You are listening to Designed to be Awake with Mick Kubiak.
Hello,
Listeners.
It's a short episode,
But the mind goes many places into Buddhism,
Into Christianity.
I think really the most potent message is that there's this idea of original sin or a garden that we used to be in that was Edenic,
Right?
It was Eden.
And then somebody did something bad,
And then we got kicked out.
And we're all living these lives in the aftermath of that,
You know,
Sinners in a fallen world.
I know that's just a Christian myth,
Even if you're not a Christian.
It's in there.
Like so much of this is just baked into the way we think,
The way we live.
Being aware of it,
Though,
There's so many beautiful hints about how to get back to the garden and that actually we're already there.
Hello,
Hello.
It's a Tuesday night,
And I saw maybe six clients today,
And some of them are still texting me with updates or things,
You know,
And it's so beautiful.
Like in one case,
I'm connecting to that person through a thread to another country and agriculture in that other country or plant life in that other country.
And in another case,
It's holding someone who's going through divorce and having been through that myself and knowing all the people who've been through divorce and not just divorce,
But separation of any kind,
Right?
A breakup,
A heartbreak,
Because divorce is just a more formal version of a heartbreak.
But yeah,
All of these beautiful beings that I'm connected to at the soul level.
And I was just feeling into how much I love my life and how much I love this access to the inner worlds,
The deep soul of other people and how I'm almost never really happy when everyone's like keeping the party polite.
I'm not saying never.
I'm not saying I can't,
You know,
Go to a place where,
Hey,
This is just beautiful and this is just like fun.
I actually think that's very profound and important.
Beauty and fun.
Those are up there for me.
So it's not like everything has to be,
Show me your inner soul and bear it to me and I'm going to go deep with you.
You know,
It doesn't have to always be like that.
But I actually,
I do like it.
I like it at that level and I kind of am always at that level.
That's always very accessible to me.
And I feel like I live in a world where that's not considered polite.
That's not what we talk about at the dinner table.
That's not what we're doing here.
We're not doing that here.
Like relax and have a beer,
You know?
And I don't want to relax and have a beer.
Although sometimes I do.
Again,
I just want to like honor the complexity of all beings and recognize that I'm very,
I'm open to all the experiences that this life has to offer.
I just really like that the great majority of my experience these days is composed of vulnerability.
Vulnerability and I don't love the word struggle because it's not always a struggle.
I actually think the struggle is in faking your way around vulnerability.
Like that's a struggle and it's unnecessary.
It's really unnecessary a lot of the time.
Now,
If you're a child in a dangerous household in the midst of the,
What I like to call the prolonged hostage crisis that is childhood,
I know there are people who have great childhoods and I honor them.
I honor you.
If you're here,
If you're one of them,
Beautiful.
For me,
It was not like that.
And it was definitely more of a prolonged hostage crisis.
And in that situation,
I had to learn to pretend to be okay.
I had to learn to pretend not to be like bleeding to death inside.
And in that pretense,
I developed what we call social skills.
And I'm grateful for them.
And I'm grateful for that.
I've just reached a point in my journey where I'm so grateful for everything.
Even the things that I used to really believe ruined my life,
Devastated me,
Cut me apart inside,
Made me impossible,
Like unwifeable,
Right?
Unlovable,
Difficult.
Even those things I find now,
I look back on with so much gratitude.
And I guess that's because I understand that there is no separating those things from me getting here where I am now.
And to be here where I am now,
And to have a career that is built on making it safe and not just safe,
Though,
Because that's another word I struggle with a little bit,
Making it acceptable,
Embraceable.
Like,
I love it.
I love it.
Bring it to me.
Bring it.
Bring your vulnerability to me.
I want to know.
I want to know about your pain.
And I want to know about how exquisite it is to be vulnerable and have a child,
For example,
At the same time,
To be vulnerable and have your heart broken,
To be vulnerable and watch the sunrise or set or any of the hours in between those two things.
I want to know.
I'm here for it pretty much all the time.
It's like a great gift.
And in making this podcast and having there be people out there listening to it,
That's a connection as well.
And I can just,
Yeah,
Express my gratitude to everyone who is in the place of being open,
Being vulnerable,
Really settling down into the experience of being human in this world,
This fallen world.
I was struggling with that today,
Too.
I borrow that term,
Of course,
From presumably the Old Testament,
Where,
You know,
There was the Garden of Eden and everything was great.
And then somebody made a mistake.
Somebody broke a rule.
They did something they were told not to do,
And that was it.
They were kicked out,
And everyone since then has been kicked out.
That's the story.
Now,
The whole point of Jesus was really to be like,
I fixed that.
That's what he's saying.
I died for your sins,
So you don't need to have sin.
You don't need to do this to yourself.
You don't need to torment yourself anymore.
But even,
You know,
Most Christians don't practice that.
They don't let themselves off the hook.
And in fact,
It's interesting how they put themselves even more on the hook a lot of the time in many cases.
But yeah,
This fallen world,
This illusory world,
Some would say,
That's what I think the Buddhists would say,
Right?
This would be maya.
This would be a realm of illusions,
A realm of delusions.
And we're all just trying to escape it and get back into reality,
Back into all-loving,
All-knowing,
All-forgiving reality.
And then if you're a bodhisattva,
You do that.
You get off the wheel,
And then you sign on to come back.
Because as long as there are beings here still suffering,
You want to come back and show them how you did what you did.
And I think that's a really interesting story.
And then in which case,
You know,
Jesus is the Christian bodhisattva.
I don't know that that's true.
Is that true?
It might be.
I like to philosophize.
This is all just philosophizing.
And I hope you're getting something out of it.
I appreciate you listening.
I hope for you that you are happy and free and in a kind of deep knowing that you are loved beyond measure and supported beyond measure.
And that knowing that sometimes has to precede the evidence of that by definition of the human mind,
The human definition of proof.
And that's true.
You got to know it to see it.
That's my experience anyway.
And with that,
I will bid you good night.
Thank you so much for listening today.
This episode and every episode would be impossible without my amazing team,
The brilliant Chase Coughlin,
Who not only edits every episode,
But also composed the music for the show,
As well as Maya Young.
If you enjoyed listening,
Please leave us a review.
Thank you so much for listening,
And I will see you next time.
