Worried Sick

0:01 This program is designed to provide general information with regards to the subject matters covered. This information is given with the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial, legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek the services. Of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas. At the end of the day, it's not about what you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up, who you've made better. It's about what you've given back Thanzel Washington, Welcome to inspire vision. Our sole purpose is to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you to do the same.

0:54 Bob Martin, Welcome to the show. How are you. I'm fine, Thanks, happy to have be here. I'm glad we were finally. People will put this together. Audience sometimes doesn't know how much of a challenge sometimes getting all this put together. Where are you located, Bob, I'm in North Carolina? Okay, okay, cool, So you're a couple of hours ahead of me. Which is great. So what I'd love for you to do is share with the audience your background. And you know, what I find is there's always a story, whether it's an AHA moment or whether it's a gradual development, but there's always a story that brings about an individual to the point that they are, such as yourself, where you're writing some incredible books and you're really trying to make a difference for some people. So if you could share your background, that would be great too.

1:42 Sure. So, I kind of grew up on the boardwalk in New York selling hot and candy and popcorn. That's the business my folks were in, kind of the amusement park carnival business, and never expected that I would be or become a lawyer, but I did, I think, much to my father's chagrin. And then I went to work for the District Attorney's office Janet Reno back in the cocaine cowboy days. If anybody's ever seen the movie Scarface, those were the days that I was working in Miami, and we hit the mob up for a lot of money on a joint task force with the FEDS. And left the office shortly thereafter, and lo and Behold. They came to me and the mob and they said, you know, you got to be pretty good to to hit us up for that much money. And they started sending me clients, and so I have to admit that I was kind of taken with it, and I was my ego was stoked, and I started hanging out with those guys and maybe doing some stuff I shouldn't have been doing. And all of a sudden, even though I was able to maintain a good professionalism, things behind the scenes were starting to go south. And I was seeing a therapist, and one thing led to another, and I found out that my

3:14 therapist was actually a disciple of and also the English language editor of a seventy second generation Master monk from the Shaolin Temple named Watching Me seventy second Generation Wow. And it was it was an amazing experience for me. I had grown up in a non theist family, my folks, you know, just had no connection to any religion. And then all of a sudden, you know, I was presented with this system of virtue and humility and grace and generosity that didn't ask me to believe in anything that I couldn't see, feel or touch, and it all made sense to me. So I studied under Masterne for eight years and that was transformational. I have to say that at the end of that time, I ran into a little bit of I guess you'd say, difference of opinion with my clients, and I thought it would be best to move to North Carolina from Florida. So I did.

4:28 And when I got here, because of the study that I had done with Master Nee, I dedicated my life to public service and engaged in a practice of contemplation, meditation and the like, and became a meditation certified meditation teacher, very rigid and stringent training program, and I maintained my practice. I represented indigen people after that, folks that could afford a lawyer, did a lot of pro bono work, did a lot of rights representation, and retired in fifteen twenty fifteen.

5:11 And then Elon University picked me up and I've been teaching there, trying to kind of transform the culture on campus to be more mindful and finally, I'm really excited about this. Finally, just last year they agreed to open up a few credit courses in meditation and I'll be teaching and I'm just excited as can be about that because it's an opportunity to get to these twenty something minds and give them a different way of looking at life. So I'm excited about that. So I'm curious when you talk about, you know, Masterne and the tawis, what is the origin of that. I'm familiar with Buddhism limit in Thailand. What's the origins of Taoism?

6:02 Well, Daoism really evolved much more from an old Chinese shamanistic backing, So there is a lot of superstition and tradition and stories, kind of shamanistic approaches to early Taoism. But then twenty five hundred years ago, Laotsu, Confucius body. You know, they were all kind of contemporaries, and between the three of them they kind of developed a consistent Eastern philosophical bent, combining a lot of Hindu traditions. And I guess the best way to distinguish between them is that confusion. Confucius felt that it's all about our desire and how we perceive things. It's not about what happens in life. It's about how we deal with what happens in life. And Confucia said that, you know, our desire for things to be different than the way they are is so compelling, and our desires towards base instincts is so strong that we have to have a rigid set of guidelines to keep us straight. The buddhas said, well, it doesn't have to be that rigid, but we do need to balance out those desires by cultivating things like generosity and grace and loving kindness and sympathetic joy and wisdom.

7:35 We have to work at developing and cultivating these things kind of just to balance the normal negativity that we tend to develop in life. And the loud too. In the Dallas they were kind of a hippie dippy, a school of Eastern thought, and they were kind of like, oh yeah, man, if something sound or don't worry about it. You know, it's like get into the sour and go with the flow. And Dallism was all about learning to recognize the energy and I don't mean mystical energy. I mean the energy that's existing in a conversation or in a relationship, or in what's going on around you, and then being able to effectively fit into it. I guess maybe the best example I could give is if you're out in the ocean, and you're trying to swim towards shore.

8:34 The Dallast would teach, well, swim like heck. When the water's going with you, and when it's going against you, just put out enough energy to hold your position. Build up your energy because it's going to turn it and it's going to go with you again. And when it does, you want to be ready to swim like heck. Interesting. So when you started with Masternee for eight years, how intense was that? I mean, was that every weekend? Or were you there for a few weeks and then took a break. How did that work? Well? Masterne came about every month, and then we had a couple of Disciples teachers who were taught by Master Knee who were there in Miami constantly. We met every week and we did daily practice. And depending on whether if you were interested in taichi or if you were interested in chigung or the ii qing or some of the other contemplated practices, we had little subgroups to support those studies.

9:39 And of course we met with George on a weekly basis. We all met on a weekly basis and created a community. Wow. And you know, and a lot of that was meditation. I'm I'm curious because you're teaching meditation now right. Yes, yes, So I was just watching a video, just a short one on TikTok earlier. It was a Buddhist monk and he was literally talking about why are you listening to music, Why are you listening to words? You should be doing silent meditation because the rest of it is interrupting. And I've heard I've heard this concept before. In fact, I've talked to a few people, interviewed a few people who really are into this silent meditation. My personal experience was that I initially started with a fellow that does a lot of a lot of guided meditation, and then ultimately I thought, well, get rid of some of the verbal stuff going on. And so I've found that I've listened to certain music and get into the sofigio frequencies and so forth, and seeing how that's working. What are your thoughts and why are some people particularly emphasizing just quiet meditation where you're focused on your breath versus some of these others, And what's your opinion on all of those?

10:59 Yeah, I think that just to hear the monks say that much is a disservice to folks because it leads to the idea that when you sit that you're supposed to empty your mind and you're supposed to have a quiet interior. And that's just not the case. I don't know how many students, all of my students, anybody that I start teaching, for the first couple of weeks, it is trying to shape them of the idea that they're supposed to quiet their mind. You know, most people, you say, well, you're supposed to quiet your mind. So I'm going to sit here now I have I'm thinking about, you know, what that guy said last night, and what I got to do for dinner, and I've got that appointment, and then there's that deadline, and I don't think I look good in that shirt, and all these thoughts flood through your mind, and everybody immediately says, I can't do this.

11:57 I can't do this. You know, I just can't stop thinking. And that's just a complete misunderstanding. It's not about stopping the thinking. It's about stepping out of the thinking and allowing it to flow and just being able to watch it happen. So when he says the idea of sitting silently, what he's talking about is the process of being able to sit and having an opportunity to allow your thoughts to flow and being able to watch them. But I don't I think distractions are okay because if you're distracted, it stimulates a whole bunch of thoughts. Why is that dog barking? He's bothering me. I'm not going to be able And you get to watch all those thoughts as well, and in doing that, you begin to understand better how you reason respond to distractions. And that's a learning process, and that's information that's helpful because the more you understand how you respond to distractions, the more you can consider whether or not it's helpful or not helpful the way that you respond to distractions. And then when you're thinking like that, you have some access to maybe making a decision. Well, maybe that's not the most helpful way. The other process

13:30 that you get involved in a meditation is that this process of watching your thoughts. All of a sudden, and this happens maybe in the third week of the class, most of the students go, oh, oh, I'm not my thoughts as we say, I had a thought, so who had the thought? So there's the generator of the thoughts and as you step out of your thoughts and just simply watch your thoughts without trying to stop them or allowing them just to be, you start to recognize that you've been out of touch with the generator of your thoughts, and you start to get back in touch with that generator of your thoughts, which we call the observer. And from the place of being in the observer, you are freed up from all of the conditioning and all of the excuse my language, all the crap that's been laid up on you that identifies you to be the person who the world says you are, and you start wondering, well, who do I want to say I am? And it's that kind of access. You know, A lot of people ask me, well, you know you meditate a lot. Do you get angry? Yeah? I get angry. I get angry, and I get pissed off, and I get frustrated. But even as I'm angry because I've been meditating, I can

15:04 also at the very same time, I can watch my anger. I can be angry and experience all of the experiences of life, and at the same time I can be watching it and thinking, well, you know, maybe I'm going a little bit too far here, maybe I would pull back a little bit, or afterwards I'm thinking, gee, you know, that really was the most helpful way to react, and it gives me the opportunity maybe the next time, or the next time or the next time, to maybe modify that behavior a little bit. So it's it's it's all of that, and anybody can do it as long as they're not wrapped up in this idea that I have to quiet my mind.

15:51 So here's here's the question. Sorry, that was a long answer. I'm so sorry. So using music work, it's about using music and what's your thoughts. I mean, I've read different things about binaro beach and how effected they can be versus selfeggio frequencies and how effected they can be. Even guided meditations. What are your thoughts about those different types of meditations and is there one that seems to work better for your students than others. Okay, so we always start out with guided meditations, and my advice to my students is listen to the guidance until it gets in the way of the practice. In other words, listen to the guidance you know and follow the instructions until you know the instructions well enough so that you're not in time or you're not in step with the guidance, and it seems to be getting in the way, then let it go. As far as music and the like, I think we have to distinguish between relaxation and meditation. Now, relaxation is nothing to shake a stick at. I mean, relaxation is a vital part of our existence.

17:17 You know. We have to give the brain a break from thinking all the time. We have to let the intuitive part, the left hemisphere. We have to allow it to do some work on its own before without being dominated by the languaging logical part of our brain. And you've probably noticed that you're trying to remember something or trying to think of an idea or put something together and you can't. Then you've taken a shower and in the middle of the shower it comes to you. That's because your brain has been working on it sublingually. And then when you relax, it allows the sympathetic nervous system to cut in and how it jumps up to your consciousness. We see the world more broadly when we relax. When we're anxious and stressed, our mind narrows and constricts to focus on solving the problem that's causing us the stress. But when we relax, we see the world more broadly. Our peripheral vision actually increases, so we literally see the world more broadly. So music and other mechanisms that help us get into a relaxed state actually are vital components of having an effective and efficient mind. But they're not the same as meditation.

18:49 Meditation. Well, and that was going to be my question. So you get to the relaxed state, and then are you able to then move forward into meditation or you have to turn off the music in order for that meditation to actually occur. Now you can have music in the background while you meditate. You can you can be on a bus or in a crowd, you know, or waiting, you know, waiting in line at the grocery store. And meditation, all meditation is is stepping out of your thoughts and watching your thoughts. So as you, as you studied with Master Nee and obviously a lot of meditation, and now you're teaching meditation, what is in your mind the outcome that we should be seeking for. And it may not be just a defined outcome, but what is the point of meditation, and what does it do for us if we're really willing to get in and do it on a consistent basis.

19:47 Resiliency you don't get as shaken by life is, I would say, is the main thing. And because you don't get shaken by life, you're not on a roller coaster, And because you're not on a roller coaster, your ups and downs tend to smooth out a bit. And because of that, you see life as much more of going with the flow than paddling upstream. Well, and you hear a lot of people talk about experiences they've had through meditation, whether it's healing that occurs within their body or out of the body experiences and so forth. I've never experienced that through my meditation. But what happens when they're experiencing that and how deep have they gotten into meditation to be able to experience that, or what is that exactly?

20:47 Yeah, So there are different kinds of meditation, like contra meditation and transcendental meditation, which specifically focus on alter huring your state of consciousness. I wish I could answer your question, but I've never I've never gone into that practice. The practice that I've been in has just been simply mindful meditation, insightful meditation. Okay, so really becoming mindful, becoming aware of those thoughts, recognizing that you're not your thoughts, but they're there, and then being able to let those go and not have them affect you as deeply. Is that a fair assessment of the type of meditation You're Yeah.

21:32 And you learn to be less judgmental, And there are meditations specifically to cultivate loving kindness, sympathetic joy, wisdom, empathy, compassion. There are specific meditations to do that. And one of the things that's interesting that now brain science is affirming it's like the monks of a thousand years ago knew it. But here's the interesting piece. A lot of us want to say, I need to be less negative. Can't do it, You cannot do it. Brain science says that the electrical activity that's in your right prefrontal cortex is your fight flight response, your negativity, your survival instincts, all of that.

22:28 It's nearly impossible to reduce the electrical activity over there. But if it's imbalanced, if there's so much more on the right side than the left side. You're going to go. You're going to be very negative and cynical and unhappy if you can. So you can't reduce it over here, but what you can do is you can build up the energy over here. So whether it's meditation, or whether it's jogging, or whether it's doing crossword puzzles, or whether it's taking a walk with your dog, whatever it is that builds up your sense of connectedness and belonging and optimism and hope and goodness. We have to intentionally cultivate those things so that are both sides of our brain aer balanced. And when that happens, you take care of the interior world and the exterior world starts to take care of itself.

23:28 So you've written a couple of books, Children of Abraham and I Am the Way, Yes, what motivated you to write those? And I'd love to have us talk maybe a little bit about each of those and what was the message behind each of those books. So after nine to eleven occurred, and before then and since then, you know, we see a lot of people going and even today we have a lot of Christian nationalisms and Muslim Islamic nationalism and like. And I have no idea what the nature, makeup or personage of God is, whether God is self conscious or thinking. I have no idea.

24:20 It's above my pay grade. But for the sake of my novel, let's say that God is a thinking being, and I would wonder if he sees all these people running around doing these pretty horrible things in his name, if he would say, yeah, not my intention. So as an experiment in Children of Abraham, I bring God down to the earth in the form of ticker tape messages that appear in Times Square and other ticker tapes around the world, and on the bottom of your TV screen. He's mess just from God. Start appearing. People and see it in their own native languages. Miracles start happening. And will it make a difference in the world? I have some my characters are flawed with addictions and arrogances and sloth and slovenliness and the like. And the question I guess of the book is you know what kind of law is redeemable? Who would pay attention? And would the world even care? It was just an experiment of thought, and then I said, well, let's play with it, and it wound up being a book, which I'm really happy to say was I self published. But now it's been picked up by a national publisher. So it's it's being

25:51 regenerated by Kendall Hunt. And the message and the message. Is, yeah, let's not be hypocritical and and let's let's let's if we if we feel that there is a force of good in the world and that it's worthy, however you may perceive it, let's abide by it. Yeah, okay, And what about I am the way that can get. Yeah interesting, So I am the way. So you know, you already know that I. I I grew up as a nontheist and then went to Dallas. And when I came to North Carolina, there aren't a lot of Dallas, so I started tending Buddhist groups. And then, funny you would say, I wound up marrying a Southern Baptist Bible literalist.

26:53 It was It was really kind of funny because her family kept asking her if she was going to be yoke to a heathen, and I had to go and pass the mustard test with her pastor, and so it was fun It was a funny thing. But my wife is truly a saint. She's the kind of person that when she sees the need and sees someone that needs to be helped. I mean, there's not even a debate in her mind. She just moves into it and takes care of it. And I think we shared the same question of life. Have we done it off? And that's where we meet. And so the one thing that we could not talk about really was our beliefs because I had trouble with her science, so to speak, biblical science, and she had trouble with myself because it was just weird.

27:53 And so it was an area that we could not come together on. But as she would come back from church on Sundays and tell me about the sermon and the like, I started to notice that there were things that she was saying. In Taoism, the seminole book is called a Dowda jing, which means the classical book of the Way of Virtue, and there's eighty one chapters. And I would think, oh, well, that's just like this chapter, and that's just like this, or that's just like this sutra in Buddhism, and the similarities blew me away. So I said, maybe I can do something with this. And I started looking at the Dowda DJing with the eighty one chapters, and I'd take a couplet or maybe four or five lines, and then start looking in the Bible.

28:50 And the more I did this, the more impressed I was. Not necessarily with the historical, with the stories, and certainly not with a life out of the institutional religion, but as far as the teachings go and the wisdom of the Bible, it blew me away. So I started reimagining the lesson that I had in the Jing that was written by loud Zeus five hundred years before Jesus, and I would find similar in the Bible and rewrite it in Christian terms. And every time I did it, she goes, oh, I get that. And we would have these wonderful discussions and get into our cosmologies really deeply, and it was such a bonding thing that I was just motivated to go on and do the next chapter, in the next chapter, in the next chapter. Finally I did all eighty one chapters, and it wound up to be a Christian devotional without any of the dogma of institutional religion, without any of the exclusivity my way or the highway stuff, but just the pure teachings of Jesus Christ said in a different cadence and kind of with a different feel to it, more like that pithy Confucius like sayings. And she would

30:22 read it and she said, you know, my pastors have always taught me about you know, the Seven Tribes and Jehovah and Jerusalem and all the history and everything else, but none of them has ever taught me to appreciate Jesus the way what you've written has been. Yeah, And I love that. I absolutely love that. I you know, one of the things I've done is similarly with Buddhism, is trying to compare the basic teachings Buddhism and saying that you know what that if you get if you get rid of the religion, you get rid of all of the stuff that's been pushed through religion and get to the true teachings. They're so similar. Yeah, And you know, there's different levels and certainly slightly different messages that go on, but if you really look at it, there's a basis of truth, of the goodness of man, and how they can become that point of as you say, as you moved, you know, one of compassion, one of kindness, wanting to give back to the community, all of those types of things. It's all similar, and yeah, for some reason, the world says no, if I'm this, you're wrong or you know, and we see all of these wars occurring because of it.

31:51 Yeah, it seems like such a waste of energy. Yeah, yeah, it really is. And you know, I'm curious because I know you. You worked with a lot of people with a lot of different type of things. One of the things that as I was reading a little bit about what you do is working with people with addictions and how you use mindfulness, meditation, whatever you want to call it to help people overcome their addictions. What is that process that you have found to be successful through that way. So I would say that that meditation doesn't take the place of a good program like a twelve step program, and it doesn't take the place of therapy, but it does turbocharge them. It is a wonderful addition. It's like bestally, I can say it turbo charges them, and I can.

32:51 For example, if a person is in CBT cognitive behavioral therapy, what you're going to be learning is that something happens and you have a thought and because of whatever that thought is, and it usually only lasts for a brief moment before it turns into an emotion or a feeling, and then based on that feeling, that kind of determines what your response to that action is going to be. And so CBT really talks about trying to identify the thought that you have before you respond, and if you can grab a hold of that thought and maybe change the thought, maybe you can change your reaction. So that's the whole kind of you know, CBT in a nutshell.

33:45 So with meditation, where we actually practice watching our thoughts, it turbocharges the therapy that you know, a turbocharge is someone who's speaking to a therapy is who can easily and much more easily begin to identify the thoughts that they have when things happen. One of the processes that we go through a meditation, it's not just watching your thoughts. As you gain skill in doing that, then we start classifying our thoughts. And we have the thought, we don't just watch it. We say, oh, that's a betting thought, you know when you think, I bet this guy's gonna blah blah blah, or that's a remorseful thought, or that's a projecting I'm projecting there, or that's a judging thought.

34:42 So we start to classify our thoughts and as we classify them, it's kind of like organizing a messy desk. And although we may not have really done any tasks, because our thoughts are now recognizable as falling into category, they're kind of organized. Our mind starts to get organized, and so that whole process helps us to become more aware of the consequences of our actions, because we're living in real time. And the thing that really helps people to work out of their addictions is being able to connect what I do to the consequence of it, because mostly addiction is all about doing what you're doing and not even want to thinking about the consequences and the like.

35:40 And when you start to be able to look at it non judgmentally so that it's not threatening, you could be with it. You know. One of the old adages we have is what you resist persists, but what you can be with will let you be. Oh, I like that one. I like that one. So you know, it's interesting to me because as you're talking about meditation, and like I say, as I've talked to different people about meditation, you know, you talk about what about brings those reactions, what brings those thoughts and so forth, and there are those that suggest that through meditation and through perhaps you know, individual coaching or therapy, you can get back to those imprints that came about early childhood, or even for those that are willing to accept it, even generational imprints through DNA that tend to be there.

36:40 And we can't understand why on Earth am I acting this way until we get into that. So what are your thoughts about, how can meditation help with that? Or is meditation merely and adjunct to seeing someone who can guide us in a correct way? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that that's very true. I think that when we're born, you, well, you and I will both remember the old blackboards. You know, now we have whiteboards everywhere. We remember the old blackboards, and remember when they were real new and you wrote on it with a piece of chalk. You couldn't erase it. It was like imprinted into the blackboard. The only thing you could do was write on it and erase and right on an erase.

37:29 Finally it became a gray board, but those initial chalk marks, they were still down there. And I kind of think of our brain the same way that when we're young, there's a lot of impressions and thoughts and feelings and emotions that are like those first chalk marks, and then we live life and it all becomes lost under kind of a fog of grayness. But if you meditate, and it doesn't have I mean the first time, you know, the first few months of meditation, you're just excited to learn a new skill. It's kind of like if you learn to play tennis, you're just excited to get the ball over the net, right, You're not worried about winning the game. You're just you're just happy to be able to hit the ball. And meditations kind of like that.

38:19 But as you progress, those that fog starts to lift. And that's why, you know, for a person that takes the practice on seriously, there's nothing like an experienced, you know, several year meditating coach. There's nothing like a coach. I mean, you can go to apps, you can have you can have books, you know, you can do a lot of self study, you can do all that, but at some point they're nothing like a coach. Amen to that. Amen to that. So as we close, what would what would be a message that you would really like to share with the audience. I would say that don't be your small self. You know most of us are satisfied with you know, our kind of identity, which I call that our small self.

39:15 And we are so much more. We are so much more than that. There is so much more in life that is available. Once we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we can allow ourselves to adventure out to experience awe and beauty, to open the heart. I would say, if you could live your life this way, have a strong back, but a soft heart. Amen. And how do people find you? Bob? Well, if you're interested in meditation, I just put together a little forty foot forty page book that's free. It's an ebook, and you can email me at Bob at a wisanhappylife dot com, or you can just go to my website a wiseanhappylife dot com.

40:17 And then they can download that book on meditation. So you talk about how do we learn to meditate better? The name of it is is meditation? For me? What it is, what it isn't, how to do it? And how to do it? Okay? Cool? And your books, how do they find your books in general? Other than the free one. They can go on to that website and there's our links, or they could go to I Am the Way book dot com. Wonderful, well, Bob, thank you. This has been interesting. You know, I've not really had anyone that can get so in depth about meditation and how we do it and why we do it and so on and so forth. So I really appreciate your insights on this. Well.

41:03 Thank you for I mean, this is my passion, so I thank you for allowing me to do what I love doing. Uh you bet, folks, thanks for listening. I hope you really enjoyed this, and please go to those websites in particularly A Wise and Happy life dot com and really, you know, download the book and learn a little bit more about meditation and see if that is something that can be effective for you. So this is doctor Doug saying, have a wonderful week, and no mistay, no mistake,