Emotional and Spiritual Maturity: Gabor Mate and Adyashanti

so the first thing I will ask you and this is my personal beef perhaps so my personal grievance or fear I just wanted tonight over dinner I described in an episode of traveling from Germany through into Switzerland would you just describe what happened for you there and then others no question about it many years ago I was teaching in Germany and Switzerland and we were in a car means several people I was in the backseat and talking with a few people and not paying much attention to where we were all of a sudden I noticed this really stark sort of change of energy it felt as if you know the kind of feeling like when you're in a dark cloudy day and the Sun breaks through and all of a sudden it feels lighter so I felt this very noticeable lightness and a kind of energetic sense of opening and I said I asked the people in the car said did you guys feel that because it was it was very strong to me and they all said yeah we felt it and then one of them pointed out he said you know we just passed we just passed the border between Germany and Switzerland and I looked in the looked behind us and sure enough we could still see the sign in the review mirror and it was a really stark energetic and it was really you know I had experienced the different energies in different places in different environments but this was probably one of the more powerful shifts of from something that felt a little heavier a little bit more I don't know me oppressive energy that's maybe an overstatement to some extent and then something much lighter okay so I heard this story and I have a there's in me a in a medieval capacity to draw the negative out of anything and so when I heard this story what happens for me I'm getting well this guy travels been in Germany and of course we all know the history of Germany and how different that is from the history of Switzerland and so beyond we all me understand what this energetic shift is all about but I wouldn't have that kind of I've I've been to Switzerland I've been to Germany I didn't feel you know that stuff and then I read I just want his work or other people's work on enlightenment and I'm thinking well what kind of a when he tells me the story tonight and thinking what kind of a person would it take to be able to sense an experience that tremendous and obviously palpable energetic shift well it takes somebody very sensitive it occurs to me and then my pessimism goes to well of course he would have enlightenment experiences because he's that sensitive so someone's like there's two kinds of people in the world those that are wired for such experiences and those that are not and he's in one group I'm in another so it doesn't matter how much I read your teachings or listen to your your-your-your tapes or that of Eckhart or that of Elmo's or anybody else given that I'm wired differently and my mind isn't wired for that sensitivity and that connection maybe I don't have a hope in heck of actually getting there do you understand sure my dilemma what I say to that yeah yeah well first of all first of all I mean I would I would agree in to the extent that we're all hooked up differently just like anything else in life spirituality is no different there's people that are inherently like talented violin players for instance or or just anything or architects or whatever and and other people that it's it's more difficult for them and I think the same thing occurs in spirituality I think that's that's fairly obvious however I I don't think of myself as a particularly energetic person not not when I compare myself like to my wife Mukti she makes me like feel like a you know knuckle-dragging neanderthal that energetically wise you know that sensitivity but you know I obviously have have developed it I think much more than I did so I don't really just from that from the energetic point I don't I haven't experienced that I grew up and felt energetically sensitive or anything at all but that kind of came through a lot of practice but I mean you might be spiritually that sensitive though is it possible that you were wired for the spiritual experience and other people are not so wired for it it's possible and if that's the case then can it be taught can it be transmitted really or are people just going to be coming to you to experience your energy which is wonderful or they actually if they're not wired for it or they do I have a hope of having that experience that's amazing this is what I'm asking you know I get the question and I and I appreciate the sincerity and the directness of the question because it's it's a it's the kind of question that's easy to sort of you know dodge and you know so that everybody we all feel really good about all this stuff but I mean like I said I do think that some people are having sort of more of a sort of inherent hook-up or talent or whatever you might think of it and around around the spiritual experience what being a teacher has taught me is that I've encountered a whole lot of people that really didn't think they had any real talent they would tell me I have never had anything even remotely like a spiritual experience in my life I'm intrigued with the idea of it but I don't feel that I'm you know and kind of hooked up that way and and I've seen that so far 23 years of this that the biggest factor that I found is when I can get people's mind to open to pot the possibility that without disagreeing with their basic makeup like yeah you have your may okay you have that but if you didn't limit yourself with your idea of a conclusion right and but neither one of us are making a conclusion right I'm not making a conclusion like that yeah you're anything at all is possible for you who knows how do I know at the end of the day right but I have seen that in many instances that this seems like one of the biggest factors is actually just a mind that hasn't closed into conclusions that it's I saw that when I very first started to teach that if I could open people's mind just their mind to a maybe you know about well lots of things actually but especially in this regard because spirituality you know the idea of awakening enlightenment its course it's clouded in the shroud of of specialness it's made for special people of special talents and you know and all of that and experience has taught me if I can help open people's mind beyond that that may be it it appears that way because that's what collectively we've kind of held and believed then a lot more becomes possible that that's about as straight as I can give it and I've seen I've certainly experienced seen a lot of people that really didn't think it was possible I've tried to open their minds up to the possibility of it and you know I've seen a lot of people have had some pretty big spiritual shifts that really didn't think it could happen whether that can happen like for every everybody walking around I don't know okay you know I wouldn't want to come to a conclusion on the positive end of it either I kind of try to keep it very open-ended okay well that actually leads me to one of things that noted in your book you falling into grace and you say here early in the book that grace is something that comes to us when we somehow find ourselves completely available when we become open-hearted an open mind and are willing to entertain the possibility that we may not think what we may not know what we think we know so the key word for me in this sentence is we find ourselves completely available now that finding occurred to me can happen two ways finding could be just an accidental serendipitous event or happenstance I find something on the ground I didn't was expecting but you know or it kind of a very active component I'm actually looking for something yeah so when you say find here which which of those did you mean or did you mean both of them both of them you're sure one of the things that what I've talked about grace I think a lot of us myself I would very much say my first experience where I really felt you know I'd been graced lots of times in life in different ways but the first time that it really I really felt wow this is it feels like pure gift was something I share with people all the time when I teach almost never does an audience brighten up when I say what I'm going to tell you but it's been my experience that my to a large measure of my spiritual path has been a path of failure that the greatest openings have come when I've come to the end of my rope certainly in the early years that was that was the case I I sort of would exhaust exhaust myself until I was not despond a combination of despondent and exhausted and that seemed to be a pretty potent ground for for grace to happen now it doesn't have to be that way fortunately I think that was just because early on there was probably more resistance and things in the way but I think that's an important thing to consider because of course as as a teacher you just can't you see this all the time people coming up against their limitations yeah right or their perceived limitations or what they really experience to be a limitation and they they go up against it and they at a certain point you try different strategies and tripping different angles and you try everything you can and and at some point you might just and we do everything we can not to be checkmated right not to run out of strategy we do everything in our power not to get there but sometimes we do find ourselves there and certainly in my case I found that that was often as I said early on when there was probably more resistance that that's when grace would often occur something would happen that would feel like pure gift it wasn't because I was talented enough to I just surrendered to God you know I just surrendered well I tried that but apparently it wasn't in my capability to surrender in a complete enough way so I had to go through what I had to go through okay as my my own teacher says we all have our dance to dance out in life and the whole point is just to dance it all the way out and boy did I find out to be true so when you talk about enlightenment do you mean those particular experiences that imagine as ones of realization and unity and I can only use words for it because I'm not conscious of everything as such ever had such an experience at all do you mean that particular experience or do you mean something that happens after that experience or something like you learned from that experience what is the main alignment for you well it's good thing I like the way you frame that question because the question was actually my answer is that it's all to me it's all of that it's yeah the the Paolo experience is what we might call where you can recount say something to happen in a given moment or day or whatever are like door opening moments consciousness opening moments we can call those some some of them of course not every in fact the vast majority of spiritual experiences are not and mentor awakening experiences but even if that even if we experience that of course anybody that's ever had those moments has has had the experience of having this look up the clouds of consciousness sort of part and something a whole new way of being come into into your experience but we all most of us certainly when those are sort of when we're early in that kind of experience we also experience that as human beings we don't quite live up to it you know it's like it shows us our our potential and what we not just our potential more more fundamentally of our sort of our essence our our wholeness you might say our completeness but we're also we also have these two aspects of being a part that spirituality is really pointing to which is sort of what I call the always an already complete whole and there's a sort of intimate connectedness with being but also there's a human part and the human part may or may not be deeply sort of penetrated by that experience we all differ greatly and how deep that goes and so any any spiritual experience will need to be that in of itself doesn't just mean you know you to get to lighten mint certificate because you had enlightenment experience the next day you know when your kid knocks on your door to inopportune time or something then you find out like how real is this so to me it involves all of that involves the door opening experiences it includes yet the the process which is not an instantaneous process the process of of embodying that in our humanity which is generally a very humbling path very humbling experience and a deeper understanding I think it's to me it includes all of that so if I can get personal here first of all you and then about me so you've been on this fad for decades and you've had these clouds splitting experiences as far as I understand do you get annoyed in the morning when it's raining or your wife doesn't look at you the way you want to look at you or you said geez I wish it wasn't like this this morning or do you live in this piece of acceptance and peace and just what's it like for you yeah I float in the clouds at all times no my my biggest so a confession moment my my biggest sort of weakness as far as the annoyance is almost always almost always around technology I can get frustrated with my computer or my phone or if something doesn't work well for some reason that can that can push the old upset button pretty pretty easily you know and the greater scheme of things that's not that big of a deal right if you think of if you think of life like geez okay that's not much to complain about so I'm certainly not complaining but that you know that's the thing of this the gaybar is the way I see this it's what I teach it's also comes from my experience and is that we we can have these these awakening experiences that not even all awakenings are the same there's depth to awakening just like there's depth to anything else and then we have and that can can be very very sudden it's not always sudden that's a kind of myth that they all have to come in mind-blowing moments you know they can kind of creep up on you I've seen people that have Awakening experiences that are kind of like well I'll be darn really I'll be darn but I think there's these two aspects that I kind of touched on briefly there's there's the revelatory aspect and that's sort of we see or we don't see then there's the human aspect and as far as I can see is because we're connecting with something that's experientially is infinite that the human being has a has its own infinite capacity to grow into an embody what we realize and there doesn't seem to be an end to that and it doesn't have to be instantaneous no it's never I've never seen a case where it was instantaneous ever yeah ever and and that's just part of I mean that's part of the thing that it's everybody deals with is like acknowledging that and then starting to see the gaps between the D and this isn't just an Enlightenment thing by the way this is like everybody in this room you and me and all of us we all have what we might consider the deepest or most meaningful things that we feel like we know those whether it's an insight or and understanding gain from life experience that's that's you you just innately know this is just innately meaningful and we also know that as human beings we are always growing towards or away from that right and there doesn't seem to be an end where you get to go over some line called total enlightenment or total liberation and you can claim okay as a human being I've reached I now embody the infinite in my limited humanity and so I think if we're honest which is a always a great protector if we're honest is we just we settle we start to settle into that and like okay there's there's on the relative low I'm always growing in to what I always an already am and I think that's but I think it's a more balanced view of all this than sometimes gets talked about you know because we all like extraordinary stories but you know I was telling you that my own teacher who I was with her 14 years she she had she raised five kids and so she was very ground and you know if you had a big old awakening experience she'd just kind of smile at you and go okay okay and then then then she sometimes we're usually within sometime in the next minute she'd ask you a question like so how are you getting along with your mom just some some relational question because she was like trying to like reek it was like reconnect like this is where it's gonna be real kid yeah which is really interesting because when you're telling me that dinner and you first talked about your spiritual teacher and I asked you if you had a teacher and you said yes right away I think of a male yeah I never would have thought you were having it and let alone a female with kids yeah how can I be a spiritual teacher right so it's that we have these ideas right yeah so speaking of ideas somebody wants actually I've often said maybe too often said according to what I just learned from you is that I've never had a spiritual experience in the sense of one of those big aha moments the cloud opening and all that and yet when people talk about enlightenment when I read Rumi's poetry or fizz's poetry or I read Jesus sort of read the Buddha or I read you or you know read a card totally or any one of these people there's something you mean knows what they're talking about yeah and recognize it is and gets the truth of it even yeah so this one person put a very interesting question to me that I'd like to put to you know which is is it possible that we do have these experiences we just don't recognize them as such because we have a kind of idea as to what they should be like and since they don't correspond to the idea we just don't see them for what they are it can be it can be I've met people like this like that and I don't question them all start to you know ask them and and like they might you know it like I said some people kind of just slide slide in there kind of gradually and so the idea that it has to always the the Enlightenment is defined by simply by powerful moments is a is a misunderstanding right so yeah just just just because you have a shift doesn't always mean it's going immediately conscious right the AHA is only only when the the shift is very very quick and the change of perspectives was basically immediate but what if he had that change of perspective over five years right you're not gonna have an extended five year aha moment Yeah right so like I said at the end of the day this stuff is proved not by look I'm it's I I deeply value awakening experience obviously but in the end it's not proved by those experiences it's proved in the way we move and function in life that that's the that's the that's the real deal right so if somebody says oh I had this wonderful awakening experience five years ago but you notice they're just really easy to trigger and their buttons are just all over them and you can push them really easy then you kind of go okay you might have had an experience and not to devalue that but that's not a lived reality right now then you walk over to the next person that says I've never had an enlightening experience at all I don't really have never had that and maybe if you're with them for a while you noticed like they're actually really hard to trigger like okay so now in the in the moment who's actually more enlightened in the moment you know what I mean that's what I mean by like the the experiences are important but after those what's important is right how easily do we get triggered how you know how much are we grabbing hold of identity how much we grasp on to ideas that aren't really true all those kind of things in fact Suzuki Roshi who wrote then mind beginner's breath he had a really interesting comment one day he said don't be so sure you want enlightenment he said you may not like it if you get it which is actually true if the real the real deal you might not like it if you get it and that's that comes as a surprise to some people and you call it Jesus and you look somewhat to the same extent the Gospel of Thomas yeah yeah you can be yeah when you can be disturbed yeah yeah I can it can be very very disturbing to some people but Suzuki also said he said you know if you do this this practice which is his way of saying like if you really commit yourself to a spiritual path whether you have one of these powerful experiences or not you may end up actually being in a day-to-day way you move through well you may be more more closer to enlightenment than someone that has one of those experiences right not to say that they're they're the same thing but I just always been inclined towards the proof of the profundity of our experiences actually proved in our day to day experience it's not proved in the in the power of a given moment okay right the moments can be in life changing but how life changing there are depends from person to person right ten people can have the same kind of experience and ten years later they can be in completely different places in their lives so that that the desire for that particular experience then is what maybe chögyam trungpa called spiritual materialism it's a kind of attachment to a certain idea of what it thank you for chasing sort of an experience yeah that is a kind of spiritual materialism you know because that and there's nothing unique about that right we human beings chase all sorts of experiences you know when we're buying an eight hundred inch TV screen right we're chasing an experience that we think is going to give it to them to me there's a it can be useful too at some point to sort of discriminate between the spiritual impulse as it is in a not itself and as it gets colored by the individual that it's operating through because the Eagle will attach its hopes and dreams and wants to the impulse but the impulse itself is is often not what we think it is it is that the very ground of being or if you want a more psychological interpretation of that the very ground of the most expansive understanding of the psyche you could get to become self-aware that's what it's about it's not it and that made that that that doesn't really value whether the our journey to that is easy or difficult it's it's the human being that goes who I want this and I want this experience and and that's understandable right that can be a part of our motivation and there's nothing wrong with it but but but if we really feel into the impulse itself it has this sort of transpersonal origin so what am i well in my mind right now there's all this this is sort of this excitement that the rich possibilities of this conversation I almost don't know which direction to go in but they all excite me but I just sort of go randomly with okay the few get there I'm sure someone is that I wanna argue with you okay yeah so let me just find the point where I think I can argue with you okay this has to do with this how we get there like well we have to do with our minds and let me just find it exactly yeah you say okay I got it I'd like to share with you your short exercise you say that will help illustrate what I'm saying just for a moment let's say five seconds and in these five seconds let yourself stop thinking about anything about yourself about others about the day etcetera etcetera okay that's what you say on page 33 to 34 okay but mr. Dushyant II a few days there a few a few days they a few pages later you say we don't have control over what we took what we want or think we have okay and just look inside your mind you have don't you don't really have control whether one thought entity or exists your mind I think of a contradiction huh yeah yeah so tell me what so no one and I'm supposed to stop my I would own me I can't stop my mind right so you tell me about that please why I do come this from the Zen tradition so purposely tie people and not sometimes okay I won't leave it at that that would be too much of a cop-out so if we could just stop our mind which is sort of hypothetical number one okay well it may not have come across in this I don't I don't even remember but one of the things I think is really important I see all spiritual teachings I think they're both health related to in the most healthy way as sort of strategies strategies to awaken or become more conscious or to see deeper or to let go of things rather than sort of statements of final philosophical existential truth I think they're medicine and when it comes to the thoughts I think it's important I often encourage people even though it might sound like I'm saying do this or don't do that let's say that it's really I would I would recommend I often say to people that take everything as a question okay so the quite like if we took that turn that into a question what you're talking about right right so what if so simply you saying since you can't simply just stop your mind you can't make that happen right right can I listen however can I listen to what's always what's already quiet whether I have thoughts or not okay can I do that not a demand like okay this is what I'm supposed to do now but can I can I can I notice that I find when we sort of turn things into into a question like that then we're not store the ego isn't sort of struggling to make it happen it's like investigating which i think is important because as soon as we make something into sort of a demand now I'm going to stop my mind not first of all that's a thought yeah and you just elicit all the resistance that might be there but if you do because I'm so good but that's what happened for me when I was doing that pageant I actually tried it yeah and all I could do was think about not thinking yeah right which is which is a kind of a lot of circular thinking yeah now after you if if you did that if you did that for well it might take a second it might take a year it might take whatever and at some point you might start invite dawn on you like Oh apparently I can't just stop my thoughts whenever I want I seem to need more the recipient of recipient of my thoughts and the creator of my thoughts right by and large right by and large okay if I start to see that maybe something in me just starts to stop trying to make this happen oh I can't do that and but there's a way of relating to that kind of limitation in a way that we're taught that when we find something we can't do we failed right like I've hit a limitation I failed I didn't get it right but we can also spiritual I think it's really important to relate to those kind of moments like oh I can't do that what's it actually like in my body in my experience to realize that I can't stop my mind without trying to what what does it actually feel like because usually I can't unconsciously what we have running in our program I can't and that's not right and I have to be able to do it and I failed none of which is I can't do it I can't do it it's just simple like oh I can't stop my mind oh so what's that like how does that feel and the interesting thing is when you let yourself feel that sort of wall that limitation your mind often becomes quieter four-note and it's not a mystery that it becomes quiet it's it's it becomes quieter because anytime we align with the truth we have a more seamless experience of being where and we're less conflict with ourself and we always think the truths are supposed to be truths that I want to know like who wants to know I can't control my own thoughts right but if we let ourselves and that's a truth if we let ourselves know that truth it's amazing how our experience becomes more harmonious right because we're simply coming into closer harmony with the actuality of our experience right so you have my sympathy number one I could easily see how you could you know take take that little little piece right I was what I was trying to do was when I used when I usually created almost as like a an imagination if you could stop your thoughts for five seconds and even if you kind of imagine it like yeah if I was if my thoughts just kind of stopped or five seconds hmm what would I lose in those five seconds of course what I could also do with it is say in this conversation ask who who's the one in me that even wants to argue about it like that's the deeper question yeah yeah right on just open to it right yeah that's a deeper question that's the most fundamental question when somebody gets hooked on that kind of question then I start to salivate like a dog all right now we're no games right yeah yeah yeah so you talked about quiet and I'd like to read you some this is this is gonna be the last question before we get into a spiritual bypass part if I can find that coat of yours well you talk at some point about this culture making it very difficult to be silent silence is you talk about these not a high cultural value that's the science is not a high culture value in our society and so I won't look for the exact what could you just kind of summed it up oh yeah but no hey I actually found it revelation and insight come from come from somewhere else from some others sorry from from from some other space they come from a place that we as a culture seen to a so little respect for a place called silence what's more neglected in our lives than silence you say and that reminded me of a great line from from the play Joan of Arc Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw where Joan is this it's a 15th century story of course a true story and Joan is this simple peasant girl who who has voices come to her yeah and those voices guide her to go to the doe fan the the came to be of France and demand that he assumed his full role as a leader of his people and Joan actually is able to lead the French armies to some victories against the occupying English yeah so it's in this particular dialogue Charles Dee who is now King as a result of Jones leader says all your voice is your voices why don't the voices come to me I'm king not you and Joan says they do come to you but you do not hear them you have not said in the field in the evening listening for them when the Angelus which is the ring the bell that calls the people to a particular prayer mine Angela strings you crossed yours you cross yourself have done with it but if you pray it from your heart and listen to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing you would hear the voices as well as I do it's beautiful yeah it's beautiful so talk to us about silence I like your sense of humor well I think it's it's it's obvious that we don't value it silence as a culture that much silence seems on the surface to be so useless like it's silent okay well as I've had a few people say to me like okay it's silent it's a big deal what's what's the big thing about that and I go yeah you got a point I can understand that surface experience but silent silence is and again silence isn't something that we need to the more we're trying to be silent the more we create conflict rather than trying to do that as I like to say is just listen to the quiet spaces inside instead of fighting with the noisy spaces there's you can work on the noisy spaces it in some other time or some other context but listen to the quiet spaces inside and the thing about silence is that it's it gives us access to to dip underneath the sort of rationale which is often irrational but the rational intellect right we're all the there's all the oh so much of the noise of happiness silence is a sort of an access scaner that's why almost any contemplative form of spirituality Valley has valued silence right it's silence isn't the only thermal worth Valley in spirituality you know questioning and I'm having challenging our own assumptions that's really important too but unless there's a foundation of of silence it's so easy for it to just become stay in the realm of the of the rational intellect you know and especially nowadays when we can go on the internet and and watch endless amounts of spiritual teaching and part of that's nice that's there's availability and accessibility but it's a part of it remember when I was young with my teacher in my 20s and I loved reading about spirituality and I mean I was just sort of on fire with the whole thing and I made a deal with myself that I was gonna I could read as much as I wanted as long as I meditated as much as I read every day well and so because I was like well I can sit here reading about silence is really exciting perhaps actually engaging in it is is at least as useful and so I did that and it's no mystery that you know people go for walks in the woods or just places where you're just sort of often caught off guard a little bit by a silence and the sense of presence you walk into a place of sort of sacred architecture it's meant to evoke a state of being sometimes it's ah sometimes its simplicity but there's always a kind of silence that's that's with that so I think silence ISM and the the the ground of our of our being is is in silence that's why you don't have to create silence you know we have to create the noise like the words I'm saying so I'm just thinking that before the Big Bang there must have been some mm-hmm and it's kind of like silence is kind of like you know that like the Buddhist word that people get so confused over like a word like emptiness you know and we think oh it's just like an empty box but emptiness is you know this this isn't the exact sort of Buddhist translation of this but something akin to like since you mentioned like big be something that can do what there might have been right before the Big Bang that everything came out of an infinitely small something which is really close to saying to nothing and that's a different kind of nothing that's that's a domain of what I call pure potentiality right and in our I think in our deepest ground of being and our deepest experience of being we we experience ourselves to be a a domain of pure potentiality there's there's nothing to it it's like before it's become anything and that's kind of a kin also it's a close cousin to silence right and so there's incredible intelligence revelatory power it's an silence isn't just a lack of sound there's it seems like that at first it seems like that at first but it's it's it's a door opener ok well that takes me now to trauma yeah strangely enough because you know I do have an if there's such thing as a dee dee and there's no such thing as a DD as far as I'm concerned it's a process but without going into that my mind just doesn't abide silence very well and I related to the fact that when my brain and mind were being formed in my earliest moments even before birth but especially afterwards there's a lot of terrible stuff happening around me yeah and not to be present to it was a natural way of coping and I'm talking about trauma here yeah and in this workshop of 100 people that I'm facilitating and and and and not just in a workshop but everywhere I go doesn't matter what work I do and as a physician I just found that trauma in the way I define it was the underlying dynamic beneath every kind of illness mental illness physical illness I'm not gonna make that case for you right now but that was that's what I found and a lot of research tends at the same direction and then you told me yourself to my delight really but to my surprise at the same time that in your workshops your retreats and so on you find a lot of people have been you said 80% of something you use some anyway that a lot of defined what am i coming up all the time all the time no the interesting thing is and that surprised me the reason it surprised me is because in none of the recordings of yours that I've heard or the recordings of Eckhart Tolle your recordings of age illness or any degrees spiritual teachers of our time does the word trauma as far as I can tell ever mentioned as such mm-hm yeah so I'm curious first of all why not well all I can do is speak for myself please so like I think I shared with you especially when I do retreats when people are doing deeper really deep spiritual work I mean some sort of questions about trauma come up on a daily basis there's rare to get through a day where someone isn't and I don't mean trauma that's not directly addressed but you think might be there but I mean just overtly you know talked about someone brings it up to me so so that's usually when when it gets talked about when I really address it is usually when someone really brings it up and there's a reason for that and I'll say this to people when I talk to them I've educated myself to some extent on trauma I didn't I mean there's probably I don't know if we any of us get through early childhood totally unscathed I don't imagine but I don't I don't even experience myself certainly to have sort of the more heavy traumas that a lot of people come to me so number one from an experiential standpoint I don't have that expertise from an educational standpoint I also know that that's not my area of expertise I don't want to pretend like it is I will often say when I'm especially it retreats and that when the subject comes up that I'll talk to people about how they might be able to be with that while their retreat but I will often suggest that people reach out to get some really good specialized help from people who are experts in this to think that your spiritual teacher is going to be an expert in trauma is probably unrealistic you know I think it's important for spiritual teachers to be open to addressing it and dealing with it when it comes up and probably at least educate themselves in some basic way I've met lots of people have come to me and they're talking about some in your experience and it's just terrifying them and I've learned over time to distinguish between the kind of Terror which is this sort of like like the the ego meeting it's X distension limitation that's a kind of tear people can when they're ready they can let go into that they can surrender into that but if it's the tear that's the tear of of a traumatic of trauma coming back again I've met so many people that a spiritual teacher says just dive in yeah and well they do it they tried to dive in and they ended up worse for doing it right because that's not what you wanted as far as I know that's not the right direction for that kind of fear so you know when someone is like what I realize okay there's some traumatic trauma aspect here I I'll be I'll suggest that you just you got to slow the whole thing down take it in little little bites you know lots of I won't go into all the pointers but try to stay really grounded connected with your body if you if you start to get you know overwhelmed don't think you have to just boil your way through it that's counterproductive that's what I mean like I have a an elementary understanding of it enough to I think to give some useful guidance in those situations but I'm not an expert and I don't want to pretend like I'm an expert no that's for I'm not even sure what I would write in a book you know yeah that I would feel comfortable with fair enough but I there's no argument there just giving you information no no I'm just I'm not taking it that way yeah from my point of view it'd be so refreshing if somebody like you or any of these others that I mentioned could actually just say the word yeah and say I may not be don't want to do it whether I may not you know but I know it's here yeah I know it's affecting many of you yeah that would - maybe yeah really helpful understood yeah I understand you know if you listen to enough tapes you're gonna hear it okay yeah it's there but I've got a legend the morning no no don't don't no I understand what you're saying and I and I think your point is well-taken it really is because it's it's it's a bigger issue with more people than I would have ever dreamed with when I started out this stuff or me as a physician I'm sure yeah and and it's and it's a it's an important thing to to be to be able to identify and for people to get some really good skilled help with that like just those two things right there are just extremely important so that then brings me to spiritual bypass and and and alighted at trauma in the spiritual world so you mentioned Suzuki Roshi I mentioned Trillium champion push a Suzuki Roshi moved here from Japan founded the Zen Center in San Cisco and as far as I know he was a well it was clearly a great teacher and without with integrity but the man he appointed to be his Dharma heir his followers you probably know this yeah whom I don't need to name but his name is well-known sexually exploited for years yeah women in his in their restaurant chögyam trungpa rinpoche who funded Naropa University and wrote many books of spiritual teaching and steeped in a certain Tibetan tradition died of alcoholic liver disease and also had a lot of women and his that is sexually asked yeah the leader of shunt the Shambhala group that that Trump a founded has recently had to resign the most recent leader the the one that Trumper appointed as his Dharma heir past HIV on to his lovers not telling that he had HIV yep the current leader of that same group has just had to resign because of sexual improprieties I wanted an ad retreat with Suzuki Roshi nice tsuki Rocha yes okay who I think was working it was Leonard Cohen's guru he worked at Mount Shasta and he just died the fears of a well over age of 100 but when he was over in his 90s there was a front-page article in New York Times that for Yee decade had been groping women mm-hmm this great Zen teacher I I participate in retreat and he really was a wonderful teacher and I'm not taking anything from their power to teach understood and he and he would grope women and his nominee women would complain Summum will complain is his acolytes his assistants would say to these women buddhism is all about non-attachment why you so attached to your breasts if he wants to touch your breasts let in touch your brain what's going on well first of all there's a damn big problem in spirituality Yeah right there's a big big problem I think that's first thing that needs to be okay to acknowledge there's a big big problem and there's lots of reasons for that but I think one of them goes back to the word the phrase you used to open this this last little bit up as is spiritual bypassing I remember reading myself in a book from his then teacher that teachings were basically I thought quite sound and good but when somebody he was there was a Q&A in the book and it was asked if if you know Zen meditation is good enough to sort of cure someone of all their psychological emotional ills and he said yes and when I read that I was like that's wrong like the other stuff might have been good in this book but he's just flat wrong about that one and I think there's this sort of this pervasive it's it's through lots of these kind of episodes like you'd mentioned it's slowly starting to change but not fast enough but there's this this thing and this goes for not only teachers but anybody is that and we touched upon this earlier when we were talking about enlightenment experiences and like there there is these enlight there's a spiritual line of development this human line of development they do interact with each other but they are also simultaneously not the same line of development and you can be very highly developed in spiritual insight and be an emotional child right maybe you had your own trauma maybe you just never grew up maybe becoming a teacher where you were so you know had so much adulation was part of what kept you from really growing up like you know what I mean there kept you in this sort of more infantile state and I think what what we need more and I think everybody teachers and students need to understand this that these experiences do not confer human perfection upon you you can still not have your emotional human ego act together at all even with you have really big powerful spiritual trance experiences I mean real ones not phony stuff that can happen and the part of every of an unfolding is acknowledging like that like I said that gap between who you are as a human and what you what you realize and that's you that's a different they're intersecting so they always have to be you know they we have to encounter both of these domains simultaneously but I think we have to get over the idea that spiritual insight is a cure for everything number one that it's the same as emotional growth that's not true it can help a lot with emotional growth it can it depends greatly on people how much it sort of penetrates into the the humanity the human domain but so I think for everybody for teachers and students like I think we have to be honest about like okay I'm I'm going after spiritual insight but yeah it's also you're also gonna have to take care of your your emotional baggage along the way unless you want to end up highly-developed in one area and highly undeveloped in another area so that so these people that I mentioned they were great teachers and and what they thought was seems to me very real when it comes to Dharma that yeah great right is it possible though is it I'm asking you know I I don't have a suspicion but I don't know that if there's this uneven development that you described yeah as great teachers they may be that that's somehow wouldn't pollute their teaching at the same time could they be doing great pure teaching and then have his other life on the side that doesn't affect their teaching it's a good question I'm not sure if I can give a great answer to it it's it because I think it is sort of a question I mean I think there's enough of our Peaks between because these two domains of human experience are interacting but also not the same the fact that they're interacting to me would have to tell me that in some way that lack of development is getting into the teaching in some way did you know what I mean that obviously you can have people that are very undeveloped emotionally that can give some really great Dharma but I just all my intuition tells me that they just can't be separated that much they can be separated to a great degree right right it's because it's not true that just because somebody is sort of an emotional infant and a lot of people get hurt when you're in a position of authority when that happens it doesn't mean that when they're talking about the Dharma that they may have really great things to say but I think that's an important thing like just in spirituality in general that we don't just measure this whole thing simply by spiritual insight that we start to measure spiritual insight is part of the part of the picture it's an essential part of the picture but it's the pictures bigger than insight it's it's human beings and it's emotional growth and it's relational maturity and it's a lot a lot of things I just feel intuition aliy that if you're super undeveloped in one way it's got to it's got to affect the Dharma teaching somehow because they're just not completely it which is my baby understand this which is why maybe we're seeing this dysfunction now in several generations after yeah from path in his organization that's right well I'd like to because you can when you're blind to something you are often blind to see in in in others that's right but you just don't you don't acknowledge it you don't see it you know so I mean I'd loved from from the purely selfish point of view I'd love to just keep talking we're here forever but I don't want to give people here a chance to ask you questions and I just can put one more question to you yeah and it's it's related to this issue spiritual bypass if I get this computer working properly then you'll hear yourself talk and and then I'm gonna ask you to comment on it so you know my favorite thing to hear myself talk yeah you too yeah it's always like listening there's finger nails on the chalkboard to my ear I mean people sometimes will come up to me before I talk and say I'm really looking forward to listen to you talk and Maya says so do I so here we go if it works all right why wasn't this working again please it worked before oh maybe grace on my end is struck again let me just try one thing you I'm not gonna keep trying forever sorry I've stolen headphones okay let's see okay let me just try one different way because I just would like to use this quote and I've worked all night record and this is my wife will T please help so and watch it's not gonna work but I'll reprise it for yours best okay I'm talking about the consequences of denial yeah and you're actually saying I believe you're saying pretty much what I've been teaching all week and what I've learned over the decades of the physician that the cost of is denial the consequence of denial like if you put yourself in situations when you deny yourself for example can be deleterious to your health yeah and everything else and that deny can also happen through spiritual work as far as I understand because people who put themselves on a cushion and and really feel peace yep and insanity and joy even but in their lives they're denying something yeah and they're even they might even be using that spiritual work as a way of getting away from the might even often yeah okay so I just wish you would talk a little bit about that denial and its consequences and then below without do questions from the audience well you you mentioned some of the some of the consequences but on on a less on a smaller scale than the influence of spiritual teachers on people I just think for all of us you know Julie what I found is I think to be honest with yourself about yourself is about the most challenging thing that a human being can pull off right you know with any consistency every now and then when you know when when you get pushed in a corner okay maybe you do it but to just really not honest in the sense of a lot of people miss translate that as a sort of judgment of things but we don't it's not judgment it's just being honest and honest and honest and I take that as sort of one of the central pillars of spirituality as I teach it but you have to be Cape you have to be willing to whatever extent you can muster to be really really honest with yourself because if you're not if you're not honest with yourself well how spiritually awake are you going to be able to get number one but in a more human sense we don't actually get to successfully repress anything it just comes out in a different form like you push it down here and it comes out over here so the denial and the repression thing it might you know squash it in one form but it's it's gonna come out somewhere somewhere else so none of us get off the hook and I think it's kind of a ruse a ruthless kind of not like judgmentally ruthless but it's a difficult fierce practice to to be honest that's what I was trying to kind of suggest when we were talking about the mind for a moment like me sometimes just like when I was learning to meditate right and I had a real trouble in the early years meditating and it was very difficult I did a lot of it but it was really difficult early on and in one day I was with my teacher and saying talking about my mind and meditation and just looked at me and said if you go to war with your mind you'll be at war forever and then picked up the bell and rang it like that's the end of the conversation kid and it was like perfect timing because I walked out and it's hard to convey to other people the effect that had when I put so much time and I was so ardent and and trying with everything I had and all the sudden I was just told the way you're going out about a kid this this isn't gonna work and you can do this forever and get nowhere and I remember like sometimes when you're just stunned by something and I was walking down the road after that going back to the meditation hall and I thought first of all I thought you know what I knew this from the very first time we ever meditated I knew it but I didn't let myself know it because it wasn't convenient it wasn't convenient to know that I couldn't control my mind the way I wanted to so I pretended not to know that I denied it and I went about trying to control it and I was just told I could do that forever and I thought I need a totally different paradigm completely and that's when I began to find my own way I had to first acknowledge what was true about my own experience that I couldn't control it and then I get okay if that's what's true now what do I do and that's when I found a totally different way of going about meditation and all of a sudden the war dropped out of it so that's you know very specialized you know there's also there's emotional denials of piled up infinitely but I think it's it's key to emotional work it's key to spiritual work it's there's the phrase using inconvenient truths yeah that's a great point right inconvenient truth and sometimes the the most transformative truths are the inconvenient truths right yeah we always think truth it's going to be true because I'm going to feel great about it not always sometimes it's like Oh God not that but then so often you know if you can take it in and you stop denying and you reorient around that truth later you look back and go wow that truth that fierce truth was actually a kind of liberator there's a famous saying of Jesus that you will know the truth and the truth will liberate you and I don't know which American president put a twist on it and he said the truth will liberate you but first it'll make you feel terrible [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: scienceandnonduality

Views: 410,502

Rating: 4.8128986 out of 5

Keywords: Gabor Mate, Adyashanti, science and nonduality, spirituality, grace, enlightenment, stopping thoughts, spiritual bypassing, trauma, spiritual insight, emotional growth

Id: t9S8JNo6JM4

Length: 66min 42sec (4002 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019