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In this episode, I’m joined by renowned Buddhist author Bob Thurman for a conversation that will change the way you think about happiness forever! If you’ve ever struggled with fear, stress, or feeling stuck, Bob’s advice will shift your perspective in a BIG way.

You’ll learn:

  • The #1 mindset shift that will change your life—immediately.
  • The real secret to enlightenment (it’s not what you think!).
  • How to make happiness your default state, even in tough times.

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disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #247 Feb 17, 2025 emotional wellbeing

how to really be happy even when life’s tough: big talk with bob thurman

[00:00:00] The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host, Gabby Bernstein. And if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started. Welcome back. Welcome back to Dear Gabby, my friends. You've probably heard me say this a bunch of times, that happiness is a choice we But what does that really mean?

What does that really, really mean? On today's episode, we're going to unpack it completely. I'm going to teach you the simple shift that can change everything. And how to understand what it really means to be happy. What real happiness, genuine happiness, the kind of happiness where you wake up in the morning and you just feel connected to the universe and you feel aligned with love and you [00:01:00] trust that there's a higher power.

You know that even when you get taken out, you can come back. That kind of unshakable faith. And happiness is what I'm going to talk about today. And I talk about it with a really, really special guest, one of my heroes. Bob Thurman. He's a renowned Buddhist teacher and author. And together we talk about this really kind of, and this was like actually one of the coolest conversations I've ever had on Dear Gabby because I just want to have deep, big talk.

You know that. I just want to go big. I want big talk, deep conversations, deep connection. I don't want to, I don't want to mess around. I don't want to play around. I got no time for, I got no time for small talk people. So we just go there. We just go there. We dive in deep. This is a man who really understands enlightenment.

And he shares it in a way that you'll resonate and in the resonance of his voice and his words and his wisdom, his decades of Buddhist practice, you'll feel and know what real happiness is and how to access it. [00:02:00] It's a really beautiful conversation and I just can't wait for you to listen. And if you've ever really struggled with fear, if you've struggled with stress, which we all do, we all do, feeling stuck, fear, stress, anxiety, this episode is the perfect way to know that there is a way out.

We talk about the Buddhist concept of enlightenment and how people think this is such a big, unattainable thing that involves lots of suffering, but really, it starts with one simple shift, and that's going to be revealed on today's episode. As we talk about happiness, nothing makes me happier than hearing how this beautiful work is supporting you.

I've been getting a lot of messages lately. From my Gabby coaching members inside my app. It's a quite if you don't know about the Gabby coaching app. It's epic It's like an app where you have me as your coach in your pocket all throughout the day at any time anywhere I'm just there for you. There's meditation hundreds of meditations and workshops and daily lessons and four different always on challenges, like the manifesting challenge and all the amazing stuff that I put inside of it.

[00:03:00] My members have been revealing to me some of the messages of what it means to have a sustainable spiritual practice and what it means to show up each day and then the gifts that that brings. And one of my members wrote this message to us and left this review. Gabby is my lifeline. It is the first practice of my day and I go back to it all throughout the day.

The meditations are quick and easy and so relevant and I highly recommend getting this app. If you're feeling untethered and out of sorts, this is the app for you and it will give you a sense of belonging and peace and Gabby herself is so supportive and never fails to tell you that she loves you. And I do love you.

Oh, it's so beautiful. I love you. I love you. I love you. It's so beautiful. So, you know, if you're in the Gabby coaching membership, something that's going to be really relevant to today's practice is the happiness is a choice practice inside your app. And if you're not a member, you can go try seven days free.

You can go to deargabby.com/app and try out the membership. It's The absolute must have. I will be your spiritual coach in your [00:04:00] pocket, so you can go to dear gabby.com/app. Now it's time for you to meet Bob. This conversation is gonna change the way you think about happiness forever, and I'm so psyched for you to enjoy it.

I love you. I love you. I love you. Enjoy this episode.

All of us out in the world, you have a spiritual foundation, a spiritual practice. In many ways we're spiritual activists. Yes. And now we are in this year, as you just said, of the wildness and the combustibility, right? We're talking about this time that we can be in a great change.

And I think that I want to check in specifically about how you might recommend anyone listening, whether they have a specific spiritual practice, Buddhist practice, whatever it might be, might be considering bringing that practice and integrating that practice more into their day to day life so that they can I think so be part of the solution and the change that we're coming up against.

I think [00:05:00] so. So what I've loved about your work is the simplicity and the ability to demystify big principles and give them to people to practice in their own life. And so, For someone who's new to Buddhism, right? Everybody calls you Bob, Buddha Bob. So Buddha Bob, I follow. So Buddha Bob, let's think about this newcomer to Buddhism and I'd like to just give them and offer them a chance to sort of understand how the Buddhist principles can help us in these times.

Right. I think key thing is happiness and joy and even ecstasy and bliss. That's the key. That's the absolute key. That was Buddha's discovery. Buddha has been wrongly presented to people as, Oh, he's into suffering. Everybody's going to suffer. He only mentioned that if people are confused, and they're in the wrong bus [00:06:00] station, going in the wrong direction, then they're going to be frustrated.

You know, we mention that because we're all in the right position, and when we know that, we can be blissful, we can be happy, no matter what. But that doesn't mean we're insensitive to suffering, our own and others, and that we wouldn't want to do something about it. But you can't do anything about it if all you're doing is the suffering.

Right. You have to have the extra bliss. You have to have a bliss that overrides it. You know, like, have you ever been in such a good state? that you bumped your leg and didn't notice it. Oh, no, I have. I have had, I've had experiences where I've been in such a good state that I lose track of the Exactly, and then later, oh, what happened?

Why bump myself? That's the key, is to be like that. And one, one lady once, actually publisher of Simon Schuster at one time, said I had to write something about reasons for hope. And I wrote 10 points. But the last one, which I surprised myself, I suddenly wrote, [00:07:00] It is our duty to be so happy. But even if they kill us, we'll die happy.

Whoa. And, and, and yes, yes, yes to all of that. Now, the listener that is sitting here and is saying to themselves, well, how can I be happy? Exactly. How can I be happy? That's the thing. Well, you know what? There's a, another, another cute thing. Somebody gave me a painting by, I think someone quite famous, but I don't remember who, which was a painting with a bunch of cherries on the canvas.

Wasn't that big? You know, but I like that. Some cherries on it. It said, people think happiness is to be gotten. Actually, happiness is a choice. I said, and I like that. I really like that's a good start. I really agree with you because even in my darkest moments in my life, I have always remembered that I could exercise choice.

So in those moments of, I had postpartum [00:08:00] depression, which nearly took my life truly. And. It was the remembrance that I had a choice, even the simple choice. In those moments when you're dealing with a biochemical condition, you might think, well, I have no choice right now. But my choice was to seek support.

My choice in that moment would be to not feel that way. Even in those moments of saying, I'm recognizing the suffering. I don't know how to get out of it, but I choose to not have it. Actually, in many ways, it's a prayer. It's an opening. It's a redirect. Mm hmm. And I definitely believe that it's important to acknowledge, too, that when we say happiness is a choice that we make, we have to recognize that it's not that we're going to go from despair to happiness right away, but that that exercising of that choice is the step towards that.

Right. That connection. Now, if you have a practice, let's say you have a Buddhist practice, how would you exercise that choice? [00:09:00] Well, when you feel pain, you can go nuts because I feel pain, so you can feel it twice we normally do. It's like I have a pain and it's a little awful, I have a pain and I don't tense up and I resist it and so on.

When I feel pain. And remember, oh, that's pain. On the other side of that, I wasn't feeling it. So I'm not, it could be worse. I think that, you know, Lake Wobegon, that's what they used to say when they were in a good mood on Thanksgiving. At Lake Wobegon, you know, the American, whatever it was, that funny guy.

And he would say when they were in the best situation, they just had a little port wine after a great Thanksgiving dinner. And they'd sit and they'd look at each other and look at each other and they'd say, It could be worse. Right, right, right. So right away, when you have a pain, if you realize immediately it could be worse, then you already have the joy of it isn't worse.

It's just where it is. So the [00:10:00] key, I think, Buddha's key discovery is that the reality of every situation is freedom from being forced to only be stuck in it a certain way. And that with that freedom, then you can always choose to have full freedom. Or the half empty. You know, you can see the potential for the full.

And we are indoctrinated by culture and also eastern cultures too. This isn't an east west thing. It's not, yeah. We're indoctrinated to be afraid of reality. You know, that's why my book, my latest one, is called Wisdom is the Bliss. Not ignorance, in other words. Ignorance is when you don't know what it is.

When you misunderstand where you are, then you will be miserable. You will be frustrated. You won't be good enough. You won't be satisfied. But when you know where you are, you will be blissful. And so, wisdom is bliss. It means knowing what the reality of the situation is. [00:11:00] So that's the key. The key is we can always get more happier once we know that.

But the key thing is in no matter what the situation in whatever adversity, that's an opportunity to feel better and even when we have a bit of a pain, you know, and then eventually when we learn to sort of constantly flip over that way and not go into feeling the pain twice and lamenting that we have the pain, angry that we have the pain.

Instead of that, We're delighted we don't have more pain. And then, you know, Dalai Lama likes to say that when he gets a little bit overwhelmed by some adversity, and he's a very sensitive person, like, well, of course, we all are. Every human being is a massively sensitive instrument. And it's not just the brain, it's the whole body.

Every, like, fingertip of every human being is very, very sensitive. And somehow, at least in our notion of Darwin. We chose that because we have a long history, all of us. [00:12:00] We didn't just pop out like suddenly and like there we are, you know. We have a long background and we chose the greater sensitivity because to whatever degree we knew that we're in a river that basically is good.

It's basically, you know, people who believe in God and they believe that God is good, they sort of get that. They, they, if they may personify that in a way where it comes only for them or they have all kind of extra ideas about it that any mystic will tell you, you know, nobody will know if you really want to face, touch God, you won't be knowing what it is.

You'll just be embraced by it. You'll be suffused with it, basically. So that part is the choice. That's a choice, too. But the point is, in the case of the Buddhists, it's nirvana. It's the clear light of emptiness. It's the clear light of freedom. Clear light meaning that Where it's like dark energy, dark matter.

It's invisible, but it's not dark. It's not dark. It's like crystal. It's like you were there. I'm here between us. [00:13:00] It seems to be invisible. It's all one stream of energy. That was Buddha's discovery. And you know, it's like dark matter, dark energy, but it's invisible, but it's not dark. It's neither light nor dark.

It has light and dark. It transmits whatever it is. So, so that's a key thing, I think, to be really working on undoing the conditioning that we have to be afraid of reality. Yep. I just think that something's wrong always and it's hiding around the corner. It's going to get it. And even then when we, when we do sort of feel good, we feel immediately like guilty, worried who's going to come and take it away from us.

We immediately went against bank because we had fun. Right, right, right. Celebrating the goodness, but also an unlearning of the belief that it has to be so hard. Yes.

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Select podcast and the survey and be sure to select my show in the drop down menu that follows.[00:16:00]

So what I'm hearing is, is this witnessing and accepting of the suffering. Yes. And in a way that I don't have to feel this twice. It's here. Yeah. I'm with it. Right. And unlearning the belief that it has to be hard to survive to be here. That's right. And then the next step of that is embracing. the grace of the feeling good.

Yes. Because I agree with you. So many people have these fleeting moments of good, this fleeting moments of joy. Yeah. And the second they have that, it's what shoe's going to drop and, and that inability to be in the presence of that. That's right. I think it was Peter Levine, the somatic experiencing therapist said trauma is the inability to be present.

Yes. And so, so much of the path, whether it's the Buddhist path or any kind of spiritual path, I believe is the unlearning of that fear and that story and remembering that love and that light and that joy of who we truly are. Yes. I know from my own [00:17:00] personal experience that having been on this journey for my life, I have come to knowing the, the joy of presence and the joy, and the joy, and I even found myself yesterday just walking around and just being like, I just feel so good and I didn't have any reason.

It wasn't because like everything was working out. It's just like, I just feel happy and joyful. And there was no voice saying, you know, stop that. It's going to get away. It was just more like, let's get more of that. Fantastic. And listen, this is, it's important for me to say, you know, it's like, I'm a trauma survivor, I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict.

I've had so much experience in my life that would otherwise tell me that isn't possible, but the undoing is possible. That's right. It's living the miracle, actually. It's living that miracle. The other great thing about wood dragon year, or this wood dragon year, and we're still close to the full moon of the first lunar month, And the full moon of the first lunar month in Tibetan culture is called the miracle full moon because it celebrates a time in Buddha's [00:18:00] lifetime when he showed miracles.

Usually he would avoid that, so, because it was so spectacular that then people would, you know, like showing some marvelous thing like a Christmas tree out of a toothpick or something. Right, right, right. But he, but he did that not one day. Yes, he showed that. And actually we have like a miracle. You know, then I was going to say about his holiness, I didn't really, I got distracted.

It's my age, you know, wait, can I ask you a quick question though about the Buddha? And so if he had this one day where he would show the miracles, yes. And would he not show the miracles because he didn't want to sensationalize or, or it's, it's like the miracles are natural and he's probably just like, yeah, this is just the miracles, but I'm going to show them on one day.

Yes. Yes. And the one day was just the end of his life. He did as he was leaving late in life and people had assembled and he did it because people were challenging whether he understood reality. He wanted to show because he was making this radical claim about reality that it's just totally good. Yes.

That it's beautiful. It's beautifully designed. There's loving beings all around us. They want us to [00:19:00] be happy. We chose this place because when we were in other animal forms, which are more, you know, guarded, you know, like a being that has scales or horns or thick skin, you know, but then we couldn't feel pleasure and we couldn't feel happiness because we were like living inside of like, sandpaper.

So we chose the body. Yeah, we chose the more sensitive being because we sort of got an inkling from our hearts that life is, fits together well. Molecules and atoms and energies and there's an overall thing which we could call love or we could call it abundance or we could call it sufficiency for every entity that's enfolded within it.

You know, like Gaia, you know, the idea of Gaia, Mother Earth. It's a miracle. We live in a miracle on a rock filled with boiling rock, a little skin in a little thin atmosphere, and then like darkness with not much thing, but it isn't. It's still transparent. We can see the stars. And so there's a little [00:20:00] cut little sliver of space.

We crawl around on it. We can breathe in more kind of nice air. The plants love us. They produce the oxygen for us. They take our carbon and make a nice tree or a flower out of it. I mean, we live in a miracle. Well, here's a tough question though. So we live in a miracle. I could, I wholeheartedly believe 1000%.

I know this, know this, know this. But of course, a lot of the collective consciousness has Got chosen the miracle. Or maybe they've had so much of a barrier to that miracle that the belief is so ingrained that that joy is not possible, that that interconnectedness is not possible, that that happiness and that truth, the core truth, isn't possible, which is where we are now.

Right. Right. Right. So Buddha called this kind of, a certain kind of happiness, he called it the suffering of change. And that's because, like, the other day you were feeling [00:21:00] like that. I feel like that right now. I feel like that right now. But the first way of what stops that when we're feeling that is we tend to have this other narrative inside that will say, Oh, but this isn't going to last.

Or it could be better if some other thing was happening. So we'll compare it. Or what's next. We'll come up with a concept. And that comes from our conditioning. The time when we're really feeling it, we're not thinking whether it's now or later or in the moment or isn't in the moment because we're just.

Surrender to it. We just let go of it. It's like I was lost and I'm found, you know, like that's it And then but then we cut it off ourselves with craving for more whereas when we let it take us It's so totally, totally there. And then there's a second skill, which can intensify it even more. This is what I was trying to say about Dalai Lama.

He says when he's really feels like crushed by adversity, he gets reports that they just killed like a thousand people somewhere that he feels very closely [00:22:00] connected to his Tibetan people, for example, up in the mountains under the communists and the whole thing. So they just did something nasty to a whole bunch of them.

And he's feeling really crushed. So then he says compassion saves him. What that means is he finds in other people, A, that they're in a worse situation, and B, that even they can be improved in that situation. So it's not just empathy, it is a total empathy, but it's also finding that actually they're alright too, really underneath.

And then the key border for that is dealing with the issue of death. And death really liberates, if you really understand death, it liberates you from that biggest sort of complex knot, the knot of fear that, that the dominator cultures, the authoritarian cultures, the dictator cultures, enforce on us human beings by making us say, no, you, this is a terrible world and you need [00:23:00] me to protect you so you should be scared, even be scared of me, and then, and then you just obey me, you know, and then you're there like that.

And, and that, that we have to learn to realize that we're conditioned by that. And then when we feel good, we learn to ignore. The narrative that this isn't going to work out or this is going to lead to something bad or all that guilt that will come up from feeling good. Yep. You know what I mean? I do know what you mean.

And then spread that to others. And then we're really more insulated because we have their joy. And that's why you have such a wonderful profession. The best thing. Where you're reaching out to people and you're, You're helping them turn inward to their heart and find half full, the half fullness of their life.

And I think that even in the darker journeys I've lived in my life, there are times where I was still teaching and writing spiritual books, but still really suffering. The mentality always was. I choose to heal. I choose to heal and being in that choice to [00:24:00] heal is let me be on this journey of unlearning that fear and staying consistent.

And now as a result of just being in that choice, I choose to heal, right? So, yes, I choose happiness and my sense of saying I choose healing. I have come to here where I am today and I'm so pleased that I can live to tell because even in those dark moments, that choice to heal was enough to keep me, to keep me moving and to keep me connected.

And, and that optimism and that hopefulness. And it is a mentality. It is a mentality of this is possible. This is possible. It's just unbelievable. I love that you're going there. I just, so we have to go. That's the only place I want to go, man. So I think that there's this thing I'm trained in internal family systems therapy with Richard Schwartz and so much of, you know, Dick talks about.

self energy, which would be like your Buddha nature, which is compassion and curiosity and creativity and connectedness. And so, so much [00:25:00] of what we lose sight of is that connection to that source of that energy within us. But as we start to slowly titrate back into it and into it, into it, we develop more and more and more of it becomes all that we rely on.

And that's actually what I've wanted to be for others is to say that. The here's the truth about my suffering and here is still my choice that I can make as someone who has lived the teachings of the Buddha and taught the teachings of the Buddha and practice them in your own life. When for you was, well, there's two questions.

One was what led you to fall in love with the Buddha? And I know there's a love affair with the Buddha. And then when was that moment in your life? When you felt, I really, really can feel this now. Well, I think it was when I understood not really what Buddha, because that took me a long time. But when I first encountered Buddha.

What I understood was that he [00:26:00] said that not only could I understand myself and the world, but I had to if I wanted to be happy. Daga. And I had always been told, first by religion people, Sunday schoolish sort of thing, you have to believe something that doesn't make sense to you, but that's tough luck, because you can't know anything anyway.

God knows, but you can't. Because we don't, so we just have to believe it, whether it makes sense to you or not, and I said, well, why do you say that? And then I said, you don't, you say now, right now, that you don't know. Somebody told you you had to believe, but you still don't know, so you don't know if you're telling me the right thing or not, do you?

Ha! So I said, listen to that. So then when I ran over to the science side, right, the scientists, you know, great scientists, and they said, in school, I'm talking like fifth grade, fourth grade, in school, they said, They said, oh yeah, you can study a lot. You can know about this little molecule, this being, looking at a microscope, telescope.

You can always, of course, when the more you know, the [00:27:00] more you'll know you don't know. So you can't understand. So they will scream with that, that you can't understand. And then, and I almost felt trapped by that, and I didn't like it. And I just determined and I didn't go, I didn't study for my classes. I was a little bit IQ ish, so I got good grades anyway, but I didn't study and I wasted my time actually.

And then suddenly I realized, oh, you can understand reality. Your human mind, human is an instrument that can understand, that fits into their world and they can understand how to connect to it. Oh, wow. Okay, that I want to, I want to follow that. I didn't, it wasn't like I want to be a member of a different religion or culture.

Yeah. Nothing to do with that. Somebody philosophically, it's which to me is scientifically saying, You can and you must understand, and it's your responsibility to try to understand. That flipped me right around. It's your responsibility. I left Harvard where they're all into their authority thing, you know.

And those [00:28:00] psychologists, you know, they tell you how you have no freedom. You know, you think you want to, you want a chocolate instead of vanilla, and your unconscious chose the chocolate five minutes ago. And you're going up in your brain, ding, ding, ding, and then you're just a little robot and you just grab that chocolate.

Well, that's ridiculous. I mean, who's authority they're enforcing by saying that? And therefore some media tells us something just because they got elected to something and they're telling us to do something stupid and we have to follow that? No. Everything is choice and therefore everyone has responsibility.

That's really, that took me much longer to understand that. But it inspired you. That was the big turn for me. That was the turn. I didn't know. That I have choice and it's my responsibility to exercise that choice. I think I have had a similar experience of, I think so, yes. Because we wouldn't be sitting here now.

No, I would like to continue. I love you. If we didn't think that way, I completely agree because that recognizing it's my [00:29:00] responsibility to exercise this choice. So first I have the choice, right? So that's my choice. I'm going to choose a life of joy. I'm going to make that choice. And then. Those of us who have that spark of hope and faith and choose, it is our responsibility to share that.

It's our responsibility to be it. And first in the expression of being it, we share it. Because somebody listening right now may not even be following what they're saying, but they're feeling the energy of what's happening. And they're feeling also, not just words, but the integration of that feeling.

Because I think that that's the gift of being in that small choice daily. Yes, it adds up. Those small choices are miracle moments. They are miracle. Each moment that we shift, we shift our thinking and we go into that more hopeful, that more faithful, choosing that fear moment and turning it into that love moment.

You know, what you said about hope really got me, you can find on YouTube, but like one of those five minute thing with Dalai Lama is being interviewed by Piers Morgan. [00:30:00] I almost fainted when I saw it. I wasn't there. But except then I got there by YouTube, isn't it a miracle? We're all getting there now. He was probably in London.

And then the guy says, Oh, you're the Dalai Lama. I always wanted to ask you, what's the meaning of life? Yeah. With a British accent, you know. So Dalai Lama goes, Why? It's just happiness. It's just joy. And then the guy's looking very skeptical. He's a Brit, right? Totally. Brits. So then Dalai Lama says, Reason?

You know, just one word, reason. The future is a mystery. So, in present We hope it will be a little better. And in the present, that hope makes us happy. I couldn't believe it. In that, in the present, that hope makes us happy. Let's say that again. So, the future is, is a mystery. We don't know how it will be.

And we don't know how it will be. So we hope it will be a little [00:31:00] better. And in the present, that hope is And the present. That hope is the joy. The joy. And if we give that up and go despair, then it's all, everything gets ruined. So the future, that's why we don't know. So why it's the meaning, but we can choose.

It's the purpose. You know? The purpose is stick with joy. Yes. The purpose is the joy. And the hope is the joy and the, again, choice. So short. The choice.

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You know, death can scare everything, but do you know what everybody does? Listening to this, you, me, every day, we reach a point, hopefully we're on our nice, soft pillow, quiet, dark room with temperature, nice sheets, luckily, hopefully, hopefully, and then we completely let go. In a way, we die out of our five senses.

You know, we just go blank. And we, anything could happen to us after that. Of course, we lock the door, we do this, that, you know, and take precautions, but we still let go. And who couldn't, who knows what could happen, you know. And then maybe we might have, and we have a dream, dreams will happen. But the point is, we go through a surrender every night, every single day.

That's right. We do it with pleasure, with faith, with confidence. We feel even [00:36:00] annoyed that we're going to have to wake up the next day, maybe if we're busy or we're too tired or something, you know. But we, we faithfully just become, we surrender. Yes. So people like to surrender. They don't mind because they have a deepest, that means that the deepest cellular level kind of, that we're, we're, we know that it'll be good and we'll be refreshed and renewed.

And a key thing for, to get out of, escape from the dogma of materialism, that we don't have spirit, that we don't have soul, that we don't have mind, which people, by the way, misunderstand Buddhism as saying, which there's no purpose. Right. But they just say our soul doesn't have a rigid identity. Yep. Our soul is very transformable, you know, it can, it can go bad, it can, but mainly it's a lot of things encouraging it to expand into beauty.

That's what our soul is about. So we do have one actually, and Buddha never said we didn't. And he just said we didn't have [00:37:00] a rigid identity that never can change. It's very big on that one. So this to me is a big insight now because death otherwise seems too scary to people. But that's all it is. Death is just another kind of a sleep.

And the soul goes on. Yes. And spirit and actually a lot of the regular mind goes on, just like our mind, our subtler level of mind produces a whole set of senses and an environment in our dream. Yep. So it's amazingly creative. You and I could, I could have dreamed we would be here like a week ago.

Absolutely. You know, I might be dreaming this now. Yeah, this, well, it is, it sort of is a dream. You know, there's a metaphysical text called A Course in Miracles, and there's a whole passage in the text about the happy dream. Yes. And living in the happy dream. Yes. Which is really unlearning the fear of the world and remembering the truth of the love of who we are.

And then when we get that, I think you and I, Speaking for myself, I'm like itching into the happy dream. I think you're living in the happy dream, my friend. But [00:38:00] that's the result of that commitment and that consistency. And so if someone today were to pick up this new book, what would be your hope for them in your new book?

What would your hope for them be that they could take away and start to implement in their life? Yes. to start to be living in the happy dream. You know, nowadays, you know, so when someone, when they actually give me a lecture somewhere, one of my favorite lectures is Buddhist ethics and the world crisis or something.

I'll give a lecture like that. And in a way, I will just try to represent my dear friend and teacher of 60 years now, His Holiness, Dalai Lama, who is such a sweet, person, really. He really is. And I says, he's a great, great grandpa. Very nice. But I end up, the main thing I would like people to take away is to try to recultivate and reinforce in them and find in their actual experience that they have by examining it, that life is good, that the world is good, [00:39:00] even in the mid of horrible things, like certain horrible things are going on right now, some crazy people who feel very alienated from other people and very scared even of their, usually, you know, dictators, you know who they're most scared of themselves, their own bodyguards.

Oh, yes. Of course. That's what they're most scared of. Absolutely. They're, they're, they're so scared. And then their own people. Yes, exactly. So in the country, when they rule a country, it's their own people they're scared of. So therefore they want to, they want to make their people think there's a big enemy over there.

Even if it gets killed fighting with that enemy, they don't care because they're so scared of everybody. So. That's the sad thing is the people who seem to be powerful are the most scared. That's why some of the billionaires would just want to go to Mars. They want to go and be in a bunker in New Zealand.

They just want to get away because they think everybody's after them. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Because they've gotten out of balance, you know? So what I want everybody to take away is cultivating the choice to see the good everywhere and to feel the [00:40:00] good and was a hand and they do every night or they would, if you don't sleep for 17 days or something, you die.

So you have to sleep, you have to surrender to being in the flow, you know? And if you don't, then you actually harm yourself. Yeah. So that I think is really critical. There was a big takeaway. The other thing is, Since people think Buddhism is all about meditating, I like to change that. Of course, meditating is important, and we all meditate all day long.

And actually, one of the main things that we do in modern society is we meditate on television. We do. We do. And when we see news, it intensifies our fear. Yep. And when we see commercials, it intensifies our dissatisfaction and greed. Okay. So then we are cultivating negative things that prevent us from finding the goodness in our own hearts.

That's exactly right. So we have to temper that and make better choices. I always tell [00:41:00] people. Meditate on the Zoloft commercial. That's my favorite line to them. You know, you remember that commercial? I don't know. If you've never seen it. Oh, it's a lady in the kitchen. And she's having break, doing breakfast.

And then the kid is throwing the porridge on the floor. The dog is doing something. Husband is being a pain. Waffle is smoking in the taster because she got distracted. It's just terrible. Camera pans out in the window. There's a field with some yellow blossoms in it, you know, like weeds, the blossoms pop off and they spell Zola.

So that gives you the idea. She took one and then suddenly, boom, boom, boom. Everything is clicking together, meaning. She feels a little joy. Her mood was altered. Of course, she was made, the choice was made for her involuntarily by a chemical. That's, that's our material culture. Or, or you could even say that the, that she chose.

Exactly. Because even if that's the vehicle through which she's getting there, the good side of it, right, that there might be God in that [00:42:00] medication for her that day. Yes. Okay. Beautiful. Absolutely. Right. But the point is it proves that we all know that we do everything better when we feel a bit better.

That's right. So then the first step is to feel better. That's right. And that's a choice we can make by seeing the half full. And this relates to, you know, Dalai Lama's translator, Tenzin Jimba, I mean, Tupten Jimba, his name is, and he's a dear friend of mine. And he was doing, I was doing an interview with him, and he was talking about meditating.

Because, you know, everybody asks him, Dalai Lama's translator, what do I meditate, what do I meditate? And he would say, well, meditating is important and very good. But you know, there's another, the most important one, Is what you're doing all day. That's right. You sort of, you're meditating out in public.

You're meditating in the middle of your life by, in a way, working on the narrative. That you're, you know, the monologue, the narrative that guides you through your life and you're looking a little critical at that and you're being analytic about it. And the negative narrative you maybe [00:43:00] would, would make you project negativity into a scene.

You're being maybe a little restraining on that, and the positive narrative, you're pushing that one, and so you're making choice meditations all the time. That's love that you're out there and it's not like, Oh, just when I'm sitting on my pillow, you're making choice. That's good. When you're sitting on the pillow is good because then you observe yourself mindfully and you learn that there is all these inner narratives going on and that there's freedom to choose among them.

You don't just have to follow the loudest one, if you've been traumatized by a custodian of some kind or, you know, somebody telling you all negative things, you know, who's traumatizing you, then you're repeating that to yourself. And so then when you meditate, you can take a look at this like a self analysis.

Yeah. And quieting yourself down. That is very important. But he says, then the one is the old 24 seven. Yeah. And you know, then the second big in love that I did, well, actually maybe third, my second wife, after having been a monk, I fell [00:44:00] in love with her. And Even though she was not exactly like, Oh, you're so great.

You were a monk. It was like, Oh, are you trying to get enlightened? Well, was that enlightened when you got mad today about that? Like the 24 seven yoga. She was always the one who is. You know what, though? The enlightenment was when you redirected after you got mad enough. Yeah, right. That that that thesis that.

We, so we have our meditation practices where we're reflecting and it also creates, creates more of that muscle memory to be in those meditative moments. But I love this idea that we are having meditative choices all throughout the day and that, Each time we say, you know, I'm not going to watch CNN, but I'm going to watch a Bob Thurman video on my YouTube and start rechange all the algorithm on my YouTube, then that's, no, you are far from boring, my friend, that, that is those subtle [00:45:00] little moments of choice are meditative moments.

Yes. And just today when I was saying something about like somebody that pissed me off seven years ago and I was joking about it with my makeup artist. And then I immediately said, you know what, let me just send her some compassion. I don't need to be doing this. Meditative moments, these little redirects and moments of grace for ourselves and self forgiveness and just, just adjustments.

And so I think that that's such a nice place. First of all, this conversation can't ever really end because I would like to stay your friend and hang out with you more because this is so fun for me. But for today's conversation, this is a nice place to sort of wrap this up is that we can take those meditative moments and add them up.

And those meditative moments are the miracle moments. The way that we live a miraculous life is by adding up those little meditative moments because each meditative moment is a miracle. It's that shift in our thinking, and the more we add up those miracles, the more we live a miraculous life. And so, oh, my [00:46:00] friend, I could go on with you forever.

This is just joyful. It really is. Any last thing you want to share? Well, I just want to thank you for being there. You know, I don't pretend to have been totally un male chauvinized. But I'm still trying. 56 years, 57 years of marriage has helped me learn a lot, and five children instructing me, letting me see my flaws and my good side, luckily for me.

But the voice of the female is key, I think. The Dalai Lama got himself in trouble because people misunderstood him when he did say that we need more women in leadership positions. Marianne Williamson rightly said recently, I heard her say, I hadn't counted them up. She said, there's 72 wars right now on this planet with many people being killed, their homes being destroyed, their children being killed, their grandparents being killed by, [00:47:00] and, but, and of those 72 wars, not a single one was started by a woman.

That's right. And we just can't afford those wars anymore. They're just a distraction. And then also the race to arm on all sides is a misallocation of resources, which need to be put to repairing Mother Earth and, you know, planting trillion trees and cleaning the plastics out of the ocean and et cetera, et cetera, you know, and that's, you know, The combined military budgets of everybody, if one fifth of them were spent every year on climate remediation, we'd be there by 2030 for sure.

And we should be there, we must be there by 2030. And this is the big turnaround year. So what I would like to share, leave everybody with, among their choices, we do have freedom in our country to choose. And we should only choose people who are positive, people who say we should choose them because everything is horrible.[00:48:00]

If they think everything is horrible, then we can guarantee, be guaranteed they will make it more horrible. Only someone who can see through the horrible without ignoring it and see if it's possible to fix it. Only choose those people and, and more women too. I am with you. And oxytocin, not cortisol. Yes.

Right. That's what we need. We need a lot. That's what I would like to share. Yeah. You know, and we need hope. Yes. Of course. I am hopeful that this is the year where there is going to be changed. You said it here. Yes. It has to be. And it has to be going to be. And the miracle of the 14th amendment section three.

Yes. We should be gripped by the amazing grace of 14th amendment section three. That's right. And you know, I ask people, have they read it? Nobody's read it, it's online, just click, you know, U. S. Constitution 14th section 3, click, it's only like one paragraph, and it's really clear, and by the way, the courts have [00:49:00] nothing to say about it, it's a matter for the Congress to give someone an exception, and if someone is banned, They just have to stay home.

That's right. It's not a crime to be banned. It's just you can't hold office again. Just stay home. Just go home. It was made for the Civil War people who had already been insurrecting. And when anybody is publicly insurrecting every day, you don't need a court case to prove that that's what they're doing.

And so I'm with you from a political perspective that we podcast on this, but it's very easy to get hooked into the dramas, the problems, the chaos, because it's so insane. Yes. But I like that you're just hooking into the hope of the 14th amendment, right? So I'm going to go, I'm choosing, I'm choosing that.

Also the syllogism that certain people don't get, not like 24 years ago, somebody didn't get this syllogism, which is lesser of evils equals less evil. That's right. That's right. Let's remember that. That's right. You know, [00:50:00] let more evil and a little less evil. are not both equal. Yep. One is less. So go for the less.

Go for the less everybody. I think that's a nice way to end this conversation. I adore you. so much. Thank you for being my new friend. so much. Yes. I really appreciate it. If you made it to the end of this episode, that means you're truly committed to miracles. I'm really proud of you. If you want to get more Gabby, tune in every Monday for a new episode. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any of the guidance or special bonus episodes. Your experience at this show means a lot to me, so I really want to welcome you to leave an honest review.

And you can follow me on social media at Gabby Bernstein. And if you want to get in on the action, sign up for a chance to be Dear Gabby'd live at deargabby.com. See you next week. Gabby. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and [00:51:00] advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.

Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.