Premium Interviews
Thank you for claiming your Hidden Power of Emotions premium. These interviews below are especially selected from Raphael’s 2012 series of forty-six conversations called Teaching What We Need To Learn.
The whole series is available for purchase as audio, books, ebooks and PDF at teachingwhatweneedtolearn.com. The selections below may be streamed or downloaded to your own computer or mobile device.
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Daphne Rose KingmaA leader in love and letting go explores her own romantic journey. “I want to be attached. I want more. I want longer. I want…” “Although being a pioneer about transforming the forms of relationships, my inclination for myself was to go back to a traditional form of relationship, a marriage.” “We are always healing and we are always vulnerable.” “The great romance must come to an end, does come to an end. The ending is built into the gorgeousness of the experience.” Listen Now:
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Reggie RayA Buddhist teacher and scholar discusses his hard-learned lessons of the body and the heart, as well what he’s gleaned from his own controversial teacher and the ways of indigenous spirituality. “With deep depression you see that the usual way in which you spend your time and the usual kind of pursuits that everybody engages in are fundamentally meaningless. They don’t deliver what we are hoping they will deliver.” “By not connecting the soma, the primary experience of life, we have actually lost the ability to even feel what the body knows.” “You develop a level of mindfulness through being sick that ordinary people don’t have and it becomes incredibly refined.” “We need to feel what it is like to be a mountain or an ocean or another person or an animal, and then we need to be able to act on that and translate that love in the way we go about things.” Listen Now:
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Daniel SiegelThe renowned psychiatrist and synthesizer of neuroscience and mindfulness shares from a deeply grieving heart following the recent passing of his father. “This has really been a period of deep refection and transition – sadness for my whole family and myself. And I debated whether to put off doing the interview. But I thought – you know if the topic that you’re exploring is about being present with what is – then I will be present with this experience. So that’s where I am.” “The last time I was with him, he said, ‘What’s going with me?’ And I told him he was dying, that his body was giving out, and it was getting ready to be the end. And so we sat there, I was holding his hand and I was experiencing sadness, but my observing self knew that all I could do in that unbelievably profound moment was just to be present with whatever was going in with me, whatever was going on in him, whatever was happening between us. I held his hand and it was this sense of clarity and strength and profound sadness and also a kind of – in a strange way – a celebration of life.” “I said, ‘Whatever your beliefs are, think of it this way: you’re going to the exact kind of place, very likely, where you were before you were conceived.’ And no patient has ever come to me frightened of where they were before they were conceived. And he looked very peaceful. And he said, ‘Thank you. That makes me feel comfortable.’” “Compassion is integration made visible.” Listen Now:
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Terry PattenThe founder of Integral Spiritual Practice takes a risky, brave, profound dive into his own shadow to gift us with the treasures found there. “Under the surface of everyone’s virtue is usually a submerged and utterly disowned Gollum who is the opposite of whatever that virtue is.” “A friendly relationship with shame, with your broken parts actually turns that thing you’re ashamed of not into a reason to be afraid of separation but a source of connection.” “We are only fully open to healing to the degree that we let our heart break.” “We can relax, because everything that can be lost will be lost.” Listen Now:
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Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly HuntIn our only interview with a couple, the guiding lights behind Imago Therapy reveal their own rocky road, and even current struggles, to get the love they want. (Spoiler alert: Yes, they do use the Imago Dialogue process when one or the other is triggered.) “When you get triggered your lower brain goes off. With a structured process [like Imago Therapy] you move into the mid and upper brain and then can honor the space between you and your partner.” “I find myself moving against my resistance to approach my partner and reconnect because not doing so is so painful that I want out of it as soon as possible.” “When your partner feels unsafe and puts up their defenses, then you are not living with your partner, you live with their defenses.” “This is a spiritual discipline. You use your partner as a tool for your own spiritual strengthening and development.” “If you cannot grow your relationship and have your partner and you both thrive in relationship, you haven’t done your individual growth yet to the extent that you can.” “We are drawn into partnership with someone whose needs we cannot meet. We actually have to grow ourselves in order to meet those needs.” “You cannot learn to ski without a mountain.” Listen Now:
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Tama KievesDisarming and warm-hearted revelations from a teacher who uses her own foibles and vulnerabilities as the very basis of her offering. “I think that any time you’re going into your next evolution or your next sharing or exposure or expression of greatness, you face your own stuff. You’re inspired and you’re excited and then you’re freaked out. And so that’s what’s coming up for me – I’m starting to realize, wow, I’m freaked out again.” “The fears that come up for me are all the comparisons – you’re not normal, you’re not doing it right.” “Really, at the end of the day, what this work is really about and what it’s really for is my own healing.” “I’m going to put everything I have into it, I’m going to put the excellence in it, I’m going to put the trust in it, I’m going to go where my God leads me, my soul leads me, and I cannot determine what that looks like externally and that’s hard because, you know, I went to Harvard Law School!” “I used to rail against God, ‘Why can’t I have money?’ I waited tables for a while when I first left law and all these people would have like trust funds and I’d be thinking, ‘I’m doing something worthy in the world! Why can’t I have money?’ And then I came to believe that precisely because I didn’t have money, I was able to do this work.” “I think the path of a calling is going to take you into territories you never even dreamed of.” Listen Now:
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Mark MatousekA gifted practitioner of the spiritual memoir explores the connection between self-disclosure and awakening, and also casts a discerning eye upon the relationship between teachers and students. “It wasn’t until I started an inner journey which is prompted by a personal crisis that I really found my voice as a writer and my form as a memoirist because my work is all about asking questions.” “The deeper you go into spiritual practice, the less you know, and the same thing happens as a memoirist.” “When people read your story, they’re reading about themselves.” “Fiction is a lie that tells the truth.” “I think all good work has to have some element of the forbidden in it, and you can’t do that if you’re playing it safe.” “Once you determine that somebody is basically the real deal then you have to drop the perfectionism and remember that they are human beings.” Listen Now:
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Guy FinleyA proponent of fearless living explores the relationship between being and doing, and how every single moment, even those we most resist, offers the key to our greater realization. “Life is not about becoming a fearless person. It is about discovering that everything that frightens us serves a very distinct purpose in our transformation.” “The feel is real; the why is a lie” “A lot of the choices I’ve made were with tears falling down my chest not with chest held high and the chin up. I was kind of miserable in my majesty.” “We are all born with a sense that there is something missing and that we need to find and understand what it is. It is that divine dissatisfaction that draws the perfect mirror into our lives.” “I’ve come to see that life never says no. It says not yet and not the way you wanted perhaps, which is different than no.” “Awareness itself changes us, not what we do as a result of the awareness.” Listen Now:
Guy Finley would also like to offer a free Mp3 album called “Seven Steps To Oneness” to listeners of this interview. To learn more and retrieve your copy, visit: |
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Devaa Haley MitchellA facilitator of the Sacred Feminine shares earthy truth and honest revelation about being a woman of loving presence in our current society. “There’s this part of me that really longs for that deep mothering energy, that nurturing, holding space where I can be young, where I can be small and not have to take care of so many details.” “I was most of the time flat on my belly, laying there, other people are doing sound healing and all this magical stuff is going on for everyone else. But for me, flat on my stomach, just looking down into the grass. And I said, ‘You know, I really feel like all I can do is be a worm right now.’ ” “At a core level, there’s that question, I think, we ask as a little kid but it stays with us, which is, “Am I normal? Am I okay?” Or even deeper than that, “Am I lovable?” fully, with all of this beauty and all of this history and all of these scars and battle wounds.” “It’s more of a struggle for me to really reconnect to that part that is the Radiant Feminine, when I’m just running around, trying to get all these things done on my to-do list.” Listen Now:
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Saniel BonderFounder of the International Waking Down in Mutuality movement brings humility, instinct and a full-bodied passion for life into the spiritual quest. “My sense is that God is waking down not into and not through but in some very mysterious ways as humanity and that there is an enlivening identification with our earthy nature that is now becoming more and more inclusive and seamlessly available along with the awakening and clarification of our consciousness, the expansion of our spirit, the sense of union with, deep communion with the divine.” “I’m going to be called at different moments to show up in ways that I wouldn’t have planned on or that might not be so comfortable for me.” “I sometimes refer to the process as not just divinely human realization but divinely human animal realization and there’s a learning how to harmonize with our instinctual nature and therefore to trust more and more deeply. Every person goes through this. It’s more and more of a trust in self, a trust in other in appropriate ways.” “Becoming your fullest and most authentic self is not something for which there is a preexisting manual.” Listen Now:
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Ram DassA beloved devotee of presence in its purest and most exalted form shares about illness, recovery, his past, and his life right now. “I don’t mind that my memory is shot… because I dwell in the present. And the past and the future are not on my screen at all. That means I can’t say, ‘Oh damn it! I use to play golf’ … or something like that … I don’t do any of that. That’s past. That’s somebody else. And this is me now.” “I live down in my heart and I know the Judge is in my mind.” “I have roles in the society… like being a wise old man… but I don’t have to take them seriously. And I think I can substitute for role, my soul.” “In relationships, truth is gold. I remember sitting in my mother’s hospital room when she was dying and… all the relatives and nurses and doctor came in and they were all speaking phony stuff. The doctor says, ‘You’re going to be all right. Wonderful, you’re going home.’ … and then go into the corridor they’d say, ‘She won’t live a week.’ For a person that’s going through a ceremony of dying and then being surrounded by lying – boy, it hurts me.” “I have my image of my father as very complex in my mind because in his lifetime he was an achiever, and then in his death I found him to be an angel, just a sweet, soft angel.” (There are some long pauses in the recording due to Ram Dass’s stroke. We chose not to edit them out because a) they’re real; and b) they allow us to slow down and “Be Here Now” just a little more fully.) Watch Now:
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Seane CornA passionate activist and yoga teacher to the starts works diligently to stay grounded, authentic, and in her true power “It’s my nature always to be more invested and interested in other people’s feelings. Even in basic conversations with my friends, if things get too close to me, I have a tendency of flipping it and start asking them questions. How are they doing? What’s going on in their life? And I do this very unconsciously.” “I have a tendency of bypassing vulnerability. . . so I have to work with people in my own life that hold me accountable so that I can tap into my own vulnerability, and so that I don’t shut down or disengage.” “I’m often very humbled by not only the people I meet but my own personal experience and how little I know and how arrogant I can be.” “Those big feelings will ultimately become the limited beliefs that will color the way that I communicate, and then therefore what I magnetize. And so, [my teacher] taught me how to do anger work, how to rinse the big feelings, how to process through the journal writing, how to get really good at the ugliness and to get unspiritual before I get to spiritual.” “She would always say, “You have to get to the ‘FU’ before you can get to the ‘bless u’.” “I’ll be dealing with my rage for the whole of my life, but my rage is also my passion.” “I’m so used to nurturing others that being nurtured in relationship in a whole another level is something that can be very scary but I’m willing and I’m available to it.” “I hope that if I ever buy my own hype, and I’m no longer being authentic, I hope someone comes and smacks me in the head and tells me to wake up because it’s never how I want to be in the world.” Listen Now:
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Bruce TiftTough love and liberating clarity from a uniquely insightful and relationship therapist. “My commitment is actually not, first of all to my relationship, it’s actually, for me, personally, it’s more towards the experience of freedom, or open-heartedness.” “Healthy intimacy has to involve a tolerance of profoundly contradictory feelings about pretty much anything that’s important.” “I think I have seen too many situations where the therapist joins the client in their resistance, their fear, their young energy. You can spend really, really a long time waiting for that person to feel safe, so I prefer to sort of differentiate between feeling safe and being safe, so I try to always be a safe person, but I don’t try to generate a feeling of safety for the people I work with.” “It’s rare that I actually take my disturbance seriously, but I’m also committed to experiencing it, and I think it would be horrible to go into some fantasy of invulnerability, which unfortunately is floating around in the spiritual community sometimes.” “All of our young survival strategies…tend to co-create exactly what it is we initially were trying to defend against, so if I had to become independent as a defense against not having enough engagement, support from my parents which is what I think what my history was, then my very success at becoming independent confirms over and over again that there’s not anybody there for me, because I don’t put myself in a dependent position in order to receive support from others.” “I find that when I stay embodied at the sensation level with my worst fears, my most painful experience, I just find absolutely no evidence that my survival’s at risk.” Listen Now:
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Elizabeth Rabia RobertsChoosing to die, and live, in the face of inconceivable pain. “My teacher said, ‘Your nervous system can’t cope with the pain anymore.’ I simply was unable. So I told Elias and my daughter. I didn’t ask them. I said this is not your decision, this is mine, and I’ve made the decision, that within a year I would like to end my life if I hadn’t died by then.” “The world suffers and I think we make a mistake thinking that it is our happiness and our strength by which we help other people. It’s only often our own suffering and our vulnerability that also can give. And we don’t have to wait to know a lot. For me, it was just show up, be with who you are, learn to be with these people, and listen.” “And it got to that place where I couldn’t say it’s unbearable. I couldn’t say that to the world, to spirit, to myself anymore. It was just bad. And I struggled there because I had told everyone and I was embarrassed, I didn’t know how long this medication would last.” “I have spent a lifetime taking retreats within different religious traditions. I’ve worked, most recently, the last 10 years, in a non-dual tradition where you don’t talk about intention or purpose. You show up. And that’s a great teaching for me because that keeps me from thinking about my purpose or trying to make it something. But now I know, when I’m on it, as anyone does, you know when you’re aligned and you know when you’re not.” “Without a series like this where people are willing to ‘fess up, I think we pretend because we want it to be so, that there’s an end point. We’re human beings as long as we’re alive. We’re human beings. My grandson, the last five years, I’ve learned as much from him as from all my non-dual training.” Listen Now:
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Paul CutrightA near-death experience vaults a renowned relationship teacher into a whole new phase of life “There was this whole psychological process that went on as well as the physical process. And one of the most surprising things was how I did not want to do the work that I’ve been doing with my wife and partner for the last 36 years. I didn’t want to do it anymore.” “All I really wanted to do was make art.” “What does this mean about the work, the business that we have devoted the last 36 years of our life to? We just . . . let that go?” “Authenticity…gives credence to anything that we might say as a teacher of any kind.” “I experience an intimate relationship between the breath and emotion. It is in relationship that we experience our deepest feelings of pain and hurt and disconnection and isolation and separation, and our deepest emotions of love and connection and transcendence and understanding and compassion.” Listen Now:
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