Therapist Ralph De La Rosa returns to the Mindrolling Podcast for a conversation about finding freedom through the wisdom and practices of both Eastern and Western psychology.
Ralph De La Rosa is the author of the #1 bestselling The Monkey Is the Messenger: Meditation & What Your Busy Mind Is Trying to Tell You and has been named amongst Sonima’s “Next Generation of Meditation Teachers.” Ralph is a state-licensed therapist in private practice in NYC and offers virtual life coaching services to clients all over the world. He specializes in trauma, anxiety, depression, and intimacy issues. Learn more at ralphdelarosa.com.
Putting Practice Into Play
How can a regular spiritual practice support us through the most difficult of times? Ralph shares how years of personal practice have really come into play during the past few months, helping deal with the suffering caused by the global pandemic as well as his personal challenges. Raghu and Ralph talk about using the wisdom of Buddhist and Western psychology as practices for helping us identify where it is that we are caught in our ego.
Liberation In Any Given Moment (9:30)
In the midst of anxiety, anger, and uncertainty, what can we do to liberate ourselves from our reactivity? Ralph reflects on the different ways that we can get stuck in our ego and how we can find freedom by turning towards our difficult emotions, instead of running away from them.
“It takes a tremendous amount of work to shut down our anger, to medicate our anxiety, or to pretend some terrible habit is not there. What we are doing in those moments is walling off parts of ourselves.” – Ralph De La Rosa
Explore more ways that we can move beyond our wounded narratives with Ralph on Ep.275 of the Mindrolling Podcast
Finding Compassion for Ourselves (27:00)
Raghu and Ralph talk about the different approaches to compassion in the dual and non-dual spiritual traditions. They look at how we might find compassion for our reactive emotions by understanding the roots of our reactivity.
“The way that we relate to ourselves is probably the most important aspect of our work in this life.” – Raghu Markus
Coming Home (43:30)
What role does a regular spiritual practice play in actualizing concepts like compassion? Ralph offers his perspective on how meditative practice offers us the experience of coming home – coming home to the body, the heart, and our deeper nature.
“Whatever it is, japa or meditation, having that daily spiritual practice begins to be a home base. No matter what is going on in our lives you can return to it, over and over again. There will always be this constant in our lives of having space for ourselves where we can come home.”- Ralph De La Rosa
