Start HEALING The Body & Mind (This Will Surprise You) | Yung Pueblo

A lot of the suffering that we encounter in our minds is because we reject impermanence. We reject change. That creates so much mental tension, so much mental struggle.

And I think our stuckness in wanting things to be the same and not being comfortable with the uncertainty of impermanence is what caused a lot of suffering.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the suffering that we encounter in our minds is because we reject impermanence. We reject change. and that creates so much mental tension, so much mental struggle because there are things that we really like in life and we want them to stay the same. We want the people that we like to be there, we want the situations to remain in a way that continue feeding that sort of calmness and pleasantness of life. But the reality is that at the mental level, at the atomic level, at the physical level, at the cosmic level, at the most minute levels possible, everything is constantly, constantly changing. And if we don't embrace that truth, that sort of natural flow of nature that's just constantly moving forward, then it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt a lot because no matter how hard we try, we just can't keep things the same. We may be able to elongate things sometimes, but ultimately whatever arises will pass away. And that doesn't need to be a truth that strikes fear in you. And that's something that I've been sort of working on in my own life and writing about is that a lot of times our relationship with change is one that's based on fear, but it can actually be, you know, that relationship can be evolved into one that's quite inspiring where I know that I'm not always going to be here. I know that this situation won't be here. So let me bring presence into this situation. Let me bring my attention here. Let me really try my best to connect with the people who are around me, who are crossing my path in this moment, because it's a special, like we're not always gonna have this. So like, what that has done, it's morphed my relationship with my wife, morphed my relationship with my mom and dad. And these moments that we do share, we're able to connect, it's like, wow, like they're so precious. And I'm more so grateful to change because if you think about it fundamentally, if the universe wasn't constantly changing, if everything was static, you and I would not be here. Nothing would exist. There would be no one would be here. So because of change, you and I can exist, we can learn, we can love, we can grow, we can, you know, really flourish and evolve. So change is difficult, but it also gives us an incredible opportunity.

It's true, but it's a tough one for people because people get comfortable with the way things are and they live in the fear of what's not here, what's going to change. And I can tell you at 63, I just turned 63, and impermanence definitely has a lot more relevance for me.

I bet.

Yeah. And whether I live another 10 years or 50 or 80 years, I'm hoping I'm dying at 180. We'll see how that goes. Maybe you got 120.

Do it for the rest of us, man. Yeah, I feel like it's a good goal.

Maybe I got another 120 years left. We'll see. But I think you know, regardless, there's an end. And I think the preciousness of every interaction, of every moment, of every person is, is, is, is really a beautiful meditation because it brings you into the present moment. Of course, if you feel like crap, if you're not well, if, you know. So there's a, there's a saying that, you know, a healthy man wants many things. A sick man wants one thing. Right. I think. So there, there is for sure that. And I think I, I personally have had become much more clued into the, the preciousness of everything, like, at every moment and every sunset of every experience I'm having. And on David, David White, who's a poet who I love, talks about being in friendship with all things, which is realizing that you're in relationship with everything. The Native Americans have a, have a prayer called, which means, like, to all my relations, to all the living and breathing things, the Rocks, everything, literally, you're in relationship with everything all the time. And I think we get pulled out of that when we're so attached to our own sort of individual self, our own ego, our own sense of separateness, which is really an illusion. And so I think, you know, I'm curious about how you kind of come to share with people this sort of illusion of separateness.

Then it's, you know, it kind of, what you're saying now reminds me of something you said a little earlier, and there's that very common quote that's attributed to a number of people, but, you know, it's We don't see things as we are, we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. And what I've tried to do with some of my writing is like expand on that, right? When we're interacting with reality, what is our perception doing? Our perception is actually seeing reality through our emotional history. It's seeing reality and not just through that emotional history that we carry from our past, but it's combined with whatever is our current emotion. so we're seeing reality through these really thick lenses and that sort of enhances that attachment that we have towards basically tying whatever we're seeing in the present towards to something that happened in the past. And if anything in the present is sort of slightly reminding us of something positive or negative from the past, then immediately our emotions will just flow in these old directions and we'll be repeating the past over and over again. So that creates a situation where I may be meeting someone and I won't be able to fully appreciate them because I'll just be seeing them through my own gunk, through all the old sort of conditioning that I've been carrying in my mind. And you won't be able to see that sort of unity or the potential love or the depth of a connection that could really be there because you're just looking at them through the unhealed parts of yourself.

Yeah, I mean, some of the things that I think happen in this framework of personal development, self help and growth, is this phenomenon called spiritual bypass, where people can do all the yoga, meditation, all these practices, but they really haven't dealt with their fundamental framework and beliefs and their conditioning, whether it's their epigenetics and inheriting trauma from past generations and just being a human on the planet, let's face it, it's been a hard thing over the last few hundred thousand years. And that's literally wired into our DNA. whether it's our own trauma from our own personal stories. And I sort of really have had a lot of recent sort of relationship with, you know, the world I came into with my mother and father being in a very conflictual relationship, my father not wanting me, my wanting an abortion. I mean, my mother being alone and depressed, you know, during her pregnancy and me being born into this environment and what that did just to my epigenetics and, you know, activating my sympathetic nervous system. as a place in the world as a place of danger and having to just deal with that. And each of us have our own story. And so how do we sort of deal with the traumas and whether they're big traumas like abuse or micro traumas of just growing up in a dysfunctional family or a relationship. How do we take the things that you've learned as part of your self-discovery and discovery of how to be in relationship to yourself and relationship to others and sort of heal that without doing the spiritual bypass?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I find that this really sort of brings in what we were talking about in regards to impermanence, because we want to allow impermanence to influence our understanding of our own identity. So we should allow ourselves to learn about our past, to see the way, you know, our relationship with our parents and whatnot affects the way that we show up in life today and allow these things to inform us. But the moment that our trauma becomes our identity, then it makes for a very rigid healing situation. Because if we're like, oh, this is how I am because of this moment and I'm always going to be like this, or this is how I constantly see myself, then it's going to slow down your evolution. So in some ways, I think we can do our best to understand ourselves, but then we also have to let it go. because it's like, okay, I'm a changing, growing being, so let me flow with nature and allow myself to develop new interests, new likes, let go of old parts of myself that don't really serve me anymore, and start letting my idea of who I am just continue blossoming. And in terms of spiritual bypassing, I think it's tough because the human mind can only process so much information at once. That's the reality of it, is that we can't process everything at once. And I think we get a little confused by the fact that the technological world of today is so fast and information is constantly coming our way. It's. We're constantly being inundated, and it's exhausting. You know, there's. There's, you know, you don't quite realize how much you take in and how much. energy that burns because you're processing all of that. So at one, you know, one of our challenges is to be able to develop our awareness and expand our awareness, but also in a sustainable manner. Because there are times where, you know, you're going through a hard time and, you know, staying connected to every single part of everything that's happening in the world, it that may not actually serve you. And then other times, you know, you want to be active, you want to be out there, you want to stay very informed. but those may be one year of your life versus another year of your life. And understanding that we have very different capacities. There may be people out there who can not only have a beautiful business, but then they're also part of all these different organizations and they're out there actively trying to change the world and they're doing all these amazing things. And that's fantastic. You're helping all of us. Great. But then there are other people who have experienced so much trauma that all they can do is heal themselves. But that's also beautiful. You're actually serving us by just focusing on healing yourself. Because if you heal yourself and you increase your ability to love yourself well, then that means you're going to be less likely to harm yourself and other people. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's true. And I think, one of the most helpful sort of frameworks I've ever learned about my own mind is that every every emotion, every time I've triggered, every belief I have is just my own interpretation of reality. Yeah. That I project my worldview onto the world. And so when I step back and go, okay, this is just like one version of reality. This is not necessarily the truth with a capital T, then I can get free from believing all these stupid thoughts. You know, my friend Daniel Amen talks about ants, automatic negative thoughts, right? He says, don't believe every stupid thought you have. And I think a lot of us are so embedded with our thoughts. And that's the beauty of meditation, is it sort of creates this slowing down so you can kind of watch your arising and your coming and going of thoughts and realize that you're not your thoughts, you're not your emotions, you're not your beliefs, you're not your body, you're not any of these things. and I shared this on the podcast before, but I almost died about six years ago and I really was in bed for six months and just unable to function and lost 30 pounds and was in really just this almost vegetative state and I wasn't anything. I was in my mind, I was in my body, I couldn't answer an email, I couldn't do anything and I just lay there and I just got to be in the experience of this sort of place which actually was very happy and blissful, even despite the fact that my body was in agonizing pain. I was sort of surrendered into this kind of peacefulness. And it was hard to explain, but I realized that at that moment, everything changed for me. And the ideas that I'd had sort of conceptually became more experiential. And it was a very powerful moment to kind of start to reorient my life to be more in integrity. And I think that's sort of the next topic I want to talk about was integrity and honesty. And I think you talk about this concept in your book, Lighter Radical. Yeah. What's radical honesty and why is it so important to have that and what does that look like for each of us?

Yeah, radical honesty is just so critical, so valuable, especially as the first step. And even before I started meditating, I found that, you know.