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Alexander Love on Compassion, Complexity, and a Call to Wholeness
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In this expansive and soul-deep conversation, Scott Schwenk welcomes Alexander Love—acupuncturist, developmental coach, and mystic—for a journey into the alchemy of healing. Together, they explore how trauma distorts perception, how widening perspective gives birth to new possibilities, and how the sacred reveals itself when we slow down enough to notice. Alexander shares potent insights into grief, love, and Awakening inside the very lives we often try to escape. This episode is a poetic call back to wholeness, a meditation on being human, and a guidepost for anyone learning to love what’s hard to love.
Alexander Love, MCC, NCC, M.Ac. is an acupuncturist, developmental coach, and facilitator. He serves as Director of Curriculum Development and Senior Facilitator at the Newfield Network, an international coach training and personal development organization.
Alexander is the creator of the Lumina Process, a shadow work modality that integrates shadow work with Eastern wisdom and integral theory. He is currently writing a trilogy, Evolutionary Gestures, which weaves developmental theory and Eastern philosophy with magic realism and memoir—including the story of his father’s murder and the restorative justice dialogue he later held with the man who took his father’s life.
At the heart of Alexander’s work is a conviction that the quality of our shared future depends on our capacity to live from post-tragic wholeness. When we find the courage to embrace our painful experiences, each one becomes a catalyst for transformation. As we evolve individually, the world transforms with us, inviting us to co-create a more beautiful future. You can learn more about Alexander at www.eoslearningcollective.com
Scott Schwenk - Master Coach, Spiritual Teacher, Culture Architect
Host and creator of the podcast The Choice To Grow, Scott is known for his hugely popular courses and workshops with OneCommune.com, Younity.com, Wanderlust Festivals, and Unplug Meditation, Scott has been catalyzing the inner evolution of others for decades: helping them to grow, transform obstacles into opportunities, and find Love within.
Apprenticeships in leadership development, meditation and philosophy training, shadow work/shadow resolution and spiritual awakening are all part of Scott’s development into the thought-leader that he is today. He continues to refine his offerings studying and practicing with key innovators at the leading edges of human development.
Scott’s teachings support the entire person to not only progressively recognize, stabilize and embody our inextricable oneness with the source of creation (Waking Up), but also to resolve the wounds of the past (Cleaning Up), continually expand our capacities for wider and more inclusive perspectives on any moment (Growing Up) and creatively and joyfully participate and collaborate with all of life as a loving thriving human being (Showing Up).
You can receive a free guided meditation and explore Scott’s courses, workshops, retreats, training and master coaching at https://scottschwenk.com and can find him on Instagram @thescottschwenk.
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Transcript
Introduction and Breathing Exercise
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm Scott Schwenk. Through these dialogues, we'll explore fresh perspectives and discover practical tools for navigating a thriving life that adds value wherever we are.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'll introduce you to innovators and creators from across our world who embody what it means to cultivate growing as a way of life. Let's prepare together.
00:00:24
Speaker
Take a deep breath in.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hold breath briefly as you soften your shoulders and soften the soles of your feet and palms of your hands. Then exhale like you're releasing tension and setting down a heavy burden from every cell.
00:00:43
Speaker
Now let's dive in.
Meet Alexander Love: Background and Connection
00:00:49
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody. Welcome to The Choice to Grow. I'm very excited to introduce you to my next guest. Yet again, somebody that's a treasure to my heart, somebody I know, somebody I met several times.
00:01:02
Speaker
Alexander Love, with a whole bunch of letters after his name that I don't know how to say, is an acupuncturist, developmental coach, and facilitator. He is the director of curriculum development and a senior facilitator at the Newfield Network, which is an international coach training and personal development organization.
00:01:22
Speaker
Alexander is the developer of the Lumina Process. It's a shadow work modality that integrates a Western understanding of the parts of the self and shadow with Eastern wisdom and integral theory.
00:01:36
Speaker
We'll get into all that. At the core of Alexander's work is his belief that the quality and the health of our future depend upon our willingness to come together and to deepen our capacity to live from wholeness, individually and collectively.
00:01:51
Speaker
So if we can find the courage to embrace our painful experiences individuals, life can become something that perpetually transforms us. As we transform, so does the world.
00:02:03
Speaker
And together, we can co-create a beautiful future.
00:02:07
Speaker
So without further ado, I'm just going to say a little bit more. i met Alexander just like I did Jeff Fitch at a couple of Integral Theory conferences. And Integral Theory, for those of you who are new to that, is really attributed to Ken Wilber, a brilliant thinker, but it's really stands on the shoulders of a lot of people, the the prolific writer in Saint Triorbindo, John Gebser, so many developmental psychologists, it's a way of looking at any moment, and seeing many more perspectives of it in such a way that we're able to orient from a greater wholeness like Alexander's pointing to.
00:02:43
Speaker
So we met at a couple of integral conferences, and then small gatherings that were curated after that of later stage practitioners. And I just get along with Alexander like a house on fire. It's just easy.
00:02:56
Speaker
And I think that says a lot about who he is.
A Life-Altering Tragedy: Alexander's Father's Murder
00:03:00
Speaker
He's found his way through establishing ease in his system and has been through some big life experiences.
00:03:09
Speaker
um Puts him in a smaller category of people. Alexander, without further ado, going to welcome you before I give the details away about your big experiences.
00:03:21
Speaker
Thanks for being here. Thank you so much, Scott. It's really lovely to be here and lovely to be here with everybody, all the listeners. So, Alexander, i kind of want to start with the Big Bang, and I don't mean the creation of the cosmos, but the inciting incident that has transformed so many people's lives who have gotten close to you. In fact, I tell this story when I'm recommending you as somebody to work with in your Lumina process. I've sent a few people that way who've all been blown away, um which is that your father was murdered when you were in your early 20s.
00:03:59
Speaker
And I'm just going to let us all take a deep breath on that one, because that's when you're hearing it for the first time, that's a lot to hear, even if you've heard of other people in that experience.
00:04:10
Speaker
That was many years ago. even though grief does not have an expiration date on it, I'm willing to bet you can tell me that there's many moments when you miss your dad and there's a deep ache.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So um yeah, when I was 20, I was going to school in Boston for music and I got a phone call that my father had been killed.
00:04:37
Speaker
And my father was a lawyer, He was a ah beautifully, he was a gentle, very intelligent, gentle man. um He was into reading
Restorative Justice and Healing Dialogue
00:04:50
Speaker
philosophy. We had bookshelves that basically instead of wallpaper, we had bookshelves.
00:04:57
Speaker
And he was also a Zen practitioner, ah meditator. And yeah, and so I got the call that he had been murdered and that began,
00:05:09
Speaker
That began a 30 year journey so far. um Leading up to a few years, a couple years ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the man who killed him.
00:05:22
Speaker
And we had a three hour restorative justice dialogue. We've now, we've now probably had about seven conversations. We're due to have another one coming up later this month um and continued our connection. he He, you know, I was about 20, he was about 18, 19.
00:05:41
Speaker
So we're very similar in age. And so it's been quite a beautiful experience to be able to to meet him and and to see what's possible when we and we can lean in to something deeper than just our behavior and the things that we do to each other.
00:05:58
Speaker
When I'm telling that story to people, I bring in a detail that is one of the most sharp relief details. And it is so... I don't know what it's just so transformative every time I consider it, which is and what was his first name again? Or no, actually we don't do we, do we say that?
00:06:18
Speaker
Can you say it's okay? Yeah. His name is Herbert. Okay. Herbert. So Herbert said to, after the first meeting with you said to his, his helper, his social justice person, social worker, that there were two people in his life. He felt loved by his grandmother and you Alexander.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah. Now listeners just, Pause and let that in for a moment. So a young kid probably who doesn't know anything from anything at some point and probably has a world of trauma behind him and is probably taking the money and thinking that's a big deal.
00:06:57
Speaker
Does this act and somebody's life has to live with that goes to prison all these years and then goes through some process which is, I can only imagine how terrifying it is for both of you to have approached that meeting and has the experience of being profoundly seen and loved by you.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it it's a gift for both of us. You know, I always have felt connected with him in some way um because, you know, his his choice was,
00:07:32
Speaker
You know, he he made the choice to kill my dad. He was he was with a group of he was a group of four total. There was the the mastermind who um hired, these were these were kids basically that he was hiring to do a job.
00:07:48
Speaker
They did jobs all the time. um He also lied to Herbert and told him that my dad was was essentially in a gang. Now, my dad wouldn't even know how to find a gang.
00:07:59
Speaker
Now, Herbert didn't, he didn't discover that he was lied to by a person that changed his diapers. The mastermind was not just some guy. He was someone who took care of Herbert when he was little.
00:08:12
Speaker
He discovered in our conversation that this person had lied to him because despite Herbert being someone who was willing to pull a trigger and end someone's life, actually end two people's lives, it was my father and his assistant,
00:08:29
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that detail. Yes, it was his my father. It was my dad and his assistant. His assistant was my, let's see if we can sort this out. So my mother-in-law's daughter's fiance.
00:08:44
Speaker
Mother-in-law's daughter. So my dad's daughter and her daughter had a fiance and that was my dad's assistant. So he took both of their lives. So despite the fact that he was willing to do that, he had his own moral code.
00:08:59
Speaker
which is that you don't hurt people that are innocent.
00:09:05
Speaker
And his boss, what he calls his old head, knew that he wouldn't do this if he thought my dad was innocent. So he told him that my dad was was doing fraud, was was the language that Herbert used.
00:09:21
Speaker
um So Herbert discovered that in our conversation, which was, you know, it was a big deal for him because it meant that he crossed his own boundary. And he heard and in he are innocent people.
00:09:35
Speaker
How has he been able, from your observation, to reconcile? Because he didn't know. He didn't know that that was the case. had no way of knowing at that time, seemingly, that was the case. Like, how you seen him reconcile if he has?
00:09:52
Speaker
Well, what I've seen so far is that he he felt betrayed. It was the only time I saw him get angry in our conversation. He wasn't angry with me. um He showed up very gently.
00:10:03
Speaker
Now, this is a someone who who wears a crimson jumpsuit, which means you don't mess with this person. you you know They have different colors for for the jumpsuits to let you know that that jumpsuit and the fact that he's in a cell by himself, it means that he was one of the most violent people in the prison. Not now, but when he first got in there.
00:10:27
Speaker
And um despite that, he his demeanor is is gentle. He's gentle. His eyes are gentle. his You can feel the ah heaviness of his heart and the presence um of his being.
00:10:47
Speaker
and um But when I mentioned this, it was the only time that I saw his energy come up in an angry way that he felt betrayed by the person that changed his diapers.
00:10:58
Speaker
And this is, you know, a big betrayal. It put him in prison for his, in in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, life in prison means life in prison. ah It's not 20 years like some places. You're there forever. He's never getting out.
00:11:11
Speaker
Wow. And so this this was a betrayal, and but also he, I've seen him process, his his experience and um he has some degree of forgiveness also because he knows that, you know, that's the way this, in his words, something like that's who this person was, you know, that he would, he lied to people, he cheated people, he hired people to kill people.
00:11:39
Speaker
So um um I've seen him be angry. I've seen him also have some degree of forgiveness.
Forgiveness and Personal Transformation
00:11:44
Speaker
Hmm.
00:11:47
Speaker
That's interesting that the degree of forgiveness, you know, you and I both, you much more granularly than i study stages of development, ego development, and i'm saying I'm just kind of like, wow, at what point of development does the capacity for forgiveness in that kind of a realm come online as a real possibility?
00:12:07
Speaker
Well, i think the good news is that forgiveness comes on can come online as soon as we're able to recognize that someone has a different perspective than us, which is quite early developmentally.
00:12:18
Speaker
and So we don't have to wait till fourth person perspective. We don't have to wait. I think we can do it in second person perspective, which means I can, you know, it's we see this in, you know, with eight-year-olds, you know, a friend.
00:12:30
Speaker
hurt you know hurts your feelings or or steals something you know steals your cookie or you know something like that, there's room. As soon as we can recognize that someone else is having a different experience than us, we can, at a very early stage, second-person perspective, we can begin to take another perspective, which means there's room for um forgiveness. And and you know forgiveness is one of these words that um we may use without defining And so I just want to say that for me, forgiveness means that I'm no longer putting history in between us. there's not
00:13:09
Speaker
yeah I'm not wearing a set of colored glasses that's obfuscated by what has happened. I'm still aware of our history, but it's not in between us. It's not in the way.
00:13:24
Speaker
So i can say i'm a I'm willing to see you Right now, instead of when I look to see you, what I see are the things that occurred, you know, in the past.
00:13:39
Speaker
I can recognize the pain of that. But then I'm willing to be here with you and say, what's here? For example, Herbert showed up with gentleness, with integrity, with intentionality.
00:13:52
Speaker
He was here to help.
00:13:56
Speaker
Primarily, he was came to help to this to our conversation to help me. He did also want to get some things off his own chest that would support his own healing. But his primary the primary thing that brought him to the conversation, which as you mentioned, it's scary.
00:14:13
Speaker
After you know almost 30 years, you get a message that the son of the person you killed wants to talk to you. And you've been living in a prison that is very violent.
00:14:29
Speaker
This is, you know, this is a this is a shocking thing. And he agreed to it because he wanted to be of service. Because he's fundamentally good. And I told him that.
00:14:41
Speaker
That he's fundamentally good. This is what happens when we don't put what happened in the past in between us. Because i can if I look at him and I see what he did, i say, oh, you can't be good. If I look and see how he earned his his nickname, Razor, in prison when he first got in, you don't see a good person.
00:15:02
Speaker
But if there's a commitment to looking deeper to that and than that and seeing what's here right now, it's a deeply good person. I was the first person that told him that, that he was good.
00:15:16
Speaker
He was already in his forty s
00:15:20
Speaker
So the meetings have continued. You said you're about to have a seventh meeting. What seems to be that the driver at this point? Like in the beginning, you said there was a driver or one of the drivers was helping you and getting some things off his chest. What does it seem like the drivers are on both your sides to continue these meetings?
00:15:39
Speaker
Well, I mean, for me, you know, emergence and transformation happens in relationship. Bottom line. I mean, we can, you know We can come up with all sorts of models and maps about how to help people transform. And you know those are all really important.
00:15:53
Speaker
But underneath that, it's all occurring within relationship. And i felt like one conversation was not sufficient. And so what happened is we got, because this the kind of restorative justice dialogue, but because the kind of system we were a part of, you basically have one conversation and then it's done.
00:16:17
Speaker
I requested that I get permission for us to be able to meet just like you would meet anybody in prison. You just sign up, you know, the way that a mother might meet their son in prison, you just, you sign up and you can go. And so I got permission for us to do that. And, you know, for me, it's just to continue the conversation.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah. That's the main thing. The other is that, um you know, I'm including some of this story and in my book. And there were times when, i I didn't understand something that he was saying or he would refer to something, um but I didn't quite get it. And so it was also an opportunity to say, well, when you said this, like tell me more about your grandmother. And when you said this, what did you mean? like What was that? Because some stuff would go by really quickly. And um so primarily to stay in conversation, to deepen our connection,
00:17:10
Speaker
um And then secondarily, just sort of help me with certain questions that I've had and things like that.
00:17:19
Speaker
I've been, as you know, but the listeners don't, part of a group of people who, most of whom have been at these small curated late stage gatherings, or mostly late stage practitioners.
00:17:30
Speaker
And so you've been sharing quite generously along the way, like before you even went, asking us, you know, um what questions should I ask and like this. and I'm curious where you're at now about to have the seventh conversation and time has passed, much time has passed since the first one. Like, what do you see has unfolded in you and your relationship to your relationships, your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your father, your relationship with life?
Art and Beauty in Tragedy
00:18:02
Speaker
Well, I think, you know, to answer that question, for me, the answer to your question comes through you know, another question, which is what is art and what does it mean to make art?
00:18:14
Speaker
Because there's the experience of having the conversation with Herbert. There's the experience of, you know, when I was 20, going to my father's funeral, there's the experience of the last 30 years.
00:18:29
Speaker
But then in this process of writing this book, there's a way in which I have to live into all of these things so much more fully. I've now returned to that funeral so many times.
00:18:44
Speaker
I've returned to the conversation, the first conversation that I've had with Herbert so many times, not just to look at the specifics of what was said, but how to ah allow these things to be written in a way that evokes beauty.
00:19:07
Speaker
that draws the beauty out. Because it's one thing to share a transcript. It's another thing to then how to craft that into a larger narrative that expresses its the deeper beauty.
00:19:21
Speaker
So through the process of art making, through the written word, it's helped me re-explore allowing the living history.
00:19:34
Speaker
i For me, I like to make a distinction between the history and past, that they're not the same, that the past is something that has occurred. Living history is how that's ah still being, it has been enfolded and it's it's rising in this moment.
00:19:48
Speaker
So I'm not trying to remember our conversation. I'm trying to lean deeply into how that conversation is still brewing in me. still moving me.
00:20:00
Speaker
And that allows my heart to break more fully. Because you know when I'm having a, ah in a good way, when I'm having the conversation with Herbert, there's a lot of things going on, you know the first conversation, especially.
00:20:13
Speaker
you know i don't know who I'm going to encounter. I don't know who this person is. And there's all kinds of things that I'm navigating. But to be able to slowly go back you know and find those moments as they're still a living in me now, and really feel into these moments of connection, these moments of intimacy, I can touch them more and more fully each time.
00:20:42
Speaker
And then as that sort of cracks my heart open more, and there's this desire to take something, maybe humanity or human beings would say, oh, that is horrible. I don't want to look at that.
00:20:55
Speaker
Well, how do I find the beauty in it so that we want to look at it? That the language, the story, the unfolding, the imagery is is compelling enough that we stay to bring a ah phrase in from Donna Haraway, to stay with the trouble.
00:21:13
Speaker
Can we make it beautiful enough that we stay with the trouble long enough to fall into how it can move us?
00:21:22
Speaker
So... There's a question that's occurring to me right now which is like, I know you've told versions of the story along the way on different podcasts and to friends and like this.
00:21:34
Speaker
And at this moment, you've said a bunch of words and you've shared ah a lot of energy and emotion and experience for those who can sense it. And I'm curious, like, is there anything in you that would want to ask the listeners a question at this point in the story?
00:21:52
Speaker
like I'm the person you could actually ask a question to because I'm here. Is there anything you would be like, well, okay, Scott, so I've said all this. Yeah.
00:22:05
Speaker
So the question that I would ask is, where do you need to be in your direct experience to receive the fullness of this story,
00:22:20
Speaker
from a place that can see that through the tragedy of it, there is an underlying intrinsic beauty that wants to be known.
00:22:32
Speaker
Where do you need to be in your body, in your direct experience to start leaning in to that?
00:22:42
Speaker
For me, it's pretty low in my body. It's like in the belly. without but it includes the heart. And I need to stay really, not stay, but keep cultivating being really, really present. like Notice any granular ways in which my attention wants to wander and care about the attunement with you and everybody in the story.
00:23:09
Speaker
to see what to see what's here and to not have my all as they would say in in other bodies of work my already always way of listening to you. Yeah, like there's a way we already and always listen to stories about tragedy or somebody's loss that are kind of on automatic.
00:23:28
Speaker
So i I have to feel my body and be here and be really interested in
00:23:37
Speaker
discovery. the other The other question that comes up for me, for you, for the listeners, is where, if any, do you notice places that you want to create separation?
00:23:55
Speaker
and For example, oh, wow, that's amazing that that guy on the podcast is doing that thing as if it's something that somebody else is capable of.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah. You know, where are those places where It's like, oh, I'm listening to a story of something amazing, but somehow not including yourself as the human being who could also do that.
00:24:20
Speaker
And by do that, I find myself throughout the story, including myself as, well, under what circumstances could I be the person that was misled and end somebody's life? Right. Right.
00:24:33
Speaker
Like, what would I need to be told or hear? Yes. That I would do an action that's so inconsistent with my past. Yeah. And that is so inconsistent with my moral compass. Like, what would I have to believe?
00:24:46
Speaker
That's one thing. Then also, like, if somebody i profoundly cared about, like my mother had been murdered, What would have to happen in my life for me to be able to be willing to go through a social justice process, to meet with the person, to be able to meet them as they are now, not put the past between us and to discover this person, like what would have to happen in me?
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah. These are the questions I'm asking myself as we sit here together. Yeah. So we share those questions because to be honest, the the primary reason why I wanted to meet with Herbert There were many reasons, but one of the main reasons was for everyone listening.
00:25:29
Speaker
Yeah. There was, for me, there was already forgiveness walking into that conversation. I didn't come to that conversation, hoping to find forgiveness.
00:25:41
Speaker
Remember it's 30 years. I had a lot of time to work with this. Yeah. I came to the conversation because I knew that this conversation was possible. I knew that other human beings had done conversations something like this before.
00:25:56
Speaker
And I wanted to have the conversation and then bring it to the world. And to be clear, this isn't just a way for Alexander to help the world. This is a way for Herbert to help the world.
00:26:09
Speaker
That's right. Which is part of the beauty underneath the situation that's not so obvious at face value. That's right. Like what even just brings any one two three people to cross each other's path for any purpose and are we only am i only looking at the surface like oh because we're at the same door of the grocery store well there may be a lot more involved giving everything that had to happen for us to actually be at that same point in time together yeah yeah
00:26:46
Speaker
and i'm very attuned at this moment to the possibility that people are considering like the difference between a spiritual bypass or toxic positivity and finding the beauty in the seemingly terrible.
Transforming Tragedy with Love and Courage
00:27:01
Speaker
That's right. And so, you know, one way to explore this, um some language that I find helpful is looking at the pre-tragic worldview, tragic worldview and the post-tragic worldview.
00:27:15
Speaker
The pre-tragic worldview We often find in in kids that have some degree of privilege or have parents that can um sort of protect them from the realities of human violence, I guess you could say.
00:27:34
Speaker
So in pre-tragic worldview, there's kind of an innocence. In adults, we see this more in spiritual bypassing communities or in communities that will have um a system set up like fake news so that when a tragedy happens, they can say, oh, those are just actors, which is a way for us to not have to feel the the the horror of what human beings can do, as well as we don't feel the implications of our own choices because that stuff didn't really happen.
00:28:06
Speaker
So I'm no longer implicated in in the choices that I'm making with my vote or whatever. So we have these sort of two There's many ways, but there's two ways that the pre-tragic view can show up in in adults. Also innocence, but that's less common.
00:28:22
Speaker
Then you have the tragic worldview, which is one in which we we allow our hearts to be um moved and broken open by tragedy.
00:28:34
Speaker
But when we're in a tragic worldview perspective, typically what happens is we lose heart. We feel overwhelmed and unable to know how to effectively respond.
00:28:46
Speaker
We see this ah commonly whenever a group of people has a president that gets elected that they wish wasn't elected. So depending on, you know, whatever side it is, you know, in the U.S., we have these very sort of these sides.
00:29:01
Speaker
Whoever's president doesn't get elected, there's sort of a heart crushing tragedy or we see wars that seem to go on forever. And From a tragic perspective, we take all that in, and it starts to weigh on us in such a way that we become ineffective or unable to act.
00:29:20
Speaker
Now, there are phases within a tragic perspective where then we do act. We say, this happened to me. I don't want this to happen to anyone else. I'm going to spend my entire life you know preventing more school shootings. So we do see action.
00:29:35
Speaker
But inside of us, there's ah there's a there's often a sense of wanting to collapse and how am I ever going to do anything about this? But many good actions do come from people responding to a tragic worldview.
00:29:50
Speaker
Now, a post-tragic worldview, it embraces those earlier perspectives. It embraces how each one of us has moments where we you know watch a TV show and we we zone out from the fact that there are wars that have not stopped, that there are people that don't have the luxury to just watch a TV show and numb out. So there's times where one particular individual, they go into a pre-tragic sort of territory.
00:30:21
Speaker
That same individual then has a moment where something hits them and they're like their heart is overwhelmed. The post-tragic can embrace all of that, but it does one additional thing.
00:30:32
Speaker
It invites us into an anchor in wholeness, an unbroken dimension of being, a place within us that sees the intrinsic sacredness and meaning in all experiences. This doesn't mean we're creating meaning, like we're creating a story that makes sense.
00:30:55
Speaker
It's the felt sense of sacredness in horror where we're willing to embrace the tragedy. We're not bypassing it, but we don't collapse because this place within us is incapable of collapsing.
00:31:10
Speaker
It's only capable of saying what's next. of leaning in and and discovering ah that all tragedy is a doorway into profound possibility.
00:31:23
Speaker
All tragedy is a doorway into profound possibility. That's right. And it doesn't mean we're like, oh, that's fine. Like, let the wars, everything everything's all good. It's not the bypass, everything's all good nonsense.
00:31:38
Speaker
It's a recognition of, oh, this is really deeply painful. Painful. And it's also a doorway. It's also a door.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah. The thing is not to bypass that pain. It's very easy, I think, for any of us. And I'm i'm paying attention to this in my own world. I rarely at this age know more than six months without somebody in my life having some sort of a somebody I know having like a health crisis, for example.
00:32:11
Speaker
That's right. And so am i am I letting myself feel fully without collapsing into it? Am I feeling it fully or am I moving quicker than I'm noticing into making a meaning of sacredness?
00:32:27
Speaker
Right, exactly. Because what I'm describing is and ah is ah is a quality of recognition from the heart. Yes, there can be a linguistic cognitive domain But if we're only doing it that way, it's easy to bypass.
00:32:43
Speaker
How would you find yourself in this moment pointing out what the heart is when you say heart? Because people may have their own and idea of what heart means.
00:32:54
Speaker
how How are you holding that, looking from the heart, feeling, sensing from the heart? Yeah, so experientially, my attention is has dropped down into my heart center.
00:33:08
Speaker
is So for me, there's ah there's a dropping down and touching into the heart center. um Is this in the midline of your body or are we over at the physical organ? This is midline. So you find the middle of your sternum, the middle of your chest, and find the middle of your head.
00:33:25
Speaker
And you go down from the top of your head and then you go in towards your spine from the front and towards the spine until those two places meet, you're at the very center, very center of that's the heart center.
00:33:39
Speaker
And so umm um there's a sense of being in that location. um But here, when we're talking about the heart, if we're bringing in some of the wisdom of Chinese medicine, we're not talking about an emotional territory.
00:33:55
Speaker
You know, in in Chinese medicine, if you're saying like, oh, i've my you broke my heart, we're We're actually talking about a different a different part of our being that's not technically the heart, even though we use that language and in our in our culture.
00:34:10
Speaker
But the the heart itself um is deeper than that. And it's ah it's ah it's a place of presence.
00:34:18
Speaker
It's a place of presence. It's one of the few Chinese characters for for the organs that doesn't have something indicating that it's flesh. So when you look at the ah the spleen and the stomach, when you look at the small intestine, when you look at the bladder, they all have a character that's the same, which means, oh, this is a part of the body.
00:34:36
Speaker
The heart character doesn't have that. So we're talking about an immaterial ah location of presence.
00:34:47
Speaker
And if we were built like an avocado, which we are, skin, blood, bones, the outer part of the avocado, the mushy part, that's the blood. then we have the seed of the avocado, our bones.
00:34:59
Speaker
Then we're starting to move closer towards that that seed, the essence layer of being. And maybe even we go a little deeper than that into just a transpersonal knowing presence.
00:35:14
Speaker
And that deep essence of being And that knowing presence, those are unbreakable. They don't express separation.
00:35:25
Speaker
They are completely willing to embrace our experiences of separation. But they recognize that even the experience of separation is a feature of wholeness.
00:35:42
Speaker
That's where the post-tragic worldview comes from. So when our friend, for example, that that you gave, if a friend has a health crisis, we're not like, oh, you're going to be fine.
00:35:53
Speaker
There's a deep feeling of the pain in that person, maybe the pain that we experience as their close friend. We feel the humanity, but we also experience them as an unbroken expression of becoming, of cosmic becoming.
00:36:15
Speaker
They are deeply possible. And no matter what occurs in their experience, this is part of their living, learning, and unfolding.
00:36:29
Speaker
And so that's what I mean by the by the heart center. I'm curious, listeners, what you're noticing that you're experiencing, like what you're feeling. I can share because I can't hear you right now, listeners, but I can share you can share in the comments.
00:36:45
Speaker
And I am curious, I feel such a lively awareness, an energy in the center of my body in the center of the the heart center.
00:36:59
Speaker
The sensation of it reminds me of intense love.
00:37:07
Speaker
only without a particular object that it's directed towards. And that's what we're that's what we're talking about here. Because we're talking about a love that has no object, that's able to face a killer and love them.
00:37:23
Speaker
It's not because there's anything special about Alexander. There's nothing to do with that. It's this love that's bigger than any individual that we all have inside of us, that we all have around us.
00:37:36
Speaker
In my experience, there's a sense, I guess this is where the word grace comes from.
00:37:42
Speaker
I mean, who the he who who in their right mind interacts with someone who has killed their father, tied him up, and shot him?
00:37:55
Speaker
Who would do that? No individual who's contracted around their own self-sense would do that.
00:38:06
Speaker
But this love, it softens us.
00:38:10
Speaker
And it shows us what's possible. And it doesn't turn away from tragedy and doesn't turn away from horror. I'm really with the word courage in its French etymology of heart with this conversation, this part of the conversation. Like love is the force or the fuel of courage.
00:38:31
Speaker
That's right. And, you know, for me, one of the things that's been really and important, you know, Wilbur talks about the the different faces of God, you know, is that language he uses. There's the first person God where you're sort of awakening to, you're awakening to God as you your first person perspective, like I am the one.
00:38:53
Speaker
And then you have the the third face, which is like recognizing the sacred world, the the the whole cosmos as a expression of the one. But then we have this second face.
00:39:06
Speaker
This is the the the lover and the beloved. If those of you that are familiar with the poetry of Mirabai, it's very much um this this quality of being. and And for me, you know, when my father died, my experience was that I was kind of going at it on my own.
00:39:23
Speaker
You know, all of the adults were just as in shock as I was. I had already planned to move to Boulder. So I'm like i' like, after the summer, um when my father died, that i finished out the school year in Boston.
00:39:40
Speaker
And then I ah spent time in my hometown for the summer. After that, I went to Boulder, which was sort of this big shift in my entire life. life And, you know, I'm all the way across the country.
00:39:54
Speaker
Everyone else is completely, you know, their knees are broken. You know, it's just so, you know, so my dad was a beautiful man. People loved him. This was such a shock.
00:40:06
Speaker
And so for me, this posture of crying out,
00:40:15
Speaker
the the the the the sense of, i don't know how to do this on my own. And, you know, in my book, one of the phrases that comes up is like, I was looking for a world that hugged back.
00:40:28
Speaker
not not Not just from humans. I was looking for like, there's got to be something more that hugs me back. Ultimately, it was an intuition, not a conscious intuition. It was a a longing and yearning from feeling pain for this love that you're describing.
00:40:50
Speaker
To invite that relationship with a quality of being that erodes the places in us that say, I would never talk to Herbert.
00:41:02
Speaker
I would never reconcile with my brother or sister or mother or uncle or like whatever that is. This love, it erodes that in us, inviting the possibility that we might then be able to make some choices from the view of love which is infinitely generous.
00:41:23
Speaker
For years when people would ask me, students would ask me to define the word grace, I would say, well, it's pretty indefinable. And the best thing I could say is that grace makes the impossible possible.
00:41:34
Speaker
And I've just had a pivot here with you where actually want to say love makes it possible the impossible possible. Yeah, absolutely. I agree.
00:41:47
Speaker
I think of, uh, the the territory of grace, it remind as you were speaking, it reminds me of a Chinese character that doesn't have an English translation.
00:41:59
Speaker
um I'll mispronounce it in in in Chinese, but but it's Ling, L-I-N-G. And the character, what it shows is at the top of the character, the character is like basically in three sections.
00:42:11
Speaker
The top section is like ah the canopy of heaven with four drops of rain, which means infinite drops of rain. pouring. And then in the middle of the character, there's three squares.
00:42:24
Speaker
These squares are, it's the character for mouth. So there's three mouths that are open, receiving this rain. And at the very bottom of the character, the you could say the earth, quote unquote, the earth part of the character, you have two female shamans doing a rain dance.
00:42:42
Speaker
And this this this character, what it what it's about is that we're engaging in ritual. we're We're engaging in, and in modern terms, instead of the word ritual, we might use the word practice.
00:42:57
Speaker
We're engaging in a kind of practice that makes it possible that we might open our mouths in such a way that we receive this nectar.
00:43:09
Speaker
this love that's that's pouring from heaven. And when I get a sense of that character, it it reminds me of grace. that in it Sometimes grace is that practice of crying out, but then listening for the response, the call, and then the response.
00:43:30
Speaker
This is evocative for me when you describe the parts of the character, especially when you said three mouths, it mint immediately evoked there's a a matrix of consciousness in the Hindu Tantric worldview ah called Chinnamasta.
00:43:49
Speaker
And in Tantric Buddhism, she's called Bajrayogini. And in the in the depiction of her with her kind of what's called anthropomorphic form, looking somewhat human-like, somewhat human-like, she has severed her own head off There are three sprouts of blood, nectar, coming from her throat.
00:44:13
Speaker
One each into the mouths of her attendants, and then another stream into the mouth of her own severed off head. Now, those of you for whom very vivid iconography like this is new and challenging, this is not about somebody cutting their own head off to find grace, physically.
00:44:35
Speaker
But I'm curious about the inner penetration or the interplay between the Chinese character and this pointing out of this imagery of becoming headless in order to receive the nourishment of the heavens or of the cosmos.
00:44:52
Speaker
Right, and I think that you know this happens for us in different ways. you know We can talk about this as a high attainment where someone's sort of ah sense of self begins to dissolve, and like that's nice.
Mind-Body Integration and Healing Practices
00:45:04
Speaker
um But i think more often what happens that's nice and but I think more often what happens is we're brought to our knees. yeah this is This is where tragedy becomes a doorway.
00:45:17
Speaker
That we're brought to our knees in such a way that we recognize there's a recognition. I don't know how to go on doing what I've been doing given who I already am.
00:45:31
Speaker
And when we are brought to our knees in that way, in my experience, it's quite painful, but it's also a gift in that it invites us to cry out. And if we cry out, but then pause and listen, one of the problems that we face, some humans face, is we cry out and we never stop yelling because the response is usually not the way we expect it, and it's quiet.
00:45:56
Speaker
So if we cry out and then and then we pause and listen, we're being worked on. This pausing to listen is something that has been occupying my awareness a lot lately. I'm currently giving a course.
00:46:11
Speaker
And so when I'm giving a course, my attention is just going a lot deeper at like how people process, how people experience, how people make meaning. And one of the things that's been coming across my screen a lot in my quiet moments is this instruction that I didn't create, that the prayer is the request And there's other forms of requests or prayer like affirmative prayer, but the prayers, the request and meditation is listening for the answer.
00:46:38
Speaker
And I've been thinking about this huge seeming influx of people presenting and saying they've been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and the culture of distraction and how that plays out with the ability to listen to and receive the grace, receive the answer, receive the guidance, receive the nourishment.
00:47:00
Speaker
That's part one of my question. Part two is what you see as a practitioner about transforming that quality of being in mind that is being called ADHD into one that can be undistracted and focused enough to receive enough nectar to share it with the world.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, the good news is that with all the distraction in the world, what what youre what I hear you inviting as something that we need, the ability to focus, the ability to concentrate, the ability to listen, those are trainable skills.
00:47:40
Speaker
And I think what we've done a lot of and in our culture is we've trained distraction. We have created an environment where, you know, um if you're watching a YouTube video and the YouTube video is an hour long, people orient that differently than if it's 30 seconds or 40 seconds or a minute and a half.
00:48:00
Speaker
They put it on two X. Exactly. And so we have we have started to train ourselves to be distracted people. And yet at the same time, we are more and more disenchanted.
00:48:14
Speaker
there's ah There's a sense of meaninglessness because one of the things that requires a sense of enchantment, a sense of sensing the sacredness in the world is depth training.
00:48:25
Speaker
And depth training requires a degree of concentration. Concentrating the mind helps us go either within more deeply or focusing on some larger territory more deeply.
00:48:42
Speaker
And so, you know, the good news is that this is trainable. it's a but It's a process of having the intention to learn how to concentrate and then learning the tools.
00:48:54
Speaker
Now, we can use some of the the tools that have come from the ancients, which is the mind goes off, we bring it back. The mind goes off, we bring it back. People use mantras for this. People use all sorts of stuff.
00:49:06
Speaker
We also have um a whole domain of working with the parts of the self that can really support us in learning how to concentrate.
00:49:17
Speaker
And sometimes it's much faster than traditional concentration practice. Because there are parts of us that are distracting us as a means to protect us.
00:49:29
Speaker
That's right. and Whatever they're afraid we're going to feel if we were still. And if we can build relationship with those protective parts and deepen trust, it's often a faster way for the system to to calm down than to just focus the mind again, focus the mind again.
00:49:47
Speaker
that That works too, but it's a long game for a lot of people.
00:49:55
Speaker
As a practitioner of Chinese medicine, what do you see around, or do you need to weave in parts work to heal somebody who's interested in coming into greater focus who says they present with a diagnosis of ADHD, for example?
00:50:12
Speaker
Oh, I weave in parts work wherever I'm allowed. Right on. Because for me, the psyche and soma are um one like two sides of the same cloth.
00:50:23
Speaker
And so, I mean, on the one hand, I do a lot of work with people that is non-local and we're not doing acupuncture. We're just doing parts work. But when I'm seeing someone locally and we're doing acupuncture, my understanding is that, you know, looking at the whole meridian system, which are like these channels that they talk about with acupuncture points.
00:50:40
Speaker
My understanding is that that system is working in conjunction with a mind that is distributed. This means that the mind isn't in the head. The mind is in the head, it's in the chest, it's in the shoulders, it's in the ankles, it's in the heels.
00:50:56
Speaker
So that the way that you move in your body, the way that you use your heels, you use your heel to ground downward and then you you rock on your on your pad of you you you rock on your foot and then the front pad of your foot, you leap.
00:51:10
Speaker
That's an expression also of how the distributed mind concentrates into descent transitions and leaps. It's not just all happening up here where the brain is.
00:51:23
Speaker
So when I'm working with someone, I found that while acupuncture is deeply effective and profound, when the when the client is also working with their own interiority, we're working with the energetic system and their subjective inner landscape,
00:51:42
Speaker
those are, it's far more profound and and more importantly, sustaining. It goes beyond the, um that session was a beautiful state experience and then it sort of wore off and now I'm back to who I was before.
00:51:56
Speaker
I saw that in my early practice and I didn't like it. And so I had to find other tools to support my clients to have sustained change, which is I think what we all want.
00:52:07
Speaker
The founder of ah Network Spinal, which you when we were kids was called Network Chiropractic, Donny Epstein, there's a lot of papers done on his work and he's distinguished it as the difference between restorative healing, which is what you described like, okay, I'm back to what I was, or i'm back to some modicum of functioning, it's maybe not radiant, or reorganizational healing, which can incorporate trauma difficulty, illness, and and the system with right support reorganizes into greater and greater coherency.
00:52:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. and And also, I find that with parts work, there's a degree of agency on the part of the client that doesn't exist when you come in and lay down and get needles put in you and then hope that you're going to be better after.
00:52:57
Speaker
The do me approach. Yeah. Well, and it's natural, right? I mean, you get a massage, you're like, I want to lay down and get a massage and your state changes and things change and it's good and helpful. yeah But I found for some of the deeper sort of stuck places in us,
00:53:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah. When the person learns tools that they can actively implement when they're not in the session, that's where I find this the sustaining reorganizational aspect of it takes flight.
00:53:26
Speaker
So that really, the session can be powerful. But ideally, what happens in between sessions is where the most powerful stuff happens. It might not be as um like explosive.
00:53:39
Speaker
But that's where the nervous system gets rewired through practice and repetition and learning and deeper exploration. That's where the person becomes a different person, not from just a momentary experience of, wow, that's great.
00:53:54
Speaker
That's inspiring. It's helpful. It's life changing. But then how do we integrate that into the way we move into the world? This is part of the, I feel, the invitation. of developing concentration for the in-between moments, the liminal spaces where so much is happening.
00:54:12
Speaker
Like this habit of occupying one's attention relentlessly until we pass out in bed at night is to miss out on the wonder of life.
00:54:25
Speaker
The wonder of life, the cultivation of concentration, not to make something happen in between spaces, but to just to be curious. Yeah. Well, it reminds me to use a sort of some Buddhist language. It's like, where where are we taking refuge?
00:54:41
Speaker
Yeah. Are we taking refuge in TikTok? Or are we witnessing TikTok while taking refuge in that deeper love? those deeper dimensions of being.
00:54:53
Speaker
what ah What are we committed to? And that's not going to be necessarily through our ideas about what we're committed to. What we're committed to is going to be evidenced by our how we move in the world, how we move our mind.
00:55:07
Speaker
So to what degree am I taking refuge or committed to building that relationship with, you could say, the Beloved with capital B, that relationship with the the big love.
00:55:23
Speaker
It doesn't mean that I have to block out the world, quite the contrary. But am I able to take refuge in these deeper dimensions of who we are, these unbroken dimensions of who we are, while also doing the things?
00:55:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:41
Speaker
Have you noticed any of your parts that are remaining in some degree of resistance to healing and forgiveness, whether it's ah related to Herbert or to anything else that has left you with an imprint?
00:55:57
Speaker
Well, I think there's two different questions there. There's related to Herbert and then related to everything else that's made an imprint. um Related to Herbert, um not not much.
00:56:12
Speaker
There was, especially right before our conversation, there was a huge surge of parts that were like, dude, what the hell are you doing? Why would you put us into this conversation?
Emotional Aftermath and Healing Cycles
00:56:24
Speaker
And your field spoke that through this, at least to me, in the in the signal chat when you were asking. like It was a very different energetic. like Our fields speak to everybody before we enter the room, right?
00:56:35
Speaker
And there was like, I was touched by the vulnerability that you were letting be there. And I was like, wow, I feel fear. I feel sadness. I feel grief.
00:56:48
Speaker
I want to hug him. Carry on. I didn't want to interrupt you. just wanted to add that. No, it's okay. So there have been moments um where that has come up.
00:57:04
Speaker
It was mostly a little bit before the conversation. And then I found that for about a month and a half after the conversation, there was a lot of um so so there was a lot of things that sort of came up as a result. And I want to kind of give some context.
00:57:24
Speaker
The way that I understand kind of how sort of this kind of stuff, this question you're asking works, is that we come into contact with someone. And if there are untended seeds, we might call this karma. You can call it whatever you want. But there's if there's untended seeds, then that relationship is going to trigger that.
00:57:48
Speaker
So in typical language, we'd say, oh, I got triggered. I prefer to call it a karmic awakening. it's It's a process through which I come into contact with someone and that dredges up all of these aspects of being that I didn't know were there or have not been fully embraced with love to the point that they come to fruition.
00:58:12
Speaker
So with that as context, after our conversation, my body and being had ah number of weeks of that. was very It was very painful, um phyly a lot physically painful and also psychologically painful, and just required patience and allowing that love to you know support all of these things to come come to fruition. Yeah.
00:58:40
Speaker
What I found was that every time I would meet with him again, a little bit leading up to, and then the weeks following, again, there'd be this experience of this pain Not all of it had narrative around it, but this pain, psychological and physical pain, would arise, and then it would it would it would release.
00:59:03
Speaker
And then came a point where that started that that stopped happening, for the most part. so um But to the other aspect of your question, of course, I'm still alive. So I have relationships that I either have currently or relationships that I haven't yet had.
00:59:21
Speaker
Even if it's, you know, someone looks at me funny at a store and I have a little trigger. It's not the magnitude of, you know, talking to Herbert, but it's still an example of there's something in me that still expresses a little bit of separation.
00:59:37
Speaker
Mm hmm. And so that's that's the doorway right there. That little, I like, you know, trigger, it's kind of has a negative comment. I'm triggered by life. Life is triggering me. But a karmic awakening, well, damn, this is exciting. You know, I'm at the back of, somebody cuts me off on my way to Best Buy. And I start feeling like I'm from Jersey because I'm from Jersey. And I start feeling like I've got heat in my blood and I'm redheaded, which you probably can't tell, but I'm redheaded.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah. All of those things are pointing to me ah whole new sort of banquet of seeds that I can either act out and cause harm by expressing separation, or i can tend and allow that love to liberate them.
Development and Identity Evolution
01:00:21
Speaker
This really good to hear for people, especially people who maybe relate to you as somebody, and even my intro as a quote, late stage practitioner, and I know a number of which in the integral community and the stages community.
01:00:35
Speaker
And it's so refreshing to hear people who have access to these sixth and later person perspective saying, you know, i was being flown to the hospital and ah young part of me that was traumatized by medical stuff came up and i was able to hold it with the support of my community and like yeah we're in a body or my my trivitya teacher who says if somebody's in a body they still have seeds or faults is the way she put it she didn't mean it in a pejorative sense but you know if anybody's in a body understand that they still have stuff to deal with and i
01:01:11
Speaker
I think many of us are still grappling with that because of the mythology of the way, particularly the Abrahamic traditions, traditions ah or the ones who took control of the history, told us about the the main figure of each of those three traditions as somehow perfect.
01:01:27
Speaker
That's right. That's right. And you know we have this myth of the enlightened one. That's one issue that we're contending with. Then we also have this other issue that late stage development must automatically equal enlightenment, which it doesn't.
01:01:42
Speaker
No. we We have these ways that these are, if we don't parse this out really precisely, It's easy to just conflate the whole thing and be like, oh, well, they must be perfect or they must not have problems.
01:01:56
Speaker
When actually, if we're looking, you mentioned the six person perspective. If we're looking at the six person perspective, um part of what's occurring there is their identification with who they are is beginning to enfold all of cosmic history.
01:02:13
Speaker
Not conceptually. but experientially, which means that they are all of it, not standing on a perch somehow separate from it.
01:02:25
Speaker
But not only that, their sense of identity is not individual. So it's not like, oh, look at Mr. Sixth Person Perspective over here who doesn't have problems and how they're looking at the world that does have problems.
01:02:42
Speaker
They are the world that has problems. But they're also recognizing that world from a different dimension of being that is also unbroken.
01:02:54
Speaker
So they are their neighbor who is you know coming from a second person perspective or a third person perspective. I want to repeat what you just said because it sounded like it may have cut off and hopefully it made it.
01:03:08
Speaker
But they're they're coming to it from the perspective of what is unbroken. They're coming to it from the, yeah. So in a six-person perspective, they're coming at things from a perspective that's unbroken.
01:03:21
Speaker
But to be clear, you can be earlier than six-person perspective and connect with unbroken wholeness. Their identity is a collective distributed identity.
01:03:32
Speaker
So it's not like they're here as an individual at the six-person perspective. They are all of the people that are all of the perspectives. There's not separation.
01:03:43
Speaker
But when we look through the sort of common ways of looking at development, we create separation like, oh, they're late stage. They must not have problems.
01:03:54
Speaker
Well, okay, but if anybody in the world has problems, they have problems. Right. Right. It's good to open out the reality so that each of us can take the next step where we are, you know?
01:04:14
Speaker
Usually I ask guests, you know when you hear the title of the show, The Choice to Grow, what is that evoking for you in this moment? And we've been talking inside of it all along, but I am kind of curious just what spontaneously arises from you when when you consider that. like You hear the title, The Choice to Grow. What in this moment does that actually invoke or evoke?
01:04:32
Speaker
So what comes up for me is that if we look at this in the context of our 13.7 billion year history, we, for most of that time, haven't had the choice to grow.
01:04:44
Speaker
We've been growing, but we've been doing so without self-reflectivity. Then, you know, couple of hundred thousand years ago, wherever we say humans began to come online, all of a sudden we have the birth of ah of a new possibility, which is, um you know, part of our deepest pain, which is the fact that we experience separation and our deepest gift, which is that we can self-reflect.
01:05:14
Speaker
And so for the first time in, you know, 13.7 billion years, all of a sudden we went from growing as the fundamental expression of cosmic evolution to having self-reflection that allows us to begin to make choice.
01:05:36
Speaker
Now, this doesn't mean that we're not going to grow just because we choose not to, but we have the choice to move towards something, to move away from something, to decide to eat all the potato chips and take the heroin and you know fall asleep.
01:05:53
Speaker
We also have the choice to move towards something.
01:05:58
Speaker
And so to me, the choice to grow, it's an invitation into looking at this entire human realm. And then every step of the way, um maybe aside from our very first you know infant moments, but early on, we have the choice to so to consciously move in a direction out into the world, but also ask ourselves with that self-reflectivity, who am I? Why am I here? What am I going to do about it?
01:06:33
Speaker
And so to me, that's what
Legacy of Wisdom and Compassion
01:06:34
Speaker
it invokes. it's it's ah it's It's leaning us into this gift of the human realm. And it's also pointing us to this profound pain that came along with this gift that now we can say, i don't know who I am.
01:06:54
Speaker
i don't like myself. All those kinds of things that come from self-reflection. So we get suffering and then we also get self-reflective awakening, the possibility to awaken to who we are and know it, which is different than something without self-reflection. who It's a perfect expression of its nature, but it doesn't know it.
01:07:19
Speaker
And then there we are back at concentration to actually become available to self-reflection. Right, exactly. Like if I'm distracted, I can't really self-reflect in any sort of a useful way.
01:07:30
Speaker
Right, which is why you know ah human beings find themselves in a place of disenchantment. Because we we have the capacity to know ourselves. There's a deep impulse of intrinsic positivity that wants us, that that that wants to express itself through us knowing ourselves.
01:07:51
Speaker
And then we get but get distracted. And you get distracted again. And there's a an important pain associated with that dismissal of deep inquiry.
01:08:05
Speaker
That pain of some people wear that shirt that says, meh, you know, the the pain of everything is sort of blah.
01:08:14
Speaker
That's a pain that's trying to pull us, remind us that there's something deeper.
01:08:22
Speaker
and And that pain, just like every era has its own shadow, its own breakdowns, its own issues, when that gets loud enough, it becomes a catalyst for a positive revolution.
01:08:34
Speaker
Now, when I say revolution, I'm not i'm not trying to be dramatic. It could just be a revolution within one's own heart. you know But sometimes we'll see in collective whereas collectives where human beings say, you know what?
01:08:45
Speaker
Enough. We need more. this isn't This isn't meeting the moment in the way that we want to meet the moment. It's not meeting our needs. And then we get an explosion of a new sort of collective exploration, a new moment of collective discovery.
01:09:03
Speaker
It's a great segue into the question that I ask every guest. And it's predicated on the quote, my favorite quote from one of my favorite quotes from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, who opened the Zen Center of San Francisco in the 60s. And he would say,
01:09:19
Speaker
Death is certain, the time is not, what is the most important thing? Yeah.
01:09:28
Speaker
So um for me, there's two domains that for me personally, I'm not suggesting everyone should adopt something like this, but for me personally, there's two questions.
01:09:43
Speaker
that I carry with me. And you know part of this is a gift from my father being killed so yeah when I was so young. um I've been very acutely aware that my days are numbered.
01:10:01
Speaker
Sometimes people in their 20s don't think about that much. But when your dad is taken away, it becomes acutely, it becomes loud. that there's there's no guarantee.
01:10:14
Speaker
Today, this conversation we're having having, it could be the last thing that happens. So the question that comes up for me is in the context of death, in the context of death's inevitability, there's two things that I care about.
01:10:33
Speaker
What can I leave behind? And what can I take with me?
01:10:39
Speaker
What I can leave behind is the legacy.
01:10:43
Speaker
it's it's It's the moments that I chose to love, even though there was a place in me that wanted to bite. It's the times when i accidentally bit and then apologized and took care of it.
01:10:55
Speaker
I mean, I have 16-year-old. There's times when it's like after 10 and you know I get tired.
01:11:03
Speaker
So there's the legacy. That could be life's work. That could be writing books. That could be the conversations you have with your neighbor and you consciously tended to how you showed up in those conversations.
01:11:16
Speaker
Those are the moments that we choose to have conversations with the people um that we don't like or that we feel hurt us. And we did the work to be able to lean in from a deeper place and have the conversations anyway.
01:11:33
Speaker
So that one domain of what do I leave behind, it's the domain of legacy. Am I leaving a trail of tears? Am I leaving the intrinsic positivity and generosity that's a deep feature of this love?
01:11:49
Speaker
And then the other side, what can I bring myth with me? There's only one thing I can bring with me. According to my understanding, I'm not meaning to, sometimes I get passionate. I'm not meaning to preach the truth.
01:12:01
Speaker
I'm just sharing passionately what's true for me. The only thing I can bring with me is the relationship that I've developed with the beloved to use that language because we've been using it.
01:12:15
Speaker
yeah We could put it in any tradition. The relationship to being and becoming awakened awareness to use like a Buddhist language. Whatever language we use,
01:12:30
Speaker
to what how much time am I spending in meditation
01:12:35
Speaker
and cultivating that relationship. Because when I go, ah don't bring the body, ah don't bring my legacy, I only bring and only bring that relationship.
01:12:48
Speaker
So that's that's kind of how I hold it.
01:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, I really am vibrating with that. Like I feel that surge of love again. And also the curiosity, I don't know if you happen to know it offhand, been You've been bringing us along with the character, the Chinese character for things and how it's revelatory about a deeper understanding. And I'm wondering if the Chinese character for death tells us anything more about death.
01:13:18
Speaker
You know, I don't know that one.
01:13:21
Speaker
Sadly, as ah as a ah Westerner, with English is my first language. I've learned Chinese characters rather than learn the language the way we would learn a typical language.
01:13:34
Speaker
I've learned the characters like these gems. And some of them I know, some of them I don't.
01:13:44
Speaker
In Sanskrit, the script, the Devanagari script ah I've been taught that each character actually is yantra. a geometric energetic form that transmits consciousness.
01:13:58
Speaker
And it sounds like other ancient languages are similar. Yeah. And you know the way that I would orient to the question um relates to what we might call wisdom and compassion.
01:14:11
Speaker
That wisdom is the awakening to our true nature. That's what we bring with us. And then compassion is world-facing. Compassion is is the legacy that I leave behind, which if we look at compassion more deeply, it's the willingness to experience the suffering of so-called other in myself or my location, and then embrace that with love so that there's an alchemy, there's an alchemization of that suffering into love.
01:14:44
Speaker
so So to me, you know if we're looking at these two things of you know what do I bring with me and what do i leave behind, one way to do that is to look at ah wisdom and compassion. Wisdom shows the character for the heart with a hand with a broom.
01:14:59
Speaker
And the broom is is brushing away the obscurations that are in the way of recognizing our deep, true nature. Compassion also has the character for the heart, but it shows um these, ah basically the silk, the character from s silk, which are like these, um they're like a chrysalis, like a um like these like they're like these little circles strung together, like um you could imagine like a cocoon.
01:15:34
Speaker
And then above that is the character for vegetation. And when you look at the character for vegetation with silk, it creates a kind of quality of being, like velvety.
01:15:47
Speaker
This velvety quality of love that is enveloping the suffering of humanity so that we're transmuting those tears.
01:15:59
Speaker
We're transmuting all that pain. This way of learning language is so much more helpful to me than Merriam-Webster. Yeah, it's different. you know Words birth worlds. And so you know and for me, you know chinese Chinese language, it's not just like, oh, this cool thing that I learned. I mean, when I went into Chinese medicine school, I was i was lost.
01:16:22
Speaker
I was looking for how to help myself. And the Chinese characters and my teachers that taught me about them, it gave me a language for how to live.
01:16:33
Speaker
So i I feel very close to these. Also being someone who's dyslexic, um a lot of things don't make sense to me the way like it's supposed to These images, these symbols spoke to me in a language that that I could relate to.
01:16:53
Speaker
And it helped me as sort of a guiding light. So I just wanted to give a little context there that they're very precious to me, even though i don't come from that culture. It feels like they they sort of took me under their wing and the wisdom of the medicine took me under its wing.
01:17:09
Speaker
Help me. Well, and that preciousness transmits. It's palpable for me for sure. And I hope it's palpable for you listeners. Alexander, this feels like a really great transition moment.
01:17:20
Speaker
And thank you. with everything I have, with all the cells of my being and more, it's always a reward to just be with you, regardless of what happens. Like I'm so feel free when I'm with you to be in discovery and drop agenda.
01:17:40
Speaker
Beautiful. Yeah. Thank you so much, Scott. it's lovely being here with you and all your listeners. So everybody, if you're new, what we do is we spend the last about 10 seconds or so together just in stillness together, noticing whatever you're noticing about your experience. There's no right experience to have.
01:17:59
Speaker
So if you get quiet and like, what am I supposed to be feeling? Bring your attention to just feeling the entirety of your body and just letting your breath become easy and sweet. And we'll end in that way together, being together in stillness.
01:18:26
Speaker
Loving the episode? Click to follow, like, and share it as widely as possible. Want to go deeper with the choice to grow? Explore the show notes. You'll find links there for going deeper with our guests, as well as how to work with me in the work of waking up, growing up, cleaning up, and showing up.
01:18:47
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Can't wait to join you in the next episode.