PNTV: When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron (#184)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today, another great book, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Philosopher's Note. Bunch of big ideas. Five big ideas there. Pema Chodron is one of the world's leading Buddhist teacher. She's extraordinary. We've done a number of notes on her books. Let's jump straight in. First, big idea. When Things Fall Apart and. Or when you feel fear rather than feel like you're getting the short end of the stick, shall we say you want to feel lucky? Feel lucky? Yeah, feel lucky. Why? Because it's only when we feel fear that we have an opportunity to express courage, to grow. And she makes the huge distinction that being courageous, living a great life is not about never having fear. It's about being intimate with fear, having a deep relationship in a wise, graceful way of dealing with fear. Right? And we talk about this a lot as well. Where Aristotle told us the virtuous, meaning courage, is the appropriate relationship to fear. If you don't have enough fear, you're rash, you can be an idiot. If you have too much fear, you can be a coward. The proper relationship is one where you feel the fear and you do what needs to get done, right? Everyone feels fear. We need to embrace that. David Reynolds from Constructive Living has one of the best lines I've ever heard. He says, anyone who tells you that he's never afraid is both stupid and lying. We all have fear now. We want to reorient our relationship to it. And rather than being depressed about our fear, feel lucky. And then lean into the fear. She says, see it as an opportunity to grow. Whatever you're feeling, whatever's uncomfortable, whether it's embarrassment or the fear or the anxiety, if we can step back and see it, we can see that there's something there for us to learn, there's something for us to grow. And she says, spiritual warriors, true practitioners of this stuff, get excited about that. This is the first tool in the tools, the idea that you need to bring it on, right? So you've got this little happy version of us, right? And then you've got your fear, and then you've got your infinite potential, right? Well, most of us live in our comfort zones. We never want to go outside of our comfort zones to experience fear, but we need to if we want to experience our infinite potential. Move outside of your comfort zone. Lean into your fear. Feel lucky. When things fall apart, it's an opportunity to grow. The obstacle becomes the way. It's another one of the ways we've Been approaching this. So that's the first big idea. We can and have talked about that for a while. So second one is death and rebirth. The fact is, if you want to have a rebirth, and we're doing this around Easter, the only way Campbell tells us, Joseph Campbell, that we can have a resurrection is if we have a crucifixion. You need to die to the old in order to become the new. Nietzsche says, the snake that cannot shed its skin must perish. We need to let go of our old identities in order to become the next version of ourselves. And again, when you realize that when things fall apart, you can feel lucky because you realize that this is a sign that something new is wanting to emerge. Then we embrace these practices, lock down our fundamentals, our exercise, our nutrition, our rest, our meditation, and take the next steps courageously and heroically. Remember, you have to be willing to have a death if you want to have a rebirth. Unfortunately, that's never a particularly pleasant experience. Yet it is true. And as you go through it, you spiral up. You can approach the same types of challenges with a deeper level of grace. That's the whole idea. Third big idea. Why meditate? Very simple here. We want to remember that we don't meditate to become good meditators. Sometimes you talk to people and they tell you about how they felt during their meditation. Oh, it was amazing. Choir of angels were there, and I was levitating a little bit. It was just awesome. And then the rest of their life is kind of a mess. That's not the idea. We want to meditate, not so we can become better meditators. We want to meditate so we can become better human beings during the rest of our lives. Eknath Eswaron says it's kind of like warm up for the rest of your day. It's not the peak event. It's not the reason you get up. It's the means to the end of having a great day. Joshua Rosenthal talks about nutrition in a similar way. He says it's the vehicle, not the destination. You eat well, not so you can eat well, even so you can be healthy. You do those things so that you can have a more extraordinary life. Same thing with meditation. So focus less on what you feel during the meditation and who you are becoming outside of the meditation. Fourth big idea is a big one. Usually we think of a mountain, right? And we're ascending the mountain. So spiritual practices, it's kind of like you're heading toward the peak of the mountain. And Pema says we need to reverse that thought because oftentimes when you head up to the top of the mountain, it's as if you enter this rarefied air where you no longer interact with, as she says, your alcoholic brother or schizophrenic brother or other people in your lives who have challenges going on. Right. It's kind of like the typical idea is that you ascend these ideas and you somehow just kind of float away into the heavens. She says the mountain should actually be reversed where the higher you go in your meditative and in your spiritual practices, the deeper into the mountain you go, the more into life you go, the more you are present. For those around you who might be struggling the most, you're not trying to escape reality anymore. You're heading straight into it. And you're finding ways to live with more virtue and grace and poise and service than ever before. So again, it's not an ascending, check me out, I'm over here. I'm great. I'm out of, you know, in a bubble of happiness. It's moving deeper and deeper within the challenges of life with more and more grace. Huge idea. Fifth big idea. Now and future you. So your you of right now that's listening to or watching. This is the result, of course, of all the past decisions that you made better or worse right now, your future you. When we look forward, who's that version of you going to be? Obviously the future version of us is going to be the cumulation of the sum total of all the thoughts and behaviors and choices we're making right now. Therefore, do something nice for your future self that your future self is going to thank your current self for and do the right thing. Knowing that moment to moment to moment, we're creating our future selves and we want to do things that our future self is going to look back and say, thank you so much you of early 2015 or whenever you're watching this, I appreciate you deciding that you were going to create this habit and make wiser choices. You made our lives better and I appreciate that. So think about that and get on it. Alright? When things fall apart, feel lucky. That takes discipline. Lean into it. Realize that's where growth occurs. You got to move through your fears if you want to reach your infinite potential. And you got to know and you got to remember that if you want to be reborn into something new, you have to die to the old. Whether that's a habit or just a way of being or whatever. Death, rebirth, only way it works. Why meditate? To become a better human being. Not to become a better meditator. Remember, as we go up the mountain, paradoxically, we actually go deeper into the mountain and into the challenges of our world. Do something nice today that your future self will thank you for and I hope you enjoyed and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another awesome day. See you.