351. Diving into Inner Stillness | Transpersonal Psychology with Dr. Steve Taylor

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Steve Taylor: 

Our minds can sometimes be turbulent and restless, even full of discord, but there's always a deep stillness in our deep being. So, I'd like to remind people that that deep stillness is always accessible. It's always there, just below the surface of your mind. You're always free to dive into it. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. 

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Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today is fascinating. His name is Steve Taylor. He is the author of The Adventure, A Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening, which is available everywhere now. And he's also authored numerous other bestselling books. 

He's a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and the chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. Steve's articles and essays have been published in over a hundred academic journals, magazines and newspapers. And he blogs for Scientific American and Psychology Today. Steve, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome, awesome to have you with us today. 

Steve Taylor: 

Hello, Dr. Richard. Nice to be with you. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Absolutely. So I usually ask a question when I start a show that -- I want you to kind of go back in time and tell us your superhero origin story. And I'm still going to do that. But as I read your introduction, I talked about transpersonal psychology and many people might have heard that and said, what? What is transpersonal psychology? So before we do anything, I would love for you to explain to us what transpersonal psychology is, and then we'll kind of dive deep. 

Steve Taylor: 

Transpersonal psychology is really spiritual psychology. So the word transpersonal literally means beyond the ego, beyond the person. So transpersonal psychology studies spiritual experiences in which we transcend our normal limited ego identity. It studies spiritual transformation. It studies spiritual development. So that's really what it means. I think maybe we better -- we would be clearer if we use the term spiritual psychology.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So I imagine the reason they do, or you tell me, because this is your area, is because there is valence to the word spiritual, right? So spiritual for some people might be a deep faith in the universe. For some people, it might be being a devout Christian, it can mean different things to different people. How does transpersonal psychology really define the spirituality? 

Steve Taylor: 

Yeah. I mean, you're right. That's probably the reason why we don't use the term spiritual psychology. It is because many people associate the term spiritual with religion. But what we mean and what I mean by spirituality doesn't necessarily or often doesn't have anything to do with religion. Spirituality can sort of merge with religion, but religion can exist without spirituality and often does exist without spirituality. And spirituality often exists without religion. 

So spirituality to me is about exploring your inner being, expanding your identity, connecting more deeply with other human beings and with the universe itself. It's about expansion and connection. It doesn't have anything to do with a belief system such as Christianity or any other religion. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So I know we talked a little bit before we hit the red button, and you were telling me that this is an area of study that's really a passion for you. So now I want to go back in the time machine, the Steve Taylor time machine. So how did you get put on this path to really start? I mean, you're really one of the most pronounced experts in the world on spiritual psychology or transpersonal psychology, pardon me. So how did that happen? Tell me about that journey. 

Steve Taylor: 

There wasn't really a specific point. It was something that was innate to me. I became aware of it when I was maybe 16 or 17 years old. I didn't know anything about spirituality at the time. I didn't have a religious or a spiritual background. But I had these moments when I would feel kind of connected with my surroundings or everything around me would become real and more beautiful and alive and sentient. The clouds would seem like sentient beings and the trees were communicating with me as sentient beings and everything seemed to be in harmony. And I felt that I was part of the harmony. 

But, yeah, these moments, they would come every so often, maybe every two or three weeks when I was walking in the park or walking in my school fields, but I didn't understand them at the time. So for a long time, I thought that was maybe, these experiences meant that I was crazy. So I wasn't sure what to make of them. 

But maybe five years later, when I was in my early twenties, I discovered -- there was one book. Actually, this was a pivotal moment when I discovered a book in a bookshop called Mysticism. Mysticism, A Study and an Anthology. And I instinctively bought the book without really knowing what mysticism was, but I found out that the book was basically a collection of mystical or spiritual experiences that people have reported, and I recognized my own experiences in the book. So I thought, wow, I'm not crazy after all. All the people that have these experiences, or maybe I am crazy, but there are lots of other crazy people around. So yeah, that gave me an understanding of my experiences. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And then the next logical progression, you do what anybody who thinks they may be crazy does, you go to graduate school, right?

Steve Taylor: 

Well, that was a long time afterwards, actually. Back then I was a musician and I wanted to be a musician. So I followed that path for maybe 10 years. And then I went to graduate school. I went back to graduate school. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Now, I want to Dig a little deeper into transpersonal psychology, because what I find so fascinating about this is that for so many years, we, and when I say we, I mean Western society, has really put the clinical side of science, mental health, psychology, emotions, all of it kind of in one bucket. Right? And then they've taken the other stuff, visions and relationships with God. Is it a God? Is it a cosmic consciousness? As Carly Young said, is it the universe? Right? 

But that was all very much, it was like left Twix and right Twix, right? Like it was, they were very, very separated, but you're kind of saying, not really. You’re saying that there's a place where those harmoniously exist. So I'd love for you to just spend a few moments, and we're going to get into your book, but talk about kind of that waiting pool where western psychology and the transpersonal, the spiritual collide, because I think that sets a beautiful stage for us to talk about your book. 

Steve Taylor: 

Mainstream or conventional psychology is quite limited. It's really focused on getting you to be a functioning human being who can function in society, who isn't full of neuroses and phobias. It's really just getting you to a point of normality when you're fairly free of psychological discord. But that ignores -- there are lots of levels of development beyond that. Once you reach the point of being fairly normal and functional in society, there are actually lots of phases or levels that you can move towards, lots of higher levels. 

So really, transpersonal psychology brings in higher levels of development into psychology, higher levels beyond the normal. And eastern spirituality is always known about these levels beyond the normal. They've always discussed higher states of consciousness and higher levels of spiritual development. And they've always known that it's possible to attain these levels through self-development, through meditation and other spiritual or ethical practices. 

So transpersonal psychology, in a way, it sort of brings eastern philosophy, eastern spiritual philosophy, together with western psychology, and it brings in those extra levels of development, and kind of maps out those levels and tries to teach people how to attain those levels of development. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I have a strong suspicion that as we start talking about the adventure, you're going to take us through some of those steps and levels. 

Steve Taylor: 

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So I'm wondering, when you finally sat down to write this book, what was the inspiration? What was the impetus? And why now? 

Steve Taylor: 

It really stemmed from an earlier book of mine called The Leap. The subtitle of The Leap was The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening. And it was based on research I'd done over maybe 10, 12 years. I'd been interviewing people who'd reported spiritual awakening, who reported that they'd become enlightened. So I tried to kind of map out the characteristics of spiritual awakening, why it arises, how it arises, and the different levels in which it manifests itself. 

But that book was really descriptive. It was kind of like quite academic in a way. But I was invited to teach workshops based on the book. So when I taught workshops, I wanted to give people a glimpse of spiritual awakening. I wanted to put together some exercises and some strategies that they could use to experience something of spiritual awakening. So the adventure grew out of those workshops. 

So it's a very practical book which tries to map out a route or a route. So I've used the English pronunciation, a route towards spiritual awakening. And it makes it clear that we're not talking about something extraordinary and unattainable. We're talking about something which is accessible to everybody. As long as you follow certain practices and cultivate certain qualities, then you will move towards spiritual awakening. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

All right. So I know we don't have time to go over all of it, but give us, let's do a high level. Give us the roadmap. What are some of these qualities that somebody has to have to be able to have that spiritual awakening?

Steve Taylor: 

Well, one is, I mentioned this is the kind of the gateway into spiritual awakening, the initial quality which you need to develop, and it's disidentification from the ego, realizing that you are not your thought mind, you are the person who observes or who can observe your thoughts. So it's sort of becoming aware that you can be free of this incessant thinking that takes place in your mind. There's a place inside you where you can rest in stillness and just watch those thoughts passing by with a space between you and them. 

And that's really important because it frees you from a lot of worry, a lot of discord on the surface of your mind. It stops you worrying so much about the future or the past. It brings you into the moment. So that's really important to cultivate, that sense of disidentifying from your ego. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

It sounds an awful lot like mindfulness meditation.

Steve Taylor:

It is, it's connected to that. Yeah, I mean, the essence of mindfulness, of one type of mindfulness is to observe your own thought processes. Just think, oh, there goes another thought. There's a memory. There's an anticipation of the future. There's a daydream. And I think many people are so identified with their thoughts that their mood changes constantly according to the content of their thoughts. So they think a negative thought, and it's, oh no, something to worry about in the future, something to feel bad about in the past, so they immediately feel depressed to some degree. 

And maybe a positive thought pops in, maybe something to look forward to. Oh, yeah, something to look forward to, or maybe a pleasant memory from the past. But again, there's a kind of restlessness because your mood is constantly changing according to the content of your thought, of your thoughts. But when you step back and disidentify from your thoughts, you become free of them. Your mood becomes more stable because it's deriving from a deeper place. And there's a sense of stillness because you're no longer feeling this incessant restlessness in your mind. So yeah, in that sense, it is similar to mindfulness.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Excellent. So I want to jump to the next one. So we've got disidentification of ego. You said that's kind of the gateway quality. Once we've got that, what comes next?

Steve Taylor: 

Well, a simple quality is gratitude. And I realized that when I interviewed spiritually awakened people, one of the qualities they emphasized most was a sense of gratitude. Most of all for the small and simple things in life, just to have a fairly healthy functioning body and gratitude for all the millions of miraculous microscopic processes that take place in the body to keep you healthy and alive every second of the day. 

Gratitude for people, we tend -- many people tend to take the people in their lives for granted. They become familiar and we lose our sense of value, the sense of their value. And simple things like being able to enjoy healthy, nutritious food, being able to see the beauty of nature, being able to experience simple things. 

But most of all, there's a sense of gratitude for life itself, just to be alive in this world at this moment, as opposed to not being here, as opposed to being dead. There's a simple sense of gratitude for all of those things which is a fairly constant, it's an ongoing state for spiritually awakened people. So my idea is that I suggest a number of exercises to cultivate an ongoing sense of gratitude. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Share one with us really quickly. 

Steve Taylor: 

Well, there's one kind of interesting exercise which derives from my studies of astronauts, funnily enough. I did some research into the American astronauts who traveled to the moon in the late 60s, early 70s. There were about 18 astronauts who went to the moon. And many of them underwent a transformation, a kind of psychological transformation, and a lot of it was based on gratitude. 

Because when you're standing on the moon, you look through space, you see this tiny blue green oasis spinning around in the midst of the darkness of space. And they all felt this amazing sense of gratitude for the earth, and for all of the different aspects of their life, which took place on earth, all of the people they loved, all of the places they loved. So a lot of those astronauts felt an incredible sense of gratitude, which remained with them. 

There was one astronaut, I think his name was Alan Bean. And he said that he was interviewed 40 years after his visit to the moon. And he said since then, he'd never complained about anything. He'd never complained about the weather, because he was glad that there was weather on the earth. So I have this exercise where I guide people, a visualization exercise, where I guide people on a journey to the moon. So we rise through the earth, off the ground, through the earth's atmosphere. We slowly move towards the moon, we witness the earth getting smaller, we land on the moon. 

And then we gaze at the planet, this tiny blue green oasis in the midst of space, and we imagine all of the people we love, all of the hot places, all of the different activities that we love in our lives, all there on this tiny planet. And we feel that brings a sense of gratitude. So once the gratitude arose in that way, then we begin to, we return to the earth, and we begin to work on sustaining that sense of gratitude. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

It's beautiful. I think that's a really cool exercise. And there was something in the book that caught my interest. I suspect gratitude is highly tied to that. You talk about taking for granted syndrome. And so talk to us a little bit about that. 

Steve Taylor: 

Yeah. That's really the opposite of gratitude. I think the taking for granted syndrome is one of human beings’ biggest issues. It's one of the biggest obstacles between us and happiness. And we sort of -- it partly comes from familiarity. We have familiar experiences, familiar people. And at a certain point, we begin to switch off to the reality of situations or to people. So they become kind of automatic to us. 

And the same with the body, if you're lucky enough to have a fairly healthy, functioning body, it's kind of natural to take that granted. But then, if you have a serious illness for a while, or a serious injury, then you become aware of how valuable and precious the body is. And for a while you think, wow, this is fantastic, I'm so grateful that my body's intact and functioning well. 

But again, that only lasts for a certain amount of time, you begin to switch off again. And it seems natural. In a way, it's a process of adaptation, but we can overcome this taking for granted syndrome. The same, we tend to take certain people in our lives for granted after we've been married for a few years, or we tend to take our parents for granted, maybe old friends. 

But again, maybe if you come close to separating from your partner or losing them in some sense, then you become aware of how precious they are, how beautiful they are. So you switch out of the taking for granted syndrome. So yeah, ideally, I mean, when you undergo spiritual awakening, you transcend that taken for granted syndrome makes sense.

Dr. Richard Shuster: makes sense. 

Makes sense. Now, the health example you gave was quite pointed. And certainly, when we're young, we're invincible. Nothing can happen to us. But all it takes is one close call or serious illness, and we look at things very differently. Until then, we hit our baseline again, and then we don't. 

Steve Taylor: 

Yeah. It happens through -- a lot of people experience it through encountering death as well. A lot of people who are diagnosed with cancer, they become aware of the preciousness of life. In fact, in my research, one of the biggest triggers of spiritual awakening is an encounter with death, serious accident, a serious illness. That can change everything because it shifts you out of the taking for granted syndrome. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Absolutely. I want to shift gears a little bit. In your book, you talk about the three states, or you also call them the three As. So talk to us about those.

Steve Taylor: 

That's related to the quality of presence or living in the now. And I suggest, excuse me, there are three different states that human beings can experience in our lives. I call them the three As or the three states of being. And the first one is absorption, which is when we give our attention to an activity or maybe an entertainment. So when we work in our jobs, we spend a lot of time in a state of absorption focused on one particular task. And maybe we spend a lot of our free time with our attention absorbed in entertainment. 

The second A is abstraction, which is when our attention is immersed in chatter in our minds, in daydreams or thoughts about the future or the past. Or maybe it could be more conscious kind of thinking when we're solving problems or contemplating issues. But mostly, it's the kind of daydreaming that we experience when our minds are unoccupied, when we're trying to get to sleep at night, or when we're waiting at the bus station, or at the doctor's surgery. That's abstraction. 

And the third A is awareness. And that's probably the state that human beings experience the least. We spend a lot of time in abstraction. We spend a lot of time in absorption. We don't spend so much time in awareness, but awareness is when we give our attention to our experience in the present moment. 

So a good example is, let's say, walking to the subway station or walking to work in the morning. So you can do it in any of those aids. You can walk in a state of abstraction when you're thinking about what happened yesterday or what's going to happen today or you're daydreaming. You could spend your journey to work in a state of absorption, listening to a podcast maybe, or checking your phone. Or you could spend it in a state of awareness when you look around and look at the trees, at the sky, the buildings, the people around you, and also maybe being aware of your own body as you walk, your own experiences, your own sensations. 

So awareness simply means, it's pretty much equivalent to mindfulness, being aware of your experience and your surroundings. So my idea in the book, what I suggest is that we should decrease the amount of time we spend in the first two ways, abstraction and absorption, and increase the amount of time we spend in awareness, because life really only takes place in the present moment. We are always, our bodies are always in the present moment, but our minds are often elsewhere. But if we do spend more time in awareness, then that's a great way of increasing our well-being. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And we've teased this a couple of times during our conversation. We've talked about mindfulness. And it is interesting, I have kind of a two-part question. One, has any of your research ever indicated why we spend so little time in awareness? And two, in addition to having a meditation practice, what are some of the things that somebody could do to enter that state more frequently or readily? 

Steve Taylor: 

Yeah. The first question is really interesting, because one of the things I say in the book is that we're called human beings, but we're actually the most misnamed species on the planet, because we don't spend much time being. We spend a lot of time doing, a lot of time thinking, but not very much time being. So the question is really, how can we increase the amount of time we spend in a state of being? And what are the issues that stop us living in a state of presence or being. 

And in a way, it's the result of social conditioning to some extent because we're conditioned to be busy, we're conditioned to be productive, to be active. We're not really conditioned to be, you know, to do nothing or to be unoccupied or to just enjoy a state of stillness or inactivity. If you do it, many people, when they have a bit of free time and think, oh no, this feels wrong. I need to do something. I need to fill this time with something. 

So it is partly conditioning, but there's a certain restlessness within us as well. I often say that we tend to live at the surface of our minds where there is this kind of restless thought chatter taking place within our minds. And because it feels uneasy, I mean it feels uneasy when you experience this restlessness within you. So you have an impulse to occupy yourself, to divert your attention from it. You have an impulse to focus your attention on some kind of entertainment, to read something or to open up your computer or check something., or you have the impulse to be busy. 

So you're trying to escape from the restlessness within you. But when you actually get used to living in a state of slowness, to living more slowly, in a more kind of spacious way, then you begin to sense that beneath this restlessness, there's actually a sense of ease within everybody, a sense of kind of harmony and ease, but you need to let the restlessness fade away a little bit in order to allow yourself to sink into a state of natural ease and stillness. 

So yeah, that's a challenge that many of us have because we are conditioned to be busy. Well, there are -- sorry. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

No, go ahead. Go ahead. Finish. 

Steve Taylor:

I was just going to turn to the second part of the question, which is, yeah, there were lots of different activities and strategies we can use. I think contact with nature is really important because nature has a natural quality of stillness, so we naturally slow down. Our minds naturally slow down when we're in the midst of natural surroundings. And we also connect, there's part of us which connects to nature as well, so we lose a sense of separation and feel a sense of ease.

So for me and for many people, natural surroundings are like home, it's like going home. So there's that sense of ease that you always feel at home. And I also recommend service or altruism, because that's a great way of connecting with others and transcending ego centeredness. And I also recommend active forms of meditation. Lots of different types of sporting activities are really kind of meditation, or they can be if you practice them in that way, like running or swimming, that they're a great way of becoming mindful through the body.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I love that. And in particular regarding nature, they've done studies where they've slapped on brain imaging tech to people who are in nature and the brain waves absolutely change. And you do get that more of a frequency that you'd see in somebody who's meditating and it's kind of autonomic, which is really cool.

Steve Taylor: 

Yeah. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Fantastic. 

Steve Taylor:

It's like -- I love the Japanese pastime of forest bathing where they make a conscious effort to bathe. Well, it's not physically bathe, but entering the forest and spending time in the woods is a kind of mental bathing. It soothes you. It relaxes you and attunes you to your surroundings.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Awesome. Yeah. I absolutely know whether it's the ocean, the rhythm of the sea or being in a forest, there are such good physiological and psychological benefits to doing both. So thank you for sharing that with us. Steve, our time together has flown by. I knew that it would. I've loved our conversation. 

As you know, I wrap up every episode by asking my guests this one single question. That is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today? 

Steve Taylor: 

I'd like to remind people that just in the same way that the surface of the ocean can sometimes be turbulent, but there's always a deep stillness beneath it. And our diver knows. Our diver moves from the surface of the ocean into a deep stillness beneath the waves. And in the same way, within our being, our minds can sometimes be turbulent and restless, even full of discord, but there's always a deep stillness in our deep being. So, I'd like to remind people that that deep stillness is always accessible. It's always there just below the surface of your mind. You're always free to dive into it. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well said. I love that. Tell us where people can learn more about you online. 

Steve Taylor: 

My website is stevenmtaylor.com. That's Steven with a V, M for Mark, stevenmtaylor.com. And I have lots of information about my writings and my books. And I also run online courses, so people can find out information about all those things. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Perfect. And we will have links to everything Steven M. Taylor in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com, as well as a link to The Adventure, a Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening. Again, that is now available everywhere. Well, Steve, I've loved our conversation today. Thank you so much for joining us on The Daily Helping. 

Steve Taylor: 

Thank you. I really enjoyed it too. Thank you. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Absolutely. And I also wanted to thank each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to it. If you liked it, if you're inspired, if you're going to go run into the woods and embrace nature, awesome, give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show. 

But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping because the happiest people are those that help others.