Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done over 500 of them by now and if you’ve been watching regularly you’ve heard that number increasing over the years. I can remember when I was saying I’ve done over 200 of them and I intend to keep on doing them. So if this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu. You can also be notified of future ones by signing up for a little email notification thing there. This also exists as an audio podcast for those who like to listen to things while they commute and stuff. The whole thing is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers. There’s no advertising or anything other than those annoying little ads you see on YouTube which don’t really generate much revenue. So if — and we’re a nonprofit — so if you feel like supporting it to any extent some people like set up a little $5 a month thing or whatever, whatever is comfortable or nothing at all, whatever you prefer. But if you appreciate it and would like to support it there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site. So, my guest today is Kate Hudson, Kate Guston. Kate Hudson, she’s an actress, right? Kate Guston PhD. Kate is a clinical psychologist practicing in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her education from Princeton University and the University of California Berkeley and has worked in a variety of settings over the past 25 years as a mental health practitioner, outpatient psychiatry, community mental health clinics, VA hospital, college counseling services and currently in private practice. Kate integrates the science of positive psychology into her psychotherapy, teaching, and consultation and leads classes and trainings for students, patients and health care professionals. So based on that introduction you might be thinking that this is going to be a conversation about positive psychology or, you know, self-improvement or that kind of thing. But Kate has actually written a book called the No Self Help Book — as opposed to the Self Help Book — 40 Reasons to Get Over Yourself and Find Peace of Mind. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about. So I think that’s interesting. A number of people I’ve interviewed have said that they don’t, that there is ultimately no self or that they’ve lost any sense of a personal self and I always argue that you couldn’t utterly lose any sense of a personal self or you wouldn’t be able to function. But anyway we’ll get into all that stuff. So welcome Kate.
Kate: Thank you I’m glad to be here.
Rick: Yeah good to have you. So before we actually get into the content of your book tell us a little bit about yourself. We just heard about your education which is a very good one. How about your spiritual education? When did you first get interested in spirituality and what have been some of the main influences in that regard?
Kate: I first got interested in spirituality about 25 years ago when I started my graduate studies at Berkeley and I just, through my own interest, started attending the local Zen Center and you know sampling a number of different teachers that circulated through the Bay Area, different meditation retreats and sanghas, and I remember one pivotal class that was offered by the faculty which was the clinical applications of Eastern thought. It was offered by Professor Eleanor Rosch and that was kind of my first introduction to this overlap between psychology and Eastern wisdom traditions. So since then I’ve been, you know, just making the most about being in the Bay Area where so many wonderful teachers come through and I’m able to participate in all sorts of venues.
Rick: Yeah I would say that other than Rishikesh it’s probably the world’s biggest hotbed of spiritual teachers and Rishikesh of course is heavy on the Hinduism so in the Bay Area you have this eclectic mix of all kinds of things.
Kate: Ah great, great.
Rick: Yeah that’s why the Science of Nonduality Conference is held out there, it’s already half the people who come to it are already there.
Kate: Yeah exactly.
Rick: Yeah. So something in what you just said, you know, the clinical applications of Eastern thought I think the name of that course was, obviously you probably feel that Eastern thought, which we could define a little bit if necessary, has clinical applications. It has, in other words, it can be beneficial for people’s mental health, right, if applied properly.
Kate: Right and these days you know there have been many applications for, you know, stress management and you know, the pain regulation, you know, mindfulness practice has been integrated into behavioral medicine and so, but it, you know it can be a little bit of a watered-down version, it doesn’t necessarily carry over some of the, you know the theology as it were, behind it.
Rick: Right. You know it’s just, you know, used as a way of helping people you know, adjust better or feel better.
Rick: Yeah and obviously people do yoga classes in the local YMCA and and all that without the theology. In fact my friend Phil Goldberg wrote this great book called American Veda have you ever heard of that book?
Kate: No.
Rick: Yeah he’s been on Batgap but it’s a book about the whole influx of Eastern wisdom since the time of the Founding Fathers, really, that began to trickle in and in small amounts and then there were the Transcendentalists and then there was Vivekananda and then Yogananda and he just traces a whole history of the sort of Vedic influence on the West and all the impacts that’s had. It’s an interesting book.
Kate: Yes and it’s, you know, really blossomed exponentially.
Rick: Yeah continues to do so. Okay so then you obviously say, like 25 years ago you started getting involved in this stuff and going to Zen Center and sanghas and satsangs and so on. So what influence has it had on you?
Kate: Oh personally?
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: Well there have been you know a couple different influences there. One has been through the intellectual study, you know reading as many books as I can get my hands on, but that has been only one part of the immersion. You know the other part has been just more of the just the visceral sense of these teachings and at times being graced with, you know a deeper understanding.
Rick: And we might also call that a deeper experience right, because I’m sure it’s not just an intellectual understanding.
Kate: Right in fact it really has nothing to do with thought process at all. And so that for me has profoundly changed my life. I mean it’s really altered my entire understanding of who I am and I believe it’s made a difference in how I am as a healer, you know as a psychotherapist. And it’s certainly what’s led me to write a book like this.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: It’s truly, I would never have envisioned writing a book on not having a self like that. I come from a very conventional background. This is not something that I was, you know, my life kind of ambition.
Rick: Do you have some kind of regular practice that you’ve settled into? Some daily routine of spiritual practice?
Kate: I had a while back but truly writing this book became my spiritual practice. You know there was a certain kind of ritual of prayer that I needed to sort of use as an entry point to write parts of the book and so that was my focus for a while.
Rick: Okay. And you mentioned Adyashanti and Rupert Spira and a few other teachers.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: Candice at Denver.
Kate: Denver. Right.
Rick: And they’ve had significant influences on you?
Kate: Yes. Yes. I’ve gone to many retreats and you know, I just find their teachings accessible. I mean you know, each person has their own flavor and you know my mind loves to kind of gnaw on Rupert Spira, what he has to say. You know, as you know that there’s a deeper sort of embodiment of his teachings. Adyashanti I find very accessible just in terms of kind of day to day life and and how to you know apply his words. Candice is you know, just everyone has their own unique personality as the vehicle through which they, you know deliver their teachings and so I’ve really enjoyed seeing, you know how this can come across in so many different ways.
Rick: If you hadn’t heard these people speaking and you hadn’t read all the spiritual books but had done the spiritual practice that you’ve done, would it have occurred to you that ultimately there is no self or at least that the self is certainly not what we take it to be?
Kate: If I hadn’t read all these books.
Rick: Yeah. In other words to what extent did you glom on to that idea from things you heard and read as opposed to what you yourself were actually experiencing?
Kate: There were several actual moments of grace in which my personal self kind of left the room. Yes, dissipated. And those experiences are what has given the, I don’t know, the meat to this, right. I mean my mind can sort of understand and really can articulate this but those experiences are what have changed everything.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: Yeah.
Rick: Did they leave a lasting flavor or was it like a glimpse and then you lost it?
Kate: They — both. I mean there was a glimpse and then you know the sort of localized sense of self you know came back in. But you know, sometimes you can have like one penetrating experience of truth and that can sort of shift everything. So I, you know and I feel like my sort of personal experience with this is what informed this particular kind of book because I really do refer to the selfing process, you know to being able to, you know identify with self-referential thought, you know that’s kind of the default and then being able to pause and step back and not identify with it. So that that really has been my process.
Rick: Yeah. Paul Hederman is fond of using the word selfing. Have you ever listened to him?
Kate: No I, no I haven’t. Some people have mentioned him recently so I look forward to looking him up.
Rick: Well my sense in reading your book is that you’re not becoming, you’re not advocating becoming utterly devoid of a sense of personal identity and I doubt whether that’s possible anyway. But it seems more that you’re encouraging people to stop believing false mental stories about themselves. Is that a fair assessment?
Kate: Absolutely. You know even though the title of the book is you know get over yourself you know kind of in a clever dismissive way, this is really about just informed consent, you know when when these narratives come to mind you know what what do you choose to identify with and, you know I, you know I really wanted to write this book as kind of a an accessible entry-level kind of pop non-duality book you know for people who aren’t necessarily thinking about spirituality or who may not even be psychologically minded you know just something that people can relate to based on you know their preoccupation with their own thoughts.
Rick: Yeah and you go through a whole lot of points of, you know, how life goes if you are preoccupied and then a whole lot of points about how life could go if you weren’t. So I think we’re gonna go through some of those.
Kate: All right.
Rick: As we go along in this conversation. But it seems to me one other key point about your book that I took away from it is that identification is the key factor in how seriously we take these thoughts and mental stories we tell ourselves. And you know of course there’s that famous analogy of the movie screen right where the movie is playing on the screen and it overshadows the screen to the extent you don’t even know the screen there you just get completely caught up in the movie. Oh there’s monsters coming at me or whatever. Whereas if the screen could somehow get brighter then you know you would see the screen and the movie and perhaps the screen could get so bright that the movie would just be a sort of a faint remains of images and the screen would be predominant.
Kate: Right, it’s where do you want to rest the majority of your attention or you know where your, your sense of presence or center of gravity resides. And and and you know most people don’t even know that there’s a choice in this. You know there’s a, you know some sort of thought and then sense of oneself is just instantaneously merged with that. And so this book is really trying to create a little bit of a wedge so that the thought or emotion you know whatever the passing phenomena of mind is you know that that can come up and then there’s a you know there’s a you there that’s able to witness that and make a choice you know how much you want to go with the storyline or maybe begin turning and inquiring well what is this part right this is the part that gets left out by psychology you know what is that witnessing presence you know we’re really interested in you know that the types of thoughts and the types of behaviors and how to make them more adaptive or more functional but you know it only goes so far in terms of health.
Rick: Yeah Plato’s allegory of the cave comes to mind too, you know where the people are chained in the cave and there’s a fire behind them casting shadows on a wall and they think that that’s the only reality. It’s similar to the movie screen analogy but it’s, yeah, throw that in there. But there’s a whole other world that they’re completely unaware of because they’ve always been chained staring at that wall.
Kate: Yes I mean you know our culture is very much about the projection in the movie and it’s so entertaining gripping right but it’s you know, it’s stressful and it’s you know it’s a fraction of what our you know sort of wholeness is.
Rick: And I wouldn’t say that it’s just our culture either because I think it’s worldwide, it’s universal. Everybody gets, there’s the same mechanics in which this the sensory input overshadows the self, the true self, the inner self of the capital S and you know, we take ourselves to be or we identify with the sensory input as opposed to our essential nature.
Kate: Yes, yes and you know it seems like these, you know earth suits, if you will, are kind of hardwired in that way, you know to take it all as you know a face value kind of the human condition.
Rick: Yeah one little doubt I had as I read your book is that just, just sort of, it’s good what you said about creating a wedge that could sort of drive a little wedge between people’s concept of themselves and what they actually are or aren’t. But I think I mean I think that’s a start having the intellectual glimpse or understanding that there’s more life than meets the eye and there’s deeper aspect to what we are than we think ourselves to be and all that stuff. But personally I would advocate for some kind of regular practice. I’m big on practice that would actually make that a living reality and prevent it from just being a conceptual one which, conceptual ones are very, very tenuous.
Kate: Right, right well and certainly meditation and you know every group therapy that I conducted at the Department of Psychiatry where I worked we all began with a meditation process and you know and even though it was, you know, it was applied for the benefit of relaxation or just you know a moment of mindfulness it’s, it’s really about cultivating some identification with that abiding kind of presence you know, sort of the field of awareness and helping people you know, come to know themselves as that and not so much the content of their thinking. You know that’s you know really what the intention is even if the the languaging around that is different in a department of psychiatry.
Rick: Yeah, and of course you know people say, and I think you even say in your book, well we are that, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to relax into that or tune into that but that that can be easier said than done you know, if one’s life is like, an intense, and it’s really coming at you and you got bills and problems and kids and you’re exhausted and, and everything else it’s, it’s just a sort of a pipe dream to say well, you are this deeper reality.
Kate: Right it requires, like you say, the practice and prompts and you know some kind of technology.
Rick: Something or other.
Kate: Yeah quiet down the noise or at least not to quiet down the noise because really we can’t control our thoughts so much, but to you know to not invest as much credibility in them.
Rick: Well no but the noise can be quieted down you know the Yoga Sutras, the second verse, “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind” it says and then, “The seer rests in the self.” That’s the second and third verses of it. So there are practices which will enable the mind to settle down just the way an agitated ocean can settle down if the wind stops blowing and, and then you know just like the ocean the Sun can be reflected clearly once the agitation stops.
Kate: Right yeah and then the image on the front of the book is a person sort of lying on the surface of the ocean although I have to say the rendering of that the person looks a little rigor mortis there but, but essentially it’s supposed to be you know a calm in the midst of the sea.
Rick: It’s held it up there. Yeah so we’re saying these things because it’s good for people to understand that this is possible I think, you know I mean your book tells them that life could be so much better if that’s the way one experienced it and and I’m just throwing in this stuff here about practice and in order to make sure that you’re experiencing it and not just conceptualizing it.
Kate: Exactly I think this book is really a very first step in just, in terms of introducing the notion that there’s something other than the commentary and then you know if people want to dig deeper you know plenty of great resources for that.
Rick: Yeah there’s a, I have this friend named David Buckland who’s been on BatGap a couple of times and I have a lot of respect for his knowledge about things, I read his blog or listen to his podcast regularly and I ran this by him, told him that you know I was going to be interviewing you and he kind of looked at video, I, looked at your website and he sent me something that was rather useful I thought we could run through it a little bit and it’s this, in the Vedic understanding they have this self concept broken down into various levels and the one that people are most familiar with is called asmita and it means the selfish me that possesses things as mine, you know — my body, my emotions, my thoughts, my possessions — and this is a sort of identified ego driven by needs and desires and actually because of when it typically develops we might call it the two and a half, the two-year-old self.
Kate: Right, right. Yes and there needs to be that level of ego development, right, you know there needs to be some kind of coherent, initially, coherent stable sort of sense of self you know in a conventional psychological sense in order to be able to sort of dis-identify and perhaps transcend that, so much of my work as a psychologist is really addressing healthy ego development you know and I don’t pathologize that at all I mean you know for people to know what they’re, you know to identify what their preferences are, to be able to advocate them, be able to sort of have a sense of personal rights, you know, that, that’s just healthy functioning but it’s not where the story ends.
Rick: No. But you make it clear in your book that you’re not going to lose all that stuff if, if you shift from the asmita level – you know the possessive identified attached sense of self – to a much more universal one, you’re still going to have those preferences and judgments and whatnot as appropriate.
Kate: Exactly. I mean, you know those things have been so over learned you know this sense of self really isn’t going anywhere you know if you don’t want it to, it will reconfigure itself within a split second so.
Rick: And if it totally evaporated I don’t know how your person would function. I mean how do you know where to put the food in the mouth and you know how to walk through the door and there has to be some sense of you know take your hand off the stove if it’s, if it’s hot.
Kate: Exactly, exactly I mean I really do feel we are you know given this sort of human form for the purpose of experiencing that play of separateness and unity and so you know that unique manifestation needs to be kind of part of the curriculum here.
Rick: Yeah it’s just that we could say that the self is multi-dimensional and most people are stuck in the most manifest narrow dimension of it. Maybe that’s one way of putting it.
Kate: Well right, you know just in terms of you know sort of survival evolutionarily like you know looking at what do I have versus what does the other person have you know, just basically taking care of needs and making sure that there’s security and then there’s, you know, contentment. I mean you know and these are, these are important needs but it’s again it’s, it’s not the whole of what people bring to the table.
Rick: Yeah okay. So the next level that David outlined is called ahamkara and it’s defined as “the individuating principle” and this is usually translated as ego and it results from the intellect recognizing this as different from other, more subtle, it’s more subtle than asmita, the possessive self, and it’s the sense of an individual self and this begins with early separation from the mother and gradually develops into the teens when the intellect becomes more prominent. Ahamkara continues post-awakening but is no longer seen as who I am.
Kate: Ah well and you know, you can, in psychological terms you might think of that also as theory of mind is developing, right, the capacity to sort of differentiate one’s own perspective from that of others you know which comes online with the development of language, you know that this self referential capacity is very much language driven and so you know and then and then in the way that, that evolves over time I mean part of that depends on the environment not only sort of the, you know a hardwired conditioning but the environment as well.
Rick: Okay, we’re going to get into your book in detail in a second I just, one more level here. The next one is called aham and it’s an even more subtle sense of I am, of being. It can arise only when the mind is quiet and a true sense of self can shine through. It’s beyond all the mind associations that we’ve just mentioned — that’s smitta and Ahamkara — the sense of “I am” fades as one shifts into Brahman consciousness. We don’t feel like we cease to be, only that what we are is inclusive of something even greater than being, so, so we’re kind of like shifting here going from I-ness to am-ness to is-ness.
Kate: Ah yeah, and you can just feel the, I don’t know, just the spaciousness of that as you describe it, right, there’s something that’s just so liberating in that progression.
Rick: Yeah. So in a sentence we could say the more fundamental we become the more universal we become, in other words, the deeper level at which we appreciate what we truly are, the more universal we find that to be.
Kate: Yes that, there really isn’t separation or difference.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: Yeah.
Rick: Of course people have often used the wave and ocean analogy, the waves might think they’re separate, but if they kind of look to their roots, they find, oh, we’re all just part of the same, we’re all just the same ocean yeah.
Kate: Exactly, exactly and I bring that metaphor in towards the end of the book in terms of you know, first of all this choice of do people even want to let go of the wave identification because it’s you know it’s sort of where the action is at, it’s sort of what’s reflected back culturally or perhaps you know sort of universally and you know from the ego’s point of view or the self’s point of view, it may seem rather dull you know to be sort of in the depths of this kind of stillness or you know the fear of losing one’s individuality which isn’t really what has to go with it but you know I think it’s just seen as kind of foreign and potentially threatening.
Rick: Yeah, a thought that comes to mind as you say that is the senses seem to have the natural function of drawing the attention outwards, that’s what they’re designed to do right, so we’re perceiving all these things outwards, outwardly, and they get habituated to doing that such that we we kind of atrophy in our ability to appreciate the inward because we’re always outer directed and so you know the meditation of some sort should be designed to allow the senses to take a hundred and eighty degree turn and proceed inwardly.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: But if we’re not accustomed to doing that then like you just said it might seem dull or we might feel like there’s nothing to find there or you know we’re used to getting our fulfillment from outer stimulation and so what could there possibly, what, and in fact when I started meditating people would say it looked weird, I’m sitting there with my eyes closed for half an hour you know what the heck are you doing.
Kate: Right right, except it’s really the deepest level of connection and I think that’s why this is really a whole paradigm shift, right, it’s a revolution in the literal sense of we’re revolving away from focusing out there revolving towards within and then to see there really isn’t a division but it’s a, you know, it’s an incredibly different orientation to the world.
Rick: It is but as you know and as most listeners will know that all the ancient traditions say that there’s a tremendous prize to be found if we, if we can take the attention inwards it’s a great reservoir of intelligence and happiness and all kinds of wonderful qualities that we can tap into.
Kate: Yes, yes, and you know I try to use a metaphor in the book of you know imagining sort of a stock room full of these barrels of every capacity you can think of you know — the peace and the kindness and the this and the that and you know and barrels full of animosity or conflict you know but it’s all accessible you know when you don’t identify with the patterning, the narrative of the self you can sort of step back and and you know sort of see what you what barrel you would like to you know sort of stock yourself from but, but you know the supplies aren’t going anywhere and whatever you draw from it’s not gonna be the only defining of you you know I can pull from this experience in this moment of anxiety and in this next a moment you know pull from some other you know kind of collective expression and you know there’s no there’s no conflict it’s an abundance.
Rick: Yeah when I read that portion in your book, I did, it triggered a question I wanted to ask you and that is that um, you know, in the metaphor and the analogy you’re talking about barrels of abundance and wonderful things but also barrel, it’s like you just said of animosity and conflict and stuff and I would argue that the animosity and the conflict and the negative stuff is not, are not characteristic of our essential nature, they are the sort of crud that has developed over time through not being in touch with our essential nature and that the whole process of spiritual evolution involves cleaning out that crud so that the essential nature can shine through and not be occluded or obscured by the deeper impressions, but it’s not like if we realize our essential nature in its fullness we’re going to you know, sometimes be expressing tremendous compassion and other times tremendous you know negativity because there’s a negativity barrel deep within.
Kate: Well I appreciate that clarification and I, and I would agree with you and so I think you know the, perhaps what that was drawing attention to was the selfing process, you know, when people really step back and see that they have choice in terms of what they identify with, you know, what what kind of thought or kind of emotion comes through, those are the different barrels but, but when we step back and identify with who is it that’s making the choice that, that is a very clean field of awareness that that that doesn’t have all of these negative qualities.
Rick: Yeah and in a few minutes we’re going to get into the nitty-gritty of your book a little bit more and there’s a whole section where you sort of speak from the perspective of the no self, or of the higher self, or pure consciousness or whatever we want to call it and, and give specific examples of how life would, could flow if that was our primary orientation so we’ll get into that in just a minute.
Kate: Right.
Rick: Just one final thing I wanted to read from David’s levels was that deeper than the aham or the “I am” is something that carries on, whatever the stage, and this is called Jiva, similar to how we use soul in the West, and this is sort of the point value of consciousness residing in the heart, the life spark that enters at birth and begins the body breathing and leaves at death. This is where the life force Shakti enters and becomes the prana or the qi, interesting to throw that in.
Kate: Yes, yes, because I know the word soul has been used in many different ways and, yeah all right well thank you.
Rick: Yeah. The final point from David here and then I’ll be done with that, he just said when he first woke up it felt like an ego death there was a sense for a while of “I have ceased to exist” but after a while he realized it was just the death of identification with the ego not a death of the ego itself.
Kate: It’s a functioning you know, the ego is a functioning it’s not an entity so there’s, there’s nothing, yeah there’s nothing that’s actually dying it’s just you know, there’s a certain kind of operating system that comes online and then we can sort of you know sort of layer on top of it all of this self referential thought that gives it the sense of being some sort of enduring entity that we have to try to get rid of, but that that whole thing is a myth.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: It’s such an illusion.
Rick: It’s like a faculty we could say.
Kate: Yes, it’s a faculty, right, yeah.
Rick: Like, like our other faculties that we have that enable us to function as living beings.
Kate: Yeah it’s a capacity towards something and, and it’s you know helpful I mean it’s you know, it’s adaptive in certain ways, certain parameters, but it’s, it’s gone a little uh, you know taken over here.
Rick: Yeah. Okay good. So switching to your book, the whole part one is a section that you call “Selfhoods” and there’s all sorts of little titles like the imposter self, the self that slices and dices, the self freezes, and so on, the dictator self, so, we won’t go through every single one of them, we wouldn’t have time, but perhaps you could pick out some of the ones that you think might, you might most like to talk about and you know, it’s not gonna be anything people have never heard before but because we’ve all functioned this way but it’d be interesting to contrast that way of functioning with the nicer way of functioning that we’re going to talk about next.
Kate: All right well you know one of my favorites is the self seeks esteem, so you know I kind of use the metaphor of a black hole and you know this process of you know having to sort of build our self-esteem and, and try to prove our worth and have enough accomplishments or enough accolades it’s, you know it’s kind of like a black hole you know, you know to the extent that you keep achieving it kind of pulls in that much more of a need to keep proving. So in other words self-esteem is you know, it’s elusive, there’s no self-esteem organ or entity within us it’s the same as the self in fact, right, it’s you know, we can engage in a process of trying to you know feel good about ourselves but the languaging around this like, we have to sort of cultivate enough self-esteem it’s, it really leads to a lot of problems, I mean I’ve had a lot of clients get stuck with this like “oh you know I can’t pursue this goal or that until I have an adequate level of self-esteem” and you know and it’s a way of relating to oneself, it’s not a thing that you have in hand, very much like the self is, the self again, a functioning, it’s an emergence it’s a, it’s a response to environment, it’s not something that you need to reify and then keep referring back to, which kind of keeps us stuck in the past and prevents us from having kind of a fresh openness to, you know, what emerges in each moment, so you know there are a lot of implications for just how psychotherapy is done or psychology around this, you know, and these days research has really looked into some of the harms associated with this endless pursuit of self-esteem you know it really sets people up for this, I don’t know just self-help project that never ends and you know and the research shows that actually trying to tap into self-compassion that, that is more healthful than trying to cultivate self-esteem because you’re not basing a sense of presence or worth on some accomplishment, it’s you know, with compassion it’s, it’s part of your, you know, just sort of what’s given with your humanity there’s sort of a you know kind of a warmth and an empathy and an understanding that arises just in the very nature of who and what you are as opposed to self-esteem which is, you know you’re trying to sort of pull in this kind of prize and and that’s giving you permission to then live as you would like to live, it’s, it’s a holding pattern
Rick: Yeah. I don’t think you’re saying that one shouldn’t aspire to do things and accomplish great things and so on but that if you, if that’s where you derive your sense of self or self-worth then you’re going to be on very shaky ground, you know you’re going to be jumping out of skyscrapers if the stock market crashes or something.
Kate: Well exactly right it’s just an invitation to focus on the process you know whatever it is you’re trying to to achieve like how does it feel to be participating in the process of it, the spirit, the participation, rather than you know some final end result or outcome that you can kind of have as a trophy which then proves something about yourself. It’s you know it’s really unnecessary.
Rick: When I think of self-esteem I think of the way I was in high school, you know, where I was very much lacking in that quality and you know just feeling like oh I’m not cool, I’m not popular, you know that whole high school mentality that is so prevalent and unfortunately a lot of kids kill themselves these days so you know, what is it about, I mean, I guess for every chapter in the selfing part of the book you have a corresponding chapter in the no self part of the book that kind of counterbalances it more or less.
Kate: Roughly, roughly, yes.
Rick: So you know what is it about shifting from the isolated self perspective to the more, the deeper or no self perspective that would cure the disease of low self-esteem?
Kate: Well there’s nothing to prove you know when you when you identify as a no self which in other words when you cease identifying with the story of who you are, come back to this wide still field of awareness what does esteem even have to do with that right, it becomes sort of irrelevant. There’s you know there’s sort of a wholesome context to who you are, there’s sort of an emergent expression of you know life kind of living itself each moment, so to put some sort of yardstick on that you know like well life better express itself this way in order to sort of qualify for you know this sort of gold standard I mean it’s just it just doesn’t really apply and so there’s freedom in that you can just be spontaneous you don’t really have to be so self-conscious and evaluative which is really constraining.
Rick: Yeah I imagine self-esteem has a lot to do with what you think other people think of you you know because if you were Tom Hanks living on a deserted island you know there’d be no consideration of self-esteem you just, although he was pretty proud of himself when he got fire, when he created fire as you may recall.
Kate: Yeah, I love that movie, yeah.
Rick: But it has, oh, go ahead
Kate: Yeah, well just that there’s the spontaneous joy in discovering or creating or doing something, right so I’m you know I’m not putting down any of that but it doesn’t, those, the doing or the creating doesn’t have to be a prerequisite for just you know feeling like there is value inherent in what you are like we come in that’s a given that wholeness is there we don’t have to sort of prove or strive for that.
Rick: Yeah so maybe we could say you kind of rest in us in a sense of confidence and contentment and imperturbability and self-sufficiency and qualities like that and so you’re not sort of grasping at straws trying to trying to culture those qualities through this or that little achievement or you know attainment.
Kate: Right, right, I mean there’s just something very kind of complete not in a in a you know egotistical kind of way but just in a way of you know what you bring to the table is valid you know and then there can still be a cultivation of different interests or different sort of expressions but it’s you know worth is not going to be conditional, or you know conditioned on that.
Rick: Mm-hmm, yeah, that’s good. I guess another way of putting it is that you know that your true nature is like, is oceanic it’s, it’s a fullness and it’s kind of like if you’re, if you’re a multi-millionaire you know gaining you know $10 here, losing $10 there, doesn’t make any difference but, but if you if you have 20 bucks to your name and you’re living on the street, gaining or losing $10 is a huge deal, so I don’t know if this gets us away from self-esteem, but it seems to be that getting, being settled in the, in that pure awareness or pure nature, it doesn’t matter much what happens on the ripples of
Kate: Right
Rick: the ocean it’s
Kate: exactly
Rick: you are the ocean.
Kate: Yes, and even just from a psychology perspective you know a lot of positive psychology has found these days that money, I mean after a certain sort of basic income you know to take care of basic needs that much more doesn’t lead to that much more contentment or happiness and you know these uh you know landmark studies of people who’ve won the lottery you know they tend to quickly go back to whatever pre-existing baseline of contentment or discontent they had had you know prior to winning and so there’s you know so there’s something else here rather than the the money or the accomplishment you know in terms of our quality of life, those things are you know they’re part of the picture but they are not the end-all be-all as culturally they are made out to be.
Rick: Yeah, yeah good and it’s good that you’re popularizing this notion because the culture really does need to shift. There’s so much inequity and in the culture between your haves and have-nots and you know so much injury inflicted on people and the environment due to sort of the craving grasping nature of mass psychology and the economic systems that arise from it.
Kate: Yes, yes, so I mean I feel like this is an important paradigm shift at all levels not just for you know personal growth which I’m making the point that it’s really not personal, you know this is part of a consciousness evolving but this is important also just for you know sustainability issues you know and environmental issues, I mean it’s broad application here.
Rick: Yeah you make that point in your book and I think it’s an important one. You know I don’t know if it’s usually not considered if we hear or if we read articles about climate change or you know economic issues or anything like that it’s, and maybe something is said about you know the mentality of the people who are, who are having these kinds of influences but usually it’s not the first priority, the the first thing we would make sure is taken care of in order to make sure the problem doesn’t continue.
Kate: Right, right, yes and so you know taking care of oneself is taking care of others so you know I’m just, I’m just trying to expand the sense of self so that it’s not you know my individual body mind you know that’s where my self’s needs end, it’s you know for me to take care of the environment to take care of the other people is taking care of myself in the largest sense yeah and and you know and it’s good for individual psychology as well.
Rick: Hmm yeah that was another criticism I got when I first started meditating people said well it’s selfish you know you’re just you’re going into a room and closing your eyes and just sort of being self-indulgent you know, how about being engaged with other people but you know that’s like saying well you know, go shopping without first going to the bank and getting some money out, you can’t really, you don’t have anything really to spend.
Kate: Right, right, exactly I mean this is um you know it’s a reciprocal synergistic kind of effect here so we when you know who your largest sense of self is then you’re more likely to sort of spontaneously serve that largest sense of self you know if we’re caught in the illusion that this storyline of who I am as separate you know if I still buy into that then what’s gonna be the motivation for even caring about you know humanity beyond my immediate family, right?
Rick: Yeah. You want to get a job as a lifeguard you better know how to swim.
Kate: Exactly.
Rick: What are some other little chapters in your selfhood section that might be fun to talk about?
Kate: Ah let’s see well I mean there’s so many. Um, let’s see the, the self erodes that’s kind of an interesting one.
Rick: Erodes like, like, like soil erodes that kind of
Kate: exact
Rick: erosion. Okay go ahead.
Kate: Erosion, right. I mean you know so you know I kind of relate this to some of the work I do with clients when people are coming in at times of transition in their lives when they’re entering into retirement or let’s say because of some personal injury they’re not able to have you know the same roles or responsibilities and you know and these are difficult adjustments and so you know there’s there’s a lot of grieving and a lot of support to be given around these changes but the point here is that the sense of self you know self likes to be this sort of stable continuous thing and it identifies heavily with its roles you know so you know I am a self who is a you know a professional or a wage earner you know like what, like whatever, whatever that is the self really binds to it and yet our capacities and our roles and our stages of life change and so that’s what I mean there is an erosion, it, to the form that we’re given of course and then how in this form we’re able to sort of, interact with our environment there’s just a natural erosion to that and the self really protests that you know there’s a lot of resistance so people can get stuck in you know trying to sort of override these natural changes or just you know go into denial and there’s you know an extra level of suffering that is then layered on top of whatever initial grief or adjustment it needs to happen. So it’s yeah so I’m basically in each of these sections I’m trying to shatter some of these what I call selfhoods these kind of myths that oh you know I’m a stable enduring kind of entity or I have, self-esteem is kind of the core of what I am you know like I’m just really trying to shake that up a little bit.
Rick: Yeah and life shakes it up.
Kate: Well exactly.
Rick: Yeah I mean let’s just take an example let’s say you ask somebody who they are and they say oh well I’m a lawyer and oh no that’s your job I mean who else, who, who are you, well I’m a father and a husband, no those are some relationships and the things we just mentioned could be lost.
Kate: Exactly.
Rick: You know and so then what would you be well. I’m, I have a body, I’m this body, but wait but that that could be, lost that could get sick or it will definitely age and so then who, well I’m this mind yeah but you could sort of like get senile or something that could be lost and so what are you that can’t be lost?
Kate: Well yes and and I actually do this exercise you know when I led some groups back at a medical center it was actually a class on anxieties but we would have people break into these dyadic pairs and one person would simply ask the other you know, who are you, the other would give a you know one word answer and then they would repeat it over and over and over again probably for about I mean as long as they could sort of tolerate it but about 10 minutes.
Rick: Really? Give us an example. What kind of a one word?
Kate: Oh well you know like so I would ask you you know who are you you would say you know oh “I’m Rick” and then I’d ask it again and you’d say “I’m a man” and you know I just keep asking the question.
Rick: Oh so you go deeper and deeper kind of.
Kate: Deeper and deeper and you know and people just didn’t even realize there were so many answers to give so just at that level it is very helpful because you know when people are going through depression or anxiety or whatever the the issue was that that brought them to the medical center you know that took up most of their self-definition at least at that point in time and so for them to see like oh well actually I am I am all these features and all these roles and all these capacities you know before we even got to what’s underneath all that which you know in a medical setting we didn’t always get to but you know it’s just, really helps people come into the expansiveness of who they are.
Rick: One thing that comes to mind as you were just talking is the element of fear. If you identify yourself as all these temporary changing things, it seems to me that there would be a sort of an abiding fear because all those things are always in jeopardy.
Kate: Yes, yes and I think you know the the self is kind of a fear-based myth of an entity, really you know like it’s you know it’s it’s kind of you know if we’re gonna personify it for a moment which is you know what what the book is working against but to personify it like here’s this sort of mythical entity that is afraid of being seen through you know being seen as what it is which is there’s no there there right so it’s you know so it has to go through this whole charade of well I really am enduring and here all my beliefs and they’re not gonna change and here’s my physicality and I you know it’s not gonna change even though you know that life doesn’t operate that way but there’s such a bravado to it because it has to work that hard to really you know create something out of nothing essentially.
Rick: Yeah and that sounds exhausting, I mean there must be a constant expenditure of energy to try to cling to and buttress and reinforce things that tend to continue slipping away from us.
Kate: Yes and thus we have psychological defenses right I mean this is many of our defenses are a protection of self you know so so we buy into this illusion that the self is you know an entity and and and then it’s a fragile one right so we’re always having to defend ourselves against being rejected or being sort of condescended to or what-have-you and and so there’s these you know whole maneuvers that we do to to protect this self it’s it’s a lot of psychic energy that could be used elsewhere.
Rick: Yeah one thing people often say when they have an awakening they feel a tremendous sense of relief because there had been this subtle effort and maybe even not so subtle going on for who knows how long and finally they’re able to just relax out of that and and somehow you know nature goes on autopilot or the whole, one’s whole makeup goes on autopilot and is is guided or conducted by by some larger intelligence and you can just sort of sit back and enjoy the ride rather than try to be in the driver’s seat.
Kate: Exactly well and it’s funny I had an experience of that sort not in terms of the self dissolving but in terms of a an actual traffic accident happening right in front of me like a huge thing with a car flipping over on top of the car I was in front of you know out of out of the blue and and you know casualties the whole thing and and in that moment when I realized just that, like oh this this whole illusion of me just trying to keep myself alive or protecting myself or just that I’m in control, like that just got shattered and the experience in that moment was such a relief like oh I don’t have to keep pretending that I can really control this and then you know pretty quickly that went away and then fear came right in like, oh my gosh I’m really not in control now but but but I believe you know there is that initial sort of release of we don’t have the reins of the horse here, so pretending to, it’s just a lot of unnecessary effort.
Rick: Yeah, there’s all kinds of verses in the Bhagavad Gita about how you know you’re mistaken if you think that you are the actor really or that you are in control it’s it’s you know the nature is doing it or you know and it gives you all these descriptions of how the sage realizes I do not act at all, it’s all being conducted by the you know forces of nature.
Kate: Right, right, and you know the self does not want to concede control you know so there’s you know the one of the other chapters you know let me just get the title of that oh, the self steals credit, so the you know the idea that whatever it is that you you do you know there’s this little mythical self entity saying well I I made you do that right you know so you know so here we are gifted with whatever sort of creative or intellectual sort of expressions and yet this collection of thoughts in our heads are trying to take credit for you know sort of life manifesting itself it’s it’s kind of absurd.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: And it’s
Rick: The Gita actually refers to such people as thieves, says if you appropriate that which does not belong to you, namely the authorship of action, then you are a thief.
Kate: Ah yes and that’s you know that’s kind of the little funny intro I have to this book, like you know there, we have been you know, there’s been an identity theft that kind of a mass level here you know that’s it you know the seat of our thoughts has sort of you know kind of robbed our sense of identity and you know these culprits should be called out.
Rick: But we don’t want to sound accusatory because everybody’s born this way and and it’s it’s like you know universal human condition so it’s not anybody’s fault I think what you’re doing is pointing out that there’s a better way and you know we ought to seek it but nobody’s blame, we’re not blaming anybody there’s no sort of secret government that’s making us function this way or anything like that.
Kate: No, no and you know and I really tried to take sort of a humorous tone you know it’s like here we are in this together and you know and isn’t it a bit odd and paradoxical right that you know if it whether it’s evolutionarily or just you know whatever it is that has put in place this sort of adherence to a sense of self like isn’t it you know what is sort of a strange thing you know that we’ve been given this sort of you know, we’re this abiding ground of being and yet we sort of see ourselves as so small you know, and how is it that we do that you know like it’s just sort of a trying to walk hand in hand through this you know just very absurd kind of drama and sort of look at it with some curiosity and with some way of sort of taking it down a notch so that we’re not sort of suffering as a result of it.
Rick: Hmm. Yeah this, there’s some great line about I don’t know if it’s from the Upanishads or something it says something like, there’s no joy in smallness.
Kate: Hmm
Rick: You know that it’s you, it’s your nature is your essential nature to be vast and unbounded and all that and there and if that is, if the whole ocean has been squeezed into a drop and you think you’re just a drop and not not the ocean that you actually are there’s a perpetual sort of pinch.
Kate: Yes well and they, and our longing you know what whatever this core sense of inadequacy or loneliness that you know pretty much I’ve seen in every client I’ve worked with and within myself with everyone you know like this I think is sort of what the driving force of that is, right, we have mistaken ourselves as the drop and that is you know a pretty constrained way of you know mistaking ourselves.
Rick: Yeah you address that nicely in the book that there’s this sort of universal innate longing I think a lot of times the longing is missed and misinterpreted or misunderstood and think people you know say I really need that Mercedes or I really need that relationship or I really need that amount of money or something and then I’ll be fulfilled but it’s the longing that they’re actually you know hoping to fulfill with those different things is actually the longing for, for the self for, for the when I say self I mean capital S self you know for
Kate: Right
Rick: for self-realization and all these other things are like inadequate substitutes.
Kate: Yes, yes, and that’s why they don’t really have much lasting power and why you know it puts us on the treadmill of constantly trying to accumulate more so you know I talk a little bit in these chapters about the self wants or the self needs it’s because it’s trying so desperately to fill, fill that in but it’s you know it’s kind of the wrong approach we’re trying to fill something in that we already are, we’re just not recognizing that we are that
Rick: Yeah. And it might bear repeating that you know, the this the deeper realization that we’re alluding to here does not deprive you of ordinary wants and aspirations, those things just become more like icing on the cake you know but at least you have the cake.
Kate: Exactly. you want the cake first and foremost right because icing gets a little sickening, right, like you know this is the addictions, this is the you know, the obsessions where we’re really trying to sort of pull something out of these substances or these experiences that they’re not equipped to really give us, yeah it’s not gonna fill in a soul thirst.
Rick: Jesus said seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all else should be added unto thee, so that’s the kind of the priority there.
Kate: Yeah.
Rick: Get that and then, yeah.
Kate: Yeah right and icing on the cake’s delicious, right, but let’s let’s just make sure we’re not just forgetting the cake.
Rick: Are there any other little little chapters in the first part that we want to touch on?
Kate: Well let’s see the self freezes I kind of like that one you know that’s really just talks a little bit more about like this process of identifying with thoughts so you know I mean it’s essentially what you know we’ve got these kind of ephemeral symbols or representations that go through our mind and we you know give a great deal of meaning to them even though there are tens of thousands of thoughts that pass through and you know we so we take a particular thought that’s got a like an emotional charge to it and it kind of freezes it, you know we kind of you know put it in our our memory museum so to speak right and then we keep revisiting that thought as if it holds some kind of essential truth about who we are about what’s possible and so I mean this is how the sense of self gets constructed like all of this you know and they could be images too but it’s um you know it’s a very —
Rick: Can you give us a concrete example a specific example?
Kate: Well
Rick: Like are you saying, like for instance let’s say your girlfriend broke up with you or your boyfriend 20 years ago and you keep dwelling on that or obsessing on that you know you’re frozen in a thing that happened two decades ago and what good is that doing you, that, is that a good —
Kate: Exactly.
Rick: Okay.
Kate: Yes, right and those are the kinds of thoughts that tend to stick, right, because they you know they have personal meaning and you know so whatever sort of pain was experienced at that breakup gets kind of frozen into you know sort of semantic and also a nonverbal memory right we kind of hold pain cellularly in the body and we keep revisiting it it becomes sort of a way of knowing ourselves like oh I’m the person that was broken up with or I’m the person who can’t sustain a relationship and you know and these labels and you know kind of this this storyline about ourselves then just you know that’s the self that we’re we’re constructing and it’s it’s so outdated. It may be that we went through these experiences and we had a certain emotion or a certain kind of you know kind of conclusion about them but why are we sort of like posting them like on the wall of the museum and revisiting them as if it represents something about our current day current moment experience.
Rick: Yeah and our doing that certainly influences our current experience and our current behavior so it’s like we we carry all this baggage that has accumulated over the years and it definitely influences how the journey is going now.
Kate: Yes yes and it and you know it really can get in the way.
Rick: There’s a mechanic — go ahead
Kate: Oh I was just gonna you know just use another example just you know five minutes before this interview I mean you know my my selfing function is alive and well and you know in the midst of feeling a little nervousness about the interview you know it was bringing up certain past experiences of you know sort of social blunders and making mistakes and you know if I chose to go with that and you know review that particular wing of the museum let’s say I mean it would really sort of bias my whole sort of nervous system towards a different kind of experience right now so you know I’m just trying to invite people to just make a choice.
Rick: Yeah I’m glad you mentioned nervous system because it brings up an interesting mechanics that helps to explain what we just discussed which is that there’s a sort of an action impression desire cycle that happens where we have an active, perform an action or have an experience it creates an impression in the nervous system which gets lodged there and may stay there for decades and that, and then that impression in the nervous system gives rise to impulses or our desires which then spur us to further action and the whole cycle can repeat itself and obviously to take an extreme example with addiction it can become very compelling and very hard to escape from but it happens with smaller things too and there’s probably countless impressions in there so you know one effective spiritual practice is to root out these impressions — they’re called some samskaras in Sanskrit — and as they get rooted out they, they’re, they’re said to be like burnt seeds that can no longer germinate and you know have weeds springing up and so there’s no longer any impetus from to action based upon the conditioning instead the impetus to action is this more cosmic intelligence that’s much more appropriate to the circumstances and not based on some old past thing.
Kate: Right, right, oh I love the burnt seeds and essentially that process is what psychotherapy attempts to do you know when, when you know, you know because we’re speaking about it as if we should know better but but really a lot of that kind of conditioning happens to us early in life.
Rick: Sure, especially if it’s traumatic or something.
Kate: Oh absolutely and it really, I’m, you know and during a very sort of you know a time of development in which you know things have quite an impact on just you know basic ego functioning you know it can it can really disrupt, you know, a person’s autonomic nervous system and so people you know become hardwired to to be vigilant and and to believe that you know people are untrustworthy or that circumstances are unsafe or that there’s something you know fundamentally wrong with themselves and and that really does need to be you know sort of uprooted.
Rick: Yeah. I know that in during intense spiritual practice when these impressions start to get released you can kind of relive a lot of the experiences that had been lodged there but they’re sort of, it’s a sort of a brief reliving that you’re capable of handling at that point and then you’re done with them and probably something similar happens in therapy sometimes right?
Kate: Oh absolutely and and there are some techniques such as EMDR, eye movement desensitization reprocessing you know which which really helps the the mind-body discharge that kind of frozen, you know, belief system or frozen kind of fear response and not in a reliving you know, it’s not about re-exposing oneself that’s not where the healing happens but it’s you know you but you do feel some of those same impressions once you discharge them so you know it’s not a fun process to go through but it really does truly liberate a person of these very early conditionings.
Rick: Yeah it’s nice to have gone through but the going through might be a little unpleasant but it’s worth getting it over with. A couple of questions came in here’s one from Bartholomew in Melbourne Australia, he asks, “So if I am NOT the doer how can,” quote, “I have free will, if there is free will?”
Kate: That is a great question. You know honestly there’s different research studies that say different things about this you know there were a whole set of studies that showed that, ah you know decision-making was done even before decisions arrived at sort of the level of the you know the frontal lobes right before you know that you were aware that you were doing that executive functioning and so it was thought oh there is no you know free will but then other studies have shown actually you know it’s a much more integrated process.
Rick: I’ve often heard people cite that study of the impulse to move your arm you know happens a second before you actually are aware of it or anything like that, but I’ve heard that also that that was debunked or that as you say it’s more it’s more complicated or nuanced than that.
Kate: Right, right, that was Lizbeth’s study and that you know some of the methodology of that was called into question but you know I think it’s an and/both I mean just personally you know I think this this second level of sort of self-referencing like that really can influence our decisions but even before that comes online there is an impulse you know an expression that comes through even before my mind makes a comment about what I am doing so you know so once that self-referential capacity does come up you know that, that can be you know part of what determines the behavior so so you’ve got kind of both that’s you know.
Rick: Yeah. A question came in from Ranjit in Irvine, California which I think takes Bartholomew’s question a step further which is he says, “How does spiritual realization about the lack of personal will change how you operate in the day-to-day world,” presuming of course that there that we have realized there is no personal will which I think is still debatable but go ahead and see what you think about that.
Kate: Well I mean it’s certainly first it humbles oneself right you know it’s it’s you know the self if we’re gonna personify the self the self does not like this you know the self wants to be in charge and you know it there might be sort of a bit of a you know kind of rebellious flaring up of the self to sort of prove it’s that much more in charge but essentially you know this is it’s a relaxing right like you were saying like when you break free of that illusion that everything is under your control, there’s a relaxing and then and then there continues to be an arising of experience of expression so you know I don’t need my self-referencing capacity to have to be online for me to really you know do anything you know it could be part of the conversation but there’s there’s sort of a trust that that comes about like a trust that life is in fact living itself you know if we I don’t know just stop listening to the the selfing voice long enough we can just do that as our own experiment and see like you know is it just you know sort of lack of movement lack of thought no there’s there is still you know a vibrancy that comes through, we’re just not claiming it as our handiwork.
Rick: Yeah the idea of intuition comes to mind as you say that and I have a friend who Susanna Marie who actually has a blog called Life Living Itself or maybe it’s a podcast but it’s like I think that little three-word phrase says a lot. It’s life is living itself and when we’re an instrument through which it’s living, right.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: Um and as that instrument you know we have thoughts we have motivations we have interests and things but don’t you get the sense that a lot of these the impulses that that motivate us to act and do things come from some deeper level that we can’t even exclude, claim exclusively, we can’t claim ownership of you know, right, there’s some like deeper wisdom that is not limited to our individual structure that we become a conduit for that’s the best I can think of saying it.
Kate: Well and I would agree is it certainly my own experience in writing this book it very much felt just like that. You know my my ego, myself, well you know it’s pretty ambivalent about writing this book to tell you the truth. I mean it’s, I’m really a private person this is the first time I’m coming out as kind of a non-dualist in a public forum and it’s you know I’m, from my conventional background you know this is, this is out there stuff and so but this this compulsion to write this and and some of the wisdom that came with that I it truly was not from myself I can, I can assure you of that there was something kind of larger at work here and you know I I think there’s something just intriguing in that mystery it doesn’t have to be a threat to my personal sense of self like you know both things can coexist and and just be kind of glad for each other.
Rick: No it is intriguing and you know a lot of spiritual teachers have spoken about surrender and about service and you know the will of God you know just being in tune with the will of God being a servant to the divine and so on and that’s what they’re talking about it’s like you know if you get out of the way then the divine can I want to say use you that sounds a little strange but you know you can be, what did St. Francis say, Lord make me an instrument of thy peace.
Kate: Yes, yes, right and and you know there’s something just so graceful in that if the self is willing to surrender a little and not get in the way.
Rick: Yeah and he still said Lord make me an instrument of thy peace so there’s a sense of a me there’s a sense of you know this body mind that functions but I want that, I want it to function in service of something you know profound, something
Kate: Yes, right, right I mean you know we all have our individual personalities and our individual capacities and that that gets to be put in the service of you know, again, life-serving itself you know that there is there’s something something beyond what our minds can really conceptualize.
Rick: Yeah it’s nice yeah so we could shift over to the no self-speak section if you like but do you have anything else that you really want to hit on from the the first section?
Kate: Um well maybe just to say the part about the self dies you know because when I write about that I’m not talking about the body’s death I mean that’s kind of a given although plenty of us are still in denial about that but but I’m talking about the the self-referencing kind of you know the narrative that we have that that part goes on and offline all the time you know so when we’re watching a movie and really absorbed in it we’re not coming back to the self storyline and referencing ourselves and there’s you know so you know it’s dying in terms of it’s just kind of fading to the backdrop we’re not identifying with it and that’s you know it’s harmless and it’s you know there’s nothing to have to dread or fear so you know it’s I just wanted to make a point of that because it’s very counter to that that first impulse which is like oh you know this sense of myself has to be continuous and it has to be kind of on the front burner or else you know something’s gonna be lost and and it’s just not true like it fades into the backdrop all the time and and we’re no worse for that in fact we’re probably you know better.
Rick: Yeah and I mean just to take an example that comes to mind is some great athletes talk about being in the zone and you know when they are they’re, they’re really at the top of their game but they’re they’re kind of like almost a silent witness to what they’re doing.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: There’s just this sort of beauty and grace and automatic performance that they are not sort of willing to happen through any kind of cerebral or any other kind of you know function there is just, it’s, they’re on autopilot and they’re at their, they’re doing the best, they’re at the —
Kate: Yes, yes same with musicians dance as well right so you know so if the self needs to take credit I mean yes there is the you know the athletes training and whatever choices were made about you know whatever course of you know instruction or way of applying you know one’s body mind but you know in the moment there there is a mastery there is this you know you can you can trust that that life will show itself in some sort of effective or purposeful way.
Rick: Yeah and actually just back to the point you were making about writing the book and how in a very real way you didn’t do it it was just sort of coming through you a lot of great artists and writers and so on speak of that too I mean there’s the idea of a muse you know and a lot of great composers say that they know their symphonies Mozart said sometimes a symphony would just come to him in a flash you’d have the whole thing and it was just a matter of writing it down so I think there does seem to be some higher intelligence which you know we don’t need to think is separate from ourselves you know I think that’s ultimately what we are but that only gets impeded by individual monkeying around interference really.
Kate: Yes, yes and I think that’s you know you know a lot of writers describe kind of this tortured experience with their writing and I’m certainly no different from that but the tortured experience is not the transmission from the muse, the tortured experience is the self stepping in absolutely with its second guessing and its you know just whatever garden variety neurotic dance that it wants to do and you know it’s you know it’s it’s a real practice as you say like you know to try to detach from that.
Rick: Yeah that’s interesting you know I mean it’s often said that artists, great artists suffer and some have said well you have to suffer to be a great artist but maybe what’s really going on is that you know something profound is trying to come through and a lot of suffering is experienced if there’s garbage in the way because that garbage is sort of being burned or pushed or you know and and so that kind of you know it’s like trying to put too much voltage through a small wire or something the wire can’t handle it.
Kate: Right and, and, you know so the willfulness versus the willingness, right, I like our we is the self trying to willfully manipulate what is coming through that’s the recipe for suffering or can we take a stance of some willingness you know some humility surrender and just just allowance to be you know the conduit you know without it you know having to sort of take away to away whatever appropriate pride there is in the accomplishment you know that could still stand but just you know allowing for you know this truth to express itself it doesn’t have to be tortured.
Rick: That these it’s an important point you know because I think this that’s a kind of a it’s a trope if that’s the right word just a popular assumption that there’s a correlation between creativity and suffering, and I think that’s something that should be put to rest you know it doesn’t it really doesn’t have to be that way.
Kate: Right, right or just some the way some people had assumed like you have to go through tremendous like suicidal suffering to have a spiritual awakening and we know that that’s just not true. No, yeah I think part well in terms of that specific example I think a lot of times people create a lot of suffering if they’re on a spiritual path by being fanatical about it and by being kind of like you know effort far more effort effortful than they should be as opposed to taking a more natural approach and just sort of relaxing and allowing allowing nature to conduct the process
Kate: right yeah because I mean I don’t think our self trying to, again, to will you know to manipulate something into awakening it I mean that’s probably gonna be counterproductive.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: Yeah.
Rick: A good example of that is like if as I quoted the yoga sutras earlier you know yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind let’s say you have a pan full of water and it has ripples in it and you want the water to become still and clear you don’t start pushing on the ripples you know because you’re only gonna create more ripples you just sort of allow the pan to settle down.
Kate: Ah that’s great, great, yeah I’m gonna bring that into my clinical practice that’s lovely yeah because I mean it’s just so true.
Rick: Yeah. All right so then this, this part two of your book is, it’s a nice collection of how one might function as no self and again, sometimes it’s confusing because some sometimes we refer to no self, anatta in Buddhism, or sometimes in Hinduism it’s called self with a capital S, but I think we’re talking about the same thing here
Kate: Yeah
Rick: hHigher self, deeper self, universal self, whatever, so are there a few like little nuggets out of there that you’d like to elaborate on?
Kate: Hmm well I think a helpful one is no self, no judgment. Right, you know there’s I think one of the fears people have is you know if I don’t you know identify with my thoughts and my opinions and my preferences I’m gonna be this bland wash of passivity you know and I’m not gonna have any kind of direction or any angle to who I am and that’s not true right there is you know there is a personality, there are preferences that emerge you know abiding as this sort of clean slate of consciousness. It just means that you don’t have to have some kind of agenda, you don’t have to you know judge good or bad you know you can still have preferences there’s still sort of a certain kind of inclination towards action but judgment about, I don’t know you know, other people or right what’s right or wrong like those things can soften and it just you know again it frees people up to be much more a willing sort of participant kind of willing interface with with life on its own terms rather than trying to impose one’s judgment and one’s kind of manipulation.
Rick: Yeah, yeah I can think of a couple of concrete examples. I mean we were talking earlier about how if one is attached to one’s opinions and, and, and so on and tries to make, if one tries to make absolutes of them, then those absolutes, we didn’t put it quite in these terms but then those absolutes are gonna clash with everybody else’s opinions because opinions are not absolute, they’re, they’re relative but if you make them absolute they’re gonna, they can conflict with everything else. But like for instance I have this friend named Phil Escott who’s been on Batgap and he had all kinds of health problems and he feels that he’s cured himself by adopting a completely carnivorous diet, he eats nothing but meat and he recently gave a talk to a group of vegans it was sort of a, supposed to be a kind of a debate and you know people in the audience were just going bananas you know yelling and screaming and not letting him get a word in edgewise just being utterly fanatical and he said well I’m never gonna do that kind of thing again and he seemed to be reasonable enough sitting on stage you know you know, let me answer the question and, but like people were very attached to that particular opinion and you see the same thing in politics and religion and any number of areas.
Kate: Right I mean there’s just you know the more attached you are to these thoughts and the more you elevate them to the rank of ideas, beliefs, universal truths, you know then the more conflict there is you know. But stepping away from that doesn’t make us you know kind of brainless zombies. I mean we, you know, we still can yeah we still have our opinions. I’ll still, you know, sort of champion a certain cause and maybe not another cause but it doesn’t mean I have to be in opposition. I see this all as the play of form right you know whole array of different kind of views. I’m not gonna judge one as I don’t know sort of God’s will and something as not that you know that would be so presumptuous.
Rick: I’ll give you another example I have a good friend named Alex Tsakiris who is the host of the Skeptiko podcast and he thinks climate change is some kind of a hoax a, global warming, and I think, I feel like it’s the worst problem facing mankind and you know we have debates about it we’ve been on his show talking about it and everything else and we never see eye to eye but I love the guy you know he’s a good friend I don’t have to think he’s evil or crazy or stupid or anything else it just gives us some kind of grist for the mill in terms of things to to entertain ourselves with try to work it work out our differences.
Kate: Exactly, exactly it doesn’t have to be you know a threat to yourself you know I mean assuming that you take, hold yourself a little lighter.
Rick: Good point. I mean if you define yourself as what you believe then anybody who disagrees with your beliefs is a threat to you, you know. They’re not exactly not a threat to your belief, they’re a threat to you because you think you are your beliefs.
Kate: That’s right, that’s why, that’s why this is so revolutionary for people to disidentify from their beliefs. I mean, it’s suddenly, oh, I’m just bring some breathing room in you know there can be some sort of negotiation, some genuine, like, you know respect for others beliefs knowing that they are all of the same thought substance. You know we can still feel strongly and impassioned but it really doesn’t have to be an annihilation of selves in the process.
Rick: Yeah you’d see how you know if I mean here’s a perfect example of how what you’re advocating this book would be of tremendous practical significance. Let’s say in politics where there’s such polarization nobody can talk to each other, nobody can accomplish anything and you know or in these debates about abortion or gun laws or gun rights and all that stuff if, there actually are groups as a group in my town where, which, is organized by a couple of friends of mine who who get all these liberal and conservative people together in one room and then they have this whole method of enabling them to actually talk to each other and appreciate each other’s perspective. I forget what it’s called, they have a website and everything but I think that would be greatly facilitated by being able to sort of relax into you know, true universality which actually by definition contains all individual expressions and your, your particular individual expression may still lean in a particular direction but actually your deeper nature of what you are contains all individual expressions and inncluding those which don’t concur with with your individual preferences.
Kate: Right, right and you know and you can see that some of the work that’s been done like Fred Luskin’s work around forgiveness you know the methodology he uses I mean and he brings together people you know different sides of the conflict from Rwanda or from you know Northern Ireland I mean people who have lost loved ones in the same room with you know those from the you know opposition and he takes him through a process of forgiveness that that’s about helping people basically detach from their own stressful thoughts like you know you know not holding on to the grievance story because it’s so toxic to the one who holds that story so the forgiveness has nothing to do with you know did you get an appropriate apology you know where amends made you know that I mean you know that can be towards reconciliation but but you know within one’s heart you know forgiveness and healing comes from letting go of the self’s attachment to the story of having been wronged I mean the fact was that these harms have been done so it’s not a minimizing or condoning of that at all but just the selves sort of attachment to that as a way of you know holding the grievance story that that’s the work that’s done and people can do that inner work and then come together so you’re not needing to extract something from someone else for your own you know healing, it’s remarkable.
Rick: Yeah someone got in touch with me a couple years ago who was doing something like that with Israelis and Palestinians and achieving great results but it brings up an interesting point which is that I mean all kinds of groups like that are great and more of that should be done and I know there are popular movements to get people to do that kind of thing whatever the polarization we’re talking about but I think more fundamentally we need to infuse into collective consciousness more of this unified value of the no self as you call it or universal consciousness or whatever I think that as that gets more and more and more enlivened in collective consciousness then quite spontaneously many differences will kind of melt away or become harmonized and people might begin to wonder why we’re making such a fuss you know what we could have sorted this out a long time ago.
Kate: Right well and then you know given that we can’t necessarily speed the pace of that I mean you know you know writing these books having these dialogues and these forums you know hopefully is doing that it is helping but you know simultaneously you know let’s let’s just have all approaches at once I don’t know I’m feeling a bit of sense of urgency around sort of what’s happening at the global level here so I you know I appreciate everybody contributing as as they can.
Rick: Yeah I totally agree I don’t think it has to be either or but but it needs to be all because if you try to just do let’s say the the meetings with or without the sort of in the deeper spiritual exploration that needs to be much more widespread or if you just do the spiritual exploration but you don’t you know take steps to promote alternative energy or whatever the relative thing is then it’s just not a complete solution I think.
Kate: Right, right because I mean you know I think this fundamental sort of myth of self and you know buying into some separation I think that’s the root at of most of these problems. Right so we can you know we can kind of keep cultivating the garden but if we’re not really pulling out some of these these weeds at the root it’s, it’s gonna continue complicating things.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah one metaphor I’ve used before that comes to mind here is that you know if you can somehow make the ground of a forest let’s say more nutrient-rich then you know all the plants will thrive not necessarily in competition with one another they’ll all just thrive because they’re all deriving more nutrients from their roots and so I think that kind of pertains to this whole discussion if the collective consciousness could be more infused with you know this deeper thing we’re talking about then all cultures will will be enriched, all peoples, all you know and, and disharmony I think will naturally begin to dissipate as a result of that because a more unified value will begin to percolate into all the more expressed values.
Kate: Right. Well and with that metaphor it’s, you know the idea that when people can tap into this rich kind of ground of what they are then it doesn’t activate the individual you know the evolutionarily sort of built up survival mechanism right you know that feeling of competing for resources or scarcity or you know just you know my needs versus your needs like if people really can tap into sort of the this rich fertile kind of foundation then you know it’s that can ease up and then you know we can bring our kind of higher level faculties the the problem-solving table.
Rick: Yeah I mean it becomes a matter of your needs are my needs because we’re all one essentially.
Kate: Exactly, exactly.
Rick: Whatsoever you do unto the least of these you do unto me.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: Nice. Okay we’ve got all the world’s problems figured out so, so what are some other little tidbits from the no self speaks section that we could play with?
Kate: Let’s see. Well I mean you know I talk about no self, no aging. That’s kind of the counterpoint to the the self dies part, you know the, you know the sense that you know this, this field of consciousness that we are, this awareness, it’s primordial. It’s, it’s unlike the self, it doesn’t kind of come online or not, it’s not like a hardwired kind of capacity in the brain that gets activated with certain neuronal activity. You know this whole premise of this book is that consciousness is, is not an emergent quality or feature of the material brain, that you know consciousness is sort of the fundamental context, source, and substance and you know everything sort of emerges out of that. So that I mean that’s you know that’s quite a —
Rick: The brain is an emergent property of the, of consciousness, that’s actually the way it is.
Kate: Right and so from that, from that understanding you know there is no aging or death. Right, you know from the self’s view the the storyline and from the body-mind you know you know death is you know kind of part of the curriculum, it’s kind of what you get.
Rick: Yeah, it’s been so long, I think you know when I first kind of started getting into spirituality I was a teenager and teenagers don’t think they’re gonna die anyway so I don’t ever remember having a time in my life when I feared death because once I got into spirituality it began to sort of tune me into something which can’t die and I never really went through that phase but um you know I think a lot of people do I think there’s a, I remember hearing about Raymond Massey who played Perry Mason and those old Perry Mason shows
Kate: Uh-huh
Rick: He was so afraid of death that when he was actually dying he tried to sort of sit on the edge of his bed and not lie down for fear that he would he would die sooner. So I mean it seems to me that if a person, if they think there’s nothing after death and it’s just lights out and you cease to exist that some people don’t seem to have a problem with that, Sam Harris talks about that and so no big deal. I think it might be, it might evoke a fear because there’s you know this sort of a natural, because it’s wrong for instance, for one thing, we do continue and to think that we’re going to cease to exist clashes with reality but yeah take it from here I could throw in a few more points but what do you say about that?
Kate: Well there’s some interesting studies that I cite at the back of the book about death fears and that there really is you know our brains are designed to actually scan for signals you know any sort of subtle signals that you know show some potential threat about you know annihilation that the mind will go to those much faster than any other kind of mental content so I think you know just you know again evolution has designed us to be on the lookout for this because we are sort of survival focus. Yes, yes it’s adaptive to you know put your energy towards the living rather than you know the understanding of the ending but in terms of you know I, I think unless people have had some true experiential no self kind of moment, it just feels too conceptual that we’re not gonna die you know, I just —
Rick: Yeah I’ve interviewed a number of near death experience people and also read some books but by others whom I haven’t interviewed and almost universally they they say, no worries it’s, I actually I’m not you know I don’t have a death wish but I look forward to dying because it’s so beautiful.
Kate: Yeah
Rick: On the other side yeah you know so
Kate: Yeah I think it’s a one of the studies I cited I can’t remember the exact number but something like 20% of people have had those kinds of experiences you know it’s, it’s not really that that small a fraction but you know because it’s not talked about or just I don’t know we’re such a youth based culture that you know as we approach later stages of life it just we’re just trying to, just feel so aversive you know I mean a lot of my clients are 60s, 70s, 80s and this this is very much what you know what the next chapter entails like, an exploration of what does this mean to you what what are your hopes or beliefs or fears and you know everybody has their own point of view.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah but you know in terms of your book here the main point is that you know that we there is a level of what we are that never dies.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: And if we can know ourselves as that then as it says in the Gita none can work the destruction of this immutable being and it also says in the Gita a little just a little of this dharma eliminates great fear.
Kate: Yes, ye,s and then that and certainly has been my personal experience as well again if I didn’t have a personal taste of that I would feel like I’m just playing around the concept, yes yeah so I you know I think in this book you know especially if this is a person who’s not well versed in these ideas like I think the hardest part to try to engage with will be the parts about no self no aging. I just tried my best to try to explain that but it’s, it’s a little hard without being able to sort of gift a person the experiential component.
Rick: Yeah well that’s actually how we started out today is talking about this the importance of the experiential component because unless you can dip into that all these things are just a lot of words you know.
Kate: Right, right, yeah, so
Rick: So I would recommend that people explore what what sort of practice or approach works for them to to enliven that experience because it’s definitely enlivenable, it’s definitely possible anyone can have it no one is incapable and it’s a matter of finding what what you can work into your you know what you can find then seek and you shall find I mean just there’s a lot of things out there and many of them are effective and you know hopefully we’re motivating people to take that route.
Kate: Yes I hope so and yeah yeah I mean my hope again with this book is that it’s a you know for folks who who weren’t really sort of spiritually oriented like this you know this allowed them to come into contact with something that’s true about themselves that you know it is sort of down-to-earth language around it so that it doesn’t have to seem so esoteric or off-putting or or out there.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: Yeah.
Rick: And you know there’s a lot of concepts that 30, 40, 50 years ago seemed really esoteric and off-putting and out there I mean the very notion of meditation was weird or yoga you know it was weird and these days it’s like yeah sure meditation, everybody does it’s a you know they do it in corporations and so you know the stuff if we’re like on the cutting edge of you know what’s considered weird right now wait ten years you know it’ll be kind of you know more normal.
Kate: Wouldn’t that be great if that was sort of the conventional reality that everybody knew that they were fundamentally of the same and you know that this kind of you know pervasive loneliness and divisiveness it just, I don’t know it just kind of fell away.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: That would be great.
Rick: I think it will. I don’t know the timeline but I think we’re definitely moving in that direction and I think there’s going to be huge societal changes and we’ll and it will come out the other end with this sort of thing becoming the norm.
Kate: Ah I hope so yeah.
Rick: So there’s a third section in your book entitled to self or not to self that is the question, whether it is nobler in the mind.
Kate: Yeah, yeah.
Rick: And take us into a little bit of that, what you’re talking about there.
Kate: All right well I mean you know it is, my intention is not to proselytize I mean even though of course it is you know the book is set up you know with having no self appear the you know the better option clearly I really do want to invite you know the readers to contemplate for themselves what’s in their best interest you know if they find that you know attaching firmly to a storyline that their mind generates about who they are if that works for them, I mean they probably wouldn’t even be reading this kind of book but you know go for it right like you know nothing’s gonna be sort of taken away there is no sort of absolute right or wrong here so it’s really helping people sort of evaluate well how would I even determine whether selfing has been useful or not so there you know they’re different sort of questions in terms of you know like how much peace does yourself really afford you right or how much does yourself even like itself you know I mean just just basic questions in terms of day-to-day like when you keep this story of yourself like you know how’s that working for you, you know the Dr. Phil kind of question.
Rick: Well your book points out pretty well especially in the first part of it that it doesn’t work for people very well and it shows examples of you know which I think most people can relate to of why it doesn’t work so I think you make the case.
Kate: Yeah all right and then you know and then in this last section just also trying to give examples of so what is the you know smart selfing this this action of you know choosing to shift out of self-identification and into no self or at least just even just the dis-identification with self is a shift even if you know people are like like you know what is this you know sort of this ground of being that’s okay just it’s enough to sort of set down the story of oneself just in doing that there’s benefit and so you know I just go through different examples during the day like when you wake up in the morning what’s an example of selfing versus what’s an example coming back to no self or eating a meal and you know just to make it a little bit more tangible you know and it’s essentially about people sort of selfing judiciously and allowing you know, and a buy-in to their thoughts when it actually serves them versus autopilot and reactivity and you know emotion driven.
Rick: Yeah I think that you know the the recommendations you offer can actually have an effect I mean just this whole discussion we’re having and just reading your book can enable people to take a step back and not be so convinced by their ordinary level of way of functioning you know not be so invested in it just to kind of recognize a vision of possibilities that there’s another way of functioning if we want to put it that way.
Kate: Yes
Rick: But just the initial glimpse is not the full realization just as you know you can see a little bit at 5 a.m. when the when dawn starts to break you can see your way around a little bit but it’s not like noon in terms of the bright sunlight.
Kate: Right and that’s why I don’t use any words about you know awakening enlightenment.
Rick: Yeah you know because somewhere down the line down the road.
Kate: Yeah and this is you know this is primarily sort of a psychological kind of book you know even though I’m you know it’s psychology only goes so far so I’m trying to you know sort of bring in you know another sort of truth of who and what we are but you know it’s it’s primarily through the workings of our mind. Yeah.
Rick: Yeah. Well it’s like you said in the beginning it’s you know it’s not supposed to be you know the Brahma Sutras or something it’s not that some kind of ultimate teaching but it’s, it’s an introduction to people that there’s another way of being and you know that you are not necessarily, you’re more than you think you are.
Kate: Yes.
Rick: Or less than you think you are. However you want to put it.
Kate: Well exactly.
Rick: So it’s kind of like you know alerting them to that possibility.
Kate: Right, right and then just seeing sort of the you know the implications of that you know, on a larger scale.
Rick: Yeah the practicalities of it.
Kate: Oh yes. Right I mean just you know in terms of individual functioning and relationships and how you approach the job but also in terms of how countries get along with people you know just all the different levels.
Rick: Yeah. It’s relevant to everything.
Kate: Yes. Yes.
Rick: One little proviso I would throw in is that there have been instances in which people have taken these kinds of understandings and it has brought about some kind of disassociation or spiritual bypassing you know and sort of a disingenuousness where they kind of mistake understanding for actual realization and then they behave more unnaturally. Yeah, have you run into that?
Kate: I have in the county in which I live I have run into that a lot. You know I mean people are, you know real spiritual seekers and you know and that what goes with that is that there’s there’s the risk for some spiritual materialism and a certain kind of pretense of how to be, you know and you know you can you can feel it when you encounter it and it’s you know everybody just has their best attempt at trying to sort of apply these truths but sometimes it’s not from the inside out sometimes it’s you know it’s from the ego and it’s a little hard to be around.
Rick: I laughed just now because I thought of JP Sears you know who JP Sears is.
Kate: Oh yeah he wrote the foreword to the book actually.
Rick: Oh that’s right of course yes he did. It was a very funny foreword and, and he’s been on Batgap and he has this whole you know ultra spiritual thing where he kind of, it’s a parody and but anyway he he lampoons that that tendency to try to affect spirituality and not have it be, as opposed to genuine development.
Kate: Oh my gosh I love his ultra spirituality thing and I think I watched the interview you did with him, it’s just hysterical and you know and it helps us laugh at ourselves right because sometimes you know the self does like to you know, kind of capitalize on this you know it’s you know again if we’re going to personify the self, it sees that its days are numbered so to speak right so you know it’s going to sort of join in with sort of the spiritualizing of itself you know to sort of hunker down and you know it just complicates things.
Rick: Yeah it’s an interesting point I mean here we’re talking about something which should ideally liberate one from the confines of you know smallness of sort of a obsessiveness on individuality but it actually can be used to reinforce it and you know just put more decorations on it but yeah and yeah so I suppose the takeaway is that this is a very important thing and don’t let it just be one more thing to.
Kate: Yeah notch on the belt.
Rick: Aggrandize the small self you know right dig deeper than that.
Kate: Yes this is not yet the next accomplishment you know in the way of sort of proving that the self has worth.
Rick: Yeah.
Kate: That is not what this is in service of but you know it’s it’s sort of their game I mean selves will appropriate what they will so.
Rick: Yeah and often people go through a stage like that and then they grow out of it.
Kate: Yeah, yeah and you know and probably unknowingly I’ve encountered a lot of people who unknowingly sort of take that on but you know to compensate what for whatever insecurity or whatever you know workings through that they’re in process with so it’s you know it’s you know everybody’s just trying to find whatever means to sort of land towards some fulfillment.
Rick: Yeah is there any other point in that section that you want to highlight to self or not to self?
Kate: Well you know I kind of bring up the acting as if method and you know truthfully I was really trying to you know I think this is sort of the challenge with a lot of teachings like you know how do you offer people kind of entry into something that you know in some sense is sort of grace given but the acting as if like what do you lose right by sort of you know if I were to go through my life maybe assuming that I am the same consciousness as the person I’m looking at I don’t lose anything by that even if it doesn’t seem like the true visceral experience I’m having, it’s a bridge it’s a way to help me just I don’t know be more open to the that that knowing right so you know so I bring it up as a tool but with some reservations like you know in psychotherapy you know if a person is struggling with let’s say social anxiety and you know assigning them the task of acting as if they’re confident I mean it’s you know it’s a bit of a manipulation clearly but to the extent that then the actual experience they’re able to sort of get in touch with a genuine sense of presence, that’s real and then that can be built upon so you know some of the means aren’t I don’t know they’re not as good as I would hope they could be.
Rick: Yeah. I’m reminded of that song from The King and I, you know that, whenever, I won’t sing it but, “Whenever I feel afraid I hold my head erect and whistle a happy tune and no one will suspect I’m afraid.”
Kate: Right. And this is where like positive psychology gets a bad name you know. People feel like we’re just kind of you know sort of fluffing over things and that’s not really true but you know sometimes it’s, you know if you’ve gone through a lot of hardship and a lot of conditioning of the self it’s a little bit hard to just smart self then shift into no self like you know there has to be.
Rick: Yeah it’s a progressive development. You’re not gonna turn on a dime, there’s a lot of that conditioning we talked about earlier.
Kate: Yeah,
Rick: It’s gonna take a while to work that out. But I think that as if thing you just said is, is has merit like if, if nothing else it might make us more empathetic. You know we kind of realized that that person is me ultimately and and they’re they’re seeing I mean it’s the same ultimate self seeing through different eyes and what you know again what you do to another you do unto yourself if we can just culture that awareness it might make us more compassionate or more sensitive or less likely to hurt others in any way.
Kate: Right, right and empathy you know is tied up with all sorts of good beneficial you know the oxytocin and hormones and you know you know when we access empathy like there’s such a such a reward you know and how we feel so it does become reinforcing you know I mean the point of this isn’t necessarily for the individual’s gain it’s just you know be able to access sort of the truth but just you know for people to know there’s something that’s good, be good for them as they you know sort of I don’t know entertain the possibility of all this.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah you know they say it’s more blessed to give than to receive but I think actually I don’t want to make that sound mercenary but when you give you do actually receive more than when you don’t give and this would probably mean giving in any sense but so it does benefit the giver.
Kate: Oh yes yes and it’s you know I always bring the researching because I’m a little bit of a like a data nerd but you know all the studies on on giving you know people are happier when they give money versus when they receive the same amount of money you know the volunteers you know the people who who received help from volunteers obviously benefit but the greatest benefit comes to the volunteers themselves I mean it’s actually you know prolongs a person’s lifespan to be giving in that way so.
Rick: And seva is definitely a spiritual tradition you know selfless service and it’s said to be a powerful spiritual practice because it kind of attenuates the ego it sort of diminishes the the me focus when when we’re focused on benefiting others.
Kate: Yes, yes and it’s um you know and it just feels really good I mean just you know they’ve even done research that’s true you know looked at what’s the neuronal firing when we’re attending to other people versus attending to ourselves and you know there’s much more activation of just like our reward systems when we’re other-focused than when we’re focused on ourselves I mean it’s yeah we’re designed this way.
Rick: Nice.
Kate: Yeah.
Rick: Yeah so you just mentioned that you’re kind of a science nerd and yeah in the final section of your book you have a whole thing called what do you call it it’s —
Kate: Me-search, instead of research.
Rick: Yeah, but anyway it’s a whole lot of references to different types of research that have been done which kind of support the conclusions that you draw in the book so that’s it for those just to let people know what’s in the book for those who have that that bent you’ll find all kinds of references in there it’s a sort of a buttress, the arguments you make during the book.
Kate: Yeah and it was it was kind of fun to you know scan through that research and see what’s what’s out there.
Rick: Yeah. Yeah good all righty so um there, you are in in the Bay Area in Northern California and you’re, you have a clinical practice you work with people. Do you just do that in the office or do you do it over Skype also?
Kate: Right now, it’s just in person but but soon it’ll be over Skype
Rick: All right. So people listening to this, and this will be up for years, they could always just get in touch with you and see if you’re doing things over Skype if they don’t live in the Bay Area.
Kate: Yes, exactly and there are some workshops that are in the process of being created now sort of no self-help workshops so I’m not exactly sure you know what venues but you know I’ll be posting that on the website the noself-help.com website as that gets figured out.
Rick: Okay and so I will post links to that and to your other website on your page on batgap.com and I’ll post a link to your book.
Kate: All right well thank you so much gosh it’s such a pleasure to talk with you.
Rick: Yeah, thanks Kate I really enjoyed the whole thing. Let me just make a wrap-up point here. So all right I’ve just been speaking with Kate Guston and if you would like to find out more about her just go to her page on batgap.com which will be linked to if you’re just watching this on YouTube there will be a link to it in the description underneath the video and then you can jump from there to her websites, also we have a Facebook page where every time I do an interview I set up a post so people can discuss that particular interview so if you’d like to, it’s more manageable than having a discussion on YouTube that gets kind of out of hand, but if you so but if you’d like to discuss this go ahead to batgap.com to Kate’s page and then link from there you can link jump from there to the Facebook discussion group about this particular interview so thanks for listening and watching everybody and thank you again Kate.
Kate: Thank you.
Rick: We’ll see you all next week.