How I Cultivate Inner Growth

I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. Since 1997, I've been coaching powerful, purpose driven, world changing leaders who are ambitious in every area of their lives. My Sex Love Power podcast and my YouTube channel are the go to resources for couples and individuals who want the vision of love they see in their hearts to manifest every day in the ways they collaborate, communicate love, and make love.

Let's go. I'm so excited today to welcome my teacher so dear to my heart, Eric Klein. He's the founder of Wisdom Heart with his wife Davey, and has been teaching Kriya yoga for Eric. How many years?

Hard to count that high, right?

A minute.

Yeah. Decades. Yeah.

And he'll tell us a little bit more about how he met his teacher and that journey. But the reason that Eric and I are talking on the podcast today is that I want you to hear it from him what he's teaching me about my body, mind, spirit, and the way that those interact with the experiences I have in my marriage and in my earning, in my business and other places in my life. Because all of life is conspiring to wake me up gently but very persistently. And sometimes things feel like a two by four upside the head, but that's really, you know, sometimes because I haven't been listening or because I'm. I'm fighting back when the loving, gentle messages come. And Eric's perspective is always so wisdom informed by the long lineage of the Korea tradition, so beautifully informed by like, pop culture. He's hilarious, he's musical, he's just tuned in. And that's why I connect with him so much more deeply than other teachers of Korea that I've studied with for 20 years that couldn't take me to the same places in my heart because they couldn't connect as well with my brain and my personality. And so I just wanted to introduce you all to beloved Eric and have him talk with us about some of the ways that you can apply planetary astrology, the chakras, meditation, and the spiritual path in general to evolve more of what you want in love and life. So welcome, Eric. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Michelle, for having me. It's a treat to be here and always fun to talk together. And let's see what we cook up. All right?

Right. We always just talk and this time we're recording it, so it's really fun. So just because some of my listeners haven't ever even heard of you before, can you take them back and share with us about your, your spiritual path? And I think it's also useful to know about your corporate consulting career.

Sure, let me just. So there's a word you use that maybe isn't familiar also to people. Would not be surprising that you are not familiar with the word Kriya yoga, for example. And so let me just touch on that briefly, then weave back in. So yoga, most of you, everybody I'm sure has heard of yoga and this. There's different flavors of yoga, you know, Iyengar yoga, Ashtanga yoga, or different hot yoga, Ian yoga. All these different doorways into yoga, which is a state of integration, essentially. That's what yoga means, integration, bring together. And that's what we're all trying to do, is to bring our life together, you know, get it together and bring in into a sense of wholeness and less fragmentation, less chaos, more coherence. Kriya yoga is a form of practice that has been around for thousands of years and for many hundreds of years it was a very cave ashram oriented practice of deep inner transformation. Then one of the things that characterizes this particular stream of the teachings began in the late 1800s, the Industrial Revolution. And the sages were seeing changes in the, in the larger world and recognizing that the pace of life, the pressures of life, the structures of life that used to be very rhythmic and agricultural were breaking down and that it was time to bring teachings out of the hidden domain and into the world. Because we need ways of reconnecting with the innate grounded, rhythmic beauty of this life. And there was a guy who worked in the government. He had a regular family, regular job, you know, his name was Lahari Mahasha. He was given this job to bring the deep teachings and the deep practices of inner transformation into the marketplace. Not that he set up a yoga school or had anything like that. He just bring it into the world. Is that what they mean by the marketplace? And teach householders, right, Householders, Yeah, Complicated relational lives to be able to experience the same degree of integration that previously had been reserved for folks and basically made that their career.

Yeah, right. And so many people can relate to that today. Like, it'd be nice if I could just like move to Bali and do nothing but meditate and have tantric sex. But in fact I have children and a job or a, a business or my husband has a job here. So yeah, like, what about the rest of us? And Lahiri Mahesh, I took that on. He was like, yeah, I'm like the rest of us, but I'm bringing what my guru gave me, you know, and guru another good Term for us to define. Right. Dispeller of darkness.

Yeah, That's a simple word. It's taken on cultic and kind of hierarchical meanings. And it's not to deny that in some contexts it is cultic and hierarchical and authoritarian. But essentially, traditionally, like in the deep inner teaching part of it, it's just somebody who you can relate to. That's a very important part of it, and who has it. Methods and principles that will help you, Me, as this disciple or as a student, release my fixation on suffering and begin to tune into the wisdom that's available.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Beautifully put. And, you know, that links it up too. I was. I was just thinking that, like they say in recovery, find someone who has what you want and ask how it was achieved.

That's the key. Cause its methodology is a very important part of this. Yogananda, who people may be familiar, he wrote a book called Autobiography of a Yogi. He was in this lineage. And one of the things he always said to his student, who was the teacher of my teacher, was that the beautiful thing about a technique is you don't have to have a belief system. You just have to work with the technique and discover the results in your own experience. And so of course, there's philosophy and principles, but these aren't imposed from the outside. They're revealed through the cultivation of the consciousness that the technique facilitates. So if we use the methodology, then we kind of. We rediscover the wisdom and we recognize where it is in the texts and the teachers. Oh, yes, that makes sense. I know that because it resonates with my own experience.

It's resonant, right? Yeah. And that's know. Resonant is a. Is a word that speaks of vibration. It speaks of our energy rather than our cognition. Right. It matches on a body level. And I think that that's so, so resonant for many women because we'll find teachings. And even if the teaching is intellectually resonant for us, like makes sense or we like it, the practices might not fit our bodies. They might not feel good. And so the. The way that you teach that of like, well, try the practice in know. Don't. You don't have to subscribe to anything in particular, but explore for yourself what the effect is.

And it's helpful. You don't need a teacher to do a practice. You could learn it from YouTube. It's just easier actually to have somebody, even if it's learning blues guitar licks at some point. It's nice to be Working with somebody who can help customize. That's an important part of the practice. And customize the instruction to your particular ways of not keeping the beat. You know, if you're talking about music, it's like you're talking about me.

Yeah.

There's things that can be pointed out in real time. And also with the teacher, one of the things that happens is that our nervous systems get into resonance with each other. And so there's not just the transmission of the method sort of as a life, as just a technical dimension. There's also, you know, like when we watch a great singer or dancer, part of it is we're receiving that energy in our own bodies and that's what brings it alive. And it's the same with the spiritual teacher.

Well, the same with a lover. Right. And listening to one another when we speak in the language. You know, something I teach couples is to, is to convey to one another. You know, there was a moment there when you did this. Here's what it felt like in my body.

Yeah.

And they can feel it. Right. We can transmit that back and forth to each other when we speak of the physiological experience. And I want to, I want to share a story that you, you'll probably remember, Eric, and this just kind of illustrates how long you've been my teacher. Remember when Mira was small, so I had like a three year old and a newborn. And I can remember, I think, talking to you, sitting in my car and. And you said when you're up against the wall and your practice is suffering, sometimes what you need is more meditation. So you're in a place where, yeah, an hour a day would really do you good. And you're also in a place where one minute might be what you need.

Yeah.

And, and just I was so moved by, you know, I'll never forget that moment because I was so moved by how responsive that was. You know, I felt seen and met and held and that that kind of containment is really a big deal for really active, make it happen women too. We're going and doing and giving and, and, and like trying to get our shit together. Like watching YouTube videos about how to meditate. And so I really like what you said. Like, it's just nice to have somebody care and be paying attention and you can ask questions. So like the container that you have been for me, where I could come and not be good at it and just name the ways in which. It was challenging to me to practice every day. It was challenging to me to stay with it and to go deeper rather than jumping out and going back to my to do list. And, you know, you've met me in that. And that's. It's such a beautiful thing to. To submit to the welcome. Okay, so you did that. You and David were like, 19.

Yeah, I was like. I think I read autobiography of you when I was like, 17 in high school, you know, And I was. Then I was looking. I grew up in New York City, and I was looking for a practice and a path. And this was kind of just the beginning of that wave of teachers from the east coming over to the west. And it was certainly bubbling in the zeitgeist of my generation. So I was part of that. And. And I had a number of experiences with different. Only a handful because there weren't that many actually places to have any experiences with some teachers that just didn't fit for me. It didn't fit my personality. And it didn't feel right. It felt, in one case, very cultic, and it was. And then in another case, I appreciated the rigor and intellectually. But there was something like human at a human dimension that was missing for me. Right. But Yogananda's book was powerful. Although I. You know, I'll put a caveat in it. It was filled with miracle stories because that's what gets people's attention.

He was a brilliant marketer.

He was a great marketer, especially to his time, you know, and. But still, people love to hear miracle stories. But in the book, there was the chapter on Kriya yoga, which said, it's a methodology that anyone can use scientifically and. Which means you can do the experiment and find out the results, you know, and that's. That attracted my Virgo soul, which loves something I can test and practice and refine and deepen and discover. So after high school, I went to Boulder, Colorado, to be a hippie and live in a teepee. But the first day I was there, I ran into a class, very first night on Kriya yoga. And he was giving. The young man was giving a talk about the relationship between the cosmos and the psyche, the relationship between the solar system and the subtle body that Yogananda points to in terms of the chakras. And I'd never heard it put together in such a coherent way that there's this resonance or this reflection between the outer cycles of existence in the solar system and the cycles of the earth and the cycles of your body and the cycles of your psyche. And that finding that through line that connects these together is a. We could say it's A form of cosmic consciousness because it puts that cosmic rhythm at home in your own embodiment. And I was drawn to that deeply. Many months later, I met this man. His name was Steve. I met Steve's teacher. I went to Chicago to visit his teacher, who was named Goswami Kriyananda, an American who was ordained and known as Kriyananda of Chicago. And Kriyanada's my guru, who. I watched him carefully on that first visit. And what most impressed me was the way he interacted personally with the people who came to the temple to talk with him. It was a human, one to one conversation. I mean, there was a line, it was an event. But I stayed in the corner and watched because I'd seen the people on the stage who were impersonal and separate from the students. And that wasn't what I was looking for. I was looking for someone I could relate to. And so we had a wonderful many decade relationship. He died a few years ago, and that's my teacher, Davey. And I studied with him and met him together. And together we've cultivated this teaching into, I would say, you know, our generations. And in our time where it needs to be embedded in our technological, polarized, crisis ridden world, it's more needed than ever.

Yeah. And you make it so accessible. And I'll just take this moment to, to share my journey. And I'm just so moved by what that was like for you, meeting him, meeting Kriyananda, because before I found Autobiography of a Yogi and Self Realization Fellowship, which is the organization that Yogananda had founded, and, and it's still in existence, I used to have like dreams and visions of these eyes, these dark eyes, and you know, I could see and feel and, and when I connected with Yogananda, I was like, it's him. That's, that's who it, who it's been, you know, that like, he's always been special to me and, and available to me before I knew who that was. And then when I connected with his teachings, him and his teachings, his essence, his love, his humor, he was a nut. Just like so lovely. And like, I love the story of him, like going into a western shop down kind of near like Palm Springs, I think, and, and he had to try on all the cowboy stuff and then, you know, like, tried on all these different things. And then when he was done, he's like, okay, good, I've completed that karma. Look. He lived his cowboy life in that hour. And that notion of like, yeah, when you're drawn to Things. It's something within you that's pulling you to it. Go for it, do that and work it out. You know, listen to. To what's being called there. So he was just lovely in so many ways. And then my experience of that organization was this very like dry, almost like a freeze dried take Yogananda and freeze dry it. And there was like a kind of vacant sort of thing. And Kurt and I were involved for several years in the local fellowship and certainly got a lot out of it. They taught me how to meditate for eight hours at a time and. And you know, I had some beautiful holy moments and beautiful kirtan and we got to do a lot of great service with kids there and loved it. And yeah, there was always like, I couldn't bottom out inside it, inside the community or the practice, because there was something missing. And I kind of attribute that to the fact that his successor died pretty soon after he did inside srf. And then it was led by their secretary who, who was never meant to be a spiritual leader. She might have been a great administrator, but that's. It had a very administrative flavor. And so my path to Eric was that I read your book about leadership. Eric wrote a book about leadership. It was like one of the very early books, years before that was a thing. And so when I found it, I was like, this book is amazing. But remind me the title.

I think you're talking about Awakening Corporate Soul.

Yes. Yeah. So I'm like a baby leadership coach, like 1998 or whatever. And I find Awakening Corporate Soul. And I was like, this is amazing. And then my friend Jennifer Louden creates this like a real life brain trust mastermind in the mutual sense. Not like somebody charging tens or $50,000 for other people to come, but truly a circle of peers. And who's there but the author of Awakening Corporate Soul. Holy moly. It's Eric Clap. And I was just ecstatic not knowing anything about this whole side. And so that's when I started learning from in, you know, and then we had the Yogananda connection and all of those things. And so for me to be able to come back to Korea in this way, that is so much more accessible for me too. You know, just so much more of a personality match and energetic match has been so nourishing. And then, you know, like I've just like kicked and screamed at sitting still at bringing my focus internal. And. And your patience and steadfastness in that has been so brilliant. And so in the time that I've been studying in A more dedicated way with you, we've really gone into what you just, you, you alluded to. You said so much there and I heard so much. But people who are brand new to it will probably need a little bit more exposition. So those cycles and the, and the connection between the entire universe and the larger physical bodies in it and then their archetypal energy and then our own systems, like it's all one. Of course. And people, people listening to this probably resonate with that notion, at least intellectually. But you helped me experience that and help me to feel the way that the cycles that are larger, that we can point to, that we can look at a chart and see like, oh yeah, this is up. Oh, that explains a lot. And that informs me and my choices. So tell us more about planets and chakras. Okay, I know it sounds really woo.

And I'm like, it is pretty woo sounding.

I'm. I'm kind of on the skeptical end of the spectrum with regard to, you.

Know, like, that's good. I'll say this. There's an ancient principle that comes from the Egyptian tradition. So it has in a sense Western roots or Mid Eastern maybe, and it's spread actually in all directions is this idea of as above, so below. But the full quote is as above, so below, as within, so without. As with the universe, so with the soul. And so it's pointing to this. There's a coherence. You could say there's a fractal, is the word design in the world, in the universe. It's simple at one level. And then that simplicity proliferates and repeats itself. But there's a pattern that connects everything. What is that pattern? Okay, this is what the sages were seeking in their meditation. What's the essential truth? Not as a belief system, but as something that's alive and structural and natural to the way life is organized. And this principle of as above so below. So that brings in this idea of that the heavens are the above. And there's a. There's a structure and a rhythm to the movement of the, of the planets around the sky. This is something that was observed many, many thousands of years ago. That's a hole. W H O L E. That's an entire system. Oh. And when the sages turned inward, they discovered inside myself. There's also rhythms of moods, of thoughts, of energies, of desires, of impulses. And they do also operate in a cyclical way. The simplest and most obvious for all living beings is, or all cerebral spinal beings is the sun comes up and we all Wake up, turn outward, turn. The sun goes down and we all turn inward. So there's a rhythm. We are part of that. It's one thing my waking and my sleeping is not personal. It's part of this larger rhythm. This is a challenge these days. Can I align my body's rhythm, re realign it back with the natural rhythm of this, of the earth, of the seasons, like so. But it goes even deeper than that. It goes into the sages recognizing. So just as there's a sun external, a source of light, illumination, warmth and life, there's also a sun consciousness internal, a source that illuminates my inner world, that brings life to my being, that helps me grow as a human being. That inner sun principle is discoverable within. Just as there's a moon that illuminates the night sky, so there is a lunar consciousness within that brings light into the dark. Unconscious dimensions, subconscious dimensions of my psyche as dreams, as intuitions, as subtle feeling states. Oh, there's a moon inside of me. And they would go right down the list of the planets of the solar system and say, as the solar system, so the inner psyche, so the soul. And this is what in the east was described as the chakra system. The chakras are the inner sun, the inner moon, the inner Mercury, the inner mind, the inner Venus, the inner heart of love, the inner Mars, the inner fire of desire and action, the inner Jupiter, the inner Saturn. These become these archetypes, if you will, of consciousness that are the portals through which the universal energies of life are expressed. As my personality, I am an embodiment of life expressed in a very unique way. Way you are expressed in a unique way. We're made of the same constituent elements physically. We're made of the same archetypal elements psychologically. But they're organized in a way that's unique to your life and shaped by.

Our early life experiences, shaped by possibly past lives and mutable, right?

Absolutely. That's one of the gifts of our time, the recognition. This is where the sages and the scientists are, are converging yet again.

They're converging, backing into each other.

They're coming and converging. The sages have always said, yes, you're born with karma, which is to say with proclivities. And you're born in a situation that is conditioning. That's all true. But here you are right now in this moment, aware of that. And so the practice of working with those archetypes, working with the inner energies and working with meditative awareness is the Practice of recognizing, that's my inheritance. Now I can work with it creatively to reform my life using the same very same situation, the same psychological ingredients, all of that. But they can be reformed with loving awareness into an expression that is nourishing for me, for my family, for my world. It's all workable. And the scientists, as the scientists look more and more at more and more refined levels of our human physiology and discover there's this thing called neuroplasticity, which is to say, yes, you've been conditioned to have this response based on something you learned when you were. Don't even remember when you were six months old. Oh, it was wired in. And you now, every time you see a dog or hear of a dog or think something sounds like a dog, your whole nervous system enacts. It's your nervous system, it's your garden. You can retill that garden, re, cultivate that garden and reshape your response not just to dogs, but to men and women. And not just to men and women, to your own thoughts, to your own pictures, to your own narratives. They can be transformed as well into a story that is more aligned with what your soul truly is longing to do in this world, which in simple terms is to be an embodiment of loving awareness and an expression of the create and a healing agent for this body, mind, and for the. All of the beings that are part of your world.

Exactly. Thank you. I'm like turning to listeners like, see, do you see how he is?

I don't know how I am. It's the teachings. Right? And the teachings are optimistic. That's the important there. The teachings are it's all material for our healing. Everything that's happening is for our wake. You said that earlier. Everything. It's all life going. You came into this life to have. What did Jesus say? To have life and have it more abundantly.

Exactly.

Okay.

Yeah.

The thing about that is, you know, what does it mean to have an abundant life? Often we have to work our way through the conditioned definitions of abundance that we've inherited and that the pursuit of them, if we look and see they're causing suffering for us and others, then we can bless the ones who gave us those ideas. They were doing the best they could, but now it's on us. It's our responsibility. It's on me to recultivate my understanding and my pursuit of abundance in a way that is generative. Yeah.

And that's been my experience. You know, you've walked me with me through a number of experiences. That I could characterize as painful, that I could think of as. As losses or violations or trouble. Life. Life constricted. But in fact, what you and Kriya and my practices have helped me find is everything is for my good. Everything is for my awakening. Even when I might be suffering, I might be sad, I might be angry, I might be scared, I might be sick. And there is an abundance in that. There is the capacity to meet what I'm experiencing and through it, to know more about who I actually am and where I actually came from and what actually sources me. And then to. To be able to show up for others in a way that reflects that.

That's important. Yes, that's super important. To become, you know, an agent of awakening in the world that we live in, whatever your world is like. One of my consulting mentors, Peter Block, used to say, people want to change the world or help the world. And his language was, the world is the room you're in. That's the only room world, you know, actually, other than as a concept, the real lived world that you're in, those are the people that you're in relation to. For most of us, it's mostly our family, you know, and our colleagues, but definitely our family. And so healing family karma is a huge invitation of this lineage, and it's a huge focus because someone said. Someone said to Karina, I was born in a dysfunctional family. He said, you don't need to say. Just say family. Just say family. It's all good.

It's redundant.

It's. We're on the earth plane. You know, it's all.

Everybody's, oh, my gosh. And as a mother, I'm like, why did they give me kids? I was brand new at this. I didn't. Why don't they.

There's no manual experience to do this. But we're all. We come together as a family. This is. And this is so, so gracious to. To receive. We come together because we're. We're circling around something. We're all trying to touch something in the general sense. We're all trying to be appreciated, loved, creative, supported. We're circling around something together. And the way we do that, circling to get to the healing, is sometimes just by running into each other. It's messy, and it's really messy, but that's why we're together. And all it takes is someone in that system to get 51% awareness. You don't need to be enlightened. You just need to get to be 51%. And then you are starting to tip the scales of your own experience, your own nervous system. And it's part of the. That's part of that web, that nervous system web. You don't even have to try. Just by having 51% of balanced awareness in your own system, you've added more balance to the, to the family system. And you will try because that's the tipping point of entering the path, is the tipping point of going. I'm going to actually consciously engage with my life to produce are, to recognize and to realize and to embody more. Peace, bliss, balance, love. You get to fill in the blank.

Equanimity, boundaries. Yeah. Vulnerability, transparency, empathy. Yeah. And hold on to myself, you know? Yeah. You've really helped me cultivate that continuity of consciousness that lets me hang on to myself even as different little parts and reactions and conditioned awareness arise. I. I have a ground of conscious awareness. So, yeah, I might have reactivity. I might be really mad at Kurt in any given moment, but also able to hold on to how do I want to be.

Yes.

And. And be able to choose. And I mean, I love. I want to back up to what you said about like, we want to change the world. We want to be, you know, I am here to be love and light. But you are a problem spouse, child, mother, mother in law. Yeah, true. And you're really harsh in my mellow. Don't you see who I am? Why do you keep being like you are totally. But learning to back up and go like, oh, wow. So like, there's my guru, there's my teacher right there, showing me the edge of my capacity to embrace everything with willingness and delight. Okay, this is a little challenging for me at the moment. Thank you. And. And then just staying, staying in the dialogue with. I mean, that's intimacy, right?

That is intimacy. And that's. Intimacy is another word for awakening. Because it's really reducing the layers of self protection in order to become more and more connected to life. The most potent aspects of life come to us as human beings.

Say that again.

Well, because we are incarnated into a human embodiment. Right. The most powerful forms of life that come to us, the ones who bring us everything. The gifts, the teachings, the blessings, the challenges. Of course, every nature is, everything is. But the powerful deliverers are human beings. It comes through people. You know, the teachings, they came to me through creodanda. They come through a person. Right. Love and growth and recognizing my own madness comes through Devi. You know, it's. Comes through Davey.

It's like my own Madness.

It's how it comes to us. And so the path of intimacy.

Yeah.

In the Zen tradition that they say. Well, the way they say it is very Zen way. They speak of awakening as not knowing because it's letting go of all of our conceptions. Right. And they say not knowing is most intimate. It's the intimacy is like to drop our pre. Our narratives, to drop our certainty. Not to become. What's the right word? Gullible, but to be. Which is quite different from being open. Right. If we're gullible, we're usually looking for a savior. Okay. And so we can drop that as well. This intimacy is dropping the self protection strategies that keep us ironically safe and suffering. So, oh, let's drop that. But we can't do it by will. We can do it breath by breath. Breath by breath. At the degree that we can absorb, that we can metabolize, you know, that we can integrate. In wisdom heart, we like to say we proceed at the pace of integration. What is that? We don't know. It's just whatever the pace of integration is for us. And spiritual practice is the way of cultivating that capacity. Yeah, yeah. Cultivating a taste for integration. Right, right.

The patience. The patience to proceed at that pace. Because you know, and we. You said a minute ago you were speaking of like the, the pursuit of, of certainty. But I have been such a voracious voyager on the road to some finish line and I wanted people who had crossed it. I needed models who, who were there. And. And what I've learned is there isn't a there. And what a relief. What a relief to. To fall into that softness. And I, I read something the other day which of course we've all heard before. Like those who know don't say.

Yeah, yeah.

Those who are busy saying they don't know if they sound certain. Take that with a grain of salt. But it's so seductive with. So we want somebody who has the. Like you said earlier, we want the magic stories, we want miracles, we want someone who will tell us, I have ascended the entire stairway. I'm on the top, and you can come here too.

Yeah, yeah, it's. And so a double edged sword, of course. Right. Which is. It's not the words, it's not the language, it's not the expression. Whether that's in linguistically or an art or. It's not. Those are. That are not the prop. Not the issue. It's the reification trying to freeze it instead of letting it be. That's one expression of it. You know, it's like, that's how it's coming to me at this time. And then it will be like in Yogananda language was ever new, ever unfolding bliss. So it's the evolution of awakening. It's an evolutionary process. When does it end? Well, if. If the. If life is infinite, you know, don't. Why don't worry about it ending, but cultivate this capacity, right, to meet each arising moment as the horizon of awareness expands. This is a. For those of you listening who are in the United States, what do they call it? Protecting the border. That's it. Even though it's like this, like the crisis at the border? Yes, we're all having many crises at the border.

We're all at the threshold.

It's the borderline. And it's like the borderline. How do we open? Do we open it? Do we close it? Do we patrol it? Yeah, we probably do all of those things, like in our self management, in our children management or in our business management.

And. And we stand. And we stand in line as refugees.

Yes.

Trying to cross it even. It's the same time.

It's all us protecting it. Yeah, all us.

It's all us. Oh, my God.

But it's that song. And it was one of the line from a song that I wrote. But anyway, I'll quote it. It's like the huddled masses longing to be free are in your heart.

Yeah.

That's where they are. The outer story that we see is real tragic and it's a reflection of our own collective lack of imagination and lack of capacity to be intimate with life. Let us look and listen and go. That's the mind at work. And I have one of those, so I better double down and get clear. How am I defending the borders in ways that are causing suffering?

Yeah. So beautiful. Yeah. Like Sherry Huber says, thank you for showing me that about myself.

Yeah. Really. Oh, my God.

Han says, please call me by my true names. You know, I'm the rapist, I'm the murderer.

And it can be hard to hear that and conflict and only take in as much as you can stand at any one time. But that's what we're doing with practice. We're cultivating intimacy and. And we're reducing self protection in order to. To receive the. The fullness. That's back to that image. To receive the fullness. Yeah, yeah.

It's important in its multidimensional nature. Like in its light, dark, multidimensional nature down. You know, that's what we say erotically. Like Receive the stroke you're getting, you know, get off on what's right here.

That's it. That's a good way. Yes.

That's what it was like a minute ago. You know, this, this is what worked last Friday night. But what's, what's going on here? And can you, can you be present to it?

And that's a beautiful way to say it. Right. And that stroke, that's how Ram Dass described his stroke. Right? He was, when he had the stroke. He, he's, he in his narrative of his awakening life, it was always the guru stroked me. Yeah, yeah.

Like a caress. Yeah, A caress right in the brain. Oh, so beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And I, I thought of him earlier in this conversation. I once heard him in, in person speaking. And, and he said, he said community is where all the people you would rather avoid are.

Exactly.

We talk about family, we just.

Yeah, you just can't live in a gated community your whole life. You do have to open it up and be part of the existence. That's really why you came. And so life's like you talked about. It's persistence. Life's relentless, gentle, insistent, unavoidable invitations will finally, finally, you know, make it through all the gates and, you know, and be delivered. You know, you have been served. You know, then you're like, well served. And now it's yes, I, you have been served. Life is your dasa, your servant. Ram Dass. Das means servant, you know, and then we get the message and then we turn around and we become a servant. Not in subservience, but in terms of becoming. To recognize the greatness that's all in the hidden wholeness that's in every member of our family and every member of our life. Ha. What else could you do except recognize that now, as we were, David and I talk about now, you know, we're in our 70s. So we look back and look at all those amazing mistakes that we made with our children, you know, and how we would think about it differently. And all the mistakes we made were just, were reflections of our own level of integration. The only work we can do is to continue to cultivate, cultivate to have self compassion for that. You know, I'll chip into their therapy now. It's all going to work out.

I'm saving already.

Good idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's so tempting, isn't it, to get, to get lost in remorse that you were not on some prior day, who you are today. That's all it is, right? If you are capable today of seeing A mistake that you made in the past, it's only because you've grown. And if you could have seen it, then you would have. If you could have done anything different.

Totally.

And so many people come to me with those. Those big stones in their pockets about they didn't do back then and how their child is suffering now because of what they did or, you know, something else in the past.

Sure.

And. And what I see for myself is if my parents have any regrets like that, I don't want them to because it took every single one of those, you know, if you want to call something they did a mistake or whatever, every piece of my own sense of neglect or abuse or whatever, to make me who I get to be today. And I could not be more grateful.

Beautiful. That's receiving your life.

Yeah, yeah. And it's. And I mean, of course, we have to, like, walk through and touch our suffering to get there.

That's right. That's right. And that's part of the practice. Yeah.

The other thing that you help me access is that, you know, we were talking earlier about the suffering we see out there. And you can get all wrapped up in the past, you can get all wrapped up in. In your future and how it's supposed to be. You can get all wrapped up in, like, the suffering of others out in the world. And, like, I have to go serve. I have to. Why can't I do to fix that? But what. What I'm coming to see, and I just loved how you said it about being a servant, that we become a light through our own contentment, through the shining of our own inner sun. It's like. It is my peace. My peace is in some ways the only thing I have to give others. Of course my hands and feet can go do things and I can write checks, and. But if I'm not. If I. Even if I. Like, you know, like we've, you know, we talk about, like, if. If you give your husband a blowjob, but you're resentful about it, like it's tainted, or if you write a check to an organization but you feel guilty, you know, you're writing it out of shame. It's tainted. But. But if I'm loving myself and knowing I'm the refugee, I'm war torn, and then I write a check, then my love goes with it. Right. My. My intimacy.

Yes. That's beautiful. It's such. It's a paradox. It is. And the path is paved with these paradoxes of, I think in the west, the Christian, you know, I'm broken. And in one of the songs, broken open, I am whole. It's like. That's the weirdness of it. There's this. The broken parts are part of the whole mandala. And so that's the difference between sort of the perfectionistic vision of awakening, you know, and. And the wholeness, recognition of awakening. It's all radiance. And some parts need a lot of work. It doesn't mean they're not radiance. They just need. They need cultivation, you know, and they need development, and they need the. The right kind of support.

And we need to be that.

Right, we need to be that.

And so that we get to be the thing that supports. You know, it's a project for us. It's like, here, Radiance, you know, you are radiance. Eric, Michelle, here's what I want you guys to do with that. Fix this. That looks impossible.

It's tricky. And, you know, it's. It's all dimensional. We realize I'm broken and I have guilt and still write the check. Still do it. Send the check and then take. Don't. Don't withhold the check, but don't withhold the love either.

Yeah.

Check is a form of love. Now turn that subtle body love back to the chakras within you, to the memory tracks. Take care of all the parts, you.

Know, all of it. All of it. And like, even the lushness of what you just described, the complexity, I feel like is just the divine showing off, like how many. How many layers of filigree it can create is so beautiful. And I opened up this book that I'm reading because there was this beautiful G.K. chesterton quote in here that when you were speaking of paradox, it reminded me of this. Paradox is truth standing on her head to attract attention.

That's awesome. He has so many great lines. He does. That's great. It's all. You know. Anyway, when you were talking, I'm thinking of Billy Crystal, though. You look marvelous. Because it's how it is. It's just. Oh, my God. It's all. It's all marvelous. That doesn't mean it's perfect. No, it's radiance. And there's a. Thomas Merton said there's a hidden wholeness in everything. It's hidden, but it's overlaid with veils of conditioning, emotionality, self defense. Not. Not just in them, you know, oh, if only they could be. Whatever I'm seeing, you know, it's there for me to. Less. Whatever arises is there to be served. And and, and, and supported.

Yeah. Beautiful. And, and there's a hidden wholeness in everything. And there's a hidden hole, like exactly. So hidden, not so like raw, gaping, bloody hole in the middle of even the most joyful moments. Right. We can always access the broken aspect. We're human. We're like I'm a little orphan stranded out here in matter.

It's all, it's, it's what, it's what we brought here. These are memory tracks. They're not you, they're memory tracks that you've brought here to heal in this life. Whatever it is that's arising, that's there to be attended to and love. And part of what gives us the capacity to do that is having a spiritual practice. Having a daily rendezvous with stillness, with silence. Having a daily rendezvous with the part of us, the play, which is our most true nature, that has never been harmed and has never been broken. It's untouchable in that regard and it can touch everything else. It can infuse everything else with that, with that grace. So that is, you know, that's my. So it's like come back to that. Make that part of your life. Nourishment. It becomes the source because you're touching the source of generativity. When you do that, it naturally proliferates and generates and extends and permeates the different aspects of your own experience and your own life. And that is super, super important.

I mean it's the most important. It has certainly been so for me and I started meditating when I was 12 years old but it really wasn't until working with you and Wisdom Heart and the, the meditation habit your really start from scratch a minute at a time. Meditation training that helped me enjoy it. I would just was so I had such a push pull relationship with. Helped me fall in love with my own radiance and that time I get to spend in it.

That's it. Fall in love with the pra. And the practice itself. It's a virtuous cycle. It, it. If we start small enough many, many decades ago when we first visited Shelley, who disciple of Yogananda who was a hermit, we found him in his little cabin in the woods and, and he would say the secret, it's intensity times duration equals the force, the power of your practice because most people try to make it longer. That's the duration part. But that's not the secret. The secret is the intensity, which is the depth and the absorption. So if you can increase the intensity, which you can if you love the object of Your meditation, if you just, if you just meditate on something you love, the duration takes care of itself. Not to worry. Fall in love with the object of your meditation.

And that's, it's the intensity of the love too. Because as you're saying that and I'm imagining myself as a listener and remembering what I was like, I love some intensity. I love to go, you know, this one goes to 11. I love to turn the knob. And it's not that. It's not, try harder. It's the intensity of the love. You taught me to back it off to where I'm not actually trying. And I'm like, but Eric, I'm being lazy. And you were like, just, no, just do it like that. Do it like that until you like it. Lighten it up until it feels good. And I was like, I don't. They can't be working.

That's right.

Are you sure this is good?

Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's not exciting.

It's not exciting.

It's not right. It's not exciting in the terms of.

All the ways that I have wanted life to be exciting. Yeah. I mean, my ambitious capitalists make it happen ego stuff. Didn't want to do it that way. But yeah, as I dialed it back.

There'S nothing wrong with having a beautiful home, having money. Nothing wrong with any of those things. They take on their meaning when they are experienced from stillness. So that's that the intensity is stillness. It's. It's really intense. That's how it goes.

Exactly.

Right.

Thank you. Oh my gosh, I love that. So I think we can, we can wrap up, but I really want people to, to know I study with you every Wednesday as part of the Wisdom Heart community. And on Fridays you have a free half hour meditation.

Yes. Friday and Sundays we have free meditations online live. So that if people come to go to wisdomheart.com and, you know, get on the list, basically, then you'll always be notified of all of these, the free events. And you'll be invited if you want to come to Wisdom Heart teachings, which happen on Wednesdays.

So cool. And. And this year we're diving into chakras, right?

Oh, yeah. We're starting a new pro chakra school. It's starting in March, but the doors will open every month as we go from one chakra to the next. So, you know, depending on what floor you may want to go on, wherever that is, and explore these archetypal energy and wisdom centers, which are the portal to the deep wisdom of Your soul. And they're also the portal through which you can express that wisdom in your life.

That's beautiful. And that's how I'm thinking about. I'm so excited about it. I'm thinking about it as, like, exploring my life, you know, the things I think of as my headaches or my pains or my, you know, thwarted desires. Exploring those through the lens of a deeper wisdom, you know, getting a. A higher vantage on them that shows how they fit into the cycles of my entire existence and. And the evolutionary arc that I'm on and. And therefore how I can engage with them more effectively. To speak in very pragmatic terms, more effective with them, but also clearly, like, be more nourished, have more fun, have it be less painful and more serviceable. So, yeah, that's going to be really exciting. And anybody who wants to join me in that study and sit at the feet of this wise man, I hope you.

I hope we do offer this. Dip your toe in. So just check it out and then see if it's for you.

Wow. Yeah. Thank you, Eric. And I think listeners can hear. It's truly a servant, a beautiful. You know, you. You do amazing things in the world in terms of building, and I know you're at a place in your life where you've accomplished a lot and. And are able to service in this way, but I think that we have so much access to so much teaching now. There are so many people standing up and claiming their seat that, you know, I don't need to talk trash, but, you know, that they may have earned over more or less time, but I'm just really grateful to. To have you in my life. That's what I'll say.

I'm grateful you're here, too. Thank you.

I'd love to hear what you're going to take away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? Drop me a DM on social media anytime. Links are in the show notes. You know, reviews are really what help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thanks in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app before you move on with your day. And, hey, have you subscribed? Hit that subscribe button in the app so you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Michelle Izenberry Christensen, and this is. This has been Sex Love Power. I'll see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you Illuminate the world around you.