How To Learn From Your Ancestors | Spring Washam

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This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello,
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my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Today, we've got
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a bit of a doozy for you. So many of
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us are interested in our family tree. We do things
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like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. We look at black and white
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photos and quiz our older relatives about the four bears
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we never had a chance to meet. We want to
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know what are our roots, what made us. Today, we're
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going to take this very natural human impulse to a
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deeper and for many of you, much stranger place. Before
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I dive into the basic information about this episode, let
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me just say a quick word about my attitude when
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it comes to magic. I, as I think you probably know,
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am naturally quite a skeptical person. I'm a journalist and agnostic.
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I was raised by scientists, blah, blah, blah. But I'm
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also a Buddhist. Not in the sense that I pound
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the table and declare that things like enlightenment or rebirth
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are absolutely true. I don't have any direct evidence, at
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least for either of those things. But instead, in the
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sense that I practice quite a bit of Buddhist meditation
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and have found that meditation and many other techniques that
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the Buddha discussed, have made a huge difference for me.
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And it doesn't hurt for me that modern researchers have
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lent a sheen of scientific validity to many of these practices.
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All of which leaves me in a very funny position
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vis-a-vis some of the more out there claims that you
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can find in the Buddhist texts. The claims go way
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beyond things like rebirth and enlightenment. I'm talking about things
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like the notion that meditation can give you superpowers and
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or the idea that there are other realms of existence,
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some of them populated by deities. The good news here
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is that the Buddha himself explicitly said that you should
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not take any of this stuff at face value. You
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should check it out for yourself, verify it through your
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own experience. Still, it's always jarring for me when I
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realize that one of my teachers, people who I know
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well and I'm personally very close with, truly believe this stuff.
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I will say that over time, my attitude has shifted
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slightly but meaningfully on this. It's not that I personally
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believe any of these claims per se. It's just that
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I'm no longer so quick to dismiss them outright. I
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try to take the attitude recommended by the poet Samuel Coleridge,
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who talked about something called the willing suspension of disbelief.
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The person who has perhaps challenged me the most in
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this regard, who has put me in the most situations
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where I've had to willingly suspend my disbelief, is Spring Washam.
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Spring is one of the most important teachers in my life,
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And she's also very willing to dive into metaphysics. In fact,
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Spring wrote a whole book called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman,
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in which Spring claims that she had conversations directly with
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Tubman's spirit. Quick refresher, just in case you forgot, Harriet
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Tubman was an ex-slave who became a famous conductor on
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the Underground Railroad, making 13 trips worldwide. into the South
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and rescuing close to 70 people. So she was just
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a total badass. But anyway, let me just quickly say
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to the skeptics, or maybe choking a little bit on
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the idea of Spring having direct conversations with Harriet Tubman's spirit,
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just remember to experiment with willing suspension of disbelief. And
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even if you don't want to believe in the notion
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of Spring having a conversation with Harriet Tubman's spirit, just
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trust me and hang in there because I assure you
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this conversation is going to pay off. Because if you
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set aside the metaphysics, One of the big things Spring
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is arguing for here is that we should all take
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a deep look at our own ancestors. Granted, Harriet Tubman
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is not, as far as we know, a direct ancestor
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to Spring Washam, but she is, in a broad sense,
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an ancestor to all of us. And that is Spring's
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point here. We need to reckon with the people who
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have come before us or their actions will impact us,
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sometimes negatively and often in unseen ways. I know this
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is a long introduction. Just bear with me. I've got
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a few more things to say. We first posted this
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interview that you're about to hear back in 2023, but
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we're pulling it out of the archives right now for
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two reasons. First, because it's awesome. And second, because Spring
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really needs some help right now. A few months ago,
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Spring was hit by a delivery truck while crossing the
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street in Atlanta where she lives. She suffered extensive injuries
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and has been largely unable to work since then. As
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a result, she's been experiencing some financial distress between her
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mounting medical bills and her inability to be fully employed.
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So I teamed up with the meditation teachers Jack Kornfield
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and Trudy Goodman to start a GoFundMe page to help
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Spring raise a little bit of money. Jack, Trudy, and I,
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of course, all contributed. If you can make a contribution,
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please do. I'll put a link to the GoFundMe page
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in the show notes. No amount is too small. Okay.
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Having said all of that, we will get started with
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Spring Washam right after this. Spring Washam, my friend, my teacher,
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welcome back to the show.
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Oh, Dan, it's so good to be back.
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Congratulations on the book. I know you've been working really
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hard on it. And the last time you were on
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the show, you were just kind of starting out. So
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if people missed that conversation, can you just tell the
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story of why you decided to write this book?
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Yes, it's kind of a magical story in a way.
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And I remember our last show was, I think it
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was May 2020. Wow, heavy times. So even though I'm
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a Buddhist teacher and healer, I ended up writing a
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book about the spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground.
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And Harriet came to me in a very powerful visionary dream.
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That's how it started. I write about that in the
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first chapter. I was running and panicked and being chased.
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And I would just remember my hands burning and I
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was holding on. I thought it was a rope initially.
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And then it was the back of Harriet Tubman's dress.
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And she was guiding me. And then the whole, kind
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of a whole journey, a series of conversations with our
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great ancestor, Harriet, began to happen. And the journey I
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chronicle in a book that is now out. So it's
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very magical. It's kind of hard. You have to tell
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me exactly maybe what you want me to share more,
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but it still is shocking and unbelievable story to me too.
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I'm still integrating. What happened here?
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I don't want you to hold anything back. I will
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come at you with my gentle, open-minded skepticism. But before
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we get into the magic, which I do want to
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go into heavily, let me just ask you something more factual,
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which is for those who don't know much about her,
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who is Harriet Tubman?
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So Harriet Tubman was born in 1825 and was born
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in Maryland on a Plantation where she was enslaved, her
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and her entire family. And it's the story of her
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awakening as she gets into her mid-20s. She runs away,
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goes to Philadelphia, kind of has this epic runaway journey
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where she goes by herself, escapes. joins the Anti-Slavery Society,
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meets up with all these other abolitionists in Philadelphia, and
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then begins to do a series of rescues on the
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Underground Railroad. And for those who don't know what the
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Underground Railroad is, it was, I guess you could say,
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a hidden passageway, a series of safe houses that stretched
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sometimes 100 miles, sometimes 500 miles. They found underground depots
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as far away as Ohio, but a very Common one
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was through Philadelphia, New York, and up to Canada. And
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Harriet Tubman was known to be a conductor on the
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Underground Railroad and rescued many people, a series of journeys.
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She did 12. That's what we know from historical facts.
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and rescued her entire family and friends. And then her
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life was just incredible. She went on to be in
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the military, first woman in history to lead military raids.
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and then went on to join the women's movement and
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with Susan B. Anthony. And she just is this archetype
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because she was A, a woman, B, as a small woman.
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She was only about five feet tall. And she's just
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known for this courage and her legacy of sort of
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the bodhisattva heart, this great compassion, willing to risk it
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all for freedom and not only hers, but to help
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other people as well. So that's a very, That's a snapshot,
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a snippet. One could study her life for a long
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time and learn many things, historical things, things about her
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personal life. But the main thing is she's our ancestor,
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a great ancestor. And there's a lot to learn from
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her journey, her experiences, and her legacy.
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She once said, I was the conductor of the Underground
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Railroad for 10 years, and I can say what most
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conductors can't say. I never ran my train off the track,
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and I never lost a passenger.
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That's so awesome. I love that. Exactly. My sense in
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my conversations that when she was conducting, this was serious business.
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She was pretty fierce. And ultimately, Harriet Tubman is a protector.
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I often see her as kind of one of those dakinis,
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like a wrathful dakini, was a protector. And there's stories
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about once you, left with Harriet Tubman, there was no
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going back. There was a story where she pulls a
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gun on a guy who wanted to go home and
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she was like, oh no, you go on or die.
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I don't think she was really going to kill him.
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I don't know, but that was enough to get him
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Over the finish line. I'm sure he was happy he
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listened to her after he got to Philadelphia. But yeah,
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there was a ferocious panther when we were conversating and
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I was writing. She tells me she shapeshifted often into
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a black panther when she was conducting so she could
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have that sensory perception, hearing, seeing. Panthers can see great distance.
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They use their senses, their heightened senses in different ways.
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So She describes herself like that in one part of
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the book when she was talking about those days of
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running those missions.
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You made a reference to having conversations with her. We're
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going to, just to be clear, we're going to talk
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about those conversations in a second. That's the magic part.
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That's the magic part. But I keep putting this off
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because you keep saying things that I want to follow
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up on. You used a couple of terms in the
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last couple of minutes that might be worth defining for
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people who haven't heard them before. You used the term
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bodhisattva and then also dakini. Right.
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Yeah. Bodhisattva. Well, that's a word, a Buddhist word that
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we use in the Buddhist tradition, the Mahayana tradition particularly.
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And bodhi means awake. Bodhi mind means awakened mind. And
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sattva is a word that means hero. So a bodhisattva
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is a being who makes vows that they will continually
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be reborn and in samsara, or you could say the matrix,
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that's kind of a modern word for samsara, over and
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over to be a benefit to all beings and keep
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turning the wheel of the dharma, an elite squad of compassion,
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compassion and action manifested in human beings who are dedicated
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to helping all beings be liberated from suffering.
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This is a, somewhat deliberately absurd reference I'm going to
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make now, but back when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
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were together, they once said, we're not going to get
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married until our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and otherwise can
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get married. The Bodhisattva is making a much more hardcore
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vow than that. They're saying, we're never going to nirvana.
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We're going to keep being reborn in this veil, this
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suffering world, Until every being has achieved enlightenment, has been
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freed from suffering.
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Yes. And which is heroic and insane and impossible, it seems.
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And yeah, they say beings are measureless. I vow to
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save them all. And this is the sort of the
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intention for one's life. It's rare, Dan. It's a rare
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being who takes this vow and actually works on living it.
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But beautiful. And Harriet Tubman definitely had the spirit of that.
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You also compared her to a Dakini, which is another
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Buddhist term. Can you say more about that? Yes.
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Yeah. So a Dakini is a manifestation of the enlightened
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feminine in a sort of magical form, a wisdom Dakini.
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Now we're getting into more of Ajnana Buddhism here, where
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they have Dakini mandalas and there's these Dakinis who appear
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and they can shapeshift and They often help yogis and
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meditators and their protectors. And they're also supposed to be
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free from samsara. And they are awakened energies. And they
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appear at different moments in time. So that Dakini's liberated
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mind manifested in a feminine, but also the feminine in
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its kind of tantric form. You know, they appear often
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naked and with bone jewelry on and free from all concepts.
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I think in the West, when we hear tantra, we
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think about the kind of sex that Sting had with
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his wife, Trudy, in the 80s, where you put off completion.
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But tantra is more accurately used to describe a word
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you use I'm getting a little bit out of my
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depth here, so please correct me, but you refer to
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Vajrayana Buddhism, which is a later school of Buddhism practiced
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perhaps most famously in Tibet. And in Tantra, the sort
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of esoteric form of Buddhism, there are many practices, one
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of them having to do with sex and many other
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of them just having to do with working with the
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various energies of the mind to become enlightened. Am I
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close to accuracy here?
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Yes, that's very accurate. I think that it does get
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mixed up with these weekend sex sessions in Marin County.
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And it's gone way off. Like everything in our culture,
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there's this depth and there's roots, but it gets kind
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of appropriated in this one dimensional way. And then people
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assume exactly Sting is Vajrayana practitioner. He may be. I
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love Sting. But I think what we're talking about is
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something with... much more deeper roots. We're talking about working
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with the energy of our mind in a very shamanic way.
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We're using breath and elements and consciousness itself too. Vajrayana
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is considered a rapid path to awakening. Not everyone can
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handle it. It's known to be a bit dangerous because
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it's so powerful. So there you go.
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You used another term that's worth just unpacking for people, shamanic.
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You and I will have said this in the introduction,
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aside from the fact that you've done decades of incredible
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work in the meditation, Buddhism world, you've also done an
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enormous amount of work in the ayahuasca world. And not
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that long ago, when the first time you came on
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the show, you were a little worried about even talking
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about working with ayahuasca because it was so controversial. generally
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and also specifically in the Buddhist world where you had
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come up. Now, though, I think in no small measure
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because of your contributions, and let's not forget Michael Pollan
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as well, but it's much more widely accepted and you've
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been much more open as a consequence about this work.
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So just to say you've got several things going on
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that you're bringing to the table as we talk about
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Harriet Tubman here.
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Yeah, exactly. And I think that this whole conversation about
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plant medicine and healing, it is the doors have been
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opened primarily because of all the research, right? Because of
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the benefits, because of all of the people and studies
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and John Hopkins and writers like Michael Pollan and many
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others sharing their experiences that were expressing the benefits of it.
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There was definitely a lot of fear when I was
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talking about it 10, 12 years ago. It was controversial,
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but now we're in the time of, by all means,
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let's help ourselves, right? After the last couple of years,
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I think many people are like, if this is helping
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with the mental health crisis in the world on this planet,
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Let's look at it. Maybe this is good. So I
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do appreciate that openness. But I also do understand the controversy.
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I do understand the fear around it. It's powerful. And
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we approach it with a lot of respect and preparation
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and reverence.
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I've always said that if I was ever to decide
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to do ayahuasca, it would be with you. Because if
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there's anybody I was comfortable throwing up in front of,
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it would be you.
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But Dan, you were going to come, right? I thought
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you were coming on my summer retreat. You were like,
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once I leave live TV, I'm coming, I'm coming. Well,
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we'll talk privately offline about it. I think that you
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should come so that you have a firsthand experience for
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all the fidgety skeptics and non-believers. You would be the
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great experiment, Dan. I think it would be a joy
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to work with you on multiple levels. levels and for
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many reasons.
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Well, just to be clear, I'm not skeptical at all
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about plant medicine. I'm just scared.
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Right. Okay. Can you say more about that? I mean,
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I don't know if this is the right moment to
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go in depth into your pain and fears, but.
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I mean, what do you think is going to happen?
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Maybe we won't end up using this stuff. And I
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do want to talk about hair treatment. But the short
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answer is the ayahuasca. I mean, you've talked about this.
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These experiences, you've written about it in your prior book,
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that these experiences can be incredibly intense and you can
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feel like a kind of death experience. I also have
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panic disorder and I'm coming through a phase now where
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it's gotten worse. And so I've been working with exposure
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therapists to make it better. And that has worked. But
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I'm a little reluctant to kind of mess with my
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brain right now because I feel like I'm just kind
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of getting control of it again. Control not being the
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right word, but being able to sort of work with
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it more skillfully again. And so, yeah, that's a long
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way of saying there are many reasons why I'm scared
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to do it.
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Okay. And I do understand that, Dan, but I think
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it would be a great benefit. I think that it helps.
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I've seen so many miracles. In fact, I just came
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back last week from leading a big retreat in the
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jungle and it was the miracles. the power I think
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you would end up loving it and often people are
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so scared but then they have so many positive experiences
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you know it's a way to overcome fear it's very
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helpful at a healing anxiety but you have to be ready.
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You know, I'm sold. I'm just not yet ready. That's
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probably the right way to put it. Okay, so we've
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kind of set the table here on who you are
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and what you do. So now that we've done that,
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let's talk about the magic. Right in your first answer,
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which I haven't let you say much more about since then,
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you talked about this whole thing being kicked off because
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Harriet Tubman appeared to you in a dream. You kind
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of laughed when you said it because you know that
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I come from a bit of a skeptical place, although
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not a closed-minded place. So I'm asking you this question
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with a genuinely open mind, but nonetheless, I retain my skepticism,
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if that's even possible as a balance to strike. Can
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you tell me more about this dream and then the
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subsequent conversations you say you had with her?
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Right. Okay. So first of all, Dan, I was as
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shocked as anyone. I was not a Harriet Tubman fanatic.
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This wasn't someone that I had followed. Of course, I
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learned about Harriet like everyone else. and February in high
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school when they had two days of Black history and
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there was Harriet and then the Underground Railroad. Of course,
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I watched a movie in 2019, but this wasn't This
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was so unexpected and I'm still integrating that. So yes,
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I had this powerful visionary dream and that was a
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week before George Floyd was murdered. I started to have
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Harriet started to appear and like everybody, I was a
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bit lost. My whole schedule was canceled. I was at
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the forest refuge and they kicked us out and I
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had to go back to California and I got swept
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up in anxiety and fear. And oh my gosh, this
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was the early days of the pandemic and all the
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violence and all the shootings. And I just kept asking
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and praying, how should I respond? My community needed me
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and I certainly didn't feel strong and I felt very lost.
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And I think it was At that time, it was
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such an earthquake in consciousness. Something happened in May of 2020.
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Something opened. And I think it was that crack in
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our hearts and consciousness. Something happened. I feel like Harriet's
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spirit really fully emerged in consciousness. And it started with
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that powerful dream, but it wasn't just a dream. It
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was so much more than that. And after I had
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that dream, Harriet began to appear in my mind pretty
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much constantly. Images, songs, I began to look her up.
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And then I had shared with you on that last podcast,
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that's when I thought, I wonder if other people are
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having Harriet Tubman experiences. I'll do a five-week class. And
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I just threw this five-week class up online and then
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the class went viral and I had hundreds of people
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participating in what was a five-week, very simple class, meditation,
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me reading and sharing about her life. But during this time,
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Harriet's energy began to appear more and more. I would sleep,
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I would stream of her every night, images. When I
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would be walking, I could feel her hand in my hand.
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And I was like, okay, this is a blessing, obviously.
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I was like, Harriet Tubman, yes, I need you. Thank
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the Lord. You got to get me out of this situation.
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What's going on here? And during the five-week class, unbeknownst
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to me, in that sea of hundreds of people on
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Zoom room, you know how it is, the vice president
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of Hay House, Patty, was taking the class and thought,
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oh my God, Spring has to write this book. So
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began to reach out to me about writing a book.
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And I tried to get out of it, Dan. I
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had no interest. I was like, no way. Are you kidding?
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I'm not a scholar. I'm not a African-American history scholar.
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I'm Buddhist. I lead retreats. No, no, I can't. And
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so I begged and cried and pleaded to get out
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of it, but that wasn't to be the case. And
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then- There was this one particular incident, which I write
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about in the second chapter of my book, where Harriet
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makes an unmistakable appearance. I guess in order to close
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the deal, to get me to say yes, there had
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to be kind of a breakthrough moment. And then I
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began to go, oh my God, something more profound is
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happening here.
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I think there are a lot of people listening to
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this show who are open to, we're using the word magic.
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And then I think there are a lot of people
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who are thinking to themselves, well, wait a minute, what
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do I do with this information? This doesn't sound evidence-based.
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And I come out of that corner of consciousness personally,
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but I've kind of changed over time and developed what
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Samuel Coleridge has called the willing suspension of disbelief. So
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what do you say to folks who are a little
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bit more like kind of oriented in my direction of
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Western scientific skeptical materialists who hear about Harriet Tubman appearing
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to you in a dream and might be tempted to conclude, oh, well,
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this person has drank too much ayahuasca or whatever.
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Yeah, I could understand that view. if you only believed
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in this one realm of existence, and if you only,
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you had a certain kind of experience, but as Dan,
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we live in a multi-dimensional universe. Even if you read
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the Pali Canon, the earliest texts of Theravada Buddhism is
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full of magic and spirit worlds. and devas and celestial beings.
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And I mean, we live in this vast universe. And
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I understand for a lot of people to survive the
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catastrophe of humanity, they had to live in a kind
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of narrow box to keep this controlled. You used that
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word control earlier. Like I've got control of my mind.
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I don't want to shake it. No, let's not do
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anything to upset the control system here. I understand. We're
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not in control though, Dan, at all. But the illusion
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of that keeps people on a certain path. And to
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think that we are So much more than just this
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human incarnation is more than most people can absorb. They
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need a scientific view of only being able to understand
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what they can see. And that's okay. But it's just
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important to understand that there's more going on here. There's
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more going on here than just what we can see
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and hear. And experience with our senses and this human
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body that we are vast. And most of our consciousness
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and our minds, we are not tapped into. We live
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in like the basement of a large house. And for
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a lot of us, we're comfortable in that basement. It
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gives us the security, we get through our lives, but
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that doesn't negate the existence of 500 other rooms in
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the house. They're there too. And when people are ready,
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they're ready. And if people wanna think of this as
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a conversation with an ancestor, that's maybe accepted. Like the
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idea that maybe we can talk to our ancestors, To me,
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that seems very normal, but I know I live in
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a certain reality. Like we can talk to devas and ancestors.
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It's not like we're talking to them every day and
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getting confused about, I'm very much clear about spring wash.
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I'm in this reality. I'm very grounded on the earth.
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I have a social security number. I'm not lost in that.
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These are experiences that many spiritual beings write about, right?
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I mean, if you read any of the biographies of
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the great masters, from Paramahansa Yogananda to Phul Rinpoche to
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everybody in between, the stories of Ajahn Mun that comes
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out of our tradition. I mean, he was battling demons
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in his cave. I mean, he was... I mean, what
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I'm saying is little compared to that stuff. That's what
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I'm trying to say. So there's a tradition of this, Dan.
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It's just that a lot of people, we don't know
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how to make sense of it. So the easiest thing
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is to negate it. And I understand that. I don't
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have fault with that. I just accept that, okay, that's
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one experience and there are others.
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I've always taken the descriptions that you use the phrase
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00:28:39.349 --> 00:28:43.039
Pali Canon with the Buddhist, earliest Buddhist teachings, as you know,
473
00:28:43.099 --> 00:28:46.980
were written down in the language of Pali. P-A-L-I. And
474
00:28:47.299 --> 00:28:50.299
in the Pali Canon, this collection, this vast collection of
475
00:28:50.380 --> 00:28:54.160
the earliest Buddhist teachings, there are lots of references to
476
00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:59.250
the spirit world and magical beings called devas, D-E-V-A, and
477
00:28:59.630 --> 00:29:03.450
superpowers that can be developed through meditation. And so, yeah,
478
00:29:03.490 --> 00:29:05.450
that's all in there. And the Buddha, you know, on
479
00:29:05.470 --> 00:29:07.789
the night of his enlightenment, sitting down under the Bodhi
480
00:29:07.849 --> 00:29:11.410
tree and engaging this epic battle with the bad guy, Mara,
481
00:29:11.869 --> 00:29:15.259
who's the god of desire. And I guess I've always
482
00:29:15.299 --> 00:29:19.019
taken that as poetic language, not necessarily something to be
483
00:29:19.680 --> 00:29:23.779
taken literally. And I'm saying this because I want you
484
00:29:23.799 --> 00:29:25.720
to push back on me. It may be that it's
485
00:29:25.779 --> 00:29:28.099
just too much for me to take in, as you described,
486
00:29:28.380 --> 00:29:31.690
so I shut down and stick to science. But the
487
00:29:31.710 --> 00:29:34.069
story I'm telling myself, which may be inaccurate, is that
488
00:29:34.569 --> 00:29:39.230
I'm just reluctant to make claims for anything that I
489
00:29:39.309 --> 00:29:41.180
cannot directly prove.
490
00:29:42.559 --> 00:29:45.160
I understand. Yeah. And I don't even think I need
491
00:29:45.200 --> 00:29:46.619
to push back on you, Dan.
492
00:29:46.799 --> 00:29:47.319
I don't.
493
00:29:47.779 --> 00:29:51.880
I've always accepted that that's what's funny about our connection
494
00:29:51.900 --> 00:29:55.490
is that I have all this stuff going on and then...
495
00:29:57.009 --> 00:29:59.630
you have yours, right? And I think that's what's funny
496
00:29:59.670 --> 00:30:03.660
about our connection is that it's okay. They're parallel. They're
497
00:30:03.819 --> 00:30:08.220
parallel reality. And it's like, it's all perfect because I can't,
498
00:30:08.319 --> 00:30:12.099
I'm not really interested in convincing people that what I'm
499
00:30:12.140 --> 00:30:16.549
saying is true because it's just my experience. This is
500
00:30:16.569 --> 00:30:20.759
just my experience. And Who's to say other people's experiences
501
00:30:20.859 --> 00:30:24.059
aren't just as valid? And they are as valid. And
502
00:30:24.279 --> 00:30:27.220
my goal is not to try to get people to
503
00:30:27.289 --> 00:30:31.470
believe in the unseen world. It exists. I mean, we
504
00:30:31.509 --> 00:30:34.970
don't know how it works, but it exists. And I'm
505
00:30:35.049 --> 00:30:38.690
okay with that. I'm okay with it. All of it.
506
00:30:38.890 --> 00:30:43.150
People believing, people not believing in devas, people believing in Buddhism,
507
00:30:43.170 --> 00:30:47.690
people not believing in Buddhism. But the stories are there nonetheless.
508
00:30:47.750 --> 00:30:50.730
They're filled with math. I mean, there's a story in
509
00:30:50.779 --> 00:30:54.759
the Middle Link Discourses where the Buddha builds a staircase
510
00:30:54.799 --> 00:30:58.599
of gold to go visit the gods in the 33 realm, right?
511
00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:01.279
To climb up the staircase. Like if I was to
512
00:31:01.319 --> 00:31:04.670
take all the magic, I could give discourses on that
513
00:31:04.730 --> 00:31:08.140
part of the dharma and And they do in Thailand.
514
00:31:08.400 --> 00:31:11.390
They talk more about the magic. I'm not here to
515
00:31:11.430 --> 00:31:15.410
convince anyone. I think the book and the message of
516
00:31:15.470 --> 00:31:19.589
Harriet Tubman is about inspiration. It's a kind of medicine
517
00:31:19.609 --> 00:31:21.920
that we need right now. We're kind of a little
518
00:31:21.940 --> 00:31:22.900
bit leaderless.
519
00:31:24.299 --> 00:31:26.819
Much more of my conversation with Spring Washam right after this.
520
00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:36.670
I want to talk about these channeled conversations that you
521
00:31:36.690 --> 00:31:38.630
write about in the book, just make a few quick
522
00:31:38.650 --> 00:31:41.980
comments and also get you talking about ancestors generally before
523
00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:44.960
we get into those conversations. The quick comments are, one,
524
00:31:45.220 --> 00:31:49.240
as you're talking, I was remembering something that Our mutual teacher,
525
00:31:49.299 --> 00:31:52.900
Joseph Goldstein, has said to me many times, and this
526
00:31:52.940 --> 00:31:55.240
was a thing that was said to him by his teacher,
527
00:31:55.599 --> 00:31:59.480
who was a guy named Munindra. And Munindra was an
528
00:31:59.519 --> 00:32:03.799
Indian gentleman who was Joseph's meditation teacher. And when he
529
00:32:03.819 --> 00:32:06.980
would talk about magic, which is, again, the word we're
530
00:32:07.059 --> 00:32:09.460
using in this context, Munindra would say, you don't have
531
00:32:09.500 --> 00:32:13.319
to believe it, but it's true. And that sometimes comes
532
00:32:13.339 --> 00:32:16.880
to mind when I'm having these conversations. The other comment
533
00:32:16.900 --> 00:32:18.240
I was going to make is that you talked about
534
00:32:18.309 --> 00:32:20.670
our friendship and I'm actually right in the middle right
535
00:32:20.730 --> 00:32:23.329
now of doing a rewrite on the chapter in my
536
00:32:23.549 --> 00:32:26.549
long delayed book that stars you. And you and I
537
00:32:26.589 --> 00:32:29.970
went on a one-on-one meditation retreat back in the fall
538
00:32:29.990 --> 00:32:33.309
of 2018. And I made a comment there that is
539
00:32:33.430 --> 00:32:36.400
even more true now, which is that we're coming from different,
540
00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:39.619
totally different worlds. And we have this friendship, and I'm
541
00:32:39.680 --> 00:32:43.259
this skeptical guy, and you're much more open to many
542
00:32:43.299 --> 00:32:48.559
more things. And you, notwithstanding my skepticism, make no effort
543
00:32:48.779 --> 00:32:51.539
to in any way hide your light under a bushel.
544
00:32:51.579 --> 00:32:55.460
Like you completely let your flag fly all the time.
545
00:32:55.539 --> 00:32:57.880
And if anybody's changed over the course of the relationship,
546
00:32:57.940 --> 00:33:00.609
it's not you, it's me, because I think I've become
547
00:33:00.670 --> 00:33:03.309
more open-minded. Again, I don't make any claims, but I've
548
00:33:03.329 --> 00:33:06.309
become more open-minded over the course of the relationship. So
549
00:33:06.589 --> 00:33:08.869
those are my two comments. I have a question I
550
00:33:08.890 --> 00:33:10.650
want to ask you, but before I do that, I'm
551
00:33:10.670 --> 00:33:12.049
just going to pause in case you have anything you
552
00:33:12.069 --> 00:33:12.470
want to say.
553
00:33:13.450 --> 00:33:16.130
Well, I agree with you, Dan. You've become so much
554
00:33:16.210 --> 00:33:20.420
more open-hearted. Even your recent TED Talk, I just cried.
555
00:33:20.779 --> 00:33:23.180
Oh my gosh, I just loved it. I was like,
556
00:33:23.640 --> 00:33:27.279
I felt like I was just proud. I know that's
557
00:33:27.359 --> 00:33:30.279
a weird thing to say. I was like, yes, Dan,
558
00:33:30.380 --> 00:33:31.049
this is it.
559
00:33:31.059 --> 00:33:31.200
Exactly.
560
00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:38.099
Exactly. So I appreciate your evolution and we all are evolving.
561
00:33:38.539 --> 00:33:41.900
We're all waking up. We're all learning. This is school.
562
00:33:42.619 --> 00:33:45.789
And I'm just happy to be a part of your story,
563
00:33:45.809 --> 00:33:49.289
our story. I think there's a lot that people will
564
00:33:49.349 --> 00:33:54.109
find important in it somehow. There's something really sweet and
565
00:33:54.150 --> 00:33:57.109
yet very deep in that, in our connection.
566
00:33:58.750 --> 00:34:02.779
Agreed. I take, the word proud very well, even though
567
00:34:02.819 --> 00:34:05.059
you're younger than me, but you're my teacher. You've been
568
00:34:05.079 --> 00:34:07.900
my teacher for a long time, at least doing some
569
00:34:07.940 --> 00:34:11.360
rough math, 13, 14 years since my first meditation retreat,
570
00:34:11.360 --> 00:34:14.579
13 years. So I take that very well. Just to
571
00:34:14.659 --> 00:34:17.699
get this back to the level of sort of more
572
00:34:18.079 --> 00:34:22.559
universality here, before we get into these really interesting conversations
573
00:34:22.579 --> 00:34:25.000
that you write about between you and Harriet, I want
574
00:34:25.019 --> 00:34:27.440
to talk about, and you made a reference to this earlier,
575
00:34:27.480 --> 00:34:28.659
so I want to see if I can get you
576
00:34:28.679 --> 00:34:32.469
to speak more broadly about it. Our relationship to our ancestors.
577
00:34:32.630 --> 00:34:34.900
You said in your world it's pretty normal to speak
578
00:34:34.920 --> 00:34:37.639
to your ancestors. I mean, I can't speak for... the
579
00:34:37.659 --> 00:34:39.940
whole world, but it's not something I hear people in
580
00:34:39.980 --> 00:34:43.960
my universe talking about much. However, we are interested in
581
00:34:44.019 --> 00:34:48.900
our ancestors. People are doing 23andMe and Ancestry.com and my colleague,
582
00:34:49.039 --> 00:34:52.300
Amy Breckenridge, who I work with very closely at the
583
00:34:52.300 --> 00:34:55.599
10% Happier Company, actually has a side hustle where she
584
00:34:55.900 --> 00:34:59.059
works with people on doing genealogy. So this feels very
585
00:34:59.099 --> 00:35:01.619
much a current interest. And so I'm wondering if you
586
00:35:01.659 --> 00:35:05.880
could address our current interests in our ancestors and relate
587
00:35:05.920 --> 00:35:07.099
that to the work you're doing.
588
00:35:08.409 --> 00:35:11.670
Yeah, I would agree. Everybody, I don't know anybody who
589
00:35:11.710 --> 00:35:16.010
hasn't done 23andMe, Ancestry.com, all of that. I mean, we
590
00:35:16.030 --> 00:35:18.550
do have this fascination because we want to know more
591
00:35:18.619 --> 00:35:21.840
about ourselves and where we come from, right? I think
592
00:35:21.860 --> 00:35:25.519
the interest is when people start to think about their genealogy,
593
00:35:25.579 --> 00:35:30.219
they think about it just as DNA initially. right? Well,
594
00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:32.960
who are my people? Where were they born? Where did
595
00:35:33.000 --> 00:35:35.800
they die? I think that's an important first step. I
596
00:35:35.840 --> 00:35:38.800
just think we don't go to the next step because
597
00:35:39.159 --> 00:35:41.789
in the West, we don't really grow up with the
598
00:35:41.869 --> 00:35:45.750
idea that we come from a living lineage and that
599
00:35:45.869 --> 00:35:50.150
your great-grandfather is part of the person that you are today.
600
00:35:50.789 --> 00:35:54.670
We don't make that connection. In the Western society, we
601
00:35:54.690 --> 00:35:57.510
believe I come, I'm born, I'm alone, I walk alone,
602
00:35:57.630 --> 00:36:02.219
I do my own aloneness. isolated individual. I'm a cell
603
00:36:02.280 --> 00:36:05.760
separated from the membrane or whatever. We have this view
604
00:36:05.909 --> 00:36:11.190
of that. So we don't see ourselves as streams of consciousness.
605
00:36:12.050 --> 00:36:14.849
and that we get more than hair color and eye
606
00:36:14.909 --> 00:36:19.489
color from our ancestors. We know we get illnesses, depression,
607
00:36:19.769 --> 00:36:22.929
you know, as they know through epigenetics, we get certain
608
00:36:23.070 --> 00:36:26.389
switches turned on or turned off, right? We inherit a
609
00:36:26.550 --> 00:36:29.570
whole set of conditions. Now, what we do with those
610
00:36:30.030 --> 00:36:33.190
are completely up to the person, how conscious we are,
611
00:36:33.670 --> 00:36:39.889
what we seek to transform. We can heal ourselves from greed, hatred,
612
00:36:39.949 --> 00:36:44.650
and delusion on various levels, okay? However, what I've noticed
613
00:36:44.869 --> 00:36:48.110
in my work over many years of helping people who
614
00:36:49.550 --> 00:36:51.750
come to either my retreats or start to work with
615
00:36:51.789 --> 00:36:55.900
me individually is they can't put a finger on why
616
00:36:55.960 --> 00:36:59.389
they're so unhappy. A lot of these people have everything
617
00:36:59.489 --> 00:37:02.389
that on the outside you would say, wow, you're successful.
618
00:37:02.469 --> 00:37:06.570
You're handsome. You have a nice husband, but they're suicidal.
619
00:37:07.409 --> 00:37:11.179
Or they are killing themselves in some other way. Or
620
00:37:11.219 --> 00:37:13.840
they're depressed so much that they can't get out of bed.
621
00:37:14.519 --> 00:37:17.940
Or there's all this suffering. And so when people began
622
00:37:18.059 --> 00:37:20.070
to work with me, I began to see more and
623
00:37:20.110 --> 00:37:24.420
more that it was connected to their family tree. to
624
00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:28.909
the energy. See, we get energy from our ancestors. We
625
00:37:28.949 --> 00:37:32.269
relate it all to science. Okay, I just get this,
626
00:37:32.309 --> 00:37:35.429
but we know we get alcoholism. We know we get programs.
627
00:37:35.469 --> 00:37:39.780
We know we get whole ideologies. So I am trying
628
00:37:39.820 --> 00:37:43.380
to bring more awareness that when people are suffering and
629
00:37:43.420 --> 00:37:47.639
they have tried all these different modalities of healing and
630
00:37:47.659 --> 00:37:50.840
they still feel this torment that let's start doing work
631
00:37:51.000 --> 00:37:54.849
on your family tree. What has happened that we as
632
00:37:54.889 --> 00:37:58.130
the descendants could put right? What were the lies? What
633
00:37:58.210 --> 00:38:03.239
is the lack of forgiveness? What is the problem there, right?
634
00:38:03.340 --> 00:38:06.519
Who can we talk to? How can we help make
635
00:38:06.579 --> 00:38:11.440
things right? Where karma is action, right? And in some
636
00:38:11.480 --> 00:38:17.210
ways we're healing the karmic lineage. We're cleansing our ancestral line.
637
00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:19.599
And people are doing that in a lot of ways.
638
00:38:19.659 --> 00:38:21.619
Sometimes people are doing that in a form, we'll use
639
00:38:21.639 --> 00:38:24.920
the word reparations of some kind, right? How did my
640
00:38:24.980 --> 00:38:28.000
family accumulate its wealth? Oh my gosh, they accumulated through
641
00:38:28.019 --> 00:38:30.909
this violence and this terror. Okay, well, what can I
642
00:38:30.969 --> 00:38:36.150
do now to offset that? It's kind of like carbon
643
00:38:36.190 --> 00:38:40.190
emission offsetting, right? We are looking at what has happened
644
00:38:40.210 --> 00:38:44.380
that affects us. even though we don't realize it's affecting us.
645
00:38:44.719 --> 00:38:48.190
Because again, in the West, we cut off our idea
646
00:38:48.210 --> 00:38:52.710
that we're connected to a living lineage that is like
647
00:38:52.730 --> 00:38:56.670
a root. It's like an umbilical cord. And if you're unconscious,
648
00:38:56.690 --> 00:38:59.889
you're still dealing with the programs. I've met people who
649
00:39:00.349 --> 00:39:03.570
had an issue with their leg and their grandmother had
650
00:39:03.610 --> 00:39:06.820
the same issue and their great-grandmother had the same issue.
651
00:39:06.840 --> 00:39:11.099
And you know what I mean? This is really powerful.
652
00:39:11.739 --> 00:39:13.679
And so when we start to look at it and
653
00:39:13.699 --> 00:39:17.900
we become conscious, we can begin to clear things in
654
00:39:17.940 --> 00:39:21.690
the present and we become much more happy and joyful.
655
00:39:21.710 --> 00:39:26.070
And I feel this is greatly overlooked in the spiritual communities.
656
00:39:26.889 --> 00:39:30.519
Like we're looking for everything else but this. Right? like, okay,
657
00:39:30.559 --> 00:39:32.920
how do I be happy? How do I get happier?
658
00:39:33.059 --> 00:39:38.260
Give me the happiness button. But they're still considering themselves
659
00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:42.300
as an isolated individual. They're not looking at what has
660
00:39:42.360 --> 00:39:44.949
happened to my mother, what has happened to my grandparents,
661
00:39:44.969 --> 00:39:49.320
what happened to where they buried? What happened to my culture?
662
00:39:49.340 --> 00:39:53.619
I believe this has a huge effect on the person
663
00:39:53.659 --> 00:39:56.500
that we are in this moment, but we are not
664
00:39:56.579 --> 00:40:00.559
conscious of that yet. And the DNA, the passion for
665
00:40:00.619 --> 00:40:05.469
DNA and genealogy is people hunting for answers. Who am I?
666
00:40:05.840 --> 00:40:07.909
Why am I like I am? Why do I think
667
00:40:07.989 --> 00:40:11.690
like I think, right? We're looking, but we're just not
668
00:40:11.750 --> 00:40:14.610
making all the connections around the energetic level.
669
00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:17.840
I feel like much of what you just said there
670
00:40:18.139 --> 00:40:21.110
is very much not magical. Karma is another one of
671
00:40:21.150 --> 00:40:23.809
these words that we in the West have taken and
672
00:40:23.829 --> 00:40:26.429
kind of perverted. But at its root, it basically means
673
00:40:26.469 --> 00:40:30.139
cause and effect. Something happens, and as a consequence, something
674
00:40:30.179 --> 00:40:32.300
else happens. And then as a consequence, another thing happens.
675
00:40:32.639 --> 00:40:35.659
It doesn't mean that if you call somebody a name,
676
00:40:35.679 --> 00:40:38.159
you're definitely going to be reborn as a Gila monster
677
00:40:38.179 --> 00:40:39.699
in the next life. I mean, that's, I think, the
678
00:40:39.719 --> 00:40:43.500
way we make a caricature of the word. So if
679
00:40:43.539 --> 00:40:45.900
you think about karma from just a simple cause and
680
00:40:45.940 --> 00:40:50.699
effect level, of course, the accumulated karma or causes and
681
00:40:50.739 --> 00:40:54.150
effects of our ancestors are going to be alive in
682
00:40:54.269 --> 00:41:00.500
us medically, genealogically, psychologically, Just as a quick example, I
683
00:41:00.519 --> 00:41:03.280
was having dinner the other night with another of my teachers,
684
00:41:03.320 --> 00:41:06.409
a guy named Jerry Colonna, who's quite a well-known executive
685
00:41:06.449 --> 00:41:11.170
coach and also a Buddhist. And I was expressing some
686
00:41:11.230 --> 00:41:13.889
shame about the fact that notwithstanding the fact that I
687
00:41:13.949 --> 00:41:17.199
have everything by objective measures, I still experience quite a
688
00:41:17.199 --> 00:41:22.050
bit of anxiety about work and finances. And I said,
689
00:41:22.090 --> 00:41:23.989
I don't know why I'm like this. And he was like,
690
00:41:24.030 --> 00:41:26.030
what do you mean you don't know why you're like this?
691
00:41:26.530 --> 00:41:28.889
I've known you for several years. I know a few
692
00:41:28.949 --> 00:41:30.780
things about you. One of them is that your great
693
00:41:31.159 --> 00:41:34.179
grandfather put his head in an oven and killed himself
694
00:41:34.199 --> 00:41:36.829
because he lost the family fortune. Another thing I know
695
00:41:36.869 --> 00:41:39.469
about you is that your parents wouldn't heat the house
696
00:41:39.690 --> 00:41:41.750
in the winter because they were so worried about money,
697
00:41:41.849 --> 00:41:45.420
even though they were both doctors. And so what do
698
00:41:45.440 --> 00:41:47.840
you mean? How can you wonder why you are the
699
00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:50.019
way you are? And that just goes right to your
700
00:41:50.079 --> 00:41:51.639
point about the living lineage.
701
00:41:52.530 --> 00:41:56.539
Exactly. What a beautiful example, because here you are in
702
00:41:56.579 --> 00:41:59.300
this moment and you have everything that you need, but
703
00:41:59.340 --> 00:42:02.760
there's this thought, I don't, and this terror around, you know,
704
00:42:02.780 --> 00:42:05.780
that's exactly the point. And I'm glad that you had
705
00:42:05.820 --> 00:42:08.900
that experience because the next question is, what do we
706
00:42:08.920 --> 00:42:14.000
do with that? And is that repairable? Is that transformable?
707
00:42:14.219 --> 00:42:16.880
And I believe the answer is really, yes, we can
708
00:42:16.920 --> 00:42:21.079
begin to do work with our ancestors. And then in
709
00:42:21.099 --> 00:42:27.059
the present moment, our moment-to-moment experience changes to one of
710
00:42:27.139 --> 00:42:30.599
lightness and joy and ease, and we feel less burdened
711
00:42:31.179 --> 00:42:35.300
by these deeply entrenched habits. I think many of us
712
00:42:35.360 --> 00:42:38.579
are looking at our habits now, like, why is this
713
00:42:39.159 --> 00:42:43.809
compulsion there, right? When we know on every level that
714
00:42:43.989 --> 00:42:46.670
it's not serving us, that it doesn't work. So we
715
00:42:46.710 --> 00:42:50.349
start looking at in the family tree, and we start
716
00:42:50.389 --> 00:42:53.570
doing some of that work. And I feel like, you
717
00:42:53.590 --> 00:42:57.909
know what happens? A lot of power is restored. Because
718
00:42:57.949 --> 00:43:00.690
right now you think about your anxiety over this issue
719
00:43:00.750 --> 00:43:03.690
of livelihood or survival, and it's a lot of your
720
00:43:03.750 --> 00:43:06.550
power gets drained out in that, right? Imagine if you
721
00:43:06.570 --> 00:43:09.380
didn't have that, you'd be like, all right, here I go.
722
00:43:09.389 --> 00:43:14.570
You know, this we sort of become disempowered by these
723
00:43:14.889 --> 00:43:18.409
energies that are alive in us connected to our lineage.
724
00:43:19.590 --> 00:43:21.250
So how do we do this work? I mean, you
725
00:43:21.289 --> 00:43:23.730
acknowledged before that many of us are looking into our
726
00:43:23.789 --> 00:43:27.889
family tree. What's the add-on that is missing that might
727
00:43:28.389 --> 00:43:31.980
make that, I don't want to call it superficial, but
728
00:43:32.079 --> 00:43:35.019
maybe surface level work way deeper?
729
00:43:36.500 --> 00:43:41.159
To start a relationship with the ancestors. with your grandfather
730
00:43:41.460 --> 00:43:43.940
who put his head in an oven and to start
731
00:43:43.980 --> 00:43:46.539
to make a connection, to start speaking to him, to
732
00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:51.440
start trying to help him, to start forgiving him, to
733
00:43:52.199 --> 00:43:57.000
start understanding him, to build a relationship and to understand
734
00:43:57.039 --> 00:44:02.329
that our ancestors are around us. And the veil right
735
00:44:02.409 --> 00:44:05.630
now between the ancestor spirit world and this world is
736
00:44:05.670 --> 00:44:09.610
like a piece of paper. It's very thin, right? It's like,
737
00:44:09.650 --> 00:44:13.949
these are energies that often people that have done things
738
00:44:14.010 --> 00:44:17.469
like that, say committed suicide, my grandmother, the same, they
739
00:44:17.550 --> 00:44:21.400
also need us, right? Just because they go on to
740
00:44:21.440 --> 00:44:24.380
the spirit world, they're not resolved. Their karma is also
741
00:44:24.480 --> 00:44:28.469
tied up here, right? So it's almost like we enter
742
00:44:28.530 --> 00:44:34.260
into like a collaboration with them. So the skeptic's challenge
743
00:44:34.559 --> 00:44:37.300
is that they don't believe that they can have a
744
00:44:37.360 --> 00:44:41.300
relationship with an ancestor. They don't because that person's gone.
745
00:44:41.619 --> 00:44:44.199
But as you see, Dan, they're not. They're alive in you.
746
00:44:45.159 --> 00:44:48.519
They're not gone. They're right here. And it reminds me
747
00:44:48.699 --> 00:44:53.739
of Maya Angelou, the great poet and writer, used to say,
748
00:44:53.760 --> 00:44:59.150
I stand as one, but I come with 10,000. So
749
00:44:59.389 --> 00:45:03.650
Maya Angelou always talked about 10,000 of her ancestors standing
750
00:45:03.690 --> 00:45:07.530
with her wherever she was. And you could feel that
751
00:45:08.820 --> 00:45:12.340
in Maya Angelou, right? Like, whoa, this one person speaking
752
00:45:12.380 --> 00:45:16.820
these words, it would have the magnitude, the power behind
753
00:45:16.840 --> 00:45:20.780
it because they were really in tune with the ancestor world.
754
00:45:21.519 --> 00:45:24.969
And it's okay that we all have hurt ancestors. That's
755
00:45:25.199 --> 00:45:27.789
part of our journey is to heal the lineage, is
756
00:45:27.809 --> 00:45:32.010
to heal our own family tree. And so how we
757
00:45:32.050 --> 00:45:35.909
do that is by believing that they're real because they are.
758
00:45:35.929 --> 00:45:40.860
And they're around us and they need something from us.
759
00:45:40.989 --> 00:45:43.380
And so we begin to have a conversation. It's not
760
00:45:43.420 --> 00:45:46.860
to become deluded. It's just that we begin to do
761
00:45:46.920 --> 00:45:52.800
healing work on their behalf consciously. right? We begin to say, grandfather,
762
00:45:52.820 --> 00:45:56.239
this action happened and this energy is alive in me.
763
00:45:57.360 --> 00:46:03.210
How can I transmute this? Right? I have what I need.
764
00:46:03.309 --> 00:46:06.750
We have what we need now. We don't have to
765
00:46:06.789 --> 00:46:10.130
be afraid, right? We do things like that. We start
766
00:46:10.150 --> 00:46:12.829
to gather. I often have people do visuals of other
767
00:46:12.949 --> 00:46:16.570
ancestors in a circle around them and we're offering them.
768
00:46:16.710 --> 00:46:20.670
We're almost like we're teaching the Dharma. Like, Everybody is
769
00:46:20.750 --> 00:46:26.469
okay now. We survived, right? And we start to engage
770
00:46:26.510 --> 00:46:28.159
in a relationship. That's just an example.
771
00:46:28.179 --> 00:46:32.039
You're going to laugh at me because I'm going to
772
00:46:33.099 --> 00:46:37.340
search for ways to follow your advice without the magic.
773
00:46:37.599 --> 00:46:39.739
So what's coming to mind for me is there's a
774
00:46:39.800 --> 00:46:43.539
kind of therapy, and we've talked about it here on
775
00:46:43.559 --> 00:46:46.179
the show several times, and it's becoming increasingly sort of
776
00:46:46.199 --> 00:46:50.030
accepted in the psychotherapeutic world. It's called Internal family systems
777
00:46:50.610 --> 00:46:55.030
basically means where you identify various parts, that's the technical
778
00:46:55.070 --> 00:46:57.719
term they use in IFS, the parts of your personality,
779
00:46:58.840 --> 00:47:00.760
and you develop relationships with them. You actually have a
780
00:47:00.820 --> 00:47:04.889
dialogue often with a therapist present with the angry part
781
00:47:04.909 --> 00:47:07.389
of your personality, the selfish part of your personality. I'm
782
00:47:07.409 --> 00:47:10.250
picking those not by coincidence. And so I'm wondering, so
783
00:47:10.309 --> 00:47:13.429
my great-grandfather, I can pull the picture out of my
784
00:47:13.829 --> 00:47:17.590
drawer and start trying to think about him, having a
785
00:47:17.610 --> 00:47:21.230
dialogue with the parts of his personality that reside in
786
00:47:21.289 --> 00:47:26.489
me still, as opposed to believing necessarily that he's here
787
00:47:26.530 --> 00:47:29.360
behind a sheet of paper in a parallel universe, which
788
00:47:29.409 --> 00:47:32.190
may be true, but As you said, there is a
789
00:47:32.269 --> 00:47:34.730
challenge here for skeptics and maybe we don't want to
790
00:47:34.750 --> 00:47:35.409
make that leap.
791
00:47:36.570 --> 00:47:40.489
Exactly. So I love there's these modalities. Like we're all
792
00:47:40.530 --> 00:47:43.050
talking about the same thing. Like so an indigenous person
793
00:47:43.070 --> 00:47:46.050
would say, just talk to your grandfather. Right. And then
794
00:47:46.289 --> 00:47:48.070
we would say, no, I'm going to go to family
795
00:47:48.139 --> 00:47:52.719
constellation therapy and have this. It's like it's just another
796
00:47:52.780 --> 00:47:56.190
way to get in. It's ancestor work. It's a family
797
00:47:56.230 --> 00:47:59.639
lineage work. Family constellation therapy is so popular right now.
798
00:47:59.699 --> 00:48:01.679
And everybody has been asking me about it. And the
799
00:48:01.719 --> 00:48:04.619
funny thing is I've never done it. I actually would
800
00:48:04.699 --> 00:48:08.519
love to do it. But every week somebody is mentioning
801
00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:12.550
about going to one of these groups and a whole
802
00:48:12.570 --> 00:48:16.090
group of strangers gets together and they become each other's
803
00:48:16.150 --> 00:48:18.889
family trees acting out patterns. And then all of a
804
00:48:18.929 --> 00:48:22.989
sudden- a deeper awareness, like something is happening there. So
805
00:48:23.110 --> 00:48:25.360
I think we're all talking about the same thing, Tan.
806
00:48:26.409 --> 00:48:30.920
We're talking about opening the door that these dreams are
807
00:48:30.980 --> 00:48:36.820
alive in us and let's become conscious. Let's enter into conversation.
808
00:48:37.039 --> 00:48:40.500
Let's talk about it. Let's, yeah. So rather we use
809
00:48:40.539 --> 00:48:44.900
that or we're with a trained therapist or we believe
810
00:48:44.940 --> 00:48:46.940
through the photo, if we put our grandfather on the
811
00:48:47.059 --> 00:48:50.400
altar that we can sit and have a one-on-one. Okay,
812
00:48:50.500 --> 00:48:54.329
use a therapist to have the three-way conversation, if that's easier.
813
00:48:54.510 --> 00:48:57.590
Whatever place is easier, but this is all moving in
814
00:48:57.630 --> 00:49:02.260
the direction that I see as incredibly beneficial for where
815
00:49:02.300 --> 00:49:05.599
we are right now. Especially in the West, we have
816
00:49:05.639 --> 00:49:09.460
particular blocks to this that I think if we could
817
00:49:09.659 --> 00:49:13.940
open and see ourselves as a living lineage, we would
818
00:49:13.980 --> 00:49:17.650
have much more, A, compassion for not only ourselves, but
819
00:49:17.789 --> 00:49:21.619
it would make us more compassionate to others. Because after
820
00:49:21.679 --> 00:49:25.739
people do this family constellation work, they're more compassionate. It
821
00:49:25.880 --> 00:49:29.340
opens a doorway into the heart. We understand why others
822
00:49:29.519 --> 00:49:32.300
are the way they are. Oh, they're like that because
823
00:49:32.360 --> 00:49:34.960
of their family tree too. Yeah.
824
00:49:36.219 --> 00:49:37.820
I think that's about understanding karma.
825
00:49:38.579 --> 00:49:38.800
Yes.
826
00:49:39.079 --> 00:49:40.860
And again, this doesn't have to be mystical at all.
827
00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:45.750
It's just this vast soup of causes and conditions that
828
00:49:45.869 --> 00:49:49.489
contribute to the way we are right now. And you
829
00:49:49.510 --> 00:49:51.710
can really understand your own personal karma by looking at
830
00:49:51.730 --> 00:49:54.329
your family tree. And inexorably, as soon as you understand that,
831
00:49:54.349 --> 00:49:56.929
you realize everybody's walking around with their own set of
832
00:49:57.179 --> 00:50:00.519
causes and conditions. And of course, that's going to contribute
833
00:50:00.599 --> 00:50:02.460
to the way they are right now. I would love
834
00:50:02.519 --> 00:50:05.150
to hear if you're open to it. You talking about
835
00:50:05.190 --> 00:50:08.650
your own ancestor work with your own family tree, because
836
00:50:08.670 --> 00:50:11.469
one of the things that I admire so much about
837
00:50:11.510 --> 00:50:13.510
you is that my family tree, even though we've got
838
00:50:13.550 --> 00:50:16.300
some problems in there, I was coughed up onto the
839
00:50:16.340 --> 00:50:20.639
planet in a very privileged position, given all the advantages.
840
00:50:20.739 --> 00:50:24.039
You were not. And you had a lot of issues
841
00:50:24.079 --> 00:50:26.780
in your family tree. And one of the things that's
842
00:50:26.800 --> 00:50:30.940
so incredible, now that I know more about what you
843
00:50:30.980 --> 00:50:34.579
dealt with coming up, is where you've ended up nonetheless.
844
00:50:34.940 --> 00:50:36.260
And so I wonder if you could talk a little
845
00:50:36.280 --> 00:50:38.599
before we get back to Harriet about your own work
846
00:50:38.639 --> 00:50:41.929
with your own parents and grandparents and beyond.
847
00:50:42.800 --> 00:50:46.289
Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting how we grow up
848
00:50:46.429 --> 00:50:50.130
with the suffering of the adults around us. Yeah, there
849
00:50:50.170 --> 00:50:53.010
was a lot of confusion with me around sorting out
850
00:50:53.030 --> 00:50:55.889
my ancestors because my mother is white. Her family is
851
00:50:55.989 --> 00:51:01.550
all from Germany and England, mostly England. My father is African-American.
852
00:51:02.460 --> 00:51:05.360
our families from the South, right? But recently when I
853
00:51:05.380 --> 00:51:10.820
did my own DNA, a huge 25% Nigeria. So just thinking, wow,
854
00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:14.400
that there was a middle passage experience. They came over
855
00:51:14.440 --> 00:51:17.780
from my grandfather. I could see the Nigerian man and
856
00:51:17.820 --> 00:51:21.619
my grandfather actually recently just posted a picture on Facebook,
857
00:51:21.639 --> 00:51:24.909
this picture of me right before he died visiting him. Yeah,
858
00:51:25.030 --> 00:51:28.210
and you know, we were born into these situations. And
859
00:51:28.329 --> 00:51:30.150
I think that the thing about this is not to
860
00:51:30.190 --> 00:51:34.389
feel powerless. Because just because we have a certain set
861
00:51:34.429 --> 00:51:38.349
of conditions, what we do know from science and what
862
00:51:38.389 --> 00:51:43.139
we do know from practice is everything's malleable, right? What
863
00:51:43.159 --> 00:51:46.099
we do know from epigenetics is we can turn things
864
00:51:46.380 --> 00:51:49.639
on and off in our own DNA based on awareness.
865
00:51:50.340 --> 00:51:53.500
So whatever your situation is, if you were born in
866
00:51:53.519 --> 00:51:57.360
a situation like mine and you're Parents separated and your
867
00:51:57.380 --> 00:52:00.860
father had addictions and ran off and your mother had
868
00:52:00.940 --> 00:52:04.949
traumas and you just grow up experiencing all the difficulties
869
00:52:04.989 --> 00:52:08.150
that come from not having parents to protect you. You
870
00:52:08.610 --> 00:52:12.119
can heal that and you can move forward. I have
871
00:52:12.239 --> 00:52:14.780
one story that I want to tell about some current
872
00:52:14.820 --> 00:52:16.980
work that I'm doing with my own family tree. And
873
00:52:17.019 --> 00:52:19.730
this is on my mother's side. So my grandmother, I
874
00:52:20.090 --> 00:52:22.670
wouldn't even say her name, Arlen, because I always feel
875
00:52:22.789 --> 00:52:24.789
Arlen is a little bit around. And I don't mean
876
00:52:24.829 --> 00:52:28.920
to freak anyone out by not seeing dead people, but... Arlene,
877
00:52:29.739 --> 00:52:33.619
that's not my reality. I'm in the normal everyday reality
878
00:52:33.619 --> 00:52:37.630
99% of the time. And this is something I can
879
00:52:37.670 --> 00:52:41.070
turn on and turn off. If I'm choosing to go
880
00:52:41.150 --> 00:52:43.550
into these areas, I can almost like flip a switch
881
00:52:43.610 --> 00:52:46.780
and go, all right, let's do it. But Arlene committed
882
00:52:46.820 --> 00:52:51.440
suicide when my mother was 16. And My mother was
883
00:52:51.659 --> 00:52:55.639
never the same after that. Never the same, was devastated.
884
00:52:55.699 --> 00:52:58.539
And she living in a little apartment building in LA
885
00:52:58.619 --> 00:53:00.280
and the police knock on the door and they're like,
886
00:53:00.340 --> 00:53:02.599
is this your mom? And she had went into the car.
887
00:53:02.659 --> 00:53:05.659
She had done it with a car in the garage.
888
00:53:05.800 --> 00:53:09.460
And so it sent my mother on a drama, trauma
889
00:53:10.059 --> 00:53:13.440
spiral for the next 10 years of just kind of
890
00:53:13.519 --> 00:53:18.809
hell and marriage and terrible relationships and suffering, just and grief.
891
00:53:19.070 --> 00:53:21.739
So that was a big thing always for me. What
892
00:53:21.800 --> 00:53:26.460
happened was my mother and my aunt buried their mother
893
00:53:26.860 --> 00:53:31.579
in a grave site, a cemetery in Los Angeles, but
894
00:53:31.619 --> 00:53:36.210
they left the tombstone with no marker. They were mad
895
00:53:36.909 --> 00:53:39.789
and they thought you killed yourself so you don't exist.
896
00:53:40.940 --> 00:53:44.659
So our land and ceremonies and the jungle and here
897
00:53:44.719 --> 00:53:47.559
and there has come and been like, I did, I
898
00:53:47.679 --> 00:53:51.059
lived and I love my daughter. There was this unforgiveness
899
00:53:51.110 --> 00:53:55.150
toward their mother. So now I am in the process
900
00:53:55.190 --> 00:53:59.050
of getting a new headstone because in the world of
901
00:53:59.070 --> 00:54:02.610
the ancestor world, you don't bury dead like that. Even
902
00:54:02.670 --> 00:54:05.289
if they killed themselves, you leave them in a terrible
903
00:54:05.369 --> 00:54:09.539
karmic tangle because imagine their kids won't even acknowledge that
904
00:54:09.619 --> 00:54:13.110
they were alive and She is not resolved in the
905
00:54:13.250 --> 00:54:16.750
ancestor world. Our karma is tied up in the past
906
00:54:16.789 --> 00:54:21.440
and the future, right? There's a link there. And so
907
00:54:21.460 --> 00:54:23.940
I have been working with my mother over the last
908
00:54:24.000 --> 00:54:28.320
year to forgive her mother. And I tell Arlene when
909
00:54:28.340 --> 00:54:32.070
I'm in deep meditation and experiences that I will rectify this.
910
00:54:32.090 --> 00:54:36.670
I In this very moment, we are working on that.
911
00:54:36.949 --> 00:54:40.389
I'm reaching out to a headstone carver and then we're
912
00:54:40.409 --> 00:54:42.809
going to go down and then I'm going to have
913
00:54:42.849 --> 00:54:47.260
the whole family sit together and we do this forgiveness
914
00:54:47.320 --> 00:54:50.780
work because that should come from my mother as the matriarch.
915
00:54:50.820 --> 00:54:55.039
Like you're now, we're putting love in our lineage now, forgiveness.
916
00:54:55.099 --> 00:54:57.119
And on the tombstone, that was the only word I
917
00:54:57.159 --> 00:55:00.519
wanted was we forgive you, Arlen. And then the dates.
918
00:55:00.699 --> 00:55:03.219
I said that must have that because we must remember
919
00:55:03.239 --> 00:55:06.179
that And so it's brought up so much for my
920
00:55:06.219 --> 00:55:10.780
mother and my aunt, emotions and unresolved feelings. And I
921
00:55:10.820 --> 00:55:14.280
just keep holding that this is what I want to do.
922
00:55:14.730 --> 00:55:16.349
And I want to make sure that I'm doing the
923
00:55:16.389 --> 00:55:19.670
work as a descendant and that I love Arlen, my grandmother,
924
00:55:19.710 --> 00:55:21.489
even though I never met her. There's a love there.
925
00:55:23.110 --> 00:55:25.639
More of my conversation with Spring Washam coming up. Keep
926
00:55:25.679 --> 00:55:34.360
it here. You talked about how 99% of the time
927
00:55:34.389 --> 00:55:37.360
you live in conventional reality, but, you know, 1% of
928
00:55:37.380 --> 00:55:39.320
the time you can kind of turn it on. And
929
00:55:39.500 --> 00:55:42.519
I think that kind of brings us back to Harriet
930
00:55:43.000 --> 00:55:47.710
Tubman and these channeled conversations that you write about. How
931
00:55:47.730 --> 00:55:50.250
does that work? How do you get into conversation with
932
00:55:50.269 --> 00:55:50.889
Harriet Tubman?
933
00:55:51.849 --> 00:55:55.909
Well, I will say that I was never, this is
934
00:55:55.969 --> 00:55:59.539
a new experience, Dan, what happened with Harriet Tubman. I'm
935
00:55:59.599 --> 00:56:05.480
still integrating that experience. It still shocks me. I'm still amazed.
936
00:56:05.619 --> 00:56:09.219
I'm still in awe of the whole story. I'm in
937
00:56:09.300 --> 00:56:12.019
awe of the book. I'm in awe of Harry Tubman.
938
00:56:12.179 --> 00:56:15.099
I'm in awe of what's happening. So know that I'm
939
00:56:15.420 --> 00:56:20.050
real time. I haven't reached like a final analysis on it.
940
00:56:20.130 --> 00:56:23.449
Here's where I am right now with it. And from
941
00:56:23.769 --> 00:56:26.650
based on where I am, but I'm still every day,
942
00:56:26.730 --> 00:56:30.170
my mind is blown open. Even when I read the
943
00:56:30.210 --> 00:56:33.070
book and I remember, oh my gosh, that was beautiful.
944
00:56:33.110 --> 00:56:37.789
Oh my God. Yes. I'm taken back. So, so I'll
945
00:56:37.829 --> 00:56:43.039
leave you, I'll start with the story about when my publisher,
946
00:56:44.349 --> 00:56:47.429
saw me online teaching about Harriet Tubman in this five-week class.
947
00:56:47.510 --> 00:56:50.039
And that was exactly when you interviewed me last. I
948
00:56:50.079 --> 00:56:51.800
was right in the middle of that class and I
949
00:56:51.820 --> 00:56:54.420
was talking about it. I was like, yeah, Dharma, Harriet Tubman.
950
00:56:54.820 --> 00:56:57.159
And I don't even think I was talking about the book.
951
00:56:57.199 --> 00:57:00.150
We might've conversed later. And I was like, oh my God, Dan,
952
00:57:00.170 --> 00:57:01.530
they want me to write a book. I think we
953
00:57:01.570 --> 00:57:04.309
texted or something. So they came to me and asked
954
00:57:04.349 --> 00:57:06.110
me and I said, no. And I said, well, I'll
955
00:57:06.130 --> 00:57:09.269
wait for a sign. If I get a sign, I'll
956
00:57:09.289 --> 00:57:11.730
do it. But there is no way I'm writing a
957
00:57:11.750 --> 00:57:13.369
book about Harriet Tubman. I was in the middle of
958
00:57:13.409 --> 00:57:17.340
writing a shamanic book. That was more my speed. Harriet,
959
00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:20.579
the topic, it was like a deep dive and I
960
00:57:20.599 --> 00:57:22.579
didn't want to go off that cliff. I was like,
961
00:57:23.880 --> 00:57:28.929
I know, call Angela Davis, call a scholar. I really
962
00:57:28.969 --> 00:57:31.889
said this to them. Yeah, I'm the wrong girl, wrong.
963
00:57:31.929 --> 00:57:35.909
I'm Buddhist. This doesn't make any sense. Harriet was Christian.
964
00:57:36.449 --> 00:57:40.170
Get a Christian scholar, someone in the South. All of these,
965
00:57:40.210 --> 00:57:42.510
you know, I was really putting up a lot of
966
00:57:42.869 --> 00:57:46.510
roadblocks and stop signs. No, no, I don't can't. And
967
00:57:46.530 --> 00:57:48.480
that was my biggest thing. I was like, I can't,
968
00:57:48.539 --> 00:57:49.440
I'm not qualified.
969
00:57:50.659 --> 00:57:51.820
So then one night.
970
00:57:51.599 --> 00:57:53.619
After I'd done all these prayers with a friend of
971
00:57:53.659 --> 00:57:55.900
mine who had came over back in those days, we
972
00:57:55.920 --> 00:57:59.710
were praying for humanity. All the time at night, like,
973
00:57:59.889 --> 00:58:02.489
oh my God, we would do these prayers. So she left.
974
00:58:02.530 --> 00:58:05.360
And I was reading this Harriet Tubman book I had bought,
975
00:58:05.489 --> 00:58:07.760
one of the many. She Came to Slay. That was
976
00:58:07.800 --> 00:58:09.500
the name of it. Anyway, I was in my room.
977
00:58:09.539 --> 00:58:11.780
It was late at night. I had been saying bodhisattva
978
00:58:11.820 --> 00:58:15.079
prayers for two hours. So there was this beautiful energy
979
00:58:15.139 --> 00:58:19.940
around my house. That's when Harriet made a kind of appearance,
980
00:58:20.019 --> 00:58:22.460
I'll say. I think what Harriet did was she just...
981
00:58:23.320 --> 00:58:26.519
I guess Aborigines would call it the dream time where
982
00:58:26.539 --> 00:58:29.420
they can talk to their ancestors. Aboriginal people always used
983
00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:33.380
to say that the heaven and the earth would part
984
00:58:33.460 --> 00:58:35.469
and for a moment they could talk to their ancestors.
985
00:58:35.489 --> 00:58:39.349
Somehow Harriet found the latitude and longitude and kind of
986
00:58:39.389 --> 00:58:42.869
made an in-person appearance. And I write about that in
987
00:58:43.010 --> 00:58:45.530
detail where it just showed up like in a spirit form.
988
00:58:46.539 --> 00:58:48.820
And it took me days to recover from that, by
989
00:58:48.840 --> 00:58:52.059
the way. My body shook for six days. It was
990
00:58:52.119 --> 00:58:56.360
the electricity. And basically Harriet showed up to tell me, no,
991
00:58:56.440 --> 00:58:59.840
this is your task to write this book. And you
992
00:58:59.880 --> 00:59:02.940
and I had agreed to this a long time ago.
993
00:59:02.960 --> 00:59:05.500
And I tried to get out of it. And the
994
00:59:05.539 --> 00:59:08.760
whole chapter two is about this appearance where I'm given
995
00:59:08.800 --> 00:59:11.940
this task. because I think Harriet knew unless she did that,
996
00:59:11.980 --> 00:59:14.139
I would never have said yes. So it was okay.
997
00:59:14.159 --> 00:59:17.679
I'm going to remind you. So that's how it started.
998
00:59:17.699 --> 00:59:20.239
So I finally said yes. And the wee hours of
999
00:59:20.260 --> 00:59:23.780
the night after this dialogue and these memories and all this,
1000
00:59:24.119 --> 00:59:26.809
it was a whole journey. And then Harriet would just
1001
00:59:26.849 --> 00:59:31.380
start to appear in my mind. We decided to write
1002
00:59:31.519 --> 00:59:33.940
and Harriet would appear like as a star with a
1003
00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:37.699
lot of thoughts and then images would come and then
1004
00:59:37.920 --> 00:59:40.159
it'd be like time to have a session. And I
1005
00:59:40.199 --> 00:59:43.800
would sit down at my computer and it would come
1006
00:59:43.900 --> 00:59:46.880
out and I call them sessions. I don't like to
1007
00:59:46.960 --> 00:59:50.780
use the word channeling because channeling makes people think of
1008
00:59:50.880 --> 00:59:53.139
like that movie Ghost where I'm going to sit down
1009
00:59:53.159 --> 00:59:56.489
and be like, no, I am Harriet Tubman with her message.
1010
00:59:56.630 --> 00:59:57.849
I don't do that. No, no.
1011
01:00:00.869 --> 01:00:02.710
You saw her in your mind, but it wasn't like
1012
01:00:02.730 --> 01:00:06.840
you were wearing AR goggles and there was an image
1013
01:00:06.880 --> 01:00:09.880
of her sitting on your couch with her legs crossed
1014
01:00:10.139 --> 01:00:12.980
dictating her words. It was more like she was showing
1015
01:00:13.019 --> 01:00:14.239
up in your mind in some way.
1016
01:00:15.679 --> 01:00:21.289
Yes, and it was a conversation. The chapters became conversations
1017
01:00:21.369 --> 01:00:25.289
and I would clarify and write, but it was all
1018
01:00:25.309 --> 01:00:31.440
through consciousness. Only Two times, three maybe most, Harriet appeared
1019
01:00:31.599 --> 01:00:33.820
as like a spirit. And that was the first time
1020
01:00:33.860 --> 01:00:36.179
she got me to say yes to the task of
1021
01:00:36.260 --> 01:00:40.380
writing this and taking on this project that for me
1022
01:00:40.440 --> 01:00:43.619
was epic. Because when I said yes, I didn't understand
1023
01:00:43.639 --> 01:00:47.719
that I would be writing this book from her perspective.
1024
01:00:48.389 --> 01:00:51.409
Like basically I became one of her passengers on the
1025
01:00:51.449 --> 01:00:56.070
Underground Railroad. I became a student there. And then I'm
1026
01:00:56.130 --> 01:00:59.199
writing from the view of the teacher trying to document.
1027
01:00:59.530 --> 01:01:02.360
So I'm the passenger who's freaking out the whole time.
1028
01:01:02.380 --> 01:01:06.739
I'm writing as the student who is trying to make
1029
01:01:06.840 --> 01:01:10.260
sense of it. And then it's Harriet's voice. Yeah. So
1030
01:01:10.320 --> 01:01:15.820
the book is a three-piece dialogue that is like juggling
1031
01:01:15.880 --> 01:01:18.219
these three pieces. So I feel very much like I
1032
01:01:18.260 --> 01:01:22.889
was a passenger on the spirit underground with Harriet. And
1033
01:01:22.949 --> 01:01:26.760
Harriet took me through 12 stops. That's how I see it.
1034
01:01:28.329 --> 01:01:30.579
One of the arguments you, and I'll use the term
1035
01:01:30.619 --> 01:01:33.559
you in the collective sense, you, Harriet, and Teacher Spring
1036
01:01:33.760 --> 01:01:37.500
make in this book is that the Underground Railroad is
1037
01:01:37.940 --> 01:01:41.590
alive today. And I think you use the phrase inner underground.
1038
01:01:41.679 --> 01:01:42.449
What do you mean by that?
1039
01:01:43.710 --> 01:01:46.130
Oh, yes. This is like a really, I feel like
1040
01:01:46.150 --> 01:01:50.349
this is the most essential question with why Harriet is back.
1041
01:01:51.110 --> 01:01:54.360
Because we know we have the historical Underground Railroad. And
1042
01:01:54.449 --> 01:01:57.360
we can actually go and, you know, there's very important
1043
01:01:57.380 --> 01:02:01.760
stops in Philadelphia and Boston, Massachusetts. And there was, for
1044
01:02:01.760 --> 01:02:06.860
60 years, the historical Underground Railroad was open. They estimate
1045
01:02:06.920 --> 01:02:11.090
over 100,000 people traversed it. And that's only an estimate.
1046
01:02:11.389 --> 01:02:15.730
At one point, everybody was running away from plantations. So
1047
01:02:15.789 --> 01:02:22.769
Harriet Tubman describes an inner Underground Railroad. another secret passageway.
1048
01:02:23.869 --> 01:02:25.889
And she talked about it all the time. She said,
1049
01:02:26.150 --> 01:02:30.489
there's another one that's through consciousness. There's the physical, yes.
1050
01:02:31.230 --> 01:02:34.590
And then there's the mental, there's the mind, there's the spirit.
1051
01:02:35.050 --> 01:02:40.630
And on this passageway, there are conductors, there are stops,
1052
01:02:41.369 --> 01:02:45.659
there are agents helping beings get through each point. And
1053
01:02:45.699 --> 01:02:47.780
this is what I guess one could say is similar
1054
01:02:47.820 --> 01:02:50.909
to like the path of Nibbana. Because I would say, well,
1055
01:02:50.969 --> 01:02:54.139
where does this Underground Railroad go? And she's like, freedom,
1056
01:02:55.219 --> 01:02:58.579
out of suffering, out of hell, out of bondage, out
1057
01:02:58.619 --> 01:03:03.420
of pain. And so her job now, how she describes it,
1058
01:03:04.119 --> 01:03:08.699
is that she works on the spirit underground. Consciousness. She's like,
1059
01:03:08.760 --> 01:03:12.519
now we're in the age of consciousness. We're now in
1060
01:03:12.539 --> 01:03:15.420
the air element. We're moving into the Aquarian age, a
1061
01:03:15.679 --> 01:03:20.920
shift from earth. Air moves faster. Everything moves, light, speed,
1062
01:03:21.059 --> 01:03:24.699
everything's sped up, right? We're not in the earthy. She's like,
1063
01:03:24.719 --> 01:03:28.260
before when I was born in the 1820s, I could
1064
01:03:28.300 --> 01:03:33.139
only help people get physically free. Literally break open the
1065
01:03:33.179 --> 01:03:36.500
chain and take you to living without a chain. That
1066
01:03:36.539 --> 01:03:40.199
was only the level that I could move at because
1067
01:03:40.260 --> 01:03:46.099
that's where humanity was, the consciousness. But now, look, we're
1068
01:03:46.119 --> 01:03:50.050
at a completely different place. People can understand. the inner
1069
01:03:50.130 --> 01:03:54.530
underground railroad now, right? We understand that it's our minds
1070
01:03:54.949 --> 01:04:00.050
that matter. The battle is here now, Dan. It's always
1071
01:04:00.090 --> 01:04:02.400
in the mind. It's less, even if we had a
1072
01:04:02.460 --> 01:04:05.059
civil war, what is it? It's a war of ideas.
1073
01:04:06.139 --> 01:04:09.239
Just to be clear, nirvana is the Pali version of
1074
01:04:09.280 --> 01:04:11.880
the Sanskrit term nirvana. You use that word and I
1075
01:04:11.900 --> 01:04:13.900
just want to make sure people know it.
1076
01:04:14.639 --> 01:04:17.780
Yes, thank you. Because I do use a lot of
1077
01:04:17.820 --> 01:04:18.699
Buddhist jargon.
1078
01:04:19.280 --> 01:04:20.969
It's all good. This is a safe place for that
1079
01:04:21.239 --> 01:04:23.519
to be a little college campus-y. So why does that
1080
01:04:23.539 --> 01:04:27.099
mean for our individual lives? How and why would we
1081
01:04:27.159 --> 01:04:30.280
want to get on this inner underground railroad?
1082
01:04:31.179 --> 01:04:37.380
Well, because we're stuck in chains and imprisoned by our suffering.
1083
01:04:38.360 --> 01:04:42.099
And if we trust Harriet Tubman to conduct us to,
1084
01:04:42.179 --> 01:04:44.380
let's say, the promised land, where she writes about the
1085
01:04:44.420 --> 01:04:48.469
promised land not being an outer destination. but a place
1086
01:04:48.699 --> 01:04:51.539
there is a stoppage of suffering. That's why I use
1087
01:04:51.559 --> 01:04:55.380
the word nirvana, which is the Pali word, which means
1088
01:04:55.420 --> 01:04:58.449
the end of suffering. And the Buddha never talked about
1089
01:04:58.489 --> 01:05:02.139
what Nibbana was. He always talked about it in the negative,
1090
01:05:02.920 --> 01:05:06.840
meaning what it isn't. It is the absence of suffering.
1091
01:05:07.400 --> 01:05:10.719
It is the absence of greed, the absence of hatred,
1092
01:05:10.780 --> 01:05:13.670
the absence of delusion, right? So he talked about what
1093
01:05:13.710 --> 01:05:16.969
it wasn't. He said it's indescribable. So I'm not going
1094
01:05:16.989 --> 01:05:18.329
to try to put words, but I'll tell you what
1095
01:05:18.349 --> 01:05:22.449
it's not. And that's more understandable for where we are, right?
1096
01:05:22.989 --> 01:05:26.110
So Harriet, if you think about Harriet Tubman as a
1097
01:05:26.159 --> 01:05:32.260
conductor who, that was the job, conducting people to freedom,
1098
01:05:32.280 --> 01:05:36.579
then now working in consciousness, it would be doing the
1099
01:05:36.599 --> 01:05:40.619
same thing. moving people from a place of despair and
1100
01:05:40.699 --> 01:05:44.849
stuckness to a state of freedom, empowerment. I don't know
1101
01:05:44.889 --> 01:05:47.849
how far this goes. I don't know. But it's changing
1102
01:05:47.869 --> 01:05:50.269
your view on Harriet Tubman too, which shocked me. And
1103
01:05:50.309 --> 01:05:52.650
I move into those in the later chapters where I start,
1104
01:05:52.989 --> 01:05:57.280
Harriet Tubman's voice starts to take on not only this grandmother,
1105
01:05:57.460 --> 01:06:02.239
but actually an incredibly wise being. I remember I wrote
1106
01:06:02.260 --> 01:06:05.519
in there, oh my God, after this conversation of consciousness,
1107
01:06:06.199 --> 01:06:10.670
I was like, Harriet, you're actually an incredibly brilliant mind.
1108
01:06:10.750 --> 01:06:15.420
And it's like, yeah, I'm always underestimated. Nobody thinks of
1109
01:06:15.500 --> 01:06:19.179
a black, illiterate, formerly enslaved woman as a great teacher.
1110
01:06:19.199 --> 01:06:22.699
So be it. But we appear in any form. That's
1111
01:06:22.739 --> 01:06:25.219
where I started depositing that Harriet was not just a
1112
01:06:25.300 --> 01:06:29.889
regular person, but actually was a prophet, a great spiritual being,
1113
01:06:29.909 --> 01:06:33.909
a great bodhisattva. As the book goes on, it starts
1114
01:06:33.949 --> 01:06:35.250
revealing itself to me.
1115
01:06:36.309 --> 01:06:38.630
So what are the beginning steps? You spell it all
1116
01:06:38.690 --> 01:06:40.690
out in the book, but just for people listening right
1117
01:06:40.730 --> 01:06:43.250
now who haven't read the book yet, when you talk
1118
01:06:43.309 --> 01:06:47.050
about being on this railroad, what does that actually entail
1119
01:06:47.090 --> 01:06:48.690
in a concrete way?
1120
01:06:49.550 --> 01:06:52.099
I think for people, it means you're committing to your
1121
01:06:52.159 --> 01:06:56.900
spiritual path. You're committing to understanding the Four Noble Truths,
1122
01:06:57.659 --> 01:07:01.500
that there's suffering, that there's a cause of suffering, which
1123
01:07:01.559 --> 01:07:05.889
is holding on, clinging. We commit to the third noble truth,
1124
01:07:05.929 --> 01:07:08.460
which is letting go. And then we commit to the
1125
01:07:08.539 --> 01:07:11.920
fourth noble truth, which is the Eightfold Path, which is
1126
01:07:11.940 --> 01:07:16.639
the path of awareness and mindfulness. We commit to living
1127
01:07:16.699 --> 01:07:19.389
a spiritual life. We make a commitment to get on
1128
01:07:19.429 --> 01:07:24.289
the path. This doesn't just happen, my friends. We actually
1129
01:07:24.329 --> 01:07:26.960
have to put effort into it. Harriet Tubman had to
1130
01:07:26.980 --> 01:07:31.300
put effort. The people who left with Harriet efforted, you know?
1131
01:07:31.360 --> 01:07:34.159
I mean, it's not an easy journey. It wasn't through
1132
01:07:34.179 --> 01:07:38.809
the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. And it's not easy
1133
01:07:38.989 --> 01:07:42.130
on the Spirit Underground now. The same demons that the
1134
01:07:42.150 --> 01:07:46.949
Buddha faced. Maras are everywhere. There's people trying to derail
1135
01:07:46.989 --> 01:07:50.260
the train left and right. I mean, it's a story, Dan.
1136
01:07:50.530 --> 01:07:54.280
We're in a sort of fairy tale. This is consciousness.
1137
01:07:54.900 --> 01:07:58.510
So essentially in the book, she and you are teaching Buddhism.
1138
01:07:59.269 --> 01:08:03.510
Yes. We're using different language. For those of you who
1139
01:08:03.550 --> 01:08:06.570
are Dharma, you'll see that right away because there's only,
1140
01:08:06.929 --> 01:08:14.489
this is like, what Harriet's talking about. It's like freedom, liberation, consciousness. Yeah,
1141
01:08:14.510 --> 01:08:19.029
we're moving from bondage in hell to the promised land.
1142
01:08:19.470 --> 01:08:23.829
These are all different languages that people can understand, different
1143
01:08:23.909 --> 01:08:27.699
concepts for the same place. Her definition of the promised
1144
01:08:27.739 --> 01:08:32.109
land is nibbana. It's promised to us and we'll get there,
1145
01:08:32.229 --> 01:08:34.010
but you got to work. And you got to, just
1146
01:08:34.069 --> 01:08:36.710
like there was the physical underground railroad, you're going to
1147
01:08:36.729 --> 01:08:40.800
have to go through a lot and rainstorms and hail
1148
01:08:40.960 --> 01:08:47.520
and blood, sweat, and tears. The spirit underground, the same. Obstacles, confusion, doubt.
1149
01:08:47.699 --> 01:08:52.359
But Harriet's saying, I will help because I'm a conductor
1150
01:08:52.479 --> 01:08:55.770
on this. Just like I was in the physical reality,
1151
01:08:55.829 --> 01:08:59.770
I was conducting people to freedom. I'm still conducting, but
1152
01:08:59.810 --> 01:09:03.659
now it's through consciousness because we're not in physical chains.
1153
01:09:03.840 --> 01:09:07.739
We're in mental ones. And some of us are in
1154
01:09:07.800 --> 01:09:12.159
physical chains. Some people definitely are. But the mass majority
1155
01:09:12.239 --> 01:09:16.300
of people in this country, we have everything. Our minds
1156
01:09:16.340 --> 01:09:20.199
are what is creating health. That's what Harriet is interested in.
1157
01:09:21.420 --> 01:09:25.439
In the book, you talk about three flavors of abolitionism
1158
01:09:25.510 --> 01:09:29.229
in a modern context, inner, outer, and ultimate.
1159
01:09:31.350 --> 01:09:37.350
Yeah. Okay, so inner abolitionism, right, would be to abolish
1160
01:09:38.090 --> 01:09:41.409
the programs of greed, hatred, and delusions. We want to
1161
01:09:41.489 --> 01:09:44.909
abolish suffering. This is where we start with the Buddhist path.
1162
01:09:44.930 --> 01:09:47.909
They're sick. We need to get better. So the word
1163
01:09:48.329 --> 01:09:53.930
abolitionism is the energy of abolishing, right? But it's on
1164
01:09:53.970 --> 01:09:57.170
the inner level, right? We're seeking to be on the
1165
01:09:57.250 --> 01:10:01.489
inner level. Let's abolish all the programs that block us
1166
01:10:02.149 --> 01:10:06.170
from our hearts to compassion, to love. So for me,
1167
01:10:06.289 --> 01:10:09.989
I'm always translating things, Dan. From my years in Oakland,
1168
01:10:10.050 --> 01:10:12.270
I used to look at Dharma texts and look at
1169
01:10:12.310 --> 01:10:14.930
the audience and think, What is the language that they
1170
01:10:14.949 --> 01:10:18.890
can understand? They'll know the ideas here. This is timeless.
1171
01:10:18.989 --> 01:10:23.420
Everybody gets suffering. I mean, you don't have to. Most
1172
01:10:23.460 --> 01:10:27.579
people can understand the Dharma, actually. They know it. It's truth.
1173
01:10:29.390 --> 01:10:31.970
So the inner is that we seek to abolish all
1174
01:10:32.010 --> 01:10:34.390
of the inner. We do our work. We do our
1175
01:10:34.470 --> 01:10:39.439
practice over and over. Outer abolitionist is that's what we
1176
01:10:39.529 --> 01:10:44.079
seek to go into society and we stand up to
1177
01:10:44.500 --> 01:10:48.819
what is unjust, right? We're willing to say we should
1178
01:10:48.859 --> 01:10:52.920
abolish that. That is not compassionate. That is cruel. That
1179
01:10:53.000 --> 01:10:56.720
is unjust, right? right? We become like Dr. King. We
1180
01:10:56.760 --> 01:11:01.039
refuse to participate in evil. That's what I used to
1181
01:11:01.100 --> 01:11:06.319
say about the Montgomery bus boycott. We refuse to participate
1182
01:11:06.460 --> 01:11:08.840
any longer. We're no longer going to ride this bus
1183
01:11:09.359 --> 01:11:16.470
because we participate in evil acts done. So non-cooperation with greed, hatred,
1184
01:11:16.520 --> 01:11:21.189
and delusion. So that's on the outer level. Then ultimate,
1185
01:11:21.470 --> 01:11:24.970
as we know, is like, we're getting to the Bodhisattva superpower,
1186
01:11:25.170 --> 01:11:26.840
Siddha power, Buddha levels.
1187
01:11:29.619 --> 01:11:32.159
You have said that writing, this is a quote from you,
1188
01:11:32.319 --> 01:11:36.520
writing this book has completely changed me. How so?
1189
01:11:37.560 --> 01:11:40.670
Well, first of all, it awakened in me a deeper
1190
01:11:40.770 --> 01:11:46.500
belief that in myself through Harriet Tubman. Because Harriet Tubman
1191
01:11:46.560 --> 01:11:50.020
chose me and every day had to affirm I made
1192
01:11:50.060 --> 01:11:53.560
the right decision, Spring. You are the right person to
1193
01:11:53.600 --> 01:11:57.260
write this and you have more power than you know.
1194
01:11:57.819 --> 01:11:59.960
So I think it was from that, I felt a
1195
01:12:00.020 --> 01:12:04.779
transmission of like strength and courage that I didn't know
1196
01:12:04.859 --> 01:12:06.390
I had. I mean, in May of 2020, I was
1197
01:12:06.430 --> 01:12:11.789
face-planted I mean, put a fork in me, Dan. I
1198
01:12:11.829 --> 01:12:15.289
was just like, there was something so devastating about what
1199
01:12:15.329 --> 01:12:19.949
was happening. I was just done, flat. Many of us were.
1200
01:12:20.010 --> 01:12:22.399
We were just, how do you rise from this and
1201
01:12:22.439 --> 01:12:26.899
meet the day with love and compassion again? You know,
1202
01:12:26.960 --> 01:12:29.619
it just felt like, whoa, we've gone through so much.
1203
01:12:30.100 --> 01:12:33.600
But I think it's just a resiliency, true resiliency. And
1204
01:12:33.640 --> 01:12:36.159
Harriet gives me that all the time. I think about
1205
01:12:36.260 --> 01:12:38.960
her actions and I think, No, you can get up
1206
01:12:39.020 --> 01:12:41.399
and do this. Look what Harriet Tubman did. There's a
1207
01:12:41.439 --> 01:12:44.460
kind of like, not in a negative way or a
1208
01:12:44.539 --> 01:12:48.399
self-abuse way, but in an actual way that wakes me
1209
01:12:48.600 --> 01:12:52.579
up and is like, for compassion, let's go out again.
1210
01:12:52.779 --> 01:12:54.979
Let's rise. Let's focus.
1211
01:12:55.149 --> 01:12:55.510
I don't know.
1212
01:12:55.590 --> 01:12:58.109
She just gave me this deep transmission of I can
1213
01:12:58.170 --> 01:13:02.510
do it and that I'm more powerful than I know.
1214
01:13:02.529 --> 01:13:06.979
But I'm still understanding what that means, Dan. But the
1215
01:13:07.020 --> 01:13:10.159
first step was the first seed she planted. It was like,
1216
01:13:10.220 --> 01:13:14.319
I'm more powerful than I know. Step two, unknown. I
1217
01:13:14.359 --> 01:13:18.640
don't know the second step yet. It's like, okay, just
1218
01:13:18.720 --> 01:13:20.779
know you're more powerful. Okay, I don't know how to
1219
01:13:20.939 --> 01:13:24.439
act on that yet, but I'll just know that. Maybe
1220
01:13:24.479 --> 01:13:26.680
she tricked me into finishing the book that way too.
1221
01:13:26.819 --> 01:13:27.119
Who knows?
1222
01:13:28.720 --> 01:13:30.880
Well, I have no doubt about your power. Can I
1223
01:13:30.920 --> 01:13:33.380
just ask you a couple last questions here? One is,
1224
01:13:33.640 --> 01:13:35.439
is there something I should have asked but didn't ask?
1225
01:13:36.619 --> 01:13:39.560
No, I think all your questions are so good. I
1226
01:13:40.239 --> 01:13:41.119
love your questions.
1227
01:13:42.489 --> 01:13:44.310
Thank you. I wasn't necessarily looking for affirmation.
1228
01:13:44.430 --> 01:13:47.369
I know, I know, but I do like your questions, though.
1229
01:13:47.430 --> 01:13:50.390
They give me a perspective to talk in ways that
1230
01:13:50.560 --> 01:13:51.529
are different.
1231
01:13:53.619 --> 01:13:56.380
And the final question is, can you just remind everybody
1232
01:13:56.760 --> 01:14:00.600
of the name of your new book? the book you
1233
01:14:00.619 --> 01:14:03.420
wrote before, any other resources you're putting out into the
1234
01:14:03.460 --> 01:14:05.579
world that people might be interested in accessing? Can you
1235
01:14:05.600 --> 01:14:06.960
just plug everything, please?
1236
01:14:07.479 --> 01:14:11.210
Well, you know, I have this new website. It's springwasham.com
1237
01:14:11.590 --> 01:14:15.569
and everything is there. I put it all there, all
1238
01:14:15.590 --> 01:14:18.270
the information about everything I'm doing. I also have a
1239
01:14:18.329 --> 01:14:21.939
podcast with Lama Rod Owens. You could check out. It's out.
1240
01:14:22.100 --> 01:14:25.199
And just, yeah, if you feel inspired, the book is
1241
01:14:26.399 --> 01:14:30.619
Spirit of Harriet Tubman, Awakening from the Underground. And my
1242
01:14:30.819 --> 01:14:34.199
other book is A Fierce Heart, Finding Strength, Courage, and
1243
01:14:34.239 --> 01:14:35.800
Wisdom in Any Moment.
1244
01:14:36.779 --> 01:14:39.010
Spring, thank you for coming on the show. I love you.
1245
01:14:39.069 --> 01:14:41.329
You're the best. Congratulations on this new book.
1246
01:14:42.149 --> 01:14:44.510
Thank you. I love you too, Dan.
1247
01:14:48.520 --> 01:14:50.920
Thanks again to Spring Washam. Always great to talk to her.
1248
01:14:51.670 --> 01:14:54.550
Please don't forget to go to the GoFundMe page that
1249
01:14:54.569 --> 01:14:56.670
we set up for spring. You can search for it
1250
01:14:56.689 --> 01:14:58.810
on GoFundMe or you can just click the link in
1251
01:14:58.829 --> 01:15:01.329
the show notes. As I mentioned in the intro, she
1252
01:15:01.369 --> 01:15:03.899
was hit by literally hit by a truck. I've seen
1253
01:15:03.939 --> 01:15:07.199
the video. It's horrifying. And yeah, she's really been struggling
1254
01:15:07.239 --> 01:15:10.300
since then with her injuries and the fact that the
1255
01:15:10.380 --> 01:15:12.859
medical bills are really adding up. So if you can
1256
01:15:13.000 --> 01:15:15.659
contribute a few bucks, that would be awesome. Thank you.
1257
01:15:16.329 --> 01:15:17.510
Before I let you go, I just want to thank
1258
01:15:17.550 --> 01:15:19.909
everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our
1259
01:15:19.949 --> 01:15:23.810
producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our
1260
01:15:23.850 --> 01:15:26.390
recording and engineering is handled by the great people over
1261
01:15:26.409 --> 01:15:29.609
at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa
1262
01:15:29.649 --> 01:15:33.350
Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer.
1263
01:15:33.750 --> 01:15:36.189
And Nick Thorburn of the band Island wrote our theme.
1264
01:15:36.220 --> 01:15:36.949
Thank you.