Next Time You're Suffering, Ask Yourself This Question | Caverly Morgan

The highest form of self compassion (is seeing there's no self in the first place). Caverly Morgan is a meditation teacher who blends the original spirit of Zen with a modern nondual approach, drawing from her eight years of training in a silent Zen monastery. She's authored two books—The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together https://www.soundstrue.com/products/the-heart-of-who-we-are-1 and A Kids Book About Mindfulness https://akidsco.com/collections/kids-books/products/a-kids-book-about-mindfulness. Caverly is also the Founder and Lead Contemplative of two nonprofits—Peace in Schools, creating the first U. S. semester-long credited mindfulness course in high schools, and Realizing Freedom Together https://www.realizingfreedomtogether.org/, dedicated to making practices that lead to liberation for all, accessible to all. Learn more at caverlymorgan.org http://caverlymorgan.org/ In this episode we talk about: How to move past a constricted view of the self Relative vs absolute truth Joseph Goldstein tips on getting a glimpse of no self The perks of meat and potato dharma More practices to help supercharge our practice How love and self-compassion factor into all of this Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD Additional Resources: Website: Things Caverly wished she said to Dan Harris https://www.caverlymorgan.org/danharris A Practice: Fleshing Out Our Conditioning Prompts: In order to be loved, I need to . . . During times of conflict, I should . . . My parents always taught me that . . . I deserve . . . I'll be comfortable when . . . I'll be happy when . . . I know I should avoid . . . If only . . . Other people would be happy if I . . . It's best not to . . . I'm usually afraid of . . . To feel successful I need to . . . The thing I should most watch out for is . . . I never seem to be able to . . . On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here https://www.nyimc.org/event/heavily-meditated/! Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025 http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025. To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris SPONSORS: Leesa Go to leesa.com http://leesa.com/ for 30% off mattresses, plus get an extra $50 off with the promo code "happier". StitchFix  Get started today at stitchfix.com/happier http://stitchfix.com/happier to get $20 off your first order, and they'll waive your styling fee.

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?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing today? Today, we're going to talk about a great question that you can ask yourself next time you are suffering in any way. We will reveal what that question is and how to deploy it in the course of this interview, in which we're also going to talk about an acronym that you can use when you're freaking out, how and why to get curious when the more obnoxious aspects of your inner repertoire are impacting your present moment behavior, and the benefits of what I call contemplative cross-training. This episode is like a cornucopia of wisdom, and my guest is Caverly Morgan, who started meditating back in 1995 and went on to do eight years in a silent Zen monastery.

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  She's written a few books, including The Heart of Who We Are and a kid's book about mindfulness, and she is the founder of two nonprofits, Peace in Schools and Realizing Freedom Together. Heads up, we also talk here at some length about the concepts of nonduality and the illusion of the self. This is fascinating, important, and potentially liberating stuff, but this stuff can also break people's brains. So as you will hear, I try to place myself in the role of advocate for you, the listener. I think we land in a pretty good place by the end. At least I hope we do. Hit me up in the chat over at danharris.com if you have feedback. As always, we've produced a guided meditation to go along with the episode.

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  It's all about how to bring down the volume on the voice in your head, and it comes from our Teacher of the Month, Kyra Duolingo. It's really good, and it's available over in the ad-free podcast feed for all paid subscribers at danharris.com. Go check it out. Speaking of meditations, two more things to say before we get into the episode here. First thing, next month, we're going to start doing weekly live guided meditation sessions on video. Every Tuesday afternoon, we do a Meditation followed by Q and A, starting September 2nd on danharris.com. Some of these sessions will be led by me, others will be led by our Teacher of the Month. Sometimes we'll do it together. In fact, next month's Teacher of the Month, Vinnie Ferraro, a fan favorite and a favorite of mine, he and I are going to do a live guided

• 2:27Dan Harris?

  meditation sesh on September 2nd together. So if you sign up at danharris.com, you can join the party. Second thing to say, speaking of meditation and parties, is that in October, I'll be back at the Omega Institute in upstate New York for another installment of meditation party. It's an in-person retreat that I do with my friends, Seven A Salassi and Jeff Warren. Joining us this year for the first time will be Afosu Jones-Cortez, which I'm excited about. It's October 24th through the 26th. You can go to eomega.org to sign up, and I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay, enough blatant self-promotion. We will get started with Caverly Morgan right after this. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node

• 3:09Dan Harris?

  of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low-stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit, and not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds, and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission, and I, as I said, would be immensely

• 3:52Dan Harris?

  grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media, and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity. In your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now. That really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit.

• 4:36Dan Harris?

  And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. Caverly Morgan, welcome to the show.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, Dan. I'm honored.

• 5:02Dan Harris?

  There's been a lot of back and forth about what we should discuss and how we should discuss it. And I think we landed on, starting with this concept that kind of, for some people, can be a little brain breaking, which is the notion of the self. And whether the self is real or an illusion. In your view, why is it important to start there?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Dan, I think it's important to start there because in my own experience, I spent years practicing mindfulness, even training monastically. And I don't feel that I was directly facing the question, but who am I really? And so a lot of what was happening as I practiced is my egoic patterns, my conditioned and habitual behaviors were just adopting, they were like getting the upgraded version of spiritual practice language.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  And in a way, I was just reinforcing this idea that I am this limited me, working hard in practice, striving, pretty exhausted in practice often, and feeling as though what I longed for was always out of reach.

• 6:24Dan Harris?

  But I can imagine somebody listening to this thinking, well, if you're not you, who are you? I mean, if it's not me doing the effort in meditation, who's making the effort?

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the question that I think is so important for us to explore in our own direct experience. I wish someone had brought that question to me in the early days of my practice, and I, again, I wasn't asking that question. So I think it's important for us to begin by inviting folks, including myself in this moment, to be present to what arises with the question, if I'm not the one that's been working my ass off to try to become more mindful, to try to become more responsive versus reactive, who am I?

• 7:18Dan Harris?

  Yeah, so what's your answer to that question?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Well, actually, Dan, I wanted to hear, what arises for you, in all sincerity? Like, if we're gonna start off here, I'm just so curious, like, what happens in your own real-time experience with that?

• 7:35Dan Harris?

  Well, I feel a little sheepish answering, because you and I were talking about this before we started rolling. I have not done any polling on this, but in my unscientific polling of humans who cross my path, I find that I actually have had some good experiences with this idea of just gently looking for the self, like, who's in there? There's no little humunculus of Dan behind my eyes, between my ears. It's pretty obvious to me when I look. And when I look for, where's Dan, or another way to do it is, what's hearing, what's seeing, you know, who's taking delivery of these sensory packages?

• 8:17Dan Harris?

  I've found that when I look, I see that there's, I have a sense of me. But that's separate from, I can't link that ghostly inner sense of Dan to the hearing, or to the seeing, or to the thinking. It's all, it's very mysterious. And when I knock on that door, I get a vertiginous feeling of vastness. However, I'm real, I realize that as these words come pouring out of my face hole, there are a lot of people who are like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't know what you're talking about. And those people are not bad meditators, they're not stupid. It's just harder for some people to see than others.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think what might be helpful in this moment is if I ground it a little bit with just a personal experience. When I was in high school, I had panic attacks, which I, I know you can relate to.

• 9:18Dan Harris?

  Yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  And I was in a time in my life where no one was telling me that's what was going on. And these panic attacks arose in testing situations. And when I felt pressured, this was way before someone came along and helped me understand neurodivergence. So I just thought, oh, I'm stupid. I didn't even know I was believing the negative self-talk that I'm stupid, but I believed that I was. And when I began to train monastically, one thing that helped me deeply was, I know you focused a lot in your work on self compassion. So one thing that helped me deeply was something I know a lot of your listeners are very familiar with, which was learning how to offer unconditionally loving reassurances to myself. That kind

• 10:03Speaker 01

  of befriending myself completely changed my relationship with who I thought of myself to be. And yet, I still often identified with a felt sense that I am someone that needs help in some way. I am someone that needs to practice in order to have, have less panic in my life. Recently, I haven't even said this story out loud yet, but I, my husband owns a sailboat, and I thought it would be a good thing, since I've only been on a sailboat twice, to learn how to sail. So I did one of these ASA sailing courses. And Dan, I wasn't even aware that I had avoided being in multiple choice testing situations since I was in high school.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Like, I was a theater major, I was an art major. After that, I focused on art and I, I knew that I believed I wasn't smart enough to be a vet, which is what I really wanted to do is be a veterinarian. But I didn't realize that I had truly been avoiding this situation of being back in the saddle of what created all this anxiety. So I got to be on this little sailboat after two days of sailing and taking this multiple choice test. Now, obviously, I'm only there for my own love, my own pleasure, so the stakes weren't high, but my body and mind reacted as if they were. I mean, I'm talking sweaty palms.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  One guy that I was doing this, the test with, he finished it in like half an hour and I wasn't even halfway through. And I had to go to the sailing instructor and say, "Explain neurodivergence," and be like, "I need an untimed test." The point is, not only did I get to practice what I've been practicing, which is befriending myself in that situation, not only did I get to say like, you know, "I'm here with you, you need an advocate, I'll go tell this guy, we gotta have an untimed test." Nobody did that for me in high school. I just like got crazy bad SAT scores because I had no advocate and I just got paralyzed, had panic attacks, couldn't finish the test. And then I had people calling my parents saying, "There's something really wrong with your child."

• 12:16Speaker 01

  So, the point is, what happened in this recent situation is what helped as much as the practice of reassurances was recognizing that I wasn't that experience of limitation. I had an experience where I could feel I am the vastness of awareness that these experiences are rising in. And that, for me, is just one way to make it really grounded. I had all the same shit happen. I mean, if you looked at me, you'd been like, "Wow, her face is red, she's sweaty." But I feel that being able to turn to something beyond even the practice of reassuring myself

• 13:01Speaker 01

  is what really popped me into a different experience than I would have been able to have even 10 years ago.

• 13:11Dan Harris?

  I say this with respect and affection and interest, but I'm not sure, not sure how grounding that is. And I know it is to you because it makes sense in your lived experience, but I suspect for many people, and I know because I've had this conversation with many people, when you say, I tapped into a vastness.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  What the hell is that?

• 13:33Dan Harris?

  What does that mean? And how do you do it?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know,

• 13:39Speaker 01

  one thing I love about getting in touch with what's beyond a limited sense, like the limited way I've been conditioned or habituated to think of myself, is that it's actually, it can be, sometimes it's presented as though it's complicated, but it can be quite simple. For the purposes of this conversation, I want to refer to it as nothing esoteric at all, but just being able to feel my own being. My own being is aware. We can really keep it that simple because for me, at the end of the day, it actually isn't a complicated conversation. I feel that I spent so much time, for example, in mindfulness practice,

• 14:23Speaker 01

  paying attention to what I'm aware of, but I never was asking the question, well, what's, what's aware of these things? And so when you mentioned like knowing and sensing and some of the words you used before when you were speaking, we only have those experiences because we're aware. And I think that's the way to keep it really simple. Our being is vast and naturally aware and not limited by the efforts of our practice. You know, one of the things that I wanted to get out of Dan, I'm a, I'm a one on the Enneagram, and I think that probably says a lot to some of our listeners, but I worked my ass

• 15:06Speaker 01

  off in practice. I mean, who the hell goes to a monastery for eight years because they are so clear that it's through the efforts of their discipline that they're going to achieve something? Me. Maybe other people go for other reasons, but I'm just going to be fully clear that I felt like I'd met my first teacher and I was so impressed with

• 15:28Speaker 01

  That she was so present. And I was like, however she got there, that's what I want to learn. And she could have told me to go join the military and I would have. I didn't know anything about Zen. I didn't know anything about Buddhism. I was just like, yes, that, please. And I applied discipline, effort, and I'm not saying those things aren't valuable. I wouldn't be sitting here today, probably, if I hadn't had all these experiences. But there's something really powerful that happens to me when we can combine things that we've found useful, valuable, like a lot of discipline, for example, or our ability to concentrate or focus the attention. That is, I'm so glad I learned how to focus my attention at the

• 16:10Speaker 01

  monastery. But again, there's a missing piece. And that piece came once I left the monastery and started going more deeply into, well, what is it that's focusing the attention?

• 16:21Dan Harris?

  Yes. So I think what you're saying, and if this is what you're saying, I really agree with it, although I'm gonna add a question on the end, just to check to make sure we're sharing the same reality here. I think what you're saying is, one can, in meditation, or even in therapy, learn to become more self-aware, to understand, oh, I'm having these thoughts, and in meditation, I'm feeling these sensations in the body, or hearing these sounds, and I can learn to direct my attention to my sensory experience, and hold it there, and then learn how, when I get distracted, I can start again. So those are all really helpful skills, but there's this other skill that is sometimes not pointed out to us, that

• 17:05Dan Harris?

  you can be aware of what is aware. Like, what is, as I said before, what's like taking delivery of all of these packages? I'm having a thought, like, who's knowing I'm even having a thought? Who's even asking this question? And that can really cut through the suffering. If you're feeling a physical sensation that's unpleasant, or if you're in the grips of a gnarly emotion, just getting right to the root of, like, what is even, who's doing the suffering here? Like, who's feeling all of this can pull the rug out in a positive way from beneath the suffering. So I have a question to add to that, but am I understanding the value proposition correctly?

• 17:48Speaker 01

  You're absolutely, we're on the same page. A hundred percent. And I'm really appreciating how you're reflecting it and putting it forward. The thing that I want to underline about it is that from a love of practice, we get to employ all of it. We get to employ the question, who am I? And we get to employ the practice of, I better do box breathing for a second, because I know that helps me. Like, we don't have to shut anything out. And it can be because all of it can be supportive. All of it can be beneficial.

• 18:24Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  At least, that's my, my own experience.

• 18:27Dan Harris?

  And that's my experience. I mean, I, I think a kind of contemplative cross-training is really helpful, not only because different situations call for different things, but that these skills of the ability to focus or concentrate, the ability to have metacognition or mindfulness, self-awareness, so you're seeing your thoughts for what they are and not taking them so seriously, the ability to tap into what might be called not-self or nonduality or emptiness. They're all mutually reinforcing. You will get better at each of them as you get better at the others. So if I'm understanding you correctly, I really agree.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what I really love is, in my own practice, the relief that has come from realizing, holy shit, I don't have to get better at anything. That's been profound for me. Like, yeah, Dan, I've worked my ass off at getting better at practices. My whole life, I don't even know what the hell I would do if I had some other job aside from what I do. This is it. This is it for me. And I feel so lucky that I now get to pair with my love of practices. I create practices as a hobby. You know, I love these little practices you put forward that are really short. You're just walking along and they're, you can give it in a quick Instagram moment.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I find things like that so useful because we can grab on to them and try them out. And I love that we can apply these practices while knowing we're already whole.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  We're already complete. Rather than having those practices fueled by something that used to fuel my practice very dramatically, which is, once I'm really good at these practices, then I'll be who I want to be. Once I can master this, then I'll have arrived somewhere. That's what's been probably most liberating for me to dismantle in my own practice. And I'm not saying I'm always there, but I'm recognizing the value of putting that down.

• 20:38Dan Harris?

  Yeah, that resonates for me. It's funny, I think I use the phraseology of getting better. And to a certain extent, especially with focus or mindfulness, like you actually can get better.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:52Dan Harris?

  But the problem is, the desire to get better hinders the getting better. And if you're coming at it from a place of insufficiency, it's gonna, or expectation, it's gonna get frustrating. And which is why being able to tap into this, the truth that there's much more and less to you than you think. In other words, that the self, this ego that you're, that's seemingly the CEO of your life, actually is quite illusory and insubstantial, that you're already whole and connected to the whole, that can actually counterintuitively, paradoxically, help you get better at some of these things because you're not trying as hard, you're not so sweaty.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you're not identified with a limited view of self, a constricted view of self, a self that's pretty fragile, actually.

• 21:50Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Caverly Morgan talks about how to move past a constricted view of the self. And I push her on clarity because this topic can be confusing, but it's incredibly, incredibly important. We also talk about the difference between relative truth and absolute truth. We'll explain that, some Joseph Goldstein tips on getting a glimpse of no self. These are very practical tips that I use myself. And we'll talk about the perks of what I call meat and potatoes dharma.

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• 23:22Dan Harris?

  Okay. That gets me right to the question I referenced earlier that I was hoping to ask you but have not yet articulated, which is, how? How do we do this? Because I, again, I'm making the empathic leap into the earbuds of listeners. Hopefully, I'm doing this with some degree of accuracy. And I can imagine people are thinking, well, okay, that sounds good. But how the fuck do you do that? Like, what's the process?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have a lot of folks that tease me for how often I assign homework. And the idea is that homework in awareness practice just keeps things at the forefront of your experience. So one little homework assignment I often give is in a little practice called SNAP. I've been teaching this for about 20 years, but it wasn't until Maggie Steele, who works with me at Peace and Schools, came along and gave it this clever acronym. SNAP stands for see it, name it, allow, which allows for a letting go, allow it. And P stands for return to presence.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  And to me, the reason this is so significant, Dan, is I've spent so many years in my own practice, feeling identified with a limited sense of I that's trying really hard to get in the present moment, watching when I'm not in the present moment, watching when the attention's in the past or the future, and then trying really hard to get back to the present moment. Not only does that activity keep in place this idea that I am this little me, trying really hard to not go down the road of past or future, but it actually also keeps in place this very linear idea of time. And the present moment, if I'm approaching things that way,

• 25:14Speaker 01

  is this tiny little spot in between past and future. What I like about return to presence is that it's actually a prompt, once we've employed all these mindfulness practices that you've already acknowledged, seeing that, oh, I'm identified with my habitual mind, the mind of limitation, the conditioned mind. I can name, oh, that's just the inner critic beating the shit out of me. I know what that is. I can name it. I allow, which allows for a letting go, and then I return to presence. I return to actually just being aware that I'm aware of all that. I'm just, it's that simple. I'm just returning to my own being.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  And to me, that's very different than get your attention back to the present moment, where I'm gonna work my ass off to try to get present. You with me?

• 26:08Dan Harris?

  Ish. I'm trying to figure out. So just to push you to articulate in a way that

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Please.

• 26:15Dan Harris?

  even I can understand the difference between scrambling back to the present moment, which of course is slipping away all the time, both because it's always a new moment and also because we're so distractible. So the difference between using an internal cattle prod to get us back into the present moment and what you're calling presence?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. I'm suggesting

• 26:44Speaker 01

  That it's when I feel that my attention's aligned with the conditioned mind, the mind that's habituated by society, family, friends, culture. When I'm identified with the conditioned mind, time feels incredibly real. It just seems obvious that the present moment is now, the past is back there, the future's over there. And something that maybe isn't occurring to me, if I'm viewing time in that way, is to back up and just ask, is it possible that that view, that line of time is just a perception?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  What if there actually really only is now? We hear spiritual teachers talk about it all the time. But what if that's really the case? There's just this. And this includes the view of time that we're used to walking around, operating inside. Now, I'm not going so far to say, so time is just illusion. I mean, it actually is. But I don't think statements like that are helpful. I had to time my day so that I could get up and be ready to talk to you today. I looked at a calendar, right? So there's a reality to time, but usually we're walking around assuming it's the whole picture,

• 28:12Speaker 01

  assuming it's reality with a capital R.

• 28:16Dan Harris?

  What I find helpful to help get my sea legs in all of this stuff is the Buddhist concept of relative truth and ultimate truth. Just for the listener, because I know you know this carefully, but for the listener, on the relative level is just basically our consensual reality, the reality in which we need an alarm clock to wake us up or tell us when we have to go somewhere and look at our calendar and I'm me, you're you. You know, I need to get certain things done and interact with other people as if they're separate people, the movie in which we live. So on the level of relative truth, it's true.

• 29:01Dan Harris?

  But on the ultimate level, on the ultimately, it's like taking a high-powered microscope to the chair I'm sitting in right now. It seems like a chair, but if I really look closely, it's spinning subatomic particles. It's mostly empty space. And same is true in your mind. You know, I feel like Dan, but if I really look for Dan, I can't find it. It's made up of component parts like thoughts and sensations, but there's no, as I said before, there's no like homunculus or core nugget of Dan that is findable. And therefore, there isn't, on some level, like real separation between me and you and me and the foam padding on this wall that we use to keep the sound out. I am porous in really important ways.

• 29:45Dan Harris?

  And the art of living, from a Buddhist standpoint, is to kind of move seamlessly between these two realities, to let one inform the other. How am I doing?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  You're singing my song. I'm right there with you. And what I really love is when we continue down this road, we will find, in our own direct experience, at least in mine, that they're not even two realities. And that's where things get really fun. So yes, there's the absolute, and then there's the relative. I like the word absolute, and I think you said ultimate, but just for the listener, it's the same thing. So that doesn't even have to be viewed as, okay, well shit, I gotta go about my day and just tend all these relative things, but I can't wait till I clock out, because then I get to hang out in the absolute, and I get to just be.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  I get to just feel my own aware being and enjoy the peace of my own true nature. We actually can know ourselves as the absolute, as our aware being, and then we can address the relative. We can be in the relative. So for example, I can, if I'm talking to you, and I'm like, oh gosh, this is Dan. He's a, he's, he's famous, and I, I'm nobody. I need to act this way, he's acting this way, you know? And I'm, I'm really reaffirming the idea that I'm separate, you're separate, and now I'm in relationship with you here on the relative plane. It's really different if I come into the conversation, and I'm like, there's Dan.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  We share the same. Being like we're the same. Ultimately, we're the same shit. Dan's just arising over there. I'm arising over here. And now it's my intention to relate to Dan and actually all the listeners by speaking from my being to their being. And that's a different conversation usually. So it's to me really powerful to let even the idea of absolute and relative collapse together.

• 31:49Dan Harris?

  Yes, that makes sense to me. I do want to, however, keep representing those for whom this conversation still may not make sense. Let me say to you, the listener, parenthetically, thank you for hanging in because we've, we've covered these kinds of subjects before and thank you for hanging in on those conversations too, because this stuff is important and can take a while to make sense. So I do want to represent those folks who might still be struggling a little bit. When you say just be or hanging out in awareness. Yeah. I do want to come back to the question of how to do that. Like, what is, what does that look like?

• 32:28Speaker 01

  One analogy I like to use, Dan, is that before this recent chapter of my own practice and training, I only focused on trying to put the attention where I want it to be. So if you picture a flashlight, I focused on, oh, I'm now able to see through mindfulness practice that the flashlight is over on thoughts of regret. Oh, because of mindfulness practice, I can see that the flashlight's on fearing that I don't have enough money and I'm going to end up with a shopping cart outside a grocery store, like with no home. So that practice, if we talk about what my practice looked like for many years, it

• 33:12Speaker 01

  was just to learn how to notice where that attention was and then redirect it to what we've talked about as something in the present moment. Like, I'm going to redirect it to the experience of sitting on this chair or in walking meditation, I'm going to redirect it to the felt sense of the soles of my feet. So the flashlight's getting refocused. One thing that I find useful as an image is to imagine that the flashlight, the light of the flashlight, were allowed to just draw back into the flashlight itself. That the light of the flashlight could just go in the other direction for a moment. That the attention could actually relax.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Instead of, I've been habituated to train the attention to be in these other places, to have an object that's of the present moment as an anchor. So getting to relax the attention is what I refer to as getting to hang out in my own being. And what I'm suggesting is that when we hang out in our own being, we actually directly experience the very thing that I was trying to get through practicing my ass off. And I'm not suggesting, of course, that that doesn't mean don't use those practices. They're really helpful.

• 34:37Dan Harris?

  And they can be helpful in what you're, I think, prodding us to do. Because it does take some concentration, some ability to focus the mind in order to do what I think it does, in order to do what you're suggesting we do. But I do want to keep pressing you on this, like so, very practically, if I get home at the end of the day, or even in the middle of my day, as you suggested earlier, I want to shine the light, the beam of light from the flashlight, back into the flashlight. Is it as simple as that, just to imagine a flashlight and then go for it? Or there are little practices that you recommend?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  That might work for someone, but it could be as simple as noticing, this is kind of comes back to that snap practice. It could be as simple as just noticing that your attention has been bouncing from thing to thing to thing to thing all day long. And that because you've been practicing mindfulness, maybe you've been trying to get it to just focus on present moment things. And maybe you're tired. Maybe in that moment where you recognize, damn, I'm just tired, you invite the attention that's been going out to all the things, all the objects, to just soften.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  And relax. If you relax the attention, it naturally comes back to its home. That's why I love, Jeff Warren stole the title, "Home Base." I wish I had thought of that before. It's so good. "Home Base, we're coming back to home base." "We're letting the attention come home to being." It's not a fancy thing, actually.

• 36:14Dan Harris?

  Well, I know it's very natural, what you're describing. However, if I just try to relax my attention, mostly I start thinking about like, what's for dinner? So is that what you're describing? Or, because I don't think it is what you're describing. Because in my default mode, it's rumination.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Yes. So, one thing that might be helpful, if I'm suddenly catching myself ruminating, and it feels kind of impossible to relax my attention. I try to relax my attention, it just bounces to the next thing. One of the things that I find helpful is to directly recognize that the way I know that my attention's bouncing all over the place is because I'm aware of it. That's how I know. That's how I can tell you, "Dan, I woke up this morning, I was thinking about, is this the right shirt to wear for our podcast?" You know, I'm tracking where my attention went in preparation for talking to you. How do I, how can I tell you this? Because I'm aware that's what my attention was doing.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Okay, let me just surrender to that awareness. I'm just gonna surrender to what's naturally aware. And it's not aware because I applied effort. That's the critical thing here. That's been the critical thing in my own practice. I really thought that being aware was somehow like the byproduct of how hard I was working. And it didn't occur to me for a long time. That awareness is primary. It's usually like in the backdrop of my experience. But just like surrendering the attention to awareness lets awareness come to the forefront of my experience, instead of hanging out in the shadows, instead of it being something

• 37:58Speaker 01

  we're actually never thinking about.

• 38:00Dan Harris?

  I'm gonna describe some practices that I learned from Joseph Goldstein that have been helpful. Joseph Goldstein, just for the uninitiated, is a great meditation teacher, that helped me see what I think you're pointing to. So let me describe them and then you can tell me if I'm in the same neighborhood as you. Does that sound all right?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Please.

• 38:19Dan Harris?

  So one thing Joseph often has his students do is just like move your arm, just very gently. This isn't even like a form of meditation, but just to move your arm or any limb or anything on your body. And just notice like how much effort is required to feel the sensations of movement. It's effortless. You don't have to do anything to feel your arm moving. We do a lot of efforting in meditation. We try to focus on one thing. We get distracted, we haul our attention back, et cetera, et cetera. But essentially, the act of knowing takes a lot of effort. The remembering to wake up and all that stuff can be a little effortful, but the raw knowing

• 39:00Dan Harris?

  of sensation, or even meditation, you know, thinking, is effortless. And so, one little practice I do in my own practice is, I'll just drop that word effortless into my mind, as I'm walking, for example, or feeling my breath. It's like, yeah, there's no effort required, just to know this. And then a supplemental thing I'll do, also from Joseph, is use the passive voice. So specifically, breathing is being known, or movement is being known, or seeing is being known. And then this is the key to add the question, by what? And then you investigate, all right, what's, as I keep saying, like, who or what is taking

• 39:45Dan Harris?

  delivery of these mental packages? And I find in those moments, I get a little glimpse of the fact that there is no core me, there is no self that is findable. First of all, what do you think of those practices? And second, am I describing what you're describing? Are we talking about the same thing?

• 40:05Speaker 01

  We're talking about the same thing. I love those practices. And I think at one point, I might have misheard you. I might have, I thought I heard you say knowing takes effort. But I think what you're pointing to is that the knowing itself is effortless.

• 40:20Dan Harris?

  Yes, if I misspoke, I apologize. That's what I meant, like, the knowing.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  It's effortless.

• 40:25Dan Harris?

  Yes.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Sorry, I got excited. I interrupted you. Please, continue.

• 40:28Dan Harris?

  No, no, I think I was the one interrupting you. But, okay, this leads to my question. When you talk about hanging out in awareness, like, for me, I can get little glimpses. And by the way, that is, in some classical Buddhist traditions, the word glimpse is very important. Like, I can get a little glimpse of the illusion of the self, but I've never managed to be able to hang out in it in any real way. I just kind of, I like to use the analogy of just like knocking at the door with one of these questions, like, known by what? I can knock at the door and there might be a little sense of, holy shit, like, this is just an empty room, like, a vast empty room. Actually, it's filled with everything, except for me.

• 41:11Dan Harris?

  And that's really interesting, but I don't sit there for an hour at a time. Does that make sense? Do you see what I'm trying to get at?

• 41:18Speaker 01

  I totally do. And this is where, Dan, I think our shared love of practice will collide, because some people say it's a non-practice to return to your own being, because it doesn't take any effort to realize that you're aware. You can realize right now, like, are you aware of the sound of my voice? Are you aware of the water that you're taking a sip of in this moment? Are you aware of swallowing? It's actually incredibly simple to realize that we're aware. Again, because it's so simple, some people will say it's a non-practice. I actually love practice, so I'm really hip to say. I like to practice the non-practice.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  I like to recognize as I'm drinking my tea that I could be spending that whole time being mindful of the taste of the tea as a practice. And that's a beautiful practice. I also could practice being aware of the knowing of the taste of the tea while I'm also enjoying the taste of the tea. And the reason I underline practice and the value of it is because we get better at this as we do it. We stabilize in the knowing of ourselves as presence, as aware being, the more we practice resting in that knowing.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  And then it just becomes enjoyable to be really present to whatever you're doing. But that's, that's not because you're working really hard to try to get better and just focusing on, for example, becoming less reactive and more responsive and hopefully becoming a better person, a better individual self through your training.

• 43:14Dan Harris?

  This interplay of effort and effortlessness is, I think, in my experience, like a big part of the art of the practice. And I just want to say to anybody who might be frustrated or confused still, there's nothing wrong with you. This is subtle stuff. And like where I often end up in these situations is just like, do the practices. Do your basic meat and potatoes mindfulness practice. Try these glimpse practices and see what happens. You know, don't get too sweaty about it. Notice when you do get sweaty because that's inevitably gonna happen. But just, you know, what do they say in the Zen tradition? Chop wood, carry water. Like, do your thing and see how it goes.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a beautiful interplay. That's why I like Suzuki Roshi's quote that "You're perfect just as you are, and you could use a little improvement."

• 44:04Dan Harris?

  I love that.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  So, we can recognize the wholeness of our being. We can recognize the effortless nature of getting to just be ourselves. And there might be some things we want to work on in our lives. Like, I, practicing a specific communication skill, has helped my marriage. That's, again, this is the fun part to me, Dan. What's really helped my marriage is to supercharge that practice. So, let's say I learned in couples' therapy, that to supercharge that practice with the knowing that I'm not separate from my husband, that

• 44:43Speaker 01

  we share our very being, it's just, it's kind of skyrocketed the effects of the practice. It doesn't mean I'm now not ever going to practice anything. It means that the practices come from a different understanding. And what the byproduct of that is, we get to just frickin' enjoy our lives. We get to practice something for the love of wanting to be here, for the life that we're here to live. We get to practice something because there's joy in it.

• 45:20Dan Harris?

  Coming up, Caverly talks about some more ways to supercharge your practice, and how love and self-compassion factor into all of this.

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• 47:26Dan Harris?

  Let me ask you about some more practices, and I don't know if these practices are effortful or effortless. I'll let you describe them. We've talked already about snap, see it, name it, allow it, presence. Another practice that you discussed with my compadre, Marissa, senior producer on the show, who collaborated with you on preparing me for this interview. One of the practices you and Marissa discussed was asking this question. What leads towards suffering and what leads away from it? Can you say more about what you mean by that?

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, just, Dan, this question's been so helpful in my own life. You know, I find that this practical question. If I can think to ask the question, I'm already on the road to freedom. So there I am in any situation presenting itself, maybe something where I feel myself, the place my attention just went is, I feel myself really wanting to be right about something. I mean, Dan, I'm just going to break it to you. I'm right. I'm just really right. That thing that happened yesterday, I'm just right. So whatever that thing is.

• 48:36Dan Harris?

  I believe you. I'm on your side.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're on my side. You get it. No, it's like those moments where you're just, you don't even think of it as I'm being right. You just know you're holding what's right and what's real and what's true.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  That was one of those awesome moments to say, does this lead towards suffering or away from it? Does my clinging on to that lead towards suffering or away from it? That moment of, for example, feeling so identified with being right is a really good example of it's really hard. You can't be right in that sense and be free. Because you have to be, you have to be identified with a sense of separateness in order to be right in that kind of identified way than I'm describing. So it's helpful to be able to say, all right, where am I going here? Where does this lead? This process I'm doing?

• 49:35Dan Harris?

  Reminds me of, and I've talked about this movie before. So my apologies to listeners who are tired of me mentioning this movie. But there was a movie, I think a decade ago called The Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks. And he's played a lawyer for a Russian accused spy. And Tom Hanks, his character is quite highly strung. And every once in a while, he would come in talking about some devastating development in the case to his client. And his client would receive the news impassively. And Hanks's character would say, you know, why aren't you stressed about this? And the client would say, would it help?

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Oh, perfect, yeah. Same thing, same thing. I haven't seen that movie. No, I just wrote it down, though. Yeah, we have to ask ourselves. My husband's very good at asking this question, actually. He, he's really good at saying, yeah, I'll be caught in something. And he'll say, well, what would the outcome of that be? Play this out for me. Where do you think if you were to bring this up? Or do this behavior or follow through with that? Where do you see it going? And that's another way to realize, oh, shit, that actually, I just end up further down the hill of, see, I'm right.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  And I get to be righteous and I get to feel, you know, special. But it doesn't actually, when I play it out, it doesn't lead to like deepened connection, deepened intimacy. And these are all things I really want. And I would suggest most of us, even if we don't word it that way, don't we all want to? Be loved, feel love. And then I would add, based on our conversation today, Dan, and this is that little extra step that if people are drawn to play with it, go for it. It's to know ourselves as love.

• 51:33Dan Harris?

  Okay, this is-

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Because ultimately, I think that's what we are looking for. Yeah, please.

• 51:38Dan Harris?

  I was just gonna double click on that because this is an interesting point. We've talked about, well, who are we really? We're unfindable and therefore inextricably interwoven with the surround, with the universe, whatever you want to call it. But the idea that actually that mystery that we are is synonymous with love, that might bear some explanation.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  I think that's fair. The reason I feel comfortable calling that love is because every time I'm deeply experiencing love, what's really going on is that there's simply a falling away of this distorted view that I'm separate. So it's like that little tiny Caverly that runs around trying so hard in life and wants to get everything perfect and wants to be right and thinks that she's gonna get love if she's right, which is a really sad setup that keeps me working hard all the time.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  When that narrative, when that distortion, when that illusion gets to fall away, what's left is an experience that I would call love. It's an experience where there isn't two. There's just, to use a really, a phrase you might say, Caverly, that's too woo woo for me. But it's like, there's just the unity of being. And that, that I experience is love. It's the collapse of you and me. Again, let's go back to a practical relative, plain, absolute thing. If I'm coming at you and I feel you as totally separate from me, I actually might have some hallmark feelings that we could call love with like a lowercase L for you.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  But when there's L with a capital L, it's because I'm recognizing that you and I share the same being. And that's, that's love. That's why we love being in love, because this I disappears. What do they call orgasm in, in French? Isn't it, isn't it a little death?

• 53:56Dan Harris?

  I didn't know that. I do speak a little French, but I didn't, clearly I didn't get that far enough in my studies, or at least I was not studying in the right places.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, Dan, you didn't learn enough French to learn orgasm?

• 54:07Dan Harris?

  No, I probably just was not doing well enough with the opposite sex to have it come up in context. Yeah, well, that makes sense, a little death, because the, the self can go away in those moments. And it also makes sense what you're saying. You know, I think this is kind of grounded, like how do we? Joseph Goldstein always talks about, you know, we're naturally drawn to people who are less self-centered.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 54:32Dan Harris?

  And that is kind of synonymous with enlightenment in the Buddhist sense. Like you're turning down the volume on the ego, on the self, and therefore you're more available. And what is that if not love?

• 54:46Speaker 01

  What is that if not love? And I would suggest that we're, we're more available than our limited minds even understand how to comprehend when we're not identified with the illusion of separate self. For example, if you're not identified with that illusion, you have access to information that is not available to you. If you're in conversation with me right now, only focused on your, on yourself. If you're only focused on, you know, do I look good? Or do I, whatever, you're self-centered. Maybe it's just, what am I having for dinner? So there's so much we cut out of view.

• 55:28Speaker 01

  The minute the small sense of self can be seen for the illusion that it is, possibility is infinite.

• 55:41Dan Harris?

  When I first started getting interested in Buddhism, I would hear this concept that we're discussing now sometimes referred to as selflessness. And I always had to, if I was going to explain it to somebody, I would say, you know, it's different from selflessness, the way we use the word, you know, we use it as generosity, but in Buddhism, they mean there is no self. But actually, they are the same on some important levels.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, say more about that. I'm curious.

• 56:09Dan Harris?

  Well, if getting over yourself makes you more loving, it is both selfless in the sense that there's less of a self, I'm not so identify with Dan, and it is selfless in the Western conventional term in that I am going to be more generous with my attention with anything.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you know, Dan, in this moment, it's also arising for me to acknowledge that someone might be conditioned to think less of themselves, to actually walk around feeling like I'm nobody. Nobody cares about me. Nobody loves me, right? Like to already diminish themselves in the way that we would diminish ourselves on the relative plane. So it feels important in this moment to also acknowledge the ego can work in many ways. And by ego, I just am referring to the activity of the conditioned mind that sees itself as separate. So the ego can be puffed up and the ego can be, I'm the biggest piece of shit.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Right? So that's not the no self we're talking about. We're not talking about that side of the duality. And that seems important to underline too, for the listeners who might be not clear about that.

• 57:31Dan Harris?

  Yeah, a pitfall of the path here would be a kind of self-abnegation, or maybe that's why you're so focused on combining these seemingly two contradictory concepts, self-compassion and not-self.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, because what interests me about the work of self-compassion is that self-compassion, when approached from this recognition of who we truly are, like the heart of who we truly are, it's an invitation to return to wholeness versus I have to use this technique to help me feel a little better. It becomes much bigger than a Band-Aid, in other words. I'm not suggesting, for example, one of the practices that we did at the monastery where I trained early on was we learned the practice of learning how to recognize negative self-talk,

• 58:29Speaker 01

  and then we learned how to apply unconditionally loving reassurances to really retrain the brain. And one of the things that I thought was incredibly impactful, once I was learning, I was being trained to facilitate retreats as a monastic. I'll never forget my teacher saying, we were doing role plays, it's more important that the retreatant has the experience of being the one that reassures the part of them that is hurt or in need than it is that that part gets reassured. And I realize now that that's because it's so powerful to recognize ourselves as that

• 59:12Speaker 01

  which can offer unconditional love.

• 59:15Dan Harris?

  Even in that schema, though, even in that, and I've thought about this quite a bit in working with self-compassion myself, like, if I'm reassuring myself, who's during the reassuring and who's receiving the reassuring, right in that is a glimpse of selflessness.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Kristin Neff led a workshop called, "Who is the Self in Self-Compassion?" And I think that's exactly the glimpse you're pointing to. We realized later that it was too esoteric of a title, and we've since changed the title. And now that question is sort of buried in the write-up of, you know, we lead retreats together and, you know, it's sort of buried a little bit more because I don't necessarily know that it's really helpful to people to lead with that, for the same reasons that you've pointed to in this conversation. But that's the glimpse that you and I are focusing on here. What happens to my practice when I realize that I am unconditional love?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  I don't even have to work my ass off to try to get better at practicing saying these kind things to myself. I can, if it's useful to be in a moment of stress, but things really shift when I recognize that I am this vastness. And then when I recognize this vastness is inherently aware, and I would say inherently loving.

• 1:00:40Dan Harris?

  Let's see if we can sneak in one last practice before we run out of time here. There's something you recommend called fleshing out our conditioning. What's that all about?

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that practice I spoke with Marissa about a little bit is a practice that's in my book, The Heart of Who We Are. And what I got excited about in that book, Dan, is what happens when we take practices? Practices like recognizing negative self-talk, practices like seeing our conditioned behaviors, for example, seeing our survival strategies, learning how to return to presence. What happens when we take these and we apply them collectively? So in the book, I focus on how we have what we think of as a personal ego, but we also have a collective ego.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  And so, for example, I can learn to see my own personal negative self-talk, learn how to dis-identify from that negative self-talk, return to presence. I can also learn how to see the conditioning of an entire group or collective that I identify with. And that's exciting to me because I think we're in a time where we could use the application of personal practice in a collective way. So, a practice where I can flesh out my own conditioning, where I can see, "Oh, I've been taught I'm only lovable if," and then I fill in the blank. Or, "I need to work really hard to," and then I fill in the blank.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  We can take that same practice as I do in my book, and then we can apply it to a collective we identify with. As a white woman raised in the South, I'm only lovable if, and then I have a very specific answer to that that's different than my personal answer, because I'm replying on behalf of a whole collective. So imagine if we could not only see our personal conditioning and dis-identify from it, but we could see our collective conditioning and dis-identify from it. This, to me, is how we'll realize freedom together.

• 1:02:54Dan Harris?

  I don't dismiss at all the value of doing this collectively, but just selfishly, I'm drawn to it on an individual level. I want to read some of these prompts you have here. You mentioned this one, "In order to be loved, I need to," "during times of conflict, I should," "my parents always taught me that," "I deserve..." dot, dot, dot, "I'll be comfortable when..." dot, dot, dot, "I'll be happy when..." dot, dot, dot, "I know I should avoid..." dot, dot, dot. Anyway, I'll drop the full list in the show notes. But personally, it feels like it would be very helpful for me to answer these questions, because it would be like... Bringing out of my unconscious many of the habitual storylines that are driving my behavior that I might otherwise not see.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Exactly, Dan. That's really, thank you for reflecting that. That's, that's really the whole point, is that we get to, with a practice like this, and I'm so glad you'll put it in the show notes for people to try out, we get to see what's usually in the shadows. Through a practice of awareness, we get to bring it forward and not be confused that that's who I am. So again, a practice like this is all in the name of revealing who we've been conditioned to be, which can highlight who we truly are, or the heart of who we truly are. Because if we're walking around identified with who we've been conditioned

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  to be all day, every day, it's really hard to even recognize what's there at the backdrop of our experience. This vastness that you and I have talked about. So if I can see how I've been conditioned, if I can catch those automated responses, and for anyone who wants to fill them out, my greatest encouragement is don't give the enlightened answers. Let your conditioning, let the mind of limitation, you know, reveal how it's been habituated, and how it keeps you in a box. And then, if you think it's fun, just go through all those prompts and apply "we," and let it be for any collective you identify

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  with. It can be especially powerful if you do this and then someone who identifies with another collective, or uses another collective through the same prompts, gets to share notes on that. A lot gets revealed about not only how suffering gets created in a personal way, but how all of this collective suffering that we see as we look around us right now gets maintained, plays out.

• 1:05:30Dan Harris?

  Before I let you go, can you just remind everybody of the name of your book? And anything else you've made and put out into the universe that we should be aware of?

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Dan, thank you. The book is, I have two books. One is called A Kid's Book About Mindfulness. And that book, for anyone who enjoyed the part of our conversation where we were exploring this question of, who the hell are we really? That kid's book starts with the question, who are you? It doesn't say hell in the kid's book. So the kid's book is called A Kid's Book About Mindfulness. And the adult, the book that I wrote for adults is called The Heart of Who We Are: Realizing Freedom Together. And that book takes personal practices, applies them collectively, and that book has the backdrop understanding that who you are is already whole. So you're not, it's not presented in such a way that if you make it to the end of this

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  book, you're gonna be better. It's really coming from you're already whole. Now, let's play with these practices. And then, Dan, all the other things on my website by the time this airs should be up to date. And I love leading retreats. And thanks for giving me an opportunity to give a shout out about my various online offerings and retreats that can be found through CaverlyMorgan.org.

• 1:06:47Dan Harris?

  Awesome. We'll put a link to that in the show notes, CaverlyMorgan.org. Caverly, thank you very much.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Thank you, Dan. It's been a real pleasure.

• 1:06:59Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Caverly. By the way, she's putting together a webpage called Things I Wish I Had Said to Dan. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes when it's ready. Don't forget, there's a custom guided meditation that comes along with this episode. You can get it if you sign up at DanHarris.com. It's all about how to turn down the volume on the voice in your head. There's a growing library of companion meditations over on DanHarris.com, so go check it out. And next month, we'll be kicking off weekly live guided meditation sessions on video. And our Teacher of the Month, starting in September, will be Vinnie Ferraro, and he'll join me on September 2nd for our first weekly session. And while I'm plugging here, don't forget to check out Meditation Party.

• 1:07:41Dan Harris?

  That's my in-person meditation retreat at the Omega Institute in late October. It's a full weekend, seven days slash. Jeff Warren and Afosu Jones-Cortez will be there. There's a registration link in the show notes. Finally, I want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer, and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 1:08:34Speaker 06

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• 1:08:54Speaker 07

  Get started at safeguardveterans.net. Click on Community Organizations. Safeguard Veterans is a 2026 pilot research program funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs.