#20 - Intentionality, Part 5: It’s Useful to View the Past in a Friendly Way

In this episode of Being Different Together, Kelly and Nyssa continue their intentionality mini-series by unpacking another Murray Landsman saying: “It is useful to view the past in a friendly way.”

They explore what it really means to make peace with your past, including how to work with regret, grief, and painful memories without spiritually bypassing or pretending everything was “meant to be.” Through stories of a woman dancing on the beach to honor friends who died, family history at Cocoa Beach, and a powerful dream about everything in life being a gift wrapped in challenges, they show how intentionality and self-awareness can shift how you relate to what’s already happened.

They also touch on the unconscious mind, Zen teachings on regret, and our cultural obsession with self‑improvement—why it’s so tempting to replay the past, and how to learn from your history without living in the rearview mirror. 

If you’ve ever wondered how to let go of regret, be kinder to your past self, or hold grief and loss without getting stuck there, this conversation is for you.

Main Topics Covered:

• How the simple phrase “It is useful to view the past in a friendly way” can completely change your relationship with regret and memory
• The story of a woman dancing at sunrise on the beach to honor friends who died—and what it teaches about grief
• Why humans are 95–99% unconscious (according to some neuropsychologists) and what that means for how we judge ourselves and others
• The difference between being actually cruel and just being unconscious and automatic in our behavior
• How to tell the difference between genuinely learning from the past and just replaying it in your mental rearview mirror
• Why trying to be “less human” (through self‑improvement, perfectionism, or avoiding aging and death) actually increases suffering
• What Zen teachings suggest about regret, karma, and the idea that things couldn’t have happened any other way
• A powerful dream message that “everything in life is a gift—and the really good gifts come wrapped in challenges”
• Practical ways to be friendlier to your past self without bypassing pain or pretending everything is “for the best”
• How seeing your past more kindly can open up more compassion, freedom, and joy in the present

Links:

• Episode #16 - Intentionality, Part 1: Everything You’ve Done Prepared You For This Moment
• Episode #17 - Intentionality, Part 2: Feeling Good Needs No Excuse
• Episode #18 - Intentionality, Part 3: If You Think You Can Change the World, You Have a Better Chance
• Episode #19 - Intentionality, Part 4: Your Reality is as Good as Anyone Else’s

Books:

• The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin

Stay in Touch:

Nyssa Hanger: www.nyssahanger.com | IG: @nyssahanger

Kelly Brady: www.kellybrady.me | IG: @drkellybrady

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:08

Welcome to Being Different Together, the podcast for people who want to make the world a better place, but no, they can't do it alone.

SPEAKER_03 0:17

I'm Dr. Kelly Brady, acupuncturist, psychotherapist, and certified dialogue therapist.

SPEAKER_05 0:22

And I'm Nissa Hanger, massage therapist, aromatherapist, coach, and real dialogue specialist.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Together we'll explore how conversations can improve relationships, make work more joyful, and spark healing for ourselves and our communities.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

And listen, we don't shy away from the hard conversations. In fact, we welcome them.

SPEAKER_03 0:43

This isn't about being right, it's about being different together.

SPEAKER_05 0:53

Hello, hello. Welcome everyone to another episode of Being Different Together.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Sometimes I wonder in our intro, you know how we always say hello, hello, and then we welcome people to the show. Yeah. There are other podcasts where I found people just sort of jump right into it.

SPEAKER_05 1:14

They just start talking.

SPEAKER_03 1:15

They just start talking almost as if we had been talking to the entire time, and then they're just like, oh, you know what? Yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's rule. They just start talking about it. We can try that. This is what we're talking about today. You want to redo it? No, no. I don't want to redo it. I just am talking about the idea of talking about things and uh starting to talk about them.

SPEAKER_05 1:36

Oh, so you want to talk about that?

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Okay. Yeah, I do. So asking somebody to talk about something. Like, can we talk about this?

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

It's kind of like the intro to the show. Like, do you see what I'm talking about here? It's like, can we talk about this? Can I like to have a talk with you? Can we talk? Uh-huh. It's a it's kind of a risky open, like just to even start a conversation with a person.

SPEAKER_05 2:03

I mean, well, and also what if that person just says no?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Yeah, no. Yeah, I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:08

Yeah, no. No, we can't talk. And then you're like, but we're talking right now.

SPEAKER_03 2:14

Today we're still talking about intentionality, right?

SPEAKER_05 2:16

Yeah, we're still on intentionality. And um, I just want to mention that um I don't know if the sound will come through sounding different this episode, but we are recording in a in a uh different location at the moment. Yeah. Um not to make you jelly or anything, but I can totally see the Atlantic Ocean from where we are recording.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Yes. So to send some gratitude wherever you may be to OV Hangar.

SPEAKER_05 2:45

Totally. That's my dad.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

OV Hanger got this timeshare over on Cocoa Beach.

SPEAKER_05 2:51

Yep, one day we were here.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

20 years ago.

SPEAKER_05 2:54

We were here and it was a rainy day. We went out to brunch at Denny's. Okay. And somebody was there, you know, while we're waiting in line for brunch. Yeah. There's some salesperson in the entryway that's like, hey, listen, it's a rainy day. What are you gonna do? For if you come and listen to our sales pitch, we will give you a hundred dollars. And my dad was like, I got nothing else to do today. I might as well just go.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

That was that. Now here we sit. See, so that guy started a conversation.

SPEAKER_05 3:26

He did. Yeah. He said, Hey, can I can I talk to you about an exciting opportunity? That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

That's what that's what happened.

SPEAKER_05 3:37

And then, yeah, no, it's a beautiful place. And if you're on my email list, I'm sure you've I usually will send an email when we're whenever we're here and share some story about it. There was that time that um I'd love to see the sunrise when we're here, get up early enough to see the sunrise because we're on the east coast of Florida. And um one day, one week I was here and every morning I saw this woman down at the beach dancing. Oh, walking and dancing. I got a little video of her, and I was just like, man, this is a happy person. I ended up seeing her at the end of the trip, and um, I just happened to be down there when she was dancing on by, and I was like, listen, lady, I gotta tell you. I have enjoyed you have brought so much joy to me this week by dancing. And she had a really beautiful story about it.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

Wasn't the remind me of the story.

SPEAKER_05 4:26

Well, the story was as I rem as I remember it, which you know. Who knows?

SPEAKER_03 4:31

This is my version of the story, but it's your story, so you get whatever version you want.

SPEAKER_05 4:34

It's true. I guess she um she had a couple friends, and they're they had made a pact with each other that they would retire at Cocoa Beach and you know, live out their retirement here on this this really nice little beach town. Uh-huh. And her other friends, um, I know at least one died of cancer. Like they had they had passed. You know, her friends had passed, and so every morning she gets up and she dances down the beach in honor of them.

SPEAKER_03 5:08

Yeah, I love that story, and it's a great segue into today's slip. Oh my god, it is it's perfect. I didn't even entirely perfect.

SPEAKER_05 5:15

My gosh. Okay, so it's entirely perfect. Just tuning in, we are in the middle of a series. This is part number five of We Don't Know How Many Parts It Will Take. Um, but I imagine we're getting close to halfway through, not quite, and we're doing um a deep dive into these sayings in intentionality written um by one Murray Landsman. So if you have not listened to the rest of it, you might want to pause here and go back to episode 16, which will be linked in the show notes, or you can just follow wherever you're listening in and um listen to part one so you know the full, the full context of these words of wisdom we are sharing with you.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Right. And to say that, you know, Murray was my professor in graduate school, and he was, you know, just kind of a beautiful person who really embodied a great w what I think was really a lot of intentionality. What is intentionality? It's kind of like you get to we get to decide as humans how we want to show up. Yeah, that's what makes us different than all the other animals. Uh-huh. Other animals can be trained and they do make decisions and they have emotions.

SPEAKER_06 6:26

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

But they don't have self-awareness. So we get I mean, we're here at the beach with our our beloved poppy, who is just, you know, such like a little smile factory for people. I mean, he's such a bringer of the joy to people, and he's just an angel to travel with. And I'm not just saying that because I'm I'm one of his moms. I'm saying that because he I've had other dogs, and this dog is way easier to travel with. Um he's pretty easygoing. He listens really well, he wants to please, he's got a kind of a calm temperament for a Frenchie. And so um, yeah, he's he's he's just been great. So Poppy will, you know, you can see I can watch him get aggressive, or you know, he'll have a moment, like if he if somebody lunges at him or he might bark back suddenly. Um maybe he's feeling angry, maybe he's feeling afraid, maybe maybe he'll give a little bark. Maybe sometimes he gets a little bit a little I can't go do that. So he's a little disappointed, dejected, maybe that's sad. Maybe when he's in trouble, he gets experiences a little shame. Certainly, if he lost something, he might experience grief.

SPEAKER_04 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Um but but he doesn't have self-awareness, he's just fully experiencing those things. Yeah. So he he that's the difference. Human beings, we develop this self-awareness in our psychological development.

SPEAKER_05 7:48

That we can decide how we want to show up. We don't just show up by and we certainly can show up by default. I know that I have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Um well here's the thing how we develop self-awareness primarily, developmental psychology says, is that we develop it in in relationship with other humans. So um anyway, intentionality is this that we have self-awareness and then from then we can decide, you know, how do we want to show up? And um I mean one of the things that I think is really important about that is to recognize that I do think we have an unconscious mind, meaning I can't remember everything that's ever happened to me. And so it's all in this this repository, you know. But Freud said that it looked like an iceberg, which is the tip outside of the water, right? That's the top of the iceberg.

SPEAKER_05 8:34

Right, that's what we can see.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

That's what we can't see, and then underneath is this huge amount that we can't see, and that's the unconscious. And then Carl Jung took that idea and he expanded it and said that there's another layer deeper than that where we're all connected.

SPEAKER_05 8:46

All the icebergs are connected.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

All the icebergs are connected. Some people call that the collective psyche. He called it the collective unconscious. Yes. Um, so I to me that those ideas really resonate, and out of the unconscious is where our automatic tendencies come from. So it feels automatic. Like we don't, we're not aware that we're doing them. I'm like I'm sitting now on my little cushion on this chair, and I have my left, I'm I have my feet propped up, and I have my left foot crossed over my right, and that's an unconscious mechanism.

SPEAKER_05 9:20

I have my left foot foot crossed over my right right now, too.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

But I didn't think I'm gonna cross my left foot. Neither did I. I just sat in the chair and my legs crossed themselves. Yeah, that's unconscious.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Like if you've ever been in your car driving home and you're thinking about something else and you don't know how you got from the store to your house, you couldn't remember what was along the way. But you were driving safely. Your unconscious was driving.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Right. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Neuropsychologists say that human beings are 95.95% or something like that. Some some of them say 95% unconscious. Some of them say 99.95%.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

I gotta tell you what my dad would say about that. What he would say, Then why should I trust what somebody that is also 95% unconscious is saying?

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Like Well, the answer is you shouldn't. The answer is you should you you don't need to. You need to trust yourself. And he's he's exactly right. He's exactly right. It it that's a very profound insight, actually, to recognize how unconscious other people are.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

So I I'll often make an attribution that someone was cruel to me.

SPEAKER_04 10:27

Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

But regularly they were not intentionally cruel. They were unconscious. They might have done something that was harmful, and I could attribute cruelty to them, but generally that wasn't intentional, it was unconscious. So yeah, I think that's actually a pretty accurate thing to say. And also then why would I even listen to myself? If I'm if I'm say 95 to 99% unconscious, and what I'm what I'm able to appreciate about reality is less than 0%, it's a really good reason to stay humble, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05 10:58

Yeah. Do we really know what's going on?

SPEAKER_03 11:01

No, we don't. We really don't. We really don't know what's going on. But we think we do. But we have an idea.

SPEAKER_05 11:10

We have enough of an idea that we can decide how we want to show up.

SPEAKER_03 11:14

Here's what I think. It's like we have a we have a whiff. We have a whiff of what's going on. Like we have a scent of it.

unknown 11:26

You know?

SPEAKER_05 11:27

It just reminds me because if you uh have a Frenchie, I don't know where your mind went when she says we have a whiff, but it's like there's that regular thing where you're on the couch and you go, Oh, copy is I think the dog just farted.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

Coffee's a bit gassy. Anyway, intentionality is like for this small, this little sliver that we are awake in, we can choose to become more awake and less automatic. And I think the idea is if we can be less automatic, that we might be able to work with uh in a in a more useful way with all aspects of ourselves, you know, we might be able to point ourselves more in the direction of how we want to show up with more compassion, more equanimity, more freedom, more space, more productivity, more you know, whatever. Yeah, more wisdom, more joy. More joy.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

Totally. Yes. So if you remember the story standing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 12:32

So remembering back to the story I told of the woman dancing on the beach. Right. So Murray came up with these slogans, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um it is useful to view the past in a friendly way. It is useful to view the past in a friendly way. Where do you where does that take you?

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Well, I'm curious to hear from you what your thought is about how the woman on the beach was embodying that slogan.

SPEAKER_05 13:08

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, you know, the story that she had these two friends who, you know, the dream, the future projection was that they would all get to live on the beach together and live in the same town. I think maybe they had lived in different areas or something, so it was like this was going to be the opportunity for them to all live in the same place and um have those those beachy mornings. And um and so that was the future projection. I think we all probably have perhaps you can relate to having future projections of how things are gonna go, and then the way things go, uh, sometimes not that way, right? And so here she is in that future moment, and she ain't got her friends. She here we're all by herself, and she's gonna live out the end of her life, not with her friends, but by herself. And so instead of sitting on the couch uh feeling sorry for her situation, she decides to get up in the morning and not only go walk on the beach, but dance on she got her headphones on, she's listening to some tunes, and she's like dancing in memory of her friends. I mean, it see that seems like a friendly way to view the past. It's like sort of making, I don't know, the whole like life gives you lemons, make lemonade sort of a thing, like and there's not that I don't know, and for me, like being at this location, um where for the past two decades, you know, I came with my family in various iterations. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Like sometimes with mom, sometimes with dad, sometimes with the two of them, sometimes with friends. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:01

Totally, totally. But it really was, I mean, for my dad that worked the corporate job, like this was this is where he would take his vacation time. And um, it really was his happy place in a lot of ways. And there's a lot of memories here. And listen, like some of them are great and amazing, and some of them are like, oh, I could totally forget that happened. As you might can imagine, two decades worth of family vacations could be, right? Sure. Um, and so no matter where I look around here, I mean, I just have all kinds of memories, but I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about the bad things that that happened. I really just feel that gratitude. So it's like it's more useful to me. It's more useful to me to view the past. Oh, the air conditioning just turned on. I don't know if there's gonna be like a like a hum now uh behind us, but just if there is, that's that's what's going on. Um we're not being abducted by aliens or anything.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

No, that happens next year, 2027. We had a fair amount of conversation about uh yeah, about the aliens coming next year. I know while we were watching the moon last night from from the port. Classic. Classic. We digress. This episode is not about aliens coming in 2027. Uh not yet.

SPEAKER_05 16:24

I mean, the things that happen when you just spend a long time looking at the ocean and the clouds, you know? Oh, yeah. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Yeah, so so wonderful.

SPEAKER_05 16:34

But yeah, I mean it's it's like, yeah, thinking about how how is it useful? Like what is actually useful in the way that I view the past.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

What's I mean, the it he chose this word friendly. And Murray, you know, he was friendly. I remember him as friendly. Uh-huh. He he um he I would use the word jovial. You used that word before. Uh-huh. Um, I would also use the word affable.

SPEAKER_04 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Um, you know, it it wasn't like he was jovial like a Santa. He he was more like jovial like a like a little like a like a little elf or something. I told everything in that word. He had a lot of little mischief. There was vague there was a there was definitely mischief, playfulness, yeah. Um also a certain amount of irreverence. Yeah. Um, and you know, part of I know that we talked about this in an earlier episode, but I want to go back to it because I just think it's so important. It's like sometimes in the unconscious there can be an idea that if like this woman who lost her friends, there can be an idea that if um if we're not you know, wailing and gnashing our teeth and stuck and sad that that the loss didn't mean anything around grief particularly. Because I I think that this thing is useful to view the past in a friendly way. I I think it's pointing us in the direction of working with impermanence.

SPEAKER_04 18:08

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 18:09

Working with these parts of life, I mean, that everyone who's listening must have noticed, right? Right. Like everyone everyone must have noticed that nothing lasts, right? Everything changes and that that's the constant, actually. The constant in life. The one thing you can count on, actually, is change. Yes. And and so uh, you know, having a cultivating an attitude towards the the past that's friendly means that you know what what's it what would it be like to shake hands with grief, to be friends with loss to what does it mean to be someone's friend?

SPEAKER_05 18:53

I mean that's I mean I think about I I think about this in terms of things in my life that I at certain times would think, hmm maybe there's some regret there. Oh yeah. Like I feel like this is the this is helpful for me when when regret comes up. And of course, you know, like what if I was friendly to regret? It kind of it kind of alchemizes it for me. Like it it then is no it it then is no longer regret. And hey, I'm not I'm not talking about like bright siding things and unright egregiously or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 19:31

Like that could be the risk with this kind of thing, is that it could be a superfici it could be a way to keep things more superficial. Totally. And that's that's that would be missing the point.

SPEAKER_05 19:40

I um I was having a conversation with um someone recently that had a pretty pretty traumatic loss um last year um on the scale of of one of the worst things that could happen to you that basically happened to this person, and they're about um nine months post grief, right? And they were like, you know, I really, I really I think one of the ways that I dealt with with my grief was think um, you know, like maybe this was for the better. And and but it was also like, but I'm trying, but I but I but I was trying to do that, like that's just part of where I went with it, but I'm also aware of like that could get in the way of processing the grief, so I'm trying to be aware of um, but it but it was like for their mind to cope with the traumatic loss, they just had to think there must be something good in this. And I relate to that, especially in the acute moments of grief, right? And so then, at least for me, like in the acute moments, maybe that comes up and it's like, okay, well, let me just put that that perspective on the shelf for a little while and wait for it to sink in a little bit more so that it actually sinks in. And then we can start doing that. And seeing then we can start doing that. Then we can start doing that. So so yeah, we're not talking about just just uh belining it for the positive washing of a situation, but welcoming that when it's appropriate.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Yeah, like when I'm friends with someone, if they throw up, I'm gonna hold their hair. Right. I'm I'm you're not gonna deny that they're throwing up. I'm not gonna be like I mean do you know what I mean? Or like I think I think about the friends in my life who have been uh, you know, just have been my friends through th through thick and thick.

SPEAKER_05 21:50

Thick and thick, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

You know. And um, you know, through various chapters of my life when things have been, you know Ups you know, smooth sailing when things when the seas have been rough, when there's been loss, when there's been ups, when there's been downs, you know, the vicissitudes of life, right? Aging, sickness, death. Yeah. These parts of humanity, what it is to be human, that I think we we have to learn from them. I I want to be able to learn from those things. And um this saying I think points really points me in the direction of of being friendly. You know, there th this thing about AI I think is so interesting, right, Niss. It's like people are so interested in AI because we don't we really most humans just they don't like to admit this, but they don't really like being human.

SPEAKER_05 22:42

Oh, you think so?

SPEAKER_03 22:43

I know so. They want to be gods, they want to be machines, they want to be heroes, but not human.

SPEAKER_05 22:52

And and with our frailties, yeah, frailties and flaws, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

You know, with the fact that we don't really know what's going on, with the fact that we know that we're gonna die. Yeah. I mean, it's it's like think of how many things are sold to us all day long in the name of self-improvement.

SPEAKER_06 23:08

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 23:09

And that's all like just don't just don't be human, just don't get old. I'll tell you what, here's a cream and you don't have to get old.

SPEAKER_05 23:16

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Totally.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

Here's the diet that you don't have to get old.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

I mean, what incredible bullshit.

SPEAKER_05 23:22

I know.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Is that or uh, you know, I mean, this kind of thing that uh people are in their 90s taking 25 prescription Medicaid. Why? For what? You know, I mean, it's um I think that what drives why we're susceptible to being sold those things is because we ha we're not friendly with being human. Um so I would I you know I would take this, this is uh one of the reasons I've really enjoyed this series, and um and we're gonna we're gonna be doing more with with Murray's work, like as as an inspiration for for our platform. Um this kind of way of showing up in the world that is uh maybe anti-perfectionistic, slightly irreverent, uh awake, uh practical. Um, you know, this this tip is very practical.

SPEAKER_05 24:25

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I like also that he says it's useful to view the past in a friendly way. He's not like this is view the past in a friendly way. You know, he could it could have been view the past in a friendly way, right? Like be nice to yourself to go back to one of them from the the last one. That's a you know, pretty direct, right? Right. And it's more like it is it's useful to view the past in a friendly way. It's sort of like um you have a choice. Yeah. You have a choice. And you know, just so you know, that it's an this is an option. There's there's an option to view the past in a friendly way. And and in fact, it may be helpful to you. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Well, and there's a difference between being somebody's friend and being friendly towards somebody. I mean, you know, like if I really wanted to kind of like split that, sure. Like there there are maybe some things that it would be friendlier to just leave behind.

SPEAKER_06 25:24

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 25:28

You know? Sure. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Like that's some there's some things it's okay to walk away from.

SPEAKER_05 25:36

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that that could be friendly. That could be friendly. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

You know, it doesn't have to be like totally.

SPEAKER_05 25:46

Yeah, not at odds about, you know, for me.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Yeah, it doesn't have to be out of aggression.

SPEAKER_05 25:50

And it sort of takes the um for me, this takes the victimhood out of going over my past. Like if I'm viewing my past in a friendly way, then it it doesn't really give me a whole lot of space to be like, oh, poor me. Poor me for you know, whatever it was that that happened. It's more of like, okay, well, what what do I want to take forward? And then what do I want to leave behind? I will say I typically I I I if you go back to the first episode, you know that I've been reading these sayings um since I could read.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

And so Oh, right, reading these sayings because they were on the bathroom wall, right? The childhood bathroom.

SPEAKER_05 26:34

Once I learned how to read, I'm like, I'm gonna read everything. Okay, what does this say? And so, and then I would have to ask what all of these mean. Um, but I was just telling Kelly before we started recording that this idea of uh it is useful to view the past in a friendly way, it really hits differently in my 40s uh than it did when I was five. Yeah. There's a lot more past to view in a friendly way. Yeah. And I just I imagine that that will continue it to continue to deepen as I get older, you know. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

Really, I just don't think that um all right, let me just jump off here for a second. Regret is not very zen. So there's an emphasis in zen on being acutely embodied in the present moment and experiencing everything in the present moment as fully and completely as possible, with as little blah blah in the mind about it as possible, just really experiencing it directly. And that direct kind of experience gets cultivated by sitting on the mat and practicing zazan, which is like getting the mind actually to a point where it can be relatively co quiet. Yeah. That does exist, you know, um, way down underneath all the tires or up above wherever it is. Yeah. Uh it's funny how I I want to kind of locate it all the time. Where is that space in my mind? I feel like it's a like there's a map. Uh and I can locate it somewhere. It's over here in my own. So you can just go straight there when you get started. You don't have to meander through the thought valleys. That's not my experience. But through practicing meditation and concentration, then we can learn how to bring that sense of awareness or concentration is another way of saying it, to like what I'm doing in every moment. So uh this really deep kind of being really engrossed in the moment and and what I'm really doing right here, right now, in this moment. Um says so regret. I know it's like when something goes wrong, how does a Zen practitioner deal with it? You know, they deal with it really strongly in that moment, and then the work is to not go back to it over and over again. You know, it's like there's this kind of awareness that, okay, well, I mean, you know, Polly, our teacher Polly tells this, Polly Young Eisendrath tells this story about she was almost in a car accident with her one of her Zen teachers, Mark Uno, one time. They were driving along and having a really intense conversation. Polly is known for intense conversations, so I guess they were driving along and then something happened and they almost died in the car. And they just both looked at each other and she's and they and then they didn't talk, they never talked about it again.

SPEAKER_04 29:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 29:35

So, you know, she said she learned a lot from that because they had the moment, they had the moment together, but then they just never went back. It was like, you know, it couldn't have happened any other way. And I think one of the reasons that it's so clear to Buddhists that things can't happen any other way than the way that they happened is because of the nature of karma and dependent origination and the law of cause and effect. I mean, it's just like things can't happen any other way. If you make a wrong turn, it's the only turn you could have made. It's the only turn you could have made for all of that's that's what was set up in that moment.

SPEAKER_05 30:13

I can see how viewing the past in a friendly way gets one to that.

SPEAKER_03 30:17

Yes, right. It that is involved in that because it's it's that being able to look back at the past and say, it couldn't have been any other way.

SPEAKER_05 30:30

Yeah, that's the only way it could have happened.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

That's the only way it could have happened. And I have to like it. No, and but it is useful. Yes. I will suffer less if I'm friendly to that to the way things happened.

SPEAKER_05 30:43

Yes. The way things actually happened, not how I wanted them to happen.

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Yes. Yeah. No, that I totally and that the truth is I I can't control everything that happens.

SPEAKER_05 30:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:56

And even myself. You know, one of our funny jokes is like, you know, you can't tell me what to do, and neither can I.

SPEAKER_05 31:04

That's one of my mottos. That comes from uh just credit where credits do, that comes from uh Gretchen Rubin's work around the four tendencies, right? As she likes to call them, there are four different ten tendencies with how um we deal with internal or external um obligations or commitments. And so um there's the upholder who does, you know, if they tell themselves they're gonna do it and somebody else tells themselves they need to do it, they'll do it. Um what's the other ones? The um questioner. Questioners, it has to make sense to them. They're not gonna if you ask them to do something, it has to make sense to them. It's all about their own internal obligations or commitments. Um what's the one that I am? I'm trying to remember what it is. An obliger. An obliger. I do so much better when I know someone's waiting to counting on me to do something. I mean, I do things myself, but I have to work around this tendency to be much more of an obliger. And then the rebels, which my dear Kelly is. Whether it's internal or external obligations, it's a little bit of a wild card. And um, and so the sayings, the saying for the the rebel is you can't make me, and neither can I. And if you don't know what your tendency is or the people in your life, especially people you are married to and work with and live with, honestly, I've found this her work uh really, really helpful to understand myself and understand other people. Um, and it's actually it's a great way of being different together, isn't it? Totally.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

Yeah, that's fun work. I hadn't thought about that in a long time. It's fun that we got there to talk about that. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_05 32:52

And actually, I feel like unless there's anything else you want to say about this one, this could segue nicely to our next um I do have one more thing I want to say.

SPEAKER_03 33:02

Yeah, go for it. Just because it it came up for me. And I almost kind of want like this episode just to be able to stand on its own. Great.

SPEAKER_05 33:10

We'll save it for the next one.

SPEAKER_03 33:11

Yeah. Yeah. Uh just because I think this has been a kind of a good narrative arc. And I I I wanted to to tell you this dream I had one time.

SPEAKER_04 33:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

And um because I think it it really helped me with this piece of intentionality. So, you know, I I heard this from Murray when I was, you know, 20 years old. Yeah I and I and it really did it it changed my outlook. Yeah. It was like, right, okay, this is a choice. I can I can choose how I'm gonna interact with my past. And that's that's something I actually do have control over. You can choose how you're gonna enter into the case. I can I can make that I can make that choice. Yes. And and um and when I catch my mind going in a direction with my past that I don't that I that isn't helping me, that's not useful. It's not useful. Now, I'm not saying like don't look back at the past and learn from it. I think we have to I have to do that. Yeah, that's it's useful, right? To be able to learn, to be able to say, okay, well, here mistakes were made, wrong turns happened. What what did I learn? That's useful. It's useful to look back at the past.

SPEAKER_05 34:14

Yeah, to ask what what can I learn feels friendly to me.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

Yeah, I mean, often I'll tell my clients it's good to look back at the past, don't stare. So you mean don't glare?

SPEAKER_05 34:27

Don't don't give the past a side eye.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

Yeah. Well, I like to think of it like it's in the rearview mirror. Like if we're driving, I mean a lot in a lot of dreams. Okay, great metaphor. In a lot of dreams, you're in a car and you're driving, right? This is very common in the one of the the comments.

SPEAKER_05 34:42

My the brakes never work in my dreams. I just gotta say, no matter how much I pump them, we water we're hydroplaning. You're hydroplaning. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can't can't push the brakes. I don't know what that means about me, but we can talk about that off the air. I'm happy to talk about it more.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Um whenever the time is right. Too much caffeine. It's totally fine. I I mean it's really that's that's an anxiety. That dream is anxious. That's about anxiety, you know. That's surprising. Yeah, being out of control, you know. Um so here we are in the car. That's like our body, and sometimes we're driving and sometimes we're being driven. But the thing is, if you're driving in a car, the way that Oh my god, did you hear that? Yeah, it was the sonic. Oh my gosh, SpaceX. Yeah, I think SpaceX just went up.

SPEAKER_05 35:25

Oh my god, that's cammy. The parts are flying too.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Yeah. I wonder if that'll come through on the um oh here it goes. It's it's up in the air now. They just shot a rocket off of SpaceX.

SPEAKER_05 35:36

What a crazy world we live on. Man, that's wild. Yeah, we're not that far, but we can kind of if we lean out the porch, we can see it.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

Yeah, I can see people down on the beach. They're looking at it.

SPEAKER_05 35:46

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

I was kind of wondering if it was gonna happen when we couldn't. Yeah. I'm so curious. I can't wait to not run to some people. I'm not a rocket scientist and I'm not a rocket person, but I But we go to the space coast for vacation. Oh, that was crazy. So if you drive in in a car, the thing is this you have to do it. In a dream. Yeah, yeah. Or in life, if you think about it, like you like the magic. Like your body's a car, you're driving. Yeah, you have to keep your eyes in front.

SPEAKER_05 36:13

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

And you have to use your side mirrors, you have to know what's in your peripheral vision, you have to know what's on the sun. Yeah, but you have to you also have to know what's behind you. If you don't know what's behind you, it could sneak up on you.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

Why is that person on my back?

SPEAKER_03 36:23

It could sneak up on you. Like there could be things behind you that that you need to pay attention to, right? It's it's it's like not it's not don't pay attention. Right. But think about it as as the rear view mirror.

unknown 36:35

Right.

SPEAKER_05 36:36

If you keep if you j if you only drive by looking in the rearview mirror, you're gonna crash and burn.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

So there is a there is a balance between looking forward and such a great metaphor. Yeah. And I and I think there's a there's a good way of doing that. So yeah. So you had a dream once. Yeah, I had this dream, and I had it um right, literally right before Heather, my former wife who passed of cancer, got diagnosed. And I think that it was a it was a I know for a fact, it was a dream that I held with me the entire time that I went through that experience with her. Um, because so much of that experience was um so difficult. And it often felt like we were being derailed by things. I mean, it and it was hard to look back. It's like, oh, why did this happen? Hin this could have happened, this could have happened, because the stakes were so high. Um, you know, we were in a a more existentially threatening situation, so it increased the amount of emotionality attached to medical errors, um, etc. So I had this dream, and in the dream I was w back in college and I was walking around um Lake Eton and um and I looked across the lake and I could see that Harry Potter was on the side of the lake and he was kind of sitting in like a throne. Okay. And I I went around and I could and as I was walking to him, I could see him. He's sitting on this throne on the side of the lake, and I could see him, and there was like this tube that brought him down and underneath the water. Okay, it was like a slide. And so he's sitting in this throne, and then he goes down, and I'm watching, he goes down underneath the water, and I think, oh, that's really interesting. Like in the dream, I'm aware of the imagery. I'm thinking he's going down into the unconscious. This is by the way, it's like, you know, when you've been working with dreams for a long time, like there's sometimes a part of me that's awake that's remembering that's interpreting my dream. It's so weird. So anyway, I'm like, oh, there he is. He's going the water is often a symbol of the unconscious in a dream. It's the it's what's underneath the surface. Right. If you think back to what I talked about about the iceberg, right? You're going what you get to see and the collective. Yeah, you get to see what's underneath the surface. Yeah, that's you know, so you're going down under the water and like we're looking out at the ocean now. We can't see underneath, and there's so much life. So much. There's so much going on underneath the water. Yes. It's unbelievable. Yes. There's a whole other world under there. Totally. And we just don't see it. It's just why it's the perfect symbol. Yes. So he goes down under the water, and then the sea, as I'm walking closer to the throne, I sort of become him. You know how in a dream you can shake.

SPEAKER_05 39:16

Sure, totally.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

So I become him, and then I'm under the water, and then I come back up out of this tube, and then I'm sitting in that throne, and who is sitting in that throne is this very, very large, like maybe he's thirty to fifty feet tall. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 39:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

Okay. And or an element, an aspect of God.

SPEAKER_05 39:46

And it's divinity.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

There's and it's got the body of a humanoid man, but the head of like an amphibious creature, like a fish of some sort, or sometimes maybe almost more like a like a frog, like there's actually a character in Star Wars that looks very similar to this figure. Um, not him. It was like Colonel something. Um anyway, it doesn't matter. Somebody will wear his own. Yeah, he definitely looked like his head was like a walrus head of some sort. Like it definitely had the head of a sea creature and the body of a of a man, and had a huge throne on his head. And so as I'm coming up from underneath the water, he he leans down and scoops me up in his arms, and he's so big that he can hold me like I'm a baby. Okay. And he's holding me like I'm a baby in the dream. And and in that space of being held by him, I felt loved. Like completely, perfectly. I didn't feel love. I want to be clear about this. I felt loved. Like I understood that this being cherished me. Like at a level that was like like the way that I felt and still feel towards my daughter.

SPEAKER_04 41:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:20

Is the way that this being felt towards me. And I could feel it in the dream. I felt that loved. And I'm just like melting into him and relaxing and realizing that I, you know, that I'm that I'm loved. And then he takes his long hand, and then it's kind of like E. T.'s finger. And now it's nighttime, and he's pointing up to the st to the stars. And he's he's drawing words with his fingers by connecting the stars, like a connect the dot, but he's doing it with his finger. And he's drawing this word so he can communicate to me. And as he's drawing in the sky, what he's saying, what he's telepathically communicating to me is this he said to me, everything in life is a gift. And the really good gifts is to become wrapped in challenges. And then he went on to say, It doesn't matter whether you succeed or you fail the challenge. What matters is that you keep practicing. And as he's saying that, he's using his long finger to draw in the stars. Like now his arm can go all the way up, and he's touching the stars, and he's drawing, and he's drawing out the word keep K-E-E-P.

SPEAKER_04 42:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

In the stars.

SPEAKER_04 42:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Practicing. And he draws it out. P R A C T I C I N G with his long finger, and it's like I can see it. I can see it literally in the stars. Wow. And you know, I woke up from that dream, and I have kept that dream with me ever since because it just helped me realize that, you know, I f it showing up and intending and doing, I am loved and I can practice. And that dream really took that saying of be friendly towards the past. And it helped me get friendly kind of with the present, also. Like being friendly with the past has also helped me get friendly with the present.

SPEAKER_05 43:59

Well, the present is. The future past.

SPEAKER_03 44:01

Yes. Yes. So this this idea about just practicing and being okay.

SPEAKER_05 44:13

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_06 44:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:17

I love how in this dream it starts with I mean we could get into why Harry Potter and blah blah blah, but the the that you know that person goes down and you go down into the unconscious and then it ends with this frog king riding in the stars. Right. It's like I don't know, it has both of those kind of because the stars, it's it's almost like it's like that's what's conscious, right? It's like superconscious. It's like super it was like one of those above so below kind of images, right?

SPEAKER_03 44:56

I mean he went from the water to the earth to the sky, it had it had all of those elements in it.

SPEAKER_05 45:01

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 45:02

Yeah. It was it was quite um it was really good medicine.

SPEAKER_04 45:07

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

It was really, really good medicine. And um, so this idea, you know, like keep practicing being friendly. You know, keep practicing. It doesn't it's like it's okay. Sometimes sometimes we'll fail.

SPEAKER_06 45:21

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 45:23

And there's still things to learn from it. And learn from that. And and if we fail, like that's the only way it could have gone.

SPEAKER_03 45:29

And we will die. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 45:32

Despite the creams. Despite the creams and the supplements, you know.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

And all the unnecessary MRIs. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 45:44

Yeah. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 45:46

So it's been really great to sit here and look out at the ocean and do the podcast. Yeah. Looking forward to continuing this communication with y'all next time.

SPEAKER_05 45:54

Yes. Yes. We'll keep a very nice deep dive into viewing the past in a friendly way. Yeah. So, um, yeah, thank you all for listening. And, you know, as always, always, always, always, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please share it with someone else. Um, you know, a really easy way to support us is to send it in a text to a friend, put it in an email. If you're on the socials, put it on the socials, tag us so we know and we can share it. All of that really helps us continue to share this work with other people. And um, you know, we've got some things, we've got some things in the works that that we look forward to sharing with you even more later. Um, I know that this work and these conversations really help me, so I'm just so grateful to share with y'all. And also, if you are on Apple Podcasts, please, please, please leave us a review. Yes. Or at least give us the five stars. If you're like, I don't know what to write, just give us the five stars. Yes. That also helps.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Don't give us less than five stars.

SPEAKER_05 47:09

And with that, we will see you next time for being different together.