We Are All Travelers- Donald Altman

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Hi there, welcome to Grief to Growth Podcast. Your host is Brian D Smith, spiritual seeker, bestselling author, grief survivor, and life coach. Brian believes that the worst tragedies of life provide the greatest opportunity for growth. Brian says he was planted, not buried, and he is here to help you grow where you've been planted by the difficulties in life. In each episode, Brian and his guests will share what has helped them to survive and thrive. It is his sincere hope this episode helps you today.

Hey everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. And today I've got with me Donald Altman. And Donald is a psychotherapist, a former monk, a 2-time Emmy Award winner, an award-winning author of over 20 books and CDs on mindfulness and spirituality. He is an engaging, an excellent engaging speaker. We just talked a little bit here. So I'm really looking forward to this interview. He talks about a wide range of topics. I'm going to read a little bit more to you about him. He is a, as I said, former monk, award-winning author of over 20 books and CDs on mindfulness and spirituality. International mindfulness expert, speaker, and trainer. He's taught over 15,000 mental health clinicians, physicians, nurses, and others how to use mindfulness interventions for depression, anxiety, trauma, pain, and stress-related conditions, which I know I can relate to and know a lot of my audience can. I served as vice president of the International Organization for the Center for Mindful Eating for many years. He was an adjunct professor at Portland State University's Interpersonal Neurobiology Program. And taught graduate-level programs for Lewis Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling. He was a senior mental health therapist at both a general psychiatric clinic and eating disorder clinic for 4 years before opening his own clinic outside of Portland, Oregon. He writes the Practical Mindfulness blog for Psychology Today. His articles have received over 600,000 views in the past year. Um, one of his books, The Mindfulness Toolbox, was a 2-time Gold Award winner of the Ben Franklin Publishing Award for the psychology and body, mind, spirit categories. So he's got a whole lot of qualifications. We're here today to talk about his latest book. In addition, all those other topics. His latest book is called Travelers, which is a fictional work. And I'm not sure if it's his first fictional work or not, I'll have to ask him that. I actually just finished the book this morning. It is excellent. I don't really typically read fiction. I don't typically read fiction at all. And I really enjoyed it a lot. So With all that, I want to welcome Donald Altman to Grief to Growth.

Oh, well, thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here with you today. And, and, you know, to talk about some topics at length instead of just to kind of gloss over things.

Yes, you know, it's interesting you say that because my, my podcasts, I always have this, this tension between should I try to keep it short because people have shorter attention spans, or do we want to dive deep? And I've landed on diving deep. So hopefully the people that listen to me are willing to go there with us. And we've got so much to talk about today. Because you are such an expert in mindfulness and consciousness and all that kind of stuff that I love to talk about. But you've also just completed this, this fantastic book Travelers, which covers some of these themes in a fictional approach. So tell me, what, what inspired you to write Travelers? And is this your first work of fiction?

Well, you know, I've written fiction before. And actually had a short film made, almost got it made as a feature film back. I lived in Los Angeles some years back. I'm in Portland now, but I lived in LA. I got kind of bit by the Hollywood bug, and, um, and I, uh, like I said, I had a short film there, and I, I wrote for a children's TV show in Chicago, which is where I'm from, and we won a couple of Emmy Awards for that children's show. While I was on staff there for 4 years. That was back in the '80s. So I've been writing for a long time. And I've written, as you said, a lot of nonfiction books. I, when I went into the monastery, and I ordained as a Buddhist monk for a period of time, that really shifted my life. And that was because of some loss and, and patterns that were repeating in my life that were very painful. And I had met this well-known teaching monk. His name was U Thīlānanda. He was from Burma. And when I met him, he had such this wonderful sense of compassion and availability. And when I had experienced this loss, I thought, wow, this might be a nice time to go into the monastery and learn from him because I was really touched by his presence. And, you know, I wanted to see how— why is it that these negative things are repeating in my life? And, and going into that monastery was really like an initiation, like a kind of a rite of passage for me. And it was an important growth for me. And I left the monastery, I didn't— even when I went in, you don't have to make a lifetime vow in that tradition, it's the Theravada, the old school of Buddhism. It's kind of like I make a commitment to stay there today, and the next day. And so when I was ready to go, I knew— I've always felt that most of my work was going to be out here in the so-called regular world. And I went back to school and became a psychotherapist. I was, you know, I started doing workshops on mindful eating. I'd always been an emotional eater myself. And I started doing workshops on spiritual eating. But people would come to me and they say, you know, after the workshop, I've got this anorexia problem, or I have this bulimia issue I'm dealing with, and I didn't know how to work with them. So I went back to school, and, and I think it's— and I was 50 years old when I did that, and I had some real doubts, some real fear if I'd be— how I would be able to compete or complete school. But I got through it, and I was able to then work in an eating disorder clinic and bring, um, you know, psychological approaches to therapy and working with people. Uh, so it was really the loss in my life that's, that planted the seed for me to grow through going to the monastery. And, um, I started doing non-fiction books, um, based on mindfulness, which I think has helped a lot of people. Um, then I had this idea for, uh, Travelers, and it really brought together a lot of what I really feel about you know, how we deal with grief, how we deal with loss, and how we can heal. I've worked in a lot of psychiatric clinics. And one of the things that always kind of, you know, bothered me in a sense was you have to give somebody a diagnosis. Right. And that always to me felt a little pathological, you know, pathologizing someone, I'm giving this with all the— this is wrong with you. But it's very much how we approach things in our— in this culture. It's kind of a, you know, a mechanical, materialistic way of looking at things, that if you're broken, we've got to fix it. Yeah, right. And but, uh, it doesn't really look at the wholeness of us. I mean, it's great if you have a car and the battery is gone and you just replace a battery, but how do you replace an emotion? You know, how do you replace complex feelings that we have? As human beings. We're not a, you know, I mean, some things you can replace, like a hip replacement or whatnot. But when it comes to the emotional landscape of us as humans, it's not a fix-it kind of an approach. It's, it's, it's more like I think of it as commitment and acceptance. We can commit to moving forward. And we can also accept things that have happened in our life. There are certain conditions we can't necessarily change, right? If you have a health condition or whatever, but you, you can learn to accept and also move forward at the same time.

Yeah, I, I just was telling you, and I think I mentioned earlier, I don't typically read fiction. I spend a lot of time reading more books like your other books. But I got the opportunity to interview, and it's kind of funny because these themes are coming up in my life right now. I just finished reading Christian Sundberg's A Walk in the Physical, which is by a guy who has pre-birth memories and is presenting a whole different view of the world and the universe and everything. And that spun me into reading Tom Campbell's My Big Toe. And I'm like halfway through that, and your book comes across my desk. I'm like, well, I need to get this read because I'm interviewing this guy on Saturday. So I did the last 3 days of getting through your book. And I want to read a short kind of a trailer for the book, I guess, or a short description that I got to help people understand what we're talking about. Uh, the book so focuses around, uh, grieving psychiatrist Ben Banks, and he can't find a way to heal from a loss. But when a mystifying, miraculous, and mind-bending tree arrives at the psych ward, the doctor is forced to confront his deepest fears and beliefs about the nature of consciousness and reality, even death. With his marriage, career, and life hanging by a thread, he faces demons both real and imagined All the while, while being transformed forever in this inspiring story of hope, healing, and renewal. And I have to tell you, when I started reading the book, you know, the themes in here of child loss and what happens with and how that affects relationships, but with him and his wife and his friends, and I don't want to give too much away with the book. But, you know, as someone who's gone through this, I'm like, okay, I was like, my first thought was, what, what happened to Donald that gave him this perspective? So I'm curious about how you were able to bring that through so realistically.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief, most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up. So you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth.

I hope to see you there.

Yeah. Uh, well, you know, it's funny. I've had people who have read the book who said to me, uh, that's you in the book, isn't it? I said, well, no, it's fiction. That's a psychiatrist. I'm, I'm, I'm a psychotherapist. I, I'm not a psychiatrist. I said, no, that's fiction, but course, how, you know, we draw on a lot of our own life story and our life history as well. And I, you know, I experienced loss in my family. I had some trauma growing up with a father who was, God bless his soul, no longer with us, but he had endured a lot of pain in his life. And so there was a lot of abuse in the family. And And that was a loss, right? I mean, I think when you experience that, you experience a— I remember feeling a loss of my childhood, actually, when I was 3 and 4 years old, during a particular, uh, uh, kind of a violent event that happened in my household. And so I lost this sense of the innocence. I lost this, uh, sense of even having a father who was there for me. And even talking about it now, I can feel the emotion from that experience. And so I think, you know, we all— nobody escapes this planet without having, without having loss of some kind or another. At the same time, we're gifted with this incredible, this gift of consciousness and of connection, right, of having attachments, you know, with others, which, which brings so much. I have so much gratitude every day for all the different people and my two new kitties that I have that enrich my life. And, you know, it's interesting in the Buddhist perspective, and I don't consider myself Buddhist, even though I was a Buddhist monk. I don't even think the Buddha was a Buddhist. He was— the Buddha was just The word just means awakened or awakening, right? It's the ism that, that I don't want to really— that, that sometimes becomes locked into a dogma. And so if you take away the ism, you just have this awakening. And so I think the awakening is very important. So there's a story in Buddhism about the— about loss. It's called the Mustard Parable. Have you ever heard of that?

I don't know the mustard parable.

No. Yeah. And it's kind of a very— a lot of people in that tradition will talk about this as a way of teaching that we shouldn't attach to things. And so the story is about a woman way, way back in Buddha's time, who had lost her child, her newborn. And, and she wouldn't let go of the baby, she just held on to it. And, and people were saying, you know, you've got to let go of the baby. And she's like, no, no, no, maybe something, maybe there's a miracle, maybe something will happen. And she found out that the Buddha was coming to her village. And she, you know, people had said that he could do miracles, and he could do all these incredible things. And she thought he could bring my baby back to life. And so the Buddha came and he gave one of his talks. And she waited. And afterwards, she came up to the Buddha, and she was holding on to her baby. And she said, I said, I, I want you to do a miracle for me. And I know you can do it. I've heard you do all these amazing things. I want you to bring my baby back to life. And the Buddha looked at her and said, you know what, I, I will do that for you. But first, you must do one thing. And if you can fulfill this question I'm going to ask you, then I will do that. He said, I want you to go around the village I want you to find one person in the village who has not lost any— someone dear to them. And if you can find me that one person, you come back with your baby and I'll perform a miracle for you. And so she went to every house in that village, and of course nobody— she couldn't find anybody who had not experienced that deep loss. And so she went back to the Buddha and she, um, she got it. She was like, I guess I have to let go of my baby now. Now in Buddhism, this idea that, um, you know, attachment is what causes us suffering, you would say, well, oh, you know, let go and move on. But it's not so easy. I, I don't think— in fact, I don't think that that's really the answer. I think it's not staying attached and moving forward are not mutually exclusive of one another. You can do both.

Yeah.

Right.

I think there's a big misunderstanding about that idea in Buddhism. I'm glad you brought that up, the non-attachment, because I think people think, well, that means I need to be like Mr. Spock on Star Trek. I don't love, I don't care. I don't, I don't appreciate things because those are all attachments. And that's not what I don't think that's what the Buddha was saying. It's, it's that clinging to things that are— it's the fight against reality. And I love, like I said, in your book, the way that you portray Ben and his wife, and the different ways they deal with their, with their loss. I think that's also very realistic that we, we handle it differently. You know, some of us are much more rational, right? The person's gone. Let's just move on. Some of us are still like, well, let's keep the room exactly the same. And you have these— and this is very real. I mean, I deal with child loss all the time because, you know, my daughter's passing, and because of the organization I'm involved with, and everybody handles it differently. And neither way is right or wrong.

Right?

Yeah.

And in the beginning of the story, Ben, the psychiatrist, he just um, he feels that his daughter Melissa, or Mel is her nickname, that leaving her room just as it is is kind of— he calls it the shrine of Mel.

Yeah.

And, and to him, it's blocking his moving on in a sense, right? Uh, and repairing his relationship with his wife, right? Because, uh, that relationship has deteriorated ever since that loss, right?

And they—

because they don't view it the same. And the wife wants to keep the room just as it is and hold on to that memory, hold on to that connection with her daughter. And, but through the story, the psychiatrist Ben actually opens up his awareness. And he's willing to, to get past his his all-or-none kind of thinking.

Yeah.

And, and get into a new space where he actually feels a connection with his daughter beyond time and space.

I love the way you did that, because that's the dilemma that we face when we lose someone. And I think because for me, it was a daughter, I'll say particularly a child, and I know every loss is— every loss is the worst loss depending on who you are. I've worked with people who have lost spouses and parents and everything else, dogs, but that, that balance between keeping the attachment and being able to move forward, not being stuck in the past. And I love the way you handle it. And I don't want to give away too much of the book, but I love the way the characters develop, and the way that their eyes are awakened to the way, you know, each other sees it. And another thing I love about the book is just the, the whole opening of what is consciousness? What is the universe. What is real? You know, are, you know, are angels real? Is biolocation real? Or out-of-body experiences, astral planes? You know, all that stuff that you bring in, which is, for me, the only true way that we can handle this existence is by expanding out into that greater consciousness.

I really agree. Yeah, I think so. And I think that you said it very well, actually. How can we expand our awareness, expand our consciousness? At one point in the book, he, uh, the— I don't think this is giving away too much, but at one point in the book, the psychiatrist meets this very trusted supervisor who had spent some time in India, and she shares with him the words of, of an old Indian sage from the 19th century, Vivekananda, who was one of the first actually to bring Eastern ideas to the West. And he said to her, The infinite universe of the library is in your own mind. Yeah. And to tap that infinite universe can bring us to places we never imagined. But to do that, you've got to stop all the clutter. In the story, Ben meets a traveler, and she's trying to get him to get to a place of silence. But, you know, he's filling his mind up all the time, reading all of these journals. And think about our lives today, how filled up they are. Every moment, right? We don't have time to just sit back and reflect. And when you get that silence, I think that provides an opening into that other realm, into those— what I call in the book the, the quantum collective. Yeah, right. Yeah, that, that, uh, everything we know that— well, think about this, um, it If we have intelligence, how could we not be the fruit of an intelligent world? How could we not be part of an intelligent, intelligent cosmos? That in some sense, even the atoms in our body must have an intelligence to them, right? And how can we, uh, create enough silence and space so we can experience beyond this human awareness. You know, I think we're in the— very much in the grip of, um, a materialistic stranglehold right now.

Yes.

And in our worldview.

Yeah.

And this materialistic, uh, grip that also science has on us. I mean, science can only look at what it shines its light on, right? And it really doesn't— it doesn't even know how to explain what consciousness is.

Yeah, I say that all the time. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

I love— yeah. And I think people— and I know I can relate to Ben. And it's interesting because my daughter is a mental health counselor. She just got her master's like last year. Oh, congratulations. Yeah, she's working as a behaviorist now. But she's a deeply She's not a religious person at all. But she's a deeply spiritual person. And I've, on the, on the show recently, I've had a couple of transpersonal psychologists, and she doesn't listen to it typically, but I send those to her. And she's struggling with what you just talked about this, the finalization, or, you know, making everything pathological, you know, especially she's working out as a behaviorist. But when she was working as a mental health counselor, the first thing you have to do is diagnose people, you know, and if you meet them, I guess it's 2 times, 3 times, whatever it is, What's the diagnosis? And you can see Ben, when he meets, when he meets the guy in the book, and he's like, I don't want to do that, you know, I don't want to put this label on him. I want to, I want to have a relationship with them. And he struggles with, how personal do I get with them, you know, and I love, you know, you talk about this idea of like, I guess, in the Freudian tradition, they sit behind the patient. And my daughter's struggling with that too, you know, like, she's like, she's sitting there, these people are struggling, she wants to share you know, herself with them, but her training tells her she can't, right?

Right. Yeah, there's this whole thing about non-disclosure, not disclosing anything about yourself, uh, to the patient. And I had some interesting moments when I, um, you know, I went through a divorce at one time, and, um, I remember one time that I was out, it was in the rain here in Portland, and I was walking around the block before my session started, just trying to get myself centered. And I was crying and I was really torn up. I came back in the office, pulled myself together, and, um, a couple— my first, uh, people to see that morning was a couple. And they came in and the woman said, I'll never forget, she said, you know, uh, you're always so calm. I'll bet you, you just really, uh, have no problems in your relationship.

Exactly, exactly.

Uh, and, and there were times when I did disclose them and say, well, the truth is this. And I feel it's important, we were, that, you know, the client is first. It's not my, not my role to say, oh, I've got this problem, that pro— you know. But sometimes when I have shared and said, well, you know, it— you're being real with somebody, you're being authentic, right? And so there's an important place for that too. And Ben struggles with that in the story.

Yeah, it's funny, as we're having this conversation, I'm thinking, because the last few weeks, there's been a whole thing about AI, and AI is blowing up, and AI is taking our jobs, and AI is writing everything. And just, yeah, that the thought that came to me was, you know, the way that traditional psycho— psychology is done in the US, AI could do it. You could just have a robot sitting there doing it. And I think people want to relate to another human being. They want to know that their, their counselor is human. They, you know, otherwise you can't really understand what they're telling you. And so that's, that's my opinion. I'm not a trained mental health professional. And like I said, my daughter is like walking that line. I'm like, well, so, you know, once you've been out of school for a while, you'll develop your own style, you'll figure out when it's okay to disclose, because it's not about you. That's absolutely true. But I think it can be very helpful to the patient to know you normalize their feelings, right?

You're, you're absolutely—

it's normalizing. We're all human beings. I'm, I'm not a robot. I don't have a perfect life.

Yeah. And, uh, it's important to let clients know that. You know, it's funny you mentioned that about AI because I've been kind of noticing that too in the news and wondering how is it going to change things. I mean, when I get on a, when I'm on a a computer screen and I'm trying to get help and I, you know, the little box comes up and it says, do you want to have a chat? I always ask, are you a human?

Yeah, yeah. Because if you're a robot, I don't want to talk to you. Yeah, I don't want to talk to you, the robot.

I'm sorry. Because I feel that a human would have more understanding.

Right?

They do. Yeah. AI is not— it's not there. It never will be because AI will never be human. And there's one guy I really admire, this guy's Bernardo Kaczyński. He's brilliant. He's a computer scientist, PhD in psych— and psychology, which is where I'm looking at philosophy. So PhD in philosophy and computer science. And he debates these people about whether AI will ever be conscious. And it's a ridiculous question if you understand what consciousness is. And it just shows you how our Western science doesn't understand consciousness. And the way that you, in this book, have really introduced people to these concepts, for some people, is gonna be an introduction. And to at least open up that possibility in their mind that maybe there's more to, to this world than I can see. And you bring in concepts of Buddhism, you bring in, again, astral travel, there's some shamanism, you know, in there. I love the way you blend it all together without being preachy or people feel like they're being, you know, taught something necessarily overtly. But you're expanding minds.

Well, I think that it's interesting that the, the therapist, the psychiatrist Ben, is very science-oriented with things. And he's become more so after the loss of his daughter, because he, he almost retreated into this cave of rationality and wondering how could he help her. I mean, he was a doctor, and he didn't catch the symptoms of the disease that she had. He blames himself. If he could have just added on a little more time onto her life, which, or helped her live a little bit longer. And so he's become like almost ultra-rational. So he's confronted by things that he doesn't understand. I think if we really look around, you know, ask yourself, are there miracles today? I think there are many miracles. I think Life is a miracle when you think about it.

Yeah.

To think that the universe started from, uh, the size of a pinhead. Yeah, that just blows my mind. So everything that is here happened or somehow had a potential for intelligence. I think the intelligence was built into that Big Bang, that whatever happened there had intelligence, and that, um, we're tapping the source somehow with our own. Every time you have a creative idea, I think humans are, are very unique in that we're, we're creative and we're able to do, uh, imagine things. Imagination, um, is really like tapping into genius every time you touch your imagination. And so I think that sometimes we underplay our abilities.

Yeah, right.

Yeah. And yeah.

And yeah, I 100% agree, you know, and I forget who said it, because you said I was thinking about— someone said either everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. And I'm coming to the conclusion where I think everything is a miracle. It's, and the universe is based on consciousness, and the material is derivative of that. And even in the field of psychology, psychiatry, and I don't know that much about it, but I'm learning more about Jung. And I guess the Jung school of thought is, is being downplayed now in modern teaching. And the more I learned about Jung, I'm like, this guy knew what was going on. I think Freud was like, I don't know what, where Freud was coming from, but Jung knew what was going on. And interesting, Jung had an NDE, I guess. So Jung was coming from an expanded consciousness point of view. And he's in synchronicity and all that kind of stuff. We would call that in our Western mindset, we would call that miraculous.

Right? Yeah. Jung was amazing. And I think that his work, it doesn't easily fit into a diagnostic way of looking at things. And that's why it's been kind of squelched or ignored nowadays in graduate school trainings. Now, when I went to school, we had a chapter on Jung, but nowadays counseling theories often avoid him. I mean, it's shocking to me.

Yeah, it's a real loss.

Yeah, that's a big loss. I think that we need to get back to that childhood state of wonder again. And that can be very powerful. I remember one time I was teaching a mindfulness class at Lewis Clark College in graduate school. And so I had everybody go outside. I said, well, I want you to spend 20 minutes really looking at nature again as if you have never seen it before, right? And so, uh, and there was a nice grassy field behind the graduate school and And I noticed, I went out there and watched the students, and I noticed one woman was on her hands and knees, uh, just very, almost very slowly, like kind of creeping along. And I was wondering, what is she doing?

Yeah.

So anyway, everybody came back in after 20 minutes. I chimed, rang a little bell, everybody came back in, and I asked for some of the experiences, and, and her hand shot up, and I I said, so, uh, tell us. I noticed you were on all fours kind of looking at the grass. What were you doing? She said, I, I experienced the most incredible thing. I was watching a worm, and I didn't know if it was going to wriggle to the right or wriggle to the left, and I just She said, I, I think I became one with the worm. And she just had regained in that moment that, uh, you know, that separation that we often have between what we see— the observer and the observed are separate— but she lost that separateness in that moment, and she was just immersed in nature and just being present.. And that's what the beauty of— and I think that can bring us into a miraculous state of the miracle, the mystery of the miraculous, of awe, when we are able to get that thinking discursive mind out of the way, even for a little bit. You know, I think everybody in our audience, you know, think about the times that you did see something like a sunset, or the sun, or the sun rising in the morning over the water. Or maybe I remember when I went to see the Grand Canyon, I walked up to the edge and I looked down and I, I went into a state of awe. I was like, unbelievable, right? Or just looking up at the sky. And then how could we feel that same, feel that same state of awe when we're with somebody, right?

Right.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because we do, we can all relate to those moments. As you said, the Grand Canyon, I remember the first, the only time I've seen the Grand Canyon, but driving up, and if you've never seen it in person, you, you have no idea what it's like, you really can't conceive of it. And I saw that, and then I'm an engineer. And I'm thinking, oh, how long did this take to carve? This is, this is, this is amazing. When you look at all those layers and think this, and you go to Sedona, and you see the red rocks, and then for most people, it's like, oh, the red rocks are really pretty. Again, my engineer mind is like, this was all underwater at one point. This was, this was under the ocean. This is— so it's just, our world is, is amazing. And if we can, we can actually bring that into our everyday lives. And that's, that's a practice that we can, we can do. And like that woman did, because you gave her that exercise, we can all go outside right now. And I can look outside and look at this tree that's growing in front of my house. And I remember when the tree was planted, you know, and just think about what it takes to grow through the seasons. So that's a mindset that we can, we can all have. And it's, again, getting back to the book, I love the way you have been rediscovering a way of looking at the world. And then the conflicts it presents in his Western world, right? Because, like, Ben, you got to get back on the path, you got to do things by the book. This is, this is the way we do things. So I could so relate to his character and, you know, his, his unfolding, his opening to a different way of looking at the world.

Yeah, I mean, he's very, very resistant to exploring different ideas of consciousness. At one point, his young patient, the suicidal patient who comes in to see him, starts having almost visions or hallucinations, what we might call that, but to the young man, it's not that at all.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

And I think that it's a lot of this book too, about spiritual initiation. How do we go through an initiation? You can do a shamanic journey. Sometimes, I think grief is definitely an initiation. Or any kind of a struggle we go through is an opportunity for an initiation. Um, I had a major depression in my early 20s, and I think from my family history, and, um, and I started to experience out-of-body awareness and different things. And I remember the first time it happened, I was lying in bed, and I was in this depression, I was being treated. But I was lying in bed, and I felt this rumble in my head. And it was almost like a freight train. I mean, it was, it was so thunderous and loud and the vibration. And in that moment, I made a conscious decision to be curious about it, not to be afraid of it, whatever this was. I, I remember thinking, you know what, this must be a normal process. I'm going to just observe it. And that vibration, um, which I later, uh, in my way of thinking, was my life. You know, we have a life energy and I could actually sense that vibration as a life energy and move it through my body. And then, um, actually, uh, from there I would sometimes experience, uh, what I think were maybe different lifetimes, or, uh, or just leaving the body and viewing things remotely. And I realized, you know, it didn't take away my depression because I'd wake up the next morning or whatever, and I feel this tremendous heaviness. But it helped me recognize that, you know, this is not the whole picture. There's something more. And so it was almost like a release valve for me, and to let me know that there was something beyond this, mired in this depression as I was, it's something else I could look forward to.

Yeah, I want to make a comment, and then I want to come— I'm gonna come back to depression. But again, this is just synchronicities in my life, because I was reading Tom Campbell's book right before I put it down to pick up your book. And in his book, one of the sections of his book is his basically his biography. And he talks about these when he was young, these travelers, he didn't use the word travelers, but these beings would come to him and take him out of his body. And he'd take him out of his body, they go and they play and they train, but they were training him and all this stuff. And but when they would take him out, he would like lose consciousness right at the moment of separation. And he said, I want to do this on my own. I want to be able to have this experience without you knocking me out. They said, you're not going to like it. It's not pleasant. When they did that, he described it almost exactly the way that you just did. So I don't know if you read his book yet or not. But he talks about this rumbling, this rumbling, that this vibration that he felt. And I know people that travel out of body, and they describe that as well. They're like, right at the point you're separating, you'll feel this rumbling. A lot of people get scared and they, they pop back into their body.

Yeah.

So I wanted to talk about that. But you mentioned depression. And I'm curious, like, what your thoughts are on like treating depression, because you, you said I had depression in my, in my early 20s. But you also mentioned the cause. And psychology today seems more like we don't care about the cause. We don't— they don't think they even think there is a cause other than your brain chemistry. So if you're depressed, we're going to give you this pill, and this is going to fix it. So what are your thoughts on that?

Well, I have some pretty, you know, strong thoughts about that. A lot of times our depression is because of our conditions in our life, right? We can learn to cope with those. The best way to share this is a story with a client that I worked with. And she came to see me. And she had had a family history of depression. And that's what she said. She's— I have depression. I'm depressed. It's in my family. There's nothing I can do about it. Her grandmother had been institutionalized.

Her—

one of her parents, I think, committed suicide from depression. She had been on antidepressants since she was like 8 years old, something like that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and I didn't try to change her story. I said, okay, you know, let's work on some skills that you can use to manage things that happen in your life. And over time— and it took, I mean, this doesn't happen overnight, it was over a long period of time— she started to feel that she had some new skills to manage her depression. Right, right. And, um, and she's, and she's, she's the one that said to me, you know, I want to titrate off, I want to get off those meds. And I said, well, you know, I'm not a prescriber. But if that's what you want to do, talk to your prescriber, and you want to do it the right way. Make sure you go off slowly, because you can't just instantly stop. And it didn't work for her the first time, but we kept working on more tools. And eventually, she did actually titrate off those medications. And her story changed. Her story changed into— I have depressive episode that I can— that I've learned to manage with, with a set of skills now.

Yeah, I love that. I love that story so much for so many reasons. One is you gave her some agency, you, you, because you're giving up control. And it's like my parents, because it runs in my family too, you know, depression, anxiety. And so, you know, a lot of times doctors will say, oh, well, your mother was depressed, your grandmother was depressed, you're going to be depressed. Here's this pill. I don't know if you've ever— there's a book by a guy named Johann Hari, Lost Connections. I love it. I've read it several times. He's not a psychologist, but he's done a lot of studies on this. And thing is, typically when someone is depressed, I mean, so it's amazing that we're not all depressed because we live in a crazy world. There's a lot of stuff going on. There's a lot of loneliness. That's why he talks about lost connections. We Even though we live in a world full of 8 billion people, most of us feel alone. And we can learn some of these skills. And I think there's a place for medication. I think it— I look at it, I now say it's like putting a cast on a broken leg. Sometimes you're so bad off, need to be on it for a while. And I was on antidepressants for a while. But when I went on them, I talked to my psychologist. And I said, I'm going to go on these medications, but I want to have a plan to get off of them. And so I said, when you say it's okay, then I'll go back to my doctor and we'll, we'll people titrate off of them. And that's exactly what I did. I think it was on them for 6 months, maybe a year. But I didn't want to be on them for the rest of my life. And I don't think they're effective long-term.

Well, I kind of feel the same way. I mean, I remember during my depression, I had some medications that helped me just relieve the pain for a brief period of time.

Right.

And just to feel what it was like not to be in that state of heaviness and depression. And that was helpful to me. But I— but my goal was not to stay on that. Right. But to not have to use that. It was like a crutch.

And it worked.

Like you say, if you're broken your leg, you need crutches for a while.

Yeah. And crutch sometimes has a negative connotation in our society. But you need crutches sometimes. So there's nothing— there's nothing wrong with it. You know, there's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with it. But again, that The dependence we have on drugs in our society is what I push back against. And in your book, you know, there's, there's people here that are psych— psychotic, you know, they're in the mental, mental institution. And I wonder sometimes that people that say they hear voices, are some of them hearing, you know, angels or other beings and guides and stuff? We assume everybody hears voices is crazy. So what are your thoughts on, on treating, you know, schizophrenia, for example?

Yeah, well, um, I have to say that I did talk to— it's a good thing I didn't report to my psychiatrist I was seeing at the time about my experiences about a body and the vibration in my head. Um, I did talk to one neurologist who, um, I said, well, I didn't say it was me, but I talked about just generally, and they said, well, this person is having a epileptic seizures, and they need to be treated for that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

So, um, but in the case of schizophrenia, um, uh, I, I, I know somebody who, uh, was diagnosed with schizophrenia who was, um, actually was having an awakening experience. Um, and he went to a monastery, and he'd been institutionalized. It broke his relationship with his parents. They thought he was schizophrenic, and, and he later went to a monastery, and there was some monk there who told him, he said, no, you're having an awakening experience. And he's since, uh, had a very, uh, interesting career, and he hasn't had any real emotional problems since then. But for some people— and I think schizophrenia is about 1.5% of the population— for people who are having, or sometimes hearing voices. They're not, maybe not sleeping, and they have delusions. For a percentage of those, I think medication really helps. It helps with the hallucinations. If somebody's having a delusion, medication can't really help with that. And I've worked with people that had delusions And I'm sure your daughter will experience this. She works in the field. Yeah, that you cannot break a delusion using cognitive therapy or any kind of— it just, you can't do it. Yeah, somebody believes it so strongly. And sometimes I think a lot of us have our own delusions, even though we're considered normal.

Yeah.

Right.

I want to— you said that I was thinking about in the book, because you actually you actually bring some of these delusions that people have— not delusions, but tendencies people have. And like, the young suicidal patient is represented by a couple of dragons that are in him. And there's a, you know, so people, these, these beings, these entities that are attaching to them, are represented physically, but not physically in our world that we can perceive, but in a different realm that are attached to them. And it reminded me of in the Bible, you know, when they talked about, you know, people being possessed by demons. And again, in modern Western psychology, we say there's no— there are no spiritual influences, it's all your mind. So if you're having these episodes or these things, it's all you. And again, you're introducing this idea, which is a more ancient idea that there are entities that influence us.

Yes, I think there are. It's not always so simple to say that it's just your mind is broken somehow, or that you have the wrong connections or the transmitters aren't working in the brain right. I mean, sometimes we just don't know. Maybe we do know that some antipsychotics can help people with schizophrenia not have as many delusions. They tend to happen in adolescence. Schizophrenia does. Adolescence into early adulthood tends to be a time when it happens. And sometimes you'll see it in families. Also that it seems to be hereditary to some extent. But, uh, the idea that you could maybe, uh, uh, be cured or, uh, healed in some spiritual fashion, I, I think is important to consider also, right?

Right.

Again, and not a— not a— not one idea isn't exclusive of the other. You might need medication and you could do the other kind of healing as well, right? Right.

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have to be either or, you know, it can be both. I think there are people who are schizophrenic, people are mentally ill. But and it's, it's interesting with the young character in the book, because what the delusions he's having, hallucinations he's having are not harmful. In fact, they're helping him. So if someone is having something that's, that's helping them, you know, perhaps it is, you know, something. And it was interesting, just a couple of days ago, someone commented on my, on my YouTube videos, they said, I had an NDE, but it wasn't a medical condition. They said there was, they lost a child. And they said they were meditating. And then she said, I had an NDE. I said, I don't think what you had was an NDE, because the way she described it sounded more like an OOBE. She went out of her body. Now, it's the same effects, but different cause. NDE is caused when your, when your body shuts down, your brain stops, your heart stops, right? I've known people who have had spontaneous out-of-body experiences. Where it's just like, boom, they were just out of their body. And one guy was— he wasn't a believer in this stuff at all. He didn't believe in souls. He didn't believe in the afterlife. He didn't believe anything. And one day he was sitting in his room, and he just went out of his body. He's like, I don't believe. It's like, I know, because I've left my body. Yeah. So I, you know, it— these things happen. And I love, again, in the book, how you talk about these, you know, you know, poor Ben, it's like his mind's just blown. You know, he starts traveling.

Oh, he thinks he's having his own psychotic break at one point, losing touch with reality. Of course. Yeah.

And there's one point because you mentioned, you know, awakening, you know, because at one point in the book, I'm like, I think Ben's having a kundalini awakening because the way you described the way it was happening. So explain how people might think they're going crazy when this starts to happen to them.

Oh yeah, I mean, when you start to experience another, a transcendent reality, um, it's, it's totally divorced from our typical day-to-day experience. So it can be very frightening for someone to suddenly be out of their body or to hear that vibration in them or to release this Kundalini energy. And it's fascinating. I was in my 20s. I was reading a book called The Occult by Colin Wilson. It's a wonderful book. And as I was reading that book, I remember one morning I woke up, and he talks about all different— I think he has some Kundalini experiences, different things in there. And I woke up one morning and I felt something different. I felt like I was charged up with energy. Now normally I wake up in the morning and I'm kind of groggy. I hope I'm not groggy this morning as we're talking. But I would wake up kind of groggy, and I need a lot of sleep, like, you know, 9 hours of sleep, or, you know, and— but that morning, I remember I woke up like 7 o'clock, totally awake. I'd already, you know, had my coffee, and, and I noticed my mind was quicker. And I noticed that I didn't have doubts. Imagine living suddenly with no doubts. And I was like, I felt this incredible change in my mind, in my body. And I wondered if this was Kundalini. Well, the next day I woke up and I felt the same way. And I remember having conversations with friends and even telling them about this. Something happened to me, and I don't— and, and it was uncomfortable. I wasn't, uh, you know, I wasn't familiar with this feeling. Um, but what struck me the most was not having any doubts in my mind. I thought about doing things and I was like, oh, this is the right thing to do, and I just made the decision.

Wow, right?

It wasn't. And, and so there was a sense of clarity and a sense of energy, and it went on for, uh, 2 weeks. And I thought, wow, this is just going to be— my, my life's going to be different now because I'm just like, you know, it's like if somebody plugged in a battery pack into me. And I was right. And then I think it was after, on the 15th day, I woke up and I was groggy like I used to be. And I realized, whoa, that energy, whatever it was— and I went back to the old thinking patterns that I had, but I had a glimpse of something different. And I think that's important, that when we have these— and I think that's why we need these experiences, we need these transcendental experiences, we need to, uh, kind of get out of our habitual ways of thinking and being to see that there's something else, right?

Yeah, yeah. As you said that, I was thinking about a woman I interviewed on my show, Mary Terhune, who had a spontaneous, like, enlightened experience, if you want to call it that, where she saw, like, the energy around everything around her, the grass and the flowers. And, and, but, and I thought, well, wow, that's really cool. But she said, well, I went to work and I couldn't work. She said, I just sat there smiling. And I realized you can't live in that state on this planet, because we have things that we have to do. And so it's, it's— you're right, you get that glimpse, you get that charge. And you carry that, you know, forward with you as you go into our, our mundane, our routine things that we have to do. There's one thing in the book that I want to selfishly ask you to expand on, if you could, because when, when Ben has this experience, where he sees like a younger version of himself, he's older version of himself. And then like, you mentioned Jesus, and like, everything like changes, and I'm like, and then you kind of moved on. So what does Jesus mean to you? I'm just curious.

Well, that's based on experience that actually happened to me.

Okay.

Where I was in that awareness state, where I was feeling that energy vibration going through me. And I had the thought, I wonder what would happen if I'd say a different word. And I thought the name Jesus came into my head. And the vibration just, it became massive. It increased like 100-fold. And I was, I was shocked and a little afraid, a little frightened. Like, wow, why is there so much energy in this word?

Interesting, right?

And I think there is a lot of energy behind Jesus and what he did. And what he represents and what he stands for, and that that energy must reach out into that quantum consciousness. And I did an experiment. I tried the Buddha, and I had the similar— interesting, yeah— kind of expansion of energy. So I think, uh, you know, and if you— interesting, if you read some of these Indian sages of what they say, it's like everything we do is an imprint. You know, you walk on the sand and the beach, you leave an imprint of your foot on that sand, right? And so in the same way, every thought we have, uh, every action we take has an imprint. And so then I think the energy of Jesus, his imprint is very powerful, very strong, and what it's created, and we can, um, kind of tap into that right, and experience that, and the positivity of that is there for everyone.

Wow.

Yeah, thanks. I'm glad I asked that question. And I really appreciate the way you put that. I was raised as a Christian. I don't call myself Christian anymore. But Jesus is still just fascinating to me. And I interviewed a young man, his name's Jacob Cooper. He had a near-death experience when he was 3 years old. He was raised as an Orthodox Jew. And he says he experienced Jesus in his out-of-body experience. I'm like, why would a 3-year-old Jew experience Jesus? A lot of people think— yeah, yeah. And a lot of people have NDEs, experience Jesus. And people said, well, Jacob was influenced by his culture. He still grew up in America. So, you know, he's— well, he was 3. I don't think he knew a lot about Jesus. And he certainly wasn't expecting to see him. A lot of people have NDEs, you know, experience Jesus. And again, I was just reading Tom Campbell's book right before I started reading your book. And there are these entities, there's a lot more than human beings in the universe, there are all kinds of entities. And even thought forms can take on like a life. So we all concentrate on something. And we create a character. There's a woman I know that, that said she channeled Thor, and she's like, Thor is not real. You know, Thor is a fictional character, but she's a medium and she channels and they like, yeah, Thor is real because he's been created by thought like we all have. So it's a really interesting concept. So I was, I was just finishing up your book this morning. I listened to books because I usually do it when I'm walking. And I was walking, I heard that part. I'm like, I gotta ask him about Jesus, because that was really interesting. But like I said, you kind of moved on really quick after you brought it up.

Yeah, have you? So how does that resonate with you when you think about Jesus? I mean, you grew up, and it had a certain special meaning for you.

You know, for me, it's interesting, because growing up as a Christian, I grew up with like, okay, God was to me the bad guy, because God was the guy who's going to send me to hell. God's gonna punish me. And Jesus was the guy that saved me. So I love Jesus. I thought Jesus was really cool. I still love Jesus. And I still love Jesus' teachings. And I look at Jesus as like, pure compassion, pure love, no judgment, you know, a brother, a big brother, a guide, someone to follow. And, you know, some people would say he's the ambassador to Earth, you know, maybe, maybe there are other types, you know, in other places, but Jesus is like the ambassador of the ultimate self, the ultimate consciousness to Earth. There's, I think there's something very special about Jesus. Now, whether that's because of the human being Jesus being so special, or because of all the energy that flows around that, that thought, I don't know. Yeah. So I still, I still call myself a follower of Jesus. I still am a big admirer of Jesus. I think, I think they're special. You know, Buddha is another special person. I tell people, I think Martin Luther King was a special person that gave his life for his people. There are lots of people, Gandhi, um, there, you know, but, but Jesus is, you know, Jesus became very popular. He, he did a good job.

Yeah, yeah. I really like to think that what separates us from these people that we admire, whether they're spiritual beings or just somebody in our life, is our next action, right? And we need to really think about and become more intentional. That's really, of course, what mindfulness is. And how do we overcome our fear to embrace this moment, to love more, to love others? Right? I think that's the big challenge we're facing. You talk about Jesus and his love and compassion. I think that's one of the great challenges we face is to get past the small self, right, with all the biases and the, you know, all the shoulds that we have. You know, you probably heard that, don't should all over yourself. Yeah, I should do this, I should do that, or they should do this, they should do that. To get beyond that and to be more expansive and compassionate. When I used to do a lot of workshops, which I haven't since COVID Brian, but when I would do workshops, I would tell about, tell the story of, that Tolstoy wrote in the 1880s. It's called The Three Questions. And this story is about, you know, what's the best thing to do at all times? Who are the most important people? And when is the most important thing to do anything? When is the most important time? And in this short story that Tolstoy wrote in the 1880s about a king that lives in a village somewhere. And he's very philosophical, wants to know the answers to these questions. And so he puts out a reward in the kingdom, anybody who can answer these questions can get this very generous reward. And what happens is, you know, he gets inundated, everybody writes in, he's got a big stack of answers. And he goes through these, and he realizes everybody has a bias. Right? Like, who are the most important people to work with? Well, the musicians said, we're the most important because we make people dance and feel good. And the doctor said, no, doctors are the most important because we heal people. So he heard about a wise old hermit, and he treks out there, finds this hermit, and the hermit doesn't want to give him the answers at first, apparently. But then finally the king's going to give up and ready to go back down to the village when this man comes through the bramble and the brush and he's bleeding. And he falls down at the feet of the king and the king decides to stay there all night and try to nurse this man back to health. Now, he does. In the morning, the man's breathing becomes more regular and he looks up at the king and he says, you know, I came here I know who you are. You're the king. I came here, I followed you. I was going to assassinate you. And the king is shocked. He says, what? And the man says, yeah, there was that war between your kingdom and mine. I lost my house. My brother was killed in that war. And so you became a sworn enemy of mine. And I vowed to take vengeance on you. And And, and he said, your guard— that turns out the king had come to this place with a guard and attendant who were down at the bottom of the hill. He left them down there, but that they had a tussle with this man. And that's how the man got wounded. So the king brings them back, says, look, take this man back with you. You know, to the village, to our village, just get him a house and make sure he gets our best doctors. And the man's very grateful and says, I, you know, I must have had you all wrong. I'll be your loyal servant. So that's— King is left there with the hermit. And the king says, well, I didn't get my answers from you. I guess, I guess you just didn't know the answers, or, or too, you know, maybe you just don't know. And King turns to go and the hermit says, wait, Says, King, you just got the answers to your 3 questions. The most important person is the one who is with you right in front of you right now, because if you hadn't helped that— when the most important thing to do is to help whoever is with you, and if you hadn't helped that man, you wouldn't have saved his life and he wouldn't have become a loyal person to you. And the most important time is now because We don't know what we'll have in the future, what, what will be there for us, but we do know what we have now.

Yeah.

And so it's a beautiful little story, um, and I was supposed to share that story. I remember I was teaching at Portland State, Brian, and, and, um, it was the morning of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. And somebody came up to me and they said, they told me about that, and I hadn't heard it. And I, I had us do some silent, uh, prayer, silence for the, for the victims. And, um, and I almost didn't do this, tell that story, because after the story I have people sit in silence for 3 minutes looking at one another. We get a partner and you just sit with them in silence. And I thought, well, I better— this might be too raw for people, but I decided to go ahead and do it. And I think, uh, even though I was choked up, hearing that story made it very real for people that, you know, the one they were sitting right opposite, would they be here tomorrow? I mean, in truth, we, we don't own or purchase the future, right?

We think we do.

And, um, so to sit with people for— and I, by the way, I'm not suggesting you get your partner and say, hey, let's sit in silence and look at each other for 3 minutes, because I primed them with that story of the 3 questions first, and I got them ready for it, and I explained, uh, some guidelines for sitting in that silence. But I would have people who would sit and look at the other people and say, oh my God, I felt like I was looking at myself.

Life, right?

Um, suddenly, uh, they were able to touch compassion and look at another person. You know, the word compassion means to be with suffering. How can you be with the suffering of another? I mean, who hasn't suffered? Who hasn't lost? You know, we started this show talking about loss, and who hasn't lost somebody? So, um, It's a very powerful experience to just to be with anybody.

Yeah, you know, I, we're coming to the end of our time. And you're a mindfulness expert. And I want to talk about mindfulness, but you just, I think, summed it up so well, that, that the most important person is the person right in front of you, the most important time is now, you know, and that, that understanding that, that's, that's been my impression, what mindfulness is, it's being in the moment. And mindfulness means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some people, it means meditation. I hear all the time, I can't meditate. But you just did a great job, I think, of talking about what it means, you know. And, and, you know, as, as I know, my daughter, you know, she went to bed one day, she didn't wake up the next day. So I know very well that, you know, tomorrow is not promised anybody. We all say it, we all pay it lip service. We need these reminders, you know, like like Sandy Hook, and the young man just was killed by the police a couple days ago. The video just came out yesterday. You know, he was a few blocks from his house. It could happen to any of us at any time. So life is precious. I want to give you a chance to— any last things you want to say before we wrap up? Anything? Any questions I didn't ask you want to answer? Or let people know, let people know about the book also. But first, just tell me if there's anything you'd like to say before we wrap up.

Yeah, well, I think the idea that is that we're all traveling here. We're all travelers, right? And if we can, let's help the other travelers who are around us. When you're traveling, you don't— you might not travel to another city, maybe you don't have a map, you depend on other people to help you. And it's the same way though, even though we're traveling through this life, we depend on one another. And I think it's important to be there for one another. And that's kind of the essence of the book Travelers, actually, the realization that Ben, the psychiatrist, has.

Yeah, absolutely. So the book again is Travelers by Donald Altman. We're recording this on January 28, 2023. By the time you hear it, the book will be available.

Actually, I think it's available now. I was like, yeah, I think the publisher just said, hey, it's available.

The notes I got was February 1st, but that's a couple days anyway, this won't be out for a few weeks. Okay, I have to say, I absolutely recommend it. It's, it's a, it's a great read. It's, you know, hopefully now that we've had this conversation, you've heard it, listeners, you'll understand more some of the themes in it. And hopefully it opens your mind up to a broader reality.

I don't think we gave away any of the suspense in the book either.

No, no, there's a lot more. There's, there's, there's a whole lot more. But I did want to touch on those themes. And like I said, I can relate to the characters. And you did, I think, a fantastic job. A lot of my listeners have, have lost children. And someone just the other day asked me— I have a thing where people can ask me questions— and she said, I'd like for you to address what happens between a couple when they've lost a child.. And I think you did a really good job in this book of explaining a situation. They're not all the same, but a situation that's actually pretty— it's very common that they look at it differently. And because of that, looking at it differently, it creates a wedge because each one is judging the other person's way of going through their grief.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So it's been a pleasure being here with you, by the way. I really enjoyed it.

Yeah, me too. Well, enjoy the rest of your day.

Oh, thank you, Brian D Smith.

Hi there, I'm really excited to tell you about my latest ebook. It's 4 Lessons That You Can Learn From a Near-Death Experience Without Going through all the trouble of dying to learn them. I've been studying NDEs for several years now. I am completely convinced that not only are they 100% real, but that there's some very universal wisdom that we can get from the near-death experience.

And I've distilled that down in this book into 4 short lessons.

And I've also given you all the reasons why I believe that NDEs are absolutely real. So go to www.grieftogrowth.com/NDElessons to pick it up for free. www.grief2growth.com/NDElessons.

I hope you enjoy it.