ReThinking Mental Wellbeing

From Noise To Stillness: Grant Shepherd On Authentic Practice

• Andre Jackson

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0:00 | 45:30
SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. This is our community podcast where we can talk about everything related to depression and anxiety. So my name is Andre, and I want to thank you for being with me over the next half an hour as we share this space of lived experience where we can talk about how to live the best version of our authentic life. So, you know, if you're ready, then I'm ready. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

So welcome back to Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. I would love to introduce to you very special guests that I've been for the last few months really wanting to interview. Grant Shepherd, welcome to the podcast. Hey Andre. It's great to be here. What I'm really going to enjoy about this conversation is your ability to be able to organically have conversations. And I think we just kind of flow off each other. And there's some really cool things that we've talked about that I want to capture in an interview for the benefit of other people, because I think other people are going to get some beautiful things out of our conversation. So Grant, welcome to this podcast. And I think one of the things I really like about you is you live what you teach. And your sincerity and your authenticity comes through in everything you say. What I'd love to do, Grant, is talk about um a bit about you and the work that you do before we sort of get into the particulars around particularly meditation and things like that. But give us a background about who you are and what led you into this work that you do.

SPEAKER_02:

Ever since I was a kid, I mean I had experiences that I couldn't quite understand. I tried to find the answers from others, but I could see that a lot of them didn't know or hadn't had the vocab to explain it to me. So then that led me to really looking into meditation and to trying to understand what it was, and then also to try and push it away a bit because I thought it was a bit scary and it was something that a lot of people weren't doing at the time. I've pushed it away for a while and I had a wild existence and lots of parties and lots of barn and lots of getting into all sorts of mischief and I thought it was great and it was a lot of fun uh until it wasn't anymore. Uh this just really isn't working for me. It's not fulfilling me at a deep level, and I need to find something that will do that. And that's when I really started to explore meditation, and that's when I really started to look at it. That's when I started to have my own practice, to start to engage, to go to university, to study it formally. And uh yeah, that's how it's been since.

SPEAKER_01:

I really like what you've said. You've you've illustrated really well the difference between doing something to try and get something from other people and doing something that fills you up, that gives you what you've been looking for. You so you're kind of like a seeker, right? You're you're a person who went into the world and did a whole lot of stuff, but you inward were it wasn't giving you what you were looking for inwardly. So I guess what you do now is a reflection of finding yourself looking inward rather than creating yourself looking outward or from the view of other people or the world around you, which I think is really nice. I mean, that whole angle of looking at what you do is very genuine, and I really appreciate that because we see a lot of people doing this type of work and they're doing it for the wrong reasons, they're doing it uh for the approval and the acceptance and that kind of thing. So I really appreciate you doing this because it lines up with your authentic nature.

SPEAKER_02:

I thank you for saying that. And uh my understanding is that it's really important to engage with meditation, with the attitude of what can I give to the practice? What can I offer to the practice? What is it that um I wish to to really well give is a great word because it's a it's a practice where we we really go inside ourselves and see a lot of things in ourselves, not just the pretty stuff, not just the stuff we want other people to see, also the shadow stuff, also the stuff that we would rather hide from, the stuff we'd rather be distracted from. But when we start to really meditate, in my own practice, I find that what happens more and more is I learn how to step into my authenticity. I learn how to uh I learn how to look at myself honestly. I learn to go, oh okay, that's great, that bit there. Oh, okay, that bit needs a bit of work. Oh, okay, that bit there is fair. How do I accept that? How do I move on from that? Is it there's a great amount of authentic self-reflection that happens as a result. And I'm very grateful for that.

SPEAKER_01:

Look, at the end of the day, I think you're talking about this view of radical acceptance of diving into the stuff that is not very sexy to dive into and becomes very like you use the word shadow work, and that's a very um, is it Freudian or Jongian type philosophy? I think it's Jong. Uh Yong, yeah. And um, you know, that's that's the nitty-gritty, isn't it? That that takes meditation and shadow work out of the realm of where it sits from a popularity TikTok, YouTube type look into some really uncomfortable places, right? That we Yeah. Yeah, you're totally right.

SPEAKER_02:

Now, as far as uh social media goes, I work with YouTube and I find YouTube really interesting and very valuable because I can present long form teachings to people that they can receive benefit from. If we go to like the other social media platforms, they can be useful too, but often what happens with your material after a few days is it disappears somewhere into some black hole somewhere and it's gone. Whereas with YouTube, someone can go to my channel and say, Oh, I want to do a meditation around the anxiety. I want to do a meditation on the breath. I need to just find a way to settle myself in my posture. They can go and work with those videos and they're always there. So I find that very useful. One of the drawbacks with social media is it kind of glamorizes meditation. Oh no, hold on, this is it. This you know, it's all very glamorous, it's all very otherworldly. Now, my understanding is meditation is real. Above all, it's authentic. Sometimes it might be glamorous and otherworldly, at other times you're gonna be knee deep in stuff you need to deal with. But there's a certain authenticity about that and a realness that can't be attained any other way, in my view. You just sit, I just look at myself. Okay, I ask myself this very important question. What's up? It's a really good question. How often do we ask ourselves that question, Andrew? What's up? What's up with me? What's up with you? What's up with him over there? It's a it's a way of opening, it's a way of being curious, it's a way of going, how am I feeling right now? It's an authentic way of really checking in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, it's a you know, this whole self-awareness thing, this this journey to be authentic is is not pretty, it's not easy, but it's extremely rewarding. The payoff is beyond words, beyond measure, right?

SPEAKER_02:

I totally hear that. It's the most important thing to know yourself. Everything else could be taken away. I mean, not long ago, I was sitting at someone's bedside while they were getting ready to leave their body. These things happen. Even our body's gonna be taken away. Anything could be taken away. But our connection to ourself, my connection to myself, your connection to yourself, that's there. That's there for us all time. That's the only real, authentic, real thing that we can have.

SPEAKER_01:

And in a ch in a in a world that is constantly changing, constantly evolving, that stability of knowing that we we need to be our own center, our own pivot point, right? Becomes very comforting when you get to that place, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely, yeah. That's why I love the post that you're putting on Facebook at the moment. Being an introvert, about looking inside, about understanding our inner world, you know. The practices of yoga and tantra are very much about that. So look inside first. What's happening inside me first? How am I feeling? What are my thought processes? How am I engaging with the world? Where's my responsibility? Yeah. And in this way, if I start to navigate life with those guidelines, with those pathways, then very naturally I'm gonna start being more real, more authentic, more to the point. Because I'm gonna really be looking at, okay, how am I acting in this moment? Is it with integrity? Is it not? Where am I right now? A very authentic way to live. More integrity than just trying to impress people all the time.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I was taking I I was taking a group of people through a session this morning in a workshop, and we were talking about the fact that we spend the first 15, 20 years of our life living in accordance to what other people's expectation is, which is great as a child because we need that guidance, right? As an adult, it doesn't show up as well as it did as a child, because we learn to view ourselves through the eyes of how other people interpret us, which becomes problematic, right? So we we learn to live from the outside in, to have that image, to have that identity, to have that, you know, do I look like I'm doing something? Do I look acceptable? So on and so on. And I guess uh social media, you know, TikTok, Insta, with their highly edited filters and rehearsals and edits to capture the perfection of what they're trying to portray. But like you said, I love the idea of learning to live not from the outside in but from the inside out. It has to come from the inside, right? Yeah. 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

I was at a dinner recently with a friend of mine who had travelled to some sites of pilgrimage. And she said what she noticed is all the people there are looking very holy at those sites of pilgrimage to get the perfect shot for the gram. Now to me, visually, how beautiful. Okay, nice. But is that the point? Wouldn't the point be to go there and to offer a reverence and just to be in that moment and experience that pilgrimage place that so many people have given up so much to be there for a short period of time? Wouldn't that more be the point? What if that pilgrimage point is inside us? What if that's where it is? What if wherever we go, inside us is our temple, inside us is our church, inside us is our mosque. What if what if it's in there? There's a beautiful um saint who I'm paraphrasing what they say. He said, Um, whatever you do, don't hurt a human being's heart, because the heart is the temple of God. Don't hurt someone else's heart, whatever you do. That's beautiful. Just imagine what the world would be like if we took that and lived by it.

SPEAKER_01:

I I talk, you kind of reminded me of um and for those that know me, they'll know what I'm gonna say. Um, so apologies for repeating it, but Michael Angelo um made some amazing sculptures out of a block of marble, and he was asked once how he could create these amazing sculptures out of a block of marble. And his his reply was that the sculpture's already in there. My job is to chip away all the rough bits around the edges. And I see that as being our journey in this thing that we call life. We've we've done the best we can through life to protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe. And along with that, there's layers of protection, there's layers of mechanisms that we've had to learn in order to keep ourselves as safe as possible, but some of those aren't necessarily the best option. And what we have to do, leading back to this authenticity, is that our authentic nature is inside us. The true uh part of us is inside us. Our job is to chip away all those bits that we've learnt that have blocked the access to get to it.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I hear that. An Wilbur is a very uh influential transpersonal psychologist, and I was studying a lot of the in that field. Eastern ideology and western ideology, and where do they meet? Ken Wilbur was talking about translation versus transformation. So translation is when you take a spiritual practice or you take a spiritual path and you fit it into your life in a way that it adds something to you. So that it's it's something that's palatable in your life, or if you thought it was interesting, or whatever it is. A transformation is when you engage with a spiritual practice in a way to deeply understand yourself, and a way to let go of all of that which no longer serves you, so that you can emerge, just like out of like a block of marble, you can emerge out of that as a true embodiment of who you are. That's clever. Yeah. That would be that would be an example of translation. How holy can I look? How how glamorous can I make it look? How interesting can I make it look? How palatable can I make it look? But as you mentioned before, and I 100% agree, the work on ourselves is sometimes not that pretty, but is it rewarding?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I wouldn't have it any other way. What's interesting is that people who are listening to this or listen to that example that you've just given who will probably feel a little bit upset about the example. And that's probably the best time for people to introspect into themselves and go, Oh, why did I feel upset? What what what happened within me? So thanks for the lesson.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm on Facebook a lot, I'm on YouTube a lot, you know. I just set up a TikTok, I'm learning how to do shorts. So that okay, you're stressed, you're anxious, breathe with me right now. Let's just breathe. You know, it can be a really useful tool. But if it's just used as a way to be entertained, to be distracted, then that's contradictory to what meditation is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, the path we're on, all of us, everyone who's listening, you and I, the path we're on is a combination of the choices that are presented to us. 100%. Yeah, and and how we prioritize those choices. I love that. So yeah. So I mean the self-improvement industry is a$43 billion industry, right? That's yeah. It's massive. So, you know, I have my own opinions about self-help. Some of them good, some of them not so good. You know, uh, I think there is a place for, regardless whether you call it a self-help or whatever it is, as long as it is leaning in towards your authenticity and your truth, then that's the right direction, right? Oh, yeah, bad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I remember uh it reminds me of a joke where this person is like um they go into a friend's house, and the friend's house has a huge bookshelf with every single self-help book possibly on the shelf. And the person looks to the friend and he says, Why all the books on self-help? And then the person, their friend goes, Well, I just can't help myself.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, we fall in love with the idea of change, or we fall in love with the concept of uh improving whatever we're looking for, and that that's our dopamine hit. Yeah. Why would we want to why would we want to do it when we've got the reward already?

SPEAKER_02:

You know? I mean, you know, I'm a meditation teacher, but you give me a good cat meme and I'm all over it. Holy, you know, there there's there's room for joy in the world, you know. But yeah. Are we are we like engaging with it judiciously, or are we just getting sucked into it? You know, as you said before, the choice is always there. Where do we go?

SPEAKER_01:

Reminds me of a meme. You're probably familiar with this meme. Uh don't take life seriously, no one gets out of it alive. That's so true.

SPEAKER_02:

Or a friend of mine said when she used to get up and you know in the doldrums, sometimes she'd say to her mother, not things, you know, and her mother would say, Cheer up, soon be dead.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Buddy, yeah, no mucking around, eh? I think you know, seeing we're speaking about that, I love the idea, and this is a this is a Buddhist, I think it's a Zen Buddhist quote um that you'll probably be familiar with, but I love I I talk about this a lot in in uh my sessions. The same man can't step into the same stream twice. And I love that because that captures how change happens all the time, you know. So someone's stepping into the stream or a river, they step out again, and if they immediately step back in, it's a different body of water, and they're different people, you know. And even if you want to take it from a biological point of view, and I'm hoping I'm getting this right for those that are listening, you can correct me if I'm incorrect. But every seven or ten years, we're completely new people. Everything changes. Cells within us die, regrow, gut lining dies and regrows, everything changes. But we have this concept where our thinking, our cognitive stuff that's going on, that tends to stay the same as we hold on to the suffering and the stresses and all the stuff that's not good for us. But at the end of the day, every single moment has a different moment. You're never going to repeat this moment you're in ever again. There'll be similar moments to it.

SPEAKER_02:

I remember I just finished um my degree at the University of Sydney. You know, it was a wonderful experience at the School of Studies and Religion there. And I just finished the degree. It was going to be the Sydney Olympics. And I was working as a personal trainer in a gym. And someone said to me, Hey, it's going to be the Sydney Olympics. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people are going to be descending onto the city. It's going to be amazing. And I thought to myself, get me out of here. Get me out of here. I don't want to be here. Anyway, the person I was personal training said, my cousin's a transpersonal psychologist. She's got a little hut on the beach in the Royal National Park. It's very, very quiet. Nobody's there. You could go there and I and meditate if you like, in isolation for as long as you like. You can even go for like seven weeks. And I already had it in my head that's how long I wanted to go. And I said, I would love to do that. Fast forward, there I am, in a little hut, no running water, no electricity. And then I'm about to step and walk up a huge hill. And as I put one step down, I hear inwardly the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. It was an incredible experience. And I love what you were saying about change. What meditation would say that at the core there is an awareness that never changes. Yeah, so the awareness is always with us, right? So meditation is a is a pathway back to that. Well, many pathways. That's why I called what I do conscious pathways. There's many pathways to get back to that awareness. And then learn to live from that.

SPEAKER_01:

I like that. And it it kind of leads us to the conversation now about you've had on it just a little bit just then, but what is meditation? What is the what is the purpose of it? Because it's a buzzword, you hear it all the time around the place. But from your perspective, what is it? What is meditation?

SPEAKER_02:

So meditation is your natural state. Meditation is you at your very core. You don't have to go anywhere else, you don't have to be anything else, you don't have to have anything else. It's you, it's your essence, and yet we tend to not recognize it. We look everywhere else for it. We look we're looking to be happy. Everybody just wants to be happy, and we run around trying to be happy and we forget to look inside. But when we start to look inside, it feels very spinted, it feels authentically me. Meditation is about learning how to connect with that over and over again. And learning to flow with the process of it. Because as you said before, everything changes, it's the only constant, but that flowing awareness, that awareness is always there. And when we start to connect with that, we can navigate and flow with light.

SPEAKER_01:

You're absolutely speaking my language. I I talk about flow all the time. That when we get out of our own way, when we can show ourselves and compassion, in this case, through the through the meditative uh place that we go to, when we're not fighting against life, when we're not trying to be things for other people, when we're you know, it's it becomes a place it almost undescribable to within the English language. It becomes, you know, we can describe like you just described it, but for those of us that do meditate and go through that, that pales in comparison to the experience of what it actually does, right? Yeah. I love there's certain and I don't know them, you probably know them. There's other languages outside the English language that captures things really well and a lot better than the English language can capture. How do people, if someone's listening and they're like, This sounds really cool, I love what you're both talking about, but where do I start? I've got a busy mind, I'm just overwhelmed, or that and I'm speaking from my perspective of anxiety, how do I get out of the chaos of overwhelm around from the world and and from within me? And how do I start this thing that you and I have called meditation?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a great, great question. Um, one of the languages, by the way, that you are one of the languages that I would really say resonates with meditation is Sanskrit. It's an ancient language. It is a spiritual language, it's a vibrational language. There's many, many terms in there which describe the different states of meditation. The words can only kind of give they're the fingers pointing to the moon. The moon is something different. The moon is something different. When it comes to being anxious or not knowing where to start or find someone who has walked the path before. But make sure that you test them. Make sure that they walk their talk. Make sure that they're just not talking about meditation all the time. Make sure they're doing it. Make sure they're living it. Make sure they're being authentic. Make sure it's not all for show. There's a very ancient mystical mantra. It's called just do it. Do it.

SPEAKER_01:

So didn't didn't the famous mystic Nike say that? Oh yes, little betty and just do it.

SPEAKER_02:

So the thing is just do it. Like find a way to sit quietly. Just just sit quietly. It doesn't have to be long, it can just be for a few minutes. If you find that the anxiety is too much or there's stress or trauma that comes up, then seek out somebody who is qualified to help you with meditation who can show you different ways to meditate that will get you away from that anxiety. Because if you try and force yourself, now this is one of the things around social media or all the information around meditation on the web or people will say, Oh, just for put push through, push through, you're feeling anxious, you're feeling trauma, don't worry, push through, push through. My advice would be no. No, don't don't do that because you're going to re-traumatize yourself. My advice would be find ways to see your anxiety or your trauma through the eyes of compassion and learn how to to skillfully navigate through them rather than trying to forcibly push through. Now, certain meditation teachers will be able to show you that, but you don't want to white knuckle it. There's no need to white knuckle it. More, it's about, well, ask yourself the question, why is it that I would like to meditate? I mean, really, when it comes down to me, with all the people that I've worked with over the many years of teaching meditation, everybody wants to feel peace, happiness. When you when we're learning to meditate, we're actually doing something really beautiful. Okay, this is for me.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's not selfish. It's about getting out of the world that tells us we have to be productive and getting into the place where you can just be present with everything as it is, rather than the feel you have to have an outcome of that, right?

SPEAKER_02:

You got it. Yeah. And the interesting thing too is meditation doesn't have to mean that we sit somewhere way away from everything and holier than everybody else, and we don't have to do anything. Doesn't mean that at all. Meditation can make us more productive. Meditation can help to show us how to be in the flow of life. Meditation can show us how to actively listen. Meditation can show us how to communicate with authenticity. You know, there's so many benefits to it. It's not just about sitting down quietly in a closed room with our eyes closed. It's also about getting out there and engaging with the world in a very authentic, engaged, dynamic way.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Which kind of now you've mentioned that. Isn't that are we are we now leaning into talking about mindfulness? How that plays a part. So let's talk about that for a second. Or three. Sure.

SPEAKER_02:

So meditation tends to be more formalized, if you like. So you know, sitting down cross-legged with the eyes closed, or there's specific practices you can do with the eyes closed too, and eyes opened as well. Meditation and mindfulness are different. So mindfulness is is more like engaged with the senses or with movement. So, for example, say you're washing the dishes, okay, and you want to become centered. Feel the heat of the water on your skin, the sensation of the water, feel the soap, see yourself washing your dishes, feel yourself putting it onto the rat. And that way you are using mindfulness to be mindful in your action, which then brings you into the present moment. It's more engaged with the senses, more engaged with action. To be clear, mindfulness can bring up some anxiety at times. Mindfulness can bring things up, but you need to look at, it's not a cure all. Same with meditation, deep stuff comes up. Then it's important to have the tools to be able to navigate that. It's like, imagine like you're there's a pond in front of you, right? It looks nice and clear, and then you jump into the pond with a big stick and you start stirring it up, stirring it up, and then it's like pea soup. And it's murky and there's all sorts of stuff there. Then you're cleaning it off with a net. Cleaning it off with a net, cleaning it off with a net. And then before you know it, it's looking clear again. And then you jump in, we stir it up, pea soup again, but less than before. You clean it, and you clean it. That it that is the way mindfulness and meditation works. It's like it's a clearing of the mind. But when your stuff comes up to be seen, the most important thing is don't forget it. See it. Look at it. And then let it go. Let it go if you can. Or if not, see it. And then the next time it comes up and you see it again, your awareness is stronger, and then you can decide what you want to do with it.

SPEAKER_01:

And I bet people that are listening will be thinking, Why would I want to do that? That? Why would I want to to stir up something that's been sitting there under my awareness? Why am I wanting to bring that up into my awareness? Is that going to make me suffer more? And what's the purpose of that?

SPEAKER_02:

Ah, what a great question. Would you say that taking medicine is fun? Depends what medicine. But generally, no. So even though it may be a little painful to look at it, won't it be wonderful to have some freedom from it?

SPEAKER_01:

I remember years ago someone said to me, Andre, the reason why we have pain is so you can be directed to the place where it hurts in order to heal. I love that. I mean, that's physical pain, but when you relate that to emotional pain, it's the same thing, right? It directs us to what needs to be healed because pain is telling us that we're still there's something hurting, something's not right. This is a science that is thousands of years old.

SPEAKER_02:

Look to the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali, look to the Shiva Sutras, look to the Bhagavad Gita. They're basically a map of the mind and the emotions and how to get clear and how to understand yourself at a very deep level. And they're thousands of years old. And the reason that they're still here today is because they work. They work.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And are we seeing in today's world, as we mentioned before, you know, the world is so so busy, it's 24-7 connectivity, there's so much information thrown at us. Are we seeing now the the effects of finding peace through those mechanisms or any other mechanisms that we use that's healthy? Do they stand out even more because the world is so much more busier? When we feel peace, it feels so much more peaceful.

SPEAKER_02:

Truly insightful question. I would say now more than ever helps us to be still in the midst of the chaos and to answer your question. I think many, many people are looking to meditate. They're looking to understand. One caveat I would put there is there is so much information on the internet. So whoever you decide to learn from, test them out. Do they live it? Do they walk their talk? Are they giving you information about you and your life? Or is it to school for show? Check, see where they're at. Yeah. I was lucky. I made the well, I don't know if lucky's the right word. I wanted to go as deep as I could into meditation. I was not there to muck around. I wanted to go as deep as I could, and I'm so grateful to this day that I did that. Was it quite interesting transitioning back out into the world after living in those communities for 16 years? Well, let me tell you, it certainly was. But am I grateful for that? I am grateful for that. Definitely. It taught me so much. Now, if you don't have a chance to do that, if that something doesn't fit into your life, meditation can still be done wherever you are. And that's why I love Tantra. It's it says wherever you are, you can meditate. There's no place meditation is from. And there's many ways to do it. Wouldn't it be nice just to have a bit of peace? Wouldn't it be nice to have a little bit of sterilism? That's what meditation offers.

SPEAKER_01:

Wouldn't it be nice to understand my emotions a bit? This is such a cool conversation. I'm sitting here listening to what you were saying, and I'm thinking that meditation encompasses every religion there is. Yeah, one of my favourite verses in the Bible, um, be still and know that I am God. I mean, meditative right there. And I think, and again, this is just my view that I think religion people give a bit of a bad name, but I think religion has a purpose. The religion is meant to be a place where you can hang your spiritual your spirituality onto. Religion provides the routine, the framework, the construct to hang spiritual, your spiritual self onto. That's my definition of it, you know. Um I think that is the right order. Spiritual first, find the routine, the construct, the framework that we've labeled religion uh into your spirituality, but the other way around just doesn't work. In other words, if we're too religious and it's all framework and no essence, then that becomes the wrong way around, right? That's just my view. So I just want to make that quite clear to listeners.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I really love that. Like I would say that religion is the framework or it's a set of rules or it's a set of regulations. And that spirituality is their inner experience as a being, as a being born on this amazing planet, you know, that we inherently have spirit, that it's there. And that whatever map that we choose to engage with, whether it be Hinduism, whether it be Christianity, whether it be Islam, whether it be the indigenous traditions, whatever it is, if it's an authentic tradition, it's gonna lead us back inside ourselves. It's gonna lead us there. I studied comparative religion. You're exactly I I'm a hundred percent agreement with you. Any authentic religious path, spiritual path, is gonna take you inside yourself. It's gonna take you there. For me, you know, someone will say to me, Oh, you know, you practice tantra and yoga and and I say, Yeah, but it's just a map. And it's it's I love the map, it's a map that really resonates with me, but it's it's a map. You know, if you want a mystical Christianity, great, you know. And a map is never quite complete. You've got to get to the destination. There might be a few things where you go off the track a little bit and you have the course correct, and but every map is there to take you to the goal, whatever that goal might be. About knowing yourself. I like that map. Everything's a map. Find your own map. Brilliant. I mean, I remember standing in the middle of India on a very one day in the village, and everything's happening, and it's a company of sound and movement and joy, and nobody crowds like the Indians. They are experts and it's amazing. They just know how to do it. And of course, you get caught up in that whole joy and that whole flow of the whole thing. Yeah. And I remember being there and I'm looking around and I'm going, well the hell did I end up yeah. This too we boy. I'm up in the middle of all of this amazingness. Goodness me, what an absolute mystery. I'm absolutely loving. And that's that's how life flowed, and I'm very, very grateful for that. And people say to me, Why do you do this? Why do you teach this? Isn't it that sort of unconvexed no? What are you doing this for? And I say, Well, because it works. That's why I do it. And I love it.

SPEAKER_01:

Different different maps, different paths leading to the same end goal, leading to the same end game. And I guess that the other thing that that does as you were talking, I'm thinking the beauty of finding your own map, the thing that works for you, is that that's your truth, but it doesn't mean that everyone else is wrong. And yeah, so it means that other people have the freedom to do their own thing because we're all on the same, we're all in the same journey using different paths, right? And it becomes very freeing where people can say, well, your way of doing it is wrong, and you can go, that's fine. That's that's not your truth. Your truth is wrapped in in a in a in in Christianity, or your truth is wrapped in uh a religious framework, or your truth is wrapped in nature, or your truth is wrapped in um uh Buddhism, whatever it is, but your truth is your truth, right? And I think that there's a huge amount of freedom knowing that I know what works for me is my truth, but you have the you you live your truth. I'm not trying to say that my truth is the right way and you've got to do what I say is true. You find your own. That that freedom is beautiful.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And of course, all those different maps they lead to a a full little word that we're all very terrified of. And that fall as a word is love. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

I was thinking work, but okay, love. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Not being in that place, learning how to to navigate life from that place.

SPEAKER_01:

Learning how to be in that incredibly cool. And I I guess the whole essence of what we're talking about is removing the myth and expectation of having to get to a certain place mentally and emotionally, or even spiritually before you can start to meditate or be mindful. So just start where you are. That's right. Even for a minute a day. Yeah. And as I'm saying often in my workshops, your brain understands consistency. Yes. Right? So doing one minute a day, which doesn't feel like a lot, but when it's applied consistently has compounding benefits. Yeah. Absolutely. And then increasing that as you go.

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. Cumulative. Yep. The benefits definitely they accumulate. I loved what you were saying before about, you know, um, about you know, the different ways to the different ways to engage. So in tantra, there's a mantra. It's um it's the natural mantra of the breath. When you breathe in, the syllable the syllable is hum. So you hear that on the in breath, and then when you breathe out the syllable is sa, and you hear that on the outbreath. Literally what that means is I am that. Um, I am sa. That is consciousness. So I am consciousness. I am consciousness. And you're right, it doesn't take a long time and it doesn't have to be way off in the distance. Oh, it is there on the top of the mountain as some sort of unattainable attainance with a very few it's right here, right now. Sit down for one minute, two minutes, and follow the breath, and there it is. And if you can't find it right there at the time, don't worry, it's there. Just keep going, it'll be there for you.

SPEAKER_01:

It kind of reminds me of um Teknad Han. Some of the listeners have uh may have heard of him. Tibetan? Is he a Tibetan monk? He's Buddhist, yeah. Yeah, Buddhist monk. Um well known, he's past now, but he was well known for his work in in bringing mindfulness into the Western culture, right? Yeah. He's famously uh famously quoted as saying before enlightenment, chop and carry wood, after enlightenment, chop and carry wood. And I like that. It's just there's no having to obtain to a certain thing and then we stop living. We just continue doing what we're doing, but we're more aware, we're more uh in tune with ourselves, we're more in flow with ourselves and our authentic nature, where we found our peace and our stillness. And in a world that is constantly bombarding us, telling us uh a million different ways to do that. We're the only ones that know the way to do that because it'll fit within our truth, like you said, finding the maps that tell us which way that we need to go from an individual perspective.

SPEAKER_02:

It doesn't have to be all otherworldly, yeah. You don't have to have some sort of mystical otherworldly guru. I mean you can if you want, and if they're a good guru, then great. But start where you are, you know, start where you are and find a way that's workable for you, that it really works for you. And if you can find that, then you're much more likely to continue to engage with that rather than go, oh, it's still it's all a bit hard, and then put it to the side.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. And I think you know, that's important to know as well is that expect it to be difficult, but don't expect it to be impossible. And I always say to people, when you have that understanding that it's going to be difficult, when it becomes difficult, it's no surprise. You expect it to be difficult, but it's not impossible. So I think having the the mentality change because people do make it look easy. You know, experienced, seasoned meditators who have been meditating for 20 years will make it look easy. And we have this bad habit of comparing ourselves to two people uh at the start of our journey who have been on their journey for 20 years, right? Right. And why are they seasoned?

SPEAKER_02:

Because they've done it a lot. Because they've done it. Kind of like, you know, riding a bike. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, you know, until it's part of your nature. The first thing you do, just start.

SPEAKER_01:

Grant, I'm I'm extremely uh honored uh and blessed to have you here. I've learned a heck of a lot from this conversation. And you are a person and and the listeners will be able to hear this too. Your gentleness and your compassion and your kindness comes through in the words and the way that you speak. So I wanted to say thank you and Nomasty for this opportunity to spend this time with you. I have got a lot out of this, and I and I hope that our listeners will get a lot out of this too. But you provided a place of learning, but you've also provided a place where we can just get out of the chaos and just sit and listen to two people talking, and hopefully that gives people some knowledge about how to start finding their peace and finding their authentic nature. Oh, thank you, brother.

SPEAKER_02:

It's been an absolute honour as well. I've really appreciated the conversation and the insight. We're so busy, we're running around, we need a bit of peace, you know, we need a bit of stillness. If this in any way contributes to that, then I'm very, very happy. Very ready. Namaste, brother. Namaste.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's all I've got for this episode. Thank you for joining me today. And I hope that you've got something useful from this discussion. And if you have any questions you would like us to discuss on future episodes, then please email me at rethinking mental wellbeing at gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. So until then, go well, go in peace, have a great week, and we'll see you next time.