Welcome to today's dialogue with the remarkable Miranda Macpherson, whose extraordinary biography from major depression as an adolescent to profound awakenings from which he has lived and taught and helped so many people to deepen into their own true nature, to awaken to our being and to contribute with grace filled joyful lives.

Welcome to to deep transformation, self, society, spirit, life enhancing paradigm rattling conversations with cutting edge thinkers, contemplatives and activists with Dr. Roger Walsh and John Dupuy join us in the evolutionary fast lane as we take a deep dive into transformational practice. Peak experience, profound understanding, powerful contribution.

Feeling the welcome of our own in breath, the natural surrender of each out breath. We start in gratitude that we are here together. We've been brought to the path of all the learning and the stumblings, the liberation, the healing and the wisdom that has birthed itself so far. And as we greet this moment in reverence, let us remember what is breathing us, what is bringing forth the questions we grapple with and the grace that responds and emerges as we listen. So let us listen together. And as we listen, we listen for everyone. We listen for the human family. We listen for the highest possibilities and we offer it all back with love.

Those were the beautiful words and the prayer of our guest today, Miranda Macpherson. Miranda is an interfaith minister, a spiritual teacher, an author, has many roles and currently leads the Living Grace Global Sangha. Quite an organization and quite an international community. She's also the author of a number of books, my favorite, the Way of Grace, the Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation. And she's also written Boundless Love and Meditations on Boundless Love. And Miranda is also a, a beautiful musician, wonderful singer, and just been very touched by her work and her music. And so Miranda, it's a gift to have you with us today and you're one of the few people we've had back, so I'm very honored.

It's a great privilege.

Well, it's actually our delight. You know, as I, as I was reflecting on what to explore with you, there's so much. But you know, as I reflected, I was really struck by your spiritual biography because you have a very remarkable story. In some ways, you're a child of our time, having explored so many of the world's traditions, not only studied them, but practiced in them. But you started your spiritual life in a most remarkable way. As I understand, your first real opening was as a, an early teenager when you were depressed. Yeah, I've treated a lot of depressed people. I've never seen anyone have the kind of opening you Describe this is fascinating. Would you be open saying more about that?

Sure, I'd be happy to. You know, I'm often asked, you know, what brought you to the spiritual path? And we're all brought to the spiritual path, usually because we're on our knees. In some way, we're suffering in some way. So my answer, the simple version, is, well, I was suffering. Only I was aware I was suffering, which is kind of interesting. I remember being a kid and seeing things that did not make sense to me. Like, it did not make sense to me when people were mean or unkind to one another. It hurt my heart. And I'm like, why? Something in me knew this is not natural. And whether that was happening within my family, within my peers, or just as I looked out upon this world that when we're children, we're presented with, you know, this is the world, and this is how you be in it. And here are some modeling and examples and everything that I was shown. Something in my heart was just saying, this cannot be it. It's like, I jokingly call it my John McEnroe kind of tantrum, you know, you cannot be serious. So I think at the core of my young depression was a spiritual kind of tussling, you know, with the umpire who I didn't kind of like this. You cannot be serious. You cannot ask me to say yes to this. This doesn't make sense. And yet, you know, my own conditioning and so forth, there was no space to speak any of this. And perhaps I didn't even have the language anyway, or I didn't feel safe enough, or I didn't trust, and probably all of the above. But my response, I remember getting to a certain threshold, a tipping point, and something in me just says, I'm not playing. And my defense or response to that feeling like it was too much, the meaninglessness, the lack of love and kindness, the things that didn't make sense and that hurt. My response was to withdraw into myself. And I really just wanted to disappear. And eventually, you know, that led to being noticed that this young girl wasn't doing so well. And I was hospitalized. I was given the choice, a teenage psych unit or an adult one. And I said, adult. That was my choice.

Big league.

It's an interesting thing there, and I think that it's part of the awakening because it speaks to something in me. Was not interested in playing games with being here. I was really grappling deeply without any support or container or navigation with what is life? What makes sense? How can we really be Here in this human realm in a way that is meaningful and noble and beautiful and good and nothing that I had been presented with really was satisfying. And so I remember, you know, being pretty stubborn in my position and all of this. And thankfully I was never medicated. God bless my mother, who was a nurse who insisted I was not medicated. No one really knew what was going on with me. And I remember just being so withdrawn. I was lying on my bed one day and I was looking out at the. The plants that were just there outside my window. And I start to pray to a God I didn't know I believed in. As I said, I did not come from a religious family, so no one had put pressure on me to accept a view of God. And this is how you have to think and feel about it. But I remember praying and my prayer wasn't a very sacred prayer. It was a prayer of resistance. You know, beam me up, I'm done here. Only I think I exhausted myself in my own resistance and something broke through in my heart. And it felt like an explosion from within, an explosion into absolute, indescribable, boundless love and truth. And it was like being plugged into the mains and all of my questions were completely answered. And in that experience, I knew this is meaningful, this is more real than anything. This is the truth of who you are, who I am, who everything and everyone really is. And the purpose of life is to live this somehow, to live from this depth that is good and true and loving and makes sense. And of course, simultaneously, as the great yogis of the east taught us, you know, this is ananda. So it's simultaneously joy and bliss as well as love. It's not just love, and it's not just an interpersonal love. It's the very source of all of the love that we feel, of all of the joy that we feel. And it is just like this unstoppable river of nectar that has no top, bottom, middle, side, beginning or end. And so the impact of that on this 13 year old girl was all of a sudden she was all right to be here. It felt like, okay, I can be here. Okay. I had the meaning, I had something that was true and it was profound. And there was nothing that could ever convince me of anything other than this. So, you know, this profound experience of the grace of boundless love woke me up, put me on the path, showed me the direction, gave me the strength to go back into the life where there was a lot of difficulty. There was difficulty in my household, there was difficulty at school, it was not an easy time. And in fact, I would go as far as to say that the circumstances of my life were harder after that awakening than before it. But the difference was I knew absolutely unrefutably that, you know, I would get through this. I could get through this. But there was a meaning and a direction. That was what was so. So it gave me optimism, courage, strength, joy, tenacity, and a deep devotion to find out more about all of this that had come online. And, yeah, that's what put me on the path.

Beautiful. You know, I think you've answered the question that was at the back of my mind, which I alluded to when I asked the question, which was, you know, I've seen so many people who are depressed, and I've never seen anyone have this kind of opening. And I think you pointed to some of the unique features, which was, curiously, it sounds like you were suffering an existential despair in your teens instead of in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, as most people do. You're precocious.

I was totally precocious. And I think, actually, I. I feel so grateful that that happened, even though, boy, it was hard, because, you know how we go through big things, and every human being goes through big things that are edgy, that from a shamanic perspective might be called a shamanic initiation that take us a little further than our edge. And there's an opportunity in that edgy space to, you know, for something to die and something new to wake up. And I just feel that that was divine grace saying, let's get this girl on the path. Let's save time. She's got some work to do. And let's just speed it up here, because in that fire, I got to be very close to all sorts of other forms of existential human crises and suffering. I got to be in a room with people who. Who had slit their wrists the night before and were just wheeled in from emergency now to have psychiatric treatment. I got to be up close and personal as a teenager with schizophrenic outbursts, with people in despair, with people coming off drug and narcotic addiction. And I was hanging out with them, going for walks with these people, being with them in my suffering in these fragile states that we were all in. And I am not afraid of those places. I feel so fortunate to have had direct encounters at such a formative age with all these different forms of human, spiritual, psychological suffering and what a soul is grappling with. You know, the things that they don't feel they have the strength or the capacity to face or the things that have happened to them that have been too much. And no one knowing how to ask the questions, how to be with you and just hold your hand and just be there and in the right moment, waiting for the right moment to just say something so homeopathic, like what's too much? What hurts? Or what do you feel? And I know from my own experience that often in those places there aren't words. You don't have the words, but you're feeling it. And I don't know. I'm probably sure I wouldn't know. I wouldn't have the capacities that I actually do to be with people very deeply on a soul level in these super important crucibles where spiritual and human is kind of crunching together in some very important way that I regard as a holy juncture. I really do. So I don't look at things with those clinical terms because my own experience says perhaps it's not. Perhaps there's more going on.

Yeah.

Let me reflect too. I. My first opening, when I was, I don't know, 11 or 12 years old. Pre. Adult.

Wow.

But it was the same. I think the questions you were asking were very noble questions like, what the f. God. You know, like, what is up? I was hurt, I was angry. I had one brother who was an infantryman in Vietnam, got wounded three different times. Is right in the middle of it. I think he was like 18 years old, 19. All this. And I had one brother run off. My other brother, both older, run off to be a hippie and hate Asbury in New York and traveled the country. Did he. And I was left alone. And I didn't get it. You know, my parents were very Republican conservative. Not like Republicans today.

But yeah, I get it. There's a big difference.

And I was just. I was lost. And I had this big opening. One thing I didn't find, and I wanted to ask you, when you had this opening as. As a young woman and you asked the right question. The story of Parsifal has been a big part of my life and. And teaching and sharing. And as a young man, he finds a grill castle and then he loses the vision because he didn't ask the right questions, you know, and it seems like you were asking the right questions. And after this opening, this awakening, did you find mentors to help you to understand what's going on? Because I didn't for many years.

I didn't for many years either. But you know what? One of the things I've learned about grace, you know, when it arrives, is that it always brings what's needed. And that's part of the mystery and the miraculous nature of it. And part of a bit of direction that came spontaneously somehow with the opening into boundless love was don't speak to anybody about this till you're an adult. And I'm very glad for that little piece of nugget because had I spoken to anybody about this, I probably wouldn't have been discharged a week later, for starters. And secondly, I knew they would not have understand it, and it would have been judged or dismissed or ridiculed or not met with what was needed. And it was too precious to me to risk that. So I didn't find any people that I could speak to about this until I'd left my family home and I was about 7.

Talk to your friends about it.

I mean, you're nobody. Nobody. And then, you know, as soon as I was old enough to start looking, you know, I found I was growing up in Perth, Western Australia, which is like 20 years behind everywhere else. Roger would have some sense of that, being from a different part of Australia. But, you know, Western Australia is even further away from the rest of Australia. So it's kind of behind what it was when I was growing up there. So the only two things in town were the Osho Rajneesh bunch, and I was too shy. And the whole sexuality of all of that was way too overwhelming for me to get too close to it as a young girl. And then there were theosophical society, and that was more comfortable. So I could walk into this. I still remember it very vividly, you know, this house, you know, with all these dusty bookshelves. And I'm gravitating to, you know, I mean, it's all grace, really. I'm gravitating to. First thing I pull off the shelf. Ramakrishna Vivekananda, Anandamayima, Yogananda, all the Eastern sages. And, you know, then I picked up a bit of Guruji from Blavatsky and Seth Speaks, and that's what I was reading and getting into. And also I happened upon Jerry Jampolsky's Love Is Letting Go of Fear, which was beautiful because I remember reading that on my bed as a teenager and just putting it down every now and again. And it's starting to help me remember some of the implications of this love and to let that help me open my mind and my heart to the things in my family structure and the behaviors and that I didn't like and Found really painful and difficult. But it was really when I left my family home and I found a yoga teacher who happened to just. Again, it's all grace, you know, I found a real teacher who was amazing. And he only took eight students at a time in a class. And he was a direct disciple of our younger. And, you know, he was very strict, and we got adjusted in every pose and he could tell what was going on with you all. I mean, I still hear his voice anytime I do any hatha yoga. And I feel, remember him coming in, tapping my toe and reminding me, miranda, this is not gymnastics, this is yoga. There's no awareness in your toe. You're not present. And every class ended with pranayama. And it was amazing. It started to iron me out because I had a lot of trauma, as you can imagine, and a lot of material. I had to work through conflicts and suffering and trauma and just wounding. You know, most of us have from our childhood. I certainly had plenty of that. And I was very aware this needed to be addressed. Just because I had tasted this reality didn't mean I was capable of living it a long shot off. And I knew that. So I knew, okay, we need to get to work here. And I was motivated because as a young adult, I was starting to see things about what was coming out of me in my interpersonal relationships. Insecurities, judgment, self hatred. You know, that tough, crunchy material that we have to. What I call the meat sauce of the lasagna that we have to deal with, that we have to tackle in ourselves. And I went for it in my 20s. I was very aware of all of that and what works, you know, what do I need?

Yeah, and you are definitely a person of the times, having explored so many traditions. You know, I want to go back to that opening for a moment because you made sense of it for me and I think for all of us, in as much as you, this was not a typical teenage depression. This was really an existential crisis. But as I say that, I'm thinking, well, you know, there's element of existential crisis to many teenage depression.

I think so. And especially for people now. I mean, God bless the young people, my goodness, you know, like, that was me in the mid early 80s. Like, how much harder must it be to be, you know, that age now in this time, you know, with climate change and all things trump and the discord and the misinformation and AI, you know, people that developed it didn't think to build ethical codes right into the foundation of it from the get go. And who knows, you know, social media, I mean, just. It's so much harder now.

Yeah.

I just feel people like us right here and now we have absolute need to help in whatever way we can help the generations after us make it a little easier. They're going to have it harder in some ways.

I think that's a great point. It's harder now. There's more stuff, you know, just all in our face. And it was hard enough. I was growing up in the 60s and there's a lot of stuff going on, but it wasn't like it is today.

Right.

You know, I grew up Catholic and never dawned on me to go to a priest because I didn't think they would understand what had happened.

Yeah, right.

In a very Christ centric kind of thing, like reading New Testament or gospels. Anyway. And finally, when I was my. I guess I was mid to late teens, I found an autobiography, not an autobiography, biography of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Oh, lovely.

Oh, I could have talked to this guy. He would. Yes, he's my brother or something. I would have understood that. And that was a very pivotal point that I realized I wasn't completely crazy, that there was some kind of historical basis on people that had touched into God. Let's just use the G word for it because that's what it felt like.

I'm all for using the G word.

The big G. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's beautiful. I mean, really, we all mean different things and I think we all need to listen to what is the authentic language of our own soul. But I know that for myself when I hear the word God spoken of from the heart, from our sincerity, it's ecstatic. Just brings alive what is noble and pure and real and the place in our hearts where we know that, like what you're describing, John, like the teenage self encountered St. Francis. And like your heart goes, yes, yes, I know this. And so it's speaking to the parts of us that haven't. That maybe haven't had the support or the articulation or the mirroring or haven't yet happened upon it. But you know, like it says in the course in miracles, Roger, that you and I know and love dearly. That passage is one of my favorites that where it speaks about the forgotten song and it says, listen. Perhaps you catch a hint of an ancient state, not quite fully remembered, but like a song, the full melody, you don't remember in its entirety, but just a little wisp of the melody attached not to a person or a place or anything in Particular. But as you listen to this melody, it brings alive, awakens the memory of what you love, of what you are, of that which is more dear to you than anything in this world. And then it goes on to say listen. It invites you to listen. And then it speaks about the fear that we all have of remembering the whole song and the conflict that that inevitably brings up in us, of the fear of loss. The fear of loss, of what we know, of what we think we are, of all of our attachments and misunderstandings. That is our familiar way of navigating the world. And the cost of remembering the whole song and living it fully is the willingness to just say thy will be done. Like if I disappear. Okay. Right. And at a certain point, I kind of see all spiritual practice is just to build up enough musculature to nurture that inner knowing in there that's always there in the deep heart, to nurture it by paying attention, by letting ourselves feel the fact that we love it, that it does represent what is deeper and more meaningful and more noble and more real and more precious and more joyful. And that there's guidance in that knowing. And that as we nurture it through some kind of practice and listen to what nurtures it for us, and it's unique in each being, then ultimately it asks us for a full surrender and then a fuller surrender still, until there's no one left to care what happens. And then there's only God. Only God. Right. And then, well, how does God want to be here now? How does God want to show up? How does God want to contribute? How does God want to love? How does God want to listen? How does God want to act? What does God want to create that births beauty and truth and goodness? Because I don't know about you, but in my experience, there's nothing else to do here that makes any sense.

Yeah.

And that's statement just what you just said. Yes. From the perspective of openings such as you've had, it makes total sense. And it's also, unfortunately, a rare perspective. And may it become less. Less rare.

Absolutely. And that's what wakes me up every morning, because I've had a pretty intense life. You know, it's been edgy, very edgy in many places. But it's often in these edgiest places that the biggest openings to another level and another possibility have become known. And then there's been a process of learning how to adapt to that new opening that feels like having no skin at all for a while. And then I always go, what happens? In my heart is always an innate knowing where I feel such a deep wanting. This for everyone. It's such this sense of being so blessed and so fortunate to have had this open. And I know it's not just for me. It's for all of us. It's for all the precious children of humanity and all the ones who will ever come. And so I then go, my mind comes in with a curiosity to what's the magic little key? And I backtrack over my own experience to go, is there anything that I did that might have helped that to happen? Yeah. Is there any practice? Is there any activity? Is there any emphasis in what I was chewing on? Right. In any way that was in some way supportive for that to happen? And I've seen, yes, there often is. Right. And then there's a whole part of it that's just grace itself. And we could talk about that because it is a dance of engagement, sincere engagement with practices and curiosity and interest and study. And then that's priming the pump. And then grace takes over. But then we have to integrate. We have to understand, what did that mean? Like, for every realization that has happened here in this location, I have had to go, what is the meaning of this? What is its wisdom? And how can that be lived in all the little areas of life? How can this be expressed and embodied in the deepest, most beautiful way so that the only impact this has is a blessing for others?

Right. Given this, how can I serve?

Yeah. But if we take the eye out of it.

Yeah.

There's your answer.

Beautiful. And, Miranda, you've just synopsized three key phases in spiritual life. One is looking at how do we play quotes, our role in this? How do we facilitate the openings that you're describing? Second. And then the openings themselves. And then third, the process, which is often given short change, which is the major process of integration.

Yeah. But I think for me, I'm looking at it not only for myself, but for others.

Yeah.

Because I know absolutely that, you know, when things open in me, it's not just for my benefit, it's for everyone's benefit. And that by whatever, you know, mystery. I happen to be a spiritual teacher. Since my 20s, people have been coming to me asking for help in their process. I didn't intend. That wasn't a career choice. It's just thing led to another and people came and teachers asked me to do this, and, okay, here we go. One led to another. And then, this is the path. This is what my function is. And it's a great Blessing. And it's very challenging. And if I just sit with, I look at what's going on in the body of the people that come to me and I let myself see them, feel them, take in what they're grappling with, what isn't yet clear, what isn't yet available to them. And I'm interested in the intersection of what's available to me and, and what are they struggling with and what's the intersection? What's the magic little three part inquiry that is going to like open up that little door that's blocked, what's going to clean the window pane a little bit, clarify the confusion, what's going to soothe the suffering, what's going to help the system relax. So it's more receptive. And I've seen and learned so much. I mean, there's a whole body of practices and teachings and different kinds of practices, some of them inquiry practices and very specific, some of them devotional practices, ancient and contemporary, some of them meditation practice, some of them classical meditations. And often I'm just given meditation practices, it just pours through. And it's in response to that question that I'm sitting with is, well, how can more of us, how can this be replicated? How can the children of humanity grow up, clean up, wake up, show up? As Ken Wilbur so perfectly synthesized.

There's some writers who think that in our times historically, more people are, are waking up than in the past. Do you find that the pressure of present times and the people that you work with and what you've seen that people are beginning to wake up on more, greater percentages?

Well, I think it's both ends because I'm also someone who at this time in my life, I pay more attention to what's going on in the world than I ever have. And I regard watching and listening to the news as a spiritual practice. These days of staying grounded in my body and opening my heart and seeing all of the distortion and the ignorance and the conflict as humanity's prayer list, as the collective cleanup that we still have yet to do. And let's face it, there's rather a lot of that right now. And then I also see people of all different ages and stages of life like coming towards these teachings and loving it and having a wonderful time and taking joy in the process of decompressing out of date ways of being that are clunky and dense and don't work very well and never did and are interested to see what's possible. Who are we really and what's possible for me. What's possible for us and forming relationship with one another, becoming mighty companions to one another. So I don't really know to answer your question, John, because I think I see both equally. And it just brings me back to the now. And how can I be within all? How can I nurture the awakening of the others? How can I continue the cleanup and the growing up and the showing up in myself? Because I do see that it continues. It's not that we've cleaned up and then we move on and then we've grown up. No, there's more. There's always more evolution and openness and clarification and expansion and possibility because God is exponential.

Yes, I'm not willing to bet on much in this life, in this game, but one of them is there's a lot more to it than I understand.

If there's one thing that helps me more than anything, it's that lesson we both know and love in the course of miracles. Roger I do not know what anything is for. And so I was sharing with my students the other day in a teaching I gave called Trusting the Mystery. And I was saying to them, and I really do feel this, that although I want humanity to wake up, I want this to be that we're in the birth canal to a higher possibility collectively. The truth of the matter is I don't really know. I hope so. I might be wrong. There's a lot of evidence right now that that is wrong. We don't know. I do not know what anything's for. And that's not going to stop me showing up every morning in prayer. What's possible and what little part can I play in bringing forth what serves? And although I don't know whether human beings are going to be able to wake up, clean up, grow up, show up quickly enough for human life to be able to continue. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing what I can and being meticulous and looking at the choices that I'm making and how I live and the influence I have on others and, you know, doing what we can to be more impeccable in those choices and caring for our impact as we go along. So it's the both end.

Beautifully said. And yes, given these extraordinary times in which there are unprecedented threats to our civilization and even our species and the planet. Of course there's a spectrum of attitudes people take from the doomers and collapsitarians to the techno utopians and despair. But I think you pointed to something that's really important that we don't know how it's going to turn out. But the question that we're left with is basically what can I do?

Exactly. And right in the now because you know, despair, optimism, it's all past future, isn't it? And within that there is presumption that we know everything there is to know. And that's just simply not true, you know. And so I rest in that lesson. I do not know what anything is truly for it always brings me rest, refuge and it brings me right back to humility in the now. And what I know from experience is that is the posture of receptivity to exponential grace. Only when I'm willing to empty out of all my thoughts and opinions and presumptions, even if they're very informed ones. And I am willing to just open into the mystery of I don't know what anything is for. I don't even know what a hand is for. If you really go down into it, whatever the situation is, I don't know what it's for. It might be for a lot more than I think or I can even imagine or conceive. And so if I use that to help me be here now in all of it, the beauty and the horror and the things that are hard to bear and the hopes that we have that may or may not come to fruition. And I remember something deeper is in charge and has been in charge this whole time and knows what it's up to, then my job is to align with that, say yes to that, open to that, let that lead.

Yeah. And your life has gone through a number of phases to bring you to this point. And we spoke, we began with talking about the remarkable opening you had in your early teens. But, and you've had, you know, you've done a lot of practice. There have been a lot of experiences and you've worked hard. And the other side of the work is as you emphasize, the grace and you had another really life changing and life orienting experience in Ramana Maharshi's cave. And quite a different quality from your earlier experience.

Yeah, completely different. And you know, segueing from what we were speaking about. If I clung to the reality of boundless love being the only reality, the only way that reality or God with a capital G or capital R could be experienced and known, then it might not have been possible for something else to appear and educate me. There's a whole other universe. And so that happened. I kind of look at my life as BC before the cave and AC after the cave.

Okay, right.

So, you know, BC I was an interfaith minister and prayer and meditation was a central axis of my practice. But when I look back at that time, B.C. now, there was always a presumption that there were certain things in me that were impure, that needed to get out, that needed to not be there. And I realized that after the cave, where it was just this being absorbed into such a depth, the non conceptual that cannot be described, in which there is no one and no God and nothing. There's just nothing in no one. Right. No self, not even a concept of a no self, no witness, just pure being in its thunderous, unshakable, silent depth. Now I understand, you know, that's what Ramana Maharshi's transmission really is. You know, people ask me all the time, well, where can I read a book about Ramana? I said, well, you can read all the books you like, but that's not what it's about. Ramana's grace is Dakshinamurti Shiva teaching in silence. It's a transmission. And so that transmission absorbed me. I don't know how long I was in the cave really in terms of time, but what I do know is that it set off in motion profound changes that asked for a depth of surrender that was very total. And thankfully, there had been many years of practice and study and a spiritual musculature built up over the years that lends itself to a capacity to say yes, to just say okay. Even though it took everything, it took all things, all support structures, There was not one thing in my life, including my understanding of God and my prayer life, that it did not obliterate. That was the edgiest part. I couldn't pray anymore for a year. It was very awkward because the experience was like no words, no one to pray to, anything at all. All the spiritual concepts had been removed. And this is for someone who's leading an interfaith seminary, training other people to be ministers. You can imagine.

Yeah, that's difficult, right?

Being that erased. And of course it meant I had to let go of that function and hand it on to others because I could not put myself back into that square hole anymore. I was no longer a square peg. It wasn't possible. Yeah. So it's very deep. And then there was a big process of learning how to adapt to another level of intense vulnerability and openness. And my deepest yearning in all of that was how to function, how to be here in the world, how to navigate ordinary life without reconstructing an ego I really didn't know, like, and I had big things to deal with, like how to navigate the US Immigration system to get legal in America. As you know, Roger, that's not a simple matter, especially when you don't have a university doing that for you and you don't know anybody, which was my situation only you're hearing guidance come to the Bay Area, East North Bay, you know, very clear. So a lot of very complex practicalities had to get handled. Only I did not want to reconstellate as an ego self with all that stress and tension and insecurity and flapping around in order to navigate. So I learned a practice, and it was just three simple words. Okay, what now? What's needed now? And so this was nurtured by all my years of study in A Course in Miracles, which the text kind of leads us to make no decisions of yourself. Well, that actually is very practical, good advice because your ego self only knows what it knows. It only knows how to navigate life from the paradigm of being a separate somebody who thinks it's in charge, who thinks that it has to contract in order to do everything, who thinks it's the thinker, who thinks it's the doer, in which there's inevitably insecurity, anxiety, and a bunch of stress. So I have been interested. Well, is there a way to show up at my desk, right to complex tasks with my students, in the kitchen with my husband when we're having a debate about something as I'm watching the news? Is there a way to show up in all of that in a different way, from a deeper place that I do know from experience? And that's my ongoing inquiry.

Stay tuned for part two, in which we dive deeper into some of Miranda's experiences and the teaching of she has to suggest how we can live most fully and express and contribute most effectively.

Thank you very much for being a part of this conversation. We hope that you were moved, as we are moved, being part of it ourselves. We'd also like to say that this is being funded by Roger and myself. It comes out of our pockets. So if you would like to help us to mainly to get this podcast out to more people because the bigger audience have, which is still growing, but the more people we can reach and the more marketing we can do, the more positive effect we can have on the world. So we've done a couple of ways, but we'd like you to buy us a cup of coffee. Very simple. And I do that with podcasts that I support. And I find it's very satisfying. So thank you for your help. Thank you for your presence, and thank you for all you are and all you do. We love you.

Sam.