In this episode we chat to the amazing Susan Piver about her latest book The 4 Noble Truths of Love and understanding meditation as a path to love. Susan is a New York Times Best-Selling author of 9 books, a meditation teacher, a speaker and a long-time Buddhist practitioner. She runs the largest virtual mindfulness community in the world, the Open Heart Project, which has more than 30,000 members. Susan is incredibly wise, insightful and kind and we're so grateful for everything she shared with us.
We discuss how Susan first became interested in Buddhism, why this particular spiritual path appealed to her and how this led to her becoming a meditation teacher. We explore the way that Susan views meditation as a path to love rather than a self-improvement technique or life-hack. Susan explains how through sitting with yourself in meditation and allowing yourself to just be who you are, this opens you up to gentleness. And as you practice softening towards yourself, this allows you to soften towards others and approach them with the same compassion and gentleness.
We talk about the intersection between intimate relationships and self-love and how the way that you treat yourself and talk to yourself can bleed over into your intimate relationship and the way you talk to your partner. The closer you get to a person, the more intertwined you become and if you’re someone who speaks harshly to yourself, as these boundaries become blurred, you’ll probably find yourself speaking harshly to your partner.
We also talk about the notion people have that you have to love yourself first in order to be in a healthy, loving relationship and why Susan believes this is a myth and in some ways, an act of aggression towards yourself.
We go through her 4 Noble Truths of Love as a helpful way of understanding modern relationships and the personal insight Susan has gained from her own marriage of 20 years. Last but not least, we chat to Susan about the wisdom of the enneagram - an ancient typology tool that is extremely helpful in understanding yourself and others. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed chatting to and learning from Susan.
Resources Mentioned:
Susan Piver’s Enneagram Workshop - https://susanpiver.com/event/enneagram-daylong-program/
The 4 Noble Truths Of Love - https://www.amazon.com/Four-Noble-Truths-Love-Relationships/dp/1732277605
Susan Piver video interview with Jonathan Fields - https://www.goodlifeproject.com/video/mindfulness-serendipity-and-the-unplanned-life/