The Utter Perfection of Everything

I don’t want to over-hype this episode too much, but listening back over it today and preparing these notes, I was left feeling that this was perhaps the most intimate, raw, & profound conversation I’ve had throughout the Meditating on Psychedelics series so far.  It might have something to do with the fact that my guest is Trudy Goodman, who is also one of my teachers.  My wife Emily & I had the great honor of being authorized to teach by Trudy last year, at her center InsightLA, where we lived for a short time so that we could train more closely with her.  

I always describe Trudy as a living koan, because she demonstrates the teachings, lives the teachings, and in those moments of living them simply IS the teaching.  Seeing someone be the teachings of kindness, wisdom, & generosity, as you've probably experienced, is much more impactful than hearing people talk about them.  In Zen they call this, when it’s voiced through words, the difference between “live words” and “dead words.”  I hope you enjoy these live words from one of my most favorite people in the world.

Memorable Quotes:

“Why do I have to be stoned to have this experience?  This should be an experience that we can just have, we’re human beings, we have this capacity.” - Trudy Goodman

“I learned from all of those experiences, and yet the experiences themselves don’t exactly help you so much afterwards.  I stopped doing them because I didn’t like the feeling of being kicked out of the garden of eden over and over again.” - Trudy Goodman

“What is it that brings us into a more committed engagement with the mystery?” - Vincent Horn

“Meditating can help the mystical experience, or the opening, that people have on psychedelics become not just a state, an experience that is after all only a memory, but can help make those insights and awakenings present in our everyday life.” - Trudy Goodman

“We ask our students to be vulnerable.  And I don’t think we should ask our students to be doing things we aren’t doing.” - Trudy Goodman

Episode Links:

• Trudy Goodman
• InsightLA
• “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts” by Gabor Mate
• Ram Dass
• Meditating on Mushrooms with Roland Griffiths
• "Psilocybin-occasioned mystical-type experience in combination with meditation and other spiritual practices produces enduring positive changes in psychological functioning and in trait measures of prosocial attitudes and behaviors”
• “Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams” by John Lockley
• The 4 Unmentionables: Sex. Money, Power & Race Series
• Father Greg Boyle
• Tristan Harris
• Center for Humane Technology
• Filter bubbles

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