Unconditional Healing with Jeff Rubin
Can a person embrace immense adversity in their life to not only cope, but to thrive and discover their most authentic self?
As a teacher of Buddhist meditation and psychology for four decades, and someone "blessed" with a chronic illness for two of those decades, Jeff Rubin has been obsessed with answering this question. This obsession led him to develop a program called Unconditional Healing, a new model of health that has helped countless people transform their relationship to pain, adversity, and illness, and unlock their own storehouse of confidence and resilience.
In this podcast, Jeff explores the principles of Unconditional Healing with talks, healing practices, and interviews with those who have discovered how to thrive in the face of adversity. He also features guests who are experts or thought leaders in a particular aspect of health and well-being. If you are dealing with an acute or chronic illness, the loss of a loved one or your livelihood, the dissolution of a relationship, or any other adverse circumstance that has you feeling anxious and confused, then this podcast is definitely for you. Especially if you’re looking for a more nuanced, more spiritual way to work with life's inevitable difficulties.
Please note the podcast is currently on hiatus, but all episodes remain available on all the major podcast platforms.
Unconditional Healing with Jeff Rubin
Chaos and Uncertainty: Steppingstones on the Spiritual (Healing) Path
None of us openly welcomes chaos and uncertainty into our life. Even hearing those words can send a shudder through our bodies. Yet, eventually, they will come unbidden for all of us. This solo episode comprises a talk I gave right before the USA presidential election of 2020 at the New York City Shambhala meditation center when chaos and uncertainty reigned from a global pandemic and a polarized electorate in the United States. When we face adversity in our life, we often see it through a purely external lens, as if the difficulty was attacking us solely from the outside.
In truth, our internal reactions to chaos comprising the mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our humanity, are the only elements over which we have control. And they are critical in determining whether chaos and uncertainty destroy us or strengthen us. When seen through a spiritual lens, adversity presents an opportunity to explore ourselves without our psychological masks on.
In this episode I discuss:
- The etymological origins of the word “chaos” and its emotional implications
- The notion that uncertainty is a neutral concept, filled with possibility rather than doom
- How chaos and uncertainty act to disrupt our self-identity and how that disruption can have specific benefits
- Several specific ways for dealing with chaos and uncertainty constructively
Towards the end of the episode (at 33 minutes: 45 seconds), I lay out a specific four-step practice (called the 4 S's practice) for managing difficult emotions, drawing upon the Neuro-Emotional Technique and the Traditional Chinese 5 elements system. There is an accompanying video for this practice found here or at the top of every page of the Unconditional Healing website. It's worth viewing as there are physical gestures accompanying the practice.
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