#41 - An Interview with Chuck Schad - TheInnerTheater.com

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello and um, welcome to the Language of Mindfulness podcast. This is a podcast for people who

Speaker C: want to have more great conversations in your life.

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Speaker B: it's the real deal. So why should you listen to the Language of Mindfulness? Because in every episode I'm going to give you tips and guidance I've learned in my pretty extensive career of coaching and practice from the best and brightest in the field of interpersonal communications, public speaking, meditation, group leadership, and somatic psychology. And we're going to have interviews with some amazing people about their groundbreaking work. It's my goal to give actionable and uncommon tips and advice in every episode that you can implement right away. So subscribe or follow now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Speaker C: If you don't listen, you're going to

Speaker B: miss some great stuff that you just won't hear anywhere else. I'm your host, Brett Hill, and welcome to the Language of Mindfulness.

Speaker C: So I'd really like, uh, to welcome to the show today, Chuck Shad. Chuck and I met on LinkedIn and we were having a conversation about the podcast and uh, he had some great suggestions and ideas and I just wanted to connect with him. And so I'd like to introduce you to Chuck.

Speaker B: Hey there.

Speaker A: Hi. How are you? Great to be here, Brad.

Speaker C: I appreciate, thank you.

Speaker B: Thanks.

Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate having you on. You know, you were just so, you kind of jumped right in and said, sure, I'll, I'll talk to you. And uh, and so tell people what it is you're doing these days.

Speaker A: Well, these days, after a 35 year IT consultant career doing everything from writing user manuals to designing like, big systems, let's just say, um, I got out of that system and uh, for various reasons. And uh, then for the last probably six, seven years, I've been teaching people about meditation. We can call it mindfulness if you want. Um, but teaching people about mindfulness, whether it's in a group kind of corporate setting or if it's a, you know, a smaller concern. And then I also do a lot of one on one coaching, uh, with people. And uh, just recently I became affiliated with Mindful, the people that do the magazine. And I am, uh, working with them as a meditation coach, dealing with a lot of corporate accounts.

Speaker C: Oh, nice.

Speaker A: So I've been around, you know, I deal with small and big and everything in between.

Speaker C: So how did you get, how did you get Involved with. How did you get from it to mind?

Speaker A: Well, I had a series of per, you have to call them personal crises. And, um, when I got done with that, I was still like saying, well, wait a minute, okay, I'm done with that. Uh, but I'm still not really. Right. And, um, I had learned how to meditate back in the, uh, late 70s when my wife and I, recently married, moved to Los Angeles and we had this job, I don't know, we were writing and editing defense documents in the Reagan years. I'm dating Star Wars. Yeah, well, it was kind of Star Wars. Yeah. We had no idea what it was. We were English major, so we're like, what is this? We don't know. I don't know what I'm writing here. It pays good, so what the heck. Yeah. So anyway, um, it was a third shift kind of situation. And, um, we had these little transistor radios and one day we tuned in one of the Pacifica stations. Kpfk.

Speaker B: Oh yeah.

Speaker A: And there, uh, was Ram Dass. And I had a passing knowledge of who he was. Um, but he never really spoke to me. And it wasn't like I said he was good or bad. I just knew the name. And when I heard his lecture, he had tape lectures on the show. And uh, when I heard the lecture, I, I always tell people my heart just opened.

Speaker B: It was just so beautiful.

Speaker A: Um, and then he would, he would, you know, play the guy I think it's called. Name was Roy of Hollywood, actually. Maybe some of your listeners remember him. But, uh, you know, he'd play Ram Dass and then he'd play Alan Watts, and then he would usually end with Krishnamurti a little bit more serious.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: But after that was all and done, um, my wife.

Speaker C: That's a big load right there. That's a, that's, you know, the hall of fame right there.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it was right on time. Right on time. And then, uh, my wife and I started to meditate a bit. And then when we moved back to Connecticut, which is where we're from, um, there was a Buddhist monk from Vietnam that had just come over after the fall of Hanoi. And he, uh, had this little apartment in a kind uh, of crummy pot of Hartford. And there was an article about him in the weekly paper one day and the next day I went over and met him and uh, he taught us how to meditate. We were uh, there on a couple times a week basis for a couple years. And he practiced a, you know, very low key Mayana, uh, Buddhism and it was very gentle and it was very. Just nice. And so we did that with him for a couple years. And then he got transferred to San Francisco to train more monks. And, uh, my wife got pregnant and the meditation ball just got dropped.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I was still interested in it, reading books about it, but I was off doing something else. And, uh, when I finally had, uh, my own personal crises, my son was shot five times, almost died.

Speaker C: Oh my God.

Speaker A: In a drug deal that went south.

Speaker C: I hate it when that. Sorry to be.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was terrible. And I coped with it by, uh, drinking too much. And so when I finally got done with all of that, I was still. I still felt empty. And I really didn't know where to turn. And I'd been through so much personally that, you know, I wasn't really 100% back. And for some reason I was searching around and I found this guided meditation by an Indian guy. His name is Sadhguru. My wife says he's.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know him.

Speaker C: I know him.

Speaker A: Yeah, he's a great guy. And I started to listen. I used to go every morning, I'd wake up and I go down in my filthy basement and sit there in the dark and listen to his 12 minute meditation. And after a few weeks, I felt better. And uh, then I took his inner engineering course, uh, online, which was wonderful. And I just started coming around and I started really saying like, okay, I really, this is really helping me a lot in ways that I can't even describe. And for some reason I said to myself, well, you know, you used to go out and present all the time in your it days. Um, why don't you start doing that? And a friend of mine was the, uh, head of a library a couple towns over from me, and she said, well, come do, do your act over here. And I did. And then I ended up doing probably 10 or 15 libraries in the area. Always free. M. You know, General. You know anybody that wanted to show up. Sure. And uh, right when I was in the middle of that, I got a call from a clinic in Hartford that, uh, Wheeler Clinic is their name. And for a couple years they hired me to do a weekly class to basically anyone that would show up. And then after a couple months of that, they asked me if I would do one on one sessions. And I did a lot of them. And then when the virus hit, it kind of stopped for a bit. But I have a lot of, uh, private, uh, clients. And what I teach them is, you know, I deal with people with a variety of things. I Can speak about addiction. Having been through it and having come out of it. I've been around a lot of people that also suffered from it. Some of them are still suffering, the ones that are still around.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, um, you know, I'm able to do a pretty good job with that. And then I, you know, I deal with anxiety, suffers. Uh, sometimes people come to me when they're very depressed, when their therapists haven't really been able to help them. And, you know, then I get into relationships. I deal with a lot of people that are trying to lose a few pounds, and they've been through diets for a hundred years, and they're still not where they want to be. And so I teach them just how to be a little bit kinder to themselves.

Speaker C: Yeah. Because often behind the scenes, there's. With that there's. There's some judgment and putting in these inner critics sort of work.

Speaker A: Uh, and, you know, and, you know, the mindfulness teacher's best friend is a habit. Right. It's all the things that people come to me for are, uh, behaviors or habits that they think they can't get past. Whether it's getting a few pounds, having a few too many cigarettes, having a few, uh, too many drinks on the weekend, uh, smacking your kids around too much, yelling at people, all that stuff. I'm able to just say, okay, let's come back here and let's use our breath to kind of focus on, um, what's inside us and not fall for all of the labels and the judgments that immediately presented our heads. Um, you know, and I, I show them that, you know, these things are just the mind's way of kind of coping with things. And, uh, you know, when the mind is left on its own, uh, kind of can go into autopilot. And what happens is sometimes it goes into autopilot the wrong way. And all of a sudden you end up with a. A few things that you're not too happy about. And you know, and then there's, you know, in the culture that we live in, it's a very, uh, kind of superficial culture in a certain way. Uh, people are so obsessed with the way that they, uh, look or what they do for a living or where they live or all that kind of stuff. And, uh, you know, I brought up my two sons in the American suburbs, so I know kind of the way, you know, people get through their lives and how sometimes, uh, you know, two and two doesn't equal four at the end of the day, and they, you know, develop whatever it Is whether it's a kind of compulsion up here of, um, thinking about the same thing too much and then maybe doing something after you do that, that you wake up the next day and you're like, come on, man. Um, so meditation is just as, you know, Brad, meditation is a great balance. Just using what you have inside you to kind of help you with some of the problematic things.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker A: So that's really kind of what I do.

Speaker C: Okay, well, that's. That's a hell of a story. And, um, I'm. It's like, whoa.

Speaker B: Whoa.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: No, no, it's great. I love it. I love people with rich history.

Speaker A: I always tell people, you know, if meditation work for me, there's no reason why I won't work for freedom. I am living proof. Well, first of all, you know, so

Speaker C: the fact that I'm living is proof.

Speaker A: That's right. That's it.

Speaker C: I get it. Um, so, um, I'm wondering. Okay, so you're helping people. They, uh, come to you with these habits. And, yeah, somebody's coming to you going, you know, I. My inner. I'm doing these things that are not so great, and I'm really down on myself about it, but. And you're saying, oh, well, what you need to do is to go inside and look at yourself more. I mean, but when you do that, isn't that kind of like you said, kind of like looking at the dirty

Speaker A: basement and going, well, it depends on which pair of glasses you have to look. See, included in meditation, as you know, Brad, included in meditation is the concept of not judging. And so we think of ourselves. Okay, well, you don't want me to judge the other people. Well, really, the important thing is not to be too judgmental about yourself.

Speaker C: Well, aren't these behaviors sort of objectively, like, not good, though? I mean, could you say, well, object.

Speaker A: Now, that's an interesting word you just used. I always say that meditation gives you a bit of objectivity about yourself because you're able to develop that pause and that. Really. I'm big on the witness concept of being able to watch what's happening in your head. Um, when I started to be a hypnotherapist, actually, I studied with a guy in Seattle. Um, and I would come out there where you are, and, uh, he said, listen. He said, you know, and he was teaching hypnotherapy, but he had a meditation background. And. And he said, listen. He said, if you can look at those thoughts and those feelings that accompany the thoughts that are going on in your head, Just as if it was a movie playing in a nice movie theater in the dark and you were by yourself in the middle of like Friday afternoon with nothing to do. You just landed in the movie theater by yourself watching the movie. That's the idea. Now people will say, well, wait a minute, if I'm just watching my actions and my thoughts and everything as a movie, it's going to go out of control. But as I always tell them, it's out of control now. Which is why we're talking, right? Which is why we're talking. So I always say that, uh, instead of having a hundred percent subjective experience with all the repetition and the unconscious behaviors that are up there in your head, why not take a step back? And taking that step back, any scientist will tell you that taking that step back and be a little bit more objective about something will get you maybe closer to what's really happening. M m. So that's, that's the idea that I use.

Speaker C: So, but how does that get you to, um, how's that help people get to. I'm okay. What I'm. So you're not saying to people what you're doing is okay, right? You're saying don't.

Speaker A: I would say what you're doing is what you're doing. I'm not saying it's good or bad. What you're doing is what you're doing.

Speaker C: So just be, just accept the truth,

Speaker A: accept what's happening so that you can change it. And don't get into a battle with yourself about whatever it is, whatever problem you have up here. Most people cannot get past that issue. Whether it's addiction, it's overeating, it's whatever it is, Worrying, being depressed. Most people cannot get past that because they think that that is them. Like in Jew's computer terms, they think that's hardwired.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: Like I, in my entire life, I would consider myself a anxiety person. Very anxious. Anything that happened, I'd be nervous, which is kind of why I drank. But everything just made me nervous. I always tell people, if there was beer in kindergarten, I would have been there because I was a nervous wreck probably. Right. Um, and so I would, I thought that was me. And when I started to develop, uh, meditation in the last few years, I saw that that's a version of me, but it ain't me. And so now I said, I always tell my clients that, you know, I meditate first thing in the morning every day, and sometimes I'm sitting on this chair meditating, and I'll start Feeling that anxiety. But now I'm able to just say, ah, uh, there's that clown up there again. There's that anxious stuff. Uh, not interested. And I move on to something else. Now, if someone had told me 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, that I could do that, I would tell them they were lying. But I've experienced it. I experience it every day. My life has completely changed with this.

Speaker C: So when did you first get the. Uh-huh. Aha. That this was really going to make a difference?

Speaker A: It was. It was listening to that guy at Saguro Tab.

Speaker C: So it all happened, like, in a moment.

Speaker A: Yep. Well, not in a moment. And it's a very. As he would tell you, it's a very incremental thing. Um, it's not something for most of us that just goes, you know, the light comes on. That didn't happen to me. The light kind of started showing up a little bit more.

Speaker C: It was on a dimmer switch. Right. It kind of like.

Speaker A: That's right. That's a better one. Just kind of slow, then slowly. You just got to be careful. That's why they always say, just trust the process. Yeah. If you trust the process and you keep doing it. Like I always tell people when I was growing up, you know, throwing the ball around outside in the street with my friends, there was always somebody, like, three o' clock in the afternoon to be playing the piano upstairs. And we all be saying, like, oh, my God, can he come out here and just play with us? Does that clown do it with the, uh. But the thing is, nine out of 10 of us that were in the street throwing the ball around, uh, walked into a room, we were 30, with a piano and said, boy, wouldn't it be nice to be able to play that? But we sat down at the piano, we couldn't play it. This kid knows how to play the piano because the habit, he just kept doing it. There were probably Tuesdays and Wednesdays where he said to himself, I don't want to do this anymore. Uh, or maybe his mother had a gun to his head. I don't know. But the bottom line is you put enough time into it. He didn't give up, and now he knows how to play a piano. Same thing with this.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So what do you do to get you through? It's not bright enough to illuminate the room, but you can tell there's some current going, and you still have all this anxiety. So how do you. How do you keep the momentum going through that phase where you haven't really kind of gotten to a place where you. It's like learning to ride a bike, right? Except as takes a little longer because you can.

Speaker A: It takes longer. But yeah, that's why you have to have patience. I always tell people, just have some patience. And I always tell them, you know, in every session that I do with people, there's a guided part of it. And I always tell people at the end of that, that the way you feel right now, you can feel like that anytime. M. This isn't something that you have to come here for. This is something that you can certainly do on your own. And it's something that the more you do do it, the more it starts to manifest itself in your everyday life. Like with me, I was always the kind of guy who. I was, uh, one of those liberal arts kind of guys that. Not good with my hands. And so when something broke in my house, I picked up the phone and called somebody to fix it. And then I went through periods of my life where I didn't have as much money as I did. And after I started meditating, I was able to fix things myself. My wife would look at me and say, really? You know how to do that? And the only thing was I was being patient, taking one thing at a time. And meditation taught me to be able to look a bit objectively about the task at hand. M. And so, um, that's the power of it. And the only thing you have to do is be, do it and be patient with yourself because it's going to take a little longer. Like I have people that show up saying, I just want this to work in 15 minutes. And I, I look at them and I say, I'm not a pharmacist. You know, uh, you can go down the street and go to the pharmacist and he'll give you something that will work in 10 minutes. That's not what this is. You know, this is just a very natural uncovering of who you are before you started all these machinations.

Speaker C: M hm. Right. So there's like, there's this, this who you are before you started all these machinations. And so somehow there's original.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, Buddhists, you know, Buddhists, I think, call it the original self or something like that. And you know, with the Western mind these days, you know, we, we look at it kind of like, what, what the hell does that mean? But it's right there inside all of us. The peace inside all of us is there. It's just been covered up with all of these I mean, sad girl would say the goal of meditation is to give up everything you made up. And what up here didn't you make up? You know, um, we've all watched enough Netflix shows at this point about murder, right? And so we know some guy gets shot and the five people that were there all have different stories, right?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So your memory is not reliable, scientists. That's true.

Speaker C: The science has really proven that.

Speaker A: Right. So why trust this stuff up here? Why trust it? I mean, it's there, but if you watch it, you can see how fallible it is and how it's based on basic repetition. Just the more you start turning something, the more you're going to keep turning it. This allows you. Meditation says, hey, let's take a step back and just watch that. Watch journey and just see it for what it is and what it isn't and how everything changes every second. So how can we think that one thing is always us? Right?

Speaker C: So it's a. A big, uh, a big vision. And I, I agree with you. It's like there's a lot of binary thinking in the culture. Like, you know, yeah, I want. I want to achieve X. And if mindfulness is a tool to help me get there, then how can I distill it down to its most powerful condensed form? Take a pill. And it's. Well, I'll tell you the exact version of it that I think resonates. It's like if you've seen, uh, the movie the Matrix, right? And he's like. And he's like, they're. They're downloading stuff. It's like, I know Kung M Fu. You know, it's just kind of like, oh, it's like, that's like, can you just download the mindfulness stuff to me and like, oh, I know mindfulness. It's kind of like people are looking for those kinds of answers with mindfulness.

Speaker A: It's not a commodity.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: I mean, if it. If you're looking at mindfulness is just another product, it's not going to work. M. I think what you have to do is take a step back again and use that watching part of yourself to just see it for what it is and understand begin. And through the, you know, through the daily practice, even if it's just a few minutes a day, you actually. I always tell people meditation is experiential. It's empirical. You actually are going to feel it. You're actually going to experience it. It's not something that you have to reach outside yourself for. It's right. Here. Now, you might need someone like us to help you uncover that, but it really is right inside you. And it's what everything has always been made of, and everything will always be made of, and we're just part of that. I always thought back before I really started meditating a few years ago, that it was just. I would wake up in the morning and I wouldn't articulate this myself, Brad, but I felt like I was just one little guy in this really treacherous place called the universe. And how could I possibly not feel.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Marginalized.

Speaker C: Well, right when you. When you're individuated that. And you're that kind of disconnected from the whole. How could you. Like you say, you know, you're just a little sparrow in the storm.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's a good metaphor. Um, but, you know, people, um. You know, I would say 90 of the people that I work with, I keep working with. And what I do is really, you know, help them uncover the stuff that's going on in their own lives. And, uh, you know, being a person, that stuff suffered from various things before I started doing this. I can empathize pretty well with, you know, whatever it is that's got them. You know, everybody's got something that they just can't get past. And when that gets to the point where. Where it might become too much, or someone tells them, you better do something about this, or blank. And, um, you know, that's a perfect opportunity. It's chaotic maybe, but it's a perfect opportunity to say, all right, let's just rest for a minute here. Let's. I use breathing a lot, Brad. You know, deep, slow breathing and just being here, you know, I know it's all over the place now, but, you know, that whole power of now of, um, just seeing the magic and the power really, of this present moment and how, um, when you start to experience that beauty and that calmness, it just spreads. And if you have a little bit of patience, it pays off.

Speaker C: Yeah. Beautiful. So you like Eckhart Tolle's stuff?

Speaker A: Yeah, I do like him. I find him very, uh, comforting. Um, you know, uh, he's great. I read a lot of the Indian, um, mystics too. I like, uh, Nizargadatta. I like the I. He wrote that book I Am Matt. And he's all about the. You know, awareness is really all we have. Everything else is just kind of a fabrication of that. Um, and I like that idea. But also, in my business, I have to be careful not to get Too spiritual.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Because, you know, people come. I mean, people come with a lot of. I mean, well, we could call it in the 60s, we call it baggage, but, you know, it's their baggage. And, uh, you know, it's kind of a big deal for them. So I have to kind of, you know, respect that and kind of tread lightly. But, yeah, you know, and the game that I'm in and the game that you're in is, you know, you have to, uh. And I was like this when I was an IT consultant, um, because my wife and I had our own business, so we never really were part of the company. We were always the outsiders. And, you know, I always tell people the reason you hire us is, yeah, we can do a job, but we intuitively know where to meet you. You know, we meet you where you are and we give you, within 15 minutes, I can tell you what you need. And that's still what I'm doing, uh, you know, in this incarnation as the meditation guy.

Speaker C: I see. So you're just taking those same skills and saying, this person, here's a system. This person is a system, and it needs these things. And.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, well, I mean, just like I tell people they can't come with any preconceptions about things, uh, I can't either. I have to be right here for you. And whatever it is that's up with you, I have to be able to make that bridge immediately.

Speaker C: Yeah. Well, I love that very much. And I. I have to say, align with that a lot in my own work in terms of working with people what are in the moment, so to speak, and kind of like ye with whatever wave they happen to be riding. Because when I was trained in comey, um, somatic therapy, they. They really, really kind of made this a big. A big deal in terms of, um. It doesn't really matter in. When someone comes as a client. I mean, it matters. I don't want to dismiss it, but it's. It's like someone comes in that says, well, they've got a problem that they don't know how to speak up, or they've got a problem that they didn't do X or they were problem. They're struggling.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: That the story doesn't really matter because all of the issues always go to the same internal architecture of the person. And so you can start. You can start. It's almost like cartography. It doesn't matter if you start filling in the blanks of a blank page of a map on the lower left or the upper right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: The map is the same when you're done, so it doesn't really matter where

Speaker A: you start, you know, I mean, a good therapist will tell you that it's never about the content. It's about the way the person presents the content.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: It took me a long time to realize that, Brad. I mean, I knew it was right, but I didn't know why it was right. And after doing this for as long as I've been doing it now, I do see that. So, yeah. Yeah. Within like 30 seconds of the way you present what's going on and what's, you know, what your issue is, tells me a lot more about you than just the issue.

Speaker C: Yeah. It's amazing if you. Yeah. And one of the profound skills or profound benefits I think, of practicing mindfulness, and particularly in a relational context, is the way that a person can feel connected to people that you don't know very well.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Really quickly because you're seeing sort of deep into the pursuit.

Speaker A: Well, you're tapping into what all of us are made of to begin with. So it feels familiar, even though you might not consciously know that there's some commonality there and there's some deep connection that's always been there. Hello. Always been there. But we're so caught up in doing what we're doing that we forget it.

Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. And if you don't forget it, it changes the conversation. That's one of my standard. Like when. When you, when you talk to people, when you're connected to this thing, it changes the conversation and it's a better conversation.

Speaker A: Oh, it does? Yeah. Does. Yeah. I mean, you're reckoning out. Ram Dash used to say, listen, you're not coming to my lectures for me to tell you anything new. What I'm doing is showing you what you have inside you that you forgot. That's all I'm doing.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, you know, he was right. He was right.

Speaker C: Yeah. I remember. I, uh, was Alan Watk talk. Uh. And he was a lot of the same things, but a lot edgier about it. And, uh, and he would say, so you're coming here and you think I'm going to tell you something that's going to help you. Well, what's up with that?

Speaker A: Right, Right. Well, I mean, those. You know, he was great at that. Right. At being a devil's advocate. He was so quick. Uh.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker A: And so knowledgeable. You know, he knew what he was talking about that he was able to just do that. Um, And Ram Dass did that. Did that too. But he Always had that kind of deep spiritual thing going on.

Speaker C: Ram Dass, you feel like you said. I loved what you said because it just opened your heart. Uh, and so, you know, he is just so infused with his heart.

Speaker A: Oh, yes. You couldn't help but catch it.

Speaker C: No, I mean, if you're listening at all, if you have a resonant field in you that can resonate with that, that's a powerful one. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. I remember right before my wife got pregnant with our first kid, uh, we went to a weekend with Ram Dass up in the Berkshires. And it was, you know, weekend retreat kind of thing. There's probably a hundred people there. But it was. It was, I would have to say, one of the big events of my life, because it was just. He was right there. And, um, you know, it wasn't an act. I mean, it was just right there.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can feel it.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: And you can. He had, um. There's a guy who I've. I like Andrew Harvey. I don't know if you're familiar with your work. He's sort of mystic and. And, um, he has a talk on the gifts of, uh, spirit or the gifts of the divine.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: Yeah, and I love that talk because what he taught. One of the things he says is, you know, humor, humility, um, you know, graciousness. And so I think. I don't personally don't know Ron Dawson. I never walked around with him. I wasn't part of his inner sanctum. But from the people I've. The. The street lore is that, you know, he was a lot of those things. And so I look for that in people who are spiritual teachers as a way to affirm that they actually got it. And not.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker C: And they're not. They're not just funneling it through their personality.

Speaker A: That's right. You know, Ram Dass did a good. He was always talking about how, uh, you know, the idea. And I think they made a movie by that title after he died, that Becoming nobody. But he was always into. We are so caught up in our specialness and our uniqueness that we all need to go to nobody's special training. And he'd be dealing with, you know, the. The crowd. He'd be talking to me over educated, uh, you know, people. Smart, Smart. Smart achievers.

Speaker C: Right. Entrepreneurs.

Speaker A: Silicon Valley neuroscientists. And they're, you know, space inventors, and they're President United. They're all over the place. And you'd be looking at them and say, no, the idea is you can't be so special and people be like, wait a minute, if I'm not special, who the hell am I? Well that's where it is. Right, That's.

Speaker C: Well, right. And it's so counterculture in the sense of. To you know, use a really old term in, in the sense of uh, you uh, know, the, the, the urgency to stand out to be. To rise above the noise. And I think, I think a lot of it is just the noise level that we deal with in ah, this culture. There's so much noise that the only signals used to use a technical, uh, framework, you know, signal to noise ratio. There's so much noise that the only signals that get through are the extremely, extremely amplified ones that rise above the din, so to speak.

Speaker A: Right. You know, Ram Dass was here before, obviously before all of his visual, uh, explosion. So that, you know, I mean, I deal with people that. I don't think they'd be coming to me if they didn't have to, you know, constantly be worrying about how they didn't look as good as the person on the next video. You know, and this kind of obsession with celebrities and, and just all that stuff. I mean, I, I'm not saying it's good or bad, but if you look at it as the only way to go, I, uh, you know, I mean if you're, if you're using comparisons to kind of set yourself up, you're always going to find somebody that's better looking, smarter. Always, you know, whatever. You're always going to find that and.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: You know, if you live in that shadow of not being quite enough, then you end up with some problems.

Speaker C: Well, I had an interview along those lines with Dr. Ron Siegel, uh, who teaches, um, you know, the impact of mindfulness and psychotherapy at Harvard. Yeah, I know him. He um, he was talking about this, like this, you know, this comparative brain which developed necessarily over.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, since survive millennial. Because it was necessary to procreate, to actually compare. Like, is that guy going to be able to take me down? Because I'm going to be, I need to be the alpha here. And so it's like. Right, exactly. But uh, we're not under those threats now. Now survival is like you're saying, well, am I just as attractive as the next guy on the video? Or it's like that's where we're at. So big shift in, in, in reality. But the brain hasn't caught up and the impact of that is kind of severe on ah, the call.

Speaker A: That's why people are so, you know, they're suffering so much, and, you know, uh, I mean, obviously I'm not the first kind of tell you this, but, you know, the virus just kind of took the mask off and all of a sudden we're home and, you know, we're still home, and then we're more home and, you know, everything's being violated. You know, I mean, we used to get in the car and go to work every day and had that whole vibe going. And then we came home and, you know, had that vibe going. And now it's just all mixed up and people like, wait a minute, what is going on?

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But it's a perfect opportunity for us to just say, hey, the virus is telling us to pause. So let's just take a break here and maybe just do a new kind of way of doing the inventory inside us. And instead of constantly grabbing onto labels and good, bad comparisons. M. Why don't we start with just everything is just right here. And let's experience really, maybe for the first time what being right here really means.

Speaker C: Beautiful.

Speaker B: I love that.

Speaker A: And once you do experience that, it's so real and it's so elemental, you know, it's. It's just such a deep part of you that it's impossible if you give it enough time, it's impossible not to be changed by it.

Speaker C: Uh, now you're channeling right now. I can feel it. Yeah, channeling. I mean, channeling being. It's like coming in. So beautiful. Well, so, uh, how can people connect with you if they want to find out more of the goodness?

Speaker A: Well, they can find me in the mindful directory. I think my email stuff is there. I also have a website. I have a company called the. The Inner Theater. Three words, no spaces. T H E I N N E R T H E A T E R the Inner theater spelled American Theater. Uh, er at the end. And, uh, you can find me on Facebook. I do a lot of group, uh, events. And, uh, actually I've met a lot of my clients through Facebook. Um, but the different social media, I'm around there, um, and so I'm kind of easy to find.

Speaker C: Okay, well, good. I hope people do because it's been. Well, I don't know if they do

Speaker A: too, because I, uh, always like to meet new people and, you know, uh, as I said earlier, a lot of the time, almost always I can help you.

Speaker C: Beautiful. Well, thank you. It's been great talking to you today.

Speaker A: Hey, great talking to you, Brad. I appreciate the opportunity. Sure.

Speaker B: So that's a wrap on today's edition of the Language of Mindfulness Podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it.

Speaker C: If so, please leave us a, uh,

Speaker B: review on itunes and follow along on whatever podcast platform you're listening on. We'd really appreciate it. And check us out@languageofmindfulness.com where you can sign up for a free coaching session. And because we get so many questions on this, you can access how to start a mindfulness meditation practice@languageofmindfulness.com now. Thanks a ton. And we're looking forward to a lot of great new content coming up as well. Have a great one and stay present. Thanks.