How To Learn From Your Ancestors | Spring Washam

Our guest argues that looking back on those who came before us can help us understand who we are and why we do the things we do. Plus, a very special request from Dan. Spring Washam http://springwasham.com is a well-known teacher, author, and visionary leader based in Oakland, California. She is the author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment https://www.hayhouse.com/a-fierce-heart and her newest book, The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground https://www.springwasham.com/the-spirit-of-harriet-tubman. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based meditation practices to diverse communities. She is one of the founding teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center https://eastbaymeditation.org/, located in downtown Oakland, CA and has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism since 1999. In this episode we talk about: How Spring came to write about Harriet Tubman's life Her work with plant medicine and the shamanic tradition The dream and the "conversations" Spring had with Tubman Why we are all so interested in ancestry How we can deepen our relationship with our ancestors Family Constellation Therapy as a modality for doing ancestry work Spring's own family history Why she is still processing the experience of writing her book about Harriet Tubman What she means by the "inner underground railroad" and how it is alive today And, how, in the inner underground railroad, freedom equates to nirvana Content Warning: mentions of suicide This episode originally aired in February 2023, and we're re-airing it today for two reasons: first, because it's awesome; and second, because Spring needs help.  A few months ago, Spring was hit by a delivery truck while crossing the street in Atlanta. She suffered extensive injuries and has been largely unable to work since then. As a result, she's been experiencing some financial distress between her mounting medical bills and her inability to be fully employed. We've teamed up with the meditation teachers Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman to start a GoFundMe page https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-spring-washams-healing-journey to help Spring raise a little bit of money. Jack, Trudy and Dan have all contributed. If you can make a contribution, please do. No amount is too small. You can find the GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-spring-washams-healing-journey Related Episodes: The Dharma of Harriet Tubman | Spring Washam https://www.danharris.com/p/the-dharma-of-harriet-tubman-spring-f95?r=4o5o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Spring Washam, 'What Was Creating All This Suffering?' https://www.danharris.com/p/spring-washam-what-was-creating-all-4bf?r=4o5o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false Everything You Wanted To Know About Meditation Retreats But Were Afraid To Ask | Spring Washam (And Dan's Close Friend, Zev Borow) https://www.danharris.com/p/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-710?r=4o5o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false 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 To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris.

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.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How we doing? Today, we've got a bit of a doozy for you. So many of us are interested in our family tree. We do things like 23andMe or ancestry.com. We look at black and white photos and quiz our older relatives about the four bears we never had a chance to meet. We want to know, what are our roots? What made us? Today, we're going to take this very natural, human impulse to a deeper, and for many of you, much stranger, place. Before I dive into the basic information about this episode, let me just say a quick word about my attitude when it comes to magic. I, as I think you probably know, am naturally quite a skeptical person. I'm a journalist and agnostic.

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  I was raised by scientists, blah, blah, blah. But I'm also a Buddhist. Not in the sense that I pound the table and declare that things like enlightenment or rebirth are absolutely true. I don't have any direct evidence, at least for either of those things. But instead, in the sense that I practice quite a bit of Buddhist meditation and have found that meditation and many other techniques that Buddha discussed have made a huge difference for me. And it doesn't hurt for me that modern researchers have lent a sheen of scientific validity to many of these practices. All of which leaves me in a very funny position, vis a vis some of the more out there claims that you can find in the Buddhist texts. The claims go way beyond things like rebirth and enlightenment.

• 1:46Dan Harris?

  I'm talking about things like the notion that meditation can give you superpowers, or the idea that there are other realms of existence, some of them populated by deities. The good news here is that the Buddha himself explicitly said that you should not take any of this stuff at face value. You should check it out for yourself, verify it through your own experience. Still, it's always jarring for me when I realize that one of my teachers, people who I know well and I'm personally very close with, truly believe this stuff. I will say that over time, my attitude has shifted slightly, but meaningfully on this. It's not that I personally believe any of these claims per se. It's just that I am no longer so quick to dismiss them outright. I try to take the attitude recommended

• 2:28Dan Harris?

  by the poet Samuel Coleridge, who talked about something called the willing suspension of disbelief. The person who has perhaps challenged me the most in this regard, who has put me in the most situations where I've had to willingly suspend my disbelief, is Spring Washam. Spring is one of the most important teachers in my life, and she's also very willing to dive into metaphysics. In fact, Spring wrote a whole book called The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, in which Spring claims that she had conversations directly with Tubman's spirit. Quick refresher, just in case you forgot, Harriet Tubman was an ex-slave who became a famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, making 13 trips

• 3:10Dan Harris?

  into the South and rescuing close to 70 people. So she was just a total badass. But anyway, let me just quickly say to the skeptics, or we're maybe choking a little bit on the idea of Spring having direct conversations with Harriet Tubman's spirit, just remember to experiment with willing suspension of disbelief. And even if you don't want to believe in the notion of Spring having a conversation with Harriet Tubman's spirit, just trust me and hang in there, because I assure you, this conversation's going to pay off. Because if you set aside the metaphysics, one of the big things Spring is arguing for here is that we should all take a deep look at our own ancestors. Granted, Harriet Tubman is not, as far as we know, a direct ancestor to Spring Washam, but she is, in a broad

• 3:51Dan Harris?

  sense, an ancestor to all of us. And that is Spring's point here. We need to reckon with the people who have come before us, where their actions will impact us, sometimes negatively, and often in unseen ways. I know this is a long introduction. Just bear with me. I've got a few more things to say. We first posted this interview that you're about to hear back in 2023, but we're pulling it out of the archives right now for two reasons. First, because it's awesome. And second, because Spring... Really needs some help right now. A few months ago, Spring was hit by a delivery truck while crossing the street in Atlanta where she lives. She suffered extensive injuries and has been largely unable to work since then.

• 4:33Dan Harris?

  As a result, she's been experiencing some financial distress between her mounting medical bills and her inability to be fully employed. So I teamed up with the meditation teachers, Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman, to start a GoFundMe page to help Spring raise a little bit of money. Jack, Trudy, and I, of course, all contributed. If you can make a contribution, please do. I'll put a link to the GoFundMe page in the show notes. No amount is too small. Okay. Having said all of that, we will get started with Spring Washam right after this.

• 5:05Speaker 01

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• 6:11Dan Harris?

  Spring Washam, my friend, my teacher, welcome back to the show.

• 6:15Speaker 04

  Oh, Dan, it's so good to be back.

• 6:19Dan Harris?

  Congratulations on the book. I know you've been working really hard on it. And the last time you were on the show, you were just kind of starting out. So if people miss that conversation, can you just tell the story of why you decided to write this book?

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Yes, it's kind of a magical story in a way. And I remember our last show was, I think it was May 2020. Wow, heavy times. So even though I'm a Buddhist teacher and healer, I ended up writing a book about the spirit of Harriet Tubman Awakening From The Underground. And Harriet came to me in a very powerful visionary dream. That's how it started. I write about that in the first chapter. I was running and panicked and being chased. And I just remember my hands burning and I was holding on. I thought it was a rope

• 7:15Speaker 04

  initially. And then it was the back of Harriet Tubman's dress. And she was guiding me. And then the whole, kind of a whole journey, a series of conversations with our great ancestor, Harriet began to happen. And the journey I chronicle in a book that is now out. So it's very magical. It's kind of hard. You have to tell me exactly maybe what you want me to share more. But it still is shocking and unbelievable story to me, too. I'm still integrating what happened here.

• 7:50Dan Harris?

  I don't want you to hold anything back. I will come at you with my gentle, open-minded skepticism. But before we get into the magic, which I do want to go into heavily, let me just ask you something more factual, which is, for those who don't know much about her, who is Harriet Tubman?

• 8:11Speaker 04

  So Harriet Tubman was born in 1825, and was born in Maryland on a plantation where she was enslaved, her and her entire family. And it's a story of her awakening as she gets into her mid 20s. She runs away, goes to Philadelphia, kind of has this epic runaway journey where she goes by herself, escapes, joins the Anti-Slavery Society, meets up with all these other abolitionists in Philadelphia, and then begins to do a series of rescue

• 8:45Speaker 04

  On the Underground Railroad. And for those who don't know what the Underground Railroad is, it was a, I guess you could say, a hidden passageway, a series of safe houses that stretched sometimes 100 miles, sometimes 500 miles. They found underground depots and as far away as Ohio. But a very common one was through Philadelphia, New York, and up to Canada. And Harriet Tubman was known to be a conductor on the Underground Railroad and rescued many people. A series of journeys. She did 12. That's what we know from historical facts.

• 9:25Speaker 04

  And rescued her entire family and friends. And then her life was just incredible. She went on to be in the military, first woman in history to lead military raids. And then went on to join the women's movement and with Susan B. Anthony. And she just is this archetype because she was A, a woman, B, is a small woman. She was only about five feet tall. And she's just known for this courage and her legacy of sort of the Bodhisattva heart, this great compassion, willing to risk it all for freedom and not only hers, but to help other people as well. So that's a very, that's a snapshot, a snippet.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  One could study her life for a long time and learn many things, historical things, things about her personal life. But the main thing is she's our ancestor, a great ancestor. And we, there's a lot to learn from her journey, her experiences and her legacy.

• 10:27Dan Harris?

  She once said, "I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for 10 years, and I can say what most conductors can't say. I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger."

• 10:41Speaker 04

  That's so awesome. I love that. Exactly. She, my sense in my conversations that when she was conducting, this was serious business. She was pretty fierce. And ultimately, Harriet Tubman is a protector. I often see her as kind of one of those Dakinis, like a wrathful Dakini, was a protector. And there are stories about, once you left with Harriet Tubman, there was no going back. There was a story where she pulls a gun on a guy who wanted to go home. And she was like, oh, no, you go on or die. I don't think she was really gonna kill him. I don't know. But that was enough to get him over the finish line. I'm sure he was happy. He listened to her after he got to Philadelphia.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  But yeah, there was a ferocious panther. When we were conversating and I was writing, she tells me she shape shifted often into a Black Panther when she was conducting. So she can have that sensory perception, hearing, seeing. Panthers can see great distance. They use their senses, their heightened senses in different ways. So she describes herself like that in one part of the book when she was talking about those days of running those missions.

• 11:57Dan Harris?

  You made a reference to having conversations with her. We're gonna, just to be clear, we're gonna talk about those conversations in a second.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  That's the magic part.

• 12:04Dan Harris?

  That's the magic part. But I keep putting this off because you keep saying things that I want to follow up on. You used a couple of terms in the last couple of minutes that might be worth defining for people who haven't heard them before. You used the term Bodhisattva and then also Dakini.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  Right, yeah. Bodhisattva. Well, that's a word, a Buddhist word, that we use in the Buddhist tradition, the Mahayana tradition particularly. And Bodhi means awake. Bodhi mind means awakened mind. And Satva is a word that means hero. So a Bodhisattva is a being who makes vows that they will continually be reborn in samsara, or you could say the Matrix, that's kind of a modern word for samsara, over and over to be of benefit to all beings and keep turning the wheel of the Dharma. An elite squad of compassion.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Compassion and action manifested in human beings who are dedicated to helping all beings be liberated from suffering.

• 13:16Dan Harris?

  This is a somewhat deliberately absurd reference I'm going to make now, but back when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were together, they once said, "We're not going to get married until our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and otherwise can get married." The Bodhisattva is making a much more hardcore vow than that. They're saying, "We're never going to Nirvana. We're going to keep being reborn in this veil, this suffering world, until every being has achieved enlightenment, has been freed from suffering."

• 13:48Speaker 04

  Yes, and which is heroic and insane and impossible, it seems. And yeah, they say, "Beings are measureless. I vow to save them all." And this is the sort of the intention for one's life. It's rare, Dan. It's a rare, it's a rare being who takes his vow and actually works on living it. So, but beautiful. And Harriet Tubman definitely had the spirit of that.

• 14:19Dan Harris?

  You also compared her to a Dakini, which is another Buddhist term. Can you say more about that?

• 14:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, so a Dakini is a manifestation of the enlightened feminine in a sort of magical form, a wisdom Dakini. Now, we're getting into more of Ajayana Buddhism here, where they have Dakini mandalas, and there is these Dakinis who appear and they can shape shift. And they often help yogis and meditators and their protectors. And they're also supposed to be free from some sorrow, and they are awakened energies. And they appear at different moments in time. So that Dakini's a liberated mind manifested in a feminine, but also the

• 15:06Speaker 04

  feminine in its kind of tantric form. You know, they appear often naked and with bone jewelry on and free from all concepts.

• 15:16Dan Harris?

  I think in the West, when we hear Tantra, we think about the kind of sex that Sting had with his wife Trudy in the 80s, where he put off completion. But Tantra is more accurately used to describe where you... I'm getting a little bit out of my depth here, so please correct me. But you referred to Vajrayana Buddhism, which is a later school of Buddhism, practiced perhaps most famously in Tibet. And in Tantra, this sort of esoteric form of Buddhism, there are many practices, one of them having to do with sex, and many of the other of them just having to do with working with the various energies of the mind to become enlightened. Am I close to accuracy here?

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Yes, that's very accurate. I think that it does get mixed up with these weekend sex sessions in Marin County. And it's gone way off. Like, everything in our culture, there's this depth and these roots, but it gets kind of appropriated in this one dimensional way. And then people assume exactly Sting is Vajrayana practitioner. He may be. I love Sting, but I think what we're talking about is something with much more deeper roots. We're talking about working with the energy of our mind in a very shamanic way. We're using breath and elements and consciousness itself to... It's a... Vajrayana is considered a rapid path to awakening. Not everyone can handle it.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  It's known to be a bit dangerous because it's so powerful. So, there you go.

• 16:48Dan Harris?

  You used another term that's worth just unpacking for people, shamanic. You, and I will have said this in the introduction, aside from the fact that you've done decades of incredible work in the meditation Buddhism world, you've also done an enormous amount of work in the ayahuasca world. And not that long ago, when the first time you came on this show, you were a little worried about even talking about working with ayahuasca because it was so controversial generally, and also specifically in the Buddhist world where you had come up. Now, though, I think in no small measure because of your contributions, and let's not forget Michael Pollan as well, but it's much more widely accepted.

• 17:30Dan Harris?

  And you've been much more open as a consequence about this work. So, just to say, you've got several things going on that you're bringing to the table as we talk about Harriet Tubman here.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And I think that this whole conversation about plant medicine and healing, it is, the doors have been opened primarily because of all the research, right? Because of the benefits, because of all of the people and studies and John Hopkins and writers like Michael Pollan and many others sharing their experiences that were expressing the benefits of it. There was definitely a lot of fear when I was talking about it 10, 12 years ago. It was controversial. But now we're in the time of, by all means, let's help ourselves, right? After the last couple of years, I think many people are like, if

• 18:25Speaker 04

  this is helping with the mental health crisis in the world on this planet, let's look at it. Maybe this is good. So I do appreciate the openness. But I also do understand the controversy. I do understand the fear around it. It's powerful and we approach it with a lot of respect and preparation and reverence.

• 18:45Dan Harris?

  I've always said that if I was ever to decide to do ayahuasca, it would be with you, because if there's anybody I was comfortable throwing up in front of, it would be you.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  But Dan, you were gonna come, right? I thought you were coming on my summer retreat.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  You were like, once I leave live TV, I'm coming, I'm coming. Well, we'll talk privately offline about. I think that we should, you should come so that you have a firsthand experience for all the fidgety skeptics and nonbelievers. You, you'd be the great experiment, Dan. I think it would be a joy to work with you on multiple levels and for many reasons.

• 19:29Dan Harris?

  Well, just to be clear, I'm not skeptical at all about plant medicine. I'm just scared.

• 19:35Speaker 04

  Right. Okay. What, can you say more about that? I mean, I don't know if this is the right moment to go in depth into your.

• 19:45Speaker 04

  And to your pain and fears, like, I mean, what do you think is gonna happen?

• 19:53Dan Harris?

  Well, maybe we won't end up using this stuff. And I do want to talk about Harriet Tubman. But the short answer is the ayahuasca. I mean, you've talked about this, these experiences. You've written about it in your prior book that these experiences can be incredibly intense. And you can feel like a kind of death. I also have panic disorder and have coming through a phase now where it's gotten worse. And so I've been working with exposure therapists to make it better. And that has worked, but I'm a little reluctant to kind of mess with my brain right now because I feel like I'm just kind of getting control of it again. Control not being the right word, but being able to sort of work with it more skillfully again. And so, yeah, that's a long way of saying there are many reasons why I'm scared to do it.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  Okay. And I do understand that, Dan, but I think it would be a great benefit. I think that it helps. I've seen so many miracles. In fact, I just came back last week from leading a big retreat in the jungle and it was the miracles, the power. I think you would end up loving it. And often people are so scared, but then they have so many positive experiences. You know, it's a way to overcome fear. It's very helpful at a healing anxiety. But you had to be ready.

• 21:08Dan Harris?

  No, I'm sold. I'm just not yet ready. That's probably the right way to put it. Okay, so we've kind of set the table here on who you are and what you do. So now that we've done that, let's talk about the magic. Right in your first answer, which I haven't let you say much more about since then, you talked about this whole thing being kicked off because Harriet Tubman appeared to you in a dream. You kind of laughed when you said it because you know that I'm, I come from a bit of a skeptical place, although not a closed minded place. So I'm asking you this question with a genuinely open mind, but nonetheless, I retain my skepticism, if that's even possible as a balance to strike. Can you tell me more about this dream and then the subsequent conversations you say you had with her?

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Right. Okay. So first of all, Dan, I was as shocked as anyone. I was not a Harriet Tubman fanatic. This wasn't someone that I had followed. Of course, I learned about Harriet like everyone else in February in high school when they had two days of Black History and there was Harriet and then the Underground Railroad. Of course, I watched the movie in 2019, but this wasn't, this was so unexpected and I'm still integrating that. So yes, I had this powerful visionary dream and that was a week before George Floyd was murdered. I started to have, Harriet started to appear and like everybody, I was a bit lost.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  My whole schedule was canceled. I was at the Forest Refuge and they kicked us out and I had to go back to California. And I got swept up in anxiety and fear and oh my gosh, this was the early days of the pandemic and all the violence and all the shootings and I just kept asking and praying, how should I respond? My community needed me and I certainly didn't feel strong and I felt very lost. And I think it was, at that time, it was such an earthquake in consciousness. Something happened in May of 2020, something opened. And I think it was that crack in our hearts and consciousness, something happened.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  I feel like Harriet's spirit really fully emerged in consciousness. And it started with that powerful dream, but it wasn't just a dream. It was so much more than that. And after I had that dream, Harriet began to appear in my mind pretty much constantly. Images, songs, I began to look her up and then I had shared with you on that last podcast. That's when I thought, I wonder if other people are having Harriet Tubman experiences. I'll do a five-week class. And I just threw this five-week class up online. And then the class went viral and I had hundreds of people participating in what was a five-week,

• 24:05Speaker 04

  very simple class, meditation, me reading and sharing about her life. But during this time, Harriet's energy began to appear more and more. I would sleep, I would dream of her every night, images. When I would be walking, I could feel her hand in my hand. And I was like, okay, this is a blessing, obviously. I was like, Harriet Tubman, yes, I need you. Thank the Lord. You gotta get, gotta get me out of this situation. What's going on here? And during the five week class unbeknownst to me, in that sea of hundreds of people on Zoom room,

• 24:47Speaker 04

  you know how it is, the vice president of Hay House, Patty, was taking the class and thought, oh, my God, Spring has to write this book. So began to reach out to me about writing a book. And I tried to get out of it, Dan. I had no interest. I was like, no way. Are you, you, you're kidding? I'm not a scholar. I'm not a African American history scholar. I'm Buddhist. I lead retreats. No, no, I can't. And so I begged and cried and pleaded to get out of it. But that wasn't to be the case. And then there was this one particular incident, which I write about in the second chapter of my book, where Harriet makes an unmistakable appearance.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  I guess in order to close the deal, to get me to say yes, there had to be kind of a breakthrough moment. And then I began to go, oh, my God, something more profound is happening here.

• 25:43Dan Harris?

  I think there are a lot of people listening to this show who are open to, we're using the word magic. And then I think there are a lot of people who are thinking to themselves, well, wait a minute, what do I do with this information? This doesn't sound evidence based. And I come out of that corner of the, of consciousness personally, but I have kind of changed over time and developed what Samuel Coleridge has called the willing suspension of disbelief. So what do you say to folks who are a little bit more like, kind of oriented in my direction of Western scientific skeptical materialists who hear about Harriet Tubman appearing to you in a dream and might be tempted to conclude, oh, well, this person has drank too much ayahuasca or whatever?

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, I could understand that view if you only believed in this one realm of existence and if you only, you had a certain kind of experience. But as Dan, we live in a multi-dimensional universe. Even if you read the Pali Canon, the earliest texts of Theravada Buddhism is full of magic and spirit worlds and devas and celestial beings. And I mean, we live in this vast universe. And I understand for a lot of people to survive the catastrophe of humanity, they had to live in a kind of narrow box to keep this controlled. You used that word "control" earlier. Like, "I've got control of my mind. I don't want to shake it.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  No, let's not do anything to upset the control system here." I understand. We're not in control, though, Dan, at all. But the illusion of that keeps people on a certain path. And to think that we are so much more than just this human incarnation is more than most people can absorb. They need a scientific view of only being able to understand what they can see. And that's okay. But it's just important to understand that there's more going on here. There's more going on here than just what we can see and hear and experience with our senses and this human body, that we are vast. And most of our consciousness and our minds, we are not tapped into.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  We live in like the basement of a large house. And for a lot of us, we're comfortable in that basement. It gives us the security. We get through our lives. But that doesn't negate the existence of 500 other rooms in the house. They're there, too. And when people are ready, they're ready. And if people want to think of this as a conversation with an ancestor, that's maybe accepted. Like, the idea that maybe we can talk to our ancestors? To me, that seems very normal. But I know I live in a certain reality.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Like, we could talk to devas and ancestors. It's not like we're talking to them every day and getting confused about. I'm very much clear about spring wash them in this reality. I'm very grounded on the earth. I have a social security number. I'm not lost in that. These are experiences that many spiritual beings write about. I mean, if you read any of the biographies of the great masters of from Parma Hatha, Yogananda to Pool Rinpoche, to everybody in between, the stories of Ajahn Mun that comes out of our tradition. I mean, he was battling demons in his cave and I mean, he was, I mean, it's this, what I'm saying is little compared to that stuff. That's what I'm trying to say.

• 29:22Speaker 04

  So there's a tradition of this, Dan. It's just that a lot of people, we don't know how to make sense of it. So the easiest thing is to negate it. And I understand that. I don't have fault with that. I just accept that, okay, that's one experience and there are others.

• 29:41Dan Harris?

  I've always taken the descriptions that you use the phrase Pali Canon with the Buddhist, earliest Buddhist teachings, as you know, were written down in the language of Pali, P A L I. And in the Pali Canon, this collection, this vast collection of the earliest Buddhist teachings, there are lots of references to the spirit world and magical beings called devas, D E V A, and superpowers that can be developed through meditation. And so, yeah, that's all in there. And the Buddha, you know, on the night of his enlightenment, sitting down under the Bodhi tree and engaging this epic battle with the bad guy Mara, who's the god of desire. And I guess I've always taken that as poetic language, not necessarily something to be taken literally.

• 30:26Dan Harris?

  And I'm saying this because I want you to push back at me. It may be that it's just too much for me to take in, as you described, and I, so I shut down and stick to science. But I, the story I'm telling myself, which may be inaccurate, is that I'm just reluctant to. Make claims for anything that I cannot directly prove.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  I understand. Yeah. And I don't even think I need to push back on you, Dan. I don't. I've always accepted that that's what's funny about our connection is that I have all this stuff going on and then you have yours, right? And I think that's what's funny about our connection is that it's okay. They're parallel. They're a parallel reality. And it's like, it's all perfect because I can't, I'm not really interested in convincing people that what I'm saying is true because it's just my experience. This is just my experience. And who's to say other people's experiences aren't just as valid? And they are as valid.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  And my goal is not to try to get people to believe in the unseen world. It exists. I mean, we don't know how it works, but it exists. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with all of it. People believing, people not believing in devas, people believing in Buddhism, people not believing in Buddhism. But the stories are there nonetheless. They're filled with ma- I mean, there's a story in the Middle Link Discourses where the Buddha builds a staircase of gold to go visit the gods in the 33 realm, right? To climb up the staircase. Like, if I was to take all the magic, I could give discourses on that

• 32:09Speaker 04

  part of the Dharma. And they do in Thailand. They talk more about the magic. I'm not here to convince anyone. I think the book and the message of Harriet Tubman is about inspiration. It's a kind of medicine that we need right now. We're kind of a little bit leaderless.

• 32:28Dan Harris?

  Much more of my conversation with Spring Washam right after this.

• 32:34Speaker 01

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• 32:54Speaker 02

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

• 33:08Dan Harris?

  I want to talk about these channeled conversations that you write about in the book. Just make a few quick comments and also get you talking about ancestors generally before we get into those conversations. The quick comments are, one, as you're talking, I was remembering something that our mutual teacher, Joseph Goldstein, has said to me many times, and this was a thing that was said to him by his teacher, who was a guy named Munindra. And Munindra was an Indian gentleman who was Joseph's meditation teacher. And when he would talk about magic, which is, again, the word we're using in this context, Munindra would say, "You don't have to believe it, but it's true." And that sometimes comes to mind when I'm having these conversations.

• 33:51Dan Harris?

  The other comment I was gonna make is that you talked about our friendship, and I'm actually right in the middle right now of doing a rewrite on the chapter in my long-delayed book that stars you. And you and I went on a one-on-one meditation retreat back in the fall of 2018. And I made a comment there that is even more true now, which is that we're coming from different, totally different worlds, and we have this friendship, and I'm this skeptical guy, and you're much more open to many more things. And you, notwithstanding my skepticism, make no effort to in any way hide your light under a bushel. Like, you completely let your flag fly all the time. And if anybody's changed over the course of the relationship, it's not you, it's me,

• 34:35Dan Harris?

  because I think I've become more open-minded. Again, I don't make any claims, but I've become more open-minded over the course of the relationship. So those are my two comments. I have a question I want to ask you, but before I do that, I'm just gonna pause in case you have anything you want to say.

• 34:49Speaker 04

  Well, I agree with you, Dan. You've become so much more open-hearted. Even your recent TED Talk, I just cried. Oh, my gosh, I just loved it. I was like, I felt like I was just proud. I know that's a weird thing to say. I was like, yes, Dan, this is it. Exactly. So I appreciate your evolution and we all are evolving. We're all waking up, we're all learning. This is school. And I'm just happy to be a part of your story, our story. I think there's a lot that people will find important in it somehow. There's something really sweet and yet very deep in that, in our connection.

• 35:34Dan Harris?

  Agreed. I take the word proud very well, even though you're younger than me. But you're my teacher. You've been my teacher for a long time, at least. Doing some rough math, 13, 14 years since my first meditation retreat, 13 years. So I take that very well. Just to get this back to the level of sort of more universality here. Before we get into these really interesting conversations that you write about between you and Harriet, I want to talk about, and you made a reference to this earlier, so I want to see if I can get you to speak more broadly about it. Our relationship to our ancestors. You said you, in your world, is pretty normal to speak to your ancestors. I mean, I can't speak for the whole world, but it's not something I hear people in my universe talking about much.

• 36:17Dan Harris?

  However, we are interested in our ancestors. People are doing 23andMe and ancestry.com. And my colleague, Amy Breckenridge, who I work with very closely at the 10% happier company, actually has a side hustle where she works with people on doing genealogy. So this feels very much a current interest. And so I'm wondering if you could address our current interests in our ancestors and relate that to the work you're doing.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would agree. Everybody, I don't know anybody who hasn't done 23andMe, ancestry.com, all of that. I mean, we do have this fascination because we want to know more about ourselves and where we come from. Right? I think the interest is when people start to think about their genealogy, they think about it just as DNA initially, right? Well, who are my people? Where were they born? Where did they die? I think that's an important first step. I just think- We don't go to the next step because you know, in the West, we don't really grow up with the idea that we come from a living lineage and that your great grandfather is part of the person

• 37:24Speaker 04

  that you are today. We don't make that connection. In the Western society, we believe I come, I'm born, I'm alone, I walk alone, I do my own aloneness, isolated individual, I'm a cell separated from the membrane or whatever. We have this view of that. So we don't see ourselves as streams of consciousness and that we get more than hair color and eye color from our ancestors. We know we get illnesses, depression, you know, as they know through epigenetics, we get certain switches turned on or turned off, right? We inherit a whole set of conditions. Now, what we do with

• 38:04Speaker 04

  those are completely up to the person, how conscious we are, what we seek to transform, we can heal ourselves from greed, hatred, and delusion on various levels. Okay. However, what I've noticed in my work over many years of helping people who come to either my retreats or start to work with me individually, is they can't put a finger on why they're so unhappy. A lot of these people have everything that on the outside you would say, wow, you're successful, you're handsome, you have a nice husband, but they're suicidal, or they are killing themselves

• 38:45Speaker 04

  in some other way, or they're depressed so much that they can't get out of bed, or there's all this suffering. And so when people began to work with me, I began to see more and more that it was connected to their family tree, to the energy. See, we get energy from our ancestors. We relate it all to science. Okay, I just get this, but we know we get alcoholism, we know we get programs, we know we get whole ideologies. So I am trying to bring more awareness that when people are suffering and they have tried all these different modalities of healing and they still feel this torment that let's start doing work on your family tree.

• 39:28Speaker 04

  What has happened that we as the descendants could put right? What were the lies? What is the lack of forgiveness? What is the problem there? Right? Who can we talk to? How can we help make things right? Where karma is action, right? And in some ways, we're healing the karmic lineage. We're cleansing our ancestral line. And people are doing that in a lot of ways. Sometimes people are doing that in a form. We'll use the word reparations of some kind, right? How did my family accumulate this wealth? Oh, my gosh, they accumulated through this violence and this terror. Okay, well, what can I do now to offset that?

• 40:10Speaker 04

  It's kind of like carbon emission offsetting, right? We are looking at what has happened that affects us, even though we don't realize it's affecting us. Because again, in the West, we cut off our idea that we're connected to a living lineage that is like a root. It's like an umbilical cord. And if you're unconscious, you're still dealing with the programs. I've met people who had an issue with their leg and their grandmother had the same issue and their great grandmother had the same issue. And you know what I mean? This is really powerful. And so when we start to look at it and we become conscious, we can begin to clear things

• 40:53Speaker 04

  in the present and we become much more happy and joyful. And I feel this is greatly overlooked in the spiritual communities. Like, we're looking for everything else but this. We're like, okay, how do I be happy? How do I get happier? Give me the happiness button. But they're still considering themselves as an isolated.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Individual, they're not looking at what has happened to my mother, what has happened to my grandparents, what happened to, where are they buried, what happened to my culture. I believe this has a huge effect on the person that we are in this moment, but we are not conscious of that yet. And the DNA, the passion for DNA and genealogy is people hunting for answers. Who am I? Why am I like I am? Why do I think like I think? Right? We're looking, but we're just not making all the connections around the energetic level.

• 41:51Dan Harris?

  I feel like much of what you just said there is very much not magical. Karma is another one of these words that, that we in the West have taken and kind of perverted. But at its root, it basically means cause and effect. Something happens and as a consequence, something else happens. And then as a consequence, another thing happens. It doesn't mean that if you call somebody a name, you're definitely going to be reborn as a Gila monster in the next life. I mean, that's, I think, the way we, we make a caricature of the word. So if you think about karma from a, just a simple cause and effect level, of course, the accumulated karma or causes and effects of our ancestors are going to be alive in us medically, genealogically, psychologically.

• 42:34Dan Harris?

  Just as a quick example, I was having dinner the other night with another of my teachers, a guy named Jerry Colonna, who's quite a well-known executive coach and also Buddhist. And I was expressing some shame about the fact that, notwithstanding the fact that I have everything by objective measures, I still experienced quite a bit of anxiety about work and finances. And I said, I don't know why I'm like this. And he was like, what do you mean you don't know why you're like this? I've known you for several years. I know a few things about you. One of them is that your great grandfather put his head in an oven and killed himself because he lost the family fortune. Another thing I know about you is that your parents wouldn't heat the house in the winter because they were so worried about money, even though they were both doctors.

• 43:19Dan Harris?

  And so what do you mean? How can you wonder why you are the way you are? And that just goes right to your point about the living lineage.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  Exactly. What a beautiful example. Because here you are in this moment and you have everything that you need, but there's this thought, I don't, and this terror around, you know? That's exactly the point. And I'm glad that you had that experience because the next question is, what do we do with that? And is that repairable? Is that transformable? And I believe the answer is really yes. We can begin to do work with our ancestors. And then in the present moment, our moment-to-moment experience changes to one of lightness and joy and ease. And we feel less burdened by these deeply entrenched habits. I think many of us are looking at our habits now like,

• 44:13Speaker 04

  why is this compulsion there? Right? When we know on every level that it's not serving us, that it doesn't work. So we start looking in the family tree and we start doing some of that work. And I feel like, you know what happens? A lot of power is restored. Because right now, you think about your anxiety over this issue of livelihood or survival, and it's a lot of your power gets drained out in that, right? Imagine if you didn't have that, you'd be like, all right, here I go. You know, this, we sort of become disempowered by these energies that are alive in us, connected to our lineage.

• 44:55Dan Harris?

  So how do we do this work? I mean, you acknowledged before that many of us are looking into our family tree. What's the add-on that is missing that might make that, I don't want to call it superficial, but maybe surface-level work way deeper?

• 45:12Speaker 04

  To start a relationship with the ancestors, with your grandfather who put his head in an oven, and to start to make a connection, to start speaking to him, to start trying to help him, to start forgiving him, to start understanding him, to build a relationship and to understand that our ancestors are around us. And the veil right now between the ancestor spirit world and this world is like a piece of paper. It's very thin. Right? It's like, these are energies that often people that have done things like that, say, committed suicide, my grandmother, the same, they also need us, right?

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Just because they go on to the spirit world, they're not resolved. Their karma is also tied up here, right? So it's almost like we enter into like a collaboration with them. So the skeptics' challenge is that they don't believe that they can have a relationship with an ancestor. They don't, because they, that person's gone. But as you see, Dan, they're not, they're alive in you. They're not gone, they're right here. And it reminds me of Maya Angelou, the great poet and writer, used to say, "I stand as one, but I come with 10,000." So Maya Angelou always talked about 10,000 of her ancestors standing with her,

• 46:40Speaker 04

  wherever she was. And you could feel that in Maya Angelou, right? Like, whoa, this one person speaking these words, it would have the magnitude, the power behind it, because they were really in tune with the ancestor world. And it's okay that we all have hurt ancestors. That's part of our journey, is to heal the lineage, is to heal our own family tree. And so how we do that is by believing that they're real, because they are. And they're around us, and they need something from us. And so we begin to have a conversation.

• 47:18Speaker 04

  It's not to become deluded, it's just that we begin to do healing work on their behalf consciously. Right? We begin to say, "Grandfather, this action happened, and this energy's alive in me. How can I transmute this?" Right? "I have what I need, we have what we need now. We don't have to be afraid." Right? We do things like that. We start to gather, I often have people do visuals of all their ancestors in a circle around them, and we're offering them, we're almost like we're teaching the Dharma. Like, everybody's okay now, we survived, right?

• 48:00Speaker 04

  And we start to engage in a relationship, that's just an example.

• 48:06Dan Harris?

  You're gonna laugh at me because I'm gonna search for ways to follow your advice without the magic. So what's coming to mind for me is there's a kind of therapy. And we've talked about it here on the show several times, and it's becoming increasingly sort of accepted in the psychotherapeutic world. It's called internal family systems. Basically means where you identify various parts. That's the technical term they use in IFS. The parts of your personality. And you develop relationships with them. You actually have a dialogue, often with a therapist present, with the angry part of your personality, the selfish part of your personality. I'm picking those not by coincidence. And so I'm wondering, so my great grandfather, I could pull the picture out of my drawer

• 48:50Dan Harris?

  and start trying to think about him, having a dialogue with the parts of his personality that reside in me still, as opposed to believing necessarily that he's here behind a sheet of paper in a parallel universe, which may be true, but as you said, there is a challenge here for skeptics. And maybe we don't want to make that leap.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Exactly. So I love there's these modalities. Like, we're all talking about the same thing. Like, so an indigenous person would say, just talk to your grandfather. Right? And then we would say, no, I'm gonna go to family constellation therapy and have this. It's like, it's just another way to get in. It's ancestor work. It's a family lineage work. Family constellation therapy is so popular right now. And everybody has been asking me about it. And the funny thing is, I've never done it. I actually would love to do it. But every week, somebody is mentioning about going to one of these groups. And a whole group of strangers gets together and they become each other's family trees, acting out patterns. And then all of a sudden, a deeper awareness.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  Like, something is happening there. So I think we're all talking about the same thing, Tan. We're talking about opening the door that these streams are alive in us. And let's become conscious. Let's enter into conversation. Let's talk about it. Let's, yeah, so whether we use that or we're with a trained therapist, or we believe through the photo, if we put our grandfather on the altar, that we can sit and have a one-on-one. Okay, use a therapist to have the three-way conversation. If that's easier. Whatever place is easier, but this is all moving in a direction that I see as incredibly beneficial for where we are right now.

• 50:39Speaker 04

  Especially in the West, we have particular blocks to this that I think if we could open and see ourselves as a living lineage, we would have much more, A, compassion for not only ourselves, but it would make us more compassionate to others. Because after people do this family constellation work, they're more compassionate. It opens a doorway into the heart. We, we understand why others are the way they are. Oh, they're like that because of their family tree too.

• 51:10Dan Harris?

  Yep. I think that's about understanding karma.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 51:14Dan Harris?

  And again, this doesn't have to be mystical at all. It's just the vast soup of causes and conditions that contribute to the way we are right now. And you can really understand your own personal karma by looking at your family tree. And inexorably, as soon as you understand that, you realize everybody's walking around with their own set of causes and conditions. And of course, that's going to contribute to the way they are right now. I would love to hear, if you're open to it, you talking about your own ancestor work with your own family tree. Because one of the things that I admire so much about you is that my family tree, even though we've got some problems in there, I was coughed up onto the planet in a very privileged position, given all the advantages.

• 51:56Dan Harris?

  You were not, and you had a lot of issues in your family tree. And one of the things that's so incredible. Now that I know more about what you dealt with coming up is where you've ended up nonetheless. And so I wonder if you could talk a little before we get back to Harriet about your own work with your own parents and grandparents and beyond.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting how we grow up with the suffering of the adults around us. Yeah, there was a lot of confusion with me around sorting out my ancestors because my mother is white. Her family is all from Germany and England, mostly England. My father is African American. Our family is from the South, right? But recently, when I did my own DNA, a huge 25% Nigeria. So just thinking, wow, that there was a middle passage experience. They came over from my grandfather. I could see the Nigerian man in my grandfather. Actually, recently just posted a picture on Facebook, this picture of me right before he died, visiting him. Yeah, and you know, we were born into these situations.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  And I think that the thing about this is not to feel powerless because just because we have a certain set of conditions. What we do know from science and what we do know from practice is everything's malleable. Right? What we do know from epigenetics is we can turn things on and off in our own DNA based on awareness. So whatever your situation is, if you were born in a situation like mine and your parents separated and your father had addictions and ran off and your mother had traumas and you just grow up experiencing all the difficulties that come from not having parents to protect you. You can heal that and you can move forward.

• 53:47Speaker 04

  I have one story that I want to tell about some current work that I'm doing with my own family tree. And this is on my mother's side. So my grandmother, I'm gonna even say her name, Arlyn, because I always feel Arlyn is a little bit around. And I don't mean to freak anyone out by not seeing dead people, but Arlyn, that's not my reality. I'm in the normal, everyday reality 99% of the time. And this is something I can turn on and turn off. If I'm choosing to go into these areas, I can almost like flip a switch and go, all right, let's do it. But Arlyn committed suicide when my mother was 16.

• 54:25Speaker 04

  And my mother was never the same after that, never the same, was devastated. And she, living in a little apartment building in LA, and the police knock on the door and they're like, "Is this your mom?" And she had went into the car, she had done it with a car in the garage. And so it sent my mother on a drama, trauma spiral for the next 10 years of just kind of hell and marriage and terrible relationships and suffering, just and grief. So that was a big thing always for me. What happened was my mother and my aunt buried their mother in a grave site,

• 55:05Speaker 04

  a cemetery in Los Angeles, but they left the tombstone with no marker. They were mad and they thought, "You, you killed yourself, so you don't exist." So Arlen and ceremonies and the jungle and here and there has come and been like, "I did, I lived and I love my daughter." You know, there was this unforgiveness toward their mother. So now I am in the process of getting a new headstone. Because in the world of the ancestor world, you don't bury dead like that. Even if they killed themselves, you leave them in a terrible karmic tangle. Because imagine, their kids won't even acknowledge that they were alive and she is not resolved in the ancestor world.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  Our karma is tied up in the past and the future, right? We are, there's a link there. And so I have been working with my mother over the last year to forgive her mother. And I tell Arlen, and when I'm in deep meditation and experiences, that I will rectify this. I will get you the headstone. So in this very moment, we are working on that. I'm reaching out to a headstone carver and then we're gonna go down and then I'm gonna have the whole family. Sit together and we do this forgiveness work because that should come from my mother as the matriarch. Like you're now, we're putting love in our lineage now, forgiveness. And on the tombstone, that was the only word I wanted was, we forgive you, Arlen.

• 56:35Speaker 04

  And then the dates. I said, that must have that because we must remember that. And so it's brought up so much for my mother and my aunt, emotions and unresolved feelings. And I just keep holding that this is what I want to do. And I want to make sure that I'm doing the work as a descendant and that I love Arlen, my grandmother, even though I never met her, there's a love there.

• 56:58Dan Harris?

  More of my conversation with Spring Washam coming up. Keep it here.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  We work with veterans every day. Caring about people isn't the same as knowing how to help. Safeguard Veterans gave our team free online on-demand training to better understand military culture, recognize when someone may be struggling, and connect veterans to support and resources. It's practical, flexible, and our staff actually use what they learned.

• 57:25Speaker 02

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

• 57:39Dan Harris?

  You talked about how 99% of the time you live in conventional reality, but you know, 1% of the time you can kind of turn it on. And I think that kind of brings us back to Harriet Tubman and these channeled conversations that you write about. How does that work? How do you get into conversation with Harriet Tubman?

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Well, I will say that I was never, this is a new experience, Dan, what happened with Harriet Tubman. I'm still integrating that experience. It still shocks me. I'm still amazed. I'm still in awe of the whole story. I'm in awe of the book. I'm in awe of Harriet Tubman. I'm in awe of what's happening. So know that I'm real time. I haven't reached like a final analysis on it. Here's where I am right now with it. And from based on where I am, but I'm still, every day, my mind is blown open. Even when I read the book and I remember, oh, my gosh, that was beautiful. Oh, my God, yes, I'm taken back. So.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  So I'll leave you, I'll start with the story about when my publisher saw me online teaching about Harriet Tubman in this five-week class. And that was exactly when you interviewed me last. I was right in the middle of that class and I was talking about it. I was like, yay, Dharma Harriet Tubman. And I don't even think I was talking about the book. We might have conversed later. And I was like, oh, my God, Dan, they want me to write a book. I think we texted or something. So they came to me and asked me, and I said, no. And I said, well, I'll wait for a sign. If I get a sign, I'll do it. But there is no way I'm writing a book about Harriet Tubman. I was in the middle of writing a shamanic book. That was more my speed. Harriet, the topic, it was like a deep dive. And I didn't want to

• 59:27Speaker 04

  go off that cliff. I was like, I know, call Angela Davis, call a scholar. I really said this to them. Yeah, I'm the wrong girl, wrong. I'm Buddhist. This doesn't make any sense. Harriet was Christian. Get a Christian scholar, someone in the South, all of these. You know, I was really putting up a lot of roadblocks and stop signs. No, no, I don't, can't. And that was my biggest thing is like, I can't, I'm not qualified. So then one night after I'd done all these prayers with a friend of mine who had came over, back in those days, we were praying for humanity all the time at night, like, oh, my God, we would do these prayers. So she left and I was reading this Harriet Tubman book I had bought, one

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  of the many. She Came to Slay, that was the name of it. Anyway, I was in my room. It was late at night. I'd been saying Bodhisattva prayers for two hours. So there was this beautiful energy around my house. That's when Harriet made a kind of appearance, I'll say. I think what Harriet did, she just, I guess, Aboriginals would call it the dream time, where they can talk to their ancestors. Aboriginal people always used to say that they would The heaven and the earth would part and for a moment they could talk to their ancestors. Somehow Harriet found the latitude and longitude and kind of made an in-person appearance. And I write about that in detail where it just showed up like in a spirit form. And it took me days to recover from that, by the way.

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  My body shook for six days. It was the electricity. And basically Harriet showed up to tell me, no, this is your task to write this book. And you and I had agreed to this a long time ago. And I tried to get out of it. And the whole chapter two is about this appearance where I'm given this task. Because I think Harriet knew unless she did that, I would never have said yes. So it was, okay, I'm gonna remind you. So that's how it started. So I finally said yes in the wee hours of the night after this dialogue and these memories and all this. It was a whole journey. And then Harriet would just start to appear in my mind.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  We decided to write and Harriet would appear like as a star with a lot of thoughts. And then images would come and then it would be like time to have a session. And I would sit down at my computer and it would come out. And I call them sessions. I don't like to use the word channeling because channeling makes people think of like that movie Ghost, where I'm gonna sit down and be like, now I am Harriet Tubman with a message. I don't do that, no.

• 1:02:07Dan Harris?

  You saw her in your mind, but it wasn't like you were wearing AR goggles. And she, there was an image of her sitting on your couch with her legs crossed dictating her words. It was more like she was showing up in your mind in some way.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  Yes, and it was a conversation. Like I, the chapters became conversations and I would clarify and write, but it was like, yeah, it was all through consciousness, only.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  Two times, three, maybe most Harriet appeared as like a spirit. And that was the first time she got me to say yes to the task of writing this and taking on this project that for me was epic. Because when I said yes, I didn't understand that I would be writing this book from her perspective. Like, basically, I became one of her passengers on the Underground Railroad. I became a student. And then I'm writing from the view of the teacher, trying to document. So I'm the passenger who's freaking out the whole time. I'm writing as the student who is trying to make sense of it. And then it's Harriet's voice.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the book is a three, three-piece dialogue that is like juggling these three pieces. So I feel very much like I was a passenger on the spirit underground with Harriet. And Harriet took me through 12 stops. That's how I see it.

• 1:03:33Dan Harris?

  One of the arguments you, and I'll use the term you in the collective sense, you, Harriet, and teacher spring make in this book is that the Underground Railroad is alive today. And I think you use the phrase inner underground. What do you mean by that?

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yes. This is like a really, I feel like this is the most essential question with why Harriet is bad. Because we know we had the historical Underground Railroad. And we can actually go and, you know, there's very important stops in Philadelphia and Boston, Massachusetts. And there was, for 60 years, the historical Underground Railroad was open. They estimate over 100,000 people traversed it. And that's only an estimate. At one point, everybody was running away from plantations. So Harriet Tubman describes an inner underground, another secret passageway. And she talked about it all the time.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  She said, there's another one that's through consciousness. There's the physical, yes. And then there's the mental, there's the mind, there's the spirit. And on this passageway, there are conductors, there are stops, there are agents helping beings get through each point. And this is what, I guess one could say is similar to like the path of Nibbana. Because I would say, well, where does this Underground Railroad go? And she's like, freedom. Out of suffering, out of hell, out of bondage, out of pain. And so her job now, how she describes it, is that she works on the spirit underground.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  Consciousness, she's like, now we're in the, we're in the age of consciousness. We're now in the air element. We're moving into the Aquarian age, a shift from earth. Air moves faster. Everything moves, light, speed, everything's sped up, right? We're not in the earthy. She's like, before, when I was born, in the 1820s, I could only help people get physically free. Literally break open the chain and take you to living without a chain. That was the only the level that I could move at because that's where humanity was, the consciousness. But now, look, we're at a completely different place. People can understand the inner Underground Railroad now. Right?

• 1:05:59Speaker 04

  We understand that it's our minds that matter. The battle is here now, Dan. It's always in the mind. It's less, even if we had a civil war, what is it? It's a war of ideas.

• 1:06:12Dan Harris?

  Just to be clear, nirvana is the Pali version of the Sanskrit term nirvana. You use that word and I just want to make people, make sure people know it.

• 1:06:21Speaker 04

  Yes, thank you, because I do use a lot of Buddhist jargon.

• 1:06:26Dan Harris?

  It's all good. This is a safe place for that, to be a little college campacy. So why does that mean for our individual lives? How and why would we want to get on this inner Underground Railroad?

• 1:06:37Speaker 04

  Well, because we're stuck in chains and imprisoned by our suffering. And if we trust Harriet Tubman to conduct us to, let's say, the promised land, where she writes about the promised land not being an outer destination, but a place there is a stoppage of suffering. That's why I use the word nirvana. Which is the Pali word, which means the end of suffering. And that Buddha never talked about what Nibbana was. He always talked about it in the negative, meaning what it isn't. It is the absence of suffering. It is the absence of greed, the absence of hatred, the absence of delusion. Right? So we talked about what it wasn't.

• 1:07:20Speaker 04

  He never, he said, it's undescribable. So I'm not going to try to put words, but I'll tell you what it's not. And that's more understandable for where we are, right? So Harriet, if you think about Harriet Tubman as a conductor, who that was the job, conducting people to freedom. Then now, working in consciousness, it would be doing the same thing. Moving people from a place of despair and stuckness to a state of freedom, empowerment. I don't know how far this goes. I don't know. But it's changing your view on Harriet Tubman too, which shocked me. And I move into those in the later chapters where I start, Harriet Tubman's voice starts to take on not only this grandmother,

• 1:08:04Speaker 04

  but also actually an incredibly wise being. I remember I wrote in there, oh, my God, after this conversation of consciousness. I was like, Harriet, you're actually an incredibly brilliant mind. And it's like, yeah, I'm always underestimated. Nobody thinks of a black, illiterate, formerly enslaved woman as a great teacher. So be it, but we appear in any form. That's where I started depositing that Harriet was not just a regular person, but actually was a prophet, a great spiritual being, a great Bodhisattva. As the book goes on, I saw it, it starts revealing itself to me.

• 1:08:42Dan Harris?

  So what are the beginning steps? You spell it all out in the book, but just for people listening right now, haven't read the book yet. When you talk about being on this railroad, what does that actually entail in a concrete way?

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  I think for a people, it means you're committing to your spiritual path. You're committing to understanding the Four Noble Truths. That there's suffering, that there's a cause of suffering, which is holding on, clinging. We commit to the Third Noble Truth, which is letting go. And then we commit to the Fourth Noble Truth, which is the Eightfold Path, which is the path of awareness and mindfulness. We commit to living a spiritual life. We make a commitment to get on the path. This doesn't just happen, my friends. We actually have to put effort. Harriet Tubman had to put effort. The people who left with Harriet, efforted, you know? I mean, it's not an easy journey.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  It wasn't through the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. And it's not easy on the spirit underground now. The same demons that the Buddha faced. Mara's are everywhere. There's people trying to derail the train left and right. I mean, it is, it's a story, Dan. We're in a sort of fairy tale. This is consciousness.

• 1:10:01Dan Harris?

  So essentially, in the book, she and you are teaching Buddhism?

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  Yes. And we're using different language. For those of you who are Dharma, you'll see that right away. Because there's only, this is like what Harriet's talking about. It's like freedom, liberation, consciousness. Yeah, we're moving from bondage in hell to the promised land. These are all different languages that people can understand, different concepts for the same place. Her definition of the promised land is Nibbana. It's promised to us and we'll get there, but you gotta work. And you gotta, just like there was the physical Underground Railroad, you're gonna have to go through a lot and rainstorms and hail and blood, sweat and tears.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  The spirit underground, the same. Obstacles, confusion, doubt. But Harriet's saying, I will help because I'm a conductor on this. Just like I was in the physical reality, I was conducting people to freedom. I'm still conducting. But now it's through consciousness because we're not in physical chains. We're in, we're in mental ones. But some of us are in physical chains. Some people definitely are. But the mass majority of people in this country.

• 1:11:21Speaker 04

  We have everything. Our minds are what is creating hell. That's what Harriet is interested in.

• 1:11:28Dan Harris?

  In the book, you talk about three flavors of abolitionism in a modern context. Inner, outer, and ultimate.

• 1:11:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. Okay, so inner abolitionism, right? Would be to abolish the programs of greed, hatred, and delusions. We want to abolish suffering. This is where we start with the Buddhist path. They're sick. We need to get better. So the word abolitionism is the energy of abolishing, right? But it's on the inner level. Right? We're seeking to be on the inner level. Let's abolish all the programs that block us. From our hearts to compassion, to love. So for me, I'm always translating things, Dan. From my years in Oakland, I used to look at Dharma texts and look at the audience and think, what is the language that they can understand?

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  They'll know the ideas here. This is timeless. Everybody gets suffering. I mean, you don't have to. Most people can understand the Dharma, actually. They know it. It's truth. You know, so the inner is that we seek to abolish all of the inner. We do our work. We do our practice over and over. Outer abolitionist is that's what we seek to go into society. And we stand up to what is unjust. Right? We're willing to say, we should abolish that. That is not compassionate. That is cruel. That is unjust. Right? We become like Dr. King. We refuse to participate in evil.

• 1:13:07Speaker 04

  That's what I used to say about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. We refuse to participate any longer. We're no longer going to ride this bus. Because we participate in evil acts done. So non-cooperation with greed, hatred, and delusion. So that's on the outer level. Then ultimate, as we know, is like, we get to the Bodhisattva, superpower, Sita power, Buddha levels.

• 1:13:36Dan Harris?

  You have said that writing, this is a quote from you. Writing this book has completely changed me. How so?

• 1:13:44Speaker 04

  Well, first of all, it awakened in me a deeper belief.

• 1:13:49Speaker 04

  In myself through Harriet Tubman. Because Harriet Tubman chose me and every day had to affirm I made the right decision. Spring, you are the right person to write this and you have more power than you know. So I think it was from that I felt a transmission of like strength and courage that I didn't know I had. I mean, in May of 2020, I was face planted. I mean, put a fork in me, Dan. I was just like, there was something so devastating about what was happening. I was just done flat. And many of us were, we were just, how do you rise from this and meet the day?

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  With love and compassion again, you know, it just felt like, whoa, we've gone through so much. But I think it's just a resiliency, true resiliency. And Harriet gives me that all the time. I think about her actions and I think, no, you can get up and do this. Look what Harriet Tubman did. There's a kind of like, not in a negative way or a self abuse way, but in an actual way that wakes me up and is like, for compassion, let's go out again, let's rise, let's focus. I don't know, she just gave me this deep transmission of I can do it. And that I'm more powerful than I know. But I'm still understanding what that means, Dan.

• 1:15:13Speaker 04

  But the first step was, the first seed she planted was like, I'm more powerful than I know. Step two, unknown. I don't know the second step yet.

• 1:15:24Speaker 04

  It's like, okay, just know you're more powerful. Okay, I don't know how to act on that yet, but I'll just know that. Maybe she tricked me into finishing the book that way, too. Who knows?

• 1:15:35Dan Harris?

  Well, I have no doubt about your power. Can I just ask you a couple last questions here? One is, is there something I should have asked but didn't ask?

• 1:15:43Speaker 04

  No, I think all your questions are so good. I love your questions.

• 1:15:49Dan Harris?

  Thank you. I wasn't necessarily looking for affirmation.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  I know, I know, but I do like your questions, though. They give me a perspective to talk in ways that are different.

• 1:16:00Dan Harris?

  And the final question is, can you just remind everybody of the name of your new book, the book you wrote before, any other resources you're putting out into the world that people might be interested in accessing? Can you just plug everything, please?

• 1:16:14Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I have this new website. It's springwasham.com and everything is there and put it all there. All the information about everything I'm doing. Also have a podcast with Lama Rod Owens you could check out. It's out and just, yeah, if you feel inspired, the book is "The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground." And my other book is "A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment."

• 1:16:43Dan Harris?

  Spring, thank you for coming on the show. I love you. You're the best and congratulations on this new book.

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  Thank you. I love you too, Dan.

• 1:16:55Dan Harris?

  Thanks again to Spring Washam. Always great to talk to her. Please don't forget to go to the GoFundMe page that we set up for Spring. You can search for it on GoFundMe or you can just click the link in the show notes. As I mentioned in the intro, she was hit by, literally hit by a truck. I've seen the video. It's horrifying. And yeah, she's really been struggling since then with her injuries and the fact that the medical bills are really adding up. So if you can contribute a few bucks, that would be awesome. Thank you. Before I let you go, I just 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 people over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer.

• 1:17:40Dan Harris?

  And Nick Thorburn of the band Island wrote our theme.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

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• 1:18:14Speaker 02

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