Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace.

So you'll know if you've listened to Radio Headspace before, if you've listened to

the headspace app over the years, I tend to talk a lot about something called the shared

human condition. And I think that can encompass so many different aspects of life. Of course,

it encompasses the difficulties that we all go through in our life, both internally and

externally. But it also talks to something that perhaps exists beyond or underneath, however

you like to think about it, our not just our thinking mind, but even sort of the lives

that we live. Perhaps it talks to something that sort of connects us all in some way.

This is something that's always sort of fascinated me. I remember going into one of my first Buddhist

monasteries that I lived in. And for the first, I can't remember how many months it was, we were only

allowed into a certain part of the library. And in that library we were just Buddhist books,

as you would expect, in a Buddhist monastery, the philosophy, the psychology, the practice,

and everything else. And then after a number of months of being there, you were allowed into

another part of the library. And in another part of the library, there were actually, it was a

really broad offering of books. There were books there on, I know, Sufism and sort of Christian

mysticism and all the different sort of great religions and traditions and pathways in the world.

And even as someone who is not particularly sort of religious in nature in terms of following a

doctrine as such, I'm kind of fascinated by what connects all of those things.

And actually as I started reading the teachings of many of those great sort of masters and

philosophers that had taught over the years, you started to see a real connection. And

as I went on and had to go fortunate to meet many people from different contemplative traditions,

as she started to see that, and I know I've said this before, as well, kind of the further,

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