Unbeatable Mind Podcast with Mark Divine

0:05 [Music] the parenting paradigm that set up in mainstream culture is set up to quote unquote spiritually fail [Applause] they focus marked divine with the unbeatable mind podcast welcome back thanks so much for your attention today

0:37 we've got a terrific yesterday dr. Shefali Suvari author of several books on parenting such as the most recent one called the awakened family how to raise empowered resilient and conscious children this is going to be a really important conversation folks so if you're a parent or you're thinking about parenting they're not pay attention and get out your notebook unless you're driving then don't do that at any rate before I get started if you're really serious about

1:08 accomplishing more than ever next year focusing more really clarifying your purpose and your passions and aligning with that and developing an unbeatable mind then I encourage you to check out our I'm gonna be double mind summit being held November 29th to December 2nd in Carlsbad California this is the sixth year I think that we've run it's an incredible experience over the three days we'll arm you with a total framework for achieving awesome focus

1:40 and concentration and clarity around your future and how to really zero in on achieving not only the material goals but also all of your inner domain goals and short you know trekking up those five mountains of physical mental emotional intuitional and Kokoro or heart mind health so if you're listening and you want to come and check it out we have a special rate for you and I think there's only 30 spots left the special rate if you go to our website summit and

2:10 build mine calm is p OD 300 pod 300 nadia 300 dollars off so and i've been saying this even though my team grits their teeth every time i do but this is the last year we'd be running the summit in this format we're gonna be shifting the format to more immersive training in the UM system starting next year so if you'd like the original format with motivational speakers and all sorts of fun stuff then this is it come on out in

2:37 November December okay I mentioned a moment ago my guest today is dr. Shefali Suvari I will just call her dr. Shefali she's an acclaimed author she speaks worldwide you know she's done TEDx and she you know has a lot of experience in parenting and some best-selling books and she's been on the Oprah network multiple times she works at the Kellogg Business School as a teacher and the speaker that Aly Lama Center and she has her doctorate from

3:07 Columbia University and she's from Mumbai India so she specializes in something that's kind of near and dear to our heart which is kind of integration of east and west integration of Eastern philosophy and Western psychology that sounds a lot like what we've done with unveil in mind but we apply our integration toward vertical development and leadership capacity and dr. Shefali is looking at parenting so I just shipped my son off to college this morning Devin is on his

3:39 way to college and I can tell you you know the last 18 19 years have been extremely interesting experience all your parents are not in your heads right now parenting is hard work and what I think is we often try too hard so I'm really anxious to hear what dr. Shefali has to say about that dr. Shefali thank you so much for your time today I really appreciate it and how are you hi thank you for having me I'm excited to speak

4:06 with you and your audience so I'm happy to be here likewise we're excited to have you so why don't you know you just give us a little bit about who you are in terms of how you got interested in you know child psychology or pet you know parenting I guess is I'm not sure what the category would be of research by parenting what was your early childhood like what were your parents like you know how did you kind of come

4:31 to be who you are let's go there first well you know I think my my intentional journey really began when I chose to leave India and come and pursue Eastern mindfulness and Western psychology out here in California and did my masters and began steeping really deep in Eastern mindfulness practices especially the past my meditation again practicing the past now

5:03 myself it's a form of Insight Meditation where you look deeply inside the nature of your own mind and minds reality and the reality of reality and while I was also studying psychology and seeing clients and families and seeing how our minds and our constructs really were the cause of suffering and how our consciousness was the obstruct er or our

5:35 lack of consciousness and we were not living awakened lives we were living lives that were pretty much reactionary and zombie-like so when I became a parent I began to see how I hadn't learned anything I thought I knew so much and really began to have to apply the principles that I had been you know practicing on the maps so to speak how to detach from the ego of being the unquote creator of this

6:07 child of being the owner and possessing and controlling and really apply principles of trust and abundance and lack of fear and living in one's own divine essence so one could liberate the child to live in their divine essence so I began to see that you know these teachings were very difficult to apply in the parenting process because the parenting paradigm that set up in mainstream culture is set up to quote/unquote spiritually fail because

6:38 it's set up as if the parent is in charge is the hierarchical know-it-all be it all and they demand it demands the paradigm demands obedience from the from the child and subservience and it was completely you know antithetical to what I was learning in my spiritual practice so when I saw that I was full of ego and possession myself I realized I had to do something about it and their birth my my work on conscious parenting and teaching people how to

7:10 divest themselves from the attachment to their role as parents and thereby detach not emotionally you know bendin but just let go of their control over their children so that the children could naturally unfold into who it is they were meant to be of course I loved that as a practitioner and teacher of yoga for about 15 years I completely aligned with all that and and yet is still very

7:42 hard to do because of the structure and systems that you know we live in in the West to help our listeners really understand from your perspective what you know you said something is profound that you know essentially the we start the prima facie place to star from Eastern philosophy is that when your grasp and you're attached to outcomes into the material world then this is the cause of suffering and so the way to

8:13 avoid suffering is to detach or to practice non-attachment and that's what we mean by kind of taming the ego or getting in touch with your higher mind or your booty all that stuff is really powerful and it's completely antithetical to the Western model which says you know nothing about suffering and that we can avoid suffering just by attaining more it's almost like the opposite grasping more that's my kind of look at it what how would you describe

8:40 kind of the major difference between eastern and western modes of just looking at parenting and development yes you're right they're fundamentally different however they shouldn't be absconded and one shouldn't reign superior because we're living in a world that requires an understanding and invocation of both so the way I look at it is that the world is made up of you know very material dense form based

9:12 experience experiences such as you know we become pair it's form-based we have relationships we buy houses we have cars we have careers so everything in this form based world is about attachment to an identity identity as a parent identity as a high achiever low achiever fat person thin person these labels these judgements this form based world is dense and replete with these identifications and in order to kind of live here and pay

9:44 your bills and and eat your food you kind of have to develop an adequate sense of self to feel confident to overcome insecurities and to maneuver this this world so that's where Western psychology is important because it teaches you how to motivate yourself and how to be yourself and how to understand the psychological patterns that created the self and so Western psychology is good too current code good too it's

10:15 effective to allow us to live in this home based world but it isn't enough and that's why we have Eastern philosophy to teach us wisdom of how to live in this world where there is a need to institute a self but to have the wisdom that there is no real independent self and Eastern philosophy doesn't really talk about avoiding suffering but really teaches us how to transcend suffering and Western psychology I would say is you know anti

10:44 suffering it's it's like you said it's going to do everything prosthetic lis synthetically artificially to to avoid suffering and eastern psychology says you can't avoid suffering you have to learn how to transcend suffering so the fundamental differences are that Western psychology is about the self succeeding in a very attachment based world success and identities are very important in this world Eastern philosophy talks about the formless aspect of your divine

11:16 essence which which is beyond attachment which is beyond identifications it's something far greater and grander then we can ever imagine but in order to touch that you have to learn to transcend this idea of self as independent and truly cultivate inner awareness and mindfulness practices that teach you how to transcend and overcome the seductions of a very conditioned mind based on form

11:49 so as those are the fundamental differences I know it's hard it's hard to explain in a few interviews but we're not gonna enlighten anyone on a podcast but we can church her to it so I think I hear you that you know West Western tries to avoid suffering under fights suffering and Eastern wants to try to send it and yet isn't it also true that if you just seek to transcend or this is kind of confirming what you say why

12:20 they're both important because if you just seek to transcend suffering then you still trail your shadow with you all of the all the issues from childhood up to your present moment are still trailing you and being you know kind of dogging you right the samskaara that the Yogi's talk about and they still kind of drop little bombs in your life and which kind of become obstacles to transcendence and so where Western psychology comes in is to be able to

12:47 translate your past and to you know clear up the shadow self while you're in the process of transcending and that's actually something that Eastern philosophy missed right if Eastern philosophy it talks about how to handle the psychology is we've inherited and how to penetrate these psychologies of those around us with awareness with discernment it teaches us how to recognize when someone is in their unconscious selves and how to detach

13:18 from that Western psychology teaches us how that psychology developed and to recognize the psychological patterns in our own lives so the I look at Western psychology as teaching us the what you know the brasstacks the tools of whom a how did we know what makes us us and Eastern psychology teaches us how to truly finesse the us how to truly hone in on the bejeweled aspect of who we truly are because the Western self the

13:49 psychological self is not who we truly are it's who we were raised as who we were brought up to be who we were conditioned to believe we were are but Eastern psychology says yes in this lifetime this is how you were raised by your parents to believe in this God and to believe you're this color this way is this Creed okay that's your psychology that's the what of you but it isn't who you truly are so when you have both you understand

14:14 the isness of the form that you were raised in and the context you were raised in but then you learn to see beyond that in with Eastern psychological and as spiritual lenses yeah I love that and that's so important today recognizing the oneness like you said or the unity of us all so that we have greater care and concern or great care and concern for all humanity and all sentient beings while at the same time appreciating and honoring all the

14:42 differences boy if you know if we could teach that to the world we'd be in a very different place and so I agree with you then what a better place to start than with parents and aren't we aren't what you really saying is as a parent you know basically become aware of your true self your essential nature and through that you will become an effective parent it's not so much like parenting skills right it's really more

15:08 it's more human skills as a you know become the whole person that you really are and then the parenting kind of sorts itself out well exactly so again if we look at it in the in the two lenses of the psychology and then the spiritual spiritual transcendence cells we as parents bring in are very conditioned psychologies into the parenting process and we put on to our children all our psychological mishaps right all the misgivings all the conditionings and we

15:39 think that's true we think that's real we think that's how the child should be but what we forget in that is the Eastern transcendent lessons off of the awareness that the child isn't what my conditioning is certainly certainly not what my grandparents conditioning was the child is their own divine as essential nature so how then do I as a parent Tron transcend that psychology right so first I have to heal and become aware of my own conditioning I have to do the work

16:11 to raise my own self because most of us were raised by unconscious parents who were trapped in the mire of their own misunderstandings of what this world is life the self is about this journey is about so I have to heal become aware undo all the conditioning and all the layerings upon my true self and embark on a quest to cultivate the true self the true self is always there it's just buried under layers of the false conditionings where

16:39 we were told how we should be versus allowing who we truly are and then when we begin doing that work as parents raising ourselves that's why I say conscious parenting is about raising the parental self before we raise the child self and raising the child within the barren that still lives in the parent because the child was left undone nurtured then the parent begins to as the parent touches upon their own divine nature the parent begins to realize that

17:09 this is an inestimable gift and treasure that they must help nurture and sustain within the child and that's where transcendent philosophies of Eastern wisdom come into play right hey folks I want to tell you about a product developed by a friend of mine Navy SEAL dr. Kirk parley it's called a sleep remedy I tried it recently during my unbeatable mind summit and boy this stuff works I can't say enough good

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19:41 dock parsley do cpars luy calm so in our unbeatable mind in the coupon code box at dock parsley com I recommend check it out yeah you know I just finished 12 days of our teacher training for our program called kokoro yoga and most you know everyone in there was profoundly impacted by the training and I you know I kept hearing kind of a common theme and that is you know they they all felt

20:11 like they're on the leading edge and that everybody in their universe around them back home was completely clueless or disinterested in learning about true nature the essential self you know God consciousness whatever you know knowing that you're running used for the eastern concepts of ultimate reality so where does where does a listener even start in terms of you know just gaining a foothold or an experience understanding

20:42 of what it means to be a conscious parent yeah it starts I think from pain you know we human beings somehow only who would need to learn or feel like they need to learn from pain I wish it were not true and I wish we would learn from just the wisdom of the beauty around us in this life but nope we don't we only learn from pain and it can't even be just a little pain it has to be

21:07 like gross on the floor you know rock-bottom pain apparently this is what I see in my office that people come to me in the last minute when things are in a crisis but thank goodness they come then because many people don't even come then right there so adhering to what they believed and their righteousness that they won't even crack open then but at least I found that if you have sufficient pain so I'm a great worshipper of emotional pain because I I

21:34 know that it's only then that we're going to crack open because our conditioning is so rigid and we're so you know we hold on to our conditioning with such in dear life we cling to it so how does one start through pain hopefully that will crack one open and if it doesn't crack one open then we from our pain I mean no rush no rush no hurry we've been here before we'll come again I mean if somebody's not waking up it's

22:01 okay don't panic I've learned in my practice you know when I think that people are about to get the lesson and I'm getting all attached to their getting the lesson and so excited thinking now this person is going to learn you know and then nope the loop is back in motion and they're back in the cycle it's okay you know this is the nature of awakening it takes a long time it takes a lot of readiness

22:25 and it takes a lot of intellectual power wisdom discernment a lot of emotional stamina so it's okay you know I think many of us on the spiritual path sometimes get superior and we get on our own soap box we get impatient I know I've done all those things but now I kind of just wait and I'm patient and I'm really not even waiting for the next moment because whatever is happening to us in this moment is the way it's meant

22:55 to be because it's the way it's happening so it is what it is so we just have humility for it and allow people to unfold when they're ready so when they're ready what they can what they were naturally gravitate toward is the answer to the question did I have anything to do with the creation of my reality was I part of this and it's OC because that takes so much humility to turn the spotlight within and say what

23:25 do I need to learn here what is this experience showing me about my unhealed parts of myself and it's when the spotlight is turned that's when learning can begin but till that doesn't happen then we just allow the person to experience experience experience and one day when they're ready it will turn we can it cannot be imposed by someone else you can try to inspire you can try to guide but you can't get attached to your role as the awakener

23:58 you know I've had to learn this lesson many times yeah so you said and I've got a quote from when your books we need to keep our kids we are and the rest will follow so what do you mean by that what's there what's the job of a parent basically from your perspective the main job of the parent is to keep cleaning out their own internal terrain to keep checking in on their own emotional energy asking

24:25 constantly why am i reacting this way what is really triggering me inside there's nothing on the outside that can move me to such an emotional upheaval so what is it within me that cannot tolerate what's happening right now why can't I accept the as is what about my child do I not truly accept why am i conditionally accepting my child why am i conditionally loving my child why am I not able to reach a place of

24:51 transcendence what is it about me that doesn't feel whole in this moment so I project my own anxieties on my child it's these questions of deep internal penetration that of course only the you know true spiritually inclined will tend to ask but though that's what I challenge parents to do that every experience is about a reflection of their own needs their own anxieties their own projections and they got to rein that in because we're cluttering our children and burdening them with all

25:23 our stuff and they don't even have a chance to find out who it is they are and how do we know this is true we know it because of our own lives you know we've only just in our 40 started a glimmer of all my goodness I've been living a lie I've been living a fake self I've been living to the tune of my parents I've been living to the tune of my in the institution's around me so we

25:47 don't want this to happen to our children we want them to ask quickly as closely as as approximately turn the spotlight to themselves and they don't have to wade through layers and layers of conditioning before they discover who it is they truly are so we don't want to look at our kids as an object to be fixed or to be you know trained we want to allow them to flourish in their own unique self their unique identity and

26:18 the way that we do this is to work on our yeah so that we can remain unattached and connected to our higher self and open you know open to receive who our children are because everyone is so unique so shoving them into boxes and putting labels on them it doesn't allow the experience of their true selves to emerge to unfold yeah now there's one of the things I'm probably skipping ahead a little bit this you know this can't

26:47 possibly be a linear discussion what's coming to me is the role of Technology and social media and YouTube and there was a tragic incident in San Diego just a couple days ago where this young like 17 year old kid who you know was like a 15 minute of Fame YouTube star but he earned enough money to buy himself a Ferrari or Maserati and and then all of a sudden you know his next video didn't have the

27:16 Flair and his followers started dropping off and you know he started to get really agitated and and he lost control and he took his Ferrari out the other day and sped down the highway and drove the wrong way and ran into a mother and child and they all three died it was just four horrific and the parents are of course just destroyed and I'm sure they're wondering what did I do wrong but that was all you know that was

27:42 society that was technology you know how do we combat that yeah you know it is a plague it is a modern era plague and it is nauseating because we're seeing that children are moving away from deep connected relationships and they're having these virtual relationships but it is the as is and we've participated it we've co-created it we are sometimes

28:12 the perpetuators of it so we as adults need to see our role in it and remind ourselves that interpersonal connection and presence and solitude and quietude are the key ingredients so we can't now control our children especially they are in the throes of this fear culture but we can certainly embody the quote-unquote right actions the right ways of being around them as much as possible every generation is going to come up with its own plagues but I do

28:44 see a trend of us moving toward further mechanization further isolation it's alarming and I hope it doesn't continue but how to how to stop it without you know blind resistance you have to stop it through enlightenment not through hatred or antagonism or you know you have to create consciousness around it and I think what you said earlier is probably appropriate when the suffering and the pain the suffering get to be

29:16 extreme enough then there'll be a backlash at a much broader societal cultural level right right yeah and also you know too for all the listeners to begin like you said to embody and to live by through example or to show your children through example that you're willing to take time in silence to disconnect from your iPhone to spend time in nature to meditate you know to be quiet and have conversations with your kids as opposed to all be pecking

29:44 on your iPhone at dinner and stuff like that just leading by example I think that's kind of one of the been the main themes be the change you want to see in your children okay so let's talk about some like practical issues though I imagine when you start to work with parents that you have some practices or some kind of tools to help them slow down and turn inward and could you describe what that process is like or

30:15 what are your you know what is your path look like to get people to slow down and turn in burdens and begin to connect with their deeper nature well typically you know the families we work with in this model and I'm actually just launching a coaching Institute next year to help coaches train parents how to turn inward where we you know just constantly help them shift the focus from the outside to the inside so homework assignments meditation

30:46 Journal writing and constantly giving them ways to pause to take it slow you know it's a it's a practice it's a way to create a new mind because the old mind is reactive the old mind is full of fear and anxiety and scarcity the new mind the new conscious mind is about abundance Trust unfolding but also taking action where necessary but inspired action not reactive action so

31:16 teaching parents to shift from control and puny ssin and reaction and threats and yelling and screaming and shaming and guilting to empowerment resilience compassion connection and it's just a process you know and every parent does it differently some do it deeply some do it superficially but every step is a step in the right direction mm-hmm do you think that everyone should be a parent I mean do you do you recommend that people think carefully before they

31:49 you know yes are you kidding me yes no I do not think every parent should be a parent and maybe I shouldn't have been a parent either when I became one but there's no shoulds you know and I'm not abnegation everyone's core right to be a parent dare we say that people should you know look at themselves a little bit before they dare to raise a child you can't say these things because people are prickly about their right to be a

32:15 parent but really we don't have a right to continue this unconscious malaise without at least looking within I mean it's no joke I mean it's not as if we're you know we need to procreate for the survival of the species I mean people really have told me that when I say that a whole generation should just technically stop having children now of course do I really mean it do I really seek to enforce it or control it I just

32:39 suppose it as a rhetorical idea of you know let's just think about this insanity that we all think we should have children first no we should all not have children we are not fit to have children we first need to heal our own tragic childhoods we need to become aware of the great responsibility that this is we shouldn't have children because it's a it's on the conditioned checklist of how to be an adult you know we need to pause we need

33:05 to really ascertain if we need to and then you know no it's not for the biological well-being of the species in fact for the biological well-being of the species we all need to like shut the shop down for couple generations right and then the the species and the earth will thrive again so we are overpopulated overpopulation leads to all ills of the world I mean many health of the world and overpopulation comes from the core ill of the world which is

33:31 ignorant you know mental ignorance so we should really think you know I mean even ask parents the reasons they had children you know they all start laughing because I do it with compassion but I poke at them and I show the irony because every reason that a parent gives that they've had children is for their own self right because it's rich I wanted this and I wanted that and and so I'm like okay if you're now seeing that

33:57 it's all selfish then how you also at the same time allowing yourself to believe that it's a selfless act so every time you cook for your children you should say thank you to them because they allowed you to feel worthy and important and have an identity so why are we constantly telling children that they should be grateful to us you know no they didn't ask to come we we pulled for this energy and of course they

34:21 pulled for this energy too but I'm just talking on a colloquial level we're so high and mighty acting as if you know the children or something no they don't owe you anything we did didn't ask for this it's that rubbish you know and we just propagate this because we know we're guilty of such heinous actions and thoughts against our children so we we pretend as if we're so righteous you know so we're not real we're not wrong with ourselves

34:45 and my task is to you know blow the lid off this righteousness we have as parents it just it just is is frustrating when I see that because it perpetuates violence against our children you know what perpetuates are shaming them and all in the name of love and all in the name of caring no you're a control freak and you need to see that or you're completely unconscious and you need to see that or you're guilty and

35:11 you that guilt onto your children and you need to see that so it's time to just wake up you know and using our children as pawns is unconscionable so that needs to stop immediately well that's you know you're just describing a cultural shadow or a cultural story loop though you know we have to have children you know it's it's survival of this species and all that kind of stuff that's just a story it's a meme that's been going on for a

35:38 long time and you're right you know I think that this is kind of a fun conversation and and some people probably skewer me for saying this but why not have a parenting test and if you can prove to the world that you're not going to raise the next sociopath or a narcissist then go for it not many people would be able to pass that test well it's really not about what you're going to quote-unquote create or produce

35:59 it's really have you done the inner work yourself we ultimately have no control our kid my kid could be an ax murderer tomorrow I don't know you know maybe something will flip in her DNA I don't know that's not I mean that's her path and all those who come in her way but and hopefully I've taught in of empathy and connectedness but again we can't control the the the psychosocial biological neuron neuronal interaction in another human being we can though the

36:27 way to really thought evil and ill in the world is to work on ourselves so you know that's the key so how many hours of meditation have you done how many hours of inner work Emma done how many self-help courses have you taken how many books have you read on your your psychology and and self-help that I mean some some thermometer I mean even to drive a car we have to know the signs and the the techniques and the triggers

36:56 and the roadmaps and the direction you know inputs in a car we know nothing about our psychology when we become a parent you know so that is the abysmal unconscionable reality and people feel they have a right because their biology allows for it but no it's a moral obligation not just a biological impetuous right that you have to enact you know now I know you appreciate some soreness

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39:01 unbeatable mind at the check out so again receive 25% off of one of my favorite tools for achieving increased muscle performance and recovery by going to power dot-com and using that code on bill mind ooh yeah so you were trained in Vipassana and I teach a lot of meditation I find that there's a lot of confusion out there and people really just don't know how to meditate and you know just sitting and I mean it's

39:31 beneficial to sit and listen to a meditation app or you know something like focus or you know some guided visualization but it's still kind of incomplete this is lacking grounding in my opinion in terms of helping people to find success early and to be drawn inward how do you teach meditation to your clients yeah I I talk about its unglamorous aspects how it will not make you anything and you know because everyone who comes to meditate

40:03 one system to make them feel better and look better and eat better and become more successful and happier and and I just shoot that all in its belly right away and lambasted and go that's not the point of meditation it's not to do a quick meditation it's not to become efficient it there is no goal to meditation in fact if you have a goal to meditate you're you're not you're going against the grain of meditation the

40:28 point of meditation is to become aware to become enlightened which means to just to cultivate and develop the power of your mind to observe itself meaning you no longer are mired in the seduction of your monkey mind you're crazy reactive mind you've now developed the capacity to enter that energetic space of witnessing your mind

40:59 to become a witness oh and when you touch that this other space of awareness you then touch upon your eternal awareness of who you really are so that is the point of meditation it's not to become more of your unconscious self it's to discover how unconscious you are and what what your true essence is which is something beyond mind right it's mind

41:29 above my mind beyond mind it's not it's not to control the mind it's to become aware of the mind that's beyond the mind now all of the sounds very flashy and confusing because it's something that you have to practice so the very it's very hard to explain this you have to experience this and it's somebody who's here slee has awakened to this understanding that the world is an illusion those people will be ready for the true art of

41:58 meditation and the rest of the people will benefit from the superficial techniques of meditation which is you know how do I focus how do I you know not get anxious how do I count one to ten how do I get from A to B without losing my keys those are the superficial techniques of meditation keep calm Keep Calm breathe come to ten you know say a chant okay that's really good too but that's not the the real deep purpose of awakening

42:28 oneself right so there's different levels and people can choose to penetrate their mind at different levels and I'm not knocking the other techniques down but those are different techniques compared to what I believe to be the true purpose of meditation right and of course you know the yoga and Patanjali teaches us that you have to prepare most people I mean there's very few people who can go from zero to hero in meditation and so we have to prepare

42:52 the mind in the body and you know so we do some movement and we eat healthy and we learn to sit quietly and then we practice the pranayama and then we learn to concentrate and that stabilizes your attention yes and with the stabilized attention then you can turn that attention from outward to inward and then we can begin the process of meditation so what's the I guess you must maybe assess each individual and see kind of where their mind is that and

43:19 then do you apply a tool base to find where they're at or do you start everyone in the same place so you know I teach meditation online so I'm blessed that I have some format to you know invite people to join because people need a format and I believe in the power of community so I'll either ask them to join my meditation classes which is structured we meditate together every week or I invite them to go to a local

43:46 community you know meditation place and begin learning the art of sitting and you know getting aware of one's breath and learning to watch one thought one's thoughts now people tend to veer towards different kinds meditation but the one I teach as I said is the Posner which is you know simply but profoundly tuning in word without the use of any adornment technique strategy chant it's just about observing one's own mind and and the revelations

44:18 that come from this practice are enormous you do begin to understand into the true nature of your reality that everything is impermanent there's no point in clinging and craving the minute you do you're creating a false attachment to something that is illusory anyway and you begin to see how you cause your own suffering by getting mired in this constant cycle spin cycle of reactivity and it helps you break out of it so when you're with your child the

44:46 next time and your child says something really you know antagonistic and you're about to pounce on your child this practice will teach you to take a pause to stop to ask how can I have compassion for my child how can I see my child before their experience without getting personally into intertwined so it allows you to you know slow down to watch it's that watcher that you develop you know you develop this persona you know it's

45:15 not a false persona but this new awareness this new energy of being a witness and that is so powerful it literally can change the fabric of your daily existence I love that that was really well said and the metaphor I like to use is that you become the mountain and the stories your thoughts and emotions become the clouds just drifting by yep oh I see you know you stand on the platform and the trains go by and

45:42 you don't hop on the crane you know certain ways to explain the same thing yeah nice Wow fascinating and so important so important not simp simple in a sense but not easy especially for most people because we're so busy and and and most people think they don't have time to meditate and to you know do these practices and what do you say to that I mean I I think that's you know personally that this stuff gives you all

46:12 the time in the world once you start F yes of course that's the again the conditioned mindset that I need to have time and you know there's a saying that if if you only have a few minutes a day you you should think about meditating and if you don't even have a few minutes then you definitely need to be meditating so you know something to the effect of that it's an illusion that you don't have time and the reason you

46:39 you've bought into that illusion is because you don't meditate and the minute you meditate I'm kind of suspends that elongates because there is infinite time it's our distractions it's our ruminations it's our constant whirling spinning emotions that keep us on this hamster wheel life is infinite time is infinite space is infinite love is infinite money is infinite you just have to tap into that sense of inner abundance and the reason we don't just because we're cluttered by fear and

47:10 scarcity and it's only meditation only the practice of meditation that will teach you to let that go there is nothing else in the world that can teach you that except your own understanding of the illusion of it all right it's profound so in a closing you know kind of appeal to our listeners you know as if you were on the last 1 minute of your TED TED talk you know what would you

47:40 what would you be your appeal to the parents who are listening what everyone really is that this life incarnation that we've inhabited is for the purpose of becoming whole we were whole we were snatched from wholeness because of the conditionings of fear and scarcity and separatism and it's our obligation to ourselves to return to a state of wholeness and every experience really can be an invitation to go deeper into

48:11 our false selves and discard it slowly but surely and as we discard the false self we illumine with the true self and that is our essential nature and that's what this entire incarnation is about it's a discovering more and more who we are without the vestiges of fear and without the masks of falsity and duplicity of separation we are one and the moment we

48:43 realize that all fear subsides and the moment you realize that is also the moment you can allow your children to be who they are right absolutely you know they are shining with who they are and we are constantly battling them to become who they're not and who they should be so the moment we yeah pay homage to our true self we will naturally allow and in fact fight for the freedom of everyone else to be their

49:13 true selves wow that's terrific thank you so much and you have a website where is it dr. Shefali Shefali calm that people should buy more yes okay so I'll spell it out it's w w dr shefa li dr. Shefali calm and your next book is the book out yet the awakened family yes it's been out for two years and been on The Oprah super-soul and you know the New York Times bestseller yes it's a good it's my

49:44 last book as I now know I mean I may change my mind but it was my last book on parenting my daughters now on the sixteen it's not like parenting is over but you know you I've had enough I'm like okay done well each book is like giving birth in its next books we'll touch on other aspects of the human existence oh great good for you while I look forward to that and um and tracking your progress and thank you so much for

50:13 your time and let us know if we can help out with your work at all thank you so much thanks to everyone yeah thank you dr. Shefali it's been an honor all right folks wow you're gonna have to listen to that one a few times especially if you are a parent or thinking about being a parent and it comes back to you just like everything else I mean we are creating this world and we experience it with our

50:37 mind so why not learn about the mind and the true nature of reality makes sense to me and I know it makes sense to you or else you wouldn't be listening so thank you very much for being who you are and doing what you do and you know stay focused do the work every day and forge that unbeatable mind I'll see you next time bye now

51:09 please the bright swinging frogman [Applause]