Waking Up Spiritually, the First Step to Collective Healing

Speaker 1 Richard - TakToMeGuy

Speaker 2 Lauryn Axlerod

Music

Speaker 1 Greetings everyone. This is the Sound Health radio show where we talk about the crossroads of the environment, our health and longevity with Richard Talktomeguy and Sherry Edwards is off working on the Sound Health portal. I would suggest going to the SoundHealthPortal.com, scrolling down just a bit and clicking on the Watch How button. You'll see a short video explaining how to record and submit your first recording. Then go back to SoundHealthPortal.com, scroll down to current active campaigns such as cellular inflammation, bio diet, neuroplasticity, or memory, and choose one that is of interest for you. Click on that campaign and click Free Voice Analysis and the system will walk you through submitting your recording.

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If you'd like to leave me a voice message with a question for a guest or a guest idea for a show, you can do that directly from the site and I will be notified. With that, Lauren Axelrod, an ordained interfaith interspiritual minister, chaplain, spiritual director and teacher, a graduate of one spirit seminary. Lauren founded Three Mountains interspiritual community and authored 10 words, an interspiritual guide to becoming better people in a better world. She writes the radical spirituality getting to the root of what matters newsletter on Substack and leads workshops both online and in person. Known for her down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach, Lauren helps others discover spiritual wisdom and live centered lives in our changing world. She's also an award-winning ceramic artist, hospice chaplain, end-of-life doula supporting those in the process of death and dying, and new monastic.

Bringing the fruits of monastic tradition to modern life. When not teaching or writing, Lauren can be found on her Vermont farm growing her vatic vegetables, tending maple forests and enjoying hiking, kayaking and nights by the fire under the stars. Welcome, Lauren.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Richard. t's really a pleasure to be with you.

Speaker 1 I want to start by asking, what is new monastic?

Speaker 2 New monasticism is this really interesting trend that started, I'd say 15 years ago, where people, you know, within the religious world, we're starting to look at the monastic traditions and what the gems of monasticism are, which is a very spiritually focused life. And then trying to move that into the modern world that we live in, how do we take that commitment to living a spiritually centered life to work, to our relationships, to our complex modern political world. And it really kind of took hold largely within the Episcopal Church. There are a number of new monastic communities, but they're also interspiritual communities, ones that are not not taking those gems from any particular denomination or any particular religious tradition. And they're even like art monasteries, you know, so it's really this idea of how do we live a spiritually centered life in the modern world.

Speaker 1 Interesting. I grew up near a monastery in Carmel. There was a monastery on the beach on the way down to Big Sur. And so that's why when I hear the word monastery or monastic, I think, oh, that's what that was.

Speaker 2 But this is such a new, interesting, right? Because because, right, because how many of us are going to go, you know, move to a mount and top monastery, we're not, you know, it's that's an older framework, which was the belief that you needed to separate yourself from the quote unquote dust of the world, right, from the secular world in order to develop, you know, a deeper relationship with whatever it is that you call God. And that's, and what we found is that's not actually true, that God's really in the details of everyday life.

So here we are living our everyday lives. We don't want to go move to a monastery. We want to stay in our communities, in our homes, in our work, which, you know, where we can contribute to, to the, you know, betterment of the world.

So how do we do that? And that's what, what new monasticism, that's the question that new monasticism is based on. I might be a new monastic. I think a lot of people want to be, you know, they really do.

And that's where it's really interesting. I mean, I myself, I always wanted to be a monk, but like, I'm not going to go move to a mount and top monastery. I mean, I kind of live on one now. But, you know, I still work. I still, I have a cell phone, you know, I still live a regular life. I'm married, have kids, you know, the whole thing. And that's really where the rubber meets the road. That's where we have to really say, how does my spiritual life inform my regular life?

They're not different. You know, I often say that, you know, you're all, you're on a spiritual journey, whether you are aware of it or not. It's called life. That's your next book title.

Speaker 1 What I could do, that could so be an hour conversation, but I'll move on here. What is interspirituality?

Speaker 2 So again, you know, I use these terms that are relatively new within spiritual discussion, right? Interspirituality is the idea that beneath all of the doctrine and all of the dogma and all of the various institutionalized religions that have grown up is a common core that, that, that was if we look at all of our religions, they came out of the mystical experience of their founders.

Whether we're talking Abraham or Jesus or Muhammad or the Buddha, whoever, right? There was some understanding of the sacred that then becomes institutionalized and, and doctrine eyes, you know, and, and dogmatized. And then you get churches and, and movements and this and that. But interspirituality is the idea that there's, there's a common core between all of the traditions.

And some would call it the perennial wisdom, right? But that it's the same thing, like regardless of the details on the top, and they're different. Every religion has a different, is a slightly different path up the mountain, but it's the mountain that we're interested in. That's interspirituality that I can tell you that there are certain principles that are common all across all traditions, which is the basis of the 10 words, my book. But that is really what interspirituality is. There's more that connects us than divides us. So it is really like nature with cross-pollination in a certain way. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, you could look at it psychologically, Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, like there are concepts, there are themes, there are principles that the mystics all discovered, science is corroborating, certain of them, absolutely at this point, science and psychology, you know, is saying, oh, wait a minute, they were right.

And those are the principles that if we apply those, we will be better people in a better world.

Speaker 2 Mike drop. Thank you. So if would you please say the 10 words so that we have them sort of, I want people to understand these are not, you didn't create words, you didn't invent something in the sense of you observed, you became aware of you had aha moments, however you want to all of that.

Speaker 2 Yes, the 10 words really came came out of my own experience. And this is kind of tying it back into your first question that when I was really exploring new monasticism, one of the things I started to look at were what are the rules of life, the precepts, the commandments by which monastics live their lives. And so I looked at them across traditions from Christianity to Buddhism to, you know, the 613 mitzvot of Judaism, like looked at all of them. And I didn't really like any of them personally, like these are the ones I want to live by.

Because my, my experience is more inter spiritual and interfaith. And then, you know, sometimes they were just too specific to one tradition, or they were, they were not relevant to today's world. So I created my own and they came very, very quickly, like within a few minutes, I just started writing words that I knew were common because I've spent my life in all the different traditions, studying, exploring, learning.

And the 10 words that came out, first of all, they all begin with A, B, and C. I didn't plan that. That's just the way they came out. They're that foundational. And I didn't make them up. They're distilled from the teachings of all of the traditions. And they're words that we know.

There's nothing esoteric here. They're very, very simple words. They're concepts, though, they're not thou shelt's or thou shelt not's. They're not, you know, don't kill, don't lie, don't cheat, etc. They're concepts, they're principles that apply across the board.

So here they are. The first word is Attention. The second one is Acceptance. Authenticity. Benevolence. Balance. Contemplation. Creativity. Collaboration. Celebration. And Care. And what's beautiful about them is that they, unlike most precepts or commandments or rules of life, they don't exist separately. What you find when you start working with these words is they actually are all connected. So much so that the first word, which is attention, which by the way is where most modern spirituality stops. And it's just the first word, right? This is mindfulness. It's right here. It's all it is. It's mindfulness.

Nope, nope. They're nine other words. The first word is attention. The last word, the tenth word is care.

To care about something is to attend to it, to give a very specific kind of attention. And it takes you right back to the beginning. So they form like a loop trail, except it kind of keeps spiraling, right? It goes, one adds to the other. And as you go around, you can keep going around endlessly. And your understanding of those words and your application of those concepts is going to change. It's going to evolve. So it's a complete path.

Speaker 1 I almost feel like making a tape for myself saying the words and then listening to them while I'm being quiet. Yes. I don't necessarily meditate directly. I try to, but my mind usually starts thinking about something.

Speaker 2 Where we are right now, where it's like mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness, it's like another thing to beat yourself up with. It's like, I can't meditate.

Not everybody is really good at sitting still. And that's just a training. The idea is that you practice that for a little while, hard as it is, but then you bring that attention into everything else that you're doing. It's not just what happens when you're trying to sit on your meditation cushion. That's just, it's like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. That's all it is.

And every religious tradition, every faith and wisdom tradition makes that the first step. It's all about every practice out there is where's your attention?

Speaker 1 We were talking backstage and the audience has heard me say before I've had a camera in my hand since forever, since I was in junior high. And for me, when I have the camera in my hand, I go into a walking meditative state, but hyper aware at the same time because something will pop into my corner of my eye or I'll see something or it could be a butterfly on a dandelion, let's say, or milkweed, preferably. And then I will be focused on that. My attention will go to that. And then I will be there contemplating that until the moment that I think it is correct to click the shutter.

Speaker 2 Yes. And that is meditation. That is absolutely the first word, attention.

It's cultivating the ability to focus your attention, first of all, and then making the choice as to where your attention is being put. It's just the first step. And again, going back to what I said about your, you're on a spiritual journey, whether you're aware of it or not, it's called life. So it's putting your attention on the details of life.

That's all that's all it is. You know, and I'd like to jump to balance because I'm wondering well within collaboration. You see how they all feed into each other.

Speaker 1 I'm in a loop looking at them going, no, yeah, that, yeah, that, that was there. So balance. We live in this amazing nature world. I'm not talking about humanity.

That's a completely different story. Well, it's part of nature, but anyway, right. But I mean, in the sense of when I go into nature, and it could be in a parking lot, just looking at the meridian, looking for thing, you know, something to photograph. Nature is an amazing example, a shining example of balance and collaboration.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Everything in nature works with everything else. Yes, we don't understand how the wolves are eating that elk is in, is in cooperation. But that's again, a whole other conversation. There is an agreement. Somebody has an agreement. Okay, I'll go this time, because it's my job to go.

Somebody has to go, I'll go supply myself to the wolves. Right. And being the sacrificial deer. Right.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in that, so, so in nature, there's balance. And then also there's collaboration. And through their collaboration, there's balance and, and etc, etc. It's back and forth. And so we live in this amazing example of how this can work. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 Are humans just stupid? I tried to come up with a different way of saying that more kind, more gentle. Yeah, I was going to say I wouldn't use that word. I know, that's why you're the word Smith.

Speaker 2 I am a different kind of word Smith. I, I don't know that it's that we're stupid. It's that we're not, well, take it back to attention.

We're not paying attention, right? And, and we tend to assume that we're the center of the universe. And that all revolves around us. And that's where, you know, if we understand that we live in a inter interdependent universe and interdependent cosmos.

Speaker 2 And this is where every every faith and wisdom tradition and science at this point would confirm this, that everything is dependent upon everything else. Then we are in a constant state of, of equilibrium. This is kind of a tricky word just because people think balance is equal.

And balance is not about everything being equal. It's about things more like being in harmony with one another. Or you think about the Taoist symbol, the yin yang, right?

Where you have the two principles, yin and yang that are constantly moving in relationship to one another. Or you think about, I mean, you're, you know, you're on the California coast, think about surfers. You know, when you are on a surfboard on a wave, you are going to be making constant micro adjustments to stay up, to stay on that wave. That's the way the world, the universe works. It's in this constant movement of micro adjustments and harmonies. And sometimes one thing appears to be more dominant than another. Well, at that moment, maybe that's what is needed, and then it shifts.

But everything is always in relationship to everything else. And that's where, you know, it's not that humans are stupid, it's that we're self-centered. And we think that we are, that everything revolves around us. When in fact, we are just one part of this very, very complex ecology on a cosmic scale. And we, there's no other species, again, setting humans aside, on the planet that would do to its surrounding environs, as we do. Yep, this is true.

This is true. And, you know, I actually recently did another podcast interview with a guy who started this podcast because of a conversation we had on a previous podcast. And that the title of the podcast is, We Have a Spiritual Problem.

And it came out of the conversation of me saying, listen, we don't really have an environmental problem or an economic problem or a social problem or a political problem. We have a spiritual problem. Because that's what's at the root of it. If we understood that we lived in this, this interdependent universe, and that we are not in charge of how it all operates, if we abided by these 10 words, if we explored them and we applied them, we wouldn't have all of these other problems.

They're an outgrowth of a spiritual problem, which is, which is not understanding the principles.

Speaker 1 I think when we lived in caves, we understood at a really base core level, because it was a matter of getting out of the cave, going and finding something to kill and bring back to the cave, and not get eaten in the process.

Speaker 2 Right, it was a matter of survival. It was really survival. And we didn't know back then that it was survival. It was just how we lived. We lived in, you know, when we were in the cave and the fire was burning, we felt pretty safe. But at any moment, there was a sound outside.

Somebody would sit up and grunt and go, yeah, that thing's here. That's going to eat your face. And now we've gotten so sophisticated driving around in our whatever's, not thinking about what's coming out of the tailpipe to go to the fast food place and get more bad food that doesn't support the planet. Not that I have an attitude. Let's have an opinion. I have an opinion. That's what it is.

Speaker 2 It's an opinion. It feels like an attitude, opinion that, you know, back then it was very, you know, you're like three steps every day to a life, you know, wake up, go outside, find something to eat. It wasn't like you were taking walks in the forest and looking around and going, this is so amazing.

Look at that evolution happening. You know, all that, because there wasn't, we didn't have that. And now we seem to have reached a state of I don't know what it is.

I am agreeing with your spiritual, you know, loss of spirituality. We seem to have lost that connection to the earth in a certain way. We have. And yet, you know, we're craving it. And that's why people, you know, why hiking is a big thing.

And, you know, I think we, you know, we, we're never going to get away from that, what I would call the spiritual urge, the urge to, to explore the, the, what I would, you know, say are the three main questions. Who am I? Or what am I?

What's going on here? And how am I supposed to live in relationship to that? And we never get away from those. We just come up with other ways of answering them. And right now, those answers are largely through science. But before that, they were through, through the mystical experience and the observation of the world around us.

And being wowed by it, being like, you know, I mean, think about the way kids are, you know, they look up into the sky or they look at the bugs in the grass and they're like, what is this? How does this work? I don't understand. It's all magic to them. And it was magic to our, to our forebears. And religion is how they came up with the answers. Now we have science. But what we're finding is science is actually corroborating what many of our very, very early observers already discovered.

It's almost science is a rationalization of. Yes. Oh, look, two plus two equals four. Therefore, we agree with what the spiritual said.

Correct. And this is all part of sort of our movement, post enlightenment into the rational. There is nothing rational about spirituality. It's not rational. It's an, it's, it's a knowing that can't be proven. I can't prove to you my experience of ultimate reality, the source of life, you know, God, whatever you want to call it, I can't prove that to you.

That's just my experience. But we moved in, you know, during the enlightenment into the age of rationalism, and we killed that, that God, you know, we killed that experience to the point where people think religion at this point or faith or, or any of, or, or a spiritual experience that is not just like a bliss bunny experience, but is a really, you know, powerful experience of the sacred is, is foolish, is somehow childish. So we live in an age that is so profoundly secular that we have lost that connection, that relationship to whatever it is you want to call it, that's bigger than us, which goes back to my saying, we think we're in the center of the universe. We are not the center of the universe. What, it's not about me? What do you mean by that?

Right. And even our spirituality, our modern spirituality, which I quibble with a lot because it's totally self-centered. It's about my meditation and my experience. And it doesn't take into account, you know, it's become very, very psychologized where it's all about how I feel. There is no commandment anywhere that says, thou shalt not feel bad.

It doesn't exist. You know, but that's what modern spirituality has become, that it's therapeutic. It's about healing your traumas and not to say that trauma is not, you know, a real thing. But that's not the point of spirituality. The spiritual, the point of spirituality is to develop a relationship, a connection to that which is not us. I mean, it's us, but not us, right?

That which is greater, that which is beyond our comprehension. And nobody said that that's always a pleasant experience. Oh, isn't it supposed to be fun all the time for me? Exactly, exactly, you know. And it's really, you know, to walk a spiritual path is a commitment, you know, and it's a commitment to even when it's not easy, when there are those dark nights of the soul, that you keep going.

You keep asking the questions. How do I live knowing that things are not always going to be perfect for me? That was the Buddha's first of the four noble truths. Suffering is inevitable. Stuff's going to happen.

That's life. Now what? Next. Right.

Well, isn't that when we then roll back to attention and we look within the moment that we're okay? Right, right. That's why it's the first word. It's the foundation of all of the other words.

Speaker 1 Yes. I see it because I spend a lot of time wandering around parks or, you know, parking lots. I see a lot with moms with kids or dads with kids who kids freaking out about something, usually with reason. In my view, over here, as a nonparent, in my view, it's like, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 I'd be freaked out too. And they try and bring them to like, you're okay, you're here now, you know, you're okay, you're with me or, you know, whatever it comes to that, they unintentionally are changing the child's shift to attention over here. Well, it may actually be intentional. I mean, it's a parenting technique, right? And it's also a, you know, trauma-informed technique of keeping people grounded in the present because when you're freaking out, you're either in the past or the future.

Yes. So it's a way of keeping people, you know, whether it's a child or an adult, in the present, grounded here, like where, you know, where are your hands? This is where you are. So it's absolutely, I mean, it is the foundation, I think, of a life well-lived, whether you want to call that spiritual or secular, it doesn't matter. This where is your attention and what is the quality of your attention, especially these days where everything is clamoring for your attention all the time and we're so super saturated with input. You know, we have to make choices.

Speaker 1 Where am I going to put my attention? You see, for me, that's an easy choice. I mean, I talk into a microphone for living, so there's that. But for me, it's back to the, we were talking backstage. When I pick up a camera, I go into a semi-altered state.

Because my focus is, the camera becomes an extension of my vision. I've held cameras in my life long enough that I don't have to think about any of the technology.

The camera is just my ability to capture the thing that I see and then focus in on and then make choices about depth of field and all sorts of things. Right. And it's a perfect metaphor.

Speaker 1 Right. It's a perfect metaphor. But it's also true that whenever we do focus our attention, and this is the sort of, you know, high that people feel from meditation, is that same kind of focus where your experience of the world around you heightens because your attention is so fully there. And that's, this is why, you know, Buddhist teachers would often say that there is such joy and beauty in the world. If you just look for it, it's there.

Put your attention there. You know, I think it was Shunry Suzuki, the great Zen teacher who said, you know, I can find the universe in a sunflower. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.

I stared into many a sunflower. Yeah. If I'm actually putting my attention there. And that's where we experience, I think, the sacred. That's where we go, whoa, look at this. This is amazing. I can't, this is such an incredible mystery.

Speaker 2 And we get that wow, what I would call the wow factor. You know, I have a patient, you know, I'm an end of life doula and a chaplain and I have a patient, she's 105. She's amazing.

And I think the secret to her longevity is she still has this wow. Sometimes it's hot dogs, like she really loves hot dogs. So it's like, wow, hot dogs, or flowers, or birds. There was one time I brought her some flowers and she took one of the flowers and she just rubbed it gently across her face and just, and was like, wow. And I mean, I was in tears.

It's like, yes, you know, that is, that is, I think in many ways, the penultimate spiritual experience when you can let go of yourself enough to be utterly wowed by the fact that you're alive.

Speaker 1 Last week, I did a show with a doctor, medical doctor, and he's a Canadian, so he, but he's been writing medical columns for 47 years for laypeople. He's syndicated nationwide, about 7 million viewers a week. And Doc is 102.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 And he still writes a medical column every day, 650 words, pounds out those words. And his daughter was with him on this show, and she has been before too.

And they work together. And she, you know, I asked him and I've interviewed him about a half dozen times. And he's so, I always feel like a lazy slop. When I talk to him, because he's so like, I play badminton every day for 30 minutes because it keeps my agile and this and that. And I'm still writing articles and he has amazing recall for all the research he's done.

He studied with Linus Pauling and vitamin C and what he advocates and ortho molecular medicine, blah, blah, blah, because he said, I'm just vital. I just feel that way. And I said, no, you're not vital. You're like fiercely vital. Yeah, you're really here doing your bliss. And you are vital about it. And she said, sort of wandered in and said, boy, howdy, is he vital?

Yeah, you know, he is producing stuff two months ago, he released a new supplement.

Speaker 2 Amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. And it's but I want to go to the word because you know, I'm the word person, right? So and that word vital, vital means life. Yeah. And I will go back to, you know, the miracle and you can call it God, you can call it whatever you want, but the miracle is life itself.

The rest is commentary. The miracle is life itself. And science will tell you that the conditions for life to exist are so specific and so narrow that it should blow your mind. You know, and if spirituality, if living a spiritual, spiritually centered life, is not blowing your mind, then you're missing something.

Speaker 1 Yes. I've done a number of shows with Sherry Edwards, who's the founder of Sound Health Options, does a lot of work with hearing sound and running it through software and telling people where they have imbalances. And it always blows my mind. She's older than I am and I'm in my mid 70s, but Sherry is still just the same when she's, when I've done live shows with her. And it's a webinar.

So we're seeing charts. She is like a rabbit, a dog after a rabbit. When she sees something in the chart and I'm looking at the methylation cascade, which always blows my mind because it's so amazingly complex. And one of the things I say to Sherry is that I think it's a miracle every day when I get up. And it's not because I think I'm dying, it's not that. It's just like, think of all the things we have to do just to get out of bed every day. And I don't mean that in a martyred way.

I just mean in like, look at that. I lift my foot. I do this. And it's like just all happening automatically.

Speaker 2 Right. You know, my heart is beating. My kidneys are processing. My liver is flushing.

Speaker 1 My bowels are moving. You know, it's all just happening. And I'm not thinking about it. And if that isn't the mystery to blow your mind, I don't know what is.

Speaker 2 Poof. You know, it really, and that's when, like we can try to have answers and we can say, okay, well, here's why biologically this is happening. But behind that is that mystery. And again, you can call it God. You can call it whatever you want. But behind that is the mystery that you woke up.

And you know, a lot of traditions have prayers that are, you know, said when you wake up, when you first open your eyes, when you go to the bathroom, when you move your bowels, like there's a prayer for that because like, if I didn't do that, I wouldn't be alive. Thank you. Yeah.

You know, everything where, where, you know, there's a tradition in Judaism that you should say a hundred brahota, a hundred blessings a day. That would not be hard if you were actually paying attention. You know, you already named 10 of them and you haven't even gotten out of bed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like you could literally lay in bed before you put your feet on the ground and say, wow, okay, first of all, I woke up. Second of all, you know, the sun is out. I have a roof over my head.

Speaker 1 I have, you know, warm clothes or blankets. I smell coffee being made.

Speaker 2 Right. Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, we can literally, a hundred blessings a day would not be hard if you actually put your attention there. It's how I feel back to nature because that's my go-to. I live near redwoods. Well, actually, in the, in where I live now, there are redwoods, but they're domesticated, so to speak. They're not in organic forests. And so I can go out to the coast and walk among the redwoods.

And at the time I touch a redwood, I'm tripping. And I mean that in the best of ways. It's just like, it's amazing how long they've been here, what they've seen. Yeah.

How they have this amazing agreement that they're going to be on this planet with these stupid pink sacks of water walking around. Right. Well, and I feel the same way. I mean, I live on 25 acres of northeast hardwood forests.

Speaker 2 Wow. And, you know, it's spring now. We've got a long winter and everything is greening up and the trees are budding out and the daffodils are up and the hyacinths are up. And it's, it's, it's just, wow, how does this happen? You know, I'm just, I'm blown away. The birds are out, the bunnies are out, everybody's, you know, life has returned. And not, there wasn't life in the winter, but it, you know, there's still this, this version of life, this, this exuberant explosion of lifeness, of life-ing just blows my mind.

Speaker 1 Yes. It's like a Disney film where the creatures are waking up in the forest where they're all, you know, thumpers banging his feet and the birds are tweeting. It's just like, wow. It is literally what, what is happening right now.

Speaker 2 I'm in a living Disney film, but, but that that should, if that doesn't point you towards mystery, towards something that we can't explain, I don't know what would. And so is the list, did attention just end up at the top because it seemed like it or is it really that it seems like attention is the beginning of everything? Yeah, it is. It's the beginning of everything.

And that's why it started. I didn't, I'm, these words literally came out in this order in like 10 minutes. And then I looked at them and I went, whoa, wait, I think I actually have something here.

Yes. You know, and, and it, you know, they didn't come out of nowhere. They came out of decades and decades of study and practice. So, so they, they weren't, you know, I didn't, I didn't make them up.

They just, they came out of experience and, and learning. But I wasn't sure if they would actually work, but I was still excited about them. And I shared them with a few people. And within a few weeks, there were 10 people who said, you know, let's explore this together. And we did, we spent a year taking one word each month and really diving into it. You know, what is not just what are the traditions tell us about why this word is important, but most importantly, like what was our experience? What does the word mean to us? How is it showing up in our own lives? How can we cultivate it? How can we bring more of it into our lives? What are the challenges? that we're facing? And we spent a, you know, one month on each word. And then at the end of the 10 months, we took two months to basically put the words into our own words. So how we experienced, so let's say, attention, you know, how do I want to remind myself to pay attention? So we created our own sets of commitments or vows or promises or whatever you want to call them.

And by the end of the year, we determined not only do they work, but they are utterly transformative. And you could literally write the word on a sticky note and put it on your computer. And, and you would be, you'd be good. You don't even like it, they seep in, it just seeps in because they're so simple. I may have to create a short little movie, a triptych, as we were talking backstage.

Speaker 1 Could be still images, I still think a triptych. In spite of what the cinematic types think. I agree with you.

Speaker 2 I agree.

Speaker 1 And have it just roll across. It could be my screensaver, where the words just float in and drift across just so it enters my, you know, I'm, I'm, the list came back up as I was scrolling down on my notes and I see celebration. And what's not to like about celebration?

Speaker 2 Oh, celebration is one of my favorites, right? We forget, we forget that life is worth celebrating every single moment. You know, and this is where our practices of gratitude come in. You know, like, how can we celebrate? How do we find the joy? Even when life is hard. And especially like right now in the world we live in, there's so much focus on all the stuff that's negative that we forget to celebrate. We forget to say, wait, we have this moment. It may be hard, but I'm still here. I still have this moment, which means I have the opportunity to experience joy. And yeah, you can, you know, the thing about these words is that they, they're going to show up every single day.

If you're paying attention, you will see that they show up every single day. There's always an opportunity to practice acceptance, authenticity, benevolence, balance, collaboration, collaboration, creativity. Every breath we take is creative, literally. Our out breath is feeding the trees. Without us, they wouldn't be here. We are in relationship with them. We are in relationship with everything.

Speaker 1 Damn it.

Speaker 2 Including the divine, right? Including the divine. And that means we have to pay attention to those relationships. It's, you know, the more I work with these words, the more they just blow me away. Because, because they, they are literally in everything, in everything we do. Care, you know. We only care for the things that we love. So love everything. You know, you're in relationship with everything.

That means you have to care. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy. Is not caring. Yeah.

Right. But if you care about everything, wow, think about how rich your world becomes. You care about the grass and the birds and the bunnies and your friends and your family. And you don't even know your world becomes so rich and so full.

And I think it's the antidote to the ennui and the, you know, anhedonia that we have, the, you know, lack of pleasure that people have now. Because they're not connected. They're not in relationship. When our relationships are about, you know, we don't even use words and texts anymore. It's just an emoji. That's not a relationship. Yes.

Speaker 1 The dreaded emoji. Right. It's not a relationship. That, that the meaning in life, the richness of life is through our relationships. And I don't want to go too far into this because I don't want to really talk about politics.

Speaker 2 I really want to observe that how can we use these words to be in relationship with somebody that we disagree with? Well, it's all in there, right? First of all, if you're paying attention and you're accepting what is, right, you don't have to like it. You don't have to affirm it. You don't have to agree with it, but you have to accept that it is. And that means even people's opinions and beliefs, they're entitled to their beliefs and opinions just as you are.

Authenticity is one of those words. If you're being true to yourself and you are being honest and benevolence, I'm going to wish well for people even if I disagree with them. They are entitled to believe what they believe. I can choose whether or not I want to be in further relationship with them, but I don't have to vilify them. I don't have to cancel them. I don't have to destroy them just because they believe something different than I do. Collaboration, care. I can even celebrate the fact that, hey, look, isn't this cool?

Speaker 1 We can have 15,000 different opinions. I think the tricky part, at least for me personally, is that I care deeply about the environment. I grew up in a beautiful place. I observed it. I photographed it since I was young. And when I see people either doing or talking or leaning into, oh, sure, go ahead.

Let's let industry dump more pollution into the rivers. I can't find a way where I can engage someone who believes in that in conversation because I think that the idea, the belief is so corrupt and bad, and I have a string of words around that I can't use, that I have a hard time approaching any kind of conversation with them. So one of the things that I think is difficult right now is everybody is so entrenched in their beliefs. And I'm not saying I disagree with you. It pains me.

Speaker 2 I live in the natural world as well. And it pains me that people think they can desecrate it and it's not going to have an impact. The problem I've found is that unless people are willing to approach dialogue, you know, Pope Francis was just buried yesterday. Pope Francis did something amazing within the Catholic Church that nobody had ever done before, which was that he opened up dialogues in which people were free to voice different opinions. They didn't have to agree with him.

But the space and the framework for having conversation was, first of all, respect and benevolence. You are entitled to your belief, even if I disagree with you, but to allow for that flow of ideas. And the challenge that I see right now is everybody, not everybody, but many people are like, this is my belief and it's fundamentalist and it's, you know, energetically, it's fundamentalist. It's black and white. And there's no room for any kind of nuance.

And so it's really hard to have conversation. People don't want to learn, they don't want to see another side because it's a threat. If I see another side and then I might question my own beliefs, then I can't say I'm on this side or that side. And what if you're not on any side, but you're on the side of, you know, what makes the most sense given what we know about the world that we live in an interdependent cosmos. And what we do to one part of it, we do to ourselves. If that's a fundamental belief, then that is going to affect how you, you know, what choices you make. But it is, it's hard. I mean, and, you know, it's really hard to have dialogue with people who wish you ill because of your beliefs or vice versa.

So that's where that word benevolence comes in. And acceptance and collaboration. How can we have a conversation that's collaborative, not just two people screaming at each other from their, you that's not constructive, that's not going to help anything. That just creates more division. So if your goal is not to feed more division or more war, right, by using language of war against, you know, anti, but the language of, you know, of imagination and of creativity, what are you for?

What do you want to see? Years ago, you know, my farm, I had young people coming, you know, woofing and, and helping out on the farm. And I would sit down, we'd do a family dinner, the first, you know, night or so after everybody got here. And I would pose the question of what kind of world do you want to live in?

Tell me, what do you want to see? Because if you can't imagine it, you can't make it so. So you need to start imagining what you want, not just what you don't want, but what you want.

And use that language, use those words. So if I'm going to enter a conversation, a dialogue with somebody who's on, you know, seemingly the opposite side, I have to ask myself, what do I want? Do I want to win this conversation? Do I want to make my point? Do I want to convert them?

Or do I want to actually listen and try to understand why they believe what they believe? What's my ultimate goal here? Yeah, my ultimate goal always is education. Right. I think that if I keep yacking into this microphone, somebody's going to learn something and think, oh, wow, maybe I shouldn't throw that plastic bag in the trash.

Speaker 1 Right. Maybe I should not take that styrofoam container. Maybe I should, you know, I hate to use the should word. I don't mean to should on people.

I just want to use enough words to have people go, huh. Yeah, that seems like a bad idea. All on the run. Right. And but you're never going to do that by pounding people over the head with it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It doesn't work. It forces people that backs people into corners and they feel like they need to defend themselves.

So they get more rigid. Instead of approaching it with softness, you know, the prophetic voice does not have to be loud. We don't have to yell on the screen.

We don't have to beat people up. We just have to be clear and keep talking openly. And things will change. Maybe they won't change as fast as we want them to change, but they will change. Little by little, think about where we are now. When we were younger, we didn't recycle anything.

Nothing was recycled. You know, a lot of the things that are now common for us to do. We didn't think about when we were kids because it wasn't part of a conversation. But if you don't have the conversations, then it doesn't get out there.

Speaker 1 There's energy behind the words. Yeah, that is interesting from the view I can't remember was on air off here. I mentioned doing work with Sherry Edwards is sound, the bioacoustic person. And hanging out with her for a long time, I did a lot of shows with her years ago and still from time to time. And it really is the work that she does is about the frequency coming out of the words, but it's still those frequencies are formed by words.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go into the super woo-woo for a minute. I'm going to go into Genesis and the very first lines in the beginning was the word. And I'm going to say, and what was behind the word? Behind the word was the intention was the imagination, the frequency, the vibration of making, of envisioning something into being.

The speaking of it, the word is the actualization. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Right? So we have to imagine the world we want to live in before we can speak it into existence. But as soon as we speak it, that word carries energy. We literally make the world with every thought, every word, every breath, literally.

And science can actually cooperate that. So there you go, right? Yeah.

The very first line of the Bible is already telling you. Yeah. I've worked with, in college, I worked with disabled students, Vietnam vets, a lot of them, who were damaged, not just structurally, but the psychological state. Mostly as a just to sit around and talk person. I'm not a therapist, but I have that demeanor. And I'll listen. It's calm voice. It's the calm voice fools a lot of people. I have no idea what's going inside.

Speaker 1 It's very calm. Except I was a working chef for 20 years. And there I was not such a, I was a calm voice until I wasn't. Right. Until you're working in a professional kitchen.

And then until I step back to acceptance.

Speaker 2 Do you see? Yes. No, I had a laugh earlier to myself about that.

Speaker 1 Like, oh yeah, there's that acceptance. I can't use this bad word, but I really want to. When the wheel in a kitchen fills and you know that you're just behind the eight ball. So you just have to accept it, put your head down and cook like a maniac. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these words are so powerful. And behind the words is that intention, right?

Speaker 2 And all traditions will talk about how intention precedes action or even proceeds intention. Oh, no, sorry, proceeds attention. So intention proceeds attention.

Your internal state will determine the external, the internal, the intention comes first. Mm hmm. I will oddly enough relate this to cooking again. When I was in charge of the kitchen, there would be times when you'd have like four or five people on the line sauteing and maybe somebody at the grill and somebody at the, you know, various stations. And when you're the head chef, you're in charge of all those stations. So you have to keep your eye on everybody. And you can see a newbie to the line because there's going to be a moment when they freak out. Mm hmm.

Because if you don't freak out, you're not paying attention. Yeah. Really, that's the deal. Yeah. Yeah.

Because you suddenly realize you're in the weeds, man. Right. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 Yes. I was just going to say you're in the weeds. And my choice was anytime they saw me coming into the kitchen, because I'm standing, you know, away from the kitchen running the window, they knew that something was up.

They were all part of like the red sea like, Oh my God, don't let it be me. And you just have to take that newbie and like go, no, do it this way, it'll work better. And you take that 30 seconds in the middle of serving 400 meals. And you show them how to do it. And they go, Oh, and then that's back.

The queue is back up. Right. But if your intention was not to be a, you know, supportive presence of teaching, you know, an educational presence, but just to be pissed off and yell and scream, how well, you know, what would have happened? I've worked in that kitchen. I hated that kitchen. I hated just being yelled at without solution. Right.

The original chef I trained under would yell at me, but then show me how to do it. Yes. Right. But at least, you know, it wasn't just, just tearing you down.

Speaker 2 No, no. We have enough, like we have to stop tearing each other down. Yeah. We're not going to get anywhere towards that, you know, call it the kingdom of heaven on earth, call it the messianic age, just call it a better world. I don't care, but we're not going to get there if we're yelling at each other. Yeah. If we're dividing instead of finding what unites us. Yeah. And, you know, divide and conquer is a political technique. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Right. As long as you can keep people fighting with each other, then, you know, they're not paying attention to what's happening going on behind the curtain, but, but, but we need to stop fighting. We need to listen. We need to collaborate. We need to cooperate.

Speaker 2 That's all those C words are in that word and collaborate, cooperate, communicate, all of these things that, you know, that word is really about relationship and developing and fostering relationship. And our relationships have been, you know, are a mess in the last couple of years. I mean, I don't know about you.

I've lost tons of friends, you know, family fights. Like this is absurd. Yeah. There is some theory in other dark rooms that I had in where they talk about the idea of if they have us in contention with each other, then we're not paying attention to what's actually going on. That's what I said. We're not paying attention to the man behind the curtain because we're fighting with each other over stupid things. Yeah.

See, stupid. We're back there. We begin.

Speaker 1 We end as we began. That was great. Thank you. Actually, I want to jump slightly to something that I sent you.

I emailed you. I just want to read this. This was a sign at an event that somebody actually took this sign and posted this thing saying, you know, this thing, somebody was at a protest and saying, here's the deal. And what the sign said was, when making your signs for rallies, important reminder, signs shape movements. Say what you're for, not just what you're fighting, speak the future into being. This is important because what we resist persists. We must shape the future with what we want. Yeah.

Speaker 2 This is exactly what I was saying, right? And let's, you know, that we have to think about what the, you know, we have to engage our imaginations and envision what it is that we want, the world we want to live in. Because if we can't imagine it, we can't make it happen. And if we're using the language of war, of anti, all we're doing is adding to the war. We're adding to the division. And remember that a protest, pro the prefix there, the Latin is for, not against, it's for, that's what pro means. So what are you for?

What do you want to see? Put that positive energy out into the world. And then you've got a better chance of it happening. Yeah, I like that vision. I'll have that.

I'll have what she's having. Yeah, me too. What are you, what are you for? I'm tired of anti. I'm tired of, I don't like this, I don't like that, I don't like this. Fine, stop whining.

Tell me what you want. You know, stop whining, never get the positive response. People always are not happy when you say that. Oh, stop whining.

Tell me something. Right. But I, I mean, we've just become very whiny. Yeah.

I'm just like, okay, knock it off. Yeah. Tell me what it is that you want, because if you tell me what you want, I can help you make it happen.

Yeah. But if you can't tell me that, what do you, you know, all I'm doing is fighting. I don't want to fight. I want to build. I want to create, you know, none of those 10 words is fight.

Speaker 1 That'd be great if the list ended in fight. That it's one of the 10 words now.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

No, and it's really not. We have to build, we have to engage our creativity, our collaboration, we have to care, we have to, we have to build the things we love. That's how we become better people in a better world.

Yes. Is focusing on what it is that we want to see, what brings us joy, what brings, you know, what's a win-win for everybody and everything, what creates a world in which everyone and everything thrives or has at least that opportunity. And I really do believe that the 10 words, I mean, I know they help me be a better person in a better world. And I don't always succeed because I'm human. But as long as I can come back to those words and go, oh, right, collaboration or oh, right, benevolence or oh, right, acceptance, all of it.

Yeah. All of them, you know, and you'll see if you start working with them, you'll see they just, they just keep coming back around and around and around. I want to, we're going to go just a couple minutes over because I want to ask you about, I suspect you do.

Speaker 1 I want to talk to you for a couple minutes about being an end of life doula. Okay. And how do you, do you bring the 10 words into that practice?

Speaker 2 Well, you know, the 10 words are my spiritual practice. Right. So inevitably they're going to show up.

Yes. I mean, so one of them, I mean, they, let's just start with the acceptance of, you know, death, the acceptance of the reality of, you know, this is life, there is death. Because for some people, that's really hard. It's really hard, you know, and as people approach the end of life, sometimes they have great fear. And they don't, and they, and, you know, they don't want to go through the process of letting go of this gift. And I don't blame them, you know, I mean, most people don't want to not live because it's such a gift to live.

So let's just start there, you know, I oftentimes have to work with people on, okay, what are you afraid of? And how can we come to the acceptance of this is the situation? I mean, there's that's, that's one right there. I mean, care, care is huge as an end of life. Do I actually care that the people that I'm working with have as peaceful a process of dying as possible? So I'm going to do what I can to facilitate that collaboration.

I'm in collaboration with them. I can't make them do anything that they don't want to do. Right.

But I'm in collaboration with them. Creativity, sometimes I have to come up with some ideas to help them in this process, whether that's I had one patient who sadly young man with an infant daughter and his sadness was that she would never know him. And so we shot a bunch of videos. And then also I was like, you know what, what if I go get a whole bunch of like birthday cards and other cards that you can just sign love dad. And then her mother can give them to her on her birthdays and things coming up so that she will always know her father was thinking about her.

You know, there's a creative idea. So we spent a couple hours signing love dad, a bunch of cards, right? Nice. Yeah. So these words are going to show up in so many ways.

And if they be if they are your spiritual practice, then there's no end to how they are applied. And part of that, I was with my mother when she died, alone with my mother holding her hand. And she wanted me there because of whoever I am. Her son and a spaceholder.

To start with her son and she loves you and she would want you there. Right. And because I do seem to hold a space kind of thing.

Yeah. And it seems that as I see the words, I understand how they create a space. But in as you're working with somebody who is what I would call crossing, transitioning, transitioning, then so you're helping, you're holding a space with them.

You're creating that bubble of like, no, it's okay. We love you. You are loved. And you're going to be fine. And you'll be fine. You'll be surprised.

Speaker 1 Possibly astonished. Yeah. Yeah. It is.

Speaker 2 It is absolutely that. I mean, I was just with my uncle who passed last week in the same kind of situation, you know, of like, it's all going to be fine. You know, we love you. We're here. And you do what you need to do. You don't need to keep holding on. If you're ready to go, we'll be all right. You know, a lot of people need to hear that, that their loved ones are going to be okay.

They're going to miss them, but they're going to be okay. You know, there's an, and it can get complicated. I mean, I've been in end of life doula for people who've chosen medical aid and dying. And that can get complicated. Yeah. You know, and, and if your intention is to be fully present, to be authentic, to accept, to be kind, to try to not go too far one way or the other in, you know, emotional extremes or any kind of extreme, to stay centered in that kind of contemplative space that open, you know, awareness that there is something that is not you going on here, especially at the end of life. There, you know, you're not in charge.

You're not in charge. So that awareness I find sitting with somebody at the end of life, one of the most profound spiritual experiences, because there's life and then there's not. Yeah. Whoa. Right. And it is amazing. I, as I say, having been, you know, holding my mother's hand, it was amazing to feel that.

It will change your life. Yeah. Experience. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, it really does.

I mean, I, my first experience of it was with my stepfather 25 years ago, you know, and being like, wow, that was, I can't even describe, I can't even describe it. Yeah. But yeah, so I mean, these words are applicable in life and at the end of life all the way through. And they work with kids.

Kids can understand these words. And they work whether or not you would consider yourself religious or spiritual. You can use these words just, you know, as, as helpful tools to being a decent human being.

You don't have to have a religious orientation in any way. They're just kind of like little, little miracle words. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I look forward to your sub-stat column on that. That's really, on little miracle words. Little miracle words.

Speaker 2 Because they are very, you know, as I looked at the list when I first started reading the material, I looked at the list and I thought, well, there's nothing, there's no tricks here. No. There's no, where everybody's always looking for the latest, like, did you see this on TikTok? It's amazing. Right.

There's nothing here that's amazing in the sense of none of the words are like, oh, I'd never thought of that. Right. There's no magic trick here. And that's, I think, one of the problems that modern spirituality has gotten itself caught in is everybody's after the latest magic trick, like the next cool technique.

Or here, I can, you know, do yoga and meditate upside down underwater, you know? I just call that magic tricks. Yeah. You know, these, there are no magic tricks here. Right. This is, it's so simple. And, you know, one of my teachers, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, you know, when he was blurbing the book, he said, this is a simple book and all the more dangerous because of it.

Mm-hmm. You know, that, that, that I tend to believe that, that the truth is actually really simple, that we, we make things so much more complicated than they need to be. The real truth is actually very simple. It doesn't mean easy, but it is simple.

Yes. And the rest of it is window dressing and magic tricks. And time on the forest. Hug those, hug those redwood trees. I missed that I actually lived in Northern California for a number of years too.

I do miss the redwoods. Yeah. They are nice.

Speaker 1 Yes. Well, Lauren, that was wonderful.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Richard. I love this conversation.

Speaker 1 It was great. Where would you like people to find more about your work and where would you like them to find your book? So you can check out more of my work either on my website, laurenaxlerod.com, that's L-A-U-R-Y-N-A-X-E-L-R-O-D .com, or on my sub-stack, which is Radical Spirituality, Getting to the Root of What Matters. The book is available anywhere books are sold online in your local bookstore.

They can order it, ebook and paperback. And I hope that you find the 10 words useful. You find a simple path for yourself. And thank you for the opportunity to share them with you. Wonderful.

Speaker 2 Thank you. All right, everybody. Have a great rest of the week and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.