EPISODE 99

October 29, 2024

Roger Walsh – Making a Difference in Times of Crisis

Thomas is joined by Professor of Psychiatry, Philosophy, and Anthropology, and host of the Deep Transformation Podcast, Roger Walsh. They dive deep into how each of us can leverage our unique skills and capacities to help solve the many crises humanity is facing. It can be overwhelming to view complex, interconnected problems like climate change, war, and political unrest, and feel like you’re powerless to make a difference.

Thomas and Roger assert that we must be willing to face our fears, be present with our emotional responses, and understand the psychological and spiritual roots of these problems to affect meaningful collective change.

Roger stresses that there are no simple, single solutions for individuals or the collective. But at the core of our distress is a deep compassion for humanity, and tapping into that compassion is a powerful activator for collective healing.

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“We’re going to have to work on the psychological and spiritual roots from which these issues stem. Otherwise, we are merely treating things symptomatically instead of at the root causes.”

- Roger Walsh

Guest Information

Roger Walsh

Roger Walsh MD, Ph.D. is a professor of psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology at the University of California, whose research focuses on topics such as meditation, psychological wellbeing, wisdom, and the psychological roots of our global crises.

His books include Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices, and The World of Shamanism. His research and writings have received over twenty national and international awards, while his teaching has received one national and seven University awards.

He is a student and researcher of contemplative practices, an authorized lama in Tibetan Buddhism, and cohosts the podcast Deep Transformation: Self-Society-Spirit, with listeners in over 170 countries. His more curious careers include having been a circus acrobat, and having had an extremely brief and unsuccessful career as a standup comedian.

Learn more at:
drrogerwalsh.com

Notes & Resources

Key points from this episode include:

  • How to combat feelings of hopelessness, powerlessness, and lack of agency
  • Understanding global problems as symptoms of our individual and collective psychological and spiritual dysfunctions and immaturities
  • The need for inner-work and outer-work to address the root causes of crises
  • Relational awareness and the need to create supportive ecosystems for sharing emotions
  • Depathologizing pain and dysfunction

Episode Transcript

Thomas Hübl:

Hello and welcome to Point of Relation. This is my podcast. My name is Thomas Hübl and I’m sitting here with Roger Walsh. Roger warm, welcome. I’m happy to see you.

Roger Walsh:

Oh, thanks so much.

Thomas Hübl:

And first of all, we had already great conversation in the past and in another context, and I really enjoyed our conversation and I know we have a lot of overlapping areas of interest. So I’m sure it’s going to be a very interesting and insightful conversation. And I think like many people right now might be wondering, oh, if I look into the world, if today it seems like there’s a lot of turmoil, it seems like polarization, fragmentation in societies and democracies is getting stronger. There’s a very strong drift to the right. In many countries, there’s a lot of the wars, there are all kinds of conflicts showing up. So in this world of today, one could say, or people call it a poly crisis or a meta crisis or all kinds of terms, maybe let us know how you, first of all, how you personally look at this deal with it are in this times of kind of crisis reinforcing each other. And then maybe we can zoom into some of the sub aspects of what we are seeing now, but let us know how you’re dealing with the current situation.

Roger Walsh:

Well, thanks, Thomas. I think it’s an ongoing question. I think one of the things that becomes very apparent as we reflect on the multiple crises we are facing, which as you say can be conceived of as a poly crisis, many different crises or a meta crisis that is a whole network of everything from the crises in the world around us to the psychological and spiritual and cultural roots from which many of these issues stem. And I think the question you’re raising, how do we respond to these is one which I’m sure perhaps almost everyone who’s listening is wrestling with at this time. Now, I certainly have been too for many years, world is our world has always had its crises, but they’ve never been at this scale, they’ve never been so multiple, so interconnected, so distinctly problematic, or have they been of such magnitude that they threatened the very survival of civilization. So in some ways, what we’re dealing with is a continuity of crises. On the other hand, they are of a scale and complexity and interconnection, which is unprecedented. So yes. So one of the great questions you are raising is how do we respond?

I think perhaps for me, one way of just speaking to it is many years ago I went to India to work with Mother Teresa, and I was just blown away by the extent of poverty and the diseases on the street, which I’d only read about in my medical textbooks, and was like, this is immoral that this should happen. And so I was left after I came back wrestling how to deal with that. And very shortly afterwards I saw the film The Last Epidemic, which is about what a nuclear war would do. And it just blew me out of the water that we could annihilate ourselves. And so I really wrestled with how to respond. I mean, what can one little person do? And what I came to realize was, yeah, there are some things I can do. I can write for example about the psychology of these things, the psychological roots and the spiritual roots.

But it took a long time. And I think, so one of the things I take away from looking into these crises we’re facing is that a lot of us have this expectation that we really should be able to come up with an answer very quickly. What can I do? But it’s really feels like an immersive process of really opening into facing into these things, dealing with the pain that they evoke and letting them call forth the compassion that does come if we open defenseless sea to suffering. And out of that over time come answers, but not one time answers. They can be successively deeper ones. So maybe that’s enough to give a flavor of the way I got into this and the ongoing challenge that you face. I know you’re facing into these and working with ’em, and I expect so many of the people in your audience are.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, yeah. That’s beautiful. It’s like you’re already in my perspective saying something very important. Sometimes part of our defense is to look for the ultimate answer, which is relieving us from not really relieving, but it’s an attempt to relieve us from finding the step-by-step answers in a crisis that are also connected to a deeper feeling and awareness of what’s actually happening for us. And this kind of human steps are I think very important. And often we try not to feel what’s actually happening in the crisis, which I think at the end of the day also leads up to the crisis. It’s like one of the root causes is all the stuff that we didn’t want to feel, and that’s leading to the crisis. So thank you for this, that all of us can reflect, okay, where am I actually trying to solve it in too big of a portion?

And that’s why I feel powerless. I feel depressed, I feel paralyzed. I feel like I can’t do anything I feel disempowered, no agency. So that’s great. But when we look at agency, because I often speak about there’s one type of hope which is always in the future, and then there’s another type of hope which is coming out of the sense of my agency that I can actually be part of a world that can change. And so maybe when we look a bit at, so what can we do in times of crisis? What can be a contribution, even if it’s a step by step contribution, besides what you just said before,

Roger Walsh:

I think I’m glad you emphasized the step by step, Thomas, because it really does feel that way. And as we look into the suffering around us and the potential even greater suffering that could emerge, the question that naturally comes is the one you are pointing to, what can I do? And I think it’s really important to recognize the kind of question that is, because there are two kinds of questions which aren’t often differentiated. The first are standard knowledge questions, is it raining outside? Look out the window end of the question. But the question, what can I do is more of a wisdom question. It’s more like a, that each time we ask it has the potential for taking us deeper into the question, deeper into ourselves and deeper into life. And so one of the important things to recognize about the answers we come up with in response to these big questions of what can I do in the face of these enormous challenges is that there’s not a final answer.

It’s an ongoing evolution. I think that’s what you were pointing to, and that my answer today is the best I’ve come up with so far. And it’s changed over time, and I assume it will change as I change, as the issues change, et cetera. And it has the potential for deepening. So I think that’s the first thing that is really important to recognize that it does take time. And then there, of course, there are deeper questions for me as I wrestled with this, realized that below the question, what can I do is another question of what’s the most strategic thing I can do? How can I leverage my little, well, my training, my skills, my capacity, the people I know, et cetera, how can I leverage that most effectively to have the greatest impact? And the term that Buckminster Fuller introduced, which is a beautiful one, is trim tabbing, finding that point of application of force where it can have the most impact. So I think the question, what can I do as a first step? And there are deeper ones and multiple questions and how to do that, as you said, in a way which stays open to it all and doesn’t shut down. Although of course that happens and I find myself cycling, there are times I kind of shutting down happens. And so back to the meditation cushion, et cetera, that cycle of withdrawal and return, but it’s a process I think was exactly what you were pointing to.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, that’s beautiful. I love the simplicity of, and the simplicity and the depth of what you just said is that it’s a process. And in a way, we are the process of becoming an answer. It’s not that we will have an answer, we are becoming an answer. And that was really beautiful. And also when you said, hold on, this is also when you said that when we shut down, of course sometimes we will shut down because our trauma gets triggered and we feel the effects of that inside. And that’s something, not that it means that I cannot, that means that there’s a process going on that’s not a pathology, that’s a part of my own roots. And maybe when we talk about our roots, maybe we can talk a little bit now about what you see are, how come that we are in a crisis? Do you see any root factors? What are the roots of this poly crisis?

Roger Walsh:

Yeah, it’s a beautiful and important and challenging question because one can always look, there’s an automatic tendency to look for the cause and yes, and to look for what’s the most fundamental cause. And there’s great value in that. And it needs to be held in the larger context of the fact that what we’re dealing with are incredibly complex systems. And the definition of complex system is one in which there are multiple interacting factors which can produce, and which you can never completely model or fit into a simple conceptual system. So it feels important to hold both at the same time that we are dealing with enormously complex interactive systems in which, for example, a climate change interacts with ecological disorders, interacts with resource depletion, interacts with migration and political crisis and movement to political movements, to conservatism and so forth. They’re all in a way interconnected.

But that doesn’t stop us as you’re pointing to looking for what are some fundamental causes. But I also want to add another caution. Not only is there interaction, but I think there are kind of psychological traps in looking for answers. There’s the tendency to fixate on, for example, a number of what I call single focus fallacies to focus on, to look for the single cause fallacy, the idea that there’s a single cause and the single solution fallacy, which is that if we just do this, if we just recycle, we just change capitalism. That will solve it all. And that will be nice, but it isn’t going to do it. And there’s, I am sure most listeners will know of or remember reading Thomas oldest Huxley’s utopian novel island in which an isolated island creates a utopia and someone washes the shore from a shipwreck and discovers this and asks, well, where do you start? And the islanders respond. We start everywhere at once.

I think that’s a beautiful statement of how do we look at this and how do we approach it? And as fundamental, in some sense, it’s again holding this dualism of, in one sense, we can’t say there’s one fundamental cause on the other hand, can look, perhaps we can look. And I tend to look at very deeply our human nature and our psychological and spiritual dysfunctions. And our technological power has grown so extraordinarily powerful that we have shaped the world in our own image. We’ve damned rivers for our thirst. We’ve created monocultures for to feed ourselves, et cetera. We’ve decimated forests. So from that perspective, what we call our global problems are actually global symptoms. They’re symptoms of our individual and collective psychological and spiritual dysfunctions. And Im maturities. And what that implies is that if we are to really solve these crises, we’re going to have to work in multiple dimensions. We’re going to have to work, yes, to feed the hungry, to reduce nuclear stockpiles, to create treaties. And we’re going to have to work on the psychological and spiritual roots from which these issues stem. Otherwise, we are merely treating things symptomatically instead of at the root causes. And if we don’t do that, the crises will just recur as theirs have throughout human history.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, I’ve deeply resonate with this. I want to just underline this. That’s also a big reason why I speak so often about collective trauma. I often say when you say peace work needs to be done in times of peace, not in times of war. In war, we need conflict resolution, but in times of peace, it looks like we have peace. But actually our inner world has an echo of the war. And not only in our generation also generations after the war, the war is still echoing. I often say in Europe, had we done 40 years ago, had we started with working really on the World War II wound all over Europe, most probably we wouldn’t have another war now between Russia and Ukraine. But the fact that we didn’t do that means that we didn’t do the piece work that was needed to really deepen peace. And that’s exactly what, in a way, what you said is when we don’t take care of that, then we will shape the world in our image. And I love this phrase because I often think people say, oh, we could have done it differently. And then I wonder really,

If we did it that way, could we have done it differently? Or isn’t that a sign that we are looking at something that we have to see and we are not seeing? And in a way you said that, so please go ahead and explain more. This is really interesting.

Roger Walsh:

Well, but I want to ask you a question, Thomas, and that is, do you think our culture had the tools to do the kind of trauma work that was necessary after World War ii? Because it feels like you’re pioneering a new form of collective trauma work, and it feels like it’s innovative, it’s new, and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t have the sense that we had those decades ago.

Thomas Hübl:

Exactly, exactly. I agree with you. Otherwise we would’ve done it had we had the tools. But it’s important to make that correlation that we see, okay, we have to invest in a new form of working more on the collective level now that we begin to develop those tools. And I think some of the work is growing and expanding, and there are more and more people that are resonating with that, even if we don’t know exactly how ultimately it’s going to look like, but we don’t have to know how it’s going to, we have to walk there. But that’s right. I think had we known, so we would’ve done it, but we didn’t. But for now, I think it’s a good sign that we, because I think if we want to deal with this crisis, if we don’t do that in a work that you said, we think the crisis is outside. And I think that’s the trap that we can tap into. And so that’s why I love how you described it, and I also love that how you said, because that’s really powerful. I think we really see in nature what we don’t see inside.

And that’s very powerful what you said, we shape the outer world in our image and we see this dysfunction outside. It has to really show us something inside. And I think that’s a very powerful statement.

Roger Walsh:

And it raises the question, Thomas, of the type of work you are doing, and the type of work I’m suggesting is probably crucial to a deeper resolution and more long lasting healing of these kinds of great issues we’re facing in our time requires then two kinds of work, as we were talking about, requires definitely the outer work and the world and peace movements and feeding hungry and dealing with the ecological crises, but also requires inner work, which is what you’re saying. And so that raises the, I mean, that’s a lot to do the outer work or to do the inner work. Both are challenging enough, but then the question becomes, well, how do we integrate them? And as best I’ve been able to see the tradition, which most speaks to this is the Hindu yogic tradition of karma yoga. Karma yoga being the yoga of work and action in the world where one’s very work in the world and service is taken as the means of one’s practice.

And the beauty of karma yoga is that it requires no extra time or effort. It can be benefited by sitting on a cushion or retreats, et cetera, for sure. But the core of the practice is taking what one is doing and using that as one’s practice. And perhaps it’ll be worth just briefly outlining the elements of kmi yoga, which traditionally there were three parts. I think it can be very usefully expanded, but traditionally the elements were to before beginning an activity, offering it to the God or Brahman traditionally to do the work as impeccably as one could, while simultaneously releasing attachment to the outcome. And it’s that last one that turns it into this knife edge practice. And we can expand that, but I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, that again, speaks deeply to me, especially the last one is there’s so much in the copyright department of our personal sphere that tends to grasp either the outcome or is fixated and is kind of just looking at the outcome. And I’m writing an article, I’m speaking also often about the pandemic of later. I think that’s an interesting, because there’s one thing that I would love to deepen on when you say, how is the integration of inner and outer work? My experience, at least in working with many people on inner trauma is whenever something integrates really, it’s going to move into post-traumatic growth, and it immediately has an effect in the system. And so I’m wondering if we really need to talk a lot about how to do it. I come back to the karma yoga in a minute, but when the inner work really, when whatever was stuck on one level makes a vertical development into maturation, maturation of self maturation of culture, organizations, whatever it, there’s an immediate impact in the expression of whatever system we work with. So that’s at least my experience. And then with the Karma yoga, I think supporting the agency, I think is a deep resourcing practice. So I love the karma yoga that I serve the world as part of my own giving, as part of my own resourcing, and that strengthens also my own inner healing work. So these are all interconnected. That’s really powerful. And it’s not just about big things because some people think, oh, I need to do big things in order to save the world, but we are an orchestra. So

Roger Walsh:

Yeah, that’s a nice metaphor. And I love what Mother Teresa has said, we can’t do great things, but we can do small things with great love.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Roger Walsh:

And to just take off on your point about the possibility that inner work or working with trauma can lead to post-traumatic growth, it seems, I’m really struck that it seems like the difference between the symptom between a symptom and a growth opportunity is whether a painful experience is resisted or whether it’s open to It’s all in the relationship to the pain.

Thomas Hübl:

Exactly. And the relationship to the pain and how much we can dissolve or at least bring awareness to the isolation of the pain, how much of the pain has been taken into a separate department and how much they can open up back into the relationship with the world so that the data flow in the web of life can circulate more. Right. That’s also my experience, that the relationship is one of the key elements here.

Roger Walsh:

And you just named, I think the key component of that healthy relationship, which is awareness. And we look across the Western psychotherapies and the world’s contemplative traditions. Perhaps the most central thing they share is an emphasis on awareness, bringing awareness to experience or rehabilitating our capacity to experience openly, defensively, fully, et cetera.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, that’s also my experience. And sometimes even small things, sometimes when people say they feel fear, and then I say, okay, let’s have a look. When you feel fear, what’s your relationship to me in that moment, your felt relationship? And then often they become aware that when they feel fear, like the energy is retracted into themselves, which means they didn’t have the support when they felt fear early on in their life to really experience that in a supportive relationship. So they started to hold it themselves. And then today as grownups, that happens. But without that question, the person says, I’m scared, but if at all, that’s already good.

But without the relational awareness, and once that retraction is not pathologized and brought into our awareness, then the fear slowly can expand back into the relation and become a shared space. So that I believe even the fact that we call emotions, personal properties, it’s my fear or it’s your sadness, or it’s like, no, we experience fear and sadness, but in a healthy world they can become shared spaces and then they’re being, we call that compassion. We called it love, we called it care. We called it all kinds of things, but that emotions are actually shared spaces. And if from early on we experienced that. So then my fear matures throughout my upbringing as a quality and as a grownup, I feel, wow, when I am afraid there are always people that I can talk to when I need support, I have. And then these people also have it because they created it. They created an ecosystem that is supportive versus other people learn to privatize their emotions. And then they also say, when I’m scared, I’m often alone. And that’s only one part of the awareness. But it sounds like simple things, they’re kind important. And that’s I think where awareness has a massive change capacity.

Roger Walsh:

That’s interesting. Thomas, I really appreciate you saying that. I haven’t heard it or thought of working with painful emotion in quite that directly relational way. Of course, it happens in counseling and therapy and work we do, but your emphasis on bringing it very explicitly into the relationship and holding it in that way is, I haven’t heard that said that way. That’s very interesting.

And it feels like it’s a part of maybe an expansion of the crucial shift of helping see, helping myself see, helping others see the way in which I’m relating to the fear is am I relating to the fear out of aversion, trying to push it away, trying to make it go away, which or am I opening to it as an opportunity for learning and growth? And I guess for me, there seem to be two principles, two things about the way the mind works. It seems incredibly important. One is whatever you’re unwilling to experience sticks around until you are willing to experience it. And the other is whatever you’re unwilling to experience runs your life. Exactly.

Thomas Hübl:

No, very much so how I tend to phrase it, unconscious energy is destiny, and unconscious energy is a choice.

Roger Walsh:

Oh, that’s beautiful. Thank you. Yeah,

Thomas Hübl:

Because when it’s unconscious, it just runs you. It’s exactly what you said. It’s like it runs your life. And then we say, no, but we are all free. We are free individuals in a free world, right? Free until we are not. And then, yeah, an awareness, as you said before, changes unconscious information into conscious information. And so we can create a new form, the information becomes a different form so we can change our life. It becomes pregnant with the future or something.

Roger Walsh:

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you. And I am reminded of something that Fritz Pearls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, said, awareness in and of itself is curative. And I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that. And I guess in terms of what we’re dealing with in the world today, part of that awareness is bi-directional. Part of it is to open to the magnitude of what we’re facing, as you said, without the tendency to contract and push it out of awareness. And the other is opening to the fullness of our own emotional reactions to it, but also acknowledging that the reactions include not just negative, negative emotions or painful emotions such as fear or anger or rage, but also if we look deeply enough, if we are willing to stay with the experience, we find that there’s a real desire to help to heal. Compassion arises. And unfortunately not most people don’t recognize that that is also there if we’re willing to really open to experience.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that what you’re also saying is the willingness to care and to heal. And also I see many people that even with joy, we say, oh, we all want joy. But then when we are really joyful, how deep and how fulfilling is that joy or can stay or for how many people, when they feel joy, they’re afraid that something bad’s going to happen, something will take away the joy. So there are all kinds of fears immediately coming or all kinds of other processes where we reduce the joy and we go actually back into another pattern because we are not able to really enjoy. Because also, joy, I think is a very powerful emotion that supports us, supports our presence.

Because when you really enjoy a meal, you cannot only enjoy it when you’re really with it. You cannot enjoy your meal while you are texting on the phone and watching the news, and you’re not enjoying your meal. But when you really enjoy a meal or a conversation, it’s like you’re in. You’re not thinking, oh, how long is my conversation with Roger going because I’m really enjoying it. You don’t think about time when you’re really present or when you’re really enjoying something that you’re doing. Yeah. So that’s lovely. I have one question that, because I know you said in some other context that our culture is, our modern culture is in a kind of tos. It’s in a kind of an illusion, collective illusion. Can you speak a little bit more to that, what that means?

Roger Walsh:

Sure. Well, I think it’s a very important idea, and I think it can be looked at and understood in multiple depths. On one sense, we can say that our culture reflects our individual psychologies. And that all of us, as anyone who does in a work quickly finds out that all of us suffer from a variety of both perceptual distortions and delusions. Literally false beliefs about who at the most fundamental level, about who and what we are, but limiting beliefs about ourselves, beliefs about dichotomizing, our group, other group, et cetera. But it extends also to a far more profound level. If we look for example, at the Indian concept of Maya, the all consuming illusion, the idea that unawakened life is lost into an all consuming or all enveloping fundamental illusion, which clouds our thinking and distorts our perception and is both an expression of and a perpetuator of the pace of mistaken identity, which we all suffer, that we think that we are this little ego, instead of recognizing that that’s just a very surface layer of a far more profound, in fact bottomless awareness or being, which is our true nature. And our culture certainly reflects that. Our culture, as we know, it’s the recognition of who and what we truly are is a very rare recognition in our culture and very different from the conventional mainstream belief. So in, I think the idea that our culture is that we live in the biggest cult of all culture is a very multi-level, what to call it. It’s a very multi-level recognition and a crucial one.

Thomas Hübl:

Well, the biggest cult is culture. That’s an statement. I mean, it very much relates what you just said. It very much relates to the reason why I speak or wrote about collective trauma is because to me it looks like that we are identified with the sense of separation, like the ness that trauma creates when pain is being created. It’s very interesting because even in wisdom traditions, when we talk about a sense of presence, and then people try to be present, and it’s hard sometimes. And then people pathologize themselves for, oh, it’s hard for me, I cannot be present, is often what people say. And then I find this very interesting because when you look at the traumatic moment in that moment, life says here and now, life is not good for me. So not here, not now is definitely better than in an overwhelmed body in an overwhelming experience that is so painful that you can’t experience it.

So not here in time and not here in space is better. It’s intelligent and working with the intelligence of not being present versus pathologizing, that I think is a key element in skillful contemplative or meditative work or spiritual work. And on the other hand, often we are identified with the frozenness that is not moving. And that’s what you said. We often identified with the small sense of self that is a collection of that which is moving less than the flow of the original movement of life. And so I very much like this. And that’s why I think that also in the collective trauma understanding, we would say that that unprocessed data that we or other generations couldn’t process is exactly what creates this illusion. And the more we are able to reintegrate that, the wholeness will naturally happen. And I’m curious what you think about this because I think that would also mean that the way we talk about history, I think is a bit colored by that illusion because we often see history is what’s behind us versus history. Integrated history is having this conversation, integrated history is sitting here as us, as all of us unintegrated history is the past, but integrated history is this moment. And so I’m curious, what do you think about this?

Roger Walsh:

Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way, so thank you very much for bringing that in. That’s a very interesting way of looking at it. And I think I need to digest that. Yeah, that’s a new frame for me. So thank you. I wanted to ask you one thing, though. You were speaking about the tendency, which is it feels to me innate in us until we’ve done a lot of significant amount of deep inner work, there is the tendency to look to another moment for the satisfaction, wellbeing integration that we feel is lacking. And you said there was a wisdom in that. I’m wondering how you work with that.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, I work with that when let’s say somebody starts to share a deeper wound or a deeper place where that happened. So first of all, in our groups, we do a lot of reframing of how we pathologize our inner process. And then for example, when people say, I cannot feel my body, well, it looks like a dysfunction. It’s not working. But we could also say, at a certain moment in your life, you could turn off the sensitivity in certain parts of your body because you were chronically overwhelmed by the pain that you experienced. So either it sounds like a dysfunction, but actually when in the moment of trauma, it’s actually a function that makes a lot of sense. And I think if we refined it, then people are much more willing to re-own that to grow.

Roger Walsh:

Okay. That’s helpful. Yes. So you’re something and acknowledging that today as is so often the case, today’s problems are actually yesterday’s solutions.

Thomas Hübl:

Exactly. Exactly.

Roger Walsh:

May have been very wise or even absolutely life saving essential at one time. The trap we tend to fall into is to continue using these things long after they’re necessary. It’s interesting how that can go to very deep levels, even you see people doing deep spiritual work still using practices that were appropriate at one stage but may not be appropriate at those.

Thomas Hübl:

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And also that I think because the moment we know that we are dealing with our intelligence that in the trauma response there is an innate intelligence to save us to survive better. And in that moment when it’s really painful, something happens that is intelligent, that changes our relationship because it’s suddenly not anymore my dysfunction. It’s a function, and it’s beautiful how you said it. That was very important once, and I even think reframing this, that symptoms are the echoes of a process in a different time zone.

So what was a process for me as a 2-year-old is now a symptom ever since. So if we develop the ears to listen to when the symptom was a process that made perfectly sense in the ecosystem where it arose, and then from there, new maturation can happen, but often we try to take care of the symptom, as you said before, and not look for the deeper intelligence that was active. And so that’s also with not being present. It’s like when people leave their body because it’s too painful, then that leaving needs to become a conscious experience so that they’re arriving can happen again. And yeah,

Roger Walsh:

I really like the way and deeply appreciate a common theme to the way you work and see things, Thomas. And that is that you appreciate the, even with significant dysfunctional patterns, you appreciate that there was a wisdom underlying them. And it feels like you have a worldview and perspective which appreciates and can help others appreciate the benign intent underlying their motivation, even if it brought them into dysfunctional ways of being be

Thomas Hübl:

Absolutely right. Because I think that’s the only way for that individual or that group or that collective to begin to change the relationship from a pathology to a process. And once we are aligning with the process, we re-own it, and that’s how it can begin to grow. Otherwise, there’s two same pole magnets that will constantly keep rejecting each other. They can’t create intimacy. So when I relate to my dysfunctional part, I want to get away from it, not get into it, but when I know that there’s an intelligence. So that’s also more true. I think it’s really true. It’s not just a trick to get us connected to ourselves. It’s true. It’s the truth. As a 2-year-old, I tried the best to save myself, and that’s what I could do at that time. And today maybe I have other options, but at that time I didn’t.

Roger Walsh:

Yeah, no, it’s clearly not just a strategy. It’s a way of seeing, and I’m really appreciating it. It reminds me of the principle that if you want someone to heal or change, make it safe for them. And making safe, making it safe includes taking any judgment condemnation away from a symptom or issue and helping them see that exactly what you’re saying, that it was the best one that they could see to do it at a particular time. So effectively, a lot of it seems like a common theme you’re bringing to your work is to pathologize and take the judgment and condemnation off people’s pain and dysfunction.

Thomas Hübl:

Exactly. Yes, very much so. Very much.

Roger Walsh:

Beautiful. And related to that, I love what you said about joy, the importance of joy, and that’s something I’ve had to learn. I tended to be very serious. We’ve got a world to save,

Thomas Hübl:

Right? Exactly. We have a world to save, right? It’s a serious business. Yeah, exactly.

Roger Walsh:

I think one of the most important things my late wife told me, and she taught me and she taught me a lot of things, was it’s okay to have a good time when you’re working and computer. It’s like, oh yeah, how about that?

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, no, I think also that it’s also part of a mature relationship to the world, that we know how to resource ourselves and that we can have joy and then that it doesn’t oppose that there is a lot of pain in the world, but there’s also joy in the world. And some people it becomes too merged like me and saving the world.

Roger Walsh:

It can be a dysfunctional belief, which I certainly suffered from that. It’s not okay for me to feel good while so many others are suffering.

Thomas Hübl:

Exactly.

Roger Walsh:

A very dysfunctional limiting belief, but certainly one I operate under for time.

Thomas Hübl:

I see our time. Maybe one last question, Roger, and maybe we can have a part two to this, because it seems so rich. We just open some pockets.

Roger Walsh:

Yeah, we’re just beginning.

Thomas Hübl:

Yeah, we’re just beginning. So maybe we should continue this and have another part. That’ll be wonderful. That will be wonderful. I’m really enjoying it. And I think we could dive into some of what we opened today a bit deeper. One thing that is an important part, I think also in your thinking is, and in terms as in relationship to crisis, when really the crisis gets strong, we tend to regress individually or collectively to

Less inclusive, less compassionate, less of many things, maybe ways, and come back to more to older versions of consciousness in ourselves that have been more stable because they’re much older. And maybe you can speak a little bit to that, just that we keep this in our mind no matter how much we can do about it, but in solving a crisis, as long as we are sitting in very protected spaces and everything is cool, and we can philosophize about crisis, so it’s one thing, but when the crisis really is at our doorstep, then we might react very differently than we thought. So maybe you can speak a little bit to that

Roger Walsh:

Point. Yeah. Well, I think you’re raising the important point, the humbling recognition that yes, it’s hard to maintain our big picture perspectives, compassion, et cetera, and under the face of real stress. And it’s important, I think, to recognize that both individually and collectively, because if we are asking people to, as a first step, to open to and acknowledge the magnitude and complexity of the issues we’re facing, we need to realize that that’s a stressful thing we’re asking people to do. And that under stress, the tendency is just as you said, for people to regress psychologically. And with regression comes a greater focus on self, and me and mine egocentricity a contraction of the field of awareness, short term thinking. So how to, but what we know is that it doesn’t have to be that way. And if we can give people certain information, ideas that there’s less tendency to regress, for example, people tend to regress if they don’t see anything they can do.

But if they see something that they can contribute, then it offers meaning, purpose, and the possibility of agency. If people have a context for understanding this, for example, understanding that, yes, humankind always faced crises, but somehow we’ve gotten through, we’ve gotten through because small numbers of individual, so-called creative minority, have seen the crisis and work to bring this awareness to the greater community. Those kind of things allow people to see, oh, this makes sense in a bigger picture, and people have responded effectively in the past, and perhaps we can do so too, and oh, here’s some things I could do. So that tends to much reduce the tendency to contraction, to regression. And so that I think you’re pointing to has to be a part of any work we do to help mobilize ourselves and others to a greater recognition of and skillful response to the great issues of our time.

Thomas Hübl:

Well, that’s a beautiful sentence. Maybe to end with this lovely exploration, this journey into individual work, collective work, and also a reminder that we can come back to the resources that are deep inside of us because our ancestors went through crisis, made it through crisis, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. And that there is a strong power and resilience in it. So thank you so much, Roger. I really love this. I would love to continue this conversation. I think there’s so much more to uncover. I thoroughly enjoyed your presence and your

Roger Walsh:

Thank you so much, Thomas. It’s mutual. It has been a gift to have this conversation, and thank you. You’ve opened several perspectives I hadn’t appreciated before, so thank you very much.

Thomas Hübl:

Thank you. Yeah, fantastic. Roger, this was great. I think we should do it part two, if you’re open to it. There’s so much

Roger Walsh:

Work. I’d love to, yeah, I’d love to. That was a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Very rich, and I learned a lot, so thank you.