Essential Medicine 6: Deep Hope

Neurointensivist Dr. Adam Rizvi and cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Julia Mossbridge take a deep dive towards understanding and facilitating hope. They discuss how to experience deep hope -- the abiding and inviolable sense that you will be okay no matter what. Dr. Rizvi reveals his fear of mortality and what he has learned by keeping a death journal about each of the deaths he has been honored to attend. Dr. Mossbridge describes her "time travel narrative" approach to accessing deep hope.

Transcript

Hey,

Hi.

So you just came from the hospital.

Yeah,

It was a good day.

It was a good day at work.

Yeah,

I did.

I did.

You know,

It's interesting.

You said,

I'm saving lives.

You know,

Sometimes,

Sometimes I don't save any lives,

But it still feels good.

It still feels like I'm contributing to something.

Even though it like today was a status quo day.

No new things,

No deaths,

No births.

It was just status quo,

But it still felt good.

You know,

I had a couple of conversations with family members and answered questions that they had.

And a lot of time,

It's just reassuring them,

You know,

And it's just being with,

Being with someone and listening.

A lot of listening.

That's a really good way to segue to our topic of hope,

Hope and medicine and hope and essential medicine,

Because I feel like so much of hope is,

Is we have so much focus on the dramatic points,

You know,

The up,

The peaks and the valleys of our experience.

That was a good time.

That was a bad time.

That was a good time.

That was a bad time,

You know,

Births and deaths.

Then we forget that what is really the,

The,

The,

The,

The thing that brings us through is this middle road where you're just basically trying to get to the next day.

And if you could do that in a way that's loving and compassionate and sometimes even playful,

I don't know.

There's that's to me,

That's where hope comes from.

Anyway,

I don't know if that's a forced segue,

But that came into my head when you were talking about status quo,

You know?

Yeah,

It is.

It's interesting.

I think I find myself learning different ways to communicate to family members.

One of the things I used to say when I was just out of training was I want to share with you exactly what's going on with your loved one.

And I don't want to give you false hope when I say that things are unchanged.

I also found myself saying that I have an update for you and only later on realized that people often understood that word to have a positive connotation.

And that update meant that something new and good was happening.

I guess it's the up part of update,

But I found myself saying I don't want to give you false hope as if to emotionally prepare them.

But I think I've learned to sort of drop that more and more because I trust that the family members will be able to emotionally regulate their own experiences.

I don't need to do that for them.

I'll tell them the way it is.

And if they cry,

They cry.

And if they want to say a miracle is going to happen,

Then they say a miracle is going to happen and I'm there for them regardless.

And so it is interesting the different ways that we use hope and false hope,

I guess,

In a sense.

Yeah,

Let's talk about false hope because recently I've heard that phrase from people because I'm more and more speaking and writing about hope and trying to understand it and how it works in us.

And people say,

Well,

One of the first questions is,

Well,

What about false hopes?

You don't want to give people false hopes.

And the more I dig into that,

The more I start to recognize that that fear about giving people false hope is really a fear that our own fear that we're going to disappoint them or our own fear that we don't want to experience when we're wrong.

Like we want it.

We're the ones with the hope and we want it to work out the way we want it and we can't stand it if it doesn't.

And so we'll just try to,

It's like a,

It's like a surgical strike.

Like,

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's like a preemptive strike.

That's what I mean.

Yeah.

And,

And your statement about allowing families to process their own emotions.

You could only do that if you're capable of processing enough of your emotions so that there's space for that.

So you're not afraid of disappointing them and you're not afraid of their pain,

You know?

Yeah.

You know,

What's interesting is I'm still relatively young in my career.

And even though it's only been a handful of years,

I do notice a trajectory in terms of the,

The depth of the psychological conversations I have with family members.

And one of the things that I noticed myself and my colleagues were doing at least during fellowship is speaking of preemptive things is we would try to do all of the emotional processing for them upfront in the conversation by,

By saying,

You know,

I know this is hard.

I know this is tough.

You're going to get through it.

There's going to be ups and downs,

But at the very end,

We'll all come to acceptance and it'll be great.

And,

You know,

They haven't even gotten to acknowledging our first statement that their loved one is dying.

Right.

Right.

Right.

It's this fantasy that if you,

If you look,

I'm,

I know the plan,

This is how it's going to go first,

You know,

And then we're going to be fine.

That's like it's all you're saying is I can't stand for you to have hard feelings in front of me.

That's all you're saying.

And they've,

And that's how people feel.

They feel your unwillingness to just be,

I mean,

Not that you do this,

But when people,

When doctors do this,

I think that patients feel your unwillingness to just be with them and whatever's going on.

Yeah.

And,

And,

You know,

I'm sharing it because it was one of the,

The things that I learned not to do.

And one of the,

One of my mentors at,

At Stanford,

Who is in the palliative care department,

Shout out to Felicia,

Who we,

Dr.

Hui,

You're awesome.

Thank you.

She taught us about the importance of therapeutic silence.

And so,

Of therapeutic silence,

Which is this idea that not saying anything is not an,

Is not a sin of omission,

Which is to say that when you're not talking,

It doesn't mean you're not doing something.

It doesn't mean that you're not offering some form of therapy.

And in fact,

What I've noticed is the less I say,

The more listening,

The more creating a space of being able to hold whatever's arising in the moment is that's actually what's helpful.

Not the,

Not the words that Dr.

Rizvi needs to say.

That's well,

But,

But that's right.

But I don't,

But I think that it's,

It really doesn't come down to words or being quiet.

It comes down to what you just said about holding the space,

Whatever you need to do to hold the space,

Whether it's say certain words or not say certain words,

Just being capable of being there for the patient's feelings and not continually trying to distance yourself from your own is so powerful.

And I think we're seeing a new generation of doctors who are getting that.

And you're part of that generation.

You're like the leading edge of that generation.

And it's really exciting.

It's the psychological awareness of your own process so that it doesn't get in the way of,

Of the patient's process.

Yeah.

I one of the things I started to do really early on is,

Is have a death journal.

And you and I have talked about this a little bit.

I think I've shared this with you.

And I,

I basically,

From the moment I know that a patient's going to die to the moment after their death,

I document all of that.

And,

And one of the things that I document too,

Is not only the nuts and bolts of how the death occurred and by what disease and what resuscitative efforts we may or may not have done,

Which I kind of find interesting.

I want to capture so I can learn,

But also what I thought about it,

How I felt and what others might've expressed,

How they felt like nurses and techs and other colleagues and physicians.

And I also share,

I write down the prayers I offered internally,

You know,

And sometimes externally,

I get out,

Guess out loud.

But one of the things that that helped me do was realize how often I had to do some sort of psychological and emotional processing with every death.

And I don't think I was fully aware that this was happening all the time.

My innate fear of,

Of dying.

Your innate fear of you dying as patients.

I see.

So the patients would remind you of your own mortality.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean,

It,

It sounds kind of cliche,

But it's like every time I would be with a dying patient,

It'd be a mirror right there.

And I would reflect on the fact that not too long ago,

This person was a young baby being born.

And not too long ago,

They were learning their first steps and learning to speak and having their first experiences in the world.

And here they are drawing their last breath.

And I'm,

I'm,

I'm standing here and we've never met before sometimes.

And you didn't know when you were born or when you were,

You know,

15 and having your first date that you would be standing with a guy named Adam.

And that would be your last breath.

And so I really reflect on,

Gosh,

I don't,

I don't know who I'm going to be standing with when I die,

Who's going to be at my bedside and what will be the circumstances.

And you know,

I'd be lying if I said that that didn't scare me.

And the,

The not knowing and the,

I think also it's the desire.

I wish I had some control over that,

But I don't.

And it's the,

It's that aspect of it that I find myself coming to terms with every time I face a patient dying.

Okay.

So,

So wait a minute,

Let me get the clear on this death journal thing.

The death journal is an actual journal that's devoted to this.

Is that right?

This is it.

Wow.

Cause he's holding up a green journal.

I fill it up and when it's done,

I buy a new one and I fill it out again.

And you know,

It started off as,

As a way for me to capture all these experiences.

One of the stories that I captured was not too long ago,

It was about three months ago.

And it was a a 93 year old Chinese man who barely knew any English and had been in a nursing home for the past year.

And his daughters actually flew from China to be with him,

But because they arrived at the,

During the beginning of the coronavirus,

They hadn't been able to see him.

And prior to this,

They hadn't seen him for many,

Many years because they were in different countries.

And this he,

And he now was admitted into my emergency room from the nursing home and he was dying actively dying.

And I called them in and I said,

You should be with him.

Cause we allow for patients to be visited if we know they're going to be passing away soon.

And it was very,

Very poignant because they hadn't seen him for years and years,

And now they're going to see him and a,

And a rush of memories,

No doubt are coming in.

And they're trying to make up for lost time,

Knowing that he's going to die any moment.

And he's on a biped mask,

So he can't really talk.

And so I'm standing there in the room.

They're both crying,

Holding his hand and not saying much,

But you can see how,

I don't know.

I just felt like decades were being transmitted through their eyes,

You know,

Decades and decades of trying to catch up.

And then he,

And then he passed away.

He died.

He,

His heart stopped and he went asystolic.

And then they started crying on his chest,

But the most striking thing happened.

And I'm so grateful to have been part of it.

Both of them just stopped crying all of a sudden,

Like dramatically,

They stood up,

They went to the side of him lined by,

And they,

They stood shoulder shoulder,

And they just bowed and they bowed three times,

One,

Two,

Three.

And then they went down to their knees back up and then turned to me and bowed and said,

Thank you.

And that was that.

I was so moved by that because I hadn't seen,

It's like,

I'm going to offer some interpretation,

But it's,

It seemed to me that they put aside themselves for just a moment.

They put aside their grief for just a moment to honor him and to honor his life.

And that felt so tremendously respectful and gracious of them to do that because it felt like in that moment,

They were really there for him and not for themselves.

And I,

I,

I felt amazing.

It felt amazing to be a part of,

Of that degree of honor and respect.

Is it okay if I,

Did you,

I'm feeling sheepish because I have like 16 thoughts and I didn't know if you wanted to tell another story from your journal and,

And I sort of want you to tell all the stories from your journal,

Like right now.

I want you to transmit them through your eyes to me like they did.

But at the same time,

I had a couple of thoughts.

So what would you like to do?

Let me,

At this point,

Adam says a quote about a man who lives in Siberia and it's from a movie.

We don't discuss the movie,

But he says the quote and then we discuss the quote and the man's experience.

What I fear the most is that my life will pass unnoticed,

That my name won't matter in the history of the world.

And that was for some reason that struck me so intensely because,

I mean,

He really is kind of in the middle of nowhere and he lives a relatively simple life.

And there's no real reason why anyone would know of him.

And yet now we're talking about him and he's forever immortalized in that way.

But I think what the reason why it struck me so much is because at least for me,

But I suspect in the vast majority of us,

If we were honest with ourselves,

There's something of that fear in us as well.

This desire to not die unnoticed.

And I wonder where that comes from,

What that speaks to.

And I do,

I dive into that a little bit more in my musings,

But that particular fear struck me and I wanted to capture it.

Okay,

So that,

Oh.

Where to go with that?

Well,

No,

I mean,

There's too many places to go with that.

So where do you go with that?

There's so many places to go with that.

So where to choose?

But let me just,

The thought that is pounding in my,

On my tongue,

I guess,

Is on the door of my tongue,

Is that working backwards from what you just said,

You know,

There's,

It's very reminiscent of the girls or the daughters and the father,

That same feeling in that what struck you about the daughters lining up and bowing,

You know,

During a time of grief,

Lining up and bowing,

And then kneeling and bowing and bowing to you is that they were acknowledging that the death was not final.

I mean,

If they really believed the death was final,

Why would they bow to their father?

He's dead.

There is no more father.

Why would they want his death to have honor?

It doesn't matter.

He's dead.

And so what they're honoring is the essence of continuation and continuity,

The essence of sort of,

I guess I want to call it the I am essence,

The essence of existence,

Which ironically is what survives death.

And I feel like the desire to make sure your name is,

You know,

Your life doesn't pass unnoticed is like a desire to be just,

To believe that you exist,

To believe that there is this essence,

That there is this I am-ness that is you and that is only you and that lives in the world even after you die.

And so,

But to me,

This is,

This is what I call deep hope.

So deep hope isn't that,

So what I call shallow hope,

When I say I'm talking about hope,

Most people come up with a question about false hope.

And then the next question is like,

Well,

Do you mean like,

You know,

I hope that tomorrow I'll have a good day,

You know?

And I'm like,

Yeah,

That's a kind of hope that it's good to have.

Like,

It's good to have wishes like that.

That's like a wish.

The deep hope is this experience that there is an inviolable,

Inviolable,

Not being able to be violated aspect of yourself that continues.

It's like,

There's this essence that continues from beyond your birth and death.

And so therefore you don't have to,

It's like,

Regardless of the circumstances.

So at some point you will die.

So deep hope is I get that I am regardless of the circumstances and nothing can break that and nothing can destroy that.

That is actually not,

Not able to be injured in any way.

And it seems to me that that's what we,

When,

When he says,

I don't want to pass unnoticed,

That could be taken as an egoic sort of,

I want my name in lights.

I don't think that's what he's saying.

But I don't think that's what he's saying.

I think what he's saying is he wants to have the experience of deep hope where he exists no matter what.

So I don't know what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah,

I,

I would agree.

That's certainly the way I took it as well.

I think if one pays attention close enough to the natural world,

We see that things fade,

Things die.

Even mountains crumble over time.

Long lasting trees will eventually die.

You know,

This is the sun itself will explode,

You know,

It just it's a different time scale.

But the one constant is change.

And more often than not,

It's change along the lines of entropy,

Which is to say more,

More and more dissolution.

And that,

I think,

Creates can create a sense of fear and terror,

If we identify with that.

And I think that's what you're getting at,

Because I have found the greatest moments of peace in myself,

Both in in meditation,

But also in regular moments of walking down the hallway of my hospital,

You know,

Or outside on the street and the sidewalk with the sun shining through the leaves,

You know,

Like simple moments like that,

Where it doesn't feel like I am this individual with a particular story playing out a role,

But I it feels like the whole universe is breathing in this particular nexus that seems to have a name and seems to be mobile.

But there are other nexuses out there that are named and have their own roles.

You know what I'm saying?

But it's still it's still this breathing,

Moving presence that is always alive.

And I the other quality that I would give to it is it's just imminently present,

Like,

Just this raw presence.

That is the nature of life itself.

And I think when we when we touch that,

And we realize that that is who we are,

Then we get to the realization that,

Oh,

Yeah,

That's inviolable.

That cannot change that is always there.

How could that be destroyed?

It cannot be destroyed.

Yeah,

It is like the is-ness,

You know,

It is it is the beingness.

Yeah,

To me,

That's where that's that's the fountain of hope is the recognition of,

Of,

I can identify with this piece that is inviolable.

Let me ask you a question.

The one of the great quotes in in the Sufi tradition is,

May I die a second death?

And that's interpreted in many ways.

But one one death is the death of the physical body.

But a second death is the death to the egoic identity.

And the fear of losing that is arguably more frightening.

The fear of losing a an individual persona.

And I find that a very intriguing subject,

Because then I'm going out on a limb here,

And you can direct me accordingly.

But I feel like hope,

Deep hope is a very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very much like,

Hope Deep Hope,

Perhaps,

Can be touched if we're willing to go through the terror and the fear of that second death.

And know that,

You know,

That's not who we are.

Yeah,

It's like you have to I'm it's like you have to die to survive,

Right?

I mean,

It's,

Yeah,

And I don't think it has to be,

I think that it is a trick.

Yes,

I think deep hope,

Talking about deep hope is a trick to try to get people to be motivated to identify with this,

With the I am.

I mean,

I think that's definitely a trick.

And it works though,

Because I've noticed that dividing it up into shallow and deep hope and I say,

Look,

It is frankly this idea that like,

I'm going to be okay if X,

Y,

And Z happens externally.

It's not a satisfying idea because sometimes X,

Y,

And Z does happen.

And you still don't quite feel okay.

You still feel unsafe.

You still,

It's not enough.

So then you want PD and Q to happen.

And those things may or may not happen,

But if they happen,

It's still not quite enough.

In other words,

Nothing external that reinforces our separateness actually gives us deep hope.

It just makes us feel good briefly,

You know?

And going through this period of recognizing like,

And I'm not saying you can control it.

I'm not saying like,

If you just did some magic things,

You could do this.

I'm not saying that.

I am saying somehow it works to talk to people about deep hope as an identification with the I am,

Or the isness that is the life force,

Like an identification with the life force rather than what the life force is going through our bodies.

Because hope,

Because there's this feeling of we ought to be able to feel okay.

We ought to find it really does feel like there is a solution to just being okay with what happens.

We have this native desire to have that experience that gets thwarted.

And it makes us feel unsatisfied when we have this sort of superficial hopes.

But I'm not saying they aren't important.

Like it is important to have the experience of like,

I wish I'm alive to go to work tomorrow.

Right?

You know,

Like,

If you don't have that experience,

Then you're probably depressed.

And that that's not good.

But I'm just saying at this level of always depending on these external events and not just feeling okay exactly as the life force that you are,

It just feels unsatisfying.

And so I think that is what causes people to start to seek some other way.

And so I think deep hope is another name that I feel is more motivating than like seeking enlightenment,

Which can I think I could get really intellectual and almost judgy and there's so many definitions for what that means.

Anyway,

But I do I do like what you said just a moment ago,

Which was something external,

Which reinforces our sense of separation.

I think that's those are the words that you used.

And I,

In my experience,

It is a huge leap to go from where I am now to the isness and the I am and the complete acceptance of this moment as it's expressing.

But especially when I'm struggling with someone either,

You know,

A colleague at work that I disagree with,

Or someone that I'm in a relationship with that there's there's tension there.

I can't jump straight to the I am.

But I do notice that there are very clear steps that will take me there.

And one of the steps that I found helpful is this idea of ultimately,

Ultimately,

Having shared goals or shared interests.

On a fundamental level,

We all want to be cared for and loved.

And we all want to be heard.

And I'm sure there's there's more aspects to being human.

But I tend to go to those quite often,

Because when someone's expressing some some frustration,

I go to we all want to be heard when when someone is frustrated about things not going their way or someone yelling at them and judging them.

I go to we all want to be loved.

And I find like I've trained my mind enough,

Where if some external factor does show up in my life,

That is seeking to reinforce separation,

I can transform it with my mind with my intention into something that actually reinforces a sense of unity.

And I imagine that many spiritual spiritual practices and humanistic practices seek at that learning to transform what arises in the moment,

Instead of one thing,

Which is separation,

But getting at another,

Which is unity.

I think that's a powerful tool connection,

Or unity as a transformer,

Awareness of awareness of unity as a transformer.

I think I think there are about five tools that I've noticed that can can,

When you're not there that can help you get there.

And one of them is connection.

One of them is prayer.

One of them is humility,

Just just having deep humility and that I'm just like,

I don't know what's going on.

I don't have any control over the situation.

I'm just completely humbled.

That's super helpful.

One is compassion for someone else who's having a hard time.

And the other is creativity,

Because there's something about when you when you're in a creative state,

You're suddenly unified with the universe because it's flowing through you and you can't not be aware.

You're expressing this thing that's flowing through you can't not be aware of this life force because it's coming out.

It's like I'm being a fountain.

I feel like those five things are really powerful,

But I did have a reaction to something you said,

Which is where you said,

I can transform it this way.

And I do think that there's so much this is probably going to make me very unpopular with you.

I think there's so much talk in the world of spirituality about what can you do to change your experience and what can you do to control things so that things are different?

And I feel like what if you can't do anything?

Like what if you have the experience of being able to transform your experience because that's how God wanted you to experience it.

That's what God wanted you to experience in that moment.

But someone else in that exact same situation can't doesn't have the capacity to do that because that's not what God wanted them to experience.

And someone else tries to do it and it fails because that's what God wanted them to experience in the moment.

So there's a part of me that says we get so focused on agency,

Like,

Oh,

There's a problem.

I'm not experiencing the life force.

So I'm going to do something because I'm going to meet that.

And it's like,

Wait a minute.

If you're not experiencing the life force that in itself is an experience and you can just accept the fact that it's,

That's where you are.

And what happens if you do that instead of trying to fix it?

Well,

I'll tell you what happens.

You get in touch with the life force.

So anyway,

It's just,

And you don't have any control.

My belief is you don't have any control over whether you even accept it.

Like I'm just talking about descriptively about things,

Not proscriptively.

You know what I mean?

Yeah,

Exactly.

No,

I would say that you've,

You've become a little bit more popular in my mind with that statement,

Not unpopular.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's actually something that I have found in the,

In the intensity of feeling horrible.

I remember I was very angry at someone when I was I was in college at some point or something,

But someone had done something I don't even remember.

See,

I don't even remember the external factor,

But what I do remember was I couldn't,

There's nothing I could do except completely drop all barriers to feeling this way.

It felt so bad and so intense that I was holding up a barrier.

It's like my mind wanted to think about something else,

Or it wanted to assign blame or it wanted to,

It couldn't handle the intensity of the energy of anger.

So it was trying to do something with it.

And so I stopped trying to do something with it.

And I said,

I'm just going to feel this anger right now.

And then came,

I don't like feeling anger.

And then I decided I'm going to just be with,

I don't like feeling anger.

And,

And it's like this recursive process that I noticed,

Like anytime something else came up,

I would say,

Fine,

I'm going to be okay with that too.

And it just kept this process of like,

I was this space of okayness,

Right?

It's the best.

And,

And that,

I mean,

I didn't do it for the purpose of getting somewhere is because I realized like,

I couldn't go anywhere.

So I was forced to just be here.

And in the process of that,

Of course,

I was able to,

To be in a more productive state.

And,

And I felt a lot of healing,

Actually,

Honestly,

I felt a tremendous amount of healing.

So I feel I totally agree with you,

Actually.

There's also a term called spiritual bypassing,

You know,

Which is this idea of like,

You don't face what's actually happening.

And you try to use a technique or a trick or something.

And then you effectively bypass the very first step,

Which is being with and accepting.

But I like the term being with better because accepting sort of still has a sort of action quality to it.

Being with is like,

Is like someone sitting next to me,

I'm not gonna,

I don't need to do anything.

I'm just gonna sit here next to you.

I'm not gonna try to make you feel better.

I'm not gonna try to convince you to think otherwise.

I'm literally being with you.

I'm just sitting with you.

And I do that with my emotions.

And I feel like the not needing to have it be other than what it is,

Is what helps me.

Absolutely.

Me too.

Like sometimes I get into a state of,

Thank God I'm not liable to get into a state of depression for longer than a few hours.

But when I have one of those like depressing,

Just sort of dullish feelings,

What gets me out of it is to go,

I just feel kind of depressed.

But that's because again,

Like I don't have a clinical disorder.

So it's not like this is going to work for everyone.

And there are times when you can't do that.

You can't just be with it.

I mean,

So it's like,

Even that,

Even,

And then there's times when you can't be with the not being able to be with it.

But that being a space for okayness,

Being okay,

These layers of okayness,

This iterative process,

This is unconditional love.

That's what unconditional love is.

That's all you're unconditionally,

All loving is,

Is being with.

You're unconditionally being with yourself,

Even though you might not like yourself.

That's what brings that's a good way of putting it on unconditional love.

Yeah,

It's it is interesting when you,

When I treat myself as,

As if there was another person here.

I think sometimes we do that and we don't realize that we're doing that.

But I do wonder sometimes if,

If it were the case that there was this other person that was this other person here and,

And there's another Adam,

Sometimes I,

I could be really mean to this person.

And I imagine something that I used to do.

I haven't felt intense emotion that often these days,

But a while ago when I used to,

I had this meditation that I kind of came up with,

Which was,

I imagined my emotion being like a homeless child out in the rain,

Ringing the doorbell and wanting shelter and food and like a hot cup of soup or something.

And instead,

What I do is I open the door and I punched the kid in the face.

And I said,

Don't ever come here again.

And I closed the door.

And I think about how twisted and sick of a reaction that is and how maladaptive and horrible it would be if I were to see someone do that in real life.

And yet how I used to treat my emotions was very similar to that.

Not acknowledging or acknowledging,

But then condemning and blaming and judging and wishing it wasn't there and asking it not to ever come back.

You know?

And so what I would do instead is I would imagine the kid,

The emotion and welcome it in and really say,

You don't have to be other than anything than what you are.

Anything other than what you are.

Your clothes,

How you look,

Everything.

There's nothing that you need to change.

Here,

Here's some water.

Here's some food.

Have a seat.

And you know what?

You actually don't need to leave.

At any point.

If you want to stay here,

You can stay here.

And that kind of level of total openness and allowing gives that emotion space and freedom.

And I guess you call it love.

But for me,

It's like it didn't process as love.

I felt like I needed to go through this mental,

You know,

Imagination exercise to get at that response,

Which is indeed love.

That's really beautiful.

That's that's really beautiful.

And that's the kind of thing that I've been working with people on with their past selves.

So turning their past self into someone else,

It doesn't matter what age could be five minutes ago,

Right?

But bringing that person of representation of that past self with you and just what do you need?

How can I love you better?

You know?

Because there is something about ourselves over time.

And,

You know,

I'm always talking about time and we've talked about this before maybe.

But there's something about how you connect with yourself over time,

Which is related to your ability to connect and identify with your life force.

It's like if you could see your life force as being manifested in the past and in the future,

As well as in the present,

And you can't see the past and the future,

All you can see right now is the present,

Then you have to acknowledge that there's something else other than what you can see that is you.

We do talk about how we felt when we were six years old.

We do talk about how we will how we'll feel on our deathbed.

You know,

Those are real models of us in our minds.

And and to connect them and love them.

It's like you're creating this thread.

You know,

You're creating this thread.

You're creating.

You're allowing this thread to be created or you're creating this thread,

Depending on how you want to think about it.

That goes through the course of your life and that is inviolable.

So I think there's a relationship there with that practice that you just described.

Wow.

I I'm curious.

Do you do that practice with future selves as well?

Yeah,

I do.

Well,

So I've been working on this this this project where we're trying to lead people who are at the intersection of abuse,

Incarceration,

Addiction,

Poverty,

Trauma through these steps of time travel.

We call them time travel narratives.

But these steps of of healing the past self with what you know now and then looking toward the future self as possible source of love for you now.

And I do that.

In fact,

The whole meditation and the whole process and the idea for the the project came from when I was a kid and I looked to my future self and I visibly in my in my mind's eye,

I could see my future self when I was in trouble,

When I was in an abusive and neglectful situation,

I could see I wonder if we've talked about this before,

But I could see my future self in my mind's eye while the abuse was happening.

And she was kick ass like she would like she was like she would say to me,

You know,

This isn't okay,

What's happening and it's okay for you to be angry and it's not normal.

And but guess what,

You're going to actually thrive.

You know that like every every night she would say that.

And so that saved my life,

Right?

My model of my future self saved my life.

And so that's that's why I'm passionate about teaching people about how powerful that connection is.

So yeah,

I do I do teach people about connecting with the future self.

It's a fantastic source of love,

Especially when you're not feeling loved in the moment.

Yeah,

That is amazing.

That is amazing.

Yeah,

I can see how helpful that would be.

Just something powerful in knowing that you're,

You're loved and supported.

And having it be a future self.

It doesn't make any difference.

Yeah,

Very,

Yeah.

Well,

Maybe it does make a difference.

Because at least in my situation,

There was no one.

I was in a farmhouse,

There was no one else on the family I could trust.

So I didn't have like,

I had to go instead of looking to different people in space,

I had to look at myself in time.

That was my resource,

You know?

Yeah,

So maybe it did better that it was me because yeah,

I could trust me.

Exactly.

Actually,

Now that you said that,

That makes a makes a lot of sense.

There's a,

There's this interesting thing I remember doing when I was in fellowship.

I remember having a hard time.

And I was in the stairwell of the,

Of the cardiovascular unit.

And I was trying to come to terms with the stress of what I was going through.

And I think intuitively,

I jumped forward three or four years,

And said,

I'm going to have graduated,

I'm going to be working comfortably in a job.

And life is going to be amazing.

And I will have learned so much.

And I got a,

I got a little boost.

I don't know what happened in that moment on a mental,

Energetic,

Psychological level.

But I do feel like something connected.

And I got,

I got a supercharge,

Because all of a sudden,

The heaviness of the moment dissipated.

I'm like,

Yeah,

Yeah,

It's gonna be,

It's gonna be great.

It's gonna be fine.

And I was able to get through it that day,

That now that you're sharing this,

I realized,

I think I have a tendency to do this intuitively.

I think we all do.

But we don't realize that this is actually a thing.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Most,

Most people who have been able to make sense of their lives and be successful in some way or another,

When I share this,

They're like,

Oh,

Yeah,

I do that,

Too.

And it's,

It's a thing.

It's taking it seriously,

That there's this future self that there is this representation of that we can actually call on to,

To bring to pull us forward.

You know,

If you think of your life as a as a series of ups and downs,

Like I'm moving my hand like a wave,

You know,

Say your peaks and valleys,

And when you're in one of the valleys,

You know,

You're in the valley,

Because it doesn't feel good.

But if you can look forward to a peak,

Just like in the back,

And then in the back in in your history,

You can look back and say there were times when I felt better.

Well,

Then reflect that in time.

There will be times when you feel better in the future.

And so hope,

Deep hope,

Because it is with you that whole time in the peaks and valleys acts like a bridge,

I think.

So yeah,

It's a normal thing that people do.

People don't talk about it.

I think it's,

I think it's insanely helpful.

Yeah,

As you're as you're describing this,

My natural inclination right now,

And I was kind of doing this as you were describing,

Is tapping into the me post mortem.

But right after I don't know,

I it's a,

It's it's this huge feeling of like a deep,

Deep okayness.

Like it like a joy and not only is everything okay,

But things are friggin great.

And it's a,

It's a good,

It's a good feeling.

It's really interesting.

It almost makes me feel like I am looking forward to it.

I mean,

It is it does not almost but it is that feeling of,

Of looking forward to it.

I'm going to let it take its time.

Of course,

I'm not going to speed anything along.

But yeah,

It felt good to do that for a brief moment.

That's really cool.

Because we opened this conversation with pretty,

Pretty close to the beginning about you talking about you being very aware of your own fear of mortality.

Yeah,

Yeah,

It's interesting.

Yeah,

Because I think mentally I let I stop my mind there at at the moment of the last breath.

But if I break through that barrier mentally,

And play with the me,

That's after that moment,

I realized there's a whole world there.

And it's huge.

And it's expansive.

And it's,

It's radiant.

And that's not as good.

And that's not as constrained.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

That's a powerful type of thing.

I think Julia,

I'm very excited to see what comes of your efforts.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Time travel.

I am very into the usefulness of time travel.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Wow,

Thank you.

I feel like I feel like we're done talking,

Or it feels like we're wrapping up.

But I also,

I have this thirst,

Because we haven't done this in a while to talk for like another whole hour,

But we should probably just cut it off.

I don't know where you on the conversation.

Yeah,

Yeah,

I think there's so much more to talk about.

There.

Yeah,

There's a lot to talk about.

I'm okay with closing it now.

But knowing that there's a lot of topics to discuss.

Okay,

Well,

It's really great to see you.

I love you a lot.

Yeah,

I love you too.

Yeah.

Keep up the healing.

And I'll do the same.

Yeah,

Thank you.