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You leave your nature to serve your culture, and what that does is it splits you in two.
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So, you're no longer in integrity, you're in duplicity.
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But you don't actually even know it with the conscious mind.
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You feel it in the heart, you feel it in the body and the soul, but the mind is clueless.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
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Now, you know that this podcast is dedicated to try and serve you with insights, thought leaders, thinkers, teachers, and guides that can help us all elevate our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls.
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And today, I'm joined by the one and only Martha Beck.
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She's a Harvard-trained sociologist, world-renowned coach, and New York Times best-selling author.
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She's written nine books and a novel, and her latest book, The Way of Integrity, will be out this spring.
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Martha is also a life coach and contributor to the O Magazine.
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Her work and multifaceted career has amazed me for years, and I'm so excited to talk to her today about integrity, befriending suffering parts, taking new ones, and changing parts of our life.
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Martha, it's truly an honor uh and privilege to be with you today, and I'm so glad that we're getting to discuss uh your amazing new book, The Way of Integrity, Finding the Path to Your True Self.
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Uh such an important topic, such an important book at this time.
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Thank you for doing this podcast.
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Oh my goodness, the honor is all mine, Jay. I'm a big fan.
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Well, I I really do look forward to meeting you in person.
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I I I feel your energy through the screen already and and through your voice.
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And I wanted to start actually with a quote I saw from one of your other books recently, and it's from your book called Steering uh by Starlight. And here's the quote.
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The variety of an ordinary life is infinite and precious.
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Uh and I read that and and it really struck me because I feel that a lot of what I read today is always challenging me to be extraordinary.
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Or a lot of what I come across or what we see on social media and Instagram is asking people to think big and vast.
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And when I looked at this quote, I'm not saying that it's opposite to any of those ideas.
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I just wanted to understand from you uh what you mean by an ordinary life.
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And and why is that such a infinite and precious thing and why is that quote so powerful? So, let's start there.
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The idea is that definitely culturally we are urged to seek the extremes.
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And what is called happiness, particularly in American culture, but I would say culture around the world now, is actually mania.
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And the the points that are supposed to be our happiest times are points where we're actually when I work with clients, they're actually feeling super stressed.
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In my latest book, I talk about this guy who made $400 million in one day when his company went public and he called me at 3:00 in the morning completely stoned.
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This rock band you know, famous rock band in the background and he was screaming into the phone, "It isn't enough!
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When's it going to be enough?"
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And I was like, "Dude, all you really like is hiking.
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Maybe go for a hike sometime."
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So, that idea that everything's supposed to be super spectacular works against us.
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And the opposite of that, not really the opposite, but the alternative is peace.
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And I have coached everybody from people in prison, murderers, billionaires, successful celebrities, homeless people.
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Every single one of them resonates to the to the idea I am meant to live in peace.
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That is the one thing that feels true to every single person that I've ever coached.
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And peace is boring to the mania mind, or as you would call it the monkey mind instead of the monk mind, yeah?
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So, the monk mind goes for peace, yeah?
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So, peace is flat and dull to the mania mind and to the culture.
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But when you go there, when you meditate every day, you sit, you know, I spent several years out living in a forest and I would go out and meditate every day.
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And birds would land on me, for example.
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I guess that's not completely ordinary, but I did sprinkle myself with bird seed, I have to confess.
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When that happened, I remember the first time a bird landed on my knee while I was meditating, this little bird, and he looked up at my eyes.
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And the the love I felt between the two of us just exploded my universe.
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It was the most incredible thing.
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Little gray bird, nothing special about it.
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And that started to that feeling started to come into everything.
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A sip of tea, I mean, there was a lemon tree, I'd pick a lemon and my heart would explode with the experience of it because the mania mind was finally quiet.
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And once you get get to peace or ordinariness, you find that it is vast and much more interesting than the the heights, which are weirdly dull when they if you repeat them too many times, they get very dull. Wow, yeah.
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I mean, so much to unpack there and and so much to look at because I find that before I was working with people like the ones that you were mentioning.
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So, for for a lot part long part of my life, I worked with homeless communities and charity projects and individuals and uh young people uh whether they were in, you know, coming out of uh gang violence or college issues or or or early drug use or whatever it may
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have been and then when you do work with someone who's wealthy and successful and they have that moment that you just explained of 400 million in in one day from exiting their company and you know, having this moment and it not being enough. A lot of people will stop and say, well,
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A lot of people will stop and say, well, that's easy for them to say because they already have it.
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But explain to me that that that interesting thing that's happening.
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And and in your in your book that we're talking about the way of integrity, uh you talk about the desperation for success.
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And and I thought that word is so true.
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There's this desperation for success that exists within all of us whether we are successful or not successful or on the road.
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Why is it that desperation so damaging and destructive for us?
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Well, what this whole book is about it's called the the way of integrity and integrity doesn't mean what most people think it does at least not here.
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It comes from the word integer which means one thing and being in integrity is being whole and undivided.
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So there's no part of you that's divided from your true self.
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So when people get when they're socialized to do something like seek a certain type of success.
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If that's not according to your true nature and your culture pulls you toward it, you leave your nature to serve your culture and what that does is it splits you in two.
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So you're no longer in integrity, you're in duplicity.
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But you don't actually even know it with the conscious mind.
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You feel it in the heart, you feel it in the body and the soul, but the mind is clueless because it's a cultural tool.
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That's why I love the saying that the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.
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So when we go to serve our cultural ideas of what joy is, we leave our true nature and always but always that causes suffering which is a a huge gift because suffering is the only thing that will get our attention enough to say, "Wait, I need to change my life."
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So, if it weren't suffering, we would not pay attention to it and we would never find the path of our right self, our true self, our one individual path that no one else can ever have.
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Um so, yeah, being in whole and in integrity often means turning off cultural noises and tuning back into one's own true nature.
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I love that distinction you make between nature and culture and how our culture can pull us away from nature.
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That's that's so beautifully said.
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How do we find a culture that reflects our nature?
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Because I find that that's probably one of the most difficult things that we all want to be in a culture, I guess that's natural to want to be around others that encourage us to become more of our true selves.
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And I've definitely found that in my own spiritual tradition that I follow and and the work that I've done.
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Uh but I also found that even sometimes that culture was taking me away from my true self as well.
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And so, how do we start to create the community and culture to suit our nature?
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You began by asking, "How do we find the culture that matches our nature?"
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Now, I'm not meaning culture in the sense of, you know, British culture versus American culture.
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I mean, anytime there are two people in a room, culture is the third guest at the table, right?
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Every couple has a culture, every family has a culture, ethnicity, whatever.
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There is no culture that is exactly aligned with your true nature. It It just can't happen.
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But as you said, we're social primates, so we we have this biological desperation to be in culture, connected to other creatures like ourselves.
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In every single case, there will come a moment when you leave your nature to serve that culture.
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And it may just be a little bit, which is fine.
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But as you said, like you left the city culture in London wasn't serving your spiritual self, went to become a monk.
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Clearly that didn't totally serve your whole self either. Agreed. Agreed.
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And what you are doing is not finding a culture, but leading a culture.
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So, you come out of those two experiences and you say, "I will create something that is true to myself."
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And I love your story in Think Like a Monk about giving your first presentation to an empty room on a college campus and just nobody showed up and you still gave the presentation. That's what you did.
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You were purely in your true nature and you didn't care if culture came to be with you at the table or not.
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You didn't care if there was anyone else in the room, you were going to serve your nature and initially nobody came.
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But truth, integrity is the sweetest thing that a human being can find.
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It's the most precious energy. It is peace.
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And so, as you stayed in that energy, you didn't make other people like you, you showed by being yourself how other people could be themselves.
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So, you create a culture in which the only ironclad rule is we all support each other in our uniqueness. And that's new.
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That I think is a new cultural form that if it get hits a critical mass in our population today, our global population, could actually save the ecosystems, stop war, stop ethnic violence.
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It's a new phenomenon and in sociology and your life is an example of how it happens. And I hope mine is, too.
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No, I'm I mean yours definitely is.
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Thank you, that's very kind of you.
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I'm I'm touched by your wonderful encouragement.
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It It means the world to me hearing that from you and uh it's it it it's definitely fun living it and figuring it out.
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And and I think you know I've I've had moments in my life where you rightly said where I was trying to make something me and it wasn't me and then I was trying to become something that I wasn't and that wasn't me.
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And then eventually you kind of settle and let go and go, "All right, let me just be myself."
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Uh because because that's where I feel most peace as as you rightly said.
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Tell me about how I want to go into a few concepts that I love from the book, but tell me about how someone can know, right now if they're listening, if someone's listening or watching us right now and they're thinking, "Martha, this is really resonating with me.
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This is really connecting with me."
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How does someone know whether they're in integrity or or feeling unaligned and out of integrity or out of balance in their life?
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How does someone know because I feel that that diagnosis is almost the trickiest thing to do because you don't just go to a doctor and get a scan.
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It's it's something you have to do for yourself I'm guessing or working with a coach of course.
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Uh but please please walk me through that and walk us through that.
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How can someone know whether they feel they're aligned or not?
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Yeah, the first thing is uh that you have to notice if there's any degree of discomfort whatsoever, emotional, psychological, physical.
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Um one of the things I do when I speak in public, there would be people in the audience and I'd stop right in the middle of a speech and say, "Is everyone comfortable?"
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And they'd be like, "Well, yes, of course."
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And I'd say, "No, seriously, are you really comfortable?"
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And they would say, "Yes, go on with your speech."
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And then I'd say, "If you were at home in your bedroom with no one else there, how many of you would be sitting in the position you're in right now?"
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And no one raises a hand.
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And then I would say, "Why?"
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And it would take them like 5 minutes to kind of go, "Oh, it's not that comfortable."
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And the problem is not that they were uncomfortable, because people can survive a lot.
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The problem is that they their bodies knew they were uncomfortable and their minds did not.
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They looked me dead in the eyes in clear daylight and lied and did not know it. That's duplicity.
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The culture says to learn you sit in chairs like this and and it goes through a filter. Are you comfortable?
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Given that I am forced to sit in this really uncomfortable chair in a fairly uncomfortable position, this is tolerable.
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But the way the brain thinks of it is this is comfortable.
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So, the way I get to someone's integrity is what I call a sense of truth and you used the word alignment, which is really important.
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A lot of traditional cultures divide the self into body, mind, heart and soul.
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So, you start with the body, make sure the body is the body comfortable and relaxed, because whenever we tell the truth, I don't know if you know this, everything in our bodies strengthens.
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Whenever we lie, everything gets weaker.
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Our muscles get weaker, we blink more rapidly, our heart needs go up, we perspire more.
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Um if you want to weaken someone, have them lie.
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They literally become physically weak.
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Um so, once you're telling your own truth, the body becomes relaxed and strong.
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Then the heart, are you emotionally okay?
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And that you could be sad or happy, but there should be an undertone of peace, peace, peace.
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You can be happy in peace and you can be sad in peace. The peace is separate.
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And then there's the soul.
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And the way the soul knows truth is does it free me or does it liberate me?
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Like the Buddha used to say, everywhere you know a body of water is the ocean, because the ocean tastes of salt and you know enlightenment, no matter what form it takes, because enlightenment tastes of freedom.
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So, the soul feels freedom, even if there's terrible fear, your pain, whatever, that freedom comes with the truth.
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The last one to the party is always the mind.
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The mind we worship is like, "What? What? Go back. I didn't get that."
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Because it's drowning in culture, right?
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But when you get the mind to say, "Oh, this makes no sense to my culture, but my body is relaxed, my heart is filled with warm and warmth and peace. My soul feels free.
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Okay, let me check the facts because they're probably going to say this is true.
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And once they're all aligned, you have what I call the sense of truth, which is like a click or a chime or a ring.
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We actually use words for that that feeling of everything is like a puzzle piece going click in the perfect place.
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And that sensation is integrity. Mhm.
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Beautiful, deep definition of integrity.
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I've definitely never heard integrity explained that way, and I I hope that's resonated with everyone listening.
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My my favorite thing that you mentioned was around how telling the truth strengthens our body, and and telling a lie weakens our body, and I think you're so right that you can you can feel that, and you can see that, and there's physical cues that you mentioned and and even on a deeper level, but tell us a bit more about uh there's this concept of Mount Delectable that you have uh from Dante's Divine Comedy in the book.
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I I want you to explain that and how it relates to integrity um because because that was something that when I was reading it, I thought, "Oh, this is really going to resonate with the with the audience."
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So, I really want you to share that with them.
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Cuz everybody's a huge Dante fan, I think. Yes, exactly, exactly.
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I have been using Dante's Divine Comedy as my own private self-help book my entire life.
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And the whole book is standing on the shoulders of this giant of um enlightenment, really.
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I think Dante had an enlightenment experience similar to the enlightenment experience of the Asian masters.
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I think it's a biological thing that happens to people.
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That's a totally different story.
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It's at the end of the book, but at the beginning of the book, if you've ever read the Divine Comedy, it starts out with him saying, "In the middle of my life, I came to myself in a dark wood, and the true way had been lost." So, he's in this forest.
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It's foggy, it's dark, it's like it's swampy, there are wild animals, and he's confused.
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He doesn't know what he's doing.
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And I think a lot of people sort of snap into consciousness at some point in their life when they've wandered from the true path, and they're miserable, and they don't know why.
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It's very foggy and swampy, but it's just not right.
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And he looks around and he sees this mountain rising out of the murk, and he calls it Mount Delectable.
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Uh Dilettoso Monte, I think is what it is.
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I don't even speak Italian.
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But, it translates to Mount Delectable, and he sees all these people climbing it, and and the sun is coming up, and the mountain looks all golden and glowy.
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And so, he's like, "That's how I get out of here.
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That's how I I get happy."
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So, he starts climbing, because this is what culture does.
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It gives us those manic high points and bathes them in a golden glow, and says, "If you get up here, you'll be happy."
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But, as he goes, ferocious beasts keep pushing him back down the mountain.
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And the ferocious beasts all have an emotional quality.
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So, there's a wolf that makes him super sad.
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There's a leopard that just makes him desperate, that word again.
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Um and there's What's the one that makes him Oh, there's a lion that is so frightening that the air is afraid of it.
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So, what happens to us when we start climbing the cultural, you know, the the pyramid, is that our emotions say, "No. No."
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And we get scared, we get anxious, we get depressed, but we don't know why.
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And it drives Dante back down the mountain, and there he meets a guide who says, "For you, for everybody, the only way out is through.
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We have to go not up, but down.
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We're going into He calls it among the lost people.
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But I read it as the lost aspects of Dante himself and of each of us.
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Part of us have a We have a lost self.
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And to get to it, we have to go into the Inferno.
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Not what one typically wants to do, but it's the only way to paradise.
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Yeah, I I I love that analogy and how it links to integrity because to me, I I've always described it as the mountain and the valley.
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And and and the idea that there's there's uh we've always felt that our journey has to be forwards and upwards.
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But actually, I think the journey is deeper and inwards.
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And and we've always felt that the skills that get us to the top, actually it's the opposite skills that let us go down the valley.
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When I was 18 and very, very depressed, it's the first time I read the Divine Comedy and I didn't care about the literature. I just wanted help.
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And what helped me so much was that he goes down through the Inferno.
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He get things get worse and worse and worse and worse.
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And they get to the very bottom, he and his guide get to the very pit of hell, which is the center of the earth, and the monster Lucifer is there trapped in a lake of ice.
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And Dante just says, well, I guess we're this is us now.
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And Virgil, his guide, says, no, no, no, keep going. The same direction.
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He's like, there's no more direction to go.
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And Virgil's like, you have to climb on the body of the monster.
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Like he has to face his worst fear.
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So, he's lowering himself down.
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And when he gets to the center of the earth, suddenly everything switches and he's going away from the center of the earth, which is up.
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He's going in the same direction, but instead of going into hell, he's now headed to heaven.
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And that was what got me through my depression when I was 18, that image. Wow.
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Well, tell us tell us a bit more about that.
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Uh I think there are a lot of young people today uh and people across any age and generation struggling with depression, struggling with anxiety, struggling with stress and and mental health challenges.
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What was it for you that was so key at that time in your life that made you feel depressed?
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And then what was it that started to be the cure for that journey?
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Yeah, the problem was that um I was raised in a culture that didn't fit my true nature at all.
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I was raised in the most Mormon of Mormon places you can imagine.
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I have very, very Mormon family.
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And it just didn't really work for me, but I tried to make it work for a very long time. Well, 18 years.
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No, I I kept trying after a while I grew up also, but I was really trying up to that time and it just wasn't working for me.
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At 17, I went off to Harvard, which is about as different from Mormon central as you can get without going to Pluto.
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So, now I was in this complete sort of atheist materialist culture and my only really strong imperative as a personality is just please everyone, right?
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So, I sort of adapted to my culture at Harvard and just sort of fit in there and then I would go back to Utah and try to fit in there.
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And these two selves were so different that I I lost my sense of what was true.
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So, I just got incredibly depressed like constant weeping, couldn't function at all.
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Almost catatonic at a certain point and I thought, I've got to figure out what's wrong with me.
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And I just started turning inward.
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I went straight into the pain.
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And I went into my inferno.
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And I went down and down and down until I found the thing that was the most painful thing to me and that thought it was the thought, I don't know what's true. Mhm.
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Cuz I I so split and anybody who's been pulled different ways by different loved ones, different jobs, different um national cultures or whatever, if you feel that lostness, that's the dark wood that Dante woke up in.
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I am so lost and I don't know why.
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And I didn't know what the answer would be, but I knew that the the pathway was into my own suffering. And it worked.
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It took a while, but it worked.
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It It sounds like that's a It's a scary journey or a journey that requires one to be okay with, as you say in the book, you know, going into the inferno and embracing that fear.
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How can people today feel more comfortable with discomfort, feel because it's strange, we're talking about getting back to our nature, but it almost takes discomfort and fear and pain to get back to that, which seems natural.
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So, it's Or explain that journey to me a bit because I'm just trying to I'm thinking about everyone who's listening and thinking, "I don't want to accept that I'm not living in my truth because that's scary.
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That means I might have to quit my job.
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It might mean I have to break up with my partner.
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It might mean that I have to move across country."
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Like it means a lot of real things.
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And you work with real people all the time.
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So, I know that you're you're greatly placed to help people.
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But that's what I'm trying to understand is is what does someone do when they're like, "Well, I can't accept the truth because the truth will ruin my life."
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We are all terrified of the truths that will take us away from the culture we belong to, the culture that makes us feel grounded in the world.
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If there's a truth that we've hidden because it doesn't work with that culture, we are terrified.
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So, where does Virgil take Dante in the dark wood of air?
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He takes into a gate and he says, "Here's where we're going in."
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And it says above the gate, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
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And Dante's like, "I don't think that's a good sign, literally."
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And Virgil just pats him on the head and says, "Trust me."
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And they go in, and it's horrible.
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So, what I like to do with clients and what I do in the book is find if you're not completely happy in your life, and I mean completely happy.
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I think we should be completely happy.
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So, find the thing you're frightened to think about.
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And you don't need to think about it yet. Just identify it.
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Like, okay, there's something about my job, and I'm scared to think of it.
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There's something about my spouse, and I'm scared to think about I don't want to think about it.
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Don't want to think about it.
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Don't want to think about it.
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The irony is that the fear is only there because we already know what's inside there.
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What's inside, as you said, what's on the other side of that may mean a divorce.
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It may mean changing a career.
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It may mean giving up Scotch, you know? And we don't want to.
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We're as comfortable as we can be, you know, clinging to our little dark wood of error things.
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But if we want to be free, the suffering gets stronger and stronger and stronger.
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And typically, there are things that, like in Dante's case, a guide shows up.
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In our case, it might be a book. It might be a teacher.
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It might be a podcast like yours.
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But something says, "Walk up to that gate. Just walk up to it."
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And for me, the scariest thing was when I was 25, and I was now getting my doctorate, so it's my third Harvard degree, and I got pregnant for the second time I was married, and my son was prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome.
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The fear was like nothing I have ever experienced.
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And I just walked around Harvard, and I looked at these I looked at the professors, I looked at the students, and they all looked really pinched and anxious, and I thought, "Geez, this is my third I kept thinking if I get another Harvard degree I shall be happy. And it never worked.
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I was getting more and more tense.
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And then I thought, okay, is it possible for a person with Down syndrome to be happy?
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And everything I knew said yes.
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So I thought, okay, Emerson said beauty is its own excuse for being.
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Joy is the felt equivalent of beauty.
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Maybe joy is its own excuse for being.
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And if that's the case, then anyone who can feel joy belongs here as much as anybody else in the world.
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The fear I went through for the next several months as I waited and they said there was a 40% chance he would die at birth and all these things would ruin my older daughter's life, he would ruin my marriage, everything.
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Um I've never experienced fear like that.
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And it finally pushed me to a point where I broke.
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I went into the I went through the door.
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And I let myself feel all the fear.
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And it was just this It was exactly the way Dante describes going to hell, just screams and noise and you know, wailing of it like all silent of course in my own head.
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And then in the middle of that whole cacophony, I heard this one whisper that said, "Are you sure?" "Are you sure?"
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"Are you sure that's true?"
28:17
And I was like, "I don't know what's true." And it said, "Hmm.
28:22
You may want to think about what's true."
28:25
And that was the first moment that the fear let go of me and I was like I was in the inferno after that.
28:32
So yeah, life will take you there.
28:32
Uh thank you so much for sharing that with us.
28:35
That's it's um it's a very that's a very real uh result of going into the fear and I liked what you said there where you just allowed yourself to feel it and then ask whether it was true and and the part that really struck from me from that story was the idea of when you were saying that I asked if he still had a chance to be happy and the answer was yes.
28:58
And and I thought wow, like that's it's it's again again it's comes back to the same point of disconnecting from the culture. Yes.
29:07
Because the culture makes you believe I I remember I mean not in any comparison at all and and it's not similar uh but just to share like I remember when I uh when I when I left the monastery people always told me that I wouldn't be as
29:23
close to my teachers anymore and they said well, you know, if you move on, you know, you're going to get lost in the material world and and Maya as it's called illusion and you won't you won't be able to maintain this. And and I remember saying to myself it
29:35
And and I remember saying to myself it was like I'll never let you know, I I don't want to let go and this was so important to me because I'd found my soul teachers and I want to speak with you about that around soul teachers.
29:46
And it was really funny because constantly in different stages of my life people have said things to me and that's culture is saying something to me.
29:56
And actually culture saying it to me has been a beautiful reminder for me to not make that my reality. Right.
30:05
So instead of feeling bitterness towards culture, I feel this like gratitude towards culture because every time they say to you they're like Jay, you know, when you get married you'll have less time for spiritual things.
30:12
I was told that when I got married.
30:14
And and and I was like oh okay, that's a reminder to me to not do less spiritual things.
30:18
So I'll make sure that I'm more grounded in my spiritual practice.
30:22
Uh people said oh Jay, when you build a business like this will happen.
30:26
When you become an entrepreneur this will happen.
30:27
And that was always a good reminder of what I didn't want to let happen. Right.
30:33
and and that was such a beautiful way of responding to it but you talk about meeting soul teachers.
30:38
And when you were sharing earlier, I do feel it's beautiful to find teachers in podcasts and books, but I do feel, and I was lucky growing up in a tradition where mentorship was encouraged and highly It was part of the culture, and it was a good part of the culture.
30:54
Uh so, I really strongly believe in coaching.
30:56
Tell me about how someone finds their soul teacher, knows it's their soul teacher, as you talk about in the book, and give us some of those insights from a few of these chapters so that people who are listening can start thinking about that, because I think again, culture hasn't made coaching or mentorship normal. And therefore, culture. Not So, not at all.
31:16
And so, we kind of feel like we're we're just figuring it out.
31:20
And And it's many years after which people are even okay accepting a teacher.
31:25
They feel that to be an alien concept to accept a teacher as an adult.
31:30
Explain to us why it's I I feel like having a human coach is there's nothing better than that.
31:35
Like you It needs to be beyond the book, beyond the The podcast and the book are the starting point, but there's another level as well. Yeah.
31:43
And what I found is that when you If you If you walk up to to the gate of your fear, and you surrender to the fact that you're afraid, and you just ask or set an an intention, I would really like some help here, please.
31:58
A teacher is always sent.
32:00
And But it has to be asked for from a place of peace.
32:02
This is what I wanted to talk about with the question about desperation.
32:06
We tend to only ask for help when we're desperate in this culture. Yes.
32:12
Western materialist culture, which is very linear and it doesn't accept having to go through cycles of change and needing teachers at each cycle and all of that, which is what I teach coaches to do, get people through those cycles.
32:24
But when we're desperate for it, um this is what I believe.
32:30
I believe that every time you pray or desperately ask the universe for anything, it is immediately sent to you.
32:37
The answer is always yes, and the response is always immediate.
32:38
But, it always gets sent to your true home address, which is peace.
32:45
If it were to send what you want to desperation, that would make you move into desperation and just sit there gathering up your stuff.
32:51
But, in instead, if you can be at peace, so you walk right up to your fear, find a moment of peace, and it doesn't have to be a day, doesn't have to be an hour, it doesn't even have to be a minute.
33:02
It has to be a moment of peace when you say, "I need help. Please send teachers."
33:10
And sometimes, for me, they first came in books because that's how I allowed it.
33:14
Nisargadatta Maharaj, my favorite one of my favorite soul teachers, and let me tell you, when I saw his book in a cabin in South Africa, I stole it.
33:28
I was like, "I can't stop reading this. I need it."
33:30
So, I mailed them another copy later when I got home, but I'm like, "I can't I can't leave this book behind."
33:37
And sometimes, like my son with Down syndrome, Adam, he was the teacher who came for me.
33:43
Turned out to absolutely transform my life and bring me so much.
33:45
The the the first best-seller I wrote was a book about how he came into my life and the magic he brought with him.
33:52
Let me tell you one of my little Adam stories. Please.
33:56
Once I was listening to a recording of the different planets made by the Voyager spacecraft.
34:00
As it went past, it would take radio signals from the planets and transform them into sound.
34:05
And they sound really weird.
34:05
Like the Earth is like And part like some of the moons of Jupiter go So, my son was walking past as I was playing these. He was like 20.
34:19
Um and he doesn't talk very well.
34:19
And he came into the room, he said, "What What are those sounds?
34:24
I have those sounds in my body." And I said, "You do?" And he said, "Yeah.
34:30
Where are you getting them?"
34:30
And I said, "They're from the planets."
34:32
And he was like, "Oh, right."
34:33
I was like, "Why do you" He said, "It's It's a call. It's a message."
34:40
And he put his hand up to his head like a a telephone receiver.
34:42
And I said, "The planets are sending us a message that's in our bodies?" And he said, "Yes."
34:48
And I said, "Well, what is the message?"
34:50
And he said, "That we're safe." And he just walked away.
34:53
And every now and then he'll just pull one of those out.
34:58
And so he was my teacher.
34:58
And once I realized that I could be taught by a newborn with Down syndrome, I was looking for teachers everywhere.
35:07
And as long as I stay in peace, they pour into my life. You poured into my life.
35:16
And I'm so glad to be talking to you, but through your books and podcasts, you do.
35:20
I I mean, every communication you have with your soul teacher feels like this You feel that ring of truth. This person, this book.
35:30
And then weirdly, like I I love Jill Bolte Taylor, the the Harvard neuroanatomist who had the stroke.
35:36
Have you Have you talked to her ever? I haven't. No, I haven't.
35:39
She's awesome, but she lost the left side of her brain and had to build it back in the right side of the brain is in the presence of God at all times.
35:46
So she came back very different.
35:49
And I've been quoting her stuff and learning from her, reading her books.
35:52
And the day before yesterday, she just called me.
35:57
She just Zoomed called me.
35:57
And I was like, "Okay, why are you calling me?"
35:59
And she's like, "I don't know.
36:01
I just wanted to talk to you."
36:02
I was like, "Are you serious?"
36:04
And she told me all this stuff about neuroanatomy that helped me understand myself.
36:08
And that's what happens when you just say, "I'm I'm going to stay in peace and ask for teachers."
36:13
Okay, you you just blew my mind uh with all of that and and how you so clearly made the proposal to us all that we can only receive our true teachers and our soul teachers when we're at peace.
36:31
And actually, if we ask for them out of desperation and they'll go to that home address, right?
36:40
It'll shift us I love that blew my mind because that made so much sense more than intentions.
36:47
It made more so much more sense than seeking the right people out.
36:51
Like that idea of what place what space from which are we asking for what we're asking for?
37:00
And you're absolutely right that we only ever ask for help when things go wrong.
37:04
We never ask for help when things go right.
37:06
And also, haven't you often found that a lot of our asking is a demand and not a sincere request.
37:15
Like it's a demand of like, "Why is this not happening to me?"
37:17
Or "I need this right now."
37:18
And it's a And it's the antithesis of peace as as you're saying is where we need to be. It's It's the anger. It's the pain.
37:25
It's not asking from a place of a sincere request.
37:31
You know, which is often what's needed even to get your friend turned around. But you know what?
37:34
Here is how miraculous and benevolent the universe actually is.
37:41
When you go to peace the things you screamed for in your tantrums, if they're right for you, will be there or they will come there.
37:48
Like every childhood wish that I'd ever had when I started I I did sort of monastic period of my life when I was 50.
37:57
I just moved out to the woods and spent 6 years meditating and and tracking bears.
38:02
And um everything I had ever wanted started to come to me. It was It was bizarre.
38:09
Like people like Jill Bolte Taylor, but this type of miracles started happening over and over and over again.
38:16
And I would say to the universe, "But I was really fussy when I asked for this."
38:21
And it would just say, "Oh, sweetheart, we want you to have everything.
38:24
Why do you think pain exists?
38:26
So that you'll ask for things, so that we can demonstrate our love for you by giving you those things when you're in peace."
38:35
And so try going to peace and just staying there and see if things you asked for when you were a child, when you were an adolescent, when you were young, if those things don't come and find you.
38:46
I wrote this book just because I wanted to be absolutely sure I was telling the truth.
38:49
I didn't want magic miracles.
38:52
I use those words cuz stuff like that happens to me a lot.
38:54
And I wanted to get out of it.
38:56
I wanted it to just be the science.
38:58
Let's just talk about the facts. Truth, truth, truth.
39:02
And I went deeper into integrity than I'd ever gone, and the miracles and the magic in my life went absolutely bananas because I was in peace.
39:12
I was in that ring of truth all the time and holding myself there. Whoa.
39:18
You want to manifest a Ferrari? Get some peace.
39:23
What what are the things you think we should be asking for if asking at all?
39:30
Because like you said that that if you're in peace, you can probably attract anything you ever wanted.
39:37
Uh but as we spoke about earlier, sometimes everything you ever wanted isn't what you really need and isn't that satisfying as you expect it to be.
39:47
Is there is there a is there a better search that we should be on that then helps us I I always it's it's kind of two ways.
39:55
So the the here's here's my my uh hypothesis, and I'd love for you to dissect and destroy it if it's terrible, but I'm just offering it I live for.
40:05
I want to destroy you today. It as an idea.
40:08
Destroy was a strong word. It was a strong word.
40:10
If I if we need to dissect it or take it in a new direction, that's better. That's better. Let's use that.
40:16
Uh It's one of one of my teachers teachers would often say that anything material in your life is like zeros. So, like lots of zeros.
40:30
So, every time you have a new material accomplishment or material success or material goal, it's like a zero.
40:38
And all those zeros, if you look at them as they are, they're they're not valuable at all.
40:41
They they actually don't satisfy the soul and the heart and the example that you gave earlier on.
40:48
But actually, if if your integrity in this in this language, if your spiritual connection is is aligned then that's like that one in front of all those zeros.
40:58
And all of a sudden, all those zeros have meaning. Yeah.
41:02
And and and I remember hearing that as an 18-year-old and thinking, "Oh, that makes so much sense because I meet so many people who have all the zeros in the world." Mhm.
41:09
But but they themselves will tell me and even more so now where people I'm working with and coaching will tell me, "Jay, this means nothing. Like this doesn't work."
41:19
And and now they're seeking that spiritual spiritual connection.
41:21
And so, it's so That's where I'm seeing it that actually all of this can be given value when we have this pursuit aligned in in integrity.
41:31
But all of it loses value when we don't have that. It's really beautiful.
41:35
And it's it's I believe that suffering has two functions and one is to get us back into alignment.
41:39
And the second is to push our imaginations to to play with this material universe in a in a creative way.
41:47
So, every person I've ever coached who has suffered greatly for whatever reason and then found peace makes more peace with the suffering they've experienced. Can you say that again? That was beautiful.
41:59
Every suffering is the raw material for its opposite.
42:04
The more time you spend fear, if you go to peace, you have more courage than others.
42:09
If you've spent more time in depression, you go to peace, you have more joy.
42:15
You spent time in what rage, you go to peace, you have more ability to be peaceful and to spread peace.
42:23
One of my favorite examples is the spiritual teacher Byron Katie. Do you know of her?
42:27
Yeah, I've interviewed her.
42:28
She's been on the podcast. Oh, yeah? Yeah.
42:30
I was talking to her one day and she was a woman who was in horrible, horrible depression, every kind of pain, physical, mental, everything.
42:36
And then she lost the ability to believe her own thoughts and was suddenly in a space of complete peace and bliss because thought is what connects us to culture and once she lost the ability to be in culture, she was her true self.
42:51
And I was talking to her one day and she said something about being, you know, the transformation and I said, "Well, you can't have been that bad."
42:58
And she she looked at me very seriously and she said, "No, I was a very bad person."
43:04
And she she was absolutely serious.
43:04
She is the most delightful, joyful, blissful human being you can imagine.
43:13
And it's because she was so miserable that when she came to peace, her life exploded into joy.
43:22
So, whatever suffering you've got going on, whoever's out there listening, come to peace and yes, a one will appear in front of those zeros and you'll be richer than you ever imagined.
43:32
And what are the what are those some of those beginning steps towards peace, Martha, that that you beautifully lay out in the book, but tell us some of those steps to peace because I think when we think of peace again, and this is this is why going back to the concept you've shared with us, when we think about peace, the problem is the understanding we have of peace is the
43:50
culture's definition of peace, which is kind of like you know, like that's that's what peace looks like, like peace looks like this this very like, you know, perfect tranquility uh and and that's the challenge that when you have that cultural image and vision of what peace looks like, you don't allow for the pathway to peace to look like that. I always feel
44:12
I always feel like we have we have two we have two things we're always looking at.
44:16
Our vision of reality and then the actual pathway we're walking, but the actual path to peace doesn't look like the vision to peace, so we we leave it.
44:24
We we we abandon that path.
44:24
Google peace and you get 8 million pictures of women in sitting in a on a deck in the sunset. Yeah.
44:33
And it's like That's not peace, that's boring. Yeah.
44:39
Actual peace is that alignment I was talking about, the feeling that our bodies, hearts, minds, and souls are all working in the same they're they're working like a team of horses that are exactly matched and they will go all kinds of amazing places.
44:51
Like they'll push you into action as surely as they'll push you into rest.
44:56
You know, I I had a I had a an autoimmune disease, several actually.
45:04
Uh from the time I was 18 into the time I was about 30, I was almost completely bedridden and in constant pain, physical pain.
45:10
So, it was not um a fun time.
45:10
Raised my kids on a king-size bed, basically.
45:17
And um when I was as I was trying to find my way out of that, what I realized is that my body was responding to whether or not I was in the truth.
45:27
I had to connect my truth to my I had to connect my story in my head to the truth that my body was telling.
45:36
And then when I started following my body, heart, and soul, as well as my mind, I locked into this thing that I call integrity in this book, but it's also peace.
45:44
But it was At that point, I remember I got diagnosis for one of these they were all terminal, progressive autoimmune illnesses with no cure, and I was resting I was resting. I was in peace. I was in peace. I was meditating.
46:00
What else do you do when you're bedridden for 12 years?
46:02
But they'd given me a hotline that I could call.
46:05
I called this hotline and I said I've been resting and resting and resting and the pain is getting worse.
46:08
And the nurse on the hotline said, "When your soul wants to dance, then lying down is effort and dancing is complete perfect peace." Like dance. Get up, move.
46:21
Even if it hurts, do what your soul wants.
46:24
And it completely knocked me out of that whole yoga pose thing.
46:28
Nothing against yoga, but I realized that um true peace pulls us through life by all four of those, body, heart, mind, soul, and into joy and into wonderful, amazing situations.
46:41
It's put you behind that microphone right now. Like it's not static. It's ecstatic. It's dancing.
46:54
Tell Tell me about the opposite, Martha.
46:55
I'm intrigued by something because um I I learned about and I'm sure with your studies you've come across this too or studied with it.
47:02
I was I was very much uh trained in the path of bhakti, bhakti yoga, uh which is the path of devotion and love.
47:10
And the idea was that or or or a core idea is that when one has true love and true compassion and true joy, one can even experience stress for the object of our love.
47:27
Or the idea of stress doesn't stress anymore. Right.
47:32
Uh because you And And the closest thing can be described and you've lived this uh through your beautiful examples and stories in in one of the deepest ways is the the closest example or comparison that would be made is the idea of love uh of a mother for her child. Like that level of love.
47:49
That like no matter what challenge this is, this is love.
47:53
Like, you You it's it's not coming from anything else.
47:55
A mother's not looking for praise or validation or for the child to do everything perfectly.
48:01
A mother's love is beyond I mean, I feel that from my mother.
48:05
I grew up with that kind of love from my own mother. So, I know it exists.
48:08
Uh where tell me about how how you understand that with the with the movement towards stress and peace?
48:15
Is that somewhere Where does that come about?
48:19
Where do we get to that point where we start to see stress as peaceful because actually it's based on love?
48:25
There's a word in psychology called eustress, e u plus the word stress, which is the opposite of distress. Mhm.
48:32
So, distress is uncom- discomfort and eustress or positive stress is Like eudaimonia.
48:38
Is that where it comes from? The e u or no? Yeah.
48:40
It's like euphoria or um utopia. Yeah.
48:47
So, eustress is positive stress and it's the kind of it's the difference between um being stabbed in the gut and being cut open by a surgeon to to heal you.
48:56
Like it could be the same type of pain.
48:58
I was walking down the street one day and I I tripped and turned my ankle and I was very worried that I'd hurt it.
49:06
And then later on in the day I got a massage.
49:10
And I realized during the massage that the massage was actually more painful than my ankle.
49:16
But I was interpreting it as helping me. So, I loved it.
49:19
I was like, "Deeper pressure, please."
49:23
Um you know, whereas it was all about how I was thinking about it.
49:25
And if we apply that to stressful situations like somebody's screaming in your face, you can actually go into that and go, "Where is the Where is the beauty? Where is the lesson? Where is the healing?"
49:38
There's always a healing in it.
49:38
You can always find if you're caught on anything negative, you you know something in you needs to be healed.
49:46
Because if nothing needs to be healed, nothing hooks you like like that. Nothing is distressful.
49:51
You look at it and you go, "Ah, this could go well."
49:56
Like and and you're like you're such a living example of that. It's so funny.
50:02
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said the words and I want everyone to write this down.
50:07
It changes when you interpret it as helping. That's the key.
50:11
Like the what you just said there with the massage example, which I thought was brilliant, is even when we're experiencing pain, when we interpret that as helping us, not hurting us, then it heals us.
50:23
And and as soon as we interpret it as this is hurting me, it actually stops helping us and stops healing us.
50:33
Because at least in the massage you know someone you're working with has expertise, but sometimes when we're being badly handled by culture or people around us, we think that they're damaging us, but even then there is help there and that's what you're pushing us to seek, which always find it if you're willing to walk the path of your integrity.
50:55
Don't get pulled into the story of the culture. Find integrity. Find integrity.
50:58
So, you you find all the places inside yourself where what you believe is not true for you and this is the source of all suffering.
51:08
And I say this after 30 years of doing this coaching stuff.
51:12
The single reason for psychological suffering is believing something in the mind that is not true at the deepest level.
51:20
Once and that's going through the inferno, you get rid of those lies.
51:21
And then Dante walks up purgatory in the next part of the Divine Comedy, which is where you take the new truth that you found in your own heart, mind, body and soul and you begin to live it, even if the people around you don't agree.
51:34
You know, in your case, even if your parents were like, "Becoming a monk, what's wrong with you?"
51:39
Or your spiritual friends going, "Don't get married."
51:43
And you're walking your true path.
51:44
That's purgatory and it strengthens you.
51:46
You go upward and upward and upward.
51:46
And when you reach the place where your thoughts are completely clear and your actions are aligned as well.
51:53
So now you've put activity into it.
51:57
You've put that the the joy of movement in peace, the ecstasy of that.
52:04
You get to the top of purgatory and Dante just flies off into paradise at this point.
52:08
And I do believe he had an enlightenment experience and I was just talking to Jill Bolte Taylor about how that works neurologically.
52:15
It's a real condition to which we are biologically predisposed and that's what everyone is actually in their heart and soul trying to find.
52:25
Beautifully said, Martha.
52:28
Martha. Absolutely beautifully said and I I only wanted to add this because I think it relates to what you were saying there is that often people feel that as you go on that journey at one point everyone's going to agree with you and
52:45
everyone's going to somehow love you and everyone's going to say and and and that doesn't happen and and you know that's no matter how much in integrity you're living, that doesn't mean that everyone loves you, believes in you and thinks you're amazing. Can I tell one more
53:00
Can I tell one more story? I'd love for you to. Yes, absolutely.
53:04
I'd love I had to I had to I had to take it there because I think we also again have this culture of you of if I live in integrity and if I'm aligned and if my actions are perfectly manifesting and I'm then all of a sudden everyone's going to believe in me and agree and I haven't experienced that at all.
53:20
The more I've gone into the more I've gone into integrity, the more I realize um there are more people who have issues with that.
53:29
So it's it's not Yeah, it's not become easier.
53:31
So I'd love to hear your story. Okay.
53:33
So when I was 29 I decided that I was not going to tell a single lie for a whole year.
53:40
Um it was a New Year's Eve, um, resolution.
53:43
Later on, when I needed therapy from this my my therapist told me that my biggest problem was I kept my New Year's resolutions.
53:49
But, I did not tell a single lie the year of of being 29 to 30.
53:55
I I don't tell lies now, either.
53:57
I just decided no lies at all.
54:00
Um, I found my true self that year.
54:00
That was the year my body started to heal.
54:05
I also lost my religion, my family of origin, which is very deeply part of that religion, so complete no contact.
54:13
Every friend I'd made growing up before the age of about 17.
54:15
Um, my job, um, and my marriage, and I I realized I was gay.
54:27
This was not a year of everybody coming to my side.
54:29
I was This is what I came out thinking, for the first time in my life I was healthy and happy, and there was no part of culture that was on my side, and I realized that if I want to walk my particular path, I have to give up like I I would your integrity will give you every single thing you need to be happy, everything.
54:51
The wildest dreams, the deepest love, the joy the most joyous experiences, but it will cost you absolutely everything else.
55:03
And, yeah, my whole life changed from that, and that's when I started coaching, and that's when I I started getting published, and everything just went from there.
55:12
But, I I was stripped down to bone by total integrity.
55:13
I don't recommend that, by the way. It's too rough.
55:19
Martha, this has been such a joy speaking with you and learning from you today.
55:23
Everyone, uh, I've been talking to Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity, Finding the Path to Your True Self.
55:29
The book's available now.
55:30
Please, please, please, make sure you go and study this deeply.
55:32
This isn't one of those books that, um, you just going to read once and and kind of, you know, put it on the shelf and think, "Oh, that was cool."
55:41
It's It's It's going to be a book that you study.
55:44
It's a book that's going to make you reflect.
55:46
It's a book that you want to sit with, use it as a workbook.
55:47
Uh use it as a book where you're and and I love I love what Martha's done here.
55:54
There's so many fantastic reflection moments and questions that I really think you need to sit with and and you may even sit with some of them sometimes a day, sometimes a week.
56:03
Uh allow yourself to really use this book as a workbook and and I can't I can't stress enough how I think how powerful it would be to to feel like you're living in integrity as well as learning all the amazing new skills and all the passion projects you want to build and all that kind of stuff you want to do. It comes from this.
56:21
This is actually the root of it and sometimes when we don't start here and we get started on everything else, we either get everything and it doesn't fulfill us or we don't get it at all because we weren't asking from a place of peace. And so, Right.
56:34
I I I really want you all to start here and um Martha, as you know, as as you listen to the podcast and and and sharing your wonderful thoughts about it, we end every episode with a final five, which is our fast round questions.
56:48
Uh every answer has to be one word or one sentence maximum.
56:53
I always break the rules because I get too intrigued.
56:56
Uh but but let's see how I go.
56:59
Uh so, Martha, these are your final five. Are you ready? Yes. Awesome.
57:03
Okay, so question number one.
57:05
What is one widely accepted rule that you always break? Please people. Mhm.
57:14
Sorry, that was two words. That's a great answer.
57:15
No, that's a great answer. Very good answer. Okay, second question.
57:19
What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? Trust yourself.
57:24
What's the worst piece of advice you've ever received?
57:27
Trust me from someone else. That's so good. That's so good.
57:33
All right, question number four.
57:35
Uh what's one thing you know to be true, but a lot of people may disagree with you on? We are all perfect. Beautiful.
57:44
And if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be? Be nothing but yourself. It's kind of a theme.
57:52
Like you could have just asked one question. I only have one answer.
57:55
It's a It's a great answer and I and I do think that the journey of life is for that reason and and it's it's a great answer and I think today we hear it in a very "Be your best self."
58:08
Like we hear in a kind of a fluffy version, but uh you know, the way you talk about it is that deep valley version of of going down into the inferno and um I I love it. Thank you so much.
58:22
Martha, thank you for being a guest on purpose.
58:24
Where can people find you?
58:26
Where can people follow you?
58:26
Where would you like people to connect with your amazing work beyond the book that we obviously want to get? Oh, thank you so much.
58:33
Just go to my website, marthabeck.
58:34
com, or you can crawl through the snowy fields of Pennsylvania and try to find my house, but I'm not going to give you the address. Just go to marthabeck. com. I love that. marthabeck. com.
58:45
Uh Martha, this has been amazing.
58:48
I really hope we get to talk a lot more and I may be reaching out to you for a few more personal questions that I have, too. So love that.
58:55
Uh I I've really enjoyed our time together today and I and I really look forward to being in the same room together.
59:01
Uh I really hope that this has served you.
59:03
I hope that this has served everyone who's been listening.
59:05
Uh I hope that this helps you find the path to your true self and your path to integrity.
59:12
So, Martha, thank you again for sharing your gifts with us.
59:15
Thank you everyone for listening.
59:17
Make sure you share this on social media.
59:18
Tag us with what you learned, what you gained, because I love noticing what you're learning, what you're taking away from these episodes, and make sure to come back for our next episode. Thank you.
59:27
If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here.
59:35
I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book Think Like a Monk from thinklikeamonkbook. com.
59:44
Check below in the description to make sure you order today.