[Below is an illuminating dialogue on Stephanie's profound journey in meditation and spirituality.]



Guri: If you've spent any time with Stephanie in the last few days, she doesn't need much of an introduction. Her presence just speaks for itself. The few times that I've had a chance to interact with Stephanie, we just laugh a lot. (laughter) The conversation goes from laughter to really deep, really quickly, and she just has a spectrum to hold it all.

I wanted to start with this question: What was your first experience of the awareness of something beyond, of awareness of an inner world, that kind of took you beyond this material world? Whether it was as you were growing up or later on, as you learned more and deepened in spirituality?

Stephanie: I was thinking of the first experience I had that kind of transformed who I was, and that was kind of in my thirties. But earlier on, I remember the first time I went off by myself in Georgia. I was staying in New York then. (And I grew up in the trees, and I like getting lost in the trees. That was like thrilling for me.)

So, I'd been in New York too long, and there weren't enough trees. And so someone gave me a little cabin in Georgia. I went down there for four days that turned into ten days. I was by myself, and I took music with me. It was James Taylor -- that's how long ago it was. :) And I took my music, I built my fires, and I did that for two days, and I walked around in the woods every day. Then, on the third day, I was done with James Taylor. Two days of James Taylor was enough, and he was great, and I love him. So there was no music.

On the third day, I came home, and it was silent, and I realized for the first time I'd never been alone. Maybe I'd been alone in a room with other people in a house, where someone was coming and going, but there were no people within miles, and I have never been totally alone.

It kind of struck me.

Then, this wave of loneliness came up that just hurt my chest. It was huge, and it was really intense. It was things like -- every time someone had hurt me, or I might have hurt someone -- not good things that were all coming up. And I had the fire going, and during this loneliness, I'd get flashbacks and thought of people -- not whom I wanted to be with.

I still had this like really intense loneliness, and I just started sobbing and crying with it. And then I started to get kind of hypnotized by the fire.

If you look at a fire, it's happy. Fires are not sad things. They're dancing, and I was kind of looking at the fire, and it was a while into the fire, and there were these two little flames that were individual, little flames over here, separate from the dancing big fire. They were like their own little creatures, you know, and they were kind of doing their thing. And I started watching them and kind of rooting for them. And they seem to like their prime directive was to join the big fire. But if they do, when they joined the big fire, they die. They are no longer these individual things. They're part of the big dancing fire, but they seem to want to do that.

To me, I'd been trying to be an actress, which is like, "Hi, I'm my own individual!" (Laughs) And here, that would be a definition of hell, you know, to join, and then you disappear. But I was watching the joy and like they'd struggle and struggle and have their own lives, and then they join that big fire. And then everyone was happy and dancing, but they weren't there anymore. And I became kind of just fascinated and mesmerized by this.



That night I didn't go to bed. I stayed by the fire, and the fire and I went to sleep together. And when I woke up the next morning, I knew something was different, and I couldn't figure it out until I realized I wasn't lonely anymore.

I was never lonely again after that moment.

So that was before this other thing. But that was something I thought, Oh, so loneliness is this something you can have and then some other thing can happen and how we see the world that can totally shift how we feel in that moment. So I've spent most of my life living alone except for some relationships. But I take vacations to be alone because I don't get enough alone time (laughs). :) And I've never been lonely since that time, so that was the first time, probably, where I went, "Huh. How does that work?"

Guri: How old were you?

Stephanie: I would've been in my 20's. That would have been a couple of years before the other one, so it would have been the late 20's or early thirties, maybe? Yeah, maybe like 28? Probably, 28. Yeah... And it was like, Whoa, how does that work? I was just trying to figure out how things worked, not always successfully. (laughs)

Guri: Then you were saying that in your thirties, you had this kind of a big shift.

Stephanie: Yeah. I had a big shift. When I was 28. Then, I went to Yale School of Drama, and I came out. When I came out, the writers guild was on strike, and actors were on strike, and it just wasn't a good time to come out and be an actor. And I would say I was the opposite of what I am now. I was very serious. I was always hurt or mad-- and I was very critical of myself and of everyone else (laughs). So that didn't leave you a lot of friends. :) I had alienated myself from my family, my friends. I had no place to live. I had no job. After Yale, I ended up living in a maid's room and moving into a maid's room in a big New York City apartment where there were like three bedrooms, and a maid's room would be like the size of -- maybe this? [Laughter as she indicates the small area around her.] That's it.

And, I gained 45 pounds, and I was, you know, not a happy camper. I had spent my whole life trying to get conditions in the outside world, in a certain kind of way of thinking, "If everything was perfect, then I would be good." And there was an Israeli woman in the house. She was my first introduction to someone who lived her spirituality, and she lived with grace; and I had no idea how that worked, but I saw it in her. So I saw an example of that, and I thought, okay, maybe I need to work on the inside. I didn't want to, but the outside wasn't working. :) Then, three people I knew died in a two-week period. Like someone died on one weekend, then the next weekend, and the next weekend. It was -- I thought it was really bad before that, but it kind of got worse.

And I read a book called Love, Medicine, and Miracles by Dr. Bernie Siegel, where he worked with terminal cancer patients, and what would happen with 30% of the terminal patients when they changed their life and started loving and forgiving people, their cancer went away, and they lived. And I thought We've got this ability to heal ourselves.

I didn't want to wait until I was going to die to get it.

But you know, love wasn't my thing. I was like a cynical New Yorker. So I did a love experiment. So every time I was somewhere, I was like: Okay, where's the love in this situation? (Laughs).

And like they'd say, when you point to someone every time to judge them, three fingers are coming back into that person's fat. Well, so am I, okay ... and I was doing that walking down the streets of New York. And I remember one time things weren't going well, and the people behind the counter were overwhelmed, and everyone was mad at them. So I went up to them and thought, Okay, what's a loving thing to say? because I just didn't have that muscle.

So I went and said something like, "Wow, you've been working really hard; you did a really good job."

And they turned to me, and they'd go -- gasp -- "You saw that!?"

And they turned to me with this (appreciative) awe, and I went, Whoa! Whoa! They just gave me this wave of stuff -- and suddenly, I felt good. I thought, "Oh, this is a really cool experiment." (Laughs)

So I would just kind of go around thinking, Okay, what nice thing can I say here? Whoa, I got another wave of good stuff!

So I needed a new "prime "directive" because mine wasn't working. And I thought, okay, this love thing, this love stuff, look for that, and it transforms! And Bernie Siegel helps them with cancer, so there we go!

So I started doing that, and then slowly, over the course of like a year, I didn't have arguments with people, and I didn't have people I was upset with and things on the outside got better. I don't know how that happened, but then I started discovering that if I did something good for somebody over here, something good of a similar kind of quantity came in over here, and those were totally unrelated things. And I thought, okay, who's keeping track of that? (laughs).

I had left the church; like, I didn't think God was that-guy-up-there-in-a-white-beard, you know? So then I thought maybe it's like we're all this kind of energy, and it's like water. When someone jumps in the pool, then that water gets displaced. I thought there must be some kind of balancing system going on, and I was trying to figure out the nature of reality. And I thought if I just keep doing that love thing, everything works well. So that was kind of my bailout thing. Like, when-in-doubt-do-this-love thing (laughs).

And then I went to a drama camp.

I was giving up acting because that was a failure. And I went to a month-long retreat for Shakespeare with this woman who insists that you say the word with your mind, your emotions, your body, all in the present moment truthfully. She takes no prisoners. I have seen Zen Roshis do this. During the course of that training, a week into it, they have a ceremony they do where you take your scene partner to death -- because as an actor, at some point in your career, you might have to kill somebody on stage, or you might have to die. And they wanted to consciously set up a thing so that you wouldn't be kind of traumatized by that.

So, you had one scene you were working on for a whole month, and I was doing Lady Macbeth's dagger scene where they killed the King. So my scene partner was Macbeth, and he was afraid of everything. He was so sweet. In this ceremony, in the presence of a facilitator, each of us had to kill each other. And the way we had to kill each other was you had to sit on top of the other person and strangle them.

Now just know, that when in stage fighting, the victim is the one in control. So the other person has their hands on your clavicle bone, and they're pulling away, and the person being strangled is pulling in. So you see a real strangle there. But the person doing the strangle had to let out this primal animal scream of rage. I did it for him first because he was too afraid of killing me, so I killed him first (laughs). And, I don't get why that is funny, but yeah, this primal scream, I don't think I'd ever done a primal rage scream like that.

For me, the stage fighting was fun; I liked that. But this scream part was something I have never done, so I did that. And afterwards, everyone goes to him like, 'Are you okay? Are you okay?" (laughs) Someone was on top of you killing you, and are you okay?

And I just felt my body was all vibration and all the cells in my body kind of separated from each other, and I was kind of -- whoa!

And then it was my turn to die, and I didn't want him to suffer too much. So I wanted to die quickly. So he was doing it, and then, and I was just throwing myself into everything with abandon. And so he did manage it. I screamed, and I struggled, and then I died, but I went, "Nope, there is something still there - let that go. Nope, let that go, let that go."

... And then the next thing I know -- well, there was no language, there were no words, but you could say there was nothing, there was nothing. It was blackness, but I had no language for it.

And then there was a kind of movement over here.

And then, at one point, you realized it was sound, but I couldn't have said sound. There was no mind.

And then it kind of got a little louder.

And then you realize it was language, but I couldn't have said it was language.

And then I realized it was a word that I knew maybe, and then I realized it was my name.

And then -- you know how on Star Trek when you go into warp drive? And you go -- swoosh!

It's like I arrived.

I was there, and people were calling my name, and they were all upset, and it's like my consciousness just spread. I couldn't even use the word consciousness. My awareness suddenly was as big as the whole room -- and I felt this just eternal peace. And I could feel everyone like all upset. It was like, Oh, these creatures are all upset, and it is okay. Everyone is asking, "Are you alright?" and I was like, "Oh honey, it's fine."

My sense is, in that room, I could see what was going on, and my whole perception of everything shifted from that moment.

The next day I had energy coming out of my body. My body started crying, and I was feeling great. People would ask me, "Are you okay?" And I would be like sobbing and saying, "No" (laughs).

But it was like my body had to purify that energy.

From that moment on, I think, I lived a kind of a state of this amazing ... it was just -- you know, at the time, I would have said I'd transformed into powers. Now, I'd look back and say everything that was interfering with me being there dropped away. That is what I would say now. But at the time, I didn't know what the hell was going on. I knew it had to do with evolving in some way, and I couldn't talk to anybody because, you know, I had a psychology degree from Duke, and you would put someone in a jacket or give them pills if you told them what was going on. :)

So I spent two years kind of in solitude trying to figure out what that was -- only in solitude because I couldn't function in the same way anymore. I didn't want to be other people anymore -- which, as an actress, is a tough thing (laughs). :) Because everything you acted is someone who has a problem, right? And it's like I wasn't having any problems, so I didn't want to go there. So I wasn't very good for that while. So that was kind of the big shift, and then I was just trying to figure out: What is the nature of reality, and how does this work?

I stumbled around for six years until I found my teacher. I wanted to talk to someone who said, "Oh yeah, that! Yeah. Well, go down there and take a left and do this and don't do this." But you couldn't tell anybody because they would think you're nuts or weird (laughs), or they thought it was great - or they want some of it themselves, or they want to follow you around. None of that was helpful. I wanted someone who knew it and could say, "Oh yes, Oh yes." But I didn't hang out with that crowd - like you said spiritual, and I was in New Yorker. I'd probably leave the room. (laughs) Probably. (laughter) . Yeah, I've come a long way, baby - what is that - Virginia Slims commercial? Right? Never mind, that dated me. (laugh)

Guri: So as this cynical New Yorker, you were in this newfound sort of spiritual, or I-don't-know-what's-happening, state of recognizing that something is different. To figure out all of that, you literally went to the woods for two years?

Stephanie: No, no, I didn't intend to be alone. I just couldn't function. So I went back to New York, and it was like the analogy I gave. It is like you develop the ability to hear an ant crawl up a wall, but you're living in a construction zone. It's like I had no skin, so I just couldn't leave my apartment. I had no coping mechanism. I had no context for this. I'd never heard of this. So I didn't know how to function. So I moved to California because that's where people like that go, I think (laughter). You know. It's the only other place you can make money as an actress.

And then, I lived in my mom's house, and she was married to a new husband. So there was an empty house, like 5,000 square feet, with all these untouched canyons behind us. For a New Yorker, you have got someone above you, someone below you, someone over here. I mean, people are all around you all the time. So there I was like, "Oh, this is great!"

And everyone said, "Don't go back in the canyons; the coyotes have eaten all our cats."

And I would say, "I'm a New Yorker; those are dogs! I can do this!"

I would go out there, and that was the first time I used the "G" word God, and I go out and talk to God. It was when I was out in nature, I ... think that's when I was re-aligning my molecules and my system, and I'd ask questions, and I'd get these really enigmatic answers that were kind of annoying because you didn't really know what they meant and that wasn't the answer you wanted. But it was like the quote on the wall last night, which said, "It matters not what we do, what matters is who we become by what we do" by Ruskin. It was like I said, "Why can't I work as an actor? It's like, aren't I supposed to be doing something? I know - why is this not happening?

And I got, "You are just now becoming what you will be known for."

And I'm like, "Great, what do I do now? What do I do with that?"

And they said, "It won't be anything you do - it will be who you are."

And I'm like, "So what do I do with that?"



You know, I just felt I had to do something. So my old habit patterns of fixing, I had to work through my habit patterns of how I protect and function. And it was a little sloppy ... but I was alone, so no one saw it. (laughter) It was kind of messy. There was a dog- he saw it - he was cool with it (laughs).

Guri: How would you describe that whole period? Obviously, there's this new way of looking at the world, a new way of seeing yourself. There's a certain shift going on, and it seems like there was a certain shift going on physically as well. Would you say this was kind of a period of total excavation? How would you describe the process?

Stephanie: Well, again, I had no context, so I started making one up. I started just making up how I thought it worked, and I'd feel energy doing things. And I went, hmm, what if we do this - what if - you know, I thought of that show Bewitched. I grew up with like "Bewitched -- and "I dream of Jeannie" - and Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball, as you can tell.

And I remember, in Bewitched, she had these powers, but she didn't know how they worked. And she would accidentally make her husband land in another place. So I felt like I was trying to figure out how it worked. What was the nature of reality because of how I had perceived the world - I no longer thought it was real. So the question that I was holding was, is what I perceive now, is that real?

So I would say I would call it, maybe an integration, but the body had to catch up. This happened in the body, and, like, I had to learn self-care. Like I'd never tuned into what felt good before. Like now, I teach people that. I remember in New York, before - when I was that other person, there'd be a group of young people, and everyone was saying what they wanted. I want to do this. You know a New Yorker is ambitious, and I remember one young girl saying, I just want to be happy. And I remember thinking, "Oh, get a life. Go, go sit under a tree and sniff flowers. What's wrong with you?"

And I thought now I help people be happy. So it's like I had to embrace everything I judged and come inside it literally. And I'm still learning being here with all this love fest - I'm like (makes an awestruck sound) - it's a constant opening and learning. That period I think, was like an incubation, maybe. It was like the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, you know, Saturday Night Live. ( TV show) I wasn't ready for interactions with people yet. So the universe just made me unable to do things out there, and I considered myself kind of a failure that I couldn't function in the world, But I think I needed to hang out with myself for a while and kind of just understand, okay I see this, how is it working?

And I did a lot of ... I talked to God a lot. We had some awesome conversations, so to speak, not with language. But you would get the knowledge that you didn't have a moment before that was good and true. And so you go, "Cool!"

When I met the Buddhists later on, I said, "What do you call that? (laughter) That's not a thought. What do you call it?"

"Oh, Prajna."

"Oh, there's a word for it! (Laughs). Great! Cool! They have words for things." So I was just kind of bumping around and working it out until I was ready for prime time if I ever really was or am.

Guri: What was that? That kind of pulled you out -- or pulled you away from -- the Canyon?

Stephanie: Well, my mom was selling the house - that'll do it. (laughter) And I moved into LA . But I still ended up finding a place. I took the dog with me, and because I had a dog, I had to hike three times a week, oh dear. (laugh) And every time I'd go up on a mountain, I kind of get what I called "Popcorn." You kind of go up, and these insights would come. Like there was a show when we were young where people get into the booth, and there was like all these dollar bills around, and people would try to grab the dollar bills. So this was like all these insights will come faster, but if you tried to write one down, you're letting go of all these others, and do you try to hold onto one? And I figured that dejavu's were probably that you had those insights before, and you just remembered it later. But I get all these faster than you could speak in a language, and they would just come, and you just go, " Okay, what am I supposed to do with that?"

And then I'd come down and come back into the world, and then when the world got a little too on the surface level, I would go back up the Hill. So I was kind of doing this, going up and coming down. And I think that 20 years since then, it has been about, now I go to the kitchen and talk to the kitchen people. Now I don't need to climb the mountain for that. I believe it is what we all are, and we can just kind of let go of our .... you know, thinking it has to be, this means you do not see that over there. So just that practice of letting go. Like I walk around going, what can I let go of now. Well, I can let go of that. I can let go of my jaw. So I kind of walk around the day saying, "What can I let go of?" - whether it's physically or, you know, I could let go of that thought. That's been around for a while. So it's just an ongoing practice kind of thing.

Did I answer that question? I'm trying to remember what it was. (laughter)

Guri: What I did also want to ask about was your first meeting with your teacher. How did that come about?

Stephanie: Okay. So when I was trying to figure out what this was and wanted to talk to someone who knew about it, I came to LA, and there was no internet then. So you were like talking to operators on the phone and asking them about places. And I figured everyone who really knew what this was about, I could find, was either in India or dead (laughter ). And I said I wanted to hang out and have a beer with someone saying, "Hey, what is it?" And there just wasn't quite access to that. So I went, okay, maybe I'll meditate, and the idea of sitting still for more than five minutes was like, "Why? Is the six-minute better?" (laughs) Like what are we doing? But I thought, okay, maybe I'll meditate.

And I went down to the Bodhi Tree, which is this spiritual bookstore in LA, and a young man with a Walkman and long hair, that's how long ago it was. He had a Walkman with a cassette tape, and he was back there, and there's like all these books. And looking at all of them, I was overwhelmed. So I said, is there a tape? Can I just listen to someone? And he said, "Oh yeah, there's this one recording of these five meditations by this guy named Shinzen Young. One is Karma yoga meditation, Mantra meditation, Kaballah meditation, Loving-kindness meditation, and Vipassana meditation."

I went, "Great." I took them. I did what I thought you were supposed to do. I got a tub; I lit candles; I got stoned (laughs). I thought that's what you do. That's how you meditate, right? So, I lay in the tub one night, and I'd listen to one. I really liked that one. And the loving-kindness one - I thought I'd made that up, and here it's been going for thousands of years. And there's a name for it: "Metta," another word to learn. And I liked them all except for that Vipassana one - it was a little too technical. But they were great, and I thought, I come from a family of teachers. My mom's a teacher, and I was a teacher. So I thought, he's good at explaining things. Let me find him.

So I call the operator, and the center that was on there didn't exist anymore. So, I thought, Oh well. And then a man who I l had lived with because he meditated called me one night. I wasn't living with him anymore, and he called me one night, one o'clock in the morning. He said, you know that guy you're looking for, he's on KPFK right now on the radio. And I listened, and I went, Oh that's him! He's older, he still sounds like a woman, but it's him! (Laughs) And then at the end of the interview, it said, Vipassana Support Institute, and I thought - Oh, of all those five cool meditations (laughs), he chose Vipassana?!

And then it just happened that Saturday, some of his teachers were having this day-long sit. So I wanted this day-long sit, and I had a cold, and they're sitting here labeling parts of the body; knee, elbow, shoulder, and I thought, what does this have to do with anything? And I kind of complained and then, anyway, they explained how you don't say that's a motorcycle. You say that's a sound. And then, when I asked, what do you do - knee, elbow, shoulder, sound, Why did he do that? They'd say, Oh no, you just label that "Thought." ... And I said, you're making it sound like I am not my thoughts. I said, that's who's driving this car, and they said, no, this is what's playing on the radio. And I went, Oh wow. Well, that cuts out a whole lot of suffering right there. (laughter)

And then this guy, whom I talked to, said you have to go on a retreat. And I go, you mean more than one day? And you're sitting there, and ...? And he said, yes, you really have to. So I went on a retreat with Shinzen. And then I was waiting for him to come in. At his retreats, he has something called online's where you go into these rooms, and everyone puts a headset on, and then you sit there and meditate. He comes in on your headset and says, "Hi, what's going on in your practice? Oh, okay, well try this, try this. I'll be back to you in 20 minutes, and he goes to someone else."

So in an hour and a half, he takes care of three, four, or five people. And I wasn't going to go in a room and talk to him on the phone, and this man said, "Have you done this?"

I'm like, "No."

So he says, "This is mine, go, and he pushes me in that room."

So Shinzen then comes on and says, "Hey Michael."

And I said, "Oh no, no, this is Stephanie. I'm sorry. Michael gave me a spot."

Shinzen said, "Oh okay, you're new, right?"

I said, "Yeah."

He asked, "Do you have any questions?"

"Well, yeah." (He was doing this like look at mental images and internal talk and body sensations, labeling them "talk, image, feel.") I said, "You know, I can do this. I teach juggling. I can do three things at one time. But my question is, WHY? It feels like playing scales, and I was an oboe player, and I stopped because I hated playing scales. I thought, it just seems like too much work."

And he said, "It scales, but the music is your life."

Good answer. (laughs) But I still didn't want to do it. And I said, "You know, I can close my eyes and go to this oneness of light, and I'm gone, everyone's gone, and it's just this oneness of light. And you come back and bliss ... why should I do talk, image, feel?"

He said, "There's gonna come a time when the doo-doo hits the AC, and you're not going to be able to close your eyes and go blissy."

And I said, "Oh yes, I will!"

And he said, "No, you're not."

So I said, "Okay." I still didn't want to do it. But he gave me a technique, and then he went on to somebody else.

He came back like three minutes later, and he said, "Can you teach anyone how to juggle?" (laughter)

I said, "Yeah, pretty much."

And he said, "Can you teach me how to juggle?"

"Well, have you ever played juggle a ball sport?"

"What's that?"

"It's where you take a ball, and you have to aim where it goes."

And he went, "Oh no, and I'm really spastic!"

I said, "Well, it's going to take longer then, but you know about that."

So after that first retreat, I was giving him private juggling lessons for the next six, eight weeks. He never really got it that well (laughs), but I was going, no, no, no, put your hand here. Put your hand here. Good. You did that well. And he jumped up and down and go; I got it, I got it, I got it. And I would think, This is the man who was doing ...? :)

And then I married the man I sat next to at the first retreat. Shinzen, his exchange for my teaching him juggling, was to call me and ask me how my practice was going on and give me personal guidance. So this man who I was not yet married to would be at my house, and he'd hear Shinzen on the phone saying, "Hi Stephanie, I'm just calling to check on your practice." So I had a different relationship with him from the first moment.

And he said, "I've been with Shinzen for eight years, and he's never called me to say, 'How was your practice?'"

I said, "Well, you're not teaching him how to juggle." (laughs)

And the reason he wanted to juggle was because of TV screens. You know, the old TV screens where you look closely has red, blue, and green dots. He said so everything else is an emergent property that the eyes see. So our reality, everything we think of as our thoughts and world, is an emergent property. But he wanted to take it down to the three individuals, see, hear, feel dots that create all of the experience, and then he wanted to pull up three balls and juggle them, which he never got to.

And then I ended up recording him and becoming the person who translated what he said to his teachers. And then he said, "It would be good if you started teaching, too." So I just started doing that. But that was my first meeting with him. I still didn't do his meditations until like a year later when I started to have - the doodoo hit the AC, and those damn labels helped me function again. I was like crying and couldn't do anything, and it literally got me grounded and present. I went, Okay, I'm going to learn this now.

And then, the next retreat was a 30-day retreat, and I went from being basically a junior high, seventh-grade level, to post-graduation in those 30 days. Because I was like, I'm going to soak up everything. And of course, I wanted it to be enlightened by Thursday at 3PM, but enlightenment isn't like, "Hi, you're there, now you're on a pink, fluffy cloud, and there's no emotion." So you're just cool ... but no ... But that was my first introduction to him—a different kind of relationship with a meditation teacher.

Guri: As you are speaking about this last 30-day retreat that you did, and also that initial first experience of trying to figure out how does this work, once you have an insight into something that you've never seen before, it's so powerful that it changes you that much. Do you still have, at the level of manifestation, the same types of things that emerge? Or has the journey kind of progress in a different way?

Stephanie: I'm trying to understand your question. Are you asking, like are there still things opening and going? Well, that's happening all the time. Like I go whoa, today I just figured out or - I just got that insight. So that continues. The difference is because of my time with Shinzen ... The person with whom I wanted to talk then, a person who could understand what I was going through or guide me? Well, I've become that person. So I'm that person for other people now. So wherever they are, I will say, yes, I remember that part of the mountain, you know, it was there. So I've had other deepening experiences, and I remember Shinzen saying one time that the distance between stream-entry, like an initial awakening, to complete enlightenment is something like ten times longer than the distance from total unconsciousness to stream-entry. And I love that. It means you still got some purification to do.

In fact, his best compliment to you is like, "You've done a lot of purification." (laughter), And that's like, whoa, you have got a gold star in your chart. So there's always a deepening and a broadening. I think what shifted for me in the biggest way is the service. That is what I watched him do - just give all the time. And the satisfaction that you feel while you do that is invaluable. I learned the word "mudita." What a cool word, like it translates as "sympathetic joy," but it's really like getting thrilled that someone else gets an aha and you go (sound of delight), and it's a gift for you! And I went, "Oh my God, you could live on that!" And there's a word for that. And having words for things helps.

So I would say the part of the deepening has been this "not a sense of separation." So I don't have a sense like I'm over here and you are over there. It's like we're all .... like you are me over there. It's like when you juggle; your left hand is going to be spastic if you're a right-handed person. So your right hand can teach your left hand. And so the part of me/us that knows this helps the part that doesn't. So it's all kind of this satisfying, rich balancing, and you balance energy with emptiness, and the fabric is love.

Guri: I feel like this is probably just the beginning of many other conversations. (Laughs) It's a teaser. There's a lot of layers in between.

Stephanie: Stay tuned! Next week, Tuesday at nine o'clock. (laugh)

Guri: (Laughs) We might be back. But if anybody else has any questions.

Audience: You said your teacher was teaching you Vipassana. So, did you become a Vipassana teacher?

Stephanie: Yes. I became a mindfulness teacher. And so what happens in our country especially ... well, I think that Vipassana and mindfulness are the same things. But when someone says Vipassana these days, they're usually referring to Goenka retreats, which work with just the body. And what my teacher does is he works with all of your sensory experience. Who you are, what has happened to you in the past, what your problems are, what you want in life, what you like, what you don't like, what you're like - All that information comes in through your five senses - and your thought process. And that can all be broken down into these three primary colors of see, hear, feel. So we could like right now there's that plane coming in, and you could let that be a message on your skin. So, we work with at-risk youths with music. So, so we're using the word mindfulness. So I've learned like the word Vipassana means to see clearly, like the see-through, what the components are, and also to really get clarity. So I would say yes that I am a Vipassana teacher, but if I say that to most people in our country, they'll think that means Goenka's, which is the only body.

And so we're working with your emotions, your thoughts, the sounds, the birds, the same part of the brain hears these birds as hears that voice in your head. You could use that to your advantage. You know, if the voice starts repeating a lot, you can just slide out to sound and let these sounds serenade that channel. It helps to unplug from our habit of chewing on thoughts.

What I liked about his system was the practical application. I could work with some who have never meditated, who were crying out in agonizing pain. And in 25 minutes, I could help them feel like they're swinging in a hammock by using his system. So I could tell my journey, but that doesn't help anybody. But his techniques helped me help people. So I have such gratitude that I learned his stuff because it gives me these tools for helping people have less stress, be more focused and productive, and be satisfied to not suffer over their thoughts and feelings as much.

So I would say, yes, I'm a Vipassana teacher, but I'm careful with the word because people associate that with Goenka. So I use the word mindfulness if that makes sense. And I was always an acting teacher. I've always taught like body language, and I taught film directors. But I remember at one point I was teaching meditators and I was teaching actors one day and I had an audition, it was one of those days. And, one day, I was teaching someone to get on a show called Dragnet, and I was coaching them for an audition, and the next person, I'm helping them change their relationship to the voice in their head, so they don't suffer. And I thought if you're going to spend an hour doing something, that second hour is a heck of a lot more satisfying, you know.

So I just started kind of pulling away.

I wasn't interested in the people who wanted to be famous as much as I was in the people who were looking to change and grow and evolve and suffer less. So, that's what I like doing now. That's what's fun. You know I could do that all day long.