A Conversation on Vulnerability — The Strength of Letting Go

In this episode, we explore how vulnerability might be the key to unlocking deeper relationships, inner peace, and even spiritual growth.

Through personal stories and insights from science, psychology, and the Bible, our host, Russ Ewell, along with his guests, Dr. David Traver and Dr. Gary Ruelas, discuss how embracing our emotional limits can actually lead to strength. You’ll hear how letting go of control can relieve anxiety, how spiritual honesty can fuel personal growth, and why vulnerability might just be the most courageous thing we can do.

Listen now and rediscover the strength in surrender.

Scriptures

My friends at Corinth, our hearts are wide open to you and we speak freely, holding nothing back from you. [12] If there is a block in our relationship, it is not with us, for we carry you in our hearts with great love, yet you still withhold your affections from us. [13] So I speak to you as our children. Make room in your hearts for us as we have done for you.

2 Corinthians 6:11-13 TPT

Then Jesus called for the children and said to the disciples, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like these children.

Luke 18:16 NLT

He said, “Abba! Father! You can do anything. Take this cup of suffering away from me. But let your will be done rather than mine.”

Mark 14:36 GW

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. [2] He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.

John 15:1-2 NIV

But divide your investments among many places, for you do not know what risks might lie ahead. [5] Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things. [6] Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another-or maybe both.

Ecclesiastes 11:2,5-6 NLT

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. [32] Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

John 8:31-32 NIV

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, [20] idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, [21] envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21 NLT

But for that very reason, God showed me mercy. And I am the worst of sinners. He showed me mercy so that Christ Jesus could show that he is very patient. I was an example for those who would come to believe in him. Then they would receive eternal life.

1 Timothy 1:16 NIrV

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

1 Corinthians 15:10 NIV

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

James 5:16 NIV

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. [11] Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42:1,11 NIV

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

Psalm 90:14 NIV

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.

John 14:6 NLT

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:2 NIV

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. Then he went out again to the people and told them, “He is not guilty of any crime.

John 18:38 NLT

Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

John 17:17 NIV

Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Mark 10:21 NIV

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” [12] even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Psalm 139:11-12 NIV

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Transcript

Russ Ewell

Welcome to the Descriptuality Podcast. Incredible, cool, interesting, spiritual, wellness, holistic, oriented podcast that I think we’re all going to enjoy. Whether you’re doing your laundry or you’re driving in a car or just hanging out with friends or maybe just laying down for a little bit of a relaxation and you’re listening. We hope we can keep you not just entertained but informed and inspired. Today, I am fortunate enough to be joined on the Deep Spirituality podcast by Dr. Gary Ruelas and Dr. Dave Traver. And this one is going to be the beginning of a series of podcasts or really a change in the way we approach our podcasts. We’re always going to be talking about spirituality with regard to the Bible and scripture, et cetera.

But we also want to keep us informed and see how all the different things about being spiritual connect together. And they really do. And today’s focus will be the chemistry of vulnerability. Vulnerability is something I know for me growing up was really, really challenging because I didn’t understand it, didn’t know about it. But as I learned about it, it transformed my life. And I think it’s continuing to transform my life. But it involves a lot of different things. And so today, that’s what we’re going to do. I want to welcome in Dr. Gary Ruelas and Dr. Dave Traver. Guys, thanks for being with us today.

David Traver 

Thanks for being here.

Gary Ruelas

Thanks

Russ Ewell

I want to start out with something. It’s a scripture. And for those who are listening, sometimes we’ll start with scripture. Sometimes we’ll start with a quote. We’ve got multiple quotes that we’re going to use along the way. Maybe I’m asked the guys to go ahead and just say what they’re thinking and what their insights and their awareness and their experiences. They’re very experienced doctors and their practices. And you’ve already heard me in the introduction introduce who they are.

But in 2 Corinthians 6 and verse 11, says, my friends at Corinth, our hearts are wide open to you, and we speak freely, holding nothing back from you. If there’s a block in our relationship, it is not with us. For we carry you in our hearts with great love, yet you still withhold your affections from us. So I speak to you, children. Make room in your hearts for us as we have done for you. That’s 2 Corinthians 6, 11 through 13 in the Passion Translation. 

Now, one of the most important things I think that comes up is this big question. And I want to put this big question out there and then allow Gary and Dave to kind of think about it. And then I’m going to add a couple of more items and then we’ll roll into our discussion today. The big question is this. Why does vulnerability unlock breakthroughs in every area of our lives? Could it be the missing ingredient in our emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical chemistry?

That’s what that scripture was about. And there’s a great song that some of you are probably familiar with. It’s called Unpretty by Jelly Roll. And he has these lyrics that he says, I don’t like the way I look when I look in the mirror. I wish I could forget the things I remember. Everybody’s telling me to love myself, but I don’t love myself the way I should. And he talks about the fact that it’s because he remembers the unpretty moments in his life.

When I first heard that song, I felt something inside me move. I love Jelly Roll now. I didn’t know much about him before I heard this song. Because he captured what so many of us feel and rarely admit. A deep insecurity, painful memories, gnawing self-doubt. Guess what that is? That’s vulnerability. And guess what else? It affects every area of our life. If we can capture it, if we can learn to be vulnerable, it will open up an amazing amount of life. So I just want to bring you guys in.

Russ Ewell

And I’ll get Dr. Ruelas, I’ll get Gary going, and then get Dave going. I just want to hear what you guys think in general about all these things.

Gary Ruelas

Listening to the idea of this, of this is such deep resonance for me, one that I don’t fully understand, but the more that I begin to direction, the more vulnerable I feel, the more closer I become, the more fearful I am, and the more grateful I am. And the dichotomy just continues to expand like going into a universe with complete mystery. So I think of things like when Jesus said, let the children come to me, you let them come to me as being vulnerable. When he said from the cross, your will be done. He was in his most vulnerable state in that frame. And I think as we come in… without our mind, we acquire our mind in this lifetime, but we’re born in a purity. An infant is purely vulnerable. They’re 100 % dependent on everything for life. And I think then the mind gets in the way.

I’m a psychologist as well as a physician. And after years and years of being an analyst and a therapist, now I’m in the business of dissolving the mind. How do we get rid of it? How do we get it out of our way? And yet, I hear it. I want to get better. Who’s the I? I want to stay in my mind. And I say, well, you have to leave that behind and follow me, Jesus said. You have to be vulnerable and strip yourself of yourself to be one with me. That’s vulnerability is the complete unity with the divine, with our Lord through Christ.

Russ Ewell

Love that. Now I’m going to ask you a question because you got my mind working. One, you talked about, and I’m coming to you, Dave, but you just got my mind working. You said we acquire our mind. And I think you’re talking about when we’re born into this life. is that what that is when you said we acquire our mind?

Gary Ruelas

Right, let’s give the mind a definition. The mind is the self, me, not the we. I have an identity, I’m given a name, I’m given a gender, I’m told how to behave, when to sit. And my mind is recording all the ways I’m supposed to function in a rule-bound world. And I have this now memory that I refer to and I think about and experiences that I have and I’m acquiring memory and form and the mind is always either about the present or moving in terms of concern about the future. It’s never in the present. And vulnerability is being 100% in the present. It’s just being pure.

But we live in the mind and we judge in the mind and we think about the mind and we think about how am I doing? How am I doing? But you see, the minute it’s me, we’re no longer in the we. And the union with God is in the giving everything up. You’re take over. Take over what? Take my soul and let’s be one together. As Jesus said, I lie with you, the Father is in me and I’m with you. And we’re all one together.

Russ Ewell

I love it. Mm-hmm. Well, I love that because one of the concepts I was studying, I didn’t know this was going to come up. So I didn’t look up the exact pronunciation. There’s a Japanese term. I think it’s machine. It’s spelled M-U-S-H-I-N. And it talks about the freedom of the mind, of the letting go, the process of it. And I ran into it because I watched a movie with Tom Cruise called The Last Samurai years ago. And there was a scene in it when he was being taught how to fight, you know, as a samurai. And one of the young Japanese guys says to him, too many minds, too many minds. And he says, no mind. And then he says, mind on people, mind on fight, mind on sword, too many minds. And I looked up, what is this all about? And that’s when I came on the Japanese term machine, which I think you’re talking about. And here’s what’s interesting about what you’re saying about getting rid of that mind, getting rid of that self. Because in John 15,

It talks about the fact that the vine is Jesus. We connect to him and that God is the gardener. That’s how we begin to approach the oneness with God and get the comfortability of being able to be spiritual. I think people think being spiritual is I read my Bible and I pray. Or they think I go out in nature or whatever they may think. But it’s all, I love what you’re saying, it’s all a loss of self. a loss of self, I got to say, I don’t know that I thought this clearly. A loss of self is a freedom from the mind. then of course, you can’t help but think about, and I’m talking to lot of people out there that are millennials and hopefully Gen Z, you can’t help but think about the matrix where he’s constantly being told, free your mind, free your mind. And I know that that’s a concept that runs through other religions, whether it’s Buddhism or it’s Hinduism or it’s Daoism. So it’s actually something that I think God is trying to get into society in every way he can. Sometimes people think, well, there’s only one way to figure out what the truth is instead of looking holistically at life and going,

I can learn from this and I can learn from that to get to what Jesus said about letting go of self. Dave, you’ve been listening. I’m get you on in here. What are you thinking about all this? Gary’s got me embroiled in and rolling out. I’m going have to get my journal out and start writing.

David Traver

Yeah, I don’t have my pen, so I’m at a detriment. Gary, I want to take notes here from you. First of all, absolutely fascinating topic, you know, to start this whole idea of the chemistry of vulnerability. And then I think, Gary, what you shared was very, it was fascinating because you talked about the I, the me or the we, right? And I was thinking about this before we started doing this. was thinking of this through the week and different days.

And this is, vulnerability is a very, it’s a now topic, right? You know, in the present society do not have the information to say that I know how popular it’s been in the past. know, some words are used more than certain decades and others, but it’s certainly a big topic now. And there are certain, you know, thought leaders in that. Some of them I’m sure we all know. But when it comes to vulnerability, it’s very interesting because if we go to what Gary mentioned about the we, I’ve been thinking lot about this, certainly from my own life. One thing that was mentioned was when children are infants newborns, neonates are brought into the world, right? They are absolutely true. They’re 100 % vulnerable in every possible dimension. Okay? The irony of that is we are taught that as time passes, we establish independence over the years in different levels and dimensions. that’s, we understand what that’s trying to say. But I think in my personal opinion, based on some of the thought leaders that whether they consider themselves spiritual or not, social science leaders and spiritual well, I personally have come to the maybe I should say that the suspicion.

That we are never truly independent. We are never truly autonomous. And the idea is that I think both mentally, certainly spiritually, emotionally and even physically, we are meant to be connected. We are meant to be vulnerable. And vulnerability is one of the main channels that we access that truth.

And that helps us on all of those dimensions, in all of those dimensions, when we are able to engage that. That may seem a bit kind of out there, but that was something I was thinking as he talked about, you know, we start very vulnerable and then we, the idea of the society is we gradually disconnect. And although there’s clearly, know, there are certain areas that’s true, you know, the reality is that we’re talking here, not so much as whether you can make a sandwich on your own per se, but whether you are going to be known, whether you’re going to be vulnerable. And I believe that we are actually meant, think with talking back to what the word of God shares, I believe that we are meant to be vulnerable.

I believe that when we are not that, we don’t engage that, we repudiate what we were actually meant to be in God’s creation. That’s what my thought is.

Russ Ewell

So I’m going to take what the guilty guys are talking about. And there’s a book that’s been out for a little bit now, maybe a year. I bought it right when it came out. I’m sure you’re both familiar with it. Jonathan Haidt’s book, Anxious Generation, and all the stuff that he talks about about getting smartphones out of schools, et cetera, et cetera. But he’s really, in my mind, trying to aim at the impact it has on younger people’s anxiety and how much it’s impacted people’s capacity to connect with other people, to play with other people, so on and so forth. I mentioned that.

And I want to mention too that you were talking about an important word to me here as you mentioned autonomy. I’ll tell you why that’s important. So one of the greatest fears I had and things that caused me the most anxiety when I was coming up was the fear. I can think of a lot of other fears that I had and still can have fear of failure. And I think those are connected to fear of vulnerability. So for me, as simple as growing up and asking, yeah, thankfully I’ve been married, you know, multiple decades here or three decades plus now. But for me, rejection in most forms came from either sports not making a team or something like that, which I was fortunate enough to make all the teams I went out for, but still the fear of rejection, but then dating or going on a date or asking a young lady, do you like me? The reason I bring that up is I’m kind of, I don’t know what to do with what you said about autonomy. And for those out there listening, who maybe don’t, you know, pay attention to some of these topics, when Dave says autonomy, I think saying our ability to be independent of our circumstances or as Gary talked about, our ability to be independent from a rule-bound world, to be able to find our own self and define who we are and find our own identity without it always being determined by others. With religion and the way we become religious is we actually, I think, sometimes lose our autonomy and we start to conform to the rules or being ambitious in the world and wanting a job, we start to conform and I think we lose ourselves. That’s what I interpreted Gary is talking about. The mind starts to…

Record all this stuff and start to tell us hey you need to be this you need to be that you need to be this then when someone gets on social media and they find out hey You know your hair ought to be this color you have to your makeup this way you ought to weigh this in these many pounds Then all of a sudden and I I’m just saying what’s in my head I don’t know what I’m talking about but all of a sudden you’re sitting there and you’re going I need to lose weight Because you’ve lost your autonomy to social media. You’ve lost her out. You lost her ability to have your own identity

Russ Ewell

And I’m not talking about there’s a difference to me between being connected and having autonomy. You can be connected to somebody and still have an identity and know who you are. But if the connection ends up turning into conformity, you lose who you are. And I think a lot of that’s what’s happening in society. I think a lot of the reason we have polarization in politics is because people don’t have an independence from maybe the policy they believe in. And they started to attach themselves to it. And the danger is if you attach your identity to everything you do, that becomes a form of religion to me. And we always know that when you get really webbed to something like a religion that’s not God, that can cause a lot of consternation and battle. So what’s the big question in my mind? I think some, for me, of vulnerability is that when you’re able to see who you are and what you’ve recorded, I’m going to work with what Gary said. All the things I’ve recorded, when I started looking at God in the Bible, I started identifying, I’ve recorded that only if I achieve this much

Can I be loved or this is how I’m loved or only if I act this way. What happened when I understood what the Bible said is I started to let go of those things. And then when I did, I started to discover who I was meant to be instead of just becoming what I think I was being told to be by society. So to me, I think one the about vulnerability is that, and I think Gary already said this, you already said this, Dave, it starts to put you on a journey of discovery to say, a minute.

Maybe my whole life is not being a basketball player, or maybe my whole life is not having a lot of money. Maybe there’s more to me than this. And maybe, Dave, you can speak to that a little bit, and I’ll get Gary in here, and we can get some thoughts, and I can figure out what I was just talking about.

David Traver

Yeah, no, I agree with a lot of what you just shared. I think the idea of connectivity is becoming warped in a lot of social media outlets. People are settling for contact as a surrogate for connection. And as a result of that, I think that we were never supposed to be connected based on data sharing or data transfer, information transfer. But I think a lot of that happens today, whether it’s through one platform or another or just even in our conversations. As a result of that, I think that it’s very easy to substitute what it actually means to be connected. And we start putting in these, like you just said, know, trophy A, know, idol B, you know, entity C into our life.

Because we think that that’s what it means to be connected. So there’s contact, right? A lot of people, during the pandemic, we didn’t even have that a lot of times. So contact, then we go to maybe communication would be the next level, and then connection, right? And then you go to intimacy, which is just almost a dirty word nowadays. So I think that a lot of people can settle for a more superficial form of…

David Traver

What shouldn’t be, which is, we should be much more deeply connected to vulnerability, but that’s gonna take, the deeper you go, the more efforts it’s gonna take to excavate. I probably didn’t answer your question, but I think that’s what I see a lot in my profession. And it’s funny because when people come in, both patients and other professionals, it is very easy to try to talk about the challenges and the problems that are clearly on the table or in the room without being vulnerable. And we have to start doing that in order to heal. You can’t heal what you’re not willing to admit is there. And it’s very hard with some of the challenges that we face as healthcare providers. I’m sure Gary would agree with that.

Gary Ruelas

yeah, I’m, you know, that’s so much that’s going on. This is such a beautiful topic. Thank you for bringing that. And we make vulnerability complicated. This is the other side of that coin, is that it really is a purity and a simplicity that the mind won’t allow us to enjoy. The mind will complicated and the mind will never be satisfied because it goes to the next hurdle. I can clear three feet now, I can clear six, but I can’t clear nine and Johnny down there is clearing ten. So I must not be good enough. we’re always in that, the mind is always in the comparative mode and usually we’re on the negative side of whatever that comparison is. so, and then we believe, the problem is not having narrations or memories, is the problem is that we believe it to be real. It’s like the three blind men and the

We believe that I’m holding the tree when I’m holding the leg. We don’t see the complete picture, you know. We just see it a small slant of whatever that image is for that point in time. And then we believe a story we make up about that. And then we argue about it and we’re hurt and angry and most of that is our own. It’s the second law of, you know, in Buddhism is that, you know, our attachments hurt us. Our expectations of others create our pain.

All men will suffer and all the suffering comes from our views of others. And I think that’s, and so that’s what we give up. If we can give up, then we can be more loving, more vulnerable because there’s a purity, a driven desire to be in unity. So you might want to edit this out, but I’m gonna just say it as a concept.

Russ Ewell

No, I don’t need to edit it out.

Gary Ruelas

The sperm is a driven energy. And the first thing the sperm does is fight to connect. And once it connects to the ovum, you have a beginning form of life that starts to form in abundance with these cells that begin to generate. And the next movement is another connection to the mom, to implant itself.

And from that implantation, you have a growth that comes in the form of an embryo and a heartbeat at 21. There’s just a miracle energy that’s formed. And then a baby, and out comes the infant. And what’s the first thing the baby wants to do is connect. And these are biologically driven, completely non-intellectual drives that are going to be, when we find our most peace of mind, is when we feel connected to each other.

when we feel that bond and it’s intermittent because the mind gets in the way. It only lasts a short period of time, but quality and not quantity, right? That little bit is lasting. That’s the eternal form of love. I think of love as being the energy of connection and anything short of that is despair.

Anything shorter than that is pain. Anything shorter than that is anxiety, depression. you have all, I have a DSM-5, a book of labels for disconnection. Psychiatry, DSM is a book that describes energies of disconnection. Depression.

Russ Ewell

Now Gary, let me just let me have you explain to the listeners what is the DSM briefly and then re-state that again. What you’re talking about, first of all, is fantastic. Let me tell you why. In Ecclesiastes 11, it says that in your life, you shouldn’t try to control the flow of your investments, whatever you put your heart into. You should be willing to put it into many things without knowing which one’s going to pay off. But at the very end, it says the reason that you invest in many things is because it’s like God’s work is like the mystery of a baby being formed in the womb. So when you describe the connection, some people are sitting out there going, what does that have to do with, let me tell you what has to do. Everything Jesus does is usually trying to teach us from creation about God. And that, you just stated, that comes right down to the mystery of a baby’s formation in a womb. Now, why is all that important at this point? I think because you just described something you just described the DSM something I’ve never, or is DSM, you’ll tell them what it is. You described it as something I’ve never heard it as. It’s a book of disconnections. Why do I think that’s important? Because I’ve talked publicly, and you may have been there when I’ve talked about this, that too many people see their mental health diagnosis as a label of identity. And then that starts to have a negative effect. But I’m outside my depth. if you can kind of connect those a little bit and explain, this is what the book is about.

This is why I say it’s a book of disconnection.

Gary Ruelas

Okay, I’m in honor of the book and all my colleagues and friends that are psychiatrists and psychologists, but I’ve said this to them as well. We’re in edition five, I have edition one, which is about 10 pages. Basically, it’s diagnostic, what’s the second word, statistical manual. It’s a statistical analysis of groups of people with similar components to study. 

It’s not a diagnosis of a person. It’s a diagnosis of a category. It’s a category that we group people into. And it has about a .6067 validity, which in science is very low, right? I mean, that’s the every diagnosis. We can argue about what category you fit into. And then there are common themes, like everybody’s bipolar, but nobody knows about cyclothymia or dysthymia. you know, we have common terms that, as you said, I want to belong to that club or somebody told me I’m in that club. But they’re groupings. They’re not individuals. So there’s no such thing as an individual that’s bipolar. There are individuals that show behaviors that fit into that group of bipolarism.

That it’s a statistical analysis. But in the suffering of that, when the individual is in those behaviors that causes disturbance to their mind and their body, they’re feeling separate from everybody else.

The anxiety is a separate, I have fears that nobody understands me. I feel lonely that nobody loves me. I feel despair that I don’t think I’m ever gonna resolve. I’m never gonna be somebody. Nobody’s ever gonna want me. I’m hopeless. These are experiences of detachment, separateness, aloneness, and the whole movement of psychology or psychiatry. How do I help this mind move in such a way that it can connect again or at least find some connection, hope, because in the connection I have hope. I have that experience that maybe I’ll be okay or maybe I will find that deepness with somebody else group therapies, treatments, retreats that are trying to bring people together. But they can only do it so much until what? Until they find some groundbreaking depth of experience of vulnerability with each other. And the people that succeed in giving up those categories are ones that find some peace of mind in that unity with someone else called love.

And God is what? God is love. I mean, that’s the most powerful recognition in terms of not a physical, I mean, that type of love is undefinable. We can’t describe the power of that kind of love, but it brings us together as one.

Russ Ewell

That’s fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, let me tell you why this is important. I’m a big believer in, fan of psychiatry, psychology, and have seen it help tons of people. So when you’re talking about to me as an audience, I can’t speak for our whole audience, when I hear you describe it, I don’t hear you diminishing.

the statistical awareness of what these categories are. I hear you explaining to the layman or to those uninformed, this is a simple way for you to see why it helps and to see what it’s trying to do and what it’s not trying to do. And it’s why I think there’s a deep connection between psychology and psychiatry, spirituality, and specifically because I’m a Christian, Christianity. So many times, there are people who try to divide the two instead of seeing how they complement each other and see how they work together. Because again, I’m not a professional, but once a psychiatrist helps someone be able to deal with whatever, I’m going to use my own ignorant term, their brain chemistry and wherever they’re feeling detached or disconnected, once they do that, then they have to go out into the world like everybody who may not have that particular challenge. And every one of us, and this is what I hear you saying, every one of us deals with attachment issues. 

Every one of us is trying to figure out how do I overcome my insecurities, my fears? I’m an adult child of an alcoholic. How do I overcome my dysfunction in order to be able to walk out into that world and experience this love you’re talking about? And for some people out there who may not, maybe you’ve got a kid or you’ve got a friend or a family member and you don’t want to deal with, I’m speaking for myself here, you don’t want to deal with the mental health part of their life or there may be something and you don’t really wanna go into that venture. I think we have to understand it’s like, for me, my battle is blood pressure. As an African-American, as I get older, I’ve got to constantly be in a war against that rising all the time. And I don’t go, oh, no, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to treat it, because it would make me seem like a person who has challenges with high blood pressure and has got to always work on that. Instead, I look at that as a component to being able to give me whole health, whole wellness. And the way I write about it in the chemistry lab, and some of our listeners read, is I talk about the fact that the Bible says, love God all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. In my mind, there’s four dimensions to life. There’s your mind, there’s your heart, there’s your mind, your heart, your physical body, your strength, and then your soul. And part of what using all these disciplines and these options for helping yourself, what they do is they allow you to be a complete whole person. To me, it’s been not just becoming a Christian,

But, I, know, Dave’s helped me a lot with my health and knowing how to think about it. It’s been not being afraid to go to the doctor anymore. Because back when I was younger, I was like, I don’t want to go in here hear them tell me I’ve got something bad. And instead of going, no, that’s just somebody who’s going to help you do with the physical part of your life. And then mental, I’ve read a lot of books on psychology and psychiatry. In fact, when I was young, Garrett, I read Sybil as a young kid, and I was blown away. I could not believe that book. I I read the book cover to cover and when I got done I walked out and told my parents I’m gonna be a psychiatrist because I was like who helped someone that much? But I’m saying there’s so many avenues and I wanna say to our listeners before I Dave get in here because I’m sure he’s biting at the bit to just talk about this that part of what will make everything we’re talking about powerful is if you take it personally. I’ve written about this and talked about this before. When I read the adult children’s alcoholics I didn’t know what I was getting into.

And I learned so much about who I was and to use the term we’re kind of holding onto, all the things I had recorded in my mind, all the things I had told myself, and I had to understand those to even let God into my life. And I think a lot of us, we want to become a Christian and we want to live as a Christian, but we don’t want to discover anything because we don’t want to feel sad or we don’t want to feel discouraged or we don’t want to feel bad. But I think it’s behind the curtain of all those emotions

that you find your real destiny, your real purpose, and your capacity to connect. The ability I have to connect to people that I had at 17 compared to 28, compared to 48 and on increased with direct correlation to how much I was willing to know myself. And we go to John 831 and 32. He says, if you know the truth, it’ll set you free.

And that truth to me has dimensions. You’ve got to be mentally true. And we just talked about that with psychology and psychology. You got to understand who am I, where am I at? And then you’ve to be emotionally true, which is telling yourself the truth first. That’s the hardest part. For me, anyway, it’s that jelly roll song, looking at yourself and going, there’s some unpretty parts of this. And in order to get past them, I’ve got to face them. And then when I face them, I can triumph over them. And what I’ve noticed when I deal with my mental and my emotional, all of a sudden my physical body is different. Like I was having back spasms and all these things and I started going to work and I’ve got a lot of tension. The way I process life, I’ve got a lot of tension. And until I dealt with all that, I couldn’t be free. And I wanna encourage people out there, don’t run away from depth and don’t run away from what feels like complexity. Run to it to understand it and before you know it, the curtain that’s holding you back in your life can be pulled back. And that’s when the big, you become the great sort of person you’re meant to be. But Dave, jump on in here. I know you got a lot to say about that. And the more you guys say about how this connects to your physical health and your emotional health, along with spirituality, would be very beneficial to our listeners. Go ahead, Dave.

David Traver

This is very therapeutic for me, so I’ll pay both of you later. just say thank you, Gary. Thank you, Russ. Thank you, doctors. You know, I was preparing for this, just reading. it was, Gary said it right. This is.

Russ Ewell

Hahaha!

David Traver

This is an invaluable experience to be able to discuss this, but also to reflect. It’s funny Russ, you were just saying, don’t be afraid to run to it. It’s funny though, you don’t realize this as a young person, but the older we get, the less inclined we are to want to continue to learn to discover, to run. And you think that the older you get, you’re gonna be more secure. And maybe in some ways that’s the case. But I think that it’s very, because of, in my opinion, the lack of connectivity in life we can easily become more reliant on our experiences and the negative things that have happened, back to Jelly Roll, so that we end up retreating more and more rather than running toward the battle line, if you will. I was just thinking about what you were talking about earlier about vulnerability and it’s funny because I think that a lot of us have heard of Brene Brown.

And she talks about courage and showing up. And I agree with that. But a lot of people go, I can’t be vulnerable because I can’t, I want to be in control. And the irony of that, although we understand what that means to be vulnerable and put it out there and you can’t control how people are going to react, respond to what you say. But by doing so, in my opinion, it demonstrates the ultimate level of control. You are taking the initiative to do something that no one can take from you. You have demonstrated something that is incredibly challenging and difficult and you’re not giving control to others per se. You’ve demonstrated what it means to be free by doing that. I don’t know that makes any sense. And back to Gary’s point about God is love, and I agree with that. The actual, the root of the word freedom comes from the word to love. So the etymology of the word free is actually defined as love. It’s not just, you So I’m probably rambling. Do I need to stop?

Gary Ruelas

I want to kind of spin off of what you said, Dave. First of all, I want to kind of reiterate, I love psychology and I love psychiatry. For me, it’s a mystery and it’s an exploration and it’s an understanding that what we call disorder is confusion of our organization in that space that keeps us apart from each other.

And so the whole idea is to open those pathways up so that whoever is in there now feels connected and there’s unity with one and another, whether it’s a mother and father. I remember seeing this father that had been arguing with his son for so long about his homework and they’re just fighting. He’s an adolescent and he gets in a car accident. The father calls me. He’s at the ICU and the boy is intubated. And he’s crying, the father’s crying, and we’re praying over him. says, you know what? My prayer is, I don’t care about anything else anymore. Just bring him back to me.

That was his prayer. Everything else got wiped out. All those ideas of grades and behaviors, nothing mattered more than the connection to be back one with and hold his son together. And it’s life changing events that bring us back down to what really matters. And here’s the dilemma that we all, and we get caught up, I want to get this balance between my mind, body, and soul. And in my head, I’m arguing, so wait a minute, you know?

It’s not a balance. It’s not a balance. We gotta put God first and everything else follows. And we don’t. We don’t. We don’t know how to do that. Because it’s all about me. What am I gonna get? Yeah, yeah, I’ll give into. But how many of us can say, I will give up everything you take over? That’s the walk of faith. That’s the mystery of that power that Christ talked about, can you do it completely? And we spent a lifetime struggling to do it because we fall back into the next book, the next thing I can do, the next technique, and this and that. But do we say, your will be done first and I’ll follow, whatever that is.

And I think that’s really, really kind of the core part of where all this is driving for our mind. Mother Teresa, they asked her one time, said, how do you heal all these sick people? You probably heard her saying what she was saying. She said, I don’t see them. I see Christ in all of them. I see my lover in all of them. Namaste, right? I see the holiness in you that I see in myself. you know, put God, we have to see God everywhere and everything and all our purposes, and then everything follows. Because he is the purity of love. He is a primary connection. He is the driver that puts us there. So I have a patient comes in, all kinds of complications, right? I had a boy whose father left him when he was three and his stepdad just had a double lung transplant from COVID and he feels lost and his mother comes in and says, what’s wrong with him? He’s depressed and he’s sitting there flat and I said, he just doesn’t know how to connect anymore. How are we gonna love him through this? And she starts crying. said, tell him how much you love him as opposed to go take him to another doctor and get him on more medication. We can do that as well, but we need to put God first. That’s what I mean, God is love, right? Love him in all ways and all things, and then all that path will lay out. Everything else will take form. And I think that’s the mystery of medicine now. How do we have good relationships with our patients? How do we treat ourselves in a loving way? How do we honor everything? How do we make everything a union?

Russ Ewell

Well one of the incredible things you’re talking about there is years ago, and I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, I talk about it often, one of my great friends is Howard Cunha, his brother Ron Cunha was running and working in the Department of Psychology at Fresno State. And I was trying to figure out how to navigate mental health issues in our church with the spirituality part and I really didn’t, I it was really new to me to sort of try to tackle that. And I said I want to sit down and talk. And we talked about a lot of things, some things similar to we’re talking about today. said, Russell, I’m to tell you a couple of things. He said, number one, I sit down with all my patients and I tell them, yes, you have anxiety or whatever their issue may be, they may be facing is. And he says, but we can’t completely take anxiety out of your life and we can’t completely make whatever you’re facing the way. you have to at some point look at your life this way, awareness itself. You’re aware. So that puts you in a position. And I think sometimes, and this can be true of anything.

Sometimes we look at solutions that are not God and we make them God and then we end up disappointed and we end up in despair and we end up grieving and we end up sad and we sit there and I’ve worked with people that will be so frustrated. Well, why didn’t this medication take all these problems away? Because medication doesn’t take all your problems away. Medication makes you capable of taking, I’m outside my depth here, but medication makes you capable of tackling your problems. It doesn’t take away the problems and that’s why God is so important and that’s what you said. What you’re talking about generally in older religious terms still used today is a surrender and I sometimes that word is so used in religious circles that I it loses its power to me but I think some of it is that what you talked about is that connection to God that is so powerful and so transformative that allows you Philippians 4 says give all your anxiety to God and then you’ll have a transcendent peace that comes from Him and so for those out there you know don’t philosophy books a lot. Transcendence means you just can rise above. And so if you’re trying to figure out, what does it mean to rise above? Well, it’s Michael Jordan when he’s playing basketball. It’s his ability to exceed what anybody else does and rise above what anybody does in opposition to him. And I think a lot of people don’t think that’s possible, and I do. so when you’re talking about putting God first, I think God is the one who allows us to experience transformative things.

I’ll talk about, you personally. For me, when I first, at 19 years old, read the Bible, I read the New Testament the first time at 19. And I was like, well, I didn’t understand this about Jesus. I’d seen the movie, but the book’s a lot better, not unlike, you know, a lot of things. And I was like, man, the movie doesn’t tell you all this. And then I started, you know, learning about myself. And then I ran into the concept of sin, which a lot of people hate talking about. But I think sin is the ultimate disconnection. When you look at Galatians 5, 19 through 23, God is saying you’ve got options. You can live this way, which is sin, and it will disconnect you in every relationship. To me, every sin is just a relationship, a destructive relationship pattern. And so some people are like, well, you should be able to do any of that. It doesn’t matter. Okay, it doesn’t matter. You can live however you want. But at the end of the day, does it disconnect? And what I saw for me was an ability to build relationships better. And a lot of what I try to work with people on now, if you get your relationship with God, right, you don’t get your future.

Gary Ruelas

That’s all I know.

Russ Ewell

Feelings hurt as much. You start to listen better. You start to be able to be resilient more because you’re not making people have to participate in your personal movie, which is how I describe it. All of us walking around have our own personal movie we’re producing and we’re the star. And so we don’t like anybody coming into the movie who’s going to take away and either start it. But when you start to become a Christian, you let go of that and you start to, if I can continue the analogy, you start to enjoy other people’s movies. You start to want other people to succeed in the movie instead of you always being there. And I think it changed my life and I can’t tell people enough the balance of all these things how powerful they are. Gary you’re gonna…

Gary Ruelas

But what you’re just saying Russ is really kind of crucial is that in that matter in that point when you’re enjoying somebody else’s to me that’s the connection right that’s the love you’ve given up the self in order to really enjoy that other being You have now let go It’s not about me. It’s about that we that I’m back to that we right and here I want to reiterate something that’s really important that came to me when you said this. The more I want to do God’s will, the worse I am at it.

Russ Ewell

Ha ha ha.

Gary Ruelas

I want everybody to understand I’m accepting my imperfections which allow me to give it to God. I am not good at this. I can say those words, but I don’t want to give an illusion, he does it. I am the worst at this. Every day I have to deal with my frustrations, my anger, my disappointment, my insecurities, my fear. I have it all. I am the DSM plus.

Russ Ewell

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I’m in there. Don’t try to take it all.

Gary Ruelas

And the way out, the lifesaver for me when I’m in that ocean is him.

David Traver

Hahaha!

Russ Ewell

Yeah, well you know you’re saying language that’s biblical. Paul says about himself, I am the worst of sinners. He says I’m the worst of sinners. And I want people to understand, what does that mean? He’s saying what you’re saying. He’s saying, I don’t have this thing down.

I am totally able to do this because of God. I don’t have this thing down. And so I think that’s what he’s then he says in first Corinthians 15, by the grace of God, I am what I am. So he’s saying the only reason I’m to do any of the stuff I do is that God is so gracious to me that despite the fact and I’m with you, I’m prideful, I’m arrogant, I’m selfishly ambitious. Despite all that, God takes this imperfect person. And if I can use, you know, a what is it would be a Buddhist term. It’s a biblical biblical Bible and translate the translation of the Bible.

Actually have energy very much, but I’m able to let God’s power and energy work through me. And that’s what the Bible is really talking about, is the capability of God to work through an imperfect, weak instrument. In 2 Corinthians 12 he says, my power is perfected in weakness. And so what you’re telling me, Gary, is the more I’m aware of my weakness, the more freedom God has to work in my life. And instead, most of us get discouraged when that’s…

Gary Ruelas

That’s the vulnerability. That’s what you just gave me was the window of vulnerability, It’s that admission of the imperfection. I’m here naked and you take over. You guide me.

Russ Ewell

Yes, that’s it.

Russ Ewell

Well, here’s the killer, Gary and Dave, and Dave, you can get in here on this. statistics, I just wrote an article about this in Salvation. The statistics show that churches talk about sin less because they perceive that’s what the world wants to hear. They don’t want to hear those things that are negative. But correlating to that, the attendance of churches has declined in connection to the less they talk about sin. Now, why do I think that is? I think people don’t understand, and sometimes ministers don’t understand, the answer to sin is the cross. We don’t need to stop talking about it. We need to start talking more about the power of the cross and the power of God. And you just described the vulnerability of saying, and this is James chapter five, you confess your sin, to one another and pray for each other so you can overcome. It’s that vulnerability that creates that connection, which is what you’re saying, and it can be done with God and with people, and that’s when you get, you’ve said it a number of times here, Gary, that’s when you get the love. And I think sometimes we go work at relations. What are the one, two, three, four, five steps to building better relationships? Well, if you’re not a vulnerable person, none of those steps are gonna work. And so I think that’s important. Dave, get on in here.

David Traver

I’m learning. I think it’s a phenomenal conversation. So Gary and I, obviously we work with patients. And I think people see vulnerability as some kind of an emotional tool or some thing that some spiritual leader espouses from the podium or whatever don’t think that’s actually even what the world believes. I think that what we understand is that life comes with a lot of hardship. Life, with those hardships, emotions are gonna be attached, obviously. And the way some of those emotions are tough, the way we want to evade those is by suppressing them. And the more we suppress shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, sadness, all these things, we try to negate the fact that it’s real. But number one, it’s not possible. Number two, it’s not good for us. And I think this is implicit in everything I’m sharing is I’m just echoing what you and Gary have shared is that it’s the we. You cannot be complete. Someone once said this actually, know, only the broken can be made whole.

Okay. And we all want to be whole, but we don’t want to start where it’s requisite, which is understand that we’re broken. And I don’t think there’s something where we just kind of overcome it at some point on the game board. And then from that point on your whole, and then whatever you ride into the sunset, I don’t think that at all.

But I think with each emotion we have every day, we’re gonna have a physiological response. And that’s what we see all the time as practitioners. And each response has a physical outcome. And what comes to our door are these physical outcomes. But as Gary, I eloquently put it, you have to track it back to some of the most visceral foundational things, love spirituality because not so we can be cool California people but because that is really where the foundation lies and you know people talk about I’ve got stress or I’ve got my cortisol levels or you know that’s all true cortisol goes you know is depleted when you know when we suppress you know they’ve actually shown this is pretty this kind of shock they’ve shown that the risk for cancer goes up when you suppress and when you’re not vulnerable the risk for cardiovascular disease goes up. Cardiovascular, we kind of go, okay, I kind of get that. But for cancer, the risk is actually, I know this sounds hard to believe, is 70 % increase from the baseline when you are not vulnerable. And you have to think through all the dots that connect, but the point I’m making is that a lot of people don’t…

Russ Ewell

What?

David Traver

They come to us with these more surfacey, the problems that are cascaded from the things that I think have been brought up in this podcast. But they don’t necessarily always either A, recognize or B, want to walk it back to where it really comes from, which I think was eloquently shared.

Gary Ruelas

Can I make one comment before you move on to your questions? It’s this kind of different orientation to, I think maybe it’s Western culture, maybe it’s ego-based. It’s kind of what I said, that the ego will always be looking for another level higher.

Russ Ewell

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can make any.

Gary Ruelas

And you could both know about this, but I think when we go into vulnerability, it’s a descending slope, not an ascending slope. So, you know, we want less, we want to hold on to less, we want to less. And it’s the giving up, right? Not the acquiring. And I think if we’re trying to do better in being is we’re not in the right path. I don’t understand it quite myself because my mind gets in the way, it’s counterintuitive, but it is a constant letting go of things. Maybe that’s why maybe in other ancient religions they all go into robes and monasteries. I don’t understand that, but it’s the giving up, right?

Russ Ewell

Well, I think what’s interesting, you know, I remember watching, I love Star Wars. And I remember, I don’t, I can’t remember the numbers.

But the original first three I loved, the next three I didn’t, and some of the new stuff I liked. But in one of the ones I don’t like, I can’t remember which episode, Anakin is explaining to someone about being a Jedi, and it just catches my attention. He goes, one of the most important things about being a Jedi is you can’t have any attachments.

And the reason I, you’re contrasting, and by no means am I even remotely an expert in this, you’re contrasting the Western mind, if we could, with the Eastern mind. And we’re not trying to overgeneralize here, but we’re trying to talk conceptually how they approach things. When I did some graduate work, one of the things I studied was, well I actually got into Native American, if you would, And I, of course, in my family. My grandmother’s I think was at least half Cherokee because her mother was Cherokee, something like that. so I was always in it. I was always in a Native American everything. I wanted to be back in the days when you said Indian. I wanted to be like Indian. I asked my parents once I pulled them aside I said I want to change my name. You guys will love this. I said I need to change my name. What do you want your name to be? I said I think Coach Cheese would work. I think I I

Gary Ruelas

I was thinking that. I was thinking that. It’s a very popular name at some point in time. I like this.

Russ Ewell

Yeah, I was like, think Cochise would be about right. Well, in this graduate program, I studied Crazy Horse and why he was able to defeat Custer. And there was an element to his ability to unify the Sioux that was spiritual. I’m not saying Christianity, and obviously I’m a Christian, that’s what I believe. So anybody out there is like, man, maybe he’s moving over. I’m not moving anywhere, but what I’m saying is…

David Traver

Awesome.

Gary Ruelas

Well that’s the fear too, right? That’s the fear. No, no, think that’s the other, know, Christ didn’t stay in one club.

Russ Ewell

Right? Right. He didn’t just want to eat at the fine dining. He wanted to go to the soul food restaurant as well. You know what saying? Yeah.

Gary Ruelas

Yeah, he went all over the place. He went all over the place and so did the disciples. And I think, you know, like if you go and do yoga or you go and chant with the Sikhs or you go and do mindfulness with Buddhas, doesn’t make you anything more or less than what you are with Christ. And I think that’s a fear and I think that’s something to be honored and looked at and said.

Where am I in that path and why am I so, you know, that’s a whole other discussion.

Russ Ewell

Yeah. Well, and we’re just going to forget what I had planned. Let’s just talk about this a little bit. So because I have no real plans. For one time in my life, I’m flowing instead of controlling, which is a whole other. I’m like in that DSM thing. They probably have a picture of me in there going, this guy, he’s got, I’m doing something.

Gary Ruelas

Ha ha ha! I got it.

David Traver

Hahaha. Gary, he’s descending.

Gary Ruelas

He’s going down. He should be going up. We don’t want thumbs down.

Russ Ewell

Hahaha! I forgot. Now I forgot what I was going to say.

David Traver

Keep going, keep going Russ.

Gary Ruelas

But I think it of goes back to this, know, if you go to the Vedas or you go to the Upanishads and you go maybe in Sanskrit and they’re talking about chance and frequencies and energy, that’s also modern medicine, right? It’s energy where it’s the exchange of electrons and, you know, getting everything in harmony and balance. Shock was opening up. Portals that they understood were portals of alignment, right? Ultimately, it led to being one with the divine.

Russ Ewell

Well, and see to me, think that the, there’s a, so I’ll speak from a firmly absolutist Christian. believe all absolute, all truth is rooted in scripture and rooted in Christ and therefore that’s how we judge everything. The trick is do we see all the truth that’s there? And so when I studied Native American religion I learned about it, there are things in it I absolutely don’t believe and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. There’s things in it I absolutely don’t believe. But what I was able to do was read my Bible differently.

And I was able to say, this is a part of the truth of the Bible I can’t see because of my Western mind or because of my linear approach to life. Now, I don’t want to get too complicated, but meaning there are people who don’t just think in terms of ascending, which you’re saying. And for me, that was, I always thought growing up, it’s my achievement. OK, what’s my GPA? Where do I rank in class? Am I winning the election? Am I making the team? Am I the star of the team? And it was very frustrating when I played basketball because I wasn’t the star of the team. Now I didn’t quit or anything because all my best friends, a lot of them were the stars of the team, but that was where I learned how to, for the probably the first time, I learned how to let go of me and go, it’s about us, and we ended up fifth in the state pretty good, first time our school had ever been that far. And I remember how great that felt. And to this day, me and my friends are all connected, and even better, how great that feels that those relationships were bonded. And I think that’s what you’re talking about a lot is, think sometimes we look at life in a linear way, and in a constant way, and a lot of the Western approach is that. It’s, it’s, it’s, go ahead.

Gary Ruelas

In your basketball metaphor, think you answered a parenting question. The parenting question is, how do you find unity with each other? It’s not a technique, it’s not an outcome, it’s how do we love each other?

Russ Ewell

Good, let’s go to it.

Gary Ruelas

And then everything else kind of follows because the disturbance is you’re not accepting me or you’re trying to order me and it’s a me you battle when we can just fall into the mercy of I love you so how are we going to make this work together? And it’s an easy concept to say, it’s difficult to challenge because you know I want my will over your will with the child parent issue. But that love will grease the wheel for flowing together.

Russ Ewell

Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Ruelas

that if the baby, if the child, if the adolescent really feels like you’re accepting all of me, which is what maybe a definition of love, I am more willing to give to you all of me. And I think that, you how do we practice that? Well, we do that with prayer. We do that by listening. We do that with compassion. We do that by trying to understand.

Russ Ewell

But i think you know it’s interesting you mentioned it because I read a couple of articles recently. One was written by a millennial and she was talking about the birth rate and why it’s declining. She said, I’m not going to give you statistical, you know, models, but I’m going to tell you my perspective as a millennial. She said, I think a lot of us spend a lot of time, you see a lot of millennials. This is her speaking on me, estranged from their parents because they feel like their parents triggered them or their parents, you know, are doing something to them. And she goes, I think what’s happened is my generation has so often looked at their parents as the problem. They don’t want to be parents themselves because they don’t want to have children that look at them the way they looked at their parents. I go to what you’re saying about the using vulnerability in parenting. One of my strong feelings is I learned this a long time ago. Whenever I buy parenting and marriage books, I tend to look at the books written by women because they tend to they tend to they’re number one amongst those kind of books. They are the greater population of purchasers, but they tend to the old things and I read a book that said that that oftentimes parents they stop parenting right around middle school and then the children that are their kids’ friends start to parent them and teach them things. And I think some of that connection is it’s easy to be connected to your kid if we can use the term connection when you’re fully in charge. When I can throw my kid into the van and go, we’re going to go to the zoo. And when I can go to my kid, OK, we’re going to go grocery shopping. But then once they reach that age, whatever it may be, 10, 11, 12, and they go, yeah, I don’t want to do that.

A lot of parents don’t know what to do after brute force fails. know what I’m saying? And kids are resilient. You can go, I’m not going to give you any money. And then the kid goes, well, I’ll get a job. Well, you can’t use my car. Well, I’ll buy one. And eventually, instead of teaching them connection, you teach them control and power. And I think that’s a lot of what you’re talking about. And I think vulnerability, I try to tell parents, be vulnerable. I’m a believer in strong parenting. What I mean by that is not always letting your feel and your weaknesses and your insecurities make you lose confidence that you can help your child. I think that’s important. But at the same time, not trying to appear as though you’ve got to win every battle, which my wife’s way better at that than me. Gail was like, okay, we don’t have to be right every time. She doesn’t have do what we say or he doesn’t have to do what say every time. And I grew up in a home. My parents were great. But they were like, hey, if we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you.

David Traver

Hahaha

Russ Ewell

And so I, you know, I was like, thank you. Okay, I understand where I am. Well, today’s generation is a little different and I think vulnerability is more powerful and that capacity to draw kids out as well as share your life is really important and that you can become very influential in people, anyone, when you’re vulnerable and you share your life because then they connect to you in powerful way. Dave, I’m gonna ask you a question, okay? I’m gonna just spin right into what I was thinking about. This is a quote from Brene Brown in the book Dare to Lead, which I haven’t read.

Vulnerability, this connects with what Gary and I are talking about. This is Brene Brown, Deer to Lead. Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome. What do you think about that Dave? I’ll read it one more time. Brene Brown, Deer to Lead. Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It’s having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome.

David Traver

Well, I wish you had not asked me that question, because I think Gary’s better at this. And I don’t want to be vulnerable. Phenomenal, phenomenal meaning behind that. I do agree with a lot of that.

Russ Ewell

Hahaha!

David Traver

I agree with that. think that I don’t disagree with it.

Russ Ewell

Just do me a favor, here’s what you can do for me. Talk to me for a minute, and I mean you’ve known me a long time so you’ve got a case study of me on this. Talk to me for a minute about how easy it is to choose control over vulnerability. Part of being an adult child of an alcoholic is I became the person called the hero, which is you try to control. Because I felt uncertainty, and no one should think I grew up in a great home with great parents. I’m not even remotely complaining of what I learned is I learned I feel uncertainty and the way I deal with uncertainty is I get control. And so in every part of my life I was always striving for control. As a result I suppressed, hid, and really distanced myself emotionally instead of being transparent, sharing and connecting with people so that I had a lot of friends but I wasn’t fully connected because control was what I wanted. And I think maybe you can speak for a moment, it could be personally, it could be your observations of patients you’ve seen, but I think what she’s trying to say is that there is a great danger to the wellness and the wholeness of your life when control becomes more important to you than fully living, which is vulnerability and as we’ve been talking about, freeing yourself of yourself so you can discover who you truly are and be fully connected to people. But I think people could use out there, listeners, understanding that leaders are not the only controlling people, type A people are not the only controlling people, that there’s a desire for control in every one of us and that vulnerability is the answer to freeing ourselves from the need to control our kids, control our spouses, control our bosses. I think a lot of anxiety in life is that we are trying to control things we can’t control and then we’re angry at the world because we’re not able to control it. Maybe you can just speak to that for a minute as far as like why vulnerability is an answer or even what you’ve seen with patients or stress or whatever.

David Traver

Well, think that helps. I the funny thing about control is I don’t think we’re usually aware of it. I think that it’s something that can be engaged or started or whatever word you want to substitute. I don’t think I myself, when I started journey control, it comes from a place that I’m not necessarily even conscious that I’m starting to roll the ball. And, you know, someone can say, well, you’re kind of controlling, but by that time, I’ve already gone to Defcon three or something, you know, the question is, where does it come from early on? And the idea of control probably is rooted in fear for me, sharing more personally. Some of the people listening may know this. I’m the fortunate recipient of two very loving parents who adopted two Korean children. I’m Korean ethnically, you know, by birth. And I was raised in an all, I was N of one basically. I was a whole white and black city in Illinois.

So I learned from my own childhood experiences what it was like to be just marginalized or made fun of or whatever. And I think that really became much more part of me than I either A, recognize or want to acknowledge, even now as someone who’s much older. But because of that, I started to engage control mechanisms very early to try to navigate those painful experiences. And I’m sure I’m not alone. Not everyone helps. He has to go through what I went through. Everybody has their own thing, right? And we can’t look down on others just because they didn’t go through the same pain you experienced.

But I think it builds within me a desire for family, a desire to connect, and a level of empathy that, I’m not saying I’m arrived in any of those, but I think that, like you said earlier, Russ, our experiences shape, whether it’s Native American appreciation or whether for me it’s going up as end of what, it shapes how I look at things and helps me start understanding how to appreciate things more rather than, a narrow review. I’m not sure if that helps.

Russ Ewell

Gary, you have any thoughts on that? And then I’ve got a quote I want to read to you after you’re done.

Gary Ruelas

I think you both have addressed that really foundationally. We can make it complicated with all kinds of different but I really believe there’s the connection and disconnection and there’s love and fear. I think all roads lead down to those paths of healing, of family, coupling, vitality, life.

We have that juice that comes from that energy of being one with each other at a very soulful level, not just having the same logo club. Because we can jump from one club to another and believe we belong, but then we don’t like the people in the clubs that will leave the club.

It’s you know, or like a church can be a club and so I go to church But really I’m just a member of this club, but we’re not really joining That’s the moment. We’re not dropping down to be pure and just say, I just love you and I just want to be one with you and I’ll just show you all my scars and battles and I’m human and can we be human with each other? And it’s quality not quantity. It doesn’t take morphing together for eternity. We’re gonna do that in another way. But that openness and that unity of whatever that is I think is really the healing part for our life, for our mentality.

And as you said earlier, I think God doesn’t care about our circumstances, he cares about our soul. We came from them and we’re going back to him. And so no matter what our circumstances are, whether I have a castle or I got a little mobile home, I can be content and live with God because that’s the most important part of my journey. Not the obvious.

Russ Ewell

And yeah, and think what’s cool is, what’s cool is that you don’t have to attain to it, it has to be your vision of what you want for your life. And so often we get discouraged because we’re like, well, I’m not there now. I’m not either. But if that’s the vision of my life.

Gary Ruelas

Whoever that is, right?

Russ Ewell

Yeah, exactly. Now this quote fits perfectly. You mentioned the word soul twice and it fits perfectly with the quote I chose is from Oprah Winfrey. I remember I used to, you know, wonder why is everybody watching Oprah? You know, I remember in one day I said, let me watch an episode or I didn’t make it through the whole episode because I had to go somewhere. But I started watching. I was like, holy cow, she’s talking to people. Like there’s talking to people and then there’s talking to people. And I was like, she’s talking. And I think I think we’ve lost we’ve lost that understanding. So here’s something she said in a conversation with Brene Brown, O’Byrne, he said, being able to open up your soul and let it flow so that other people can see their soul in yours. I’m gonna read that one more time for the listeners. Oprah Winfrey, in a conversation with Brene Brown said about vulnerability, being able to open up your soul and let it flow so that other people can see their soul in yours. What does that mean to you, Gary? What are you thinking? How does that kind of work for us and can it work for us?

Gary Ruelas

The minute we put a language on it, you we’re already kind of labeling it as a thing and unfortunately we have to live in the term of language. So we use soul as a definition of something intangible, something without an ego identity or form, beyond the body, beyond the mind, the energy that maybe drove that first connection. And so when I can experience my resonance, think, my energy, my frequency. Experience your frequency and my frequency. My energy and your energy are one. That’s the soulful connection. Our rhythms are the same. Our energies are the same. We’re moving in the same, because it’s beyond form.

Russ Ewell

Love it.

Gary Ruelas

It’s beyond color, beyond pigment, beyond structure. It’s beyond something that came from the divine, it came from our Lord, and we go back to it. And the soul is always on the background of everything we’re doing. It only wants one thing. It only wants to be connected, my soul to your soul. If I can see beyond all the identity, you go to, and I’m sure David, you go somewhere and they say, what do do for a living? I don’t want to tell people what I do for a living. I don’t want to say, I this, I knew that, and I haven’t. I want to know you and I want you to know me at another level beyond whatever you think I am.

Russ Ewell

Boy, you’re getting into the uncharted waters.

Gary Ruelas

I remember going to this lecture, one of my professors, was a PhD, he developed a computer lab at Chicago. He was well known, well published. And so they were gonna introduce him to a conference, because they were taking his concepts on the plan of family therapy. 5,000 people in the audience. And the guy introduces him, him, reads off his resume.

And his name was Han von Forster, and he’s a little short guy, real smart guy. He walks in, and they’re all clapping, standing ovation for this guy, And I’ll never forget what he said. He goes, wow, that’s impressive. I’d like to meet that guy one day.

Russ Ewell

Hahaha!

Gary Ruelas

And I think that’s, I think because we’re not that. Inside I’m just a guy, I’m just a soul wanting to be loved and wanting to love. Bottom line. Whether I’m in the cashier register, I’m in a car wash, or I’m at a church. Can I be acknowledged? Can I acknowledge it? we just?

Russ Ewell

love that.

Gary Ruelas

For that second, just be cool with each other. That’s it, right? And we lose it because I have to wear this identity of this cloak where somebody sees me as something else and then I’m further further away from the connection. So, Oprah Winfrey, that’s it, right? One soul to another. One soul to another.

Russ Ewell

Yeah, yeah, she’s spotting it. Yeah, she’s identifying it. And that completely shedding of all those barriers. like what you say about, because I get into this all the time, I like what you say about forming our identity around a label as opposed to actually knowing our true self and communicating our true self, which is the Bible teaches. The Bible’s constantly doing it. You reminded me of Psalm 42. When the Psalmist is going through a frustrating period of his life, he cries out and says, my heart, my soul pants for God as a deer thirst for water and he talks about why am I so disturbed inside? Why am I so upset inside? And he’s talking about I need God and that the soul from a Christian point of view is constantly learning, yearning for God to fully complete it. In Psalm 90, the bosis says, satisfy me, God, with your love. That there’s a satisfaction that no possession, no amount of prestige and no amount of power can give us and that the Bible’s talking that’s the soul.

That you’ve added to that layer is not only does that soul connect with God, but that soul can make a human connection. In my opinion, that’s the deepest part of us. That’s the part that I look in marriage, for instance, in my marriage. That’s the part I look at with my wife, is there’s a knowingness of me that she has because of our relationships with God independently that allow us to experience a depth of relationship

I think is, is, it’s impossible for me to even explain. I’ve never experienced it before in my life. I’ve never, even when I read about other people’s relationships and things they do, I go, this thing is amazing. And the reason I’m describing it that way in response to you is because I think so many people don’t understand that there is something to soul connection and that it’s why in this world we have so much anger because you’ve got people going around and if I can use the, the

His dark materials is a science fiction show and one of the things that happens in it is these kind of wicked people everybody’s got their soul there it’s kind of like their soul is a an animal connected to them you know could be a rabbit could be a tiger and they’re separating these kids from their soul because they get energy from it and power from it and What happens to the kid after it’s separated from the soul is they just become placid they and literally they die and he’s not a religious writer, but when I watched it I went, when we don’t nurture that part of us that’s spiritual, when we don’t nurture that part of us that connects, we die inside. And I don’t think enough people, even Christians, you mentioned that church can become a club. I run into many Christians who go, why am I not excited? Why am I not as happy as I used to be as a Christian? And that’s because you’ve taken back some of the vulnerability that you had when you first became a Christian. Exactly, and I think a lot of times we get angry at everybody and all that and so I think it’s really good. there’s there’s yeah yeah get corks please.

David Traver

Can I say something Ross? I kind of say something. Just just bounce off what you shared is It’s interesting the last prayer in the gospel of John is that of significant length at least is is John 17 and What Jesus really prays for? You know if you want to use the word is unity, but what he’s really praying for his connectivity. He’s praying for connection He’s praying, he did not pray for all health to be taken care of, all poverty to be abolished, for sin to be eradicated on the earth. Great prayers, I don’t pray for that either. But I will tell you, it is so impressive that he prayed for connection. He prayed for unity. And this is, the whole topic of vulnerability is the blood line for connection.

And so it’s so huge that it’s only right that we strive and endeavor to be connected and vulnerability be on the table and never off of it because that really, Gary, this resonates with what Gary said, that is why we were made. We were not made to do great things per se in our professions, although we should do great things in our professions if God allows us. The real issue is we were made to be connected made to be one, we were made to be together. And when people lose that conviction, when they lose that magic, that is when the rabbit and the tiger get separated from their body because they are losing what really is the most wonderful thing that we’re all called to be and to strive for, which is to be one with God first and with each other, of course, as a fruit of that. And you really can’t have one without the other. But I just I want to put a punctuation mark on what you were saying, because I don’t think this is just a good theory. This is really why we are here and to be able to share with others, to share that it’s not just evangelism, it’s connection. It’s being able to reach out and make family. That is our purpose. That is why we are here. Not to go to church, no offense, but really for all those reasons. And when we lose that and we still attend some kind of organization, that is when we become the hypocrites and all of you know, the sweater wearing label people that we all, you know, tend to default being. I do want to be in each of your clubs, but I just, that can be taken out of the editing, but there you go.

Gary Ruelas

It’s kind of like Woody Allen saying, I don’t want to belong to the club that will have me, right? But I’ll ask you, I’m going to ask you both of one question here, and it kind of brings back to this, know, so for me, God is love and love is the energy of connection. So we all kind of going back to that whole thing.

David Traver

Hahaha!

Russ Ewell

Hahahahah

David Traver

I’m with ya, I’m with ya man.

Gary Ruelas

But Jesus said, am the way, and this is something that you mentioned, Rose, I am the way, the truth, and the life. What does that mean to you, the truth?

Russ Ewell

I don’t know if it will be simple, but if I give my simple, most people consider my simplicity complex. I think fundamentally, when I look at Jesus, and he’s saying he’s the truth, that embodied in his life, whether you look at it as deepest levels or its most superficial levels, is the path that we ought to take and be certain that we’re on that right path. And so truth to me is not relative. People think it’s, can do this, I can do that, it’s up to me, it’s how I feel. No. There’s a way to live life. And there’s a path to live life. And Jesus shows it. And when you follow the rules, you may not be on that path. You may just be following the rules. And so, it is, if there was, I’m no good at direction. I can’t tell north from south, east from west. But if there’s a north star in our life, is Jesus. And if we keep our eyes on Him, that’s what Hebrews 12 says, fix your eyes on Jesus. Often the mistake I make in my life is I’m trying to figure out what are the 10 commandments, what are the 20 commandments, what are the 13 rules, what do people around me want? But if I keep myself focused on being like Him, if I just imitate Him, and you know where I learned that? Playing basketball. When I played basketball and I read this book, I could never play basketball right. But when I started watching a guy named Jerry West on TV, I went, that’s how you play basketball.

And I would just think about how Jerry West did it. And that to me, truth is not a rule. Truth is not a direction. Truth is embodied in Christ. And when you look at Him and you think about Him, in fact, 2nd Corinthians 3 says that it is His image that we are being transformed by. So here’s why Christianity is so simple. If you just watch Christ, look at Him, envision Him, you’ll find the truth. You don’t have to go get the right argument you have to follow the right person. so to me, truth is looking at him and going, if I stay on that path, if I keep my eyes fixed on him, I’m going to get to the right place. So that’s what I think it is. And obviously it’s the Bible. The Bible shows us that path. But so often the Bible gets turned into a book of rules. everybody, you know, they end up not playing basketball. They end up, you know, being kind of herky-jerky on a basketball court. Dave?

David Traver

This is a good segue from what you just said at the end of your sharing. and I’m not going to try to make this, you know, you know, Pilate asked, what is truth? I’m not sure what his heart was when he asked that. Jesus is standing next to him, right? You know, on the final trial, right? And, you know, as you probably know, in John 17, 17, Jesus said, your word is truth. Of course, he’s praying to God. And I don’t have great answers, but I believe that truth is God’s word, which is resonates with what Russ just mentioned, but I think that truth is relationship. I think truth is relationship with God. I think truth is relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And the trick of that, Gary, is that I don’t think a lot of people understand the word relationship.

I think that it’s easy to be myopic and sell what I just shared short because we define or we interpret what was just shared in the view of, in the lens of what we think relationships are. But I think relationship is a lot of what we’ve been talking about with, know, connectivity, all these things. But I, that’s what my answer. It’s, it may be a little bit truncated, but that’s how I go about

Russ Ewell

I’m waiting in great anticipation. I am waiting in great and I’m like a student in high school again going, what grade did I get on my test? Because I’m linear. I’m an achiever. And if I don’t get a good grade on my test, I will collapse, lose all sense of identity, and be thrust into the whirlwind of life of emptiness. Anyway, go ahead and tell us what it is. Yeah.

David Traver

And you want to make sure you made the cut.

Russ Ewell

I just know I’ll be devastated if I’m not in the realm of right. What are you thinking, Gary? What’s on your mind? I just can’t wait.

Gary Ruelas

My god, that’s so funny. You know, I think what you’re both saying and what I hear and I feel so, so love, one of the concepts I struggle with is that pure love, I heard somebody, I don’t even know where, is a hundred percent acceptance of what, of the other. And what that might mean is how can we accept the other hundred percent because we have all these conditions, right?

But pure love is the, if it’s the energy of connection, it’s the emergence 100 % into the other. It’s a pure acceptance of the other. Does that mean we just go along with everything? No, there’s a whole other discussion in it. But we merge into the resonance completely as a unity of one. And that’s just, the mind gets in the way of that because I don’t like this or I don’t like that or this or that. But it’s the acceptance.

And that doesn’t mean give away. There’s all kinds of other levels. But they ask Jesus, what are the two greatest commandments, right? And besides honoring our father as the only one above everything else, what we’ve been talking about, he said, love your neighbor as yourself. And then we even take that further to love our enemy. It’s that completeness of the emergence without a dichotomy and a separation and a judgment to that we get to be in that unity, that oneness with each other. And I think that’s one of the definitions of the truth is what you both have said is that unity is that drive to be complete hard, easy to say, hard to do.

Russ Ewell

Well, what the… yeah. Well, and what you’re talking about you know, and obviously that term truth is deep, right? Because I think part of accepting other people is accepting yourself. I had a person say to me once, you love your neighbor as yourself, so if you don’t know how to love yourself, you’re going to be pretty terrible at loving your neighbor. Of course, the guy said to me, Russell, I think you have great potential to love people since you love yourself so much. It’s like, OK. But what I like about what you’re saying is Jesus was the embodiment of love. God is the embodiment of love. And so that purity. You’re talking about when the truth comes into your life, you shed all those things. this is the, I think it’s a good place to kind of close our talk off. It’s just been so exciting. I’ve been so fortunate to have Dr. Dave Traver and Dr. Gary Ruelas, and I’m trying to bribe them to be consistent guests. They’re very busy men. They have a lot of patients to see. They’re doing a lot of good in the world. But Jesus, when he talks to the rich and unrulers, he’s known. He says, give up all your possessions and follow me. Sell it all and give it to the poor.

But when he said it, the Bible says he looked at him and he loved him. And I think what you’re talking about is when you have embodied the truth in your own life, there isn’t anybody you can’t love. There isn’t anybody you can’t connect to. They may not connect back to you, but you can connect to anybody. And that’s what 1st Corinthians 9 says. Paul says we must become all things to all people. People don’t care what we know when they know we don’t care.

And I think one of the hardest things I have to do in training people, which I do for the ministry, it’s not the skill to speak. It’s not the ability to lead. It’s the care for other people. And it struggled for me in my life because I cared so much about achievement that I looked at everything as a vehicle to confirm my identity as being worthwhile because I achieved. And I remember someone once pulled me aside and said, Russ, you’ve got to understand that people are fragile.

And I walked away and went I have no idea what they’re talking about, but I’ve got goals to reach so I’m not going to think about it. Fortunately as the decades went by I looked at it and I went I’m fragile every human being is fragile and only love can solve that problem and love’s vehicle to solve that problem is the truth of Jesus expressed in spirituality and and and vulnerability and so we hope today in our discussion that you’ve been able to sit back listen to us and and really get your own thoughts together be able to develop your own perspective in all this. We’re not trying to tell you what to do. We’re not trying to tell you what you have to do. What we’re trying to open up is a way of thinking and feeling and experiencing God, experiencing people, so that the whole of your life, every aspect of your life, can be better. And as Gary had said earlier, whether you’re living in an RV, a mobile home, or you’re living in one of the big mansions like Dave Traver lives in, whatever, I’m just joking.

Russ Ewell

resist myself.

Gary Ruelas

my gosh, good. I will forever see you differently now.

David Traver

Yes, Gary, that’s called connectivity. Connectivity.

Russ Ewell

Ha ha!

Russ Ewell

Hey, that’s what happens when you’ve known, that’s what happens since you’ve known each other since you were teenagers in college. That’s what happens.

Gary Ruelas

I know we’re gonna answer it. I just want to read this one. I want to leave us with this one verse, if you don’t mind. Okay.

Russ Ewell

Get it in here. Get it in here. That’s going to be the close right there. Gary Royles, dropping knowledge on us right here, Deep Spirituality, an exclusive.

Gary Ruelas

This is God’s work, but I just want to switch this topic for maybe next time. So this is Psalms 139, 12, and 13. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light becomes night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Russ Ewell

Chemistry of vulnerability.

Gary Ruelas

And that it’s complete, right? There is no, it’s just complete openness and acceptance of what is, anyway.

Russ Ewell

And I want to thank both of you for not only talking about this subject, but exemplifying it not only in the podcast, but off the podcast when we talk and we’re friends. I’ve known Dave for most of my life, and I feel like I’ve known Gary for most of my life, only we’ve just been building our friendship for the last year or so. I’m very grateful to both of you. Thank you for being on.