How To Relax The Need To Control Everything | Rosa Lewis

Plus: Navigating the "dark night of the soul," the power of saying "no," and how to be more present. Rosa Lewis https://rosalewis.co.uk/ is a mystic, awakening guide, artist and writer. She is the author of many books, most recently Unlocking the Depths of Being: Wholehearted Presence for a Mystical Reality https://rosalewis.co.uk/books/. The last two meditations on this playlist https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaotvC2tIBw1RRiSr8pgKVsWvqCicbdcJ&si=1WSenyj4vcNTUiLn are related to her book. Join Dan and Emmy Award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert at 92NY on May 17th for a live conversation about how mindfulness can deepen connection and combat loneliness, available in person and via streaming. Register here. https://www.92ny.org/event/dan-harris-with-allison-gilbert Join Dan, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18, 2026. Register here. https://www.eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party#9851 This episode is sponsored by: Function Health — 160+ lab tests a year for $365. Check your health the way Dan does at https://www.functionhealth.com/happier — use code HAPPIER25 for a $25 credit Quo — The modern business phone system. Try free and get 20% off your first six months at https://www.quo.com/happier Samsara — AI-powered fleet safety and operations platform. Request a free demo at https://www.samsara.com/happier Wix — Build your website with AI in minutes at https://www.wix.com/harmony

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:18Dan Harris?

  Hey, gang. One of the most venerable spiritual cliches is the notion of being present. It may be a cliche and therefore slightly annoying, but it is also an incredibly important concept and skill, being awake and alive to your life during this limited period of time when you're here on this planet. So today, we're going to talk about what being present actually means, and then crucially, how to actually do it. My guest is a meditation teacher and self-described mystic named Rosa Lewis. Rosa and I talk about why sadness and grief, which of course, nobody likes, can actually enable presence, the difference

• 1:00Dan Harris?

  between feeling sadness and getting lost in self pity, why the so-called dark night of the soul is a very normal stage in spiritual practice, why, and this is counterintuitive, but why visualizing death can help you process the bad things that have happened to you, why saying no can be a spiritual practice, and much more. Before we dive in, I just want to say that if you want to meditate with me, I have two live in-person events coming up. On May 17th, I'll be at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. I'll do a guided meditation, and then I'll talk about how the practice can help you in this chaotic world. And then I'll take your questions. It's going to be great. You should come.

• 1:40Dan Harris?

  May 17th, 92nd Street Y. Then in October, I'll be doing my annual meditation party retreat with my friends, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. It's a weekend thing at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. It's really fun. We teach a bunch of different styles of meditation. There's also time for Q and A, and socializing, and pickleball, if you're into that kind of thing. Your meditation practice really can be improved by doing it in the carpool lane. So come hang with us. I'll put links to both of those events in the show notes. And we will get started with Rosa Lewis, right after this.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Your joints help you keep doing what you love. Give them daily support with Ancient Nutrition Multi-Collagen Protein. Two scoops deliver 20 grams of collagen from 10 types, including clinically studied eggshell membrane, plus vitamin C and probiotics to support skin, hair, nails, and joint health. Visit ancientnutrition.com/protein and use code PROTEIN for $15 off. That's ancientnutrition.com code PROTEIN.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 3:14Dan Harris?

  Rosa Lewis, welcome to the show.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Thanks. Yeah, really nice to be here.

• 3:19Dan Harris?

  Okay, so so many questions for you, but the first one is you describe yourself as not only a meditation teacher, but also a mystic. And so I'd just be curious, what does that mean actually?

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess one of the most important parts of it is that there's a deeper aspect of reality than just the sort of logical, linear time, rational, material world that is sort of focused on by a lot of humanity as the main aspect of experience. And then there are these sort of deeper, more subtle realms of experience that are present. And time isn't always linear. There's like different ways in which causality can happen. And there's a connection to something bigger than just us. So you could call that a kind of a divinity

• 4:15Speaker 03

  or a mystery or Buddha nature or something that has intelligence and rhyme and a reason that isn't this sort of like just logical, linear, rational material that we're in. And I would say that being a mystic is... Kind of communing with those parts of experience, being connected to them, being open to them, that being more the sort of baseline of reality and experience sort of like arising from there as its main source.

• 4:47Dan Harris?

  So in the subtitle of your book, you use the word presence, like being present. It's called unlocking the depths of being wholehearted presence for a mystical reality. I'm narrowing in on the word presence because I think that's something that everybody gets, being awake and aware right now, right here, in the present moment. If I understand correctly, and I hope you will correct me if I don't, that really is, for many of us, the gateway into what you're describing in terms of a deeper level of reality or mysticism.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yes, for me, it starts there because otherwise it's just, you're actually just adding ideas and concepts and going off into somewhere else. It's actually, yeah, you go through the door of presence. Wholehearted is in there as well because it's about wholeness and feeling and embodiment and like showing up and being in the moment, committing to presence and committing to the full spectrum of what that can mean. And then as you practice and through meditation and other things, other aspects of experience, which I'm sure we'll talk about, what it means to be in the present moment can start to get broader and more expansive.

• 6:03Dan Harris?

  So whether or not a listener understands exactly what you, Rosa, are pointing at when you talk about a deeper level of reality, AKA the mystical, whether we get that or not, it's important to know, like, the only way to get it is through waking up right now. The only way to get to that state is by being awake and aware right now.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it happens by paying attention to your immediate experience in the present moment and being here with what is in your body, your heart, in your direct experience.

• 6:42Dan Harris?

  So we're going to get to the how of all of this and your book really lays out these like seven aspects of our present moment experience that we can kind of unlock and investigate. But before we do that, I'm just curious, like, how did you get where you are now? Like, well, how does one become a mystic? I think the wise ass in me that will never go away would say, you know, like just dozens of ayahuasca trips, like, so what's on your CV in order to get to call yourself a mystic?

• 7:13Speaker 03

  There are some psychedelics sprinkled in there. I think that psychedelics open things up, but it's more meditation and shadow work focused, actually. It's interesting because now, when I look back on when I was a child and a young adult, there were a lot of elements of mystical experience there, but I was in a very rational paradigm. And so I was, I was sort of like discounting that and seeing through that lens. But my sort of experience of when I first started experiencing these things is, well, there was a few things that happened at once. One was I got a bad concussion and that just sort of like, it's kind of like opened my mind a little bit to what was going on.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  And then I sort of was listening to a few kind of like more spiritual things, Alamozi type stuff and having sort of like energetic responses to that, which I didn't really have a bucket to put that in. I was still in a very rational frame, but just these sort of like big overwhelming emotional energetic kind of responses where I would hear something and it would be like a sort of transmission quality where I would kind of suddenly be in a very different experience. And then, you know, sort of like synchronicities were showing up and things like that. And then I did a group shadow work therapy retreat and essentially it's like a very embodied therapeutic modality that is about opening these different archetypes and letting

• 8:41Speaker 03

  these modes and ways of being flow through you more fully. And my process was around opening up the love archetype, so deeper level of feeling. And when that happened, it really, really transformed how I experienced the world for one. I was like, I'm allowed to feel these things I'm normally just repressing with more of letting that repression out. Yeah, just more archetypal, imaginal, energetic, emotional things started to sort of come into reality. And then the more shadow work I did and the more I later started meditation, the more meditation I did, the more sort of these altered states and different parts of experience started coming in.

• 9:24Dan Harris?

  So interesting. So you're using some terms I'd love to hear some more about. I don't know that I know exactly what you mean when you say shadow work or archetype or imaginal. I think I kind of know what you're talking about, Jungian stuff, but especially for the listener who might have no idea. Would you mind just teaching us a little bit?

• 9:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, shadow work is, it's Jungian depth psychology and then specifically the type of shadow work I did is a it's a specific type made by a man called Cliff Barry, but it's built on Jung's work and it's really that essentially there are parts of you that either from birth or through your childhood or also young adulthood, it's like you will have learned that there are certain aspects of you that are not welcome or certain parts of you that are not certain emotional responses or so the type of shadow work that I've done with Barry's, it has four archetypes, so lover, warrior, magician and sovereign. Lover is really about emotions and feeling and

• 10:30Speaker 03

  that sort of realm, whereas magician is a lot more about kind of like thinking and seeing options and being rational and being able to perceive what's going on. So it's almost like these kind of totally different modes that we have, a way of being. And a really common one in our society is that you will have essentially sort of shut down the emotional mode quite a lot, and this was true of me as well, and learn to feel less because emotions are not welcome. And then to compensate, you will think more and use your, again inflated magician, use that more and be extra sort of rational and see through that lens to avoid feeling. And then the shadow work bit is that the lover, the feeling is in shadow.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  It's like not accessible to you. There's not just like a free flow of feeling in your life. And so you have to basically go back and revisit and sort of unblock that aspect of your being so that that can flow more freely, you can be more in balance, you can have more optionality in your range of how you experience the world, how you show up, which bits of your being are accessible. And those four archetypes as well are good examples of archetypes being a kind of. In this realm, that's a bit less concrete and a bit less literal and a bit more sort of energetic, things can get a bit soupy and archetypes are kind of like a way to gather a bunch of meaning and say like, ah, yeah, the lover archetype, it sort of gives people a sense of what you're talking about. It's sort of like a packet of meaning and information,

• 11:58Speaker 03

  right? It's like, oh yeah, that's like feeling, that's the bit of me that is embodied and soft and open. Whereas the magician archetype, it's more sort of mental. And so archetypes are kind of, yeah, ways of pointing towards something that can be a bit fuzzy and hard to grasp, kind of like a symbol.

• 12:19Dan Harris?

  I'm gonna say a bunch of words and then you're gonna tell me if the words make sense. The point of the words is to just make sure I understand what you're saying, because I think it's really interesting.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 12:29Dan Harris?

  My understanding is that for, you know, a long time in many different traditions, we've had different ways of talking about aspects of our personality. The Buddha had a demon, he called him Mara. Mara was the like embodiment of delusion and greed and hatred. You know, in the Hindu tradition, they have inner avatars, like aspects of the personality. In later Christian tradition, and I think maybe even ancient Greece and Rome, they had either demons or daemons, D A E M O N S. And in modern psychology, we have the modular model of the mind, where we have these different modes we go into, which either might dog us, or we might have been told during our life are unacceptable.

• 13:14Dan Harris?

  So we have various levels of health in our relationship with different parts of our personality. Speaking of parts, there's also internal family systems where we, we name our different parts and enter into conversation with them. So like, just, we all know we have different aspects of our personality. And occasionally, one of these aspects or parts or demons has the steering wheel. And occasionally, other parts of our personality, we have no visibility into at all, because we weren't ever allowed to, by the culture or by our family, to have a relationship with them. And I think what you're describing here is that you learn through this work to just kind of like, end the war with the various aspects of your psyche with which you had unhealthy relationships with, or

• 13:59Dan Harris?

  just total lack of visibility into. How am I doing?

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Specifically with the shadow work as well, they say that the aim is to have a like a nice kind of conference meeting of the aspects and the sovereign can listen to all of the aspects and choose a way forward from there so that they're all present and all available.

• 14:24Dan Harris?

  I like that metaphor. I want that for myself, for my own fractious intracranial committee. Okay, so thank you for your patience in letting me slash us learn a little bit more about you before we dive into your recommendations here. Just again, the book is called Unlocking the Depths of Being a Wholehearted Presence for a Mystical Reality. And so in the book, as I understand it, and please you'll correct me if I'm misstating at any step along the way here, but in the book, as I understand it, there are these like seven aspects of experience when it comes to like being present that we can unlock. Now, I'm not sure we'll get to all seven, but we'll do our best to work through some of them. The first is sacred sadness. So can you just talk a little bit about what that is?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I guess everyone knows sadness and I think a lot of people know what sadness feels like to feel when you're disconnected from the world and it feels pretty bad and you don't want to feel sad. Sacred sadness is really feeling sad and feeling connected and feeling that sadness is a deep connective force that connects you more deeply to yourself, to the world, to others, can open your heart, can make you realize what's important in life. And the reason it's first is because I found that with working with people, it's like opening to grief and specifically grief

• 15:49Speaker 03

  that has a connected feel to it. It's like that's a kind of prerequisite for opening to anything mystical. There's a kind of like open-hearted like willingness to be moved by life and the feeling that that is beautiful.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  There's not a kind of control where I'm only orienting towards good stuff. In Buddhist terms, it's like, you know, the craving and aversion of just trying to make things different, trying to get to the good stuff, avoid the bad stuff. And when people can sort of get a bit of a flavour of sacred sadness or just open to their grief more and like feeling safe in that and like, ah, it's actually, this can be beautiful, this can be, it's still sad and it's meaningful and it's, then that just opens up a doorway for something. Yeah, a kind of presence with less of that craving and aversion happening.

• 16:41Dan Harris?

  That actually makes complete sense to me that there's something about allowing in the sadness that most of us spend a lot of time medicating away, either through actual medication or through scrolling or gambling or shopping or whatever. Finging on Netflix, not against any of those things, but if taken too far, you're actually just closing yourself off from like a really important part of life. And doing the hard thing of letting it in, I think you're saying,

• 17:15Dan Harris?

  is a foundational aspect of, you know, living a more vibrant life.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah. A couple of things that help people with it is I think in the book I say open the heart requires an equal measure of beauty and heartbreak, something like that. And I think art can be a way to do this in a way that's safer. So I recommend one of the exercises is listening to sad music and having a cry or also watching a sad film can do it. Just something where there's like that feeling of like the beauty of it is still present as well can be a way for people to sort of like ease in if they wanna sort of dip their toes in the water a bit more with it.

• 17:55Dan Harris?

  I'm a big fan of using aesthetics, beauty or to feel more. That is, I think, pretty readily accessible. If we were to go one click deeper into the less accessible, what else would you recommend in this zone?

• 18:11Speaker 03

  I guess there's like that moment of just when you're a hammer cry. There's a sort of moment of like, oh, if I open to this, I'm just gonna get so overwhelmed by like the depths of this sadness. It's kind of like you really let go and you're just. It's sort of like a fear of distraction from it. And it's almost like you do just let yourself be completely destroyed by it. And you sort of cry so deeply that you really hit the thing and then it, ah, you feel it release afterwards. And I think there's that process where you're just really like getting into this, really, really getting into the sadness and really letting it, letting it rip. And again, like staying with the present moment experience. So one thing I have as well, and for each chapter is a kind of,

• 18:55Speaker 03

  you can sort of get an inflated version of sadness where you then start to wallow in self pity and stories about the world being terrible. And it's not about going off into that. It's about the embodied experience of like letting it through with tears, with the direct experience in the emotion.

• 19:15Dan Harris?

  If I'm understanding you correctly, it seems like the former could prevent the latter. I'm embarrassed to admit, I've actually never really done what you're suggesting here, although I find it very attractive as an idea. As somebody who's not, doesn't allow himself to be super emotional, and I'd say that as a weakness. But if we, next time we're sad, like take it all the way, like really let it in. Then you're allowing it to move through as opposed to this kind of ambient sadness we might have by looking at the news, for example. And we never really work it all the way through. We're just kind of stuck in this sadness rage cocktail.

• 19:56Dan Harris?

  And then many of us feel like subconsciously or consciously, the need to kind of performatively be morose all the time as if that's gonna help. But in fact, we want to let the emotion move all the way through.

• 20:10Dan Harris?

  So that we can have the space to like, take effective action, depending on what our power and capability is. Again, I'm going to check in. Am I reacting in an accurate, helpful way?

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, there might be a backlog. There's almost always a backlog for people that sort of needs to be felt. But as that opens up, it just becomes more and more kind of spacious and yeah, helps build presence, build capacity to be here, both because the sadness is sort of a part of what's allowed to be here. And then also because there's less sort of backlog that's sort of trying to be avoided or carried or moved around.

• 20:49Dan Harris?

  Perhaps a key word that you just used right there is allow.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 20:55Dan Harris?

  Because we do spend a lot of time fending off, quote unquote, difficult emotions such as sadness.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Yes. And I think there's something here, which is, I really like that, actually. I think all of these seven aspects are essentially about allowing a quality to come forward. It's not about like, creating an experience or needing to get somewhere or having experience show up in a particular way. It's just kind of feeling into a part that is likely to be repressed and giving it some space and letting it come through.

• 21:29Dan Harris?

  Okay, so very practically, the next time we're sad, let it rip, I think is what you're saying.

• 21:36Speaker 03

  Yes. And if that's difficult for you, find some sad music to listen and feel along with and see if that helps it feel safer and makes some tears or a bit more feeling.

• 21:50Dan Harris?

  And again, so whether we're letting it rip, just because we have the capacity in the moment, or we're going to help midwife the full birth of the emotion with some sad music, in either case, the pitfall of the path would be wallowing in it. And so I think it might be worth you just clarifying again, how we walk that line between taking it all the way and not wallowing.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the key is, it's the presence where we started and it's staying with.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Direct sensation and emotion in the present moment. And so if someone has like an embodiment practice, that might be easier to do through the door of really feeling the sensations in the body. If someone's more of a meditator, it might be like, or of a personal meditator, kind of like noting the sensations as they come, or just something that if you're drifting off, just like staying with the body is the clearest way to stay with the thing that you want to be staying with.

• 22:53Dan Harris?

  So if you find yourself getting stuck in stories of, I really been screwed by my family and I'm like this, I'm always going to be like this, or nobody's ever going to love me, like, those are thoughts about the past and the future. And what you really want is digging deep in a kind of gentle investigatory way into like what's happening right now.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 23:17Dan Harris?

  All right. This is my new homework assignment.

• 23:24Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Rosa Lewis talks about how to reconnect with the natural sensitivity that you had as a kid, but may have armored over as you've become an adult.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat with flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment. Get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 24:12Dan Harris?

  Well, let's move on to the second of the seven aspects that you talk about in the book, and that is sensitivity. What do you mean specifically by sensitivity?

• 24:21Speaker 03

  One thing I've discovered from working with a lot of people, one to one and in groups, is that people experience the world very differently. And there's a way that it's important to include that because otherwise, people are often trying to be someone else or something. It's a sort of move away from your own sensitivity, your own. One way I use to help people to get in touch with this is the way that you've always experienced the world since you were a kid. And it's sort of like, it's a very small part of you. And it's just before you get to the point where you have intellectual overlays and ideas

• 25:06Speaker 03

  and strong desires and all of these things that are sort of maybe bigger and stronger and layered on top. It's sort of like a small receptivity that can listen and notice what's here and be present with it and sort of receive. Yeah, and specifically your unique sensitivity, like what does that feel like for you and to be you and what are the things that you're picking up on? And just sort of validating that, finding that and validating it and exploring it as a topic, really.

• 25:41Dan Harris?

  So for you, the term sensitivity is kind of, and I just want to make sure I understand this because I think it's interesting, especially when you invoke like how we were as kids. Like there's some kind of factory setting for us of how we experience the world, how open our aperture is maybe. It can get papered over, it can get paved over by the events of our subsequent life. But by sensitivity, I think you're pushing us to like get back in touch with this original stance.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it has a strong sort of, like it connects to the quality of innocence as well, of just this sort of original, natural, kind of been there since you were a kid. Just how you receive the world before it gets gunked up with a bunch of stuff.

• 26:38Dan Harris?

  Again, I find this very intriguing. I kind of like the childhood version of myself better than I like the current version of myself. So what very practically can we do to get back in touch with that?

• 26:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there's a exercise in the book and it starts with just building some safety in the different aspects of yourself. So one thing that pulls us out of that kind of sensitivity is that it's just not safe for the naturalness to sort of be itself. There's a sense of like having to put on a posture or a mask or a defense and they get stacked up as we go through life. So it's sort of like getting into a safe place, you know, like a place where you're meditating and you know, nothing's going to come get you. Or you don't have to be a certain way and then sort of letting that infuse. And then spending some time, the question, yeah, what's, what's the way of being that's been there since a kid is a good way.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  There's a few more questions as well in the book, but like just sitting with that and trying to feel into other specific aspects of experience that I feel or focus on or sense. And then that's the sort of individual thing. And then also we do on retreats. I've sort of worked with this quite a lot where again, it's the allowing thing. Often people are like, for some reason have learned that they're not allowed to see what they can see. And actually, if you start saying to people, oh, just describe what you're seeing, sit in partners and just describe what you're seeing in their emotions or describe what you imagine that in a world might be like. Or you can actually see a lot more than you think you can see. There's like a lot more sensitivity there, but we've sort of

• 28:19Speaker 03

  learned not to include it because it's not polite or for many reasons, I guess. But so you can also do it in sort of pairs or small groups and explore it.

• 28:31Dan Harris?

  So in the pairs, I want to get back to the individual practice in a second because I have an advantage over you because I have that actual words in front of me. So I'm going to read them back to you. But I'm just curious about the pairs thing. So you're sitting there and saying what you can see about the other person?

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 28:47Dan Harris?

  Like, how do you stop people from being dicks? Because I would be like, oh, I can see you have terrible taste in clothing or whatever. I don't know. I mean, I probably wouldn't genuinely be a jerk. But I mean, I might say things that don't land well, or want to say things that don't land well.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I guess in the context of a retreat, we'll have a pretty good sort of baseline setup where it's about letting people have their experience and not taking it personally and kind of sharing what's coming up and having a bit of space for people to correct. You know, if you have a projection about me and it's incorrect, I would have space to say, oh, it doesn't feel true for me. This actually feels true. Or and just make, yeah, much more space for there to be a sort of group experiment and a sharing and a high openness to what that could be as the sort of foundation of where we're speaking from.

• 29:40Dan Harris?

  Feels interesting, slightly dangerous. Let's go back to the individual practice. It's called the trusting experience meditation. And again, this is to help us, you know, get in touch with what Rose is calling sensitivity. And so there are three steps to this process. I'm going to walk through this, Rose, and then I'll let you just hold forth on the other side. So it starts with some affirmations, like some things you can say to yourself. And this is the safety part you were talking about before. You know, your experience is welcome as it is. It's safe for you to see the truth. Shadows and dissonance are welcome. There's a deeper layer of meaningfulness. So you're just sending the signal, I think, from mind to body and beyond that you're okay.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:25Dan Harris?

  It's cool. The second step is space, just like leaving space for sensations or emotions or images to arise. I think this is probably helpful if you have meditation experience, enough stability in the mind to observe whatever's happening without getting carried away by it, although that will of course happen. And then the final step is inquiry and it's asking this question. What is a way of seeing or feeling that has been there since you were a child? What is something you're highly sensitive to?

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, this might be a, it might be an inquiry that takes people a bit of time. You know, it might even be an inquiry that takes people weeks and months to really get to some of the ways that is true for them. But essentially I've just found working with many people one to one, that it's kind of magical. It's almost like ways that they see the world. It's like the water they're swimming in a bit, where some people are just really keyed into other people's emotions and just get a lot of information about that and don't even sort of realize that they get it. Or other people, it's like really a way more kind of like technical and notice. I don't know, this one's hard for me to imagine because I'm not like this, but like very specific, high res kind of technical

• 31:44Speaker 03

  things about experience or what's around. And it's just these sorts of different ways and modes. And something clicks in when someone realizes that about themselves and validates their experience. Because before that, it can be a kind of, maybe like subtly leaving your own experience or something that happens, rather than just living in it and from it. And when you're living in it and from it, it's more free to flow. Yeah.

• 32:13Dan Harris?

  This is super interesting.

• 32:16Dan Harris?

  Just to reset for the listener, we're walking through the seven aspects of the experience of being alive that we might not really fully investigate or even actively resist, that we can use to be more awake and alive in our lives. In other words, be more present. One of the most venerable spiritual cliches, presence, but nonetheless extremely important. As discussed earlier with Rosa, like the gateway to what we might call the mystical. So the third, we've worked through the first two. The third is the dark night of the soul, which Doesn't sound super fun, but what do you mean specifically by it?

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's the reason why it has to be included, because it is not the fun bit, but it is an important bit. What I mean by that is that, yeah, it's sort of pointing to that shadow work element. And it's really that there is a lot in experience, in individual experience, in the collective, in the world, that is hard to be with and intense and, yeah, overwhelming. And we would ideally want it to be another way. Either from like an individual perspective, we'd want it to be the way that I specifically

• 33:43Speaker 03

  want it to be, or equally like on a collective level, there's obviously things that are just like super inherently kind of sad and difficult. And it's just about including that part of experience and not turning away and letting that be a part of what's here and letting that into your system. So that, again, it's like coming out of the craving aversion and coming into just a more kind of like a wholehearted welcoming of the full spectrum of experience. And yeah, this bit can get super sort of like mystical in the way that it shows up. And I think it's talked about in the stages of insight in Vipassana meditation is a way

• 34:26Speaker 03

  that as you meditate and pay attention to experience, you know, you get these different phases and at some point you're just in a lot of fear and disgust and misery. And that's just like part of what needs to flow through in order to come further out into equanimity. But it also happens on this emotional level where it's almost like as you open the heart, as you open yourself to more presence, you're kind of opening to these more lovely, beautiful parts of experience. And that's great, but aperture is kind of going in all directions. And so as more comes in, more darkness is going to come in and it's giving space for that to flow through so that it can be processed, it can be included, it can be welcomed, you can build the capacity to be with it.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  And then you get this sense of like robustness and equanimity that can be present with a broader range of experience.

• 35:16Dan Harris?

  It's the bad news that we don't often lead with when we're encouraging people to get into meditation or spirituality, or allowing, to go back to that word, that if you're truly letting stuff in, being more awake, taking off the blinders that our modern tech-obsessed world wants us to wear, so that we're better consumers and scrollers, et cetera, et cetera, it's not all gonna be bliss. Much of what you'll take in will be difficult, and that's why they call it the dark night of the soul. This isn't a malfunctioning. This is a part of the path that has been recognized and described for millennia.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I think there's something about including it. I mean, it's still painful and hard. Part of including it is recognizing that it's kind of like, in my experience, there's no bypassing this completely.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  But if you don't talk about it, and people hit that territory, then it can make it worse, because people feel, on top of the struggle, people then put a layer on, which is, I'm doing something wrong. There's something wrong with me. There's no way out of this. You then get this sort of extra layer of that this is bad. Whereas if it's something that is included and says, this is gonna come up, it's gonna be intense. And one of the reasons it comes up is as an alchemical opportunity to transmute something, or a chance to deepen your wisdom into greater equanimity, or a chance to... Then people have more of a sense of resilience around it, because they can see that even though it's hard,

• 36:55Speaker 03

  it can be a good thing that it's coming up, and it has a meaning, it has a purpose. There's good things to come from the experience, even if the experience itself is hard.

• 37:06Dan Harris?

  In the book, you describe an exercise for leaning into the thing that we don't want to lean into. I think it's called the life-death rebirth cycle. It's like a visualization to release stuck energy. Can you walk us through it?

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, the first step is to think about how you relate to death. And specifically, it's not that you need to take on relating to death in any specific way, but from a modern individualist capitalist rationalist world, a lot of people are really, really scared of death. And it's not that you don't have to be scared, but there are other ways that you can relate to death. Spending some time feeling that there might be something kind of nice about it also.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Like a returning home or a release or these sorts of qualities might be in death. So the exercise starts by sort of just bringing in some of those possibilities and then spending a bit of time being with the imaginal qualities of death. Lots of people have a hard time understanding what the imaginal is, but death is actually one of the best ways to think about it because we don't have any, there's no way of actually knowing what is on the other side of death. Everything we think about as death is inherently imaginal because it doesn't have a logical, concrete thing in our world. And so there's like some questions to connect people to this imaginal experience. And so it's sort of feeling into like, ah, what do you imagine is there on the other side of death?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  What's the vibe of it? Even if it's just like a void that you think is, death is a void? Is it like a black void? Is it a white void? Is it a transparent void? Are there sort of like these imaginal? If you believe in God and a like higher intelligence, what does that intelligence know? Like, where are you going? Where is it compared to this universe? And just sort of like feeling through some of this, not to get the answer, obviously, because there's no way of validating, but just to feel it in your system imaginarily. How do I relate to death? And kind of build it out a bit and get a bit of a more of a sort of emotional.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Resonance going, where it's not just, this is a scary, bad thing that I don't ever want to happen. It's more like, ah, this is a experience that I'm gonna go through one day. And how do I relate to it? How does it show up in my experience and what is it? And then, once that's sort of a bit more alive, you can use that to essentially bring in some bits of experience that you want to be different to how they are. And just imagine them getting absorbed by that death and seeing if that changes. How you relate to it in the experience and if it changes what's showing up at all.

• 39:49Dan Harris?

  So if we start from the thesis that

• 39:56Dan Harris?

  life can be difficult and there can be lots of dark nights of the soul and avoiding it is not going to help us really. It might be good for a minute or two, but it's not really an abiding strategy. One portal into some deeper way of being alive is to kind of let it in. So if we start from that idea, it's a natural progression, I think you're saying to, all right, how do we practice this? Well, let's conjure the thing that most of us are most afraid of, the most difficult aspect of being alive, which is the terrifying mystery of death. And let's see if we can't make it as vivid as possible in our mind through this guided practice. Or through this, you know, practice that we guide ourselves through.

• 40:41Dan Harris?

  So that we can maybe achieve a degree of equanimity with this inevitability.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. It also sort of folds in on itself where if you're comfortable with that, one of the things that keeps you away from the challenging stuff and in a more is this sense of. I need to be in control. I need to keep experience together in a very specific way, keep the bad stuff out. And when there's a sense of death, ah, death is okay. It can sort of get this like metaphorical momentum behind it. Where it's like, oh, I can let go. The sort of smaller things that can seem a bigger deal. It's almost like a little mini ego death of just like, oh, well, I said something silly, never mind. You sort of like let that bit of your ego kind of die. Does that make sense? It's sort of like the bad coming in doesn't seem as bad if it's just a sort of mini

• 41:32Speaker 03

  or quite major sort of ego death that's occurring.

• 41:37Dan Harris?

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like the way I understand or operationalize what I think you're saying is in light of death, the shit I'm worried about isn't that deep. Then the trick is to keep death top of mind so that we can keep our problems in perspective. One way that I find helpful, and it's, I really like the exercise you're describing, but one way I, perhaps additional way for people is the Buddha's five daily remembrances. Once in the morning, once at night, I really have been able to get into the habit of just recalling, this body is of the nature to grow old, get sick, die, I'm going to someday

• 42:22Dan Harris?

  lose everything and everybody I hold dear. As a result, the only real possessions I have are my actions. And just doing that twice a day, I mean, it doesn't mean I never get carried away by bullshit, but I think I'm less likely to because death is closer, it just has more salience for me than it used to.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's it.

• 42:49Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Rosa talks about some more aspects of experience such as why falling in love with your experience of being alive can actually deepen your practice.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 43:35Dan Harris?

  Okay, we're moving through our list here. The fourth aspect of experience that you're suggesting we unlock en route to presence is, and these are your words, falling in love with experience. Say more, please.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's gonna be a reason to do it, right? Is one thing.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just think it's kind of like letting that happen, letting beauty, joy, just all the lovely, beautiful stuff flow. And that's going to be different for everyone, like what that is, what makes them feel that about life. And I think spending some time really being with that in yourself and remembering moments and feeling the heart opening qualities of it and being inspired by it, just enjoying it. And I guess this one came up from, from working with people a lot. It's, there's such an easy self punishing mode that people go into, either like full

• 44:38Speaker 03

  of self critique or maybe turning practice into like another thing that you have to do. Discipline is obviously can be an important part, but it can tip over into this sort of like, yeah, more just self punishing and sort of practical. I have to go through the steps and I have to do this and I have to. And I've just found that the more people's heart is online, the more like openness and passion and joy that is flowing, the easier the path becomes and the more naturally it sort of stems from this place of love rather than sort of punishment, I guess.

• 45:17Dan Harris?

  I mean, I don't think anybody's gonna argue with this. This one sounds good. Yet again, I think the question is like, how?

• 45:25Speaker 03

  There's like a vulnerability required in it. And I talk about this in there about that.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Sort of soulmates or specific things or places might inspire a lot of love. And the sort of downside of the thing that stops it is the same as if you're falling in love with the person where it's kind of scary to open your heart and like be vulnerable and really feel what you feel and like let it flow through you. But yeah, it's just finding those people, places, things that inspire the joy and love in you and connecting to that and really letting it flow, letting it be present.

• 46:05Dan Harris?

  There's another guided practice here. The three steps are one, recall, recall a moment when you felt alive. And I think the words you use are where everything in experience was singing together. It could be a person, place, some sort of past mystical experience. The second step is to intensify it. You might say to yourself, let the felt sense of being in love live through you. If you're holding back, turn the sensations up 10 times stronger. And then the third is inquiry. Third step is inquiry. Ask, who are you when you're connected to this love? What would it mean to live from this heart connected place?

• 46:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, and there's something there. I think specifically the turning it up 10 times, it's sort of trying to avoid the thing where it's like, oh, it's scary. I'm not sure I want to, or like self judgment or things that stop you feeling. It's really just letting you like, let it rip. And then the kind of connecting it back to who you are is that, yeah, falling in love with the experience is not, it's just unhooking the feeling from, and then I need to sort of get something from like, I'm falling in love with this place. And so I need to come back here all the time or I'm falling in love with this person. So we need to have this certain type of relationship. It's keeping it back to that, the sensations that it's bringing up in you and the mode and

• 47:30Speaker 03

  the feeling and the inspiration is the point. It doesn't need to go somewhere. The process, I'm a feeling of falling in love is the purpose rather than that sort of, I'm falling in love and then therefore I want this and this and this to happen.

• 47:45Dan Harris?

  Right, right, right. Because that's not being present. That's, that's projecting forward.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:52Dan Harris?

  Okay, I think we can sneak in one more here. So number five on your list is.

• 47:58Dan Harris?

  Potency, it's actually potency, colon, the Kali inside you, Kali, K A L I, which I believe is a Hindu goddess, am I right, is a Hindu?

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:11Dan Harris?

  Please describe it.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  So this is letting the truth speak for itself. And so there's lots of reasons in society to like be polite and say the nice thing or to be a bit kind of manipulative and to try and like dominate people and control people and get them to do what you want. And this is sort of letting go both of those and just letting the truth sort of speak for itself and come out in a very direct way. And when you do that, it tends to be very potent. One of the reasons I've specifically included the Kali element is because it's interesting actually,

• 48:53Speaker 03

  there's even something a bit gendered here, maybe where it's like, there's a lot of pressure to not speak the truth in our society and maybe in all societies. And there has to be a kind of like fierceness and a fierce sort of commitment. And Kali is a goddess, she, you know, she has a sword, she'll cut off people's heads in the mythology. It's just like really letting the sort of truth, just like say the thing that is true regardless. The gendered piece is maybe specifically, she's a female feminine goddess. The truth I'm talking about is not necessarily like a rational, logical, or this is the objective ultimate truth.

• 49:37Speaker 03

  It's like as much the kind of like felt embodied elements of experienced truth and kind of like letting your truth be present and part of what's here. And yeah, that can be quite disruptive. And I think there's something important about, about the archetype where it's saying like, it's powerful to disrupt and say the difficult thing and let the truth be spoken. So that was the sort of importance of including the Kali element.

• 50:07Dan Harris?

  I would imagine you would recommend that we say the truth without being jerks about it.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  So it's like the wholehearted truth. Yeah. So people will have a tendency, which is they might be wanting to kind of like dominate and say things that are trying to impress or trying to like put other people down. Or I guess that's kind of what I'm imagining when you say being a jerk. The truth would actually be if someone sort of like dominating to put other people down in order to like feel good about themselves. The truth would be someone saying, well, right now I want to like say something that puts you down. So it makes me feel good about myself. It's sort of a a step back where you're starting in the presence and starting in the kind of like truth of what's in the present moment for you.

• 50:53Dan Harris?

  Hmm.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  And then there's another thing, which is the other way that people can go is being polite and hiding and not saying what is true and being a sort of people pleaser. And then they need to sort of be pulled in a bit more into saying the hard thing. And then they might get the feedback from people that they're being a bit of a jerk by saying the hard thing. And sometimes you just have to cut through people's desires for you to be so sweet and nice in some ways.

• 51:19Dan Harris?

  No question. This may be gendered in that historically for me, it's not like I've really held back from saying the hard thing, but I've been rude about it, which has not helped anybody. And I realize that may not be true for women listening. Instead, it might have gone the self silencing route. I hear your advice as, you know, sensitive to everybody, wherever your conditioning is.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like using the heart as the compass of what is first connecting to what is wholeheartedly true and then being able to speak that. And I think there's something as well, which is, I think I mentioned this in the sacred sadness. It feels like that in terms of gender, it's like men explicitly are not given space to feel sadness.

• 52:04Dan Harris?

  Hmm.

• 52:05Speaker 03

  And it feels like that's really important that men have given space to cry and to feel sad. And then this has almost a bit the opposite where it's like women are often not given space to speak difficult truths. And that's really important that that's given space.

• 52:20Dan Harris?

  Yeah, not only not given the space to speak difficult truths, but punished for speaking difficult truths.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:28Dan Harris?

  I think also in this part of the book, you talk about saying no more often.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Yes. Society asks a lot of people and

• 52:37Speaker 03

  I guess there's like a clarity that can come online where being well bounded and saying no in a modern busy life, it's almost like if you're not super busy all the time, overextended, doing a million things, then you're not enough or something. There's like a societal message in there. And actually, just being like, no, I don't want to do that. And that's no for me. That to me is good potency and Kali energy of just clarity of what is truly aligned for you and what actually really um serves the truth of yourself and experience from a deep level.

• 53:16Dan Harris?

  And again, the key here is that whether you're speaking up, you know, speaking the truth in the moment, or saying no, it's about what's happening for you right now. This becomes spiritual or mystical only when it's directly connected to what you're feeling right now.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have a friend who's an authentic relating teacher, Margot Fisher. And she describes boundaries as letting the energy speak for itself, letting the what's already here, let it fall where it falls. And that also has a very strong sort of Kali element, where it's like the sort of truth falls where it falls. It's almost like anti manipulation is the metric.

• 54:07Dan Harris?

  We're almost out of time, but in closing here, just two final questions for you. One is, you know, anything you want to say in summary?

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it can be a lot of information and it can feel like a lot to take in, maybe. And I think one of the things I describe in the book is like giving yourself time for each of the chapters to show up in your life as something that, yeah, just like having some time. So, you know, sacred sadness, having some time to sink into that as a beautiful, tender part of experience. And the focus is really on the embodied and sort of wholehearted aspect of experience rather than that understanding. It's not about like needing to get some cognitive understanding. It's about going through a process in your body and your heart and feeling things.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  And so giving yourself.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Time to feel and be with each aspect of experience is important.

• 55:10Dan Harris?

  Final question is, can you just remind everybody of the name of this book? And then anything else you're putting out into the world that we should know about?

• 55:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, so this book is Unlocking the Depths of Being: Whole Hearted Presence for a Mystical Reality, and it's free, it's on my website. And then I'm writing two books currently. And we're gonna be one, and then I became two, which is surprisingly less overwhelming, writing one big one. But yeah, one's about the living, imaginary realm. So I guess these two books are sort of, it's almost like the unlocking the depths of being is the groundwork of getting into your being so that you can be more present and sort of safely and wholeheartedly present in experience. And then it's like, from there, there's a possibility that it can open more into more sort of mystical territory.

• 56:03Speaker 03

  So one of the books I'm writing is called The Living Imaginal Realm, which is like how experience is more imaginal and shamanic than modern society would like us to believe. But yeah, I would say like, this book is really kind of like the groundwork if that is of interest. And also, if there's any sort of mystical explorations or spiritual explorations with psychedelics, or with any kind of interest in altered states of consciousness or anything like that, it's like, this book is written to make that, yeah, safe, wholehearted, coming from presence, being connected to the body, so yeah.

• 56:39Dan Harris?

  And you said it's available via your website? What's the website?

• 56:42Speaker 03

  rosalynlumis.co.uk

• 56:44Dan Harris?

  Great, I will put a link to that in the show notes, so people can get more from Rosa if they want it. In the meantime, Rosa, thank you so much for making time for this. It was great to talk to you.

• 56:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really, really nice to talk.

• 57:01Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Rosa Lewis. Awesome to talk to her. Don't forget, if you want to meditate with me, I've got a new-ish meditation app. You can get it over at danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try it before you buy. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 57:51Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.