditation would bring a lot of that up, and then I could then process that in therapy.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually some of the releasing that happened through different kinds of therapy again that I'd done would then those releases would sort of have a really positive impact on my meditation and and my my sort of uh development on the path to awakening, so to speak.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's one way of doing it is like just know that you know you're gonna have you're gonna be working in different on different levels with different modalities.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um is there a way to have a kind of a sort of whole path that I mean in a way the whole path is ourselves, you know, we ourselves are the are the I mean it all that all that we're doing, whether it's therapy or whatever kind of meditation, of course it's all about uh sort of uh finding out more and allowing more of what we are and making allowing the unfolding of our real identity, our sort of deepest self to come forward more and more.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, um I don't know, am I am I is this answering the question enough?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is um one of the the things I'm I'm seeing because I'm involved um in the in communities where where people practice meditation and they and they practice different kinds of self-improvement modalities, and there seems to be this sort of I've got to do it all on my own kind of attitude, where you know people will spend hours reading different books and trying different things, but they won't engage with therapy, you know, because they they see it as some kind of like failure or something to ask for help.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: But yet everyone who I've spoken to who's had therapy, it's not a huge number, but people that I trust have told me that it's been incredibly transformative for them.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, I can I can I can see how having an awakening practice and some kind of therapy, even if the therapy consists of journaling or you know uh whatever it is, but kind of having the two different tracks, I can see that as being as being really useful.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: For my own trauma, one of the things that I found really useful was expressive writing.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I know there's a lot of research on that.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: I found that very, very useful to just look at what happened and to express it and write about it, about it.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I've written a whole book about that, actually.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: A novel.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's uh I I've I've written I think four or five novels, um, and there's one sort of a long one that I haven't yet published, um, which is it's it's staring down a barrel of my childhood trauma.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's not enough for a novel.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's also, you know, actually is there's more to it than that, you know.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I just want to say, wait, there was something in there like um, oh yeah, you said like reaching out.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I I I can tell you actually, uh I uh I don't want to be plugging something too much, but I have got well okay.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well we I have developed a new course, a new program actually that is delivered in courses and retreats called Original Love, which I've laid out four zones of growth, which for me cover the primary territory of of healing and awakening.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that you know, the first one is mindfulness, which I think of as loving awareness basically, and and so learning to be with our difficulties and our personal and interpersonal, and and and sort of generating essentially finding love in difficulty, a way to love what has seemed difficult.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's a pivotal reorientation, loving it instead of hating on it, you know.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um that's not to deny the difficulty, but finding how do we get to that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second zone is support.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's learning to trust support.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was very I mean, it maybe it doesn't sound like it from the mini biography I gave earlier, but I was actually very resistant to getting support.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was very resistant to having a teacher.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was initially very resistant to therapy, although I started quite young, but I actually, even while in therapy, I was kind of distrustful of it.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I sort of did it with, you know, sort of half I did it, but I didn't had reservations always.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And gradually my my distrust of I in looking back, I sort of feel I had a pretty general distrust of people, actually.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um and and gradually that that that uh healed and that sort of opened more.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: I became more trusting, and that meant that I could have more support and discover more support.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It also meant I could be more grateful and more compassionate and gradually you know becoming more helpful, I hope.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then the second zone I took, a third zone, sorry, I talk about in this program is is finding flow states, you know, samadhi in meditation, as they call it, so deep absorption experiences, jhana as well, which is a kind of Buddhist absorption scheme that's pretty fascinating.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I've I got interested in I mean, I I've had some training in that, um, ongoing actually, but the but the point is that this third zone of getting deeply absorbed in either in an activity in what we call a flow state, or in very little in meditation, which we call samadhi, that's pretty profound for many of us, because we're finding that we can sort of fall in love with right now.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: But it's still those first three zones are still basically dualistic.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then the fourth zone is awakening, where the self is seen through, meaning we we we lose the centre of gravity that we've taken us taken to be me.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: We find it was nothing really but a sort of illusion of sorts, a kind of chimera or a sort of genie, and we we see through it and it evaporates, and and then we discover this boundless inseparability, which is which blows away all the other three zones, actually, because it's sort of it has no time, it has no space, it has no um there's no sort of process in it in it.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: The only process is kind of coming to know it ever more intimately and consistently.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: And is this the original love course or is it titled something else?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that is.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this these four zones I've just been going over, they are sort of the the main things we look at in this original love program.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel it's kind of I mean, I would hope somebody who does the we've got courses, you know, somebody who does a course, at the very least, I think they get a clear map of of sort of I don't know, spiritual practice or meditation practice, and that that might inspire them to reach out to practitioners in whatever particular zone, you know.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it it it also helps to clarify what awakening is, because you know, a lot of a lot of uh the word gets used a lot, but it you know it doesn't always connote what the deep traditions mean by it.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to go into that a little bit with awakening.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I was practicing a very kind of dualistic meditation practice, you know, just like focusing on the breath, and um I found great value in it, like really great value, but I I kind of always dismissed like the idea of no self.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, like, you know, as a lay person that's just unattainable, I don't understand it.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many kind of jokes about it, you know, like Woody Allen has like a bunch of jokes about like being one with with everything, and um and also you know, coins for like if you if you don't understand them from the outside, they can be like so baffling to the point of you know being annoying, you know, like if you try to wrap your head around them and they've become again jokes, you know, what is the sound of one hand, and it's kind of like a fun riddle that you tell people.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I tried explaining to my dad non-duality recently, and it just it the conversation just didn't go anywhere, you know.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was it was an impossible thing to discuss for me.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I only really discovered this fairly recently, and now I'm starting to have a much deeper appreciation for awakening and starting to see that it is actually possible.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I just want to get your view on that.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is awakening possible?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, is it this you know, uh like really far-fetched vision that we that we can have in our life?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: And um, yeah, just like what is your view on that the the public opinion on non-duality and koans versus seeing it from the inside?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I mean, fortunately, I don't think you know everybody should do co-hand training.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are weird and they're they're not the easiest entry, actually.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are other kinds of practice like pointing out practices like Sam Harris does on his app quite a bit, are much more accessible, I think.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And um I mean, yeah.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: Here's here let's say some thoughts on that.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, first of all, it's fantastic that it's becoming much more widely talked about.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the awareness of this possibility of a really radical shift in the way we experience this very moment from one that is just so obviously deeply self-based.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, it may not be obvious that it is if we haven't done a whole a little bit of practice already, but we start to realise that, yeah, we filter everything through this sense of being me being me.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, how could there even be an alternative?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is what we might think at first.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's enough talk about it in the zeitgeist or whatever going on now, in the general discourse, that people are starting to recognise, wow, there really is a possibility of sort of experiencing my life in a totally different way.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: And actually it's not outlandish because it's here all the time anyway, and it's also not far-fetched to hope to have a glimpse of it, you know, and and for many who do have a glimpse, it's you know, it's a very profound landmark in a life, because suddenly everything looks totally different.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because without it being a sort of self-centric view, I mean, we these things that I've been saying show themselves that we're part of everything.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that doesn't mean like I mean, you might say, Oh, well, obviously I'm part of everything, I live in the world, and you know, I'm made up of molecules and whatever, and so's everything else.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it we that's all correct, but this is talking about an actual immediate experience of knowing that and seeing in that way, not just thinking it and and acknowledging it as possibly true, it's actually experiencing that you know, when you're looking at a tree, you and the tree are actually part of a single whole.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And well, that's absurd.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing about it is it it's not it's actually not abs it's not absurd.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it may sound absurd, but it actually isn't.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if we and again, I don't really want to just feed the mind on it, but the mind could grasp it and thinking, like, well, actually, you know, we know that when we see a tree, we're not actually looking out through the windows of the eyes and seeing something out there.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're actually what the the experience of seeing a tree is a kind of simulation in this consciousness, you know, and so the world is a kind of simulation within this consciousness, you know.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Light doesn't get into the cranium, you know, it's it's all a simulation.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: And and um so that may be a way to sort of approach it conceptually, or one of many ways, but but the the the point is that you know, the more it's talked about, the more there are practices entering mainstream discourse or you know, the the conversation that point to it, the better, because people are already uh tumbling into it now and then randomly anyway, but also its healing potential not just for the individual but for society is incalculable.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's kind of if more people awaken, more people discover their inseparability from all others and from all other things, um well, if there's practice to support it that understands it, that we find our way to, it it it it can be the turning point of a life.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: It opens the heart like Nothing else.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: It um it reor it has the potential to reorient our priorities very, very radically.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um it it um you know it what it looks like in action, we hope anyway, the aspiration is towards a sort of you know, a a really um consistent, compassionate um wish to help and be of service.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um you said just now that coins might be not the best entry point.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um like to talk a little bit about coins because um one of the things I loved so much about the the course that you did on the Waking Up app was that you gave a backstory and context uh about the people that said the the the coins, um, which felt very different from just like randomly reading a line online, right?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's a completely different thing.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: You're like picturing the the situation, why it was said, who is said by the history, the context.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it just it felt way more grounded for me, and I I could just picture it so much better.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um at the same time, you did instruct the the coins.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe you can explain a little bit more how we can work with them.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: You did instruct not to try and figure it out, you know, not to try and like engage the rational mind too much with it.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_02: At the same time, I did find that even though I knew it wasn't the right idea, I still was like very tempted to try and do that.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know if that's incorrect, but um yeah.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a that's a common experience.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we we just acknowledge that that's gonna happen at times, you know, and no worries.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, basically, um I mean if we take like you know, the the most famous koan is the sound of one hand.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: If the full koan goes, you know the sound of two hands clapping, but do you know the sound of one hand?
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: That that's the complete koan.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's often said to be, do you know the sound of what is the sound of one hand clapping?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that is a slight misrendering of it.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, the the point being, like, okay, so you know what two hands clapping sounds like.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: But do you know the sound of one hand?
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: We might think, Whoa, that's just a ridiculous riddle.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not interested in trying to figure that out, you know, and I fully understand that, and I've been there myself, but I actually oh my god, when I first started sitting with that coin, you know, it was it was sort of frustrating at first, and then all of a sudden something happened, you know.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is how they work, they they um they they are an invitation, and uh I like in a way I like it particularly with this coin because it's so clear.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you know the sound of two hands clapping?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like to have two hands, but what about one hand?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what one hand is?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like it's asking that.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: It says it move from duality, two hands, to non-duality, one hand.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: What on earth does this mean?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: One hand, one hand, the sound of one hand, what does that mean?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's and the mind might, you know, ponder it and chew on it and get nowhere or feel it's got somewhere, and then and then all of a sudden, boom, something can happen out of nowhere where you know where we suddenly we suddenly have a a shift, an unanticipated, unexpected shift, and suddenly something in us See there's uh the the you know because the non-dual is always present um it actually I think it's always sort of ready and waiting to show itself and these little any sort of invitation that can somehow kind of wriggle through our our dualistic defenses or something, you know, uh it'll do so and the non-dual appears, you know.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: So so to get a Koan is not a mental thing, it's not a conceptual thing.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: To get a Koan is to undergo a sudden and I think it is always sudden, um shift, switch, change in how we experience this very moment from feeling that I'm a me in the middle of this body or in the middle of this skull or however we frame it at the time to suddenly that just sort of releases and there's this whole uh openness that's undivided and the the you know, s selfless and almost no self sounds uh may sound not that nice.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: It may sound kind of bleak or something, but actually it as an experience is the reverse.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's discovering a single wholeness and that that's what we are.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being this sort of um contracted single entity that's navigating the world the best it can that sense uh kind of uh releases into a wide open wholeness.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's what a Koan is for.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's to precipitate that.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it does it unfortunately in random, unpredictable ways.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it but it does they can do it.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: And they can they can do it in a slight way, and they can do it in a very profound way.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um all all is good.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they can, you know, even without them doing that, um, I think there's something in us that that well, yeah, we might get kind of I don't know, irritated or troubled by one or something.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: But actually if we sit with it in a certain way that's not demanding, that's very kind of um sort of a gentle, kind of invitational kind of approach, where you hear a koa and you repeat it gently in your mind, either now and then or regularly or gently, you know, sound of one hand.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not looking for anything to happen.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're just hearing this phrase in your mind, sound of one hand.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's the sound of one hand?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: But not trying to answer it, you're just using it like a sort of nurturing, nourishing sort of fertilizer for your for your humanity, for your human uh beingness.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: What is the sound of one hand?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: And yet you don't try in any way, you just softly sort of see what effect it has on your on your being.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean of course, the the main context in which they're used really is in meditation.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they're particularly helpful for people who already have a meditation practice.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I think anybody's invited to try one if they want, you know, in whatever context.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: But they can kind of, even without triggering the kind of shift I was just talking about, they can also cast a sort of spell.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: They can be very sort of they can bring on a kind of stillness and a kind of clarity that we just we just feel and we we we just sort of inhabit, you know, maybe a little unexpectedly, what is the sound of one hand?
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we we we we realize we don't have to be trying for anything.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're just we can become very restful and kind of clear and still and calm.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: What's the sound of one hand?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're very useful in that way as well, just sort of settling our minds and our hearts in a beautiful way.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: They can do that too.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I early on in in the series of talks that you gave, you discussed the colon, what is this?
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: And um that's kind of become like because I've heard meditation instructors say, you know, try and punctuate awareness throughout the day, but it's okay, like, how do I do that?
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, do I okay, I'm aware now, you know?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um whereas I I find um I I I say what is this as I'm going about my life, and after I I say that, there's just this kind of this kind of silence and like a sitting with like there's no desire to answer it, but it's just like it's kind of like this wake up um experience of just being being aligned for just the moment, um, which I found very, very useful.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like that really helps just asking that question throughout the day.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm really happy to hear it.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you're describing exactly what I'm talking about.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: That silence.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: It it's sort of uh yeah, it it's sort of it's sort of almost like a little minor sort of stunning stunning of the mind.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: The mind gets a little bit stunned, you know.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: What what is this?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: What is this?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And exactly, but not trying to answer it, it's just like pointing us back to here and now without words, without a problem to solve, with nothing to be fixed, just this.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is this?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ah it can be yeah.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Quiet.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's yeah, that's been very, very powerful for me.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um I I as soon as I started listening to the to the course, I knew immediately that I would be going back over it.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was just it was obvious to me, like because I want to spend time with each one, you know.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um more time.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to hear it.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: Where like so a lot of a lot of our education about Xen has come from people like Alan Watts.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um how can someone who's who's curious to learn more about Xen, like where would they begin?
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like um, what would be a good path for someone to learn more about Xen?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, you know, there are there are great books, you know.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's um Alan Watts for sure, The Way of Zen and and others.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, we got a ton of material on our website, mountaincloud.org.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I it uh again, I don't want to plug things, but you know, if somebody is really curious, they they can come along to one of our intro classes at Mountain Cloud every Tuesday afternoon.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um start attending that and maybe sign up for one of our courses.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um um but Mina more broadly, there's beautiful books like Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is an absolute classic.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's the three pillars of Zen, another classic.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's a great book called Zen the Authentic Gate by Yamada, which uh I mean, uh full disclosure, I had a hand in a minor hand in editing it.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a very, very good book on Zen by a Japanese twenty late 20th century Japanese master.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um so there are there are plenty of resources out there.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think yeah, I I always you know I think we just have to kind of trust um what we're drawn to, you know, and let one thing lead to another.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, in spiritual in in the sort of spiritual development or whatever to call it, it seems really important to to kind of trust one's intuition and also be a bit careful because um I mean there are a lot of weird sort of you know culty kind of outfits in these waters, and and um I think it's probably getting better, I I mean in the sense that you know there have been so many kind of terrible experiences that have happened in spirituality in the West in the last 50 years with you know scandals of various kinds, and Zen hasn't been excluded from that by any means.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I think um my hunch is that when we'll look back on it, you know, and and just see this those problems as kind of the early years as we were trying to find our way and how to sort of healthily have spiritual training, which is something that we haven't frankly had a whole hell of a lot of in the West, because um the the Catholic Church um has has some of it, I think, but not very much.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: The Protestants really turned away from it, you know, pretty much contemplative life.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not entirely, but much but largely and historically, and um and and our the Western um sort of skill and care and detail-oriented approach to meditation r really hasn't been there.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's been pretty hit or miss and not very thorough or sort of you know, at least nowhere near as as minutely crafted or s whatever as as some of the Buddhist traditions that went more deeply into contemplative experience.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um so but so I think you know, w understandably we've been we've been um absorbing a whole lot of Eastern spirituality in the last whatever 50, 70, 80 years.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: And probably, yeah, I think we're gonna get more smarter about it and not and have it be less exotic and have it be um kind of less easily uh sort of prone to predatory teachers, if you see what I mean, as it becomes more sort of normalized in in our culture.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I uh those are some really good uh references for for books.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we'll be sure to provide a link.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have one blade of grass, uh, but I I actually was thinking, should I read it or not before I speak to you?
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I I thought I'd best not, because then I might be kind of like talking to you from the perspective of already knowing things rather than letting my curiosity lead me.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I'll be I'll be reading that soon.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm definitely gonna be attending uh a course, um, one of your courses, because so one of one of the things uh in my life is I have a young child and I'm I'm kind of like a single dad, I'm quite heavily hands-on in that way, and I can't realistically attend in-person meditation retreats.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um do you think that one can still make serious practice with online trainings and you know, like meditation at home and things like that without attending retreats?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I totally do.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm absolutely thrilled, you know, thrilled by it.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was kind of resistant um as somebody who'd been to a lot of in-person on-site retreats in my training.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually, you know, as soon as COVID hit, we went online at Mounted Cloud, and and I mean it's been spectacular, you know, and I think um, oh my god, the the the the feedback we get is like this is better than on-site because I am in the midst of my life.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so these original love courses are two hours a week, and then there's some supplemental practice we send out, and so people get, you know, it's like how to practice in the midst of life is exactly what what we um kind of most want to be working towards.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and the old the old model of retreats was supposed to be supporting that, that you'd come and immerse for you know, whatever it is, a week or a month or or a couple of days, you know, whatever you could manage, and then you go back to your life.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's absolute value in that and going deep while you can.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but actually, um this way of like a continual titration right through your life, sort of drip feeding it through your life, getting live guidance, you know, and and and some sense of community when you know hundreds of people gather on Zoom for for weekly events, it's really powerful.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I think the fact that it is kind of you know embedded in our normal everyday life actually amplifies it.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: In a strange way, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, that makes a lot of intuitive sense just because I've heard a lot of meditation uh teachers talk about how it's so common for people to not integrate um after a retreat, you know, to kind of have their retreat persona and then just forget everything as soon as they get stressed out back home.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and how there's so much value in not really seeing meditation as separate from life, and I guess you get to practice bringing that kind of attention into ordinary life because you are in ordinary life, so yeah, I can see how that would be valuable.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um exactly, exactly.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um, so um Henry, it's been great speaking with you.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: I've really enjoyed it.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_02: Is there anywhere that you would like to send people anywhere people can keep up to date with you?
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_02: We'll we'll add the links to everything you've mentioned so far as well in the in the show notes.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, hey, thanks.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's original love.org, um, where they can find out about that program, and there's mountaincloud.org, which is more kind of traditional Zen, most most of the material on mountaincloud.org.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, I think those would be the main things.