In our latest episode, Rabbi Rami Shapiro joins us to delve into the profound depths of mysticism and spirituality. Whether you’re spiritually curious or deeply entrenched in your own mystical journey, this episode promises insights that could transform your perspective.

Rabbi Shapiro, author of “Judaism Without Tribalism” and a revered figure in the realm of interfaith dialogue, brings his rich background across numerous religious traditions to our show.

From discussing the egoic distractions to the power of spiritual practices, there’s a treasure of wisdom awaiting you!

Here are 3 key takeaways to entice your mystic senses:

• The Power of Surrender: Rabbi Rami breaks down the crucial first step in the 12-step program, shedding light on the liberation that comes from surrendering to the ebb and flow of life’s madness.
• Spirituality vs. Religion: Discover the stark distinction between authentic spirituality—rooted in compassion, engagement, and connectivity—and the often harmful rigidity of structured religion.
• Justice Through Compassion: Learn why compassion is inseparable from justice, and why embracing the golden rule is fundamental to creating a just and empathetic society.

🎧 Tune in to our conversation for a dive into how mysticism intersects with everyday life, and to illuminate your path towards authentic spirituality.

Transcript:

Rabbi Rami Shapiro: Authentic spirituality is engaged spirituality but it’s free from the dogma and the power and the hierarchy and the patriarchy and the evil that religion can do. What we need as a species as the human species is authentic spirituality. We don’t need more religion. We don’t need more pseudo selfish spiritual narcissism.

Announcer:
Welcome to Exploring the Mystical Side of Life with your host, Linda Lang.

Linda Lang:
Hi. This is Linda Lang from www.ThoughtChange.com. We are Exploring the Mystical Side of Life once again this week. If you enjoy our conversations, remember to subscribe, share with a friend. Today, we have Rabbi Rami Shapiro with us. Rami has written a multitude of spiritual books, and we are excited to have a beautiful conversation with him today. Welcome, Rami.

Rabbi Rami:
Linda, thank you very much for having me on your podcast.

Linda Lang:
The first thing I want to touch on is that beautiful quote you have on your home page, which I will just read. Your website is www.RabbiRami.com, and the quote reads as: “Religions are like languages. No language is true or false. All languages are of human origin. Each language reflects and shapes the civilization that speaks it. There are things you can say in one language that you cannot say or say as well in another. And the more languages you speak, the more nuanced your understanding of life becomes.” I think that’s such a beautiful quote, and I’m curious as to what inspired you to put that front and center on your website?

Rabbi Rami:
Well, it’s the way I experience religion. I mean, I’m a rabbi, so I have training in ordination as, you know, a leader in the Jewish community, but my academic background, and more importantly, my personal background, is much broader. I’ve spent 10 years seriously practicing Zen Buddhism. I’m initiated into the Ramakrishna order of Hinduism, Advaita Vedanta, non dual Hinduism. I’ve had teachers, in Catholicism, in Sufism. I mean, I’m I’m interested in religion in general from the mystical perspective. When I was teaching in the university, I taught the more conventional face of religion, but I’m interested primarily in mysticism. And when you look at religion from the mystical, through the mystical lens, then that quote is, I think, very accurate.

Linda Lang:
Perfect. Perfect. There is a assumption, I guess I would say in the Huna tradition. That’s a shamanic tradition from Hawaii, something I’m trained in, and it says that all wisdom is not held within one school. So it encourages us to keep an open mind so that we can pick the nuggets from many traditions and bring that wisdom into our own experience.

Rabbi Rami:
Yeah. Well, I would agree with that. I would say that no tradition has a monopoly on this. And then I would go even farther and say that the wisdom that each tradition has fundamentally points beyond itself to something that no tradition can hold, which is ultimate reality that you can’t articulate. You know, like it’s like Lao Tzu says in the opening of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao that can be talked about isn’t the Tao, the eternal Tao isn’t the ultimate reality. So we’ve gotta go… even though religion is like language, ultimately silence is what we end up with.

Linda Lang:
Exactly. And in that silence, there is so much information that it’s even beyond information, really.

Rabbi Rami:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in that silence is the ultimate silencing of Linda and Rami and all egoic notions. And when you and I well, let’s just make it simple…. When I’m not there, then capital “R” reality is. You know, I don’t know how you wanna language it. But in in my practice, what I reconstruct, you know, you can’t say what I experienced because there’s no “I” to experience it.

Rabbi Rami:
But in those moments when Rami is absent, when Rami returns, my sense of what happened in my absence is the awakening in within, as the absolute. And there’s, there’s no way to articulate that. There’s a way to live it out after you’ve had the experience, and that’s the way of love and compassion and justice. But as long as we’re dealing with language, we’re limited. So ultimately, the language has to give way to silence, and every mystical tradition knows that.

Linda Lang:
So it’s very interesting to me that you use the word justice right beside love and compassion. Can you explain the position of justice as that an equal quality?

Rabbi Rami:
Yeah. My sense is that justice is compassion acted out in the political realm and the social realm. You know, it’s one thing to have compassion for people. It’s another thing to, to express that compassion by creating a society that is, that is built on equity, that is built on, you know, freedom, liberty, I mean, justice, right? So, so I think that justice is an expression of compassion so I link them together. But one of the things that worries me when I talk to lots of people who are interested in spirituality, they leave justice out because that seems, “oh, that’s too political. That’s too social. I just wanna sit back and meditate and feel compassion for everyone’s suffering, but I don’t wanna alleviate their suffering by working for justice.”

Rabbi Rami:
But I don’t think you have a choice. I think if if compassion is authentic, it’s going to bring you back into the world to work for justice.

Linda Lang:
I think a lot of people consider their definition of justice as being punitive, where in actuality, in my world anyways, justice is very subjective. But if you think of the word “just,” in meaning “right” or, like, in Huna we would say “pono,” that idea of making things right between 2 people back and forth or 2 organizations or 2 countries, if there is that respect and compassion and cooperation, justice can be served in a less punitive way, let’s say.

Rabbi Rami:
Yeah. I mean, there’s restorative justice. There’s distributive justice. It it’s… yeah, if you go right to punitive justice, then, yeah, then it’s about power, and that’s not what we’re either one of us is talking about. So, yeah, I would agree with that. But, you know, if people are looking for, you know, how do I, how do I know what’s just? I know that we can make it very complicated, but I don’t know if it’s really that complicated. The golden rule isn’t a bad place to start.

Rabbi Rami:
In the Jewish tradition well, Jesus is Jewish, so you you would say even Jesus is within the Jewish tradition. But earlier than Jesus and going back to Confucius, who’s the first one as far as we know to articulate the golden rule in print so we can, you know, we can look at it historically. But Confucius, and then later within Judaism, Hillel in the last century BCE, both of them put it in the negative. They said “what’s hateful to you, don’t do to somebody else,” as opposed to “do unto others what you’d want them to do to you,” which is Jesus’ formulation. The earlier ones are negative. If you don’t want it done to you, don’t do it to someone else. And that’s a good place to start. If you don’t wanna be abused, don’t abuse someone else.

Rabbi Rami:
If you don’t wanna be bullied, don’t bully someone else. If you don’t wanna be exploited or, you know, oppressed because of your race, don’t oppress someone because of their race, their gender, whom they love, you know, all of that. And that’s what, what I think of when I think of justice. And it’s not that complicated. We complicate it because we don’t wanna do it, but it’s not that complicated.

Linda Lang:
I absolutely agree that if we went back to that baseline, treat your brother as yourself or as you would wish to be treated… But it seems like so many people, whether they’re spiritual or religious or neither, so many of them don’t embrace that very simple embodiment of empathy and compassion, really. How did we go so far astray?

Rabbi Rami:
So this is how I understand that. And maybe it sounds a little harsh, but this this is how I understand it. I’m gonna make a distinction between spirituality and religion, And then I want to make a distinction between authentic spirituality and faux or fake spirituality. So religion, just talk about that for a second. Religion is a set of principles, rules, dogma, beliefs that are defined by and in service to an elite, a power elite. I mean, that’s why you believe what you believe in a religion because someone told you to, and it’s always in service to the people who tell you to. Now they’ll say God did it, but it’s God in their image. So for example, your religion can tell you to do horrible things to people that the the definers of your religion don’t like.

Rabbi Rami:
So I was in, just to make a concrete example, I was asked in my little town to join with the local Imam from Islam and and one of the Methodist ministers to sign a statement saying that we are opposed to all violence done in the name of God. And, you know, it was at the height of of all kinds of religious violence in the country and around the world, really. And so we signed it. I mean, all 3 of us were opposed to violence done in the name of our religions or in the name of God in general, and we all signed it. And then I said, you know, since we’re in complete agreement, why don’t we add 6 words to it and say, yeah, “we oppose all violence done in the name of god in this world and the next.” Six words. And they couldn’t sign it. And I said, why not? If you don’t believe that we should harm people in the name of our God in this world, why can’t you then say then people shouldn’t be harmed in the name of God in the next world? In other words, you know, you shouldn’t damn people to hell because they’re not a certain, they don’t believe like you believe.

Rabbi Rami:
And they said, well, we can’t; that’s God’s business. And I said, but you invented that God. That’s your theology. You don’t agree on this God. You don’t certainly, you know, Muslims and Christians don’t agree and Jews don’t agree on the nature of this God. Jews don’t have a God who damns people for all eternity because they’re not Jews. So why assume that your God will damn people because they’re not Muslims or damn them because they’re not Christians? You know what? Why can’t we just say we reject that idea and they couldn’t do it? That’s religion.

Rabbi Rami:
Right? Religion will get you to believe and ultimately do things. So your religion can get you to do horrible things, whether you’re a Jew, a Christian, a a Hindu, a Muslim, or we saw in Myanmar, or a Buddhist. I mean, religion is no hedge against evil. It can be a fomentor of evil. Then you take spirituality. So I want to make a distinction between authentic spirituality and faux spirituality. Faux spirituality is just me sitting around, just feeling or trying to feel good about myself, happy, compassionate, loving, and anything that isn’t, “I’m just, I’m not feeling that. I don’t want that in my life.

Rabbi Rami:
I’m gonna just, you know, push that away.” Whereas authentic spirituality is, is what the Taoists talk about when they talk about experiencing the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows of everyday life. It’s about the Tibetan practice of Tonglen, where you breathe in the suffering of the world and you transform it in your own, vast divine nature and then breathe it back out into the world as healing light. It’s about compassion in the sense of shared suffering. And and it’s about realizing that you can’t isolate from the world because you are the world. You’re part of the world. The divine is everything, and you are that, Tat Tvam Asi. You are connected to everything.

Rabbi Rami:
So authentic spirituality is engaged spirituality. But it’s free from the dogma and the power and, oh, the hierarchy and the patriarchy and and the evil that religion can do. What we need, and I’m going on way too long, sorry, but let me end it with this. What we need as a species, as the human species, if we are to survive, and I don’t know we are, but what we need is authentic spirituality. We don’t need more religion. We don’t need more pseudo selfish spiritual narcissism.

Rabbi Rami:
We need an authentic engaged spirituality where people are doing serious practice going beyond their egoic minds, realizing the divine mind, the Christ consciousness, the Buddha nature, that kind of thing. Realizing that the Atman is Brahman. In Hebrew, it’s called Mochin d’Ggadlut, spacious mind. Realizing that your true nature is a manifesting of the divine and so is everything else, human and nature as a whole. Realizing that and acting from that perspective, that’s what we need if there’s any hope for humanity at all. And again, I don’t know if there is, but that’s what we need.

Linda Lang:
Well, there’s always hope. Right?

Rabbi Rami:
Well, I guess there’s always hope.

Linda Lang:
So, do you think that faux spirituality, as you’ve just defined for us, often actually opens the door for authentic spirituality? That it’s almost like the starting point or the invitation that gets people to the point where they may be open to that authentic relationship?

Rabbi Rami:
I think it’s possible. I think the challenge is that faux spirituality is all about me, and authentic spirituality destroys the me. You know, I think one of the most powerful, mythic articulations of the spiritual process is the Christian story. So I take, looking at things from a mystic point of view, I look at the religion from a mythic point of view, meaning not false, but the truth of a religion is in its story, and or in its myth, which I understand is deep truths being told through story, not history. So the deep truth of Christianity, the deep spiritual truth of Christianity is Jesus saying to us, “Follow me.” Now Christianity says, “Believe in me,” but he doesn’t say that. Jesus says, “Follow me.” Where is he going? He’s going to the cross.

Rabbi Rami:
He’s not saying follow me and sit back and watch me get crucified and then resurrected and then believe in my death and resurrection, and you’ll be fine. That’s not what he said. He says, follow me. You get crucified. And if you don’t get crucified, you can’t get resurrected. Jesus is the paradigm. You and I have got to experience the same thing. The dark night of the soul, the cloud of unknowing, you know, the the death of the ego, however you wanna say it.

Rabbi Rami:
But the idea is the faux spirituality is all about me. Authentic spirituality is the crucifixion of the me, the crucifixion of the self with the smallest, the crucifixion of the ego. And then with the death of that is the reincarnation of the true self, Christ consciousness, Buddha nature, you know, the the true person of no rank that they talk about in Taoism, the truest you, which is the divine, that is resurrected when the ego is momentarily crucified. And then when you’re reborn, it still functions because you need the ego to function, but it’s put in in its proper place. It’s no longer running the show. It’s just part of of who you are, and and it’s a tool, not the master. So can that happen to people who are in working in the faux spirituality space? Maybe, but probably by accident because they’re still all about the self. And maybe they stumble, you know, into the death of the self.

Rabbi Rami:
But it’s not what they’re seeking, not what they’re trying to do.

Linda Lang:
Not the original intent of why they got there in the first place. Although I do find having met many people that have taken that path, I do find that often there’s so many surprises for them on that path that opens them up to greater truth. But, again, I think it also depends on how attached they are to being the center of the universe.

Rabbi Rami:
Exactly. Exactly. If they stick with it, you know, they might discover something they didn’t intend.

Linda Lang:
Yeah. So do you think that the choice to start exploring is necessarily a conscious choice? Or is it more like a prompt from the soul that you’re searching and searching and searching for something?

Rabbi Rami:
I think it’s a prompt. Yeah. I think it’s a prompt. I think, left to its own devices, the small “S” self, the egoic self, will seek to distract, And it’ll go for, well, I don’t know, alcohol, drugs, food, whatever the distraction that your physical mechanism is drawn to. But it’ll try to distract itself rather than transform itself. So, I think that because our our true nature is so much different than that egoic self, I think that true nature is wanting to to be resurrected or to be birthed, right? And so it it pushes, and so what you’re calling prompts, so it pushes us in that direction. I think it it depends on how strong you are in resisting.

Rabbi Rami:
And maybe, I was reading this the other day, I don’t know if I’m gonna get his name right. He wrote in the twenties. His last name is Broad, C. I think it’s C D Broad, but don’t hold me to that. That’s his initials, C D, and then his last name is Broad. And he’s writing about the place of the mind in nature. That may even be the title of his book.

Rabbi Rami:
It’s in the other room, so I can’t tell you what it is. But the idea is he talks about the brain, and he says the brain is a filter that shuts down your consciousness so that you can function, that you’re actually… your your true conscious self with a capital “S” is connected. It’s it’s the divine, so it knows everything. It’s connected to everything. It’s in a, it’s in a constant state of wonder and awe and unity with the universe, so you can’t function. And so the brain develops and then, you know, narrows it, narrows it, narrows it, narrows it until you get a small trickle of what’s really there so that you can say, “Oh, look. There’s me.

Rabbi Rami:
This needs food. This doesn’t. But this better have food and this better have water and this better, you know, get a job.” And so you narrow it down to this, but there are things you can do through meditation, through chanting, through walking in nature, and there’s all kinds of things you can do. And you can do it with, with psychedelics. And there are things you can do that we’re developing scientifically that broaden, you know, that sort of turn the brain down a little bit so that more and more things come through. And then I think there are some people who have the capacity, and these people are rare, and I am not one of them. But there are some people have the capacity to just let the whole thing open.

Rabbi Rami:
So we go from the little narrow trickle to the fire hose, and then they come back to the trickle, and they can tell you what the fire hose was like. Those are the great spiritual teachers of any age. But those people who are in an authentic spiritual path, are doing authentic spiritual practice, that what they’re really doing is they’re turning the brain down and allowing the greater reality of which we are a part to flow through. We’re not getting something we don’t have. We’re just stopping the blockages so that we see more or experience more of what’s always there. Does that that make sense?

Linda Lang:
Absolutely. It’s the mystical path in a nutshell, really. Rami, in your work, you often refer to 12 step program with regards to spirituality. Could you explain that a little bit for us?

Rabbi Rami:
I’m an addict. I’ve followed the 12 steps. I’m a compulsive overeater, and so I am a recovering food addict. I believe that the 12 steps, the classic 12 steps for Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted to, in my case, food. I think that Bill W who created the 12 steps was a spiritual genius. I think he came up with a practice. His concern was to help alcoholics stop drinking. But his insight was to create a spiritual practice for people who weren’t all that religious, if religious at all.

Rabbi Rami:
Because he talks about, you know, turning your your addiction, turning your life, over to God, but he doesn’t even use the word. He just talks about a greater power. But when he does talk about God, it’s god as you understand God. So he’s taking you out of religion. He’s taking you out of all these things. But what I like about it is it blends not just the mystical, you know, because he talks about the greater power. Usually in 12 step meanings, they talk about a higher power, but he talks about a greater power. Higher implies dualism, something out there somewhere, but greater power is what we were just talking about, that you’ve got this consciousness of which you’re a part.

Rabbi Rami:
It’s greater than you. My experience in 12 step is rather than say to a higher power, “help me not overeat today.” My experience to the 12 step is to just open to the greater power who is not addicted to anything and rest in that. And I find I don’t find myself driven to eat compulsively that day. So he created this whole spiritual path, but that’s only part of it. The other part is in the moral inventory and then engaging with other people. So it’s, it’s a full-bodied spiritual practice that isn’t just internal, but also in isn’t just personal, but also interpersonal.

Linda Lang:
Could you take one of those 12 steps for us and break it down for someone on their spiritual path and how they can connect more fully through that one step?

Rabbi Rami:
I would say take the first step. The first step says we are powerless. We’ve come to believe we are powerless over “X”, alcohol, food, whatever it is. I would say, and in in my two books on 12 step, I make this claim, we’re actually powerless over life. We’re not in control. The other day, I was just… I walk my dog miles every day, and we’re standing… She’s not standing. She’s squatting.

Rabbi Rami:
She’s doing what she needs to do. And I’m standing there, and I’m…my body is doing stuff. I walk with a walking stick, and I’m tapping the stick and doing with all these things, and I’m just watching myself do it. I’m not making myself do it. My ego, it doesn’t say, “Oh, let’s tap the stick.” My body’s just doing stuff. And if I’m, if I’m observing my myself, my thoughts are just happening. My feelings are just happening.

Rabbi Rami:
My, my heart’s just beating. I’m not in control of any of this. My lungs are pumping, you know, are moving the oxygen, you know, the blood and all that. I’m not doing any of that consciously. Rami isn’t doing it. All these things are happening. I may be responding when something catches my attention, but I’m not in charge of any of it. I have 2 grandsons.

Rabbi Rami:
One’s 7, and one’s 8 months. I don’t have any control over them. I was with them last night. They do what they do. Good luck trying to control that. I’m not in control of anything. Now we pretend we are because it makes us feel better, but I don’t think we really are. So the first step is to realize you’re not in control.

Rabbi Rami:
In the big book, Bill W says the first thing you have to do is stop playing God. Thinking you’re in control is playing God. Thinking you’re in control is being all about your ego. When you think you’re in control, you have to play God. You have to dominate the people around you, the situations around you. You have to dominate your own behavior. You can’t do that. The world isn’t like that.

Rabbi Rami:
You’re really in a wild… I mean, the Bible says right in the beginning, Genesis 1:1, it says, the universe is… the Hebrew is Tohu wa-bohu… is wild and unformed. It’s chaos. Ecclesiastes tells you right in the beginning, everything is impermanent. Nothing lasts. And Buddhism says the same thing. You can’t control it. Everything is in, is vaporizing before your eyes. Everything is in transient.

Rabbi Rami:
All we can do is learn to surf the madness. And until we learn to be surrendered to the wildness, we’re going to try to control it. And when you can’t control it, you seek alternatives, food, drink, gambling, sex, drugs, whatever the alternative is. So the first step is to recognize you’re not in control. And then to see that you, you’re never gonna be in control. And then so what do you do then? In my suggestion is you learn to practice surfing, right? You learn through, you do, you do mantra. You do sitting, seating meditation, you do walking meditation, you do whatever contemplative practices call to you that free you or allow you to turn the controlling part of your consciousness over to the greater reality, which I wouldn’t even say that’s in control.

Rabbi Rami:
That’s what’s happening. Become part of the happening, and you’ll be liberated from the need to control, and then you’ll be able to surf, navigate, engage with the wildness with a sense of compassion and justice, love, etcetera, that you didn’t have before. I don’t know if it makes any sense to hear that, but that’s that’s how I understand it.

Linda Lang:
Surrender to life living through you.

Rabbi Rami:
Yeah. Right.

Linda Lang:
Beautiful. Beautiful.

Rabbi Rami:
You said it much better than I did. Thank you.

Linda Lang:
Rami, if people would like to learn more about the wisdom that you share and all of those books that you’ve written, where can we send them?

Rabbi Rami:
Whatever wisdom I have, I put in the books. So that’s the best place to go. You can go to your local bookstore and order any of them. And if there’s, if you don’t have access to a local bookstore, Amazon, everything is on, you know, Amazon.com. So that’s that’s the easiest way to do it. And local bookstores, hopefully, you still have some, but they’re shrinking. You can go to www.spiritualityhealth.com and subscribe to the magazine I work for and listen to the podcasts that I do for them. But I also work for the One River Foundation where we teach mystical principles.

Rabbi Rami:
We’ve got a program called Living Underwater. How do you surrender to the madness that we were just talking about? And that’s oneriverfoundation.org.

Linda Lang:
Beautiful. And your latest book is?

Rabbi Rami:
Judaism Without Tribalism.

Linda Lang:
Thank you for being my guest, Rami.

Rabbi Rami:
Thank you for having me as your guest.

Linda Lang:
And thank you for listening to this week’s edition of Exploring the Mystical Side of Life. You will find all of our conversations on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, on Spotify. Come visit me at www.ThoughtChange.com. Pick up your copy of Learning to Listen, and we’ll see you again next time. Bye for now.