Navigating the Human Predicament with Duncan Trussell

hi everyone welcome to the ramdas fellowship live stream we are here again for another month having interesting conversations with wisdom keepers of our times sort of unpacking topics that are near and dear to rondas's heart i'm jacqueline davinski i'm the director of community outreach and education for love server remember foundation live stream and you you all are the ronda sot song the sacred community made up of folks from around the world and we come together in various ways each month including these live streams just to feed our hearts and minds and souls to remember deeper truths because they're so easy to forget and just to make community our topic tonight is navigating the human predicament and we're here with the amazing duncan trussell as it said in the email that went out if you saw it we and we all know this right that we get born into this experience of separateness and these complex ideas about who and what we are and we are contending with those in every moment of every day and it's our curriculum you know we enrolled for this and yet learning to embrace that humanity as well as our divinity seems to be one of the like paradoxes of life and tonight we get to consciously play around with that so i'm super excited about it uh before we begin a few things about how we proceed it's about 75 minutes we'll be hanging out together the first half will be duncan talking and the second half is us answer us meaning gina who's on the back end sending your questions to me and then i will ask duncan so you are welcome to put in your question at any time into the chat or whatever platform that you are um watching from and we'll try to answer as many as we can so invite you all to settle into your space and take a couple deep breaths connect with all of those hearts that are tuning in today and through time and space and from that heart space we welcome duncan tressel who if you don't know is an american actor and stand-up comic uh known for his podcast the dunkin trestle family hour and he appears on the netflix series the midnight gospel one of the things i think many of us love about him is his openness and authenticity and this great esoteric wisdom he brings forward in such a lovely way he embodies that spirit of ramadas and he speaks a lot of him in maharaji during his podcasts so let us shine a whole bunch of energy and light and sparkles as we welcome duncan trussell hello thanks for being here thank you for having me hi everyone whoever is out there thank you for tuning in to this i am a wisdom keeper of these sacred traditions i'm not a wisdom keeper but i appreciate that i am american but i'm not a wisdom keeper but i like what you i mean it would be cool to be one uh wow it's so cool i they um i'm so disorganized i uh missed the email regarding like the plan for this evening and i'm excited because uh they said that i should talk for 30 minutes which it's just like a dream come true for me because i'm very happy and that's a that's a fun thing to off the cuff talk about what the topic is today which is navigating the human predicament which to be completely honest i thought my god there's so many names in that title uh what a confusing title or something to talk about and then uh to get ready for this i went to a restaurant with one of my favorite books by choking choppa ripped cutting through spiritual materialism and i was having a vodka soda reading it and thank god i opened it up to this uh wonderful um question someone asked uh choking chopper rinpoche during one of his talks which is in a lot of his books uh the best part of the book is not so much what he what he was writing as his response to some of the questions uh for those of you who aren't familiar with choking champa rinpoche he is a controversial teacher who uh was friends with ram das and there's some pretty awesome videos that you could probably find on youtube of ram das hanging out with chogyam trump or rinpoche uh who he choking champa was a very uh he was well he was a wisdom keeper actually he was the real he was when you say wisdom keeper he was a true wisdom keeper and was from a very young age trained uh in what in the west we call tibetan buddhism and so uh he came to the west and uh sort of analyzed our culture and in that analysis he recognized a potential sort of danger uh what happens when capitalism meets some of these teachings and specifically for him buddhism or what we call buddhism what happens when those two things meet and one of his something he recognized was that there was in that convergence a potential for these teachings which are uh have the effect of sort of dissolving the identity uh or sort of as ramadan would say helping you become invisible or nobody or whatever that didn't paradoxically these teachings could have the opposite effect which is they could like sort of inflate you like some kind of embarrassing spiritual balloon and then you could spend uh your whole life just sort of imagining that there was some that you were very spiritual like the most spiritual it reminds me at burning man they have something called the most spiritual person contest which is really funny where a lot of people get together and like sort of uh brag about how spiritual like how many times they've done ayahuasca or uh how much frog venom like showing the scars of their frog fit them and stuff and um certainly i'm guilty of this because uh one of the qualities of the ego of course is that it wants to be important and very special and you know i'm a com i'm a comedian and a podcaster so uh it's just so easy for me to get completely ridiculously puffed up and certain and um so i understand what he was talking about how you could if you didn't watch out without even knowing you were doing it find yourself very like full of how very spiritual you are and somehow in in that you're completely disconnected from actual everyday life so this is a cool question someone asked um trump he was talking about someone in the kaju lineage of buddhism called marpa but the question goes having stumbled around various spiritual sinners i feel that a personality like marpa must be a very troublesome phenomena for most addicts along those lines for here is a man who seems not to be doing any of the things that everybody says will get you there he's not ascetic he doesn't abnegate he looks after his everyday affairs he's a normal human being and yet apparently he's a teacher of enormous capability is marpa the only one who's made the most of the possibilities for a normal man without going through all the tremendous pain of asceticism and the discipline of purification so chogyam trump rinpoche answers of course marpa is an example of the possibilities open to us however he did experience tremendous discipline and training while he was in india by studying strenuously under indian teachers he prepared his path but i think we must understand the true meaning of the words discipline and asceticism the basic idea of asceticism leading a life according to the dharma is to be fundamentally sane if you find that leading an ordinary life is the same thing to do that is dharma at the same time you could find that leading the life of an ascetic yogi as described in the texts could become an expression of insanity it depends upon the individual it is a question of what is sane for you the really solid sound stable approach to life the buddha for example was not a religious fanatic fanatic attempting to act in accordance with some high ideal he just dealt with people simply openly and very wisely his wisdom came from transcendental common sense his teaching was sound and open the problem seems to be that people worry about a conflict between the religious and the profane they find it very difficult to reconcile so-called higher consciousness with practical affairs but the categories of higher and lower religious and profane do not really seem relevant to a basically sane approach to life marpa was just an ordinary person involved in living every detail of his life he never tried to be someone special when he lost his temper he just lost it and beat people he just did it he never acted or pretended religious fanatics on the other hand are always trying to live up to some model of how it all is supposed to be they try to win people over by coming on very strong and frantic as though they were completely pure and good but i think that attempting to prove that you are good indicates fear of some kind marpa however had nothing to prove he was just a very sane and ordinary solid citizen and a very enlightened person at the same time in fact he's the father of the whole kaju lineage all the teachings we are studying and practicing spring from him so i think that's a great way to talk about navigating the human predicament from a spiritual perspective because in my own uh ex you know in all the various phases i've gone through with uh studying this stuff and working with teachers i've noticed that something can happen that is really kind of [ __ ] up which is that suddenly i'm not good enough for myself or something like i'm not meditating every day oh my god what's wrong with you why don't you meditate every day or uh i'll lose my temper or something slam on the horn in traffic or uh find myself being like selfish or uh just a general sort of dilapidated self you know mildly depressed maybe i don't know compulsively masturbating to porn uh thinking greedy thoughts imagining like weird things or just generally like some aspect of myself is emerging that does not fit in with this other idea i've invented about what it must be to be a spiritual person this idea is an invention and i think that's something that choking trump really wanted us to understand which is that you sort of as a natural result of um having an imagination and hearing some of these things you invent a version of yourself that might be possible after some amount of time a certain number of retreats certain number of these sorts of events i know i like i'll like sort of like find myself in this really like i don't know piggish way of being where i'm sort of like snuffling around audible looking for oh maybe like this pima trojan audiobook will be the solution to how i feel or you know maybe uh maybe if i get the oh my god i'll show you oh my god sorry this chair it just deflates hold on okay uh this this was like a really intense phase i went through recently i just started buying these like hardcore buddhist scriptures see thinking this will help somehow in the study of these books there's an answer here like i will find this is where i'll find the answer and i remember i had jack cornfield on the podcast i was sort of like doing that thing like a humble brag where i'm like you know i'm reading uh the treasury of precious qualities and his response was why are you reading that stuff it was so cool you know um and it was so ego it was like just taking a needle and popping this like wonderful ego bubble that i've been swelling up as i fantasized myself as some kind of like ah i bet alan wants to study these texts and i'll be like you know like that like ego stuff so this is what shogun choppa called spiritual materialism and uh it's the tendency that we all have to number one completely like completely disregard who we are right now or even worse just like judge it like get put ourselves it's like the most ridiculous kind of witch trial where you put yourself on trial you don't even realize you're doing it but you're like oh he's judging yourself oh i don't meditate i i'm eating meat or oh god i i drink too much or this way that i'm acting is just not the way a person who meditates is acting or maybe you would think god neem crowley baba would definitely send me away if he met me because i'm a vile monster like i would be one of the people that got jowled immediately if i even made it into the ashram or whatever your particular symbol is for enlightenment you imagine that thing as you currently are is rejecting you um so to me this is i think where accidentally spirituality can become something of a poison and uh god in in in in that you you completely sort of ignore uh all the parts of yourself that uh you just you just not the cool stuff you know like there's cool stuff that as a podcaster i've come to recognize uh you know you can do these cool confessions it's cool you know and i know you know what i'm talking about you'll hear people do this kind of cool confessionalism but what they're confessing to is kind of [ __ ] cool like whatever it may be but we all have things that we don't quite feel so easy about saying out loud these are the things that are part of us too and in the mandala of identity these things exist and are real uh whether you ignore them or not and so i like the buddhist conceptualization of uh ignorance not as like a uh necessarily a derogatory like right now we use ignorant to refer to like bigots that person's ignorant but in buddhism the idea is more that it's active ignoring so it's like you're actively using all this energy to sort of block out these aspects of yourself that you have based on your studies uh come to see as being profane and in there's a lot of energy involved in that kind of blocking it out and also it's something of a tragedy isn't it because here you are a a person and you've just decided that you're going to sort of cut the pie chart in half or even more than half who knows i don't know what you're but and disregard all these aspects of yourself uh out of some spiritual aspirations so to get back to pima children i heard an audiobook i was listening to of hers that she said if you're meditating because you want to change yourself then that's like starting your spiritual path as an aggression against who you are and um i i i saw an instagram uh i follow a lot of like ramada's instagrams and it was a wonderful talk he was giving her saying talking about falling asleep you know what we call falling asleep in the spiritual world which is really just like you stop meditating you stop thinking about the stuff and you just go back to your whatever your life was before you were going to the retreats or drinking ayahuasca or taking mushrooms or whatever your thing is and how people beat themselves up for that and feel incredibly guilty for this thing we call falling asleep and he was saying oh that's the path too uh another version of this i read that he said is uh when you when you when you're off the path that is the path and i think uh the part of ourselves that won't you know want to inflate we don't want to hear that because because if if that's the case then what is there to gain from any of this like what's the well what's the reward like if you're saying anywhere i go is the path uh well then that means that i don't have a kind of pull-up bar a spiritual pull-up bar or you whatever spiritual peloton where i can quantify engage my advancement on the spiritual path and uh yes that's it i think that's a really important thing to just give up is this idea of uh there being anything really to gain from any of this and you know i'm only saying all this just because lately i haven't really been into spirituality and i always get excited in these moments you know uh because i i'll have this thought which i think is a really good thought which is uh maybe it's time to just start over like let's just forget all this stuff like all of it all the ramdas stuff all the be here now stuff all the spirituality stuff yeah maybe maybe it's good every once in a while just to forget it like whatever progress you think you've made forget it you know like when you uh erase the hard drive of your computer i don't know if you've ever done that or you reformat your computer and you just put a fresh operating system in it's really awesome like it's cl it feels like you've scrubbed your computer or something i think there's something to be said for that in this uh in in the world of spirituality uh i don't often get to this place where i'm like oh yeah i don't really wanna i don't really wanna connect any kind of spiritual symbols or metaphors or teachings to what i'm doing and sometimes if i'm really lucky when i'm meditating i will that will happen or i just i'm instead of meditating i'm just sitting still and i know this is my own sort of neurotic stuff here but uh you know just the word meditating is so intense isn't it it's so intense well i'm meditating it sounds so heavy but sitting still is a little less romantic or something just sitting still forget all the stuff the posture all the teachings just give all that stuff up just give it all up whenever i do that sometimes that's where i'm like oh i'm fine i'm actually okay like i don't need any of this stuff i all that it was great well it was great and it's pretty and sparkly and it's fun and it's definitely fun to talk about and it's definitely fun to be around people who are working through it but just letting it all go for a second is uh is a really i think really exciting moment you might have if you've been working on this stuff for a while and uh there's something in it that's especially exciting if you feel blasphemous or something doing it you know blasphemous like oh god i'm giving it all up it's a good thing to do that i only say that just because the topic tonight navigating the human predicament um i find that if i'm just doing myself in in my life as a dad and a podcaster and just letting that be enough then all the other stuff becomes completely irrelevant and there's something quite liberating about that anyway as i'm walking to go get a little dinner before i did did this i'm just walking and i passed oh my god a nightmare for me because i really don't like the saxophone i actually hate it i hate it it's a horrible sound no offense to my saxophone players out there horrible sound we put it in the gospel actually just forget just because like i thought oh god what could be worse than than a saxophone angel thing but um i'm walking down the street and i passed this saxophone player and i swear to god he just stopped playing the saxophone and he sang to me love is all you need love is inside of you love is everywhere love is all is is all around you you are love and then you started playing the saxophone again and i was like what the [ __ ] are you kidding me really wow that i still hate the saxophone but i it's really cool that you sang that and then some other guy walking down the sidewalk says isn't that cool you didn't have to be doing anything except walking down the sidewalk and i thought oh that's it right of course of course yeah you don't really have to do anything it's a very frustrating thing to our ego to imagine that you really don't have to do anything you don't have to learn sanskrit you don't have to know about your chakras you don't have to have those scars on your arm from the frog venom you don't have to do 90 ayahuasca retreats you don't have to go to i'm sorry y'all don't have to go to the wrong dust retreats you don't need to go to hawaii you don't have to listen to alan watts lectures you don't really have to do anything because you're already there and um i think there's something very offensive about that to the ego which really wants to like earn something but you already earned it which is you you're born into a body that's going to die and that's a pretty courageous thing you know they were saying we chose this incarnation i don't know i go back and forth on that all the time i think it's a different topic where i have five more minutes to ramble but i have to tell you i don't know for certain i think that's a maybe a lazy way to deal with the problem of evil in the world we'll get into that in another thing but i don't i think regardless of whether or not we chose this incarnation or we didn't it's a [ __ ] mess and uh you know you're gonna die you're melting down right now my hair is falling out and like i just i've got this weird hunch forming in my back among other things and it's really intense you know to be melting down into time and so i think that's enough once you've just once you've once you're in that situation that's all that's it everything else is love everything else any you don't need to like get into a ridiculous battle internally where you have set some strange finish line in the marathon of your incarnation where after you cross that line that's where you can be fill in the blank actualized enlightened loving compassionate whatever it may be you're already there you did it you already won it it's over and this is what i think is so beautiful about the concept of surrender which is really uh surrender i think means surrendering all of it all the ramadan's teachings and the alan watts teachings and the choking trump teachings and all the teachers teachings and all the teachings and all of it just surrender all of that give it all up and then somewhere in that anyway i something really quite beautiful seems to happen which is you're just normal again you just get to be normal and that's really wonderful that's the end of my talk thank you for having me on that was lovely i love talking with you because i so agree with so much of what you have to say so really thank you cool yeah um uh you know what some of what you said reminds me of it's one of my favorite kabir poems and i i absolutely butcher it every time but it's go something like you will not find me in temples and mosques you will not find me and eating nothing but vegetables or wrapping your legs around your head when you really look for me you will find me in the next seat i am the breath inside i am time within time on the breath inside the breath that's cool yeah it's like you know it's just there um i like god because i definitely can't wrap my legs around my head i know right but also this not enoughness that you're talking about i was um recently talking with a woman who was from estonia and we were talking about ukraine and she was talking about what it was like to grow up under soviet rule and what was really hard for her was just the amount of paranoia you know like you could dinner with someone like you didn't know what you know who they were really with and it made me start to think about what was it like what did we learn in capitalism what's like the mindset that grew up that we learned through capitalism and i really think it's this like i am not enough and this constant self-improvement project yes and that even our spirituality becomes that and i think it was tick not han said something to the effect of like there's this gift i'm going to give westerners and they're going to get it wrong because they're going to skew it but we're going to give it to them anyway right we do and it's like yeah we're going to take this this concept of um you know that we are divine as human at the same time and we're going to make it into this like perfectionism that we have to attain yeah yeah right yeah it goes from being a possibility of taking a real break to going to war with yourself like suddenly you're just in this terrible like i mean how many times have you heard someone it comes up in the psychedelic community a lot like this the words being used uh regarding the ego it's it's annihilatory they say things like i destroyed my ego annihilated my ego i shattered my ego i crushed it's all very aggressive and violent and really it's like very sad when you think like imagine if your doctor said that like if your doctor took your appendix out i was like i crushed your appendix you feel like what the [ __ ] are you wanting to take it out no i annihilated your appendix i destroyed it somehow we are so cruel to ourselves over here and it's uh you know i i think it's just a us so somehow in in that cruelty or in that that's where we feel like we that's where we hide out or can feel like we exist is a single thing it gives you a sense of identity if you hate yourself you know what i mean happen like we turn spirituality into a weapon every we can turn everything into a weapon against ourselves and others right and it's like yeah and usually it's just against ourselves and that's where it becomes incredibly tragic it's most spiritual people that i meet they legitimately try to help people around them but see secretly or not so secretly they're always like engaged in this you know i look i have friends who've gotten caught up in uh home improvement i don't know if you know what i'm talking about where like it never ends like they bought a house and they have construction workers at their house and they they've been there for like 10 years and it's like when are you gonna live in this house like at some point you have to stop improving your house it's fine when are you gonna relax and just this is where you live yeah but they're always expanding or building or fixing or you know they just don't never ends exactly richard rohr he's a christian mystic and uh he has this book called breathing underwater uh where he's talking about the 12 steps and he he talks about how like we get so caught in taking our inventory of what's wrong and forget to like pay attention to like the consciousness that we are and have and that's where it sort of breaks down of like yeah you know we're human uh we've got these like total weird quirks it's it's part of why we're here it's like yes yes and nobody i'm sorry no one wants to talk about that everyone loves talking about the first two noble truths no one wants to talk about the last two everyone likes talking about suffering no one wants to talk about the end of suffering because we're ex that we're experts on suffering probably most of us are like really good at it but the other part of it is like [ __ ] well if this ends if the suffering ends then well what will i have to talk about or what will i be or what will i even be interesting anymore if i'm not constantly at war with myself yeah yeah um there's some questions that have come in and one uh is from chris from youtube and he's talking about this is sort of a non-sequitur but it came to mind as a connection because of a podcast i was listening with you and raghu earlier today um where raghu was talking about spiritual bypass and i think you were talking about like spirit almost it sounded to me like spiritual competition um and they're asking about this idea of spiritual bypass and how and as well as how do we integrate ancient wisdom into our daily lives that's the question yeah how to integrate can you speak on what ragu refers to a spiritual bypass also how do we integrate ancient wisdom into our daily lives got anything on that yeah uh well i mean i'm an expert i'm very good at spiritual bypass i'm so good at it like i'm really good it's a that's really that's the problem with this stuff is it's perfect if you want to like an excuse to not do anything and just sort of like uh to be some kind of like boneless quivering thing it's you can find something in any of these traditions that will invite you to do that uh so it's it's uh it's you know it's an easy thing to do the the as far as the uh integrating the ancient traditions i this is the um uh i think about this all the time choking champa was talking about how how this is not a dead thing but it should feel like fresh baked bread ah and so this is why the word ancient and all this stuff i i first of all it's like why do we celebrate the ancients more than the presence number one that's a weird thing we do it's it's more of this hierarchizing things like theoretically whatever it was that the ancients were tuning into it must exist in this moment now and if it doesn't then who cares what they were tuning into because it's gone but if they were tuning into something that is timeless then really the only thing that matters about anything that they said is that which allows us to tune into that in the right now and not in the past i think part of spiritual materialism is fetishizing ancient because we can domesticate the ancient control it that stuff's already been written now it's been written we can interpret it and then if we interpret it in just the right way we can do spiritual bypass and not really connect to the right now the right now doesn't really care how old anything is and um so yeah it is a very funny thing we do which is the ancients well who cares about the ancients they're all dead anyway and they are right bad news they're all dead and uh we will be soon so we'll be ancient eventually too so meaning that if you if i get too caught up in the ancient stuff then i end up like like really scrunching my just really trying to understand what are you even talking about like some of these analogies they're using they don't apply anymore to us you know like they're we i maybe you have but i've never like had to deal with oxen you know i mean like i've never in my life i don't think i've ever been around one but so many spiritual metaphors involve oxen or sheep it's like i don't know about sheep or oxen and then i have to do this extra math to be like oh i see what i guess i see what they're talking about so i think as far as all that stuff goes i invite you to just give up all the ancient stuff and and and play around with the idea that maybe all that stuff is just it's it worked back then but now what what what were they pointing to and is that still around right now if it's not around right now then god it makes whatever the hell they were talking about even more annoying but if it is around right now then probably the only thing that matters about what they said is anything that helps you tune into that place whatever it is right now yeah and i know that i fall into this a lot as i idealize the past like somehow before some period of time like it was better than and somehow this is a mistake now and so if i you know can find out what they were saying and do that that i can make my world better now yeah total idealization and like i don't know how else to say it but like somehow god made a mistake and it's not supposed to be like this right now oh god isn't that a one like yeah right now everything's messed up and now it's the oh god all these spiritual people it's the kali yuga welcome to the kali yuga like fantasizing about some time uh before penicillin when people were like profoundly homophobic profoundly misogynistic profoundly patriarchal profoundly racist people are like oh no back then that was compared then it's like stop it you've been if you've been in a hot tub this year just stop with all of this to call you give me a break with the call you good stuff maybe it is i don't know but probably it is but anyway the kali yuga and it didn't it meant the age of gambling anyway but all i'm saying is uh the um one of the tr one of the traps is you end up you're like yo i'll tell you this of all the things ramdas told me in person he i didn't get a name from him i didn't the real bit of teaching he gave me is he said you need therapy when he was right and then i got therapy and it helped me so much but in this fetishization of the ancients we disregard all the great stuff that we have done in the in the present the the new modalities of understanding the human psyche and human consciousness which ramadas was steeped in like in when i was reading that thing when they're talking about how marpa uh went you know had all of this like at the beginning of his path was a lot of discipline you know richard alpert was a very very profoundly educated um uh psychologist and uh which is why he was able to interpret this stuff in that way so i again i think i love the teachings of the agents and i i i think i have found things in it that are useful but there's something really exciting about tuning in to the moderns too because there's something happening now which is really quite invigorating and i think really uh potentially transformational some of the current existing ways of understanding the human psyche oh you were talking about metaphysics and one of the podcasts i was listening to and like the combination of that i'm not sure if that's what you're talking about but um i'm talk you know i know i'm just talking about like like uh you know the work right now the the incredible uh work that's being done related to healing trauma yeah and um uh you know the in a lot of these ancient teachings or wisdom traditions there is an acknowledgement of this i mean i think uh you could replace god forgive me for saying this but maybe you could play around with the first noble truth of buddhism instead of saying uh there is suffering you could say there is trauma you know and um uh so the idea that if you know suffering is going to end if you can if you can let go or heal your trauma i think that's a little to me i think it's easier to understand and even though i do think the idea of and buddhism the concept of suffering actually it goes far beyond trauma i just think uh the work being done right now and understanding what trauma is how it works neurologically and ways of healing it are incredibly profoundly uh transformational and maybe somewhat more i don't know efficacious than uh uh than some of the ways we've been taught to work with our suffering you know i just i'm just saying like don't tune out what's happening now because it's not it hasn't matched your standards of how old something should be before it means something yeah yeah thank you i think that's so important um and but it also brings up the idea of the trauma work um the epigenetics of trauma like how it's passed on and so yeah can be more than just the eye it's the we of the trauma that we can potentially work with um so this is michael on facebook how do you know which truth is the truth in regards to faith and religion is truth relative to a person who's experiencing it you know you're going to tell us all about truth i love answering these questions like i know anything i can't i don't have no idea i i don't know i i'm a dad i gotta like i'm we're moving we're gonna um we're trying to find a plate i'm trying to find a place to move my family to and uh the i don't know how to answer that question i really i don't i don't i think a little question it's yeah yeah yeah there is an answer i don't know that i don't know i i think there's something to be said for personal responsibility i don't know if this leads to like cultural relativism or whatever but i think there's something to be said for personal responsibility and um somewhere in in that and like you know letting go of the idea that someone else is going to tell you what the truth is maybe you'll save yourself a lot of time yeah well said uh enrique from youtube is asking about she's she's graduating college and everyone should says she should be excited but she's terrified um so do you have tips for navigating fear for what comes next she's scared of starting college graduating from college oh graduating okay yeah i was gonna say you should be excited but boy when you graduate that's when you should be afraid [Music] well you know um most things that i've been really afraid of like graduating college it happens and then you're just in your life and all that i've just noticed that a lot of the times when i'm getting really afraid of some future event suddenly that future event is over and then all that fear dissipates on its own as far as like what to do with the fear now i try to reframe my fear and as a comedian i have to do that because uh because there's a night in uh you know there's something called stage fright is what they call it but uh that's a i think that's a really shitty term that is a confusing term uh that invite that like anyone who's about to do something important and and what you're about to do is a kind of initiation it's the consummation of your academic time and it's this cool weird initiation ritual that's what graduation is it's weird i mean they wear robes i remember going to my graduation vaguely and like i just remember thinking like what what is why is everyone dressing like this like people are in these weird costumes and they have like spangles and banners all over them and there's some sort of like ceremonial quality to it so it represents this initiatory you're you're being initiated into going out into the world or something and so you know one thing when i at my wedding i remember all of a sudden feeling that fear you're talking about and um just being surprised by it because i'm like holy [ __ ] i i can't imagine that i would be this afraid but suddenly i'm terrified so maybe it's not fear all i'm saying is maybe it's something better than fear or like the one one level of its fear but there's at this other level of it that's your your energy building up to your magical energy building up to sort of uh explode out into your future life or something like that so maybe that's maybe that's a maybe you should reframe the idea i'm not saying it's not fear but maybe there's other aspects to it that are just excitement and you have done such an incredible thing that you managed to graduate that's really an incredible accomplishment anything anytime there's a couple there was another question right after that around a similar question and i think anytime we just step into an unknown like it's unknown so our whole psyche is like oh okay what how am i going to be in this next place of the unknown yeah yeah right yeah oh god yeah i know it's a it's a bardo state too because you're like in between you because you're in this one temporary place school and then you're graduating then you go into the bardo the in between which is the best if you ask it's so magical there i mean that's where all the coolest stuff happens not to say cool stuff doesn't happen once you start solidifying or crystallizing your life but the in-between places are always wild and weird and that's where all the that's where you meet like the there's just all kinds of interesting beings that like live in the those liminal places so i think you should if i were you i'd be quite excited and enjoy it because you won't be there that long pretty soon you'll have your life going and whatever your career is and whatever whatever the next phase of your existence is but enjoy that cool twilight in between graduation and your and whatever the next part of your life is i when i graduated i went to la i bought a vial of lsd a bunch of synthesizers and just freaked out for a year until i ran out of money and it was really fun so i'm not advising that by the way but uh and again yeah that was a long time ago i'm i'm a dad now so different advice no no i don't mean the vial of lsd i'm just saying it was pretty fun though yeah but there's also all that like whenever we move into the crystallization is this this pressure right this pressure to become when we there's just all this pressure to become all the time throughout our lives yeah yeah and yes there's so much pressure and you know you graduate and you're supposed to do something now or uh you know i think that's the really that if you like one of those i don't know how it happened wherever like you're supposed to get an education so you could have some dumb job like that's capitalism it used to be you get the educate the education was the point not what not to like use it to like get into a career or something but we've all been taught you do this thing you know essentially you're brought here it's a bribe like you're you're bribing the college for certification so that you could like then practice something you probably didn't really need to get that certified for but you're in debt so you know you're basically telling the banks if you certify me i'll cut you in on the profits for like 10 years or something i think it used to be you would just you would get educated because it was like like it it enhanced your life to like learn stuff yeah yeah uh i don't are you question this next question i asked about how do you separate yourself from a christian upbringing and start your life down a more spiritual path i love jesus i no i don't i think like depending on the christian upbringing like uh you know some people they get born into families where people are using christianity or the stories in the bible as a bludgeon to try to create a its idea of like teaching subjugation as being a positive quality so people will um you know spare the rod spoil a child and all that crazy old testament desert [ __ ] so they'll they they they teach a kid that that's submitting to an author a male patriarchal authoritarian figure is the path to to hat to like heaven i mean it it's if you ask me it's uh that what's the difference between that and abuse psychological abuse like what what's like you know what i mean like let's say uh people found out that every day i told my kids that if they didn't behave and a clown a sky a clown from the sky would descend it looked like a spider but it's got a clown face and would drag them into a cave and torture them forever like if people found out i was telling that to my children like i think like that it would not be great like i think there would it would be considered abuse but if i tell my kids that if their bodies are impure and if they don't do the right thing then they well it's not a clown but some like you the devil you're gonna go to hell and the devil will like beat you forever that's like yeah it's what you gotta do it's the truth i mean it's the word of god uh so i i don't connect to that version of christianity at all and um i think that what's really interesting about the new testament is that the again and again and again and again there's this invitation for you as the individual to reach out to jesus that it's you and god not you and then an interpreter in god that's the jesus i connect to and i love the jesus of the garden of gethsetheme where he like tried to get out of the deal i love that because like all the other a lot of the other messiahs all of them i think they were like into it from day one they're like i want to end the suffering of the world and then they got enlightened or they went into the cave or whatever and then but jesus what i love about him is uh he was like drinking with his friends he didn't want to get tortured to death he after they all passed out he went into the garden to pray saying can you please take this cup away from me basically saying is there any way to not get tortured to death here and like the answer was no and and um so to me i think there's really something so human in that and also though i've heard various interpretations of this i think there's something incredibly beautiful about christ the crucifixion of christ when he said father why have you forsaken me because um i i think that's more of a human experience which is that moment where you're like waking up after the fight with your partner and your life is a wreck and you are a mess and you think i'm just completely alone i don't think there's any hope here uh i think that's way more human than any other thing i've ever encountered in any kind of religious tradition and of course you can't forget the next thing he said uh i think it's the next thing which is into your hands i i commend my spirit i surrender you know but to get to the surrender part you've got to go through where the [ __ ] are you are you serious like this is what i was happening i think uh so that's why i love christianity but uh if you were abused using christianity then i would just invite you to like see if there's a way for you to like revisit minus the like with the idea of like you're you're going this is between you and jesus not you and whoever abused you and jesus because that i mean if there was a devil or satan or some dark force of the universe that would be the first thing that they did to try to disconnect you from that um from whatever that was by getting in the way yeah and i think it's really important to separate the mystical teachings of this radical rabbi called jesus yeshua and like christianity because i have a good friend and she's like they a lot of the um they like stole god we need to steal god back and i love that phrase because the the abuse that has happened using the bible using the the mystical teachings as as a weapon um but yeah there's some really teacher uh richard rohr matthew fox um there are folks that really pull out the like mystical teachings of jesus from like the the christianity that many people grew up with that was so painful annie lamont she she's so good at talking about it and she's uh she's a real you know she's a christian and and christianity is just not i don't think it's uh you know a real like to me like it's a very human it's just a way of being human that's really beautiful and very realistic com compared to like some other things i've seen out there there's like what he gave two commandments right love the lord god with all your heart body mind and strength and treat your neighbor as thyself yeah those are some pretty powerful things to live by um yeah i love annie um let's see we've got some more questions coming in if annihilation or destroyed the ego is violent what does it look like more look like to more lovingly frame a conversation with ego that acknowledges and maintains the boundaries that keep us sane i i for me i i think that it's the the i mean this seems like i'm maybe sounds a little contradictory i am sort of like um just coming up with stuff on the spot here but uh vengeance is mine saith the you don't have to lord about it you don't have to worry about destroying your eating highlighting your ego or any of that stuff it's all taken care of don't worry you don't have to worry about it you're already you're you know depending on how old you are don't worry your ego is getting annihilated the earth will take care of it and it's taking care of every other person's ego that has ever lived yours will be no different so you don't have to worry about the project it's not your job so that's a great place to start uh so that this thing that you've decided well that's my ego versus this is my me or whatever you could just sort of just it's all you and you no longer are responsible for the project of annihilation dissolution or any of that stuff really is you know it's very frustrating you know because the ego loves to go to war doesn't it like it's it's favorite thing well it isn't its favorite thing but it's what something that it does it likes to fight um this question also sort of follows up on that about just methods for cultivating compassion letting go of unworthiness yeah um i'm i'm lucky but you know but i would go to these ramdas retreats and i was one of the people where like they would go out there you know sharon salzberg maybe or trudy goodman would start doing a teaching on meta meditation and this idea of like tuning in to compassion and so in those days i was so disconnected from everything that like even when they were like okay if you have a weird relationship with your parents try your pet and then i would be like ah that [ __ ] that poodle man it's so shrill the parking is so drilled but i have these wonderful kids and uh so like i know what i feel i know what it be what compassion feels like now and so and from and so i that's you know the invitation in meta meditation is to try to like find wherever that is for you whatever that is now i'm so neurotic and messed up that like uh in the old days anytime i even came close to feeling it i would just shut it down like i thought it was i was fully in my head like i'd successfully managed to just be completely numb from the neck down and anything that got me even close to my heart was just a kind of like something to avoid and then i remember when i started working with my meditation teacher david nicktern and i was i was i've been meditating i just remember one day just sitting there and just like i've never like my heart broke i just felt so i felt it it really isn't that my heart broke i just felt my heart and i've just been so disconnected from it but i remember thinking if this is what it's like i don't i'm not gonna do this anymore it was so horrible compared to being numb it seemed like that and i remember saying to him what is that and he said well that's what that's what i'm sorry if i'm i'm paraphrasing here everything radiates out from that and and so uh yeah i i think that um i think it's okay to not want to be there you know and and but also maybe know that if you find yourself like avoiding a broken heart uh you know i'll tell you when i'm doing this i do this therapy called i always forget the acronym i think it's called edmr i don't know what it is and um anytime it's working or it's really working i will be like i can't do it i can't do this i don't want to go there and she's like just if you will just just try you'll see it's better to go there than not and so to me that's compassion you know it's a little bit like it's but not very comfortable for me even now but i'd still it's the i'd much rather be there than i'll numb and dumb up in my head yeah yeah you know i'm just gonna keep chiming in sorry um please but i think like that broken heart that like really sitting with that sense of i think most of us have a sense of unworthiness what is it rondas's quote we're all busy hanging onto our unworthiness yeah and the broken heart that rests in there of the not enoughness i think we all hang out with it and avoid it with everything in our being takes so much courage to just like sit there and be with it and i think for many people it initiates sort of a dark night of the soul and that like spiritual poverty that we many of us really live in but i think there's this great saying of like the only way through it is through it yeah i think that's how we actually get to surrender and we get to the the parts of us that are beyond that i think it's almost the doorway through sometimes but it might it must be it must be i mean it's what what else are we gonna do be reptilian aliens that don't feel i mean because like one way you know i remember uh hearing robert thurman give this great talk about well you know well how do you what kind of consciousness do you need to have to be okay like dumping oil into the ocean you know what i mean like how do you get to that point where you're like you know what this makes sense i every once in a while the things i make infinite amounts of money from they just poison biomes permanently so like how do you get to that place you don't well the only way to get there would be to completely like freeze from the neck down so i think like probably as a species the idea would be oh yeah we kind of do have to figure out a way to be in both places because that's what's cool about us is we could be at both places and um yeah learn like probably learning how to like becoming familiar with that i mean a lot of i'm sure many people watching this if there is anyone still watching this are um more familiar with that territory you know but uh for me it's it's a it it's still kind of like a new place for me and anytime i i get there it's not like angels sing and like golden rainbows or something or like it's horrible usually at first and then it becomes then i realized like oh this when they talk about going home this is what they're talking about it's just the driveway sucks it's a long neurotic painful driveway yeah and that that forsaking feeling often comes with it yeah uh this is from someone from instagram um how do you persevere we don't take questions from instagram okay i'm just kidding what's the question i'm just joking too um how do you persevere forward on your path when you feel like you keep running into the same obstacle over and over again how do you stop making the same mistakes oh my god this is what you do you order camus myth of sisyphus it's this fantastic essay sisyphus doomed to push the boulder up the hill the boulder rolls back down meaningless activity over and over and over again it's it's a it's an essay about in the midst of absurdity like how do you fi how do you find a reason to not commit suicide how do you find a reason to be authentic and uh it's a beautiful essay uh i would invite you to look at that um it's it's it's really wonderful and uh even though it is you know it's french existentialism so it's like a little like hardcore hardcore maybe a little naked well we might consider to be somewhat negative but ultimately it's really it's a beautiful uh it's a really beautiful uh it reminds me of children trump a little bit it's a it's a beautiful invitation to just be yourself in the midst of this that there's a kind of rebellion against absurdity a kind of decision and you know i can remember trying to be smart once when i was with david and we were doing some kind of talk at a yoga studio and i at the time i was trying to edge lord so i'm like intention is nonsense and he looks at me he's like that is [ __ ] and it was so true because he knew i was just trying to be fancy i don't know what i was doing but um uh and it wasn't me in the way he said it was very sweet and look that's why it really like hurt but uh so intention right like the yeah i know what you mean like i've i run into the same stuff over and over and over like inevitably i'm like back in some collapse state like completely covered in flies feeling incredible not literally but you know what i mean like feeling just muddy and demonic or something and thinking what was the point of any of it if this is the place i keep returning to and um uh and that's where you know i i i will like in in the smallest way try to remember some of the some of the dharma as i've been taught the smallest way the smallest thing you'd like look okay fine maybe it is all [ __ ] maybe all this stuff is nonsense or pointless or whatever but who cares like i would rather continue to fail in my attempts to be kinder to people around me and to myself than win at giving up completely and becoming some kind of like numb alien i don't it's i don't think it's gonna work for me in this life like i don't think i'm gonna get the name i don't think i'm gonna get like i don't think anything's really gonna happen for me other than i i'm gonna be i'm gonna apologize sooner when i'm an [ __ ] like i really do don't know if much more is gonna happen than that but uh uh from but that that's great to me that's great and it and and uh yeah so i'm sorry if that's a rambling response to your question i just you know sometimes like you j it just feels like grasping at straws doesn't it like it just feels completely pointless and hopeless and uh ridiculous and absurd and beyond absurd something just seems like a mistake or something uh so you know what i do whenever i'm there i think oh yeah but if i'm feeling this how many other people are feeling this i bet a lot of people are feeling this oh right this is suffering when they talk about there is suffering that's what they mean you know so anyway for me i just try to keep referring to um i mean it sounds so obvious and i'm so sorry i saw the dalai lama in anaheim it was a mistake shouldn't have gone it was it was like his birthday i don't know why this happened like all these famous people were wishing him a happy birthday it was really like kind of embarrassing he was just there with his translator and he was like just being dalai lama or something and he said something that i will never forget which is you can always be kinder so whenever i get to that spot you're talking about i just try to remember that you know you can always be kinder um i don't know it you know it doesn't always work but uh sometimes it does yeah that's great kind of to ourselves um speaking of annie lamotte they're the um the surrender like when i am ramming my head against a wall over and over and over again yeah i often have to like pray to something bigger than me hopefully it'll change me yeah sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't um and it sort of rounds back to this question that came in earlier about karma do you have thoughts about karma about karma yeah like you know the question is from someone who is asking how we're able to decipher we've just made a mistake or if it's just part of our karma well you know raw goo once it's been a long time explaining karma to me like like how like complex this system is it's really interesting there's all these like you know in the west we get this sort of like basic idea karma but it there's all these different forms of karma so uh everything that so like everything that's happening around you right now is karma like this is everything you're surrounded by is there because of choices that you've made the clothes you're wearing how you cut your hair the music you listen to all this stuff that's karma everything's so it's number one it's not even like that mystical thing it's just sort of uh you can see it all around you right now you're surrounded by your karma um but then there's other forms of karma where this is where it gets a little spooky which is uh like seed karma is what it's compared to so uh there's things that you have done in the past that have yet to blossom into the present so to speak and there's nothing you can do about that you already planted the seeds the seeds are going to grow and where it gets really unnerving is some of these seeds you planted in previous incarnations so this is what i love about the epigenetic stuff is it's almost like a biological sort of way of talking about past life karma which is you know you might you might have trauma that comes from your grandparents having like starving or something like that which apparently can imprint on your dna so uh whatever like symbol set you want to use to encapsulate this idea basically it points to this possibility that stuff is going to appear in your life that you planted the seeds for a very long time ago maybe when you're a completely different person so that's another form of karma that can appear and then in the conversation of karma inevitably the question appears which is a really good question is there any way out of this situation that's exactly what jesus said in the garden of conception is there any way out of this do i have to get crucified and the answer is no no way out you got to go through it uh so um which brings us back to what we were talking about earlier this this idea of intention you know because you can't really do much about when you were like sleepwalking 10 years ago 15 years ago last week or whatever and you made all kinds of bad decisions and now physio maybe your body is sick or you find yourself in a a situation that uh you don't want to be in anymore uh there's not much you can do i mean yeah maybe there's a way with the quantum computers and the certain particle accelerator who knows maybe there's a way to like go back in time just watch tenet that's why i'm saying it don't watch a horrible movie but the point is uh at some point all you really have left is this intention this like basic intention uh of kindness helpfulness meta compassion and even if you're like me and like a kind of blundering and confused or uh like penduluming between like profound uh dislike for the self or some weird like ridiculous narcissism or something or whatever it may be this is your karma and so all you can do is try to like have some basic intention which is that even in this muddied state where you may be right now you're going your intention is you're going to try to be kinder more compassionate or more loving to the people around you and most importantly to yourself because i think you need something simple like that a very very very simple thing to remember in those moments where you find yourself being rolled under the ocean of your karma yeah yeah and circling back to the beginning of our conversation without beating ourselves up when we're not the ideal loving compassionate kind person that we hope ourselves to be right like absolutely yeah exactly like yeah because it doesn't it doesn't help if only it this is what this is what i we know for certain if being hard on yourself worked we would live on an enlightened planet we would be walking among the most enlightened beings of all time everyone around us would be buddha if being if hating yourself and being down on yourself or hating other people worked it just doesn't work we tried it we tried it for thousands of years so far as far as as far as i'm aware i've never met anyone who's been like you know things got better when i really started hating myself [Music] so leading into the next question from daniel how could we live joyously knowing we're imperfect still causing harm to others and ourselves is it about acceptance self-forgiveness how can we dance when others are suffering yeah well i don't like dancing you know i i'm well i hate it i have friends who go dancing like really all right go dancing i guess they will not see you out dancing then i and i envy them i envy them i am like wow i wish i was there you know i but i'm not that's not my thing but um you know you're not doing any good for the people that you're picturing or suffering by sort of like doing whatever scarlet letter thing you you want to do to like whipping your back or like going through the world the kind of state of like a grim sadness because you live on a i mean let's face it like everyone's gonna like we're all done man we're or friend we're all dead meat here uh so you know you know the people that you're feeling like you're you're not supposed to dance around or whatever you're really not that different from them and you and also you don't know what's around the corner for you i mean this is the thing it's like god my mind fixates on the news you know i this stuff in the ukraine i i dream about it's [ __ ] i'm so sorry to cr it's horrible and i can't stop i think we're all just like just appalled and we don't know what to do but i i think some people are forgetting like just so you know that could there's no reason that's not gonna happen to you there's no reason on this planet that that you're any safer than them i'm not saying this to like make you more depressed or anything like that i just mean the reality of our situation as a human being here is that uh we are if like you're looking to stick around or to not get sick or to not get old or to not die you are in trouble me if you haven't right now if there's some possibility where you can dance and you want to dance because if let me tell you if you want to steal joy away from me take me dancing because i'm going to be miserable i'm going to be miserable but but if for you dancing means joy then um you might as well do it now you know i mean i think this is why one of the i never knew this but in the i think it was the last book ramdas wrote with miravai somewhere in there she said something like love serve remember remember you're going to die we carry death on our shoulder and i think that's to like bum you out or get all goth or like put on black lipstick and hang out in graveyards or something i think it means like just remember like uh yeah other people might be suffering and you aren't suffering right now or other people might be going through profound unimaginable uh experiences right now but if that's not happening to you and there's some opportunity right now to like experience some joyful way of being why not you should do that i think it's important you might as well i mean you're not helping anybody i don't think by not doing that you know and i'm i'm sure a lot of the people suffering in the world that probably say you should damn you know dance that's your thing just don't take me dancing you just don't get it man i used to when i was a kid i think i just forgot i just don't like the way my body looks i just feel all jiggly and old when i dance a lot of people are into it right now it's just not my thing yeah ecstatic dance that you're not gonna be there oh my god are you freaking kidding sir i would rather i would honestly i would rather like have like my nipples electrocuted but my friends who do it i like it's like to me it's like well congratulations you're the you've managed to get to a mindset where you can like do ecstatic dancing i think that's a great thing i'm just not there i'm sorry y'all i know i have to be there you get to be wherever you want to be sorry i did not mean to end on on that note so let's not is there anything else you want to share before we wrap up yeah yeah for sure look i think there's like uh i think that there's some very simple things that you can do that are like really wonderful and uh you know it from you know the movies have created an idea i think and maybe this is my version of spiritual bypass but i feel like the movies have created a version of what being spiritual looks like and you see this sort of very clean very glowy weirdly disconnected thing i don't know what you've invented for yourself but when i was a kid i used to watch the razor's edge with bill murray and i would watch that idea of spirituality and be like that's what it looks like it looks like walking through a city you're all smug and you sort of have turned your nose up at the human experience as a kind of downgraded way to be versus your ascetic self and um since i've become a dad uh and have seen what it's like to be in a fan like a to to like what a family is it's really like the movies and i think it's not pretty all the time it's not romantic sometimes it's really hard and sometimes it's the most beautiful thing i've ever experienced and most certainly it's something that i can't really control but i think the same is true for whatever this stuff is they're calling the spiritual path and that giving yourself a break and just recognizing that where you're this is it where you're at this really could just be it it might not be any better than this or worse to me that's very liberating and anytime i remember that and give myself a break even if the break lasts for a few seconds that's when um you know that's when things really start to glow the end so lovely we did have several i have one more question because several people asked it it's not quite relevant but they're asking about season two midnight gospel any anything on that friends i'm not the person to ask about that you gotta talk to netflix uh you know look we're lucky they let us make i can't believe they let us make it can you believe they let us make that like crazy what a role you know what a roll of the dice and it's really to me i'm just very happy that they let us make it that being said reach out don't be afraid reach out to them and you know who knows maybe there will be one hmm lovely thing it's such a pleasure to get to chat with you thank you for having me here thank you for letting me ramble everyone i really appreciate you all for uh letting me uh go on and on i mean i'm just a podcast or comedian person i really i'm in therapy i you know i have all kinds of i'm not really one of the teachers i mean and by the way in case you fight at the end of this thing if you're wondering that i'm sorry but these uh i really feel like i need to say this uh there's so many great teachers in this community um i can nail you know them but and i'm sorry if i forget that but we have sharon salzberg jack cornfield trudy goodman david nichtern krishnadas raghu marcus and the list it just goes on and on and on and they're real teachers and they are my teachers and i non-romantically engage with them just so that i would like so that my my family doesn't have to deal with some like raging neurotic narcissist so that's how i interact with this community and i i hope that you all uh you know uh also take advantage of all their writings and all this all their of what they offer because they you know we're very lucky to be around people who you know met neem crowley bubba and and if they didn't meet him who had their own sort of lifetime of practice because that's real you know in the beginning that thing i was reading it's important to not forget that part of it you know that all these people they really did train for a long time and i'm i'm i'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to uh to that to that that you know i think that some people have really dedicated their lives to roshi joan halifax i forgot her um but uh yeah so those people are there for you and all of us i hope you'll reach out to them uh and take whatever i said truly with a grain of salt but thank you for having me on i really appreciate having getting a chance to work through this stuff in my own head yeah well you are the perfect as a perfect human human you're the best person to be talking about this thank you so yeah and such amazing amazing teachers and and wisdom keepers um they're actual wisdom keepers yeah i'm keeping stuff but most of it's not i play eldon ring i play video go home and play video games it's the both end of it it's the both end um so i just want everyone out there to know that uh you can share this so there's you can replay this and share it with your friends if you go to romdos.org live streams dash replays um you can find duncan just on all of the social media platforms um in your podcast uh all of these things we do for free if you're able to support financially you can text satsang to 91999 gina will also be putting links in the the chats and make sure you know more about all of our fellowship events we have several monthly gatherings where we actually talk face-to-face over zoom so make sure you sign up for that at ramdas.org fellowship and there's several affinity groups and lastly make sure you tune in next friday for the third event of our solan music series with mike posner and mariah woods so we'll give a big another big big big thanks for duncan for being here and making this thanksgiving yeah big thank you to everyone behind the scenes that made it happen and a big thank you to all of you for showing up see y'all next month bye you

Channel: Baba Ram Dass

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Length: 84min 3sec (5043 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022