Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Awakening from Grief with John E. Welshons

67 min

Nadia [00:00:09]:

Welcome to the Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life podcast. I'm your host, Nadia Delacruz, founder of the Wayne Dyer Wisdom community. My guest this week is a beloved meditation teacher who has been a student of world religions throughout his life. His teachings weave together the mystical and contemplative aspects of the world's great spiritual traditions. He trained with Elizabeth Kubler Ross and spent much time working with friends like Ram Dass and Stephen Levine since the 1970s. His workshops and retreats often focus on terminally ill patients and people in grief. Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote the forward to his book Awakening from Grief: Finding the Way Back to Joy, which we'll be talking about today.

Nadia [00:00:53]:

John Welshons, thank you so much for joining me today, Nadia.

John Welshons [00:00:58]:

Thank you so much for inviting me. What a pleasure to be with you.

Nadia [00:01:02]:

So the first thing I want to tell you is that this book, Awakening from Grief, was the book I bought when my father died in 2019. That was the biggest loss I have experienced in my life. I was definitely looking for a different perspective maybe than what I was receiving in the world around me. And in fact, this was the only book that I bought on grief. So it is quite an honor to bring it kind of full circle and get to sit down and have this conversation with you today.

John Welshons [00:01:38]:

Oh, thank you. Wow. Well, it's an honor for me, Nadia, and Wayne's blessing on that book was such a precious gift to me. He was always so warm and gracious and kind to, you know, really? I think we share a great affection for him.

Nadia [00:01:59]:

Yeah. When did you first meet Dr. Wayne Dyer?

John Welshons [00:02:03]:

Well, that's an interesting story.

Nadia [00:02:06]:

Oh, that's what we're here for. That's perfect.

John Welshons [00:02:08]:

I met him briefly at a workshop that he did in Princeton, New Jersey, back in, I would guess the early ninety s. And in 1979, I was going through the breakup of a terrible relationship and it was one of those that should have broken up like years earlier, but we stuck it out and it was just awful. And my former partner was reading your Erroneous Stones, and every time I saw the book, I just hated the book. And I hated Wayne Dyer because I had a feeling that she was reading the book to help her get the courage to leave. Right. And so her final coup de gras was the day that she was packing up and moving out. She packed all her books and everything in the car and she came up one last time for one last look to see if everything was gone. And then she had your erroneous zones in her hand and she threw it at me and she said, I'll clean this up.

John Welshons [00:03:28]:

She said, you're such a jerk, why don't you read this book? It might help you. And off she went. And that was the last I saw of her for a year, I think. But anyway, so that was, I think it was 1979, and ultimately, Nadia, I did read it. I picked it up. I had already been very connected with Ram Dass, and not yet with Stephen Levine, but I had studied with Elizabeth Kubler Ross, but my relationship skills needed some polishing. And so one day, maybe a month or two later, I picked up your erroneous Stones and I started reading it. And I just got captivated.

John Welshons [00:04:17]:

I thought, this is such a great book and I didn't expect that. And then I started to realize Wayne Dyer is not just a psychologist, he's a spiritual teacher. So fast forward. I meet him briefly at a workshop in the early ninety s. And then in 1999, just before Awakening for Grief was published one day I had the thought to call Wayne and ask him for an endorsement. And I was talking with a man who at the time was a very popular and famous motivational speaker who seemed to know everybody. So I called him up and I said, do you know Wayne Dyer? And he said, oh yeah. I said, do you know how I could get in touch with him? So he said, I'll find out.

John Welshons [00:05:15]:

Next day his secretary calls me and she says, here's Wayne Dyer's phone number. Now I'm thinking that it's his know, and I'm going to talk to a secretary or something like that. So I call the number, there's no answer, there's no voicemail, there's no nothing. It just rings and rings and rings and nothing. I keep calling every now and then for about two months. One day the phone is answered and I hear someone whose voice sounds very familiar say hello. And I went, oh, my God, that's Wayne Dyer. I said Wayne? And he said yes, who's this? And I said, well, my name is John Welshons and I'm calling you.

John Welshons [00:06:02]:

And I mentioned the person who gave me his phone number. And I said, I'm a friend of his. And he gave me your phone number and he mentioned this person's name and he said how on earth did that person get my phone number? I said, I don't know, but I don't want to bother you, so we can just hang up right now if you want to. And he said no, why did you call? So I start to tell him about the book, about Awakening from Grief. And he listened and he was a little know, understandably, not defensive, but he, you know let me tell you something Nadia. I've lost you.

Nadia [00:06:49]:

No, I'm still the video. If the video cuts out for you, don't worry, because it's recording locally, so the finished quality will be fine. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, go ahead.

John Welshons [00:07:03]:

So anyway he said, John, I think everybody in the world is writing a book. I right now at this moment am looking at a stack of several stacks of probably 200 manuscripts sitting in my office that people want me to read and endorse and I just can't read them all. And I said I understand it's fine but thank you for your time. And somewhere I mentioned Ram Dass without any particular intention and Wayne says to me you know Ram Dass? I said yeah. He goes oh my God, how is he? Because this know not too long after his stroke maybe two years after the stroke and he goes I love Ram Dass. He's like my greatest hero. I didn't know then he said then the heavens opened and then he said send me your manuscript, I'll do my best to take a look at it. I did and like three days later the fax machine sprang to life and here comes a fax from Wayne with an endorsement for the book.

John Welshons [00:08:17]:

And then when we did the second version which was about three years later I asked him if he'd be willing to write the introduction or the preface forward, I guess it's called. And he said sure. In the meantime, I had met him. I'll just tell you one other wonderful story about him. I went up to meet him at a workshop in Los Angeles and when I introduced myself oh John, I love your book. And he gave me a big hug and he said do you have any with you? And I said Well, I have some in the trunk of my car. He said Go get them, put them on the book table next to my books and we'll sell them. And I sold like 100 books that day at his workshop because then he stood up on stage and he held it up and he said buy this book.

John Welshons [00:09:10]:

And of course everybody says Wayne Dyer says buy the book. I'll buy the yeah. So that was the kind of person he know just extraordinarily kind and was I guess that was our first real meeting at that workshop in Los Angeles but I saw many times after that on Maui sometimes with you know he'd come over and visit or he would go out to dinner with us or whatever. Wonderful. One time I just ran into him. I was jogging on the footpath in front of his condominium at Kanapali Beach and I knew he lived there but I was staying down the beach and just out for a jog and I called him. We thought we might meet a few days later. Then I'm jogging and here he comes walking down the know.

John Welshons [00:10:06]:

So we had a nice greeting. So those are some of my you.

Nadia [00:10:12]:

Know what's interesting to me many things about the story you just shared. But one of the things is that when you read Your Erroneous Zones, which was his first book, that you recognized him as a spiritual teacher. And I'm not even sure if he had recognized that in himself yet.

John Welshons [00:10:31]:

Well, I mentioned that to him, Nadia, when I first met him, and he said, you were right. But I didn't know that at the time. But to me, it came through his writing, because while he was a psychologist, but I could feel something much deeper than most psychology, which is probably why.

Nadia [00:10:55]:

He loved Ram Dass so much, too. I mean, he definitely saw him as a mentor, an example, and eventually a good friend. But it started out with him just really admiring Dass's work.

John Welshons [00:11:08]:

Yeah, he told me he used to go see Dass whenever he gave a lecture that Wayne could see when Wayne was like a graduate student and he'd try to sit in the front row.

Nadia [00:11:21]:

Yeah, Dassi Ma and I talked about that a little bit when I spoke with her earlier this year. I know you two are good friends as well. I was surprised that Wayne Dyer was an early influence for her because I met her when we went to Maui, and I ended up at Hanuman Maui, which was just, you know, they're like, oh, who are? You know, I was like, oh, I run the Wayne Dyer wisdom community. And they're like, oh, we love Dyer. And so to hear that she actually discovered Ram Dass second, she discovered Wayne Dyer first. So even though she was his primary caretaker for so long, that there was connection there, too. And both of them, for whatever reason, Dr. Wayne Dyer and Ram Dass hold such a special place in my heart.

Nadia [00:12:08]:

They've brought me to levels of understanding and compassion that I'm not sure I would have found my way to otherwise. But it hits me in different places. Like I say, Ram Dass enters through the heart and then gets to my mind, and Wayne Dyer goes through my mind and gets to my heart. Yeah, because I've been thinking a lot. What well, what is it about these two? Because they're both so significant to me. But it was the words, really, that started me with Wayne Dyer, but it was this feeling with Dass, and then it's like this feeling of grace and what is that? And I think it awakened something that left something in me. So it's neat that we're all connected, right? But so many people feel this connection that I do, and exploring it is one of the great joys of my life. But I would love to read part of.

Nadia [00:13:12]:

Yes, that's a great question. I did meet Ram Dass once, and that was at a Wayne Dyer conference on Maui in, I believe it was 2007. It was the first time he had held a conference at the Westin there before. He was always traveling, traveling, and he's like, well, you guys can come to me. And I was like, Dr. Wayne Dyer in Hawaii? Because I already loved Hawaii. I was like, yes, please. So that was his first one.

Nadia [00:13:41]:

He made it an annual thing, and he had Ram Dass there, which admittedly at the time, I didn't know a lot about. I knew he was significant. I was captivated by the talk that he gave and how funny he was. But it was really after that that I started diving into the recordings of his talks and his books and everything. So, yeah, that was my one meeting.

John Welshons [00:14:06]:

I actually was there. We were staying at the house. And he and Ram Dass said, well, we're going over to see Wayne today, and Wayne's going to have Ram Dass speak to his group. And so we traveled over to Ka'anapali and I was amazed at how he affected the group because that was 2007. I had known him for 45 years, or 35 years at that point, and it was sort of it was just Ram Dass up on stage. I loved seeing him for all 35 years. It wound up being almost 50 years that I knew him. But to see Wayne's group just so enraptured by him was just wonderful.

Nadia [00:15:01]:

Yeah, I remember at one point he held a meditation, and he had just come off of a year of studying the Tao Te Ching. And to me, he was the most centered that I've ever seen him. And he always inspired me. But there was something different. There was a depth to his experience, to his presence, the way that he showed up, it felt a little bit slower and deeper. And he was also excited about his next project, which was Excuses Begone. So he wanted to practice some of his techniques for overcoming self-defeating thought patterns. But mostly we were there to talk about the Tao.

Nadia [00:15:45]:

Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. And at one point, he held this guided meditation. And so the whole audience; I don't know what we were maybe 200 people or something, we all sit there and we close our eyes and Wayne gets into this space and he starts this guided meditation. And I just felt this wave of energy that washed over the room. And I actually opened my eyes and I was like, did anybody else just feel that? I don't think I said it. I wasn't going to interrupt the meditation, but I'm looking around, like, did anybody else just feel that? Because it's like he was so practiced at that point of getting into that space, of coming into alignment with that heart space, that it was a tactile, sort of palpable experience for me.

John Welshons [00:16:36]:

Sweet.

Nadia [00:16:37]:

Yeah. But it was an amazing weekend. I loved being there, and it's so fun to hear that you were there. And I know Dassi was there, too.

John Welshons [00:16:45]:

In fact, we went back, I don't know if it was the next year or two years later or what, but we went back another time. Ram Dass, I think, maybe did three or four altogether with Wayne at the Westin Maui, but I went back with him another time. That time, I remember Wayne was struggling with his health and not feeling real good, although you wouldn't have known when he was up on stage, he was just fine.

Nadia [00:17:12]:

Yeah, I know he had a lot of neck and back pain. Is that one of the things that he was dealing with at the time? Of course, he had his leukemia diagnosis too, but I'm really not sure how much that impacted how he felt from day to day because I don't think that's something that we heard a lot about.

John Welshons [00:17:32]:

Yeah, he didn't seem to complain and I do remember that day he was having neck pain and stomach issues. He invited us to have lunch with him backstage and he had this wonderful feast set up for about ten people, but he couldn't eat much. He had to go over in the corner of the room and lie down and body worker who was there was working on him. I was amazed when I saw him come back after lunch and know seemed fine.

Nadia [00:18:11]:

Pop back up in front of the.

John Welshons [00:18:15]:

Yeah, and I saw Ram Dass do that. A number of know after his stroke, he had a lot of physical discomfort and physical complications. And sometimes he'd come down in the morning and I'd look across the room at him and he'd be sitting in his wheelchair at the breakfast table and just kind of slumped down and looking. I say you okay? Ram Dass And he'd just say, really bad night. But then somebody would come to the house to see him and the doorbell would ring and somebody go answer the door and you know, "Ram Dass, that's so and so coming to see you." And I'd turn and look at him and suddenly his face was full of color, his eyes were Know, and he was all like, Ram Dass, and they'd come in and he would never let on that he was struggling and suffering. It was quite amazing.

Nadia [00:19:14]:

It must be a lot of pressure to have so many people wanting to see you showing up for a talk. I can't remember exactly where I heard it from, but I remember Wayne Dyer talking about one time, I think he was getting ready to record a PBS special and the audience is all out there and he was in terrible pain that he actually ended up on the floor and he couldn't move. And he was asking for his wife Marcy, even though they were separated at the time because she was the one who could calm him down and help him to feel better. But I can just imagine the pressure of sort of being that famous, I guess, and wanting to serve and wanting to show up. But we're all human and so we have our good days and our bad days. and it's like if I have to cancel something, it's not affecting that many people, but if you're Wayne Dyer or Ram Dass and you have to cancel something and like Wayne was know, there was millions of dollars resting on his ability to show up for this. Everything that was set up in know, if they had to stop it, a lot would be lost. So I wonder if I think it was a combination of kind of wanting to fulfill that, but also I think the audience would bring something out in him that would energize him and sort of he would respond in kind.

John Welshons [00:20:42]:

Yeah, I mean, you know the guru that Ram Dass met in India we call Maharaji, his name was Neem Karoli Baba. But I have had many times in my life where I'm feeling like I can't do it. And I just have to turn to Maharaji and say, I need your help because I can't do then, you know, there it. And Ram Dass really always felt that when I first met him, he would say to people who would come up and I I was just so blown away by your lecture. And I've never felt anything like that before. And Ram Dass would just say, if you feel that coming from me, that means Maharaji loves you. Don't blame it on me.

Nadia [00:21:38]:

Don't get it twisted. This is coming from the source, right?

John Welshons [00:21:42]:

Yeah, that's right.

Nadia [00:21:44]:

Yeah. I'm going to remember that. And Maharaji had his own health issues, didn't he?

John Welshons [00:21:50]:

Well, I guess I never met Maharaji. I heard about him through Ram Dass in 1971 and then I met Ram Dass in 73. As soon as I met Ram Dass, I made arrangements to go to India to meet Maharaji. But he died before I got there. So I missed him in that form. I mean, he was a mysterious, enigmatic human being and he died. I think he maybe was 73 years old when he died, but nobody was really sure. It's a little confusing.

Nadia [00:22:38]:

He's a bit of a mystery, but he left quite an impression, didn't he? That is still making waves today.

John Welshons [00:22:45]:

He did, yeah. Waves of love.

Nadia [00:22:48]:

Okay, well, I wanted to read part of the foreword to your book, Awakening from Grief. Can you believe it's been 20 years? That's just mind blowing how time just keeps moving.

John Welshons [00:23:00]:

Blink of an eye.

Nadia [00:23:01]:

Blink of an eye, yes, but all in perfect timing. So, Dr. Wayne Dyer's forward... I'm just going to read a little bit here. It says, "I recall my first conversation with John Welshons, in which he told me about the book he had just written, Awakening from Grief. While I was intrigued by the idea of finding the way back to joy in moments of deep disappointment and sorrow, I was just as impressed with the man himself. We talked about our mutual friend and mentor, Ram Dass. And when I hung up the phone, I said to myself, this is a man who walks his talk, who lives his passion and if I can ever be of assistance in his work, I would be honored."

John Welshons [00:23:44]:

And he carried through with that.

Nadia [00:23:49]:

And it's so neat having heard that story from you directly of how you called him on his phone number. And he's like, I got a lot of books here, and you can imagine a lot of people wanted something from.

John Welshons [00:24:04]:

His heart. To this day, I don't know how we got his home phone number, but.

Nadia [00:24:10]:

It was a miracle, I guess.

John Welshons [00:24:13]:

So, yeah. So you mentioned, Nadia, I was going to ask, you mentioned that that book was helpful to you when your father died. Yeah, you want to talk about that?

Nadia [00:24:26]:

So my father died in April of 2019, and I've talked about it frequently, probably on this podcast, because it's something that's ever present with me. Of course, in a way, it's also something that drives me, which is interesting in the context of talking about grief because I think it did bring me to an awareness of the preciousness of life and how fleeting it can be. And it made me feel a little bit more courageous to do some of the things that scare me and to live while I'm here. But I was receiving so many messages. So I'm going to read a quote here because this one really touched me and it's from the book, and it says, "Every time people have said to us, "don't cry, be strong, keep a stiff upper lip, don't think about that. Let's talk about something more pleasant. Here, have a drink. You'll feel better," They have taught us not to grieve."

Nadia [00:25:22]:

And boy, was I hearing a lot of those messages, and it did not sit right in my body at all. And I'm one of these people who I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve. I feel things deeply. I've always been more sensitive. I used to think it was a curse. It took me a long time to figure out it was a gift. There's so many gifts that come with that.

Nadia [00:25:46]:

But it just felt intolerable to me to stuff it all down and pretend it wasn't there and pretend it didn't happen. So that time was a bit of a blur, honestly. And I can't tell you for certain why this was the one book that I bought on Amazon about grief, but I think it was how open and honest and courageous you were about the truth of the human experience. And that's something that I have always been drawn to without maybe even understanding why. But let's get real about what life is.

John Welshons [00:26:31]:

Well, that really was Ram Dass's influence in all the years I knew him, that's so much what he was about. Is facing life directly and clearly not sugar coating it, not pretending that it's other than it is, and recognizing that there are these seasons of life I've been calling them recently, but phases of our lives that we go through and we're going to have losses and we're going to have disappointments, and that's just mean. Even Wayne Dyer with all of his wonderful know, had losses and disappointments. And I think we lose sight of that in this know, there's so little preparation for any of it. So it was really Ram Dass, people have said to me what you just said. You're so courageous to write this book in the way you did. And to me, it wasn't courageous. It was just honest.

John Welshons [00:27:38]:

And I guess it takes courage to be honest. But at this point in my life, not so much, because I realized that line in the Bible that says, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. I think I wrote An Awakening From Grief that in one of my early interactions with Ram Dass when we were just coming out of the we had ways of getting high, which many of us had sort of renounced by that point. But he said, if you want to get really high, you want to get really high. Try living in truth. Very scary, but it's just a fascinating and I would say even glorious way to live. You learn to handle it judiciously and prudently. Like, sometimes people mistake living in truth for saying whatever comes into their mind or what they think and winding up hurting people's feelings and not being particularly kind.

John Welshons [00:28:53]:

So in that case, I just like to apply that wonderful formula. Before you say something, ask yourself, is it kind? Is it true? And is it? You know, Ram Dass and I used to sit and look in each other's eyes as a meditation. He did this with a lot of people. But we would sit and look in each other's eyes until we establish this really pristine, beautiful connection through meditation. And then he would start asking a question. And the question was, if there's anything you can bring to mind which would be difficult, embarrassing, or uncomfortable for you to share with another human being, share it. Now, that's not typical mode of conversation in our culture. And what he was doing ultimately was we go through this exercise, his eyes would never flicker, and you could feel that his love never flickered.

John Welshons [00:30:05]:

So you tell him, like, the worst thing you'd ever done or ever thought, and he'd go, Right, I hear all that. Here we are. The world didn't come to an end. Now, if there's anything difficult, embarrassing, or uncomfortable that you can share with another human being, share it. And we just go through it and through it until finally I couldn't think of anything. And I realized it was a kind of purification. That was what probably the Roman Catholic Church was endeavoring to do with confession. But it didn't quite work the same know, with Ram Dass, it was just like he or Stephen Levine started to call the practice the eater of impurities.

John Welshons [00:30:55]:

So it was just like that. Another human being would bear witness to your stuff and not judge you for it. And he did that because that was the experience he had with Maharaji in India. Maharaji loved him unconditionally. And Maharaji knew everything about him, and he still loved him.

Nadia [00:31:20]:

Yeah, I think that kind of love he described as the most transformative. And it sounds like really, that practice he was doing with you is an emptying of shame and guilt. Just let it all out. Put it here on the table. It sounds so much like what they do in a lot of the Twelve Step programs, like AA. Right. And I adore that level of honesty. I am really drawn to people who are like, you know what? This is it.

Nadia [00:31:51]:

This is my story. This is how I really feel. Instead of trying to keep those masks on all the time of, oh, I'm fine and life is good and la la la, that sort of forced positivity is really hard for me to swallow. But when we talk about truth, I see it less of a verbal expression and more as a commitment to trying to see and meet life as it really is. How do I really feel in this moment? How do I really feel about my relationships or my life, or what am I really thinking about? And I know, of course, you are a teacher of meditation. And I think when we get to that topic of mindfulness, it's observing what the mind is doing. And only if we have some awareness of what's feeding all these feelings and experiences that we're having, do we have any hope of doing anything about it.

John Welshons [00:32:58]:

Yeah, that's right. That's it. As you alluded to, the culture trains us not to do that. Don't think about it, don't look at it. Don't pretend it's not happening. And I came to this realization, Nadia, a number of years ago. I started doing meditation in 1968, and I started teaching it in, I think, 75. And a few years into teaching meditation, it started to become clear to me that everybody who came to meditation class was secretly thinking that they were uniquely insane.

John Welshons [00:33:47]:

They would sit there and look. Why did you come to meditation class? Oh, I'm a little stressed out. Right. Or one woman. I've always remembered this expression. I said, what brought you here? She said, I suffer from brain race. I thought, well, that's a great expression, but the truth is that all our minds are like that. They're just chaotic.

John Welshons [00:34:15]:

One teacher said, they're like a screaming barreling, madhouse on wheels. And that's the way the human mind is. It's chaotic, it's judgmental. It's not rational. We have to learn to think rationally. We have that ability. And so we call ourselves rational beings. But the human mind is not inherently rational.

John Welshons [00:34:42]:

The human mind is full of fears, irrational stuff, all sorts of crazy thoughts that just come into your mind, and you think, oh, God, if I think that, I must be an awful human being. But I started to see my own mind as like a compost heap. It was just generating. Compost all the time from the subconscious, from previous incarnations, from fears and desires, and it doesn't make sense. So it's really, I think, a misunderstanding to think that enlightenment happens in the mind. It happens when the mind is quiet, and it's really the arising of the recognition of our own true nature. So it's something that's always with us. We don't lose enlightenment.

John Welshons [00:35:42]:

One of the things that I really liked about the Zen training, which is that most spiritual paths are seen as an ascent up a mountain, sort of that image is used often, but in Zen they just say, no, your job isn't to become enlightened. Your job is to stop pretending you aren't because you have all of the raw material. You got everything you need to be enlightened. There's a part of you that already is. And when you look at that place in yourself where you were even as a child, you said a few minutes ago, not feeling comfortable in this world, in the perspective that most people are feeding you in this world I think that's usually an indication you're an old soul and you've been through this a number of times and you've got more perspective on it than most people.

Nadia [00:36:47]:

Know. It's interesting because I was just a teenager when I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer speaking on PBS. I think I was watching it with my dad at the time. I'm not even sure who turned it on, but at some point, I just became fascinated. And when I think back on that, it seems so strange that at this time in my life when I was arguably more concerned with friends and clothes and boys and getting into college and whatever else was coming up next in my life, why was I so interested in this kind of self help spiritual conversation? And I honestly don't know. I think it just hit something that I was in alignment with, and I carried it with me for the rest of my life. And I still think it's a little bit bizarre because so often people will come to that later after they've had more experience in life, and they find things are a little bit unfulfilling and they're like, okay, I'm moving into this stage of meaning.

Nadia [00:37:50]:

But for me, it hit me so young, and I'm actually really grateful for that now because I had that sort of guiding first. The first one was Norman vincent Peele, The Power of Positive Thinking. I read that book in high school. What was that?

John Welshons [00:38:12]:

He married my parents. He presided.

Nadia [00:38:14]:

He married your parents? It's a small world, let me tell you. So wow. Norman Vincent Peele. So I remember having this book as a teenager, and that was the first time that I received the message that you could have any control over your thoughts at all. I really thought it was just this runaway train that you couldn't do anything about. You just tried to have good intentions and that behavior was everything. And Norman Vincent Peele was the one who planted that seed that said, you know what? There's more going on to these thoughts and you have more influence over this than you think. And then along came Wayne Dyer.

Nadia [00:38:56]:

So I had been primed for that. So when he's talking about the potential of your life, nobody had told him. Every time. Everybody talked about fear and limitations and this is what you can expect, and don't set your sights too high. And he was giving me a very different message. And I don't know, maybe I would have found it one way or another, but that was the doorway for me.

John Welshons [00:39:20]:

You would have, but that was the doorway for you. How did you get hold of the book Power of Positive Thinking?

Nadia [00:39:29]:

Gosh, I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know if I got it from the library or I bought it. I think it had a blue cover. I remember seeing it in the house. But yeah, that's a very good question. Maybe it fell from the sky, I don't know. It was just time for me.

John Welshons [00:39:47]:

Sometimes they do when you need a message, it comes. My dad gave it to me, along with another book because he was in AA, and that book was very popular in AA. And also Emmett Fox, a wonderful teacher named Emmett Fox who wrote a number of books, but the most popular was called The Sermon on the Mount, which was just his metaphysical interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and just a beautiful book. So might check that one out sometime, too.

Nadia [00:40:22]:

I will. I have not read that one yet, but yeah, it's so interesting how all of these connections, they overlap so much and bring us together. Now, in the book, you talk about many of your own experiences with loss of varying kinds from a young age, but why grief? So you studied world religions, which is fascinating to me. I have not studied that in college, but I think that is a program I would love to explore because it's something I'm very curious about. So you studied world religions and then you end up basically spending all of these years talking about grief and loss. So why grief? What is it that motivated you to serve in this way?

John Welshons [00:41:20]:

Wow, what a great question. Again, it was largely Ram Dass who sort of he always worked as a kind of conduit who wove together the different elements of my consciousness and my life. Now, my mother had died when I was 18 in 1969, and she was 55, and she died at home. And in those days, 1969, no one had ever heard the word hospice. No one knew what that meant. It wasn't a concept that existed in our culture. And if someone was dying, they certainly wouldn't be brought home unless the family was very poor and they couldn't afford to have them in a nursing home or hospital. My mother wanted to come home.

John Welshons [00:42:10]:

And the story is in Awakening from Grief. But it was basically the doctor advised against it. He said it's too much of a burden on the family. But it wasn't. She was in our house and at first we were all kind of freaked out. But then I started to spend time with her, sitting with her, holding hands, looking in her eyes the way that I later would look in Ram Dass's eyes. And I started to see this tremendous light in her. And one day I was sitting on her bed holding her hand, looking in her eyes and she couldn't speak because she had a brain tumor.

John Welshons [00:42:49]:

So she was a phasic, which meant her speech was impacted. So we were just silent together, looking in each other's eyes, holding hands. I see this light in her, Nadia. And I had the thought that's the part of her that isn't going to die. And when I had that thought, she squeezed my hand, smiled and nodded like you got it, kid, you got it. And she died like a day or two later. But it was such a powerfully, transformative experience for me that I really had almost no grief about her death. And that was fascinating.

John Welshons [00:43:41]:

I was so happy about what we had shared together that it was hard for me to drum up some kind of woe is me because we had connected in a way that everybody would yearn to connect with their parents in just a moment, just a glimpse, just seeing that. So that was in the back of my mind. But there was nothing in the culture that supported that until I met Ram Dass. And I met Ram Dass in 1973 and he had been spending a lot of time with Elizabeth Kubler Ross who was a psychiatrist from Switzerland, who was a wonderful saintly being. And he mentioned that and he said that he and Elizabeth at the time were planning to start a center together and work together. And I was so fascinated by it. He said during his lecture in 73 that he was finding being with people who were dying and people who were grieving to be the highest spiritual practice he had ever come upon. And I went up to talk to him about that.

John Welshons [00:44:53]:

I said, I'm a little puzzled by that. We talked a little bit and he talked about Elizabeth. And then he said, well, why don't you go see her? So I did. And it was about three years later when I finally had the opportunity to see Elizabeth at a big conference in Berkeley, California. And what struck me at that conference was there were 2000 people there talking about the thing that we were never supposed to talk about and everybody looked happy. This is bizarre. And it was like everybody felt this weight lifted off their shoulders like we can finally speak. So that was the beginning, I was really impressed by that.

John Welshons [00:45:40]:

And then Ram Dass continued to do the work. He continued to influence me in that way and then ultimately introduced me to Stephen Levine. And that was really his know, it's not the only thing I do, but it's certainly been a significant guidepost in my life, and it's a significant reminder because I'm often working with people who are dying, who are younger than me. And it caused me, at a certain point to start realizing that there is a truth that we often ignore. And I like to bring that truth into my daily meditation for about 30 years now. In my morning meditation, as I'm coming out of meditation, I add in the following reflection, and I say to myself, this could be my last day on Earth or the last for someone I love. In light of that, how do I want to spend it? What do I want to fill my mind with? Do I want to be loving and generous and kind? Or do I want to be cranky and selfish? And the answers come pretty quickly if you realize, jeez, this could be my last day. How do I want to spend it? And it could be that's the fascinating thing about it.

John Welshons [00:47:12]:

And I'm saying that not out of pessimism or negativity. That's the truth of our human life. Not one of us has any idea how long we've got to live in these bodies. And I think if we think about it more instead of thinking about it less, it wakes us up in some sense. You start to realize you don't have time to be depressed and carrying on about how terrible things are because you need to look around and see how beautiful things are around you. I'm not discounting that people have tremendous suffering and problems in their lives, but if you focus on that solely, you miss so much beauty.

Nadia [00:48:03]:

What brings you joy?

John Welshons [00:48:06]:

Talking to you, being with you, talking about truth, talking about God, talking about love, being in love. I think the natural beauty we were talking about the view that we have from our condominium here on the hill in New Jersey, and it's just breathtaking. And we see these sunsets every night that are just mind, you know? I mean, they're as good as sunsets over the so, uh, yeah. Natural beauty and love. I think if I had to pick two, if I have to pick one, I have to go with love.

Nadia [00:48:53]:

Love. Yeah. Well, that really covers it all. Love, yeah. The reason why I ask you that is because you have spent so much time contemplating the truth and the reality that we are all going to die one day, and that you have that in your daily meditation. And what we've learned from Elizabeth Kubler Ross and and Stephen Levine and Dass and you and others is that if we can see things as they are and embrace our mortality instead of hiding from it and running from it, which is impossible that it can enrich our experience of life. One of the quotes from your book says, in teaching us to avoid the unpleasant and encouraging us to deny the inevitable, our culture has robbed us of many, many precious opportunities to gain a deeper, more immediate sense of who we are and what our lives are all about.

John Welshons [00:49:58]:

I wrote that?

Nadia [00:50:01]:

Or it came through you.

John Welshons [00:50:03]:

I think it came through, yeah. That's the best writing. I think Wayne knew that too.

Nadia [00:50:10]:

He said, God writes all the books and builds all the bridges.

John Welshons [00:50:14]:

He used to wake up at 3:30 in the morning or something and Can I go back to sleep? And the voice would say, no, get up and write. Happens to me, too. I find the early morning hours to be the best time for writing.

Nadia [00:50:28]:

Yeah. For me, it's late night. But that's the other side of the same coin. Because once my family is asleep, my kids are in bed, and it's like the house gets quiet and it's easier to get in touch with how I feel and what's coming through me and let those thoughts and everything kind of flow get into the flow. Really. The house is kind of so busy from the moment I get up that morning. Meditation is difficult to make space for, but there's always space in the evening, so I treasure that time, that late night time. But then I'm a night owl too, so that works for me.

Nadia [00:51:09]:

I guess if I was a habitually, woke up early in the morning, it would probably feel very similar.

John Welshons [00:51:19]:

Well, it's difficult to be a night owl when you're a mother, so congratulations.

Nadia [00:51:27]:

To each their own, right? No, we make it work. Life is always in flux. But yeah, being a mother is one of the great joys of my life and I'm kind of amazed that I find time for anything else. But you got to follow what's in your heart, right?

John Welshons [00:51:48]:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Nadia [00:51:52]:

You wrote about the conference that you went to with Charlie Garfield and Elizabeth Kubler Ross and that you described them as fully alive and fully human beings with deep compassion, profound honesty and extraordinary willingness to look at the most difficult aspects of life and death. How we can use these difficult experiences in order to learn how to live. And I read that and I think it really clicked for me that I think that's the underlying thread of what draws me to people. Right. That's exactly what drew me to Ram Dass. It was that extraordinary willingness to look at the most difficult aspects of life. And if that was culturally the norm, I think it would be really transformative. But we may not be born into a culture that gives us these messages, but there are certainly teachers that are here to share that.

Nadia [00:52:57]:

I'm grateful for your teachings. I'm grateful for your books. I'm grateful for your experience that brought this to us. And it really seems like it was part of the awakening of the that we started looking at life and death and suffering a little bit differently. I think that's kind of so amazing because I didn't even know you guys were all friends. You know what I mean? It kind of reminds me of Transcendentalism where it was a fairly small group of people that got together but made a big impact on kind of a new way of seeing things. What's it been like to be part.

John Welshons [00:53:42]:

Of that, what's it been like to be part of it? It's been mostly grace, mostly all of the things that happened in the 60s. It was pretty wild, but it was so creative and such an amazing awakening. And one of the things I remember just revisited recently was Paul McCartney talking about a song that Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys wrote called God Only Knows. And Paul said it was the most beautiful song he's ever heard. He's written a lot of beautiful songs himself, but he said that song never fails to cause him to cry. And when he hears it, he has the thought, my goodness, how did we get that good? And where did it go? Because whatever that creative thing was that was happening in the little bit into the early 70s but it did kind of dissipate and maybe it was just you can't sustain it because a lot of it was fueled by psychedelic drugs and caused a lot of people like Brian Wilson to have really serious mental problems. It's like forcing your way into a heaven realm when you're not really prepared for it. So it was a mixed blessing in that sense.

John Welshons [00:55:21]:

It was incredibly rejuvenating and vitalizing to be a part of it, but realizing that we lost a lot of people along the way and that whatever it was, that was a blip on the screen of the evolution of consciousness. But it's manifesting now, Nadia. I mean, what you're doing so many younger people so drawn into this. Sometimes I sit down and I'm speaking to someone who's like in their late teens or early 20s, I'm thinking, how do they know all this now? This is amazing. But that's what I meant when I said I really think that whether you subscribe to reincarnation or not, it does seem to me that there are souls who come into this life who are much more attuned to just yearning for truth and recognizing it when they see it and hear it and feel.

It's been an amazing journey and I'm very grateful for it. And I think the same thing. How did I get to hang out with Know? How did I get to hang out with Wayne Dyer, Stephen Levine, Elizabeth Kubler Ross? I don't know. It just all kind of happened organically.

Nadia [00:56:51]:

Your paths aligned it seems like there was kind of this pilgrimage to the east looking for answers to the things that didn't sit right with us here. Like, there's got to be another way. So I feel like so many brave souls ventured out to try and find answers or another way or somebody's got to know what's going on. I know in terms of psychedelics, Ram Dass had talked about that. They had read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and they're trying to find this roadmap of what is it that we stumbled on here with the psychedelics and what does it mean and how do we navigate this? Or like, somebody must know which. He tried to ask Maharaj. I don't think he quite got the answer he thought he was coming for. But there's these ripples from that that we've brought a different way of looking at things.

Nadia [00:57:46]:

Like you said, hospice is now a thing. Meditation. Who hasn't heard of meditation and mindfulness? It was not that long ago that it wasn't part of the cumulative consciousness. Yoga, there's yoga everywhere. Like all of these things that sort of emerged out of that time, I think the ripples are still there. And like they say, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. So you find people of all ages today that are feeling something and they're like, there's got to be another way. They come across something, they have a lot of answers.

Nadia [00:58:20]:

I know a lot of young people especially are finding Be here now and tuning into Ram Dass's work and really just kind of looking to find a way to maybe even just be more at harmony with what we are or see what we are. So I definitely see it continuing. It's not quite the same landscape as it was before, but it's still here. I mean, it didn't transform the world like maybe people thought it would, but it did make big changes that we have not seen the end of.

John Welshons [00:59:01]:

Well, I was writing I have two other books that I wrote too. This one. One soul, one love. One heart which is called sacred path to healing all relationships. And when prayers aren't answered and it's opening the heart and quieting the mind in challenging times. And this book, when I was writing it, it started to dawn on me that the world does this thing of kind of getting better and worse at the same time. And I think it's just the polarity of the energies. It's like one of the things that's so evident in our culture now is political polarities, right? And not to take one side or the other, but simply to note sort of the principle of physics, which every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

John Welshons [00:59:55]:

So if you pull really hard in this direction, this direction is going to get pulled really hard too. And that's why one of the interesting things about the east is cultivating this equanimity and centeredness. So that you're not so attached. You may be identified with one side or another. I mean, to me, I want to be identified with the side that's more loving, if there is a side. And that means giving love to everybody. So you talk to the great teachers like the Dalai Lama. He always says, Keep talking to each other.

John Welshons [01:00:41]:

Don't stop talking to each other. You know, don't say your beliefs are so reprehensible. I won't even acknowledge that you exist. No, find your common ground. Find the places where you can meet. One of my friends a few years ago was talking about how she had this big rift with her neighbor, next door neighbor, who she dearly loved for years. And they always got along, and then they got into this political argument. Now they're not speaking to each other.

John Welshons [01:01:09]:

She said, what do I do? I said, you bake really good cookies. Bake some cookies and take them some cookies. Something just simple like that. Just so that we can keep connection to one another and hold to our principles, hold to what we know is right, and go toward the light. As the Tibetan Book of the Dead always said, just keep going toward the light.

Nadia [01:01:35]:

We can send love to those that we disagree with. In fact, that's where our work is. I love that Ram Dass would put pictures on his puja table of people that really irked him, that was really difficult for him to love, so it would remind him, so he could say good morning to all of them and try to be as loving to the people he disliked as the people that he naturally loved. I mean, even Jesus said that, right? To love mean that's the heart of the practice. That's the heart of all of our practice. I can't think of anything deeper than that. And I know Ram Dass. Towards the end of his life, his mantra was about loving awareness.

John Welshons [01:02:25]:

I am loving awareness.

Nadia [01:02:27]:

I am loving awareness. And I think it just if you can take nothing else from his teachings but to become that embodiment of loving awareness, that it would solve so many of the things that we think are problems in our lives.

John Welshons [01:02:56]:

So true.

Nadia [01:02:59]:

He wrote the forward to one soul, one love, one heart.

John Welshons [01:03:02]:

He did.

Nadia [01:03:03]:

The book that you just brought up, and just a piece of that says, when I read this book, I feel like it is coming from my own heart. John Eloquently and elegantly puts into words the concepts that I have been teaching and working with on my own journey for many, many years.

John Welshons [01:03:23]:

Yeah, I once was sitting with him on Maui, and I said, we were talking about the book, and I think during while he was writing The Forward and he was telling me how much he liked it, I said, Well, I stole it all from you. And he said, oh, that's why it feels so familiar.

Nadia [01:03:49]:

This is great stuff, Ram Dass. I'm going to put it all in my book.

John Welshons [01:03:53]:

That's right. But I did it openly and with great respect.

Nadia [01:03:59]:

Oh, yes, of course. So before we leave today, I wanted to leave everybody with one final thought, and it is the final paragraph from Dr. Wayne Dyer's introduction to Awakening from Grief. It says, awakening from Grief by John E. Welshons will help you to heal your heart and rediscover your infinite inner resources. If you honor the spirit of this book, eventually you will come to know in your deepest intuition that everything that has happened in your life has happened not to make you eternally sad, but to help you recognize that you are eternally loving, eternally joyful, and eternally at peace. May God bless you on your own inner journey of awakening from grief. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.

John Welshons [01:04:51]:

Wow. So sweet to hear that.

Nadia [01:04:55]:

I'm grateful for Dr. Dyer. I'm grateful for Ram Dass. I'm grateful that you came into my life when I needed it. This book operates like offering a hand of kindness to someone in their darkest hour. And what a personal joy for me to sort of come full circle and get to sit here and ask you these great questions about your life and your teachings. So, thank you for spending this time with me.

John Welshons [01:05:23]:

Well, thank you, Nadia. And just let me say that I do a lot of interviews, and sitting here for an hour with you has been just glorious, just wonderful. Thank you for your wonderful questions and comments and your beautiful consciousness.

Nadia [01:05:43]:

Thank you so much. We meet in the heart space. Yes. And for all our listen listeners, thank you for following change your thoughts, change your life, and telling your friends about it. Until next time, take care of yourself and take care of each other. Namaste.