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Danielle LaPorte: How to be Loving
2.7k Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Danielle LaPorte, best-selling author, joins us again to talk about; what love is, her path to mysticism, and balancing the experience of being genuinely happy alongside the fear and emotions of the world. In our conversation, everything comes back to love.
Danielle LaPorte is the creator of the Heart-Centered Membership and the Heart Centered Leadership Program with 400+ leaders in 30 countries hosting conversation circles, retreats, and workshops in all kinds of communities and businesses.
This most recent book, How To Be Loving…when your heart is breaking open and the world is waking up, is also an Audiobook + ebook, with a companion Journal. Danielle is also the author of The Fire Starter Sessions, White Hot Truth, and The Desire Map, and producer of dozens of meditation kits and online programs for spiritual support.
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Transcript
Introduction and Book Overview
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Coe, your host, and thank you guys once again for tuning in. Today we have Danielle LaPorte coming back on the show. She is the author of her most recent book. It's called How to Be Loving When Your Heart is Breaking Open and the World is Waking Up.
00:00:45
Speaker
It is also available on audiobook and ebook. And she came here today to break it down for us, you guys. We talked about what love is, her path to mysticism, how to be genuinely happy while being fearful, sad, heartbroken, even in an literal crisis. And she shares her personal stories and enlightening truths on how she was able to do that and break open to more of who she was, which is love.
00:01:15
Speaker
She is a member of Oprah's Super Soul Sunday 100 group. She's been in a think tank in Washington. She's obviously the author of The Firestarter, The Desire Map, White Hot Truth, if you haven't checked them out. Definitely take a look. Danielle Laporte, she is the creator of the heart-centered membership program with 400 leaders in 30 countries. She has conversations and retreats and workshops.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's endless. And if that isn't enough, you can check out Danielle on her podcast, We Love Danielle. It is ranking in the top 10 for wellness. So plenty to go learn, grow, and experience in the Danielle Laporte world. You can find her on Danielle Laporte, P-O-R-T-E dot com. And she can also be found on her social media handle is at Danielle Laporte.
00:02:08
Speaker
I know you're going to love today's
The Writing Journey and Deeper Themes
00:02:10
Speaker
show. We're very honored to have her as our repeat guest and thank you guys once again for tuning in. Welcome to this week's episode of the Art of Authenticity. I am Laura Ko and I am so excited to be here with Danielle LaPorte. Thank you Danielle again for coming on our show. Thank you. Hello everybody listening.
00:02:33
Speaker
I'm so excited to have you back. It's been a while. So anybody out there who did not hear the first interview, it was wonderful.
00:02:46
Speaker
I'm particularly excited because of the content of this book and the timing of it and the idea of love and how to be loving. Um, it's on the top of my mind. It's something I think about all the time lately. So, um, I'm just curious though, like why this book now, what was the story into this
00:03:07
Speaker
Body
Feelings vs. Virtue
00:03:08
Speaker
of work. I mean, I know the desire map and your work is around connecting within but but what what specifically drew you to this work and this book right now The book we ended up with was not the book I started to write so this was going to be this evolution of desire map but you know is based on this question of how do I want to feel and The deeper I go so it's like it was gonna be desire map 2.0 and the publisher wanted it because who doesn't want you know, it's like
00:03:37
Speaker
It's out there. Who doesn't want to? Boy, no. And I got in to it and realized I knew that I wanted to talk about the evolution of desire, but it was more of a departure than I thought it was going to be. And so the clarity got to
00:03:59
Speaker
my own experience and then just some mystical research, as in research into mysticism, that feelings come from the subconscious self. And I really kind of had this reckoning with it. It felt a little like scary and messy. I was like, whoa, wait, wait. If feelings come from the part of me that's unconscious, like what about all the positive feelings? So is my happiness unconscious?
00:04:29
Speaker
my sadness, my anger, all those things. And the answer is yes. I'm down with that theory. I'm now team, like feelings are from the subconscious self. So then what do I do about happiness and what I do about anger and all those things? And desire map was based on the question, how do I wanna feel? Oh my God, what do I do with like this whole,
00:04:56
Speaker
way of living, paradigm, body of work. I had all these coaches coaching people to that question, design a life according to how you want to feel. And then I got clear. The next level of clarity was, well, I hope this is obvious. Feelings are part of the human experience.
00:05:18
Speaker
It's not a negative part of the human experience. It needs to be embraced. There needs to be reverence, but it's not the end game. Like being happy, feeling good all the time. First of all, feeling good all the time, not possible. Not possible. But it's not actually like the goal even. And
00:05:42
Speaker
Then there was a revelation that I wanted to, I got deeper into work around virtue.
Love in Dark Times
00:05:50
Speaker
And I got clear, like I wanted to be a certain virtues. Like I want to be loving all the time, no matter what. I want to be, I want to embody compassion all the time, no matter what. And I know
00:06:07
Speaker
that I can be loving even if I don't feel good that day. And that's how we got here, how to be loving. I love it. And it sounds like this came through a series of personal revelations.
00:06:27
Speaker
When you say I got into mysticism and then I learned about reverence and virtues, can you share a little bit about what that looked like for you as you were going through this process? Because I can only imagine here you are with this business of coaches and publishers and a drive towards and you're having this deeply personal experience that it must have been meaningful. Is there a couple of moments that stand out that you could share?
00:06:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, there was like, I would just put sort of general research into this bucket with a lot of Buddhism in the bucket, leaning more towards increasing your level of consciousness, raising your vibration, raising your frequency. And there's no one discussing about, you know, being in a better mood.
00:07:22
Speaker
relating to like your frequency, right? Like, you know, and yes, there are, of course, we want to aspire to be happy in those things. The one, there were a lot of experiences, but one experience was I was in a really rough place. Like I, I am really okay with labeling it as a real bonafide, dark night of the soul.
00:07:45
Speaker
And it was a time in my life, this is about four or five years ago now, where my psychotherapist was on speed dial. My friends were calling to check in with me and make sure like, you're good, you're okay, you want to be alone, you need company kind of thing. And a friend called who I hadn't talked to in a couple of years.
00:08:04
Speaker
And you know those relationships where like you just pick up and no time has passed. Yeah. But I was such a, I was really suffering as such a mess at the time. I hope that anybody who was calling me was calling a check on me.
00:08:20
Speaker
And just how the conversation flowed, we just started talking about her first. And she was also in this really rough place. And we ended up, we both had to go. We didn't get to like my sorry self, you know? And I got off that, I did what we all do. We like, we're just witnessed and we're loving. And you know, I was a friend that day.
00:08:45
Speaker
And the context is like right before she'd been calling, I'd been like sobbing in my living room. And back of my mind, I was playing like, oh, I'm going to keep crying after I hang up the phone. I've got like a minute today. It's a bad day. And when we got off the call, I felt all my feelings were so raw.
00:09:09
Speaker
I was really aware of like my state at the time. And I just felt really alive. I felt useful. I felt like so meaningful. I felt close to God. I felt fulfilled. I really felt fulfilled. And I just thought that had nothing. Me feeling fulfilled via being loving had nothing to do with my
00:09:38
Speaker
mood that day, my unhappiness, my despair. And I had a moment of I was love, I embodied love really in spite of everything I was going through. And then that was really light bulb one for me. I was just like, wow, this fulfillment thing, like spiritual richness isn't actually not about feelings.
Joy, Happiness, and Cultural Perspectives
00:10:05
Speaker
And then all the mystical
00:10:08
Speaker
research, teaching, I was going to say data, but they'll tell you like the unconscious self. That's really, that's the astral body and it's very watery and it's very illusory. It's very not true. And that awakening is all about truth. And the truth is you are not that, you're not your feelings.
00:10:35
Speaker
We are actually virtue. I believe that the energy of divine love and all of its expressions is what we're made of. That's our true frequency. That's the true self. Just gotta wake up to that.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. I believe that entirely. It took me a long time as somebody went through the authenticity, not desire path, but right. I was like, Oh, we have to wake up to the truth of the authentic voice within. And it's like, what is that anyways? Right. And it's like, it's love. It's the frequency of love. It's the experience, the divine expression of life force, which is love, right? It's not romantic love. It's not being in love. It is love right at its core.
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's beautiful. And I guess I'm, I'm, I'm totally struck by, and I'm curious to just go a little deeper on this idea of happiness is not the goal though, right? Cause we're, we're moving quickly through that. And I agree entirely, but this culture is many cultures are
00:11:38
Speaker
are entirely organized around, I mean, American culture, the pursuit of happiness. Like, it is your right, it is your right to be happy. And it's like, wow, that's deep, right? Because it's not a state that you can hold from waking up till bedtime. Like, there's no such thing. You'd be completely, I mean, just the chemistry would take a loan to be happy, happy, happy, happy in a dopamine sense of the word. It's just not even possible. So,
00:12:08
Speaker
If it's not the goal and we're not our feelings and we are love, for somebody out there who's trying to make sense of this, because it's so nuanced, what is love, the vibration of love being in a sadness and being loving, how do people start to understand the difference between this goal of happiness not working, what happiness is, and then what really is the difference between that and love, a loving state?
00:12:36
Speaker
Great question. I would love to talk about your insights around authenticity, but sure. There's the semantics of happiness. So in Buddhism, and I'm not quote a Buddhist, but it is in my toolkit. In Buddhism, many prayers revolve around happiness.
00:12:55
Speaker
May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free of suffering, may you be free of mental anxiety. May the thoughts, words and actions on my life today to contribute to the happiness and freedom of all. Actually sounds very American when you give it the right kind of oomph, you know? I think through the Buddhist lens, a more esoteric consciousness lens, happiness is really about
00:13:20
Speaker
a beingness. It's just the joy of being. I make a distinction between happiness and joy. I think joy is a core state of being. It's foundational. I have experienced, when I went through my divorce, this was another one of those kind of like vignettes, vignette moments, you know, I'm sneaking out at night to smoke a cigarette.
00:13:47
Speaker
walking my dog really in agony, you know, marriage over. And I really, I felt this joy. And it wasn't an emotional joy of like, ah, I'm out, I'm free and black, you know, it was just like, again, I just felt so alive. I felt joyful. It was like this awareness, the awareness of being alive.
00:14:17
Speaker
brought me joy, realized the beingness itself is joyful. I know it's difficult to explain, but we get it. I know we get it. Everybody can, you listen with your heart, you get this. So joy is a container, it can hold everything. I know people who've been in grief, like it's losing children and have been able to tap joy.
00:14:48
Speaker
Happiness, I think, is an emotion. It's a great emotion. We get to have it. Go have it. But it's like a cloud. It comes, it goes. It's carbonated. It's going to get deflated. Just like all the other things. And you're not the happiness. You're the joy. You're the environment, not the clouds.
00:15:10
Speaker
And when you get this, this is the liberation that I think so many mystics speak of. And my personal experience is that, yeah, of course, of course, goes without saying, still have challenges that I have all the emotions about. But they don't take me down as long.
00:15:37
Speaker
I don't, I'm not as triggerable as I was when it was all about being happy or badass or whatever the feeling was that I wanted to feel. And it's been a bit of a journey, but I also now, this is sort of the kind of the tail end of this cycle, I have more compassion towards my feelings.
00:16:06
Speaker
Uh, right. Right. That's beautifully put by the way. Yeah. More compassion towards my feelings, right? Because if you're in a, um, seeking pleasure, resisting pain cycle, then you're mad at a lot of the feelings, right? Like it's like, I don't want to be sad and I want to be more happy. Why am I not more happy? Why am I feeling sad? Like, right? Is that what you're meaning? Like there's a compassion towards all of them is just being what they are and they're the clouds. They just swoop around.
00:16:35
Speaker
And they're okay. Like, it's okay, right? There's a... Yeah. And why not? They're there. They're there. I also try less. This may sound so ironic in this wellness space. I try less to change my feelings. Yes. So I try more. I was going to say harder, but it's like, I'm more dedicated to changing my state.
00:17:04
Speaker
But if doubt shows up, I don't say to my doubt, you need to be faithful. That's right. I don't even say to my fear, you need to be fearless. Well, it's just fear. All that energy we waste trying to change what shows up, just see it. You're not it, just see it. Oh, wow, that's interesting. I'm afraid of that. Interesting. Move on. Right, right.
00:17:31
Speaker
Ironically, it moves on right? It's like the less you Feel a sense of shame that it shouldn't be or resisted or seek it so I love how deep we're going so quickly back to this book title though because I have one more question around it your the book is called how to be loving but your tagline says as your heart is breaking open and our world is waking up and
00:18:00
Speaker
How to be loving as your heart is breaking open. I'm actually working on a book right now called Beautifully Broken. And it's about my own experience where my heart got broken a million times by a very deep like twin flame love it's just been this really mystical spiritual experience but it's
Heartbreak and Awakening
00:18:19
Speaker
Bro i feel it's broken me open to more of myself as i let go but it came through sort of. What one might call on the face of it a heartbreak after heartbreak but in fact i feel it was breaking me down to open me up like breaking down all of the.
00:18:39
Speaker
the resistance, I think, to the experiences I was having. But I'm just curious why, as an author, I know the titles and the subtitles, you think about that. Why breaking open? What's the heartbreaking open to, or what does that mean to you? Exactly what you said. How I interpret what you're saying is the suffering brought you.
00:19:05
Speaker
to your truth, which I think is what it's designed to do. It's actually a higher function. You know, we hear this so much in like the self-help space. It's like, life is happening for you, not to you. And I believe that. And I think that's what it means. The suffering, there's always a gift in it. It doesn't feel like a gift at the time. No, it doesn't. So a lot of us are feeling
00:19:32
Speaker
Well, we're feeling heartbreak on any given day, whether it's relationship stuff or any kind of any kind of loss, the state of the environment. But, you know, with the timing of this book, this is like I think we're in this place of like global heartbreak. You are the unfortunate part of it or the instrumental part is like people are just on one side of the heartbreak or the other.
00:20:00
Speaker
And some of us are waking up to like, it's just all, it's all, we're all in this together and we're only going to go forward together, but you know, very polarized time. So I thought, let's just reframe the heartbreak. This has to happen. Has to happen.
00:20:17
Speaker
I had to get divorced and figure out who I was. Social systems from education to medical freedom, to politics, to religious structures, they've all got to fall apart so that we can see what's really there, which is humanity and the necessity of loving kindness. We're not there yet, but we're getting there. And that the world is waking up.
00:20:47
Speaker
not, you know, that's a second line of as your heart is breaking up, as our world is waking up. Is the world falling apart? Yes. If you don't think it's falling apart, just wait, just wait, just wait a few more months so you'll get it. Um, but it's, I really feel it's an awakening, painful one. Yeah. Yeah. But it, it does, I think require,
00:21:15
Speaker
Awakening does require a certain amount of shake-up and For some of us more for some of us less but regardless, I don't think it comes peacefully for most of us I think there's a maybe a few divine souls who perhaps are at the end of their incarnations Different experience but have you always been spiritual would you say that this is I mean I hear that you're having like a bit of a spiritual awakening into mysticism, but is it sort of
Spiritual Journey and Mysticism
00:21:45
Speaker
just sort of a broadening of how you felt before? Oh yeah, it's a broadening. I felt really open as a child. I went to Catholic school most of my life.
00:22:05
Speaker
And my mother was reading Wayne Dyer and Louise Hay, and I turned my Barbie house into a Hail Mary house. I was in love with Jesus.
00:22:19
Speaker
when I was 10 years old, yeah. Oh my God, that's awesome. That's awesome. And so getting to the book a little bit, like you bring up a lot of topics in there. One in particular, this idea of truthful identification. Can you explain that to the audience? It was a term I hadn't really heard before. Maybe you coined it yourself, but what is that to you?
00:22:45
Speaker
Well, I was, I did have to coin it because my editor said, you can't call this correct identification, which is a Buddhist term. There's incorrect and correct truth and you know, lies and truth. Um, she thought correct was, wasn't politically correct to the irony. I was like, okay, it's truthful as a, but truth is so objective. I, you know, anyway, um,
00:23:13
Speaker
This, I think, is the journey. We think we are so much of our identity. We think we're Catholic, female, married, right, wrong, our past, our future, afraid, neurotic, courageous, all these things. Virgo, Gemini, INFJ,
00:23:38
Speaker
Don't forget human design. You gotta throw that in. Yeah. I haven't done that yet, but I'm resisting. Um, and like, those are all in, they're just things. They're flags. They're little flags we wave. Is that who you really are? No matter what, at the end of the day, before you incarnate, after you leave your body? No, you don't even get to take
00:24:02
Speaker
most of your knowledge with you. I think the soul expands, you burn karma, you become quite literally brighter, you burn brighter with each incarnation. All the identity labels, the labels are useful. I like to know that I have four planets in Virgo. It helps me choose my cleaning products.
00:24:30
Speaker
helps me apologize to people for how organized it will be when you go on a trip. Um, but is that who I am? And I, so the expansion you take with you, but do you remember all the languages that you've ever spoken in the next lifetime?
Truthful Identification and Authenticity
00:24:49
Speaker
No, all those things. So you're not that, you're not that. Why are we here to remember
00:24:58
Speaker
what we truly are, which is, you know, back to the point we both made simultaneously is like, we're the love, we're the love stuff. And I mean, this is a very like finessed wondering, but you know, I wonder if you have, you can ever have full remembrance in this dimension. You know, like you had mentioned,
00:25:26
Speaker
maybe people just kind of at the tail end of their enlightenment, still got assigned this dimension down here. I don't know, maybe. Maybe, I mean, I know there are, of course, of course, there are great masters, great masters who have profound awarenesses, including their past lives and just, they experience things multidimensionally, but I don't know.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I feel our language system fails to capture the depth, right? Because you said it passing about 15 minutes ago. You may not hear this on an intellectual level, but you'll feel it on a heart level and you'll know it to be true. And I think that to really understand all of it is to let go of understanding any of it
00:26:22
Speaker
with our minds, right? Because our minds can't understand great art. It can't understand a moment of awe. It can't understand falling in love. It can't understand when your baby's born how that feels. It can't understand at the moment of death. It doesn't understand anything, but we intuitively have such a depth of understanding that goes so far beyond what this brain or language can contain.
00:26:46
Speaker
And so it's like the uncontainable is the knowing. And I think it's a release of knowledge, right? Of what we've been taught. This is a spoon, this is a fork, this is a television. None of that puts into practice why I look at a sunset and I pause. Right? Yeah. Yeah, there's so many points there. One is,
00:27:16
Speaker
Looking at the sunset and pausing, I believe that beauty is this universal language. I think beauty is how God shows up. It's like, I just want to remind you that I'm here. Oh, here's a sunset. But there's a universality to beauty. Like you can take people from different cultures
00:27:44
Speaker
and they'll all have a similar experience of similar things.
00:27:52
Speaker
Yeah, there's something else really lovely you said, but it just slipped out of my mind and I'll come back. Yeah, and when you're in the moment of awe, we're all having that drop out of the physical, right? Like that's what I think if you see great art, if something happens that stirs the soul, so to speak, right? Like the thing that's remarkable is time stops.
00:28:15
Speaker
The moment stops. And that's what's real. Yeah. That's, that is the flip. You know, like we hear so much, well, depending what you're listening to, but like in mystical terms that this lifetime is the illusion. This is theater. This is the Maya. Yeah. And I understand that conceptually for a long time, but then when you start having some beautiful experiences or
00:28:41
Speaker
For me, this has really actually come through meditation. And this doesn't happen all the time. And I'd say it's just like really a handful of kind of what some people might call more peak experiences, which weren't even that peak. I just, after meditating for a while, I just have this revelation, this thought that that is what's real. When I, on the times when I close my eyes to meditate,
00:29:09
Speaker
It's like, wow, I'm actually tapping into the true reality. And when I come back, I'm back into the movie. Yeah.
00:29:21
Speaker
That caused me some distress for a while. Yes. Well, the ego does not love that message, right? Because it's everything we've built around our identity of self and the world we're in has to die a little. I think that's the egoic death beginning when you start to have those awarenesses. And then it's like, well, wait, then, what are we doing, right? Danielle, you mentioned the word
00:29:47
Speaker
reverence a couple of times. And I noticed that as well in your work. What does that mean to you? It's a powerful word. Powerful word is currently my favorite word. The definition of reverence is respect and wonder tinged with awe. Look how gorgeous, is that right? Respect and wonder tinged with awe. I think
00:30:17
Speaker
That's what we aspire for. That's what we should aspire for is reverence. Respect and wonder with a tinge of awe. So yeah, break that down a little more for us. Reverence for all experience and for all people, which we have been trained to, whether it's through religious dogma or self-help dogma, we've been trained to overcome our fear.
From Tolerance to Reverence
00:30:43
Speaker
Don't accept it. Don't be friendly with it.
00:30:46
Speaker
don't be reverent of your fear, overcoming, you know. We are trained to push away depression and fear and greed, all those gnarly, dark things. We're trained to separate ourselves from other people, different ways of living and choices and all those reasons we're all divided about, all the stuff we're divided about.
00:31:12
Speaker
There's tolerance. I see this in three sequences, three levels really. There's tolerance. Tolerance is better than intolerance, for sure. But there's still, I know that when I'm in tolerance mode, I'm just putting up with, there's still this kind of agitation there. I'm just being politically correct. Yeah.
00:31:36
Speaker
Okay, so let's keep going. Then I think there's acceptance, which is really this embracing, embracing of what we've been pushing away. We no longer push it away. We accept it, it's there. So we accept our things, you know. I have this illness, I have this neuroses, this thing about this person, I'm gonna accept they have it, okay. Okay, they're spacious, beautiful, oh my gosh.
00:32:02
Speaker
I exhale. And I think there's another level. I'm really interested in it, which is reverence. I think this is where all Kami is. This is where we become healers and things get transmuted, which is I'm going to look at all the stuff and the people I've been pushing away. I'm going to move beyond like it's here to like, I'm actively going to find reasons to dig it.
00:32:29
Speaker
to honor it, to have some awe. So it's like we have this, we have this practice, you know, I have this leadership program, right? It's all this coaching and facilitating curriculum. And we work with people and we have them do this love letters exercise where you write a love letter to like your gnarly stuff and to your positive stuff.
00:32:52
Speaker
So write a love letter to your happiness. Amazing. Easy to do. Right. Write a love letter to your anxiety. And obviously, you know, there's like a push there for people. And I just dropped some words in like, what if anxiety were your lover, you were committed and
00:33:16
Speaker
I love it. Really creates some shift and you can start to see without a spiritual bypass. You can start to see the gift and things like, wow, my anxiety has actually taught me to pay attention to my nervous system. Thank you. So you're making friends out of the stuff that you yourself have created. You create your anxiety. It's of the mind. Yeah.
00:33:40
Speaker
instead of being in conflict all the time with all your stuff, that's the loving move, that's the power move. Yeah, I love it, that's beautiful. Okay, so I'm sure there's people out there going, sign me up, I'm in, I love it, how do I get started? So heart-centric living, right? You talk about this, living from the heart space, it's a powerful place to live from, becoming the love.
Advice for Heart-Centric Living
00:34:07
Speaker
What do you suggest somebody out there who's,
00:34:10
Speaker
not so in love with all their parts, excited to get started, obviously get your book. But what's some advice in the early phases, middle phases of this process? Because it's so nuanced or subtle to understand conceptually, to be sort of practical.
00:34:33
Speaker
I have the most practical advice ever. Two things, two things. One is, and I really should have called the book this, treat yourself like a five year old. That's it. That's it. You got to eat good food when you're hungry and you probably need a nap. You need to get enough sleep and say loving things to yourself. Encourage yourself.
00:35:01
Speaker
hang out with people you have fun with. Just how would you treat a five-year-old that you really loved, adored, cherished, were responsible for? You would take impeccable care of them.
00:35:15
Speaker
as we do, hopefully. And give them some hugs and have creative time and play time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when things suck, you don't say, stop crying. Not really, not the good moms or dads. You say, what's the matter? Yeah.
00:35:36
Speaker
Or you say, you probably, do you need a snack? You probably need a snack. We all need more snacks, you know? So there's a gentleness and a devotion that will really, I think, change our lives. And we are all so, I don't want to use the word guilty. Guilt is such a heavy word, but like millions of us are not very good at that. No, it's, we weren't raised with it and now we're,
00:36:06
Speaker
We're so bought into the suck it up, push through, man up, get over it, push it down or fake it till you make it or be in denial or your point spiritual bypassing. I mean, I think that's actually one of the
00:36:22
Speaker
biggest challenges in the process of opening up is there's a belief that you're supposed to just move right past everything, right? Turn that brown upside down. I feel fine. That toxic person doesn't bother me, right? It's, it's just baked into our culture. Yeah. I've, well, let me, I want to talk about bypassing the other point. Treat yourself like a five year old and then watch your tone. Watch your tone because
00:36:52
Speaker
Do we wanna be better, more loving, more of goodwill, more prosperous? All those things, yes. You can say to yourself, you could be so much better. Okay, not a great tone. Or you could say to yourself, and this is very literal, like this is you silently speaking inside to yourself. You could say to yourself, you could be so much better. Hmm.
00:37:20
Speaker
So like, you know, the aspirations driving is still there. We're going to have that. Just gentle, gentle.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful advice. I mean, really truly. And, you know, I just want everybody who's listening to pause on that because it's easy to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But actually try spending even, I mean, a half an hour being kind to yourself. I think there's a lot of resistance to shifting that inner voice to, um, a gentler, as you say, kinder loving spaces is pretty difficult.
00:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's the work of lifetimes. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. And so you had said you wanted to speak to spiritual bypassing as well. Was there something? Yeah, I think the easiest way to understand spiritual bypassing, well, the basic definition is you are, you're sugarcoating things that look unspiritual. You're trying to just smear spirituality onto things that you have labeled as negative, you know? And
00:38:22
Speaker
I think the most understandable concept with spiritual bypassing is to look at all of your so-called negative emotions. I prefer to just call them your heavy emotions. And if you identify as being on a spiritual path and you want to be of goodwill, you will probably tend to want to bypass all that heavy stuff.
00:38:52
Speaker
And I have done that many times, still do it a lot. Just like, oh, sometimes I'll just feel like this rage. And then the criticism will come in. This is how you know, criticism is the gateway drug to spiritual bypassing. I'll criticize myself for feeling the rage. Like, oh, that wasn't very spiritual or kind or loving or evolved. And that's the moment of the bypass.
00:39:22
Speaker
And what I really wanted, and it's like, what I need to do is like stop, drop, and acknowledge the feeling. I created the feeling. It came from within me and just say like, wow, I just felt rage. It's just a cloud. It's just a thing. I can analyze it if I want to. Why? Well, that triggered me because of a thing in the past or whatever. Or I can just be like,
00:39:45
Speaker
That was interesting. Move on to the next thing and choose a higher vibration feeling really, or thought. Think thoughts are more powerful in terms of choices.
00:39:56
Speaker
So say that again, why are thoughts more important than, or higher value? Yeah, because I think you can't choose your feelings. It's like they're in the basement, they're going to come up, they're part of the soup. You can't choose what's floating downstream to you. It's coming. Yeah.
00:40:17
Speaker
You can choose how you respond to it. You can choose your opinion, your thought. You get to choose what you think about your feelings. You actually get to choose your thoughts. Now, I think there is a place where thoughts and feelings tend to conflate, but you get to choose your thoughts. You get to choose your beliefs.
00:40:41
Speaker
to choose your perspective. Yeah. And I love what you said because the thoughts about the feeling, it's not like, um, okay, so if I'm in a rage state and I start to then criticize it and try to shut it down, instead it's just, I get to choose the thoughts about the rage, right? Like it's not that I'm trying to stop the rage or bypass the rage or tell myself I'm bad for the rage. It's just,
00:41:05
Speaker
I get to decide on my perspective about it. And curiosity is always a good one in my experience. Just open and curious, like, interesting. You said the same thing, right? It's just like, oh, look at that. I'm raging inside, right? It doesn't have to mean as much as we suggest it does. The mind, I mean, Danielle. Laura. What are you going to do?
00:41:34
Speaker
The mind, yeah. The mind, right? It's so hard to...
00:41:40
Speaker
To not identify it as real and as us. Do you have any suggestions for people how to get, because we want to get to the heart, right? But the mind is so loud. The heart is more of a subtle space, in my experience. It doesn't seem to want to, it's like the younger sibling that doesn't want to compete with like 10 other children.
00:42:05
Speaker
How does one not over identify with the mind? Well, that's it. Over identify is the magic word. Yeah. So we have a mind. We created the mind. It's our baby. Don't try and exile the mind. Mind is not a bad thing. Ego is not a bad thing. You got one. You made it. Love it. Right. But just like you're not your children and you're not your feelings, you're not your mind.
00:42:35
Speaker
So it's part of your life, carry it with you. You are the consciousness that's aware that it has a mind. You're the consciousness that is aware that it's having feelings. You're that. It's the you are, right? Where are you pointing when you think of yourself? Is it the mind or somewhere else? And this book has so many beautiful quotes.
00:43:06
Speaker
So how did you decide, were these all personally meaningful to you? Did you keep a journal for 10 years? All the quotes of other people.
00:43:17
Speaker
Yeah, in the book. I mean, of course your own work is amazing, but you put in like just one after the next, just thoughtful little quotes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The reason I just, I clarify that is because we have quote pages. So some people are talking, I made these little poster pages. Yeah. The quotes from other people. Yes. I have been keeping notes for 10 years. Like I have multiple quote folders. Ah.
00:43:43
Speaker
And I have a whole highlighting process, but it was really important to me, and I mentioned this in the back of the book actually, that I only quote people whose work I have directly experienced.
00:43:58
Speaker
and who I consider teachers, because you can go online, ask for a quote on grief or happiness, and get a gazillion, and you don't know the roots, the origins, who that person was. And it was important for me to really be connected to their body of work. So that's how, yeah. And those quotes really do represent my influences.
00:44:25
Speaker
It felt that to me and that's why I wanted to ask. I felt personal. I didn't feel like that. I didn't want to say it up front in case it wasn't true, but it felt like they were all personal, not just ones pulled to support what you had written. It felt like there was a meaning or intention. So where do we go from here, Danielle? How do we
00:44:52
Speaker
Get into the practice of heart centric living. You have the book, you have the work you're doing. What else is going on in your ecosystem to help people get into this experience? A podcast that I think can be helpful. I hear it's helpful. So it's called With Love, Danielle. And I'm talking about this stuff all the time. Yeah, that's a place to start. I love it. There's meditation kits.
00:45:24
Speaker
This is how I used to think of meditation, especially in terms of trying to be a support system to somebody.
Meditation and Inner Happiness
00:45:31
Speaker
I used to not want to be too forceful about suggesting people meditate because you have to come to it on your own. And I'm officially over that.
00:45:43
Speaker
And here's what I have to say. You got to meditate. Yeah. Just find the practice that works for you. Cause you know, a lot of people say it doesn't work for me and I tried and then they get the monkey mind and just say, well, keep looking two things. Keep looking until you find a practice that works for you. Like you get to want to love it. Yeah. And there's lots of different, you may be a visualization person. You may be a breathing person. You may need more active meditation. Like I'm a very, um,
00:46:14
Speaker
active meditator. I'm not sitting there watching my in breath, my out breath. I get the power of that, but that's not my way right now.
00:46:25
Speaker
And it can change over time, right? You don't have to stick to the same one. I mean, I think there's this feeling out there that you have to do at least X amount of time every day or you're not a meditator. And it's like, no, pick anything and do it for a period of time and then switch it and try something else. And like, as long as you're sitting quietly,
00:46:46
Speaker
and learning how to quiet yourself in your mind, I think it just does wonders for your life. You'll be happier too. I always think, keep a little happiness journal. I've never said this publicly, but I'm happier. The more I meditate, I'm happier. It has this wonderful impact and not that dopamine happy. I feel this deep internal
00:47:08
Speaker
uplift, um, when I do it on a regular basis. So it's, it's much faster and cheaper than shopping. Yes. Retail therapy is not sustainable. No, Danielle. So people are looking for the book. They're looking for you, Danielle, the port.com, anything, anywhere else that the podcast, obviously anywhere else that they can reach you other than your social media outlets.
00:47:32
Speaker
That's it. I'm on social. I hang out on Instagram. You're on Instagram mostly. Beautiful. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your time with us again on the Art of Authenticity. I appreciate your voice on this topic in a much needed time. Oh, Laura, thank you. This is fresh, deep thanks. Thank you.