From Courtroom to Calling: Bob Martin on Healing Faith, Taoism, and the Power of Story

Bob Martin Interview

Welcome to Hard, beautiful journey where we embrace vulnerability as our superpower and let courage light our path. I'm Tiff Carson here to share heartfelt stories of healing, grief, and resilience. Each week I'll talk with guests from experts to everyday heroes. About their journeys through adversity.

Together we'll uncover the beauty that emerges from life's challenges and how each experience can spark profound growth. Join us on this courageous journey of connection and transformation.

Tiff Carson: What do you do when the life that you've built on power, certainty and success no longer feels true to who you are? Our guest today knows that moment intimately. Bob Martin once stood in courtrooms during one of the most dangerous eras in Miami's history, the cocaine cowboy era, high stake criminal cases with intensity and precision. He was a criminal trial lawyer at the top of his game, but something deeper was stirring. Then came 9-11. And as the world watched in disbelief, Bob did more than observe the violence and division that was playing out around him.

He began to question everything, not just the system, but the stories, the way religion had been used to justify harm, the way that truth could be twisted, the way that belief when left unexamined could divide instead of unite. And that questioning turned into writing. But not legal briefs. This time it was books.

First came Children of Abraham, a bold and compassionate attempt to reimagine what divine guidance might look like in a fractured world. Then came I Am The Way, a spiritual conversation between Eastern and Western thought, born from deeply personal dialogue between Bob and his wife. Two people with very different spiritual roots, but a shared devotion to kindness, curiosity, and connection. 

What I love most about Bob's story is that it's not just about a professional shift, it's about a soul shift about finding healing through questioning about holding space for different truths, about daring to write a new narrative when the old one no longer fits. 

Welcome to the podcast, Bob. How are you? 

Bob Martin: Doing real well today. Thank you and thank you for having me on your show.

Tiff Carson: I’m looking forward to our conversation. We have rescheduled from a long time ago, and I have been thinking about this one for a long time, so I'm so grateful that you are here. I just shared a glimpse of your journey, but I'd love to hear it in your own words. What was going on in your heart and your life that led you to make such a radical shift from law to writing about faith and healing?

Bob Martin: It's a interesting question. Let me start answering that by telling you a little story about a question I asked my dad. My dad was born in 1898. He lived 97 years, and sometime in his early nineties or late eighties, I went to him and I asked him, Dad, you know, your life has been incredible.

You were born when there wasn't even indoor plumbing. And you saw a man walk on the moon. Now what was that like? What was that like? And I expected to get this fountain of wisdom from him, but what I got, and he was Hungarian, so he talked like Dracula. And what I got from him was, well, it all happened kind of slowly. And I tell you that story because when you asked me the question, you know, was it all happened kind of slowly

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: Things happened in my life and doors opened and it seemed like they invited me to walk through them. And sometimes I wonder how many decisions in my life I made, you know? Which brings up the whole question of, are things synchronous? 

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: Which is kind of above my pay grade, but let me get to your question. I'm sorry.

Bob Martin: So yeah, I was doing very well as a lawyer. You know, people were walking into my office with oodles of cash. I had paid my house off by the time I was 34.

Tiff Carson: Wow.

Bob Martin: I had the respect of the courts. Most folks knew me. I had great friends in the media. Everything was just going as well as you could hope. Not personally though. 

You know, one of the, I guess one of the professional liabilities of being a criminal lawyer is that sometimes you start hanging out with your friends. Not that you engage in their activities with them, but you start to kind of know them. And, I was most connected with the Italian branch of a famous mob family, the Miami branch, and these guys were just fun to be around, and I was hanging out with them. And again, it was the cocaine cowboy days. And let's just say that my behaviors were a bit excessive. 

Bob Martin: And as my behaviors became excessive, things at home became more frayed. So I spent more time at work and it got to the point where I was coming home at midnight and leaving at five in the morning and I had two kids and they weren't getting the attention they needed.

It wasn't very pretty picture.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: So in some ways my story's unique, but in some ways it's very common because, you know, you start to hit bottom and you reach out for help.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: And I reached out. I heard about a therapist who was different, let’s just say he has his office behind his house and it was in the middle of a Chinese garden with waterfalls and tinkling bells And you just walked in there and automatically had a sense of calm, that was, you could touch it.

Tiff Carson: Hmm.

Bob Martin: And so I started seeing him and I developed an affinity for him. And then came a time when I had to make a big crossroads, and I went and I asked him, what should I do?

What should I do? And I fully expected to get some kind of therapist talk like,
“Well Bob, what do you think you should do?” 

Tiff Carson: Yep, I totally get that

Bob Martin: Right?

Tiff Carson: Uhhuh.

Bob Martin: What do you think I you should do? You know?

Tiff Carson: Yeah.

Bob Martin:  But instead he picked up some coins. And he shook him in his hand, and he dropped him on the table and he looked at him and he counted up the heads and the tails and he started making mathematical calculations, and I thought that all of a sudden my therapist had become some kind of soothsayer, you know, a tarot card reader or something.

I was getting more and more angry.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  Finally, he came up with a number opened up a book to that chapter number and he showed me the chapter and the title of the chapter was Retreat.

Tiff Carson: Hmm.

Bob Martin: I cursed him out. I stomped out. I didn't think that it was cool to be throwing coins about my future.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: And second, I didn't like the advice.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. 

Tiff Carson: Because it didn't fit your narrative, right? Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: But it was like that word was stamped on my forehead. So I pulled back from some of the behaviors, I pulled back from some of the crazy things I was investing in and after a couple of weeks, I made another appointment.  I walked in sheepishly and I go, what was that? And he said, well, that was the I Ching.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: And I said, what is the I Ching? He says, it's a Taoist practice of self-examination. I said, what's Taoism? 'cause I didn't grow up in a religious home.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  My folks, they suffered at the hands of the Bolsheviks and the Nazis and the like, and they just didn't feel there was a God that should be worshiped.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: And so that wasn't a conversation we even had. So I really didn't have any kind of basis in any kind of philosophical or, you know, a system.

Tiff Carson: Hmm.

Bob Martin: And I asked him what that was and he started to explain it to me. And all of a sudden, you know, I said, well, that makes sense and that makes sense. And I wasn't being asked to believe in anything that was supernatural.  It wasn’t anything I couldn't see or touch, I could just rely on my experience and he would, you know, show me something. And I say, yeah, that jives with my experience.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: And so I wanted to learn more about it. And that's when I found out that my therapist was the English language Editor, and top student of Master Watchman Nee.

Bob Martin: And actually now he's a grandmaster. Matter of fact, this year is his 100th birthday.

Tiff Carson: Wow. Oh my goodness.

Bob Martin:  So it causes me to reflect back on my time with Master Nee, but he journeyed from the Shaolin Temple to Miami. He taught, and I studied under him for six years and it was transformational. It changed my life.

Tiff Carson: So you've said that 9-11 shook something in you. Was it around that time? And can you take us into that season of your life? What was unraveling for you or shifting?

Bob Martin:Hmm. So the timeframe comes basically that I studied from Master Nee during the eighties, and then at the end of the eighties, I had certain agreements with my mob clients that I wouldn't do anything unethical or illegal.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: Then when his son was arrested, it was like, no, you will do this and you will do that. And I said, no, I won't. I can't.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  So we all decided that it would be better for me to move to North Carolina. Which we did a handshake.  He said, sometimes a man needs to move on and do this, you need to leave and I did.

Tiff Carson: Hold on a sec. Were you nervous? Like, were you ever nervous at all?

Bob Martin: You know, our relationship was, it's funny, you know, you wouldn't think that you can depend on the integrity of a criminal.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: But in that world, at that level, your word is your bond because you don't have a police force or a court system to enforce your contracts.

Tiff Carson: Right. Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: You have to rely on folks. And trust and loyalty and honesty are highly regarded.  Your word has to be your bond. And so the arrangement that we had was always that way. It was always straight up and honest. I said what I would do and what I wouldn't do, and if he didn't like that, we would talk about it. And I explained why I thought so. And so it was all good. But like I say, when his son was arrested, he wouldn't take no for an answer.

Bob Martin: And so we resolved it. I mean, he wouldn't take no for an answer and he told me so. And, my problem was that even if hired a different lawyer, a lawyer is ethically bound to report the unethical conduct of another lawyer. So even if I hung around, I would be between a rock and a hard place.  So it was just was the best thing and we shook on it, and I never heard from him again. So, no, the relationship was such that I never really felt nervous, except of course, when he came to see me for the first time.

Tiff Carson: Oh yeah!

Bob Martin: Because I was a prosecutor. We had just hit the mob up for 70 million bucks, and then I left the office and hung out my shingle, and within two weeks he walked right into my office and sat down in front of me and didn't say anything for a very, very long minute. That was scary. That was a little scary, yes.

Tiff Carson: Oh my goodness. Okay, so you moved to North Carolina, which I love North Carolina by the way. It's so beautiful. So then what happened?

Bob Martin:Well, so with this transformation that occurred in me, the woman that I had married, who was the mother of my children, I was a different person and she wasn't the right person for me to be with.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: Our values had changed such that it didn't work. So we split up and in 2001, I met my current wife, or actually, I married my current wife, but it was right after 9-11, a few days after 9-11, we got married.  But again, because I hadn't grown up with any kind of religious mandate imposed on me, it caused me to always be curious about people that rely on faith and belief and the like.

And I always curious about why it is that people claim to be devotees of the master Jesus who taught love. And yet are cruel. How do you wrap your head around that?

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  You say your devoted to this particular idea of loving your neighbor, of turning the other cheek, and yet you don't live that life.

I was curious, and after 9-11 I saw everybody running around killing in the name of God. You know, we were killing the Muslims and the Muslims were killing the Muslims and the Shia and the Sunni, and it was a mess.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: So it was a thought experiment one day I just kind of thought, you know, if there is an “up there” and there is a God up there and he thinks like we think and he thinks in English, he might be looking down at this craziness and going, nah, no, that's not what I intended for you guys.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. 

Bob Martin: Not only that, but I had also been looking deeply through the meditation and the training in Taoism about how our bodies and our minds evolved or were created for a very different kind of environment, and we are now been almost plucked out of being hunter-gatherers and placed in this highly stressful life that we live today.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: So all of that was kind of bubbling around in my brain and I thought, what if God would just send a message, say, Hey, I really exist and you're not doing what I had intended.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  So I played with like, how could I make that happen? And so I made it happen by, the little tickers down the bottom of your TV screen? Messages from God started appearing there. And the whole chapter, there's another message from God, and I’ve got seven characters, each of them has one of the seven deadly sins, you know, sloth, jealousy, envy. And the question is, what kind of human faults are susceptible to redemption?  Which aren’t?

Bob Martin: You know, does the sex addict more likely to be able to redeem? Does the mafioso who compartmentalizes carrying the statute of the blessed mother in the parade, then taking care of family business the next day, would it make a difference to him?

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  What about the guys that are selling counterfeit Versace handbags on 42nd Street in New York, would they still sell them if God was fact not belief?

Tiff Carson:: Mm-hmm. 

Bob Martin:  It was just a whole world of thought experiments. And so I started writing and it resulted in the novel.

Tiff Carson:: When you started writing that, so not legal stuff anymore, but from your heart, did it feel like something that you had to do? Or was it something you felt was part of your healing journey? 

Bob Martin:Wow. Um hmm. Yes and yes.

Tiff Carson: Why yes and yes.

Bob Martin:  Well, it was certainly healing to be able to explore these things and these questions had always been up there circulating and the ability to play it out, put a lot of it to rest.  It was healing in that regard.

You know, there was a lot of comfort and stability afterwards and there was also the feeling that I needed to do it. I don't know where that motivation came from, just kind of an intellectual curiosity. One of the things that Master Nee always taught us was that the antidote to judgment is curiosity. And when you become curious, you move from the egotistical state of knowing, to the childlike curiosity of the beginner's mind and the beginner's mind is so much more supple. So, I mean, that was the training that we had. And so, that was something that was motivational, I guess.

Tiff Carson: That is so powerful. The, the power of curiosity is just incredible when you actually set the ego mind aside and actually say, okay, what more is there? 

I love that I Am The Way was born out of conversations with your wife, especially because your beliefs were very different. What did you learn from having those probably very messy, but real conversations?

Bob Martin: Well, okay, so here I come in as a Taoist. Well, when I got to North Carolina, there's not a lot of Taoists in North Carolina.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: For your listeners, just as an aside, for those who aren't familiar with Taoism, I could just leave it at that it’s kind of a sister to Buddhism.

There weren't a lot of Taoist in North Carolina, so I started going to Buddhist temples and that's when I started meditating and the like, so here I come as a Taoist Buddhist and I fall in love with this Bible literal Southern Baptist.

Bob Martin:  I mean, she thought my stuff was just weird you know, and I thought that I couldn't buy her science, you know, that the world was 4,000 years old and Noah's Ark and all those things.

Tiff Carson: Yeah.

Bob Martin: So you have to grow up with that in order to be able to, you know, accept it.

Bob Martin: So there were funny things that happened along the way.  First of all, her family in Moultrie, Georgia. Deep, deep Georgia. Yeah.

Bob Martin: They all were scared and were advising her that she was getting yoked to a heathen and so you wonder like, what was it that attracted us to each other?

Tiff Carson: Yeah. How did that happen?

Bob Martin: Well by then, one of the things that occurred, and I can remember it as if it was 10 seconds ago, was the moment that my heart opened.

Tiff Carson: Hmm.

Bob Martin:  And there is a sensation when that happens, you know, it's almost like it opens up and an energy that flows into your body. It's like the positive side of PTSD 'cause it changes the structure of your brain immediately. And after that, you know, the primary thrust of your life is to ease suffering. And she is a saint.  And so we met on our shared values. You know, she had been married twice before and each time, if she wanted to go into the kitchen and cook for a group, if she wanted to help this person out, her husband was saying, why do you have to bother with that? Why do you have to do that? Why does it always have to be you? And for me, what she got was, “That's wonderful. Great.  Go for it.”

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. 

Bob Martin:  And she supported me as well in those endeavors. And so that's where we met and we just supported each other and we also worked together for some time.

And so we developed a deep friendship.  But I remember one time she was going off to church and she just seemed very sad. And I said to her, honey, what, what? Why are you sad? And she goes, well, you know, I just love you so much and I hate it that you're not going to go to heaven with me, because in her thinking, you have to be saved to go to heaven.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  And I said, well, yeah, I understand, but you know, I hate that you're not going to be reincarnated with me. She didn't take that well!

Tiff Carson: Oh my goodness. To be a fly on the wall for that one. Oh my! 

Bob Martin:  But then what happened was she came home and she was telling me there was evidently a pretty good guest preacher who came in. And it really, really moved her. And she came home and she wanted to tell me all about it. And as she was telling me the teaching, I was thinking, oh, you know, that sounds just like Lao Tzu.

Lao Tzu is the author of the Dao de Jing, which is the main book of Taoism.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hm.

Bob Martin: I said, “that sounds just like Lao Tzu, let me go look”.

Bob Martin: And so I looked and I kind of flipped through the Dao de Jing and I found the passage and I go, wow, that's interesting and I said, I wonder...and it's just another kind of thought experience…I wonder if I could take this, 'cause the way the Dao de Jing is written, it's almost like 81 poems.

Tiff Carson: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  They’re rarely more than a page, usually a paragraph or two and in that kind of Confucius way, like deeply, heavily packed, you know, cadence oriented. Meditations and they wonder if I could take, 'cause I've been playing around with poetry at that point, and I wonder if I could take this and find Christian terminology and reimagine it as a Christian devotional, as a Christian affirmation.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:And so I went to Google and I said, Hey, Google, what does the Bible say about leadership? So it gave me like all these citations, you know.

Tiff Carson: Yeah.

Bob Martin:I started reading them. Sure enough, I found one that was right on point. So I went and I looked at that in the Bible and I said, then the next thing was, you know, how to kind of mirror the cadence.  I didn't need to worry about rhyme, so thank God 'cause I couldn't, I don't know, that would've been too much, but just the cadence.

Tiff Carson: Yeah.

Bob Martin:I played with it and I wrote a couple of these and I read them to her and she goes, wow, those are really good. know, who'd you get that from? I said, no, I wrote it. She goes, what? I said, yeah, I kind of translated it from the Taoist. And she goes, let me see the original. So she read it and she looked at mine and she looked at this and she looked at it and she goes, that's not so weird. I get it. And she said, can you do another one? So I said, yeah, can you do another one?

Can you do another one?

Tiff Carson: Yeah.

Bob Martin:  Finally I wrote all 81of them, and again, by happenstance, this time I didn't have to try to get it published because somehow word got to a publisher. And they reached out to me and they said, can we see it? And I said, yeah. They said, we want to publish it.

Tiff Carson: That's incredible. I Am The Way…that is incredible.

Bob Martin:  Now the reason I call it I Am The Way is because the word Dao means the way. Maybe Jesus was saying, I am the Dao.

Tiff Carson: Maybe! There you go. 

Tiff Carson: So especially in this time right now, how divided it is in our world even having those distinct separations in your beliefs within your same house, that can be scary, not just the world, but in your house. Was it something that brought you and your wife closer together over the years?

Bob Martin:Yeah. It was like a Rosetta Stone between our minds. It was like a translator between our minds. I mean, look, she's Type A and I'm pretty laid back now. I was Type A, but you know, she's real task oriented and I'm real process oriented and sometimes, you know, it kind of gets in the way. If she wants to get it done, she wants to get it done right now. And I'm looking at it and I feel like it's not right, you know and to wait. And sometimes, I'll say, nah, I don't feel like doing it. She goes, why not? You know, you got the time. I said, it just doesn't feel right.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  Then a couple of days later, something will happen that completely voids the necessity for having to do it at all. And I say, well, it's good we waited because you know, that would've been wasted energy. She goes, I hate it when you do that. You know?

Tiff Carson: Oh, that is so awesome. So it does take courage and guts to challenge big things like religion and extremism. In your writing, what made you feel like, okay, I cannot stay quiet about this anymore. I need to write this.

Bob Martin:It's that intention to ease suffering. I wrote it because I sense that the divisiveness causes suffering. And there’s another way. I mean, ever since I wrote the book, I've been writing a lot. I tend to write letters these days, letters to a friend, because I see people suffering so unnecessarily. 

There's the conditioning that's placed on us and the perceptions. It's funny how perceptions work. Little story. So, she’s not much of a meditator, I brought her to one meditation class and afterwards she said, don't ever bring me to one of those again. And one day we got into a discussion about her science and about minutes into it, she goes, Bob, look, it's worked for me all my life. It works for me now, and I’ve got no reason to want to change it. I go enough said. 

Tiff Carson: So I am also an author. I did hybrid publishing and I use Amazon now to sell my books. You were literally selling books out of your garage. Which is wild and amazing. What kept you going when things probably felt discouraging? And did you ever ask the question that I have asked myself a bazillion times?

Is anyone even reading this?  

Bob Martin:Well, this book, you know, that's been published. I don't have any question about that because I get letters from around the country. I even just got a letter from New Zealand or an email from New Zealand, and people that had left the church because, of the, you know, my way or the highway. The Anarchical belief systems and things like that also left behind their relationship with the Divine.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  Through my book, they're finding an ability to reestablish that relationship and not have to have the dogma of an organized religion. So I get a letter about that from time to time.  I will announce that my publisher has now decided that they want to publish my novel.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  You’re an author. Can you imagine getting hit with this? She said, “We want to publish it, but right now it's at 96,000 words, and you need to make it 65,000 words”.

Tiff Carson: That actually just hurt my heart again because my book writing coach, let me tell, my book writing coach, I got to 40,000 words in my journey and she read it and she cut 20,000 instantly. 

Bob Martin:  Those are your babies.

Tiff Carson: It's your baby. Like what are you doing? But she moved it to a manuscript scrap pile, I use those words and those stories in other areas, but still, yeah, like cutting from 90 some thousand down to six. Are you nuts?

Bob Martin:Yeah, right. 

Bob Martin:Well, I said, what do you want me to do? Cut out every third word. She goes, no, you got a lot of fluff in there. Get rid of it. So, you know, I took the scalpel and I started cutting and cutting. And you know, it's interesting because she was absolutely right.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: It’s much tighter now.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  Not only that, but I also started out, I had 96,000 words in 13 chapters.

Tiff Carson: Oh, yeah that's a lot.

Bob Martin:  Now I have 65,000 words in 34 chapters.

Tiff Carson: Yeah, so more bite size, more digestible. 

Ecamm Live Recording on 2025-04-05 at 06.06: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's much tighter. So it should be released in about a month with a new cover and everything.

Tiff Carson: And that's just exciting going from self-publishing to actually having a publisher reach out to you. So that is a huge thing.

Bob Martin:Yeah, the self-publishing was tragic. First of all, I didn't know how to write a novel, and learn as I went, and I didn't know anything about the publishing industry. And so then all these, what do they call 'em? Consultants.

You know, they start surrounding you and saying, well you need this in publicity and you need that, and then you need an editor and you need this. This is gonna be $14,000. That's going to be $13,000. And it near broke me, and so you say, how did I through that?  Well, I got sick of it all, and I self-published it with a self-publishing company. I paid all those fees and I got my first royalty check of $6. 

Tiff Carson: I'm laughing because it's true. Wow. 

Bob Martin: I said screw that. So I found a printer and I brought the manuscript to a printer and I said, print me 3000 copies. And then I started selling it on the internet and I sold, maybe a thousand, 1500 copies on the internet. I’ve still got a thousand, 1500 copies in my garage. And then I just gave up and it just sat for years. You know, it is a trying thing.

Tiff Carson: So the thing that I would like to address about that is this. And I heard it the entire time I was writing in all of the circles that I was in, is you don't make money off of a book ever, or like very rarely.  The point of the book is to share story. It's to share your thoughts. It's to share your knowledge.

Would you agree with that? It is part of our healing journey to share our story, to write those things for other people to help them heal.

Bob Martin:  Oh, absolutely. I mean, yes you know, writing is certainly a big, wide and important path. Of course, it's not the only path to healing, but for those that you know, it works for, it is an amazing path. Like these days, the cultural, political situation these days is chaotic and difficult. For me personally, who was a servant of justice for 40 years to see the rule of law being dismantled on a daily basis is, it's beyond heartbreaking. I've come up with the term existential heartbreak,

Tiff Carson: Mm. Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  And if I could not write, I don't know what I'd do with it.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. It's a release.  It's a release of hard things that are going on right now.

Bob Martin:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tiff Carson: This might sound really random, this question, but do you ever see any connection between your time as a trial lawyer and the spiritual work that you do now? Or do you feel like they're completely two different worlds?

Bob Martin: No because when I came to North Carolina, I continued to practice law, but I only practice law for what master Jesus would call the least of these. I say master Jesus because Lord doesn't fit my cosmology,

Bob Martin:  I think Jesus was one of the great wisdom teachers, along with so many others. But, I think that the best lawyers are the ones that are sensitive and empathic and realize that their job is to work with people at the edge of existence, for the most part.  Unless you're doing a real estate transaction.

Tiff Carson: Yeah.

Bob Martin:  But you know, if you're doing a divorce, if you're doing a criminal trial, if you're doing a lawsuit where somebody has been paralyzed, you are stepping into somebody else's life taking on the responsibility of doing what you can in the situation that they're in, in those usually pretty extreme situations.

Bob Martin:  So, like I say, if you come into it because you are interested in the fee you're terribly academic, if you're very academic, you should be sitting in the office writing contracts. If you're doing trial law and you are taking this person's life and this person's story, and it's your job to turn around and present that to a jury and you have to create a theory of the case you have all of the characters and the evidence, to weave into that. So the skill of doing that is very helpful to an author because it's almost like writing a book.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  But just like any other business, I think it's not about selling the car, it's about loving your client.  Even if you just love 'em for the moment. As long as it's your case, and then you give it to the jury and then the jury comes in and they go yay or nay, and then you go home and you either cry or you celebrate and the next day you get up and you say, what's the next case?

Tiff Carson: So many people listening right now I think are in that uncomfortable middle space where they're questioning what they were taught, but not sure what to believe now.  I know that I have been in that middle space. What's something small that they can do to start finding their truth? 

Bob Martin:  It's interesting you say that because, my wife and I now go to church and I've been saved, I've been baptized, because we found a very, very progressive church that could handle both of us, it's that broad.  And a matter of fact, I went to the pastor and I told him, my cos boss, he goes, you're good. And we have an adult Sunday school called the Seekers. And there's like six retired pastors in there and most everybody else are recovering Baptist or recovering Methodist or recovering this or recovering that.  We're all seekers in that class and so it's very affirming and they accept my Buddhist background and very often, I’m able to say, well, you know, in Buddhism, we look at that this way and I learn other ways to look at it from the Christian perspective. So it all works out.  So for me, what I talk about, I have a current working hypothesis about how the universe works and it's subject to change if new evidence comes along.

Tiff Carson: of course.

Bob Martin: But you know, when you're in a very conservative church, you don't have that freedom. So I would say, and you don't have the freedom and it at the same time, on some level you are questioning, but then you're suppressing the questioning. And that I think is a terrible way to live.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin: A very stressful way to live, you know, like what about the dinosaurs? Where do they come in to the history and things like that, but to answer your question, surround yourself with beauty. You have an obligation to  experience awe.  Go find it wherever you can find it and cultivate it because the sensation of awe is the sensation of being in contact with the divine. The sensation of beauty points to something that is the ideal, and we know that we don't live the ideal. 

And in that, you can find the whole. Smush of what it means to strive to be divine and yet be faulty as a human. We look at something that's beautiful, we see the possibility, we see the potential, and there's something in us that says that I resonate with, that we resonate. There is even something called Standal syndrome where you know, seekers will go and they will see something that's so beautiful that they faint.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.  

Bob Martin:  And then, I mean, the brain science that there's a part of the brain, the left prefrontal cortex, that is where our sense of spirituality and connection and creativity rests. And today the world will stimulate the fight flight response on the right, but it doesn't give you a lot on the left.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  We become actually unbalanced.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  We're heavy right. Not so much left. And when you're unbalanced, that's when you start going down the rabbit hole.

And if you don't want to be, you have to intentionally stimulate your left side. You have to, I mean, I have this that sits on my desk. I got my little tai chi man here. I got my little yin yang box with my little candies in it. You know, I have pictures of beautiful things up there. Here's a stone I brought back from California. So these are all the energetic things that I put around on my desk, just, whenever I have to take a deep breath, I look at my little guy here.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  Like this little guy, you know, and here, this is his brother.

Tiff Carson: Oh, nice. I love them.

Bob Martin:  So you know, you have to intentionally stimulate that, and you begin to get comfortable with being in the presence of that, you start to experientially come to your own understanding. If I may.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:One of the things that I learned about the difference between the east and the West, that tells us that the most powerful way of moving forward is to combine them.

In the West, especially in Christianity, the idea is accept Jesus into your heart, and he will show you the way somehow.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  It’s kind of almost like an energetic thing, but the problem is that Jesus only taught for three years. Imagine if he had taught for 40 years. Now in the East, they say, look, we don't know about the answers. All that stuff's above our pay grade. We don't know how it works. Well, maybe we do, but we're not going to share it with you.

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:  What they will tell you is this. You cultivate generosity, cultivate beauty, cultivate compassion, cultivate gratitude, cultivate loving kindness, cultivate wisdom, cultivate these things, intentionally cultivate them, and you'll come to your own understanding of how the universe works and it will be more important to you.

Tiff Carson: Hmm.

Bob Martin:  What the east does not have is a model of unconditional love. Now if you see Jesus as a model of unconditional love, this is what is possible. This is what unconditional love looks like. It gives you that end in mind, that goal to strive for. 

Bob Martin:  In the teachings, what Buddha taught for 40 years, so there's hundreds of teachings of how to cultivate those things. I mean the techniques, the processes, the practices that actually cultivate these things. So what would happen if you take those practices and your goal is follow Jesus?

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm.

Bob Martin:You bring them together.

Bob Martin:   Some people say, well, you know, it's not in the Bible. Well, I mean, if you go to get your car fixed, you don't have to go to a Christian mechanic, you know.

So here's somebody that's a brain mechanic and he's gonna tell you how to readjust your brain so that you increase your capacity to love. And I'm doing it so that I can be more like Jesus. 

Tiff Carson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Win-win.

Bob Martin: Win-win. 

Tiff Carson: If somebody reads your books or hears your story, what is one thing that you hope stays with them today?

Bob Martin:Hmm, that you're not your conditioning, you're not the filters, you're not your thoughts. You are so much more. The person that is identified with the bulk of your thoughts is, I don't mean this as a criticism, but it's just small compared to who you really are.

Tiff Carson: That is beautiful. That is very powerful. So I am going to bring up how we can all get in touch with Bob. Bob's website is right here and what can my listeners find on your website? Is this where they can learn how, first of all, get your books and learn how to meditate.  What else can they find on there?

Bob Martin:Well, there's the books. They can also connect with me. I have on the first Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, I have a meetup. We just had one and we had about 15 people show up with questions about meditation and happiness and just had a great conversation.

No obligations, totally free on Zoom.

Bob Martin:So they can connect with that. They can send me an email if they have more questions. There's a couple of downloadable free eBooks about what meditation is, whether it's for me, 25 tips on how to relax, and there's also 56 gigabytes of videos and information if they wanna go explore.

Tiff Carson: Excellent!  I end every episode asking my guest what they are grateful for today because even when your journey is hard, it is also beautiful. What are you grateful for today, Bob?

Bob Martin:No kidding, and I'm not just saying this. I am grateful that you gave me the opportunity to do what I love doing.

Tiff Carson: And you do it well, let me just tell you, I absolutely love guests that share not just what they’re working on, but stories and their heart. 

Bob, you've lived one heck of a journey from the courtroom to the pages that you've written, to the soul level conversations that you are inviting people into now. And what I take away from this time with you is that we don't have to have it all figured out to start asking better questions. And to start healing. You've reminded us, you've reminded me, that faith doesn't have to be rigid and that truth doesn't have to live in just one place. That curiosity, kindness and conversation, especially with the people that we love, can be more powerful than certainty and rigid and maybe even more spiritual too. 

To everyone that is listening. If you're feeling like you're in that middle space, that messy middle, not sure what you believe anymore or what your next step is, I hope that today's conversation gave you a little bit of peace or at least permission to take a breath. To keep going because healing doesn't mean having all the answers. It just means willing to go deeper and to stay open. To write a new chapter when the old one doesn't fit anymore. So Bob, thank you again for being here. This was such a gift.

Bob Martin:  Thank you for having me.  This was such an enjoyable conversation.  I really appreciate you.

Tiff Carson: Thank you!

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