Speaker 1 · 0:03Welcome everyone. I'm Sean Fargo with Mindfulness Exercises in conversation today with Jake Eagle, author of The Power of Awe. He co-wrote this with Michael Amster, who we had a conversation with about a month ago. It was a wonderful conversation about mindfulness and awe. And it went so well that I thought, you know, let's talk to Jake too, who was his co-author for The Power of Awe. Jake was a licensed mental health counselor for the past 27 years and now practices as a meta-therapist, exploring what comes after therapy. Although Jake recognizes the value of therapy, he also recognizes the limitations and has developed a method that accelerates and simplifies the process of personal growth. Individuals and couples can experience his work in live sessions or via a digital platform. Jake is the author of Get Weird, Make the Most of Your Life, and co-founder of Liveconscious.com, a community of people practicing skills for living and loving more consciously. Jake, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you today.
Speaker 2 · 1:29Likewise, nice to be here. I've been looking forward to this because I know Michael had a good time with you.
Speaker 1 · 1:34It was fun. Yeah. I'm curious about how, say, traditional therapy can evolve and how we can bring more efficacy to how we help people with their mental health and say spirituality or just consciousness. But you know, you've been in this field for decades. You are a thinker and someone who's wanting to move the needle on how we help people. So I'm just curious if you could say more about that and any other say techniques that you found that would be helpful for healers of any kind. But can you maybe say a little bit about how you think, say, traditional therapy might be able to be more effective?
Speaker 2 · 2:24Yeah, I'd be happy to talk about this. This is really probably my bigger passion because I've been a therapist for 30 years. I started out incredibly optimistic. I loved being a therapist and felt really good about doing the work for the first 20 years. But I've grown a little bit jaded and discouraged because when I look at the big picture in terms of how I see people treating one another, treating themselves, I don't feel like we're making a lot of progress. And more people than ever are in therapy. The self-help movement is huge, but I still feel like we're not moving the needle enough or even in the right direction. I think part of what's happened is people are becoming too self-absorbed and narcissistic, constantly self-reflecting and asking questions that aren't productive. And the model that I developed with my wife about 10 years ago identifies three levels of consciousness. It's a very simple model. It says that there's the first level of consciousness, which is safety. And that's where we live most of the time. We're productive, we're outcome-oriented, we're taking care of business, we're taking care of your three-year-old daughter, you're making sure your family's safe, making sure you're going to make enough money, whatever it is you need to do to make sure everyone is safe. And it's a very essential state of consciousness. There's nothing good or bad about it. It's how we conduct ourselves when we are in that state of consciousness. But we often don't conduct ourselves terribly well because it involves scarcity, it involves competition, it stimulates defensiveness because there's a sense that I have to take care of myself. Everybody's thinking I have to take care of myself. But we generally live in safety consciousness. And my concern about therapy is almost all of it occurs in safety consciousness. So client comes in and they say, Here's my problem. This is what so-and-so did to me. And oftentimes the therapist will validate that by saying, That sounds very difficult. I'm sorry that happened to you. And let's talk more about it. That reifies the experience that the client has. My approach to that is to encourage the client to shift their level of consciousness and recognize the way they were seeing it, the way they were talking about it, was simply one perspective. It is not the truth. And I don't even pretend that there is a truth, but it is not the truth. It is one perspective. And the extraordinary thing about people is how malleable meaning is. We can make meaning in so many different ways. The second level of consciousness is heart consciousness, where we open our hearts and we see and connect to ourselves and other people with more tenderness and greater compassion. And as soon as we shift into that state, we do see the world in a different way. And we can spend, I believe we can spend a lot more time in heart consciousness and still be productive and still take care of business and still get things done. The third level of consciousness, we call it spacious consciousness. And it's something that's been talked about for thousands of years. Many contemplative practices are designed to help people go to a state of spaciousness. But what I think is remarkable about the awe method is I can take myself to spaciousness in 15 seconds. Literally, I can take myself there in 15 seconds. It's not difficult to do. I have to build the muscle. But when I go to spaciousness and I have this diminishment of ego and self and this sense of expansion and connection with I don't know what. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 · 7:08Yeah, language is crucial for this. When you talk about meaning and how meaning is very malleable for us, you know, as a healer, as a therapist, how do you navigate how someone chooses their meaning? Is it a co-creating of their meaning? Is it something that bubbles up internally within them? Is there some form of guidance to possible meanings that may be healthy? How do you navigate that for someone who may find that if someone chose a meaning for something and then that kind of dissolves because they reframe the situation? Well, now what meaning do I put to it? How do you navigate that for someone who may have lost their past sense of meaning to something and now needs to discover a new way to find meaning of something?
Speaker 2 · 8:17I want to help people connect meaning to their values. So it's still subjective, but the question is: if you've been making meaning in a particular way and it's caused conflict and tension in your life, you're no longer happy with who you are and how you relate with people, how do you want to relate with people? Well, I want to relate with more compassion. Okay. So now we go into a relationship and you're describing how things are going. I'm going to tie that back to do you feel compassion? Are you eliciting your own compassion based on the way you're defining and making meaning of the interaction? Because it doesn't sound like you are. You sound like you're being very judgmental and harsh and critical, which doesn't really connect with your desire to be compassionate. So can you talk about this from the point of connection you have with your desire to be compassionate? What would that sound like? And oftentimes, prior to that, in the work that I do and that my wife and I do, we'll want to have people go through experiential activities that really drive home the point that meaning is made up, that meaning is malleable. And I believe that's actually best done in groups. I'm a huge proponent of group therapy or group events where people are working on their own development. Because when we see when we're in a group, it doesn't matter what size it is, but I like groups of about 20 people, because there's enough diversity that you can see how different people make different meaning of the same event. And if you're with those people for some amount of time and you come to appreciate or respect them, you start to see it's fascinating how that person is making meaning in a different way than the way I make meaning. They found an event threatening that I thought was funny. And it just starts to create more porosity in our mind. We open up, we relax, we stop being so attached to our idea of what's right or wrong or good or bad. And all of those binary and dualistic distinctions, I think, are driven from the primitive part of our brain, where we're basically designed to make decisions very rapidly: good, bad, right, wrong, safe, not safe. And we're trying to help people shift to activate what I call the modern brain or the prefrontal cortex, which is where we have choice, we have options. It's really where we do create meaning. And if we can make that shift, the world opens up, choices open up, new possibilities arise.
Speaker 1 · 11:06Yeah. It's interesting that you like the group dynamic. Do you think there's also this added element of being witnessed as you share, say, your new meaning that you share, the new levels of consciousness that you're exploring and being and feeling witnessed from a group that may help validate or solidify, or can you talk about that power of feeling and being witnessed in that group way that helps further the change and the growth?
Speaker 2 · 11:52Yeah, my mentor, his name was John Weir, and he actually developed a linguistic model called Percept. And if people are interested in it, it's a fascinating way to communicate where we're really talking in verbs all the time. Everything is in motion. And there is some reason to believe that the original Pali language that at the time of the Buddha was really a verbing language. People didn't talk about nirvana as a place, it was nirvana as a process. And really, it would be nirvana-ing myself, right? It's not a place to get to and stop. So, John, who was a mentor for many years, talked about the fact that he didn't believe people could change if they weren't witnessed. He believed that witnessing was an essential component of change. And that's why he did all of his work in groups. And that's why my wife and I mostly work with groups. And what we do, this is kind of an intriguing part, is you know, you said maybe it's because people are validated, and they may be, but when we work with groups, we never have people tell other people about them. So if one person in the group is representing how they're doing, other people are there, they're observing, they're witnessing, but they will never tell you about you. They may tell you what their experience is in terms of how they feel when they listen to you, but they never tell you about you. So you're left with your own experience of yourself. But the way that the witnessing occurs that I think is so profound is that you come to a group and you share something about yourself that's intimate and very personal, and all of these people are there. And an hour later, you're having lunch with them, or you're out on the beach playing with them, or you're singing with them, whatever it is. But there's this profound sense of being part of community and being seen and accepted, much of which is nonverbal. And I think that's a great part of the power of where the depth of the work comes from.
Speaker 1 · 14:02Beautiful. Yeah, I'm thinking of offering some in-person retreats shortly, and I'm playing around with these typical retreat structures and thinking of say being strategic around how a one-day retreat could go versus two three-day retreats and the different types of modalities that could be woven in. So I may knock on your door sometime to have a conversation about how we may be able to structure something for maximum efficacy.
Speaker 2 · 14:36I'd be happy to have that conversation. I will tell you one thing that we have found is that the longer programs are much more profound. So we're doing five and six and seven-day programs. And another thing that we've done is everyone's anonymous. And the reason we do that, you come to the retreat and you choose a name for the week, whatever name you'd like. And you can change it during the week. But the reason we do that is because you never tell your story. You never start off saying, you know, my name's Sean, and I used to be a businessman, and then I became a monk, and then I started to work at Spirit Rock. Because as soon as you do that, you start to constrict and limit both yourself and the way other people see you. So we want you to come and say, hi, my name is New Father, and I'm happy to be here and connect with all of you. And that's it. And nobody knows whether you're a businessman or whether you were a monk or you weren't a monk or whether you have money or you don't have money. It's a very fresh way to interact with people.
Speaker 1 · 15:40Yeah, absolutely. I did a Hoffman process retreat last year, and in the pre-retreat booking, they'd asked me what my parents called me when I was a kid, which was pup, P-U-P, like otter pup. And I get to the retreat thinking, you know, I'm gonna be Sean. And they gave me a name tag that said pup on it, and I just about died. I'm like, people are gonna know me as pup. And I almost left. But after about a day or two, I thought, you know, this is so freeing to not be Sean Fargo, you know, and no one shared their story, and so by the end of the retreat, everyone was speculating what the histories were of each person and what people did for a living. But it was so freeing to not carry my story with me, but to rather sense into a new way of being and a new way of communicating and not say relying on my resume or defaulting to the four bullet points that I always share about what people want to know.
Speaker 2 · 16:55So nice. I didn't know that about the Hoffman process. I love that.
Speaker 1 · 16:59Yeah.
Speaker 2 · 17:00The only difference with what we're doing is we're having people choose their own name as opposed to have it chosen for you, but I understand their intention. I like that.
Speaker 1 · 17:08Yeah, yeah. What else would you like to share? Like, what would you like people to know? What would you like to share with people, either in terms of therapy or their practice? I know we could probably talk for another couple hours and maybe we'll have another conversation, but any final thoughts or words?
Speaker 2 · 17:32Yeah, I think the main thing I want to communicate to people is that the process of personal growth and personal development doesn't have to be hard. And I don't think that the answer is predominantly in looking back and trying to resolve our past. I do think that's a small portion of the journey. But at a certain point, I think it's much more about being present, and it's much more about how we behave. And I don't think there's enough emphasis on that. I developed a model recently, and I'll just give you the brief version of it. But there's a converse relationship between how much self-regard people have and how reactive they are. So, scale of one to 10, if my self-regard, in other words, I like myself at the level of an eight, my reactivity is very likely going to be low, like a one or two. If my self-regard is a four, my reactivity is probably very high. And so if we can put more emphasis on how we behave and behaving in a way, conducting ourselves in a way that we feel good about, I think we move ourselves significantly towards greater health and well-being. And what I find so interesting is that almost every time I've seen somebody behave poorly and I'm around and I can intervene and I say to them, How would you like to behave? What would be a better way to handle yourself? They almost always know the answer. Once in a while, somebody's confused, but the vast majority of the time they say, Well, I wish I had X, Y, or Z. And then I go to the place. Well, you can, you can. And I just think that we've made the whole process too heavy and too clumsy and too limiting, as if it's hard. I also don't believe that relationships are hard, which I know a lot of people do believe. And I always say if you believe they're hard, there's a good chance, A, they will be, and that you will tolerate them being hard. But if you don't think they have to be hard, then you're not as likely to tolerate when they are difficult. And almost always there's a short way to get to health, to get to maturity, to get to love. I don't think it's a long journey. But I feel relatively alone with this perspective. I don't hear a lot of people talking about it.
Speaker 1 · 20:09Well, let's change that. Yeah, I think I'm inclined to agree with everything you said. And that's all like good news too. And maybe it's a little more pleasant than some people think it is. Or it's not as bad as people think it has to be. Yeah, and when you were talking about that word spaciousness came back to mind that if we hold relationships with a little bit more space, the answers tend to come a little bit more clearly. And I think when we hold ourselves in high regard or higher regard, almost by default, there's a widening of perspective or widening of spaciousness. It doesn't feel so dense. So I think this element of spaciousness is perhaps one of those key ingredients to a lot of what you're saying, and can understand why it may be what a synonym for consciousness or a gateway to consciousness. You know, and that's our mission is to help increase or enhance our consciousness for the sake of all being. Thank you for writing this book, The Power of Awe. Thank you for your wonderful thoughts and wisdom around how we can help people live with greater consciousness and love and self-regard. And I hope that those of you listening check out the power of awe, check out Jake Eagle and his pursuits to help people maybe attend one of his retreats, and also to practice microdosing mindfulness and to see how it can impact your life in a myriad ways, from personal life to work life to spiritual health and well-being. When I do practice it, I feel changed and more spacious. So, Jake, I really appreciate you bringing this practice to so many people, especially those who are really struggling with depression, chronic pain, anxiety, loneliness. And there's certainly so many of us struggling with that. So thank you for your wisdom, your compassion, and thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 2 · 22:52Thank you. I just want to remind people that this can be easy. It's easy. And thank you, Sean. I appreciate the way you embody what it is we're talking about.
