Spring Washam - Finding Strength, Courage & Wisdom

Spring Washam is the author of an amazing book called "A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in any Moment." She shares her thoughts on how we can emerge from the darkest moments in our lives--and even use our suffering as a catalyst for growth She talks about things like Divine Patience and using humour as a resource for when we’re at our worst. She’s a beautiful soul who shares so much wisdom in this interview!

Transcript

Welcome to Untangle. I'm Patricia Karpis. Today I interview Spring Washam. She shares her thoughts on how to emerge from the darkest moments in our lives and even use suffering as a catalyst for growth. She talks about things like divine patience and even humor as resources for when we're in these really, Really tough places. She also shares the work she's now doing combining plant-based medicines with meditation in Peru and how this powerful blend of ayahuasca and meditation can be so transformative. She's a beautiful soul who shares so much wisdom in this interview. Now, Here's Spring. Spring, It's really so great to finally have you on Untangle. Thanks so much for being with us today. Oh, It's an honor to be here and I'm so happy it finally has happened. I know, Right? Yay. I want to start with a really simple question. How did you come to meditation originally? What is your journey there? When I was a teenager, I was really interested in psychology and I mostly was interested in it to try to figure out my own depression, Trying to work with my mind. I had this really clear insight very young age, Something's wrong with my mind and I've got to understand what's happening with my mind. So, I had read about meditation a lot in a lot of different self-help books and I really got into it when I was 23 and someone left a book about meditation by Paramahansa Yogananda, Who wrote Autobiography of a Yogi at my house. I was moved into a new place and I remember I picked up this book and it really was one of those enlightenment moments, Not like a real enlightenment, But an enlightenment for me because I immediately changed my life after reading it. How did you know as a teenager, Even as, I mean, In the book you talk about even as a young child, You felt like something was wrong? What was that feeling? What made you think that something was wrong? Well, I think when I was young, I was an empath. So, I picked up on a lot of different emotions that were happening around me. So, My mother and her depression and her boyfriends and their fighting and the suffering in the community as I would observe people outside in our neighborhood being high or drunk. I kept being like, Why is there so much suffering? Why are people acting like this? What is motivating them? What is underneath this? I don't understand this. I really had that as a child very deeply, This observation and this questioning of why are people so unhappy. As I grew up, It kind of just grew in me, This interest. When I made a joke about that when I was young, I don't know where I got the word psychiatrist, But you know how adults ask children, Oh, What do you want to be when you grow up? I would say psychiatrist. I'd be like, Psychiatrist? Do you even know what that is? I was like, It helps people with their mind, Right? Yeah, That's what I want to do. And so, That feeling has actually never changed. So, It's my mind and then other people's mind. So, That's a strong force in me. Rachelle It's so interesting. And I love that you start with why are people so unhappy and that because you're a sensitive human being, You pick up all the emotions of people. And then your first chapter is called Blooming in the Mud, Which I love that name, But it really speaks to how can we rise from these feelings of unhappiness or these feelings of suffering or how can we learn to be with them? And I also love that you say in that chapter, It's not where we start that defines us. It's where we end up that transforms a good story into a brilliant one. And I am curious, And I know you've written a lot about this, But what does happen when we lose our bearings or our guidepost or when we hit that feeling of rock bottom and talk about it being those things that happen to us that shake our very foundation? And so, I'd love for you to talk about this, You know, How we can open to this experience, Whatever it is, No matter how painful. Rachelle That's a really big theme in the book is our suffering and how to lose it. So, What I've discovered are there's two types of people, Those who kind of use their suffering as a catalyst, As a way to grow. And then those who use their suffering or experience suffering and it just leads to kind of more shutting down or acting out. So, I am of the school where let's use our painful experiences to grow because in some way they really are stepping stones. And I write in that chapter about collecting biographies. And I just love biographies. In fact, I just finished Tina Turner's recent biography. I knew her story, But just hearing it again, Just all the mud and muck that she went through and then just flowering later, You know, And we love those stories, Don't we? And they come from all walks of life. And we just, We root for the underdog, The one who had the most obstacles, The most tragedy, And then they flower at the end. And so, That's really what this book is about in my own story. It's just a reminder of that because I say I have nothing new to write. These stories are the stories of our people, The stories of our ancestors, The stories of our families. This is the same suffering that has been around, Betrayal and abandonment and abridging. I mean, We've been telling these stories for millenniums, So it's just a reminder, Like, There's a way, Everybody, That we can use our difficulties to get stronger. It's such a great way to put it that suffering can be a catalyst because many people, When they have difficult or challenging things that happen in their lives, Feel like they're the only ones. They go down that victim path. What did you put in place to rebuild your own personal foundation after hitting rock bottom? What do you suggest for people? How do you handle that? Yeah, I think that when we're in a rock bottom place or we're in a dark night of the soul, It can be, And I think for a lot of people, How I advise them, And I do get a lot of people reaching out to me in this kind of, It's almost like a birth canal, Right, Between worlds or something. Every, You know, Haven't fought before something else is born and we're sort of in this middle part, Right, We're in like a tunnel. We haven't reached the end of it and I usually recommend that people take refuge at these times in their spiritual practices, That if you have a faith-based tradition that brings you joy or rather you practice the dharma or Buddhist philosophy or you have a deity in the Hindu tradition or you're Muslim, It's really an important time to take refuge in your practices of awareness. So really seeking out your wise friends, Seeking out those who are elders on the path, Remembering that it's a transition. So when you're in that dark place, You really have to at some point to move forward. The stuckness can be paralyzing, But there is a doorway. We have to want to get free in that moment and we really have to pursue that. Seek out those teachers, Seek out those meditation communities, Retreats, Or even spending time in nature. So reaching out and trying to surround yourself with as much positive energy as you can muster, It can be hard at that time though. Yeah, I think it's true. It can be hard because I think a lot of people tend to retreat inside of themselves when they feel sad. But my next question to you is going to be how important is faith to believe in something bigger than that one awful moment? It seems like you really believe that having a spiritual tradition of some kind will be very healing in the dark night of the soul, So to speak. Yes, And also we need a quality that is highly undervalued in our culture and that is what I call divine patience. Oh, Heavenly patience. I could write a whole book on that. Heavenly patience is a cycle. The dark night is meant to chisel away all of our clinging. It's meant to pull something out of us. When you go through the dark night, You have like a testimony at the end of that, Right? You're riding out of that, Like, Holy, I'm a different person. I survived. And when we're in it, All we can see is darkness and we can feel lost in it. But what it calls forth in us is a kind of fierce strength. That's why I write about the fear. I want to give up in those moments, Even though everything in us is just like, Lay down, Stay in the bed, Don't get up. But there's something in us that's like, No, I'm getting out of this bed. I'm going to wait this out because it does go. And the dark night arises, It stays for a period. And then the clarity comes. The new birth happens. That's always, With every death cycle, There's rebirth. So there's always that period that feels uncertain. I love this quote when you talk about this dark night being a wake-up call. The first sign or messenger comes when our lives are no longer satisfying. We lose interest in the things that used to make us happy. The winds of change are blowing and an unbearable restlessness grips our spirit. The call speaks to us in questions. Who am I? What is my purpose? What am I doing with my life? It's going to be recognizing, Okay, We're in this cycle. It's a kind of identify it. Okay, Whoa, Something very important is happening. It's very painful. But to honor it as a cycle, Like, Wow, Everything's falling apart. Our health, Our relationship, Our job often seems to go in waves. The things that freeze, My relationship, They're gone in a matter of days. Because that's really when you know, Okay, There's something bigger happening here. Okay, Universe, Let it be a wake-up call. I hear you. I'm paying attention. This is so painful, But I'm going to pay attention. And that's when we kind of enter into this divine patience, But also bringing in this prayer for ourselves. It's almost like we're holding vigil. Something is dying off. And it's scary, Right? My life, It doesn't look like it used to. I'm not interested in the same things. My relationship's over. The things that defined us are usually what goes during the dark night. And so we have to find a new definition like who am I now after this experience? What are my values now? So honoring that place, Naming it, Seeing it as a cycle, When we name something, It really helps us. You know, It's like I'm going through a cycle right now. This is a challenging one. However, You experience a higher power, We start asking for that higher power to awaken our eyes to see clearly. That is always what I do when I go through these stages. But I try to do it every day. But you know, Sometimes you really got to do it when everything's dissolving. Because it's painful when things are dissolving. And if we fight ourselves and resist it and respond with hatred and rage, We're just hurting ourselves more. We're adding so much more on already a painful process. So what we want is to be responding to these periods with compassion, Right? If we respond with hatred, Anger, Or we try to suppress it, What's happening, It just magnifies the pain. I tell everyone, You got to surrender to this one. I surrender to this higher power that's in charge in those moments. There's this other quote, You say, When you say yes to this call, Or to whatever's changing in your world, The people, Situations and opportunities you need to move forward will present themselves at the perfect moment. Well, Usually it's during these times where we're going through a huge transition, And we start to come out of it. And I was like, The world has this magic to it. When we're opening our heart, And we're living in the present moment, And all these divine synchronicities start to happen. Those moments, We just love it. You're thinking about going to Bali, And then someone comes over with a Bali brochure, And they just came back. It's almost like there's this path forward that's helping us. And it's like these little messages along the way, Like, Yes, Okay, You're on the right path. Keep going, Keep walking. The end is clear. And so synchronicities or things happening, And people coming forward, And teachers coming, Or like the book being left on my dining room table. Right. The synchronicity, I was ready to change my mind. I was ready. Yeah. So it's just like, I love that, The magic that can happen when you're on this path, And you're really living in your heart. It's just so fun, Actually. And that has such, Even what you're saying has such an opening feeling, Versus in your Prison of the Mind chapter, You talk about the ways we imprison ourselves. And much of it has to do with our limiting beliefs, Or cultural upbringing, Or repetitive stories. And I'm curious if you have thought about some ways that we train in terms of actually stopping our minds from spinning those stories that become meaningless or even harmful. Yeah, I think that's where meditation practice is so essential. Because what meditation practice does is, Essentially, We hit the pause button. There's all these thoughts going and stories, And we feel the suffering. Every thought generates an emotion, And then the emotions generate more thoughts. And we're just, We're sort of in tangles, Right? Where our mind tangles. And so one of the beautiful things about meditation is that we hit the pause button, And we just stop, And we feel the breath, And we feel what's happening now. We step out of the prison for a few moments. And the more that we step out of it, The more we step into stillness, Presence. There's a happiness that starts to come. It's like another level that we can access, Right? It's like, Oh, I don't have to be caught in all this. I just, Let me just breathe and be still for 10, 15 minutes. And the more we train our mind how to do that, The more powerful we become, And it creates a habit in the mind. The habit to pay attention, The habit to be still, The habit to let go of the stories. We were used to holding on to everything now. When something arises in the mind, We believe it. We bite full. Well, We're there. There's no other reality. It's just that story. But when you start to practice meditation, What you're really doing is you're practicing being aware. Instead of being lost in the movie, You're watching it like, Okay, Yes, This is happening, But we're one step removed, And we're observing. And when you start to observe experience, You start to become very wise very quickly. Yeah. I mean, You talk about true freedom lying beneath our stories. I mean, Some people say that they can't practice when they're in an intense emotional or even in intense physical pain. What do you think? Is that when you actually surrender and you may pause your meditation practice, Or do you think you continue to meditate and just do shorter periods of time or whatever you can handle? Yeah, Sometimes we're in the grip of rage or anxiety attack. It's hard to be like, Okay, Now I'm going to feel my breath. Yeah. Realistically, That's practice, Right? That'd be something you'd work on while you're on a meditation retreat or something like that. But you can learn to do that. Also, Meditation is the practice of being present. So when there's intensity happening, I encourage people to move the body. So go on a walk, Feel your feet, Running, Yoga, Things that move the energy. Often these are bigger energies moving through, And we need a healthy outlet, Right? Big emotions, Big energy. We feel them fully, They can take over. So again, You want to start being skillful with these big emotions. When they arise, You want to work with them. We're alchemists and we transform them, Right? We don't want to suppress them. We don't want to act them out. We want to learn how to feel them, But that's an art and that's what we're practicing with meditation. How to feel intensity without getting lost in it, To how to be with it. There's such wisdom there. So let's get into your journeys to Peru and your work as a healer using ayahuasca. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that dovetails with your meditation and mindfulness teachings? This question about my work with ayahuasca and plant medicine, I have to say it's been a little controversial in my community. I understand that. I never have argued that. I've always been like, Yes, Yes, It does seem that we're experimenting with something here. However, These plants that we work with in the jungle, They've been around for thousands of years. This is ancient. This isn't anything that just started with this. These are medicines of the earth that go back for so long in such a deep lineage. But I started working with plant medicine about 12 years ago when I actually fell apart on a long meditation retreat and all this unresolved trauma came up. And I had thought I was done with that cycle of not all my trauma, Of course, But I wasn't prepared for what happened. And I just completely fell apart and it was physical. It was emotional. It was on every level of my system was no physical, Emotional, Vibrational. And I found that my Buddhist practices were not helping me when I was in intense retreat. They were helping me with my mind, But somehow being in a silent meditation monastic setting wasn't helpful with the trauma. And we know this now. We're so much more evolved, Years of understanding how trauma moves through the body and mind and what supports it is contact. And so I was sitting in these silent retreats with all this trauma and it wasn't helping me. And so I left the retreat and a friend of mine who was a psychologist told me, Hey, Why don't you come to a ceremony? And I really respected this woman who was a teacher, Healer, Killed her own trauma, Was a clinical psychologist that come to the ceremony. There's this amazing plant. And I was like, A plant? What do you mean a plant? I had all these skeptical views. Are these hippies? You know, What is this? Drugs? Please come and really see if this could help you. And so I went to the ceremony and I ate our experience and I knew more about myself in that eight hours and years of practicing meditation. What happened? Well, Yes. And I can explain as best I can about that. And I'm writing a new book all about plant medicine, Consciousness, Trauma, The whole thing. It's a great topic for me. But what basically what I was though, Who's a doctor spirit, That's how I describe it, Basically shows you your subconscious and what's going on and why things are happening the way they're happening and why you're responding the way you're responding and moving these huge pieces of stuckness. That's really what happened in that eight hours. It was this insight, Understanding in a rapid, Accelerated rate. And that's what I needed. And that led me to within a couple of months, I took my first long trip to Peru and went to the jungle by myself. And did you meet with healers there to work with you, With the ayahuasca? You continued that path? I did. I continued that path. I was very curious about understanding what ayahuasca was because I'm very interested in lineages. Where is this from? Who carries this? Where is this medicine from? What is the history? How is it used in Amazon? So I went on my own investigation to see how it works to participate to meet healers. And so there was a women led community of Shabkivo female healers. And I was very interested in working with them, Very powerful maestras. And so I went to a retreat with them. And then I just from there, A passion for the medicine and connecting it to Buddhism, To mindfulness, The heart, All the teachings that I had been steeped in for years made so much sense in the shamanic world. See, I feel like the shamanic world needs the Buddhist world. And the Buddhist world could use the shamanic world because it will accelerate awakening, Which we kind of need to go a little faster now. So I found this great compliment. And that's where Lotus find journeys, Lotus being the Dharma, Vine being the vine of plant we work with together. So we merge them together on my retreats in South America. SONIA DARA-MARTIN Do you see a lot of major transformation in people? And why are so many people afraid of trying ayahuasca? Is it an intense experience? JENNIFER LEE-CABROL Yeah. So to answer your first question, I have seen incredible miracles. At one point, I had been going to the Amazon jungle. And without telling people for years, I would go to retreats maybe one to two months a year. I was just going to, I'm on retreat, But I would be in South America. And then I decided to live there for a year. I was so intrigued by the miracles that I was seeing that I moved for one year in the jungle to a healing center. And it was there that I saw myself and others, Just the power of the plants, Healing from all kinds of depression, Autoimmune disorders, Physical things, Emotional trauma, PTSD. And I just fell in love with the process with adding in meditation, All these other things. So again, They need each other. So I think the fear is that it's very unknown. Also, A fear that people have is that the people who are speaking out on this topic are mostly male, White, Very intellectual. And they refer to plant medicine, Ancient plant medicine as psychedelics. So people are frightened by the word psychedelic. And I don't ever use that word. And I'm trying to take it out of the lexicon. Like ayahuasca is not a psychedelic. This is a plant-based medicine that heals our consciousness. So there's a lot of fear around the word psychedelic. And there's also a lot of fear around it being a drug. Is this natural? Is this, You know, What is this? So in the uncertainty, People post things online and people start to feel afraid. But I think that's one of the reasons I'm very excited to start speaking openly, Which is a new phenomenon for me. This is controversial, But I need to clear up all the misinformation and be a new voice on the plants. Yeah, I think that's really needed. And there's so much more research coming out now from Johns Hopkins. A lot of people are looking into plant medicine as ways to help with anxiety disorders, Depression, And just as you said, All kinds of different health conditions. We are a country that normally needs a lot of research and data to prove things or to make people feel comfortable with it. But it always starts with people like you or the pioneers in this area who are experiencing it to come back and say, Hey, This is really what the experience is all about. Yes. And I appreciate the side of the Western folklore that's very science-driven. You know, They even needed Buddhism to be proven scientifically. Yes. Like real, We're not just relying on some yogi in a cave. I want to see my brain span, You know? Right. Exactly. And so I have been sharing this privately with people for years. This medicine is an incredible opportunity for those who are ready to work on that level of mind, Body, Spirit to move faster. Not everyone can handle it. It's not right for everybody. But those that it's right for, It's pretty amazing. I have a question about this. I have a friend that does ayahuasca, Actually monthly with a group. And he has shared with me the experience that he's had. And he said one of his observations is that he sees people go through these incredible experiences and they've opened up new pathways and new ways of thinking. But then when he sees them in everyday life, They haven't found a way to integrate what they have learned in their ayahuasca experience. Have you seen that? Yeah, That's actually, For some people, The most challenging thing is integration, Right? You go up to the mountain and that's also with any spiritual insight that you have. You scale the mountain and then you have to come home, Right? And then suddenly you have to deal with your husband or your children or your work world. But I think one of the reasons that I'm so interested in merging our spiritual path with the plant medicine is that you need both. You could have a massive awakening experience or opening or this huge healing. But if you don't have a spiritual path day to day, Your old habits will come back. You'll have done some good work. But the real transformation is living your life differently. It's living your life with more wisdom and compassion. And so sometimes if people don't have any other practices, They just go to kind of have this big experience and then they go back to their corporate job. Everything is about living with more consciousness, Living with more heart, Living with more compassion and wisdom. So for some people it also can take more time. But that's why I like to bring in the dharma. So the whole time we're studying that, We're practicing that, And that gives us a skillful path. Like we've got to live the spiritual path. We've got to walk it with ethics, Integrity, Love. And that's where the real work is, Isn't it? It's like integrating that into our moment-to-moment daily experience. And that takes these practices that we continue to do. And it's important to continue to practice all the time. Oh yes. This is a lifestyle. I had this one class that I used to teach in Oakland for years at the beat. It was called New Year's Mental Cleanse class. And it was the first four Mondays of the new year in January. And it was like 30-day mental cleanse. And the class was really popular. We'd always have like a couple hundred people there squeezing in. And I remember when the class, The first night I was like, Okay, Everybody, There was a typo. This isn't a 30-day process. It's a 30-year process. Right. Imagine if I had that, Hey, Everyone, Come to the 30-year program. People want a quick fix. Don't we? We want to like, Just get me through this and I'm good. And then we go back to living unconsciously because those old habits, They come. They come, Those old programs. They're not done yet. And so to remind ourselves every day to have some kind of practice of sitting quietly, Walking in nature, Doing yoga, Some stillness is very transformative every day. Some piece of your day dedicated to spirit, To remembering is really, Really, That's where you're going to really grow. Yeah. I love that. You say we can wish for happiness until we're blue in the face, But if we plant the seeds of unhappiness, Then that's what we'll harvest. So I thought that was a really great way to put that. You also say, I love this quote, Our lives are like movies and no matter how much we love it, It ends. Will you talk a little bit about your thoughts on impermanence? Yes. I love looking at things as cycles. When you think of a cycle, You know there's an ending, Right? It's implicit in, Oh, This is a cycle. There's an end. So I always look at my human life as a cycle. Like this is some cycle of an expression and here I am. I appear as this, I appear as a woman, I appear as a black woman, And I love this expression. This is it. I know that there's an expiration date, But the thing is, I don't know when. So we pretend that we have forever or we just, That's part of our way that we live in a kind of a collective delusion, But that's why I understand that. But living with this insight into impermanence, What that does is it wakes us up. It gets us thinking about the present moment because a lot of us stay in suffering situations and things that are not good for us, Or we stay with certain habits because we think, Oh, I'll change it tomorrow, Next week, Right? And there's not that urgency, But when you start to realize impermanence is real, That nothing lasts forever, Including this human life, You meet people who've had near death experiences, It's a wake up, Right? Whoa, Okay. Now I'm getting down to it, Right? But all of us when we contemplate impermanence, Like, Yeah, We're here now, But we don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. So live your best life now. Impermanence is a beautiful contemplative insight in the Buddhist tradition. To contemplate impermanence is the way that we wake up the mind. It cut through the stories in that moment, Like, Wait, Is this how I want to spend today? No, Wait, It adds a kind of momentum, A strength for me, I know it is a lot because it's not going to last forever. So when I'm having a hard day, I just remember, Okay, This tomorrow's a new day. Moons have risen and fallen, Right? Yeah, Absolutely. Tomorrow's a new sun and new moon. I can do it, Get through it. And so that also gives us that, The impermanence gives us that divine patience is connected to that in a way. I am going to remember that term divine patience. I just love that. I'm going to throw out a word and just have you respond with your thoughts about each word. It's a little game we'll play. Yeah. Okay. The first one is generosity. Generosity, My heart practice above all others. I really try to practice generosity every moment that I can, That I'm conscious of what can I give in this moment. Rather, It's financial. I have a very thriving tithing practice. I like to use that word tithing, Even though it comes from a different tradition than I work with every day, But where I try to give 10% away of everything to the betterment of the world. So my charities, My organizations that I support, People that I love, And I'm trying to make generosity my conscious practice. So I think about it ahead of time, I give what I want to give, And then I delight in it after. And purpose? Everything. Motivation is everything. You have to know what it is. What do you want to do here? Every human being should have their own vision and mission statement. Like an organization has, What is yours? Know what you want to do, Why you're here. What is the purpose? And keep asking until it gets clear. You just keep asking the question to the universe. If it's not clear, It'll get clear. What is my purpose? Perfect. Loneliness. Loneliness for me represents a disconnection with ourselves. Not even about other people. Because I can be in a relationship and feel lonely. I can be in the middle of a dinner party and feel lonely. It's not about the people. It's about my own relationship with me. So loneliness brings me back to putting a hand on my heart and telling myself I'm here. Happiness. To delight in moments of happiness is really key. And for those who are going through the dark night, I think happiness and joy, You've got to find moments where it's just funny. Like, Okay, How bad can you get? Oh, It's bad. Okay. You've got to laugh. You've got to find some, Even when it's all dissolving and we're in tears. There's moments where you can find the humor in it. Like, What am I clinging to right now? What is funny about this? Because balancing 10, 000 sorrows, 10, 000 joys is everything. So finding joy in the dark night. Spring, Thank you so much for being with us today. You are so filled with such beautiful wisdom and I'm just so grateful to have you here today. Oh, It was my honor. I'm so happy that we got to talk and I hope this conversation is helpful for all your listeners. Thanks so much to Spring for being with us today. We'll see you next week.

Reviews

A really interesting conversation, thank you!