Tami Simon: Hello friends. My name is Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I want to welcome you to the Sounds True Podcast: Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original, premium transformational docu-series, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows, including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question and answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us. Explore, come have fun with us, and connect with others. You can learn more at Join.SoundsTrue.com. I also want to take a moment and introduce you to the Sounds True Foundation. Our nonprofit that creates equitable access to transformational tools and teachings. You can learn more at SoundsTrueFoundation.org. And in advance, thank you for your support.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Danielle LaPorte. Danielle is a former think tank director who now is speaking and teaching about the intelligence of love. Her heart-centered facilitators program has facilitators in 32 countries. She’s the host of a popular podcast, With Love, Danielle. And with Sounds True, she has released a new book. It’s called How to Be Loving as Your Heart Is Breaking Open and Our World Is Waking Up. Her new book, How to Be Loving, Danielle describes as, “an urgent love letter to the light in every one of us.”
In this conversation, Danielle shares many of the perspectives, practices, and we even enter a heart-centered practice together where we identify with the limitless, boundless light love of our heart center and begin to use that as our guide in our life. Here’s a beautiful conversation with Danielle LaPorte.
Danielle, welcome. Welcome.
Danielle LaPorte: Hello. Hello. This is such a big day. It’s like inaugural, inaugural, launching, love. It’s so good. Yes.
TS: I know. I feel a lot of happiness arising in me, which doesn’t happen all the time, so I take note of it when it does. This is a moment.
DL: Tami’s happy.
TS: It’s good to be with you. Exactly. Exactly. Mark it down. Here at the very beginning we’re going to talk about many of the teachings in How to Be Loving that really struck me personally and I think will really benefit our listeners. Here at the beginning, this notion of living a heart-centered life. How could someone attune right now, listen right now, participate in this conversation in a heart-centered way? What does that mean?
DL: Well, you could ask yourself why you’re here and what brought you here. My definition of a heart-centered life is a life that’s reflective. It’s just like, we’re awake. We want to know why we’re here. We probably have some intentions of goodwill. And my experience, the switch to get present to that is really in the heart center, and the key to open that is breath. So you’d all just take a few deep breaths. Think about a virtue, like a higher quality energy that you want to relate to, align with, vibe with. I would suggest some things like divine love or compassion, radiance. We can talk about radiance. And we’re here.
And I would put in the space… I mean, now this is already getting into philosophy. But just to consider that your heart is always open. It never closes. It’s really this vast space. It’s the mind that’s more like an aperture that opens and closes and tells you what’s right and what’s wrong. Creates all the division. So just want to let your mind relax by focusing on your heart. That’s it. Let your mind relax. Focus on your heart. The heart has got it. Heart has got everything.
TS: Now, it’s interesting to me, Danielle, that you brought up the term radiance because I actually wanted to begin our conversation talking about radiance. That was one of the chapters in How to Be Loving that really struck me in that you describe how radiance can be the outgrowth of dark night passages. And believe it or not, I wanted to start there to understand some of your own journey that went into this heart centered living teaching. If you can share some about that.
DL: My definition, my breakdown of radiance, it’s a bit counter to self-help. So I think in this space we tend to think of radiance as like, “This is my shine and my glow and I’m going to bring it.” And that’s beautiful. Walk into any situation, want to be the love in the room, lean towards the positive instead of the density. Yes.
However, I think the real light, the stuff of love, is something that gets revealed. It’s in us. We hear this so many times. The answer is within, the light is within. And if that’s a universal truth, which I’m signing up for, then radiance is really about the ego mask getting burned. It’s all those layers that come off.
And how things work for most of us is those layers get toasted and peeled back through suffering and through hardship. It’s the breakup, it’s the divorce, it’s the bankruptcy, it’s the diagnosis. When we get to the other side, we go through those dark nights. We see, “Wow, I’m more connected than I thought I was. I’m way more resilient than I thought I was. I’m more loved than I thought I was.” And for me, my passage was no different.
I used to think in my 30s and my 20s, oh, divorce was a dark night or that business rumble, that was really a dark night of my soul. And I think I was misunderstanding what ego obliteration really is. When I went through my dark passages, one in particular a few years ago, and I did a falling apart, not able to work, anxiety out of nowhere. I’d never even identified as an anxious person. Called my shrink and said, “What’s going on?” She said, “You’re having panic attacks.” I went into the mode that I usually go into, which is research and connect. And what I found was the hallmark of a dark night of the soul is really that ego being burned. You don’t know if you’re going to come out the same person on the other side. I don’t know if I’m going to have the same orientation, if I’m going to be able to work, if I’m going to want the same things. And I don’t know when this is going to end. It really is that soupy chrysalis place. And from that you peel back, you’re in the fire and you become one with that fire and there’s that light.
TS: In talking about that soupy place, you call it “soul soup,” which I really appreciated, and this sense of liquification. I think a lot of times people can think, “Something is really going wrong right now.” And I wonder how we can take an attitude that it might be a transformation that’s happening, not that something’s going wrong.
DL: Well, I think we learn and we can invest and we can believe in other people’s stories. There are other people who have gone before who appear to be broken and they rise. They get it together, they become more of themselves. What I’m interested in is why some people go through a dark passage, they get to the other side and they keep expanding. And then some of us conflate and contract again. I’ve had people in my life, they get a diagnosis and they have healing circles and they have really intimate conversations and they’re doing all the things. They are vibing higher. There’s just more intimacy that happens in their life. And then a few years pass and they’re back to their habits of overworking and not having a contemplation practice and busy, busy, busy. And then they get another reminder. There’s a fender bender or the illness comes back.
And then there’s other people who—what I observe, and I’ll count myself amongst this—is you will do anything you can to not go back to the agony. And you commit to, in this context, a heart-centered life. You commit to using the tools that have always been with you. And I also see when people have been through that fire… So you decide you’re never going back, but you also have sometimes this unspoken commitment that you’ll do whatever it takes to help people not go through that. If you can help flatten the learning curve of your brethren, you will do that. And I think that’s what helps the expansion stick. Not that expansion is about, “I’m here now.” But I think that the dedication to expansion, it gets rooted when you commit to help other people heal on their path.
TS: You write, Danielle, about actually, the power of taking a vow. And I thought, “It’s interesting. Danielle’s using a very traditional, spiritual term here. A vow.” And I’m curious to know, as you emerged from this dark night passage, what vows you’ve taken?
DL: I used to question staying here. I wasn’t suicidal, but I always had this kind of… “This is totally going to be my last lifetime.” And then it got a little more morose in that I think we are living in this Babylon that’s falling apart. I’ve questioned, “Why incarnate now? This is not the best show. This cannot be the best situation in the solar system. There’s a lot of agony down here.” And that shifted for me and I got to, “Hey, if I really believe that there’s purpose and meaning to everything, then my personal timing has got to be divine.” And my vow was to be the antidote. And I think that’s where for me, and maybe for more of us, that’s where the warriorship is. Is that really, this is the prayer of St. Francis, which I write about in How to Be Loving. It’s like, “Where there is hatred, let me so love. Where there is darkness, let me be the light.” And on and on.
And it’s like, the warriorship is to be calm in chaos, to find your joy when there’s so much suffering. But my experience is that’s where my fulfillment is. And it seems to be that’s where my most effective service is. And that is what requires the most courage. And that only comes from a vow to love. And I also started to include myself in my vow. In How to Be Loving and in the whole heart-centered community, we really focus on the metta bhavana prayer. “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be free of suffering. Free of mental anxiety. May I live in peace. May my life be blessed with ease. I pray it for me. I pray it for you. I pray it for all sentiency.”
And it helped me. What dawned on me with that practice was that I was always doing my seva and trying to burn my karma and praying for everybody else. I was on the outside of those prayers and I’m included in sentiency. As I work for you, I get to heal myself. There’s been a real softening.
TS: This notion of in any situation being the antidote, that’s extremely powerful, Danielle. What I flash on is situations in which in my own life, I end up contributing to the problem in one way or another by being critical or thinking. But actually that’s very powerful to commit, “I’m going to be the antidote in this situation.”
DL: Yes.
TS: I’m moved by that.
DL: What it’s done for me is… If you avow to be the antidote, you will do your practices and you have to… A story that was really healing for me in my own flurry, because in that flurry I really saw my own neurosis of hyper-criticism, hyper-judgment to myself and others. But I would always see how it was projected outwards. But then I got into, “Wow, this is really some kind of self-loathing that’s happening.” And I came across just this dynamic of actually, the more regulated my nervous system got, the more chill I got, the more loving I was, the more darkness I found.
And what helped me was actually some teachings of Pema Chödrön. Of her story when she took her vows and was saying to her teacher, “I’m doing these practices and I’m really committed, but all that’s coming up is fear.” And he said, “Oh, then you’re doing it right.” It’s like, “OK.” I think we have this new age theory that when we really commit to love and to bring harmony to the situation, being the antidote, that we’re going to be fully resourced and it’s going to be easy. It isn’t.
This is why the term warriorship is used so often with respect to spiritual growth and the path. And my experience was the darkness starts to calm down. It’s like all that stuff I found in the basement of my psyche—my arrogance, my manipulation, my fear, my loathing—it’s less chatty. I talk to it, I engage with it, but it’s not pounding on the ceiling anymore or as much. I’m way more friendly to it and therefore it… Not that it’s all about control, but consciousness is in a way about control. I’m awake. I can see all the dials. Not that I’m an awakened being, but I get more awake and less reactive.
TS: Now, there was a moment in How to Be Loving where I sat up super-straight reading the book for a moment and it’s when you quoted Carl Jung. “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” The most terrifying thing. And I thought to myself, “OK, wait a second. Is that the most terrifying thing? What is that terror?” And I had my own unpacking of that, but I’m curious how you work with that statement.
DL: I think there’s a self-help filter that my reaction to that teaching was like, “Oh, well if I accept myself, I’m going to become whole and perfect.” That’s not what’s happening. I’m accepting that I am broken, that I’m fragmented, I’m imperfect and I’ll highly likely be that tomorrow. And that something else is going to trigger me and I’m going to have some surprise, authority issue, crap response. I’m going to be ashamed. It’s highly likely I’m going to do something in the future that I’m not proud of. And I have to keep accepting that. It’s endless. I think the heart of How to Be Loving is about reverence. Reverence has become… Well, it’s my favorite word. The definition of reverence is wonder and respect tinged with awe.
And it’s very antidotal. It’s worked for me in two ways. When I see something emotional come up that I’m ashamed of. For me it’s arrogance with authority figures. I’m all love and light until I go through airport security and you touch my essential oils and I act like a… I just become totally petulant and awful. I can tolerate that. I think there’s these levels.
So level one is there’s tolerance. It’s better than intolerance for sure. So I tolerate that I can have these outbursts at the airport once in a while. The next level is I could actually accept that I have this authority issue that’s really unattractive and creates a lot of conflict. So I’m not pushing it away. To accept is to embrace what you’ve been pushing it away. This part of me might come up again. I’m going to walk with it.
But I would love to go even further to reverence, which is I want to love everything like I love my child or the way I imagine that a god figure loves me. So how can I actually have a conversation with my arrogant authority issues that cause me and others pain that has actually got some wonder and some respect to it? That for me is a game changer. And to have that conversation with my emotional stuff, but also, I’ve learned a lot about reverence through my body.
I had a chronic painful situation for a while. And I know that… I mean I get the concept. All emotional pain and physical pain is just saying, “Hi, there’s something here to pay attention to. I just want the light of your consciousness. I just want your love for a minute.” OK, I get that. But for me saying to my chronic pain… Engaging. “What do you have to show me? What do you want to tell me? I got it. I got some things about being more awake, being more compassionate.” But when I said, “If you come back tomorrow, I’ll still be friendly.” I thought, what’s the most reverent, unconditional message I could give to my pain? “If you come back tomorrow, I’ll still be here.”
TS: Now Danielle, when you said this sentence, to have the kind of reverence so that we love everyone in everything the way we would love our very own child and I thought to myself, “That sounds extremely aspirational to me.”
DL: It is.
TS: In terms of… It’s one thing you’re talking about pain, something in your own experience, emotional challenges, things that we’re experiencing. OK. Maybe I could love those as if I was loving my own child, with that kind of acceptance. But when it comes to other people, we go far out on the spectrum and there are all kinds of people that I’m going to find it very hard to love like I love my own child. How can you help me with that?
DL: You need to start with, just entertain the power of reflection. So big. Let me go meta first.
TS: Sure.
DL: Just consider that we all come from the same source. So you don’t even need to believe in a god, but some universal intelligence gets us all here. So that might help soften things a bit. Then consider, possibly, the universal truth that all people are your reflection. And so, step one for me is someone can be all these things that I judge. I don’t want it in my space. This is not how I want to live my life, et cetera. And if just for a minute I can be in reflection mode, I might say to myself … This is super deep, Tami. You ready?
TS: I’m ready.
DL: I might say, “Oh, I’ve done that before.” And that’s it. I’ve been needy. I’ve been close-minded. I rounded up the truth. I’ve told some lies. I’ve done that before. And maybe I did it a decade ago and I really have matured and evolved and become more loving. Maybe I just did it this morning. But it’s all about, just soften the mind. You just let your heart talk your mind into just relaxing just a little bit. These are micro-adjustments. And those micro-adjustments of like, “OK, wait, we all come from the same source. OK. I’ve done that before.”
Little softer. It will change your tone. You might say one less sentence that could cause harm. The hooks in what you’re about to say to them might just retract a bit. We just get micro-soft and then maybe we can have a more heart-intelligent conversation. There are people who are imbalanced and dark and ignorant and broken and unhealed and it doesn’t mean we let all of that potential harm and insanity run wild, but we can engage with it differently.
We could move into conversations and procedures that are around restoration and rehabilitation. We could open up to consider different opinions. I love that, at least in Canada, part of the indigenous culture, when someone in the community goes wrong, the community gets together and they bring forward the people who know that misbehaved person the best and they figure out what the best action is for that person and for the community. Maybe they need to be sent away. Maybe they need to be integrated in a different way, but it’s very specific and it’s very communal. You can only have that if you consider that you’re all in it together and you all come from the same source.
TS: “I’ve done that before”. That is a very, very powerful reflection, Danielle. As I was reading How to Be Loving, I was feeling critical of someone I work with who I feel is in a steamrolling posture right now, trying to get a bunch of stuff done. And all I had to do was say, “I’ve done that before,” in every other day or something. And I noticed that how I was criticizing this person… I like your word. It softened. It softened. I had a lot more compassion for the whole situation. I didn’t feel so oppositional.
DL: I was just going to say, and that helps us be mentors. I’ve experienced the same thing with someone on my team. I’m just like, “Oh, that approach is not working”. And I thought, “I’ve done that before. I was there. I get why she’s doing that.” Now I can go have a more loving conversation.
TS: Now, I want to circle back to “the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely” because this struck me so much. Because you continue and you write, “Self-acceptance is the gateway to life force. Self-acceptance is so counterculture that it upends patriarchy.” And I especially wanted to hear about that comment. How is self-acceptance so counterculture that it upends patriarchy?
DL: Well, I think that the patriarchal mindset, which is not gender specific, it’s always out to… It wants to gain. So it’s always power-over, dominance. So it’s always exploiting weaknesses. So it’s never going to let you arrive. It’s never going to let you be good enough. In fact, all it’s going to do is point out how you have to earn your keep, be more productive, where your failings are and how you need to rely on this big authority figure. That toxic mindset, it’s like the ego on steroids. It’s just separating, dividing, superior, inferior.
And self-acceptance says like, “Look, if I’m full of compassion for myself, if I’m revering even my foibles and my shadow side, if I’m loving the body I have today, if I’m not even asking whether I’m worthy or not, I’m beyond that ego question.” I’m just like, I’m love, I got this. I don’t need to buy the handbag to signal to somebody when I walk into a room that I’m worthy. I don’t need the fillers. I don’t need the job title. I don’t need the car. I desire less. I mean we all want to be with beautiful, amazing people in partnership. But I desire less to be with a special person who’s more of all these things that I’m not because I’m full.
And then advertising has got nothing to sell me. Organized religion has no guilt. The dogma no longer works on you. I think this all gets traced back to the intelligence of the heart to love. When you are full of compassion for yourself, when you are simply speaking with a friendly tone to the stuff you’ve been pushing away, when you’re going to do friendly things for yourself, get enough sleep, be hydrated, hang out with people who make you laugh, do some things in your community, then really does it matter what somebody else on social media has? Not so much. The algorithm doesn’t work when you wake up to love.
TS: Part of what I love about what you’re saying and self-acceptance is the gateway to the life force, is that I notice when I accept all my energy, all of its bigness, its radiance, all of it. Just all of it. All of its intensity, then no. No one’s going to put me into some status quo box. So powerful. It’s just to say all of this intensity is who we are.
DL: Yes. It’s the whole thing. I can be all these crap things ten times a day and I’m also all these beautiful… It’s all of it. It’s all of it. For me what it gets down to, the most succinct, simple definition of love is inclusiveness. I think this is Buddha nature. This is Christ consciousness. It’s all in. You love it all. You love all your children. You love everything about every child. You love all your thoughts. They have room. They have room. And then you relax. You think more clearly. You actually become more loving.
TS: One of the things that you go into quite some detail in in How to Be Loving is this shift of what you call “misidentification” to being this more open and compassionate space. Can you talk about that? How you see misidentification occurring in people and what this shift is?
DL: A parent says something to you when you’re 12 and you never forgot it. It’s stuck in your consciousness and you’ve been living your whole life to try and prove them right or wrong. Your religion says this is how women should be, men should be, this is what you should do to burn karma, earn divine favor. It’s just like these little checklists about how to be accepted, how to be better. And we identify as those rules. We identify as the dogma. And I think truthful identification… Originally, I called it “correct identification,” but the sensitivity writer said that wasn’t politically correct. I should call it “truthful identification.” So we went with truthful. Truthful identification is, just to quote Ram Dass, “You’re a spiritual being having a human experience.” Oh wait, if that occurs to me, then what’s the spiritual approach to this human conundrum? Are you identifying as love or as fear in the conversation?
I was in a painful passage. This energy healer I’ve been working with for many years said to me… It felt like this last-ditch effort. “You can try this meditation and we’ll do these oils and we’ll do this yoga posture.” And then finally she said, “Danielle, what are you identifying as right now?” And I was like, “My wound.” And I realized actually I’m the healer. If I just tell myself I’m the healer.
And I think the simplest, profound pop culture power word would be, “I’m love and I got this.” So what would love do when they’re letting somebody go? How would love approach getting into shape? How would love approach a book campaign or your quarterly objectives? How would love approach your row?
In How to Be Loving I use the metaphor, I string it throughout the book, of the sky. And this is a Buddhist reference. It’s such a powerful, poetic tool and I think it’s designed to blow our mind. So the reminder is you are the sky, you are that vast. OK. What does that mean I’m that vast? That means you have that much love. You have eons of experience. Your energy is unlimited. That’s very poetic. How does that work? How does that work when I’m in pain in my kitchen?
A couple weeks ago, my man and I were in a bit of… We had a row. And we’re just going to take a natural break. We had stuff to do. We’re going to meet later on for some sushi. And now being on the west coast, all sushi. Everybody, you just meet for sushi after you have an argument with your partner. Works every time.
And I’m walking on the sea wall and I’m going through my list. Because so much of self-help culture is about accountability, which I am so… I have a different perspective on accountability. I think there’s a lot of shadow stuff to this. If he did this and if I did this… And I’m going through the lesson. When we get back together for sushi, I’m going to go through all the ways that each of us could be more loving. And I could feel the constriction in that. I could feel that that list checking was… It wasn’t helping feel more regulated or loving. And it’s a beautiful day. I look at the sky and I think, “I am the sky. I’m the sky. My love is this vast.”
And the list just went away. The list didn’t matter anymore. The list really was the cloud going by in the sky. And I thought, “I’m big enough to handle what was said and what wasn’t said. I’m big enough to handle this discomfort and I’m big enough to just be super loving about this.” And we got together at 5:00 for sushi and I just showed up and said, “Hey babe.” And that is the difference for me in that moment of being loving or being afraid that I’m not right. That if we don’t correct this, we’re not going to get where we want to go. And it’s also the difference between hours of working something out, and just it got worked out.
TS: Now Danielle, tell me what you mean by you having a different perspective on accountability.
DL: I think accountability is tied up into boundary culture. I love boundaries. I think boundaries are essential to part of becoming spiritually mature. There’s a lot of great material out about boundaries. Terri Cole, Boundary Boss. Dear Friend. Figure out what it feels like to be respected. Design your life that way. Figure out what your conditions of healing are. For how many hours you’re going to work a week and how you like people to talk to you. All that. It’s great. You don’t stop there. You can’t stop there. Because what I’m seeing with the boundary conversation and accountability is a lot of divisiveness in the psyche. “All of this works for me. All of this stuff does not.” So we’re walking through the world with this lens of, “This is a red flag. Oh, that’s a green flag.” Just stop with the flagging. And I think accountability… So it’s like the offshoot of that is we get hooked on accountability structures and it keeps us out of our heart.
And I think the natural inclination, we don’t hear it, but I think the first default of the heart is always to forgive. And then we go, “Well, accountability. We signed the contract or they said or they made the promise. They’re not going to mature, become better partner/ relationship/employee unless, unless, unless”. My experience is what makes people better is, a lot of the time, letting them off the hook. Mercy. There’s no bypass in there. “Let’s have a conversation. This is what happened. This is what we all felt. All forgiven. Let’s keep going.” I don’t know. It’s like octane. But the ego mind loves accountability systems because it’s all about right and wrong and payback.
TS: I hear what you’re saying, Danielle, and I’m hearing a lot of merit in it and yet a question still is there for me about in the row with your partner, were there certain things that then got swept under the rug that weren’t addressed, that will fester later when you’re just like, “Hey babe, and let’s let it go?” Or is it like, “No, actually there’s no point in going through all that?” So that’s where I have a question.
DL: Yes. I think the answer’s both, but I’m willing to try just, “Hey babe.” I’m willing to try… Let’s try gentleness today and letting it go. More often than “We got to dig in there.” Maybe it’s the 80/20 rule. Maybe 80% of the time we go for gentleness and 20% is, “Let’s course correct.”
TS: Yes. That makes sense. You have a lot of How to Be Loving perspectives and practices, specific ways we can work with our mind throughout the book. And one of them that helped me in the middle of a row was pausing in the middle of an emotional bind with someone and thinking, “I wonder what they’re experiencing right now.” That was a really helpful tip. How did you come to that?
DL: Just years of therapy. I owe that to all my psychotherapists. It just seems like a loving consideration. If I’m really going to walk my talk and that your happiness matters as much as my happiness to me, then I should think, “Wow, what’s going on in your nervous system right now?” And also it’s a bit… I think it’s the upside of having an ego and a persona. When I started asking that question, it was a bit ego-driven of just like, “I wonder how I’m occurring right now? Do I look loving? Do I sound compassionate? Or do I just sound like a terror trying to get my way?” Yes.
TS: Now there are a couple of other practices that you offered perspectives. One is this notion that we can engage in intentional recollection. Can you explain that a bit?
DL: Yes. There is some science to this, which is it’s really the power, the biological response of thinking positive thoughts. And I think with all the polarity and division that’s gone on, that’s going on… Especially, it’s been so heartbreaking to see how families have fractured over these last couple years. Just remember why you love someone. Can you remember why you love them? So you use your mind and you refer to your heart and it actually affects your brain chemistry.
And you will get into that gentle place like, “Ah, we’re having this extreme difference of opinion, but I can grasp why I fell in love with you. I can remember that time we laughed.” And then again, it’s a micro-adjustment. You remember another thing about why you love them. You remember the vow you made. You remember you’re related. You remember the gift. Your tone softens. So much is about tone. And then maybe you make a different decision over Thanksgiving dinner. Yes.
TS: How do you actively practice gentleness, Danielle? Because you write that when you were in this very difficult passage, “I healed precisely because of gentleness.”
DL: Yes. There’s the everyday gentleness. The doing of the day. It’s like when I was really in my dark valley, my psychotherapist said to me, “Danielle, you need to orient your whole day around the wound.” I was like, “What? You got to be kidding me. I got stuff to do.” I said, “How long is it going to be?” She says, “It’s not going to be forever. This is not a new lifestyle thing.” And so orienting the whole day around the wound was, what does my psyche need, my body, my nervous system? OK.
I would do five things a day. In the morning I would get up and I’d write, “What are five gentle things today?” And they had to be so simple. “I’m going to walk around the block.” Not, “I’m going to go for a hike,” or “I’m going to get my ten thousand steps in.” Just gentle. “I’m going to walk around the block. I’m going to text one friend.” One particular friend who’s really… She was like medicine. I don’t have to talk to her for an hour. I don’t have to have the anxiety of I’m going to disturb her day with my… I’m just going to text her.
I’d actually put on my to-do list, “Lay on the living room floor.” That was it. Just lay on the living room floor. Two minutes, five minutes. Nothing to do. Just lay down where you don’t usually lay down. In the sun. That was it. And then back to tone. So it wasn’t like “Anxiety, leave me alone,” or “I’m such an unevolved spiritual loser because I’m feeling anxiety.”
I didn’t pay attention to the workshops. It wasn’t like, “Meditate harder.” It was like, “Anxiety’s here. This is hard.” There’s times where I actually said to myself, “You poor thing.” That’s all I wanted anybody to say to me at that passage. “You poor thing. This is hard. This is brutal.” So I said those things to myself.
TS: How to Be Loving is an urgent love letter to the light in all of us. And one of the things I wanted to ask you, Danielle, is how you actually experience light? How you experience yourself as light? What does it feel like? Describe it to me.
DL: It’s fleeting. I wish it was every day. I wish it was perpetual, but if it was, I probably wouldn’t be here. I experience some dissolving of otherness at certain times. I used to experience a lot when my child was young. Just I couldn’t tell where he started and where I ended. I feel it when I’m in nature. I feel like the trees are talking to me. It’s a very psychological, but for me a practical indication of more light is I see suffering with less judgment.
So the people in my city that are living homelessly, and there’s a lot of them and there’s a lot of drug addiction, heroin addiction here, instead of just seeing dark on top of dark… Of course my heart is breaking and I wish they had different circumstances, and how do we clean all that up? Sometimes I’ll actively look for and see this glow around people in dark situations. And I’ve started to consider maybe what they’re doing is embodying light and I don’t know it. The Bodhisattva Vow or how some monks take on the suffering of others or how some ascetics are just going through extreme physical deprivation to feel close to God. Maybe they’re doing that and I don’t know that. When I have that kind of awareness, I have this sense of light coming across my thinking mind of, there’s a beautiful way to see even this darkness.
TS: What could we do right now as a listening community to experience more light together?
DL: Oh, you’ve got to meditate. There’s no way around it. I used to have a softer touch around this. Just like, well, you might have to meditate or maybe you just go for a walk every day, but you got to meditate. A dentist doesn’t say, “Well, brush your teeth sometime.” No, you have to do dental hygiene every day. So we need to commune with silence in a meditative intentional way on a daily basis. And you just find the way that works for you. Find the meditation that works for you.
TS: Can you lead us right now in something we can do together for a couple of minutes?
DL: Oh sure. Yes. OK. This is called a virtue blessing. It’s so simple. We’ll be here for four minutes. You can do this while you’re walking. You can do it in group. Beautiful. Everybody hear these words right now. We’re not going to move into the meditation yet, but I’m going to lay out the menu. I’ll offer you the virtues that we talk about in How to Be Loving. There’s seven of them. And then you just pluck out the one that you want to work with. We’re going to work with it in the heart. But you’re going to energize this virtue. If you’re like a meditative baller and you want to do like, three or four, or all seven, you can do that. So you just take a breath and if you want you can close your eyes. I’m going to offer these words. Put these virtues, these soul qualities into the space, and then we’ll move into the practice. Divine love, compassion, forgiving, wisdom, lovingkindness, resilience, radiance.
So you might have one of those or two of those that you really want to energize. So your breathing is natural and that means that you’re going to inhale and exhale through your nose. Mouth is closed. And you put your mind’s attention on your heart chakra, on your heart center. You become aware of a warmth, friendliness, and a golden quality. This golden-hued light that fills your heart center. And then at the center of your heart, the cave of your heart as it might be called, you see a golden seed, and it is very vibrant. Adds more of that golden-hued light to your heart center.
And then you speak in that virtue into that seed. You can say it out loud, you can say it quietly. You name that seed. And by doing that we really come into alignment with the power of words and voice. By naming that seed, you’re celebrating the quality of this virtue. And then you take a few breaths, and on the breath it feels right, you see this golden seed blossom into a seven-petaled lotus flower. And it is emanating, radiating the energy of that virtue. And now we’re going to ask for a blessing for this lotus of light. So you can choose the god of your understanding. I am going to use the term infinity. You can repeat after me or silently to yourself. “Dear infinity, please bless, nourish and protect and love this lotus of light.”
You’re really aware of that golden quality in your heart chakra. We’re going to send this lotus out, but before you do, determine to whom and to where you’re going to send this lotus of light. So when you keep doing this practice on your own in the future, you can send that lotus further and further out to your community, country, your hemisphere, until you’re sending it out into the solar system and beyond. Today you might just want to send it to one person or this group of people listening. So inhale and exhale and when the breath feels natural, you extend that lotus of light out to its determined destination. It’s radiating that goldenness and that frequency of that virtue, that soul quality on its way, touching everything in its midst. And it gets where it’s going. And then when you’re ready, you breathe your eyes to open. And we keep in mind that to give is to receive and that our capacity to bless at all times is infinite. You can be the blesser. Yes.
TS: Beautiful. Danielle, just one final question. It has to do with the subtitle of How to Be Loving. As your heart is breaking open and our world is waking up. And throughout How to Be Loving you reference this time that we’re in, this time of epic shift, to use your language, and how the individual work that we’re doing connects to the evolution of the whole. Can you comment more on that?
DL: I’ve always been very service-oriented and I had to ask myself—and we want to question everything—if my ego was keeping me on this striving of serving and saving all the time. “Got to save the world, got to change the world.” If nothing changes until you accept it, nothing changes until you accept it. And I need to have reverence for all parts of myself. Then why am I so zealous about changing the world? Which gets me to the conclusion that if I really want to be of service… My greatest effort for social change is to heal myself. Get myself together. And that often happens through heartbreak. And I know that heartbreak is really this portal to deeper meaning, deeper connection, more fulfillment, which is not predicated on being in a good mood. It’s not about being happy. It’s about connection.
And then I think for each of us, we know that sometimes… It’s not so much it has to get worse before it gets better. But that the stuff has to come up. It’s like the poison has to get purged. The hard conversation needs to be had. You’ve got to feel the muscle burn for the progress. And I think that’s what’s going on collectively. And the shadow is… As I said earlier, all pain, of course it comes with a message, but it’s really just asking for attention.
So I think the shadow has to come up for us to move forward to really embody love, to heal. It’s not a purge for the sake of purge. We’re not scrapping it out just because things need to be said. It’s all coming up to actually be met with gentleness, to be forgiven, to be integrated. It’s all coming up for some light. So the conversations and the therapy and the new policies and the things falling apart aren’t coming up to be battled. They’re coming up for a different kind of awareness, a different kind of loving attention.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Danielle LaPorte, author of the new Sounds True book, How to Be Loving as Your Heart Is Breaking Open and Our World Is Waking Up. And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in after the show Q&A conversations with featured presenters and have the chance to ask your questions, come join us on Sounds True One. A new membership community that features premium shows, live classes and community events. Let’s learn and grow together. Come join us at Join.SoundsTrue.com. Sounds True, waking up the world.
