You don't have to be some special kind of person or particularly trained or in any way qualified or to merit a mystical experience.
It's also bypassing that whole idea that you have to be pure and perfect and have arrived at some state of awakening in order to be granted access to that numinous reality that is yours for the receiving.
We all have them and I'm interested in how do we cultivate that garden so that we get to harvest more and more of them.
So many people walk through life just living in a state of perpetual greatness, kind of waiting for the big moments, the sacred, the mystical occasions to just magically appear and change everything.
It turns out those moments, they're actually and rarely ever big, nor do we have to wait.
They're tiny, they're ordinary and they're there for the taking all day every day when we understand how to welcome moments of ordinary mysticism into our lives.
Even if you're a practical non -wuwu curmudgeon, you can connect with a deep sense of wonder.
So the question is how and that is where we're headed with today's guest Mirabai Star, an award -winning author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and inter -spiritual teacher.
Drawing from over 20 years teaching, being a professor of philosophy and world religions and a lifetime of contemplative practice, Mirabai shares wisdom on really living a spiritually awakened life grounded in the mystical traditions.
In her latest book titled Ordinary Mysticism, your life as sacred ground takes these moments into our everyday lives.
In this conversation, Mirabai really demystifies the notion of mysticism, inviting us to recognize the mystical essence just pulsing through every aspect of our daily lives.
And we explore how simple practices, accessible to all, can open us to profound experiences of interconnection and wonder.
And Mirabai shares how grief and suffering can become almost portals to an expanded capacity for love and radical amazement at the beauty embedded in our very existence.
So whether you follow a spiritual or religious path or simply seeking more presence and aliveness, this conversation will inspire you to embrace the sacred dimensions of our ordinary reality.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
One of my initial curiosities is really around the word mystic or mysticism.
I feel like some people hear that word and they're immediately drawn in.
They want to know more and there's something appealing about it.
Other people hear that word and they're kind of like, what?
I'm not so sure. They may even be a little bit freaked out and say like, no, that's not for me, which is why I'm fascinated by the fact that the name of the new book, Ordinary Mysticism is, it seems like this is an invitation to say, no, it's actually for all of us.
So I'm curious, really just as a starting point, is what are we actually talking about when we're talking about mysticism?
Yeah, it's really about direct experience.
It's just so different from it.
I think what you're getting at what people think of it when they hear the word mystical or mysticism, they think of shadowy and magic and esoteric, and what I'm talking about is kind of the opposite.
I'm talking about an embodied experience of the sacred in the middle of your everyday life, but even classically, it doesn't necessarily have to be connected to what I'm talking about, which is finding the presence of the sacred overflowing any ordinary mundane moment.
But really mysticism is about experiencing the sacred or the divine directly.
That is without asking permission from the authorities, from clergy people or prescribed prayers or even religious belief systems or religious spaces like churches or mosques or temples.
To have a mystical experience means, and this is our birthright, everybody has them, is to have a direct sense of the presence of the holy.
It can be felt as wonder, as overflowing love, but something that penetrates through all the veils of your opinions on the matter and gets right into your bones.
Yeah, I love the way that you phrase that.
I feel like so many people now are really struggling with the notion of organized religion and in part the dogma or just like the traditions, the rules, some of which I think have tremendous value across many different traditions, but also in part the translation and who is the translator and what filters
are they using to bring this to us.
So I love, if I'm understanding correctly, you're saying that mysticism in a way is your window into bypassing that and just having direct experience.
Exactly, Jonathan, that's it.
You don't have to be some special kind of person or particularly trained or in any way qualified or to merit a mystical experience.
It's also bypassing that whole idea that you have to be pure and perfect and have arrived at some state of awakening in order to be granted access to that numinous reality that is yours for the receiving.
We all have them and I'm interested in how do we cultivate that garden so that we get to harvest more and more of them.
Yeah, I think so many of us are.
One of my curiosities also, I'm so curious what your take is on this, is you just use the phrase mystical experience.
How do we know when we are in a mystical experience?
Mmm, such a beautiful question.
I sort of feel like one is starting right now because I'm sitting here with you.
I've been following you for a while and some of your guests in your community and anytime I get to have a conversation that is deep and real, it opens the window to the mystical.
Or maybe it's more like a knock on the door and as we continue over the next few minutes, my sense is that door is going to open and one or both of us is going to walk in and there we will be having one.
Because what it is to have a mystical experience is to settle down or sift down through the layers of surface thoughts and beliefs and preconceived ideas and arrive at a direct kind of naked intimacy.
I don't just mean with each other although that is a way to, it's a really reliable way to have a mystical experience is with another human being or animal or in nature in the presence of a loving other but it's much more about what happens to our own heart.
It's like a disarming.
It's like the armor starts to fall away.
We have to have intentionality around it.
We don't have to but it helps to decide I'm going to be as fully present as possible and if the sacred reveals itself, I'll be ready.
I'll be here. Mmm, I love that phrase if the sacred reveals itself in part also because it implies that this is something that's not necessarily generated through force of will from us but it's more of a receptivity to something that almost moves into and through us.
How does that land with you?
Yeah, that's beautiful.
I mean I think that's in some ways the Judeo -Christian mythology of grace.
Grace is not something we earn but we can make ourselves available to it and then it can come flowing in and I think that's for those of you who for whom that framework of grace is helpful, you can think of it that way.
You know, it's, I almost think of this whole mystical journey, this journey of being a human being who is open to experiencing the presence of the sacred in any way at any time is this co -creative dance with the great spirit, with the mystery, with God, with the divine where we do our work.
I mean there's some intentionality, some decision to be present, to be a truth teller, to be, to have your heart open.
It's not all just accidental but it's that beautiful combination, that synergy that of being willing to sweep out the chamber of your heart as the Sufis say and then perhaps that grace will come and if it does you're ready to meet it.
What a beautiful phrase being willing to sweep out the chamber of your heart, which to me also implies there's a sense of creating space which I feel like so many people these days feel like we don't have space for not just for more things that we don't want but even for more things that we would want
and I feel like a lot of us struggle with this sense of just being packed to the gills that we don't have room to allow something even something magical, mystical into our experience.
Yeah and I would be full of it if I claimed that I am beyond it.
Same here. It's the tyranny of tasks man against me every day and this is where certain spiritual practices really do come in handy from the different world religions and spiritual traditions.
So when I speak about deconstructing religion which I do a lot, you know, I'm really just not in the mood for religious language most of the time anymore.
I've almost developed an allergy to religiosity and religious belief systems and codified ideas.
However, there are certain jewels at the heart of all the world's great wisdom traditions and they are totally worth safeguarding and one of them I would say are the contemplative practices in all the world's great traditions in Hinduism and Buddhism as a simple sitting practice, a meditation practice
even if it's just 10 minutes a day in the morning of just carving out a few minutes to take some deep breaths and just settle and become aware of your body and how you're feeling and you know or a yoga practice or a walk in the woods or on the beach right there there are ways that we can purposely slow
down and show up and I do use the different contemplative practices from the world's traditions chanting.
I love chanting. I have a string many strings of prayer beats that I use to kind of help anchor my mind and heart and then there are there are practices like the Sabbath practice in Judaism so I was born into a completely non -religious Jewish family.
In fact, anti -religious I grew up with a total aversion to organized religion so over the years I've reclaimed some of the beauty in my ancestral tradition because it's there too and one of the best things I've found in in the Jewish tradition is Shabbat you know on Friday night lighting the candles
welcoming the Sabbath who in mystical Judaism actually in Judaism I think mainstream too is feminine is she you welcome her as the beloved whatever your gender is she's the beloved you light the candle and you welcome her home into your own soul where she kind of re -souls you they say and then for the next
24 hours you just sort of back off of the to -do list the that tyranny of tasks I mentioned that inner Pharaoh who bosses you around all the time it's never enough you know that to -do list is never complete I say that it's written in in fluorescent ink it's just to try to get your attention every moment
screaming and maybe not like that for all y 'all but it is sometimes that way for most of us and on the Sabbath we just lay it down I like to see it as laying down my burden at the feet of the great mother and saying you take it I'm gonna just take a little rest now and it's so helpful it's kind of non -negotiable
in our house we just do it every week yeah I love that imagery it sounds like we actually had at least in part similar upbringings were not too too distant in age and I grew up just outside of New York in a Jewish family that was basically non -religious at least that at our level two and later in life
my mother ended up remarrying into a family that actually celebrated the the Sabbath every Friday night extended family cousins who were all new to me and would come over no matter who you were if you were in your teens in your 20s and you had things to do and whatever it was we didn't celebrate the full
24 hours but everybody came to Shabbat dinner you know and that night was sacred and it was the first time in my life where I realized oh like oh this is actually quite lovely yeah you know this is just a time for everyone to exhale and to be together and we would all go off on do our over things but it
was this window where there were it was almost a expectation left the house right how beautiful you totally get it yeah and you don't have to be Jewish to engage this practice whatever your tradition or lack thereof and it doesn't even have to start with the lighting of the candles it doesn't have to
be Friday night to Saturday you know Friday at sunset that's what it is in sunset although that sunset to sunset windows is beautiful and sacred and it is I don't know stamped by thousands of years of of practice and also the candle lighting you know there's something about lighting a candle across
the spiritual traditions of the world that signifies to our that were entering sacred space sacred time it is fascinating that some version of these rituals exist in nearly every tradition in some way shape or form because we realized whether you believe that it was you know um endowed or passed on to
us through some sort of spiritual knowledge or just over a period of thousands of years people realizing we actually need a break you know it serves a purpose it's very incredibly practical at the same time you know so sort of like this beautiful overlap of the practical and the mystical all in this one
just very doable thing that we've kind of obliterated from our lives when you decided to sit down so curious you know you you studied different faith traditions you you taught for many years and when you decide to sit down and sort of like say you know I want to actually write about this notion of demystifying
this of taking mysticism bring it into everyday life why now because I would imagine that these ideas had been with you for a long time yeah they sure have and I kind of thought everybody was this way you know inter -spiritual one of each and not bound by any particular uh religious membership or identification because I
grew up that way I grew up in a very kind of inter -spiritual very spiritually free and curious space and I can say more about that whenever you like but I have discovered that there are still people who identify as Christian or Muslim or Hindu to the exclusion of any other any other way of seeing or being
and so I've always felt open and and connected even not just curious about but connected to multiple spiritual traditions but as time goes on even though I have taught both in the academic arena world religions comparative religions but I've also practiced deeply in many different spiritual traditions
it's I realized I was not interested so much anymore in fact less and less was I drawn to the sort of institutionalized versions of spirituality that I had always loved and cherished I've always been interested in excavating the jewels at the heart of all the world's religious traditions mystical traditions
you know the mystical traditions meaning the ones that emphasized direct experience but even those were starting to get on my nerves and I looked around to me and I realized because a lot of people are drawn to me through my work that a lot of people are in that same mood and then of course the largest
growing religious demographic is what's called the nuns or N -O -N -N -S or the spiritual but not religious the world is more globalized we're seeing and experiencing we have access to more different ways of seeing of being in the world and and it's it doesn't make so much sense to just have some tribal
membership I don't mean that in the in the indigenous sense tribal membership in an indigenous sense is more important than ever but I mean in a philosophical or religious belief system that excludes everybody else or otherizes that's what I'm talking about it just doesn't make sense to our our own
collectively evolving minds hearts and souls anymore so I'm finding a lot of people who are mostly deconstructing a particular religion they're very busy becoming not a christian anymore or not a a jew anymore not only a buddhist but they're also people like me who've experienced multiple spaces of spiritual
and religious belonging who are letting it go and letting it go but not all of it I don't love it yeah it is interesting what we hold on to and I I do feel like a lot of maybe not a lot of and I'm speaking as a bit of a religious letite here like not that I reject it but that I'm just not deeply versed
in sort of like the details of the practices of many different traditions but I do feel like those that I am aware of through my own tradition through friends or colleagues that have shared that there are some very just there are there's a lot of value in some of what comes to us as we talked about you
know like Shabbat is a perfect example so people want to hold on to the the traditions but they often dissociate them they're like I see how this just makes me feel better but they almost don't view it as religious anymore it's just something that helps me you know it feels good they don't know understand exactly
why so let me just keep saying yes to it you know and we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors a big part of what you explore especially early on in this newest book around this notion of bringing a sense of mysticism a sense of connection to the present to everyone is almost like a starting
point of intentionality but you also tether that to a lens of love which I thought was a really interesting connection yeah you just read my mind because because I would say that of all the spiritual treasures that I do safeguard that I'm not letting go of they're all connected to love either love of the beloved
as another beautiful Sufi term it's also in mystical Judaism you know God as beloved that deep intimate connection that's rooted in longing you know the longing of the heart for some kind of loving connection with the beloved with love itself but it's also love for beloved community the world and the earth
herself and so the two things I look for when I'm winnowing out the treasures of the world's religions and letting go of the divisive toxic elements is the messages of love do they awaken love in my heart for the divine whatever that may be which I don't even believe in half the time but it's not a matter
of belief it's a matter of experience and does it quicken my love for the human family the animals the earth who is in peril when I see through my smartphone or other other media the suffering in the world it breaks my heart and it breaks my heart open I don't stop with the despair there is a cracking
open of my capacity for more love when I allow myself to feel the suffering in the world to me that's a mystical experience even when it's heart -wrenching hmm it's so powerful as you're describing that and brought to mind a conversation I had years ago with Tara Trent who I asked how do you know what to
devote yourself to see this was in the context largely of activism and she basically said ask what breaks your heart Andrew Harvey says that too yeah it's a powerful guide and we often don't want to go there because we don't want to feel that feeling and yet there's so much wisdom contained within it
there's so much wisdom and it's I really believe in what I said a minute ago which is that when we do allow ourselves to feel it when we don't turn away from the suffering of the world or from our own grief and loss that breaking does expand our capacity to hold what is to hold reality so that even
though it's hard it it gets bigger and it our heart muscles get stronger and it doesn't kill us or if it kills us it kills that in us that is most limited by unhelpful beliefs that that no longer apply which is that I can love some people but not everybody or I can tell the truth sort of but need to
really couch it in some kind of protective language makes us wild this mystical love intention makes takes the shackles off like we have nothing to lose yeah I mean it's powerful also you know I know you had the great loss of a daughter who was fairly young in her life a number of years back and it
would be completely understandable for anyone any parent who lived through that to close their heart to a certain extent because the the idea of while there are others that I could lose or maybe there are new relationships that actually don't want to form because those can be left and and tear me apart
as well completely understandable and yet you seem to have gone in the exact opposite direction and I'm assuming that wasn't overnight that this has been a process but it's interesting to just sort of see how you've integrated this and how it informs the way that you step into the well I'm so glad that you
said you know that that it would be completely understandable for people to close down their hearts when they've experienced a harrowing shattering loss like like I did the death of a child and many of you are listening and experience shattering losses and have shut down and there's nothing wrong with you
if you have in there are periods where we just must or at least turn inward and and make the world go away so we can kind of take stock my daughter died in a car accident so there was no preparation for like 10 years every time my husband left the house and got in his car I was it was a foregone conclusion in my
reptilian mind anyway that he wasn't going to come back but that was it you know that the people you love most drive away and die and don't come back this is instinctive to protect ourselves against more loss and you're right that what happened to me probably was a result of years of of contemplative
practices of different kinds different heart practices but none of my spiritual practices worked when Jenny died in fact they all pissed me off and made me want to rebel totally want to rebel some of them came back a lot of them didn't but there was this moment I remember very clearly that relates to
what you're referring to when I was trying to use mindfulness practice to deal with my grief like I'm going to be present I know how to do this I've spent thousands of hours on the cushion I know how to be mindful and present and lean into the experience and explore it with with curiosity and then it
was like fuck that this doesn't make any sense to my shattered heart that I'm going to be you know cultivate curiosity and be present with this experience I mean I want to do anything other than feel this unbearable English but right behind that was this sense of but I don't want to turn away from Jenny
I want to stay right here as an act of love there were we come back to love again Jonathan it's it's the only thing that does make sense is that turning away from the experience of my own broken heart felt like betraying Jenny or something like leaving her behind I wanted to stay with her I wanted to
keep loving her through the experience of losing her and it just changed everything then it wasn't a spiritual exercise like I can prove how spiritual I am I'd flex my spiritual muscles look at me I I've done all these years of practice I know how to do this I can do this it was much more about I love
you honey and I'm not going anywhere I mean it's so powerful it also speaks to something else um you speak about and in fact this is in that you write about this this notion of surrender of surrendering control but also in the context of I think the phrasing was something like embracing radical amazement
you know in these moments of just profound surrender and whether it's just a tremendous loss or whatever it is or just the sense of a profound lack of control over the circumstances of your life in the world which I think a lot of people are feeling right now this notion of saying when you're there
it's not like giving up your humanity or you know like stepping into some professed practices or or spiritual thing where like oh this is just what you do in these moments it's like if you can truly surrender to what's going on around you but then like that next thing like embracing this this notion of radical
amazement it's not just surrender it feels like it's a combination of surrender and open -hearted inquiry blended into one hmm that's so beautiful I love that insight this combination is braiding of surrender of allowing but also staying curious open -hearted inquiry I love that yeah so it's not blind
faith like I'm just gonna let myself down into the arms of the unknown and see what happens there is an element of that that's actually quite wondrous when you it's almost like falling backwards into the dark the womb of darkness and saying I the outcome is none of my business there are times when that's
a really powerful act but what we're talking about here is that we're staying awake we're showing up it's that co -creative dance again with the divine like I am going to allow and surrender but I'm also going to stay present to see what my part is in this dance what what might be to make it as beautiful
and vital and vibrant as possible and I will say that my greatest losses have awakened my most childlike wonder my ability to marvel at like the simplest things has increased so much over years of sorrow and loss my joy my childlike wonder and joy is has grown in in proportion I don't get it I mean I
didn't design it this way but it does seem to be working that way not all the time I mean I wake up in bad moods and I you know break something and get mad and whatever all things stay unskillful things to people all the time that's something I do and um I try really hard not to and I'm getting better
but it's not about getting better it's about being as true as you can and as real as you can about who you are and loving your way through what is I mean I was listening to your your conversation with Elizabeth Gilbert and that letter to love and that's um you know maybe it's not a formal practice of mine
but it is the underlying energy of my life how do I come back to just gently tenderly often with a big dash of humor loving myself through whatever perceived mistakes I'm making disassembling all these ideas of purification and perfection that the patriarchal religious systems have handed us and just
being true to what is and allowing ourselves to be messy and gloriously complicated beautiful beings doing the best we can to show up with love yeah it's such an interesting concept it's also complicated for me I look at the phrase and I hear the phrase and I've heard it there are variations of the phrase
like to love what is which often includes you like love yourself as you are and on the one hand I'm like yes wouldn't that be amazing if I could wake up and just uh but on the other hand and I hear versions of this in different spiritual traditions also and part of me says is this just rationalization for complacency
because there are things about myself that I feel are important to me to be different there are things about the community around me the world in which we live in that I feel are important you know so that the notion of loving what is and I guess this goes to tiknot haman his whole approach of engaged
buddhism right it's like yeah no we can actually be in this space of acknowledging this is our reality and embracing it as real and true and at the same time that doesn't mean that we just sit there and say like it is what it is and I have no role in making it different you know like that there is suffering
that's being caused by the way that it is both internally and me and in the people around me and there is some sense of responsibility to take action on that to become involved in change I think it's a tension that I've always felt with the sort of like the the notion of loving what is including ourselves
and also having this really deep felt sense that but it's actually not okay not in a judgmental shameful and broken kind of way but just no really like actually there are like I would be a lot better if there were some things that were different and the world would be a lot better if there were some
things that were different so how do I love that current state but also make you like feel like it needs to change yeah beautiful and I agree with you a gazillion percent maybe it's more like how do I not hate on it look at my fives at age 63 and I can say eww I don't want that I don't want it to be
that way but I don't just say oh well just love yourself through it I go hiking and I lift weights and and suddenly I'm stronger and I'm more energized I feel better and I'm able to do the things that I want to do with much more ease because I've attempted to you know engage in fitness in fact that's
actually a good example because I personally I get up every morning I do yoga I meditate and then I happen to live on the boundary of national forest I'm looking out my window at it right now I get my dogs Lola and Ruby and off we go into the mountains for at least a three mile hike I would say every
day this is when I'm home do I have enough time to do that no I have way too much to do I have way too much to do to Ford doing Shabbat for 24 hours every week but what happens is that when I do show up for my body and for my nervous system and I'll do all of those practices and exercise and eat well
it expands my ability to show up for what is in the world so it's better to not hate myself and if I can if I can lean toward love that's even better and if I can engage in the effort required to maximize my ability to be present then that's it's all the same none of these things are mutually exclusive
is what I'm saying so I'm an activist I pray with my feet too and I never neglect the invitation except sometimes I'm really tired and burned out and then I do and then I refill but the invitation to do what I can to make things better to alleviate suffering either right in my direct sphere or even
far away if it's possible they're not mutually exclusive yeah no that makes sense to me um I am incredibly blessed as you are and that like as as I literally had this conversation there's a window behind my computer that where I'm looking at the front range of the Rocky Mountains and I start my day
these days the same way as you at 7 a .m.
I'm out the door and hiking and all sometimes there's news going on or something like this I'll pop an earbud in my ear and then five minutes in I'll be on the trail I'm like what am I doing it just just like take it out and take away the electronics and like this is you know whether I believe in the divine
or not are you thinking it as a being whatever or just an ethereal energy there's something just profoundly sacred about just being for me at least in nature and often alone um well me and the bears um but it is it's sort of like a yes and like this is this is all part of the experience and we'll be
right back after a word from our sponsors what you're talking about also brings up something else I'm curious about and it's something that you write about as well as is the notion of attention as a part of not just life but also this notion of access to mysticism on a regular basis and I'm curious
about the whether you see a connection between attention and love yeah loving attention well I'm now going to use your phrase of open -hearted inquiry my teacher Ramdas so Ramdas who wrote Be Here Now the iconic book that really introduced a lot of eastern concepts to the west was my lifelong friend
and mentor and Ramdas toward the end of his life coined this this phrase he had it had a stroke and he had aphasia it was difficult for him to speak this phrase really evoked everything that he was going through and that was loving awareness or I am loving awareness is what Ramdas would say I am loving
awareness he just kind of tried it on let's see what this how this fits how this resonates and the more he chanted it almost like a mantra the more he said it to himself the more translucent he became my friend Nina talks about him as he became more and more translucent not transparent but translucent
the light came through and Ramdas was always someone who was really good at admitting his foibles in fact leading with them Ramdas and Annie Lamont you know just let's not try to pretend that things are all pretty and tucked in but in fact let's use our our messiness as an example for how to be truthful
and loving in this world the more Ramdas showed up for the possibility that he was is loving awareness and that all of us are too the more kind of out of his own way he became and this loving quality that you're speaking of begins to pervade our gaze you know my friend Richard Rohr another wonderful
living mystic speaks about gazing through the eyes of love that's what contemplative life is for Richard you know that word contemplative practice contemplative life is a kind of spiritual buzzword but for Richard it's just about how can I look through the eyes of love and perceive more love and that's
I think what you're asking Jonathan and I think that's what you're doing in your life and in your community here is gazing through the eyes of love so you're paying attention but you're paying attention to what kindles more love part of my curiosity around that is um for somebody listening to this is kind
of not anyone to say okay I think I get it sounds pretty good to me I'd like more of that what's sort of like an easy access point into this notion of developing this gaze for me it's like what's hidden in plain sight you're parenting your children you know how do you pause you were talking about how
we just like rush through life so often so many of us so many of you are listening are going yep that's me rushing through each day so it's like pause I am going to have an exchange with my toddler right now or I'm going to be as present as possible I'm going to start with beginner's mind and not think
I have this all figured out and see what reveals itself in this moment or I'm going to change this diaper with full loving attention even though it's icky or my teenager is being a complete bitch to me I am going to see what it feels like to not do my habitual reactive snapping back but like really
become lovingly curious about this very moment or I walk into work it's like a grind I really don't want to be here this is not the job I dreamed of having when I grew up this corporate cubicle or whatever it might be but how about I go to work today and see if I can perceive the face of the divine
in the face of some person who I've deemed less than conscious or at least less conscious than I am you know it's caught in the one of the muggles or whatever they call it you know see if we can let go of our judging mind our otherizing impulses and reclaim some everyday experience of traffic or food
or even sex or you know intimacy love making that we have certain ideas about what that's supposed to look like how about if we just let it go and re -encounter the beloved as the beloved it doesn't have to be serious and solemn and you know some kind of ideas of tantric yoga or something to just simply
be loving and present and curious and that's when the divine sneaks up on us which really also makes me wonder about awareness and as as sort of a meta skill for all of this it's so hard to think about the notion of being present of surrender of love of being intentional about what you're doing if we
don't have the capacity to actually at any given moment in time be aware of both what's happening internally within us externally around us and sort of like like between us I was about to say I feel like so many of us have lost that but honestly I think so many of us never had it that we sort of like
were born into a space where we're almost in the state of perpetual distraction at least from the moment that we really enter a sense of awareness of us as individual beings and all of a sudden there I mean especially people who are coming up now in the world I think you know when you and I were kids
there were probably a lot more opportunities for just wandering and being in solitude I don't think that exists now unless you're really really intentional about making it exist and it doesn't leave us the space to just be aware of like what's actually going on inside of me like what am I hearing or feeling
or thinking and what about outside and around me um you know these things we're talking about none of it's possible if we don't have some developed sense of awareness does that land with you yeah it really does yeah some impulse toward introspection that we can't get from the media and the sound bites
that we consume for three seconds and then move on to the next one it's true and yet I think that most people probably who are gathering in your community listening right now maybe have always been inclined toward introspection and and that wonder that curiosity about both the the inner life and the world
around them but I'm seeing more and more young people starting to intentionally disengage from that constant input that they grew up in that it's all they've ever known you know they live in cities or suburban areas and that's they've been consuming that kind of media their whole lives but something
in them knows that there is more and they're and they're hungry for it that's why I think that we're all mystics that inherently we all have this inner fire that drives us to encounter the presence of the sacred in the quiet of our own inner lives in the cacophony of our relationships in the middle
of the most challenging things and you know somehow I feel like old -fashioned reading and looking at art and listening to music making music making art making writing is more important than ever to actually read books to actually slow down enough to read a poem I that's part of my morning practice by the way
is after I meditate I always have a book of poetry next to me either a collection of contemporary poets or something classical or something spiritual like the Tao Te Ching although as I mentioned at my capacity for religious language is diminishing but whatever it is a poem makes you slow way down in order
to really read a poem and take it in and it's so visceral it's so embodied poetic language and that becomes part of my invitation to enter the day with awareness and with love is to read a poem read it a couple of times slowly and just eat it savor it and so that's one of the things I recommend to people
is reading beautifully carefully crafted language doesn't have to be serious spiritual writing but it needs to be intentional and it needs to be robust like let's do that again learn to play an instrument sing get art supplies and when you're in the middle of the craziness of your life stop pull out
the paper and the markers and just and blast some music and start to draw you don't have time for that shit but do it anyway there's something about reclaiming that human capacity to make and appreciate art that I think is going to save us so agree with that years ago I wrote something close as I come
to the feeling of God is what I'm making not being God but just like the experience of feeling some connection with something bigger than myself is that I just completely lose myself and have some sense that there's something moving through me and I feel like it's a beautiful invitation for anyone I
also want to not jump past what you said earlier which is this notion that you know and really this is what a lot of this conversation has been about it's this notion that mysticism is not this thing that is reserved for the quote anointed mystics that we're talking about simply being the notion of being
present in so many in the nuances and details and beauty of ordinary experiences that this is something that we all have access to and I think that's not necessarily the easiest thing for people to say yes to and I wonder if part of that is if you say everybody has the capacity for mystical experience
on the regular that part of that also is we also have a certain and maybe you disagree with this we also have a certain responsibility towards opening ourselves to that and maybe that feels a little weird and when you say responsibility toward opening ourselves to it you mean that if we have the ability
to have a mystical experience and we don't do it we don't open ourselves to it in some ways we're betraying our gift it's not even that it's sort of like it's on us yeah so if we don't do it and we don't feel it in our lives that's on us so on the one hand it's like yay that's on us if anyone has access
to this then then anyone can sort of like start to say okay let me actually do the little things all day every day that let me feel this and at the same time if we don't ever do those things and we don't ever feel it and we're already feeling like oh there are so many things about our lives that are sources
of shame or upset or self -judgment that this becomes yet another one oh I'm not doing all the things that would let me have access to this magical state that I really want to feel that's another reason to feel bad about myself I feel like so many of us walk through life with so many versions of that layering
on top of each other yeah that keep us from engaging in the depths of life that reveal the beauty in the middle of the messy yeah I agree and it is a decision and it does require agency and a certain level of buy -in I'm thinking about a beloved relative of mine who suffers from depression you know it's
clinical it's it's neurobiological there's not a lot he can do about it what he can do he does but he does spend a fair amount of time suffering but this same person takes pictures of cats of his cats and anybody's cats and is just like wildly enthusiastic about the beauty of these creatures this person calls
me up because he lives nearby when the full moon rises over the Sangre de Cristo mountains where I live and says nearby go outside right now the moon is rising and there's something about him that even though it'd be really easy for him to feel victimized by life circumstances and neurochemistry and sometimes
he does he also shows up in every way he can so that he might be overtaken by the presence of this sacred wherever it might happen in a bowl of ice cream in a conversation with a child it's not like despite our life circumstances I'm not saying that despite how difficult things can be you should just
you know muscle your way through to a mystical experience it's more like this human predicament as Ramdas called it is very humbling sometimes it's humiliating and if we can through the portal of how hard it sometimes is to be a happy human being to have a good life to make a good life but to actually
walk through those painful realities into that bigger landscape of the soul that is beckoning you know right behind the I can't do this it's too hard it reminds me that this the importance of the fact that we're we're you know we're born alone and we go out alone and yet while we're here we have this amazing
opportunity to be together Ramdas in the end we're all just walking each other home yes you know and this is again something that you write about this sense of interconnectedness and that in my practice in my own spiritual practice in my practice of just life in my practice of opening to mystical experience
there is some main chapters in the book is called beloved community it's about the fact that we can't do this alone Thich Nhat Hanh who I think you mentioned at one point today beloved Zen teacher recently gone from this world said that the the new Buddha will be the Sangha and the technical terms Buddha and Sangha are simply
you know most religions have some idea of of a second coming some great being who's going to show up and make everything right and in my mind that's a patriarchal construct that doesn't it's not helpful in fact it's anti -helpful it's counterproductive to hold this notion of some perfected dude that's
going to come in and save the day so rather the word Sangha in Buddhism is a community it's the interconnected web of what did Thich Nhat Hanh called the web of interbeing to which we all belong and if we can wake up collectively right now and step up as beloved community that that's our only hope I
mean I think even we're still holding out many of us or the Hopi prophecy that says we are the ones we've been waiting for and so any work and again coming back to Ramdas if I work on myself it is an offering to the world it makes the world better when we can cultivate more self -awareness more love
more equanimity more joy more rebellious aliveness it's subversive but it means the torn fabric of the world Thich Koon Olam is the the Hebrew phrase right in in Judaism Thich Koon Olam to repair the broken world it's every time we do anything loving and caring to ourselves or others we're mending a thread
of that torn fabric I love that thought and that also feels like I think a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation so in this container of good life project if I offer the phrase to live a good life what comes up for me it's to see and express beauty wherever I can I'm an Enneagram
for for those of you familiar with that system so I come by this impulse honestly but it's really important to me in my life to surround myself with beautiful things and it doesn't mean expensive things often it's it's gathering dried grasses and sticking them in a handmade vase that my six -year -old
grandchild made made for me but I have beautiful I have beauty around me I read beautiful poetry I try to write with beauty you know I'm not just writing spiritual self -help books all of my books that are grounded in my love of language and the music of language and the visual richness of language so for me
a good life is a life that is drenched in beauty and where beauty comes through me when you describe Jonathan that feeling of making things and being used by the divine as a conduit for me it's like let me be an instrument of beauty in this world in whatever ways I can that beauty might awaken the hearts
of other people to their own beauty and to the interconnectedness that they will remember that we belong to each other beauty is the great awakener and quickener of that of that understanding thank you thank you hey before you leave if you love this episode safe bet you'll also love the conversation we
had with Elizabeth Gilbert about being present to love's wisdom in our lives you'll find a link to Liz's episode in the show notes this episode of good life project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me Jonathan Fields editing help by Alejandro Ramirez Christopher Carter crafted our
theme music and special thanks to Shelly Adele for her research on this episode and of course if you haven't already done so please go ahead and follow good life project in your favorite listening app and if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable and chances are you did since
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signing off for a good life project
