February 20, 2025 • 48 mins
Welcome to Season 10 of the Hoffman Podcast! We're glad to be back with you and a new season of conversations.
Marissa and Raz Ingrasci
Marissa Ingrasci and Raz Ingrasci, Hoffman Process teachers, join Drew for this deep dive into the many layers of spiritual lineage running through the Process, and their own journeys to becoming Process teachers. There's also a familial lineage, as Marissa is Raz's daughter.
Raz and Marissa came to teach the Hoffman Process through the lens of theatre. For Raz, this meant studying classic Greek theater; for Marissa, it meant studying and living the art of acting. In this conversation, they share fascinating ways theatre, in its many forms, illuminates the Process's inner workings.
Within the Hoffman Institute and the Process are layers of spiritual lineage. The spiritual lineage of teaching the Process is passed down as each new teacher takes their seat, teacher to teacher. Bob Hoffman passed the Process lineage down to Raz and Liza, Hoffman's CEO and President and Raz's wife when they established the Institute in the United States. Over recent years, Raz and Liza have been working to ensure the lineage continues.
Raz and Marissa share a deeper understanding of the spiritual dimension in the design of the Hoffman Process. Marissa highlights the nature of the Hero's Journey and how the week of the Process is remarkably similar. Raz, who has studied multiple Eastern spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, highlights how Bob Hoffman brought the Process into being in the West. We don't have to travel to distant lands to benefit from this spiritual lineage of the Hoffman Process.
We hope you enjoy this deep, delightful conversation.
More about Marissa Ingrasci:
Marissa Ingrasci holds a B.A. from Emerson College. She received her coaching training through the ICF-approved, Academy of Leadership Coaching and is also a certified NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) coach. Marissa did the Hoffman Process when she was 23 years old.
Marissa says, “The Hoffman Process changed my relationship with me, quieting critical voices and allowing me greater access to my inner knowing and wisdom. In short – it gave me freedom! It’s inspiring and a joy to walk alongside and support others doing this work.”
More episodes with Marissa:
• Ready to Step Into the Mystery
More about Raz Ingrasci:
Marissa, Raz, and Liza Ingrasci
Raz Ingrasci graduated from UC Berkeley and has been an executive, consultant, and facilitator within the Human Potential Movement since 1972. He is also a Hoffman teacher and founded the Hoffman Institute Foundation in 1998. Raz took the Process in July 1989. From that experience, he had three major takeaways: “I knew my marriage would last; I could be a great dad to my young children, and I’d found work worthy of devoting my life to.”
“The Hoffman Process is the most highly effective method for people to heal, discover their true nature, and live a more free, open, loving, and spontaneous life,” Raz shares. His passion for teaching the Hoffman Process is both professional and personal; it brings him into the depths of human experience where he learns at least as much as he teaches.
Raz lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife of over 40 years, Liza.
More episodes with Raz:
• Husband, Father, Son
• Hoffman and the Enneagram with Raz and Ward Ashman
As mentioned in this episode:
Bob Hoffman, founder of the Hoffman Process
Theatre and Performing Arts
Greek Theatre
• Greek Mythology
• Greek Tragedy
Spiritual Modalities:
• Tibetan Buddhism
• Hinduism
Joseph Campbell's and the Hero's Journey
Quote shared by Raz:
“Even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.” Werner Erhard (Referring to the spiritual truth which can only be known through experience, not through belief.)
Gift from Raz to Marissa - Lucite Buddha
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
The great thing about Hoffman is
spiritual experience
is experienceable. It's not something to believe in.
We don't have any at Hoffman, any secret
handshake or any of these other things that
we want people to believe in. We want
them not to believe in anything. We want
them only to adhere to their own direct
(00:21):
experience and honor that and live it.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute
and its stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process and how it
(00:42):
lives in the world radiating
love.
Everybody, welcome to the Hoffman podcast,
Loves Everyday Radius.
My name is Drew Horning. Glad you are
here. Two special people. Raz and Marissa Ingrassi
(01:05):
are with me today. Raz
is a UC Berkeley graduate. He's been an
executive consultant and facilitator
within the human potential movement since 1972.
He's a Hoffman teacher,
and he founded the Hoffman Institute Foundation
in 1998.
(01:26):
Marissa Ingresi
is Raza's daughter,
and she has been a Hoffman teacher for
the last ten years. She received her coaching
training through the ICF
approved
Academy of Leadership Coaching and NLP.
Welcome, everybody. Thank you. Thanks for having us,
Drew. Thanks, Drew. We're excited to be here
(01:46):
with you.
Super excited for this conversation.
You are both Hoffman teachers.
How did that come about? Well, I think
it came about naturally
because,
you know, I did the process back in
1989.
At that time, my Marissa was about six,
and I did the process. My main motivation
(02:07):
was I wanted to be a better dad.
I could hear things coming out of my
mouth that I hadn't heard since I was
a little kid,
and I didn't like it then. And I
heard about the process. I knew Bob Hoffman
pretty well, actually.
So I did the process for that. So
you could say that Marissa motivated me to
some degree to do the process.
(02:28):
And so she's she's always been in that
zone for me.
Then she follows her own path. And, of
course, has her dad, I was supporting her.
And then
her explorations
and really devotion to theater and the performing
arts
ultimately kind of led back to
(02:49):
Hoffman.
And in a way that's also it was
also true for me
because I had studied theater and that led
as part of my interest
in transformation.
I was studying theater to understand why humans
behave the way they do.
And
I came to
a deeper
(03:09):
exploration
of Greek theater
and
tragic theater,
and
that was, it seemed to me at least,
the perfect preparation
for
working with Hoffman as well as my studies
in other spiritual
modalities
(03:30):
such as
Buddhism and
Hindu traditions and so forth. Then Marissa had
her own path, and she was following theater
too. Yeah, Marissa. Is that new information about
your dad? And did you see those parallel
paths from
exploring theater to
Hoffman teacher?
Yeah. Well, it's not new information.
(03:51):
I was following
my own path
of acting and performing arts.
And at the time when I was pursuing
that,
I wasn't making the same connections
that I would make today.
However, I I knew that my dad also
did that when he was in college as
(04:12):
well.
And so whereas I was interested in
transformation
and psychology and spirituality and why people behave
the way they do. And I started studying
psychology in college,
but soon discovered that they were studying rats,
and they weren't really studying
(04:33):
human behavior.
And then one thing and another, I was
very interested in
Greek theater and Greek,
mythology,
and that kind of led me into the
drama department. So I began my exploration
of human behavior through the lens of theater.
So whereas I was going into theater as
a laboratory
(04:54):
for studying human behavior,
Marissa
was really into
theater as an actress,
as a performer,
and only later
used that platform to
enter into
transformation.
I think it's a great platform
because
you learn all kinds of things in performing
(05:16):
and out of vocal motions and all kinds
of things about what motivates human beings.
Marissa,
do you see that connection as theater is
a gateway to understanding humans?
Oh, for sure. And I've known that about
myself for a long time and known that
what the same
similar things that motivated me toward
(05:39):
theater
were the same things that motivated me toward
this work.
I've also always been
interested
in understanding
why people do the things they do and
knowing more about the human condition. And as
my dad was just saying, for me, it
was
in the form of
embodiment
(06:00):
of characters
and
really getting inside
another person's
lived experience and what life might be like
for them.
And little did I know that that is
also a huge component
of
the process and, you know, being able to
(06:21):
to empathize or or understand what someone might
be going through. But also
in the work that we teach
at the process, it's so much about
embodiment of really
understanding
what it is,
how our patterns feel
inside our bodies, what it feels like when
we are
(06:43):
procrastinating
or
withdrawing
or
just so incredibly triggered, right, all of that
we experience
those emotions, sensations
within our bodies. And then
we also experience the
totality of our,
what we call it the process, our spiritual
(07:03):
selves, that
part of us that has no patterns that
is able to be present whole,
all of the things that you want.
And so
in hindsight,
I see now how that was a preparation
for this, but didn't know it at the
time.
Yeah. That's
that's really cool. The
(07:24):
the actor who can
embody the role in such a
visceral way
is a better performer,
the human being
who can embody their integrated quadrinity, their spirit
in a more profound way is
a happier, healthier,
(07:46):
right road human.
Well, I've observed that Marissa just has
tremendous powers of compassion. I think it I
learned from listening to you now, Marissa,
how
stepping into a character,
if you will, the method acting, having to
be that character,
you know, that requires a strong initiative
(08:07):
on the side of the actor
to want to
step into a different persona
and live it and know what it's like
to be that person.
I think that gives you a real
leg up in your teaching because
you have the power
to
step into another person's experience
(08:28):
and know what it's like for them, if
you will, from the inside. I mean, without
giving up your own beingness, you can,
really empathize with another.
I think that's terribly important.
But also
in theater,
you know, there's always
this fact that
we're watching
(08:48):
a story unfold.
And a story that's unfolding on the stage
is about people who don't know why they're
why they're behaving and living the way they
are.
In terms of tragedy or comedy,
there's always some breakdown
and then an enlightenment and awareness, a new
awareness.
And that new awareness,
(09:10):
unwittingly,
especially in tragedy,
has a spiritual component to it where the
actor,
the protagonist
runs into
something much greater than himself or herself
and
much more powerful than they ever imagined existed.
And that takes them down.
(09:32):
They have to reformulate
their life.
What you were just describing
in what a character goes through
is also, you know, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey.
It's a really great descriptor
for what people go through in the week
of the process.
(09:53):
As you were saying, facing something that comes
up as an obstacle
in one's path and then
having the stroke of insight of realization
that helps the protagonist.
That is really
the way that I look at the process
is that people are on their own hero's
(10:13):
journey
saving themselves,
and that what they come up against is
their own
traumas and pain
and unlooked at material.
That it is in facing that with eyes
open and doing the work of the process
that
is the ability to come to the other
(10:33):
side
and really have the experience and feeling that
they did that work for themselves and that
no one did it to them or for
them. And that was certainly my experience when
I did the process. Yeah. I didn't know
what to expect. I knew
that you and mom were very
involved,
but you had also done a really great
(10:53):
job of you never
I didn't know anything that was going to
happen in the process. I was completely surprised
every step of the way
and delighted.
And I remember
on
Thursday
having this sense and this feeling, and I
and I had had feelings about this throughout
the week
(11:14):
of just in total awe
that this is what you guys do.
This was what you've been doing my my,
you know, the majority of my childhood that
this was your work. And so it was
it was amazing
for me
because the process was so impactful for me.
(11:34):
But just this sense of pride is the
word that comes to my mind. I just
felt so proud of you. You know, and
I was young at the time when I
did. I was 23. When I did the
process,
Had no idea what it was really at
all. Yes. Especially when you are dealing with
the negative love patterns that you got from
us, and at the same time,
(11:56):
being
being proud of your parents,
you know, while you're in there bashing them.
You have such a unique
experience
compared to any other student who's ever gone
through the process in the sense that
this is where they went to work. This
is what they were doing, and the discovery
of both what was happening inside of you
(12:17):
in your journey
and the discovery of the intimate nature of
what they had helped
create
and shepherd
into the world was the Hoffman process that
you were now
a part of
and experiencing so intensely during your week. Wow,
Marissa. What a parallel
(12:40):
experience.
How was that for you, Marissa, to do
both at the same time?
It was great. I mean, when I did
the homework and
I had had a call
or a connection with my teacher a little
bit before I got there.
I remember my mom in particular, and, dad,
(13:00):
you may have done this as well,
but just encouraged me
to go for it. That there wasn't anything,
you know, did not worry about
hurting them or hurting their feelings that they're,
you know, that this wasn't about
them, but it was about me and me
on my path of discovery.
(13:21):
And so that was
a really great permission,
so I didn't feel guilty or anything like
that.
I remember
wanting to do everything that, you know, that
was set out in the course. I remember
that being my intention,
and I did.
And I experienced
(13:42):
the
power of the process and the power of
the transformation that comes from the process,
I think because I let myself
go
in a certain way and,
not be
self conscious or worried about what other people
would think because
they were my parents or something like that.
(14:02):
You know, it wasn't until later in the
week that the pride came.
It was but it was amazing.
Bob Hoffman had a great affinity for you
and Mike, your brother. So, Marissa, what what
impressions do you have of Bob?
I remember
him
as
(14:23):
fun in a certain way
that he liked to laugh a lot. You
know, of course,
I I think he died when I was
about 14.
So I didn't have
an adult relationship
with him,
but
I remembered
a kindness
to him.
I just remember
(14:44):
a sense of
you feeling good about the work you were
doing and that he was a part of
that.
Now, I'm sure that he related to me
in a different way than he related to
other adults. So my memory of him is
being a kid,
but that's, yeah, that's what I remember.
You mentioned Bob's sense of humor, and it
(15:04):
reminds me of the fact that you and
I share a sense of humor. We are
often laughing together.
We both have a mischievous
sense of humor, and Bob did too. I
think that was one of the things that
drew us together.
Liza also,
you know, as your mom and your wife
(15:25):
and as my boss,
she loves to laugh, loves to laugh, and
is
finding humor
in everything.
When you see someone who loves to get
tickled
by all these funny,
mischievous things, It's like you get a contact
tie. Liza's a pleasure to work around because
she loves to find humor and everything. Yes.
(15:48):
She does. Yeah. She does. That's right.
And, I think that rubs off on you
a lot, Marissa. I think
for the perspective of time, I can really
see
the influences that
mom and I have had on you and
that our partnership has had on you.
There's a really big way in which you
have
(16:09):
on your own,
not through any of work of us trying
to push you. You have stepped up into
a leadership role in this work
and have made it your own. So it's
as if it's your own nature
and that it fit you so to speak
like a glove
and it's been fun for us to see
(16:32):
how it's become a life path
for you, a path of service and contribution
as well. Yes. Absolutely.
The way that I came back to it,
I think, is the only way that it
could have ever happened. I felt so drawn
to totally explore this other area, which at
the time was acting.
(16:53):
You were supportive of that.
That when
my journey with all of that brought me
back to first, you know, going through coaching
certification,
and so not even yet considering that I
would teach the process,
to then
really
feeling called to teach the process
(17:14):
that
it felt
and in a certain way, it was totally
my idea.
And it wouldn't have worked in the same
way if I had felt pressure
to come into the family business or, you
know, it just felt like exactly what I
was supposed to do next.
So I'm really grateful for that.
I know that speaking for myself and mom,
(17:36):
we felt that way too, that it was
a beautiful surprise to us.
Authentic you were well, you're authentic and wholehearted
in everything you do. You don't you don't
do things
that you're not wholehearted about.
And so it was a delight to us
to see that the Hopkin work really rang
true for you and that you stepped into
(17:58):
it, and it brought a lot of things,
I think, different parts of your life into
focus.
Dad, I have a question that I think
might be really interesting about a gift that
you gave me just a couple of months
ago,
and it's sitting here on my desk. I'm
looking at it as I am sitting here,
(18:19):
speaking with you and Drew.
It's a Buddha that is inside
of Lucite. And
the Buddha
is suspended
inside,
like, almost looks like it's floating.
And
it must have been a laser or something
that that made it because there's it's created
(18:39):
by
points.
So the Buddha is not like lines drawn.
It's
just all kinds of points that come together.
I acquired that in a kind of a
mystical
spiritual way
because when I was in the process,
I had a number of spiritual revelations.
And one of them was,
(19:00):
you know, with my eyes closed, there was
just this plane of light. It was dark
and then in the middle there was just
light.
And
then very slowly,
it started to open up as points of
light. It was opening and then at a
certain point, I could see that it was
the Buddha
sitting
up. And as he sat up, there he
(19:21):
was. But it was all points of light.
It was a Buddha as light as a
light being,
and there's a beautiful experience I had in
my process.
And then many years later,
a great friend of mine named, Jochen Windhausen.
Jochen was the founder of the Hoffman process
in Germany,
(19:42):
and he loved Bob Hoffman
with all his heart. I would say Bob
was like a surrogate father to him. In
all the meetings of the international, Yokhen always
represented
how much we love Bob, how much we
owe to Bob, and, he was very close
to Bob. He's a very sweet man.
One day, we were in Italy. We were
(20:02):
having an international conference.
The conference center was on the coast of
the Mediterranean,
and I just come back from walking on
the beach.
And Yolkin
waved at me and motioned me to come
over, and he said he had a gift
for me. And he gave me that,
which was from his collection, his treasure. He
(20:22):
was a Buddhist practitioner.
Then I had it, and it was very
special that he he gave it to me
because I had been holding the Hoffman
Institute International together as the chairman since Bob's
passing for many years, and he wanted to
acknowledge
what I had done.
My memory when you told me this story
(20:44):
before
was that you hadn't told anyone else that
that was how you experienced that visualization.
So
Yokin gave this to you without knowing that
you had had that visualization
in your process.
Right. And so it came to me,
him honoring me, leading the way as the
chairman for many years of keeping the Hoffman
(21:07):
process
solid and high integrity and high quality throughout
the world. I experienced it as a gift
from Bob
and a spiritual
dimension to it.
It was profound for me and had it
for many, many years.
I wanted you to have it
because
there's a lineage in which you stand.
(21:28):
And in this lineage,
there's a spiritual transmission.
I wanted you to
have this as a reminder of
that lineage
and that sourcefulness as a way of being
in the world. So very much what the
process is about
is connecting with our spiritual self and then
(21:49):
acting from
that ground of being
in the world.
Our model is be, do, have. You're being
you're being in your spiritual self.
You're doing things are there
that flow naturally from
that dimension
of beingness.
And so you're acting and doing things in
the world, and then what you have are
(22:11):
results
that are aligned with your spiritual being. And
that feeds back into your spiritual being, and
it's the cycle
for
manifesting spirituality
in the world.
It's this cycle
for bringing peace on earth
and
love into the foreground of all human relations.
(22:34):
I witnessed your tremendous growth, Marissa,
and your
spiritual
composure and presence,
and I wanted you to have that as
a gift in that lineage.
I wanna bring up one other point, which
is that,
dad, you had given this to
a friend who's also
(22:55):
very
strongly involved in Hoffman as a Giles who
was the first chairman of the board. Yeah?
Yeah. Well, Giles Bateman was the first chairman
of the board of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
So we created the foundation back. We were
creating it in '97, and we launched it
in '98. And at some point, you gave
(23:16):
this to him because of the time that
he was going through in his life? What
happened was
he was chairman and on the board for
a total of about ten years.
And then his wife died, who we loved
very, very much.
I was her teacher
to give him some consolation.
I wanted him to have this.
(23:37):
So that was about twelve or fifteen years
ago that I gave that to him. And
unbeknownst to you,
he brought it with him to
our
conference that we just had, you know, just
a few months ago in October.
And he gave it to you
at that conference.
Yeah. He just said he gave it to
me, and he said, I want you to
(23:58):
have this. He said, it's helped me for
many years, and it's been with me,
and I now want to return it.
So it's kind of a traveling
gift.
Yeah. And it was there at that conference
that you gave it to me the evening
after that conference ended.
Yeah. When I received it back, I thought,
(24:19):
how amazing this has come back to me.
And then I was
inquiring,
why?
And a message I got from my spiritual
self was pass it on to Marissa.
So I did for all the reasons I
just explained.
And we can put a photo of it
in the show notes. It's beautiful.
(24:40):
As you know, Drew,
being a Hoffman teacher is a spiritual path.
Being so involved with Hoffman as Liza is
as the as the leader, even though Liza
is not a teacher, she could've and she
wanted to be a teacher.
I mean, she is a teacher. She's a
she teaches us how to do the business
in alignment with the spiritual dimension
(25:02):
so that we don't step out of line
and she models for us that it's possible
to do
business from a spiritual perspective
and have things turn out. So she's she's
a teacher of all of us, but she's
not formally a Hoffman teacher,
and yet in many ways, she understands the
process
as deeply as anyone.
(25:23):
In my process, at the very end of
the week, she said some student asked a
question about going forward and stepping into the
unknown.
And she calmly
spoke to the class
and finished her thoughts by saying, this will
continue
to grow
inside you.
And that idea of this experience that I
(25:44):
just had
growing
inside me
has never left me,
has always been true.
And I just think about her words,
not as a teacher, and yet she offered
that wisdom
that I still keep in my heart
of the growth of the process
(26:05):
emerging more powerfully
on the inside.
So, Marissa, I I've seen that with you
as well where you're where you became a
really good teacher,
supervising teacher, then you became a a manager
of the teachers and have other roles in
the institute.
You became
a a really senior
supervising teacher,
and now you're also working
(26:26):
more fully in the organization itself.
Russ, what's that like to know that the
lineage
is being received
and embraced,
and Marissa is really
taking on
this next generation
of Hoffman
leaders and teachers, and she's receiving
(26:46):
the pass
of generational leadership.
It's deeply gratifying,
and it's validating
of the idea that there is a lineage.
There's a spiritual lineage here. And that, you
know, it was passed on to me and
Liza from Bob in a formal sense
and informally as well.
(27:07):
Liza and I worked closely with Bob for
almost nine years, eight and a half years,
but I knew him from 1974.
We became friends in '74,
and I didn't do the process then as
it was a thirteen week program. But I
liked what it produced and what its goal
was.
(27:28):
Then we remat in 1988,
and
something just clicked. I was ready, and he
was ready to pass it on. I was
ready to receive it. I had expanded my
own knowledge, been through my own trials and
tribulations,
and this was the next step for me
and for him.
And I felt it too that I was
ready
to carry it forward.
(27:49):
So there's this old spiritual
adage that when the student is ready the
teacher will appear.
I think also when the teacher is ready,
the students appear.
I could not have arranged
for Marissa to be in the state of
readiness and beingness
and excellence that she is.
And so it is very validating
(28:12):
because Marissa knows me
probably
in many ways better than anyone.
Sometimes she knows that I can be headstrong,
and she'll go toe to toe to toe
with me.
I think she always wins.
I come around to sing it her way.
So
I have challenged her,
and she has challenged me,
(28:34):
and I have found her to be
a very senior
thinker.
She never
gives in because I'm her father. She's committed
to the truth,
always committed to truth. I admire that about
her, about you, Marissa.
Well,
I learned about truth from you
(28:54):
about what's real.
Yep.
Truth has become
besmirched
because oh, that's true for you, but that's
not true for me. And truth is being
seen as relative.
One of my old teachers
used to say,
the truth believed is a lie.
And what he meant by that is that
(29:15):
the truth is experiential.
And when you experience it, it's undeniable.
It is so present. It's so clear and
true.
If you turn it into a belief system,
what you believe is not the same as
what you experience.
And so when you turn
truth into a belief,
it's not true anymore.
(29:36):
And so the truth believed is a lie.
That's really great. The truth believed
is a lie. Truth is not a belief
system.
If you turn it into a belief system,
it is no longer
true.
Which is the great
thing about Hoffman. You know, spiritual experience
is is experience. It's experienceable. It's not something
(29:58):
to believe in. We don't have any at
Hoffman, any secret handshake or
any of these, other things that we want
people to believe in.
We want them not to believe in anything.
We want them only to adhere to their
own direct experience
and honor that and live it.
I find that to be the way you
live, Marissa. So I admire that in you
(30:19):
and I. This goes back to how does
it feel to
to have you as a lineage holder of
Hoffman. Of course, every teacher drew your lineage
holder.
One of the great powers of Hoffman is
that it's not a belief system.
So as a teacher,
as a remarkable teacher, you drew
are also a lineage holder of the process.
(30:41):
And then there's the
bigger game
of speaking about the process, which you're
doing now, spreading the word through these podcasts
and many other things you do. There's this
extra dimension
that I have with Humorous are having I
still remember the moment you were born.
And that was
remarkable experience for me because I held you.
(31:04):
And in the moment of holding you,
something just went like zonk
landed on me. It really shook me, and
I knew it. And I felt that bonded
to you in that moment.
I think when I did the Hoffman process
and learning more about this parent child bond,
I will always relate it back to that
(31:26):
moment when that
bond landed on me like
a ton of bricks.
Maybe that was a moment of recognition
for me too that
you and I that there was something amazing
here.
Marissa,
do you remember doing quad checks when you
were little? How did
the content of the process and
(31:48):
the idea that it was such a cellular
journey
show up in your childhood? Razz, how did
it change your parenting?
It showed up
in my childhood
in the exact way that he's describing,
which is that
not that there's anything wrong. I think it's
great people do quad checks with their kids.
(32:11):
He they happen to not do that,
but it was
in the way that
both of my parents
moved through the world
and were in their own
capital t
truth or
the way that they move through the world
with integrity.
(32:31):
Well, I'll tell you the main thing that
happened for me in my change in parenting
was that
I realized in the process that I had
been parenting
our children from the perspective
of trying to get them to be little
adults
and to behave
like adults.
After that, I figuratively
(32:52):
and literally
got down on the floor and played with
them
and embraced deeply
the adage of
Maria Montessori, which is follow the child.
And so from that point on,
we just looked over to see what was
interesting, what did they want to do, and
then supported them in their own exploration of
(33:14):
what they wanted to do. I could say
without reservation,
Marissa was six, Mike was four when I
did the process,
knowing the kind of father I was programmed
to be versus the father I
aspired
after the process to live. That I would
say, Marissa, that your destiny was changed because
I did the often process.
(33:35):
Maybe so. Yeah.
I remember
spirituality
always being
very important to you, not from a place
where you were telling us to
be a certain way or practice a certain
thing, but because I experienced
you as having a
spiritual
connection,
(33:56):
you would meditate,
you would burn incense in our home. I
remember
when I was kinda little, it was sorta
weird because
other people's parents didn't do that. But there
was also this
sense of you being really connected to something
that was important, and I remember
asking you questions about it. It was some
(34:17):
of my favorite times just asking
you questions about
how life works or what happens next, or
just hearing about your
experiences
in your life before
I was born.
I would say that that was also
true of you and existed within you
(34:39):
before you did the process.
Oh, absolutely. I traveled throughout India for years.
In the seventies, I was over to India
probably 10 times, and
I had a guru and met with many
many other gurus,
studied with them.
Yeah. I embraced a lot of very in-depth
spirituality
(34:59):
in India and Tibet.
All of it was consistent with what we
teach in the process, by the way.
First off, the be, do, have, I we
already talked about. But
I think about the Buddha
after his great awakening, he figured out nothing
special about me. If I can have this
experience, this awakening,
everyone else can too. And so he set
(35:21):
himself about trying to teach it. The first
the four noble truths is life is suffering.
Until you get that, you cannot proceed.
That's what, you know, what we do in
Hoffman.
You start with a 45
page
homework assignment,
which creates a map of your personal
(35:41):
suffering.
And so we start with your suffering.
In my study of theater,
I came to study Greek theater, which is
about tragedy.
And that is the theater of the West
is the tragic theater.
And then end of Shakespeare,
That too is always about the hero
who was looked up to by everyone and
(36:04):
a wonderful perfect person,
but who falls
is destroyed through no fault of his own.
And in that fall,
because
the audience
I use that word audience a little advisedly
because
nobody came to the Greek theater to be
entertained.
They came to have a spiritual experience.
(36:26):
And in that fall,
it was a theatrical
device
for having people accede
to the higher
spiritual reality.
And the higher spiritual reality
was embodied in
the Greek god,
Dionysus.
Dionysus is usually seen as the destroyer god,
(36:48):
and he's destroying things that don't hold spirituality
anymore.
This is the same thing as also in
Buddhism.
There's
Brahma, the creator,
Vishnu, the sustainer,
and Shiva, the destroyer.
And the branch of Hinduism that I became
very involved in
was
Shiva,
(37:08):
the destroyer. And the destroyer is destroying all
forms
that we're attached to.
Negative love patterns. We love these things.
We're attached to them,
but they don't hold spirituality
anymore. They're not conducting
true spiritual experience.
And so, like, as if with a sword,
they're cut away,
(37:29):
and we experience being wounded
as we lose these attachments. So this
tradition
of Hoffman
work
is consistent
with the other great spiritual traditions and, of
course, Christianity
also.
Christ on the cross
and the metaphor of Christianity
is God embodied.
(37:50):
Bob Hoffman's work
was not designed to do that
by him like a conscious design
or like a conscious design, let's do what
Joseph Campbell says.
It came authentically through him,
and it exists
in our own cultural milieu.
(38:11):
We so we don't have to leave our
culture,
go to India, go to
the Tibetan way.
We can have this authentic tradition.
All of my previous studies
in spirituality
were validated
by what Hoffman was teaching.
And of course, over the last thirty five
years, we've helped it evolve in the right
(38:31):
direction
with brilliant people like
Drew Horning.
Marissa, what's it like to
hear your dad make those connections between his
past and the travels he did and the
traditions he learned,
and that it all actually relates
very much to the work we're doing at
Hoffman and what
Bob created
(38:53):
early on.
To me, what I hear and what I've
heard before when he shared that with me
is,
the recognition
of, you know, what we've been calling capital
t truth
that
to be able to
recognize
all the many different forms
that that truth can take, experiential
(39:15):
forms for people. But there are certain elements
that have to be necessary
or that are just true
and that the process contained those.
Your spiritual self is resonating
in harmony
with the universe.
Once your spiritual self steps forward,
(39:35):
the entire universe is a spiritual experience.
You know, it's like in a Zen rock
garden. The rocks are spiritual.
Everything is spiritual.
You know, it's a funny thing like
as a teacher
you can both relate to this
on the first day of the process.
We don't wonder how it's gonna turn out
or if it's gonna turn out. No. We
(39:57):
know already
what's gonna happen.
We already know what the last day is
gonna be
and that people are gonna be transformed,
utterly transformed.
And that's because
we know something about them that they don't
know, which is that
it's about their inner perfection,
their spiritual dimension.
(40:18):
And once that is revealed
and embraced and integrated,
life is, as you said, Drew, forever different.
That's beautiful.
Whereas you've always had the
capacity to take
what we do at Hoffman and bring it
to
another dimension.
Making these connections,
(40:39):
finding these
ideas
to be
transcendent
and
forever a part of so many other things
as well.
And we are now at the point
where
Liza and I have been involved for thirty
five years.
We're moving into our retirement years.
(40:59):
And so this tradition, this lineage
lives in people like you, Drew and Marissa,
and others
largely in the form of the teachers,
but also then how do you translate that
into the organization.
You know, we've gone through one
transmission from Hoffman to us,
and so we know we've done it once
(41:20):
successfully,
and I think we're doing it a second
time successfully.
You know, there's no road map for how
you do this.
We're inventing
it. We love inventing it. I imagine it's
not easy, Riaz,
to take this thing that's so beloved to
you and Liza
over these past decades, and then to
(41:42):
to
to slowly let it go and trust it
in the hands of the
next generation?
Well, it's an interesting thing because once
people commit,
learn how to
operate from spirit and commit to operating that
way, they can be trusted.
You know, as a nonprofit, we do fundraising
(42:03):
for funding our scholarships
and teacher training and improving our sites
and owning sites where we can conduct the
process.
And the fundraising here at Hoffman does not
work from
us
trying to get people to give us money.
It works from the perspective
(42:23):
of having people
self identify
as how can I support this? How can
I help it grow?
One of the avenues is to donate money.
And so we have people
donating
from the perspective
of
contributing to the movement.
We're not trying to get money from people.
(42:44):
We're trying to open up a path of
contribution for them
and so they can become part of it
and contribute to it. Both of you heard
the call
to become a teacher in that same way.
We're not trying to make people into teachers.
Only a person can make himself or herself
into a teacher.
Drew, I know in your case,
(43:05):
you were a therapist,
a clinically licensed therapist, and
and you had a practice,
and yet I imagine not talk with you
about it, but did Hoffman fulfill something,
offer you the opportunity to fulfill
something that maybe was alive for you when
you were originally drawn into therapy? In two
huge areas, the
idea of the cellular journey,
(43:28):
giving the intellect a rest
so that the spirit embodied can move forward
into
this felt sense of things.
And then the the second thing is the
multidimensional
experience
of humanity,
rather than the solo
experience
of my psyche
(43:49):
and other people's psyche. There was a much
deeper and
wider and
higher
experience of
what it means to be human,
what it means to be in this planet,
what it means to be in this universe.
Things that words right now
(44:09):
fall way short.
But the embodied
experience of all of this
was something I'd never
experienced in my life before.
As so many people go through Hoffman, there's
so many doors that open into rooms
that they haven't visited before. And to see
the look of wonder and awe in their
(44:31):
eyes
is unforgettable
and memorable
every time it happens, and it happens
in every single process.
Yeah.
Marsha, what about you? Do you have any
comment on that?
I just feel
so grateful to
work with
(44:53):
other people who
can also have that same recognition.
Just I love listening to what Drew just
said. Of course, Dad, everything I've learned from
you and all the conversations
that we've had, but you can have a
conversation like this with any
often processed teacher,
and you get in the
(45:14):
way that they talk about it, something that
is deeply felt and experienced,
something that's
lives in them is true. I feel fortunate
to be able to work with people like
that.
And
then to work with people who want to
and for this, I'm talking about the people
who come and choose to do the process,
(45:36):
People who want something different for their lives
and to see something a different way
and to experience
themselves in a different way than maybe they've
experienced themselves before.
Well, you guys, this has been
fantastic.
I have watched you all connect and smile
and
appreciate each other on video here, and listeners
(45:58):
will appreciate it on audio.
Thank you so much for joining the
Hoffman podcast
community. You both have already been
interviewed individually,
but
to see a father daughter come on
as
that relationship, but now as colleagues
(46:18):
and
as generational
links
to this incredible thing called the Hoffman process.
I just wanna add one thing, which is,
Marcee, you talked about when you were in
the process being proud of what your parents
did
very often,
especially at ceremony of integration dinners,
someone will come up to me and say,
oh, your daughter is amazing and they're trying
(46:40):
to tell me how incredible you were.
There's always this feedback that's coming our way
about your growth, your contribution.
And as I said at the very beginning
of this,
everything with you for your whole life
has been wholehearted and natural.
So this is a natural evolution.
(47:01):
Thanks, dad.
Glad that you see it that way.
Wholehearted
and natural.
What a beautiful description of you, Marissa. Thank
you. I feel
I don't know what the word is.
Not embarrassed, but,
like, it's too much
recognition
(47:22):
in a good way, though. Your mother likes
to say organic.
It's organic evolution.
Organic indeed, you two.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Drew.
(47:42):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razzi Grassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other, and in the world.
(48:04):
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.
The great thing about Hoffman is
spiritual experience
is experienceable. It's not something to believe in.
We don't have any at Hoffman, any secret
handshake or any of these other things that
we want people to believe in. We want
them not to believe in anything. We want
them only to adhere to their own direct
(00:21):
experience and honor that and live it.
Welcome, everybody. My name is Drew Horning, and
this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute
and its stories and anecdotes
and people we interview
about their life post process and how it
(00:42):
lives in the world radiating
love.
Everybody, welcome to the Hoffman podcast,
Loves Everyday Radius.
My name is Drew Horning. Glad you are
here. Two special people. Raz and Marissa Ingrassi
(01:05):
are with me today. Raz
is a UC Berkeley graduate. He's been an
executive consultant and facilitator
within the human potential movement since 1972.
He's a Hoffman teacher,
and he founded the Hoffman Institute Foundation
in 1998.
(01:26):
Marissa Ingresi
is Raza's daughter,
and she has been a Hoffman teacher for
the last ten years. She received her coaching
training through the ICF
approved
Academy of Leadership Coaching and NLP.
Welcome, everybody. Thank you. Thanks for having us,
Drew. Thanks, Drew. We're excited to be here
(01:46):
with you.
Super excited for this conversation.
You are both Hoffman teachers.
How did that come about? Well, I think
it came about naturally
because,
you know, I did the process back in
1989.
At that time, my Marissa was about six,
and I did the process. My main motivation
(02:07):
was I wanted to be a better dad.
I could hear things coming out of my
mouth that I hadn't heard since I was
a little kid,
and I didn't like it then. And I
heard about the process. I knew Bob Hoffman
pretty well, actually.
So I did the process for that. So
you could say that Marissa motivated me to
some degree to do the process.
(02:28):
And so she's she's always been in that
zone for me.
Then she follows her own path. And, of
course, has her dad, I was supporting her.
And then
her explorations
and really devotion to theater and the performing
arts
ultimately kind of led back to
(02:49):
Hoffman.
And in a way that's also it was
also true for me
because I had studied theater and that led
as part of my interest
in transformation.
I was studying theater to understand why humans
behave the way they do.
And
I came to
a deeper
(03:09):
exploration
of Greek theater
and
tragic theater,
and
that was, it seemed to me at least,
the perfect preparation
for
working with Hoffman as well as my studies
in other spiritual
modalities
(03:30):
such as
Buddhism and
Hindu traditions and so forth. Then Marissa had
her own path, and she was following theater
too. Yeah, Marissa. Is that new information about
your dad? And did you see those parallel
paths from
exploring theater to
Hoffman teacher?
Yeah. Well, it's not new information.
(03:51):
I was following
my own path
of acting and performing arts.
And at the time when I was pursuing
that,
I wasn't making the same connections
that I would make today.
However, I I knew that my dad also
did that when he was in college as
(04:12):
well.
And so whereas I was interested in
transformation
and psychology and spirituality and why people behave
the way they do. And I started studying
psychology in college,
but soon discovered that they were studying rats,
and they weren't really studying
(04:33):
human behavior.
And then one thing and another, I was
very interested in
Greek theater and Greek,
mythology,
and that kind of led me into the
drama department. So I began my exploration
of human behavior through the lens of theater.
So whereas I was going into theater as
a laboratory
(04:54):
for studying human behavior,
Marissa
was really into
theater as an actress,
as a performer,
and only later
used that platform to
enter into
transformation.
I think it's a great platform
because
you learn all kinds of things in performing
(05:16):
and out of vocal motions and all kinds
of things about what motivates human beings.
Marissa,
do you see that connection as theater is
a gateway to understanding humans?
Oh, for sure. And I've known that about
myself for a long time and known that
what the same
similar things that motivated me toward
(05:39):
theater
were the same things that motivated me toward
this work.
I've also always been
interested
in understanding
why people do the things they do and
knowing more about the human condition. And as
my dad was just saying, for me, it
was
in the form of
embodiment
(06:00):
of characters
and
really getting inside
another person's
lived experience and what life might be like
for them.
And little did I know that that is
also a huge component
of
the process and, you know, being able to
(06:21):
to empathize or or understand what someone might
be going through. But also
in the work that we teach
at the process, it's so much about
embodiment of really
understanding
what it is,
how our patterns feel
inside our bodies, what it feels like when
we are
(06:43):
procrastinating
or
withdrawing
or
just so incredibly triggered, right, all of that
we experience
those emotions, sensations
within our bodies. And then
we also experience the
totality of our,
what we call it the process, our spiritual
(07:03):
selves, that
part of us that has no patterns that
is able to be present whole,
all of the things that you want.
And so
in hindsight,
I see now how that was a preparation
for this, but didn't know it at the
time.
Yeah. That's
that's really cool. The
(07:24):
the actor who can
embody the role in such a
visceral way
is a better performer,
the human being
who can embody their integrated quadrinity, their spirit
in a more profound way is
a happier, healthier,
(07:46):
right road human.
Well, I've observed that Marissa just has
tremendous powers of compassion. I think it I
learned from listening to you now, Marissa,
how
stepping into a character,
if you will, the method acting, having to
be that character,
you know, that requires a strong initiative
(08:07):
on the side of the actor
to want to
step into a different persona
and live it and know what it's like
to be that person.
I think that gives you a real
leg up in your teaching because
you have the power
to
step into another person's experience
(08:28):
and know what it's like for them, if
you will, from the inside. I mean, without
giving up your own beingness, you can,
really empathize with another.
I think that's terribly important.
But also
in theater,
you know, there's always
this fact that
we're watching
(08:48):
a story unfold.
And a story that's unfolding on the stage
is about people who don't know why they're
why they're behaving and living the way they
are.
In terms of tragedy or comedy,
there's always some breakdown
and then an enlightenment and awareness, a new
awareness.
And that new awareness,
(09:10):
unwittingly,
especially in tragedy,
has a spiritual component to it where the
actor,
the protagonist
runs into
something much greater than himself or herself
and
much more powerful than they ever imagined existed.
And that takes them down.
(09:32):
They have to reformulate
their life.
What you were just describing
in what a character goes through
is also, you know, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey.
It's a really great descriptor
for what people go through in the week
of the process.
(09:53):
As you were saying, facing something that comes
up as an obstacle
in one's path and then
having the stroke of insight of realization
that helps the protagonist.
That is really
the way that I look at the process
is that people are on their own hero's
(10:13):
journey
saving themselves,
and that what they come up against is
their own
traumas and pain
and unlooked at material.
That it is in facing that with eyes
open and doing the work of the process
that
is the ability to come to the other
(10:33):
side
and really have the experience and feeling that
they did that work for themselves and that
no one did it to them or for
them. And that was certainly my experience when
I did the process. Yeah. I didn't know
what to expect. I knew
that you and mom were very
involved,
but you had also done a really great
(10:53):
job of you never
I didn't know anything that was going to
happen in the process. I was completely surprised
every step of the way
and delighted.
And I remember
on
Thursday
having this sense and this feeling, and I
and I had had feelings about this throughout
the week
(11:14):
of just in total awe
that this is what you guys do.
This was what you've been doing my my,
you know, the majority of my childhood that
this was your work. And so it was
it was amazing
for me
because the process was so impactful for me.
(11:34):
But just this sense of pride is the
word that comes to my mind. I just
felt so proud of you. You know, and
I was young at the time when I
did. I was 23. When I did the
process,
Had no idea what it was really at
all. Yes. Especially when you are dealing with
the negative love patterns that you got from
us, and at the same time,
(11:56):
being
being proud of your parents,
you know, while you're in there bashing them.
You have such a unique
experience
compared to any other student who's ever gone
through the process in the sense that
this is where they went to work. This
is what they were doing, and the discovery
of both what was happening inside of you
(12:17):
in your journey
and the discovery of the intimate nature of
what they had helped
create
and shepherd
into the world was the Hoffman process that
you were now
a part of
and experiencing so intensely during your week. Wow,
Marissa. What a parallel
(12:40):
experience.
How was that for you, Marissa, to do
both at the same time?
It was great. I mean, when I did
the homework and
I had had a call
or a connection with my teacher a little
bit before I got there.
I remember my mom in particular, and, dad,
(13:00):
you may have done this as well,
but just encouraged me
to go for it. That there wasn't anything,
you know, did not worry about
hurting them or hurting their feelings that they're,
you know, that this wasn't about
them, but it was about me and me
on my path of discovery.
(13:21):
And so that was
a really great permission,
so I didn't feel guilty or anything like
that.
I remember
wanting to do everything that, you know, that
was set out in the course. I remember
that being my intention,
and I did.
And I experienced
(13:42):
the
power of the process and the power of
the transformation that comes from the process,
I think because I let myself
go
in a certain way and,
not be
self conscious or worried about what other people
would think because
they were my parents or something like that.
(14:02):
You know, it wasn't until later in the
week that the pride came.
It was but it was amazing.
Bob Hoffman had a great affinity for you
and Mike, your brother. So, Marissa, what what
impressions do you have of Bob?
I remember
him
as
(14:23):
fun in a certain way
that he liked to laugh a lot. You
know, of course,
I I think he died when I was
about 14.
So I didn't have
an adult relationship
with him,
but
I remembered
a kindness
to him.
I just remember
(14:44):
a sense of
you feeling good about the work you were
doing and that he was a part of
that.
Now, I'm sure that he related to me
in a different way than he related to
other adults. So my memory of him is
being a kid,
but that's, yeah, that's what I remember.
You mentioned Bob's sense of humor, and it
(15:04):
reminds me of the fact that you and
I share a sense of humor. We are
often laughing together.
We both have a mischievous
sense of humor, and Bob did too. I
think that was one of the things that
drew us together.
Liza also,
you know, as your mom and your wife
(15:25):
and as my boss,
she loves to laugh, loves to laugh, and
is
finding humor
in everything.
When you see someone who loves to get
tickled
by all these funny,
mischievous things, It's like you get a contact
tie. Liza's a pleasure to work around because
she loves to find humor and everything. Yes.
(15:48):
She does. Yeah. She does. That's right.
And, I think that rubs off on you
a lot, Marissa. I think
for the perspective of time, I can really
see
the influences that
mom and I have had on you and
that our partnership has had on you.
There's a really big way in which you
have
(16:09):
on your own,
not through any of work of us trying
to push you. You have stepped up into
a leadership role in this work
and have made it your own. So it's
as if it's your own nature
and that it fit you so to speak
like a glove
and it's been fun for us to see
(16:32):
how it's become a life path
for you, a path of service and contribution
as well. Yes. Absolutely.
The way that I came back to it,
I think, is the only way that it
could have ever happened. I felt so drawn
to totally explore this other area, which at
the time was acting.
(16:53):
You were supportive of that.
That when
my journey with all of that brought me
back to first, you know, going through coaching
certification,
and so not even yet considering that I
would teach the process,
to then
really
feeling called to teach the process
(17:14):
that
it felt
and in a certain way, it was totally
my idea.
And it wouldn't have worked in the same
way if I had felt pressure
to come into the family business or, you
know, it just felt like exactly what I
was supposed to do next.
So I'm really grateful for that.
I know that speaking for myself and mom,
(17:36):
we felt that way too, that it was
a beautiful surprise to us.
Authentic you were well, you're authentic and wholehearted
in everything you do. You don't you don't
do things
that you're not wholehearted about.
And so it was a delight to us
to see that the Hopkin work really rang
true for you and that you stepped into
(17:58):
it, and it brought a lot of things,
I think, different parts of your life into
focus.
Dad, I have a question that I think
might be really interesting about a gift that
you gave me just a couple of months
ago,
and it's sitting here on my desk. I'm
looking at it as I am sitting here,
(18:19):
speaking with you and Drew.
It's a Buddha that is inside
of Lucite. And
the Buddha
is suspended
inside,
like, almost looks like it's floating.
And
it must have been a laser or something
that that made it because there's it's created
(18:39):
by
points.
So the Buddha is not like lines drawn.
It's
just all kinds of points that come together.
I acquired that in a kind of a
mystical
spiritual way
because when I was in the process,
I had a number of spiritual revelations.
And one of them was,
(19:00):
you know, with my eyes closed, there was
just this plane of light. It was dark
and then in the middle there was just
light.
And
then very slowly,
it started to open up as points of
light. It was opening and then at a
certain point, I could see that it was
the Buddha
sitting
up. And as he sat up, there he
(19:21):
was. But it was all points of light.
It was a Buddha as light as a
light being,
and there's a beautiful experience I had in
my process.
And then many years later,
a great friend of mine named, Jochen Windhausen.
Jochen was the founder of the Hoffman process
in Germany,
(19:42):
and he loved Bob Hoffman
with all his heart. I would say Bob
was like a surrogate father to him. In
all the meetings of the international, Yokhen always
represented
how much we love Bob, how much we
owe to Bob, and, he was very close
to Bob. He's a very sweet man.
One day, we were in Italy. We were
(20:02):
having an international conference.
The conference center was on the coast of
the Mediterranean,
and I just come back from walking on
the beach.
And Yolkin
waved at me and motioned me to come
over, and he said he had a gift
for me. And he gave me that,
which was from his collection, his treasure. He
(20:22):
was a Buddhist practitioner.
Then I had it, and it was very
special that he he gave it to me
because I had been holding the Hoffman
Institute International together as the chairman since Bob's
passing for many years, and he wanted to
acknowledge
what I had done.
My memory when you told me this story
(20:44):
before
was that you hadn't told anyone else that
that was how you experienced that visualization.
So
Yokin gave this to you without knowing that
you had had that visualization
in your process.
Right. And so it came to me,
him honoring me, leading the way as the
chairman for many years of keeping the Hoffman
(21:07):
process
solid and high integrity and high quality throughout
the world. I experienced it as a gift
from Bob
and a spiritual
dimension to it.
It was profound for me and had it
for many, many years.
I wanted you to have it
because
there's a lineage in which you stand.
(21:28):
And in this lineage,
there's a spiritual transmission.
I wanted you to
have this as a reminder of
that lineage
and that sourcefulness as a way of being
in the world. So very much what the
process is about
is connecting with our spiritual self and then
(21:49):
acting from
that ground of being
in the world.
Our model is be, do, have. You're being
you're being in your spiritual self.
You're doing things are there
that flow naturally from
that dimension
of beingness.
And so you're acting and doing things in
the world, and then what you have are
(22:11):
results
that are aligned with your spiritual being. And
that feeds back into your spiritual being, and
it's the cycle
for
manifesting spirituality
in the world.
It's this cycle
for bringing peace on earth
and
love into the foreground of all human relations.
(22:34):
I witnessed your tremendous growth, Marissa,
and your
spiritual
composure and presence,
and I wanted you to have that as
a gift in that lineage.
I wanna bring up one other point, which
is that,
dad, you had given this to
a friend who's also
(22:55):
very
strongly involved in Hoffman as a Giles who
was the first chairman of the board. Yeah?
Yeah. Well, Giles Bateman was the first chairman
of the board of the Hoffman Institute Foundation.
So we created the foundation back. We were
creating it in '97, and we launched it
in '98. And at some point, you gave
(23:16):
this to him because of the time that
he was going through in his life? What
happened was
he was chairman and on the board for
a total of about ten years.
And then his wife died, who we loved
very, very much.
I was her teacher
to give him some consolation.
I wanted him to have this.
(23:37):
So that was about twelve or fifteen years
ago that I gave that to him. And
unbeknownst to you,
he brought it with him to
our
conference that we just had, you know, just
a few months ago in October.
And he gave it to you
at that conference.
Yeah. He just said he gave it to
me, and he said, I want you to
(23:58):
have this. He said, it's helped me for
many years, and it's been with me,
and I now want to return it.
So it's kind of a traveling
gift.
Yeah. And it was there at that conference
that you gave it to me the evening
after that conference ended.
Yeah. When I received it back, I thought,
(24:19):
how amazing this has come back to me.
And then I was
inquiring,
why?
And a message I got from my spiritual
self was pass it on to Marissa.
So I did for all the reasons I
just explained.
And we can put a photo of it
in the show notes. It's beautiful.
(24:40):
As you know, Drew,
being a Hoffman teacher is a spiritual path.
Being so involved with Hoffman as Liza is
as the as the leader, even though Liza
is not a teacher, she could've and she
wanted to be a teacher.
I mean, she is a teacher. She's a
she teaches us how to do the business
in alignment with the spiritual dimension
(25:02):
so that we don't step out of line
and she models for us that it's possible
to do
business from a spiritual perspective
and have things turn out. So she's she's
a teacher of all of us, but she's
not formally a Hoffman teacher,
and yet in many ways, she understands the
process
as deeply as anyone.
(25:23):
In my process, at the very end of
the week, she said some student asked a
question about going forward and stepping into the
unknown.
And she calmly
spoke to the class
and finished her thoughts by saying, this will
continue
to grow
inside you.
And that idea of this experience that I
(25:44):
just had
growing
inside me
has never left me,
has always been true.
And I just think about her words,
not as a teacher, and yet she offered
that wisdom
that I still keep in my heart
of the growth of the process
(26:05):
emerging more powerfully
on the inside.
So, Marissa, I I've seen that with you
as well where you're where you became a
really good teacher,
supervising teacher, then you became a a manager
of the teachers and have other roles in
the institute.
You became
a a really senior
supervising teacher,
and now you're also working
(26:26):
more fully in the organization itself.
Russ, what's that like to know that the
lineage
is being received
and embraced,
and Marissa is really
taking on
this next generation
of Hoffman
leaders and teachers, and she's receiving
(26:46):
the pass
of generational leadership.
It's deeply gratifying,
and it's validating
of the idea that there is a lineage.
There's a spiritual lineage here. And that, you
know, it was passed on to me and
Liza from Bob in a formal sense
and informally as well.
(27:07):
Liza and I worked closely with Bob for
almost nine years, eight and a half years,
but I knew him from 1974.
We became friends in '74,
and I didn't do the process then as
it was a thirteen week program. But I
liked what it produced and what its goal
was.
(27:28):
Then we remat in 1988,
and
something just clicked. I was ready, and he
was ready to pass it on. I was
ready to receive it. I had expanded my
own knowledge, been through my own trials and
tribulations,
and this was the next step for me
and for him.
And I felt it too that I was
ready
to carry it forward.
(27:49):
So there's this old spiritual
adage that when the student is ready the
teacher will appear.
I think also when the teacher is ready,
the students appear.
I could not have arranged
for Marissa to be in the state of
readiness and beingness
and excellence that she is.
And so it is very validating
(28:12):
because Marissa knows me
probably
in many ways better than anyone.
Sometimes she knows that I can be headstrong,
and she'll go toe to toe to toe
with me.
I think she always wins.
I come around to sing it her way.
So
I have challenged her,
and she has challenged me,
(28:34):
and I have found her to be
a very senior
thinker.
She never
gives in because I'm her father. She's committed
to the truth,
always committed to truth. I admire that about
her, about you, Marissa.
Well,
I learned about truth from you
(28:54):
about what's real.
Yep.
Truth has become
besmirched
because oh, that's true for you, but that's
not true for me. And truth is being
seen as relative.
One of my old teachers
used to say,
the truth believed is a lie.
And what he meant by that is that
(29:15):
the truth is experiential.
And when you experience it, it's undeniable.
It is so present. It's so clear and
true.
If you turn it into a belief system,
what you believe is not the same as
what you experience.
And so when you turn
truth into a belief,
it's not true anymore.
(29:36):
And so the truth believed is a lie.
That's really great. The truth believed
is a lie. Truth is not a belief
system.
If you turn it into a belief system,
it is no longer
true.
Which is the great
thing about Hoffman. You know, spiritual experience
is is experience. It's experienceable. It's not something
(29:58):
to believe in. We don't have any at
Hoffman, any secret handshake or
any of these, other things that we want
people to believe in.
We want them not to believe in anything.
We want them only to adhere to their
own direct experience
and honor that and live it.
I find that to be the way you
live, Marissa. So I admire that in you
(30:19):
and I. This goes back to how does
it feel to
to have you as a lineage holder of
Hoffman. Of course, every teacher drew your lineage
holder.
One of the great powers of Hoffman is
that it's not a belief system.
So as a teacher,
as a remarkable teacher, you drew
are also a lineage holder of the process.
(30:41):
And then there's the
bigger game
of speaking about the process, which you're
doing now, spreading the word through these podcasts
and many other things you do. There's this
extra dimension
that I have with Humorous are having I
still remember the moment you were born.
And that was
remarkable experience for me because I held you.
(31:04):
And in the moment of holding you,
something just went like zonk
landed on me. It really shook me, and
I knew it. And I felt that bonded
to you in that moment.
I think when I did the Hoffman process
and learning more about this parent child bond,
I will always relate it back to that
(31:26):
moment when that
bond landed on me like
a ton of bricks.
Maybe that was a moment of recognition
for me too that
you and I that there was something amazing
here.
Marissa,
do you remember doing quad checks when you
were little? How did
the content of the process and
(31:48):
the idea that it was such a cellular
journey
show up in your childhood? Razz, how did
it change your parenting?
It showed up
in my childhood
in the exact way that he's describing,
which is that
not that there's anything wrong. I think it's
great people do quad checks with their kids.
(32:11):
He they happen to not do that,
but it was
in the way that
both of my parents
moved through the world
and were in their own
capital t
truth or
the way that they move through the world
with integrity.
(32:31):
Well, I'll tell you the main thing that
happened for me in my change in parenting
was that
I realized in the process that I had
been parenting
our children from the perspective
of trying to get them to be little
adults
and to behave
like adults.
After that, I figuratively
(32:52):
and literally
got down on the floor and played with
them
and embraced deeply
the adage of
Maria Montessori, which is follow the child.
And so from that point on,
we just looked over to see what was
interesting, what did they want to do, and
then supported them in their own exploration of
(33:14):
what they wanted to do. I could say
without reservation,
Marissa was six, Mike was four when I
did the process,
knowing the kind of father I was programmed
to be versus the father I
aspired
after the process to live. That I would
say, Marissa, that your destiny was changed because
I did the often process.
(33:35):
Maybe so. Yeah.
I remember
spirituality
always being
very important to you, not from a place
where you were telling us to
be a certain way or practice a certain
thing, but because I experienced
you as having a
spiritual
connection,
(33:56):
you would meditate,
you would burn incense in our home. I
remember
when I was kinda little, it was sorta
weird because
other people's parents didn't do that. But there
was also this
sense of you being really connected to something
that was important, and I remember
asking you questions about it. It was some
(34:17):
of my favorite times just asking
you questions about
how life works or what happens next, or
just hearing about your
experiences
in your life before
I was born.
I would say that that was also
true of you and existed within you
(34:39):
before you did the process.
Oh, absolutely. I traveled throughout India for years.
In the seventies, I was over to India
probably 10 times, and
I had a guru and met with many
many other gurus,
studied with them.
Yeah. I embraced a lot of very in-depth
spirituality
(34:59):
in India and Tibet.
All of it was consistent with what we
teach in the process, by the way.
First off, the be, do, have, I we
already talked about. But
I think about the Buddha
after his great awakening, he figured out nothing
special about me. If I can have this
experience, this awakening,
everyone else can too. And so he set
(35:21):
himself about trying to teach it. The first
the four noble truths is life is suffering.
Until you get that, you cannot proceed.
That's what, you know, what we do in
Hoffman.
You start with a 45
page
homework assignment,
which creates a map of your personal
(35:41):
suffering.
And so we start with your suffering.
In my study of theater,
I came to study Greek theater, which is
about tragedy.
And that is the theater of the West
is the tragic theater.
And then end of Shakespeare,
That too is always about the hero
who was looked up to by everyone and
(36:04):
a wonderful perfect person,
but who falls
is destroyed through no fault of his own.
And in that fall,
because
the audience
I use that word audience a little advisedly
because
nobody came to the Greek theater to be
entertained.
They came to have a spiritual experience.
(36:26):
And in that fall,
it was a theatrical
device
for having people accede
to the higher
spiritual reality.
And the higher spiritual reality
was embodied in
the Greek god,
Dionysus.
Dionysus is usually seen as the destroyer god,
(36:48):
and he's destroying things that don't hold spirituality
anymore.
This is the same thing as also in
Buddhism.
There's
Brahma, the creator,
Vishnu, the sustainer,
and Shiva, the destroyer.
And the branch of Hinduism that I became
very involved in
was
Shiva,
(37:08):
the destroyer. And the destroyer is destroying all
forms
that we're attached to.
Negative love patterns. We love these things.
We're attached to them,
but they don't hold spirituality
anymore. They're not conducting
true spiritual experience.
And so, like, as if with a sword,
they're cut away,
(37:29):
and we experience being wounded
as we lose these attachments. So this
tradition
of Hoffman
work
is consistent
with the other great spiritual traditions and, of
course, Christianity
also.
Christ on the cross
and the metaphor of Christianity
is God embodied.
(37:50):
Bob Hoffman's work
was not designed to do that
by him like a conscious design
or like a conscious design, let's do what
Joseph Campbell says.
It came authentically through him,
and it exists
in our own cultural milieu.
(38:11):
We so we don't have to leave our
culture,
go to India, go to
the Tibetan way.
We can have this authentic tradition.
All of my previous studies
in spirituality
were validated
by what Hoffman was teaching.
And of course, over the last thirty five
years, we've helped it evolve in the right
(38:31):
direction
with brilliant people like
Drew Horning.
Marissa, what's it like to
hear your dad make those connections between his
past and the travels he did and the
traditions he learned,
and that it all actually relates
very much to the work we're doing at
Hoffman and what
Bob created
(38:53):
early on.
To me, what I hear and what I've
heard before when he shared that with me
is,
the recognition
of, you know, what we've been calling capital
t truth
that
to be able to
recognize
all the many different forms
that that truth can take, experiential
(39:15):
forms for people. But there are certain elements
that have to be necessary
or that are just true
and that the process contained those.
Your spiritual self is resonating
in harmony
with the universe.
Once your spiritual self steps forward,
(39:35):
the entire universe is a spiritual experience.
You know, it's like in a Zen rock
garden. The rocks are spiritual.
Everything is spiritual.
You know, it's a funny thing like
as a teacher
you can both relate to this
on the first day of the process.
We don't wonder how it's gonna turn out
or if it's gonna turn out. No. We
(39:57):
know already
what's gonna happen.
We already know what the last day is
gonna be
and that people are gonna be transformed,
utterly transformed.
And that's because
we know something about them that they don't
know, which is that
it's about their inner perfection,
their spiritual dimension.
(40:18):
And once that is revealed
and embraced and integrated,
life is, as you said, Drew, forever different.
That's beautiful.
Whereas you've always had the
capacity to take
what we do at Hoffman and bring it
to
another dimension.
Making these connections,
(40:39):
finding these
ideas
to be
transcendent
and
forever a part of so many other things
as well.
And we are now at the point
where
Liza and I have been involved for thirty
five years.
We're moving into our retirement years.
(40:59):
And so this tradition, this lineage
lives in people like you, Drew and Marissa,
and others
largely in the form of the teachers,
but also then how do you translate that
into the organization.
You know, we've gone through one
transmission from Hoffman to us,
and so we know we've done it once
(41:20):
successfully,
and I think we're doing it a second
time successfully.
You know, there's no road map for how
you do this.
We're inventing
it. We love inventing it. I imagine it's
not easy, Riaz,
to take this thing that's so beloved to
you and Liza
over these past decades, and then to
(41:42):
to
to slowly let it go and trust it
in the hands of the
next generation?
Well, it's an interesting thing because once
people commit,
learn how to
operate from spirit and commit to operating that
way, they can be trusted.
You know, as a nonprofit, we do fundraising
(42:03):
for funding our scholarships
and teacher training and improving our sites
and owning sites where we can conduct the
process.
And the fundraising here at Hoffman does not
work from
us
trying to get people to give us money.
It works from the perspective
(42:23):
of having people
self identify
as how can I support this? How can
I help it grow?
One of the avenues is to donate money.
And so we have people
donating
from the perspective
of
contributing to the movement.
We're not trying to get money from people.
(42:44):
We're trying to open up a path of
contribution for them
and so they can become part of it
and contribute to it. Both of you heard
the call
to become a teacher in that same way.
We're not trying to make people into teachers.
Only a person can make himself or herself
into a teacher.
Drew, I know in your case,
(43:05):
you were a therapist,
a clinically licensed therapist, and
and you had a practice,
and yet I imagine not talk with you
about it, but did Hoffman fulfill something,
offer you the opportunity to fulfill
something that maybe was alive for you when
you were originally drawn into therapy? In two
huge areas, the
idea of the cellular journey,
(43:28):
giving the intellect a rest
so that the spirit embodied can move forward
into
this felt sense of things.
And then the the second thing is the
multidimensional
experience
of humanity,
rather than the solo
experience
of my psyche
(43:49):
and other people's psyche. There was a much
deeper and
wider and
higher
experience of
what it means to be human,
what it means to be in this planet,
what it means to be in this universe.
Things that words right now
(44:09):
fall way short.
But the embodied
experience of all of this
was something I'd never
experienced in my life before.
As so many people go through Hoffman, there's
so many doors that open into rooms
that they haven't visited before. And to see
the look of wonder and awe in their
(44:31):
eyes
is unforgettable
and memorable
every time it happens, and it happens
in every single process.
Yeah.
Marsha, what about you? Do you have any
comment on that?
I just feel
so grateful to
work with
(44:53):
other people who
can also have that same recognition.
Just I love listening to what Drew just
said. Of course, Dad, everything I've learned from
you and all the conversations
that we've had, but you can have a
conversation like this with any
often processed teacher,
and you get in the
(45:14):
way that they talk about it, something that
is deeply felt and experienced,
something that's
lives in them is true. I feel fortunate
to be able to work with people like
that.
And
then to work with people who want to
and for this, I'm talking about the people
who come and choose to do the process,
(45:36):
People who want something different for their lives
and to see something a different way
and to experience
themselves in a different way than maybe they've
experienced themselves before.
Well, you guys, this has been
fantastic.
I have watched you all connect and smile
and
appreciate each other on video here, and listeners
(45:58):
will appreciate it on audio.
Thank you so much for joining the
Hoffman podcast
community. You both have already been
interviewed individually,
but
to see a father daughter come on
as
that relationship, but now as colleagues
(46:18):
and
as generational
links
to this incredible thing called the Hoffman process.
I just wanna add one thing, which is,
Marcee, you talked about when you were in
the process being proud of what your parents
did
very often,
especially at ceremony of integration dinners,
someone will come up to me and say,
oh, your daughter is amazing and they're trying
(46:40):
to tell me how incredible you were.
There's always this feedback that's coming our way
about your growth, your contribution.
And as I said at the very beginning
of this,
everything with you for your whole life
has been wholehearted and natural.
So this is a natural evolution.
(47:01):
Thanks, dad.
Glad that you see it that way.
Wholehearted
and natural.
What a beautiful description of you, Marissa. Thank
you. I feel
I don't know what the word is.
Not embarrassed, but,
like, it's too much
recognition
(47:22):
in a good way, though. Your mother likes
to say organic.
It's organic evolution.
Organic indeed, you two.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks, Drew.
(47:42):
Thank you for listening to our podcast. My
name is Liza Ingrassi. I'm the CEO and
president of Hoffman Institute Foundation.
And I'm Razzi Grassi,
Hoffman teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute
Foundation.
Our mission is to provide people greater access
to the wisdom and power of love. In
themselves, in each other, and in the world.
(48:04):
To find out more, please go to hompaninstitute.org.
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