EP 101: Shifting Shame | Alan Anderson

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, my name is Fleet Maul and I'm honored to be your host for the next hour or so while we focus on the one place where we have any real agency and power, our own actions and contributions to the relationships, teams, organizations, communities and worlds in which we participate. So I'm here today. I'm really happy to be here today with my friend Alan Anderson. How you doing, Alan?

I'm doing okay. How are you?

I'm good, I'm good, Good, good. Very good. Yeah. So I want to tell our audience a little bit about you and. And then we'll jump right in. So. So Alan's.

Born in Milwaukee and began his career as a musician playing jazz professionally for 20 years, as well as touring and recording with Paul Savar. And then he turned his sights towards education, teaching music in the Milwaukee Public Schools. He currently teaches a combination of mindfulness and music in the schools and is founder of AMAP Arts and Mindfulness for Academic Progress. He teaches this program through the Reset Mind, Body and Arts at Large. And he's been a student and instructor in the mindfulness meditation world and in particular the Shambhala community for over 30 years. And he's the co founder of Windhorse Retreat Center. So again, welcome Alan.

Thank you. Nice to be here with you.

Just so my audience knows, if my voice sounds a bit froggy, I just finished leading a very intense.

Five day training. Well, four day training, which is four and a half day training, I guess, which is called the event, which is one of the sources for the radical responsibility model. At least part of it. Part of it really. Kind of the core of it. And I feel very privileged to lead that training several times a year. You can find out more about it@the eventtraining.com and we use our voice a lot in that training and so my voice is a bit challenged at the moment. I just got home from that. And so Alan is the author of a new book called When Bad Lands how not to Numb Out, Freak out or Bottom Out Buddhist Style. So Alan, you know, just for sake of full disclosure, we've known each other for quite a while. We're part of the same meditation, global meditation community. And.

You'Ve done my radical responsibility training several times and you've been a real supporter of that work and.

You got yourself into a pretty Sticky mess a while back and had kind of a fall from grace that created a big pattern interrupt in your life and your career. And I remember back then, you know, trying to be supportive with some coaching around that. And like anybody, you know, when you're. When you. When you're caught in a trap, your. Your first impulse is how to get your. Your get the trap off your leg or whatever, or even chew your own leg off if you have to. And. And so I know there was a bit of that riving around, but pretty quickly you embrace the whole thing and. And that's taking you down quite a journey and led to this new book of yours. So why don't you just start off wherever you'd like to start with that journey? Because for me, your journey is a real example of what we mean by radical responsibility.

All right, thank you.

One thing I recall is that when I was kind of in the depths of things, and you're right, I was just trying to avoid taking responsibility in whatever way, because it was just so painful and embarrassing and. And shameful as well. And you were someone who said to me, I will be on your support team. And that was shocking to me. I just thought I had to, like, suffer through this on my own. So what happened is that after I went through my fall, I just. It took me a long time to sort of come up for air. And so I wanted to stay away from people. I was avoiding people. I was avoiding seeing people. What I wanted to do was just disappear and just get out of there as much as soon as I can. So what I did was I tried to find some way to get myself back, to get my feet back on the ground. And I tried to trust in all of my meditation background. I had done a lot of background in meditation, in teaching, and it turned out that wasn't enough. Just the idea.

I apologize, Alan. I apologize for interrupting. But before we. If you could just give the audience, you know, just whatever you feel comfortable sharing. Just a nutshell version of actually what happened that put you in that situation.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I was a meditation instructor and teacher at the Milwaukee Shambhala Center. And what I did was I had a relationship with a student, and in that relationship, I smoked drugs with her, smoked pot, and I drank alcohol. And this is completely terrible thing to be doing for someone who's trust, who's putting their trust in me. So I pretty much failed at being her teacher. I failed myself. I failed the community. I failed my teacher, Sakyang Mee Pam, who had appointed me to a Job called Shastri, which is a lead teacher. And. And so basically, I found myself in a terrible, painful situation. So embarrassed and so ashamed. So what I did was I tried to weasel my way out of it as best as I could because that was. I didn't know what to do with such strong feelings. I felt really defeated and again, very embarrassed, and I really disappointed a lot of people. So what I had to do was figure out how to get better. And after I made. Made my amends and finally took responsibility, which took a while, I don't deny it at all, what I had to do is find some way to get myself back on track. And I had to use. I had to discover my own kind of set of practices and things to do in order for me to feel whole again.

And you were actually asked to step down from your teaching role by the community, Right. You formally had to relinquish your empowerments and so.

Right, yes. And I was no longer. Not only not a Shastri anymore, but I was no longer a meditation instructor or a teacher. And that whole community.

Aspect in which everyone knew what I had done was just shocking to me. It was like I was trying to hide in the bushes for whatever, 50 years of my life, and all of a sudden I was out there and. And yes, I was asked to resign my position.

Yeah, I just want to give our audience the sense of the gravity of the situation so they can relate and see. I mean, you were also involved with a university, right?

This was actually a student at university where you were offering a course.

Yes, I was teaching meditation at the university and.

The classes were being held at the Shambhala center, but it was a university course, so I had to be brought into. In front of the acting dean and everything and deal with that.

Yeah. So I assume you lost that gig as well.

Yeah, yeah, it was kind of. Everything came crashing down. I mentioned in my book that along with that, so many things in my life I did. I was being divorced. I retired from my regular job, and I no longer had an identity.

My parents had died, and so I was no longer a son, I was no longer a husband. I was no longer a teacher. I was no longer someone to be trusted. And those things were. That was. It just took away all my identity, who I thought I was.

Yeah. Really, the bottom just completely fell out.

Indeed. Certainly did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I really want our audience to get that. And.

You know, in some of our work in prisons and other situations, we lead this process called who Am I? And we ask people to write down a number of identities and roles they have in life that give their life meaning and purpose, a sense of who they are. Right. And sometimes it's being a father or being a son or being a teacher, or sometimes they're negative associations like I'm an addict or an alcoholic, or it could be your gender and different things. And then you go through this process of letting them go and trying to, you know, drop into that place, beyond those identities. And it's a very, very challenging process. And you didn't go through this in a nice meditative way. This just. It just. You just crashed and burned. And of course, this was of your own doing, but nonetheless, the fact was there you were just kind of like being dropped out of a space capsule in the blackness of space.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I really had no reference points anymore. It was like I was a tent with no more stakes in it. There's nothing holding me down. And I just. I just sort of freaked out. My book says how not to Numb Out, Freak out, or Bottom Out Buddhist style. And I did all of that. So I really had a terrible time. And I really did exactly what I thought I was. I did the opposite of what I thought I was capable of doing and what I was. What was the opposite of what I was trained to do, which is to. To work with my mind and to be responsible and take ownership and all that. So I just really. Everything totally backfired. It was a big crash.

Not only that did the bottom drop out, but you had a lot of condemnation and shame coming your way directed at you, a lot of anger and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. This was at a time when, you know, we're trying to run an organization at the Shambhala Center. And then the. The bottom just dropped out on that. And it made me look like it was a reflection of the entire community. So the community was upset with me, of course. And so it affected a lot of people, I think, is the main point.

Yeah. So you had to really see that. That you had impacted all these people.

Yeah, yeah. I created harm, you know, and I caused a lot of stress to people who were trying to work this out and work with me. And so.

It was not just my own failing. It was something that I couldn't even contain within myself. It was just sort of spread out everywhere.

Yeah. So what began to turn things around for you?

What began to turn things around for me was to realize that I had to find my way out by myself. I had the people who supported me, of course, including you, But I had to figure out how was I going to get out of this? What is the best thing to do? And the first thing was for me not to blame anyone. That was really the first step because that's what took me a while to try to find some little, little tiny corners where I could say, oh, it's not 100% my fault, somebody else. And I had to come to that conclusion. And it took me a while, but at some point I realized I have no one to blame. And I don't even feel like I've been, like anyone's really hurt me. I don't feel like anyone's has any fault. I took it all on my own. So it's like as you say, for radical responsibility. I took 100% ownership and thought, ah, okay, I am responsible. I don't have to put my energy anywhere else. Which allowed me to kind of keep focused on myself and not have to be distracted by these ridiculous approaches to try to try to force any blame anywhere. Along with that, then I started looking through some teachings by Trungpa Rinpoche and there's a lot in. He has a book called the Truth of Suffering. And that really resonated with me because I was suffering greatly. And I dug into that and found so many comments from him about overcoming self deception. And I realized that's what I was doing. I was completely full of self deception and I wasn't really seeing myself clearly. And so it took a while to look at that, but that was a really important thing to kind of reach out to those teachings and see that there was still room for me to, to move forward. I wasn't someone who was no longer capable of having any dignity or confidence or goodness.

So this Chogyam Chungpuram Shei Ref Singh, great Tibetan Buddhist meditation master who had a huge impact on the development of Western Buddhism and the founder of the global Shambhala community. So you found.

It looks like you found some wisdom in, in, in that book and were really able to face yourself based on some of the teachings you found there. And how were you able to embrace, you know, 100% ownership and let go of, you know, the search for somebody else to blame for at least some part of it. How were you able to embrace that 100% ownership without just turning it into self blame and self hatred? How were you able to do that?

That's a good question.

I think.

I think what I did was I, I just got really tired of spending so much energy looking elsewhere. I, it's really, it's hard for me to think about how I exactly did that. It's a great question, but it's hard for me to come up with what, what I exactly did. I stopped blaming other people when I started realizing that I was the one that had to look at. I was the one to be looked at. It wasn't other people that needed to be looked at. And again, a lot of that came from Trungpa Rinpoche. He had one quote, which I use all the time. He said, it's much easier. Wait a minute, it's much easier to be holy than to be sane.

Yeah, well, part of, also a core part of Trungpur Rinpoche's message was the message of innate basic goodness, that we all have innate, basic goodness. And of course, you've trained in that tradition for a long time. So I assume that gave you some foundation so that responsibility just didn't collapse into self shaming automatically.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's true.

Relying on my practice and relying on these teachings allowed me just those moments.

To feel my, basically my inherent goodness and my inherent worth. And just. I tell this to people a lot like that. You have to feel that there has to be some quality of. You have to experience, even if it's brief moments that can be strung together. Eventually you have to have brief moments where you notice that this idea of basic goodness is not just a concept, not just an idea, but you feel it in yourself. You feel whole and you still feel connected to the world because sense perceptions are all still working.

I don't have to tell myself the story. Letting go of the story is really essential because once you drop that story, there's a sense, okay, I'm okay, I'm here, I'm okay. And as you say, like, I'm safe, I'm resourced, you know, so it, I think it takes some experience, not just sort of an intellectual or conceptual spin to help you break out of it. That's what meditation, I think, brings to you.

Yeah, it sounds like your meditation, your mindfulness practice was very important in that, you know, you were looking inward, really looking at yourself, but also the ability to stay in the body, to stay grounded, to realize, okay, I'm here, I'm breathing, and I look out the sun, the sun shines, and, you know, the grass is still growing and I can still have my sense perceptions. And so your training in that allowed you. Seems like it gave you some strength to stay in the body and stay in your heart and have some kind of foundation from which to really look in the mirror. And do that really tough work.

Yeah. And I should add one more thing. I was driving home one day and parked my car, and I was listening to an interview on the radio, and it was a Brene Brown, and she was talking all about shame. And that's when I had to. I just sat in my car, turned off the car, and just listened for about an hour and learned about shame. And. And then I bounced back to some of the teachings and some of the coaching I've gotten from you, and they just really work together very well. So understanding shame was really important. I can't stress that enough. So I had my practice of meditation. I had my great insights from different great wisdom teachers of the past, but I also had to look at what is shame. And I learned about this. This quality. I reviewed tapes that I had of you and listened to what shame is and how shame is so hard to identify. I think in the book I called. It's like a ninja, like assassin. It comes in and then it disappears before you can even look at it. You don't even notice that shame is driving so much. Plus, I feel that shame is the perfect. We say in the Buddhist tradition, in the Shambhala tradition, we talk about basic goodness is not having a basic badness. But I thought that what shame was was like a designer drug that was meant to target your basic goodness. So if you felt like you were. The sense of being okay and feeling okay, it was constantly being chopped away and chipped away by shame. Saying, no, you're not okay. No, you're not. Basically good. So learning about that and just contemplating that and meditating with that was also very, very helpful to me.

Yeah. Brene Brown's work is really fabulous and important. I'd love to have Brene on the podcast someday. And, you know, she's really clear about shame. And also a big thing about her work is vulnerability. And so, you know, it's like the situation you're in, it's almost the last thing you want to do is feel it and be vulnerable and open to all that, but it seems like you were able to turn towards it rather than away from it.

Yeah, you know, I can't. It's funny because I know meditation provides you an experience of settling into your basic goodness, your inherent goodness. But I got so much from great teachings. I remember Fleet specifically from you. A comment you made at one of the radical responsibility weekends is that you're either vulnerable or defended.

And that kind of put an interesting filter over me, just watching myself, watching my activities to see when I was trying to armor up when I was being defended and when I was really able, when I was not doing that. And again, when you're not doing that, I think the natural qualities of the world and of your own dignity arise out of that, as long as you're not pounding yourself into the ground with more and more shame and more and more stories.

So. So what did the. The actual, you know, journey back begin? Because you had really, you know, you'd kind of become an outcast, been asked to step down from all your responsibilities. People were angry with you, you know, all the loss. You talked about going through a divorce and having lost your parents. And so there you are, just kind of this outcast outlaw. And somehow, you know, first you had to come to grips with yourself, but then you had to begin rebuilding a life. So what did that journey look like? And, you know, I'm curious, as we talk about that journey for you personally, then, you know, I think you've done a good job of kind of universalizing that experience to make it available to others. You've actually identified seven skills in your book When Bad Lands. So maybe we could begin to talk about that journey a bit.

Yeah, that would be great. So we've covered so far that I have worked on meditation and hearing a lot of good teachings and taking responsibility and being guided by really a lot of new information or information that I needed to take into my very soul. And so I came up with. It turned out, and I didn't plan this at all, but I came up with, there were seven. I realized there were seven different things that I did to make myself whole again. And I wasn't intending to reach any number or anything, but there were seven things that occurred. And it's funny because I tell people a little humorously right now that actually when the Buddha taught his first teachings were. Some of his first teachings were called the Eightfold Path, right? So only one of those Eightfold Path Path items was meditation. And there are seven other things that he had that would be used for someone to really apply meditation and mindfulness and awareness into their world. So I have the same thing, in a sense, that I came up with. I came up with seven skills. They're not nowhere near the same as the Buddhist teaching, but only one of them is meditation. So I consider that to be a very powerful element of my recovery. But I also came up with a couple others. So first of all was the first one of my seven skills is called not believing everything you think.

And that was really necessary for me when I Was feeling shamed and feeling a lot of self loathing, is. I have so many thoughts. And all those thoughts, I mean, which ones do you put your. Put all your eggs, put all your money on? You know, which thoughts are real, which ones are justifications, which ones are ways for us to bail out. So the first skill was just not. Not believing everything you think. So it's something to contemplate for me. And I actually would say that those that phrased myself, I would just keep saying not believing everything you think. Just all that stuff going through my mind, coming through like a deluge, like a. Like a torrent. I can. I don't have to believe all that stuff. So that was the first step and then the second step. The second step.

Yeah, just comment there. In 12 step work, they often say, in terms of when people find themselves having crashed and burned in their life, that your best thinking got you there. That's where your best thinking got you. And then they also say sometimes for an alcoholic or an addict, the worst place you can be is alone with your own thoughts.

Very good.

So I mean, obviously we can change that relationship, but still. Yeah, it seems like you got that. You had to create some distance, some separation from which you could have a base to have some reflective awareness to connect with something other than just what was running through your head.

Yeah, yeah, because we all know that's. I mean, that's a powerful force. It just is unabated, you know, it keeps going and keeps going. So we. You have to do some kind of. There must be. Has to be some kind of way to sort of stop that or take a pause from it. So that's one of the ways I did that. The second skill was also sort of a conceptual skill. This one's called not pretending Things are otherwise in which I could not pretend that I was okay. I couldn't pretend that I was.

That the thoughts I had weren't occurring. I think it's a way for us to try to avoid.

What'S happening in our real life. We try that a lot. But in this situation, I was feeling so much of what was going on in my life and I had to in some way stop pretending that it was not that things weren't pretty or things weren't getting better. It was like this is the ground zero. This is rubber, you know, rock meets bone. So I had to feel that quality of sort of, I think I've heard you say, like sitting in the fire. I couldn't pretend I was out of there. I couldn't pretend that this was going to be over for me in two months or two weeks or six months. So I had to find a way to allow myself to get away from trying to escape into some other fantasy.

Yeah, you had to give up denial as a strategy. And that's such an instinctual reaction. You know, Elizabeth Kubler Ross's five stages of how we usually go through reacting to and coping with loss. The first stage is denial. And it's a really tough one to give up because it's just all. It's just instinctual.

Yeah. Yeah. It really puts you into a different frame of being and you're not really paying attention to what's going on. You have this entire new framework. I heard one teacher once say, it's like we walk around with this, like a stage set. You know, we carry it with us and we set it up. We want everyone to think this is the way that we're. That we're doing fine and we're great. But I just had to feel not. I had to find a point where it wasn't.

Self loathing, but I could say, this is how it feels. It's not getting better than this, and sometimes it's not getting worse than this, but this is where we're at. Another Trungpa Rinpoche phrase was be there all along. That's the message. And again, those little phrases came as reminders to me. Be there with this. Don't try to jump out of it. Don't try to wiggle away. And so that was the second one. The third one was the mirror of meditation. So that's the third skill that one we've talked about already. And the fourth one, all of these great teachings and comments of support that I got from you, from Tungpa Rinpoche, from all kinds of reading, from friends. I went to a therapist as well. I need to do some therapy for a while.

This number, the fourth reminder, is filling yourself with wisdom and reminders to constantly change the channel into something that was more healthy, spiritually, intellectually, conceptually, philosophically. So I had just little. I had certain phrases and certain teachings that I remembered a lot, and I would repeat them a lot to just kind of clear my mind. And really, as I said, like, change the channel. And matter of fact, there's one. I have these two, three by five cards that are still hanging over two of my doors in the kitchen. And they just say the word change just to remind me that this has changed and it's ongoing. And when I feel bad about something, it usually means something is changing. That seems to be out of my control, and I have to be more resilient. So filling yourself with wisdom and reminders just basically meant that. That telling myself, hearing new things, creating a different framework from what I was used to. You know, like, you talk about fleet, you talk about the core wound. You put together this toolbox of strategy starting at age 2 or whatever, and you have no resources at all. And you try to put together these toolboxes. And so there's a framework in which we guide ourselves in a certain way. We learn how to. Maybe we. Maybe we scream or maybe we tell lies, or maybe we make up fantasies, all kinds of different ways to solve our existential dilemma, and those don't work. And that you carry them with you as you've taught you, carry them with you into adulthood. So to change that framework, I think takes some work.

Yeah, absolutely. We have, in our Path of Freedom prison program, we have a guided meditation called Change the Channel. I like that a lot. Going back to the previous one for a minute, the Mirror of Meditation. I just want to read a Trungpuram Sheikh quote that you put in your book in that chapter as an epigraph you have. We have to know what we mean by meditation at all. Sometimes we use the word to mean emptying out or letting go. Sometimes we mean relaxation. However, the point of meditation practice is actually to rediscover our hidden neurosis and. And our hidden sanity at the same time. So I think that tells it all. It's really, you know, bolt allows you to develop the resilience and a strength and the sanity connection with your basic goodness, to have the ability to look in the mirror and then. And then also allows you that mirroring quality to have your core neurosis mirrored back to you so you can actually see it and begin to work with it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

I think that's the biggest move in terms of having confidence is to say, I'm not afraid to acknowledge those negative attributes as well as the positive attributes and not to have it take you down the drain again. But say this is going on and that's going on. It's back to that phrase, be there all along. That's the message. So you're going to be there with the negative, and you're going to be there with the positive, and they don't. None of those say, this is who you are. Another Tungpa River Rpoche quote in there was that the teacher just says, this is where you're at, not that this is where you're at, therefore you're a good person, or this is where you're at, therefore you're a bad person. But just simply, this is where you're at. And so to take that in and not freak out because you have some negative baggage, you know, I think is very helpful. So, yeah, I think that's. That's the power of meditation, is to see all those things and watch them bubble up in your mind. Because, you know, we all know we're not trying to be the best breathers in the world. You know, we. We're trying to actually notice that we're trying to hold to an object of meditation and we are going to have interference. And so we have to work with both and not curse it or curse. Curse ourselves for not having just.

A very clean slate of thoughts. Anything can come up.

Yeah. And then number four, as you were talking about, you were getting new information into your.

Mind stream and really giving yourself access to more channels other than just the shame channel or the beat yourself up channel.

So you had to give yourself access to some channels that would actually move you in a more positive direction.

Yeah, I just. I. So powerful for me, because it's. Because you're. I mean, I was in the shame channel and beat myself down channel 24 7. For the. For at least the first four or five months of this thing, it was just really awful. I. I've. I felt passive, suicidal. I felt. I felt like I just couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't. I didn't have a feeling like that in my life that was so powerful and seemed so deadly.

So.

Yeah. So changing the chance, that's allowed me to say, here's some other ways to look at this now. So it seems so simple, you know, but it's so powerful to start entertaining different perspective, especially when you get it from great sources of wisdom and experience.

Great. So moving on from there, what was the next step? I'm looking in your book here. It says this is. And then you've got in parentheses, fear, practice. So what's that all about?

So I got that when I was actually. When I was going through the depths of having to go through a divorce. And Adam LaBelle, I had a conversation with him, and he said, just sit down. We're not going to do meditation. Just sit down and feel exactly what you're feeling. And so, you know, there's a pause there just to feel it. And he said, and now name it. So it's like for me to say, to be able to say, this is fear. So I can acknowledge it. And it reminds me of, like when I first started meditating, first connected with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche is that I understood what confusion was. All of a sudden, I didn't know what that was, this cloud of confusion. So in the same way I didn't know I would be feeling confusion and not knowing where to go, but to say, this is what this is. So it could be this is fear practice, or somebody's feeling insane jealousy. You could. This is jealousy just to name it. So it's really the same as something I think a lot of people know already, which is name it to tame it. Right.

Same kind of practice is to give it a name rather than just being kind of bullied around by it. So this is fear practice was. Or this could even be. This is my heartbreaking, you know, and that's the practice to be able to.

Naming it is. Is in a sense, part of owning it, part of, part of embracing it, and part of owning it. And then, like you said, taming it, or at least, you know, by getting in relationship. Now it doesn't own you. You're. You're owning it. You're embracing it.

Yeah, yeah. And then after that one, the sixth skill is called the genuine heart of sadness. And again, this comes from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The genuine heart of sadness is that we can accept being sad and not in a. Not the weepy way of being sad, not the depressed way of being sad, but to accept that warm, tender feeling in our heart when we feel sad is actually very much connected to the world as it is, without trying to put some buffer around it or some. Or sweeten it up with some sugar. But that.

The idea of the genuine heart of sadness is acknowledging and feeling a vulnerability. So like when we said earlier, you're vulnerable or you're defended, vulnerable means, I mean, it's not going to be pleasant necessarily. It's going to be kind of itchy and, like a little discomforting. But you can actually connect with that and not run away from that. You can. You know, the Buddhist teaching is that when we're feeling a sense of vulnerability or if we're feeling negativity in any way, we just want to push it away. So it's related to, like, not pretending things are otherwise. You know, it's like we have a feeling of sadness and we can connect with that. And our aloneness doesn't have to be loneliness. It can really be alone and touching in. And I've been a musician much of my Life. And I really equate this a lot with what it's like hearing really beautiful music. You feel something. It feels as real as if you're holding touching columns of a building. You know, it's so strong and such a feeling. And a lot of that feeling is.

Not sad and weepy, but just so touching. And I think poignant is probably a better word to describe that. And that's, I think, a very rich part of our human inheritance.

There's also a quality of longing in that. You know, we have a natural longing to want to share that with somebody or experience it with somebody. And in some ways, we can't really. We could try, but there's a certain aloneness because we're experiencing something that's so much in our own heart. And that genuine heart of sadness, as we both know, is a core phrase and teaching within the Shemal teachings that Trung Premche brought into the world. And it's very akin to the way Brene Brown talks about vulnerability. And that Rhumchet actually made that genuine heart of sadness really the foundation and the core of what he called the path of warriorship, the path of fearlessness. And the path of warriorship is really, that's where we're a warrior from, is from that genuine heart of sadness from that place of vulnerability.

Yeah.

Well said.

Thank you.

The final skill is called the Four Way Mirror. And this is something I kind of hijacked from. From the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. The Four Way mirror is something. There's a crystal mirror at the heart of one of the visualization of a deity in an advanced meditation practice. And that vision of that deity, there's all kinds of accoutrements. You know, there's like, it might be holding this and holding that and riding a horse or something like that. But in this visualization, which is a visualization of what it is, like, completely free from aggression.

The Shiva okar, this.

Being has a crystal mirror. And I started thinking about that and started thinking, what does that mean? And granted, I am making this up right now, but my interpretation was that it's crystal because I don't want to get anybody or myself in trouble by saying, I speak for anything in the Shambhal tradition right now. But it's crystal. So you see through it clearly. Like, if you've ever held up a crystal ball, it's like everything in there is so bright and sharp and crystal clear. It's really beautiful to look into, actually. So there's that clarity, and then there's that reflection. So the Seventh skill reflects in the Buddhist tradition is something called ground, path and fruition or view, meditation, conduct. This is sort of the third step. It's more result.

View meditation and result. And so the result is if I would picture what it would be like for me to come through all this and become fresh and new and to come back with my feet on the ground, it was that I would have to be honest.

And see others suffering clearly to not hide my own. And so the four way mirror was this idea that if you and I were across from each other we could have this four way mirror sort of in our hearts like that. I can see exactly what you're doing. You can see exactly what I'm doing because I tend, I like many people tend to cover up so many things. I try to like it's humorous, you know, we try to not have people notice the kind of things we might be thinking.

So this idea that I can see you, you can see me, I can see a clear reflection of my self, you can see a clear reflection of yourself. And it just, it was, it's kind of a what a very optimistic view of how we might be able to react with one another and, and be truthful and be, be honest because I felt like my entire trip was a way to overcome self deception and that idea of the four way mirror was for me a way to.

Show how, what that might be like, which I think is again being vulnerable, letting yourself be seen and seeing others and having empathy for their suffering and their difficulties as well. So that was number seven.

Yeah, that's great. Well that really brings to mind the eye gazing work that we do in the first morning of the radical responsibility training. And it's really about allowing myself to be seen, willing to see the other, see myself mirrored back in the other. And people are amazed at how with a perfect stranger they can sit down and get to, to levels of connection and intimacy and trust that they don't in many cases aren't experiencing with anybody in their life currently. And they're able to do that with a stranger in a matter of minutes through to working in that way. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's beautiful. So, so how, so you, this is the path you took and, and you've identified these steps for yourself. So where has that taken you? Where are you today? And, and how has it worked out?

Well, this is becoming very interesting because I wrote this book and now I'm in the position of, now I'm presenting this book. So all those things that caused me shame, I'm having to Go back into it and tell my story. And I have to tell you, Fleet, when we, the listeners don't know that we tried to do this a couple weeks ago, but we had technical problems. But I have to tell you, and I didn't mention this before, is that after you and I tried to go into some of this, as we did the introduction to this, and we talked about the things that I actually. What occurred in my great fall, I was filled with such shame. It's like I went way back into that shame, as if I was right there again. My breathing, my feeling, it was just very powerful. And I realized it wasn't about what I did. It was about something about shame. Just got shake. Got shook up again. And it was all there as just like it was eight years ago. So that was really interesting. So before meeting with you again today, I did a talk at the Milwaukee Shambhala center, and I gave a talk, and I revealed the whole story to everyone in front, in public. So I put myself on the spot so I could get sort of get used to realizing I've been through this. But to acknowledge this and use things to.

Work with, with my shame, I had to use some of the state shifting things you use in using my breath that you bring out in radical responsibility. I just sit down and breathe and have that straw breathing where you're breathing out longer on the exhale. So I had to actually apply tools that were now in my toolbox because all of a sudden I felt like I was spinning back into the same nose dive. Isn't that wild?

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, our work, our personal work always comes in layers and layers, and sometimes we think we're. We're done with stuff, but it's not done with us yet. But it's always, you know, usually when it comes up again, it's not. We're not exactly welcoming it, but I think we can learn to. At least our second thought could become. Oh, oh, okay. An opportunity to heal this even more deeply. Or that might be the third or fourth thought. But anyway, at some point, we do realize that. Okay, okay. It's not. I'm not done with it. I got to do the work. Yeah. So that's great. And so you are.

You're kind of being welcomed back into the world these days. You're able to teach meditation and offer programs within the Shamala community and out in the world a bit, and you're finding your way back to having something to offer to the world.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that I'm Finding that the sense of taking the 100% ownership is really helpful for the world. I have had some conversations with people and it's kind of shocking to me because, you know, I wrote this book and I had no intention to create anything, but I knew I had something to share. And so now I've written this book. I've had people already, like three or four people come up and say, thanking me so much for the book and saying that they've been going through such something very deep and painful. And so I feel like part of my path now is to be really upfront so that people can see that it's possible to do that. It's possible to take a different route than to cover up. It's possible to be vulnerable and you can still survive. And so I think there's some kind of funny modeling I'm doing at this point. But I mean, not funny haha, but unusual modeling I'm having to do because I realized part of my message is, is to show that we don't have to keep hiding, we don't have to keep covering up, we don't have to camouflage. We can get over our self deception. Yeah.

I actually have a friend, someone I'm coaching, who we're kind of becoming friends, but who's had a pretty bad crash and fall from grace. And I'm going to send him your book. I think it'll. I think he'll find it incredibly.

Incredibly helpful. Yeah. You know, in Western psychology there's actually a phenomena described as the pain paradox. You know, and we're pretty hardwired to chase pleasure and comfort and avoid pain and discomfort. Right. And so it's when there's pain, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain or mental pain, spiritual pain, what have you. Our. We instinctually want to withdraw away from it or push it away, but all the great spiritual traditions, the wisdom traditions, point to this and Western psychology points to it as well. That actually resisting it, pushing away, withdrawing from it, resisting it actually increases the suffering. And the answer to the real release is to move through it and to embrace it. Which is just counterintuitive. Right. I actually remember.

It was either Joseph Goldstein or Jack Kornfield sharing in a teaching about there's some monastery in the UK somewhere, a Christian monastery. I don't know if they've been there, they heard about it, but in the, I think what they call it, the reflectory refectory. So I got the word wrong there, but it's where the monks gather and do prayer, but also readings and contemplations. And so there was a big.

Framed kind of poster up on, on the wall. It said, the only way out is through. The only way out is through. And that's kind of counterintuitive when we're in the midst, when we're facing that pain. But I think you've, you've really modeled that quite beautifully and given us a wonderful book that can be a great guide to, you know, when, when all our attempts to escape the pain don't work, maybe we could be willing to try something else.

Thank you. That's. That really is my motivation right now. And I feel like it really can be helpful to people who are going through this difficulty. I think very much like your book, that your book I consider an amazing manual to work through some of these difficult times. And I think my book is sort of a cousin of that. And I think the two of them really work very well together in terms of providing a number of tools that people can actually apply. Because it's very hard, you know, it's very hard to change our behavior patterns. And we know that in the tradition we call it the cocoon, we just layer and layer all kinds of insulation so we don't have to connect with the world and we can sort of stay off in our own little, little island of self serving, whatever. And so I think, I think so it's so helpful just to not have to be caught in that because that habit is strong. It's powerful to just escape.

Absolutely. Well, this has been great, Alan. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast. And really the purpose of this podcast is to get the radical responsibility message out into the world. And really the best way to get it out there is for people to hear stories of how people have embraced it and whether it's brought someone like yourself back from a really tough situation or, or whether people are using it just to really actualize their potential and possibilities. But your story is a great one and I'm really happy that you found a way to get it into a book that's gonna be incredibly useful for people and just really happy that we have this connection and look forward to more.

So thankful. I'm so grateful to you and I really think that people have some tools now to work with that. And, and you've been so. My book was. Really came out of, out of your book and your approach. It's, it's been the most. It's the driving force is that quality of, of facing things as they are and not just letting my spiritual tradition turn into Some kind of fantasy, but actually work things, you know, again, rubber meets the road and rock meets bone and really have something of value to add to this world. And so I'm exceedingly grateful for you and your support and your teaching.

Well, we need to find a way to get your book in the hands of, you know, there's always these, it seems on a regular basis there's somebody in the public world. Politicians and others fall from grace of many different kinds. And, you know, they often go to a PR firm to do damage control. So maybe we need to get this book in the hands of all the PR firms so they can say, yeah, we'll do damage control, but by the.

Way, you might want to.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny, as I looked in your book, when you go over Daniel Goldman's the Four Quadrants, I was looking at those. There are some. If you don't have these things, you are really in some serious trouble and cause a lot of chaos in this world. And I thought this is like the opposite of some of the more horrendous things we hear about in politics these days. You know, to be able to be vulnerable and to have responsibility for your own feelings and to notice other people's feelings. It's a. I think the fact that we have this now at our access, I think is a really helpful thing for our society. So.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm so encouraged that, you know, the mindfulness movement, the mainstream mindfulness movement is getting this out there more and more and emotional intelligence training and even In K through 12 education, there's a lot of programs that are integrating mindfulness and what they. In the education, they usually call it social and emotional learning, which is very similar to emotional intelligence and, you know, giving human beings those skills. Today, it's just a no brainer. In fact, it's really negligent not to. So it does give me some hope that hopefully we can get more and more people to become more mindful, more thoughtful, more awake and more emotionally intelligent before things get worse than they are. But this has been great and I really want. I recommend people to check out Alan Anderson's book When Bad Lands. And this has been your radical responsibility podcast with Fleet Mall. So see you all next time. Goodbye. Thank you so much.

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