Mary Maddux On Mastering Meditation

David Gandelman and Cody Edner sit down with master meditation teacher Mary Maddux as she shares her wisdom and experience as a teacher, meditator, and guide for anyone interested in beginning or deepening into a practice. Mary is the co-creator and voice of the popular Meditation Oasis podcast and smartphone apps that have reached millions of people.

Transcript

Welcome to Energy Matters,

Exploring awakening to your authentic self and finding purpose through mind,

Body and soul with your hosts,

Cody Edner and David Gandelman brought to you by intuitivevision.

Net and groundedmind.

Com.

Hey everybody.

Welcome to this episode of Energy Matters.

David and I had a great time today getting to talk with Mary Maddox,

A master meditation teacher who has quite a following on Insight Timer and has been on the web and on iTunes for a long time.

I've been aware of her for years with meditation oasis and I followed her and listened to her meditations over the years.

She's got a really great voice,

Really nice to speak with her and just hear her perspective on meditating,

Teaching meditation and just the path of meditation.

And David is the one that tracked her down.

Thanks David for getting Mary to come on and share some time with us.

I just would send her letters,

Knock on her door,

Call her relatives until I got through to her.

I think she's the first meditation teacher I ever listened to through an app and it had to be at least five plus years ago when I downloaded meditation oasis,

Which was one of the first meditation apps on there.

And I just remember going,

Wow,

This teacher's voice is so calming and so easy to listen to and I would fall asleep listening to her.

And in this episode,

We talk a bit about a story about me meeting someone at Cornell recently who was loving her app.

It's a pretty cool,

Synchronistic story.

So great episode,

Wonderful master meditation teacher.

I mean,

There's just so much wisdom in Mary and she was so kind to come and speak with us for a little while.

Oh,

And before I forget,

As always,

The energy matters podcast is brought to you by intuitivevision.

Net,

Which is Cody's website.

You can find all of his work on there and groundedmind.

Com,

Which is mine.

And if you go to energymatterspodcast.

Com,

We've got all the episodes of the podcast on there.

You could listen to them there and you can subscribe to our newsletter.

Cody and I have been,

We huddled and we're deciding we're going to teach a new course soon.

And if you want to know when it's coming out,

Just go on there and put your email in and we will let you know when we know what we know that we don't fully know yet.

And that's how you get in the know.

That's how the only way is to do that.

That's right.

It's really good to be in the know.

And Cody and I check our email once a month,

So we'll get back to you shortly.

And let's get into it,

Mary Maddux.

Hey everybody,

Welcome to energy matters.

And we've got Mary Maddux on today and I'm super excited.

Hi Mary,

Welcome to our show.

Hi David,

Thank you for inviting me.

You're very welcome.

Of course,

Cody is here.

For some reason,

Cody decided to wear a cape today.

I'm having a Batman theme thing going.

She's Batman,

I'm Superman.

You could be Wonder Woman.

Hi Cody,

Hi Superman.

Hi Mary.

Wonder Woman here.

So Mary,

I didn't even,

We were talking pre-show a little bit and I didn't mention this,

It's a really cool story.

Just a few days ago,

I was at Cornell University at a startup conference for entrepreneurs and I was talking to the person putting on this whole conference and she found out what I did for a living.

And she was like,

Oh,

I meditate every night with my daughter.

She's seven,

We do the sleep meditation and if I don't put it on,

She goes,

Mommy,

Put on the sleep meditation.

And so she puts it on every night.

And maybe like a few minutes later,

Just for whatever reason,

Intuitively,

I just asked her,

Hey,

Have you ever heard of Mary Maddox?

And she goes,

Oh my God,

That's the woman I listen to with my daughter every night.

Her voice is so calm and wonderful and my daughter can't sleep without it.

Oh,

That always grabs my heart.

Sometimes I hear from parents and that's the only meditation I've made specifically for children,

Although I understand that children listen to a lot of my other meditations because they're pretty simple and direct.

But yeah,

Whenever I know there's a little child out there going to sleep with my voice,

It just is very heartwarming.

Oh,

Cool to hear that.

And so I told her,

Oh,

Mary's going to be on my podcast on Monday.

And so she immediately down,

You know,

Subscribed to the podcast and was like,

I need to hear this.

Hopefully she's listening.

Hi,

Amy.

Oh,

Okay.

Hi,

Amy.

Yeah.

There's this whole group of people at Cornell super interested in meditation now and they're all exploring.

And it's just I've noticed and I've talked about this in a couple of episodes with Cody that how much the intellectual class and the academic class of people are really getting into meditation.

And so I think what Cody and I have been doing and what definitely what you're a master at is like broadening the scope of your teaching so everybody can kind of have it.

And we talked about that a little before we started the show,

But you're so good at just making it so accessible to everybody.

And I just wanted to just like thank you for doing that because people from all I just noticed an insight timer.

You have over a million streams on your meditations.

That's just incredible.

So that wasn't even a question.

I just had to say that.

Have you noticed that that broadening of your teaching where you just are reaching such a wide range of people?

Yeah,

Definitely.

I've noticed on Facebook that if I don't take the time to look at new followers,

They'll be people from just any every religion,

Every political persuasion,

Ages.

So that has been my goal.

And I think it's that meditation is a universal human ability.

And our minds,

The way the human mind works,

Our capacity for these different states of awareness,

Different states of consciousness is universal.

And so I try to just stay with in a very simple way with those universal principles so that anybody can relate to it.

And I definitely,

You know,

I hear from all kinds of people.

I hear from people from different religious backgrounds.

I heard from a woman recently who is a very devout Christian.

And she said that she felt really badly that a lot of Christians that she knew were hesitant about meditation because she felt it brought her religion alive and that the faith and the things that she believed in became real.

And she felt a connection and an experience of her beliefs through meditation.

And you know,

I've heard from,

I don't want to go into every kind of religion in person I've heard from,

But yeah,

It's wonderful to and to see that because that is where we are all united.

You know,

As human beings,

There's more that we have in common than that we don't.

Do you find that most people listening to your meditations are coming because they are trying to relieve stress or anxiety or are they coming for sleep?

What is kind of the overarching theme that you've been noticing?

I think more often than not,

It's people who are dealing with some kind of stress or another.

Maybe it's anxiety,

Depression,

Maybe they've had a loss,

Or it can be students who want to be able to be more focused and successful with their work.

It can be there's a lawyer who contacted me quite some time ago who had social anxiety and that obviously made it difficult for him with his law practice.

But you know,

Meditation helped him.

Usually it is some kind of stressor that brings people,

But sometimes it's people who are just looking to discover more about themselves and expand.

And people get referred also by their therapists,

By their doctors often.

I often hear that.

You know,

My doctor told me to meditate.

Oh,

That's great to hear that.

Oh yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Actually,

You were talking about the academic world being more and more interested in meditation.

One of the recent collaborations that we've done is that the University of Oregon has a program called Mom Mood Booster.

And it's for women who have postnatal or perinatal depression,

And it's a program that's been around for a number of years and has worked very well and they've been upgrading it.

And so they're going to be using five of our meditations on that program.

And so that's one thing that came to mind when you're talking about universities.

Yeah,

It's so prevalent.

And it seems like in our current society,

You mentioned this just a second ago,

Mary,

That anxiety is prevalent and people are starting to turn to meditation for that kind of thing.

Do you do meditations specifically for anxiety or for mood boosting or for.

.

.

When you think about creating meditations,

How do you kind of decide what to focus on and what to offer?

Well,

You know,

That's been really interesting because when we originally started by making CDs,

That's kind of a long history to that.

But then.

.

.

What's that?

Hey,

I have a lot of stuff on tape,

You know?

Yeah.

Well,

Now we have a big closet full of CDs.

If there's anybody out there who has an institution or some place where they could use a lot of CDs and they're willing to pay for shipping,

We'll send you some.

Eight options?

Yeah.

So we started the podcast.

We have a podcast,

Meditation Oasis podcast,

And we started that in 2006.

And originally,

My thought was just to give people the experience of meditation,

You know,

Basic meditation.

But I started getting requests and they would be requests for very specific things like a meditation for anxiety or for grief or creativity.

You know,

I have writer's block or I'm a student and I need to be able to focus on my studies.

I started getting very specific requests.

So at that point,

I started making meditations,

Guided meditations that had a specific focus and purpose.

And they always start out by helping a person to get into that relaxed meditative state.

But then directing the attention in some particular way for a particular effect.

So with regard to anxiety,

I felt that I wanted to go deeper than just some meditations for anxiety.

So we created an app.

It's called At Ease Anxiety and Worry Relief.

And that has three breathing meditations for anxiety,

But it also has a whole journaling process and a way that you can apply some principles in your daily activity.

So we've started doing targeted things.

We have some targeted apps and targeted meditations.

So I think that's what you're asking.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Very interesting.

So Mary,

How did you get into meditation then?

Was there a particular stressor for you or was it an interest as a seeker?

Where did you begin?

You know,

It was really both.

Definitely stress,

A lot of stress.

I was looking for something because of that.

But I also,

I think from the time I was very young,

Had a sense that,

You know,

There was a lot more to life than I was seeing.

I mean,

A sense of wanting to deepen my awareness,

To understand myself and life more.

So that,

You know,

There was really a seeking part that was very strong in that.

So it was both things.

And what happened was I was starting to look around and my brother had learned meditation.

And when I started meditation,

People,

It was not well,

People didn't even know what it was,

Most people,

Or they thought it was something,

You know,

Very strange and esoteric.

But my brother had started it and he was encouraging me.

And I just got a feeling from the changes that seemed to be making in him that this would be a good thing to try.

And then as soon as I started meditation,

I was sold.

And that's been a part of my day every day ever since.

Wow,

Fascinating.

My brother got me into meditation too.

Oh really?

Nice.

Yeah.

He dragged me to a bookstore and forced me to buy a book when I was a teenager.

And I just happened to pick up The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.

And I had like three pages and that was it for me.

Oh,

Beautiful.

But when you're telling that story,

It's like,

Oh,

My brother too.

Yeah.

Thank goodness for brothers.

Yeah.

Thank you.

If you're my brother's listening,

Alan,

Thank you.

Well,

Thank you Robert.

Sorry,

I haven't paid you back that money yet that I owe you.

Mary,

So you're doing so well on all these fronts and I really love the meditations you put on Insight Timer app.

And if you are listening to this on Insight Timer,

That's great.

If you're not,

Insight Timer is a really great free meditation app that all of us have some meditations on.

But we were talking about this before.

There's so many teachers out there before the show that there's so many teachers out there now.

How does somebody find a teacher?

How do they find the right teacher?

Somebody that's going to work for them that they resonate with,

That they can learn from,

Especially when they go on an app like Insight Timer or they just look at all the different yoga retreats or meditation retreats.

It's kind of overwhelming for a beginner.

Yeah,

I think it could be overwhelming.

I know when I started,

There weren't that many options.

You said resonate with.

So you want to find something that you resonate with.

You want to find something that,

For example,

If you use Insight Timer,

And it's a wonderful app to get introduced to many different meditation styles and many different teachers,

What I would suggest is that first of all,

You want to go into your heart and see if it's that voice,

That person,

And that style of meditation is speaking to you in some way.

You feel drawn to it.

You feel like,

Oh,

There's something there that appeals to me.

And then if you find something that appeals to you,

I suggest that you,

Or I suggest that a person,

Stick with that for a while.

So if you find a teacher that you resonate with,

Then try sticking with their meditations for a while.

Otherwise,

You're jumping around from one thing to another to another thing,

And it could get confusing.

I think some indications are that it shouldn't feel difficult.

The teacher should be able to help to set you at ease and help you to relax into the whole process of meditation.

See what other criteria.

Mary,

Do you have a teacher or a favorite teacher or had a favorite teacher when you started?

When I started,

I learned transcendental meditation first,

And I did that for years and taught that.

And then I was introduced to some other processes.

I started studying the healing arts.

I also was a counselor,

And those things started to become a part of meditation for me.

So over the years,

I've had a number of different teachers on Insight Timer.

It's been very interesting on Insight Timer because,

As I mentioned before we started the interview,

I taught pretty much,

Well,

Along with my husband,

But pretty much just in isolation,

Not in a community of teachers.

I really wasn't exposed to a lot of other teachers and meditation styles.

I mean,

I had been exposed to a number in my own history,

But I hadn't.

Anyway,

I taught for many years in isolation,

So it's been very interesting being on Insight Timer and being a part of a group of publishers who have such varied styles and voices.

So I've started listening to some of them,

And it's been very expanding for me.

So I have some favorites on there.

Actually,

I'll be curating a week on Insight Timer with the theme of relaxation.

When is that happening?

That's going to happen later in May.

I think it's the second,

I can't remember the exact week of when my,

Oh,

Here we go,

The week of May 21st to 27th.

Very cool.

For anybody who doesn't know what that is,

It's seven days of meditation that you're curating and you do the intro.

Right.

So obviously for me,

There are certain teachers that I resonate more with than with others,

And it's going to always be that way.

You might like a certain voice and not like others.

If you start to listen to a meditation or you find a teacher and something just doesn't feel right,

Well then go to another one.

One thing is don't listen.

I think be wary if there's any kind of hype.

I think be wary if a teacher is sort of talking about themselves and what a great teacher they are,

Or if a teacher is kind of saying they have the best program.

I would say don't be taken in by that because meditation is all about you.

It's all about your self-discovery,

About you finding your own truth.

So you just trust your gut.

So I guess other than that,

I just say if you find something you like,

Stick with it for a while because it's repetition that allows something to go deeper.

Yeah,

That's so true.

People tend to jump around and just stay on the surface of things,

But it takes a little time and a routine and repetition to go deeper and deeper into really any kind of practice of the arts,

Whether it's on a physical level like martial arts,

You can jump around and stay on the surface,

Or meditation is the same way.

Once you find that voice and that practice that works for you,

Doing it long enough to go to that next deeper level is really important,

I think.

I think it's very important.

This may sound like a funny comparison,

But I think these days there is an overwhelming amount of choices about everything,

Whether it's a piece of clothing or which smartphone you want to get.

My husband and I read or well,

We listened to audiobooks,

Aziz Ansari's book about,

Is it called Modern Romance,

I think?

Something like that.

The thing that was really interesting in that book is that it almost sounds like it's hard for people to find a meaningful relationship because there's always this sense that there are all these others out there.

You can get into a mode where you're sort of shopping and comparing,

And you really have to spend time with somebody.

So I think it's true with meditation,

It's true with many things.

It's funny you say that,

Mary,

Because just last night I went to this social event with a group of people and it was a very dressed up kind of event.

There was one gentleman who was using a dating app and his friends were mentioning how he does five,

Six,

Seven,

Sometimes 10 dates in a week.

Oh my gosh.

Sometimes more than one a day.

I could see the lack of fulfillment in his eyes.

It was almost like a nervous condition.

If he was to stop,

That space that would open up would be a little too painful to be aware of.

He had this device in his hand that let him,

It was in New York City,

So let him have an endless amount of people to contact and continue to date.

Before you mentioned the Aziz Ansari thing,

That's what came into my mind was dating with that.

Aziz Ansari happens to be Cody Ani,

One of our favorite comedians.

He's great.

We just love his show.

I think my favorite joke of his is when he says,

How could you marry someone before knowing them for two years?

I've had sweaters longer than that.

Very good point.

Mary,

I wanted to follow up with you a little bit about Insight Timer.

For example,

Insight Timer is a free app,

But as meditation teachers,

We all also have to make a living.

I was just wondering what you thought about money and spirituality and how you can make it and create wealth in a healthy way in the wellness area.

I think a lot of people listening to this show,

Some of them work in wellness or in meditation.

Me and Cody have had a lot of these conversations,

And we just were wondering what your perspective on it was.

I think it's a matter of balance,

And it's something that you have to be aware of all the time.

Oh boy.

All right.

I'm going to go back in a little bit with our history.

I work alongside my husband,

Richard,

And he actually makes music.

A lot of our guided meditations have music,

Our apps have music.

He is the musician behind that,

And he's also a meditation teacher.

When I say we,

That's who I'm talking about.

We had originally been making CDs,

And then got the idea of doing a podcast.

I remember when we were starting the podcast,

We thought,

Gee,

We are going to be putting out all this stuff for free.

Is this going to be sustainable?

It was a question,

Because you do have to make a living.

That's very obvious.

I don't think you can just separate out the spiritual.

If you want to call meditation spiritual,

It doesn't have to be a spiritual practice,

But you can't separate that out from the material.

A lot of spirituality is wholeness,

So all of those pieces of life are important and have to be in balance.

At that point,

When we were deciding about the podcast,

We also felt like,

Well,

Look,

We have something to offer.

We've already found out people can benefit from it.

At least we want to get it out there.

Whether or not we're going to make money somehow from a result of the podcast,

Let's just go ahead because that's what we want to do.

We want to put this work out there.

We went ahead with the podcast.

As a result,

We reached many,

Many,

Many people.

It helped to develop our work because of all the requests that we got,

Helped to show us areas where we could say more,

Areas that we could address.

Ultimately,

Then when we started to create iPhone apps,

Because we had such a big audience,

They started to buy our apps.

Then the apps became successful to the point that for a while they were making very good income with the apps.

You can start to get wrapped up then in the income.

You can start to think more about that piece,

The business piece of it,

Than the original reason that you got involved.

What was it that created the meditations,

The podcasts,

And the apps?

That thing that came from our hearts that we wanted to give,

That we wanted to express,

That we wanted to share because we'd had the benefit all those years of meditating and we saw what it did in our lives.

That's why I say balance.

Then you have to recenter,

Reconnect with your purpose if you find that your thinking is getting too dominated by the money.

I think that there definitely is something where meditation now has.

.

.

Well,

Actually,

We got contacted once by these investors who said,

Hey,

Don't you want to start doing these subscription apps and don't you want to do these big apps that make millions of dollars?

I think they were thinking of possibly investing in us.

It wasn't the right path for us,

But definitely that factor of making money first can start to dominate even with meditation.

You have to find,

For anybody out there who's a teacher or wanting to be able to make a living in that way,

You have to find,

I think,

A balance because you also do have to make the money and there's nothing wrong with charging money or putting in your time.

If you want to devote yourself full time to that,

You obviously have to make money unless you're financially self-sufficient.

Like Cody.

Like Cody.

So that's a long rambling answer.

No,

That was wonderful.

That was wonderful.

Cody,

We talk about this a lot.

That's a good answer because that's always the question is how do you stay true to the art,

Whatever it is,

And also charge,

Make money through doing the art,

The practice.

Yeah.

It's a tricky balance just from our own experience.

You have to put the art first.

That has to be first.

Otherwise I think at one point in our careers,

We were just barely making it.

At times we think,

Well,

Maybe we should go out and get a job or actually we started this work while we were working at other jobs.

But we ultimately would say,

You know what,

We'd rather be poor and doing what we love and giving what we have to give than make the money.

That's something that just doesn't express our sense of purpose.

And so we've just- Do you think that's why you did so well?

Because there was that moment where you were going to do it the way you wanted to do it,

Even though it looked like maybe you would stay poor?

You know,

I think that does have something to do with it.

It has to have something to do with it because we stayed true to who we are.

Otherwise things can get distorted.

Back to becoming a meditator,

What do you think are some of the biggest challenges to getting started into meditation or maintaining a practice?

What are some of the things you try to address in people or help them overcome to get really into a meditation practice?

I think some of the most important things are to help a person to let go of expectations about what their experience will be.

And certainly a big thing for just about everyone is feeling like they're not supposed to have thoughts because that is such a kind of stereotypical idea of meditation that you sit down and you empty your mind and that's not what it is at all.

You know,

There's a piece that people come into it when we do anything in life,

There's kind of a right and a wrong way to do it or you can be good at it or not.

If you're a student,

You're getting a grade.

If you're employed,

You're getting some kind of review.

And meditation is something completely different.

You're coming into a practice that has a completely different set of rules.

And part of that set of rules is that there is no wrong experience in meditation.

If you're sitting there and you're,

You know,

Feeling emotionally upset,

That isn't wrong.

You know,

It's not wrong if you're not sitting there in total peace every moment of your meditation.

There are a lot of ideas that people come into of what meditation should be and so they can very quickly feel that they're not doing it right.

You know,

I shouldn't be having all these thoughts.

That's such a powerful controlling mindset that we have that we have to be doing something right or that there is just a particular very narrow right way to do things.

Right.

There's certain things that you have to do right.

You know,

You have to bake the cookies at the right temperature for the right amount of time.

But you know,

When it comes to anything creative,

When it comes to anything that has to do with the inner subjective life,

You don't have,

Those formulas don't work.

I think we're in a culture that makes it very hard to just relax and be ourselves and make quote unquote mistakes.

In fact,

I think of meditation as something that can help us to be more relaxed with life and more forgiving of others and more forgiving of ourselves.

Because life,

You know,

Life isn't,

There isn't such a thing as a perfection.

There's no perfect life.

There's no perfect person.

So I guess,

You know,

With meditation,

I try to help people to just relax into it,

To know this is just an exploration.

It's a kind of discovery.

It's a journey.

It's not something you do right or wrong.

And certainly with regard to thoughts,

Which probably just about everyone that starts meditating,

I like to give the message that thoughts are just a part of meditation.

The mind is always going to be having thoughts.

It's the nature of the mind.

And so the question is,

Are we going to fight them and get all caught up in them?

Are we going to just let them be there?

Let them,

Let them go.

Meditation is a lot about letting go.

And that's another thing that's hard for us to do.

We want to be in control.

All the time,

Every moment of every day with our schedule set,

Our timer set.

I've got 30 minutes for you,

10 minutes for you,

Only five minutes for you.

Mary,

I wanted to ask you,

We have a few minutes left,

But I just want to ask you a question that I want to ask you.

I don't know if any of my audience would care.

And I've been listening to you for years.

I think I downloaded your app like five or seven years ago.

You were like one of the first meditation apps out there.

And I just remember thinking,

God,

She has the most amazing voice.

These meditations are wonderful.

And all these years later,

I get to sit here and speak with you.

It's so cool.

Well,

All these years later,

I'm asleep so many times.

All these years later,

I'm getting to sit here and speak with you.

Two men wearing capes.

I didn't mean to cut you off,

But it's so,

You know,

It's just there are these times when I'll meet somebody and sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances.

Like one time it was,

You know,

Calling GoDaddy or something about our website and ended up talking to somebody who listened to the podcast.

And it's always really wonderful to connect personally with somebody who's been connected with my work,

You know,

With the apps.

Especially when you're on your own recording so much,

It could be a little isolating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway,

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Oh,

So the one question,

We were talking about this a bit earlier,

I just wanted to go a little deeper.

And I think because we've all been on this trend of teaching wider audiences and making the language that we use wider in scope.

But just kind of bringing it back to,

I think we all started,

I'm assuming you did,

But maybe you can tell us more on it,

Like a spiritual path of awakening,

You know,

Awakening your consciousness.

And sometimes we kind of take that out of our teachings a bit so that people,

They're getting it anyway because they're meditating.

And so that's what happens naturally,

The same way as if someone taught you to run and then you get in shape.

We just don't talk about getting in shape.

I feel like with meditation,

There's,

You're just,

Your consciousness awakens naturally.

But for you,

Was it a spiritual kind of fire that you were following?

And is that still what it is for you?

And do you,

When maybe when you work more one-on-one with people or smaller groups,

Do you still take them into that kind of space?

And what does that look like for you?

Okay.

Wow.

That's a great question.

Before I get into my history about that,

Just to say that I think it's a matter of what we call something.

You know,

I do,

I just want to say again that this experience of an expanded state of awareness,

Of a relaxed state of awareness,

Of openness,

Receptivity,

That we experience in meditation,

That it's a universal experience and you can view it as spiritual or not,

Depending on,

You know,

How you view your life.

So I just want to say that because I've so often had,

I've had experiences where somebody will say,

Oh,

I'm so spiritual.

And I remember I was working as a hospice social worker and the patient that I was seeing was a man who was very consciously spiritual.

In other words,

He identified as being spiritual,

Did a lot of practices.

It was very much as a part of his identity to say,

I'm spiritual.

And of course,

Spiritual means different things to different people.

So you know,

That's,

I often don't talk about it.

So I'm doing all this kind of explanation before I get into answering directly.

But he had a brother,

This man,

The patient had a brother and his brother did not,

He said,

Oh,

Well,

He's the spiritual one and I'm not spiritual at all.

Well,

What I found was with the way they lived their lives,

I would have said that the brother who said he wasn't spiritual was more,

Was living more what I would call a spiritual life.

And so that word spiritual can have a lot of different meanings.

And I just want to emphasize that what we experience in meditation can be a part of a spiritual journey if that's what you're feeling that you're on or it can just be a way to relax and be more open,

More balanced.

You know,

Mary,

It is kind of the great paradox in what we do that becoming more spiritual is kind of about transcending identity in many ways.

And yet so many people attach I'm spiritual as an identity,

Which is,

It's just a funny paradox.

Well,

No,

I mean,

Really I did,

I have for years just felt,

You know,

I was such a spiritual person.

And really,

You know,

I had a lot of growing to do as far as really being here.

I appreciated David's introduction to his week,

You know,

David curated a week.

And I really appreciated that introduction about coming into the body and just really being here,

You know,

On earth.

At this point in my life,

I don't differentiate between the spiritual and the material so much.

I don't think about,

Oh,

I'm a spiritual person.

I'm just a person.

I'm just,

You know,

Another guy out there,

Girl out there,

Person out there trying to live in this very complicated and challenging world.

And I just,

You know,

So that whole spiritual identity has dropped away considerably.

Although I have to say,

On the other hand,

I've been seeking for deeper answers to feel greater connection with the whole world and humankind and beyond the universe.

So I'd say that when I first started meditation,

Although I believe that the stress in my life brought me to it,

I also embraced it as a spiritual journey and as a means of developing myself.

And my idea of where that development would take me has changed considerably over the years.

I think we've hit that or passed that.

Oh,

Yeah.

Boy,

The time flew.

It really,

Really did,

Mary.

And I can ask you a thousand more questions.

And I'm sure Cody could too,

But we want to be respectful of your time.

But before we finish,

Can you just tell everybody listening,

If anyone's listening,

Where they could find your work and yeah,

How they could find you.

Okay.

So the easiest thing to do is to search for meditationoasis.

Com and you'll find our website.

And that's kind of the hub.

You can search for us in the app store of either Google Play or in the Apple app store.

Just search under meditation oasis as the developer name and on Insight Timer,

If you click on teachers,

I'm one of the lucky people to have a picture on that first page that you get about teachers.

So you can find me there.

And I have not all of the meditations on our podcast.

Oh,

Also,

Yeah.

Look for our podcast on iTunes or on our website.

I don't have all of our podcast meditations on Insight Timer at this time.

So you can hear more of me on our podcast.

I think that covers it.

You got a lot of content out there in a lot of places.

Yeah,

We do.

You know,

Like for example,

Insight Timer,

You organically having over a million streams is just a reflection of how great of a teacher you are and how wonderful your content is.

So thank you for sharing that with the world.

And thank you for being on the show and taking the time and just hanging with Cody and I because we have nothing else to do this afternoon.

So we're like,

Maybe we could just hang out with Mary Maddux.

Well,

I want to thank you for hanging out with me.

This has been really great.

I think we've just I've just discovered two very kindred spirits.

So definitely.

Thank you,

Mary.

Yeah,

Thank you,

Mary.

So it's really fun and I could keep going.

But as always,

David has to stop.

He's the time controller.

I'm the time fairy.

I'm a little bell.

Well,

Sprinkling fairy dust on everyone who's listening to this podcast.

May your day and your life be blessed.

And thank you all so much for listening.

Mary Maddux and we'll see you guys next time on Energy Matters.

Yeah,

David,

What a joy it was to get to spend an hour with Mary and get to know her and talk about meditation,

Our favorite subject,

And just hear her gentle way of presenting the ideas she has about meditation.

And you know,

She has a great way in her apps of kind of grouping everything into a subject matter or a theme or a topic.

So definitely check those apps out.

Way before apps,

I've had her on my iTunes as a podcast,

Her downloads and her meditation.

And she does still have the podcast.

Yeah,

That's where I originally found her in it.

It's a number of years ago.

So she has been around a long time sharing her wisdom with the world and getting people to meditate.

And that was really great to have her on the show.

Yeah,

Mary Maddux,

Everyone.

Thank you all for listening to Energy Matters.

As always,

If you get a moment,

Rate us on iTunes or don't.

And as always,

Again,

Energy Matters is brought to you by intuitivevision.

Net and groundedmind.

Com.

Enjoy yourselves,

Meditate,

Be well,

Be happy,

And we'll see you next time.

See you next time,

Everybody.

You've been listening to the Energy Matters podcast with Cody Edner and David Gandleman,

Brought to you by intuitivevision.

Net and groundedmind.

Com.

Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes,

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Reviews

Such a wonderful episode and the fact that it ends with fairy dust is reflective of the wisdom shared

Mary is a queen. Great interview

Mary does a lovely job of describing the basics of meditation without moving into the arcane. Her conflation of the spiritual and material is refreshing.

Awesome! Thank you! 😁😁🙏🏼

Very informative thank you 🙏