Judy Cohen Interview

Summary

The discussion examines how spiritual practices can reduce suffering while also reinforcing a separate, damaged sense of self. It explores awakening, the limits of language and perception, and the relief that may come from stopping the effort to become something else.

Questions This Interview Explores

• How can spiritual seeking become a source of suffering?
• What is awakening if it does not eliminate unpleasant feelings?
• How does language shape our experience of reality?
• What does surrendering to the present actually mean?

Key takeaways

• Inquiry can make ordinary life less painful without ending identification with the separate self.
• Stories of awakening can fuel comparison and keep spiritual seeking alive.
• Letting go of the demand for a better state can bring unexpected relief.
• Language filters experience and helps create shared assumptions about self and world.
• Awakening does not necessarily remove difficult emotions or unpleasant experiences.
• There may be nothing to gain beyond recognizing what is already present.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a non… I started laughing at myself because I’ve said this so many times, and I started thinking about how it sounds to people who’ve heard me say it every week. I thought maybe I should change it. All right, five, four, three, two. Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is a non… What am I doing? Okay.

Judy: I’m glad it’s you and not me, that’s all I have to say.

Rick: Okay, brain to body, go. Five, four, three, two. Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done nearly 500 of them now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to the Past Interviews menu on batgap.com—B-A-T-G-A-P—where you’ll find all the previous ones categorized in various ways.

This program is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and would like to support it in any amount, there’s a PayPal button on every page of batgap.com. There’s also a page about other ways to donate if you don’t like PayPal.

My guest today is Judy Cohen. Judy is a former clinical psychologist, former serial entrepreneur, which I presume means she tried a lot of ventures, not all of which turned into the next Amazon; former depressed, anxious, antidepressant-taking, suicidal despairer. She used to be a seeker of self-improvement. She used to be a certified facilitator of the work of Byron Katie. In fact, I think there’s still something on your website about your doing that, although you say that you don’t do it anymore, so you might want to update your website.

She was also a certified senior facilitator trainer of the Living Inquiries, which is Scott Kiloby’s thing, right? Okay, so she’s not certified in either method anymore.

She was desperate to feel better. Luckily, eventually Judy came to see that the method she was trained and certified in actually perpetuated and strengthened the sense of self as damaged. Several awakening experiences happened. Contrary to popular myth, they didn’t put an end to unpleasant feelings. So all that seeking, the inquiry, and the desperation to shift—what was it all for, then?

Judy finally realized she could give up seeking because this is it, as it is, which sounds kind of Katie-ish, but we’ll talk about that. What could any teacher or technique give her that wasn’t already there—already here, rather—that she didn’t already have? She came to see that every experience, good, happy, bad, or sad, is an awakening.

She knew to give up seeking because there was nothing more to get. She’d had it all along. Much more fun: this no-Judy-to-fix, nothing-to-seek existence. Though, of course, she’s also still here as Judy because human continues, and paradoxically, that’s better.

All right, I told Judy I might not read the whole bio, but I did because it was kind of fun and entertainingly written, as are the things on her website—sort of a playful, irreverent kind of tone. Does that describe your personality, playful and irreverent?

Judy: It does. I’m not one of these spacey, all-good types. Yes, I like to laugh.

🕊️ From misery to spiritual inquiry

Rick: When did you first get started on the spiritual path? Have you been at it since you were a teenager, did you pick it up later in life, or what?

Judy: I spent most of my life miserable, and I stumbled on Byron Katie in my mid-fifties. Until then—and even then—I was skeptical and mocking, I would say.

Rick: Like yesterday?

Judy: Yes, 11 or 12 years ago. Something like that, approximately then. I just stumbled on her name on a talk-radio station in the middle of the night. Until then, I had no interest. When I came across it, I found it amusing.

Rick: Yeah. Well, you must have felt you were getting something out of Byron Katie, or you wouldn’t have become a certified facilitator, right? Or practitioner, or whatever they’re called.

Judy: Yeah, for sure. I jumped in wholeheartedly. I didn’t really understand it, but it came to my neighborhood. I didn’t really know at the time—I didn’t have any background, so I didn’t know at the time—that she came to my neighborhood several times a year. I didn’t know that, and I was all in for a few years there, yeah.

Rick: And so did you really feel that—what did you say here?—the methods you were trained and certified in perpetuated and strengthened the sense of self as damaged? Did it really do that, or was there some positive aspect to it that was perhaps counterbalanced by this strengthening of the self as damaged?

Judy: Well, I came to that realization later, but at first what I found the work amazingly good for—and it definitely was; there were many ways that it was very helpful—I would say that it was my entry point to a real sense of what I am and what I am not. It was the entry point, and I think as a way to make the dream world less painful, it’s great. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: So, I mean, if you did nothing but that, fab.

Rick: Nothing but make the dream world less painful.

Judy: Yeah.

Rick: And by dream world, of course, you mean the world we all live in. You’re alluding to it as a dream world.

Living in a Shared Fiction Without Adding Suffering

Right. Well, you know, it’s not a reality from what I can see. We have all tacitly agreed to accept the fake as real, and yet we appear to live in it and we have to do our best in it. If we can find a way not to hurt, why wouldn’t we want to do that?

Judy: Right. Well, you know, it’s not a reality from what I can see. We have all tacitly agreed to accept the fake as real, and yet we appear to live in it and we have to do our best in it. If we can find a way not to hurt, why wouldn’t we want to do that?

So the work definitely did that for me for a while.

Rick: Sure. I mean, I think it’s a universal thing that people want to be happier and not hurt.

Judy: Yeah, yeah. Who would want to hurt on purpose? I mean, I guess there are people who do, but…

Rick: Well, even when they do, they somehow derive some sense of gratification out of it.

Judy: Right.

Rick: In a distorted kind of way.

Judy: Well said, yes.

👁️ The dream world and the limits of perception

Rick: So, let’s say that you go and take a vacation in Yosemite National Park and spend time walking among the redwoods, just living in a cabin for a while and being out in nature. Is that also the dream world just as much as living in Los Angeles or Philadelphia, or is that more real in some way?

Judy: Yes, and I’m going to answer all of these questions with a kind of certainty. I just want to be really clear that ordinarily, when I’m speaking or thinking for myself, I am aware that in the end none of us really knows the answers to these questions. We have strong ideas and opinions, but I’m also aware that that’s all it is.

So, is that also a dream world? Yes. It’s all projected, it’s all perception, and it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Rick: Yeah. So let me phrase it a different way and see if you agree with this. By calling it a dream world, are you saying that whatever it is—our particular filtered view of it, which is necessarily filtered by the nature and limitations of our senses and understanding—is not what it really is? It’s only a kind of limited peephole into what the full reality of it might be?

How the Brain and Language Distort Perception

Judy: Yes, and I think it’s distorted, ferociously distorted, also. So it is a limited peephole. We are limited by what this brain is capable of perceiving, what the hardware is capable of perceiving. We have great faith in these brains, but they have limits. So we’re not only limited by that, but in addition, it’s twisted and distorted, mostly by language.

Rick: So, okay, a couple of questions there. Would you say that it’s distorted to different degrees in different people’s experience?

Judy: Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that if you, Rick—the character Rick—are having a problem with a neighbor, you may not see that situation clearly. That will be distorted. But in addition, the idea that there is a you, there is a neighbor, there is a home, there is a next door and a house, and all of that—that is also a universal distortion.

Rick: I see.

Judy: So there’s the individual distortion that comes out of our apparent backgrounds and conditioning and family life from childhood. There’s also the agreed-upon conditioning, or twisted perception, of all of this that we start training in from the time we learn to speak.

Rick: Which makes life possible. I mean, we all agree that there’s a stop sign there and that we better stop at it, or else we’re going to get killed or something.

Judy: Exactly.

Rick: Whereas to an ant, there’s no stop sign there. There’s something that the ant is climbing, but it has no idea what it is. It has a different perspective.

Judy: Right, and who knows what stop signs we’re not seeing?

Rick: Yeah, good point. Meaning, who knows what is there that is beyond the limitations of our perception?

Judy: Right. I mean, you only have to have a cat or a dog to experience that in a real way in our daily life. I have a cat, and periodically the cat will go and look at something that isn’t there as far as I can tell. Dogs hear sounds we can’t hear. Our hardware isn’t built to pick that up, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a sound happening.

Rick: Sure. Same with bats and dolphins and all kinds of animals. You know, it’s said that birds actually migrate by being able to see the magnetic lines of the Earth’s gravitational field, or at least that’s a theory.

Judy: Well, you know, coming from California, having moved here only a month ago, it was common knowledge that just before an earthquake, the number of missing pets increased significantly. So you could almost predict an earthquake was coming by the fact that, if you just checked those personal ads—those classified ads, you know, lost-pet ads—they increased exponentially. The animals had some kind of warning that we don’t pick up. Whether it’s a gravitational field or what, it’s something.

Rick: Yeah. Before that big tsunami that happened in Asia five or eight years ago, whenever it was, there were a lot of animals that headed for the hills, you know.

Judy: I remember that. Right, they know.

Rick: Rupert Sheldrake, whom I interviewed a month or so ago, has written a book called Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, and it’s all about this kind of phenomenon—how dogs and other animals have these abilities that are really hard to explain by conventional means.

Judy: By human means.

Rick: By human means.

Judy: Right.

Rick: Okay, so you said a minute ago that language is the main culprit, perhaps, in the distortion of our perception. That would imply that maybe cats and dogs are not so distorted, but then they have their own languages. Also, obviously, they and all animals—a bat, an ant—have a very different chunk of the spectrum of potential experience in their experience. So it seems like everybody has a peephole, regardless of what sort of being you are, regardless of whether you use any language we would recognize as a language or not.

Judy: The thing is, with other species, they don’t have words. They communicate, but they don’t have words. The thing about words is that they are symbols; they’re a step removed from experience. They’re a description of experience. There’s the word “touch,” and then there’s the touch. They’re not the same thing. As we apply words, we are instantly removed, and that colors everything.

As we apply words, we are instantly removed, and that colors everything.

Rick: Yeah, but I don’t think that necessarily means animals are more—well, let’s use the word enlightened for a second, just for the sake of economy—than humans. They may be more in tune with nature in certain respects, but boy, if the UPS man comes to the door, our dogs go ballistic. That’s, I guess, an appropriate dog response, but it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense in terms of the potential threat that the UPS man poses.

Judy: Right, although they probably have a damn good time at it.

Rick: They enjoy it.

Judy: You know.

Rick: So, I mean, chill, you guys. Everything’s okay here.

Judy: Yeah, but they’re having fun.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: But, you know, to come back to your point, I mean, this is what your show is about, so I understand that. But the question is, what does enlightenment or awakened even mean? I mean, okay, because, you know, are they aware of consciousness? I don’t know. I’m assuming not, but is that it? Is that what it is?

✨ Awakening, seeking, and the value of stories

Rick: Okay, well, let’s spend some time on that. Maybe we can start doing that by—you mentioned in some of your writings that you had numerous incremental awakenings, too many to count, and some very powerful. There was one in which you were on your knees, having fallen off the bed, and as you put it, the planet had moved. These awakenings—awakening implies going from sort of less awakened to more awakened—so what are you talking about here? Describe those experiences, especially the lollapalooza one where the planet had moved.

Judy: Well, just understanding—I mean, we’re having this conversation, and this is not how I ordinarily communicate these kinds of things. I tend to avoid the words awakening or enlightenment unless I’m making a specific point about something else, actually.

Rick: Believe it or not, so do I. I mean, the terms just have too static and superlative a connotation. The fact that even though I talk and think about all this stuff all the time, when somebody says they had an awakening, I have to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about exactly. We have to really get into it and define what they mean by the term.”

Judy: Especially when you—especially on your show, you know, or anywhere else—start to see how huge the variety is of what that experience is supposed to mean. It kind of loses its value as a standard or even as a determiner of what’s actually going on.

And I know I’m just going to say one more thing about this. When people want to hear my or anybody else’s experience of awakening, I always wonder what for. What value is it to them or anyone what my experience was? It’s not like they’re going to catch it from my words. It’s not like—

Here’s what I find: All these stories out there of people who have awakened in some way or become enlightened in some way, as these stories are told, people use them to perpetuate seeking. They use these stories to evaluate how they’re doing, and they compare themselves to whatever the story is. They see if they are better or worse than the story, and they start chasing, or they continue chasing.

I think that the perpetuation of these stories kind of makes people feel bad about themselves, or superior, which is also not necessarily a good thing. That all being said, I do intend to answer your question, but I did want to say that I just don’t know the value of telling these stories.

Rick: Well, you just articulated the downside of it. I think there’s also an upside. Let’s use Yosemite again. Let’s say I’ve never been to Yosemite and someone has just visited there, and they start telling me about it: “Oh, it’s so amazing. Half Dome is so beautiful, and I took this hike up to the top of the cliff and hiked all the way down.” They can go on and on describing their trip, and it incentivizes me. I want to go there and experience that myself.

People have been telling you stories for thousands of years. The scriptures are full of them, and so it indicates to people, first of all, that there is something, even though there might be a lot of disagreement as to what it exactly is. It sounds good, you know, and so it’s something that one might aspire to.

Judy: Okay, yeah. It’s just that I guess there we maybe disagree, because I don’t think aspiring helps anybody, and I think it does hurt. Especially if the goal is awakening, you can’t get it by aspiring.

Rick: Seek and ye shall find; knock on the door and it shall be opened.

Judy: Okay, and in your experience, is that true? Seek and ye shall find?

Okay.

Rick: It is. For about a year before I learned to meditate, I was reading Zen books and reading Timothy Leary and taking Timothy Leary’s advice and doing different things like that. I kind of got the deep conviction that there was some higher thing that could be lived or experienced, and so it lit a fire in me to realize that. It sort of set a course for my life, which proved very beneficial.

Judy: And again, I understand that there’s a whole lot of that. My sense is, if awakening is being present, how can you get it by chasing something else?

Rick: I get that, and I’m sort of playing devil’s advocate a little bit because I also understand the angle that you’re coming from. There’s some kind of happy medium here someplace between chasing the dangling carrot forever and settling into that which is already here and which you’re already experiencing.

Judy: And maybe, when you’re not chasing something else that you think is better, you can actually find contentment with what’s here.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: And, you know, I work with a lot of people who are chasing something, and I see the pain that it brings. It’s a lot of pain, because when you’re aspiring or you’re seeking and you’re not finding, now you’re a failure in addition to not having this wonderful thing that somebody else has. So you’re missing out and you’re failing, you know. It hurts.

Rick: I was a student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for many years, and I was experiencing stuff from day one. My life definitely improved and continued to improve, but I was definitely an eager beaver in terms of “enlightenment or bust.”

One time I was up on a stage at the podium talking about something. He was sitting there, and there was an audience, and he interrupted me and said, “Every day is life.” He said, “Don’t pass over the future. Don’t pass over the present for some glorious future.”

Judy: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: What’s the point of that other than pain, honestly?

Rick: In terms of that experience, he was right. You can make yourself miserable by failing to appreciate what’s here now, what you’ve got, and just kind of moaning and groaning and pining for some glorious future.

But, on the other hand, I think it’s realistic to understand that we do continue to grow, or we may, and that 20 years from now, if all goes well, we may be a lot happier or brighter or clearer or whatever than we are now. But that is not to say that you should disparage what you’re experiencing now. That possibility is there, wouldn’t you say?

When Seeking Becomes a Last Resort

Judy: What I have found—and this is one of the many, many paradoxes in all of this—is that when a person—I frequently work with people who have tried everything and who have been seeking and searching and trying and aspiring, as you said, for a really long time, sometimes many decades. I’m experienced by many people as the last resort, as one of the ways they turn after they’ve tried everything.

It’s kind of astonishing, the amount of despair that exists out there because they haven’t gotten it. Despite doing all the right things, going to satsangs, sitting at retreats, giving thousands of dollars to this one or that one, traveling to India, meditating every day, and sometimes several times a day, these are people who are depressed—really depressed.

Paradoxically, there is a relief that comes when you get to a point where you just say, “Screw it. Here, now, this is it.” There is relief in that kind of surrender to what is instead of what we want. For a depressed person or an anxious person, it’s hard and it’s fought, but it’s kind of a miracle almost.

There is relief in that kind of surrender to what is instead of what we want.

Rick: Yeah, I get that, and I agree with you. I wouldn’t dispute it, but it is paradoxical. There is that—you remember Fiddler on the Roof? He kept saying, “On the other hand, there is another hand.”

Judy: Until there isn’t. At the point that there isn’t, it’s astonishingly a blessed relief. We think that it won’t be, but if what you’re after is improvement and a better feeling, for a whole lot of people it can’t be gotten by seeking.

Rick: Well, in my own case, let me just speak from my own experience. Maybe that’ll help. I feel like for a long time I was a seeker. There was this yearning, striving, struggling. I was practicing, and I still practice, I still meditate, but there was this feeling of, “Ugh, you know, got to get it, haven’t got it, can’t wait till I get it.”

Then, at a certain point—it wasn’t actually one moment—it just dissipated and disappeared. Now there’s none of that kind of feeling, and yet I still meditate. I still feel like I’m growing and improving in different ways, and I don’t really care about any particular pot at the end of the rainbow. Whatever comes will come.

But I also feel and acknowledge that there are higher possibilities yet to fathom, yet to realize, yet to experience. I don’t bemoan what I’m experiencing now. It’s like education. Let’s say you’re in the fifth grade. You may eventually get a PhD, and you’re going to know a lot more than you do in the fifth grade, but that doesn’t mean you should bitch and moan about being in the fifth grade. You have to fully enjoy that, and then enjoy the sixth grade, and so on as you progress through your education.

Judy: I guess what we’re talking about here is that you’re obviously not in a place where the idea that there’s more you can get is depressing to you or hard for you or painful to you. But you would be perhaps shocked to discover how many people this is painful for—terribly, life-ruiningly painful for.

I’m hearing from all these people I work with who, as I said, have tried everything. These are very unhappy folks. Part of what brings this unhappiness up is the idea that there’s something they’re not getting, there’s something out there, they’re missing out. The question is, to quote Byron Katie, “Is that true?”

Rick: Yeah, good. Okay, well, let’s keep probing that. I don’t question that you talk to such people or that there aren’t such people. I totally believe you, but I’d like to understand better why that is.

Do you find my education metaphor appropriate at all? I mean, if you were to talk to one of these people and say, “Yeah, yeah, there’s more, but enjoy what you’ve got now.” It’s typical of any field of life that we’re not as good an athlete or as good a scholar or as good in anything as we may be if we continue to focus on that thing over time.

Judy: You know, all of that is language so contrary to how I work or think that I would never say to anybody there’s more. I would never say to anybody, “Where you are is fine, but there’s someplace better,” or “There’s more to be had.” I would never say that.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Seeking is as good a way to live this life as any, but if the dream world is miserable, then something’s not working.

Rick: No, if it’s making the dream world miserable, then definitely.

Judy: Right, and so what I would say is that there is—I mean, I’m very lucky that I have the ability to kind of cut through a lot of the garbage that mind provides people and help people actually see for themselves. Not listening to me spout off for a couple of hours, but experiencing for themselves what is actually happening.

And in order to do that, it’s not a question of chasing something else, or learning, or educating. It’s not any of that. It’s simply finding a way to experience what is already here. It doesn’t have to be learned, it doesn’t have to be chased, it doesn’t have to be educated. It’s already here. There’s nowhere to go for it.

Rick: Okay, yes, I agree with that. Obviously, what is that verse in the Gita? “The unreal has no being, the real never ceases to be.” So what is real is already here, and what you’re saying is the name of the game is to experience that—to experience what is already here.

Judy: If you can. Not everybody can. If you can’t, this is good anyway.

Rick: Why wouldn’t somebody be able to?

Judy: Only because thought often makes that not possible.

Rick: So you make it sound like some people are qualified or capable of experiencing what’s already here, and others—sorry, Charlie—you just don’t have what it takes.

Judy: That’s not the case. I guess where I come from is that it honestly doesn’t matter if we know it or not. It’s still what’s here.

Rick: True. And it doesn’t matter if we understand. All of this—the spiritual scene—is full of people trying to understand, trying to learn, trying to educate, trying to understand. All of that depends on mind, ego, and thought. Those are interchangeable for me. You can’t understand without mind, and I have found ways to bypass that, but I have not found that understanding is even necessary.

Well, let’s keep playing with this. No, it’s good. I’m liking this conversation. Hopefully the people watching are also. I think there are different faculties for understanding. You just named a few of them: mind, ego, and the senses. There’s intellect, intuition, heart. There are these different aspects of the experiencing mechanism, different levels of it—some grosser, some subtler, and this and that. Obviously, if one just applies the grossest aspect without also engaging the subtler ones, then the understanding is going to be partial, right?

Judy: And if you’re depending on language, thought is not going to help.

Rick: Sure. Well, can we take a simple example? Let’s say the taste of a mango. Mango actually happens to be the most popular fruit in the world. I didn’t know that until I learned it recently, but maybe in the United States it’s not as common as bananas or apples.

Let’s say a friend tells you about a mango. You have a big conversation about what it tastes like, you start reading books on mangoes, and you can go on for years doing that on that level and never know what a mango tastes like. You can become very frustrated in the process: “This marvelous, incredible thing that I’ve been reading about and thinking about—now I know the whole botany of it and the chemistry, but I still don’t know what it tastes like.” So you have to taste it.

Obviously, you can get stuck on that kind of level of understanding with regard to spirituality without having the actual experience that it’s all about.

Judy: Right, and I think the spiritual community is rife with that.

Rick: So there’s a lot of people stuck in that way, you’re saying.

Judy: And they’re talking a good game.

Rick: Yeah, yeah.

Judy: And many of them are teaching, but there’s a whole lot of words coming out and there is not a lot of mango eating.

There are a whole lot of words coming out and there is not a lot of mango eating.

Rick: Well, I agree with you. After I started doing this thing and started running into particularly those who are categorized as neo-Advaita people, I found this Tibetan Buddhist saying: “Don’t mistake understanding for realization.” The second part was, “Don’t mistake realization for liberation.”

I ended up feeling that a lot of people have read too many books and gone to too many satsangs. They’ve gotten really good with the terminology and have kind of psyched themselves into mistaking an understanding, which they’ve immersed themselves in, for their actual realization of that to which the understanding pertains.

I ended up feeling that a lot of people have read too many books and gone to too many satsangs. They’ve gotten really good with the terminology and have kind of psyched themselves into mistaking an understanding, which they’ve immersed themselves in, for their actual realization of that to which the understanding pertains.

Judy: It’s kind of mind-boggling to me because it seems to me that the more one experiences something other than the personality, or something other than the apparent, the less certain of right and wrong—and of what is—the less certain one becomes.

Earlier, I saw somebody post on Facebook. They posted some spiritual quote, and somebody else commented, “No, that’s wrong.” Then they went off into that, and the other one said, “Right, you’re right, that’s wrong.” And I’m thinking, “Really?” I mean, not knowing the difference between a point of view and the truth—that’s where, who knows what the truth is? We all have a point of view. Who knows who’s right, if anyone?

Rick: It’s like the blind men arguing over the elephant, right?

Judy: Exactly, and very dogmatically. They’re absolutely positive. So it seems to me that the more in touch we get with stepping outside, as best as possible, this limited hardware, the more accepting of uncertainty we can be.

Rick: Yeah. My little blurb on Skype is actually a line from the Incredible String Band, if you remember them. The line is, “Whatever you think, it’s more than that.” And Nisargadatta, everybody’s heard of Nisargadatta, said, “The ability to appreciate paradox and ambiguity is a sign of spiritual maturity.”

I think if you appreciate paradox and ambiguity, then you’re not going to be adamant about this or that position. You’re going to have a both-and kind of appreciation.

Judy: Exactly. I mean, I would say that both-and is the best I could do. I’ve written a few times about the word “simultaneously.” We can live this dream and go to the supermarket, drive on the right side of the road, tie our shoes, yell at our kids, and walk the dog. We can do all of that and also occasionally have this sense of what we really are, which is not this.

Rick: Yeah. Here’s a line that you wrote. I copied it down because I thought it was good. You said, “Even when there are triggers, there’s always a simultaneous not-Judy that is fine with what’s happening, can be riled up and not riled up simultaneously.”

Judy: Yeah. I moved to Philadelphia last month from beautiful, sunny, idyllic California to be here with my mother, who is sick. There’s that famous Ram Dass quote: “There’s nothing like family to set a person off.” Here I am; I have voluntarily moved closer to my mother. Triggers can happen, and I can watch Judy react and also not. I think, as long as we are human, that’s it. It’s both.

Rick: Yeah, I think so. We can flesh that out a little bit, but I think you’re right. I think that’s what is meant by witnessing. You’ve heard the term witnessing. I don’t think witnessing is something you are supposed to do. I think it’s an orientation that can characterize your experience at a certain stage, where, in the midst of any kind of chaos or situation, there’s this sort of not-Judy perspective at the same time. There’s this silence that’s unperturbed by it all.

Judy: Right, yeah. Knock yourself out. Go ahead and yell at the kids or whatever it is you do, and also—okay.

Witnessing and being human

Rick: Yeah. Now, the fleshing out I would want to do on that is that I think there can be an evolution in terms of how readily one is triggered. Some people just fly off the handle at anything, and I don’t think that shows a very mature development—there we go with the development word again—of a personality, or development even in the sense that spirituality should ultimately entail.

It indicates a lot of conditioning and a lot of reactivity, and that kind of stuff can actually be grown out of through the proper means, I think.

Judy: It does seem to relax. I don’t know if I would use the words “grown out of,” kind of going back to our previous conversation, but I think it does relax.

I remember a long, long time ago, I was at some event of Byron Katie’s. It was just after Thanksgiving, and she was talking about the fact that her Thanksgiving turkey had caught fire in the oven. She had gone running through the house looking for Stephen—I don’t know if those are the words she used, but essentially, she went running through the house looking for Stephen.

I raised my hand and said, “So when you were looking for Stephen and the kitchen was starting to catch on fire, did you think you were really there?” Basically, her answer was yes and no.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: I’ve come to understand that myself. A trigger—there’s a fire in the kitchen. Yeah, I’m triggered. Yep, okay. I think that comes with being human.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: In fact, if it didn’t—

Rick: There’d be something wrong.

Judy: Right. Do we all have to resort to a cave in order to be able to access or live the kind of life you’re describing, where you’re mature and you’re in touch with that? Do we have to reduce human lives to such small stimuli in order to make sure triggers don’t happen?

Rick: If we do, then I would say it’s not a very well-established condition; it’s not well integrated. If it can be blown away by the slightest thing, then you ain’t got it.

Judy: I mean, why would you even want it? If you have to reduce experience to something so small in order to keep triggers from going off, what are you left with as a human?

Rick: Yeah. No, I mean, just to quote the Gita again, the whole story was about somebody who was supposed to start a battle. He was told to get yourself established in pure consciousness, or yoga, or the transcendent, and then go ahead and fight the battle. The battle is going to be intense, but you’ll be able to do it with equanimity if you have gotten this foundation established.

Judy: It’s just—I guess my experience, for whatever that’s worth, is that when I can get Judy out of the way, it’s just a little clearer. It’s just clearer.

Rick: And what do you mean by getting Judy out of the way? What’s that like?

Judy: Well, Judy is like everybody else. Judy is a product of conditioning and language and education, of happy things happening and unhappy things happening. Judy is like your dog barking at the UPS guy. They learn to do that, and then they have a good time and enjoy it, and they keep it up.

The “and also” is, I find, the key to peace. Judy was an unhappy creature before understanding that this isn’t all she is.

Rick: Yeah. So to my mind, what you mean by getting Judy out of the way is not eliminating Judy, but not having Judy be the whole show. It’s having the deeper dimension there simultaneously along with the Judy dimension, so that the Judy experience doesn’t overshadow the reality of the situation. That could be phrased in different ways.

Judy: Right, but essentially I think we’re in agreement. I also want to say that I’m really enjoying all your quoting of these various sources, because I can’t do that. I don’t do that, and I don’t have the background for it anyway. So it’s fun for me to hear all that, and I’m glad you’re doing it and not waiting for me to.

Rick: Good. Well, if we keep at it long enough, I might quote Curly of the Three Stooges or something. You never know.

Judy: That I’ll be with you right there on.

Rick: Actually, he has a great one. He said there was a situation that the Stooges were involved in, and they were trying to come up with a solution. Curly was standing there, squinching up his face in different ways, and finally said, “I’m trying to think, but nothing happens.”

Judy: Right. I mean, everybody’s aspiring to that here in the spiritual scene.

Rick: Yeah, he was enlightened, that’s for sure.

Judy: Yeah, and here we could say “nyuk nyuk” and see right on.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, so this is fun. We’re having fun. And just to remind those who are watching, if you feel like posing a question that I’ll bring up during the interview, go to the Upcoming Interviews page on batgap.com. There’s a form at the bottom of that page through which you can submit your question, and that’s true of any of the interviews that I do through Skype.

So, you were saying earlier about how you would never say to somebody that there’s more, and that it would be depressing to them, or you wouldn’t want to depress them by saying such a thing. As you’re saying that, I can see your perspective. It’s the both-and thing. But also, my reaction when I hear somebody say that is usually that I find it depressing. There are people who say, “This is it. This is all there is. Whatever you’re experiencing, that’s it.”

I guess we’re coming back to the point we’ve already covered a little bit, but I just want to cover a little bit more, which is to say that there’s a tremendous realm of possibility in terms of the perspective one can have as one lives one’s life, and in terms of the inner experience one has as one goes through one’s day. I find it discouraging to say, “What you’re experiencing right now, this is it. Don’t expect that there can be anything more than that.”

Accepting what is

Judy: Okay, so I wrote a recent MindTickler, my blog, and I did not send this to you. I’m sure you haven’t seen it. It’s about my dad, who reached the age of 85 and felt that there was no more coming. “There was nothing to look forward to,” was his expression. There was nothing to aim for, nothing to aspire to, no better place to get to. This was it. Rather than accept that, he killed himself.

And I’m saying that without any sadness for him. This was what he wanted. What I found is that when people experience a sadness, depression, disappointment, or a “But I don’t want it to be like that” in answer to “This is it”—and I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing; I’m exaggerating some of what I’ve heard—but when people do experience “This is it,” which is simply true, right?

Rick: This is it so far, based upon what you’re experiencing. This is it.

Judy: This is it. Yeah. Breathe in, breathe out. This is it.

Rick: You don’t have much choice in the moment.

Judy: All the rest is thought.

Rick: So what’s wrong with thought?

Judy: Well, there’s nothing wrong with thought, except that it’s rarely kind. And so when people, again in my experience, experience a sadness, a depression, or a mini-tantrum in response to “This is it”—“But no, there has to be more”—

Rick: Like the infomercial: “But wait, there’s more!”

Judy: Exactly. When people experience that, they stop there. They get stuck there. If you actually—and again, I’ll use words I don’t like to use—accept or surrender to the “it-ness” of this moment, because truly, this is all we get right now. This is it. When that is actually accepted and not fought—“No, this can’t be it. I don’t want this to be it”—when you fight that—

Rick: Yeah, that’s not what I’m saying, but continue.

Judy: Okay. By fighting it, you’re guaranteed to be unhappy.

Rick: Absolutely, yeah. I wouldn’t advocate fighting what you’re experiencing right now. That’s going to make you miserable. It’s going to be a struggle, it’s going to be unnatural, and you’re going to be at war with yourself.

Just to go back to the education metaphor, if you’re in the fifth grade and you think, “Fifth grade sucks. I hardly know anything compared to what Einstein knew, or whatever. I hate the fifth grade,” you’re not going to do so well in the fifth grade if that’s your attitude.

Judy: And your dream is going to suck.

Rick: Yeah, but that’s not to say you may not go on to get a PhD in physics and know as much as Einstein did. But you’ve got to do—well, here’s a quote for you. You like quotes. This is from the Gita again: “You have control over action alone, never over its fruits. Live not for the fruits of action, nor attach yourself to inaction.”

It’s saying, basically, this is it. This is the thing that you actually have a handle on, so make the most of it. There will be fruits, but you don’t have any control over those. The best you can do is make the most of the moment you’re in.

Judy: I would even take issue—dare I take issue with the Gita?—that we don’t even control the action.

Rick: Yeah, let’s get into that a little bit.

Do we control our actions?

Judy: I mean, there’s science showing—who did I just… I just had this conversation.

Rick: Yeah, there’s that thing where you have the thought to move your arm five milliseconds before you move your arm. That’s been sort of disproven, but there is—yeah, go ahead.

Judy: Okay, the thing is, you have the thought to move your arm. Where did the thought come from? What generated that? Did you do that?

Rick: Yes and no.

Judy: Okay, we’ve got an “and also” going on.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: Okay, so if I tell you to have a thought right now, go.

Rick: Okay, I’m having one.

Judy: Did you see that second or beat where you had to wait for it to come?

Rick: Yeah, but there’s a reason for that.

Judy: Medication?

Rick: No. The reason is that thoughts don’t come full-blown into the mind. They start out subtle and become increasingly manifest until they reach the perceptual threshold at which we can recognize them.

Judy: What are you basing that on?

Rick: Experience, and some understanding that there’s a realm of subtlety to the mind. It’s like an ocean where you have, let’s say, big bubbles breaking the surface, and then smaller bubbles as you go down to the ocean floor. There’s a range of subtlety to the mind that one can explore and traverse, and one can actually go beyond it entirely and reach a state beyond thought where there isn’t any thought. I’ve experienced that many times.

Judy: Okay, so I guess my question for you is, does the ocean generate the bubbles?

Rick: Okay, let’s do paradox again, and I’ll reference the Gita again. There was that verse I just read: “You have control over action alone, never over its fruit.” Then there are many verses that go on and on about how you are not the actor, you’re not doing anything, and all action is done by what they call the gunas of nature. If you take yourself to be the actor, then you’re deluded.

So it’s a matter of perspective, I think—where we want to take our stand. Both are true. Maybe the one you’re advocating here is more true, a deeper truth, but there’s also the relative truth that we experience in practical daily life.

Judy: Understood. In that relative daily life, I think I scratch my nose by choice, and that’s okay. We need that to function. Again, I choose to make a right turn here.

Rick: Shall I have lasagna for dinner, or pea soup? Let me think about it for a minute. I had lasagna yesterday, so I’ll have pea soup.

Judy: Although if it’s slowed down, you can see that the preference shows up all by itself, and then we claim credit for it: “I did this. I made a decision,” or “I had an idea.”

People often ask me about some of those MindTicklers that I’ve written. They scan all kinds of subjects; they jump from subject to subject, week to week. I’ve long ago given up trying to control what is going to come out of me in those things.

I often have a plan, and I think I’m going to write about such-and-such today, but I sit down and that just isn’t happening. Before you know it, it’s about my dad deciding that there was nothing to look forward to. Again, there is a lot of peace in not being the one in charge.

And also, if your goal—this thing one aspires to—if your goal is to see the not-selfness involved in all of this, then when you don’t see yourself as the one in charge, you have perceptual options you didn’t have before.

So this is an example where I said it’s all words, it’s all language. Our language is geared to make it appear as if this is me, and I am a one, and I am a person, and you are a person, and you are over there, and you are not here, and we are not the same. Language is designed to do that.

And so, where was I going with this? I had a place to go.

Rick: I’ll say something for a moment, and that’ll trigger your memory. When I started to go through the transition from feeling like I was in charge—that I was holding the reins, that I was running the show—to something much bigger than me, as it were, running the show, there was a lot of seesawing back and forth.

There was a lot of falling into passivity, where I wasn’t taking initiative because I expected the powers that be to motivate me or something. Other times, I would be gripping and pushing, trying to insist that things happen a particular way. There was a lot of vacillation during that transition period.

Now it’s pretty smooth, but I think many people go through this, where there’s a relaxing of the reins and letting—or putting—the car on autopilot or whatever.

Judy: Right.

Rick: And you’re nervous at first: “Oh, the car is going to crash if I let go,” so you grab the wheel again.

Judy: And there’s also a whole bunch of, “I don’t like this. Wait a minute. I can’t control my fate. I can’t control what happens to me.”

Again, one of the things I work with a whole lot is people who have lost motivation or who procrastinate. This is often common in the spiritual scene, where people get a sense of, “I’m not doing it, so what the hell?” That “what the hell” piece is a pout.

Rick: Yeah, that’s kind of what I was saying.

Judy: It’s a tantrum. It’s a way for thought, or the mind, to not accept and not surrender. “Well, if I can’t control this, then I just won’t do anything.” That’s basically what it comes down to.

You can wait. You can say, “Well, if I can’t control anything, I might as well just sit here.” But that’s a trick of thought. It’s a trick.

Yeah, it comes down to lack of integration again, perhaps lack of real… Here’s what it is: If our perspective can expand to the point where it incorporates both the individual and the universal to a sufficient degree, then one can be motivated like a son of a gun, pursuing whatever one is wired to pursue, and yet at the same time be very much surrendered and letting God sort of hold the reins.

Rick: Yeah, it comes down to lack of integration again, perhaps lack of real… Here’s what it is: If our perspective can expand to the point where it incorporates both the individual and the universal to a sufficient degree, then one can be motivated like a son of a gun, pursuing whatever one is wired to pursue, and yet at the same time be very much surrendered and letting God sort of hold the reins.

There’s a saying, “Brahman is the charioteer.” That bigger reality is actually guiding the reins, guiding the chariot, and yet somehow that’s not incompatible with personal motivation.

Judy: Because what we do, whether we do something or we don’t, whether we tie our shoes or we don’t, whether we get motivated and get that PhD or we don’t—again, I’m not a scholar, I’m not an expert, and I don’t know exactly how—I wouldn’t be able to define Brahman, although I’m getting an idea from what you’re saying.

Rick: Let’s say the wholeness, vast intelligence, or whatever.

Judy: It’s good with either one: get the PhD or sit on the couch.

Rick: Yeah, but you know, I think—

Judy: Does it have a preference?

Rick: I think all of Indian society fell into a kind of lethargy based upon this misunderstanding that somehow being spiritual meant not doing, not accomplishing, becoming renunciate, not having initiative and motivation. It really had an impact on the whole civilization. So I personally don’t think that spiritual development, or whatever you want to call it, is at all incompatible with accomplishment, motivation, enthusiasm, and any of that stuff. It can actually enhance it if you go about it right.

Judy: Agreed. I think that the key to whether that is torture or painful as you are accomplishing and getting to do things—the difference between whether that hurts or not—has to do with whether what’s here is good enough.

Rick: Exactly. I agree. I once heard humility defined as the quality of not insisting that things happen any particular way.

Judy: You can insist all you want.

Rick: Yeah, right. Katie territory again. If you argue with reality, you lose every time.

Judy: It hurts, you know. Again, when I’m working, I work with people who hurt, and you can keep it up. Brahman—or is it something bigger or whatever that is—is fine with that, but it hurts. And if this dream hurts and you don’t want it to hurt anymore, maybe it’s time to not hurl ourselves at that wall.

Rick: Right, or make sure that you’re actually experiencing what all these concepts signify rather than just dwelling on the concepts. Here’s a question that came in from Jay in Victoria, British Columbia, which is right up your alley. He said, “I’ve read dozens of spiritual books and know the jargon. I have focused on a couple of books on surrender. However, I still struggle with depression. My main focus for the last six years is on being present, although I find that I am dissociative and not interested in anything.” This is what we were talking about. He said, “How do I infuse joy and happiness in the present moment?”

Finding happiness without chasing it

Judy: You’re not the boss of that. You can’t aim for joy and happiness and expect to reach it. And I’m making that face as I say that because I’m sure that you have countless listeners out there going, “That can’t be right.”

Rick: Well, maybe it depends on how you aim.

Judy: Again, I’m going to refer to it as mind, and I’m going to refer to it as a real thing. It’s not; it’s another concept, but we experience it as if it’s real, just like we experience this as if this is what we are. And it has a million tricks. If you’re experiencing depression when you think you are surrendering, you’re not actually surrendering. You’re fighting it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, except that it hurts.

What I have found is that you can’t come at this stuff head-on. You have to trick mind. You have to trick it. It’s not going to relinquish its domain happily.

Rick: How do you trick it?

Judy: Well, I’m going to be careful how I answer this, because if I say too much about how I trick it, it won’t work. In other words, once mind is aware of what’s going on, it won’t work anymore. But you keep it busy with a project, and you let the grown-ups talk. You know, that means nothing.

Rick: You might need to explain what you mean by that.

Judy: Let me think of an example. I often, when I’m working with people, will ask a bunch of questions and get their mind busy with answering the questions. At the same time, I am—

Rick: Dogs.

Judy: Is there a UPS man in the room?

Rick: No, they were just let into the room, and that was a cause for excitement.

Judy: One of the advantages of cats is that they’re quiet.

Rick: Yeah, well, not the Siamese.

Judy: Oh, see, I don’t know that.

Rick: Yeah, we had one. Okay, yeah.

Judy: So, you know, it’s kind of the way hypnosis works, although I am not hypnotizing people. I am not a hypnotist, but this is essentially how hypnosis works. With words and with a few possibly actions, but mostly with words, the hypnotist occupies the conscious mind with a task and, at the same time, simultaneously directs the unconscious, so to speak—because I’m going to put that in quotes—or directs another part of the brain, or another part of the experience, in a different direction.

So the mind is all very busy solving this problem, clucking like a chicken or whatever it happens to be, and yet there’s access to something else. Essentially, you’re accessing the right side of the brain when you’re hypnotizing people. You’re keeping the left side busy and accessing the right side. So that’s how hypnosis works.

When I’m working with people, I really understand this. I work with a whole lot of people who say what Jay from Vancouver said, which is that he’s certainly trying everything, but doing this yourself, the mind simply will not let you see its roadblocks. It wants the roadblocks to work. And so you need kind of an outside-the-mind way of accessing something else. You need to keep it busy.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. What you said kind of reminds me of the way a mantra works, or can work, which is that you actually do engage the mind in thinking this thing, but it begins to settle down to more and more refined impulses of the thought and becomes a vehicle to take one to a deep state. But it’s an activity.

It’s sort of like one might say they’re standing in the middle of a mud puddle, let’s say, and someone is out at the edge of the mud puddle. The person in the mud puddle says, “How do I get out of this mud puddle?” And the guy says, “Well, take a step.” “Wait a minute, you’re asking me to step in the mud again.” “Yeah, but just take the step.” “Okay, now take another step.” Eventually, you’ll be at the edge of the mud puddle; you’ll be out of it.

Judy: Right. So it sounds very similar. Again, I’ve got limited experience with meditating, but what you’re describing does sound similar if you occupy the rational mind with a task.

Rick: I mean, it’s not rational in this case, but it is an activity of some sort.

Judy: The thinking mind—that’s what I mean by rational.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: You can do this all kinds of ways. I remember years ago there was a workout program I was doing. I still kind of do it once in a while, and it still functions the same way. I’m so focused on the pain of that workout that the whole thing becomes a kind of meditation. You’re pulled to the mantra, you focus on the mantra, and it frees up a different—let’s call it a different—part of the brain.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: You can do that with hypnosis, you can do that with a workout, or you can do that with some kind of creative thing like painting or making music or whatever—all kinds of ways. It doesn’t have to be meditation, and it doesn’t have to be spiritual, but you can occupy the thinking mind with a task and finally get it out of the way a little bit.

Rick: Yeah, it’s true. It’s kind of like you put a sign on the wall saying “Post no bills,” and then that keeps people from posting all the other signs.

Judy: Right, even though that is, of course, a post.

Rick: Yeah. A few minutes ago you said something about how you can aim at the target but you won’t necessarily hit the target. Do you remember what you said just then?

Judy: I think I may have said that you can’t go at it directly. You can’t say, “I’m going to aim for joy.”

Rick: Right.

Judy: It’s going to be very hard to hit joy by aiming for it directly. I’m not saying it’s impossible—nothing’s impossible—but it’s going to be hard. And when you have somebody with a question like Jay’s, I just want to say that, Jay, what you wrote is extremely common. It’s what I do all day. I hear from people with that exact story all day long. That’s what I do.

Rick: Well, I have a metaphor for you on that one. Let’s say you have a bow and arrow, and you can aim the arrow at the target, but you’re not going to hit the target unless you pull the arrow back on the bow before letting it go. Then chances are you might hit the target. How that relates is that I think what all the scriptures say about the kingdom of heaven being within you, Sat Chit Ananda, inner bliss, and all that stuff—from my own experience, I fully ascribe to that notion, having experienced that inner bliss. But you don’t just get there by wanting it now.

Judy: Right.

Rick: There has to be an artful means.

Judy: Yes, you can’t go at it straight on.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: I will just say—and this is not to your point, and I don’t know if you… I don’t want to take too great a detour with this—but the idea of “inner,” I think, is an additional roadblock.

Rick: Kind of, yeah. I mean, because where is it? In the middle of your brain or something, or in your stomach?

Judy: Right. I ask clients this all the time: If we took you to an MRI, or we took you to a surgeon and we cut you open, would it be in there? So when it’s—this was one of the flaws, in my opinion, of the work in the Kilby inquiry—when your focus is inward, you are focused on this character.

Rick: Not necessarily. You can go beyond the character. There’s a verse from the Gita that describes it as being like a tortoise withdrawing all its limbs within its shell. There’s a sort of thing that can happen where the senses, which are ordinarily outer-directed, can take a 180-degree turn—not permanently, but just for the sake of having that inner experience—and then come out again. You end up soaking it up, as it were, and then it plays out in daily life.

Judy: Which, again, I do understand, of course, because I live in this world like everybody else. But I think that if what you’re looking for is enlightenment, the concept of “inner” and going inwards will get in your way, in my opinion and in my experience. Because, again, it was—

Rick: You end up fixating more on your individuality if you do that, right?

Judy: Yes, and how it feels and how it thinks, and whether it’s thinking good thoughts or stressful thoughts, or too many thoughts or not enough space between thoughts. But this is what I mean by the head-on thing: You can’t get at it head-on. When we’re looking for inner bliss, the language alone solidifies what is not solid.

Rick: Yeah, and language has its limitations, as we both know. When I say “inward,” I don’t mean an actual solidification of individuality. I mean more of a relaxing of it and an arrival at something which is not individual at all, but universal.

Judy: And I do understand that this is not where you were headed with it. What you were saying is that if you’re going to look outward for your bliss, you’re going to have a hard time.

Here’s the thing that seems to me from working with all these people: We all have our preferences for how we want our lives to go. We want our children to like us, and we want the dog not to bark, and we want our wives not to have lung conditions, and we want to have lasagna instead of pizza or pea soup or whatever. We all have our preferences. I like green and not yellow, or whatever, right?

And then, when we want the outside world to supply our likes and dislikes—“I want him to love me,” “I want my children to get along,” whatever—when we move our preferences out and then become dependent on situations happening in order for us to be content, we’re kind of screwed.

Rick: We are, yeah, because we don’t have control over that stuff.

Judy: And things happen—bad things, things we don’t like, things that don’t measure up to our preferences—every day.

Rick: Right, which is why all the traditions say, “Don’t put your eggs in that basket.” Don’t expect your fulfillment to be found in the outer world, because it’s always going to change.

Judy: “I’ll be happy once my husband is nice to me.” What happens is, the husband starts being nice to you, if you’re lucky, and then it’s something else. So, if you have to describe that bliss as inner or not, it’s more accurate, I would say, to say inner. But in my opinion, it’s a potential roadblock.

Rick: Yeah. Well, the word has its limitations, and like any word, if we’re going to use it, we better make sure that we’re defining it the same way, or we’re talking past each other. But I think the way you and I understand it is just that there is—well, what’s that Rumi quote? “Beyond right and wrong there is a field. I’ll meet you there,” something like that.

So, the traditional understanding is that there is a field which is fundamental to the universe and fundamental to who and what we are. That field has some qualities, and one of those qualities is bliss or happiness. If you can get in touch with that field, you will enjoy that. That’s my experience and the experience of many, many people. So I’m not just speaking hypothetically here, and neither have all the hundreds and thousands of people throughout history who have described their experience.

Judy: So I have a question for you.

Rick: Yes.

Judy: I mean, I’m not taking issue with what you said, and of course, if we get to experience bliss as opposed to anything else, why wouldn’t we want bliss?

Rick: Yeah, and bliss is again one of those words that we better be careful how we’re using here, but go ahead.

Judy: By the way, I have something in my eye. I’m not winking at you.

Rick: My bliss level just dropped a few notches.

Judy: The question is, if you are consciousness, would you have a preference for bliss over pain?

Rick: Relatively, I think you would. As Jesus said, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” He didn’t want to get crucified. He knew what that was going to be like, but then eventually he just said, “All right, God’s will be done.” Sure, you have a preference for being in a nice, comfortable bed rather than sleeping on a bed of nails, I suppose.

Judy: Right, but I guess what I’m asking is—

Rick: You still have your relative druthers.

Judy: But the relative is the key word there, because is the preference coming from consciousness’s preference or Rick’s preference?

Rick: Good question, and I think I know where you’re going with this, because I read one of your blog posts and you talked about all the yucky stuff that happens in the world—the Holocaust and all the horrible things that we could enumerate. If everything is consciousness, if everything is God or whatever, then it seems like God doesn’t have a preference, because all that stuff happens.

Judy: Here it is.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: Yeah.

Rick: I don’t want to be glib in trying to answer this, but let’s reference our own experience. Would you rather sleep under a bridge in the freezing cold, or would you rather sleep in a nice, warm bed?

Judy: Well, are you asking Judy?

Rick: Yeah, Judy.

Judy: Judy has definite preferences. Judy would much rather sleep in a warm bed. Judy would rather be in California. Judy would rather experience bliss than pain. Right. But I’m asking you, if what you understand consciousness to be—if it has a preference.

Rick: My understanding, for what it’s worth—and this is just an understanding—is that if you’re going to have a relative creation, as we apparently have, a universe, then there are going to have to be pairs of opposites. If there’s going to be fast, there has to be slow; hot, cold; big, small—all the various pairs of opposites we can enumerate. We could go on and on for hours enumerating them. So suffering, happiness, misery, joy, or whatever—there’s going to be this spectrum.

Judy: So does that mean consciousness endorses suffering?

Rick: I think it means that consciousness incorporates all the diversity and duality within itself—consciousness, Brahma, God, whatever. It incorporates all the diversity.

Judy: So we’re in agreement on that, and so the question then is, even when there’s suffering, can it be enough?

Rick: Now here’s my answer to that, which is that—my answer is—when I say things like that, I don’t mean to say that I’m somebody—

Judy: Oh, no.

Rick: There’s no authority here or anything like that. My best understanding of the situation is that all beings possess a natural tendency to want to experience greater happiness, greater joy, greater fulfillment, and so on.

I kind of see the whole universe as one big evolution machine in which greater and greater complexity and forms have evolved out of homogeneous hydrogen over billions of years, to the point where we can have a conversation like this, or we have Mozart, or we have Einstein, or we have all these amazing realizations in which consciousness is able to live and enjoy a living reality, as opposed to just being flat and unmanifest. So I think I strayed from your question.

Judy: Well, that’s okay. I thought to myself before we started this call that I have to be careful not to turn this around and start interviewing you, and it looks like that’s where I’m headed, because I spend my time asking a lot of questions. So I guess what—let me make this as a statement instead of a question.

Rick: Yeah, and I got too spaced out on that last answer. I kind of got out there, but go ahead.

Judy: No worries. What it seems to me is that the imposition of preferences, and even what you’re calling realization, is something that consciousness needs none of. It is what it is; it’s enormously infinite, and it includes every color, every feeling, every sound, and every preference.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: And so it appears to me, simply by the fact that it exists, that suffering is welcome and that bliss is not—that the desire for bliss is a human thing.

Rick: You may be right. I’ll refer back to Maharishi again here. He used to say that the purpose of creation is the expansion of happiness. They use the term lila in the Sanskrit or Vedic tradition, which means play, and play is usually associated with happiness or fun.

Obviously, Shakespeare wrote comedies and he wrote tragedies. King Lear was not a happy camper. So, going back to my point about the necessity for pairs of opposites, if there’s going to be diversity, the play is not necessarily always going to be pretty or enjoyable.

If God alone is the ultimate reality, then, yeah, God has preferences, because we have preferences and we are ultimately that. Obviously, preferences are being had, and others have a preference for heroin, sadomasochism, murder, or rather dark things. Presumably, they get some kind of perverted pleasure out of those experiences. But do they get bliss, I guess is the question.

Judy: Well, I guess where I’m going is that I think the aim for bliss leaves out a whole lot of experience.

Rick: Yeah, but do you want all that experience that it leaves out?

Judy: Well, again, now we’re talking about preference, and I think that when we are run by, driven by, our preferences for happiness and bliss, we eliminate—this becomes less available to us.

Rick: For the sake of those just listening in audio, you’re kind of gesturing to signify the unboundedness, or the Brahman, or whatever.

Judy: Yeah, right. It’s less available while we’re aiming for bliss. We are eliminating vast quantities of experience that, obviously—again, I’ll use words I rarely use—consciousness has no problem with. As a matter of fact, consciousness endorses this, or it wouldn’t exist.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: So, when we’re—I mean, I’m all for bliss. I’ll take bliss over pain, as much as the next guy. But the drive to bliss is a human limitation, often comes with pain, and is nonessential. I’m making this face because I know this is not your point of view.

Rick: No, I’m not disagreeing with you. It’s a subtle thing, I think, we’re trying to put our fingers on here. I think there’s a verse from the Rig Veda. It says something like, “The frog desires water, the physician disease,” and it goes on, enumerating the different types of beings and the different kinds of things they desire or enjoy.

Let’s say we have a choice between listening to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony or some really intense heavy metal. Maybe you and I would prefer Beethoven, but there are some people who are going to get more enjoyment out of the heavy metal. So there are individual preferences, and as they say, there’s no accounting for tastes.

But I think what I’m getting at is that, aside from all those relative preferences and individual considerations, there’s a fundamental intrinsic reality to the universe, and one of its characteristics is said to be Ananda, or bliss. If one can get in touch with that, regardless of one’s individual proclivities, interests, and pursuits, there will be an innate, fundamental happiness that dwells in the heart, or wherever it dwells, that is abiding regardless of the changing circumstances of life.

Judy: I think that’s a nice theory.

Rick: But it’s also something that people experience.

Judy: We were talking about bliss and intrinsic happiness.

Rick: Yeah, whether there is any such thing inherent in the fundamental nature of reality, or whether it’s all just brain chemistry—dopamine and serotonin and this and that—a chemical thing, perhaps. That might be one angle of looking at it.

Judy: I mean, just like I’m not a spiritual scholar, I’m not a scientist or a biologist either, so I don’t know. I think that, again, all I can speak of is my experience. As long as I think I am this, and as long as I’m focused on this experience—what it thinks, whether it likes it, and how it feels—I am going to miss what you’re calling that intrinsic happiness.

These characters are by nature—the mind is unhappy, I guess. I realize I’m inviting an argument with that. As long as we think what we are is this—as long as I think I am Judy and you are Rick, as long as we think this is what we are—intrinsic happiness is going to be an elusive goal.

Rick: I totally agree. In fact, there’s an Upanishad which says, “There is no joy in smallness.”

Judy: You know, but aiming for bigness is good luck with that. Again, you have to come at it sideways, and I understand that’s not necessarily your point of view, and I understand that that’s not necessarily everybody’s experience.

One of the things that I have found, and that was a great relief for me when I came to see this, is that the experience of this existence has so many versions. It’s completely infinite. So whatever you have discovered for yourself in terms of what bliss is, what enlightenment is, and what understanding is, that’s been done. It’s not going to look like that for anybody else.

When you talk about intrinsic happiness and inner bliss, and you’ve experienced this, I think that when people listen to these kinds of things and start aiming for that for themselves, they’re aiming for your experience. Good luck with that.

Rick: No, I agree. We shouldn’t aim for somebody else’s experience, which is not to say there aren’t sort of universal truths or patterns or whatever. I mean, there are probably an infinite number of ways of driving from Philadelphia to San Diego, if you take into account all the different roads that exist, but there are certain tried-and-true methods that are going to get you there faster, certain I-80s or whatever.

There’s a lot of—who is it, Houston Smith or Aldous Huxley, one of those guys talked about the perennial philosophy and how the same sort of truth seemed to come up in one culture after another, cultures that didn’t have any communication with one another. People discover the same things.

Judy: Well, yeah, and I mean, it’s hard. On one hand, that’s hard to argue with; on the other hand, I think that, again, as long as we’re focused on what this thing wants—and I get that this thing wants bliss—we are bound and limited and driven and missing vast quantities of experience.

Again, I realize this is what your show is all about, but the idea that bliss is the goal and bliss is really essentially the only thing acceptable, you’re basically saying—

Rick: I’m not saying that.

Judy: Well, I mean, I don’t know. When you talk about—even when you talk about happiness as intrinsic, what does that mean?

Rick: Yeah, go ahead.

Judy: I mean, is it intrinsic to the human?

Rick: I’d say it’s intrinsic to the ultimate reality, and that the human can interface with that ultimate reality to greater or lesser degrees of clarity. The greater the clarity of the interface, the more inner joy will be experienced.

Judy: Okay, so again, I’m landing on that inner word. But—

Rick: Well, as opposed to through the external objects brought to us through the senses.

Judy: I understand. I really think it’s a limiting word, though.

That’s absolutely true. One of the ways that I work with people and come at this sideways is via the words that I hear, because they’re so—the limits of language are a way to trick the mind.

For instance, let me just give you a quick example. If somebody says to me, “I feel like I have an elephant on my chest. I feel heavy,” and I say, “Well, is there an elephant on your chest?” and they say, “It feels like it,” they think that’s an answer.

I’ve come to see that when somebody says to me, “It feels like” or “It seems like,” what they are basically saying is that they know it’s not true and that they’re willing to pretend.

Rick: Well, they’re using a metaphor.

Judy: I know, but what is a metaphor? It’s a step removed from experience, and in the metaphor they are creating an experience.

Rick: They’re probably trying to describe some heaviness or some pressure or something like that they’re experiencing. Maybe it would be better to use more precise words than “elephant.”

Judy: Okay, so what I’m trying to say is, when we refer to bliss or happiness as intrinsic or as inner, we are basically saying, “Suffering, no. Only bliss will do.”

Here is existence or consciousness or God or awareness, whatever you want to call it, providing so much more, and we’re saying, “No, no, no, no tears. Tears bad. No bad.”

Rick: No, not necessarily.

Judy: Or, “No realization good, no realization bad.” That’s a human value judgment on experience.

Rick: Let’s take Ramana Maharshi. He died of cancer, and it was very painful. He was definitely experiencing pain, but people would ask him about his experience and he would make it perfectly clear that the pain was rather superficial by comparison with his predominant experience, which he probably would have felt comfortable using the word bliss.

So, the two were somehow coexisting, and the deeper dimension was his predominant reality.

Judy: So, this is an example I use often with clients—occasionally, I guess. There’s an American Indian tribe, I want to say the Sioux, that has a ritual called the Sun Dance.

Rick: I have friends who’ve actually done it and have the scars to prove it.

Judy: Okay, so here they are intentionally and purposefully bringing torturous physical pain to their bodies in order to occupy the mind with the pain so that they can transcend it and experience what you’re calling bliss.

They did this on purpose, and that was the only reason that they performed this ceremony: to experience that. I’m using these words—again, these are not words I often use—but that sense of connection with something bigger, that transcendence, that sense of what they really are as opposed to this character hung by their nipples in the bright sunlight.

So, what you’re describing with Ramana is really something similar. When the body is occupied with sickness or pain, it occupies the mind, gets it out of the way, and one can get in touch with something outside of this person, this self, this character. You can do that through pain. It’s one of the ways that you can.

So, when you’re emotionally suffering, are you sure it’s a bad thing?

Rick: Good point. I won’t refute that, and obviously ascetics have inflicted pain on themselves in all kinds of traditions in order to do the very thing you’re saying there.

Judy: Exactly.

Rick: And in Ramana’s case, he was already enlightened years before he got the cancer, so it wasn’t like the cancer gave him some new experience.

Judy: No, no, no, but I understand that. That is one of the values—I said to a client the other day who had developed shingles, “Thank goodness for the shingles. Thank goodness for the pain.” She was more peaceful dealing with that than she had been in quite some time, and feeling much better physically.

So, is happiness intrinsic? That’s the question.

Rick: Well, some would argue that all the painful experiences that everyone goes through—in fact, all the experiences—have an evolutionary significance or value. I wouldn’t argue against that, and it may not seem so at the time, but they do.

Your mother is scrubbing the dirt out from behind your ears, and you’re a little kid and you hate it and you’re struggling and screaming, but it’s actually good for you.

Judy: I think most of us have had experiences where we look back and, while we were in them, they were absolutely torturous.

Rick: And then we look back on them and think, “Well, it’s good that happened.”

Judy: Yeah, awful. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, and also not a bad thing.

Here is existence, consciousness, awareness—whichever word you want to put on it—providing this vast range of experience, not just bliss. And here we are saying, “Yeah, okay, but I just want the bliss, please.”

Here is existence, consciousness, awareness—whichever word you want to put on it—providing this vast range of experience, not just bliss. And here we are saying, “Yeah, okay, but I just want the bliss, please.”

Rick: I agree with what you’re saying, and there’s a bunch of good questions that came in that I want to get to. So I’ll just say one thing, which is that this bliss word does not refer to pleasure or relative happiness. It refers to something that sort of is beyond the pairs of opposites.

In fact, someone named Pat from Storrs, Connecticut, said something similar in a question she just sent in: “Maybe you’re confusing pleasure and bliss. Intense pleasure can create addiction and intense craving. For me, bliss is the peaceful place, the peaceful, balanced place where a quieter sort of joy comes up.”

So that’s well put. It’s something that is beyond the sort of relative-pleasure thing.

Judy: I get it, of course, and also I think the difference is in the value of all experience, I guess.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. Okay, let’s rest that for a few minutes.

Judy: Okay, you had some other questions? Yeah.

Rick: Erevik from Glendale, California, asks, “Is self-realization an attainment, or is it something that just happens?”

Judy: I don’t think anything’s an attainment.

Rick: Okay.

Judy: I think it’s all just something that happens—everything in this experience.

You can busy yourself with trying to get there, and I realize this is not your point of view. One can busy oneself with that for many years and still not attain.

Rick: Right.

Judy: So what is the difference between the guy who does 50 million satsangs and meditates every day and the other guy who does 50 million satsangs and meditates every day? What is the difference between them? One attains and one doesn’t.

Does it have to do with them? That’s the question, I guess. So I consider it all a happening and not an attainment.

Rick: Yeah. Also, an attainment implies that someone is getting something, this thing that you get. Universally, when people wake up, almost universally they say, “Wow, this has always been here. I just didn’t recognize it.”

Judy: Exactly, but that last piece of that sentence is the key to it: “I didn’t recognize it.”

While we’re waiting for realization and while we’re waiting for understanding, it’s here. That’s what I meant earlier when I said we don’t need to understand this. We really don’t. It’s here already, and whether we get it or not, it’s still here.

Rick: It’s true. We’d be in trouble if it weren’t.

Judy: Yeah.

Rick: Here’s a question from David in Fairfield, Iowa, which is where I am. He says, “You mentioned”—I presume it’s Fairfield, Iowa, not Fairfield, Connecticut, which is where I grew up—“you mentioned that the mind wants the roadblocks to work. What are the roadblocks, and why does the mind want them to work?”

Judy: When we talk about the mind as if it’s a real thing, it’s not, but it can help to use the words in these ways as a way of understanding, dramatizing, and picturing it.

If you picture the mind as if it’s a real thing, it wants to survive. What happens to it if you see that it’s full of crap? It kind of goes poof, and it’s not going to do that voluntarily.

Rick: Are you alluding to the thing people often discuss, about how the ego has this sort of desire to survive and feels threatened when it begins to dissipate or dissolve, and a lot of fear can arise and people cling to their life?

Judy: They’re afraid of the void, or they’re suddenly hungry for cookies. Again, I see this all the time.

The thing is, it’s a trick. Those feelings that people spend so much time on with some of these methods—and again, this is why I don’t do the Kiloby thing anymore—all that focus: “Oh, I have a feeling come up,” and then they stop there and put all their attention on the feeling.

Mission accomplished. You don’t go any further than that, and that sense of self is alive and well.

Fear does come up. Okay, so what?

Rick: Incidentally, I don’t disagree with your premise that many, many things that people do probably reinforce the sense of self or individuation rather than enable one to relax into a more universal or unbounded state. I think that’s probably very true.

But you can’t sort of lump everything together in one big basket. There are just so many different things out there that people do. You have everything from Jonestown to some real healthy scenes, techniques, and practices that have really been fruitful for people.

I’d say maybe it’s good to be discerning and discriminating and practical. If something doesn’t seem to be working, then move on.

Judy: I mean, for me, inherent in what you just said is a basic common sense. If somebody has been seeking for 30 years, it’s time for something different, because it’s not working, right? And when I hear about these various gurus and ashrams, with all this sexual abuse and all this other stuff, I’m just kind of astonished at people following. I don’t understand the following thing, and I should understand it because I kind of did it with Byron Katie for a while.

But I think this is what happens when we’re looking to these teachers for answers. That’s where we’re rife for being taken advantage of. Yes, do something different. I know people who have done the work of Byron Katie for 30 years, and they’ll very happily say, “I’m going to do it for the rest of my life.” Why?

Rick: Yeah, I mean, I’m going to keep eating for the rest of my life because it seems to be necessary for me. And I enjoy it, but if for some reason it weren’t, then it’s not a good example. Like the Byron Katie thing, if you don’t seem to be benefiting anymore, you’re just going through the same rote thing over and over again and you don’t seem to be…

Judy: Well, I’m sure they feel like they’re benefiting, but the question is, the thing is, there’s always another thought, there’s always another stressful thought, there’s always another thought, there’s always another feeling. If we get stuck focusing on that, you can never access anything more than the self. You can give the self a happier dream, and again, yay, but if what you want is to access what you’re calling that intrinsic happiness, that bigger… How do you get there by worrying if a thought is true or not?

Rick: Yeah, you know, I guess one way of putting it is if you think of traveling someplace and maybe it’s a trip where you have to take three different flights: a smaller commuter flight, then a bigger flight, then another smaller commuter flight or whatever. Each flight is essential to the journey. You wouldn’t get there if you didn’t take all three, but if you try to stay on any one of the planes after it has landed, or after it has taken you as far as it’s going to take you, then you’re not going to get to your destination.

Judy: So I think that not everybody’s destination is awakening, again, using… These are words I do not ordinarily use, but this is what I do. I speak your—I do my best to speak your language. If your destination ideally is that sense of awakening, can you get it by focusing on what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling and whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing? Can you get there that way?

Rick: Maybe not. Maybe you can get there that way, or maybe some can and some can’t, and others need something different.

Judy: And again, I’m all for anything that makes the dream less painful. Why wouldn’t you just do it? In that case, do it for the rest of your life. I mean…

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: Yeah. So, are there more questions? Because I know we’re…

Rick: Well, no more have come in from viewers, although they’re welcome to send them if they want. Go to the Upcoming Interviews page; there’s a form there. But my sense of Byron Katie is she kind of reverse-engineered her experience. She had a certain experience and then thought, “Well, how can I derive something practical from this that I can impart to others?” And so she came up with this method.

Judy: Or even—and again, I can’t speak for her—“How can I understand what has happened?” Again, that’s where you start getting the mind involved in an experience: “How do I understand?” I agree with you; it was reverse-engineered. An experience happened and then there was an explanation.

Rick: Right.

Judy: And a method. But it didn’t happen to her via the method.

Rick: No. She was in a halfway house, a cockroach crawled across her foot, and she had some kind of awakening.

Judy: Which is—I mean, the cockroach was coincidental, incidental to the story. It was just something that happened.

Rick: Yeah, just something that happened. You’re not going to get there by keeping cockroaches and letting them walk across your feet.

Judy: Wouldn’t it be funny if people derived that from the story? “Oh, I know what I need to do.”

Rick: Well, that’s a sort of absurd example, but people have done that for a long, long time. They try to emulate the external behaviors, appearances, or habits of teachers.

Judy: Yep. Yep. I mean, that’s all over the place. It’s in every ashram, right? All the folks sitting in the right position for the right length of time, in the right uniform. And, you know, are they meditating right? Are they thinking right? Are they disciplined enough? If their mind wanders to sex, “Oh, no, no, no.” It’s like, “Okay.”

Rick: There’s a story of Shankara. I don’t think this really happened, but it’s one of those stories that illustrates a point. He was walking along with some disciples, and he got a bit ahead of them. They saw him drink something, and it turned out to be some alcoholic beverage or something. So they all drank some. Then he walked a little farther along, and they saw him drink something else. They got up to the point where it was molten glass. The point was, “Don’t mimic me.”

Judy: I love that. Don’t you wish you could send some version of that message to all those gurus being arrested right now and all those disillusioned, pained followers hoping that this person has what they want? I mean, it’s a hard way to live.

Rick: Yeah, and there are a lot of teachers who are trying to get away from that hierarchical, sage-on-a-stage kind of arrangement, making it more of a “We’re all one, sitting in a circle” kind of mentality. But it’s another one of those both-and things, because it’s not to say that some people haven’t progressed a little bit further in terms of the depth or clarity of their experience and that they might not have something valuable to impart. But boy, if you put them on a pedestal, all kinds of problems begin to arise for you and them.

Judy: Right, right.

Rick: So, we don’t have a hard-and-fast ending to this show, Judy. If there’s anything that you feel like we haven’t touched upon that you would like to, we could take a few more minutes.

Judy: I’m completely in your hands. The only thing I would say is that I have taken over my poor cousin’s house since I have the toddler over my head in my own, and so I won’t be able to steal their house indefinitely, though it’s a thought.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: But I guess I would just want to say for the folks who are listening who feel like they’ve tried everything and really given it a good go, and if they’re still feeling stuck, that I think they can come at it sideways.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: And I think that’s hard to do by yourself. It’s hard to see straight by yourself. Sometimes, you know, that old expression about how you can see other people’s stuff but you can’t see your own. It helps, I think, to have a person outside your particular thought loop. That is a contradiction, I think, because in that sense, I think that’s how people can fall into following a guru.

Rick: Yeah.

Judy: They are outside; it is somebody else. But I don’t think they… I guess I’m babbling. I don’t know.

Rick: I understand what you’re trying to say. No, it’s coming across clearly.

Judy: Okay.

Rick: I think it’s another one of those… Here’s a little doggy who just jumped in my lap.

Judy: Sweet baby. Noisy little thing for such a tiny little character.

Rick: He likes to growl. It’s another one of those things where there’s a balance point. Something can be helpful, but too much of it, or approaching it in the wrong way, can be harmful, like anything—like water or anything.

Judy: Right.

Rick: Teachers can be helpful. We shouldn’t just brush off the whole value of teachers or guides or helpers or whatever, but obviously there can be wholesome and twisted versions of that dynamic.

Judy: So I’m just going back to that.

Rick: He’s growling at you, actually. He’s looking at you on the screen and growling.

Judy: You know what? It’s been known to happen. I mean, it’s something about this. I guess I was just thinking about the dichotomy between none of it is me and all of it is me. It’s all a realm of paradox and contradiction, and I don’t, again, think that these brains, these minds, are big enough. They’re too limited. That was one of the things that was very clear in one of those so-called awakening experiences of mine.

I even have this one recorded, as a matter of fact. I was talking to somebody, and it was recording, and it became very clear that we’re just not big enough. We’re limited by all of this. We’re just not big enough to be able to understand.

Rick: Yeah, true. Can anyone honestly claim that they understand everything there is to be understood?

Judy: And especially when it comes to awareness. I always kind of crack up at this because it’s a common theme: the idea of being aware of awareness.

What?

Rick: Yeah, what is the awareness that’s aware of the awareness?

Judy: Exactly right, and all within the limitations of this hardware. There is a point at which we don’t have the capability.

Rick: Right. That’s why the Gita says the Self realizes itself by itself. But there’s actually no duality in that. It’s not like this thing over here realizes this thing over here. It’s more like a sort of relaxing into oneness.

Judy: That makes sense.

Rick: Yeah. Okay, one final question. Virginia Harry from Stourport-on-Severn in the UK wants to know—this is a good concluding question, perhaps—“I struggle to incorporate what I know spiritually into my daily life. Can you offer any guidance?”

Judy: I do know Virginia, actually, and I’m sending her this answer with love. The integration of all of this into daily life—I mean, that’s all it’s good for. If we can’t use it, right? If enlightenment doesn’t bring something lighter, what’s the point? What good is it?

And so I do spend a fair amount of time—I actually have a class coming up, and I’ve given this a few times—on integrating so that daily life is less painful, possibly more productive, or whatever, simply better. Again, for the dream to be a little easier—who wouldn’t want that?

So, how do you do that? Again, it’s hard to do alone because the mind isn’t gleefully willing to help, but a lot of it is just a question of seeing where the limitations of thought are. Oh God, these words just are not doing the job.

It is possible to integrate and just have a better life. I’m not saying that you’re going to sit in a cave and be blissed out all the time, but it is definitely something that is the point of all this. Again, if there is a point, otherwise why bother?

Rick: Yeah, I interviewed a woman last week who was a disciple of a man who was a disciple of Yogananda, so she’s in that tradition. After the interview, I thought of one thing, a point I would like to have made. This is Ellen Grace O’Brien, whom I interviewed, and that is that spirituality is not a compartment of life. It’s not a sort of aspect of life; it’s the whole basket, and everything else is contained within and enhanced by it. If it genuinely develops, it should just have an enriching or enlivening effect on everything.

So this whole thing about sitting in a cave to experience bliss or something makes no sense to me. Maybe a few people are cut out for that kind of life, but for the vast majority of us, it would be extremely counterproductive and totally unnecessary.

Judy: I mean, in the end, we do, as a rule, have a preference for this dream to be a satisfying one, a better one, an easier one, a more peaceful one. In the end, without that, without the integration, what is spirituality and understanding and all of this education and learning, et cetera? If not for that, it’s kind of like, what for?

It’s about the dream, and why not want it to be better?

Rick: Yeah, I totally agree. And some people use that as a point of criticism. They talk about people wanting to just have a better dream rather than getting out of the dream, but I think the way to make the dream really better is to get out of it while remaining in it, as we’ve sort of discussed here.

Judy: It’s your only option, because we don’t turn into vapor as soon as we get there. We don’t vanish; we still have to go to the grocery store. It has to be both.

We don’t turn into vapor as soon as we get there. We don’t vanish; we still have to go to the grocery store. It has to be both.

Rick: Yeah, all righty. So I just want to say, Judy, that I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. I don’t feel like I’ve disagreed with you at all. It may have seemed like that at times. I feel like I’ve just tried to, in every case, say, “Yes, I agree, but how about also this?” You know, the both-and thing.

We did get some complaints during the interview that I was talking too much, and I did talk more than I usually do in interviews, I think. I hope I don’t usually talk this much, but it was a conversation and it was a lively one. As you said at some point, you were kind of interviewing me, asking me what I thought, which is why I went on a bit.

Judy: Which is not your fault. That was mine.

Rick: But I apologize to anybody who doesn’t like me to do that. All in all, I think we had a really fun time together.

Judy: I agree, and I enjoyed it very much.

Rick: Great.

Judy: And I just want to say one more thing. Even if we did—and I hear you—but even if we did disagree, I am used to being disagreed with, so that’s not a problem for me.

Well, it’s like you said in the very beginning. It’s one thing to sort of say, “Well, yeah, I kind of get what you’re saying, but there’s also this, and I also think that.” It’s another thing to say, “No, you’re wrong and I’m right,” to take this adamant, rigid kind of stance. I think neither you nor I are inclined to do that.

So thank you.

Rick: Good, thank you. So I’ve been speaking with Judy Cohen. As always, she’ll have a page on batgap.com where I’ll say a bit about her and then link to her website. What is your website? You might as well just say it also.

Judy: My website is irreverentmind.com, and I guess I probably should say, if anybody is intrigued at all, I do have a class coming up sometime in February, I think February 24th, maybe, on integrating all of this with real life.

Rick: Good, so they can go to your website and find out about that.

Judy: Yeah.

Rick: And this is 2019, January 26th. People will be listening to this 10 years from now. So anyway, if you catch that class, great. You probably have some kind of email thing people can sign up for to be notified of future things, right?

Judy: Absolutely. The Mind Tickler. They can, again, on the website, just click on any of the various links to subscribe to the newsletter, which comes out every week and is designed to just spark some new ideas.

Rick: Yeah, they did for me. I enjoyed reading those.

Judy: Thank you.

Rick: Okay, thanks. So thanks to those who are listening, who have been listening or watching, and we’ll see you for the next one, hopefully.