Ko Ru: A Meditation Practice for a Busy Life Ep 128 | Guest: Bob Martin

 In the second part of Julia Marie's conversation with Bob Martin on the Evolving Humans podcast, Martin discusses his spiritual journey and how he became a Koru meditation teacher.

He credits his wife for inspiring his book, which explores the Dao from a biblical perspective. Despite their differing beliefs, Martin and his wife found common ground in their shared values and commitment to service.

Martin also discusses the benefits of meditation, both on a secular and spiritual level, and the importance of having a coach or mentor in the practice.

He offers a free 32-page ebook as a primer for those interested in starting a meditation practice.

Link to Julia Marie's Book

RESOURCES:

Many thanks to Daddy_s_Music Piano Moment 9835 from Pixabay
Bob Martin's Author Website
Bob Martin's Meditation Website

Thank you for listening to Evolving Humans!

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https://tinyurl.com/Book-Signals-from-My-Soul

Transcript

This transcript was generated by ai and therefore may contain errors.
Julia Marie (00:00):
This is part two of my conversation with Bob Martin. After his spiritual wake up call service to others became the centerpiece of his life. You'll hear how he became a Koru meditation teacher and why he wrote his book about the Dao from a biblical perspective. Welcome to Evolving Humans, the podcast for Awakening Souls. I'm your host, Julia Marie. Settle in and get ready for another spirited conversation.
You ended up combining a look at the Tao through the eyes of the Bible, if I understand that correctly. So can you share a little bit about
Bob Martin (01:02):
That? Well, I really have to give the credit to my second wife, my current wife for the book. So when we  met, we worked together for several years and we were just great working partners. I opened up a sub shop here in this little town, which is a college town, and there was no sub shop. And I figured, how can that be? How can you have a college without a subs shop? And so we worked there together for several
years and eventually got married. Now, the crazy part about it is if I were to identify as something at that point, I would say I was a Dao Buddhist because when you got to North Carolina, there's not a lot of Daoist here. And there are Buddhist Buddhists though. So I was attending Buddhist temples and that's where I got into meditation. But she is a Southern Baptist Bible literalist. She believes that the Bible is
iner, that Noah's Ark and the Guard of Eden and all of those historical biblical tales are true.
(02:22):
And so you might say, well, how does that come that I would marry her? But she's a saint. She's one of those really rare people that will see someone in need, and there's not even a question in her mind about whether to move in and make a difference. I mean, it's just, to her, it makes sense. It's not an act of grace or an act of giving. It's just, well, of course, why wouldn't I? And if anybody thanks her for it, she's a little
bit like, why would you thank me for doing what was called for? And she's just a wonderful, wonderful human being. And so we met on those values, but we could not talk about our cosmologies. And I remember one time I was about to sit down and watch the Sunday news shows, and she was going to head off to her Southern Baptist church, and she had these sad eyes.
(03:34):
I said, honey, what's wrong? And she goes, well, I love you so much, but I really hate it that you're not going to go to heaven with me. I hadn't been saved. And I said, well, I hated that you're not going to be reincarnated with me. And she slapped me and went off to church, but I started thinking, how can I bring together what I know? And so she was telling me something about what a preacher said, and immediately
it connected with me. Well, that's like chapter 34 of the data Jing, the Data Jing is the seminal book of Taoism. It's 81 1 page chapters. And I said, well, that reminds me of what Lasu said. So that got my curiosity up and I started looking at the Dao de Jing. And especially if you look at the first chapter, immediately it hits you. It says There's the Dao.
(04:34):
And before the Dao, there was nothing. And the Dao created everything so well, that's the creation story. And so I started taking pieces of the Dao to Jing and couplets and then thank you to Google and thank you to those things. What does the Bible say about this? And what does the Bible say about that? And I started getting into the Bible. And once you get away from some of the dogma that has grown up in organized religion and in the institutions, and you get away from some of the traditions and dogma and
those things, and you just look at the truths and the teachings that are in the Bible, it's a magnificent book I discovered, and I came to love it as well. So I started taking the couplets and then looking for a way to find a biblical story or a citation that fit that.
(05:33):
And then the only other task was to try to craft the words into the same cadence and style as the Dao de Jing, but using biblical language and Christian references. And as I did this and read it to her, she was amazed and we would have these wonderful discussions, and she became more interested in the dao. I
became more interested in the Bible. And so eventually we found a really progressive church, United Church of Christ, a very progressive college town, church here that's big enough to accept both of us. And I can continue to call it myself, a Taoist Buddhist Christian, and she can continue to call herself a Bible literalist. And the church accepts both of us, and we're very happy finding a spiritual home there.
Julia Marie (06:28):
One thing I've learned over the decades, truth is truth, and those truth principles are embodied in all the major religions of the world. I feel like whatever that infinite intelligence is, it only matters that somehow we learned to embody that truth in our lives. You actually went to school and did mindfulness training, didn't you?
Bob Martin (06:56):
I went through classical Tibetan meditation training, which is a two year process. So I became classically trained as a meditation teacher. Then it meditation's just a hard conversation in the west. People want it but are not willing to work for it in effect. Well, oh, that's what I need. I need to meditate. I need to de- stress. I get all these thoughts that run through my head. I need to do something about it. Well, would you
be willing to give it 15 minutes a day? I don't know. Would you be willing to get up 15 minutes earlier? I don't know. So it's, it's a hard conversation.
(07:53):
When I retired from doing law regularly as my day job, I still do some volunteer work. Every Wednesday I go to court and I represent people in the Abuse dependency court where the Department of Social Services has to take custody of children because their parents are suffering from mental illness or addiction. And like my job there is to work with those parents and try to get them back into shape so they could safely take their kids back. So I do that on Wednesdays. But when I retired, basically from a close
by practice, Elon University hired me to teach business law, and they have a beautiful spiritual center there called Newman Lumen, and it's just such a gorgeous place. So I would spend a lot of my time over there. And when folks found out I did meditation, they said, oh, oh, you must do kru.
(08:54):
And said, they told me about this method of meditation that was developed at Duke University that's designed for westerners. It was developed particularly for 20 somethings, but it is a great way of presenting it. Now I can say to someone, yeah, I can teach you meditation. Would you be willing to give me one hour a week for five weeks and practice 10 minutes a day? If you can do that, I can teach you
meditation. And people will say, oh, they understand it's a finite course. It has a beginning, it has an end. They know what the time commitment is and the like. Duke developed this great infrastructure that when somebody does their 10 minutes of practice, they log it into their app and then that log comes to my dashboard and every morning I get their log and I can coach them on the log every single day for five
weeks. And that makes it way different from any other kind of teaching that you can do. So I went and got certified as a coru teacher, and now I have a nice thriving meditation practice because this is something that was just really well designed
Julia Marie (10:20):
Well, and there's a feedback loop. And I feel like that component is probably what does the job.
Bob Martin (10:27):
This transcript was exported on Jun 12, 2024 - view latest version here.
Oh, yeah. Because let's say the log might say, well, I tried to do my 10 minutes, but I couldn't do it. And I failed at it because the dog was barking and it distracted me and I got really angry. And by the time I remembered to listen to the guidance, it was over. So that's the kind of log I might get in the first week.
And I get to say, well, wait a minute. I don't think you failed. I think you did a really good job. First of all, you noticed the dog and now you've noticed that you've noticed it and you've never noticed that you noticed things before and you noticed that you got angry and you noticed that the time went by and how it distracted you. I mean, that's all really good information for understanding yourself better. And that's the
kind of coaching that I can give daily. And over five weeks, it makes a huge difference.
Julia Marie (11:15):
How can that kind of a practice make a difference any person's life?
Bob Martin (11:20):
Well, so there's a couple of different levels that I might answer that on. There's a secular level, kind of the physical, a sense of feeling more organized with your thoughts, a sense of feeling less stressed out about them, a little bit more in control and enhancement of focus, things like that. And then there's a spiritual level, which if my particular student is inclined that way, I think is much deeper where I consider it getting back in touch with parts of ourself that we have been partitioned off in a way, our conditioning, let
me put it this way. Most of us are living the life that the world has given us. And meditation helps you have a say in the matter of a life that you choose to live. And the way that that's done is that what meditation a lot of people think meditation is about quieting the mind and emptying the mind, and that leads, and it's not, it's about watching your thoughts and learning not to resist because what you resist
persists, but to learn to be with things.
(12:55):
And when you can learn to be with your thoughts more, you can learn to be with other things in life more.
But where we look and watch our thoughts from, we often call the observer. You think about what we say in language, we say, I had a thought. Okay, so who had the thought? Who is the I that had the thought?
Now we say, I had a thought, but we don't really believe that we're not our thoughts. But when we meditate, we actually sit back and we kind of watch our thoughts like trains stopping in a station and thenmoving on. And we start to see this flow of thoughts. And then we start to pick out patterns. And this place that we're watching them from, we often call the observer scientists, call it metacognition, but if we
want and are allowed to be a little bit spiritual about it, I call it our soul. And when we get more connected to the observer, to our soul, we start to really begin to understand the inherent goodness that lays within us. And that becomes transformative. And I've seen that happen. I see it happen again and again. So I am blessed.
Julia Marie (14:28):
What are some of the common challenges or misconceptions about a practice like this?
Bob Martin (14:38):
So that you have to sit in a cross legged, full lotus position. And until your knees hurt that you have to quiet your, that you have to hush it, that those, I think the restlessness, there's a sense of discipline, picking the right time and being consistent. Even when I started learning meditation there were fits and starts for a good long time before I got a coach, once I got a coach and there was somebody to be
accountable to in the early years, that made a huge difference. But life tends to get in the way. And it's just like any other practice going to the gym or jogging. You got to get up and you got to do it, and you got to do it when you don't feel like doing it. And it's funny when you don't feel like doing it and you do it, those are the most rewarding times.
(15:45):
It's funny how that is, but it's only I now sit for about 30 minutes a day, but five or 10 minutes a day is enough to begin. So those are, I think, the biggest resistance in just making, deciding that you want to do it. That's why I like Kru so much, because it's not going to make you a master meditator, but it will, at the end of the course, you'll know what meditation is. You'll have experienced it, and it might not be right for
you. Maybe jogging is the right thing, or writing is the right thing for you, but you'll know and be able to make an intelligent choice as to whether it's right for you.
Julia Marie (16:33):
Well, and it sounds to me like what you're saying is, and I always hark back to disciples and discipline somehow having a synchronistic meaning,
Bob Martin (16:47):
Oh, I love that. Yeah, I love that.
Julia Marie (16:49):
And so what you're basically saying is I don't have to meditate if that doesn't work for me, but I need to find some kind of consistent practice that allows my mind to drop its limiting beliefs and open up to the possibility of something greater than my human self.
Bob Martin (17:10):
Yes, ma'am.
Julia Marie (17:12):
If I was interested in starting a practice like this, what would your advice be to me?
Bob Martin (17:20):
Well, the first thing I would say is I put together a little 32 page flip book ebook, and it has in it, it's a primer and it has the basic instructions and a little bit about the different kinds of meditation and some tips on delving into and some recommendations for books and recommendations for apps. And there's a
number of good things out there to do. But I would say this, there's really nothing like a coach. There's nothing like having somebody that you can be a bit accountable to. And also, there are so many misconceptions and different ideas that have built up in our conditioning to have somebody who can help you identify what's conditioning and what's a helpful thought. And it is very hard for us to determine that
for ourselves because we have this tendency, whenever I have a thought, it becomes my truth as my thought, my truth. So that's the most helpful. But I'd be happy to share that. That's free. I'd be happy to share that. If someone would just like to send me an email, I'll send them a copy of that. And there's a lot
of good ways to get going in that little 32 page book and also a lot of memes and little funny cartoons and stuff like that to entertain you.
Julia Marie (18:54):
What's one thing the listeners can take away from this conversation today when it comes to mindfulness or any other spiritual practice for that matter?
Bob Martin (19:06):
It's a little funny, but if you've never really enjoyed a shower, try going in and really getting into a shower, I would say go enjoy a shower, feel the water, feel the warmth of it. Feel the feel of soap. Feel what it feels like to be squeaky clean and all of the smells and the sensations that you have of taking a
wonderful shower. And then think about whether or not you could live life in that kind of joy.
Julia Marie (19:42):
Well, that's a good one. I'm going to have to go take another shower. Now, before we tell the people how they can find you, I have five questions I like to ask all my guests.
Bob Martin (19:56):
Yes, ma'am.
Julia Marie (19:57):
So let's start with three words to describe yourself.
Bob Martin (20:02):
Happy, kind, creative.
Julia Marie (20:08):
How about three words to describe your spiritual journey?
Bob Martin (20:12):
Different circuitous, if I can use that one. And rewarding
Julia Marie (20:23):
What has been your greatest spiritual lesson.
Bob Martin (20:28):
You never know. You never know what's going on with the other one. You never know so often. You just
never know. And you have to have faith.
Julia Marie (20:44):
What's your concept of higher wisdom or God?
Bob Martin (20:49):
There is a flow of energy in the universe and it's good. And beyond that, it's above my pay grade.
Julia Marie (21:01):
What's your final message that you might have for the Evolving Humans? Community
Bob Martin (21:06):
Comes from a country Western song. Always be humble and kind.
Julia Marie (21:13):
Where can the people find you?
Bob Martin (21:18):
Well, they can find me at the website A Wise and happy life.com, and they can go to a wise and happy life and send me a contact link if they're interested in the book. It would be I am the Way book.com, and there's also contact links there.
Julia Marie (21:41):
I want to express my appreciation for your wisdom. I've got some things I can ponder as I go about my day to day. I want to thank you for being here.
Bob Martin (21:54):
Oh, this was absolutely a pleasure. And I have to say I love your voice.
Julia Marie (22:00):
Thank you.
Bob Martin (22:02):
It is, I think it is the most calming, sweetest thing that I've heard today.
Julia Marie (22:11):
Well, that's high compliment, and I will accept that because that's what I'm learning to do. Just accept it
with grace. Thank you. Well, that's our time for today. I'm grateful to each and every one of you for continuing to support this podcast with your subscriptions and shares. If you enjoy this podcast, please share the link with someone in your circle who would also benefit. You can now leave a question or comment by clicking on the link at the top of the show notes page. And I can't wait to hear what you have
to say. And now here's a quote for you to ponder as you go about your day. The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size. Albert Einstein.