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Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service, where we report the world, however difficult the issue, however hard to reach podcasts from the BBC World Service are supported by advertising.

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Just download Capital One shopping to your computer and let it do the work for you so easy and you don't even need a Capital One card to use it. Capital One shopping. It's kind of genius. What's in your wallet? Savings and available coupons. Very. This is the BBC World Service, I'm Nicola McGovern, and welcome to World of Wisdom, where we offer inspiration to those who have struggled during the coronavirus pandemic. Three spiritual advisers are offering life lessons to members of the public who have contacted us from all over the world.

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Dr. Shefali Sabry is from India and brings Eastern philosophies to her perspective as a clinical psychologist.

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Eckhart Tolle is originally from Germany and the author of books, including A New Earth Awakening to Your Life's Purpose.

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Now, Sister Dan GM is Vietnamese and a Buddhist nun. If you heard her in our other edition, you cannot fail to have been moved by her advice to Gita Lu, who was from Zambia. He was suffering after being severely ill before every session.

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She brings a relaxed focus with the use of a bell like this.

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My dear ones, before we start this session together, let us enjoy three sounds of the bell that are set beautifully with our back upright shoulders open and relaxed. And we come back to our breathing, breathing in, aware that there the breath is flowing in and breathing out, aware that their breath is flowing out. OK, my back is up, right? My shoulders are open and relaxed.

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Unfortunately, we only have time for one sound off the bell.

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But let's hear your sister dang GM with Janice on a difficult subject.

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Sister Dying has suffered trauma herself as a child and has written on how to heal from it.

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In her book, Flowers in the Dark, Janis has experienced serious physical abuse during the pandemic, which she does not shy away from discussing openly with sister dying since the pandemic.

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My life's been pretty much a wreck. When my partner had lost his job because of covid, he basically took it out on my face. So I was locked down with me and our baby in the Washington, D.C. area and he physically abused me, you know, strangling me in front of the baby. He was jailed, but he's out now. And, you know, I kind of still feel threatened by him and have moved to Germany, where I have some support.

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I feel deeply traumatized by what's happened to me. And it's been made way more extreme due to the coronavirus. So can you just help me feel less? I'm not going to say angry, but resentful and less afraid. Thank you, my dear, for your question, which is full of courage and compassion for yourself and also for many others, because I see that your question reflects the state of our world right now. You know, since the pandemic, the rate of domestic violence, sexual abuse have increased tremendously.

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First of all, I am really glad that you are in a safer place now. Yes. I'm really, really glad that you and your baby are safe for now in a better environment. And that's already very wise of you. Yeah, a few things that can I can offer. First of all, is that to acknowledge the trauma that you have gone through? Yes, that's very important. In the teaching of the Buddha, the first noble truth is about being aware of the suffering.

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Many of us actually when we have problems, we are stuck in denial. Yes. And that denial actually only compounds complicates the matter. So for you to be able to articulate your situation so clearly, that's already the first step towards enlightenment for liberation and the second step in the teaching of the four noble truth. It is looking for the causes of the suffering, the seeds of love, of kindness in us, but also the seeds of violence, of despair, of anger, of resentment are present in all of us.

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So when conditions the situation is nice, is not triggering, then the negative seeds may not manifest, but they are always there. So probably that seed of violence in your husband and your partner was already there. His seat of despair, his inability to deal with problems was already there. And then with the pandemic, with the loss of his job, those were triggering factors for him to manifest the violence, the physical violence towards you. So we see that this is from a person who was not able to deal with his own problems, was not able to control his anger, his frustration, his fear.

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That awareness also helps us to not take it too personally. I hope you understand. What I mean is that it's not necessarily because he did not love you. I'm sure there was love between you. There were many beautiful memories. And that was why you chose him to be your partner. That was why you actually had a child with him. Right. So we it's important to remember those good conditions, those good qualities in each other, because when we suffer, we have a tendency to forget of them.

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And we were trapped in the negativity. And it takes away our energy, it separates us. And that makes it more difficult to you her with that awareness. A few things that we can practice to transform the trauma. One you have already done is that you remove yourself from the environment. And you also you are aware that the trauma in you can be transmitted to your child. Take good care of yourself, my dear, so that that trauma does not continue, because now physically your partner is not with you.

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But, you know, mentally, I am sure you think of him often. You have flashbacks on what happened to you.

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You, you know, thoughts about him, images of him, images of the incident take place in your mind. So if the flashbacks continue, if the strong emotions continue, it's like you. Experienced trauma again and again and again, and if you experience that trauma again and again, then the way you hold your child, the way you talk to her, the way you care for her, your energy of sadness, of anger, of resentment, of fear may be transmitted to her.

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So what can help, my dear, is that we have a practice of mindful breathing. You've been breathing all your life.

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Yes.

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When you're angry, when you're scared, you breathe much, much more quickly. Right. Much more loudly and laboriously. When you're calm, when you feel safe and peace, your breathing is deeper. This low is more relaxed. Right. So you see how your breathing reflects your mind. Yeah. And the amazing thing is that when you are aware of your breathing, you become more aware of the state of your mind. And that's good because sometimes you are not aware of the state of our mind.

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When we are angry, we may not be aware that we are angry. When we are fearful, we may not be aware that were fearful, you know, so trained yourself to come back to your breath, to be friend, your breath breathing in. I'm aware that this is an inbreds breathing out. I'm aware that this is an out breath in, breath out breaths. So that's one practice that is very concrete journeys that you can practice throughout the day.

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My dear, that you can come back to your body and you relax your body part, my part. So coming back to the breath and relaxing our body and speaking lovingly to ourselves, to our body helps us to regain that sense of safety, that sense of trust in ourselves that we are here for ourselves. Does it make sense to you, my dear? Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Also, when DeFalco thoughts arise, my dear, like you say, resentment or fear.

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When the trauma is triggered by your own thoughts or by a sight that you see outside. You know, by a. sight of somebody that reminds you of the situation of the person or sounds you know or taste or touch that trigger the trauma in you. The best thing is that if you are sitting, sit still and breathe. Breathe until your body is calm, is relaxed, that you feel safe, tell yourself you love yourself. You may want somebody to tell you that that person loves you, but you can say to yourself, I love you, Janice.

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Thank you for being safe. Thank you for doing your best. That's one concrete practice that I'd like to share with you. You see, most of us, we are not aware of our thoughts and feelings because we are so preoccupied by many things. So if you can simplify your life, simplify your activities that you do the spending that you have so that you have more time for yourself, for your baby, you have more time to sit quietly, more time to do walking meditation, to enjoy the beauty of nature of these practices, help you to nourish yourself, to heal yourself.

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And when you hear yourself every moment that you feel relaxed, you feel a sense of well-being, of peace. When you feel safe and trust in yourself, your child experiences directly.

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So I know you love her a lot. I am sure. So do this out of love and compassion for both of you. Thoughts about your partner will arise and you can practice what we call a mirror sending compassion to him. OK, when the thoughts of him arise, instead of having your body tense up your mind racing with sadness, pain, sorrow, resentment, just breathe and relax and say, may you find a way out. I pray that you take better care of yourself.

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May you be safe, may you not cause any more suffering. Do that for yourself, for your child, for him.

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OK, your child. Half of her came from her father. You want your child to grow up and behold, if she feels torn between you and her father, she is torn from within. He's a perpetrator, but he's also a victim, a victim of his own background, of his own sadness and fear. So when you look deeply into that, you have more understanding and more compassion and it will help to heal your resentment and pain. You are beautiful woman and you are strong woman.

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And there's a lot of love and courage in you. I know you can do this for yourself and your child.

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I definitely think that this is going to be really helpful. I think that my biggest challenge is definitely going to be sending compassion to my former partner. But I do understand why you said that, because it's not that he deserves forgiveness, but it's more like I deserve peace.

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Janice has been through a lot, been asked to find compassion for the person who was violently attacked you.

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It must be an enormous challenge.

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Janice sounds strong, though, so please join me in wishing her a full recovery from what must have been a very traumatic experience.

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Our next question comes from Aranya. It's not her real name. She's in Thailand. She lives in Bangkok and finds it very hard to know how to cope with the suffering that she sees there as people lose their livelihoods or their loved ones.

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During this pandemic, she outlines her problem to Eckhart Tolle.

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My issue is I find myself feeling deeply sad to see everyone around me affected by the covid-19 crisis.

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And I know that I'm more fortunate than a lot of people because I'm not directly and severely affected by it. I still have a full time job and no one around me has been infected, but I just can't stop thinking of how much other people suffer and it kind of keeps me awake at night. Sometimes I just kind of feel guilty that I'm not rich enough to help everyone. And that makes me sad.

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I sometimes have similar feelings when I look at the various ways in which people are being affected by the pandemic. In some countries, of course, it's worse than in others. So to start with, it's a natural thing, of course, to feel empathy with other human beings. Not everybody is able to feel empathy. But you are. And that is a wonderful thing. There's empathy, there's compassion. And then, of course, the sadness arises because you realize that there's relatively little that you can do.

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But then it grows and grows. And you. Intends to, it seems, from what you're saying, it tends to take over your thinking function and then you start thinking about it and at night especially, and then the thinking intensifies, the feeling of sadness. And that is not a helpful thing. That is where what was initially positive becomes something that can actually be quite self-destructive. And it's not actually, as you know, it's not helping you and it's not helping others.

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So we need to look at what your mind is doing first. You need to recognize when this happens, you're being taken over by these thoughts which perpetuate and intensify those feelings. Once you've recognized that, you need to find some way of directing your attention away from those thoughts because you've recognized that they are not helpful at all. How do you do that? There's a choice of different methods you can use. One that I highly recommend is you take your attention away from that, from the thoughts and become aware that you're breathing the awareness of your breathing, which in Buddhism, Buddhist meditation is called Unaipon Orsatti Yoga, which is the awareness of the ingoing and outgoing breath.

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The strange thing is you cannot really be fully aware of your breath and at the same time think then you become you are no longer at the mercy of your thoughts. You have found an inner power. In that power, of course, is the power of your consciousness practice when you're feeling relatively OK, so that when the night times come and these thoughts arise again, you're able to go there.

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I have, you know, focusing on breathing in and out in order to calm your mind. I mean, that's something I try to get some sleep all the time. I guess it does help because it makes me concentrating on on the breathing and not thinking about other problems, like you said. But the problem is when you wake up the problems that you if you feel this way, do they make the problem go away?

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Oh, yes. But is that your problem or is that something bigger involved? Because the suffering of humanity is not your problem. The suffering of humanity is a fact that is actually easy to overlook until it comes to you. But it's everywhere. This is why the religious traditions emphasize the fact of suffering so that you can recognize it. Jocasta, the term the Buddha used, some of that suffering is inflicted by seemingly outside forces. For example, pandemic, an earthquake.

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Then you have the suffering, the private suffering of humans, sickness, death approaches. Then there's another aspect of suffering that is so suffering that is created by human beings, violent conflict, genocide. Now, as far as suffering that is inflicted by seemingly outside forces, there isn't much you can do when an earthquake comes up and Demi comes. But the other type of suffering before it becomes a collective dysfunction when humans kill other humans of genocide, warfare and so on before it becomes a collective dysfunction, is the suffering that arises in the individual that means in you.

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And so if you want to tackle the human suffering, we have to start where where we can tackle it. And that is in yourself. How much suffering do we create? How much suffering do we bring into this world? And now change the question, how much suffering do I bring into this world? How much suffering do I create for myself if we want to go to the root of human suffering? We are not looking at the whole thing in a much wider context.

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The important thing is, instead of complaining about suffering, you see the fact of suffering and then you ask yourself the vital question, do I contribute to suffering? Do I make myself suffer? Because only when you become a peaceful human being, then you can make a really valuable contribution in whatever form to this world. Does it make sense that suffering needs to be addressed within yourself and that that begins with being aware of your mind? Being aware of what?

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Your mind is doing so that it does not create unnecessary unhappiness, I guess, if I may. I think it goes back to what you talked about. I mean, what you what you said about humanity, because for some people to be part of humanity is to share a suffering, right? Yes.

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And so the initial reaction would be, am I wrong that I'm not suffering like other people?

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I find the way you point to a different way of looking at a self-destructive boat. I have been stuck with you. Help me look at it in a positive way. That is very useful because going forward, I have it all again. And I can come back and think about what you told me today, that dealing with myself, having an inner peace will also contribute to aiding other people suffering.

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That is such an interesting thought to find a way to be aware of the suffering of others, but not to be so overwhelmed that you create more suffering in yourself and those around you.

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I hope her conversation with Eckhart has lightened Aranesp burden.

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She seems confident that it has now. We must take a pause.

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We're going to be back with the challenge of parenthood during the pandemic and the transformative effect that loss can have on those who have been bereaved.

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The documentary is just one of our BBC World Service podcasts.

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There are many others to choose from ENDESA, the host of Deeply Human Will. We find out why you do the things you do? Why do you fall for him or her?

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What attracts one person to another? Why do you get déjà vu and how does pain change the way that you perceive yourself? There's a whole bunch of taboos around illness from the hidden power dynamics of the standing mind to the technological advancements, the challenge of definitions of death. Join me for Deeply Human, a BBC World Service and American Public Media co-production with Hard Media.

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Just search the deeply human note. Let's return to the documentary.

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Hello, I'm Nula McGovern. Welcome back to World of Wisdom on the BBC World Service, where we are exploring life lessons on some of the issues people face during the pandemic.

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It has been a tough year for parents these last 12 months, presenting enormous challenges all over the world.

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Schools have been closed. Children are not allowed to meet their friends. Outdoor activities have been limited. So much has been missing from children's normal lives and parents are left trying to fill the gaps.

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It would be a hard heart that could not sympathize with Nina from the UK, who has found the experience of looking after three young children day in, day out during the pandemic. Very hard indeed.

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Dr. Shefali Sabari is a clinical psychologist from India. She's now based in the U.S. and she's best known for her book, Conscious Parenting.

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Nina outlines her problem to Dr. Shefali and asks for advice.

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So I'll start from the beginning.

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I suffered parental burnout in 2014 on the birth of my second son, and since the pandemic has now hit, I felt I'm coming dangerously close to burn out again. I have three young children and my husband is now working abroad in Ecuador and with the school shut and my husband away, I'm really struggling to cope. And I feel that even when schools do reopen, I won't gain enough time for a full time job. So I've scaled back my work, but I feel really resentful that I have to choose between my career and my kids.

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And, you know, whatever I do choose, I feel burned out. So the last time I had parental burnout, it was, you know, a full on, serious nervous breakdown. And I really want to avoid that happening again.

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So let's just talk about our lives, your life right now as a narrative. You know, I always try to have people to understand all the events in their lives as a meaningful narrative. Otherwise, we just go through life thinking that life happens to us. But when we understand our part in it, how we tell the story, how we direct the movie script, then we begin to take ownership. So mothers especially feel so out of control because having a child is an out of control process.

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So the two things that you and most of us becoming mothers they hold onto is an expectation. The the mismatch between expectation and reality is huge in parenting. In fact, I would go as far as to say that most of our anxiety as mothers especially is because. Of this mismatch between expectation and reality, said, number two, No. Two, modern day parenting is not is not conducive for the mental health of our mothers.

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And you're seeing that your your partner is in another country and all the pressures are falling on you as the mother and you are being pulled with your other ID, which is your job. It takes so much energy from you to be pulled in all these ways. Your mind is not here and now your resources are being emptied out. And that's why you have this burnout. So that's the narrative.

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Look at all the pressures Nina is putting on herself.

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By the time covid comes, you know, the pandemic comes into our lives. We have no more resources left. So do you find that that took you now over the edge because you are now being the school teacher and you are being the 24/7 nanny and the mom in charge round the clock? Do you feel like that's what finally has taken you to this place of burnout again?

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To be honest, I don't really know. I think I don't really realize that's the problem is I don't realize sometimes how hard things can be until I get the signs like I know, for example, I grind my teeth in my sleep. And when it gets to a point that, you know, I know now I'm starting to grind my tongue. I literally shred my tongue at night and it gets to can get to the point that I can't speak.

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And it's when those physical things step in that I think, oh, actually, this is affecting me. And, you know, people as well will say to me, like, oh, well, I'm glad things are better now or I'm glad you're getting a break now. You know, when the kids go back to school and I feel that people will say, oh, well, it's great that I've had exhausted now and in the context of the pandemic.

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Oh, well, now we've got a vaccine. Everything's OK. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely.

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So even when you're talking, I know that you're feeling anxious and you're talking about all these physical symptoms that you're now paying attention to. So I'm going to do a little exercise with you, if you don't mind. So let me take you back to your childhood. Give me a memory of a young Nina where she felt she did something wrong.

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That's really hard. You know, are we talking, like, literally as a child, really, really small. I mean, you know, with my homework wasn't up to scratch. You know, if I can go back, you know, disappointing, I would get back, you know, a bit disappointing for you, Nina. I usually did well at school, but that made me do better. So I thought, right, I'm going to ace this next time.

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So it sounds like you super compassionate, super responsible are what the parents would call the good girl, the the achiever.

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You kind of had your your head on your shoulders at a young age. Is it fair to generally describe Nina as that?

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Yeah, I think my parents very much brought me up and recognized that I had that sort of in a drive and conscientiousness. And if anything, they didn't want to push me. So I would say, I want to do this. I want to do that. And they'd say, well, maybe just, yeah, ease down because the stress would really get to me, do you know what I mean? So I would always want to do be the best and be the big fish in a small pond, if you like.

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Beautiful. And that when I. Nina, let's pause, because this this is it. Now you've hit a core theme that is underlying your narrative. Nina has this and has always had this internal drive to do more, to do it well. And when things don't look that way, it creates anxiety in you. You it bothers you.

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Yeah, but I mean, in the case of my children, it's not just it's bothering me, but, you know, I love them and it's you know, it's almost like a chemical hormonal, you know, really, really deep, raw love. It's not about me trying to be perfect. It's.

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Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. But here's the thing, and this is what I teach in conscious parenting is that our emotional makeup from childhood sets up a template. You kind of are used to being competent. You're you that's your identity. That's how you thrive. You're kind of a super achiever. I'm sorry to make you sound like this perfect person, but. But you're not alone. Many, quote unquote, good girls or achievers who are competent at a young age.

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We mothers especially, we think we can do it all. And then, like you said, there's this hormonal chemical bond we have with our children. We're now we're enmeshed with their well-being even more so. All of this put together puts tremendous internal pressure on us. And when things don't work out, quote unquote, epidemic happens. It makes us feel out of good. Even more not because it is out of control, what I'm saying is you bring with you an emotional template, you're adding that onto the environment.

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So the answer is not to say, oh, it's because I love my children. It's to question the identity, the attachment you have to having done things perfectly or having things under your control. So the next time and every time you feel this anxiety, go within. Ask yourself, what am I expecting my life to look like right now that isn't happening. And then you go, wow, Nina, you are you are just amazing. Look, you're in the middle of this conflict.

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And Nina, you may have to be in this conflict for another six months. Just that kind of internal mothering voice will calm you down.

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I mean, I love the idea that, to be honest and it sounds lovely, but in the moment, you know, one kid screaming, another one screaming, Tyvon, it's very hard to just stop and breathe.

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So what you need to understand, Nina, is that you are going through an anxiety attack in those moments acknowledging anxiety. I'm an anxious person is liberating. I'm not asking you to stop the anxiety. I'm asking to become aware that you have anxiety. And why now? Once you honor your anxiety, you will begin taking better care of it.

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The greatest love for your children will come when Nina takes care lovingly of her own inner child. Do you at least recognize that your own inner child, the one who wants to be competent and achieving, is very anxious?

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Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it doesn't help when in the news I read recently, no shouting at your kids can be as detrimental as smacking the implications of how we parent now for the future of our children are huge.

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So let me just stop you right there, Nina, because what you said is so profound and is going to have so many parents, what you just said and said it so convincingly. Do you remember what you just said? You said, The implications for our children for the future are tremendous. And you said it with authority. You completely believe that statement. And it made me feel anxious.

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It was like the worst weather forecast of our children possible. Right? The implications are tremendous, Nina. That entire statement is a complete castle in the air. It's a lie. It's a fabrication of an anxious person in an anxious culture. It is not true. What implications and what future? What are you talking about? But I want to show you, culture places this on parents of perfectionism, of controlling our children's future, of taking them to the pinnacle of success.

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It's not our job to do any of that. But if we think it is to play kind of God in our children's lives, no wonder we are all anxious wrecks and our children are anxious.

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So I ask you to just sit in that and allow that to sink in, that a lot of anxiety is created and definitely we're in the driver's seat of how much we allow in our lives. Dr. Shefali Sabari, they're advising Nina, good luck, Nina.

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I think there is a theme to this program emerging around self-love.

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We all need to be less hard on ourselves, allow ourselves to be imperfect in a world that can make so many demands. My mind returns to our first edition of World of Wisdom, where Assisted Dying teaches Chatel in Zambia to tell himself he loves himself.

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It's a powerful practice.

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Now prepare yourself to go deeper. Eckhart Tolle is a well-known spiritual adviser, perhaps most famous for his book And You Earth. Here he is providing advice on one of life's key stages. This is to Fabio, a young man from Albania who's now living and working in Beijing. The death of his father during the pandemic has proved a transformative and even bewildering experience.

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My dad passed away one month ago due to covid, and it's only now that the trauma and reality has hit me. I feel lost in the middle of an ocean with with no direction. I thought I was a strong person all along because it was only because life hadn't hit me this hard. So where do we go from the loss of a loved one? From someone who we used to be? A family with how do we find the motivation to move forward?

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It's having an immense psychological effect on me. I suddenly see that life is impermanent. That's a very important point to reach in one's life. The realization of the impermanence of all life forms, everybody seems to know that they are going to die at some point. But unless you have actually faced death experience, the death of somebody very close to your loved one, like a parent, or to have faced your own imminent death or gone through a potentially fatal illness, unless that happens, death is just an abstract concept in one's mind.

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Yes. You know, yes, one day I'm going to die. But it doesn't really mean anything. And you don't really believe it. You have not internalized that at all. It is only when you face death. Suddenly the act of death is no longer just an abstract concept in your mind, but something that you experience in every with every fiber of your being. And that can be quite shocking at first. Nothing that we do here makes sense.

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This perhaps is a situation that you find yourself in after the death of your father. You begin to question all the things that you had taken for granted before and on certain things that you thought were important or of value, perhaps are no longer important, seemingly at first a negative experience. But potentially it could lead to a deepening of who you are and to an awakening of your consciousness. When you realize how fleeting everything is in this world, when you accept the fact of death without running away from it, to look death in the eye and face it fully.

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And then you realize that our contemporary civilization is in denial of death mostly. And this is started in Western civilization, but it's now reached many other places, too. So death, when it does come, comes as a terrible shock. But it's an incredible opportunity for going deeper and asking yourself, is there anything beyond that? Is there anything beyond the sense perceived material reality in which everything is subject to impermanence? You also have to ask yourself about yourself.

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Who am I? Is there am I this physical body that's going to die? We don't know when everybody is just one heartbeat away from death. Is there anything beyond the physical? Me on the one hand, we have this physical universe here that we move the material world. For most people, that's all there is. They identify as the physical body and the world of the senses. The world of physical things occupies all the attention that's that gives life meaning.

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But it's not a meaning that's very lasting because you cannot find ultimate satisfaction in any of the things that you can achieve on this surface level of reality. And when you realize how fleeting our impermanent the surface level of reality is, then it's no longer satisfying. Do you have perhaps reached that point where you see many things, right, that you before you thought were worth pursuing? You are now beginning to question them because your identity destined to lose everything anyway, you're going to die.

[00:41:30]

So everything that you achieve ultimately is destined to dissolve again, Jesus said a warning. He warned us against attaching excessive importance to this level of reality, to the things of this world, he said. Do not store up riches for yourselves here on Earth, where moss and rust consume and thieves break in and steal even the most solid iron substance. Eventually it rust so it it's all subject to decay. So Jesus said instead starbridge this for yourselves in heaven where moss and rust cannot destroy and thieves cannot.

[00:42:23]

Break in and steal now elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus spoke of heaven as the kingdom of heaven is within you. So there is a dimension. What he's talking about is a dimension of consciousness in you that is deeper than the surface reality. And in that dimension, you are connected to the divine or to God, that is. And this is something to be discovered. And does it make sense so far? Are you following.

[00:42:54]

I, I think awakening or finding this this new dimension within myself would be one of the ways I would mitigate the grief and all of the anxiety. I do agree a lot with the fact that the surface of reality that we experience every day is very fleeting. And this brings me to my next question, which is who do we talk to in these cases? Many of my friends and other cousins or family, they haven't experienced something like this. So I find it hard to find the right people to talk to, not people who use very common words like command your strong or you can do it OK.

[00:43:45]

Through the pandemic that humans are experiencing all over the world, millions of humans are faced with at least the possibility of death. Many people are becoming aware that they are mortal. They become aware of how precarious the world actually is and the possibility of dying arises even for a relatively young person or the first time they think about it. And for most people, that's a very fearful thought. But spiritually, that can be a great opportunity for questioning and going deeper, because that's the only answer when you recognize that the world let's call it the world, which is the physical world here, is not a place that will ultimately make you happy.

[00:44:35]

It just cannot do that because everything is subject to impermanence, can make you happy for a little while, but no lasting satisfaction, no matter what you achieve. OK, you've reached that point of realization and that's important. Once you've reached that point of realization, you can either go into nihilism and say, OK, I'll just indulge in as much as I can in sensory pleasure to live in that in a kind of selfish way. All you can see is there more to this life than than all that surface level of reality.

[00:45:13]

The answers can only be found within yourself when you look within become aware of yourself. What are you aware of at this moment? You're aware of sense, perceptions, whatever you see, whatever you hear, those are the primary senses to. OK, that's fine. What else are you aware of at this moment? Well, you may be aware of certain thoughts that come into your head. You may be aware of certain emotions that perhaps you have.

[00:45:42]

There may be some anxiety. There may be sadness. OK, now where is the kingdom of heaven? It's not the sense perception's. It's not my thoughts. It's not my emotions. What else is there? Hmm. And so you suddenly become aware of something that is prior to since perception's thoughts and emotions, you become aware that you are conscious. And that happens, for example, in between two thoughts. You think one thought the next thought hasn't arisen yet.

[00:46:26]

There's a little gap between two thoughts and that little gap when you're not thinking for a few seconds, for example, now you are simply aware that absolute sense of beingness or presence that is, that when there's a little space of no thought in you that but you're not asleep at all. You are aware, you are conscious and you know that you are conscious. That is the kingdom of heaven. That is the dimension of spaciousness, and that is the realisation that there is a depth to you, because that is the depth dimension of you.

[00:47:15]

It's a formless one life, the formless one consciousness that you can discover. Within yourself, relatively easily, if you only know how to look for it, the formless awareness or consciousness that you are and where does what is said, where does it come from? That is the light of consciousness that if you didn't even have a glimpse of awareness of that which transcends the physical form and the psychological form, then death is a terrible thing because death in our is regarded by our contemporary civilization as absolutely dreadful and terrible is so dreadful and terrible that don't even mention it very much.

[00:48:01]

They're afraid of it. This is why we live in a very superficial civilisation, a civilization that denies death, denies also the depth aspect of life, the deeper dimension of life, to be aware of death without flinching, without turning away, to look death in the face, death that can also put you in touch with that within you. That is beyond death. So your task is really to go deeper within where you realize there is more to you than the body and the personality.

[00:48:41]

If you don't know the deeper essence of yourself, you cannot recognize the deeper essence of your father either or anybody. And then death is absolutely tragic. But when you realize the deeper essence of who you are and thereby also realize that the deeper essence of the other as the light of consciousness that emanates, then death is still very sad. But it is no longer absolutely tragic.

[00:49:13]

Death is still very sad, but no longer absolutely tragic. Thank you, Eckhart Tolle. And thank you, Fabio.

[00:49:22]

I do hope the experience of losing your father does ultimately give you that opportunity to grow and enjoy a richer life and also that your sadness subsides.

[00:49:32]

So many of us have experienced the death of a loved one or, as Eckhart says, seriously contemplated our own death for the first time in the past year.

[00:49:44]

But if Eckhart is right and that leads to a deepening of experience and enrichment of life by finding the gap that he describes, then that holds the possibility of a more satisfying life for so many.

[00:49:59]

We are coming to the end of the last of two editions of World of Wisdom.

[00:50:04]

I have enjoyed it enormously. It's made me think deeply about so many things and led to some very interesting discussions at home. If you've enjoyed these two programs, you can find them both on the BBC World Service Festival website. Just click through to World of Wisdom and don't forget to tell your friends thank you to all those from around the world who wrote to us and offered to take part in these programs.

[00:50:34]

And a big thank you to our three spiritual advisers, Sister Tanjim, Dr. Shefali, Sabari and Eckhart Tolle, the producer of World of Wisdom is Charlie Taylor. Our assistant producer is Ruth Edwards. I'm Nicola McGovern and this is the BBC World Service. Goodbye. Thank you for listening.

[00:50:55]

There will be more from the documentary podcast soon. If you haven't already, please do subscribe. And don't forget, do try our other BBC World Service podcasts to.