Helping Navigate Grief in the Wild Heart Space with Mirabai Starr

In this conversation, Mirabai Starr shares her profound experiences with death and loss, detailing how these events have shaped her spiritual journey and her work. She discusses the impact of her brother's and first love's deaths on her life, leading her to explore the sacred dimensions of grief. 

Mirabai also introduces her current projects, including the Wild Heart Space community, which supports individuals navigating grief as a spiritual path. She emphasizes the importance of recognizing all forms of loss and the transformative power of grief in connecting with the divine. 

In this conversation, we delve into the complexities of grief and loss and the healing power of writing. We explore how writing is a spiritual practice and a means to navigate emotional challenges. 

The discussion emphasizes the importance of embracing suffering and the mundane aspects of life as pathways to spiritual growth. 

We also reflect on the challenges of balancing creative work with the demands of life and the necessity of allowing oneself to feel and express emotions authentically. 

Ultimately, we invite listeners to recognize the sacredness in everyday experiences and walk the ordinary mystic's path.

Mirabai Starr is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature.

She taught Philosophy and World Religions at the University of New Mexico-Taos for 20 years and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practice and inter-spiritual dialog. She is a certified bereavement counselor who helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Her book, WILD MERCY: Living the Fierce & Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, was named one of the “Best Books of 2019”. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

Wild Heart Space Website - references the writing workshops and Holy Lament community.
Mirabai’s Books
Levine Talks Website - Steven and his wife Ondrea
Love Serve Remember Foundation - Ram Dass
Murshid Samuel Lewis Archive - writings and stories of Samuel Lewis, the founder of the Ruhaniat Sufi Order and Dances of Universal Peace
The Lama Foundation
Poet Rosemary Watola Trommer

Transcript

Wakil David Matthews (00:02.348)
Welcome everyone. On today's episode, we are thrilled to be talking to my friend Mirabai Starr. Mirabai is an award-winning author of creative non-fiction and contemporary translations of sacred literature. And having read most of them, I recommend them all. In fact, I have to admit I'm a little obsessed with her most recent book, Ordinary Mysticism, Your Life as Sacred Ground. And we'll be hearing more about that as we speak with her.

Annalouiza (00:29.027)
She has taught philosophy and world religions at the University of New Mexico, Taos for 20 years, and now teaches and speaks internationally on contemplative practices and inter-spiritual dialogue. She is a certified bereavement counselor who helps mourners harness the transformational power of loss. Her book, Wild Mercy, Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of Women Mystics, was named one of the best books of 2019. She lives with her extended family in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Welcome Mirabai. Thank you for being with us.

Wakil David Matthews (01:08.834)
So good to have you.

Mirabai Starr (01:09.134)
Thank you both, Wakil and Annalouisa.

Wakil David Matthews (01:14.552)
So we always love to kind of get a feel for our guests' lives around the question of death and dying. So can you just tell us a little bit about when you first became aware of death in your life?

Mirabai Starr (01:32.864)
I had a lot of death in my life early on from an early age. So my older brother, there were four of us, was diagnosed with a brain tumor when he was nine years old and I was seven. He died a year later. And that rocked, well, shattered actually the foundation, 

Wakil David Matthews (01:55.788)
Mmm, yeah.

Mirabai Starr (02:00.78)
I would say, of our family. It also really kind of catapulted me back across the threshold, I would say, from which I had recently come, you know, as a small child, I think the veils are still pretty thin between the worlds. maybe rather than catapulting me back across the threshold, I would describe it as just blowing the veil away. And there was a much more permeable membrane between this world and that one. And I felt not just a sense of Maddie's presence, but I felt the proximity of death and it felt sacred, even though I didn't have a concept of the sacred intellectually. And my family, while Jewish, was not practicing in any way. In fact, they were very anti-religion, very interested in dismantling all religious ideology.

But something in me recognized the holiness of that place that Maddie had gone and that I was somehow, welcome to, to experience without being dead. And, and then when I was 14, you know, I had my first love, Philip, and he was at, he was actually a child prodigy guitar player here in Taos where I still live. This extraordinary human. All the adults were always fascinated by Philip. He had a lot of charisma and this incredible ability to play music. so Philip and I were in love and he was killed in a gun accident when we were both just 14. And that was, if you think about it in the timeline, I'll be 64 next month. That was seven and 14.

Annalouiza (03:58.009)
13.

Mirabai Starr (03:59.16)
Very early on and Philip's death definitely started me on my spiritual path. I moved to Llama Foundation right after that on my own and lived there as a teenager. Llama being the place where Ram Dass created, let's call it, 

Wakil David Matthews (04:23.307)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (04:27.054)
Be Here Now because it's so much more than just a writing with the Llama community and it's where Murshid Samuel Lewis who created, as you well know, the Dances of Universal Peace is buried. He wanted to be buried at Llama because it was the most sacred place he knew. And that's where I moved and started on my spiritual path, but really an inter-spiritual path, really shot out of the canon of death.

Wakil David Matthews (04:45.463)
Wow, right. Yeah. Well, amazing. Amazing. And interesting the seventh year and the fourteenth year. Yeah. 

Annalouiza (04:55.607)
Yeah, those are interesting numbers. So yeah, I don't know if you've probably have come across the Mayan calendar and Mayan astrology, but seven is the death, right? And then you start all over to do these other things. So I love that at seven, it's just, and you had seven years to train for the second one. So how has death impacted your life story?

Mirabai Starr (05:27.07)
Let's see. So after a few years of living and visiting Lama Foundation, I met Stephen Levine, the great American teacher of death and dying in many ways and I also met Andrea who became his wife and lifelong companion at the time. So Stephen and Andrea Levine were very much instrumental for me in finding a home for myheart, this heart that is so drawn to the sacred dimensions of death and dying. 
I wanted to work with children who were dying. So when I was 18, that was my desire. And my friends there, Stephen and Dale Borglum, Ramdev said, you know, it's a beautiful aspiration, but you're too young. 18 is too young to work with dying children.

It's interesting because years later they both regretted that and apologized for it and said, you know, at 18 you were ready and your energy would have been really helpful to families of children who were dying.

Annalouiza (06:37.357)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mirabai Starr (06:59.278)
 It kind of got me on a different track. You know, I went into the academic world and became a professor of philosophy and world religions, but still continued to be deeply drawn to death and kept finding myself at the bedside of loved ones and friends or family members of loved ones who were dying. 

Wakil David Matthews (07:16.375)
Hmm.

Mirabai Starr (07:27.63)
And I just became this sort of unofficial bedside companion. I never had hospice training, but it sort of became a snowball effect where often I was simply called to be with someone at the end of their life. 

Then my child died. I'm leaving out many other deaths, including my father's death, that were significant in between, but the death of my daughter was in a universe unto itself. So Jenny died when I was 40, and she died the day in a car accident, so very sudden and unexpected, the day that my first book came out, which was a translation of Dark Night of the Soul by the...

Wakil David Matthews (07:31.211)
Hmph.

Wakil David Matthews (07:54.306)
Hmm

Mirabai Starr (07:55.19)
16th century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross. And I'd written this new fresh translation from a non-Christian perspective, from a more universal perspective, although it was a faithful translation of the original. It just wasn't as Catholic or as Christian even as most. And so Jenny's death coincided with the release into the world of this teaching on the power of profound transformation through suffering.

Wakil David Matthews (08:27.863)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (08:29.366)
And so that's, I'll stop there for now.

Wakil David Matthews (08:32.831)
Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. Well, and actually the next question is where we can get much deeper into all this, that we like to kind of find out more about the work you're doing right now. You know, I was looking at the Wild Heart Space, which I've been a member of for a while, and I'd love to hear more about that, Holy Lament, and the book that you wrote about that experience with Jenny, the Caravan of No Despair, was just profound, really profound. 

I think the very first book I read of yours was The God of Love, which is a guide to the heart of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And that still resonates with me. And it was one where I kind of said, this person, I need to know more about her. And so I pretty much started reading everything I could find.

Mirabai Starr (09:05.89)
Thank you.

Wakil David Matthews (09:27.795)
Anyway, then at some point, I think you were coming out here to do a book signing, and that's when we really got to meet you and spend time with you and get to know how connected we are in many, many ways. So thank you for all that. But speaking to the work you're doing now, anything you want to talk about, of course, the new book, Ordinary Mysticism, is full of beautiful jewels that I might grab later if we have time. But yeah, if you would, just tell us a little bit more about some of the work you've been engaged in recently.

Mirabai Starr (10:00.825)
Thank you, the way, Wakil to you and Wendy and your children for putting up this vagabond writer all those years. I've just been asked to do a new edition, an updated edition of God of Love along with an audiobook, so I'm very excited about that.

Wakil David Matthews (10:16.417)
Wow.

Mirabai Starr (10:17.678)
So yes, Holy Lament is this community that you're referring to. So my beloved friend and colleague Willow Brook and I co-created an online space dedicated to people who are walking through grief as a spiritual path.

Really embracing the sacred dimensions of the broken heart, of loss, of the way that loss can open the gates to a deeper and more intimate connection with the divine. Not something that any of us would choose necessarily and to be to be in communion with the divine yes but not not through the doorway of of grief and loss necessarily and yet so many of us experience that even if we don't always admit it that how holy that space is even not just on the other side of the death of of a loved one but during the dying process how how deeply sacred that territory is

And so we created Wild Heart Space, which is a community that explores many things, including the topic of my newest book, Ordinary Mysticism, Your Life as Sacred Ground. But really the primary offering, I think, is this holy lament community that is just growing year by year. We're in our third year now and loss keeps happening and grief keeps...

Wakil David Matthews (11:59.435)
Ha. Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (11:59.874)
breaking people's hearts open. And we really welcome, only three times a year though, because we try to keep it sort of safe and intimate and keep the container sewn up around the edges so that people can really rest in it. And we have those three openings a year.

Wakil David Matthews (12:20.597)
Yeah, yeah. I love the way you folks created that. Of course, I was saying earlier how much I love Willow. I've known Willow for a long time since she was a little kid, as part of our community. But she and you, the way you guys weave in music and the way you've talked, I think you could maybe speak to the 12 thresholds. You don't have to tell us about each one of them, but just the fact that, you know, how that what those are as compared to the five steps basically that people know so well of grief. I love there's a, 

I think there's a much deeper connection for me there was when I went through the course with you guys for the first year. It's such a deep connection to those thresholds. Even though they are related, of course, but they, but yeah, maybe speak to that a little bit.

Mirabai Starr (13:21.134)
So Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of grief, which really grew out of her recognition of certain universal passages that dying people also go through when they're faced with a terminal so-called diagnosis. And those stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance Kubler-Ross realized mapped onto grieving people in very similar ways to dying people. And it's been a very useful framework for a lot of people because it helps them feel like they're not crazy …

Wakil David Matthews (14:02.273)
Right.

Annalouiza (14:03.213)
That's right.

Wakil David Matthews (14:09.591)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (14:14.024)
… when they experience these kind of universal psycho-emotional responses to loss. For us, know, Willow helped me by following and supporting my teachings over the years around grief as a spiritual path, we realized that my teachings had much more to do with actually consciously walking through the landscape of loss, this terrain as being holy ground, not just psychological states to kind of get through and endure and come through to the other side, hopefully to some kind of acceptance, but rather portals into a greater aliveness and a deeper intimacy with the divine. 

And so we distilled through, you know, just exploring the ways that my teachings were unfolding, these 12 thresholds, we call them, in the landscape of loss. 

Wakil David Matthews (15:12.79)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (15:20.276)
So things like shattering, that when you're shattered by a great loss, it breaks you open. And into that, into that, the torn, the torn seams of your life of your heart really, grace can flow this kind of deeper sense of the presence of that which our hearts really long for.

Wakil David Matthews (15:32.459)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (15:32.724)
And yearning, in fact, is one of the primary thresholds. It's kind of toward the middle end of these 12 thresholds. And it's not a linear trajectory. These are universal spaces that many people on the grief journey touch down into along the way. They're more like guideposts saying, if you find yourself here, we're here too. Here we are together.

Wakil David Matthews (15:56.927)
Mmm.

Mirabai Starr (15:58.798)
Yearning for the divine yearning longing for God is an essential element of this grief journey this conscious grief journey this journey of holy lament and then it's one of the one of the key thresholds that I wanted to reclaim as we walk through with people their journey through the wilderness really of the broken heart that that there is this deep connection between missing, a loved one who has died and longing for union with God. 

Annalouiza (16:38.457)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (16:38.623)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (16:50.656)
We wanted to name it and really spend time in that place. But there are also thresholds like fearlessness, you know, where you just, when you've lost something or someone that is precious and essential to your life, there's often a sense of not having anything left to lose. And so might as well just throw it all into the air and jump off the cliff and do whatever you would have dared to do before. Some of that can be reckless and, I don't know, dangerous, but a lot of it is very liberating.

Wakil David Matthews (17:14.187)
Mm-hmm.

Mirabai Starr (17:14.358)
So all of these sort of subtle, nuanced experiences of grief, inquiry is one, inquiry, where, know, Kubler-Ross might call it bargaining, where you endlessly retell yourself the story of what happened in hopes that you can change reality by thinking your way out of it or something. 

Wakil David Matthews (17:21.59)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Mirabai Starr (17:44.014)
And we're reframing that as a process of conscious inquiry, like what happened, what is real, what are its effects, and if we harness that out-of-control monkey mind process of ruminating and retelling ourselves the story kind of in a tortuous circle, which can often be the case. 

Wakil David Matthews (18:04.007)
yeah.

Mirabai Starr (18:09.986)
How about if we show up consciously and start asking deeper questions and see where that leads us. And as you mentioned earlier, Wakil, unknowing which is kind of, I would say, the hallmark of the mystics of all traditions. The willingness to not know is a deep and profound part of this journey we guide people on.

Wakil David Matthews (18:21.759)
Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll put a link, of course, in the podcast notes to that site. And when is the next time you'll be coming asking for more people? April. OK, well, we'll try to make sure this gets broadcast by then. We can move stuff around, but we really want to support and promote everything you're doing. So, yeah, thank you.

Mirabai Starr (18:32.222)
Soon, April. I think that's right about where we are now.

Annalouiza (18:39.555)
Yeah.)
Yeah. Well, and I want to go back to this beautiful kind of scaffold that you've created to support those who are grieving. And it made me think that in some ways, some people have a physical loss of a loved one, and some people may come into this realm with already a spiritual loss. And they're looking for God. They're reckless, and they're trying to feel or fill that void where somebody's calling to them. And they don't know that it's grief that somehow there was a splicing as they came through this and through this portal, right? So I wonder if this could go beyond just a physical loss for folks. It sounds really powerful, so.

Mirabai Starr (19:36.718)
Thank you. Yes, it does. And we make that very, very clear when we reach out to people who would like to be part of our community, that every kind of loss is welcome in our circle. So we have

Annalouiza (19:49.784)
Mm-hmm.

Mirabai Starr (19:52.726)
We have lot of people who are grieving the death of a loved one. There's no doubt about it, partly because of my work, my books. And so I have lot of bereaved parents for that reason. But we also have people who are grieving the loss of a relationship, a breakup. And then we have people, Annalouiza, who are coming to this space with a heart that is on fire with longing for God.

Annalouiza (20:19.277)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil David Matthews (20:19.746)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (20:19.886)
Who feel that pain of separation, that somehow we were cut off from that divine source. 

Annalouiza (20:41.378)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mirabai Starr (20:47.456)
You know how so many spiritual traditions have these love legends that symbolize the way that lover and beloved were one and then somehow became sundered or separated and long for return. It's often one lover more than the other, but we're reclaiming the truth that beloved longs for reunion with lover as much as lover longs for union with the other. Yeah, you're our people.

Wakil David Matthews (20:50.753)
Hehehe.

Annalouiza (20:56.735)
Mm hmm. that makes me feel kind of weepy because I, I, I, I, I sense that I sense that for myself and I sense that in others who will say I've never experienced a loss and then, you know, having a conversation that they'll usually tell me this a longiness like I don't know what it is, but it feels like I didn't. I miss something somewhere and this gives me language to also discuss that because I think that's part of it. Sometimes we don't have the language to help people like piece together, which kind of grief are you working through? Right. And so this is really beautiful. I love this.

Mirabai Starr (21:37.582)
Good, thank you.

Wakil David Matthews (21:37.996)
Yeah, some of the very first teachings in our Sufi practices, the original loss is when we are born and we find ourselves separated from that divine that we were once just not very long ago a part of. And I think Rumi has a poem about the bamboo flute that is creating beauty after it's been taken from the cutoff.

Annalouiza (22:04.473)
from the, yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (22:05.365)
Yeah, it's been, and it's yearning for that beauty again and creates the beauty with the flute. Yeah, thank you. That's thank you, Annalouiza, very profound thought. And thank you, Mirabai, for the work you're doing. It's really amazing. Really beautiful.

Annalouiza (22:18.857)
Yes, it sounds like you have a really like a buffet table of offerings for so many people. And I, you write, you speak, you teach, you serve. What are your challenges in all this work that you're doing? Tell us, how can we support you?

Mirabai Starr (22:40.062)
That's sweet. You know, by the way, the other branch of that wild heart tree is writing. So in everything we do, all of our offerings, I give an abundance of writing prompts and guide people in writing as a spiritual practice. So grief as a spiritual path, writing as a spiritual practice is kind of the essential tool that…

Wakil David Matthews (23:02.807)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (23:06.614)
…that we work with and people love it so much because they write, write, write and read, read, read to each other and share. And it's a kind of an ecstatic element of the work that we do together. But yeah, it's, it's a lot, because I really, the truth is that writing books, so long form writing is my favorite thing to do. And I'm sitting right now in a little studio that my husband built for me just last year after all these years of writing in a little room in our house. Now I have a dedicated space and it's writing for me is a contemplative practice. I'm alone, I'm quiet, and I have to really show up for a book because it unfolds over a long period of time.

And it's a discipline like a daily sitting practice, which I also have, you know, a daily practice of silent sitting and have since I was 15, so 50 years. I find that it's very difficult to set aside all of the many other tasks in order to write a book. I'm writing a book about grief right now. And while, I mean, what is this last book? 

Wakil David Matthews (24:05.121)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (24:19.257)
Mm-hmm.

Mirabai Starr (24:25.758)
Ordinary Mystics just came out a few months ago, but I already am writing a new book because I have to, it burns in me. And yet with all the teaching and the traveling, there's a lot of teaching and a lot of traveling and a lot of online teaching, and a lot of writing that goes with all of those things, it's challenging for me to be able to sustain the time needed for a book. And yet that is really what feeds my soul.

Wakil David Matthews (24:30.359)
Beautiful.

Annalouiza (24:54.233)
Mm-hmm. That's beautiful.

Mirabai Starr (24:55.006)
Most all of this is is very delicious and nourishing for me but and now with the world being on fire in the ways that it is i find that i'm being called more and more to kind of show up and try to help be a steadying voice in the madness and…

Annalouiza (24:59.916)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (25:13.196)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (25:14.954)
I'm in turmoil myself. I taught a class yesterday and I cried through half of it. I never do that. But the tears are so close because there's such suffering and I see so much more suffering on the horizon. And I want to be present and serve in any way I can. So writing books is very challenging, but I know that that's my Dharma. That's what I've been, that's what I've come to do.

Wakil David Matthews (25:24.011)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember reading a couple of things that you reminded me of, and I'm not sure which books they were, but one was that I think was an ordinary mysticism where you spoke about bending across the threshold as a sacred space to go into your writing space. And that I thought that was such a beautiful image. And also, I don't remember which one it was, but one where you saying all the all the practices you have the silence, the walking the dog, the things that you do every day.

And you say, do I have time for that in my busy life? Absolutely not. I just love that because it's so real, you know, it's a challenge for all of us. know, there's, as you say, there's so much to be done, so much work. and even those of us who are not doing all the amazing things you're doing are challenged in that way as well, I'm sure, to just make, make time for those things that are so important.

Annalouiza (26:37.07)
Yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (26:37.655)
My spiritual director the other day asked me if I was taking time to just weep and and I thought wow, that's something I wrote a little blog about Despair and micro dosing despair basically, you know

Annalouiza (26:52.675)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mirabai Starr (26:54.68)
Awe!

Wakil David Matthews (27:07.019)
Because yeah things are so there's so much right now that's just overwhelming and and it's and part of the tactics of what's being thrown at us is this overwhelmed but to face that and to be in that. I have a lot of practices I do and this kind of stuff to stay balanced, but you know, it just gets deep, overwhelming and exhausting. And so to just take the time to cleanse, it felt like when I practiced it, took 10 minutes to just scream and yell and weep. And it felt like I washed every cell of my body with that, right? So something I really feel connected with what you're talking about.

Annalouiza (27:35.097)
Yeah. And also I was going to say one of my first books that I read of yours was through seminary and it was The Wild Mystic. And you know, it was it was all these women's The Wild Mercy, right? Sorry. I'm like looking at all these little books here. But that was one of the ones we had for seminary. And I just remember reading all these women who were in the portal to hear and listen and act. And as a single parent, I’m like, I sometimes think I can't do anymore. I can't do the weeping and the sitting and the, you know. And then I think about how sacred it is to even talk about these things with kids so that they, I may not be able to practice 100 % of the time, but giving you know, friends and kids like the tools to grieve like there's so much grief right now and letting them cry, letting them like gnash their teeth on the kitchen floor just for an hour because the world feels on fire to them too. So yeah.

Wakil David Matthews (28:43.265)
Sure. Yeah, very much. Well, let's see. Let's look at our little list here, see there's more. I would like to just maybe talk a little bit more about the book, Ordinary Mysticism, because like I said, I'm in love with it. A little obsessed with it. And we don't have to spend a lot of time, because we're getting close to the end anyway. But one of the things you spoke of in the chapter four called Transmission, pages 118 and 119, I make good notes here, was the story of Nancy, and this really struck home for me, of course, dealing with debilitating disease and the way she was moving through that. It so beautiful. I think I'll just read one quote. was, “I'm experiencing my own disappearance every day. Nancy tells me, as the parts are taken away, I wonder what's left.
It needs to be okay with me if the essence is gone and nothing replaces it.”

And she said after that, and sometimes it is okay, and sometimes it's definitely not. So that and then you talk about Father Boyle and then there's the story of Rosemary in Chapter Six, which also deeply moved me. Do you want to speak to any of those or I have quotes I can send you to read if you want? Or you probably have the book.

Mirabai Starr (30:12.545)
I've got a book you can tell me. I'll read anything you like if you want to hear something in my own voice. Just before we go there, and we can end there if you like, what I will say is that my work is so much about being with things as they are. 

Wakil David Matthews (30:34.966)
Yes.

Mirabai Starr (30:41.676)
And so if people are in despair, they get to be in despair, and we bless that that reality. If someone is nearing the end of her life and she'd rather not die, we understand and affirm that and we'll cry with her. And so there's nothing in my work that is telling people that they shouldn't be sad, they shouldn't be angry, they should be something other than they are or feel something other than they're feeling. We're encouraging people not only to be real about what they feel, but to bless it.

And we're blessing it. And so I just really want to emphasize that none of my work is a manual for getting through or over, because we don't consider to be grief a pathological condition or death a mistake.

Wakil David Matthews (31:29.577)
Absolutely, right, very beautiful. Annalouiza, what do you think? Are there any other questions we should do before? I'd like to maybe have you read at the end the epilogue, page 215, where it starts with all you have to do to walk the path of an ordinary mystic. That'd be a good way to kind of sum up, I think. But we also have questions that we like to ask. And I don't know, what do you think, Annalouiza?

Annalouiza (31:53.901)
I think that for her time and her generosity, I think that we should just say, what do you wish we had asked you? what do you want people who are, I think, honestly, bless the despair that that to me is like, that is such a gift to let those who are caregiving somebody going through despair and grief to witness it and hold it alongside and not try to shape shift it into something else so that it feels better for all of them, right? So I really appreciate that as a gem for those listening. But what would you like to say? What's important to you?

Mirabai Starr (32:38.73)
I feel like we've covered it. I mean, let's see, perhaps just to reframe what we've been talking about in terms of this new book, Ordinary Mysticism, Your Life as Sacred Ground. Really what I'm inviting people into is a way of affirming that everything you want, your soul wants most is available not despite your mundane everyday existence, but through the doorway of the ordinary. 

Wakil David Matthews (33:20.172)
Yeah.

Mirabai Starr (33:37.528)
And so many of us have been conditioned to believe that if we could just get finished with the dishes and get the kids off to school, get on with our spiritual lives, rather than truly embracing the most seemingly mundane tasks and realities and painful ones and boring ones and challenging and beautiful and sensual and all the things that the spiritual traditions often have conditioned us to believe are unspiritual. We're reclaiming them as being the very domain where the divine lives and is beckoning to us.

Wakil David Matthews (33:59.328)
Beautiful. Yeah, maybe that last paragraph would be a good way to end that part of the conversation. 

Mirabai Starr (34:51.136)
OK, great.
All my life I've been enamored of the God intoxicated ones, those rarefied souls who slip into ecstatic states and spontaneously utter poetry. The ones who exude deep stillness, embody equanimity, listen more than they speak. The initiated and the ordained, the monastics. You could recognize them by their white robes or their head scarves. The prayer beads wound around their wrists and the scriptures from which they quote. If a talk show host wanted to interview a mystic, these are the exemplars they would invite into the studio. I wanted to be one of them, until I didn't.

I want you to not want that as well. Instead, I want you to want exactly what you have. A real life with its clogged plumbing and flight delays, its cool sheets and steaming showers, its free-floating anxieties and spontaneous foot rubs. Girls Night Out, Monday Night Football, the death of your favorite uncle and the birth of your first grandchild, Comings Out and Turnings In Your crises of faith. I want you to want to be exactly who you are, a true human person, doing their best to show up for this fleeting life with a measure of grace, with kindness and a sense of humor, with curiosity and a willingness to not have all the answers, with reverence for life.

You do not need to chant all night in a temple in the Himalayas. You don't have to be the newest incarnation of Mary Magdalene. It is not necessary to read or write spiritual books. You are not required to know the difference between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism or memorize the Beatitudes. 

All you have to do to walk the path of the ordinary mystic is to cultivate a gaze of wonder and step onto the road. Keep walking. Rest up and walk again. Fall down, get up, walk on. Pay attention to the landscape, to the ways it changes and the ways it stays the same. Be alert to surprises and turn with the turning of the seasons.

Honor your body, train your mind, and keep your heart open against all odds. Say yes to what is, even when it is uncomfortable or embarrassing or heartbreaking. Hurl your handful of yes into the treetops and then lift your face as the rain of yes drops its grace all over you, all around you,
and settles deep inside you.

Wakil David Matthews (37:53.016)
Beautiful, very beautiful. Yeah, I think that's probably for everyone so we will definitely leave that in there. 

Annalouiza (37:54.563)
That was for me. Thank you.
Hmm

Wakil David Matthews (38:22.177)
Well, we do like to end with a poem and being the overachiever that you are, you actually sent us two poems. I don't know if you knew that. 


Mirabai Starr (38:31.421)
Oh no, excuse me, I meant to just send one.

Wakil David Matthews (38:32.177)
Both by somebody I'm going to have to learn more from, Rosemary Watola Tromer. Is that the same Rosemary that you quote in the book or that you speak to in the book? So you sent us one called So Slowly and one called How and you can pick which one you'd like to read for us.

Mirabai Starr (38:23.296)
It is. It is.

Mirabai Starr (38:31.95)
How is the one I meant to send you.

Wakil David Matthews (38:34.935)
Perfect. Let's start with that then. 

Annalouiza (38:53.315)
And you have the title how and then a little quote by Rabbi Irwin. Should I go that first and then begin? How do we live at the traumatic center of death and life? Rabbi Irwin Kula, Original Thinkers Festival 2022. A single moment contains the scent of warm pumpkin pie and the grave digger's spade, the splatter of blood and the smooth honeyed flesh of a mango. Did we ever believe we could live this life unscathed? the stab of loss and the clean mineral perfume of rain. the ache of loss and the deep golden sunflowered yes. the carving loss in the sweet subtle tang of apples in fall. Oh, the ache, oh, the ache, oh, the beauty, the loss, oh, the beauty, the loss, oh, the beauty.

Wakil David Matthews (40:06.391)
That's written by Rosemary Watola Tromer and we will link to more of her. But I will read that again because it is so amazingly beautiful. So how, beginning with this quote from Rabbi Erwin Kula from the Original Thinkers Festival in 2022.

How do we live at the dramatic center of death and life?

A single moment contains the scent of warm pumpkin pie and the gravedigger's spade, the splatter of blood and the smooth honeyed flesh of mango. Did we ever believe we would live this life unscathed? Oh,the stab of loss and the clean mineral perfume of rain. Oh, the ache of loss and the deep Golden, sun-flowered, yes. Oh, the carving of loss and the sweet, subtle tang of apples in the fall. Oh, the ache. Oh, the ache. the beauty, the loss. the beauty, the loss. the beauty.

Wakil David Matthews (41:45.463)
Yes, such gratitude.
Thank you, Mirabai. We love you and your work, and we hope we can let us, you know, we will support you any way we ever can. If you're ever back here, you can stay at our house again, even though it's much smaller than it used to be. So it would be lovely.

Annalouiza (42:08.441)
And I'm in Denver if you ever need a spot here too.

Mirabai Starr (42:14.648)
Thank you so much, both of you. Thank you for the depth of your questions and your responses and for reading that poem so beautifully, both of you. Thank you.