S2E21: Elizabeth Gilbert on Letters from Love: Is love conscious and what does it want us to know? | Talk Tracks

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the talk tracks.

I'm so excited to welcome the best-selling author, Elizabeth Gilbert, back to our show.

If you listen to season two, episode three of the telepathy tapes,

you heard author Liz Gilbert among other brilliant creatives talk about the creative force

and how it works with each of us.

But creativity may not be the only force seeking to engage with us.

There's another and it wants us to know it and that force is love.

Here's Liz Gilbert talking about the first time the force of love spoke to her.

This voice came to me and it was incredibly clear and it said,

get out of bed and get a notebook.

And write to yourself the words that you have always longed to hear somebody say to you.

Just write it down to you.

Though that was the first time Liz engaged with the universal force of love,

it wasn't the last.

Today we'll be talking to her about her practice, letters from love,

that she's been using for over two decades to converse with the love in the universe.

It's a force and a source that is incredibly consistent,

that's non-judgmental, non-condemning, non-controlling, deeply gentle and incredibly present.

The first time she wrote her own letter from love, the instructions were simple.

What do you need to hear that's going to get you through this?

And the first thing it said was, I'm right here.

I'm right here, which I now have tattooed on my chest because I think it's the most important thing.

The act itself is simple.

You sit down and write a letter to yourself from love.

In short, you're basically allowing a message from love to flow through you to you.

This is intuitive writing.

You're downloading a message from the cosmos, from your intuition, from your heart.

If unconditional love existed, what would it want you to know?

Don't try to make this poetic.

It actually doesn't work if you try to make it poetic.

And even though this may seem like a simple act, it can have a profound impact.

What we're doing here is that we are learning as a practice how to write to ourselves

and speak to ourselves from a place of kind, loving, simple, often humorous affection.

Rather than speaking to us in the voice of an evil, cruel, monstrous enemy,

which is what the interior voice of so many of us has been and still at times can be.

What emerged 20 years ago from Liz's darkest moment has expanded to envelope a community of thousands

as more and more people have joined her in writing these letters from love on sub-stack.

And if you don't know what sub-stack is, it's an online platform

which allows people to publish content and engage with their audience, kind of like a blog.

It's on sub-stack because it's a safer place for people to be vulnerable, at least it is so far.

I share a letter from love every week that I've written to myself

and we invite somebody to come risk doing this, to risk trying this.

And then they write a letter and they read it and then there's a comment section

where people can write their own letters for love and share them.

And then people respond to each others and they've created friendship and community across that.

Our little trademark is like the kindest corner of the internet

and it's so far absolutely has been.

And what's amazing is that as people from all walks of life wrote these letters,

love had a similar message almost every time.

There's nothing you can do to lose this love

and there's nothing you can do to gain this love.

Like you didn't earn it, you can't lose it.

It's your innate birthright wherever your life takes you.

I'm going to be there.

We went through some of the recordings in the letters from love sub-stack

and the consistency in themes is striking.

Here's just a few lines from various letters

recorded by the people who wrote them.

I'm with you always. You know that.

I'm always here without conditions.

You already have it because you are it.

I have been here and here I will stay.

And what's interesting is that much like creativity,

love can engage and work with all of us.

But the two forces are very different.

Later in the episode, we'll talk about how love and creativity act differently,

treat us differently, and want different things from us.

Perhaps the most important takeaway?

This is something we can all do.

But that doesn't mean it's easy.

And I know that from firsthand experience

because back in October, Liz asked me to write a letter from love.

And so I did.

And it was one of the most vulnerable things I'd ever done.

I wasn't entirely sure how I'd do it.

But kind of like Liz's first letter,

it just rushed through me.

And this was months before our conversation today.

And I had actually steered clear of reading

or listening to any of the letters to avoid being influenced

because whatever love was going to say to me,

if it said anything at all,

I wanted there to be nothing in my subconscious

regarding what others had been told.

But when talking to Liz,

I was surprised by the themes that appeared in my letter and others.

The letters that Liz has curated come from every walk of life.

Intellectuals, atheists,

people who consider themselves spiritual, some who don't,

people who don't consider themselves creative or writers,

and some, most remarkably,

who've never experienced tenderness or even unconditional love

in their lives.

And what kind of shocked me about my letter

is that it tended toward how the non-physical world

has gone through great lengths to demonstrate to me

that I am unconditionally loved.

And here's just a short excerpt from the middle of mine.

I was there.

That is the first thing.

That is the last thing.

That is the only thing you've ever needed to know.

I was there when you sat beside your dying aunt,

begging her to speak.

I gathered what remained of her and pushed it forward with all her might

so she could press final words into your ear.

It was a garbled triumph of sound.

You did not understand the words,

but thank you for telling her you did.

I stayed with you through the years

as you replayed those jumble sounds again and again,

listening with your mind, trying to solve them.

And then one night, when you finally

listened with your heart, they arrived whole.

Take care of your mother.

That was me, not late or even unclear,

just patient enough to wait for the part of you

that could hear them rightly.

So Liz, maybe just take us back to what was going on in your life

when this voice first came to you.

I was in the darkest time of my life

when I was around 30, 31 years old

and I was going through my first, but not last divorce.

And then I didn't have any tools of life yet.

I didn't know myself.

I knew shame.

I knew how to be humiliated.

I knew how to hide.

I didn't know any concept of divinity.

Certainly I did not know how to be kind to myself.

So you hear this voice that tells you you need to write a letter

and I love that you were just like,

okay, and you pick up your pen.

And then what happened?

I wrote, I need you.

And in response, I wrote, I'm right here.

And I'm with you.

How many start that week?

That's where mine started.

Most of them start that way.

Like I've now read thousands of these.

And it's rare that it doesn't start with either I'm right here

or we know right here.

It sometimes comes in first-person glural,

sometimes comes in first-person singular

but the very first thing is this deep reassurance

that you are not alone and that you have never been alone.

And mine also said very similar to yours.

I was with you at the moment, I'm your birth

and I'll be with you at the moment of your death.

There's never been a moment that I haven't been here.

Wow.

So beautiful.

And it's kind of curious, right?

That this reassurance is almost ubiquitously.

The first thing love has us know.

Why do you think that is?

I think this speaks to our deepest fundamental fear of like

working out to the void of the perceivable universe

and being like, there's nothing there.

There's that tremendous existential angst.

And then the letter went on to say,

I don't need anything from you.

I don't need you to be successful.

I don't need you to not be depressed.

Everyone in my life needed me to not be depressed,

including me.

And love was like, I have no need for you

to be any different than what you are right now.

Nothing about you needs to change.

And if you never get well

and you're this depressed and miserable

for the rest of your life, don't worry.

I love that.

It's okay.

And just for those who may not know much

about your books or background,

two of my favorite books of yours

are Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic.

But your books can get pretty personal.

And you've been through a ton, you know,

divorce and addiction and death of a partner.

My life has been like many of our lives.

Your kids have great joy and periods of great sorrow

of seasons of loss, seasons of success,

seasons of fear, seasons of confidence.

It's changeable.

It's mutable.

People die.

Another divorce happens, sickness happens

like all of the drama of life happens

and this steadily beating source

that says, I'm right here, you're not alone.

I'm not going anywhere

and I don't need you to change is constant.

I've had hard times, but I've never dipped again

to the level that I was in at that moment

because that voice is always there.

So now, you know, knowing that you do this

almost every day, I mean, are the letters the same?

Are they short?

Like a post-it note now?

Like, do they change a bit?

You know, does love give you a little variety?

They've changed over the years

where they're no more instructive.

The first decade and a half, my love hunger,

my bereft sense of being alone,

that sense was so deep

that I think that that source just needed

to spend a decade and a half

where you're sharing me

that there was nothing you'd have to do.

Like, you can fail at another marriage

and I love you.

You can lose these relationships that I love you.

You can have disastrous things going on in your family

that you don't know how to deal with and I'll love you.

I needed so much condensing

because that message is exactly the opposite

of what I had always been led to believe

that my merit of being loved was based on

how much I could produce, how successful I could be,

how lovable I could be in human terms

until the last 10 years.

It's like, you know how loved you are.

I've got some work for you to do.

Here's where I want your attention.

Here's who I want you to be serving.

Here's what I don't want you to be doing.

Before it was telling me,

you don't have to do anything.

I just love you.

And now it's like, I do love you

and there's a couple things I need you to do.

What are some of the things?

Like, I'm curious about love's directions.

Sometimes it's about what I'm not supposed to be doing.

More than what I'm supposed to be doing,

which is harder.

Sometimes it's just a redirection of attention.

Like, I don't want your attention on this.

I want your attention on that.

I want you to teach people how to do this practice

or sometimes it's very specific.

Call this person and check on them.

Go to this person's house and see if there are right.

A lot of the direction is about the releasing of control

or the illusion of control.

And of course, letting go of control

was letting go of something you never had.

And you don't even need to understand it.

And I need you to back off

because your anxiety about this thing

that you have no power over

or your anxiety about this person

or group of people that you have no power over

is draining, vital,

and crucial energy that could be used very well elsewhere.

So interesting.

One of the other messages we hear a lot about is surrender

and we hear this tremendous relief from people

when they are invited into surrender.

Everyone is so stressed and everyone is so tense.

And that's from trying to control what we can't control.

So, okay, that's kind of cool.

So love can direct you, it sounds like.

The directions are more intimate than global

and for my big, old grandiose ego

that wants to be a world changer,

that's very humbling.

Somebody in the letters from love, love said to them,

you are loved beyond measure

by forces that are getting you control

over practically nothing.

But the little teeny tiny

that you do have control over

is so important that you shop for.

And if you're expending yourself on things

that you can't do anything about,

then you're not going to be able to help

where we actually need you.

So it's very humbling.

I mean, what a beautiful thing.

And I guess as a writer,

I have these letters influenced any of your work.

My last book, it was a direct instruction to write,

even though it was uncomfortable.

It was like, we need you to write this.

We need you to tell the truth.

For the many people out there who aren't writers

and may not even consider themselves,

you know, really creative

and this task seems daunting.

What do you say to them?

What would be your advice?

That's a big obstacle for people.

They're like, I'm not a writer

and I'm like, the most beautiful letters

I've gotten from our guests

are from people who are not writers

because a very simple, unwriterly message

is trying to come through you.

And they're just downloading the message

without any obstacle.

Have there been any surprises in the letters from love

where you've been like, wow,

this person was not tuning in to love?

You know, or does everyone seem to be able to tune in

and receive it?

Nothing I have read doesn't sound like love to me.

That's what is so wild about it.

People doing this for the very first time,

which is every single week,

a couple people will drop in and say,

you don't even know if I believe in it.

It feels really weird.

I'm feeling super vulnerable.

Anyway, here's my first letter from love

and I'm like, that's identical to mine.

Like that's identical to the messages

that I've been receiving.

The same themes run through.

You don't need to understand

there's more going on here than you can see.

You have no idea how loved you are.

Stop doing so much, stop trying so hard,

which I think the whole world could use

as guidance right now.

I just want to share a few clips from guests

that you've invited to read their letters from love.

You're striving meant nothing to love.

You're being meant everything.

What I really want you to know

is that you're already so loved.

You don't have to work so hard

to push so hard, to perform so hard for it.

The worry, I got you.

Not because you deserve it, mind you.

Deserving has nothing to do with it.

It really is remarkable

because if you were to tell someone

even to write a letter from God

that could be an angry God

or jealous God of this God

or it could be multiple.

Like it's not the same

or if you were to tell someone to write a letter from Earth

you don't know what to do

and I bet they'd all be a little bit different.

And I always think what's real kind of resonates, right?

Like you can feel it like with your cord.

And the fact that everyone knows

what a letter from love is or how to do it

or comes out the right way

must mean it's just so tuned to who we are

that it's not difficult to get there.

It's something that I found really interesting

when I started doing this

is I would say to that source to that voice,

are you God?

And the answer came back, no, we are love.

And I'm like, well, I don't get the difference

when they're like, I'm part of God

but God is much more than just this.

Love is an actual thing

and unconditional love specifically is an actual thing.

So are there times when love maybe has surprised you

or tells you, you know, no, I'm not that

or I'm not going to do that.

There have been times where I've almost

I'm trying to do divination.

Like I've asked that voice to tell me

what's going to happen

if I'm in a really scared situation

and it has sped we don't know the future

that's not our department.

We're just here, we just love you.

And do you ever get frustrated by what love says to you?

I remember in a very dark time in my life saying

if you can't fix it and you can't change it

and you can't tell me what's going to happen

or make it go away, what use are you?

And the response was we are company for you

in the darkest moments of your life.

And if you don't think that's vital,

just try being in the darkest moments of your life alone.

Wow, yeah, dang, that lands.

So it sounds like this is kind of, you know,

deeply changed your approach to navigating good and bad times

which sounds trite, but it has made a difference.

One of the things that it's really taught me

is having received all of that unconditional love.

I now am much better at just sitting with people

who are in pain without trying to fix it.

Knowing sometimes love just needs to be in the room

and that presence is enough

and nothing needs to be changed

because it can't be.

That's part of it too.

What's happening cannot be changed

and the presence of love changes

what cannot be changed into something that can be accepted.

Oh, okay, wait, I just need to repeat that.

The presence of love changes

or cannot be changed into something that can be accepted.

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Okay, so in your experience,

are there personality types or patterns

to maybe who has an easier time or harder time

with this process?

Like does love equally flow through everyone?

Or can we stand in our own way?

I'm astonished at how every single person

that we invite including some people

who are very well regarded as spiritual people.

It's terrifying and it's deeply uncomfortable for them.

But I'm fascinated by how difficult it is

to get men to do this.

There have been a number of men

that I was very surprised when doing it.

And then there's been a number of men

who said they would do it and then bailed.

It's so hard for them.

Yeah, I mean, it's so important

because I'm raising a little boy and he's so full of love

and he's so thoughtful.

And everything about him

is just this like vulnerable sweetness.

And I look out into the world and hear about,

you know, the epidemic of male loneliness

and that men are more likely to isolate

and have a harder time reaching out to people

and fewer people to reach out to

and account for 80% of suicide.

And I mean, I think about him all the time,

like how do I keep that vulnerability alive in you, right?

Because I feel like it's the fear of being vulnerable

that makes people not want to connect or reach out.

In ways interesting because you think

that women have a lower sense of self-worth

but I think women are much more open

to the concept of love.

And one person who is somebody like deeply admire

and is an incredibly compassionate man

who does great work on compassion in the public sphere,

I asked him to do it and he wrote back

and he said, I'm not gonna do this

because I know what love is gonna say.

Love is gonna say something to me

along the lines of your perfect way you are.

And I don't wanna hear that

because I don't wanna lose the fire of momentum

that I need to try to constantly do better.

And I was like, that is a wild response.

And also, I don't know what love would say to you.

Like you don't even wanna ask and find out.

That's so interesting.

You can still be ambitious if you're loved.

You can still be driven to better yourself.

Yeah, I think there's a fear of being a sucker

or being credulous or being woo-woo

or being seen as any of those things

because this is unprovable.

Yeah, I mean, this is something we think through

and wrestle with in the telepathy apes all the time.

You know, this concept of not wanting to be tricked

or be made a fool, but also making space for

and being open to exploring things

that we simply don't know are not true.

One of the things that people often say

is how do I know this is the spirit of unconditional love

and not just me talking to me?

And my answer to that is you don't and can't know.

I've made a decision to believe

that this is a force and a source

that is speaking through me and to me.

But when I started doing this 20 years ago,

it was purely an act of life-saving imagination

where the assignment was an imagine

if there was such a thing as unconditional love

and if unconditional love had a voice,

what would it want me to know today and then write that?

So it's an act of creative imagination

before it becomes an act of faith

and it may never become an act of faith.

It may just be an act of creative imagination

where you're just wondering what would unconditional love say

and you write it and my feeling is doesn't matter.

If it's only my imagination, thank you imagination.

Thank you for saving me from despair

because my despairing thoughts are also my only my imagination.

So it's a question of like which aspect of my mind

am I going to listen to?

The one telling me that I'm doomed

or the one telling me that I'm loved no matter what

and I'm choosing to turn the dial that way.

But I actually believe that it's coming from outside

or that it would call myself to me.

Yeah, and sometimes these things

that we feel so deeply can't necessarily be proven

with the scientific method or at least not now.

But that doesn't necessarily make them any less real.

In the upcoming telepathy tapes film

we really go through like humanity has lived

through multiple paradigms.

Things that seem so real and so true change

and then suddenly they're not true

or things that can't be true that changes

and suddenly they are.

So anyway, I think about the fact that every single person

is more or less understanding exactly what love is.

That's the thing.

Now that I've been reading these letters for two and a half years

and I've come to know a lot of people in the community

not only are there people writing these letters

who have never experienced it,

there are people writing these letters

who have experienced quite the opposite

who have experienced lives of horrific abuse and neglect.

People who are going through unthinkable catastrophes right now.

This is not some lighthearted thing.

And the fact that somebody who has never experienced

even a simulacrum of unconditional love can generate it

either through a imagination or a download

is absolutely incredible to me.

Like people who had parents who were putting cigarettes

out on them are able to write to themselves

from this place that is so tear-inducingly tender.

Like people who have never known tenderness.

So in cases like this,

where the feeling or concept of tenderness and love

might be so foreign or far away,

are there any tips for getting started?

One of the clues that we give people to learn how to do this

is start the letter from love to yourself

with an affectionate nickname

with something that's a very dear honorific.

Like mine is always honey-head.

There's somebody in our community

who I've always called her penguin cheeks

and like these sweet little like bumble-truck

and that's something that then have trouble with too.

But I think my dad always used to say

that much love child has many nicknames, right?

Like we do this with our pets automatically.

Anybody who's got a pet that they love

has like 90 different names for their pet.

There's something so literally endearing about an endearment

even if it's just like my child,

which is how a lot of these begin.

My child, my precious one, my gem.

If you knew your preciousness would make you cry.

If you knew how much we love you.

That's so, there's that plural again, we.

And I love it.

It's like who's the we?

Cause there's some consortium of angels or spirits

or like what are we talking about here?

Like who's behind this?

I don't know either, but it certainly felt like

a very real presence.

And whether it was from me or not from me

didn't really matter.

How was it for you?

I mean, it was so different from any experience I've ever had.

It was very vulnerable, you know?

I like to be very private, you know?

And like the telepathy tapes has social media

that posts all the time.

But I post very rarely.

I don't like to go on the internet.

I don't like people to know too much about my life.

And so this felt like a prayer, you know?

Cause for me, I do think like love

and this sense of God are connected.

Even though God probably created love, right?

And love is like a component.

It felt like letting people into the most like vulnerable

moments of your life.

And I didn't know actually how to sit down and write it.

So I just thought, well, it'll come to me when it does.

And it was awesome because it was like four in the morning

one morning.

And I just like, and I wrote the whole thing in my notes app,

you know, on my phone.

It was a messy stream of consciousness.

But I remember when I woke up that day, I felt so happy.

Oh, no, no, no.

And everything in the world felt glittery.

I wasn't stressed and I wasn't nervous.

I just felt like everything grounded itself around me.

And it was the happiest I felt in a long time.

Wow.

And I realized like I need to focus this.

And I think you don't often go back and look at like very

vulnerable moments that happen for you and who is there.

And often it's no one.

But love was, for me, it was really this realization

that love has manifested itself for me in many ways sometimes

to help me understand.

It's always there.

And I don't think love has to do that.

I don't think I think it is just there, right?

But that's what inside of me wanted me to know is like,

there's like magic, if you want to call it that,

it's also tied with love.

This unseen world is tied with love.

That's the substrate of everything.

So it was beautiful.

But then when I had to actually record it

and put it out there, it felt like, OK, well,

this feels really, really, really vulnerable.

But I think that vulnerability is good, right?

That's the doorway to connection.

100%.

And I'm so glad you mentioned the unseen world

because we also pick a theme sometimes.

And like our original prompt is the one I've used forever,

which is just dear and love.

What would you have me know?

But then depending on what the letter is of the special guest,

sometimes there's an inspiration for a more specific question.

And so with yours, we asked people, go ahead

and ask the spirit of unconditional love.

What it would have you know about the unseen world.

And those were some of the most beautiful and interesting letters

we've ever gotten, including this repeated message

that came through hundreds of times

in different people all over the world

saying the unseen world is more real

than what you call the real world.

I actually hadn't gone back to look.

And then my producer, Selina, was like, you should.

And so I went through that week's letters.

And you're right.

There are hundreds.

And I'm just going to read a few of these excerpts.

Dear one, the unseen is almost all there is.

Here's another one.

The unseen world holds the truest truths.

The universal thread of life that tethers you

to all other beings in the universe.

Here's another.

The unseen world, my inspiration,

is everything that makes the seen world possible.

Here's another.

The unseen world is limitless,

borderless, non-discriminatory, and open 24-7.

And here's another.

Everything you see, little son,

is evidence of what you don't see.

Trust that.

Everything you see is the visible evidence

of the unseen me, love.

Everything, everything, everything.

I mean, it was so beautiful to read through these

and the many of letters that reflect the themes,

that we're exploring in our show,

and that the unseen is more real.

And the harking back to season two,

it's what's so many people that come back

from a near-death experience, say.

It's like, it was cave.

It's like, you're in the dream,

but this is the reality, right?

And what we're trying to get you to

is to awaken out of your dream

into the reality of the love and the magic

that is the real thing.

Yeah, and as we discuss in season two,

episode three on creativity and how it engages with us,

when you download creatively,

I think for those of us who've experienced it,

it's very real.

And many times, it's definitely not from you.

And I guess that's my big question for you.

And there's no one better to answer this question than you.

Does the download from creativity come from the same place

as the download from love?

Like the creative muse that is very much out there

that we explore deeply in that episode working with us,

is that the same force is love?

You know, that seems deeply of a consciousness

and will of its own.

Is it coming from the same place as love?

Like, are they the same invisible entity?

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

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Love has a specific fingerprint.

Creativity can be good, demanding.

It can be bossy, it can be elusive, it can be playful,

it can be all sorts of things.

Love is very straightforward, and it's absent-soaked in and.

The voice of love relaxes us more than anything else does

because it answers our biggest fundamental fear

that I think we all have, which is am I worthy of my existence?

Am I a waste of breath?

Am I a waste of genetic material?

Has my life been meaningless?

Am I enough of anything?

Do I deserve to be here?

Do I want to be here?

These are ancient crippling questions.

And I think that love comes from a very different place

than creativity.

Love doesn't care.

Love's like, I don't care if you do that or not.

I don't care.

Like creativity is insistent.

It's like you must make this work.

And love's like, you know, you can do it or not do it, you know?

Yeah, interesting.

So many of these things seem to come from a similar place

and maybe it's just a non-physical world.

Something that we're swimming in so much

that we don't even know exists, right?

Like a freshman, no, it's an ocean.

But they are different.

So I'm glad that you kind of called that out.

One thing that was interesting for me,

that I think is the most actually weirdly tender

when I think about outside of the sentiment of your love

always and you're never alone, was when going through

these moments of what I was feeling love wanted me to know,

I felt for the first time like I was back there.

Like I was able to be with the young version of myself.

It felt like time travel in this beautiful way

where these deep moments where you felt so scared

or crippled or angry or frustrated or desperate.

And they're so significant

because of the moments that dot your life.

That's creates who you are.

It's your character.

But sometimes you think about it and you reflect on it.

But writing the letter from love,

I felt as though I could see myself

like racked up on a blanket on the couch

as though love was this presence in the room,

loving me, cradling me, looking at me, comforting me.

And in doing that, I was able to be back in that room.

And there was something so sweet

about being back in my childhood house

and really feeling it.

Because it's like my parents are divorced now

that house is gone.

My brothers have a different state.

You know, it's just like all that stuff

is just crashed into the almost like devastation

of growing up where they're shards

through where they used to be something at least whole

and perfect at least for a little bit

or that cradle home that felt loving and safe

or that living room couch where you would curl up

under the blanket that your parents and your brothers used.

Whatever it is, like you forget how tactile

and safe that can feel for me, it felt safe.

And I was transported back there

and that was the greatest gift of all.

What's coming to mind is I'm hearing the voice

of the great meditation teacher, Byron Katie,

who I've seen work with people

on dismantling their most stressful beliefs

and when they arrive at this place

where that belief dissolves,

there's this warmth that they stepped into

and she always says, welcome home.

Welcome home, honey.

Welcome home to love.

The rage that they were feeling about somebody

that they were able to let go of,

like welcome home to your true nature.

Like welcome home to where you're really from.

And in your case, it was this homecoming

that was literal and also emotional.

Like welcome home to the home you grew up in

and welcome home to your true nature, which is up love.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it can be so challenging.

Some people can be really difficult

and life can be really hard and operating from love

and grace and forgiveness,

which I think are all part of love all the time.

That's no easy feat.

And I know you have done a lot of research

on their death experiences,

but the blindingly common experience

people have at that moment of death

and the homecoming, like welcome home

and the enormous waves of absolutely unbreakable love.

Or the reunion with people who hurt you and harm you

or who you hurt and harmed

and the homecoming back to love,

which we can't all figure out how to do in this plane.

British Australian writer, Kimmy Neckapil,

and her letter from love is so reassuring.

Love was like, we don't at all expect you

to be able to operate from this place in this plane.

You can try and certainly it's worth trying

to be this loving, but you are not unconditional love.

That's our job.

Here's an excerpt from a letter from love written by Kimmy.

You can't give love to everybody equally

because that is not your job, it is mine.

I am bigger and more expensive

than you'll ever be.

I have infinity on my side.

You don't.

You are not limitless, but I am.

Give what love you can

and know that I will fill the places that you can't.

You are human.

Let that be enough.

You have your role.

I have mine.

Wow, and that's such a freeing message to hear, right?

You know, I'll share this.

And this is something I also see

in the thousands of letters that I've read now

is that same message coming through of love saying,

you have no idea how little control you have over this.

You can be very hurt by people

and you can need to separate from them to preserve yourself.

And we understand that.

We're not asking you to stay in abusive situations.

We don't expect you to be universally forgiving.

Like we know how hard it is.

Like we're not expecting you to be at this level.

Well, you're down there or in that video game

that you're then playing out the karmic dramas

and these tremendous conundrums and predicaments

that you find yourselves in and these wounds

and these ways of hurting each other.

Like we're with all of you.

And those people who you can't love, we love them.

So don't worry.

I love that.

I mean, what a relief.

What a relief.

Yeah.

What a relief because I can't.

I mean, I try as hard as anyone I know

to be universally loving and I fail all the time at it.

And they're like, it's good.

We see, we know, we know.

It's really something.

And people always say that like a dog's life, right?

Like what a joy.

You just really live in the moment

and pretty much all you feel,

I think it's unconditional love or fear.

Like the both baseline things and Zett.

And I think there's a lot more going on

with our pets and animals in general.

But if you think back to being a child

and I hope that most people have one moment

before they became a type A personality

where you just weren't happy.

You could just lay down and feel happy

just for a moment without planning the future

and how to schedule.

I mean, you think about being nine.

I mean, it was at least hopefully carefree

in the sense that you weren't having to think out your life.

And yeah, I mean, I think those are the moments

where you are able to feel that way

if you feel fundamentally safe and loved, right?

And I guess when I think back

on what that letter did,

it made me revisit those moments

where I felt fundamentally safe and loved.

Because I don't feel that way when I wake up every day.

But doing this allowed me to feel that way again.

You know, one thing that Margaret,

who I did so swiftly,

who's one of my oldest friends and we did this together,

one thing that she noticed is that people tend

to respond to the letter from love that they received

with eye dire a sense of,

oh, I remember this feeling from Tyler.

This is what it felt like to be free.

This is what it felt like to do joyous.

This is what it felt like to be light

or it's people like me who are like,

I never for a minute felt that in childhood.

I've been looking for this my whole life.

Like there it is.

And I've been trying to find it

in all sorts of different people places and things

and it hasn't been working.

But here it is.

So you can either experience it as reminding you

of what you remember or for the first time

introducing you to something where you're like,

I knew it existed.

Yeah.

I knew there was something more than this.

And I think that feels very inclusive to me

that this can work whether you have been loved

and you have known peace or whether you have not and don't.

Yeah.

If you will want to try this for the first time,

how would you walk them through this?

What would you tell them to do?

I would tell them to start with it

and instead of trying to be a mystic

who's downloading a spirit to be an imaginator

who's making something up.

Don't try to hear love, try to generate it

because people did it frustrated

where they're like, I'm not hearing it.

I'm not hearing it.

I'm like, I didn't hear it for a long time either.

I made it up, you know?

I made it up until something else happened

and I was like, wait a minute,

I'm not making this up anymore.

And now I'm hearing something that feels like it's outside of me.

So now, how do you sort of tap into it?

You know, do you have any tips?

My first guidance would be opening up the channel

by reading something or listening to something

that eels to you like true love.

I always think of the great poets

so Mary Oliver works for me

because her work is so infused with love.

Hafiz Rumi, Walt Whitman,

when I read those, those are like my great saints.

They had access to this thing.

And I think part of their generosity

and part of their loving service as artists

was that when they died, they left the door open

behind them through their words

so you can enter in through their words.

So enter into that space

through the words of somebody who opens your heart for you.

And then once you're in that space, once you've read that poem,

then you just write the question.

And I know this is the hardest thing in the entire world

for our monkey minds, but truly do not overthink it.

This is another reason why writers

have so much trouble doing this.

You write, dear love, what would you have me know?

And then imagine if there was a spirit of unconditional love

and it loved you without any reservation,

completely, personally and intimately,

what does it want you to know today

about like the moment you're in

and your life will write this moment

and then write that down.

That's it.

And then if you want, you can come to our community

and post it and we will love you up.

But you certainly don't have to share it

because I did this for a decade

and a half without sharing anything

or bit with anybody.

I love the idea of just doing it all the time still.

You know, because that, like to me,

is like, okay, I did it once,

but I think there's always more to know.

We'll need so much love, Kai.

Yeah, I need it every single day

because I'm scared every single day.

I wake up scared.

I wake up most days feeling like I got shout out of the canon

with this pressing feeling

of they're not doing enough time or resources.

I wake up in dread for the state of the world.

I wake up in shame for my failures.

I wake up in fear about my relationships

and what's going to happen to the people that I love.

Like all of this needs to be big in love

for me to be able to function

and without that, I'm just a neat puppet

walking around trying to make things work.

So I need to start the day

with like a deeply reassuring message of trust us,

whatever happens, it's gonna be okay

because of love.

It doesn't necessarily make you get what you want

but it makes you be able to live in what you get.

Yeah, I think that's beautiful.

For anybody who thinks this is like light work

and I don't mean light work, like a light worker,

I mean like meaningless insignificant.

Like the world is burning.

Are we really gonna sit here

telling ourselves that we love ourselves?

Aren't there much more pressing things?

There's a famous story about the first time

the Dalai Lama came to the West.

He met with a group of intellectuals

and teachers and philosophers

and in that room was a young Sharon Salzburg

the wonderful meditation teacher

and teacher of compassion.

And she asked the Dalai Lama,

what is the traditional to that new remedy

for self-hatred?

And the Dalai Lama was so bewildered by the question

that he had to talk to a translator

for like 15 or 20 minutes.

He kept asking her to repeat it

because he literally kept the knees mishearing.

Who is the enemy that you're struggling with?

Like who is the person that you hate

that you're feeling these hateful feelings for

and they'd be like me, I am, I am the person who I hate.

And he was like that doesn't make any sense.

Like you are you, you are yourself and you need yourself.

And he said, do you all have this?

This sense of that you are your own enemy of self-hatred

and every single person who was like, yeah, duh.

And he was horrified.

He said later there were two things

that shocked him the most about coming to the United States

and one was the rampant consumerism

and the other was the deep self-hatred.

And if you don't think those two things

are the same thing, you're not paying attention.

This is why this is so important.

It doesn't make any sense that you would do your own enemy.

There's just no sense of that

in traditional to that in culture.

And then he was like, you need to learn how to talk

to yourself the way your mother talked to you.

And then all these people knew him like, no.

No, and he's like, wait, what?

And then he found out like what a lot of mothers are like

in our culture and he was like, okay, grandmother.

Like how far back do we have to go?

Was there ever anybody in your life

who spoke to you with tenderness?

And for a lot of people, the answer is no.

That's where we have to begin.

But for some people, you've got to look really hard

to find where anyone ever held them

and said, you are innately precious

without having to do anything to earn it.

So that's why I think this is deeply, deeply important

because self-hatred leads people to do all sorts of things

that are incredibly damaging not only to themselves

but to others.

Yeah.

I also believe something is happening right now

in this moment.

People have talked about the end of the age of the guru.

You can download this yourself.

Like you don't need to go to a medium.

You can do this.

You have access to all of this.

And more and more people I think are awakening to that

and hearing and seeing things that in previous generations

were maybe stifled or suffocated.

It's something's going on.

The veil is getting thinner.

I love it.

You said that we're leaving the age of the guru.

It's been heresy for much of human history.

You need a priestry.

You need someone above you to access the unseen world.

And if you do it on your own, you are which or worse.

That's a good thing even to end with too

is that this is democratic.

I do believe that you can all access this.

Well, thank you so much, Liz.

You are just the most delightful, charming person

to speak with every time.

I'm just so grateful for you sharing this practice with the world,

with our audience.

And I really encourage all of you to do it.

Please try it just once.

Just sit down.

Quiet your mind.

Pick up a pen and ask love what it wants you to know.

And then let us know too.

So thank you all.

We'll see you next week.

And again, Liz, I just adore you.

You're a joy.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm hugging you.

That's it for this episode of The Talk Tracks.

But new episodes will be released every Wednesday.

So stay tuned as we work to unravel all the threads,

even the veiled ones that knit together our reality.

And please remember to stay kind, stay curious,

and that being a true skeptic requires an open mind.

Thank you to my amazing collaborators,

producers Catherine Ellis and Selena Kennedy,

technical directing, audio mix, and phishing

by Jeremy Cole, opening and closing music

by Liz with PW and original logo and cover art

by Ben Condor design.

I'm Kai Dickens, your executive producer, writer, and host.

Thank you.