Martha Beck

LeAnn hosts Martha Beck- a Harvard-trained sociologist, bestselling author and world-renowned coach- to discuss her latest book The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, Hello, beautiful people. I am so happy
to have you joined me for today's Holy Human because
my guest is seriously one of the wisest humans I

(00:21):
have ever come across, and I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
In addition to holding three degrees A B, A, M, A,
and PhD, all from Harvard University, Martha Beck is a sociologist,
world renowned life coach, and best selling New York Times author.

(00:42):
Her latest book of the Way of Integrity, Finding the
Path to Your True Self, has had a tremendous impact
on me and I cannot wait to share this conversation
with you. Welcome to Holy Human, my friends, Martha Beck,

(01:19):
thank you so much for joining me today on Holy Human.
It is such an honor to have you on here.
And I have to say, um, there are very few
people that scare the ship out of me, and you
are one of them. Yes, because I am homicidal and
in the best of ways, in the best of ways,

(01:42):
I have so much respect for you and your life.
I'm gonna cry because I just I just your level
of integrity, um is something like it's a north star.
It really is. Um. People like you, women like you
who uh really inspired me and you make me question

(02:03):
my life. Like I started reading Um, I started reading
two of your books at the same time. I started
on the Joy Diet and then I started in on
the Way of Integrity, and man, I had, I had.
I've had many conversations, like deep conversations of truth, UM,
and they have. Yeah, it's been the last four weeks

(02:26):
of those two books have been incredibly powerful and eye opening. Yeah,
so that's why you scare me. Well, you know, it's
so weird. You sit in your little I sit in
my bedroom typing away and then I throw stuff out
like a message in a bottle from a desert island,
and you just sort of sit in your room going
to hope that works and then to hear back, you know,

(02:50):
through time and through space from someone I've admired for
a very long time. Is It's surreal in a very
wonderful way. But please do stay gared, because I like
people to be afraid as much as possible. Well, I mean,
do you. I think you kind of when you start

(03:10):
questioning everything about your life and you start to live
in this kind of level of integrity. I mean, I
feel like I have deep integrity, but I always know
that there's a new level. I guess, Um, you know,
like how honest can you be in the moment? I
do you feel like integrity? Do you feel like it
comes to you in layers like one? I know that

(03:30):
you wouldn't okay because I know one day you decided
to go through basically it was a year long integrity clans.
Basically like when you were going to lie. Um, how
do I mean, how does one just make that decision
and then keep it for a year? One word suffering
Like I was suffering so hard. I was depressed. I

(03:51):
was in a lot of physical pain, people from autoimmune diseases.
People didn't understand, and I was just desperate. And I
was like, they say, the truth will set you free,
So I'll try not lying for a year and see
what happens. And I might as well have detonated a
nuclear device. It just went like everything in my life, Um,

(04:12):
I either walked away or quit except for my children,
and I lost a lot of things. I lost a
lot of relationships, my family of origin, my religion of origin,
my job. Realized I didn't like it, so I do
not advise anyone out there to do to do things
that abruptly. Integrity literally means whole, and it's just about

(04:35):
doing what keeps you whole. Okay, So that's how you
define integrity, is what keeps you whole. Yeah, it's like
structural integrity and a machine. If the machine parts are
all lined up, it works. And that's not a judgment,
it's just what happens. And when you're living in the truth,
and I know you've done so much work on this,
when you're speaking the truth in your case, singing the truth,

(04:58):
living the truth, all the hearts line up and the
machine of your life works incredibly well. So it's not
about integrity or I'll hate you and you'll be bad,
you'll go to health. It's you've lost pieces of yourself,
bring them together and teach them to love each other,
and you will not believe how the world transforms to

(05:19):
a gentle, benevolent space. I think that's what's so interesting
about that word integrity, because a lot of people consider it,
you know, a moral compass, and I know you talk
a lot about our true nature and culture clashing, which
I find like completely true in so many ways, Like

(05:39):
with with integrity. I think a lot of people think
of it as, like I said, a moral compass, and
whose moral compass are you going? Like? What we've been
fed and taught and if we never question those like,
do we ever find our integrity? No? I don't think
we do. And by culture I mean any group of

(05:59):
other people. So everybody. Anytime there are two people in
a room, culture is the third guest, like we all
and it's just pressure to behave in certain ways, and
we all have multiple cultures, family, ethnicity, whatever and what what.
We're born whole. We're born to our true nature, but
before we can even talk, we're pressured to do things

(06:22):
more the way other people like us. So maybe cry
less than you want to be, braver than you want to,
or less brave than you want to be. And we're
just structured so that, as little babies, we start splitting
away from our nature to serve the culture. And that
is emotionally and ultimately physically painful. It hurts to be

(06:45):
divided from yourself. So integrity is finding the lost parts
of yourself and bringing them back into the fold and
uniting with them and it feels wonderful. Well, you said
suffering was what inspired integrity. And then there's when you
blew up your life, which I've done a couple of times. Um,

(07:05):
it sucks. Um, you know it does. It sucks. But
I almost and I'll get I want to ask you
this because is there another way? But I do. It's
like you you go from one pain to the other. Um, yeah,
what's the if you're If you're going to be in
that much pain, I guess you might as well do

(07:26):
it in truth, right, I Mean that's the thing. Where
do we suffer either way? Well, the real, the clean
suffering doesn't last. So there's a guy I quote in
the book, Mario Martinez, who says, when you break from
the lies of your past, you go through something called morning,
the known misery. So you're grieving for what you knew
because it was familiar, it was all you knew, and

(07:48):
to be pulled away from that is this involves loss
in it initiates huge tidal waves of grief, like that's
how we process loss. But when you've lost yourself, it
never it never ends. It's just this dull, sad, painful
and whatever it is for your anger, whatever, it just
goes on and on and on. When you separate from

(08:09):
the things that have been pulling you away from your nature,
and you say, I must live according to my nature.
There's sorrow for losing the people and things that go away,
but it heals. It's like having a broken bone that's
been set and it heals. So it does, and and
we become strong in the broken places. So there's an
end to that suffering. And when we come out of it,

(08:30):
there's enormous joy, wherewith losing yourself there is none. Wow. Yeah,
that's powerful. The suffering, though, I mean the the avoidance
of grief. This has been something I've really been going
down myself and understanding how deeply I've built my life

(08:51):
around the avoidance of grief. Yeah, we all do that. Now.
We're running toward anything that feels good and away from
everything that feels pain, and that's perfectly normal. But when
it takes us away from the stillness in our cores,
when we lose that essential hardcore of ourselves, um, we

(09:13):
actually are running into a much worse form of suffering
than any grief. So Carl Young, the psychologist, said, every
neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering. And what he
means by that is if you're crazy. If you're messed
up in any way whatsoever, it's because there's a part
of you that can't quite face the legitimate suffering that

(09:35):
is part of your life story. And you have to
sit in that grief and let it consume you. And
it consumes all the pain, and it leaves you with nothing.
It's like a smelter. It leaves you with nothing but
pure gold. But it hurts, and it's normal to avoid
it for as long as you can. So don't blame
yourself if that's what you're doing that. No, I mean

(09:56):
I I just have come to understand it by some
really d work of like, Oh that's that's been a
guiding force in my life as to avoid grief. So
how do you go? Have you started going into it now,
changing and turning towards it? I think so a little
by little. Um, I haven't blown up my life yet.
Um again, but I yeah, I always it's always time

(10:20):
for that. I'm only thirty nine. I'm about about to
turn forty in August. I feel like you know that
that's probably gonna blow up my life in some way. Um,
But I do think, like I say it as a
joke about it, but it's you know the times that
I have um, there has been so much, so much
beauty that's come out of that. It's just continuing, like

(10:44):
when do you how do you choose to turn towards it?
Like that's that's the hard part. Well, I had this,
you know. One of the events in my life was
that I had a child who was diagnosed with Down
syndrome before he was born. And I had just like
a few days where it would have been legal to
terminate the pregnancy. But and I'm actually pro choice, but

(11:05):
I want I was already in love with the baby,
so I kept him. And I would walk around and
I was getting a PhD at Harvard at the time,
and I would walk around and see all these brilliant people,
and I think, my son will never be one of
these people. What can he do? You know? And then
I started to think what is worth doing. I'd go
into people's offices and they all look haunted and miserable,
and other students were miserable and exhausted, and I would think,

(11:30):
why why this this is like, we're at the apex
of academia. We should be happy. And then I thought, oh,
it's about being happy. Like one thing, my son absolutely
will be able to do his experience joy and so
that became the absolutely Emerson said, beauty is its own
excuse for being, and I think joy is its own

(11:52):
excuse for being. And going toward joy became the whole
focus of my life. So if it doesn't feel like joy,
I turn away from it. And sometimes that means I
turn into a situation that's hard or sad or scary.
But if the life I had led was not bringing
me joy and a situation is in the way of joy,

(12:14):
and I know it, I'm sort of honor bound to
go straight into the worst um the thing I'm avoiding
the most, and it's on the other side of the
thing I've been avoiding the most that I always find
the greatest liberation. Yeah. Absolutely, well that's true. Let's just turning,
just turning towards that thing. It doesn't need to hurry,

(12:36):
like take it super easy and don't don't do it
one minute before you feel like it's the thing you
absolutely must do. Yeah. Well, I think what's been interesting
for me that I've been questioning is what is truth?
Because you know what what is truth? Because truth can
be very subjective, and like what's true for me right

(12:56):
now might not be true for me ten minutes from now.
When you talk about true nature or truth, like where
what is truth? How you're absolutely right? Is completely subjective
and we can't know, you know, and Um Descartes said, man,
the only thing I can know is that I'm thinking,

(13:16):
So I guess that's the reason I know I exist.
But I can't know if your truth is like my truth,
or if if any truth sustains. So the first thing
is um for me, I think there's a sense of
truth in us, and it comes when all our ways
of making meaning, our mind, our heart, our body, and
our soul they all align and there's a sensation of

(13:38):
physical sensation that comes with that, of of landing, of loosening.
And it's only in the present moment. The truth never
goes to the pastor of the future. It's always right here,
right now, and it's we enter it by feeling something
with our entire bodies. And there's actually a phrase. After
years and years of coaching, I kept trying to see

(13:59):
what would give people that ring of truth or that sensation,
and the biggest thing I found was the phrase, I
am meant to live in peace. So anyone I've I've
worked with people in prison, I've worked with people who
should be in prison but aren't. I've worked with billionaires,
and there's never been a person who said that didn't

(14:19):
feel true to them. I am meant to live in peace.
So then if you find I mean, if you say
that a couple of times in your mind, do you
feel it? There's a wholeness and alignment that comes. Mm hmm.
There's there's a kind of quiet calm. Yeah, and it

(14:42):
can go so deep. At first we don't even notice
it because our culture is all about bright lights, big city,
you know, big noise, and it's so quiet, but damn
it goes down forever into this place of sweetness and
it becomes this sort of fountain that can feed you

(15:03):
every minute of your life. Mm hmmm. What are your
How do you stay connected to that in your everyday life?
I meditate. That's that's like bedrock. Every culture in the
world has its own way of saying, go sit by
yourself for a while and don't make any noise. Um.

(15:24):
But I also writing as a form of staying on
on truth. For me, because I'm very alert when I'm writing.
I associate with people who bring me that joy, and
who will tell me when I'm lying, They will call
me on my bullshit. And I love that. So I
just structure my whole life around staying in that zone

(15:46):
of joy because I don't ever want to leave it.
It sucks to leave it. All right, We are going
to leave that thought for just a moment, for a
quick break, but we'll be right back, and we're back

(16:07):
with Martha Beck talking about the joyous but sometimes complicated
concept of joy. Joy has been really interesting for me,
and I think it might be for a lot of people,
and in the way that it can feel very uncomfortable. Um.
I grew up a gripping as an only child, and

(16:28):
I had a mom who was very depressed and sad
and a dad who was angry, and so you know,
being in joy was almost um it was something that
would almost alienate my parents. Um oh yeah, absolutely, it
was threatening. I guess. Wow, that's that's a hell of

(16:51):
a culture to run into, as you know, as an
innocent little baby. Wow. So have you found it? Have
you found a sensation where you they're these moments when
and for me, they used to be incredibly rare and
when all these forces would align and for one moment
I would feel this sweetness and this clarity, and I
would think, please, please never let me lose this, and

(17:13):
then I would lose it. Yeah, of course, don't go No, Yes,
I have had. I actually I just finished writing and
recording an album and I had I wrote this song
called Innocent on my album, and I had this moment.
I was doing some somatic work and I had this
moment where like innocence and this this joy was like

(17:35):
outside of me, it was up here, and I found
this moment where it like dropped into my body and
it was I just burst into tears because it was
so like you're saying, sweet and pure, And out of
that came a song. But I remember, for about forty
eight hours, I could like tap back into that place

(17:57):
of like for me, it felt like endless possibility and
just openness and sweetness and like you're saying, it was like,
please don't go anywhere. Um Can I recreate this feeling
of dropping it and I can revisit it to an
extent um and I find moments. I've been looking more

(18:20):
for moments of joy in my life because it's so
easy for our brain too, you know, when we're locked
into this old trauma pattern of finding trying to keep
ourselves safe. It's so easy to miss out on the
joy that is present. So for me, that one experience
made me realize, oh that is that is part of

(18:41):
my true nature and I I do miss it when
it's not there. It's very it's very heartbreaking. Can you
find it? And this is I'm putting on the spot.
Can you find it now? Yeah? I can. There's a
sense of it. So like where sorry, this is turning

(19:02):
into a country where totally people learned through me too.
So where is it? Where is it in your body?
I feel it like here around your head? Yeah, people,
I can't see. Um, I feel it like around my
left side, especially of my my face, my head, my shoulder.

(19:27):
What does it feel like physically? Um, it feels very vibratory. Yeah,
it feels light. So can you go into that, like
put all your attention, as you said, onto that and
make it make the vibration stronger and deeper and louder, stronger, deeper,

(19:48):
louder that. Yeah, And it's about focus. I mean right
now you've sort of you're sort of looking up into
the to the left I think, so you're using a
certain part of your brain to track the sensation of
joy the way a hunter might track an animal um
to keep it as a pet, not to kill it

(20:09):
um exactly. But we all have ways that we can
track it, and we have to sit quietly to find that.
It's a deep internal uh sort of knowledge. In the
East and Asia, science and the great thinkers didn't look
at the outside world the way they did in the West.
They turned inward and everything was about tracking joy through

(20:32):
the body, tracking suffering through the body, the mind, the soul,
and it can go as deeply into you as an
astronomer could study the galaxies going outward like it's infinite,
and it becomes quite fascinating when you start to find
it and feel it and then be able to hold it.
And I actually think you really did that brilliantly in

(20:53):
your Human and Holy album Thank You, Like the song
be Still and No Damn, you actually make audible a
vibration that I had I love to find in meditation.
And I love that because it was just just turn

(21:15):
on a song and it can take you where hours
of meditation might not be able to. So I know
you've been there, and I know well that came through meditation.
I mean those songs, everything that I was on that record,
I sat and meditated, and in fact I did it
right before we jumped on here because I'm working on
the next chair record, and I just sat there and

(21:37):
I just I listen and I whatever, I don't judge it,
and just let whatever comes through come through. And it's
so cool too to see, just like what spills out
of my mouth from silence. It's so fascinating because, um,
we know from brain science that if you put two
people in a room and they don't even talk to

(21:58):
each other, three people whatever, within twenty minutes, they're the
vibrations of their brain, the patterns of electrical activity in
the brain and in the heart will will come to
match the calmest person in the group, even though they're
not speaking or looking at each other. And it's something
called entrainment, and it actually pulls the brain state. It's

(22:19):
an electrical signal. Just like our iPhones or our laptops
or whatever are electrical machines that operate wirelessly. We're the
same thing. Are our nervous systems are electrical systems made
of meat, and they have a wireless communication and feature.
And um, certain sounds and certain and the presence of

(22:39):
certain people will pull other people's energy into that state.
So I can't say enough about that album of yours
because it pulls that state in and makes it so
much easier to access. And it's like getting a piggyback
ride to happiness. Love it, love it. That makes me

(23:01):
so happy. You know, music is music is amazing. It's
such a gift to be able to write and express emotionally,
like what not only I'm feeling, but like I know,
I speak for so many people when I do emote
and express, and it's such a cool gift. And then

(23:24):
to to be able to write my feelings down. I've
always been in awe of that process because like we create.
I mean, when you write a book, it's the same
thing you when you're a creator, you create something out
of thin air, like from nothing, and then you sit there.
I was. I was playing my the actual record of

(23:44):
my new album UM the other night, and I's just
sitting there bawling because I'm like, this is such a
gift that has come through me UM, which I love
because you talk a lot about creativity and creative energy,
and I think one of the biggest Miskins options about
creative energy and creativity is that only creators quote unquote

(24:04):
creators like that create music or art art creators and
we all came from creative energy. Like that's yeah, And
is that when you talk about true nature? I mean
that creative energy is that basically the core? Yes, And
interestingly the whole the way life fragments us, and it

(24:26):
fragments us all we all get pulled away from our
true nature is just the way things are in human life.
So we get fragmented, and parts of ourselves go out
and suffer because they're separate, and they're split away from truth,
from love, from wholeness. Then when we come together. The
interesting thing about creativity is seen from a brain perspective,

(24:46):
is that it occurs when things that are very different
are brought together. And there's actually a thing in the
brain called a far transfer where something that's really different
from anything you've thought ever connects with something else that
you're thinking, and it brings this brand new thing that
no one else could bring in because nobody else has
the same fragments. So even the suffering that we have,

(25:09):
but I mean, that's my justification for suffering. It hurts
a lot, and we're having all these experiences. But then
when they come back together, which I think they're always
meant to do. We were supposed to go out and
be fractured and then regain our integrity, and when we do,
we have this far transfer of all these experiences and
when they come together in a place of peace, of wholeness.

(25:31):
We are creation. We don't have creativity. We're not products
of the creator. We are aspects of the creator. And
there is nothing about us that doesn't create. When we're
a whole, and it creates everything as you said, events, relationships, moods, poems, songs, whatever,

(25:54):
But we are we are by nature creation itself. I
love that, even offering a course offering called think like
a Wayfinder. I was watching the four steps. That was
part of it was create creating. How do you how
would you define wayfinder? Like? What are the pieces? Are
components of thinking like a wayfinder? So I borrowed the

(26:15):
term from an anthropologist who studied the people of the
Pacific Islands, who are such great navigators that they can
actually they set off from like Papua New Guinea, and
they knew that there would be the Hawaiian Islands three
thousand miles away because they understood wave patterns so at
such an incredible level, and they would travel three thousand
miles over open water and find these little islands. And

(26:38):
I thought, the way change is so intense right now
and it will be for the foreseeable future. Societies are changing,
I mean, look at the pandemic. Everything can change any time,
and it's almost like we're on these tossed seas a
sea in a storm, Like how do you navigate life?
You have to be like these people who were the

(26:59):
way finders, And for me, it's getting into becoming whole,
getting into that state of integrity, because it's like there's
a built in navigator that will take us over any
rough water towards any destination as long as we stay
absolutely on our compass right, like really true, and if

(27:22):
it wobbles and change this intense we're all kind of
there's a lot of danger. If you're off your true path,
things are going faster and rougher than they ever have before.
So if you stay really clean and think like a wayfinder,
like focus on those internal compasses and don't let yourself

(27:43):
be distracted by the pressures on you, that's how your
life is peaceful, even in the middle of chaos. M Yes,
I like that you with create with creativity, you know,
part of creativity. I feel like it's play, which is
another we talk about joy and play like things I
really I didn't get to do as a kid much. Um,

(28:04):
I didn't. I'd really like it never affected me how much.
I didn't have a childhood until like I've had my
stepson's and then one of them turned eleven, and I
remember going, I signed my record deal at your age
and wow, like you you have no concept of that

(28:24):
at all in your life, and like this was how
this was how child is supposed to kind of develop. Um,
it didn't occur to me. How odd that was? Um?
You know, so I know I had no I had
nothing to go off of until them. So play for me,
play has been very convoluted. Like I don't even sometimes

(28:47):
I don't even know where to begin, um to allow
myself play. Where do you where do you find inspiration
for play? Like? What's play in your life? Um? Nature?
And you know I got to have a kind of
wild and crazy childhood seventh of eight kids, wild and crazy,

(29:08):
but it was really crazy. It just wasn't a childhood
for you. Yeah, and and by the way people think
that being famous and having people fawn on you and
all that stuff is going to make them happy. And
when I work with people who have had all that,
it is the worst thing that could ever happen to you.
I mean it really is. One of the being famous
is like one of the worst things that could happen

(29:29):
to people. I truly believe this. So anyway, back to
your childhood and enjoy and play. Um, if you go
into nature and you like you look at baby things.
Humans have this really interesting mutation where we were born
in we're like apes, except that we don't have the

(29:49):
gene that turns off are playing mechanism when we hit puberty.
Other like chimpanzees and guerillas, they have this. They're very
curious and playful. Then they hit puberty and they're brain
says okay, I'm set, and they stopped playing. But humans
have a mutation where we never stopped playing. And if
we keep playing like children, which you don't know how

(30:10):
to do, I'm learning that we never we never have
to be old in our minds and hearts. So the
first thing, first, you look at the suffering that's there,
that's keeping because playing through sorrow is not real playing.
When a child is grieving, you don't send her out
to play. You hold her in your lap, and you say,
what would feel like relief, sweetie, And maybe that means

(30:33):
bundling up in bed. I mean, my mother died last
week and we hadn't Yeah, we hadn't been in touch
for a long time because of I left Mormonism and whatnot.
But um, there was a day when I just I
got to go to her funeral. It was live streamed,
and um so even though I'm the black sheep of

(30:55):
the family, someone sent me the link. And the only
thing I could to do that with the day was
curl up in bed and let myself be loved by
my family and grieve and think and cry. And that
was my play for the day. But the next day,
when I was feeling a little better, I went out

(31:16):
and played in the yard with my bird feeder and
all the I like to meditate in the forest. I
cover myself with bird seed and the birds come sit
on me, and I really love it. And so I
have learned a lot of my play from animals and babies,
but animals more because babies they're being pressured. You were
being pressured from the moment you were a baby. So

(31:37):
with you, I would say, play is how can you
find comfort, sweetness, anything that makes you go, that's your
play for now. And if you go there, then the
wild stuck ups later. Bird seed is great. Oh my god,
that's the best I have. I've been wanting hummingbird feeders
because we have we have all these hummingbirds in our backyard. Um.

(32:00):
I've been really touching into nature a lot, and we
have we have hawks that fly around the backyard like
it's just it's pretty amazing. So nature has definitely been
something that I agree has taught me how to play more. Yeah,
go join them, because really the heart of play is
loving connection. And I'll never forget the first bird that

(32:22):
landed up because I didn't really I was very depressed
from an early age, also as a result of um abuse,
sexual abuse that stride when I was five, so I
didn't feel happy as a child after that. But when
I was fifty something and I sat there with bird
seed all over me in California in the forest, and

(32:44):
the first bird dared to land on my leg, I
could I still feel a little scratch of his tiny
little claws, and he knew I was there, he knew
what I was, and he looked straight up at me
with so much trust, and it was like my heart
exploded with joy. And it was because I was actually
being loved into a childhood state by this sweet, little

(33:06):
innocent creature. You never know who your teachers are going
to be, but if you open yourself, they come, yeah, wow,
that's so true. And on that thought, we are going
to pause for a quick breath, but we'll be right
back with more and Martha Beck welcome back, Loves. Martha

(33:27):
Beck and I were just discussing the powerful role that
play can have in our lives and how it can
often reveal lessons we need to learn. I know my
dog teaches me so much. My dog before she's actually
sitting right by me right now. She's out. Um. My
dog before her was like super intense, and it was

(33:47):
like she used to talk to me like by looking
at me. And this one was so very different than her.
She has so much joy, and she's also much bigger.
She's seventy pounds child um, but she she has so
much joy and she wants to play all the time.
And I can. I sometimes will see myself going like

(34:10):
basically I don't have time for that amount of play.
And I catch myself because I'm like, she's trying to
teach me exactly what I'm asking, Like, she's trying to
teach me how to play, and that that energy has
been so wonderful in my life because it's been so
opposite of what I learned. Here's what I think, And
I actually thought of this while I was working on
thinks like a wayfinder. The whole process of my life.

(34:33):
Now what I'm having a good day is play until
you feel like resting, because everything I do for work
or whatever feels like play. Play until you feel like resting,
then rest until you feel like playing, then repeat. This
is your entire life. This, I believe is how nature
and the divine want us to live. Nothing but play

(34:55):
until you feel like resting, and then rest until you
feel like playing. Wow, that's amazing. So there's no work involved, no,
not ever. You know, people say, oh, he works like
a dog. Have you ever seen dogs work? They love it,
like like I can catch your frisbee, I can check

(35:16):
out bombs from the airport. I can do and they're like, yeah,
let's go work. It's that's how we're mental work. Well,
and that's what you love and do it. That's interesting well,
and you can also lose the love for what you love.
I mean, for me, that's what I've I've definitely gone
through periods of time and still do like it depends

(35:37):
on the day where what I love like I've lost
the sweetness or the purity so many things. And that's
once again culture. You know, you mentioned fame like being
the worst thing that could happen, and it's it becomes
so confusing because you're like, well, where especially when you're
trying to keep up a career and you know, part

(35:59):
of your job is like if people like you or not,
and then you're trying to figure out if you even
like yourself and like who who are you? And who
are you without them? And who are you without someone
telling you who to be? And you know, when you
take a stand, this is my been my experience, when
you take a stand and you you go deeper into truth, Yeah,

(36:22):
you know, the culture can be like, well, we don't
like you in that truth it's like part of it's
part of my job to care and then like I'm
not supposed to care at the same time, so it's
very freaking confused. Yeah, it's so hard when you and
this is something I've seen also a lot of people
who are very gifted. I've been privileged to coach people
who have incredible skills and talent, and almost all of them,

(36:46):
at some point they do something for the joy of it,
and they're so good at it, and their joy just
rings out and it's so magnetic and infectious, and then
immediately a whole bunch of people grab it and say,
we're gonna make it into a factory. It's gonna support
us for the rest of our lives because it is.
Everybody craves that kind of pure, sweet energy that comes
through someone who's got a real talent, and then it

(37:08):
gets mercantilized. And that is I mean the one I
have a podcast called Bewildered and it's a pun because
it's be Wilder. And the thing that I always rail against,
and I get too because I have a PhD in sociology,
is um I rail against the factory culture that turns

(37:28):
every single thing into work for more money. Everything you do,
it becomes work, and the purpose of the work is
more money for more people, and it just it becomes
this massive grind that just one sociologist. Early sociologist called
it the iron cage. It just closes around you and

(37:50):
all the joy goes out of the thing you do
for love. And if you're lucky, and I think you
really are, if you're looking, you're smart, and you're brave,
you are if you find your way back to integrity,
you usually stop that for a while, and then when
it comes back, it's purified by that suffering and by

(38:10):
the search for self, and you come back with more
integrity than people who've never been torn apart. And then
I think this is why, um, human and holy is
I think? So powerful is this? You've found this pure
core of self after being torn to a million pieces
by this culture that is all about like, mechanize it,

(38:32):
monetize it. So man, I think you have a really
really good time ahead of you as that comes back
and you can sift away all the crap that got
put on it. Thank you. I think that's why that album,
to create a chant record that was like I really
didn't I just did it for joy. I did it
for my own healing, to help people find that place

(38:56):
in themselves. Um and it. You're right, it wasn't about money.
There was something so pure about that, and I think,
I mean, trust me, I've I followed that for a
long time with my music and in that integrity and
purity of like what wants to come through me. But
I think I, like you're saying, I've deepened it more

(39:16):
and more, and sometimes, you know, I have the new
records called God's Work, and it's basically about, you know,
if we can if we could move through all what
you've talked about and done so well, the superstition and
the doctrine of things and our our division, um, everything
that divides us, if we could move past that, we
could get to doing God's work. We could get to

(39:38):
doing like what we're here to do. And sometimes I
I'm terrified of what comes through me because I'm like,
am I really supposed to be talking about? Like I'm not.
I'm not sure if I'm ready. I mean, Leonard Cohen
had this great line, um, don't really have the courage
to do what I must do? Uh don't really know?

(40:00):
Sent me to lift my voice and pray me the
lights in the land of Plenty shine on the truth someday.
It's this really beautiful lyric about being chosen as a
mouthpiece by something holy and the inadequac So many people
will grab that and say, I'm holy, listen to me,
I'll be your guru. But people who who respect the

(40:20):
truth and who have their integrity and who then feel
themselves being compelled to speak some of that truth as
sing some of that truth, there's it's it's a huge
and beautiful risk to put yourself, you know, to be
a pencil in the hand of God, as Mother Teresa said.
And like, I have this feeling sometimes two people tell

(40:43):
me I've said something that helped them, and I'm like,
I don't actually remember saying that, but something said it.
And then I think, am I delusional? Do I think
I grew up around people who said they spoke for God?
I don't want to be that. But the force of
like the whatever beauty is, whatever joy is, whatever freedom is,
whatever truth is, it wants to express itself through us

(41:07):
and putting down the fear and saying I'm just gonna
say I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy, but I'm gonna
do it anyway. That's when stuff comes through that literally
shifts people's consciousness. And I think that's what you're about doing. Yeah, Yeah,
like I said, I'm in awe of the process every time,
and more in awe the more I do it, because

(41:30):
it's like it's it is in that aspect of my life,
like this endless well that if you keep going back
to the well like it, it doesn't dry up like
it's it's it's there to be tapped into, which is
so cool. Um, yeah, so interesting that you were talking
about you kind of you've shied away from the you are.

(41:53):
You ran away from the people being the mouthpiece of
God basically, and then here you are. Well, I mean
I grew up, I grew up Southern Baptist, and you know,
my my mom is born again Christian, and I respect
everyone's views on everything like totally to each their own.
It's just organized religion has never been for me. And
to like you're saying, to go into this place where

(42:16):
God has taken on like a whole new meaning for me.
It's not a person like it's for me, it's an energy,
it's creativity, it's it's yeah, it's we all are it.
And um, you know there's no hierarchy of things like
for me when I speak of God. It's like, it's
so interesting that word in itself and how triggering it

(42:37):
can be for so many people. It is a bit uh,
mind boggling sometimes as I go into you know, this
world of talking about it with people with such great
respect and reverence for where everyone is at. Um, it's
just a it's a new world that's opened up for
me with the title called God's have to say. I
love that. Yeah it, Um, it's quite beautiful. Yeah. I

(43:01):
mean when when you talk about the not being worthy,
how do you deal with how do you deal with
those feelings of unworthiness? Well, I know that the eye
that's saying I'm not worthy is also the eye that
wants to be. Um. It's an ego. It's the part
of me that cares what people think. It's the part
of me that, um wants to do it right or

(43:23):
whatever when I know there is I have no access
to absolute right. So I know when I hear I'm
not worthy in my head. Um, it's part of my
integrity practice. I always if something stops me or hurts me,
I say, is it true? Am I sure? Am I
sure that you know I'm not worthy? I have no idea,
so and the thought hurts and it stops me from

(43:45):
expressing myself. So I am going to choose to disbelieve
it at this point, and then then you enter the
work of it, the creative work. And when that happens,
if you can just get past all the little barricades
in your brain into the part of creation that you're
meant to do, whether that's raising a child or writing
songs or whatever, the process of the work takes you

(44:08):
into a sort of wordless um, even if you're working
with words. My friend Liz Gilbert says, it's when the
room falls away and there's just you and the creation
and the creator. And I like to call that God sometimes,
but I know that a lot of people don't. I
don't really care, because it doesn't care what we call it.
And there you go. That's what I was getting at.

(44:29):
It doesn't care. And to me, exactly like you, there's
as much divine in a glass of water as there
is in a kitten as there is in me. It's
all God to me. I agree you. You talk about
integrity challenges, What is that and like? And how does
one begin to to dive into that without blowing up

(44:52):
their whole entire life? Yeah. I in the book, I
use the analogy of an airplane and when it's in
structural and hegridy. It can fly anywhere it wants. And
the way I suggest people change is one degree turns.
So if you're flying a plane ten thousand miles in
every half hour, you turn by one degree. You won't

(45:13):
really even notice the shift, but you'll end up in
a really different place. So very simple way to do
it is write down a list of things to do
that you're going to do this week. Look at each
thing and feel whether that's really an authentic thing for
you to do. Will it make you happy? Will it
make you feel whole? Will it make you feel like
you're really on course connected to yourself? If it doesn't,

(45:38):
change it a little, you know, or cancel it. So
whatever it is, move slightly in the direction of something
that feels more whole. So when I clean the kitchen,
I also put on music. This makes it feel like
a dance to me. And that's a one degree turn.
It's not like you're gonna make the headline with that one,

(46:01):
but you make tiny, tiny, one degree turns, you end
up in really different lives. Just keep doing that. That's doable,
that's doable. I'm gonna go. I'm actually gonna go make
my list when I'm done. You know, it's just a
nudge it toward happy and do it in a slightly
different way, or do a slightly different thing. And the

(46:24):
journey of a thousand miles is just one step by
one step by one step. Yeah, I mean there's certain things,
like you're saying, like cleaning the kitchen, there's certain things
you have to do kind of quote unquote like it's
not a half to but there's certain things that you
want to do to take care of yourself that maybe
you don't like, or certain things that you have to
do at this moment that maybe you don't like. So
how can you make those more enjoyable? What's so weird

(46:45):
is that when you are focused on integrity um as
a on wholeness, what makes you feel whole? Like it
feels very risky for me to give up behaviors that
the cultures like, what if I really gave up worky,
like the stuff that was like work? What if I
really just did what feels like play. I remember struggling
with this and thinking if I stopped working, you know,

(47:08):
my I was supporting my kids, I was supporting I.
What would happen if I stopped working? I did stop working.
And what happened was it all transformed into a kind
of play and I started to do better. I actually
did sort of what you did, um, stepping back. I

(47:29):
stepped back and wrote a book that was I was
being so pulled around by publishers that I stepped back
and wrote a book, a novel about a woman and
a pig called Diana Herself, which no one wanted and
no one cared about it. I don't know, like it's
like on Amazon. But I didn't never do much with
it except play. And then the next book I wrote

(47:50):
was The Way of Integrity, and I expected nothing to
come of that either, but I didn't care anymore. I
was just playing. And actually the reception to that book
has been much bigger than any book I've written in
the past. So what happens is a wave of fear
followed by a wave of fun, followed by a wave
of oh my god, is happening. Like I'm not working,

(48:12):
but it works. I like that I'm not working. I
mean it's the same thing with like I look at rest.
You know, Rest has been such a it's been challenging,
especially for someone like me. And I'm not just myself,
I know, so many people listening, like especially women, you know,
to to rest, like when we're supposed to be juggling

(48:32):
a gazillion things in our lives and doing it all
really well and beautifully. Um, I joke about that because
it never looks like that, but it's you know, rest
is rest is like play like it. They think For me,
they go hand in hand of like how do I
you know? I don't. For me, I've I've kind of
gone through those moments where I've had to get sick

(48:52):
to rest, which I think was really interesting about COVID.
I actually I had it not long ago. It was
first time I I sat there and I was like
my my type a like achieving brain. I finally went,
if I can just feel like shit, I'm gonna be
that's goin. I'm achieving something, I'm doing really well. If

(49:16):
I can let myself feel like shit, I'm achieving. And
it was the first moment I think I actually felt
what surrender was truly and that's beautiful. All right, It's
that time against pause for a quick breath, but we'll
be right back. Welcome back. My friends. Martha Beck and

(49:46):
I were just talking about the incredible clarity that can
come from truly surrendering and letting go, which is something
I had to surrender to when I had COVID. I
remember thinking it's kind of like joy, I don't to
let go of this lesson of true surrender and true rest.
And I'm gonna as I'm gonna keep this as a

(50:08):
reminder in my body to to not have to get
sick to come to this rest and I have. I've
started to. I've started to make those one degree turns
of like I found a show I really love the
show Grace and Frankie. I've never let myself watch TV
and I on a Sunday now will like put on
if I'm gonna, I just want thirty minutes of joy

(50:28):
of watching Grace and Frankie. And I've done that for
last like three three Sundays, and it's just I know,
but is it is for me because it's like, oh wait,
those are those kind of like I feel like one
degree turns that you're saying with life, like to make
it a little bit sweeter, like what are those what
are those things that can bring you joy? And you're right,

(50:50):
when it's so different than what culture has taught us
terrifying and it always rest and play are not on
the docket in our in our culture, and that's all
I think life should be. But I think there may
be a new culture coming up over the horizon where
some of the structures, they're so dysfunctional, some of the
social structures, and they're all breaking. And I've been waiting

(51:12):
for this my whole life. Really, I always had a sense, seriously,
since I was a kid, that something would shift in
the way people think during my lifetime, and I thought, Okay,
I'll study it and be a social scientist. And then
I was like, no, that's not right. But I think
it's a mouth deeper, more profound, and more sacred transition UM,

(51:34):
and it's desperately needed because we're destroying everything. What do
you what do you envision for the future for now?
I think that it's got to be. You know, when
you look at history, it's UM basically a record of
who could kill the most people fastest, like who killed
who on one day. We're doing a great job of
that now, yes we are, and the whole culture is

(51:56):
set on it. And I always think, you know, it
takes nothing now to press a button and blow up
a thousand people. How much work does it take to
keep a thousand people alive and happy, to feed, clothes,
clean them. There's this. The real power of human life
is that it's the sustenance of life, not the destruction

(52:21):
of it. And we've lived in a culture that glorifies
destruction for the last few thousand years and we have
to come around. And there are many, many other cultures
besides the destructive ones who were completely focused on nurture
and the sustenance of balance and harmony in the ecosystem
with other creatures, with each other. And it's a much
more balanced male female. There's much more feminine energy in

(52:44):
it than our culture, and it has so it's shifting
towards that. There's the loudest things are the ones that
are still killing people. You know, check the news, you'll
want to die. But silently everywhere in the world people
are watching atrocities and being able to see them in
real time and communicate with the people who are experiencing them.

(53:07):
And so the ethos of nurture and love and balance
and come to me. I love it in the Bible
when Jesus says, come unto me, all you that labor
and are heavy, heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
I remember, and I'm not any organized religion either, but
I love Jesus and it's like the concept weight. That's

(53:29):
what he wants. He I'll give you rest. That's the
promise of the divine, not I'm going to give you
bright lights, big city. I will give you rest, and
then I will give you life more abundantly, not a
life of more money, but a life that itself. The life, energy,
the joy, the beauty, the love. Those will become more

(53:49):
and more abundant. So it's rest and play. And I
think we're moving towards that. I hope we are. Yeah,
I hope so too. Yeah. A lot of us get
that confused when we think of abundance, like we've always
been taught to think of money, not of the fullness
of life. That's the culture, but our nature is you know,

(54:11):
when the when the white people moved into South Africa,
the Cooisson who had lived there for a hundred thousand
years without a problem, they're like, you guys are crazy.
You're always afraid that life won't give you what you
need to live. It always gives us what we need
to live. And they thought that the farmers who hoarded,
you know, the white farmers who hoarded grain for the
winter or whatever. They're just like, that's a mental illness,

(54:33):
and I actually think they were right. I don't think
they're far off from that at all. You know, you
really advocate for questioning our beliefs and are really kind
of sorting through what does not align with our integrity.
How do we do that when our beliefs like we
truly believe, like our core beliefs, we truly believe that

(54:55):
they're true. I mean we see it all the time
now with you know, people are so split, there's so divided,
and they're so latched onto like what I believe is true.
How do we, like, how do we get out of
our own bullshit when it comes. Yeah, the brain really
locks onto the bullshit as a way of defending itself

(55:15):
when it feels afraid. So, wherever you have someone who's
saying I am right and you are wrong, and I
will always be right and I will never question anything,
guarantee that that that gripped belief is based in fear.
And you know you can't change if you try to
tell someone who's in that you're wrong. I think differently,

(55:36):
they will just double down, They'll just get even worse
as we're seeing everywhere, right, But if you in yourself,
you can change it. So if you sit and think,
like I've been doing this thing that I call hardcore
kindness because I've been reading about anxiety and how self
criticism drives anxiety and a lot of other illnesses. So

(55:57):
I've ah, I still have self critical that's not integrity.
So instead, every time I have a self critical thought,
I try to see if the opposite is true. And
I really believe those self critical thoughts like you don't
work hard enough, get up, get going. I really believe
them so deeply that I've never questioned them. But I've

(56:18):
been like, looking, Okay, is that self critical? Is it
fear or is it love? That's the simple question. It's
not it's fear. Okay. You can let go of any
belief that is based in fear and you will get happier.
You can't force anyone else to do it. But in
the warmth of your inner peace, if you walk through

(56:42):
the world in a place of inner peace because you're
dropping those gripped beliefs, remember entrainment, the energy of your
peace will begin to draw other people's energy in and
they'll start to shift and be more willing to let
go of the beliefs that come from fear in um.
And I used to think that you could change the

(57:04):
world with policies and wars, and now I think that
that is literally the only way we changed the world.
M M. I love that. Did you just mentioned to
think there's a there's a song on my album called
the Only Way and it's the only way to get
there is if we hold each other's hand, And that's
that's so true. I'm like, I love creative energy too,
because you were on the same wavelength of creating very

(57:27):
similar things in very different ways, and it's just that's
the why. Yeah, it's such an honor and talk about entrainment.
I'm like, sitting here with you and your peace, and
I think that's why I've looked so forward to this,
because I you just have this peace and grace and
playfulness and it's just infectious to be around. So thank

(57:50):
you so much for coming on here. It's been an
absolute joy. And I I'm really honored that you would
say we're doing the same work in different ways because
your work is so deep and profound and is shifting
so many lives and I'm just so lucky to get
to talk to you. Thank you. I'm such an honor.
I Before I let you go, I always ask my guests,

(58:11):
because music is such a big deal to me, I
ask you, I want to talk about your holy five.
Do you have five songs that either from your past,
your your whole life, or just right now that you
are digging and why? Uh? Yeah, there's one. It's not
a song. It's part of the soundtrack from the Moving
the mission. It's called On Earth As it Is in
Heaven by Ennio Morricone. It's a glorious, glorious instrumental piece.

(58:44):
I love Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. And there's
a song by Cheryl Wheeler called Gandhi Buddha and it's
the joyful song. It's like I must have been gone
to your Buddha in a past life to get to
love you. Oh that's Cools the Brown Wrist and it's

(59:13):
so happy. Yeah, check that one out. Love Itself by
Leonard Cohen incredible. Love Itself is about an experience he
had when he was a monk, and it's it's transcendent,
it's gorgeous. And then a song my son who has

(59:34):
down syndrome. I heard him singing in his room when
he was in his teens, and he found this song
by Bibo Norman called Great Light of the World, and
he would sing that. He still sings that. He's thirty
three and he sings that a lot, and I felt

(59:58):
like it sort of brought the Great Light of the
World into the house. And I love that song too.
I love that. That's so cool. Well, thank you for
sharing those. I'm gonna and definitely on my list. I
love it, I love it. Thank you so much. Honestly,
this was such an honor, and yeah, you're just a
fantastic human. Thank you for lighting the way for so

(01:00:20):
many of us. The honor was aline and back at you,
and that, my beautiful friends, brings my visit with a
wonderfully wise Martha Peck two and in very sadly again.
Her latest book is called The Way of Integrity and
Finding the Path to Your True Self, and it is
very much worth your time to pick up a copy.

(01:00:42):
I promise it's life changing. It made a massive massive
impact on me, as did this conversation. I hope you
enjoyed it as much as I did. I would love
to know your thoughts too, so please share them in
the comments and reviews where you listen, and yeah, I'll
see you soon. You guys, take care of one and other.

(01:01:03):
On the next episode of Holy Human, I'll be joined
by author Brian Scott, who will share the near death
experience that put him on the path to write his
fascinating book, The Reality Revolution. You won't want to miss
his life changing and mind expanding take on how we
can hack our reality. You won't want to miss this episode.
I had the best time chatting with him. He's truly

(01:01:26):
truly fascinating, So join us. It's super cool stuff. Holy
Human with Me Leanne Rhymes is a production of I
Heart Radio. You'll find Holy Human with Leanne Rhymes on
the I Heart app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get
the podcast that matter most to you.