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The Unicycle Committee with Richard Rohr · Emotional Sobriety: The Next Step in Recovery

• 0:07
  Speaker A: Welcome to Emotional Sobriety, the next step in recovery with Dr. Alan Berger and Tom Rutledge,
• 0:15
  Speaker B: just back from a 10 day trip started in West Virginia at the Appalachian Mountain Prescription drug and drug abuse conference that was attended by medical doctors, pharmacists, decisions, assistants. I spoke to about 250 doctors and the like and they just really embraced the information. I mean I sat in some of the other presentations and it was, they just were not that engaged. I mean people looking around and you know when. And I found this to be over and over again, Patrick, is that these ideas that we discuss when we're discussing emotional sobriety just really land very intimately in people's lives. They can really relate to the issues, the struggles and, and get a lot of insight in terms of what those, what causes their suffering.
• 1:12
  Speaker C: It's so universal.
• 1:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, it really is. It, it's, it was, that was really encouraging. And then I jumped on a plane the next morning and flew to San Jose at California where I got picked up and taken to Mount Madonna where Tommy Rosen was doing a week long training for people that want to learn recovery coaching Based on the 2.0 philosophy of integrating yoga into recovery. And I came in to add the piece of emotional sobriety and that went just outstanding. I mean so many people responded that they just loved the synergy between Tommy and I and bringing the two different approaches together really complete, you know, you know, make a whole. I mean it was really cool. That was very, very good, man. I enjoyed working with Tommy. He's very sharp, he does a great job with those people. And he's a yogi. He's been trained and certified in teaching yoga and he does such a great job with that as well as understanding the philosophy behind yoga, which is a very deep and contemplative practice that goes back thousands of years. Patrick. So that was nice to start seeing how yoga relates to emotional sobriety up close and personal with Tommy and, and I'm probably going to join him in Costa Rica. He does a week long retreat there in November and we'll be talking about that. And then I left San Jose on Tuesday and Wednesday. I was in New Mexico in a little town outside of Albuquerque where the Hummingbird Music Camp is at. And about 25 men that are interested in improving and transforming their lives were there for a men's retreat. And I was one of two teaching elders. It was myself and Doug Lyman who talks about the Enneagram and money. And after he heard me talk about emotional sobriety, he worked emotional sobriety into his talk it was great. It was a great weekend. And I had a unexpected and very welcome surprise. Father Richard Rohr showed up for the last day and a half I was there. He attended three of my presentations.
• 3:45
  Speaker D: Wow.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: He. And he just really. He said, alan, you just, you know, become such a great teacher, and you're carrying such a great message. It was nice to be kind of validated and, you know, being touched by an elder and saying, you've got it, Dr. Berger, I love him so much. And at the end of the conference, I think I sent you a picture. We were all sitting up front asking questions. And he fielded a question about what it's like being 84 now, and what is it? What's. What is he experiencing? And his answers are always so thoughtful and. And deep. He starts out by saying, you know, the truth is one of the things that's changed. I don't care as much. He says that that sounds radical, but I don't mean I don't care. It's that there's not a lot of big deals anymore. He goes, you know, I've seen and heard most everything in life right now.
• 4:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 4:46
  Speaker B: He says the biggest challenge at this point is to feel so helpless physically. He says, I'm tired so much at a time, and I can't get dressed most of the time by myself. I need someone to help me. I need help getting around, getting into a car. He says, you know, that's the toughest part, is being so dependent on other people for my care. And I can understand that that is a helpless feeling, because there's not what can he do about it other than accept the help or not go anywhere. And he's too dynamic and has too much of a thirst and love for life to do that. So it was wonderful to be with him and to talk and to hear him share his thoughts. That was quite. I've got two little videos of him talking that I'll send you. Maybe you can. We can even post some of them on the show with this show hearing from him, because it's his. His insights about life and about where things are at with our country and I think are just very, very, very thoughtful. So it was wonderful. That was the men. Most of them had not heard about emotional sobriety, and they were blown away. They just almost down to a man. They said that that weekend changed their lives because it made them really look at things from a very different point of view, which I was really glad for. And I learned that I'm an 8 on the enneagram, which means I like to challenge people, which I do that, that is my style, and I could really relate to that. And the Enneagram is a very special way of thinking about people. It's got nine different personality types and it goes way back. You know, that's also a very old tradition, the Enneagram. So look, the. The big takeaway from this is that people are thirsty to figure out how to achieve freedom, especially emotional freedom. And that is, I think, the real powerful and cogent message of emotional sobriety. That that kind of freedom from our emotions is possible now. It takes some thoughtfulness. It takes hooking up with the right people. I mean, you know, hanging around and learning about it like I did when I first went into recovery. But, you know, freedom is possible. I mean, you've seen it, I've seen it. I've experienced it at times. I can't say that I'm there all the time, but a good portion of the time today I experience emotional freedom and I'm in a much better place than I was 20, 30 years ago.
• 7:39
  Speaker A: I was reviewing what I've been calling the ancient holy scrolls, the long document that Tom sent us of his nutshells that he's been working on like piecemeal over the years. And there's a. One of the nutshells is staying present is like riding a unicycle.
• 7:55
  Speaker C: But I think that could probably be
• 7:56
  Speaker A: amended to emotional sobriety is like riding a unicycle.
• 8:01
  Speaker C: It's, you know, takes. You have to do it every day
• 8:05
  Speaker A: and it's a practice and you need to return to it. And it's wobbly because, you know, we as humans, we. Our minds race ahead towards catastrophizing or worrying about the future or, you know, looking behind us, mulling over roads not taken.
• 8:25
  Speaker E: I'm going to say it in the most dangerous way. First of all, most things don't matter. That's where that sounds like giving everybody permission to not care. It's not that at all. It's. You found out what does really matter. Someone else is in charge. That Jesus most common one liner was do not be afraid. He had to mean that there's a cosmic thing at work that makes fear unimportant and unhelpful and unnecessary. So that's the third half of life. It's just the rules change again and looks like cosmic non caring, just what it is. And the things people fight for. I mean, look at the state of our politics. It's just, it's almost infantile. And these are educated leaders and this is the best they can do. Well, that's what makes you realize it doesn't matter what. Well, let me end on this. I don't know what book I said this in, but there's. In the book, I put at three levels. There's my story, which is what we've spent a lot of time on here. There's our story, which is normally your country or religion, your ethnic group. That's the second one you encounter and give probably too much importance to, but you gotta fight that battle. Then in later books, I added others stories. How? I mean, my parents were German farmers, Catholic. I grew up feeling I needed to prove those. I don't know what there is to prove. There's just as much to disprove. But unless you balance our story with others story, you don't get any balance. Everybody else has got a story too. And finally, the story. The story is what's always been true. Yeah, we call it the. What do we call it? The pattern.
• 11:30
  Speaker F: The wisdom pattern?
• 11:32
  Speaker E: No, no, the cosmic. Cosmic. I've used so many dangling. You're getting all the elements, the perennial traditions. If it's true, it has to have been discovered by Hindus and Buddhists and New Agers. But they all give it too much importance in terms of their version of it instead of balancing out their version with everybody else's version. I always liked the word Catholic because it means universal. But unfortunately, much of Catholicism is more Roman than Catholic. It's not that universal. The Spanish wouldn't have treated the natives the way they did if they really had a universal message. Especially where the. Here in this state where the Spanish did not. The good Catholic Spanish did not treat the good native Indians very nice at all. And now we have to live with the results. When you drove in here, you drove by an old Franciscan ruin right down the road. This was a healing spot. I'm swimming too much.
• 13:08
  Speaker F: Well, can I re. Ask Gina's question? In the third half of life that you're in, what are you emotionally struggling with right now?
• 13:20
  Speaker B: Yes,
• 13:23
  Speaker E: Dave, just my helplessness. You see how I have to be drug around this property? I'm just so physically weak, so constantly tired. So it's almost on the physical level just feeling helpless. If Eli didn't take care of me where he was right here, I don't think I could even dress myself. You know, you read about that when you're young and then suddenly you're there.
• 13:57
  Speaker F: What does that do to your mental state?
• 14:01
  Speaker E: Well, my mental state is very weak emotional state. Thank God I wrote the Tears of things, right before it set in two years ago because I couldn't write any more books. My mind just doesn't have the clarity, which is why I'm getting off the point right now. I'm just not here.
• 14:29
  Speaker F: Peter, can I. Can I make. Can I make a.
• 14:32
  Speaker E: Any comment you want to make.
• 14:34
  Speaker F: I was thinking in the Enneagram, right, You're a type one and so terrible.
• 14:38
  Speaker E: Type one.
• 14:39
  Speaker F: The see that the ego stress response,
• 14:42
  Speaker E: for one is sorrow, the tears of things.
• 14:46
  Speaker F: And I'm wondering about the tears of things. What sorrow has been rising in you that prompted that book or that.
• 14:54
  Speaker E: You know, my compulsion all my life was not substance addiction, but process addiction. I needed to get the gospel right and took on the whole church. Not in a belligerent way, but just. I don't think he got the point. That summed up in my beliefs, but many others I could put on the list that trained me in it. You come to God by doing it wrong, not by doing it right. And 12 steps is one of those key movements, surprise of surprises. All the people we sent on the journey of doing it right, they didn't anyway. They usually just became righteous. Take the Puritans who were at the heart of Americanism and white superiority. It's all about Puritanism, purity codes. Purity codes have never gotten the Catholic Church anywhere, Buddhism anywhere, Hinduism anywhere. Because it's about doing it right. Whereas with the 12 steps cut. My God, it's my mistakes that are my teachers. It's my mistakenness that is my education, my story, our story, others stories. And the story. We all have a. The story at some level, big philosophy, meaning system. A lot of people right now, it's frankly, it's Trumpism. It's there when the story fails you. That's the dark night of the soul. Not private failure, not the failure of my group, but the failure of cosmic meaning. That's why a lot of people, I'm not trying to be political, but can imagine voting against Trump because they voted four and three times now. They know they were terribly wrong. But I can't. He was the story. Politics has taken on the third dawn of meaning. The story. And he confirms it. He thinks it's all about him. He says it.
• 17:42
  Speaker F: He does.
• 17:44
  Speaker E: I mean, everything we teach at initiation about ego. We have a president who is the ultimate uninitiated man who really does think it's all about him. So anyway, my real answer to your question is when the story doesn't work anymore, when there's cosmic meaninglessness, I've Been talking a lot. I'll stop on this. But about universal forgiveness. I feel at the end of my life. How generous of me. But I have to forgive everything. Everything. It's all, including myself, including America, including the Catholic Church, including Christianity. That doesn't mean I leave them or abandon them, but I forgive them. It's an imperfect universe. We're painting a mural on the wall of our new center building and there's a big quote from Genesis being painted this week or should be done by now from Genesis 1:31. Then God looked at everything God had made and saw that it was very good. We've got to start with a positive cosmology. Positive that this whole thing means something good. And that's what contemplation helps you to do if the whole thing is going to hell in a handbag. And forgive me, I'm not trying to offend my Protestant brothers here. You know John Calvin and to a certain degree Martin Luther got it all wrong. They started with Genesis 3. The failure of Adam and Eve to eat that damn apple. As if God is so petty he gets upset that we eat, take a bite out of a nap. You've got to begin with Genesis 1. So after I leave, it's the only phrase that's going to be painted on the wall of our room. God looked at all, all that he had made and saw that it was very good. With a pipe. Positive V story. It's very hard for you to fall into the dark line of the soul. But we live in what you know from your philosophy training, I'm sure, a nihilistic culture. Nihil in Latin means nothing. I mean it's sort of nothing means nothing. It's heartbreaking. How do you think as a 11 year old boy, a song you were. If nothing means nothing, if it's all a charade, it's all a pretend, it's all an imposter, it's all funny. If love is not at the heart of all of us, I don't want to be a part of it. I should put that in my last. Instead of being small minded and petty, who ate the apple? Who bite or who scuffed their shoes. Instead it's all he had made and
• 21:46
  Speaker D: said it was good.
• 21:48
  Speaker E: That is expansive. How we missed that and jumped over to Genesis 3.
• 21:56
  Speaker C: I don't know.
• 21:56
  Speaker E: I mean Calvin said maybe you know this. Forgive me if some of you were raised as Calvinists, you know, it was total depravity to begin with. Total depravity. How do you redeem that? How do you undo that? Let alone. It's difficult that we choose total goodness. Total goodness. It's all good. So just hold on to Genesis 131.
• 22:35
  Speaker D: That's just one of the sentences I've used earlier, earlier in my life and through midlife. I need you to understand, you know, I just. You just need to. And I hate when people tell me what I need to do, but I use that language sometimes and go, you know, you. You need to understand this. It's like, how the would I know what you need to understand? Even if it's about me. It's like, I don't need to understand de. In order to love her. And I'm sure that she does not understand lots about me that, That I would. In. In the way that I would imagine I would want to be understood. And we. But we love each other. And it's like. So maybe the mistake is in my life has been putting too much, you know, you know, not surprising, too much emphasis on that, you know, cognitive part, you know, I need. I need you to be able to do the math of understanding me.
• 23:32
  Speaker C: Yeah, I heard. You know, Michael told me yesterday. I was talking about some kind of struggle I was having with a friend, and he was saying, well, no encouraging. Mean to feel rather than to think. Yeah, I think that in relations, you know, just paying attention to how we're feeling rather than trying to logically sort it out can take us further. And I'm very much. I'm very much more head oriented and thought oriented than feelings oriented.
• 24:01
  Speaker D: But you said something about the, you know, about using the word expectation a little bit ago. And it's like, I don't know that the multiple. Multiple personality within my consciousness is necessarily a metaphor. You know, I think there's.
• 24:19
  Speaker C: I think there, you know, the committee is real.
• 24:21
  Speaker D: There are definitely significant parts of our personalities that are different enough for us to understand them as separate personalities.
• 24:31
  Speaker C: The guy inside me that. Think about the schedule that he laid out for me back in the day. You know, let's think about. Let's think about his calendaring. They're vastly, vastly different. Vastly different than the guy that's been here this last eight years. Or the guy. Yeah, oh, emerging. Emerging these last eight years. It's just. Yeah, but both are real. You know, both pounded the pavement.
• 24:58
  Speaker D: I've learned in 40 years of doing this work. And the old versions of ourselves don't
• 25:04
  Speaker C: go anywhere because those bad guys are still in there or those destructive characters are still in there. We need to manage them. We need to have Some system of management or keeping them from like running the meeting.
• 25:15
  Speaker D: Basically parts of us that basically no matter what happens they just give us the same response no matter what. I think so far I think addiction is a good example of that. And often he's only got one idea.
• 25:29
  Speaker C: It's only got one idea.
• 25:30
  Speaker D: That's right. And so I've begun to call those just bots. They're just robots. They, they just, they're just endless loop. No matter what they, they. They're actually programmed to be pretty creative about how they can, can sneak it in. But the other thing is the thing I've noticed all through my practice when we divide people up or put people in different chairs is that sometimes very actually often when I'm talking to somebody that I think is just a sort of a. A two dimensional bad guy, it's like they're not. And I realized this and what I my new way of thinking is when, when a certain part of a person that I'm working with in therapy seems amenable to change or amenable to understanding the process. 9 by I need to encourage the clients to invite them into the therapy process. We don't need. That's not just, that's not just a villain. That's not just somebody we're pushing against. That's somebody that basically we could use on the team but makes it more important that we have the person in charge which is who you and I want to identify where we want our identity to live. It's a benign dictatorship. It's like I'm going to just. I'm in charge. I'm going to decide and I'm going to specifically decide for. Based on what I believe is for the better. Betterment of all. Because we start even debating some of that stuff. Some of those guys just will over talk. Yeah. And sometimes those are those villains but. But sometimes they're just parts of our personality that just fucking talk too much. The only accurate insight we're going to have is hindsight. And we spend so much time in our western human minds trying to convince ourselves that we're having. We can have insights and that are going to change our lives and direct us in those ways. And I look back on my life, it's like I'm not saying I don't have ideas you can follow stuff like that. But I'm talking about if I really talk about go back to the work understanding if I want. If you want, you want to know about me. I can tell. I can probably tell you a lot much more about me over the last decade, you know, and the farther back ago, probably the better I can tell the story and more accurately, you know, you don't have to understand everything. People don't have to understand me, but I don't also. I don't have to understand what's going on while it's going on.
• 28:00
  Speaker C: My friend has been writing a spectacular TV script in our writers group and he's done a couple episodes of it. And we were talking about it the other day, and I guess he was showing it to some business people, like some managers and whatnot. And they were asking for him to condense, like, well, what's the elevator pitch for this? Or what are the themes? What does it mean?
• 28:22
  Speaker B: And.
• 28:23
  Speaker C: And he was like, I just don't have the faintest idea. Like, I don't know what it means. I just know that I'm compelled to flesh out this world and these characters and I'm telling in this particular way. But like, that is an absolutely, you know, insight and hindsight thing because it's like, no, no, when you, when you're on the other side of it and when you're reading it that you'll know what it means then, you know, but it's less important if you're kind of feeling that undertow, you know, or something pulling you through it. You know, it's like, you know, there is a meaning to it. There is a meaning to it, but you'll know better once you're looking back. What is the project that you're working on with 4D?
• 28:58
  Speaker D: Alan's very sweet. He's. We're given a second edition to the book that I published with new Harbinger back in the last century. And we're kind of. We've updated it. We've updated it to language of emotional sobriety because one of the things that we've looked at is it's very much an emotional sobriety book. And so we've made. We've made edits for that and Alan's adding a forward to it. And my favorite books that I've ever written is called earning your own. Earning your own respect. I think it's important, and I still hear from people fairly often that who, who benefit from this book. So, so that's. So I'm really excited about that. And, and then. Yeah, and, and then. And I will just add that I'm. I'm working with another. Another publisher right now too, with. To finally get my book out. The, the one that's called sit down and shut up for simple Meditation and practical wisdom. And it's like, it's, it's. I just my favorite book ever because every time I read it, it makes me laugh out loud. So it's, it's like, so it's a. To me, it's the book that captures. That is my personality more than any other book. Send it.
• 30:11
  Speaker C: Yeah. Alan's recording a radio show this morning. I have no idea what it is, but do you know what it is?
• 30:17
  Speaker D: No, No, I haven't talked to Alan recently. It's like, like an actual radio show.
• 30:22
  Speaker C: That's what he said. Yeah. Maybe like a Pennsylvania based, like, thing. It would have to be, right?
• 30:27
  Speaker D: I mean, I know podcast is today's radio, but I just, I still miss radio. It's cool. In my, my first, first part of my publishing career, I, I was, you know, either whenever I traveled places, I was in the studio with, with, with radio guys, talk radio guys, but then on. But on the phone long before Zoom and this stuff, you know, I did this radio shows, you know, almost every morning, you know, just. And it was just so much fun. You get it with a good radio guy. And it's, it's like they're good and they, they, they're good interviewers, but. But they're also just wonderful entertainers and it's, it's fun, it's fun to collaborate with them.
• 31:06
  Speaker C: The fact that there's a, like a limited amount that you get makes it more special. As opposed to podcasting, where we have complete command over when we start and stop.
• 31:14
  Speaker D: Oh, absolutely. Scarcity.
• 31:16
  Speaker C: Scarcity.
• 31:16
  Speaker D: If I have just. I can do it anytime. That's a really good formula for never doing it. Yeah.
• 31:34
  Speaker E: Sam,