Super Soul Special: Dani Shapiro: What Do You Believe?

Summary

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Super Soul Special: Dani Shapiro – What Do You Believe?

Podcast: Oprah's Super Soul
Host: Oprah Winfrey
Guest: Dani Shapiro
Date: October 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this intimate and thought-provoking episode, Oprah sits down with best-selling author Dani Shapiro to explore the deeper questions of belief, spirituality, and personal meaning. The episode focuses on Dani's spiritual journey—a path shaped by her Orthodox Jewish upbringing, profound personal loss, rebellion, motherhood, and her own search for devotion and purpose. Through candid conversation and powerful insights, this episode encourages listeners to examine their own beliefs and awaken to the sacred in ordinary life.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Dani’s Background and Upbringing (01:00–05:43)

• Orthodox Jewish Childhood: Dani describes being raised in a modern Orthodox Jewish home in New York City. Her father was devoutly religious, while her mother (unknown to Dani for years) was actually an atheist.

  • “We kept kosher. Two sinks, two dishwashers. No driving on the Sabbath, no turning on or off lights on the Sabbath… we completely honored the Sabbath.” (04:50–05:11, Dani Shapiro)

• Spiritual Conflict and Tension: Dani’s mother’s secret atheism created constant tension, leaving Dani with anxiety and an early association of spirituality with conflict.

2. Rebellion and Loss as Catalysts (05:54–08:17)

• Rebellion: Dani rebelled strongly against her upbringing—first by eating forbidden foods (like bacon) and later by experimenting with modeling, bad relationships, and substance abuse.

  • “If you had looked up ‘rebelling with a vengeance’ in the dictionary, there would have been my picture.” (08:29, Dani Shapiro)

• Turning Point: At 24, the sudden car accident that killed her father and gravely injured her mother forced Dani to “wake up” and take responsibility, ultimately setting her on a path toward healing.

  • “The shock created like a fissure in me, like a crack that allowed me to wake up…” (07:54–08:07, Dani Shapiro)

3. The Spark for a Spiritual Quest (03:04, 09:59–13:21)

• Motherhood’s Big Questions: Dani’s spiritual searching deepened when her young son Jacob began asking about God and the afterlife.

  • “Those questions set off an avalanche of feelings and thoughts… I knew that I was failing him. I knew I was failing myself too.” (03:37–04:23, Dani Shapiro)

• The Challenge of Defining Belief: Dani realized she could not just relay a “smorgasbord” of beliefs to her child—she had to confront what she herself truly believed, having come from a family where belief was either rigid or absent.

• Permission to Seek: A major obstacle for Dani was feeling she didn’t have the right to forge her own path, given her non-scholarly, non-clerical background and the pressure of tradition.

  • “Step one was just the idea of—this is important, not just for me but for my loved ones. So that I can be there more for them, because I can be there more for myself.” (10:27)

4. Embracing Personal Spirituality and Devotion (13:22–20:23)

• Devotion as Awakening: The title and concept of Dani’s memoir “Devotion” came to her during a personal crisis, crystallizing her need for deeper meaning beyond self-improvement.

  • “I was waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning every morning into this sort of existential panic...I intuitively knew that it had to do with a spiritual crisis…” (19:38–20:23, Dani Shapiro)

• The Value of Inner Work: Both Oprah and Dani reflect on how external achievements and “things” never bring lasting satisfaction.

  • “Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.” (23:24, Dani Shapiro quoting Abraham Joshua Heschel)

5. Sacredness in the Ordinary (28:36–31:06)

• Noticing the Sacred: Dani highlights the importance of recognizing sacred moments in everyday life—whether packing her son’s lunch or driving in nature.

  • “The task of life is to face sacred moments… it requires a kind of courage. It does. To step into it, to not shut down, but to have that consciousness.” (29:32–30:59, Dani Shapiro quoting Heschel)

• Being Present: Both emphasize that presence—true, full awareness of the here and now—is where joy and the sacred are found.

6. Practical Steps on the Spiritual Path (31:18–35:26)

• Finding Teachers Everywhere: Openness to learning allows “teachers” to appear, whether through people, books, or unexpected life events.

  • “When the student is ready...” “…the burning bush is all around us.”* (31:52–32:22, Oprah & Dani)

• Spiritual Takeaways from Life’s Events: Dani adopts the habit of seeking out the lesson—the “spiritual takeaway”—from both positive and negative experiences, even loss.

  • “We absolutely can control what we do with what we’re given, always. No matter how harsh, no matter how painful, no matter how difficult.” (35:48, Dani Shapiro)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I wanted him to have his identity. I wanted him to know where he came from. He’s going to develop his own sense of what God is because he’s watched his mother live in the questions.” (36:46–37:37, Dani Shapiro)

• “I know for sure that if I remain curious… that is where I find peace. That is where I find contentment and that inner compass.” (38:07–38:53, Dani Shapiro)

• “When you learn, teach. When you get, give… If you can’t do that, then there’s no reason to be human here on Earth.” (35:02, Oprah Winfrey, quoting Maya Angelou)

• “What is the spiritual takeaway of your past?” (35:26, Oprah Winfrey)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Dani’s Upbringing & Family Tension: 01:00–05:43
• Rebellion and Personal Crisis: 05:54–08:17
• Motherhood and the Spiritual Trigger: 03:04, 09:59–13:21
• Permission & Redefining Belief: 10:27–13:21
• Embracing Devotion and the Inner Crisis: 13:22–20:23
• Noticing and Creating Sacred Moments: 28:36–31:06
• Recognizing Teachers and Life Lessons: 31:18–35:26
• Dani’s Reflections on God, Death, and Purpose: 36:35–38:53

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Takeaways for Listeners

• It’s okay—and essential—to give yourself permission to question, seek, and define your spiritual path.
• Lasting meaning and joy come not from accumulation of things, but from an awakened presence and inner work.
• Tragedy, loss, and even daily frustrations can become the gateway to greater awareness, if we seek the “spiritual takeaway.”
• Sacredness can be found in the most ordinary acts, if we are present and open.
• Life’s teachers come in many forms—books, people, moments; the important thing is to be open and ready to receive.
• Living “in the questions” is not a sign of weakness or confusion, but of genuine searching—and can be more powerful than reciting rote answers.

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Final Reflection (Oprah):
"Each of us, human, full of longing, reaching out with our whole selves for something impossible to touch. Still, we are reaching. Reaching." (38:53–39:23)

Namaste.

Transcript

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[Oprah Winfrey]

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I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time.

Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. Born in 1962 in New York City, Danny Shapiro was an only child. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home. Her father was extremely religious and her mother agreed to raise Danny according to tradition. It wasn't until after her mother died Danny learned her mother had been an atheist. Their home was fraught with tension, and for Danny, religion and spirituality soon became synonymous with trouble, conflict, anxiety. As a teen, she rebelled and left Judaism behind. By the time she reached her 20s, Danny says, her life had become out of control. She dropped out of college to try modeling. She had a string of bells, bad relationships. She started abusing drugs and alcohol and says she felt lost, far away from her true calling. When she was 24, her parents were in a devastating car crash. Her father died two weeks later. Her mother was severely injured. Shattered in every way, Danny became her mother's caretaker and had to get it together quickly. It was precisely this moment that Danny says woke her up and saved her. She felt compelled to make her life mean something. She got sober, finished school, began writing and teaching, got married and started a family. She became a best selling author of five nonfiction books and two memoirs, Slow Motion and more recently, Devotion. Despite all her success, Danny still felt a yearning for something more, for something to believe in. At night, while being tucked in, her young son would ask the big questions. Mom, do you believe In God, what happens when we die? And she didn't know what to tell him. The religion of her childhood flooded back and Danny suddenly found herself in the.

Midst of her very own spiritual journey. So this journey for you really started when your son Jacob, who's now 14 but was a younger boy, and started asking you, what do you believe?

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah. I know many parents who were raised in either Orthodox traditional religion or not, question how they're going to now relay that to their children. What do I want my son or daughter to believe? And you were in that space.

[Dani Shapiro]

Those questions set off an avalanche of feelings and thoughts because I knew that my rote answer, my initial rote answer, which was the smorgasbord answer, it was, well, some people believe that there's a heaven. Some people believe that we come back. Some people believe, you know, in the spirit world. I mean, I just gave him a kind of smorgasbord. And I knew that I was failing him. I knew that I was failing myself too, because I was giving, you know, giving a six, seven year old kid, they don't want a smorgasbord. They want to know what their mom believes. And the avalanche that it set off was that I was raised with so much in that way. I was raised with, this is what we believe. There's no two ways about this.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Because you were raised with an Orthodox Jewish father and an atheist mother. I'm like, how does that work for you? Explain, first of all, what does Orthodox mean? I mean, I know, but what does.

[Dani Shapiro]

It mean for Orthodox? In the way that I was raised was what would be termed modern Orthodox. So we weren't Hasidic. My father didn't wear a black hat and a long beard. It was.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Did you keep kosher?

[Dani Shapiro]

We kept kosher.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Do you have two sinks?

[Dani Shapiro]

Two sinks, two dishwashers. No driving on the Sabbath, no turning on or off lights on the Sabbath, no electricity of any kind of. No writing, no homework, no playing the piano.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So you honored the Sabbath.

[Dani Shapiro]

Completely honored the Sabbath.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And you watched your father do the ritual prayers every day?

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes. As a little girl, it's actually one of my favorite memories of him. I would sometimes sit in his lap. I would sometimes stand with him and watch him. But what I was watching was devotion, which I really only understood so much later in life, really in writing about it, when I really delved into what was it that was so warm and so that made me feel so safe.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And so the process of writing devotion came about because you were in search. It was your version of Eat, Pray, love.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Only you didn't leave your own backyard.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Devotion is written like a spiritual detective story with Dani delving deep into the events of her past, searching for clues. She reflects on her parents car accident and her father's early death. How she ran away from the God of her childhood and fell into a drug and alcohol infused rebellion. It's a story she first shared in her earlier memoir, Slow Motion.

And in Slow Motion, you write about that period and you know one of the biggest regrets you say is when your father died, that you were still in that period of rebellion and trying to figure out who you were and all of that and that saddened you that he didn't get to see who you are now.

[Dani Shapiro]

It was a great sorrow for me that he died when I was really a mess and that that was. He died worried about me. I believe that he knows. Yeah, I do. My father's death, which was in an accident, was such a turning point for me of feeling like if I can't make meaning out of this loss, out of his death, then I'm not even sure what I'm doing. And that became for me, he became my compass. And it's one of the reasons why eventually I needed to write that book, Slow Motion. I needed to write it because I was trying to reconcile for myself how the worst possible thing that happened in my life, my parents accident, the loss of my father, my mother's injuries, how that could turn out to actually be something that would turn my life around. How a terrible thing that I would take back if I could, could also turn out to be something that ended up.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So your father's death and the way he died in the car accident was an open door for these discoveries for you?

[Dani Shapiro]

It was, it was a shock. And the shock created like a fissure in me, like a crack that allowed me to wake up, which is what.

[Oprah Winfrey]

We'Re all trying to do.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And it's unfortunate that sometimes it takes tragedy and it takes crisis and it.

[Dani Shapiro]

Takes, you know, we don't choose what's going to wake us up.

[Oprah Winfrey]

That's right. We don't choose what's going to wake us up. But you need to wake up.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

As you pulled away from Judaism, you said that you rebelled with a vengeance. What did that look like?

[Dani Shapiro]

Oh, if you had looked up rebelling with a vengeance in the dictionary, there would have been my picture.

[Oprah Winfrey]

You started first by eating bacon.

[Dani Shapiro]

Oh yeah. Well, bacon started in high school when all my other friends were doing slightly more interesting things in the woods. I was Eating bacon because. But I moved on from bacon to.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Because Orthodox Jews do not eat bacon. For those of you who are saying what's wrong with bacon? Right. Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

Bacon, shrimp.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah. So once I went to college and I left high school a year early, I was just kind of hell bent on getting out of Dodge. And I was about as ill equipped to be on my own in a college with other people who hadn't been raised in this kind of really protected, cossetted other people who've been doing things other than eating bacon.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah. And you lost your mind a little bit.

[Dani Shapiro]

I lost my mind a little bit. And I had no sense of my identity. Like my outline, myself, my worth.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

I felt like it had all been.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Defined for you and you had to fit into this box. And if you don't, then you don't know who you are.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah. But the rebelling, I think, had to do with really not knowing myself, not knowing, you know, just my guts, not knowing what I was capable of. No idea, no idea of what I might offer anyone else or myself or the world.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So let's talk about this process because I think so many people are, or have been where you are, are in the search for themselves. So what having still being in the journey, in the seeking phase for yourself, what advice do you give to those who want to know, who want this inner journey? How should we open ourselves to that?

[Dani Shapiro]

The first thing that I would say is that one of the things that stopped me, the first thing that stopped me was permission. The first thing that stopped me was what right do I have? I'm not a religious scholar. I'm going against the way that I was raised. I'm a woman, I don't have time. What right do I have to do this? So like step one, I think, was just the idea of this is important. This is important for me, this is important for my loved ones that I do this so that I can be there more for them, because I can be there more for myself. Then the feeling of all the shoulds, the thing that stopped me for a really long time was that I came from this all or nothing place. I came from. It's our way or not at all. And the feeling that I had about my orthodox family was they got God. So that meant there was no God left over for me, you know, that they, they were doing it right, they were doing it by the book. So that de facto meant that I was doing it wrong.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah. And also their way of doing it didn't resonate with you, and it didn't resonate with.

[Dani Shapiro]

It didn't resonate.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So that was in conflict with what you really believed.

[Dani Shapiro]

With what I really believed, yeah. But, but, but I put what I really believed kind of on a shelf because it was too painful to try to grapple with it. It was too painful to pull it off the shelf and really say, but.

[Oprah Winfrey]

At the time, you didn't even know what you really believed.

[Dani Shapiro]

I didn't know what I believed. I didn't know that it was. No, I just. I shelved the question. I retired the question. And as far as I was concerned, that question could have stayed retired and might have until my son Jacob started asking those questions.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Okay.

[Dani Shapiro]

Or something else would have.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah. Because I think that's a question for all of our viewers too. What do you really believe? Do you really believe it? Or are you just by rote reciting what you've been told your whole life? Fundamentally, what do you believe? Yeah. That's the question that you grapple with in devotion.

[Dani Shapiro]

The greatest lesson I would say that I learned and continue to be learning is that I had felt, because I had been told what to believe, I felt that it wasn't okay to build a spiritual life. You had to take the one that had been handed to you on a platter, but you couldn't create one.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

And the people who did create them were kind of seeking easy answers or like cherry picking, like a little bit here, a little bit there.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So to begin to define for yourself, for ourselves. Maybe there's another way in.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Maybe there's another way in.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes. Was like, so liberating.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

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[Oprah Winfrey]

Could you read the passage from page nine? I think that really illustrates where you were and why this book happened, and also where so many other people are in their life right now.

[Dani Shapiro]

I love that. Absolutely. I had reached the middle of my life and knew less than I ever had before. Michael Jacob and I lived on top of a hill, surrounded by old trees, a vegetable garden, stone walls. From the outside, things looked pretty good, but deep down inside myself, I had begun to quietly fall apart. Nights I quivered in the darkness like a wounded animal. Something was very wrong, but I didn't know what it was nothing. Absolutely nothing I could put my finger on was the matter. Except that I was often on the verge of tears. Except that it seems that there had to be more than this hodgepodge of the everyday. Inside each joy was a hard kernel of sadness, as if I was always preparing myself for impending loss.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Hmm. A hard kernel of sadness. What is it that you think that doesn't allow some people to feel the. And embrace fully the joy in their lives? Because there's always this feeling that even though it's going well right now, something really bad's gonna show up. Even though I'm going, yeah, what is that?

[Dani Shapiro]

Joy. Joy's frightening. Mm. I mean, to feel joy, to feel love, to feel it fully, is also to know that it won't always be so. I mean, that's just a fact.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah, that's just a fact.

[Dani Shapiro]

The Buddhists say life is suffering. Someday, the other shoe.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Accept that problems are going to come.

[Dani Shapiro]

They will.

[Oprah Winfrey]

They are going to come.

[Dani Shapiro]

Right. The other shoe will drop.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

And so the idea or the. I mean, for me, so much the desire to be able to embrace the joy as it flies, to be able to feel it fully without the. Oh. I think the hard kernel of sadness comes from leaning back into the past, of being frightened about the future. When you're fully in the present with joy, when you're fully in the present with anything, it's impossible to feel anything other than that.

[Oprah Winfrey]

But, you know, I know you watch Super Soul Sunday, and when Brene Brown was on, she was sharing the thought that so many parents have, that even as you're looking in the room, as you put your children to bed at night and you have that. Oh, aren't they beautiful? Isn't that wonderful? And then. Oh, my God, I hope nothing ever happens.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes, yes, exactly. It's like the. Oh, oh, oh.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah. But what you were feeling, I think, is what so many people, particularly those who are super soul seekers and are seeking for. For that depth of greater meaning in their lives. And I thought what you described on page seven, you said that the words were coming to me unforced, unbidden, do better. I wanted to be a better mother, a wife, writer, teacher, person, member of society. I definitely wanted to sleep better. We all want that one, don't we? Oh, and eat better. Oh, yes, of course. And have more patience, drink more water. I say that to myself every day. Okay, I'm going to make it to six glasses today. I wanted to be someone who not only bought flaxseed oil at the health food Store, but actually ingested it. I laughed at this because I buy it all the time. I even buy the flaxseed and right.

[Dani Shapiro]

Shelves full of this.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Shelves full of flaxseed. There was no end to my desire for self improvement. But was this what I meant?

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes, yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And the question is, was this what you meant?

[Dani Shapiro]

No, this wasn't what I meant. I certainly had all of those desires to self improve in all of those ways. Yes, but the desire was much deeper than that. It was this feeling, you know, the part about wanting to sleep better. I was waking up at 3 o' clock in the morning every morning into this of sort of existential panic. I didn't know what was wrong, but there was this feeling that I was falling and that there was just nothing to catch me. And I intuitively knew that it had to do with a spiritual crisis. That it had to do with.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Did you have that word for it?

[Dani Shapiro]

I didn't have the word. I'll tell you, the moment that I knew I was actually in the middle of my yoga practice. I was standing in tree pose in this little room doing yoga. And the word devotion actually presented itself to me like it was almost like in neon. It was like red and flashing. And the moment that happened, I thought, oh, that's it all came together. That's what this is. I am in a spiritual crisis. I need to understand this, I need to write about this because that's how I understand things.

[Oprah Winfrey]

By writing, by writing.

[Dani Shapiro]

It's the only way I know to know what the heck is going on in my mind.

[Oprah Winfrey]

As I was reading the book, I was saying, you know, what's interesting is you were feeling this sense of angst, this sense of urgency, this sense of, you know, flooding your body all of the time. But at least you were feeling it. I think so many people are so disconnected and numbed by the routine of life that they don't even have an opportunity to stop and know what they're feeling. And that's why sometimes it's 3 o' clock in the morning, it's waking you up.

[Dani Shapiro]

Well, the feeling that I had was that I would get my whole day done and check everything off every list that I had to do and drive everywhere that I had to drive and do everything that I had to do and get dinner on the table and answer emails and just do all of the things in that endless.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Then your last thought at night is, oh, we're running out of dog food. The same thing that everybody goes to.

[Dani Shapiro]

Hello, Food. Fall asleep. And then something in My being was forcing me awake because it was the thing that I hadn't dealt with. It was the most important thing. But, you know, what happens in life is it's just very easy to kind of say, well, I'll deal with that later. I'll get to that at some point.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So you're blessed to have that restlessness, really.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah. It's a gift.

[Oprah Winfrey]

It's a gift.

[Dani Shapiro]

It's a wake up call.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So tell us for everybody who has been where you were and is where you are seeking, because you would still consider yourself a seeker.

[Dani Shapiro]

Very much so, yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

You were saying that you've got to be able to validate for yourself that you have the right to do this, that you have the right to seek, and that the seeking really opens up what everybody is yearning for, and that is the deeper, fuller, more joyful life. Right?

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah, exactly.

[Oprah Winfrey]

I think it starts with actually what you said at the bottom of page seven. And I think that so many people.

[Dani Shapiro]

Who.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Are part of the Super Soul platform express to me through your tweets and through your Facebook messages exactly what you said. I want to do better. Yeah, I want to do better, but I want to do better in a way that's not just about. I'm gonna drink more glasses of water and I'm gonna make sure that my yoga poses are on point. I just want to do and be better.

[Dani Shapiro]

Well, it's that inner work.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

There's a beautiful piece of wisdom from Abraham Joshua Heschel where he wrote things when magnified are forgeries of happiness.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Things. Things when magnified.

[Dani Shapiro]

Things when magnified, which I love because everybody. Things. Great. Things are great, right?

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

Love things. But things, when magnified are forgeries of happiness. And I think so much of what we. So many.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Magic. Meaning. Put too much value in it.

[Dani Shapiro]

Put too much value in it. And you're absolutely right. That was one of those.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Although we were talking about our shoes today. When you get a closet full of shoes that you thought you thought was.

[Dani Shapiro]

Gonna fill you up, was gonna fill.

[Oprah Winfrey]

You up, and you walk into that closet space and it's just.

[Dani Shapiro]

And then you.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And you need more, and then you.

[Dani Shapiro]

Realize they're just shoes, and that's the forgeries of happiness.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Forgeries of happiness, exactly.

[Dani Shapiro]

But that way in which I think so many of us go about our days, go about just the. There's always something that we need. There's always a next. You know, we're either leaning back into the past and regret and into that swamp, which I think is where sort of Depression lives and all of that.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes. That's where depression is. Or where impacted pain.

[Dani Shapiro]

Exactly. Or we're leaning forward into the future, into what if and worry and anxiety and all of that. I mean, the number of times that I've been driving somewhere in my car in this beautiful, hilly, windy, you know, roads of New England where I live, and I'll realize that I've been driving 20 minutes and I haven't seen anything. I've just been thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. And meanwhile I'm passing countryside that people drive to see. You know, beautiful foliage, cows, bucolic horses.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Pastoral.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes. Stone walls. And I'm either, you know, back in 1975 or I'm in the future. And. But it's the. What, what people who teach meditation say is. It's the catching yourself. How about coming back to the breath?

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

How about coming back to the moment and because that's where joy resides. That's where anything that we can possibly accomplish in the spiritual realm, like not in the, the. The. All that stuff, at least the, you know, the, the garbage can that my head can be. And to be able to stop and actually get to that place, I think that that's like the, that's the place where it begins.

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[Oprah Winfrey]

How do you begin to decipher the sacred in the ordinary? Because that's really what you ended up doing here in this book.

[Dani Shapiro]

I think it begins, or it began for me with an awareness, kind of a constant awareness of the sacred. So that the idea that I'm driving in a car with my son in the backseat and it's a beautiful fall day and the leaves are turning and it's just the two of us in the car and we're talking. That can be a sacred moment. Or he can be playing on the phone and I can be like zoned out and thinking about 20 things that I need to do or didn't do or whatever and then the moment is lost and there's a beautiful so it's.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Like when you're being with somebody, really.

[Dani Shapiro]

Be with someone and recognize the possibility of the divine in any given moment. Just it's like a lens through which to see the world. It's so easy to not do that and yet it's almost like flipping a switch and in doing it, the Feeling of this place, the energy of this place feels sacred. Abraham, Joshua Heschel, who I really fell in love with during the time that I was writing Devotion. He said, the task of life is to face sacred moments. To face sacred moments. I just thought that was so beautiful because it requires a kind of courage. It does. To step into it, to not shut down, but to have that consciousness, this moment. There was a moment one morning where I was packing Jacob's lunch and, you know, the morning. Everything's kind of. Everybody's trying to get going. There's a lot going on and crankiness and dogs and whatever. And the words that came into my mind were, you're going to miss this someday. You're going to miss this someday. So how about not missing it while it's happening? You know, like, these are the good old days. Be here. And ever since that day, I really do pack his lunch. Different. And so there is this feeling, like this wax paper bag, this piece of, you know, what you're making today.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

These things. Putting together this lunch for this boy who's going off into his day. Yeah, yeah. Sacred, too.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Okay. I want to feel a sense of devotion. How do I do that? Well, first of all, tell me how you did it in synopsis, because we have to read the whole book because we can't get all the details.

[Dani Shapiro]

But the way I did it in the beginning was by opening my eyes to the teachers that were around me, really thinking. And look, I live in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut. So it wasn't like I'm in New York City or I'm in LA or I'm in Chicago, and the teachers are, you know, you can, you know, throw a stick and you'll hit a teacher. Yeah. I didn't even know what that meant when I said that, you know, are the cows my teachers like, what did I even mean? But when you do that, your teachers do appear.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

When the student is ready.

[Oprah Winfrey]

When the student is ready.

[Dani Shapiro]

I mean, you know that better than anybody.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And for many people, this show itself is a teacher.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And may I say to all of you who are listening around the world that when you're open to it, you hear something, it's on tv, you're flipping through a magazine, you see a line. You see, that's how it comes to you. That's what being open means. It's not Moses. And the burning bush. The burning bush is all around us is what I want to say to people.

[Dani Shapiro]

That's right.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes. The burning bush is everywhere.

[Dani Shapiro]

That's right.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

I love that.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

You know, obviously this show is a great opportunity. You hear about a book, somebody suggests something opens it up. That's what you mean by teachers.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes. And you don't need to be in the presence of the teacher. When I began this, there were so many books that I wanted to read, and I started going to the bookstore and buying them, and then I realized I was buying multiple copies because I had them on my shelves, because I'd had them for years. I just hadn't opened them and hadn't opened them.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

So it's not necessarily about being in the same place. Your teachers can be books, your teachers can be someone on television. Your teachers can be something that you see on Twitter. That takes you to a link that happened to me this past week. There was an extraordinary link that it took me to where I read something.

[Oprah Winfrey]

That'S happened to me a couple of times.

[Dani Shapiro]

And that's. But it's the openness and I guess the centeredness to follow what those moments are. Yeah, I'm going to follow this.

[Oprah Winfrey]

I think what you just said here is key. I am open and ready to receive.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

I am open and ready to receive. And when you say that to the universe, it's just like in the alchemist, the universe rises up to meet you exactly where you are.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes. All you need to do is ask.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Okay, so you open to your teachers. And then.

[Dani Shapiro]

And then I began to think both about my present and my past. In terms of the spiritual lesson. What am I meant to learn here? What is the spiritual takeaway, if you will?

[Oprah Winfrey]

You mean from your life?

[Dani Shapiro]

From my life from this moment. So, for example, very difficult mother who died unhappy. One of the last things my mother said at the age of 80 was I was just getting my life together. And also recognizing the lesson in that.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

Recognizing the lessons from people who are not maybe giving you positive lessons.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yes. Well, that's what I think every death is. Every. You know, you're sitting at the funeral, you're going through the grieving process, but every death, in my opinion, is. There is a wake up call for those of us who remain. Every single one that affects you.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And when we are affected in our. In the body of our country by, you know, horrible things like Sandy Hook and what happened in Oklahoma. It's. It's a wake up call.

[Dani Shapiro]

It's a wake up call. How do you waste time in the face of that? Yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

How do you waste time? Stop wasting time. Yes.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Right. Because each one teaches one. That's what Maya Says that's what we're here to do. When you learn, teach, when you get give. If you can't do that, then there's no reason to be human here on Earth. But I love that question. That's a tweet, tweet moment. What is the spiritual takeaway of your past? And now, what is that spiritual takeaway? So you started asking that question.

[Dani Shapiro]

I started asking the question. And one thing that I realized is that in my past, and particularly in that time in my late teens and twenties, yeah. Life happened to me. Like life happened to me. Now life happens to all of us. And we can't control what we've been given.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

But we absolutely can control what we do with what we're given, always. No matter how harsh, no matter how painful, no matter how difficult. And so the feeling for me, sometimes people will say, danny, you've had a lot of difficult things or tragedy in your life. I don't feel that way. I don't carry that around like some sort of heavy satchel.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Nothing is wasted.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

There is not one experience, no matter how devastating, no matter how torturous it may appear to have been. There's nothing that's ever wasted.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah.

[Dani Shapiro]

And that's.

[Oprah Winfrey]

So that's what you mean by. What is the spiritual takeaway?

[Dani Shapiro]

And that's healing.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Everything gets used. Everything that's ever happened to you can add value.

[Dani Shapiro]

Yeah.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Yeah. One of the questions that Jacob asked you when he was a little boy was, do you believe in God? Your answer now?

[Dani Shapiro]

Yes, I believe in God. I believe in him differently than maybe our ancestors did. I believe that there is an invisible fabric that connects us all and that God is here for all of us, for everyone. I asked Jacob the other night how he feels about being Jewish. And, you know, just. And he said, I like being Jewish, and I like being a lot of other things, too. You know, it was. I wanted him to have his identity. I wanted him to know where he came from. He's going to develop his own sense of what God is because he's watched his mother live in the questions. I brought God into our heart, home, by living in the questions, not trying to come up with an answer.

[Oprah Winfrey]

What do you think happens when we die?

[Dani Shapiro]

That has changed for me over time. What I'm beginning to think is that our soul, our energy, finds its way into another form and that we don't vanish.

[Oprah Winfrey]

And what do you know for sure?

[Dani Shapiro]

I know for sure that if I remain curious, which I think is just about the greatest underrated trait, and if I continue to follow, truly follow the path of my own calling. That that is where I find peace. That is where I find contentment and that inner compass, the feeling and living and speaking from the gut, you know, not from up here. Up here can take you to a lot of places, but from right here doesn't steer me wrong.

[Oprah Winfrey]

You know what I wish for every person who watches us today and experiences the heart of you? That you do exactly what you say at the end of the book. Understand that each of us human, full of longing, reaching out with our whole selves for something impossible to touch. Still we are reaching. Reaching. Thank you. Thank you. Namaste.

[Dani Shapiro]

Namaste.

[Oprah Winfrey]

Namaste.

I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. Rate and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.

Thank you for listening.