How To Handle Your Inner Critic | Amita Schmidt

Key Takeaway

Depression and suffering aren't solid, monolithic entities—they're collections of shifting components like low energy and negative thinking. When meditation teacher Amita Schmidt stopped fighting her 20-year struggle with depression and instead saw it as 'empty' of inherent substance, it unhhooked like a caboose from a train and never returned. The key insight: bringing wise, compassionate awareness to our inner critics and painful parts, rather than battling them, creates the safety needed for genuine healing and transformation.

Episode Overview

Amita Schmidt, a therapist and meditation teacher, discusses integrating psychology (specifically Internal Family Systems therapy) with spiritual practice to heal deep suffering. Drawing from her personal 20-year journey healing chronic depression through both therapy and meditation, she explains the 'tend, befriend, transcend' framework. The conversation explores how to work with our inner critic through IFS's concept of 'self-leadership,' the importance of addressing psychological pain before pursuing transcendence, and ultimately seeing through the illusion of a fixed, separate self.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How To Handle Your Inner Critic | Amita Schmidt from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Amita Schmidt, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Dan. The core idea we're going to explore today is kind of the the melding of uh or the integration of psychology and spirituality. Can you say a little bit about why this is so important in your work? Well, I think uh during the time of when Freud came into psychology, he was really making an emphasis on having it be more scientific and then you got pharmaceutical companies that came in later that wanted to make it scientific as well uh for diagnostic codes.

So, you know, you really uh psychology got a bit neutered from its spiritual basis, although of course Carl Young still had some of that. So, it's really nice that Dick Schwarz kind of brought that back in uh in a stealth sort of way via the self and the concept of self almost like uh having a spiritual component. So, you really got you know you especially with Skinner and a lot of the psychological tools were very scientific and I think healing is really a spectrum. It includes psychology and spirituality, although people don't really want to do that.

They don't want to talk about that in psychology. in psychology. in psychology. Bunch of questions for you. Uh you you mentioned Dick Schwarz uh and IF IFS and this notion of the self, capital S, self. We we have covered this on the show before and I'll put links in the show notes to our previous episodes on this, but given that many listeners may be new or didn't hear those episodes or don't remember them, can you describe who Dick Schwarz is, what IFS is, and what the role of the self is in in that therapeutic modality?

therapeutic modality? therapeutic modality? Sure. Dick Schwarz is the founder of IFS or internal family systems therapy which believes that you kind of have like an inner family you can work with and the self is he IFS is based on what's called self leadership which the idea instead of just having a bunch of parts inside like the movie inside out it's to be led with something that's wiser and is different than all the parts. It's it's kind of like I call it wise self and it's it's the sense that there's something else that is bigger and greater almost like awareness itself that can lead your part.

So if you do have this inner voice you can not be blended with it and your wise self can take over and drive the bus. It's really about who's driving the bus. And you know when you're you have a bunch of parts um here you have a bunch of you know we often talk about I have a part of me that feels this way I have a part of me that feels that way you know a harsh critic you know they don't we don't want those driving the bus.

So the wise self in IFS or internal family systems we're having the wise self drive the bus as much as possible. The other parts can inform the wise self. You know, your little kid could say, "Hey, I want to stop for ice cream or I don't like this person or I want to do that." But the wise self is the one driving and makes the decisions. And really the goal of IFS is to have, you know, self leadership, that wise self leading or driving the bus most of the time.

the time. the time. You mentioned awareness. We'll get to awareness later. That's a confusing term for some people. But sticking with IFS specifically and just to state it back to you, the basically internal family systems and and its progenitor um Dick Schwarz hold that much like in the movie Inside Out where where you see if I assume most people have seen that movie, it's really good. There's and there's also a sequel that's really good. It it it's about the inner life of a of a young girl and and she's got an angry part and a joyous part and a fearful part and that that I think is you know if we examine our own life experience we may find that to be true for us and Dick Schwarz goes further to say that there's this kind of capital S self which as you said is the the best uh wisest part of our self which hopefully through the practice uh of IFS and through meditation both of which we're going to talk about today we can learn to hand the res to give the steering well wheel to the the self how am I doing yes great reframe and you know in inside out too that movie like you know she's having a panic attack and her wise self comes in because she's too blended with her parts trying to control what her friends think and then she goes into that panic and then that self that wise self really comes online during that movie and I don't know if you knew but the first movie they didn't even know about parts work and the second movie they consulted with Dick Schwarz and he brought in that concept of self to the second movie supposedly this is what I've heard I've heard I've heard so for you personally like how did you come to this this blending of psychology and and and the dharma or spirituality Many people who have the training you do in the meditation world, in the in the Buddhist world, you know, they got kind of just stick with the dharma, but you are, you know, kind of going all in on this um this uh integration.

Why? I didn't have any choice. I had a lot of suffering. I had two mentally ill parents and one who committed suicide when I was a kid. So um I was very drawn to uh finding the end of suffering you know and the Buddha talked about that. So I when I read Sedarth I was thought I thought oh somebody can find the end of this suffering and then at the same time I was very drawn to helping others. Um in my senior year of college we did a a mental health family therapy program in rural Iowa.

So I really saw the value of social work and therapy. Uh so you know from for the last like 45 years I've just combined both. It's been amazing. And they just both kind of walked hand in hand for me. I guess it was just cuz I I wanted to try every tool I could to be free from suffering. I had very severe depression from age five onward. I had suicidal thoughts at age five. And so I really wanted to heal that. And I can say that it it took about 20 years.

But in my 40s, um the chronic depression absolutely fell away and for 20 years it's never returned. So it's really possible to heal. And none of the women in my on my mother's side survived depression. They've all they've all either died of suicide or or have severe mental health issues currently. So, I'm the only one that's survived and I'm the only one that's done both therapy and meditation. meditation. meditation. Well, you're really breaking the cycle. That's quite an achievement. Yeah, it's um I guess it was meant to be.

be. be. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Saying it's meant to be kind of downplays the amount of grit that I imagine went into uh this surviving. So, surviving. So, surviving. So, I did at a point about 20 years in after 20 years of therapy, I did like five threemonth retreats, silent three-month retreats. And one point I was like, should I just keep going? I mean, is this even going to work? Like after 20 years, you're like, you're looking at your watch going, when is the depression going to end?

And cuz I'd been trying so hard. And you know what happened, I think, Dan, was there was a moment I was on a retreat actually where I was like, when is this going to end? and I've done everything and I worked 100% you know with three month retreats and doing my own therapy twice a week for 10 years and then I just thought you know if I have to live with this the rest of my life it's okay and I think there was just this moment of surrender and acceptance acceptance acceptance and then about two months later um there was just an insight where the whole thing just unhooked the whole depression depression depression almost like a pattern It just undid itself.

It never came back. And I know it's not that easy for everyone, but it was I I mean it I wouldn't have ever imagined that. imagined that. imagined that. When you say there was an insight where it all unhooked, do you mean some sort of a a key insight um moment in meditations or maybe even an enlightenment experience? I just saw clearly, I wouldn't say an enlightenment experience, but I saw clearly that the depression itself that I'd struggled and fought with for 25 years or 20 years was empty.

And it was kind of, you know, they always say that sometimes really deep insights are slightly embarrassing. I I just felt like what? 20 years I've been fighting and struggling with things and there's nothing there. And it it was like a caboose um unhooked from the train and it was just a moment where I it was just a moment where I saw this unhooking and I just saw I've been struggling and there's no nothing there. Kind of like they talk about the five aggregates in Buddhism like um don't ask me to tell them what they are but you know intention, body, mind.

Um it was like the Big Dipper. It was like, you know how you see the Big Dipper and you know, you look up there and you see those what it's seven stars. This time I just looked up at there and there weren't there wasn't depression. There weren't there wasn't the Big Dipper. There was just seven stars. And there was just I saw depression was just energy, low energy, negative thinking, um, a couple other things. There wasn't anything called depression that I'd been fighting. It just the whole thing the the coagulation of it all and the struggle with it all just fell away.

Just a note to the listener um Amita used the word empty which is a Buddhist term of art but it she then went on to explain it which means that it's her depression your depression your anxiety and everything we're experiencing which feels so monolithic so personally monogrammed so like you know non-negotiable actually is empty of inherent substance. there there is no thing you can put your finger on and call it depression. It's just a um made up of these constantly shifting uh constituent parts. This is a uh a metaphor Joseph Goldstein uh who has worked with both of us often use uses that it's like you look at the big dipper in the sky and seems like yeah that's a big dipper but actually it's just seven stars um all of which of course are made up of their own shifting component parts all each of those stars.

Um, so there is no solid Big Dipper and there's no solid depression. And that's a massive insight that can be hard one. Um, and kind of has to be molecular in order to for many of us be super liberating or or like kind of unhooking the way the caboose unhooks from the rest of the train. Would that be an accurate reflection of what you just said? said? said? Yeah. Yeah, that's beautiful reflection. And it's I think it's similar to the Buddha supposedly under the bodhic tree when he woke up he was fighting Mara and fighting his mind and then at one point he went wait a minute there's nothing here this isn't real and that's supposedly when mind fell away too and I like to talk about working with these inner voices I think that depression is a precursor for letting go of our addiction to the thought mind and to the mind perspective and actually when the depression fell away this kind of quiet voice said this is how your sense of self is going to fall away too.

So I'm still waiting. You mentioned that this took 20 years. Um that that might scan as a little discouraging to people listening like oh my god I don't you know I don't have 20 years or I don't have the the time to do five three-month retreats so this is just out of reach for me. That's what it was for me. I wouldn't say, say, say, you know, I had one lady, she she just listened to my talk about this and her depression fell away from listening to my talk.

It didn't take her 20 years. I think that remember this is a journey of love and awakening and higher versions of truth and love and being who you are. So it it's not like time lost. It's not like you know it this is your this is that was my journey and it was my path my spiritual path and it was my psychological path and it was fine. It wasn't like I thought I should have been doing something else. It's it's a divine path. So yeah the key is to not think there's something else.

So I remember early on when I was at the retreat center I kept thinking well if only I didn't have trauma I could progress further in insight and then I realized no the trauma is part of my journey on the spiritual path. So it's important I think with anybody that's working with difficult emotions or trauma you don't think that's a separate path from your spiritual journey that they're the same thing. It's a great point you're making about it kind of takes what it takes and it's well what's the expression about the dharma or the the path of meditation practice and and and the like it's it's it's good in the middle it's good in the beginning it's good in the middle it's good in the end so like what's the alternative alternative alternative everything is dharma now like whether you're working with depression or you're we're talking in an interview right now or I'm sipping a cup of tea it's all dharma now that there's nothing outside of the dharma Dharma.

So it fits with what you said, beautiful in the beginning, middle, and the end. But it's all dharma. Now, what would be outside of the dharma? Especially if you think of dharma is just a synonym for nature. It's, you know, it's all Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all It's all It's all I feel like we're always doing the highest form and we love we know. And hopefully we can upgrade. So some of us might have had addictions that were the highest form of love we knew or that mean inner voice was the highest form of love we knew at that time.

But you know hopefully we upgrade to better and better versions of love. And you said in an interview love is omnipotent and multidirectional and it's inwardly there's just no end to how much we can develop love and wisdom inside. Let's talk about your framework for combining um psychology and dharma. Um the overarching framework as I understand it is tend befriend transcend which has a ring to it. Um so let's start with tend and befriend which is all about like working with our inner critic working with our difficult parts specifically the part that you know is in the h in the habit of berating ourselves.

Um, so just to signal to the listener, there's several sections here that we're going to work through. I'm I'm looking at a really helpful set of notes that um, Amita put together along with our senior producer Marissa Schneiderman. And we're going to work through these, but it starts with this idea of pend and befriend. We'll move into transcend later. And under tend and befriend, there are a couple of steps um, five to be com uh, to be uh, complete. And so the the first one is just understanding the voice in the head.

What does that mean and how do we do it? Yeah. Well, the inner critic really gets demonized, but it it's a protector part um per the IFS terms. And it's it's here to help. All parts are here to help in some way. And often, you know, we had an inner bully in our life. Um generally people with inner critics kind of learned it somewhere. And so it it it's it was here to keep us safe. Um except sometimes what helped keep us safe doesn't work so well for growth.

Now, growth. Now, growth. Now, one of the points you make as I'm reading uh your notes here is that I I I guess there are some people with who don't have an inner critic, I suspect they're not drawn to the show. Um but for those of us who do have an inner critic, there's something about today's internet culture that can intensify it. I mean, I've been doing therapy for uh acting as a therapist for about 35 years. And so I I'm pre- internet culture. culture. culture.

And man, minute Facebook and social media, people started coming into therapy room and they were just they got more depressed and more self-hatred cuz the comparing mind just gets so amplified amplified amplified by the internet culture and social media. So it that was like a whole new wave I saw in therapy of dealing with um kind of the fake news of people's social feeds and then people were comparing themselves to that and it just created a whole disparaging voice inside for people that I hadn't seen before.

So how do we befriend this voice which is so obnoxious? Yeah. Well, first you try to you don't want to meet it with another part. Um often when we have an inner critic, we have um there's several parts going on. We often have another part saying that voice needs to shut up now. Um and then you have a third part almost running between the two like there there is often a civil war inside critic. It just doesn't is not a standalone. So you really have to bring this wise self to this inner critic and kind of find out first of all what it's trying to do, why it came online, what its job is.

You remember parts are not what their job is. Just because it's criticizing you uh doesn't mean that this is a mean part. It has a job to criticize you. And actually um it's kind of fascinating. You discover as an IFS therapist that actually a lot of parts are the opposite of the job they do. Sometimes when you can really talk to the inner critic, you find actually that it's it's being mean, but it's actually kind of a kind and caring part underneath it all. And that that takes a lot of work to get to that.

Um, but it's fascinating to me that parts are the opposite of the job they do. So you often have, like I said a minute ago, you have a polarization when you have the critic. You have another part saying, "I don't like the critic. It needs to stop now." And then you have a third part that's not actually wise self that's trying to navigate between these two kids. They're like kids fighting each other. You know, Dan, you have kids and you can't let them fight it out.

So wise self is like this third thing that comes in. It kind of says, "Okay, you both have a piece of the truth and I'm going to decide what happens next for Dan or Amida and it makes the decision like a wise CEO or a wise parent when kids are fighting." fighting." fighting." So, you you said a couple things in there that I'm curious to get to the how of. You said one thing about, you know, when you talk to your inner critic, it may reveal itself, he or she may reveal him or herself eventually to be a, you know, a a protector.

Um, and then the other thing you said is, you know, bringing the wise self to bear is is, you know, to break up the fight among the parts is really uh really the move. So, I'm curious like how do we do each of these? Again, just to restate them. one, how do we learn how to talk to our inner critic? And how do we bring the our wise self to how do we access the wise self and bring it to bear? Well, one key is to realize that wise self doesn't have an agenda.

So if you are in, you know, if you have an agenda to make that part stop, then you're in that other part, the virtuous one, you know. So you have to really, you know, we talk about the eight C's of wise self. I I think you've probably talked about that on the show. That's one way to bring that online and to make sure you're talking from that versus another part. But you really want to bring compassion to this part and curiosity. These are two of the eight C's.

I use those the most. Compassion and curiosity and calmness. You really want to listen. Hey, why are you doing that? Why are you criticizing me? What's that about? Could you tell me more about that? What are you afraid of? This is a key question, Dan, to ask a part is, "What are you afraid would happen if you didn't criticize me?" Well, if I didn't criticize Dan, then he might mess up, you know, or he'll be caught unaware. So often then when you find out what that part's afraid of, then you address that fear, which is usually another part, you know, I don't want him to look dumb or I don't want him to make a mistake, you know.

Well, when did you know then you can talk with that part that's afraid of making mistakes making mistakes making mistakes and help that one calm down. So, in a way that you always want to be doing this though with this wise self and it's curious, calm, creative, connected. It it it listens. It's kind of like a good listener like you. Um, it reflects back. It's not trying to like shake this part to get it to change. And most people are subtly blended with a part that's trying to get the critic to go away.

I think I was doing that with a depression my whole life. You got to go away. Come on. Why aren't you going away? Right? And of course, then that part just digs in deeper when you do that. The best B2B marketing often gets wasted on the wrong people. I can't tell you how often I'm scrolling on Tik Tok or wherever and I get served ads for stuff I have no interest in. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over a billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers.

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I'll I'll list them. curiosity, compassion, calm, connectedness, connectedness, courage, creativity, confidence, clarity. But I do want to push you a little bit. I love, by the way, you know, asking the part the question, you know, what are you afraid of? That's that seems really fruitful. And just to say in IFS therapy, when you're working with a therapist, like the therapist will actually have you do this dialogue out loud between the wise self and and the part. I've done this with Dick Schwarz, you know, live here on the show.

So, if you, like I said, we'll drop links in the show notes if you want to hear me kind of awkwardly go through this, you can. Um, but this is also something you can do on your own. But I do want to go back to the question like how if if somebody's new to all of this, you know, how can how can you be somewhat confident that you you have some access to this elevated part of yourself? uh that that's characterized by the aforementioned eight C's.

How how can you get there? A lot of people unfortunately I notice um have very little access to self, wise self. self. self. And that's part of the problem. You know, a lot of sometimes I'll come in therapy, I talk to some really high up guy and all these corporate things and I said, "How much self do you think you have?" He goes, "20%." I go, "Dude, that's not enough." Like at least he was honest and he could see. He only had like access to 20%.

And all these parts running around. No wonder it was hard for him. And most people Dan I would say it's like 20 30%. So I do a lot with trying to just build self energy before we even do much with parts cuz people just don't have access to it. Uh fortunately meditation I think can build a lot of self energy too. Um but one of the ways I help people do is like like like you know make your like that big sky mind that Jack Kornfield does or Joseph talks about Joseph Goldstein talks about it too.

make your mind and heart as wide as the sky or you know just that opening up cuz when we're in when we're trying to when we're trying to problem solve a part often we get really collapsed and so you want to open up and um in the Hawaiian tradition they have something called kahi which means make your mind and heart like the night sky full of stars so it's trying to approach that part with that. But yeah, it's it's tricky how to teach people to have that wise self when they don't have access to it.

They're just blended from one part to another to another, right? Yes. And by blended you mean like completely identified with, owned by, inhabiting. Um but so you mentioned um Big Sky Mind or the Hawaiian practice of you know making your mind as broad as a night full of stars, a night sky full of stars. Can you just say a little bit more about how you know what what are the moves that would help somebody to come at least close to that? I mean some other tools are just ask you know is my wise self here now?

Um I'll have people even envision like their their self like 20 years from now. So if you were to think about like maybe a 70 or 80year-old you how would he be with this? Sometimes I'll say, "What would the Buddha do?" I try, you know, just trying to get some wise elder online. You know, we're not taught this in our culture. We're we're very we're not taught how to access a wise elder. We don't even have a lot of wise elders in our in our family often.

So, it's it's how to get a wise presence online. presence online. presence online. So, you know, I bring up the Buddha as an idea. I bring up my wise older self. I don't really think parts are linear in time. So, I think I do this a lot. I I go to an older version of you and people are almost always surprised. I'll say, "Well, what would your 80-year-old How does he look? How does he feel?" Like, and if you checked in, Dan, do you have an 80-year-old that's like really mean and critical to you?

Probably not. He's probably like been through that. He's like he's just chill, right? And you can bring like him online too to help like kind of strengthen that sense of wise self. That's your your wise elder to come. One other technique I would just add that I that has been useful for me is, you know, in self-compassion, as it's taught by Kristen Nef, she'll often have you talk to yourself the way you would talk to a good friend, a good friend or a mentee or a kid.

And like we all have this capacity to be good advice givers. We very rarely channel it and direct it inwardly. And so for me, I I don't know if you agree with this, but for me, I do find that that is a a a pretty easy and doable way to access this wise self that we're talking about here. about here. about here. Yeah, that's perfect. Whatever tool allows you to find that kind of more expansive, expansive, expansive, not agenda, compassionate, caring, you just would have to be a careful because um self isn't necessarily advice giving it.

That would be a part. You can have what's called self-like parts and that's like for whole another dialogue. But remember self doesn't have any agenda. It's just here and it just is loving, present, kind of like a, you know, when you're in your best self as a parent, you're probably not giving advice. You're just present with what your kids are going through and with love. And advice might come out of that, but it's not the primary focus. Okay. So, I was working through these really helpful notes that you and Marissa put together.

And so we've just kind of gone through the first section kind of talking about the IFS perspective and then you have a sort of a transitional section here where you're talking about moving from psychology IFS being an example of psychology to the more spiritual um can you just say a little bit more about this piece? Yeah, I think that it's super important that you know we're all carrying some kind of pain or tension that before you look at transcendence, you have to relax your parts and your pain and tension.

You have to look at I think um Maya Angelou says, "Where does it hurt?" You know, you have to bring compassion and inner generosity and kindness to the places we might have some pain. Not just like, "Hey, let's go to emptiness or let's go to awakening." It it's so important that we we look at the areas where we're carrying pain because we're all carrying some kind of pain often. So, you're using this tendon befriend and working with parts or just bringing inner love to your system through psychology to help calm the system down and create safety for your body and mind.

And then you can start looking at more the transcendent principles. If you didn't really do that first, it would be a bit of a spiritual bypass. Excuse me, a spiritual bypass. So, it's it's important that you kind of do both. This is where the word self gets a little um tricky. Um because we're using it, at least the way I'm thinking about this discussion is uh in my mind, I'm using the word self in a bunch of different ways. Uh, so there's the self as it's used in is IFS where they you're calling it the wise self or Richard has, you know, capitalizes the self.

There's the way we talk about the self in in normal conversation where it's just like we're referring to ourselves. Um, you know, self-compassion, self-love, self-compassion, self-love, self-compassion, self-love, self-loathing, whatever. It's all referring back to this individual. And then there's self-trcendence. Uh this is where we move from the psychological to the spiritual where you actually start to see that this reference point of a fixed and separate eye is when you pay attention in the right way revealed to be an illusion. And this can be very healing.

It can make all of your stuff less personal, less monolithic, uh more attractable, more workable. And I think what you were just saying right there is we need to start on the the level of reality that is easily comprehensible to most of us. You know, the sort of psychological level that most of us sort of innately understand. We need to start by calming the system by bringing love to the obnoxious parts of our uh inner repertoire. And once we've done that, we can move into the sort of advanced level where we're looking at it through a spiritual transcendent lens where we're starting to tap into this somewhat esoteric truth that the self is an illusion after all.

Yes. Well put. Thank you. I always like the gold star. Um, Um, Um, you do so well at reframing. This is my whole life. This is all I do is I talk to people like you. uh and make sure that the people listening truly get it. Um it's like uh some sort of um intermediary. So So is there more to say about this movement from psychology psychology psychology to spirit to spirituality before we move into like transcending and how it's done. I would say the overarching piece is really just knowing who you are.

So often, you know, there's these blocks or pain points in our psychology. So we're kind of undoing those. And then spirituality is more going even deeper. Well, maybe we're not um even this identity of self. So it's just this developing more just this it's just this developing more flow and connection with the truth of who you are. You know, you're not the pain body. you're not your trauma pain body. But then you might be willing to, not everybody wants to do this, but you might be willing to go further and say, "Well, gosh, am I even the ego self?

What what am I?" You know, it's not a question many people ask, but we probably should be asking it because the body and mind's going to go and what's still going to be here. I work with a lot of people that are like nearing death in their 70s and 80s and they really want to know this question when my body mind goes what's still going to be here and of course whatever that is is here now. So how do you answer that question? I kind of have them look like in the here and now.

So you know think of those air puppets in front of you know used car dealers. car dealers. car dealers. If all of a sudden, you know, we're like these air puppets, right, Dan? If the air gets gone from those air puppets, this is our body and mind gone, right? Well, something's still here, right? I have people look cuz it's not my answer. It's what you see. I mean, what would still be here? Is it like awareness, a sense of presence? just to to feel what might still be here when the body and mind's gone.

Something will still be here. Maybe it's a more universal presence or awareness. I mentioned this earlier, but the word awareness can be I think for some people a bit of a stopper like what what does that mean? We you know culturally we use it as like drug awareness or you know workplace safety awareness month, mental health awareness month. But it's but in this context awareness refers to the knowing faculty of the mind. The fact that the light is the lights are on at all that we are there's something that's hearing the sound of my voice right now.

There's something that's if you have working eyeballs seeing whatever you're seeing right now. somebody's some some mysterious something or not a thing at all is taking delivery of these sensory packages and that's what you mean I think when you're pointing to awareness. Yeah. And you could call that maybe pure awareness. Like what animates our bodies, bodies, bodies, what's breathing your lungs right now? What's beating your heart? What's growing your hair? You know, and that those could be um you know, pure technical things, you know, right?

Cells, but what is animating the trees and you and me? What what's making all this happen? Like the whole thing is like a giant air puppet, right? what's doing all that? And it just, you know, maybe that takes you to a more numinous presence, but I call it pure awareness because often, Dan, what we do is we identify my awareness, Dan's awareness or Amida's awareness, and then we personalize it in an egoistic way. But I think there's something called the awareness that kind of is animating all things at all at once.

you know, whatever is breathing you and me right now is breathing, breathing, breathing, you know, everybody across the globe and breathing animals and the whales in the ocean. It's breathing everything at the same time. Like, what is that? And I say this in a good way. This conversation is now veered into the weird in a in a and I I love it. I'm I'm here for it. But I let me ask a sort of a grounding question which is this notion of awareness. What does how is any of this relevant to the stuff we started talking about which was the easily comprehensible although painful reality of the fact that most of us have an inner hectoring voice who's kind of a dick.

Um and we want to you know not be so owned by that voice anymore. So this awareness piece that we're talking about now, how is that relevant to where we began? Yeah. Because ultimately the inner voice, you're working with like what's on the canvas and oh the inner voice is mean, a heckler, but we're now we're looking at the canvas itself, the blank canvas. canvas. canvas. You know, your awareness itself is never an an an Pure awareness, it doesn't even have any thoughts. might seem like it does but if you look more carefully a awareness is almost like just the pure canvas.

It all happens on the movie of you or the blank screen. You know Ramen and Maharshi used to talk about you're this empty movie screen that then the movie gets played on. So we can change the movie and get better characters in your movie. You know the inner heckler. Um, but we can also look at, well, what's what's here that is the screen of it all? it all? it all? And that just takes you deeper because then none of these things apply. Does the heckler when you're just at pure awareness, Dan?

Where's the heckler? No, no place. no place. no place. But what is still there? Maybe it's just presence. You know, some people might call this soul, which probably is a terrible word for your podcast, but um it's kind of where you're free of all these components. So, think of it like layers. You know, you're you're solving the places where your psychology is kind of mucked up cuz you got some mean parts in there. And then you go down deeper and you're just maybe kind of this loving kindness.

kindness. kindness. But then you go down deeper and maybe it's just pure, you know, just just I I don't want to say emptiness, but it's just something more universal there, right? That's not about our movie. Maybe it's a universal movie we're looking at. I don't know if that answers your question, but we're moving away from fixing our movie to more like, well, what is happening here? We're kind of looking at Yeah. to the movie itself, moving away from content to and toward process. This movie analogy, you know, I've heard I just spent some time with the aforementioned Joseph Goldstein, and he he uses it a lot, too.

It's like you look at a movie and it seems like, oh, this is happening. This is this is a real story. But actually, if you look at it critically, it's there's nothing happening. It's a bunch. It's a bunch of uh uh uh light and shadow on a on a um on a screen. Um 24 frame. You can easily break it down to 24 frames per second. And and then we move away from like, you know, so it's important to start with offering love to your to your parts.

But what you can do on an even deeper level is put the whole movie through a cheese grater where it's like, yeah, none of this I don't need to take this as seriously as I've been taking it. Uh it's kind of like what you said at the very beginning of this conversation, my depression is empty. It uh as soon as I see that my depression is as solid as a movie that's playing on a screen, then the caboose unhooks from the train. So think of it this way.

You know, it's almost like that voice talking whether it's saying good things or bad things to you or about you, but then you're here. You're just here, right? And we often think, you know, we get involved with two two voices talking, but there aren't two minds. There's the voice the mind that da I should do this, you shouldn't do that. But what is just here no matter what voice is here talking to you, talking trash to you or not, right? But you're just here. The voice might come, it might go, might come.

It might go. What is always a constant that's just here? Irregardless of the voice, irregardless of your psychology, irregardless of happy, sad, what about you is unchanging is always here. here. here. And then in a way that can tell you more maybe about the secrets of the universe. It's like what what's always just here with everybody, right? Let's talk about what some initial practical tools and you list some in this document that I'm reading off of that um was given to me to prepare for this interview.

Um one of them is labeling. What is labeling and how does it help with what we're talking about here? Yeah, labeling is just simple mindfulness um naming. So like you you already did it that oh there's an inner critic, there's an inner heckler, you know, whatever you want to call it, you're making a mental label of it. What that does is the minute you label it, you're a you're not caught in it. You're in awareness itself. So it's kind of a a you know a cheat code to just go to pure awareness awareness awareness because the label itself has you go to the awareness.

You're not lost in that emotion. Think of it like, you know, the turbulent emotion is like a turbulent river and the minute you label, you're like up on the bridge looking down at it going, "Oh, there's the inner critic." And they've actually shown that labeling in a study with Lieberman in UCLA in 2007 2007 2007 that that labeling moved it to a different part of the brain where it was easier to process it. They had MRI uh imaging and when you didn't label it, you were stuck.

the inner heckler, you were stuck in the amygdala, which is, you know, kind of your fight orflight brain. But when you labeled it, the immediately moved whatever emotion you were dealing with to the preffrontal cortex, which is the reasoning area of the brain. So the labeling really works to help you process it with a different part of your brain. And so the the labeling that you're talking about, I just want to be clear. Is this something that's I know for many of us who've meditated know about mental noting where you you might use these little whispers in the mind to note, oh that's hearing, that's seeing, that's desire.

Um, and then you go back to your breath or whatever. Um, so when you're talking about labeling, are you talking about in a meditation context or I'm just walking down the street? I pass a reflective surface and my inner critic says, "You look frumpy today." Um, and then I just quickly note, "Oh, that's the inner critic." Or are you talking about both? No, I would say this is more daily life. So, perfect analogy. Yeah. Oh, inner critic. You know, I had a very like mean and cruel father.

So, I used to joke and I'd just say my dad's name, Donald. Interesting that it was Donald. And I cuz then I just go, "Oh, that's his voice, not me." because it wasn't me. Your inner critic isn't you. And you know that labeling helps you see, oh, it's not me. And it's not to blame anyone from our past, but for me, it just helped me go that this is not even my voice. my voice. my voice. It just comes online. And maybe you had a really mean coach and you might joke, it's his voice, you know, right?

But again, it helps you move away from it and get some breathing room and some space. Um, and then you can have a choice how you want to respond to that voice. Do you want to believe what it says or do you want to say thank you and know know know several years ago I interviewed a very interesting woman named Sonia Renee Taylor and she said I wrote it down and I've not forgotten it that when she notices self-criticism in her own mind she she reframes it as the voice in her words the voice of the system.

Um, meaning the culture wants us to be self-critical because it gets us buying the next thing or swiping to the next video. That's the engine for the worst parts of capitalism. So, if you can just reframe, oh yeah, that voice that just said you look frumpy is is is my internalized Madison Avenue trying to get me to go buy some new clothes. That's perfect. Yeah. And you could even use cuz we're so into AI now. it. What if it was Siri saying that to you? Hey, Dan, you look like crap.

You know, you'd be like, "Hey, stop." Right? Your inner voice is the first AI. The mind is the first AI. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt just like you would AI. I mean, now people are really giving a lot of credit to AI that it might even be sensient or something, but you know, just just do it like an AI voice. If it was a Siri chatbot, you'd be like, you know, you maybe you might listen to it for a second, but you wouldn't Yeah, you could upgrade that tool, Dan, to like if it was AI, it was your um your chatbot saying that you'd be like, eh, get alive get alive get alive literally cuz the they're not alive, right?

But our mind is like AI. your original nature original nature original nature that's just here and then it comes in da da da da da. If we start treating the mind like AI, I think we might we might be able to get some space from it before we start projecting our own stuff onto AI. It's it's good to see that our mind is the original AI. You just talked about getting some space from it, which is really important. It's at the heart of all of this.

Another technique that you recommend for getting some space from your inner critic is to think about Well, I'll let you describe it. It's you you're using the analogy of an airplane hanger. Can you talk about that? Yeah. Well, it's it's moving back from it, labeling it, seeing that, you know, the voice is no different than any sounds. It could be the same as a bird sound. It's just blah blah blah, right? And the more you can back off and give some space uh with these voices, then you might still have the same inner critic.

Let's say um it's like a couch. But if you're in a really small room of Dan and you've got this tiny studio apartment, you have this big couch of the inner critic and you have a big easy chair of your anxiety part Dan. You're going to be bumping into those chairs all the time. and your psyche is going to be running into them. But we put them in a big airplane hanger, the same couch of inner critic, the same chair of of anxiety. How often are you going to run into them?

into them? into them? You haven't gotten rid of anything, but there's so much more spaciousness in who you are. That mind that's, you know, the big sky. It It's fine. It's fine that the anxiety or inner critics's here because you there's more of you here. A spacious awareness. I know you don't like that word, but No, I don't dislike it. I just want to make sure people understand it when we use it. use it. use it. Yeah. So, there's more spacious awareness. There's just more presence.

There's more love. So then the couch of inner critic and the chair of anxiety can be no big deal. It's just no big deal. How important is Here's another a word. Acceptance in all of this. Yeah. I think like I said with my depression when it fell away, I think the final step was just surrender, acceptance cuz we're fighting. You know, they they have that old saying, what we resist persists. resist persists. resist persists. So, you know, we're because we're fighting it, then we're creating another part that's wanting it to go away.

You see this a lot in addicts. You know, I want to stop doing this eating this compulsive eating, right? And yet, you know, the compulsive eater part and it becomes this paradoxical struggle. And when you can just let go and ease up on the whole thing and that wise presence can be here with it all. Okay? However long it takes, whatever it takes, this is my path and you're not fighting that path, then it can really fall away. Acceptance is kind of like a softening of all our parts so that we can just relax into what is the truth versus thinking we know this part shouldn't be here or we shouldn't be doing this or if you're just relaxing in that whole process via acceptance.

And then you're kind of it it's a willingness, you know, I'm just willing to have I'm just willing to be here with whatever is however long it takes. And there's something about that when you make that vow and that frame of mind that really can transform things. I don't completely understand it, Dan, but it's it's it's acceptance is very transformative. You know, the fundamental move as I understand it that you're calling for us to make is to kind of pull the rug out from the whole system to call on the whole movie and really inhabit this this awareness that uh to go back to that word.

And so I'm I'm curious any further thoughts on how we can do what you're describing? you're describing? you're describing? Well, it's important to probably try it right now cuz a I call it a aware presence or awake presence. It's not a belief. It's not a thought. That's your mind co-opting it. It's just here. Like notice it doesn't take a lot of effort for you and I just to be here right now. Just feel that. We're just here, right? And your awareness or your attention, awareness, attention is a little different than awareness, but it's just here.

So notice this is not a belief. This is not a thought. Your aware presence is just here now without any effort. So right here, visible in the here and now, you can see it. it. it. Now your inner critic might come in on top of that but before any voices come in just notice notice notice you're just here again like that movie screen before the movie starts playing and it doesn't take any belief it's not hard to find it we we make it complicated in the mind trace the AI mind tries to come and go well let me tell you about you know when you're doing an AI search now it's like well do you want more about this so here we are We're just here.

And then the mind comes in and tries to go, well, let me tell you more about this aware presence. presence. presence. And that's fine. But come back to the simplicity of it all. It doesn't take any effort just to be. I agree. It doesn't take any effort just to be. That seems readily comprehensible. Help me connect that insight to insight to insight to working with the inner critic. Your presence is just here. Then a voice arises, arises, arises, right? And whether you want to call it that wise self we talked about or just your Buddha nature just that like seeing aware, then you're meeting that critic.

I mean there's two levels to this. You can meet it with that IFS typewise self or you could just meet it like the Buddha did with oh this is just empty there's nothing here and then the voice will just fall away so you're meeting so when the inner critic comes up it's like a thought it's a thought form right and then you meet that with awareness you can just meet it with pure awareness or you can meet it with compassion connection like we talked about earlier.

What's it trying to do? How's it trying to help? Or you can just meet it with kind of a pure empty awareness that just is like doesn't even have to do anything with the inner critic. It just the inner critic will arise and pass away on its own in the spaciousness of you. Just to be clear, some of this is esoteric and weird, but not in the porative. It's it's esoteric and weird, but also doable and important and super helpful. Um, but I just want to make sure that I'm serving the we are serving the listener by making sure um it's understandable.

And so if I understand you correctly, you're saying, look, in these moments these moments these moments where you notice the inner critic, and I think this is true for any difficult part of your personality, but we're really focusing here on the inner critic. critic. critic. There are two really healthy options. One is to greet it with love and compassion and warmth. To ask, you know, what do you what are you afraid of? You know, um that's such a great question to be in dialogue in a warm uh way.

And then the other move would be what and I think in Buddhist circles is often referred to as wisdom which is another funny word because I think people hear that hear that word and just immediately imagine like Dumbledore or something like that. But wisdom in this sense is really seeing it from a a perspective of depth where it's uh it may seem solid. The voice that tells you, "Hey, you look like today." May seem solid, but actually, if you pull back to the airplane hanger perspective, perspective, perspective, um, it's just this little quantum burst of energy in the mind, it is, as Joseph says, of thoughts, little more than nothing.

nothing. nothing. And when you view it in that light, it just kind of self liberates. It It just fizzles on its own. How did I do there? Is that my close? That was perfect. I That was perfect. I have have have just to be clear, I'm not looking for credit. I'm really trying to help the listener. So, okay. I would add an analogy to that that's kind of a common analogy. So, whether it's the noise in your head or you and I were like making a lot of noise, screaming, yelling, right?

It's all going to default to silence. You and I could scream and yell till kingdom come. We all could. And guess what? The default is silence. So that voice could yell at you as much as it wants, but eventually it's going to come back to this pure awareness. Like you just said in that second part, it's going to default to silence. I mean, you could see a great example of that. Everything defaults to stillness. Even though it might not sound like it, you could be at a loud party.

It doesn't seem like it. Your mind can be like a loud party sometimes. sometimes. sometimes. But you know, this is kind of like what Joseph's saying. It's all going to rise and pass away. And you can just wait in that space where it all passes away in two, right? I I heard once a nice analogy too that um um um that inner critic, it's like one person in an empty stadium with a microphone. And I really like that because the the stadium's just this huge empty space of you, Dan, right?

But this one dude, he's got a microphone and kind of like the Wizard of Oz. It sounds like he's taken up the whole stadium. So I like to think of these both of these practices like taking away the microphone. microphone. microphone. We've worked through your sequence of tend and befriend and then transcend. It's very compelling. What would you describe as the endg game here? Is it like this is these are just good tools to work with this these with our stuff as it arises in the moment or we can make it we can just make it all go away.

We can get the caboose to unhook from the train the way you described after 20 years of of intense effort. Great question. What is the endgame? It it really is what you want it to be. It's like an awareness video game. You can go to amazing levels here. You can just decide to transcend your depression and your anxiety or you could go to complete freedom, you know, full ar full awakening. Um it's up to you how far you want to go in the game. The very end of the game is truth, love, peace, joy, 100%.

I actually work with a teacher who is 100% 100% 100% truth, love, peace, joy. He jokes, he goes, "Ma, you got to pack your bags and move into source." What is source? He's he comes from a more Christian tradition. So source to him is God. But he said you got to move into that complete awareness away from your personality personality personality away from the mind and just move into 100% awareness or you know it it's tricky because I think the endgame you see people that are have really walked it all the way through to the end like Ramana Maharshi or maybe even the Dollaly Lama they they just exhibit right truth love peace joy truth with love, peace, joy.

That's all there is. And people that are really walking the talk, who have really done the psychological psychological psychological to the spiritual 100%. They're just I mean they're just free free. free. free. And then that manifesting is truth, love, peace, joy just over and over and over again. When somebody says you got to pack your bags and move into the source, like I hear that as just totally inactionable. inactionable. inactionable. Say more when you say inactionable. Well, I mean I just don't even know how to do that.

I've been meditating for a minute like 15 years, but I just like don't know what that means to pack my bags and move into the source. Yeah. Well, where are you living? Where are you moved into? Is it the mind house or just start? Let's start with where you are. you are. you are. I am mostly in in stocked up in the movie. Um, and I have moments in my meditation and when I can bring mindfulness or wisdom or uh to or all other good stuff, other of the eight seas to my the present moment as I'm walking around through the world, I can drop out of it, but I wouldn't know how to be 100% dropped out of the movie.

Yeah, it's not for everybody. But it sounds like you've you leave the movie theater occasionally and visits quote source. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean it's it's a great kind of co-ad for you. Wow. What would it be like to live there? It's not for the faint of heart, right? But if that's your aspiration um to be completely abiding in or absorbed in source, you'll still have words. You'll still have truth. You'll still be able to do your podcast. It'll just be from a whole different perspective.

perspective. perspective. Who is this teacher you're referring to? He's not known to anybody, so it wouldn't. His name is He wants to remain unknown, but he's a Yeah, I could tell you more later if you want. So, not a guy who would come on this podcast. podcast. podcast. I asked him and he said no cuz he knows more than I do. So, he lives in this place 24/7, but I could ask him again. You know, you never know. He's a a 35-year-old African-American guy who was in the military and he has kids.

He had a spontaneous awakening kind of like Byron Katy in a cartel. But then people started to guruify him. So he went underground and he doesn't really want anyone to know about him because he he doesn't think the point is to worship somebody which is what started happening. happening. happening. All right. Well, if he changes his mind. Yeah, I'll let you know. He that would be a wild ride for you. Any other questions or so? Yeah, pack your bags. I mean, think about this packing your bags and moving into source.

It might be an interesting challenge for you. What prevents you? What prevents me moving in now? Move in now. Toward the end of every interview, I asked two questions. Um, one of them is, is there anything you were hoping we would get to that we didn't? didn't? didn't? I had no ideas what would happen. And the second question is, can you just, you know, do do you have material, you know, if people want to learn more from you? How can they do so? What have you, you know, do you have a website or do you have Dharma talks people can go listen to any other materials that you've created that we should know about?

about? about? Yeah, there's probably about 20 years of Dharma talks on Dharma Seed, you know, and they're all free there. I've got some on Insight Timer as well. Let me just jump in on that to explain what Dharma Seed is. If you go and I will put a link in the show notes. If you go to Dharma Seed Dharma D.org or and search for Amita Schmidt, you'll you'll see all of the all the talks she's given on meditation retreats over the years and and you'll be able to listen to those.

And then also there's an app called Insight Timer where you um you have more material. I think you also said that. said that. said that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What about a website? I do have a website, but it's not super up to date. I also wrote a book about a woman named Deepma who was one of Joseph Goldstein's teacher and there's a lot of wonderful things in there about um loving kindness and wisdom. You know, she's a whole separate subject, but she was kind of a female embodiment that was way ahead of her time.

I do want to recommend that book to people. I I have not uh yet read it, but um everybody I know who has read it has really gotten a lot out of it. So it's called Deepipama, and we will put a link to that if you want to check out. Yeah, it's actually officially called Deepama, the life and legacy of a Buddhist master. It's on Amazon. It's just about one It's It's sort of a biography about this woman teacher who is a Buddhist master. And like I said, she was the teacher to Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield.

in Sharon Salsber and I wrote about her because she just has some really inspiring stories for all of us. She was a householder. She never ordained and she raised uh her daughter and achieved very high states of awareness while raising a child. So she was quite a quite a wonderful example of what's possible. possible. possible. Amita Schmidt, thank you very much for your time. It's a pleasure to talk to you. You're welcome, Dan. It was really nice to meet you.