Dave: We unconsciously liberate others when we do our work. And what a beautiful, beautiful sentiment and idea. If that doesn’t get you excited to do your work, I’m not sure what will, right? But it’s not about changing others. It’s not about doing it with the intention of making others wrong or bad. It’s about being more light, being more loving, being more compassionate, and really modeling that way of being for others. (gentle music)
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of conversations with spiritually awakening people. We’ve been doing this since early 2010, so there are over 750 episodes. And if you’d like to check out the catalog of previous ones, you can obviously browse around on the YouTube channel, which I encourage you to subscribe to. But they’re well categorized and organized on our website, which is batgap.com. So I suggest you explore that. The whole thing is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. We’re registered as a nonprofit, and if you would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every page of the website. My guest today is Dave Markowitz. Dave is the author of “Refuge for the Weary Empath: The Sacred Work of Healing Ourselves and Our World.” You want to hold that book up, Dave?
Dave: Sure.
Rick: “Refuge for the Weary Empath: The Sacred Work of Healing Ourselves and Our World.” So that’s mainly what we’re going to be talking about today. But before we do that, Dave, just tell us a little bit about yourself, the trajectory of your life that led you to specialize in this area, and we’ll be getting into defining what this area is in great detail as we go along.
Dave: And of course, thank you so much for doing this. This has been on a bucket list for myself, so I’m super excited to be with you and Irene, and everyone who’s listening, so welcome.
Rick: Thank you.
Dave: And thank you. My start, wow, where do I even start? I was doing more traditional medical intuition and energy healing for quite a while in New York City. I realized that even that in and of itself is kind of an oxymoron, “traditional energy healing.” One day I was invited to a friend of a friend’s birthday party. I said, “Sure, why not?” And I hadn’t drunk alcohol in years, and I didn’t realize until I got there it was a bar crawl, so seven bars in seven hours. I’m new in town, I figured, meet some people, forgetting that after a few hours most people are not really in a place to have high-minded conversations. But at the end of the evening, I went to hail a taxi, and it came out something like “Uhhh.” And in my head, I know I’m calling taxi, but what came out of my mouth was very different. When I finally got into a taxi, because that’s a universal symbol, I heard “This is what we’ve been trying to tell you. You’re an empath.” And I said, “Oh, okay.” And before that, people were saying, “You’re an empath, you’re an empath.” And I said, “No, no, no,” whatever. For some reason, I just didn’t own the word. But of course, like many, until you have the experience, it’s just random thoughts at some point. So I had this experience of getting really drunk and not having drunk any alcohol. And in the old days, we used to call it a contact high, but this was pretty severe. And from that moment on, my practice changed. I started attracting people who were very empathic, very sensitive, super intuitive, felt overly responsible, had various aches and pains, and weren’t able to get any results. And I started intuiting in that moment very different information that I had as a more traditional medical intuition and medical intuitive and energy worker, which were things like, “you’re absorbing your mother’s grief,” or “you’re holding your father’s anger.” This was very different from, “you’re mad at your father.” It’s a whole different thing and, of course, a different thing requires different steps to heal. So fortunately, being reasonably intuitive at the time, I was able to intuit a bunch of new steps and became sort of known as “the empath guy.” I put out a book, I’ll just hold that up real briefly, it was called Self-Care for the Self-Aware. And I self-published it and it was on Amazon’s top 20 for 41 consecutive months, which I later heard was completely unheard of. And as a self-published author, the number of reviews were pretty profound. It was kind of about my awakening that we’re talking about here into the world of being an empath and what to do about it. So as time goes on, of course, we learn more and more and then more and more books came out which is now resulting in the most recent one which we mentioned before called Refuge for the Weary Empath. It just came out a few months ago. And it’s kind of a culmination of a lot of things that I learned, but in addition, a lot of new information had come through about being an empath, what it means, and how do we deal with it in this very tense world on edge. What are the best things to do and to not do. So there’s a lot of information that came through and you mentioned that you read it, so we could talk about that for a bit, sure. But that’s a real quick, hopefully quick recap of how I got here.
Rick: Okay, good. So if a person has never really thought about what an empath is, what they will have learned just now from you is that an empath is kind of like a chameleon or a sponge who’s going to take on the qualities of the environment they’re in. Is that the main way you define it or are there more dimensions that should also be brought out?
Dave: It’s probably other things, but that’s the main one that I work with, because I work with people with a lot of physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, energetic blockages. They haven’t been able to get any results, but once we can identify it as something that’s actually been absorbed, we can work with it in a very different way and get results. So it’s sort of: a kind of an X-factor is to understand that we’re all connected and some can be in the presence of others and not really take anything on and they’re just fine and some walk out of any social environment completely drained, wondering what the heck just happened. And so a lot of people also try to delineate between highly sensitive person and empathic. People can put their own meanings on things and that’s fine. I just share my own understanding. Highly sensitive is literal. I’m sensitive to thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences of other people, environments, situations. “An empath” to me takes it one step further and actually embodies it to the point that it becomes a way of being, something we even identify with. Even if it’s taking on grief of the collective unconscious, for example. We can at some point identify as that person, that it’s my responsibility to hold all these things for other people. And while theoretically okay, realistically, practically, it’s quite draining. So if you’re holding that much, obviously it can be draining, but if you’re holding even something from a partner, from a parent, it’s going to affect you at some point. So I help people delineate what’s theirs and what’s not theirs, then I give quality steps to not just prevent that absorption, but also how to heal it in a way that’s aligned for them.
Rick: Yeah. My mother spent quite a few years in mental hospitals when I was an adolescent, and towards the end of that period, I had learned to meditate, and I could go to visit her feeling just really clear and smooth and blissful. And after about 15 minutes in the hospital with her, I would just be discombobulated, you know, just incoherent. I could just, it kind of disassembled the coherence that I was enjoying. Now, I don’t think that would happen, but I wouldn’t want to work in a place like that eight hours a day.
Dave: It’s not for everyone. I just work with a lot of people who do work in those environments. I did a talk once at a hospital, and it was filled with doctors and nurses who have a lot more technical knowledge than I do, and they were all on the edge of their seats because they’d never heard of this kind of thing. Certainly it’s not discussed in medical school, right?
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: Although we might think it should be, but right now it isn’t. So they were really interested in this transfer of energy and how it affects them and why, in 15 minutes, someone like yourself can be so disconnected from their essence.
Rick: Yeah. So, obviously the word empath is very closely related to the word empathy. And my understanding of the word empathy was sort of like, almost synonymous with compassion and feeling love or support or a nurturing quality towards someone who is suffering or having a hard time. Is that a correct definition of empathy? And are those also characteristics of empaths?
Dave: Yes and yes.
Rick: Okay.
Dave: Technically, again, the empath to me is someone that really absorbs it to the level that it’s not even healthy for them.
Rick: Yeah, absorbing it doesn’t sound like a good thing. I mean, you want to be sensitive to others’ suffering, but absorbing it is kind of like, you know, let’s say a lifeguard. If he drowns every time he gets in the water to save somebody, that’s not going to be very helpful. He has to be a good swimmer, you know?
Dave: Extreme example, but yes, absolutely. What I found is a lot of people I work with get some kind of sense of over-responsibility when they’re really young. So I’ll just give you a quick example that’s very personal. When I was young, if I noticed my mother was sad, I would try to cheer her up. So whether that was singing Beatles songs, acting silly, distracting her from something, and when I saw that it worked, some part of me identified as that person, the person responsible for her emotional being. And taken to the next level, I was actually absorbing things and kind of saying, “Okay, I’ll take your grief,” and I was kind of digesting it. And that is very common, even if it’s not that specific example. That whole idea is very common with a lot of people I work with, whether they’re aware of it or not. It’s something that happened when we’re typically really young, and that becomes a way of being, like we said. And then we absorb things and absorb things and absorb things and wonder why we’re not getting better or why we’re exhausted, why we’re depressed. Because a lot of people I work with on the surface appear to have it, you know, all, have it together, so to speak, or they feel they are, at least. And underneath it, there’s this struggle. And this is part of the struggle that we’re talking about here. So it’s kind of insidious that it’s not really obvious, certainly not to our eyes. But once we become aware of it, we can’t sort of unlearn it. We’ve got to just go deeper into it and say, “What’s going on here?” And that’s one of the reasons I found people to become overly responsible. And that creates that sort of one-way sponge-like existence.
Rick: How common are empaths? What percentage of the population would you say?
Dave: I’ve heard around 20%.
Rick: Okay, that’s pretty high.
Dave: I can’t say.
Rick: That’s like at least a billion people.
Dave: Yeah, and more. And a lot don’t even know it, but they have the characteristics. So whether someone uses the word empath or not, I don’t really attach to. I’ve had someone actually come reach out recently and say, “Don’t call me an empath.” And yet they’re coming to me for these kind of things. That’s fine, right? If the words resonate, are different meanings. I actually feel we’re all born empathic, we’re all born highly sensitive and feeling that we’re connected and then the physical senses start to kick in and we get a lot of confirmation from physical beings that we are separate and we don’t feel the connectedness that we’re used to, but we crave it and I think this is another one of those things, we kind of crave that connection, so sometimes we’re absorbing energy to feel less alone.
Rick: Are there many people who think they are empaths but actually aren’t or who are empaths but don’t realize it?
Dave: Probably. Most people I work with have an awareness of it and don’t mind the word, but there’s all kinds of variations, right?
Rick: Yeah. Okay. You know, some of the Eastern traditions, particularly Hinduism, say that we come into this life with the same level of consciousness at which we left the last life, so they would say that babies are not necessarily little saints. They may seem innocent and pure, but may be predisposed to become cruel brutish adults. Would you agree or would you say that babies and young children are “tabula rasas” and who are naturally empathetic and that the pressures and traumas of life numb or dull that quality?
Dave: I’m open to any of the above. I think karma is real. It may or may not be exactly as we understand it, in our human understanding at least. I think some come in predisposed to something and there’s also an empty slate that would become products of those around us. So maybe our karma sets us up in a certain environment where those people could then feel that karma as well. So it’s a lot of yes to that question.
Rick: Okay, this is sort of an aside but I don’t take anything with absolute certainty. Everything to me is hypothetical, which doesn’t mean I’m skeptical about everything, but if you take a scientific approach, scientists give varying amounts of credence to different hypotheses, depending on what they’ve been able to actually ascertain empirically. So, you know, I like these kinds of philosophies. They make a lot of sense, but I’m not saying anybody should adopt them as rigid beliefs.
Dave: Absolutely, that goes for anything that certainly I share today is, you know, try it on, see if it works. If it doesn’t, that’s okay. Yeah, I mean, anyone who claims to know every truth is probably someone you want to run from.
Rick: Some kind of fundamentalist, yeah.
Dave: But you can know enough to have a better life without having to know the secrets of the universe.
Rick: Right. And you can claim to know the secrets of the universe and be a real SOB.
Dave: Also, we’ve seen a number of those, yes.
Rick: Right. So, so far you’ve implied or even said that empathy can be cultivated and that traumas can be healed. So do you think that many spiritual paths and some therapeutic practices can restore our empathy by healing traumas? And one reason I ask is that I know people who’ve been on a spiritual path for over 50 years whom I wouldn’t consider to be very empathetic. Maybe they should have been supplementing their meditation with some kind of therapy or something. What do you think?
Dave: Again, no absolute, but in general, the people I work with have done a fair amount of work on themselves. They’ve gotten to a point where they see things differently and tend to have more compassion and empathy for those in pain than maybe they had when they were kids. That’s certainly the case for myself. I wasn’t raised with that as being a focus. And over time, certainly doing the inner work, the shadow work, like when, for example, I don’t feel I’m a good judge of anyone anymore because I’ve seen my own shadow and I really can’t judge anyone. So people feel that and they feel safe enough to share some deep secrets with me quite often. And I don’t take that lightly. I take that as quite an honor and a blessing. At the same time an acknowledgement that, yeah, because I’ve seen my shadow, I can’t judge others. And there’s a safety that’s connected to that idea. And I don’t think that would have happened had I not had those experiences and done the work to heal them. So from personal experience, I’ll say yes, absolutely.
Rick: As you probably know, Jesus said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” You know?
Dave: Indeed.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: And yet our human minds do it all the time, right? It’s just kind of normal.
Rick: Right, sure.
Dave: Or at least a default setting perhaps for many. But like many things, it really comes down to eventually: is this serving me or is it not serving me? And it wasn’t serving me anymore to do that. And then, like I said, I had those, those dark times, shall we say. And that’s another, Dark Night of the Soul, to me it’s a misnomer. It’s Dark Night of, or Dark Years of the Soul.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: I haven’t met anyone that had just one dark night and came out of it all fuzzy.
Rick: True. I’m also reminded of the Native American saying of not judging someone until you’ve walked a mile in his moccasins, you know.
Dave: Absolutely.
Rick: But this thing about Dark Years of the Soul is interesting because I look at the whole path of my life over the decades as being one of basically increasing happiness and fulfillment and good qualities. But I can sort of flash back to any point, a decade, five decades, whatever, and at that point I might have felt pretty happy and thought that things were going well, but by contrast with now, I feel like, “Oh my God, I was absolutely bonkers.” I’m not sure how that relates to our discussion, but something you said made me think of it.
Dave: We learn through duality and contrast.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: I think that part’s hard to argue, for me anyway. So we have to have these darker times to really appreciate the light. And so, you know, if you like the word “bonkers” and you want to call a part of your past “bonkers,” I’m all for it, okay? As long as it’s not a judgment kind of “bonkers,” right? Because we can’t judge the past and really move forward clearly. It’s another block, I see a lot of people, they’re kind of judging what is, judging what was, judging themselves, expecting to move forward. There’s no space to move forward when you’re judging who you’ve been. So I really recommend it.
Rick: Yeah, no I usually feel like I did the best I could, but by contrast with now it’s like you know: okay if I’m gonna have a next life, I’d like to be in my current state of maturity going through high school.
Dave: I’m with you, I’m so with you.
Rick: On that note, how can difficulties and traumas be conducive to our evolution in ways that an easier life might not be?
Dave: That’s that duality in contrast. Without that we can’t really know and appreciate the fullness of life. There’s a phrase from the Kabbalah called “bread of shame” it’s referring to someone who receives a lot of money as an inheritance and hasn’t worked for it. They’re going to have a very different relationship to money than someone who has worked for it. Just one example of many, and maybe a superficial one, but you get the idea. We have to, in my understanding, we have to go through these challenging times to learn, to learn about ourselves, learn about life, learn about others. Oprah Winfrey, on occasion she would have some celebrity, but a lot of times she would have someone that’s been through hell and back. And those are the people that always inspired me and I think inspired her, because she had her own version of that, of course. People who have seen the worst, experienced the worst and come out of it somehow still connected to the light and able to share that wisdom, that’s a lot more inspiring than someone who is kind of born enlightening, born enlightened, to me anyway. Not that someone, if they were born enlightened, is a wrong or bad thing of course, but through that duality and contrast, it’s an important thing to remember when we’re going through hell that this is here for some reason. I might not know what that reason is right now, but I think if yourself or many people that are listening and watching were able to think of some of the worst experiences that they had, I would really, not bet, but I would certainly conclude or hypothesize that some good came out of it.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: Something powerful came out of it.
Rick: I mean, you think of people like Elie Wiesel or Etty Hillesum or people like that who actually went through the Holocaust and kind of came out with such wisdom and saintliness. Or I think in Etty’s case, she didn’t come out, you know, she didn’t make it out, but she wrote some really profound stuff about what she was experiencing objectively in that situation.
Dave: Viktor Frankl, of course.
Rick: Yeah, there you go.
Dave: Nelson Mandela. I mean, these are popular names and should be for what they’ve gone through. But there are a lot of people that had that experience and aren’t well known, so let’s not forget those either. Okay.
Rick: So, do you think that everyone possesses some degree of every quality, empathy, narcissism, all the different qualities, positive and negative, but they just exist in differing proportions in people, certain ones outweighing or overshadowing the others?
Dave: Definitely. I think what we’re doing here is getting in touch with our wholeness. I haven’t met anyone who’s really healed without accepting that they have a shadow self, that they have a lot of fear, anger, grief that’s been repressed, which is part of how I define shadow. I look at it as the whole enchilada, as it were, as the phrase goes. We have capacity for anything. Even someone who is very evolved might show some narcissistic tendencies. Now, that might not be considered a narcissist per se, but the tendency might be there. And the converse might be true as well. So I kind of look at it as a scale. I kind of look at a zero to a hundred. Zero as being total anger, ability to hurt others, not think twice, hundred being completely enlightened, if you want to use that word, and all these little notches between from one to 99, right? So not that it can be quantified, but just for an example. Every one of those is a way of being, it’s an experience, it’s a feeling, it’s a thought. Granted, it’s probably in the billions or uncountable numbers if you really break it down, but just for ease of visualization. And until we really get that we can be anywhere on that scale, given a certain situation, I think we’re missing something. And what I’ve noticed is we kind of get squashed, right? So we might be born a certain way, and then we kind of get squashed. And then our sadness isn’t welcome, so we squash that. Our happiness isn’t welcome, we squash that. And we’re kind of living in the middle, like 40 to 60 a lot. And we judge everything beyond those in either direction as wrong or bad or not safe. And I really feel like we need to get in touch with all parts of ourselves to really move forward. So that’s what the work is about.
Rick: I was walking in the woods this morning talking to a friend on the phone and he was quoting Carl Jung as having said that the brighter the light, the more clear the shadows or more distinct the shadows, which I could see as I was walking through the woods because it was a sunny day and the tree trunks were casting shadows. So that’s an interesting thing. It’s like, as the light becomes brighter, metaphorically speaking, in our subjective development, does it illuminate our blind spots?
Dave: Ideally.
Rick: Ideally, because yeah, I mean, I’ve met people who seem to be extremely bright, remarkably so, who seem to have some pretty serious blind spots still and be oblivious to them.
Dave: We’re seeing it on a big stage, you know. People who were really revered for their spiritual awareness, their vision.
Rick: Yeah, famous gurus and people like that you may be referring to.
Dave: Yeah, we’ll leave the names out, but yes. And so, they’re not fully integrated enough to own that part. And I really feel like what we don’t own tends to own us. So if we we don’t own our anger and our fear and our grief, those own our experiences. So the more light we can put upon them, I think, the healthier we’re going to be, the more vibrant we’re going to be, more intuitive, just, I would think, more happier, at least more content.
Rick: Yeah. You write about how personal transformation ripples beyond the individual, touching families and communities and all of humanity. And I’ve always been interested in the societal implications of spiritual development, how if enough people cultivated higher states of consciousness and healthy personalities, the world would be transformed. You mentioned that 20% of the world’s population might be empaths, but obviously that percentage is not high enough, or maybe their empathic qualities are not strong enough, because the world is still a mess. What percentage would we need for profound global transformation? Do you think that there might be a tipping point at which a dramatic phase transition could occur?
Dave: I’ll know it when I see it. Having not seen it, I can’t say. But I think it’s important that we all do our individual work, and that’s one of the things, like you mentioned, that I think can inspire us a little bit more to do our individual work is knowing how, or at least that it can affect other people. And that ripple effect that, in some ways, it’s all we have because you can’t really convince anyone to do something. Like how many times did someone give you a book or recommend a movie and you’re like, “okay, thanks,” and you don’t read the book or see the movie. It has to be something that you’re called to. I mean Marianne Williamson said it beautifully. She said, one: we unconsciously liberate others when we do our work and what a beautiful, beautiful sentiment and idea and if that doesn’t get you excited to do your work I’m not sure what will, right? But it’s not about changing others, not about doing it with the intention of making others wrong or bad, it’s about being more light, being more loving, being more compassionate and really modeling that way of being for others. And to me that’s where the juice is, because like we said, you can’t convince other people to do or be anything. You can’t say to someone, “Stop being an idiot!” and expect them to stop being what we’re perceiving as an idiot. But we can model that. So it makes the transformation on a global scale way more tedious, a lot more time-consuming. But, you know, if you think about some of the things that woke you up, so for example, I eat vegan lifestyle. I read a book, gosh, 20-something years ago and it got me thinking about it, but the old habit said, “Well, let’s get a hamburger.” And I did, and I was -same burger type, same burger I’d ordered many times before and I started feeling it going down my neck and actually causing pain and it got so bad —I was alone— I thought I was gonna die because I wasn’t gonna be able to breathe. It’s like when a snake eats a mouse you can sort of feel it and see it go down their body. My body was smart enough to throw it up, and I thought about it and I said, “Wow, my body took on some of the information from that book. I can’t go back.” So in a way, I was kind of forced to change my diet through an experience. But had someone said to me, “You should be vegan. You shouldn’t do that.” I wouldn’t have listened. I wouldn’t have heard it. So I had to have my own experience. So to your point, we have our own experiences of something better for us as individuals. It may not be the best thing for everyone. I’m not saying everyone should be vegan. saying we should find what works for us as individuals and just radiate some different kind of vibration other than, “you should,” ’cause that’s what we heard when we were kids a lot of the time and I didn’t take it very well. I don’t know about you, dude. When you were told, you know, you should do this or you should do that.
Rick: Usually, man, I interpreted that to mean I shouldn’t do this or I should do that.
Dave: Absolutely. That’s part of the teen things. But even that goes back. So, someone did a study, I don’t remember how or when, but I heard about it. And if I’m wrong, or if it’s made up, I’ll have to own that. But they said, we hear the word “no” 56 more times than we hear the word “yes” in our first few years of life. Or some version of no, like: don’t do that, don’t do that. Whether it’s 56 or 50,000 or two, it doesn’t matter. We hear it enough that we feel squashed. Like we said about the emotional capacity, right? We feel squashed. And by the time we’re teenagers, we’re sick of it. So people think that teenagers rebelling is a normal thing. Well, even normal has a reason. And for myself, at least, I got tired of being told what to do, what to think, and how to do this, and when to be home. And so, I did my fair share of rebelling.
Rick: Regarding the ripple effect, I think it has– you know that poem by John Donne, “No man is an island apart from the main. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” I think that it’s not just propagated by surface level interactions, like a bus driver being friendly to people as they get on the bus, and that kind of thing is important. But I think that at a deeper level, we are actually intimately connected. Even if we happen to live in a cabin in the woods or something, we’re connected to everybody. And there’s a sort of a mutual trading of influence or propagation of influence. Everybody’s sending out their own ripples in a common field. And that field takes on the collective influence of eight billion people and has different qualities according to what the aggregate of all those influences is. And all we have to do is look at the world and get a sense of what the aggregate is. But if we would like to have world peace or less famine or all those other good things, I think that, well, to use another analogy, if we want a forest to be green, each tree has to be healthy. You can’t just spray paint the forest and expect it all to be a healthy green forest. And if enough trees are green because they’re healthy, then the whole forest will look that way. So usually, we use economic or political or other kinds of measures to try to change things, and we need to work on those levels, yes, but they never seem to be sufficient. So you see what I’m getting at here. I think we all need to cultivate the ability to radiate an influence that contributes to the upliftment of the whole world, humanity.
Dave: I think that’s what we’re doing, part of what we’re doing here anyway, and everyone’s way of doing that could look very different from the so-called norm, or whatever. There’s different types of warriors, for example. Some will march in the streets, and some will write books, and some will pray, and some will meditate, and some will…
Rick: Some will be dancers or baseball players or…
Dave: Exactly. Yeah. So we all have our piece of the puzzle, and I think it’s important that we… well, I can’t even say it’s important because ultimately, if we don’t get it right this time, we’ll get it right the next time. So I just feel like we should all, could all do what we can. Like I said, be the greenest tree you can be.
Rick: Speaking of singing Beatles songs to your mother, you know, “we’re all doing what we can,” right?
Dave: And, “all you need is love.”
Rick: Right. But if you’ve been “carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.“ So the pace of change is increasing exponentially, and I think that will be even more the case with AI, more than people even realize. I mean, there’s something on the horizon coming at us pretty fast that is bigger and more dramatic than people are anticipating. Do you think, are you seeing, since you deal with a lot of empathic people, that they are finding it increasingly difficult to exist in this world, to cope with the pace of change? And people don’t want to numb out. Ideally, I think we’d all like to be more sensitive, but it seems to me that we need to cultivate more strength simultaneously to counterbalance the increased sensitivity, so that sensitivity doesn’t make us more vulnerable. That’s more of a statement than a question, but I’m sure you can say a lot about that.
Dave: I concur. Yeah, we can’t, I mean, I can’t control what happens with AI. I can control, to some degree, at least I’m under the illusion that I can control some of my own growth. And if I become stronger in my energy, more grounded and more connected, I feel like I’ll be always guided to what I need to do or be in relationship to what’s happening external of myself. And that’s kind of what I teach, like what is each moment presenting? Not just what is it happening. Not just what is happening, but also how is it affecting you? What is it bringing up for each person I work with? That’s where the gold is. Some might feel really intimidated by what’s likely going to occur and that’s understandable. So we don’t make that wrong, but we also look at it, where did you feel intimidated before? What makes you more susceptible to this than someone sitting next to you? So we each have our different fears or concerns about what might be happening and ideally, we address that on a very individual basis.
Rick: So, let’s spend a few minutes talking about how to become more discerning, more grounded, better able to remain open without being overwhelmed. In my life, it’s exercise, meditation, healthy diet, plenty of sleep, all that kind of stuff. But like you’ve been saying, different strokes for different folks. Those things there might be pretty good universal prescriptions. But what else? When people come into your office and they’re sensitive and empathetic people and they’re just feeling like, “Oh, God, the world is too much with me,” how do you guide them or enable them or have them enable themselves to be less permeable to the stresses and tensions of the world, without losing sensitivity?
Dave: So the things you mentioned, obviously, I think most would agree those are important things and helpful things. One of the things that’s not spoken about very much is community. It’s very hard to heal, much less get anything done on one’s own. As much as the ego might like to convince us that we can, or that we have, we’ve worked with people and should work with people, right? So, one of the benefits of working with myself, or really anyone who understands what we’re talking about and can work from that place, is the ability to see and hear and understand other people’s challenges. There’s a connection that’s immediately formed and it gives voice to much deeper thoughts than we typically entertain. I’ll just give you a quick example. Years back I was working with someone. We were co-leading groups. And she said to me,- now granted, the question might seem weird, but I’m gonna preface with: I had a very strong trust and belief in this person. And when she would ask me something, it would be received differently than if someone else asked me the exact same question. And she looked at me and she said, “Why are you so funny?” And I, again, because it was her, I really kind of felt into the question and what came out of me is not something that my mind would have thought. It’s something that my soul needed to purge. And I said, “Because I have a fear that if I’m not, you’re not going to love me.” I think I said, “No one will love me.” Actually, “I have a fear that if I’m not funny, no one will love me.” And as it’s coming out, I’m going, “Wow, that was pretty profound.” So that’s not going to happen by yourself. Your mind does not want you to see your deepest aches and pains and the whys behind these things, with reason. And having a strong connection, romantic partner, therapist, family, community that you trust is so important, especially as things get more tense, right? We need to have these community relations. So I would add that, I mean there’s lots of things we can probably discuss, but that’s the one that I’ve found is both super profound, but also not really discussed a lot. The people I work with tend to be kind of loners, because it’s very painful to be with others because they’re, they’re picking up energy from them, right? Until I teach them how not to do that. So they have a lot of solitary living, which is fine, if that’s what you need. I’m not here to judge that. But at some point we have to step outside of that and challenge ourselves to be in the world. Not head under sand, but really how can I be? What is my best use of my time, energy, money, etc., my gifts? And how can I affect myself and others in a positive way?
Rick: Sure. And you might have to be in the world to earn a living. Let’s say you’re a policeman or something and you’re dealing with the most stressful situations all day long, or going home at Thanksgiving and having to eat with Uncle Harry who’s kind of a political nutcase and thinks the earth is flat. What did you say earlier in your last statement? Something about being able to appreciate where people are coming from or some such thing, see the world through their eyes, or, I think that’s what you’re getting at. And perhaps that would make you more patient with Uncle Harry or the policeman with the punk kid who’s always causing trouble or whatever.
Dave: If that’s the case, we want to know why the kid’s acting out. They’re not acting out just for fun of it, they’re in pain. And in this case, Uncle Harry’s probably in a lot of pain too. And if I can speak to that part of him, there’s a chance that we can actually connect. If I’m judging him, making him wrong, calling him a fool, it’s not helping. In fact, it might actually worsen the situation.
Rick: Well, this is kind of relevant to the current situation because there’s a lot of polarity in the country right now. And I know there are some groups who try to build bridges and get people together in the same room who have different political viewpoints and all and have civil conversations, and that’s great. It’s challenging also. In my case, I definitely have fairly strong opinions about a lot of things, but I try to also visualize why people who have opposite opinions see things the way they do, maybe on common issues like gun control or abortion or something, any of those things that we all argue about, and it helps a little bit. I don’t know, what do you think?
Dave: Maybe that little bit is just enough right now.
Rick: In a way, variety is the spice of life and the more rich the nutrients in a forest, let’s say, the more diverse the fauna and flora are going to be. Like the Amazon rainforest, there’s just going to be so much proliferation of diversity. And so I wouldn’t expect us to evolve into a society in which everybody believes the same thing or likes the same things or anything else, but maybe it comes down to being able to find harmony in diversity, for diversity not to be a source of conflict but just to be a natural feature of the nature of life.
Dave: Perfectly said. The only thing I would add to that is the example that you used, being in the forest, you’re seeing all different types of life, they’re not fighting with each other. Even if one says, “I need to be this,” and the other one says, “I need to be that,” like, “I need to be this flower,” or “I need to be this bush.”
Rick: “I’m hungry and you’re lunch.”
Dave: Yeah. So I think it behooves us to hold a larger perspective than we’re typically taught to do. And yes, of course it’s challenging because our ego wants to be right. And anyone’s ego can find evidence to prove to them that they’re right about something, about anything. And we’ve, you’ve heard these people, and you’ve heard yourself, and I’ve heard myself, right? And yet, can we hold it all in brackets? Can we be as loving and compassionate with the person that disagrees with us as we are with the person that agrees with us? To me, that’s the real growth.
Rick: Yeah, you talk about narcissists quite a bit in your book, and about a month ago I interviewed Mark Vicente, who just made a movie called The Narcissist’s Playbook, and one of the characteristics of narcissists seems to be the inability to admit they’re wrong, and to blame any mistakes that they might be accused of on other people. Whereas, by contrast, if someone can say, “Oh yeah, I guess I’m wrong about that,” or “You might be right,” or “That’s a perfectly different but valid way of seeing it,” and “Ooh, I really screwed up here, I’m not going to blame anybody, and that was my mistake,” it would be real healthy to see more people in positions of leadership who could function that way.
Dave: Agreed, and one of the reasons why narcissism is so big, I think, is to kind of put a light on it, like you were saying earlier. It’s a shadow element, it’s a result of a lot of pain, and I think when people can remember that, we might have maybe a little bit more compassion for someone who’s narcissistic.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: And maybe that’s enough for now. I’m not saying you have to invite them over for dinner or be the best friend, but we do have to understand on a deeper level their traumas and what got them to that place. And eventually, maybe it’ll be a test for narcissism before getting into public office.
Rick: That would be good. And also maybe a test on seeing whether you understand what the Constitution says and other kinds of important issues.
Dave: Basics.
Rick: Yeah, it’s a basic civics course. So you propose that empathic overwhelm is rooted in four deep original wounds and that healing ourselves, healing involves reconnecting with Source, the body, authentic feeling, and one’s own nature. So I guess a first question I have here, and we could go through these four wounds if you want is, what’s the difference between Source and one’s own nature? Because I tend to think of those as more or less the same thing. But maybe one is more individual and one is more universal. I don’t know.
Dave: That’s probably a good answer. You answered your own question. I love that.
Rick: Okay, yeah. Okay, and before we move on to the four wounds, you describe yourself as a Source intuitive. What is that?
Dave: People intuit different energies. Some say their grandmothers are with them all the time, or I have a friend named Lee who channels a group called The Zs.
Rick: Right.
Dave: They’re just different sources.
Rick: The Lee energy guy, right.
Dave: Yeah, Lee Harris.
Rick: Lee Harris.
Dave: Everyone has their Source, pun semi-intended, of information beyond, or metaphysical reception of that and we call it intuition. So when I started hearing things in my head that were beyond my own scope of actual knowledge, I got very inquisitive. Where is this coming from? And I don’t know if it would behoove us to go into the specific stuff, but eventually I realized or was told it was Source energy that was informing me of all these things that I needed to know.
Rick: It’s interesting to go into the specifics. Feel free. Well, like the first one you mentioned when you got in the taxi cab and you you had a contact high from hanging out in bars even though you hadn’t drunk and some voice came to you and said, what is it?
Dave: That was Source energy saying “I told you” or “this is what we’ve been trying to tell you” something I heard. Yeah. Yeah, so you know, Neale Donald Walsch had a book called, “Conversations with God,” right? It was about 30 years ago now where all of a sudden that became an okay thing to admit, right? I don’t use that word “God” because it has a lot of connotations that I grew up with that didn’t really seem as loving as I understand Source to be right now, and also, part of homage to Wayne Dyer, one of my favorite teachers, and he used the word “Source” to describe all that is, or God, or a universe, or that kind of thing. So eventually, I realized that’s what I was hearing. And all the information was magnificent. I mean, it led me to writing books, it leads me to doing particular workshops, it leads me to working with people, you know, in one capacity where I’m hearing exactly what needs to be shared and how, or do we need to do some energy healing work, or do we need to coach a person through something, or do we need to empower someone, do I need to be extra empathic with the person, like, so in other words, I let it run my life as much as I can because I’m human and I still have an ego. I wish I could say I allow Source to run everything in my life, but it’s gotten to the point where it’s more and more, we could say that. And I’m just a lot more content in my life with, you know, people, situations, environment, my work, my books, my workshops. So I hope that answered your question.
Rick: There’s actually a saying in the Vedic literature someplace which is, “Brahman is the charioteer.” “Brahman” meaning wholeness or Source, we could say Source, the totality, you know, cosmic intelligence or whatever. That’s actually driving the chariot, even though we might think we’re the charioteer, we’d be generally better off getting in the back seat and enjoying the ride.
Dave: I think that is true, yeah. But, you know, we’re human. We have our human resistance even to things. So just a quick example, I lived and worked and did everything in New York or in or around New York City for the first 45 years of my life. I thought I had a pretty good life, certainly I had amazing friends. And Spirit, Source, started speaking to me through other people that it was time to move west. And my initial reaction as a typical New Yorker was, “You gotta be kidding me.” I didn’t make any, I was like, “No way, no, no, no, no, no, no.” And about two months later, I was living on the West Coast. My initial reaction, very human, “I don’t want to change, things are good.” But I gave in to that eventually. And it proved to be one of the most profound things I could have ever done for myself. I came out to West Coast, I met Maria, who is now my wife here. My business exploded, I wrote more books. Everything seemed to vibe a lot better from my makeup here on the West Coast than it did in New York City. So it was in my best interest on multiple levels, but my human self was initially said, “Oh, hell no.” So even if our initial human self says “hell no” to something, I think it’s important to kind of sit with it, really feel into it and surrender, like you said, to the chariot driver. Someone or something knows more about what’s best for me than I do. And that’s a really humble place to get to and really challenging because again the ego wants to be in control. But I’ve noticed when I work with that enough and let that go, I can create, co-create is probably more accurate, co-create some really wonderful things in my life and for the people I work with.
Rick: So I have a two-part question. One is: how do you cultivate, how does one cultivate more of this? And second is: how do you distinguish between genuine, deeply inspired intuitions, which would be worth following or paying attention to, and whims? You know, because a lot of times people just, “Oh, I feel like I’m feeling moved to go and do that,” you know, and sometimes it’s terrible stuff. How do you know whether it’s a genuine impulse of truth which would be conducive to your betterment and the betterment of all, or it’s like the devil on your other shoulder, you know, whispering in your ear and giving you bad advice?
Dave: Once again, you answered your question. If it’s for the betterment of myself and/or for all, it’s probably something beyond my ego.
Rick: But people rationalize. They think, “Okay, I want to do this and it’ll be good for me, good for other people,” and it ends up not being sometimes.
Dave: Humans have an amazing ability to justify anything. I think we’ve seen that. To me, it’s more of a sensation. To answer your first question a little bit, in addition, it’s a surrender of Dave thinking he knows what’s best for himself or for others. It’s a conscious, consistent practice of surrender. It’s not just just like one day, oh, I’m just not gonna do that anymore. It doesn’t really, not in my experience anyway, it hasn’t really been effective. It’s a consistent questioning and honoring of a deeper feeling and really sitting with it to really see is this in my or others’ best interests? Is it the more loving thing? Is it the more compassionate thing?
Rick: So it sounds like you introspect or contemplate a little bit. You don’t act impulsively or capriciously, you kind of dive into it for a while and at a deeper level to see if it–
Dave: Especially with big decisions, like for example, that move. But when I’m working with someone, I feel like I drop into that connected place really fast and I’m hearing things that I, Dave, have no ability to actually know about the other person, with their permission, of course. I always ask for permission in working with someone. So I know something else is happening beyond my conscious awareness. And when I can surrender and, knock wood, I probably worked with over 10,000 people in my few years doing this. Well, 30 years doing this, give or take. It’s led to very positive changes for most people.
Rick: That’s good. Do people sometimes put you in an awkward position of wanting you to use your intuitive gifts to tell them whether they should get married or divorced or, you know, personal things that you really don’t feel comfortable advising them on?
Dave: Not as much. Initially a little bit, and that’s more of a work of a “psychic” than a medical intuitive. And I, you know, I honor the question, of course, but I also turn the question back and listen to Source on what question can I ask of them that will get them deeper into their truth versus me just randomly answering it. Because there’s a potential of me just answering it, then it’s coming from my experience. You know, when you ask someone for advice a lot of times, they’re saying what they would do in your situation. I don’t do that. I really try to get Dave out of the way and listen for what’s best for the person I’m working with.
Rick: Okay. So, these four original wounds, would you like to talk about that for a few minutes?
Dave: Sure.
Rick: What are they?
Dave: I’ll just backtrack a little bit. As a medical intuitive, I was always concerned or interested most in what are the causative factors of pains and illness. I grew up the son of a pharmacist where you just took a medication for anything and not really addressing what’s actually causing the problem to begin with. So I had that whole mindset to begin with of “show me something deeper.” And a lot of times we can trace particular pains, illness, life situations to a recent event. And what I’ve seen is, there’s always something beyond that, that happened when they were younger that sort of formulated the space to allow what’s happening now to happen. So I learned about ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, and that answered some of the question that said, “Okay, well if you’re the child of, you know, there’s like nine or ten different categories of different types of traumas that you might experience as a child…”
Rick: Alcoholic parents or whatever.
Dave: Exactly, divorce, you know, a lot of different things. And those are more likely to lead to certain things. Well, I still said, “What’s underneath even that?” Because that is an answer, but I wanted something even deeper. And then I started hearing these things in meditation that just made so much sense and I just kind of formulated it into what I call the four original wounds. And there are different types of wounds that we experience in the first few years of life that set up patterns for later things to develop. So one of them is the spiritual disconnection. We are taught that we’re not connected to spirit from early on, whether we go to a religious school or something like that, it’s just kind of the norm that we don’t typically hear, at least my generation didn’t hear things like, yeah, of course you’re connected to Source, you’re connected to Spirit, you’re connected to the Universe. It wasn’t a very common conversation in my experience. When we’re born, there’s a separation. There’s a perceived, or a little bit after birth, of course, where we perceive the separation from Source at some point. Born connected, I think we’re connected prior to birth, prior to conception we’re connected, and part of that duality and contrast manifests in separation and then back to a oneness. So we kind of go from a oneness to an individuation to a oneness. The oneness is pre-birth, a sensation of oneness in utero, and then when we’re born we don’t feel that oneness anymore. We begin to individuate. All of our senses accentuate that, and we also have a perceived disconnection from Source. That creates a spiritual void that we later on try to fill. Whether it’s studying various religions or meditating in the Himalayas or whatever it might be, whatever someone’s practice is, walking the El Camino or whatever it is, we try to fill that void based on that wounding, that separation. We try to get back to a oneness with the Source. So that spiritual separation is really profound, obviously, and that’s just one of the four, so I’ll just briefly mention the other ones.
Rick: Let me make a quick comment on that before you go on. Some say that it’s necessary to go from oneness into diversity in order for oneness to become a living reality. So I guess it says in the Bible or someplace, “I am one, may I become many.” God says this. And so the whole mess begins of the diversity of creation and all that. But that enables, actually, the eventual evolution of beings like us and others, of course, who could embody that primordial oneness, incorporate that into one’s awareness, and yet function through the five senses as an individual, doing, thinking, loving, feeling, all this stuff which, in a way, is kind of more than we started out with as just primordial oneness with no ripples. Yeah.
Dave: Exactly, that whole duality and contrast thing we learn through experience. We learn about individuation to then learn that we’re actually all connected. So the spiritual disconnection is one of them, or the perception of a spiritual disconnection. I think we all know that we’re never actually disconnected. Some of the other ones are physical. We spend nine months in utero, we have a physical connection. As soon as we’re born, we feel all alone. And this leads to a lot of sensations of fear, leads us to seek safety in a lot of different – throughout our lives, whether that’s a certain relationship or a certain house or a certain income, it kind of can boil down to this sense of not feeling safe in the world, because as soon as we’re born we don’t feel safe. Personally I was put into one of those incubators for about two weeks when I was first born. So I had no physical touch and it created some traumas. I mean I felt pretty alone, right? I went from this oneness feeling to “where’d everybody go?” Right? And even other people, and I’m not saying you have to hold on to your baby until they’re 21 years old or something, but that physical disconnection creates a lot of fear and that can run a lot of our lives later on as well. The book explains it in much more detail than we’re talking about here, but just to give brief ideas into it. But again, the duality and contrast. We go from oneness in utero, individuation. Eventually we seek to create a sense of oneness again in the physical realm, whether it’s romantic relationships or whatever it is. But again, it definitely has an effect on our sense of: are we feeling safe in the world? The third one is an emotional void that happens. We’re born and we typically hear things like, “Oh, how cute!” or we’re surrounded by unconditional love by our parents, hopefully, family members, etc. And at some point, you know, mom goes and takes care of our sibling and dad goes back to work and we’re kind of wondering where did everybody go. And that’s traumatic. We don’t really feel as loved as we used to feel. Our love becomes conditional, you know? Finish your food before you get dessert or whatever. Like we learn all these conditional versions of love and that creates emotional voids that we also spend the rest of our lives trying to fill but don’t or can’t. And the fourth one is actually accumulation, where we learn to be other than who we are. We learn to be certain things to get that love. So I mentioned earlier I used to absorb energy from my mother. Part of that was to get love from her. So we lose our sense of authentic self and then at some point whether we’re 30 or 90 we wake up and say “wow I haven’t really been authentic with myself. I haven’t shared this part of my life,” or “I haven’t even been true to myself about x, y, and z.” As we do the deeper work, we see all these places that we were inauthentic. So these four wounds create these, I just look at them as voids. And we spend a lot of our lives trying to fill those voids with things that typically don’t work. And we’ve all heard that song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places.” I think a lot of us can relate to that. Even in great relationships, we might get some love, but is it really the unconditional love that we get from Source energy? So we always have that craving for unconditional love, for safety, for emotional freedom, and for authenticity. And these are end results of these wounds that happen in the first couple of years of life, that have an effect on our physiology, our mindset, our emotional capacity, our sense of safety in the world, our relative success or lack thereof. And I really feel that if we trace those back and work with those wounds that really formed really early on, we’re getting to a much deeper layer of whatever might be ailing someone.
Rick: So maybe you’ll say yes to both of these, as you have to a number of my questions so far. But would you say that working with the wounds and healing the wounds somehow, and maybe you can elaborate on how that can be done, enables you to get more clearly in touch with Source energy, or would you advocate ways of diving right into Source energy and by virtue of that having your wounds heal? It’s kind of a cart-horse situation, but maybe it can work both ways.
Dave: It can work both ways. What I’ve found is if we do the work we create space for things to happen. Kind of like what we were saying earlier, if we’re judging our past there’s a lot of energy in that, but if we’re really embracing the past, embracing the present, I think we can move forward with more success. It creates space for intuitive knowledge, for Source energy, for unconditional love to come in. So yeah, there’s some seeking to it, there’s some manifesting that might be part of it. But what I think a lot of us don’t do is dig in the weeds and start pulling those out. We just plant a lot of seeds and if you use the garden analogy, that garden’s going to look like a mess if you’re only doing one of the two. So we have to plant the seeds and pull the weeds.
Rick: Yeah, I alluded to this earlier when I mentioned that I’ve known people who have been meditating for many decades, even a couple hours a day, and yet still seem to be kind of messed up in their personal lives. And in the meditation movement I had been a part of, it was recommended that all you really need to do is transcend, settle into the Source, settle into pure consciousness, and then like watering the root of a tree, all the leaves and branches and everything else will flourish automatically. You don’t have to mess around with the leaves and branches. But I’ve come to question that teaching because it just hasn’t panned out for a lot of people. And it seems like there need to be supplementary things that are actually going to deal with the fruits and the branches and the leaves, and that can accelerate the growth if you do both.
Dave: Do whatever you can, whatever you’re guided, whatever you feel is going to help you. I can’t tell someone what to do, what not to do, but I can point out things that work for myself and my clients. Getting out of our own way is a big part of it.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: And sometimes meditation, even like just for example, I learned meditation was about, you know, seeking a silent mind. And I’ve been meditating almost every day for probably a few decades, and I have very few instances of actual silent mind. So I can look at that and I can continue doing it, which I can do, but at the same time I I can kind of question it. Maybe the intention wasn’t really that pure. Maybe silent mind isn’t the goal. Maybe having a mind that can work with Source, for example, just, you know, random possibilities. The thing about, for example, the non-duality movement. I get it and I’m not saying it’s wrong or bad, but what happens is: a lot of people I work with are escaping “what is” to try to get to a place of non-duality, assuming that place will be much more peaceful. And the logic, you know, seems there, but at the same time, how successful is it? Like you said, there are people who are doing all the work and not really feeling the effects of it. There’s a humility and a necessary surrender to get to those places. I don’t really… I see a lot more trying to escape than trying to embrace. I want to escape my pain. Maybe non-duality will be a route. Maybe. I want to escape my pain. Maybe meditation will be a route. Maybe. It can go on and on and on. What I found, in doing this for three decades is, escape doesn’t work. You can’t escape “what is” because it is “what is.” But you can go deeper into it. You can actually embrace it. It’s challenging. It’s not easy. But by embracing life as it is, we’re kind of saying thank you to the universe and not arguing with it anymore. And I think we know that what we resist and what we argue with tends to persist. So when we’re really embracing this is “what is,” right now I’m in pain, it sucks, and I’d I’d like to be out of pain. And this is “what is.” And maybe this pain is here to teach me something. Maybe I can lean into it. And I work with a lot of people — and this is very difficult to do on one’s own. So if you try it based on what I’m saying and don’t have the same effects, bear with yourself. It’s not anything wrong that you’re doing. It’s a function of mind. The mind doesn’t want you to see the deepest parts and the pained parts. But in a safe container, I guide people through their pain. What is the pain actually speaking to you about? What is it saying that you’ve repressed? And then by embracing that, by really honoring it as it is, you’re actually loving it. Love is the highest vibration. It’s the transformative element of all growth. You’re actually loving your pain, which sounds a little weird. I get it. And yet I see time after time when we can do that, not only does the pain go away, but it doesn’t come back. We learn something in the process because the pain is a message. The symptom is a message saying you’re doing something that you could be doing better. If we look at it like an enemy that has to be fought at all costs, we’re going to add more fight to the process.
Rick: Yeah, I mean, to take an obvious example, you put your hand on a hot stove, you feel pain, it’s a good thing you do because otherwise you might not take your hand away. And there have been people who have conditions where they don’t feel pain and they can seriously injure themselves and I’m sure that that might apply to emotional pain too. It’s… it’s kind of like, not a punishment, but a message that something needs attention.
Dave: Perfectly said, yeah. And speaking of that kind of thing, there’s also a lot of – this came to me this morning, I wasn’t really sure why but I guess I’m gonna just insert it here. There’s all kinds of theories about a new habit takes X amount of time to learn. 90 days, 30 days, we hear all that all the time.
Rick: Tennis serve or whatever, you got to do it a lot of times or, you know,
Dave: Probably true.
Rick: Malcolm Gladwell’s book about the 10,000 hours and the Beatles and Bill Gates and
Dave: Well, I’ll give it — you just gave an example. If you touch a hot stove you learn in a millisecond —
Rick: pretty quick —
Dave: never to do that again. Mm-hmm. So I think we learn from the amount of pain. Granted, like the tennis serve is a different kind of thing, but as far as like our emotional growth kind of thing, spiritual growth, we learn that based on pain. If something hurts enough we won’t do it anymore. Let’s give a quick example. When I first moved into this house I went down the basement I didn’t realize it was kind of a low ceiling and I hit my head. It wasn’t extremely painful but I felt kind of silly and that never happened before. I’m not that tall like 5’11” on a good day. And I realized after a few months I just thought about it, I said, “How come I’m not hitting my head anymore?” And I watched myself, sort of watched myself walk down the stairs, and I realized when I got to that point, I just did this every time. So the pain taught me to do something differently, and it became ingrained in my unconscious that I do it without asking ever again. So when we have situations that we’re trying to change, and we hear someone say it takes X amount, and it doesn’t happen for us in that amount, maybe we haven’t been in enough pain, maybe we don’t want that change badly enough, maybe we’re just afraid of it changing. So I think it’s kind of dangerous to put these numbers out there to say the change is gonna happen here. Or I do this all the time. You had a recent guest who said she had her enlightenment moment at 17 years old but she wasn’t seeking it. It just happened. So to me seeking enlightenment is, well we have to ask ourselves what is the motivation for that. And if we’re really honest, I’ve seen more times than not, people feel it’s a place where pain is not going to exist anymore. And I just don’t think that’s true, based on my experience, based on people I’ve spoken with. And seeking a no-pain existence is going to be futile. “Resistance is futile,” like the Borg say. Pain is going to happen, pain is how we learn. Pain is part of life. Ask any mom who gave birth, she will tell you pain is part of life, right? And yet a lot of moms will say, “Oh, that was worth it. I’m going to do it again.” So the value that we put on that pain changes our life or doesn’t change our life. Not because someone says it takes 30 days to learn a habit or 10,000 serves or whatever it is. I think that puts an unrealistic expectation out there. And I think we’ve all seen when we have an expectation, the universe kind of says, “Oh, okay, maybe, but also maybe not.” Right? So just being the best we can be and seeking the higher states not to escape life, but to be better and more in life. How could I be more in life and even with the pain of life from a connected place that allows me to see things in a much bigger way and hold all possibilities in brackets as opposed to trying to chase it? I mentioned earlier, grew up son of a pharmacist, pain was a no-no, always medication. You go into a medical office now, pain is a no-no. And granted, those things have their place, right? If you need surgery, you should have something that dulls the pain while it’s happening, right? And a deeper possibility is: what is this trying to teach us? And not try to escape it, but to honor it. And the transformation happens when we can really honor what’s happening, embrace what’s happening rather than fighting what’s happening.
Rick: Yeah. Okay, a few thoughts on what you’ve been saying the last few minutes. So, firstly, I think there is something to be said for a quieter mind. There’s a verse in the Yoga Sutras which says yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. And, you know, that can become ingrained, can become the norm, so that your mind isn’t like ten radio stations at once all the time. It’s quieter, even in the midst of dynamic activity. And that can conserve energy and enable you to function more coherently.
Dave: So this idea about meditation, I’m not saying that’s wrong or bad, and obviously it can be helpful in a number of things. I’m just saying I personally didn’t get to that place that I thought I would get to of a mind quiet enough to be at peace with everything. It wasn’t the end result of meditation, it was the end result of connecting with the Source that did it for me.
Rick: Yeah, well isn’t meditation a means of connecting with the Source? And that’s how it…
Dave: Yeah, that’s fair also.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: But not in the traditional meditation where you’re just kind of sitting. It’s like a lot of times meditation we can kind of sit and we can escape. We can go into the stratosphere, we can astral travel.
Rick: Right.
Dave: Lots of fun, knock yourself out if that’s your thing. I’m more about bringing the attention inward. What is my body trying to show me? Yeah.
Dave: So meditation can be a lot of different things.
Rick: And just what you just said could be one of those things, you know, what is my body trying to show me? Yeah, like you say, there’s all kinds of meditation. It’s like the word liquid, you know, there’s ammonia, there’s orange juice, there’s milk, there’s beer, they’re all different effects.
Dave: Yeah. So what you’re describing, I’m totally all for it. And maybe that’s the illusion that I had based on what I was taught, that I’ll get to a place of quiet mind where nothing will bother me. Well, things bother me because I’m human, but whether it was the meditation or it’s connected with the Source or you can probably name a bunch of different things, I can be with those things much better than I ever have before and not fight them to the point where I’m actually giving energy to that which I don’t want any longer.
Rick: That’s good. Yeah, the second thing I remembered that you were saying about non-duality, there’s a lot of that these days. There’s a number of teachers out there in the so-called neo-Advaita camp, and they say things like, “You’re already enlightened. In fact, there is no you. You don’t exist. The sense of having any kind of sense of personal self is a mistake of your understanding or experience.” And they keep drilling this into people’s heads. And a person might come with certain problems, and “there is no you. And besides which, the world is an illusion. So these problems are all in your imagination,” or some such thing. And it’s just like a heavy dose, sometimes, of spiritual bypassing, depersonalization, can make people nihilistic or passive or unmotivated and can have all kinds of negative ramifications in people’s lives. And there are a couple of spiritual teachers who’ve taken upon themselves the role of actually providing antidotes for people who had been overdosing on that kind of teaching, helping them to get back into a more integrated, normal style of functioning.
Dave: If it works for them, I’m all for it. In my experience, it’s good to analyze the reasons for wanting to go into those, that or any modality. And again, if it’s an escape, trying to escape “what is,” I think it’s going to be problematic. And from the words that you described, there seems to be a negative association with “what is.” And that is a form of resistance in and of itself. So I’m all for everyone’s belief if it makes them a better person, but I’m also all for really analyzing what is our true goal and understanding that sometimes we may not have as much control over accessing that state. Spirit has other plans for us at times, and it can lead to a lot of frustration. And that’s unfortunate, but again, in the bigger picture, the oneness to individuation back to oneness, it’s part of the process. Right? So I’ve seen a lot of posts a few years ago, more than now, because I don’t spend much time on social media, that were all about, you know, anti-new age, anti-new age, anti-new age, like all different things about, “Oh, it’s BS and this and this and this.” I say, “Well, okay.” But for a while, it was really helpful for a lot of people. So does that make it wrong? It’s just one step out of many. Maybe someone outgrows something, and maybe that’s not even the right word, but something doesn’t resonate with someone anymore from that belief based on their personal experience. Great. Question it. Create your own, whatever it is. The mind likes to get caught up in the black and white. This is wrong. This is bad. And I just don’t really find that to be conducive to our growth, our evolution, and our healing. I think everything has a place. Everyone has a place.
Rick: Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you can take that to any extent. I’ve been listening to some podcasts lately about different kinds of cults, and there are these polygamous cults where 12-year-old girls are getting married and stuff like that. And you can say, “Oh, it might be in the big picture. It’s conducive to their growth.” But the leaders of those cults usually end up in jail, and for good reason. But I agree, in a sense. Various religious organizations, spiritual organizations, some of them might seem a little weird from the outside, but very often people will go through them and they say, “Yeah, it was weird, the leader was corrupt in some way, but I really derived a lot of benefit from my time there, and eventually it became time to move on. And, you know, I don’t regret it, but it wasn’t the sort of end stage for me. It was, you know, it was a phase.”
Dave: Right. Exactly. It’s a good way to look at it, a phase. And what you just mentioned reminded me of a story, years back where there was a murder in an Amish community, and there was a lot of…
Rick: I remember that. It was a mass shooting, actually, in Pennsylvania, I think.
Dave: Yeah. And the people in the community said, “We forgive the attacker.”
Rick: I know. It was amazing.
Dave: And that’s pretty powerful. Forgiveness in and of itself can be argued, and there’s bypassing in forgiveness. It can be as well. But just the idea alone that they can be in a place of compassion for this person that created so much pain, to me, that’s an enlightened soul.
Rick: Yeah, and they were baking pies for the attacker’s family and, you know, immediately doing all these compassionate things.
Dave: Yeah, and for anyone listening, I’m not saying that you need to become Amish. I’m just saying that this one particular thing that I think we can all learn from, and like you said earlier, there’s a lot of shadow in really any group, community, guru. It seems to be more the norm than the abnorm. And we learn from these things. And granted, I’m not here condoning anything illegal or causing extreme pain, of course. And I’m also inviting a compassionate, perhaps, analysis of what’s going on with the people that are doing these things. And learning from that, because that’s more cause-based than retribution, revenge, seeking the light in those that don’t see it in and of themselves. To me, that’s a pretty elevated concept.
Rick: Yeah. I want to come back to a theme that we discussed in the beginning about the porousness of an empathetic person. You say that conventional boundaries, shielding, and protection practices may address symptoms without reaching the root. And so we want to get to the root. And you’ve been talking about Source. You make the distinction between the goal is not to shut down sensitivity, but to become a clear, resilient channel rather than a sponge. So maybe we could dwell a little bit more on how to achieve that. And before you respond, I just want to bring up an interesting principle from physics, which is something called the Meissner effect, which occurs when a superconducting material enters a state of such inner coherence that it can exclude an external magnetic field from its interior. By analogy, what we might call the personal Meissner effect is not a wall against life, but a capacity to receive nourishment while spontaneously excluding toxic influences.
Dave: I love it. I’m going to put that in my next book if it’s okay with you. Okay.
Rick: I didn’t think it, I didn’t dream it up.
Dave: All right, I’ll call Mr. Meissner and see what he says.
Rick: Yeah, I think he might be deceased, but if you Google that, you’ll find it.
Dave: I’ve communicated with deceased before, that’s not an issue.
Rick: Okay, yeah. He might speak German though.
Dave: That’s fine, that was just in Germany, I know a few words.
Rick: Okay.
Dave: Two things with that. One, like you said, and we alluded to, being the highest best version of you is going to give you more natural immunity to being a sponge for everyone else’s stuff. The other part is the practical, right? So a lot of times, you know, we’ve spoken about a lot of things that are kind of heady and I certainly understand someone say, “Well, how do you do that? What’s the practical?” Practical has to be done as well, whether it’s growth or in this case, prevention from incoming energies. So what I was shown early on was something that I ended up calling the keyhole. And the keyhole is a way of opening the self and allowing what’s coming in to come in. Which I know can sound scary initially, but bear with me for those listening and saying, “Oh no way am I gonna let a lot of stuff in.” It’s letting in with conscious awareness that you don’t need to hold on to it. So the book has the more specific… well I’m just kind of giving an overview here. So typically, we’re kind of a sponge, we take things in, I mentioned earlier, we take things in, we digest them, we say thank you, that’s mine now. The key hole is a way of actually opening, letting in what is coming your way, filtering it once in the body and letting out the back what doesn’t work for you or what’s not meant for you. The advantage of this is, well first let me say, the disadvantage of the former of trying to prevent is a lot of this kind of energy, get away from me, which I get if you’re with someone scary you should have some of those kind of walls up and say get away from me or get out of the room, whatever you got to do to protect yourself, obviously. Energetically, if we’re doing this all the time it’s going to get really tiring. It’s kind of the equivalent of holding your hands up and trying to keep people at bay all day long. There’s no way you can do it for too long without getting really exhausted. In fact, one of the things that I work with is fatigue. And a lot of people have been doing this for years and years and years. I teach them to not do that and the fatigue goes away. It’s kind of miraculous how it can happen. And of course there are other factors, but that’s just one of them. So, when we can open and allow what’s coming in, and we can sort of play with what’s coming in, and recognize that there are some things coming in, in those airwaves, if you want to call it that, that are meant for you, that you’re not going to get if you’re doing this. So this blocks too much overall.
Rick: By the way, for people listening to the audio podcast, Dave is holding up his hands as if to push away anything that might be trying to come in. Thousands of people also listen to the audio podcast.
Dave: Great point, thank you.
Rick: So they’ll know what you’re doing there.
Dave: Great point. So when we learn to actually open and consciously allow in and filter, it’s a very different experience. We can still be sensitive, still be compassionate because we can feel what other people are going through. It doesn’t mean we are invasive with their energy. I don’t condone that even for a microsecond. But what it does mean is that energy is coming your way anyway. So why not be open to what’s coming your way? That might be the secret of life or your life in that transmission from someone or something. And if we have our hands up all the time, we’re not going to hear that. So if we let it in, learn how to filter it, let out what’s not meant for us, we can be in the presence of even really challenging people and still be okay. It’s a practice like many other things, but the instructions for that are in the book. I actually have a video, if you go to my YouTube page, which is Healing for Empaths, Sensitives and Intuitives, there is a maybe five-minute video that you can see to explain that in further details. You can do it for free if you don’t want to buy the book.
Rick: Okay, I will make a note to link to that particular video on your BatGap page as well as to your YouTube channel in general. And as you were saying that, what I was thinking was it would be nice to have this kind of thing become second nature. So, you don’t have to be throughout the day, like on your toes consciously trying to let stuff in, keep stuff out, just kind of driving yourself crazy with all this effort. It should ideally become a spontaneous way of functioning where all that happens just naturally. The exclusion, the inclusion, whatever, it’s just the way you roll.
Dave: That’s where practice and safety come into play. Practice obviously to get it sort of in the cells, but the sense of safety that you feel in any given moment might not allow that to happen so easily. So, I do recommend doing this exercise before going into tense environments, for example, Thanksgiving dinner, where like you said earlier, crazy Uncle Harry is sitting there spewing some kind of…
Rick: flat earth theory.
Dave: Whatever it is, right? It can be helpful in that going to a job interview, anything that’s really stressful. Over time I’ve found that it becomes a way of being. And of course, the mind says, well, once that’s a way of being, I don’t have to practice it anymore. You know, ask a tennis player about how they stay at the top of their game.
Rick: They keep practicing, yeah.
Dave: Exactly.
Rick: Even Djokovic, he talks about how he has to have a whole different way of practice now to compensate for his age and to still have an advantage over the younger players because he can’t do the kinds of things he used to do. So, you know, he keeps working at it.
Dave: Sometimes you got to keep working at it. And I look at it like, well, do I even think about brushing my teeth or I just do it? So eventually it becomes something that you just do.
Rick: Yeah, second nature.
Dave: And it’s not even a conscious thing that you worry about. And then once in a while I realize, “Oh wow, I’m not feeling so great. I wonder why.” And I kind of feel it and say, “Oh wow, okay, I’ve been picking up this person’s stuff.” So we’re going to fluctuate. Life is a roller coaster, our learning is a roller coaster. We have this idea that once we learn something it’s done. But like we’re talking about, you know, anyone at the top of their game, like a tennis player, is going to keep practicing and adjust for whatever is happening, like in this case, his age.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: Right. So it does, it might require some adjusting. I’d rather have a tool and have to use it than not have the tool.
Rick: It kind of reminds me of riding a bicycle. You know, when you first began to learn to do that, you had to really pay attention, you probably fell off a number of times. Eventually it becomes second nature, but now that we’ve been riding bicycles for 40, 50 years, it’s automatic, but we still have to balance a little bit. And there’s this almost unconscious thing, as with walking, for instance, same thing. We’re consciously doing something to make it work successfully, and you couldn’t utterly relinquish that, or you’d fall down or fall off the bike, but you have to have a little bit of it.
Dave: Not too different. Sometimes you just got to have a little bit of keyhole to get you through the day, and that’s okay.
Rick: A couple of questions came in. Let’s see here. So here’s one. This is from Deborah Thunderchild. That’s a nice name. She might be Native American. From Massachusetts. “I grieve deeply over what we, as a species, do to animals. I believe that I am here to bring awareness of the sacredness of all beings to the collective. I know that it is within us, as a species, to live with respect and compassion for all beings. How can I reach beyond the darkness and find the light within and in the world? I know it is personal experience that transforms. How can I be a catalyst?”
Dave: Beautiful question. And on behalf of myself and anyone else who’s listening, thank you for doing what you’re doing and looking to increase that. And as often is the case, you answered your own question the very first sentence, “I grieve deeply.” When we grieve deeply, we become more intuitive. When we own the shadow parts of ourselves, the parts that we’re told to never express, typically fear, anger, and grief, we become more porous to or more receptive to universal instruction. And I believe that’s a big part of what we hear. We have our mission. We might not know how to accomplish it. In fact, a lot of times we don’t really know or we think we do. Using or co-creating with the universe, with Source, what you’re here to do, it will show you the exact path. It will show you, should I start a newsletter, should I do a march, should I… whatever it is. It’s… Part of me said I wanted to continue, but the other part of me says she just got it, so I’m going to leave it there.
Rick: Okay, all righty, so here’s a second question. I’m not sure who this is from, but it says, “Is an empath the same as an HSP, a highly sensitive person, or is there a distinction? I remember an HSP expert saying there was nothing worse than an insensitive HSP.” That’s kind of a contradiction. “I suppose that meant highly sensitive but lacking empathy.”
Dave: Sounds like it. And, you know, words can kind of get in the way. But for purposes of a conversation, help—obviously helpful. To me, an HSP is someone who is sensitive to situations people, environments, etc. An empath takes it one step further and embodies it. Can it be one without the other? Sure, maybe, maybe not. I don’t personally get caught up on that. I think it’s kind of a little left brainy and not conducive to actual growth. As someone years ago said, “labels disable,” and yet I understand the need for for them. So, I would invite you to embrace your gift, whatever it is. Let people call you an empath, let them not call you an empath, whatever it is. There’s all kinds of books and podcasts. What type of empath are you? Well, if that’s your thing, go for it. I don’t mean to sound negative about it. I’m just saying what I found conducive for me, which is, okay, we’re human. We take things on from other people, sometimes for good, sometimes not so good, and sometimes really detrimental. If we’re holding, for example, our father’s anger, and doing things from that place, clearly it’s not really helpful. So, in my book, there’s a process called return-to-sender that allows you to give back what you’re holding from other people and give it back to who it belongs to. And that is a really important thing to remember because sometimes we’re kind of burdened and we actually change our behaviors or our health can change because we’re carrying something that we were really never meant to carry. So, it’s a twofold, like we said earlier, but the manifestation and the surrender, it’s actively giving back what’s not serving, but also working to get to a place where you’re not carrying anything anymore.
Rick: Can you give us an example of that and how you might be carrying something that you really should return to someone else?
Dave: Sure, I’ll give a personal example. I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but years and years later, I realized I was carrying my mother’s sadness. Had I gone to any medical professional with the symptoms I was having, I easily would have been put on medications and diagnosed as depressed or other things, too. It was by going into that sadness that I realized, “Wow, this isn’t even mine.” So, I gave it back to her. I haven’t had symptoms since. I’ll get sad, of course, but I don’t stay in that depressed place where I want off the planet anymore. And my mother, it had no effect on her because it’s part of what she was here to experience. I was actually giving her back what was hers to begin with. Whether she dealt with it or not is actually not my business. I mean, I can love her, I can have compassion for her, but I can’t carry her stuff to the point that it’s detrimental to myself. So, some people get understandably scared, “I’m going to give my mother back my grief.” In fact, I was really scared of it when the universe first told me I needed to do that. I said, “No way, she’s not going to be able to handle it.” And after many meditations, I was really able to see that this is hers. She needs it. It’s not going to put her over the edge. I’ve led thousands and thousands of people through thousands and thousands of return-to-sender exercises. Never have I heard that the other person that was the recipient of that energy got in a worse place. And every time, the person I’m working with feels lighter, more vibrant, more intuitive, you name it. Or anything that was being blocked by carrying something. So, I would have been in a really bad place. Well, I was in a pretty bad place for quite a time, but it would have been a lot worse had I not had that realization that I was carrying something from someone else that I was never meant to carry. And to tie it in with the earlier conversation, it’s something I learned really, really young. This is my job to do. This is what I do here. I became the mediator, the peacemaker, the person that sits between the two loudest people at Thanksgiving dinner. My aunt actually noticed that. She said, she looked at me once, 10 years ago, whatever, where she said, “Oh, poor David, stuck between the two loudest people again.” And I was like, “Whoa, I didn’t see that. She saw it.” I said, “Wow, that’s true.” And I thought about the prior Thanksgivings, etc., And I realized this is my unconscious self. I am the peacemaker. If I’m sitting between these two people who are opposed on everything, I’m going to create peace. What a delusion of consciousness, right? Or unconsciousness, perhaps. It wasn’t my job. Right? So sometimes we see by other people seeing and inviting us to that reality. That was really profound, right? So, that’s one example. There are many. I mean, I work with a lot of people who are carrying things from the collective, from a parent, from a partner and as we lighten those things the collective or the partner, etc. are fine but the people I’m working with become much better.
Rick: So, when you were carrying your mother’s sadness, did it make her less sad? And when you returned it to sender, did she become more sad again? Or was it just something that you were carrying that really had no impact on her or benefit for her?
Dave: I didn’t perceive any difference in her before and after. And when I asked Source about that, it said, “Because what’s very heavy for you is the proverbial drop in the bucket for her.” It’s like, “Ah, okay.”
Rick: I guess you had just been trained with her sadness and imbibed it and were feeling sad because she carried sadness, but you weren’t actually lightening her load, right? By feeling this sadness.
Dave: Certainly not to any degree perceptible. The illusion that I was, was certainly there.
Rick: And how did you actually give it back to her or return it?
Dave: That’s the process, the return. It’s a metaphysical process. It’s not something that, like, I didn’t have to write her a letter. I certainly didn’t have to approach her in the physical life saying, “Hey, you know, I’ve been holding your grief and I’m going to give it back to you now.” That wouldn’t have worked. So, I was guided on how to do that. There is a chance that she might have felt… So, for example, there are some times where that transfer might not work and then, it’s the recipient that’s not really ready, but that’s almost irrelevant because the recipient on a soul level actually needs what’s there. So when we do the work, we connect with the higher self as opposed to the personality. So, great question. Hope I answered it well.
Rick: Kind of, but it’s not clear to me how… Maybe it’s more involved than you can cover in an interview like this, but how actually one would go through the process of returning something that one was carrying.
Dave: Yeah, it’s guided, you know, in the moment. There’s a general template.
Rick: So you do like sessions with people where you guide them through this?
Dave: Yeah, yeah. And amazingly, it actually takes longer to describe it than to do it. The person obviously has to be on board, right? Because like I said, when I first heard I had to give it back, I was like, “Oh, no, I’m not going to do that.” Well, of course, no matter any process I did at the time it wasn’t going to be effective. I had to really get it in my cells that this is a beneficial thing for myself and for her. And once I got that, I was shown a really cool um, well, I’m hearing I should describe it so I’ll describe it for you. So, I was shown this image. So, if you picture a puzzle and it’s, um, sky, clouds, sky, and a lake. Right? Color-wise, it delineates, representing these things in real life, but it’s a puzzle. And the sadness was in the lake. It was in the darker part, the part that’s not easily seen. So, I was reaching out and into mom’s puzzle, so to speak, and taking a piece and keeping it for myself. And what I was shown was, I think I was asked, like, is she complete now? No, she’s very incomplete. So, me giving her back that piece of the puzzle actually completes her, even if it’s something that I deemed wrong. That was my big growth. I had to get over the idea that grief was wrong. Grief is a natural function of loss and should be experienced and it’s a very healing element. You know, when someone’s crying, you don’t want to… You know, we often hear things like, “Oh, tell me what you’re crying about,” or— What we really need is an embrace or a tissue or someone there to hold the space. Same thing with anger and fear. They need to be embraced. And, you know, anger is often a result from someone crossing boundaries. It’s a healthy thing, right? Fear is healthy. If a bus is coming at you, fear says, “Get out of the way.” Well, we have these negative connotations. I had a negative connotation about grief. So, I said, “If I give it back, I’m hurting her. I’m giving her back something that no one would ever want.” But I had to get over that. And had to learn on a deep level, not just here, but embodied, that that grief was something that she needed. It was part of her mission here. And if I’m holding it for her, she can’t experience it. She can’t work with it. She doesn’t even know it’s there. So, that’s what I mean by taking longer to express it, to explain it than actually do it. And it can be done with more than one person at a time, depending. So, when I’m doing it, I work intuitively. I’m always listening, like, what’s needed? Sometimes we can give back to more than one person at a time. Sometimes we give back to the collective. A few people I work with for a number of years will address something and they’ll say, “Oh, we did that in our first session.” Well, it doesn’t mean that it was gone the first session. It was gone enough that you felt a difference, which is helpful, but it’s one layer of many. So, we could potentially do lots of return-to-senders as needed, but again that’s intuitively guided. So, I hope that helped.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, I can imagine there are many things which exist in layer upon layer upon layer deep within us and you’re not just going to snap your fingers and get rid of it. You’re just going to take quite some time to…
Dave: Sometimes we can, like if someone’s really ready, like things just flow. We can do five, six of them in one session. But I’m also tuning in to saying when is the limit, right? Because it changes people so much that you can’t do too much at once. Your body is going to reject that.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: Some call it a healing crisis, but it’s just overload. And especially working with someone who’s sensitive already, I want to be really conscious of what they can handle. So, I’m always listening in. What can we do? How much? When? Etc.
Rick: Yeah. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you, and I hope people have enjoyed listening to us. And as always, I’ll create a page on batgap.com that will have links to your website and your book and maybe that one little video you talked about that I told people I’d link to. And so, people can just go there and bounce from there to your various resources. Do you have anything in particular coming up like that you want people to know about? Obviously, this interview will be up for years, but for the people listening in the next couple of weeks, is there anything going on that they might wanna participate in?
Dave: Yeah, I have a two-week course called Embodied Stillness for a World on Edge, begins September 21st. All the information’s on the website, so davemarkowitz.com, D-A-V-E-M-A-R-K-O-W-I-T-Z.com. Everything is there about that, but also about private sessions, and then there’s a videos page, which also has that keyhole video there, along with other podcasts and interviews I’ve done. Information about the books are there, a lot of articles. There’s a lot there. So that’s the place to go. I don’t do courses that are, I don’t record them and make them available afterwards, at least currently. What I’ve found is being in the moment, working with people with what’s alive for them that moment is more important. It might not be what’s alive for someone after the fact. So, and it also creates a sense of safety that someone can be vulnerable with what’s going on for them, knowing it’s not going to be broadcast to the world. So, these are important things to me. A lot of people do the pre-recorded and if that’s what their thing is, then so be it. Do what you gotta do. Do what makes you happy. Do what lights you up. What lights me up is being in the moment with people, whether there’s 50 or a few hundred people in a room. There’s often, you know, individual people that need attention, but there’s also a collective. So, I kind of tune in and say, “Okay, well more people are feeling this right now than this, so I’m going to go with that.” And so, it’s very much in the moment, and a lot of things that we spoke about, we actually take people through. So, it’s more experiential. I try to make it as experiential as possible, not just linear left-brain stuff, because that can get tiring after a while.
Rick: If people miss the course that you just described, because they’re watching this three months from now or something, do you have some email list that they can get on to be notified of such things?
Dave: Yeah, it was on the contact page. There’s a section for newsletter. And I’m not one of those people that send three emails per day for the rest of their life. I really space them out. So, most people appreciate getting them rather than, oh, not this again. So, you can do that. But in general, I try to do anywhere between like five and maybe eight group events per year.
Rick: That’s pretty good.
Dave: I also work with the Shift Network. So, there’s a few million on their mail list. So that always gets a nice crowd. The ones I do on my own get a smaller crowd, so it feels safer.
Rick: More intimate.
Dave: More intimate, yeah. And I really don’t charge a lot, especially considering what people are getting. I try to keep everything reasonable, affordable. Some people I work with just don’t have the finances and that’s okay. I don’t want to exclude anybody.
Rick: So, you have a scholarship or sliding scale or something like that?
Dave: You can write about that. The private sessions, there’s a scale, but I make the group work so affordable that no one’s asked.
Rick: Okay, good. And we also have a mailing list for BatGap. So, if you go to any of the pages on batgap.com and look down at the bottom of the page in the footer there’s a sign-up thing to get on our email list and we also don’t send a lot. I just send one out whenever I do a new interview which is twice a month so that’s as many emails as you’ll get.
Dave: I like that theory.
Rick: Yeah, I mean, God knows, I’ve got enough emails coming in every day. I know what it’s like.
Dave: Yeah, it just gets to be too much, and yeah, so, you know the old rule, right? Treat people as you want to be treated, so I don’t want to inundate people with emails.
Rick: Yeah, that’s my attitude on running ads on this podcast also, because I listen to a lot of podcasts and I can’t stand it if I’m washing the dishes or driving or something and all of a sudden they play three minutes of ads that have no relevance to me and no relevance to what the podcast is about, and I can’t fast forward because I’m busy or my hands are wet, so I don’t run ads, we don’t run ads, because I don’t like them myself.
Dave: Awesome, I appreciate that. On behalf of everyone who listens to you, thank you for that.
Rick: Yeah, all right, well thank you, Dave. It’s been a long time coming. I guess you mentioned people have been suggesting for a few years that you come on this show and so…
Dave: Happens when it happens.
Rick: Happens when it happens. Good.
Dave: You learn to be in non-resistance, right? Surrender and allow.
Rick: Yeah.
Dave: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Irene. Thank you to your whole team. I mentioned earlier this is kind of a bucket list for me, so thank you for letting me be here and share something that hopefully gave someone some inspiration.
Rick: I think it will have, yeah. It was an interesting conversation. And so again, thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. And my next interview is with a woman named Carmen Acevedo Butcher, and she is with the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, which includes Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault, Jim Finley, Mirabai Starr, and she’s translated some of the books about the lives of Christian mystics, and so, we’ll be talking about that topic in the next interview. So, see you for the next one.
Dave: Sounds great, thanks so much.
Rick: Okay.
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