Clarity, Fatherhood, and Putting Down the Buffer with Cory Muscara
Cory Muscara left an economics track and a Wall Street internship at 21 after a single meeting made him "feel his soul leave his body." He was ordained as a monk, spent six months in silence in Burma and only years later realized his prized meditation practice had become a sophisticated way to avoid himself. In this episode, Cory and Cecily Mak go deep on the First of the Eight Awarenesses — Clarity: my life is better clear. They explore the surprising truth that a "clear-looking" habit like meditation can be its own dimmer. They talk about spiritual bypassing, the difference between observing an emotion and being in "full contact" with it, the road to a fulfilling life partnership, and fatherhood as a devotional stripping-away. It's an honest look at how clarity really works: as the empowered choice to stop numbing and finally hear your own intuition again.
Please remember to rate, subscribe, review, and share the Undimmed podcast to help this content reach more humans in need of support or inspiration. You can also follow Cecily's @undimmedjourney on Instagram, subscribe to her Substack, or learn more via her website.
Credits:
Host: Cecily Mak
Producer: Joanne Elgart Jennings
Composer & Sound Alchemist: Laura Inserra
Editor: Kai Heartlife
Social Media & Marketing: Megan Belden
Chapters: Undimmed S2 E2 with Cory Muscara
0:27 Welcome to Undimmed and the first awareness, Clarity
3:12 Where Cory is now: cracked open by fatherhood
6:46 From a Wall Street internship to six months of silence in Burma
11:36 Why the realization came so early: grace, pain and supportive parents
14:56 Meditation as a new identity, and what he was avoiding
16:37 When meditation becomes a dimmer
18:42 The “perch of awareness” vs. feeling emotions fully
23:50 How clarity came through his relationship
27:36 First steps: getting closer to yourself, IFS and the guard dog
31:36 Meeting your protective parts: “I see you”
33:11 Cecily’s wedding-morning parts work with Dick Schwartz
36:48 Is awareness most of the work?
39:19 Giving yourself permission to play out patterns
41:03 How Cory self-soothes today: pulling away vs. reaching out
43:05 Is alone time a dimmer?
46:20 Why the messy conversations make a relationship stronger
47:58 What’s alive now: work, fatherhood and the precious years
51:44 Where to find Cory
52:57 Outro
Cory Muscara 0:00
When I watch my son touch sadness right now, it's from his toes all the way up to his head. And there's no there's no regulation of it. It's beautiful to watch him cry because it's just this full body expression that I look at and I'm taking notes. Just like this is what it looks like to be in an emotion before you learned whether it was safe to be in an emotion.
Cecily Mak 0:27
That kind of unmanaged presence is something Corey Muskara sought many years ago as a Buddhist monk, spending six months in near total silence, yet it still didn't bring him full clarity. It was fatherhood that allowed Corey to fully understand what it's like to experience a feeling with nothing in the way. Hello and welcome to Undimmed, a podcast about living with presence. I'm Cecily Mack. For our new season, we're exploring the eight awarenesses. If you're new to Undimmed, these awarenesses are a set of principles that we use in seeking freedom from unwanted habits. I call them dimmers because they can be a variety of things. Mine was alcohol, but dimmers can be anything we use to escape, self-soothe, or tune out, such as social media, people-pleasing, overfunctioning, gambling, or unhealthy habits around food, sex, or work. When we're fully clear and present, we're confronted with what we previously tried to escape from. This is also a primary reason to pause. It's that ability, that willingness, that capacity, that desire to feel fully, to see clearly, to be in authenticity that rewards us for shedding our dimmers. Today we're going to discuss the first awareness, clarity. My life is better clear. And I'm overjoyed to explore this topic and so much more with Corey Muscara. Corey taught mindful leadership at Columbia. He teaches positive psychology at Penn. And for the last decade, he's brought his beautiful work to companies around the world. His meditations have been heard more than 25 million times in over 150 countries. And in today's episode, Corey and I get to talk about what clarity actually feels like.
Cory Muscara 2:45
Not only clarity of just I feel sharper, but clarity of I can actually hear my own intuition again. I can hear what I actually want, not just the buzz of anxiety.
Cecily Mak 2:55
We explore how to meet the parts of ourselves that we want to dim with curiosity, not judgment.
Cory Muscara 3:02
If you can just take a moment to soften that strong urge and go, I see you. And even if you choose to do this thing, like I'll still be with you.
Cecily Mak 3:12
We talk about spiritual identity, relationships, parenthood, the messy work of becoming honest with ourselves, and so much more. So, Corey, it's so good to see you. Thank you so much for joining us for this undimmed podcast experience. So let's start with just the simple. Where are you in your life and what do you do in the world today?
Cory Muscara 3:40
Yeah. So in my life right now, I I feel like I am letting myself be cracked open by fatherhood and allowing life to be reorganized around that. And uh and also my relationship with my wife and what it means for us to be really sturdy and solid and connected, um, as we're like completely in devotion to this being. And uh there's a lot of things that I used to have dialed in, like routine or practice, or um, a lot of ideas about how I wanted my day to unfold that have really just all been thrown out the window. And so there for both of us, my wife and I, we are really just in constant conversation with what is life bringing us right now? What is it asking of us? What is our son asking of us? And continuing to release all the different ideas we have about how things should be unfolding, even how we want them to be unfolding, you know, the amount of dinners that we've had to let go of, because we've, you know, we put him in the car seat, and it's just like, oh, he's not having this. And like, what would a decision look like if it were made in terms of what is best uh for him right now?
Cory Muscara 5:07
Yeah.
Um, and so that that is a big devotional practice, and that's kind of where most of my energy and orientation is going to right now, the the beautiful uh layered strip down of that process.
Cecily Mak 5:23
So beautiful. Thank you for starting with that truth. I think many of us look to sources of wisdom and guidance and support among people who seem like they have everything together, and they do have that steadiness of practice or routines that keep them going and kind of put them in this position of being a source of inspiration or influence. And I'm perpetually fascinated by the layers beneath that and what's actually going on and the things about real life that uh put those, you know, sometimes noble or steady ways of living to the real test. And to do it with a small child is kind of for the sake of love. Like what better service could we uh be of in the world? It doesn't mean it's easy, but um, I really love you opening with that because the people who listen to this podcast and are part of this community are trying to reconcile how to live a real hands-on life with all of its complications and complexities, but then also maintain a baseline level of well-being and healthfulness and self-awareness. And we're not in a monastery, unfortunately. You were, you started this journey in the monastery.
Cory Muscara 6:40
I know. Unfortunately, it gave me a distorted lens of what uh spirituality should look like.
Cecily Mak 6:46
Let's touch on that for a minute because because the people who are familiar with your work, uh, you know, we know that when you're in your early 20s, you spent six months in silence in Burma with a super intense meditation practice. So can you give us a little bit of how did you get there and what was the most significant transformation you noticed upon your departure?
Cory Muscara 7:12
Well, the the timeline between when I got interested in this work to when I took robes was maybe about a year and a half. I I was studying economics in college. I had an internship lined up on Wall Street my junior year, and we uh took this trip to the New York Socks Exchange to meet with a hedge fund manager that everyone said, you know, this is this is really where you want to get. This is like what the pinnacle looks like. And um, everyone was excited, and you know, we get there, whatever floor it was high up, and a guy comes in and he gave a two-hour talk, and I just felt my soul leave my body. But for whatever reason, that that experience really troubled me into a deeper conversation with my soul, and it was clear that uh, you know, I don't know exactly what I want with my life, but I I know I don't want to end up like that. You know, I was 21, so that was really the beginning of just starting to break down some of uh maybe long-standing associations with a certain idea of success and uh that equaling happiness. And so that that really brought me into the question oh, if if that's not what it what it is that I want, then what is it that I want? I really sat with that question before I even knew what meditation was. I was uh meditating on it, and everything kept reducing to some form of uh being happy. And I I was taking every thread in my life that I was interested in. Um at the time I was really into golf. It's like, well, if you became a pro-golfer, what would that give you? Well, people would love you, and what would that give you? You're doing what you love every day. It's like, well, then you would be happy. You want to be in a relationship and get married. Well, what would that do? I'll feel more connected and I'll be happy. I want to have kids, what will that do? More meaning in my life. That'll make me happy. So everything when I really distilled it down was coming to that essence. And, you know, I think a lot of people who have gotten into the world of personal growth, especially if you've uh gotten into a meditation practice, these might be relatively simple inquiries. But for me at the time, it was the first time I was really looking at what was the heart uh motivating um all of the different things that I I thought I cared about in my life. And I was just seeing this very one consistent thread. And to me, it was it was just this light bulb moment. It's like, if that's what it's all about, I should really, like, really figure that out. Because I have all these friends and peers and people who are older than me who are doing the things that I think I want that will lead to happiness. And they're not happy. Well, they're partially happy. Um, I knew kids, people with kids who were very miserable. I knew people who were married, who wanted out of their marriages. I and and so it was just it was kind of breaking down my ideas of the simplicity of once you have that, then everything will come together. And I was lucky to have that crisis at that age because uh yeah, I I hadn't, you know, you know what it's like to build a life on top of some of these things. And then you realize, oh yeah, that decision I made when I was 20 or 25 or 30 was coming from a people-pleasing pattern or was coming from fear of letting down my parents. And then yeah, you can end up in the relationship or the job that wasn't quite it. And then it's a beautiful journey to untangle from that and be like, okay, now let's reconnect from here.
Cecily Mak 10:54
Um can I interrupt you for a second?
Cory Muscara 10:57
Yeah.
Cecily Mak 10:57
So you're super young and early in your life journey to have the type of realization that most people have around midlife. And and so you have this advantage of this perspective and direction in your practice and in your work that many people have to spend 30 years doing something else to find. And I'm curious, what do you think it was? Was it was it that moment in the hedge fund office when you realized, or was there something else stirring that helped you recognize something that you know the hundred guys who were standing in the same spot doing the exact same thing didn't feel or notice?
Cory Muscara 11:36
Yeah. Some of it wasn't an act of grace uh to be receptive, right? The the convergence of some pain, a bit of an existential crisis. I was going through a breakup at the time, um, and and simultaneously getting interested in meditation. And so for all of that to come together and then to simultaneously be inspired to take it deeper, I don't know how to make sense of all of that. I I will say that one of the gifts my parents gave me ever since I was young was an encouragement to uh follow what was most alive in me. And I I didn't feel a strong pressure from them to follow a particular path. They sat down with me and my siblings often to understand what we were interested in and to show us different ways that that could be pursued. So there was, we could call it like a baseline level of um a sense of possibility. And, you know, you take, I was going into business, gonna work on Wall Street, and then I come home and I tell my parents, like, hey, I know I'm like three-quarters of the way done with my college career and I was gonna get this job, but now I think I want to study happiness. Like, usually that is going to be met with like, great, like good for you, but go get a job first. And like you can keep that as a hobby. And again, just another variable. I was fortunate enough that my father was in medicine and he was getting disillusioned with the the way that some of healthcare was going. And he was doing self-study and mindfulness and health coaching and behavior change to help his patients. My mom was a social worker. So they they showed me that there was a path for this. And I I like to name that for people because a lot of I I've heard this. I started teaching when I was 22, 23, and everyone always said, I wish I learned this when I was young. There, there's a karma and a dharmic path to all of this that's really out of our hands and why it came together for me at that age. I had plenty of stuff that is now like having not lived. Um, well, we can talk about sometimes what happens when you go too deep into meditation very early, and it can lead to a lot of different bypassing or the identity of being someone who's spiritual, that that I had to unravel as well.
Cecily Mak 14:00
Also, what I'm hearing, which is really beautiful, which is part of what I think takes so many of us to get to because we don't get it from our families, is that you you could hear yourself. You were tuned into your own compass, aware of maybe others' perspectives and opinions, but you were not only tuned into yourself, but you were in an environment and in a family that encouraged you to listen to it, not to override it. And it sounds like your particular environment very much thanks to your family and your own dharmic path, whatever it might have been, um, that you kind of take advantage of that moment and probably save yourself many years of suffering along the way, as much as that may have deepened your experience. So you have this awareness, you know that you want to go into a different path. It's not going to be the hedge fund on Wall Street. How did you get from there then get us to the monastery?
Cory Muscara 14:56
Yeah. Well then the subsequent year, you could say, was uh meditation and mindfulness becoming like another cool, interesting identity, the identity of being the meditator that I would say really energized my practice for the for the first year. When I looked at um what is getting me on the cushion for 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day each day, it's it's just the idea of like this is what someone who meditates is supposed to do. And I want to be someone that people look at who was previously the fraternity guy that went into business and is now like the spiritual guy into meditation.
Cecily Mak 15:35
Was there something you were trying to not feel while this is all unfolding?
Cory Muscara 15:40
Oh, yeah. Well, that's interesting. I haven't looked at it through the lens, through asked that question to my 21-year-old, 22-year-old self. But I had a lot of fear, I had social anxiety. Um, I there was a fear of intimacy and connection with people that didn't really get unearthed until later on. There was a whole journey with my wife around um avoidance of the intimacy of commitment that led us on a five-year journey of trying to figure out our relationship. Uh, and so this was comfort and meditation. And people often, you know, they they hear about going off into silence, or anyone who's done like a 10-day silent retreat, everyone, the thing everyone says is like, wow, what's it like? Like, how did you do that? How'd you be in silence for so long?
Cecily Mak 16:31
Such discipline, right?
Cory Muscara 16:32
I know. It's like it's my preference. I wish I could have done a few years.
Cecily Mak 16:37
I'm gonna just share a little bit. Um, you're familiar with the work of Undimmed. And it, you know, one of the great joys of publishing this book and doing this podcast is talking with people and learning about the ways that we avoid what's difficult in kind of less than obvious manners. So I've spoken and written a lot myself about how alcohol was my dimmer. I used alcohol to avoid my intuition and my true self for many, many years. I did do the law school corporate career, you know, the handmade Christmas cards, the happy smiling family, the whole thing, and had to have my own crisis to have a reset of my own. And I eventually end up referring to that alcohol use as my own dimming behavior, a way for me to avoid the discomfort. And in bringing this work to the world and learning from people who are touched by it, I've learned about so many wonderful, fascinating ways that people dim themselves, dim their inner voice, dim their inner light. And they're obvious ones, but one that really troubles people and and including myself, which is one reason why I really was excited to have you here, is bringing up meditation as a way to avoid discomfort. It it sounds like it would be the opposite. And you're right, people hear, oh, you went on this extended retreat. How noble and disciplined of you. You must be so in touch with yourself. You must be so grounded and self-aware and present. But there are a number of us, and it sounds like you included, who have used meditation, and no fault to us, this is just humanity at its best, right? To actually soften some of that uh discomfort. And so it's it's a bit awkward, but it can be in the same category as a glass of Chardonnay used the same way. So tell us about that. What like were you conscious of this at any point, or was it after you shifted your practice? Was Burma part of this?
Cory Muscara 18:42
I wasn't conscious of it. I I thought I was practicing as diligently and intelligently as I could uh while I I was studying under this great teacher, Saidra Upandita. He was a Vipassana teacher. And um, you know, in those practices, you're you're really exploring the nature of awakening. And in that context, like awakening is being connected to the place in you that is aware of your experience, but not consumed by the constituent elements of that experience. So you you can sometimes get this uh, I wouldn't even call it forced transcendence, but you you just get, for me, you could get so good at sitting on the perch of awareness of your experience that you you can't even see that that perch that you're sitting on is actually creating a buffer between you and the experience. There's there's safety in uh naming and being aware of, oh, this is anger right now. And you take a breath and you regulate and you watch it. Even as I'm talking about it, people are hearing that, I'm sure, and being like, what's wrong with that? Like, that sounds good. Take a breath, watch it, be with the anger. There is a certain intimacy to it, but I found that it it wasn't full contact. When I watch my son touch sadness right now, it's from his toes all the way up to his head. And there's no there's no regulation of it. It moves through. I it's beautiful to watch him cry because it's just this full-body expression that I look at and I'm taking notes, just like this is this is what it looks like to be in an emotion before you learned whether it was safe to be in an emotion. And so the meditation was for me, and I know for many others, just a safe way to be in relationship to your experience that actually makes you feel like you're making, like you're getting closer to it, you're doing the work, and can also give you a sense of moral superiority if you're into that, which is like I'm someone who does the work and all of you need to do your work like me. And it really wasn't until partnership that I saw how much I was overriding with myself and being with my wife, who had full access to her emotional range and me thinking that she was unspiritual because what a blessing. I know. I mean, just what a trip it is. Uh it's embarrassing. It doesn't it it was embarrassing initially to realize to see just how much uh work I had to do around this. Now I can look at it and laugh, and I'm so grateful for how much more has been integrated. But yeah, a lot of my vipassana training was trying to penetrate an emotion. You know, when you develop that deep level of concentration and focus, you can turn it toward any facet of your experience, any any physical pain in the body. And it kind of just disintegrates. And you see the nature of impermanence. You could do that with an emotion as well. And there's profunti. To being able to do that and to have that clear wisdom because it does allow the nervous system to soften in relationship to the flow of your experience and to the arising and passing of thoughts, emotions, sensations. Like seeing the direct nature of impermanence is really important. But my experience is that to heal and release and to integrate emotions and pain that have been stuck, you almost have to allow yourself to go in them in the same raw, wild way that they wanted to be felt at the time. Which, and and my experience is like when I've actually made contact with pain or loneliness or fear, I I cry and it hurts, and my body wants to curl up. But then my breathing, I my breathing gets shallow, and then I feel the emotion. And then on the other side of that, it's like this new breath is coming in. When I did that on a meditation cushion, it all my body looked quite stiff. Um, there was softness. I I don't want to say that it was all off. Um, and that's what was confusing and troubling and uh difficult to see for so long is that there was a lot of wisdom being developed and so much progress and things that I was grateful for.
Cory Muscara 23:30
Yeah.
But when it when it came to things in partnership and we would be having difficult emotional conversations, and I would be judging my girlfriend at the time for her emotional reaction. And I was kind of sitting in this pseudo-equanimity, it was just like, no, dude, you're you're afraid of your own anger and you're projecting it on her.
Cecily Mak 23:50
So, one of the foundations of of you know committing to the path that you're on, and most certainly the work that I invite and offer around awareness is in deepening our presence for whatever it is we prioritize in our lives is this notion uh of agency and that that we need to actually choose clarity first. And this is a word that I know you know, being clear or clarity you've used very thoughtfully in your own practice and your own offerings and writings. And it's what I'm hearing in your description is that there was a sort of an evolution of what being clear or experiencing clarity felt like to you. When did you have that I am now clear enough where I know this is the path that I want to pursue, even if it's not the one I thought was for me. When did that rub happen? And it sounds like it was around your relationship, but unpack that a little bit for us.
Cory Muscara 24:54
I I would say there have been many, many moments in my life where there have been there a clarity came through that let's just say uh sparked a path in a particular direction, especially preceded by friction and tension.
Cecily Mak 25:11
I'm just curious, kind of what was your what was your clarity, foundational layer in making some of these changes that you made even, you know, obviously post your monastic chapter? It sounds like there was even deeper, maybe more impactful, greater learning in just day-to-day life of connection and in relationship.
Cory Muscara 25:28
I think there were there were a lot of moments in relationship where I we would have difficult conversations and we would get to an underlying fear and something that uh maybe I was afraid to say or to reveal about myself or to say, like, I don't, I don't know what to do in our relationship. I don't know about the next step. I love you so much. And when I think about getting down on one knee, like I'm terrified, and there's this tension in my chest. There were a lot of things that I like one of my ways of dimming was feeling like I needed to manage everything myself. That connection wasn't, it wasn't safe to bring this in connection. And if I did, I would lose love, or they would see the real me and not like me. A lot of stuff related to like middle school relationships, um, early social dynamics. And and so a lot of this got revealed, and then layer upon layer of bringing these these things that I feared into connection and seeing them beheld, and that like not only did I survive it, but it deepened connection um with my wife, Brianna. Uh, and it felt good and it felt safe. And it actually allowed me to be in a less defended state, and the subsequent experience of that was more clarity. Not only clarity of just I feel sharper, but clarity of I can actually hear my own intuition again. I can hear what I actually want, not just the buzz of anxiety that is trying to protect me. And so that for me, there were a lot of layers of that. That is still one that I continue to learn. It is a deep one for me, this self-preservation and protection, and um, I need to have it all together. Uh a lot of progress has been made on that.
Cecily Mak 27:36
But beautiful, yeah. So many people who are kind of in this journey of there's an awareness that there's a better way to be, but it looks really scary, and it it means touching vulnerable places in us that have been protected for a very long time. What uh what suggestions might you have for practices or I don't know, exercises, shifts in awareness? What are things that you can offer to others around how to kind of even if it's just baby steps, move towards that more open or receptive or curious uh state?
Cory Muscara 28:20
Yeah. The the first thing would be actually instead of trying to open this way, like expand out, actually get closer to yourself and and burrow, nestle in. So the the big fear, as you kind of alluded to and has been my experience as well, is that if I do allow myself to be seen, then I'm going to be rejected and there's going to be isolation. It it all reduces to some form of being ostracized, kicked out, not loved, not liked. And the reality is we can never control what that looks like externally. You know, a different partnership, as I was sharing before, if I were to have revealed certain things in myself, they might not have been uh accepted by the other person. And it's possible that that could have caused me to double down and be like, see, I knew this wouldn't work. And that's where having a really deep self-connection with yourself comes in that holds you, saying, like, I don't know what the next step is going to look like, but I know that wherever it is, I will be right here with you. And you are saying that to yourself. Uh, and this is why I think, you know, internal family systems, Dick Schwartz's work on IFS is just really powerful because it gives you a way to orient to those, like the, the places in us, the parts of us that dim, they have a positive intention. This just really loving positive intention that they're trying to protect us from having to feel something uncomfortable. And so when you see this pattern in yourself, whatever it is that you're trying to not do, the impulse is to push it away, to run away, to force ourselves into the state that we want to be in. But what that tends to do is cause that protective part to double down even more because you're not in conversation with it. And that part loves you. So it just sees someone up top scrambling around, they're not paying attention. If they do that, we're really gonna get hurt. So I got to stay extra barricaded to protect Corey. Right. And so, and the imagery I also like to use for that is imagining a guard dog at the front door and someone comes to the door, you're in the back room, you're trying to read your book or do your personal development, listening to Tony Robbins, and you just you hear the dog at the door barking, and you're just like, stop, stop already. Why can't you just be quiet? And the dog is trying to tell you something, something that's here. I don't know what it is, but it's scary. And so it barks louder, and then you come out, you're really angry. But eventually, like what is actually required is for you to go to the dog, talk to the dog, and say, Hey, look, it's just the postman. Like, it's okay. We know this person, it's safe. And that's what allows them to calm. So you we want to be creating that inner relationship with that inner guard dog. And that inner guard dog might be the part of us that reaches for a glass of wine, that wants to people please, that feels like we can't say no to going out on a Friday night because we'll disappoint everyone and they'll stop talking to us. Right? That stuff like can get really big. Like what this points to is really deep stuff.
Cory Muscara 31:36
Yeah, like, I'm not gonna have any friends. I'm never gonna find someone who loves me. I'm gonna be found out. But most of it is very young. Um, and and there's a delusion to it. The delusion being like the the fear is not nearly as true or as catastrophic as we think it is. It's like a three-year-old fear that had no other resources, but to like, yeah, if if I don't please mom and dad, if I'm not who they want me to be, then like I'm not gonna get love. And that just communicates death. Yeah, uh, whether we're cognitively aware of that or not. So someone who is is trying to let go of something, the first thing I would say is tune into the part of you that wants to do it and say something like, Oh, sweetheart, like I know, I know it's scary to imagine not having that right now. If you can just take a moment to soften in that way, to meet the protector wherever you feel it in your body, that strong urge and go, I see you. And I'm not gonna force you to stop. Right? Let's just see if we can take a moment to linger in this space. Uh, and you communicate uh something related to love and care and that you are there no matter what, even if you choose to do this thing, like I'll still be with you. I'm not gonna shame you. Maybe we have to go through another loop before we see that it's not giving us what we want. But you grabbing your hand in that way is the beginning of actually having freedom over these patterns.
unknown 33:10
Yeah.
Cecily Mak 33:11
Beautiful. For those of uh the listeners who aren't familiar uh with this, so internal family systems acronym IFS, uh you mentioned his name, Dick Schwartz is the being behind this great work and great offering. And the book that has changed so many lives uh with this kind of simple practice, can be simple, uh, is No Bad Parts. And uh, Corey, you'll appreciate. So um I've also been through my own hurdles of learning how to love again and open my heart after pain and be intimate and present in relationship. And um, I was married just a couple months ago. Um second time, thank you. And uh Dick is actually a friend of ours. And in the morning of our wedding, um, we actually sat down with him and did really powerful parts work around those parts inside of us that were terrified of getting married that day. Wow. And um I actually encountered a part that remembered the evening of the day I found out about kind of the last straw in my prior marriage. And I had spent that night in the fetal position on our family home's bathroom floor, just devastated, just processing the consequences of that moment for our our children first, but then also just our family and extended community and home and finances and plans that are on the calendar. And the part that arose from that was we are never doing this again. Yeah. Like this door is closing. We will not be coming back into a scenario where this could happen again. And so, as in love as I was and as ready as I was to be married, there was this part inside of me that was doing all these crazy antics to screw it up, all the way up until the morning of our wedding day. And it was beautiful to be able to work that through. And I love hearing your language around how the you know, the kind of surprising part about this work is meeting that part with empathy and care and love.
Cory Muscara 35:32
Thanks for sharing. I it's uh I just think it's so helpful for I mean, you and Soren have done so much work and you're so immersed in the growth and spirituality. Um, and so for you to share like up until and on the wedding day, those are the things that teachers need to be sharing because it's just like it's so real, and yeah, it welcomes everyone and everyone who's learning just into the messy intimacy of all of this. And, you know, and for me it was a similar thing. Like it took five years, multiple breakups. Um, my wife and I were broken up for six months before we were engaged, and I had a massive heart opening that just illuminated for me that there was a protective pattern around commitment and um and just the fear of being in something that I might not be able to get out of. And I couldn't see it as that. All but the way those parts, those protective bundles of psychology help you is they they don't show you like this is your thing. They'll make the other person wrong. It's like, well, if they figure they're something effective.
Cecily Mak 36:48
So many problems with that person that are that are not us. Um so so I guess speaking of great teachers, um, I know we both share a lot of appreciation for Jack Cornfield. You know, his invitation around just bringing mindfulness and practice into day-to-day life and thoughtfulness around yes, and then there's still laundry, you know, and everything else has been so poignant, uh, particularly in North America in the last 50 years or so. And one thing that he has said to me several times is that awareness is actually most of the work. Like when you develop an awareness, you're you're largely there. And and I I say those words and I I try to believe them all the time. And I I actually remind people who reach out to me about this undimmed work. You know, they say, I I I see this change I want to make in my life. I know that I would be a better parent. I know that I would be more aligned professionally with what I care about or healthier or whatever it is, but I just I still am stuck in this pattern that's not uh you know in alignment with the way I want to live or the way I see myself living or loving or thriving or practicing or whatever it is. And and I I try to share that perspective. Like awareness is so far along the path. The fact that you have that awareness is showing us, you're showing yourself that you're so far along the way. And then I have moments when I doubt that. And and I'm wondering, because we're talking about this, like how how much of progress for you or growth for you or healing for you you feel is kind of already well along its way by the time you're aware of it? Or does awareness feel like a first step? What what's been your experience with this?
Cory Muscara 38:36
I don't know if I've ever reflected on that question. Um but as I do, my my experience has been that there is a lot of maturation happening in the background through a certain level of unconsciousness. Um I I had a teacher once tell me um, oh, when I was working through making money, I had this thing around money because spirituality and money just yeah, yeah. They don't mix. They don't they don't talk.
Cecily Mak 39:09
What a falsehood. We need to do a whole episode on that, by the way.
Cory Muscara 39:12
Like yeah.
Cecily Mak 39:13
Conscious, healthy relationship with the needs. Yeah, it's a big thing. To be continued.
Cory Muscara 39:19
To be continued. So, but in my early 20s when I was starting trying to start a teaching business, I had a lot of stuff around that. And and I had um a teacher who would just encourage, like, yeah, who know? Like, I'm I'm not here to tell you if more money or less money is gonna make you happy or not. So just like go make a bunch of money and see for yourself. And it was just sort of like give yourself permission to play out some of these patterns. If there's a lot of energy there, just you know, let yourself see and treat it as an experiment. Um, and then you have real wisdom on the other side. I I've had a lot of things in my life that I I would I would say I haven't done with as much consciousness as I've brought to the money one, that there was a lot of learning happening in the background through being unconscious and making a lot of mistakes, or being slightly conscious, but not seeing very clearly, like, oh, this is a pattern in you. Um and that matured me to the place of uh being ready and ripe for change when the moment of awareness was there, just like, hey, this is something that you're doing. It's just like, oh, do you want, are you ready to do the thing that you know you need to do, or do you want 50 more loops of the same negative pattern, hoping that this time it's gonna be different? And so the the permission to go through a lot of these patterns, yes, ideally with awareness, but a lot of times they're unconscious and the unconscious loops are getting you ready for bringing awareness into them. Um so yeah, I don't know what the chicken or the egg is there, but I would say it's a combination.
Cecily Mak 41:03
Yeah. And when you're when you're avoiding something, I'm guessing you don't use uh meditation in the same escapist way you may have historically, because it sounds like there's a uh learning there. What do you reach for yourself? Like parenting a little kid is super stressful. I I'm embarrassed to admit it, but uh I had a pretty steady nightly wine habit the first five years of parenthood. It was like the only way I knew how to relax. And you know, it was fine, but I I wish I had had other tools. What do you reach for? You know, you finally get the kid to bed, you're dealing with the stresses of life, which are innumerable. How do you kind of self-soothe today?
Cory Muscara 41:53
Yeah. Sleep as much as I can. Um and sleep has been pretty good. We have a good routine down with that. Um my my tendency is still to isolate uh or to and it feels very convincing. Like I need, I just need time away from my wife if if I've been stressed out to just regulate. And sometimes that's true, but a lot of times it's not. When I can actually just sit down with Brianna and we can talk and we can make eye contact, uh, and we can and I can share what I'm feeling. Like, oh, I'm not feeling appreciated here, or I'm really feeling stretched, uh, or I think I I need some more time. And then for her to be able to do the same, everything opens up. It's like a whole new energy rushes in. And so if I'm really feeling strained, I I have to check am I going into my pattern of trying one to hold everything myself and then to process my resentments myself. Uh, and and so a big practice for me is bringing that into connection.
Cecily Mak 43:05
Um I'm super touched by that because my I'm not I'm actually not far along enough on the path to have the language or awareness you do. I'm a little bit farther back on the path on this exact topic, and that I really crave and thrive on alone time. I I have ways, I have systems set up in our lives today where I can go away for two or three days by myself to somewhere nearby and I kind of have this little mini retreat arrangement set up. And uh I you know, sometimes it feels healthy, but sometimes it might be uh just easier than a deep loving human connection.
Cecily Mak 43:49
Yeah. But you're inviting me to recognize that um interesting something that looks as uh contemplative and noble and healthy as it comes to the other. Days away from the world, um, could actually be a dimmer of mine. I really thought about that. So that's that's fascinating.
Cory Muscara 44:07
Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm glad you brought it in as well. Cause I think for everyone listening and hearing this, I think it's just a good reminder that we can also we can have strategies and practices that work for us where we are right now. And and sometimes going into other ones that we see, and I wouldn't even call it like further down the path, just like some way another person is doing it. Sometimes it can be dysregulating to our system. And um, and there are times like right, I hear you saying the two to three days, just like, man, yeah, if I could take that, I would. It's lovely. And so there are times where that is genuinely what I need. And and this is where just like so many of these patterns are long-term learnings, like sometimes over decades, where you realize, like, okay, when is when is it that you genuinely need some alone time? When is it that you're avoiding connection? I don't get that right all the time. No, but one like a practice that I'm trying to bring in more is before retreating, what if I just said the thing that I'm afraid to say or share the thing that I feel like I need to process myself? And then is there still a desire to go into isolation?
Cecily Mak 45:29
That's beautiful. Yeah, I was gonna offer, you know, there's a in in my world, I try to examine the the source, which you're just shining a different light on, right? So am I going up the coast for two days to avoid unpleasantness or am I going up the coast for two days because I have a creative project that I feel like I really need candle and my own woo-woo music and you know, no obligations for anybody else for a period to pull out of myself. And um that's such a good question. Like is there is is there something being avoided? And and I think you're right, so often it's maybe even just a couple sentences that need to be said, and it's scary to say them because it might mean that love will be taken away.
Cory Muscara 46:20
Yeah. Right. And that's where you get to test this out. I I mean, where else are you gonna strengthen your relationship other than through these many risks that you take? And maybe it is messy, but if there's like love and connection and commitment there, then you get to work that out. Every like new thread that has been sewn in the fabric of my relationship with Brianna, almost every thread has been quite messy, like any any solid one. Like things didn't quite go how we wanted, the conversation didn't go, maybe there was an argument. And then, and then on the other side, we talk about that. We're a little bit more grounded, it's like, oh, let's, we got to show up differently in this way. And then that's where solidity and learning happens. If you're really going to be testing the edges of intimacy and expansion, you're gonna be pushing against the constructs and the fears that hold your current level of intimacy in place. And that is gonna mean like people are gonna get activated, each person. Um, unless you just like have a super awake, integrated, everyone's healed, and I I just I don't see it. Um not happening. But great if you have it, wonderful.
Cecily Mak 47:34
We're somewhere else if we're at that point.
Cory Muscara 47:36
Yeah.
Cecily Mak 47:36
Um, is there anything is we're kind of reaching the end of our time, which went very fast. Um, is there anything that you are kind of putting energy towards right now, or that you're working on, or a belief that you're unpacking that's that's kind of alive for you right now that you're inspired to share?
Cory Muscara 47:58
There there is an interesting inquiry into how much do I need to be working right now? And uh in relationship to parenting and fatherhood. And uh some of this is or most of it's related to being a solopreneur, so I can create my own hours, I can compress in certain seasons of life uh or of the year. But um I'm seeing that there's a lot of needs at home uh in terms of how making sure that my wife is well taken care of, that her sleep is taken care of, that her son is taken care of, and also seeing that I genuinely want to spend as much time with my son as I can. And often when I hit these stressor points where it's a lot, my mind flips and goes, like, no, I need more, I need more dedicated, like clear eight hours to be out of the house, to do my work, to get stuff done. The units not respecting that I need that time away. And so there are these interesting defense mechanisms that I have internally that I I am trying to let go uh of some preconceived ideas of just what it means to be in my mid-30s and setting things up financially and providing and and doing all of that. But like, what is does it have to be like pushing, pushing right now? Or is there a balance between like, these are incredibly sweet and precious years that all my peers, like with children who are older, they they often say, like, I really wish I could go back to that like year and a half mark that you're in right now. And am I taking that in as deeply as I could? And if I truly knew that this was like the most one of the most precious times, um, how would I reorganize things? And so yeah, there there is a continued inquiry around letting go of ideas and external pressure and my own internally created pressure and being in conversation with my wife around what is life giving us right now and what is needed, and how can we both co-create something beautiful based on our own dreaming and imagination and what feels true?
Cecily Mak 50:23
Um remember that moment ago when we were talking about you know, how how much is awareness towards the the desired outcome? I I hear your depth of awareness in this moment. And I think all parents have this experience of am I present enough? Am I enjoying this enough? Apparently this is the best part, but it's really, really hard. Am I doing it right? I I remember people telling me, you know, these are the precious years, and I remember feeling just exhausted and spent, honestly, a lot of the time. And it's uh I think we all deserve a little bit of self-grace, no matter what we're handling. You know, you could say the same thing about being with an elder parent who's in their last years as well. It's uh it's beautiful and messy and it humbles us, and we want to be there for it with all of our cells and heart and open everything. And it's also difficult, but I hear I hear such depth of awareness of where you are and the way you describe it and throughout this conversation. So thank you for being willing to share that with us.
Cory Muscara 51:32
Yeah, thank you.
Cecily Mak 51:33
I I know our listeners are gonna want to know where they can find more of you and your work. Uh, what's the best way for people to to find more about Corey Muscara?
Cory Muscara 51:44
Yeah. Um, the main social media platform that I post on is Instagram, so you can find my teachings there. Uh I have a daily podcast called Practicing Human. I'm not posting currently, but there's over 800 episodes on there, which is just me talking.
Cecily Mak 52:01
Amazing.
Cory Muscara 52:02
Um, yeah. And then my website for events,http://CoryMuscara.com.
Cecily Mak 52:07
That's great. And and I really appreciate your way of connecting with your audience is very digestible. It's very relatable. I love seeing you on walks with your ball cap and your hoodie and just kind of dropping what's going on that day. And I I love that you continue to do that and find the time. And I also am really happy to hear that you're taking some time off from your daily podcast drop too, because it's a lot of work. And um, you know, these are also special moments I I hear and see you're spending with your family. So thank you for taking a little bit of time away from from everything and everyone to to talk with me and share everything you have to share. Um, but really deep gratitude to you, Corey, and yeah, so happy for you.
Cory Muscara 52:53
Thank you, Cecily. Lots of love.
Cecily Mak 52:57
You've been listening to Undimmed. I'm Cecily Mack. My guest today was Corey Muscara. He is known as the best-selling author of Stop Missing Your Life and also of the Practicing Human Podcast, which is a beautiful effort, currently on pause while he focuses on fatherhood. You can follow his work focused on making emotional and personal growth fun, practical, and accessible via the links in the show notes at the end of this episode. If you like what you're hearing on Undimmed, it would be wonderful if you could take a moment and leave us a review. This helps this show find the people who will benefit from it the most. Finally, you can look for the next episode of this season of the podcast in two weeks with a substack authored by me dropped in between. Thank you so much for listening. Be well. The music was by Lara and Sarah, and we had social and other marketing support from Megan Veldon. Thank you so much for joining us. Be well, you know.