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Healing + Human Potential
Dr. Martha Beck: The Psychic Experience That Changed EVERYTHING + How To Use Your Pain To Awaken
01:00:51
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- [00:00]
A
So, Martha, I know your story from really rising, being bedridden, and then just facing everything from depression, anxiety, trauma. I think it's a powerful example that healing is truly possible. And I also just found out that you had a near death experience, which I didn't know about when you were telling me about near death experiences when we were on the Camino just recently walking in Spain. And I would love for you to share about your near death experience and how it was a turning point in your life.
- [00:28]
B
Well, I actually wasn't dead. I. It was. It was interesting because it had a lot of the features of a near death experience, except I was not in any physiological danger. What was happening actually was that I had started to have intrusive flashbacks from childhood abuse. And there were actual, actually internal scars that had spontaneously sort of torn open again and were beginning to bleed internally. So I went to the doctor. I was suddenly, like, there was a lot of pain. I went to the doctor, he was like, oh, my God, we have to get you in surgery right away. They thought it might be a tumor. They couldn't figure out what was going on. Anyway, it was very psychologically stressful and extreme for me. They put me under. I was lying on the surgical table. And then I opened my eyes, looked around, sat up, watched the surgeons operating on me. And then I thought, wait a second, my body's behind me, like, looking around to find it. Then I was sitting up out of it and my eyes were taped closed. And I thought, well, this is really weird. So I lay back down. And then between the surgical lights, another light appeared. And it was a sphere. It was about little. It was like the size of a golf ball, but blazingly bright. I mean, 10 times brighter than the sun. It was crazy bright. And it contained. You know how sunlight contains all the colors of the spectrum? This had more. This had other spectrums going on. And I was totally mesmerized by it. And it began to grow because it was so, so beautiful. And it sort of seemed to soak into things instead of bouncing off them. And then it touched my body and this feeling of absolute love and acceptance and peace just flooded through me. And I started to cry. And my body actually started crying, but I was lying face up, so the tears were doing going down this way. And I was just in communion with this light. And it was conscious and it was consciousness. It wasn't just conscious. It was the most conscious thing I'd ever encountered. And it loved me so much. It loves us all so much. And it was just like there's so much laughter coming from me and from it, this laughter of reunion and joy. And the surgeon saw the tears, and they were like, oh, my God, she's conscious. She can feel the operation. So they said to the anesthesiologist, give her more meds. Give her more meds. And I actually didn't pay attention to the rest of it. I was just lost in communion with the light. And it said a few things to me. It said, you're going to go through something really hard in the next while, but never forget, I'm right here. Always have been, always will be. And it also said, this feeling that you have right now is not something that you wait until you're dead to feel. This feeling is the way you are meant to learn to feel while you're alive in this body. So that's your job. Find a way to feel like this. And then the next thing I knew, I was awake and sobbing my eyes out because of joy. Just pure joy. And the nurses were really distressed. They were like, oh, honey, it's going to be okay. And I was like, the first thing that happened is I opened my eyes and there was just a janitor in the room sweeping the floor. And he looked like he was a very decrepit person, like on leave from some kind of, I don't know, prison detail or something. I mean, he did not look. He was a strange individual. And I looked at him when I opened my eyes, and I said, I love you so much. And he was like, I'll get the nurses. So he ran off, and he came back with nurses, and they said, oh, you're very traumatized. I was like, do a lot of people cry? And they're like, yes, it's very hard. I said, no. Do they cry because they're happy? They were like, not, no. And then I said I needed to see the anesthesiologist because obviously this could be a drug reaction. Yeah. And so I wanted to know what it was so I could get more. So the anesthesiologist came in, like, an hour later, and he was absolutely. He looked absolutely terrified. I was confused by this, but later I figured out, oh, he didn't know if he'd done the right thing. He came over and sat with me, and I said, you know, what did you give me? What are the side effects? What are the reactions? What does it do in the brain? Like, I was grilling him, and finally he said, look, just tell me what happened in there, Because I was going to increase the anesthesia and a Voice told me, don't do that. She's crying because she's happy. And he said, I just did what it said. And he looked at me just scared. And he said, did I do the right thing? So I told him a little bit about it and enough that he sort of knew. And then he said, you know how many times this has happened to me in 30 years of practice? I said, no. He said, once. And then he kissed me on the head and went away. And he had put so many people under anesthesia that if it were just a drug effect, I think he would have experienced it more often than once.
- [06:03]
A
Yeah.
- [06:04]
B
So, yeah. And then I went into full on trauma, flashbacks, really horrific separation, lifelong separation, it turned out, from my family of origin, from my community of origin. My entire life exploded after that. But I always knew the light was right there. And it still is. One of the things about those experiences, the memories don't fade. So it's blazingly clear. I can close my eyes and see that light anytime I want. It's always there. Wow.
- [06:43]
A
I'm curious. I love that you've got some of the scientific and skeptical mind also. I think it balances and helps people drop their defenses because you lead with that. And given that you have a PhD and three degrees from Harvard, I'm curious what some of the science that you may know that explains mystical experiences. Could you share that with us?
- [07:04]
B
Well, there are a lot of theories about how the brain reacts when it's deprived of oxygen, about the brain reliving. My favorite one is people who have near death experiences often say that they go through a long tunnel and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. And I have seen people say, doctors say that that is a birth memory that you remember coming in, you know, through the birth canal into the light. Now, have you ever had a baby, Alyssa?
- [07:37]
A
No, I have not birthed babies. Yeah.
- [07:39]
B
The idea that the baby goes down a long tunnel toward a light is a very masculine idea. It is more like having your head shoved through a rubber wall. Okay. You don't see it. You're not looking forward. The baby comes out. It may be up, it may be down, but it is never eyes forward. And there's no long tunnel involved. At that point. I'm not going to get too technical, but I am sure you know what I mean. Yeah. So. And then some people say, well, it's just all the brain firing off everything to try to survive. And there are all these. There are all these attempts to explain it, what no one has done is explain the so called veridical near death experiences where there are things that happen during the person's death experience in other rooms in other parts of town that they can describe with perfect accuracy even though they were flatlined at the time and not in the same room. And even in some cases they've got many cases of this where the person was blind for years before their near death experience. And everyone just kind of pushes that away because we have a fundamentalist religion of science that says it is only material reality counts, nothing that can't be measured is real. Certainly any idea of consciousness surviving the body is complete nonsense. And boy, oh boy, we're going to figure out a way to hang on to that belief no matter what evidence you give us. So yeah, I think it's all a little silly.
- [09:15]
A
Yeah, I would agree. And, and I know that, or I heard a story of you when you were pregnant with your son, you were getting your doctorate at Harvard, you would start having psychic experiences. Can you talk to us about that? And also, what helped you because you have a scientific brain as well, or what helped you start trusting the validity of what you were seeing?
- [09:33]
B
Yeah, the main one for me was something called. I did not know what to call it at the time. It's called remote viewing. And the CIA at one point had a group of remote viewers doing espionage on the Soviet Union by. By just imagining themselves in places in the Soviet Union where there were submarines being built and they drew these pictures of them. All of that. I wasn't there. It's fascinating. I can't say I was there to see it. What I can say is that during my pregnancy, the second, my second pregnancy, my husband was traveling. My then husband was traveling constantly between Cambridge and Singapore where he was doing business consulting. So he was always traveling. He was always in the air or in some new place that I'd never seen. And he was usually at a different clock time than me. We were in different time zones. So I would wake up at night sometimes and I would see something incredibly clearly. The first time it happened, I was seeing a festival on a street in Tokyo and there were banners hanging from both sides of the street, hundreds of banners, and there were people dressed kind of strangely and there were. There was a bamboo scaffolding with people climbing all over it. Several hours later my husband called me and said, oh, you should have been with me. There was this festival, it was amazing. I've taken some pictures and it was exactly what I'd seen. So as the pregnancy progressed, when I was thinking of Someone and they were thinking of me. I would just see, like, movies of wherever they were. Kind of in the back of my mind. It was like playing a memory a little bit. But they were accurate because we checked. I checked. If you see something happening and then you later see a photograph, that thing that was happening on the other side of the world, and it exactly matches what you saw on the inside, you don't have the luxury of pretending it didn't happen. Yeah, Other people can tell me I made it up. Right. I know I didn't make it up, and I know that I could verify it. So that's.
- [11:54]
A
It's powerful. And I think more people are showing fascination, especially after telepathy tapes and, you know, just bringing in some of the science behind remote viewing.
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B
And it.
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A
It's always struck me that the military would use that and then not really credit a lot of it, but yet still invest in it and use it.
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B
Exactly. Yeah.
- [12:13]
A
It's interesting. One of the things that I've heard you talk about, and I think this has been prophesied for a while, and I love that you speak to it, is what would happen if a critical mass of humans really were to awaken. And I'm curious, you know, anything you want to share on this, but also what you feel like we, it would take for us as a society to have that critical mass awakening.
- [12:36]
B
Wow, that's not a big question or anything. You have 10 seconds, I'll tell you. No, that idea is something that I, I, I sort of crawled toward it through my whole life, because my whole life, I. From childhood, I felt like I would sort of, I would live through a shift in the way human beings think and, and act and behave. And I didn't know what it was. And actually I kept, I would walk around because it went on for years. Like as a high school student, I remember just think it got stronger and stronger. I'm going to help with something. And I would see other people, specific other people that I didn't know. And I think he's here to help. She's here to help, like it was. And then I think, help with what? And into my head would come the lines from a poem by T.S. eliot. And the lines were, I said to my soul, be still and wait without love, for it would be love of the wrong thing. And wait without hope, for it would be hope for the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but the love and the hope and the faith are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness, the dancing. And for years, Alyssa, I would get this as a response to my question, what is going to happen? And gradually I came to believe that it was such a profound shift in the way people think that to have it explained to us before it happens would cause us to fundamentally misunderstand it. Right. It's like trying to see the color of your own eyes. You can't see the way you think with the thoughts you're thinking. So then my undergraduate major was in East Asian Languages and civilizations. I lived in Asia for a while, and. And I encountered this concept called awakening or enlightenment, which is in the west, too. But it's very different, really, in the Asian tradition, it's that Westerners think we're born imperfect. Western religions, we're born imperfect. We try to become like God. In Asia, it's, you're born perfect, but the world makes it scar. It causes you to scar, and it obscures your original light. And so if you can start getting rid of your illusions as you grow, that light that is always underneath starts to shine brighter and brighter and brighter. And if all the illusions are gone, it's just a light. It's the jewel at the heart of the lotus. So I started doing what you just asked, thinking, so if a certain, like, what if 5% of people in the world had that experience, we know it's happened to many people all over the world who describe it almost identically, despite having totally different cultures, like Lao Tzu, ancient in ancient China, described it the same way Dante did in medieval Europe described it the same way Walt Whitman did in the modern day. I think Shakespeare was in on it. Like, the Tempest is basically a story about how he woke up. And around these people, we know that there are probably people who are not famous. We don't know what effect they had. But what we do know is that certain individuals who had this awakening, whether it was Jesus or Muhammad or. What's the Buddha's real name? Siddhartha Gautama. I'm not saying it correctly. Anyway, whatever the person's name is, when they woke up, people around them were affected by it in an almost viral way.
- [16:30]
A
Yeah.
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B
And we know how viruses act. I mean, you and I probably studied it, but anyone who lived through the pandemic in 2020 knows what that looks like. It starts really low and it goes almost like, oh, it's getting a little worse. A little. Oh, it's more. And then it hits what's called the knee of the curve, and change goes vertical. So if you had 5% of the population go through this, which is a huge number. I'm just throwing out spitballs, right? Yeah, yeah. I think what you'd see is the people directly around them start to be affected in psychological ways that bring us into closer alignment with our own integrity. It makes it impossible to hold a thought that is causing suffering without examining it. And ultimately, letting go of puts a really sharp distinction between what we believe that is based on evidence and what we believe that is based on socialization. Almost all our beliefs are based on socialization. The polarization of our politics right now is based on the social part of the brain that likes to attack and judge other people. When people wake up, they lose that. They go into a different part of the brain. And right now, we've had a lot of science done on what happens to the people who are awake physiologically. So there's a new book out called Born to Flourish. It's actually not out. I got to blurb it before it came out. But it talks about the research on these people's brains and how they create really powerful rhythmic harmony from inside the brain. And that gets picked up by other brains, either through the mirror neurons.
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A
What, like a tuning fork? In a way, yeah.
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B
It can go through resonance like a turning tuning fork. It can go through entrainment like grandfather clocks all in the same room. At first, they'll be swinging wildly, and then after a day, they'll all be swinging together. It could come from the mirror neurons that readjust themselves to mirror the other people around us. But we do know that, both anecdotally and by looking at people like Nelson Mandela, who seem to have created it in our time, that it spreads. And when you get a lack of polarization and a lack of defensiveness, violence just has no place to grab. So, for example, after that surgery, I came out of it and wrote a book about leaving the Mormon Church. And it was considered quite controversial. And I went out on my book tour, and everywhere I went, people had been planted to ask questions about me. Like, they'd have a stack of documents. I'd go on a radio show. People would call in and say, you're just trying to destroy us. And we've got the name of your therapist here. And we're like. They were very aggressive, and you're lying and you're bad. And, like, in one radio show, a woman came on and was so upset, she started crying, saying, why are you trying to destroy us? And I said, oh. Oh, my goodness. This does not sound like the right book. For you right now. I was like, listen, my brother in law wrote a book about how bad I am. Do you have a pencil? Because I think it would make you feel a lot better. I think you should be reading that one. And she was like, yeah, like, what do you do with that?
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A
Yeah, there's no defense.
- [20:12]
B
So if there's no. Like when you and I were on the Camino, they did the role playing thing. Do you remember the day they did the role playing and there was a woman who was playing a man's ex wife and she attacked him verbally and he got really, really flustered and hurt, you know, And I thought, oh, yeah, that's how I used to feel before I went through that trial by fire. Now when somebody comes at me yelling, I go, tell me everything. Tell me every single thing. I want to hear it all.
- [20:46]
A
Yeah.
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B
And if you provide no defense, there's nothing for it to bounce off. I'm not saying I'm enlightened, but I have been around enlightened people and that is the way they act.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
And when we act that way welcomes everything.
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A
It's like, yeah, it's like I, it's. It's a listening ear. It's like, tell me more. Maybe there's something I can see about myself or just to be an open space, but it doesn't mean that they necessarily take it on and they don't have boundaries or.
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B
Oh, no, not at all. It's like it actually. Sorry.
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A
Yeah, yeah, please.
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B
Taking the path of non resistance, if you're clear and articulate about your position is not at all like, like allowing the other person to get away with nonsense. It's like, okay, you're angry. I want to hear everything about it. You're lying. Well, I have lied in my life, but not about this. So tell me more. Like it completely changes the energy of human conflict. Yeah.
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A
And that drops the defense also when they start coming into their heart instead of being their protection.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And we could see as they worked it out and Dick Schwartz was working with the people. When people started to listen to each other and to what was going on inside them, there's a kind of softness. And that whole group. Sorry to be talking so much about our.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Time on the Camino, but there was that kind of softness in the entire group. It was a really different group of people than I've gone walking with before. Not that there was anything wrong with the other people, but this group was therapists and coaches and everyone had an open mind so far as I was able to see. And so there was a kind of joy and lack of conflict that I think happens when anyone gets a little bit closer to awakening. So if 5% were completely awake. Yeah, holy smokes. It would change everything because it's infectious.
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A
And I really love Ken Wilber's quote, waking up and growing up. I like this. My training is spiritual psychology, and so. But I think I bought into the misunderstanding that I needed to heal to awaken. And yet I think that there's something helpful, like you're saying, to remove the misunderstandings, misidentifications that block the awareness of our wholeness. And yet it could be unconsciously seen as another thing to do rather than.
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B
Wake up to what I already am.
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A
And so I'm just.
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B
Yeah, for people, because I got. And that's the whole difference between the Eastern, Western and the Eastern view. The Western view is we strive to go forward. We clear things, we heal things, and then we're better, we're going upward. And in, say, Chinese philosophy, the Dowager Jing says, in the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the pursuit of the dao, or your awakening, every day something is dropped less and less. Do you need to force things until you arrive at non action? When nothing is done, nothing remains undone. And to the Western, I remember reading that at 19 years old and going, what? But at the same time, it sounded really intriguing. And it's because we have this striving forward mentality. And the striving forward mentality is part of what hurts us. So when you question even that and say, oh, wait, wait, I've actually been okay this whole time. There's nothing for me to do to be awake. There is only the need to lose the dream of suffering, which. And if you start to look at your own suffering very, very closely, very lovingly, and with a really strong adherence to the truth. Anything that causes suffering falls apart upon scrutiny. And it does not leave you with more skills or a better idea. It leaves you open. In Asia, they call it beginner's mind, or don't know, mind. You're just present and still and intensely alive. And I think that would change the world. Yeah, if enough of us do it.
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A
Yeah. And it's, it's, it's. I think the greatest offering we can, we can make back to life is to do our own work. And there is a place for psychological healing and spiritually awakening. So I think I started taking some of the doer like mentality into spirituality. And it was like, oh, there's a different roadmap for the psychological and the spiritual.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And I did want to just mention because I think this is an important topic that not enough people are talking about, but trauma, informed spirituality.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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A
Done a lot of silent retreats. There was a woman who had a psychotic break on a silent retreat. It was very disorienting, especially for fragile ego structures. And, you know, just for people to know that if they have big T trauma, sitting in stillness isn't always the best thing for them. And so don't think something's wrong with you. It's okay to, you know, tend to the trauma and do some of the healing work and. Or find different forms of meditation to see what works best for you. Yeah, right.
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B
And I'm glad you brought that up, because awakening doesn't necessarily mean through meditation, although that's a very common way to go about it. And ultimately, I mean, Pascal said all our misery arises from the fact that we're unable to sit quietly alone in a room. So that is a kind of. Yes, that will happen. It's not something you need to force yourself to do do. In my case, I did like a little meditation here and there until I was about 50. And the year I turned 50, I became obsessed. All I wanted was to meditate. I was starving for it. I was thirsty for it. I would just go out. I moved to this little house on the edge of a national forest in California. And I would just go, get up, go out, sit down, cover myself with bird seed and just be still for several hours while the birds and chipmunks landed on me. So that's good if that's what you want to do. But awakening doesn't necessarily mean following any socially prescribed format. It means responding to your own joy within the body. So the first step for me is never sit down and be quiet. The first step is sit still enough to find where you're uneasy and then tell me everything. And if we walk while we talk, as you and I did in Spain, then they get to have their flight response and they can be calmer. Right. And what I've found, it's not heal to awaken. Well, it can be, but it's also awakened to heal. You get a little bit more self accepting, at ease and in harmony with your own, with what makes you happy and what doesn't. And then you become more compassionate. And when you're extending compassion to the self, the traumatized parts gradually present themselves.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then they can be healed. It was interesting because we didn't do that much parts work. But when I came home, I kept finding like little trauma cells started popping up. Did that happen to you too?
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A
Yeah, it did. And little breadcrumbs to work with and.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, and I, and, and I think I had this idea. I think some people get into spirituality to avoid the human emotions and then spiritual bypass. Yeah. And so part of this was just realizing that, you know, you can be totally awake and have a, a life that is in a mess and you can be totally clear psychologically and be still trapped like you're in prison. But it's a clean prison cell. So, you know, I love that you said don't. It's like don't force yourself to do something from, from joy, from love. Follow what is true for you in the moment because as we follow that, life will guide us to what's best for us in this moment. I love meditation and inquiry, self inquiry, those are the two like pillars, but not from the rigidity of I need to do this. So that's something in the future. Yeah, but I'm curious about, because you've gone through. And I'm just. For people that have gone through trauma and, and something horrible has happened in their life, how, how do you recommend that they find trust and safety in a spiritual connection when their nervous system is still really wired for survival?
- [29:33]
B
Well, the first thing is that we are social primates. Most species of animals run to a safe place when they've been traumatized. Primates go to a safe other. So the idea, you know, I'm supposedly a self help writer, but I don't believe in self help. It just. We do not help ourselves out of trauma. We need other people sometimes it's. Sometimes you can start with a dog if you don't really, you know, if you're really afraid of people. I certainly have had clients who've done that, but ultimately with those clients, I would sit there with them and simply not show aggression and listen to them until their amygdala started to like, get used to the situation. You know how it is, graduated desensitization. They're with another person, they're frightened. And the job of anyone who wants to help them heal is to be very quiet in yourself. And this is the thing about, you don't have to sit still to heal, but it really helps to be around somebody else who knows how to sit still. Right. So as you continuously offer no threat, they come down to the point where they can start to, they can come out of the sympathetic nervous system and into the parasympathetic with you. There and if you have trauma, find someone who just sits quietly, who can. Who has a feeling of peace around them and be near them long enough for your animal instincts to calm down your brain. I just wrote a book about anxiety. And then begin to offer yourself compassion. One of my favorite examples is in Eat, Pray, Love, Liz Gilbert's book. A lot of people have read it. She starts with herself on the bathroom floor sobbing because she doesn't want to be married and she doesn't want to. She's married, she wants to get out of it. She doesn't want to have kids. And she sobs and sobs and then she prays. And this is weird for her, but after she's prayed all her. She's put it all out there, she hears a kind of voice that says, go back to bed, Liz. And that's when she starts to believe in God. Not because God gave her all the answers, but because that is what compassion would say to someone in that situation. Not here's your 10 point plan to change your life. Not here's what you should be believing. Just, honey, you're tired, lie down.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then she learns gradually to give that to herself. And I think that's why that book was read by 15 million people or some crazy number. It's so good. Yeah. It's a primer in self love.
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A
That's right.
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B
That's right.
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A
And what I'm hearing you say is that as you were talking about just being that safe, present other, I was watching, you know, the dogs that are traumatized and then they slowly, over time, start to really relax and feel safe again with other. And it's so helpful to have people in our lives that offer that to us so that we can also learn to offer it to ourselves.
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B
Absolutely.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, and I know you also talk about the importance of integrating our shadow. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
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B
Well, there's going to. One of the things we know for certain about trauma is that you have to go through the grieving process to get through it. And the grieving process starts with denial, where most of us live. And it has bargaining and then there is a sort of chaotic jumble of anger and sorrow and fear is always thrown in there for me. And as we let it happen, it may look like a shadow side. I don't really. I don't believe that the shadow side is bad. One of the things I do in coaching is dream analysis, and I use a variation of Jungian analysis where you become the symbol in the dream and then speak where you're like.
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A
You are of the dream. Okay, beautiful. Yeah.
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B
And I had this whole way of writing it out and everything, and I did this just the other day with a client, and they were being pursued by soldiers, and they've had this nightmare over and over, and it was terrible. Like, this is somebody who survived a war as a child and then who had just, like, escaped narrowly. Her family. Some of them were killed. It was a big deal. So these nightmares of soldiers were very visceral and very real. But. And it was hard for her to even pretend to be these symbols in the dream. But it's. It's interesting to become your shadow, to say, I'm going to own this for a minute and speak as the shadow. And what she said was, we're here. We're vigilant, we're guarding. And I said, how do you feel about her, the dreamer? And they said, oh, we're here to protect her. We've been here since childhood to keep her safe. After what she went through, she needs us. And all that fear of going to sleep went away like that, because the shadow actually isn't the shadow. It all turns to light. Light and shadow are not equal forces. If you bring a lighted candle into a dark room, it lights up the dark. If you bring a candle that is not lit into a sunny room, it does not darken the room. The light always wins. Always. Even when we go to the shadow.
- [35:12]
A
It's so powerful to hear you speak about that. There's so much alignment with what you share, and I just love how poetic you are when you're sharing your stories of the science. I had a channel dream after I graduated from my first master's degree in spiritual psychology. And it said that your work is to help people, teach people that the darkness isn't bad. And I was like, okay. And it told me it would reveal that after graduate school. And then after my second graduate school school, I was like, when is it coming? But I really get there's a deeper. Even in suffering, there's an intelligence in it, and we can use it for our healing. Not that I would wish that people. But I think some people aren't proactive and need tools or need community and need support, because we've learned this in grad school, not grade school. And so that's part of the intention of this podcast, is to give people perspective and stories and research so that. And tools so they can start waking up and having that support.
- [36:04]
B
Oh, that's lovely. Yeah.
- [36:06]
A
And one of the practical things that you had shared that I loved was when you talk about how the opposite of our most painful thoughts can be guides to creating the life that we want. Can you unpack this for us?
- [36:18]
B
Yeah. Even more than that, I would say the thought that you're holding that upsets and disturbs you the most, the most painful thought you believe right now is actually the direct opposite of what you need to learn to move toward your own awakening. So if you think like, give me a thought, it doesn't have to be the darkest thought, but give me a thought that sometimes troubles you.
- [36:42]
A
Yeah. I won't get the support I want.
- [36:44]
B
Okay. So first you sit with it, you ask. I use the Byron Katie word for this. So are you sure that's true? I won't get the support I want. And I assume this means in your. Does it mean professionally, in your personal life at work?
- [37:02]
A
Yeah.
- [37:03]
B
Okay. I won't get the support at work that I need. Why not?
- [37:08]
A
Because I haven't been able to get it to this point.
- [37:12]
B
Okay. And what I'm drilling down a little bit to see if I can get. What's the bad thing that would happen if you don't get enough support?
- [37:20]
A
That I will abandon doing what I want for doing what I think for. For I would abandon what my truth is, how I want to be living for the responsibility of holding it for the team.
- [37:30]
B
Okay. So if I don't get support, I may have to abandon. I'll have to abandon my truth.
- [37:35]
A
Yeah.
- [37:36]
B
Okay. So first you look at it and say, are you sure that's true? And you can see, if not, can you know? Absolutely. That if you don't get support, you'll have to abandon your truth. Okay. And you can see the effect of it. How does it make you feel?
- [37:52]
A
Lighter, smile.
- [37:54]
B
The thought, if I don't get support, I'll have to abandon my truth. Yeah.
- [38:00]
A
That feels heavy in my body. Shortness of breath and tension on my shoulders.
- [38:07]
B
So that's the animal saying, the animal does not like to lie. So when it tenses like that, you know you're in a lie. And then the last stage of the Byron Katie work, which everybody should go check out if they haven't done it, I'm not doing it properly. But she does a thing called a turnaround, which might be, for example, one of the turnarounds could be, if I abandon my truth, I won't get the support I need. Think about that one. If I abandon my truth, I won't get the support I need. And then the converse of that. If I don't Abandon my truth. I will get the support that I need.
- [38:52]
A
Yeah.
- [38:53]
B
Definitely that one. That one landed.
- [38:56]
A
Yeah.
- [38:56]
B
And that's what your life is asking you to just wholeheartedly believe. I do not have to abandon a shred of my truth. And the more I embrace my truth, the more support I'm going to get. How does that feel? I love that.
- [39:11]
A
Yeah.
- [39:12]
B
Clicks in as truth. It's like a puzzle piece fitting. Right.
- [39:15]
A
Yeah.
- [39:16]
B
And it's always. That's always the way my worst thoughts operate.
- [39:21]
A
Yeah.
- [39:22]
B
The opposite is always.
- [39:23]
A
I do find Katie's work, the work.com for people, I do find that incredibly helpful for waking up out of the fear based mind.
- [39:32]
B
Yeah.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah.
- [39:34]
B
And she's a good example of what happens when someone wakes up. Because she was just a real estate agent in Barstow, California who never left her house and was deeply depressed for years. And then she had this awakening experience and within a few months her house was absolutely full of people and she was helping people right, left and center. And there was no advertising, there was no degree, there was nothing. There was just someone who's awake and it just drew people like moths to a flame. And now she's got, you know, millions of people who've been affected and she really was just a real estate agent from Barstow. So. Yeah. People who tell me I don't know if I have enough credentials to influence the world. And I'm like a lot of people with credentials don't do much but have no credentials who change the whole game. So.
- [40:25]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of like the spontaneous awakening versus, you know, like people thinking, like practice, I think. Yes. And you know, it feels very loving.
- [40:33]
B
Oh yeah.
- [40:34]
A
To do the work and that supports more grace to, to kind of enter.
- [40:40]
B
Yeah. It's a, it's a leapfrogging effect for most of us. You wake up a little bit and then you can examine your true, your thoughts to make yourself more, to bring yourself more into alignment with the truth. And then that wakes you up a little more and then you examine more and it just, it's a kind of escalating, spiral, benevolent cycle.
- [41:02]
A
Yeah.
- [41:03]
B
And one hopes it, it leaves you at total awakening.
- [41:08]
A
At very minimum. It would leave you with a more open heart in mind. So I don't see it.
- [41:14]
B
Yeah. And more joy, which is, you know, my whole thing is I would like not to suffer. Please. I prefer the option without the suffering. Stop the suffering. Yes, please. I'm in.
- [41:27]
A
I got food. You alluded to this earlier, which. I want to bring in joy at some point, too. But you alluded to this earlier around after this experience in the surgery, how this light was telling you that things were going to get hard. And I know you had to leave so much behind to honor your truth and integrity. For people who are feeling out of alignment with their, their true north and they don't want to blow up their life, what would you say to them?
- [41:55]
B
I would say, whatever your situation is that's harming you, stay in it as long as you can. And I know that that's counterintuitive, but when people say, okay, I'm going to stay, they suddenly go, no, I'm not. Like, it's a bit of reverse psychology. But if you try to push them to leave, you get that oppositional effect that I was talking about earlier. If you don't oppose someone's desire to like, their resistance to awakening and you say, that's fine, stay in the dark, you'll be okay. I'll bring you tea. They're like, what? No, I want to be better. So then they are willing to step forward just a little bit. But I always say, take one degree turns. I was like flying an airplane, did an about face and flew off in a completely different direction. With my life and other people, I just say, look, if you're flying from New York to LA, and then you just steer the plane north by one degree every 15 minutes, you won't even feel the turn. But you will end up in a totally different place. You'll end up in like, Alaska. So make one degree turns in the direction of your joy and your whole life eventually will turn in that direction.
- [43:10]
A
I love how, I love how simple and gradual that can be. It can be easier for the nervous system to hear. But what about for people who are. They don't know what their truth is anymore. Any recommendations to help them start waking back up to what's true for them?
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, the first thing is we have one ally who never abandons us, and that is suffering. Despite what the bad things I said about it earlier, suffering is always a beautiful indicator of the places where we are believing illusions. If there's any psychological suffering, there is illusion in there somewhere. We're believing something that actually isn't true. So the first thing I do with people is say, are you comfortable? I'll say this at a. I'll be giving a speech, say, are you comfortable? And they say, yes. And I'll say, no, no, no, really, truly, are you comfortable?
- [44:08]
A
Yes.
- [44:09]
B
They will tell me, and then I'll say, okay, if you were home alone in your bedroom, would you be sitting in the position you're in right now? And they're like, no. And I say, why not? Sometimes they have to think for like minutes and then they're like, I could be more comfortable. And the problem is not that they're uncomfortable. The problem is that they are lying about it to themselves with their minds while their bodies are signaling. Clearly this is not comfortable. So going back to what feels like joy in the body, it's so verboten in Western culture. The body is just a nasty little animal and the soul reigns supreme. Now, I think the body is an animal that has been evolving for 300 million years. It's got a lot of wisdom in it where the neocortex is like a computer they just put out and it's full of bugs, right? So when you find suffering and discomfort in the body, you see where it's connected to stress. And you'll find as you look through something like say your throat is tight and you start to identify this. Actually, Dick did an incredible piece of work with me on the Camino because I was having asthma. And he said, let's talk to the part of you that causes your throat to close. And so I went in there and it was just a patch of cells. And then suddenly it was just saying, yeah, I'm the part of you that would really like to just be on the other side of the so called veil. Like, I'm happy in life, but I'd really like to be back where that light is all I see. And I'd rather be dead. So I stopped breathing sometimes and I was like, oh, okay. So here's the deal. The light told us that it's not about being dead. It's about getting to a place where there's nothing between our joy in the moment and what we're intending, what we're doing. So we cleared that up. My throat opened and the wisdom of suffering came through for me again. And it always will. And again, it will lead you to your darkest thoughts. And the opposite of those darkest thoughts are the next step forward. So it's not just like, wipe out that thought and then figure out what to do. Find the thought, turn it around, do what the turnaround says, and you'll always be on track.
- [46:45]
A
And find the wisdom inside the block and how it's trying to serve you.
- [46:48]
B
Is what I hear always.
- [46:49]
A
Yeah, that's just so loving. It welcomes and you've brought up joy a few times. What do you see as the importance of joy and this work because you've mentioned it, and it lights me up every time you say it.
- [47:02]
B
Well, I remember being a freshman at Harvard, 17 years old, middle of the night, sitting in this carol at the Lamont Library, where generations of students had carved their woes into the soft wood. And it was just people having all kinds of breakdowns right there in front of me. And I was like, honest to God, this is a rough planet. I do not think I got off at the right stop. Why am I even here? And then I sort of went through my beliefs, and I realized that I believe what Emerson said about beauty, that it is its own excuse for being. And I thought, what is beauty in the. In the psyche. And it's joy. Joy is its own excuse for being. It doesn't need a cause. It is, as Emily Dickinson said about beauty. It is not caused. It is. And so I thought, if I can find joy. And it was a long trip from there because I was very, very depressed at that time. If there is a potential for me to discover joy, then it may make joy living here on Earth worthwhile. And I have found that to be true. Because I did learn to access joy, though it took a while. And in the moments that I accessed joy, it was very clear to me why this life is worth living, this particular human life. And I believe we all have the capacity to feel that.
- [48:34]
A
Yeah. And the importance of that until. Give ourselves permission to. Sometimes I think people feel guilty for joy when other people aren't feeling that. And so also the permission to give that to ourselves.
- [48:46]
B
And. Well, just. Just think if. If you fell off a cliff and you broke your leg and you were in agony, and I came over and said, oh, my God, I see how sad you are. I broke my own leg and lay down beside you, screaming, what good is it going to do you? But if I come over real quick and I'm like, you know what? I've been trained in first aid, and I know exactly what to do. And I'm not exactly joyful, but I am on the game. Like, I'm going to do this. I can be of real value to you and to the world. And if you're spending most of your day, every single day, in joy, you're becoming very, very strong mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically. Joy makes us stronger. Physically, it makes us stronger in the moment. I mean, that's why lie detectors work. When we tell lies, the body kind of crunches in and we get physically weaker. So as far as I'm concerned, joy is the standard measure of human, of the worth of human life and the ability to find it is the skill we are here to learn. I may be wrong.
- [50:01]
A
No, I think I'm definitely an inquiry. I want to, I want to live into more for sure. And I know that integrity is a big piece of your work. So is anxiety. How do you see those connect?
- [50:13]
B
Well, I wrote a book on integrity which said, and I believe this, that when you are in your truth, there is no psychological suffering, period. And I know that's a very, a very sweeping statement. And in social science we are trained to be very cautious about sweeping statements and absolutes. But I do believe that when there is absolute integrity in us there, and I don't mean like the Sunday school thing where I never tell a lie, it's when all aspects of our truth, body, heart, mind and soul are telling us the same story. There's no, there's no duplicity, there's no division within us. And we don't divide ourselves in response to other people's demands. That's when we're whole. That's when we're strong. So I wrote this book and then a bunch of people came and told me, well, I've done everything, I'm in total integrity, but I'm scared all the time. And I thought that's weird because I sit, I had high, high, high anxiety. But every anxious thought I have dissolves when I really examine it, when I do self inquiry. For some reason, fear seems to be an anxiety. Seem to be really, really resistant to this. People stay in illusion more regarding their fears than anything else. So I thought, I wonder why this is. And I started doing research and I found, you know, I read about the brain mechanism that causes us to the negativity bias that causes us to look at frightening things and then our capacity to tell ourselves stories that justify our fear. And the left hemisphere in particular clamps down on these stories and believes them as absolute truth. And in fact, the left hemisphere of the brain, which is doing most of the talking, has this weird quality of being absolutely certain that it's right and ruling out every other point of view to the point where people who have a right hemisphere stroke so only their left hemisphere is working, they will totally disown half their bodies. The half that's being operated by the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere believes it is the only thing in the world. It's always right and nothing else exists. And because of that, people get scared and they stay scared. And it feels true. It feels so true, actually, it feels truthy. Remember that word Stephen Colbert coined Truthiness. It's not factually true, but it feels true. And you have to scrutinize your painful thoughts from the possibility that they are not true. From don't know mind. Start to look at the data that you have in your own life and if you can gently teach yourself to do, do that. Your fear dissolves and actually the brain becomes balanced and you start using your whole brain which solves problems with creativity rather than responding with anxiety. And I actually found that the brain mechanisms between anxiety and creativity toggle. So we know that anxiety shuts down creativity. What I believe is that creativity also shuts down anxiety. Ooh. It's really cool. I am. I'm all anxious because I have to like get on a plane right after this and go give two keynote speeches. And I'm like, I have performance anxiety. And then I start working on a book and it's just gone. Wow.
- [53:43]
A
Was that some of the experimentation that you were doing around activating the right brain so that it kind of disrupted some of the left brain anxiety? Is that what you're speaking to?
- [53:53]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I did it because this was during the pandemic. I was doing this research. I was talking to groups of hundreds or thousands of people. So I was able to do this sort of quick and dirty sociology. They would not have let me register it at Harvard, but I'd say everybody put in a number in the chat on a zoom call saying how high your anxiety is. So the numbers would come up between 1 and 10. 10 is the highest. And they were pretty high. It was the pandemic. And then I have them do something like imagine things they loved with each of their five senses and pretend they were experiencing those things which draws on the perceptions that access the right side of the brain. And we just do a little exercise like that where they pictured these sensory delights one on top of another. And then I'd say, so, what's your anxiety like now? And it would come 0000. It was such a strong effect that even without formal research, I stand by it.
- [54:53]
A
Yeah.
- [54:54]
B
And I've also felt it to be true. Yeah.
- [54:56]
A
That's beautiful. I also know you have a three step cat process to deal with anxiety. Can you share that with us?
- [55:03]
B
What that is? I forgot. I think I actually spelled it K A T. Okay. Would.
- [55:12]
A
Okay, I can ask another question. Okay.
- [55:16]
B
Yeah. Because I will make something up, but it won't be working.
- [55:18]
A
Okay. No problem.
- [55:19]
B
No problem.
- [55:22]
A
So just in closing, I just would love to hear from you what you would say to somebody that's feeling stuck in their life or just overwhelmed with anxiety and going through a painful season, what would you want them to know?
- [55:34]
B
The first thing is that you need to know that your anxiety comes not only from a natural inclination to look for danger, but from a society that is absolutely bombarding you with anxiety producing information all the time. And so the natural inclination toward fear that is in all human brains has been revved up by society to a point that is unprecedented in human history. So know that you are, you came by this all honestly. Second thing is, if you've been told to fight anxiety or bring it down or end it, know this. Your brain, when it's anxious, is not a malfunctioning machine, which is how our culture sees it. It is a frightened animal. And if you go to a frightened animal and say, I'm going to end you, I'm going to bring you down, that doesn't make it less anxious. So instead, sit with your anxiety, if you can get a spare moment and somebody maybe who feels a lot of peace, whether it's your cat, your dog, your mother, it doesn't matter. And say to yourself, you have every right to be anxious. Talk to the anxious part of yourself and say, of course you feel that way. Everything's terrifying right now, I'm here with you. And then come into presence in this moment, let us be together and you can feel as anxious as you want, but I'm going to sit here and I'm going to offer you kindness. So I call this kind internal self talk or kissed for short. And it's just offering well wishes to the anxious part of ourselves. So may you be happy, may you be well, may you feel relaxed, may you feel at peace, may be joyful, may you feel free, may you feel safe and protected. These are from Tibetan loving kindness mantras. And just keep offering that and it will move you into what ifs therapists call self with a capital S. Then you adopt this animal. You do not kill it. You give it a spit, you pick it up, you comfort it, you, you hold it until its heartbeat slows and you can feel it go. Because that is the shift from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic. And once you get the sigh of relief, stay gentle, stay solicitous, stay kind. And gradually you'll feel less and less afraid and more, more and more able to confront the genuinely scary world we live in today with creative solutions instead of panic. Because nobody makes good decisions out of panic.
- [58:32]
A
I know if we really learned that just even that what you just spoke to. To really offer safety to the part of us that's anxious and instead of trying to get rid of it. And yes, more creative, innovative insight and solutions come from that. Martha, I just love you. I just, I just love listening to you. I just think you are such a beautiful human. I'm so grateful for you. I know my audience is going to want to stay connected. Talk to us about what you're up to and how they can stay in touch.
- [59:00]
B
You can stay in touch with me through my website. I have trained coaches, I have an online community called Wilder, and right now I'm working on another book called the Pyramid and the Pool about the, the collapse of the society we're living in now and how we can create something much more benevolent on the other side of it. So I'm back in my full sociology mode. That's what my doctorate's in and I'm really excited about it. Beautiful.
- [59:29]
A
We'll put links here below. And to also your most recent book around Anxiety as well. Thank you so much beyond for who you are and how you live and move through Alyssa.
- [59:39]
B
It's been such an honor and a privilege to get to know you. It was so fun in Spain and this has been really wonderful as well. Thank you so much for the work you do in the world.
- [59:51]
A
Ditto. Thank you, Martha.
- [59:53]
B
So good.
- [59:54]
A
Thank you so much for doing this work that changes the world, starting with yourself. It truly does make a difference. And if you're finding value in this podcast, a cost free way to support us is by following us. It does help us grow and we are so grateful. Leave a review on Apple or Spotify, submit a screenshot of that and upload it to alyssandabriga.com podcast as a thank you gift, we will be sending you one of the most powerful tools that you can use on any area of your life to help you tap into your full potential so that you don't let fear hold you back from really stepping into your dreams. I have so much more magic I want to share with you and I cannot wait to do that soon. But for now I just want to say thank you so much for being an example of what it's like to live with an open heart and mind in the world.