How To Practice Radical Acceptance In All Areas Of Life | Mark Hyman & Tara Brach

Being outside, moving on this earth is really the healing recipe pretty much for all of us.

I want to talk about some of the challenges we face. A lot of us have these negative and harmful stories. I'm definitely a victim of that. And there are stories that I tell myself that are not necessarily true, but that keep me suffering. So how do we release those stories and the imprisonment that we have in our emotional states that we get from the thinking of these stories, the repeating of these stories?

And that's what happens is we have stories that come with feelings in our body that lead to behaviors. And we get very trapped so that people come to me and their deepest despair is that they're still playing the same pattern that they they were playing when they were 16. They're doing the same ways of avoiding intimacy or of clinging onto somebody or the same addictive eating or whatever it is. And so we do need to interrupt the patterns with some sort of intentional way of deepening attention. And what I mean by that is we need to be able to pause and find some way of witnessing and noticing with kindness what's going on. Because even a little bit of an interruption actually changes the neural pathways around. We actually, you know, this is the great discovery of neuroplasticity. We actually can change our brains and our minds and our hearts and our consciousness. So, The practice that I teach a lot that weaves together coming into that presence and kindness is rain, which I know you know about.

Can you share what that is?

Yeah, it's so powerful if you're stuck in a pattern that's causing suffering. Rain, again, it's a weave of mindfulness and self-compassion. And the letters, it's an acronym, are recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. And I'll give you an example of RAIN. I'll give you a personal example. This was, through the pandemic, people have used RAIN a lot. So I get people telling me, RAIN has saved my life. Well, when my mother moved down here, and this was, Oh, she moved down here when she was maybe 78 or 80. She came right at a time, super busy. I was trying to put together all the material for a new book and so on. And I was really torn because I was feeling very guilty about not spending enough time with her. And I was also feeling anxious about getting work done and coming through on my teachings. Now, this is a basic cluster for me. If you say, you know, What are your issues? Guilt, like, I am very programmed to want to come through for everybody and very, I get a lot of angst when I feel like I'm falling short. So that's a whole story cluster. And then the other one is, on the enneagram, if you're familiar, is I'm a three, which is a performer who wants to make sure she's coming across well. And so I get anxious about not being prepared. So those were, Those were playing out. And I remember one day I was right here in my office and she came in, she was living here then, and she had a New Yorker article she wanted to show me. And I was completely focused on my screen writing a talk, believe it or not, on loving kindness, which is embarrassing, but that's what I was doing.

Get out of here, you're busy. I'm running late.

Right, right, you're in my way, you know. And so she was very discreet. She just put it down and started retreating. And I turned and I saw her and I thought, wow, I don't know how long I'll have her. So after she left, I did a practice with RAIN. And the recognize is recognizing okay, guilt, but also anxious. The allow is just what we were talking about earlier, Mark, which is Okay, just let it be here. This is the reality of this moment. It's here. Just not try to judge it or ignore it. Okay, anxiety, guilt. The investigate, it's not cognitive. That's an important piece. It's cognitive only, you might identify what you're believing. And for me, I was believing, well, I'm letting her down, but I'm also gonna could fail. But it's mostly somatic. with investigate, you're investigating how am I experiencing this directly in my body? And for me, I could feel the, excuse me, I could feel the clutching in my chest and just the tightness and breathing with it, letting it be there, and really sensing what that part of me, that anxious, guilty place needed. And what it really needed was to be reminded of my goodness, that I was a loving, being and that the truth would flow through in teaching. It wasn't going to take a whole lot of selfing to do it. And so that was the nurturing. The nurturing was to put, I like to put my hand on my heart and I often teach it with nurturing, the self-compassion, just to say, it's okay, sweetheart, just trust your goodness.

And.

Right, There's a piece with rain where I call it After the Rain, where you just sense the presence that is emerging. And after that kind of presence and compassion, I could just feel I was resting in a much larger, more peaceful, more spacious, more tender place. And I practiced this a lot, Mark, for a few months when my mom, this was still the early days of her being here, and I found that I started really showing up more. Like, we could have our salads in the evening, these giant salads, and I'd just be present and we'd go for our walks by the river. And she died maybe three years later. And deep grief, of course, but not regrets. And I realized that Raine had saved my life moments with my mother. It had really given me that. And so it's just an example of how I'd been caught in the stories and the feelings and by interrupting with Raine, which is just mindfulness and compassion, it really shifted my inner patterning.

Yeah, that's beautiful. I mean, it's a beautiful way of framing a way of investigating and thinking about any feelings we're having or any emotions or any thoughts you're having. It's just like a deliberate, clear practice, recognize, allow and investigate and nurture. They're really simple ideas, but they're really powerful. I'm kind of moved by the thinking about applying that to things that I have challenges with. So I think it's great.

One of the things about it that's helpful to people is that when we're triggered, we have very little access to our prefrontal cortex. We forget how to get back home again, you know? And so this gives a pretty easy to remember sequence. It's not inviolable, you know. Once you go deeper into the practice, you'll find that it's not so logically A, B, C, D. But doesn't matter. There's still a way in which those elements are crucial. Now, if there's trauma, if the triggering is traumatic, you actually have to start with the nurturing. You have to start by creating more safety before you dive in and try to feel the feelings. And that's an important thing for people to know.

Wow. Yeah, so sometimes the order is different of how you engage with that practice, right? Sometimes the dark and the shadows is where the light actually starts to come in. And I know you've suffered a number of really challenging situations in your life, your mother's alcoholism, miscarriage, genetic issues that you have that you struggle with. I've certainly had issues of health crises and family issues and relationship stuff. and just life itself. And some people can be really in some ways poisoned by those experiences and turn dark and bitter and angry and hurt and isolated. And yet many people find a different way out of those experiences into a very different way of being. So for you, how your hardship shaped and how those difficulties led you to find your way towards mindfulness?

Well, first, I want to agree with you that suffering does have a potential to wake us up. And maybe just to give you an example of how I got turned towards mindfulness, when I was in college, I was probably peaking in angst. I wasn't alone. I had many others angsty, but depression, anxiety, and it really kind of the hub of it was just a lot of self-hatred. And I remember at one point being on a camping trip with a friend who said, you know, I'm learning to be my own best friend. And how far I was from that. So it just kind of opened up my eyes to, oh my gosh, you know, I hate my body. I feel like I'm failing in my relationships with others. I'm, you know, compulsively overeating, I'm not producing, you know, just every front. So that was a real pit of suffering. And interestingly, at the same time, I was very much a social activist. So I was out there, you know, and on the weekends we'd have rallies and there was a lot of agitation there. But I started doing a yoga class. So Weekends I was agitated and then Tuesday nights, you know. Ah, and it was yoga and meditation. And I remember one night mark where I was, it was right after class, I was walking home and it was spring and fragrance of the fruit trees. And I stopped and realized that my body and my mind were in the same place. at the same time.

Wow, what a discovery.

Amazing. And with that, just such a feeling of peace and belonging to the world. And what really hit me then was, you know, if we want to change our world, it really has to come from a consciousness that is feeling love and connectedness, not agitation and shaking a fist at bad enemy others.

Right.

So it was those two things together, the sense of this is really who I can be, and also being at war with myself, that I made a kind of 180 degree, I was on my way to law school and I ended up in an ashram for 10 years.

Wow. Wow.

It was a big shift.

That's a law school to ashram. You couldn't get further apart, I don't think.

I know, I keep double taking on it, but yeah, that's what happened. In a way, I understand it now because I'm still really very dedicated to social change. And I know we have to keep on waking up our hearts in order to have it come from love, not from anger and hatred.

Yeah. I mean, you sort of touched on a little bit about the self-worth issue. And I think people have different degrees of self-worth or lack of self-worth. And often they're not even aware And I think this is true for me, not even aware of where the lack of self-worth lives. And I've always thought of myself as someone who's fairly, you know, fairly confident in myself and my abilities, that I love myself, that I feel like I have high levels of self-worth. But there was a lot of areas where I really wasn't showing up that way and it really was hard for me to see it. And I think, You call this the Trance of Unworthiness, you know, that you were caught in this trance of unworthiness. There was something always something wrong with life with you. How did you first sort of awaken to the idea that you could let go of that story and really accept yourself?

Well, for a lot of us, it's like what you said, it doesn't necessarily appear to us. And the reason I call it a trance is because most people, if I ask them, I do this at workshops, you know, how many of you judge yourself? And like, 98% of the hands will go up. But what people don't realize is that there's often this undercurrent of comparing ourselves to some idealized standard of who we should be or how we should feel or what we should be, how we should be behaving in this moment. It's like this inner monitor, like right now as we're doing this, there's a background inner monitor that in some way is evaluating. So how's it going? You know, that kind of a thing. And often we're not aware that there's a gap between how we want ourselves to be and how we're showing up. We're just not aware of it. And it can affect everything because, you know, we're social beings and we want to be accepted and loved. And if we feel we're falling short, it's profoundly threatening. And so we're not aware that there's that kind of fear and self-doubt And it impacts how close we can feel with others, and it impacts how much risk we can take at work or our willingness to be creative or just our ability to relax in the moment if we think we're in some way in the red and we have to make up for it. So it's a trance. And the cool thing is that when we shine a light on it and even get that there's this trance going on, there is something in us that has a yearning to be free from it and it starts activating healing. So just seeing the trance is the beginning of freeing from it.

So in a way, some way you're saying that people don't recognize that they are engaged in this battle with themselves against themselves, that they judge themselves, that they criticize themselves, that they see themselves in ways that are less than, and that they're measuring themselves against some standard of themselves that is just a fantasy. And that that disconnect, that disparity is what causes suffering for people. And that they're not even aware that they're doing it.

And that we all have been fed those standards. It's like, I'm not thinking my thoughts, I'm thinking society's thoughts about how I should be, you know? And we all have been conditioned by the same culture that says, you know, produce more and look this way and act this way. And, you know, everything from, you know, how skinny we should be to how spiritual we should be. We have these standards and our family is the messenger. And so they imprint it in a certain kind of constellation, but it's in there.

It's so true. I mean, we go through life thinking that our beliefs or ideas or feelings or thoughts are all original. They come from us that they're, you know, We don't realize how powerfully conditioned we are to behave and think and act in certain ways. And if you travel a lot, if you meet people from different cultures, especially radically different cultures, not Western cultures, you begin to see that, wow, there's a really whole set of different assumptions and beliefs and feelings and thoughts about life. I mean, I was just in Sardinia and I was up in the mountains and I was with this shepherd and we're sitting there talking about his life and what it's like. and I said, so do you have any stress? Like, you know, he's, he's, he's gone, like, 200 goats and sheep. And he says, well, he thought about it, and he's like, he'd almost, it was a puzzling question for him, you know? And then he says, well, you know, sometimes at night when a goat kind of wanders off, and that's, I had to go find it. That's stressful.

Oh, my God.

And then sometimes, like, it's, you know, when the goats give birth and we have to move mother's close to the house, and then they wake us up in the night, and we have to go help them. And I'm like, oh, okay. So, you know, it's like we are just in such different worlds, and he just had such a glow about him, such a, you know, sereneness. And his whole family was there helping with, you know, the. Their. Their home and the whole shepherding thing. And I was like, wow, you know, we really have different points of culture reference about. life and joy and happiness and meaning. And we've all gotten, you know, and I, I've been thinking, I was thinking about this today, Tara. I was thinking about how, you know, people from other cultures are quite different. So when I meet people from different cultures, I'm like, wow, they're, they're a frame of reference. They're way of seeing the world. You know, the, the, they're seeing the world through their eyes gives me a very different perspective about life. And it's, it's kind of liberating because I realized that all of my beliefs, thoughts of what I should do, my Notions, beliefs, ideas about how life should be, what I should be, what I should be doing, or not doing are so programmed and ingrained and never really begun to question them or question those thoughts about them. And now, and that's, you sort of asked me before you started the podcast, what am I doing now? And I'm really in an active process of really examining those beliefs, assumptions, my thoughts around everything, around my life, around, you know, love, around work, around where I want to be, what I want to be doing, you know, and it's, it's a very It's a very confronting experience because rather than just being in your life, you're sort of being witness to what's actually happening and you're going, Wait a minute. Is there a different way of thinking? And that's sort of what your work is really about, is inviting people into a different way of thinking about themselves and their life and what keeps them from joy and happiness and love.

Well, and I love the way you're describing it, whether we call it the practice of pausing and breaking out of our routines by traveling and experiencing other cultures, are pausing and breaking out of our routines by meditating and just bearing witness to the patterns in our own psyche, are pausing and breaking out of our patterns by being with people who are different from us. We live in cocoons of people that are very similar, most of us.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's only when we start truly engaging and really listening, like really curious to say, what's it like being you? That we start getting a real flash of, oh, I'm living inside that particular box. I mean, that's why it's so hard for many people to recognize their own racism. Of course we're all racist, we're all programmed in a certain way. and yet it's not unless we start really investigating and engaging with people who see our caste system from a different angle that we really get where we are in it.

It's so true. And I think that your work kind of is very similar to a lot of other things I've experienced, which is questioning your thoughts and your beliefs. And Byron Katie has that, what she calls the work. And we've had her on the podcast where she talks about how we we should be curious about our thoughts. Are they true? Like, it's just like, and my friend Daniel Lehmann, you know, talks about not believing every stupid thought you have, you know, like we tend to think of them as things that are constructs that are so solid and rigid and real and true, but they're often not, and they're often, like you said, very conditioned. So talk to us about how you came to this idea of radical acceptance and what it is and how do people invite that into their experience.

Sure. And just a thing about beliefs, like one of the biggest breakthroughs and freedoms I see in people is sometimes it comes after a retreat where they're quiet and just being present is the realization, I am not my thoughts.

Yeah, right.

I am not my thoughts. I don't have to believe these beliefs because they're such a prison. And I think the beliefs that are the most, cause the most suffering are the ones that make us feel separate. And they always have to do with a belief that in some way, I am off, something's wrong with me. One woman who was with her mother when her mother was dying, she was in a coma, she came out of her coma, you know, and had that lucidity sometimes people have for a moment. Yeah. Looked her in the eye and said, you know, All my life, I thought something was wrong with me.

-Wow. -The woman who was dying said, All my life, I thought something was wrong with me. -Wow.

-Those were her last words, Mark. -And then she realized, because she probably.

Realized there wasn't, right? She had some near-death or almost dying experience where she realized what it was all about, right?

That's exactly it. She got big enough. She was inhabiting a larger awareness that saw, oh, that's what I was believing. And for her daughter, it was tragic and also a kind of gift, because it says that there's a belief there, but there are ways to wake up out of our beliefs. And so radical acceptance is a way of saying, basically, it's this inner quality in us of awake awareness that is very allowing in the present moment. It just Absolutely allows whatever is here right now to be here. It doesn't make war with how it is. It doesn't add a belief that this is wrong or bad. So if I'm feeling right now, let's say, you know, self-consciousness or ashamed that I'm not coming through in some way, radical acceptance sees that and lets the feelings be there, but it doesn't buy into the belief. It just lets what's here be here. And what we find is that it's the precursor. It's the kind of what has to be there before true change can happen. It's like Carl Rogers put it this way, that I had to accept myself just as I was to be free to change. It's the precursor to change is that this moment we radically, unconditionally allow the moment to be as it is. We're not at war with the moment. So that was my first book because I was seeing how at war we always are. Like, I don't want it this way. I want to be different. I should be different. You should be different. Stopping the war.

Yeah, it's an interesting frame and it's hard to do because what you're essentially saying is whatever's happened in your life, in the moment is okay and that you can accept it while still being in the process of transformation. I mean, yesterday was a great day for me because I had to do that. I had to practice exactly what you're saying. I woke up, I felt okay and I went for dental activity and then I had a dental implant and it started to come out. and it was painful and uncomfortable and I think I didn't feel well, maybe it was infected, I don't know what was going on, I just felt like crap. And I just, you know, my day wasn't going very well and they were so, I had to move and it was just, it was a very disrupted day and I just was like, okay, this is what's happening right now for me. Like this is just my life in this moment and it will be different tomorrow. Like, and it's like that level of just like not fighting what is. And, you know, I could have gotten like so upset about the implant and that it fell out and I'm gonna have to go through this again or maybe I'll never be able to get a tooth or whatever. So I just, it was like I could go through a whole story but I just, I was like, oh, well this is what's happening. My tooth is doing this and I could be pissed about it. I could be angry about it. I mean, you know, it was interesting. Like I was talking to a friend yesterday who was chatting with all of a sudden, she, like, had to go, and she missed her flight, and she freaked out, and. And she didn't just go, okay, this is what's happening. Let me see what. What's next. It was, like, a huge source of anxiety and stress and Trauma rather than just, like, oh, like, this is what's happening. You know, like, I had. I had a. I had a 12 days plan with really close friends that we planned for a long time to go to this. farmhouse in Ibiza and hang out for a few weeks. And it was just something I've been really looking forward to. And the morning I was to fly here, I got a text from my friend saying he's got COVID. And I had a plane ticket, I had no place to stay. I didn't know what I was going to do, where I was going to go. And so all of a sudden this new reality of being alone for 12 days where I was going to be hanging out with my friends. And it's like I could fight it. I could be pissed. I could be lonely. I could be sad. I could be angry. and disappointed. I felt disappointed. I felt a little lonely and I felt a little frustrated. But then I was like, oh, well, this is, this is what it is. This is what it is. What am I gonna do? I just gonna enjoy it and do my thing and explore and see what happens next. And, you know, magic just keeps happening. Like, I don't, I don't have to worry. Like, I I, it's like, if you just accept what is because, you know, everything changes, then. A lot of suffering goes away.

You're available for what's next. Otherwise, you're all tense and you're fighting the moment. But here's what's always interesting to me is that sometimes we can't help that first round of reactivity. It's like your friend who missed the plane. Missing a plane actually can trigger a very deep sense of trauma in a lot of people.

Clearly. Yeah.

In fact, I would probably go into a major reactivity. I have a thing about missing planes. And so radical acceptance isn't that you don't end up getting anxious and uptight, it's that then you at some point bring acceptance to the reactivity that's there. Okay, I'm angry, I'm uptight, I'm down on myself for having done it. But at some point, if you can say, oh, okay, this is what's happening and make space for it. Then you begin to interrupt the chain reaction that really locks us into a very small, tight personhood. And so it can be anywhere along the chain that at some point you go, wait a minute, this is how life is this moment. And the fear people have about radical acceptance, and I hear this a lot, is, well, if I radically accept what's happening, then how am I going to really make a difference in the world? That's the fear. And I remember it really well because radical acceptance came out in 2003 and we were, as I was writing it and teaching about it, people said, well, if I radically accept that we're about to attack Iraq, 'cause that was going on back then, Then how am I going to stand up and try to in some way stop it? Because a lot of people anticipated the chain reaction of attacking Iraq. So what I described was my own process where I would read about the hawks in our government that were planning to attack and I'd feel a huge amount of agitation and anger. And what radical acceptance meant was, I say, okay, anger, anger, feeling it, open to it. And then I'd find underneath the anger, there was this really deep fear of what was going to happen, all the bloodshed and the proliferation and so on. And I'd say, okay, radically accepting the fear, open to it, feel it. Underneath the fear was grieving, you know, really a sense of grief. And then again, I'd open to that, and underneath that was Karen. And it was from caring that I could then act. There was a number of us from the Buddhist Peace Fellowship that went out, went down to Capitol Hill and we actually got arrested and so on. It wasn't like I was passive, but radical acceptance of what was coming up inside me actually made it possible for me to respond, not shaking my fist with anger and hatred at others, But just out of caring, do it as intelligently as I could. So I kind of am saying that because radical acceptance is not a sense of resigning. It's not passivity. It means fully engaged in this moment in an allowing way that creates the precondition for you, let's say, to go ahead and do your trip without your friend, but have a really creative adventure on your own. It creates a precondition for that.

Also, what you're saying is radical acceptance is really just facing what is, right? Facing what actually is, not what you want to be or what you think should be or how life should be or what it's really, it's sort of loving what is. And it's a very different way of being with yourself and with your reality. It's radical. And I like how you say it doesn't preclude include action, right?

But it creates actually the foundation for action that can actually make a difference.

Yeah. You think of, there's a great story by Gandhi. I love this story where his mother brings him this little boy and says, My son, he eats candy all the time. Gandhi, would you please tell him to stop eating candy? He says, Tell him to come back next week. Come back next week. And he comes back next week. and he says to the boy, Can you please stop eating candy? It's not good for you. And the woman goes, why did you tell him that last week? He says, 'Cause I was eating candy and I had to stop eating candy. You know, I think it's sort of like that. You have to kind of be willing to accept all of your mishigas, you know, and craziness in order to actually sort of make the changes you need to make.

It's true. And Gandhi also took a day a week you know, he was the ultimate social activist, but he took a day, a week to meditate and pray. So he said so that he could come back home to that space of openness and not making others into the enemy, you know, that kind of open-heartedness. So his actions would come from that kind of presence that we're talking about. Yeah.

I mean, it's kind of terrifying for people, you know, I think, I hear people say, oh, I can't meditate. My mind won't stop. I feel too agitated. And it's hard for people to think about, forget about a 10-day Vipassana retreat with 12 hours of meditation a day. This is just like sitting with yourself for five minutes can be hard for people. And I can relate. I actually meditate every day and I do yoga and I fairly try to be fairly present. But I decided to do a retreat. Now, I'm very sort of connected to the Tibetan traditions and they do these dark retreats for like nine years or 93 months. It's like I'm pretty, I literally go in a dark room with no light and they get their food passed through a little door with a thing trapdoor so they can have no light. I don't know how they eat in the dark but anyway. And I'm thinking, you know, I'm not going to do that, but I'm thinking of like taking a month and going to a cabin somewhere with no internet, no phone, no books, no computer, nothing. Just me and my journal. And it's terrifying. It's terrifying to think, oh, I'm going to have to sit with myself without distraction, without having anything to, you know, fill my time and just be. and I've never really done, I've done, I've done like a meditation retreats, but you're like, you're doing something like you're, you're, you're with people and you're not talking, but you're like meditating and you're like eating, like there's a sense of like you're doing something, but this is like, they do nothing is the most frightening thing. And I think in order for people to get your work, I mean, they have to come to a level of being willing to become friends with themselves and with their I've experienced in their life in a way that they haven't been. So how do you help people get over that?

Well, first of all, it's true that it's scary. I just want to honor that.

Just being honest.

Yeah, it is. Because, you know, our whole sense of reality in our world and who we are is usually on a doing self, not a being self, you know, the human doing not being. And the ultimately freeing meditation, the moments of when we're just letting life be just as it is, where it's just pure being, are the moments that really the awareness and love that's our essence can shine through. I mean, it creates a space for the goodness, what we sometimes call the goal to shine through. But it's rare. We're mostly like, because we're stressed, It's like being on a bicycle, and the more stressed we are, the faster we pedal away from the present moment versus just putting down the bicycle and just being. So it is a training. And so the bad news is it's hard because we're so conditioned not to do it. But the good news is everybody, and I've never met an exception, can train their minds and their hearts in the direction of really being at home with their life. Everybody can do it in that direction. And we have to go at different paces. Not everybody's going to jump off the cliff into three months of darkness or whatever. But that's okay. It's part of self-compassion to just find the level. And really, the simplest is just to say, I'm a great believer in everyday, no matter what. I'll put that out there because I lived in an ashram and it was very vigorous and we did a whole lot of practice. But then when I had my first son, my only son, my child, oh my gosh, my life was so different. I left the ashram at the same time, so I had none of the supports and everything. And my practice got a little wobbly. But then I realized how much I counted on it to give me a sense of presence and openheartedness and stability and steadiness. And so I made this vow, and this is, we're talking now 35 years, you just turned 35. I made this vow that I would practice every day, no matter what.

Wow.

But I had a back door mark. The back door is it didn't, it didn't matter what practice, it didn't matter how long, didn't matter where, didn't matter what position. So, I mean, big back door, all it meant was I had the intention to pause and be with myself for some period of time each day.

That's good.

And, you know, at the beginning when he was an infant, sometimes at the end of the day I'd sit down and just, you know, breathe for like two minutes and, you know, say, May all the world be blessed and go to bed. It's a bit of a trick because if you say every day, no matter what, life loves rhythms, life is rhythmic, and it just creates this habit of, you know, Rumi says, Do you make regular visits to yourself? It just creates this habit of, okay, so what's it like right now inside? And we become increasingly intimate and comfortable being with discomfort or being with beauty or goodness or whatever is there, we just have increasing ease. So every day, no matter what, but just start slow.

It's so beautiful. And yeah, I love that even, you know, 30 seconds, you know, it's like if you can't find five minutes to meditate in every day, then there's something wrong with your life.

Yeah. And, and, you know, what you just said about 30 seconds, I I think it's amazing if we're just quiet for 15 seconds, if we just take three long, deep breaths, our biochemistry changes. There's a settling, there's a new perspective. So it counts.

Yeah, it's so beautiful. Do you want to know my secret for living a long and happy and healthy life? Well, all I have to do is check out my weekly newsletter, Mark's Picks, where I share my favorite tips for health, longevity, well-being, and lots more. Check it out and the link below. Also, you sort of talked a lot about a prayer, the Buddhist prayer that really has moved you and sort of become a mantra in a way, which is that whatever arises serve the awakening of wisdom and compassion. So how does that thinking or feeling or prayer help you get through challenging moments?

It's a powerful one. The presupposition there is we can't stop the difficult moments from happening. Like every one of us is going to lose our bodies. Many of us are losing our minds. We lose our love. In one way or another. Yeah, exactly. So that we have no control over. But what's possible is to deepen our sense of of spirit of love, of awareness through that experience. It's like the Dalai Lama was meeting with some Western teachers decades ago, and they asked him, you know, what can we bring to our students? And he said, Tell them to trust the power of heart and awareness to awaken through anything, through any circumstances. So that's the spirit of this. It's like, When I've gone through, I remember one breakup that was brutal and something in me knew, I knew how attached I was and I knew how wrenching this felt. But there's some place in me that said, Please, may that deepen my sense of open-heartedness, compassion, understanding. Just may it serve. And if we feel like it can serve, we have space for it.

Yeah, so then you basically kind of invite the difficulties in. It sort of reminds me of the roomy guest house poem, right? Which is really all about how all the challenges of life show up at your doorstep and you should welcome them as guests because they probably have something in there for you.

They do. And most people we know can look at the difficult stuff, the divorces or the diagnosis of malignancy or whatever it is. and know that in some way it required that they called on resources inside themselves that they hadn't had to call on before, the courage. They had to deepen their compassion for their own life or for others. It calls forth the best of who we are if we're available.

Yeah. It's this school, you know, they call it the School of Hard Knocks, but it's actually true. It's actually true if you're paying attention. If you're not paying attention, just keep repeating the same story over and over. I've seen people do that. I saw that my father, for example, he had multiple challenges, but he never looked inward. He just always looked outward. And I think it's easy to blame the world for what doesn't work in your life, but it's harder to look at yourself. And I think that's what you're inviting people to do. and then creating a different relationship to their experience and their thoughts. And sometimes it's hard if you've had a lot of difficulties or traumas and I think that that's real. And you talk a lot about how people get disconnected from their body and dissociated and they don't want to feel that intensity of their emotional wounds. We hold on to them and there's like issues in our tissues, right? So how do we sort of get through that? How do we sort of learn to stop that and come back into our body and step out of those reactive patterns and connect with what really matters to us.

Yeah, well, you're naming it right, that it's a pretty dissociated PTSD society. I mean, it's pretty pervasive. Whenever this world's hard for us, we are conditioned to pull away from where the rawness is. So we pull into our minds and into our circling thoughts and... Or just binge on Netflix. I'm sorry? Yeah, exactly.

We just pinch ourselves. Distract ourselves, right?

Right. Which can give some temporary re-pro, you know, just give us a little break. But the reality is that there's no healing unless we can contact where the energy has been kind of cut off and is living in our body and reintegrated into our wholeness. There's no healing. There's no discovery of our wholeness. Because otherwise we're living in a very virtual and thin part of our existence. So to really feel our hearts, we have to come back into our bodies. Love is not an idea. It's a felt experience. And so then the question is how. And it depends on how much trauma there is. You know, if there's not huge trauma, there's some very beautiful practices of body scans where we just systematically learn how to come back in and feel and wake up to our body. And mindfulness itself keeps bringing us back to where the feelings live in our body. The two questions I always ask are, what is happening inside me right now? And can I be with this? And really using those two questions to keep coming back, if there's a lot of trauma mark, and this is really a tricky one, we found out over the last decade that a lot of the instructions for embodied presence were not very useful if people had been traumatized because they could get re-traumatized. They were told to go into their bodies and then there was just It was just way overwhelming and flooding. So it needs to be gradual and there needs to be a container, a kind of safe space, so there can be a learning of how to dip in and come out, dip in and then come back to safe space. But for when there's trauma, it's so important to move, to dance, to feel your body just as well as you can in safe ways to get out into nature. being outside, moving on this Earth is really the healing recipe pretty much for all of us.

I agree. It's sort of my go-to therapy. If I go out on my bike or I go out and take a hike in the nature or jump in the ocean, it really like, it's like it resets everything.

Absolutely. You too. Reboot.

You know what I've noticed though, I've noticed that when I'm biking, I'll notice that I'm distracted and that I'm in a in my head about something, and all of a sudden I look up and I go, wow. And I get to bike in these beautiful places and I'm like, look at that tree and look at that rock and look at that sky and this field. It's like you just sort of come back into the moment of the experience and it's always there for us. It's like this big cradle that we can jump back into any moment.

It's beautiful. Yeah. I think the biggest suffering is we forget our belonging to this living world and to each other. I mean, that is the suffering. And nature is a pretty tried and true way to re-experience the elements and that that's what we're made of. I mean, you know, we're stardust, we're earth. This is what we are and we intuit that. Yeah.

It's so true. You know, I think David White talks about developing a friendship with everything. a friendship with the wind and the sun and the trees and the insects and then whatever it is, you know, like, and I, and I, and I heard that concept, like, that makes so much sense because, you know, there is an intimacy we can have with our environment even if we're completely alone. And, and, and there's so much friendliness in the world if we, if we go meet it. And all we hear about is the negative news and what's wrong, what's happening in this bomb and that climate change and this disaster and that thing. And yet around us all the time is sort of waiting this place of friendship and of intimacy with our environment and ourselves. And so I've kind of gotten into the practice of relating to my physical environment in a way that sort of meets me as a friend. And it's so fun. It's like a little practice I do when I'm out and about and riding my bike or doing something. I'm like, how do I develop a friendship? Because it's easy to develop a friendship with people, but to develop a friendship with nature and with your environment, it's very different. So it's kind of a fun thing. And it's what you're talking about, really.

Well, I mean, it's so much resonance. I have a part of my recent book, Trusting the Gold, a chapter called We Are Friends. And it's a practice that I do just like you, where I'll actually be outside and I'll see a tree and I'll just reflect on that. I'll just reflect on the sense that we are friends. Or I'll see a squirrel or see a bird. And just by positing that, the truth of it emerges. So it takes that intentionality to actually pause and put it out there. But then all of a sudden, your system resonates with, wow, we are connected. absolutely connected.

Well, you know, what's interesting though is that we often sort of forget that and we feel separate. And that separateness is really an illusion. I mean, Einstein figured this out, right? That we are interconnected with everything. Our atoms are changing with everything that's around us. And it's not just a spiritual concept. It's actually a physics. And when you start to understand the physics of, and I remember you probably read this book, but I read in college, like the Dao of physics, which was all about quantum physics and Eastern religion and how they were really mirroring the same reality. And, and I think, you know, when you begin to understand that, and that, you know, there's a now, there's a whole Advent of psychedelic assisted therapy, which gives people a sense of connectedness. and dissolves their ego and lets them feel intimate with the universe in a weird way that sounds crazy, but it's actually what happens. And the same thing happens if you meditate for a river, you get the same place, but it's a lot harder because it's a shortcut. But it doesn't last because if you do the meditation part, it tends to last, but at least you get an insight into this connection. And I think that's what we're missing in our society is that level of intimacy with what is, what is, is what you're talking about.

Yeah, the Zen masters said that to be free is to be intimate with all things, which is so beautiful. And I love what you're saying about Carla's, physics absolutely says it, that it's a relational world. And there's a quantum physicist, Carlo Rovelli, who describes his fear in giving presentations. And he says that before he will never give a presentation until he has gone outside and touched a tree. And as soon as he touches a tree, his belonging to the universe is clear, you know? So then he can do it. And we're afraid when we feel separate. and as soon as we feel connection, whether it's holding hands with somebody or touching a tree, our fear reduces.

That's really true. And people are hungry for this and hungry for this perspective, and they don't really get it. And I heard a story from this incredible scientist that I've had on the podcast a couple of times, Dr. Fred Provenza, who's a mountain man, you know, big white beard, and, you know, sort of studied rangeland behavioral ecology for 40, 50 years. And he's just got a deeply spiritual perspective that grew out of his understanding of the nature of nature, the nature of the relationships between the soil and the plants and the animals and humans and all the interconnections that are not just abstract, but that are real. He talks about how plants have 20 senses and how they communicate with each other through these underground networks and chemicals. that they're sentient beings. I mean, it was fascinating. And he's sharing all these relational stories of his insights that he came to through understanding sort of the DAO of biology, let's call it. And he said he gave a presentation to a bunch of ranchers about his research, which goes into animal feeding behavior and what they eat and the flavor, very fascinating sort of scientific stuff. But then he created this whole spiritual overlay in his talk, and he's somewhere in Montana, like a bunch of ranchers. and he said afterwards they were just so hungry for more and were so thrilled that he shared that spiritual perspective. And I think a lot of us are just sort of missing the opportunity to really reconnect with this way of thinking and being, because we're so focused on the material in our lives and the things that are difficult. But your work is just so important because it helps people bring them back to that. And you've got online courses, you've got your books, you do workshops, although it's probably difficult now COVID, but I think it's just such a beautiful opportunity for people to connect with a way of thinking and being through Tara's work that is allowing them to be free. And I think it really, you know, I've come to understand what is the meaning and purpose of life? Like, I don't know what you think it is. I want to ask you that question. I want to tell you what I think. So, what is the meaning and purpose of life?

No, here's what happens when you ask it. I'll tell you more my process is, It brings it right into the moment. I say, well, what matters this moment? And what matters this moment is inhabiting beingness, you know, being open, a sense of open-heartedness, tenderness, realness. So I don't know about life as an abstraction, but I can say this moment, it's, can I open to loving awareness and live from that this moment?

Yeah, I mean, what you're really saying, and what I'm hearing you correctly, is that it's developing an intimacy with the moment, developing a direct intimate connection with what is in the moment. And it sort of reminded me of what you said before about what freedom is. And I think freedom is intimacy with everything. And for me, when I think about the meaning of life, I'm like, it's really about freedom. And it's about spiritual, emotional, psychological, physical freedom. And it's really, to me, if we can define what that looks like, if we can come into relationship with.

The.

Things that are in our way, the obstacles to that freedom, and that's what your work helps people do, then all of a sudden life looks very different. then there's a lot of joy and fun and ease, and you're not needing things to be a certain way or have to be this way or that way. And I think you're really inviting people to look at their habits of thought and feeling and beliefs in a way that kind of accepts it, but also has compassion for it, but also releases it all.

That's completely, you said it beautifully. And one of the flavors that's so liberating is that we trust, you know, we trust who we are and we trust reality because we are reality and we are inhabiting it more fully. For me, freedom is an expression of what happens when we are inhabiting the truth of who we are, when we're really living and feeling that awareness and that love.

That's your new book, Trusting the Gold, right? So tell us about the book and what inspired you to write it and how it speaks to these things.

The inspiration on a metaphoric level is that there's this statue in Southeast Asia that was, you know, covered, it was a plaster clay, many, many years, centuries, very esteemed, but not particularly nice looking, you know? And in the '50s, there was all sorts of weather systems and rain and it cracked and what the monks discovered that the plaster clay was just a covering and it was a solid gold Buddha.

So.

It'S so cool because the monks believe they covered it with plaster and clay and historians agree too, to protect it from invading armies in difficult times, much in the way, and this is the take on it, Mark, that we cover over our innate purity to get through difficult times. And the suffering, and this is the deal, the suffering is we take ourselves to be the coverings. We think we're the defensiveness or the personality or the addictiveness or the one that's got a fantastic intelligence. We just take ourselves to be the coverings and we forget the beauty and goodness of the awareness, that beingness that's shining through. And really, the whole path of healing and freedom is remembering, reconnecting to the gold, like recognizing our wholeness of being and including the coverings. It's not like we're saying, oh, no, that's not there. But knowing they don't define us and they don't have to limit us. So that's the kind of metaphoric and way that I've kind of framed it. And then the book has many stories of my own struggles and challenges and insights around learning to trust our goodness. And one of the key teachings for me has been that the greatest gift we can give each other is to become a mirror of the gold. And that feels really important, whatever the relationship is, you know, friend, partner, anybody. In some way, if we can reflect back to them their goodness because we all forget. We all need each other to help us remember. So one of the teachings here is that if you think about somebody in your life, anybody that you're going to be in touch with in the next day or two, and you have that intention to in some way let them know their goodness, it will help to call it forward. It'll deepen intimacy. It's part of being free.

Yeah, I think people often wait till somebody dies to write the eulogy and to share what they think is great about them. And I just think it's such a dumb idea. It's fine to honor them when they die, but why not do it while they're alive? And, you know, in my community, there's a number of people who've done beautiful things to help kind of bring awareness to people's natural goodness. And one is, you know, as a community of friends. And so, when someone has a birthday, for example, we'll go around the table and share kind of like a modern day living eulogy of what we love about them or how they've touched us or what they mean to us or how they've contributed to our lives or whatever we'll come up with whatever questions. It's such a beautiful way that you know, you go on. I had that done for me the first time and I was just blown away. It just literally almost like physically restructured my physical, emotional, spiritual being. It was a really profound healing experience for me. And another friend of mine created something called Tribute, which is a company that helps to offer tributes to people while they're still alive. So during COVID it was really successful because people were in the hospital. So you can have all your friends and your family share what they love about them or what they care, how they, what they mean to them, or pose whatever questions you want, but they're reflecting that. that mirroring that goodness is such a key part of being human. And I make sure I intentionally do that with people and share what I see. Because often we think, oh, we appreciate qualities that they have, or we think something good about them, but we don't say it. You know, we don't tell them. It's embarrassing or it's weird or they'll think we're weird or something. But I tend to do it and I find it's just such a beautiful practice to do.

And it's worth feeling awkward and doing it for anybody.

Yeah, try it. That's a good take home from this podcast.

It makes a huge difference and it creates a connection that's unbelievably beautiful. So say it out loud, you know, plan it, know that you're going to do it, do it, because it's not our habit, but it really, it brings it forward. It brings the best of us forward.

Yeah, it's just so, it's so great. It really is. And it's such a gift that we can give someone. It doesn't cost anything. Right? And it's just such a sweet thing. And I think it's just part of creating a more loving world for ourselves, which is all the work you've been talking about, and then just the world we live in. Because it's not all about ourselves. I mean, at the end of the day, it's really not about us as individuals. It's about how do we show up as humans that are part of a bigger human community contributing in a way that adds meaning and value that It makes the world richer. And if you're angry and closed and imprisoned in your thoughts and feelings, it's going to be hard to do that. Yeah. Well, I'm excited for your book. It's called Trusting the Gold: Uncovering youg Natural Goodness. It's available. Everybody should get a copy. I want to talk to you about this idea of radical acceptance in the context of where we are now. A lot of people listening might go, oh, this sounds okay. It's a bunch of spiritual mumbo jumbo and blah, blah, blah. Sounds good. But what about the reality of our political crises and divisiveness in our society? What about climate change? What about chronic disease? What about poverty and health and economic disparities? And what about, and I could go on and on for three weeks, all the injustices. How do we use this practice to help us deal with what is? Because some of what is is pretty rough. Like it's, you know, recording this podcast and, you know, ISIS just, you know, blew a bomb up in Afghanistan that killed a whole bunch of people. Like, how do you accept that? You know, like, I just want to sort of push back a little and say, how do you use this work in the context of COVID and the loss and the death and everything else that we're experiencing?

Yeah, and so let's just take what you just said, because I'm so glad you brought in what's going on now and how do we respond to our world. So there's been a bombing, people lost lives, and how do we deal with it? We start by being present and acknowledging the reality of whatever we're feeling. So if it's grief or if it's anger or whatever it is, I always call it make a U-turn instead of focusing on the story out there, come back to what you're actually feeling. But then what's next? Let's say you've come back and you get down to that core of I care. How do we move through our world in a way that actually can make a difference? If I look at what seems most core in terms of our suffering in the world, It is that dividedness. It's that we have this habit when we feel insecure, threatened, scared, to make the other into an enemy. And humans have our positive quality, what's allowed us to be so successful as a species is our capacity to collaborate and have compassion and actually join hands. But we also have this reptilian brain that Survival brain that when it gets scared, it loses contact with those capacities and it gets into making the other into the enemy, anybody that seems different and then getting aggressive. And so how do we work with that seems to be like the big question of our times right now. Because it's not like we're going to be able to magically disappear, let's say one third of our population who doesn't agree with us or let's say all the people who look different or whatever it is, you know, that that's not going to happen. We have to collaborate. So here's what for me has been most powerful. One of my inspirations is Ruby Sales, who was a civil rights icon. She's a real spiritual teacher, African-American woman. And she describes the game changer for her. She was getting her hair done and her hairdresser's daughter was there. And when the hairdresser left for whatever reason, she had this urge. The daughter looked really upset, exhausted, really traumatized. So she had this urge to say to her, you know, where does it hurt? And what came out, she, this, this daughter revealed all these things she had never told her mother about how she'd been on streets and addiction and so on. Well, for Ruby, it was like, that's the inquiry. Can we be with each other and ask that question, where does it hurt? And really sense what's going on? And what for her that meant was looking at some of the most extreme white supremacists and saying, where does it hurt? And seeing a kind of a spiritual of feeling irrelevant and feeling, you know, in some way threatened and like no longer having a certain kind of meaning or importance in their life. And she was able to look around like that. So I feel like that we need to be able to ask that question, Where does it hurt? And we start with ourselves because we're dissociated from our own hearts, listening inward, and we extend it to the people we're with. the proximate people because it's a training, just to wonder, well, what's it like for you right now? And then as we start getting the knack, which really is what it is of kind of really seeking to understand, because, you know, anybody that's causing suffering is suffering, you know, we start extending it out and really asking that question, even if we're not with a person, just trying to imagine into it. And one of the metaphors that helps me with that, Mark, is this, if you imagine, you know, you're in the woods and there's a little dog by a tree and you go to pet the dog and it lurches at you with its fangs bared and aggressive. And you go from being friendly to really, yeah, terrified. And then you see the dog has its paw on a trap. And you might not get real close to the dog, but you get it. And so no longer are you angry, you're just careful. But your heart's open again. And if we can remember that those who are acting in ways that we either don't understand or we can't stand have their leg in a trap, and if we can just ask that question, Where does it hurt? We can begin to build bridges, and that's what we need to do. we need to build bridges with each other.

Yeah, I think that's really true. I think, you know, I tend to really welcome connection with people who are really different than I am and who disagree with what I believe in and who have different perspectives and worldviews. And, you know, often, you know, I.

Think.

That people kind of have trouble with me for that sometimes because I hang out with people who are, you know, doing stuff that some people I don't agree with. But I always start with the fact that we're all human first and whatever our ideology or beliefs are, whether we're vegan or paleo or Republican or Democrat or Christian or Muslim or whatever the divisiveness is, we all start out as humans with the same basic structure of our hearts and minds and bodies. and then I try to find that place in that to relate to that person. And unless they're meant really mentally ill, it's really amazing what happens. And you begin to sort of connect in a different way. And I just remember this extraordinary moment that I sort of had where I was sitting in a lecture with some sort of a presentation at a conference. and there was an African-American lawyer from Boston with long dreads and this guy who was the head of the white supremacy kind of movement and who had been really active as a spokesperson and was very educated and really had pretty radical ideas about other races and white people. And he shared the story of how when he went to college and he went to this college where he, it wasn't like a white supremacy college, it was a regular liberal arts college. And he was kind of a pariah there. And this one guy kind of befriended him, this Jewish guy, and invited him over to Shabbat dinner one night. And then, you know, then would sort of invite him to hang out. And they would have these long conversations. And over a period of a year of these deep conversations about well, here's all the evidence that, you know, whites are better and that blacks are not, or the Jews are not. And he began to sort of, you know, very lovingly and developing intimate connection with this guy have little cracks in the, in that sort of edifice of belief. And, and, and it was like he was almost deprogrammed in a way by the love of this guy and the, the compassionate way that he shared what his worldview was. And so we start to break down some of those when we get curious, like, you know, you get curious about your negative thoughts, get curious about other people who are different than you. It's a very different way of going through life. And I, and to me, it's just, it's just, it's just so fun to kind of get to know humans in, in how they think. And if you just hang out with people who are the same as you, it's kind of boring all the time. I think.

Yeah. Plus, what you just said, it's, it becomes a real adventure when, you know, whoever you're with, if you're willing, you can find your common ground of your humanness. You can find it. And there's, I was really inspired. Van Jones is one of the people I most respect in terms of his work with bridge building. And he brought together people from West Virginia who were struggling with the opioid crisis, with people from South LA who were struggling with heroin. He had them actually staying together for a week. And this is very red blue. This is like the people from LA were saying, well, why did you guys vote for Trump if you know how much he's doing to our people? It was very divided. But after a week, you saw them sharing pictures of their children who had died from overdose, sharing those pictures. And one man said, you know, I told my son, you got yourself into this, you get yourself out. And then he said, and now he's dead. And you saw everybody have that common ground that you just talked about of we love our children. We don't want a world that's going to threaten them like this. And they could work together and they might still not agree on other stuff and that's okay. But that's what we need.

Yeah, well, it's beautiful. if you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. Step number one is you get rid of the term mental illness, and you call these things what they really are. Brain Health issues that steal your mind. Yeah. Get your brain right and your mind will follow.

So the end of mental illness really.