Speaker 1: Exercising self control is not keeping yourself from giving you
Speaker 1: what you deserve, but it's removing the power of the
Speaker 1: want of those things and the feeling of entitlement to
Speaker 1: those things which you're free from being controlled by external objects,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the delusion that something outside of you is
Speaker 1: what you need to complete you. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think, ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative to make a life worth living.
Speaker 1: This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Corey Allen, a writer, musician, and the creator of the
Speaker 1: podcast The Astral Hustle. He focuses on how to live
Speaker 1: better with leading experts in mindfulness, neuroscience, and philosophy. Eric
Speaker 1: and Corey have spoken before about his book Now Is
Speaker 1: the Way, but on this episode, they just freely talk
Speaker 1: about whatever they want. Hi, Corey, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi Eric, thanks so much for having me. It's great
Speaker 1: to be on again. Yeah, it is wonderful to have
Speaker 1: you on. Every time you and I talk, I just
Speaker 1: love it and I always find we could just talk forever.
Speaker 1: So I thought, let's just have another time where we
Speaker 1: get together and talk. And I actually, in comparison to
Speaker 1: the normal amount of prep I do for an interview,
Speaker 1: I did way way less this time. So we're going
Speaker 1: to see how that goes. Yeah, it's going to go well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually think it will. There is a lot to
Speaker 1: be said for just kind of coming in and seeing
Speaker 1: where things lead us. Although I do have some key
Speaker 1: talking points, but we always start with the parable, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to answer it again. So in the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent talking with a grandchild. Says in life,
Speaker 1: there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the ranchild stops and thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up at their grandparents says, well, which one wins?
Speaker 1: The grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Yeah. So I look at that as a
Speaker 1: direct translation to the power of mindfulness, because one of
Speaker 1: the most useful elements of understanding the inner landscape and
Speaker 1: putting a spaciousness in your life through meditation and just
Speaker 1: slowing down in general, allows you to be more aware
Speaker 1: of not only the thoughts that are arising in your mind,
Speaker 1: but also the impulses. That's a huge part of you know,
Speaker 1: self development is recognizing those either conditioned or unexamined, arising
Speaker 1: impulses and then in the moment, having half of your
Speaker 1: attention trained on your experience and half of your attention
Speaker 1: trained on your inner dialogue, and realizing that those arising thoughts,
Speaker 1: ideas impulses, those are all just information. It's all just
Speaker 1: like sense, information that's flowing through the mind, and those
Speaker 1: impulses aren't things you have to do, right, They're just
Speaker 1: kind of suggestions based off of your reactions or you know,
Speaker 1: how you're feeling at the moment, or your past experiences
Speaker 1: and so forth. And so I think about these two
Speaker 1: wolves as two polarities of the potential arising impulses from
Speaker 1: the mind, and using the discipline of the practice of
Speaker 1: meditation and mindfulness allows you to actually get out from
Speaker 1: in front of those two wolves. Because if you think
Speaker 1: about it in terms of this analogy, it's as if
Speaker 1: we are human and these wolves are behind us, and
Speaker 1: almost has this sense of urgency or fear or something
Speaker 1: like that we have to deal with. Okay, I have
Speaker 1: some meat, maybe I'm the meat. Which one am I
Speaker 1: going to feed to this wolf? You know? And how
Speaker 1: much of me am I going to feed to it?
Speaker 1: You know? But instead through looking at it in terms
Speaker 1: of a more floodlight point of view as opposed to
Speaker 1: a flashlight point of view, you raise up and now
Speaker 1: you're behind the wolves and the wolves are in front
Speaker 1: of you, and you realize these wolves are just arising suggestions,
Speaker 1: just impulse is and I am not my thoughts, I'm
Speaker 1: not even these wolves. I'm none of that stuff. What
Speaker 1: I am is which of these impulses and these thoughts
Speaker 1: that are coming to mind that I choose to turn
Speaker 1: into action. And so that's how I think about it.
Speaker 1: It's like once you liberate yourself out of the fear
Speaker 1: and the anxiety of being face to face with two
Speaker 1: wolves through of course, calming the body, calming the mind
Speaker 1: through meditation, giving your mind enough time to de noise
Speaker 1: and to sort of reset so that you're not trapped
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem of your thoughts. Rather you become the
Speaker 1: an observer of your thoughts, and there's that spaciousness. Then
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, now it's simply a matter of taste.
Speaker 1: Now it's simply a matter of decision making of which
Speaker 1: one of these impulses do I want to choose in
Speaker 1: the moment to turn into action. And that can be
Speaker 1: big decisions, that can be things you say in passing conversations,
Speaker 1: that can be simply listening in moments you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be, Because that, in truth is really what
Speaker 1: creates action in reality and the objective world and what
Speaker 1: makes who you are. That's awesome. I often think that
Speaker 1: the thing meditation is most done for me when people
Speaker 1: are like, what is the biggest benefit meditation has given you.
Speaker 1: I've just brought up the old Victor Frankel line. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a space between stimulus and response, and I feel
Speaker 1: like meditation has increased the size of that space for me. Right,
Speaker 1: It's just given me more space between stimulus and response,
Speaker 1: and which I can sort of do everything you just
Speaker 1: so eloquently said, which is kind of look around and go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's the thoughts, here's the emotions, here's the bodily sensations,
Speaker 1: here's the impulses or urges that are arising out of that.
Speaker 1: I can deconstruct that a little bit and then go, okay,
Speaker 1: what's the wise response here? Yeah, totally, And I mean
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you also don't even
Speaker 1: really recognize that that's happening, and that you're caught in
Speaker 1: the momentum of ultimately like just the causality of your life.
Speaker 1: Until we recognize this, we're all just reacting, right. So
Speaker 1: we're just we're kind of panicked because we are in
Speaker 1: the state of dealing with the chaos of reality and
Speaker 1: just the logistics of being like a weird organism on
Speaker 1: a weird planet. And so there's so many intersections. It's
Speaker 1: such a moving target in every direction that we're trying
Speaker 1: to deal with all this, and so we're caught up
Speaker 1: in this momentum of just sort of reacting to this situation,
Speaker 1: reacting to this situation, getting blindsided by an emotion, having
Speaker 1: that overtake us, mistaking our emotion or our thought for
Speaker 1: who we are, you know, being like, oh god, you know,
Speaker 1: I had this negative thought and I was like rude
Speaker 1: to this person. Now I'm terrible, I'm this root. You know,
Speaker 1: we get all hung up in this, and it takes
Speaker 1: being able to recognize that and take a step back
Speaker 1: and to get out of that causal momentum of reaction
Speaker 1: and start to see the homeless. Second, I actually can
Speaker 1: choose who and how I want to be in the
Speaker 1: present as opposed to literally just like I think about
Speaker 1: like almost like catching a flu. In this way, it's
Speaker 1: like if you were twelve and someone or something happened
Speaker 1: to you know, from your parents, sir, in social situation
Speaker 1: or whatever, and it had this really negative imprint that
Speaker 1: created this defensiveness or this vulnerability or whatever, and you
Speaker 1: go through the rest of your life reacting to that
Speaker 1: situation defensively, either through aggression or whatever it is to
Speaker 1: kind of keep people back or protect yourself. You caught
Speaker 1: like an illness, right, and it's like by recognizing that
Speaker 1: you're sick, you can then heal yourself and then you
Speaker 1: don't have that illness anymore. I think it very much
Speaker 1: works like that. So given that I'm gonna try and
Speaker 1: ask a question that I don't even fully know how
Speaker 1: to articulate. I know what I'm trying to ask, but
Speaker 1: asking it is a little bit more challenging. We are,
Speaker 1: in essence, just a soup of causes and conditions, right,
Speaker 1: That's what it is to be a human being. Right.
Speaker 1: Every experience I've had in the past has altered me
Speaker 1: in some way, my genetics, what I ate today, the
Speaker 1: air I'm breathing, right, it's all this incalculable recipe. Right.
Speaker 1: So we have a tendency to look back and go,
Speaker 1: all right, here was this bad experience that formed me,
Speaker 1: and that's not me. I want to slough that, all right.
Speaker 1: And here's another bad experience that happened and that's not me,
Speaker 1: and we want to slough it off. But then we also,
Speaker 1: at the same time talk about and I think wisely
Speaker 1: talk about here what my values are. Here's what's important
Speaker 1: to me. But that value and importance has also been
Speaker 1: shaped by countless uncalculable back things. So my question to
Speaker 1: you is, how do you think about what to keep
Speaker 1: and what to discard from the past, and how do
Speaker 1: you know what's actually quote unquote you. I love that
Speaker 1: question and it invites a deep answer, you know. And
Speaker 1: really what you're getting at is the impermanence of self,
Speaker 1: you know. And if you do go deep enough into
Speaker 1: meditation or whatever practice that you can zoom out enough
Speaker 1: from your identity and being ultimately attached to the notion
Speaker 1: of your identity, you can see. I guess I should
Speaker 1: explain that a little bit is like all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: the concepts that we place on all the information that's
Speaker 1: coming through our nervous system our entire life are just concepts.
Speaker 1: And so even like for example, you know, you feel
Speaker 1: something through your hands, you smell something, you see something,
Speaker 1: the information that's moving through your nervous system arising to
Speaker 1: the stage of consciousness is just raw data. But then
Speaker 1: based on our cultural heritage and etcetera, etcetera cetera. At
Speaker 1: the time we're born, all this stuff, we place these
Speaker 1: concepts on those sensations that are really only relative to
Speaker 1: us in a lot of ways, and that generates an
Speaker 1: aspect of our subjective perception. But it gets really deep
Speaker 1: is whenever you back up a little bit and you realize, like,
Speaker 1: oh wait a second, my entire identity is that, like
Speaker 1: everything that I think who I am and all this
Speaker 1: stuff and who I should be in the entire narrative
Speaker 1: of our self aware consciousness, it's just one big wave
Speaker 1: of data that we've applied all these symbols and all
Speaker 1: this meaning and all these signs too, that truly have
Speaker 1: come out of pretty much nowhere. It's just happenstance, you know,
Speaker 1: of our experience. And so whenever you can sit back
Speaker 1: and really begin to see the structure of your identity,
Speaker 1: it becomes really hilarious to me. Anyway, you know, getting
Speaker 1: hung up into something like even any of the three
Speaker 1: poisons is something like desiring something or thinking you have
Speaker 1: to go do this, and it's very important work some
Speaker 1: way in life that you're being or something you're hung
Speaker 1: up on. You're like, who is the one that's hung up? Like?
Speaker 1: Who is this person that's hung up on that thing?
Speaker 1: I'm watching this kind of tapestry of identity that's been
Speaker 1: constructed at me over time, and I mistook it for
Speaker 1: who I am, But really I'm the one behind that,
Speaker 1: just observing that character and the actor that's playing the
Speaker 1: role of this identity through time. Right. And so whenever
Speaker 1: you see that and begin to really accept that, your
Speaker 1: question of like, well, you know, what are these things,
Speaker 1: even the good values have come to me, Well, those
Speaker 1: are also just as conditioned and separate from you as
Speaker 1: the bad things. So the move is, I think to
Speaker 1: have that insight, you also traditionally kind of must have
Speaker 1: an increase in awareness and self awareness through that process,
Speaker 1: because they're just sort of two parts of the same mechanism.
Speaker 1: And in that you can begin to realize that your
Speaker 1: perception is not, of course, some vantage point through which
Speaker 1: the true nature of reality can be seen. And so
Speaker 1: you take this into account while following you know, your intuition,
Speaker 1: your instinct about what feels right, like what is wholesome?
Speaker 1: How can I be kind? And how can I be
Speaker 1: patient and understanding and be compassionate? This is like a
Speaker 1: sidebar to you know, applying symbols to things like people
Speaker 1: mistake compassion for an identity like you see so many
Speaker 1: people in the mindfulness meditation community thing, I am a
Speaker 1: compassionate person. It's like, no, No, compassion isn't a trait.
Speaker 1: Compassion is a point of view. It's a way through
Speaker 1: which you see the world and look for opportunity. Is
Speaker 1: to be compassionate, not something that you call yourself. All
Speaker 1: I am compassionate. You know, it doesn't do anything when
Speaker 1: you just call yourself compassionate. But what does do something
Speaker 1: is actually acting that way in life. And so I
Speaker 1: kind of look at it like that. So it's like,
Speaker 1: once you recognize the game is of the self is
Speaker 1: just this impermanent, ever changing, nonstable, really you know, confused
Speaker 1: collection of data and symbols, then you can go, all right, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just be as present as possible, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to truly listen to what feels good, what feels right,
Speaker 1: and then try and use the spaciousness of mind and
Speaker 1: the groundedness and the calmness that comes from exploring in
Speaker 1: a landscape to then do the best I can in
Speaker 1: this world. And that's the other thing is that like
Speaker 1: our intuition or instinct, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: that's all we have at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: But it's not right all the time, but we have
Speaker 1: to just go with it. And by understanding it's not
Speaker 1: always right and just doing our best, I think that
Speaker 1: we can get a bit further down the road. I've
Speaker 1: been working with how to think about and talk about this,
Speaker 1: and I do think at the ultimate edge of reality, right,
Speaker 1: what we call self is completely non personal. There's no
Speaker 1: trace of Eric in it. That's just my personal belief right.
Speaker 1: So that is one view. But then as you move
Speaker 1: back into the relative world, right, as you move back
Speaker 1: into all right, I am a person who has been
Speaker 1: influenced by all sorts of different things. Now I start
Speaker 1: to take on sort of, you know, for lack of
Speaker 1: a better word, of psychological or a personal self. And
Speaker 1: that personal self can be more or less I like
Speaker 1: the word you used, wholesome or healthy, you know. And
Speaker 1: so there's that sort of dual development. Layer one. It's
Speaker 1: sort of getting rid of that furthest out for me, stuff,
Speaker 1: the surface perceptions that people put on me, comparing myself
Speaker 1: to others, trying to live in a culture that I
Speaker 1: may not agree with the values. I move back a
Speaker 1: step and now what's the most psychologically and I use
Speaker 1: that word sort of loosely psychologically or personal self. What's
Speaker 1: the best version of that that I can create based
Speaker 1: out of everything that's happened to me and what I think?
Speaker 1: And then ultimately there's one step sort of back from that,
Speaker 1: which is that witness perspective or that true sort of
Speaker 1: dissolving into you know, I like to call it the
Speaker 1: unity of self. Yeah, that's a good way to describe it.
Speaker 1: That sounds kind of contradictory what you're saying and what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, and how we're agreeing on that, and it
Speaker 1: is in some ways, but that's because all things in
Speaker 1: nature are not black and white. Everything is a multitude
Speaker 1: of polarities, overlapping in ways that are often inconvenient, in
Speaker 1: ways that people have a hard time squaring and accepting
Speaker 1: because we look for an answer. But what's funny about
Speaker 1: humans is that we look for an answer and then
Speaker 1: we'll look for another answer, like, Okay, now I feel
Speaker 1: comfortable because I have my two answers, even when those
Speaker 1: two answers are contradictory, But it goes unexamined because that
Speaker 1: doesn't serve the narrative of mine. Whenever I was talking
Speaker 1: to Dan Pink, on my podcast. He had one of
Speaker 1: the best bits I might have shared this with you,
Speaker 1: one of the best like antidotes I just love of
Speaker 1: that's burned in my brain. He mentioned he was talking
Speaker 1: to this group of people and they all had the
Speaker 1: ability to kind of vote or something. It was like
Speaker 1: at at a keynote speech or something, and so we
Speaker 1: asked the audience, who here believes in free will? And
Speaker 1: of the audience raise their hand or whatever, and they said, okay, now,
Speaker 1: who here thinks everything happens for a reason? And you know,
Speaker 1: seventy of the people raise their hand. That's like, do
Speaker 1: we see a problem there? Right? But but it's like,
Speaker 1: that's just this such a human thing is that we
Speaker 1: allow ourselves these two quote unquote truths to facilitate the issue.
Speaker 1: And the problem that we're talking about right now is
Speaker 1: that there's a contradiction in that. But it's because as
Speaker 1: a creature, humans have a strange thing we have to
Speaker 1: deal with, because we have an ability to get so
Speaker 1: spectral lee meta in this way and see ourselves from
Speaker 1: this huge distant point of view if you put in
Speaker 1: the practice to do that. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: no matter how much you do that, no matter how
Speaker 1: far you go, you're still trapped and an animal body. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Part of that main frame has like okay, I have
Speaker 1: to deal with like you can have the coolest, most
Speaker 1: amazing computer program on your computer, but you still have
Speaker 1: to have, you know, an operating system. You know, we
Speaker 1: have to have OSX or else none of the other
Speaker 1: cool stuff works. And the operating system is, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: like our our psychological profile. And we need that because
Speaker 1: we have to have an ego to continue on because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we're really just this
Speaker 1: hotel for our DNA, and that we need the ego
Speaker 1: to believe that we have enough value to continue going
Speaker 1: so that we'll know repropagate or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to change directions here because, as you were saying,
Speaker 1: I jumped into the deep end of the pool there,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't resist. I want to talk about something
Speaker 1: that I just saw it on your social media recently,
Speaker 1: but I loved this line you said, dreaming of material
Speaker 1: wealth is a dream of being free from design buyers.
Speaker 1: And you go on to sort of say like, uh no,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna work. Let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite things that clicked on me
Speaker 1: is like, because our culture is so deeply based on
Speaker 1: commerce and marketing and capitalism and consumerism, Like what are
Speaker 1: we like, We're consumers that are just marketed to from birth,
Speaker 1: like before birth, but really before birth there's all this
Speaker 1: stuff for baby while you're still in the womb. It's
Speaker 1: like the second you step out of your mom into
Speaker 1: you know, meat space, all the marketers are ready to
Speaker 1: hit you with all the stuff that you know, they
Speaker 1: get dialed in algorithmically to serve you and leverage you.
Speaker 1: And really what happens is that we're told, particularly in
Speaker 1: America and in the Western world, but especially America, because
Speaker 1: one of the great superpowers of our country is making
Speaker 1: things famous, you know, that feeds into it. And so
Speaker 1: there's like a celebrity culture and a marketing capitalist culture
Speaker 1: where it's like, if you don't have this, then you
Speaker 1: aren't successful, right if you if you don't have this thing,
Speaker 1: this trade, this quality, this material object, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: then you aren't successful. And look at this famous person
Speaker 1: and look how happy they are, and look that they're
Speaker 1: they're driving that car or they're holding this stupid cologne
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. So we grow up in that ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and like women who are marketed to so intensely with
Speaker 1: I mean god, like the body stuff and the makeup
Speaker 1: in that whole world, that whole industry is so brutal,
Speaker 1: and it's like I can't imagine growing up having to
Speaker 1: deal with being told like, hey, you're not pretty enough,
Speaker 1: and so you need to have all these things to
Speaker 1: look better. I mean, it's really treacherous. So we grow
Speaker 1: up feeling really empty, like we're missing something, and so
Speaker 1: we get focused on this idea that hey, I can
Speaker 1: not only have that feeling go away, but I can
Speaker 1: crush it and be respected by everyone and whatever by
Speaker 1: having a giant house or like a lot of cars
Speaker 1: or owning an island or whatever it is. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of where people stop thinking about it in the
Speaker 1: most time. And it's because obtaining those things is practic
Speaker 1: really impossible. Like the people who have a mansion or
Speaker 1: ten cars or whatever, like just crazy luxury wealth. It's
Speaker 1: so few that, like you know, people don't ever achieve that.
Speaker 1: So it creates a lot of suffering and people don't
Speaker 1: have the space or the realization to actually get there
Speaker 1: and realize like, wait a second, this isn't the answer
Speaker 1: to how I'm feeling. And so if we unzip that
Speaker 1: whole process and pull some stuff out of the bag
Speaker 1: and dial down into it, what is it that we're
Speaker 1: really looking for? Because you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if you have a bunch of luxurious items
Speaker 1: or whatever, it is, like that doesn't make you happy, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not really the thing you're going for. And so
Speaker 1: what we're looking for is that to have that feeling,
Speaker 1: the pulling, the tearing, and the suffering of not feeling
Speaker 1: whole be gone. And so that's really what the material
Speaker 1: pull is cloaked in. And so it's great if you
Speaker 1: can recognize the fact that hold on a second, like,
Speaker 1: it's not that I want all this stuff. I just
Speaker 1: don't want to be wanting all this stuff. Like another
Speaker 1: one of my Instagram posts was the thing you want
Speaker 1: is to want nothing. That's really the end of the story.
Speaker 1: It's like, because then you're tapping back into instead of
Speaker 1: an intrinsic type of value, you're looking inward and you're saying, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is my life like? Just you have to reframe
Speaker 1: a little bit. So first off, you're awake, you pulled
Speaker 1: off the greatest magic trick of all time. You don't
Speaker 1: owe the world or anyone anything. You came into existence.
Speaker 1: Take a moment to realize how insane that is. It's preposterous,
Speaker 1: Like you were nothing and now you're a conscious being.
Speaker 1: You did it. Congratulations. You don't need to do anything else.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing trick, right. The fact that you exist
Speaker 1: is enough your whole by the fact that you were here.
Speaker 1: And if you can sit without a little bit and
Speaker 1: start to just appreciate the fact that you get to
Speaker 1: be here, you get to have these experiences and have
Speaker 1: friends and you know, eat food and just enjoy the
Speaker 1: crazy like sensuality of being, just like sitting in feeling
Speaker 1: air on your skin is like, you know, it's intoxicating
Speaker 1: if you're present enough with it. And so recognizing that
Speaker 1: space and that idea helps you get free of that
Speaker 1: suffering and tune into the gratitude and really just the
Speaker 1: bizarre abundance of magic that it is to purely exist
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, so much of that rings really true.
Speaker 1: That what we want is to not want. I think
Speaker 1: there's a couple of reasons why this is so hard.
Speaker 1: One is that if things like a new car or
Speaker 1: a new house or a hit of heroin never worked
Speaker 1: at all, It would be an easy illusion to see through.
Speaker 1: You'd be like that, just dozone work right? Like okay,
Speaker 1: I try to no good right, but that stuff usually
Speaker 1: temporarily works to go okay, scratch that itch. Problem is
Speaker 1: the itch comes right back. You know what's interesting, I
Speaker 1: just thought of this yesterday. Maybe I sort of subconsciously
Speaker 1: had these things connected in my mind, but I tied
Speaker 1: them up in my mind just yesterday, which was we
Speaker 1: listen to evolutionary psychology, they say you're wired to be
Speaker 1: unsatisfied because a satisfied creature doesn't survive, right, It doesn't
Speaker 1: seek partners, it doesn't seek food. It's just as like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm laying in the field. Everything's cool. So we're not
Speaker 1: capable on some level of satisfaction in the animal sense.
Speaker 1: And it occurred to me like that's sort of essentially
Speaker 1: part of what you know, Buddha's first noble truth to
Speaker 1: me to some degree. First and second right, like, which
Speaker 1: is dissatisfaction is imminent for you, you know, And so
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to think about that through in
Speaker 1: some ways, the Buddha is diagnosing the human condition, which
Speaker 1: is that we are designed to continue to want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's a brutal one too, because we get hit
Speaker 1: from both sides, because we're designed to never feel satisfied,
Speaker 1: as you said, But at the same time, we're also
Speaker 1: designed to seek the path of least resistance because we're
Speaker 1: you know, we're an animal that's trying to conserve energy
Speaker 1: all the time. And so it's like, well, what are
Speaker 1: you supposed to do with that? So how do you
Speaker 1: deal with that pole of that feeling of not feeling
Speaker 1: satisfied and just that general animal hunger of feeling like
Speaker 1: you have to keep moving, you have to keep doing
Speaker 1: this stuff. How do you stay grounded? Well, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because I'm in the midst of it right now. We
Speaker 1: are planning a trip and I'm going to go to
Speaker 1: Europe for a month in June. I've never been. I've
Speaker 1: never even contemplated taking anything like a month off work.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, listeners, there will be up two podcast episodes
Speaker 1: a week. I'm working hard now. I've never contemplated taking
Speaker 1: that much time off. So now we're looking at where
Speaker 1: we're going to go, and we're booking hotels, and I
Speaker 1: feel it. I feel the I want, I want, I want,
Speaker 1: and I also see right through the other end of it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, and then I'm going to come home, right,
Speaker 1: it's gonna end. So I think for me, it seems
Speaker 1: like the best I can do is to at least
Speaker 1: try as often as I can to see through the
Speaker 1: illusion and go, yeah, of course I want to stay
Speaker 1: in that nice hotel in that beautiful town in Europe. Like,
Speaker 1: I want that. And you know what if I got that,
Speaker 1: Like if somebody was like, Eric, not only do you
Speaker 1: get to stay in this hotel tonight, but we have
Speaker 1: just gifted you this hotel, you are the lucky winner. Right,
Speaker 1: I'd be over the moon for a week, two weeks,
Speaker 1: a month, I don't know how long, but eventually that
Speaker 1: hotel would just become my normal and I would be
Speaker 1: back to wanting the next thing, which is what you're
Speaker 1: getting at in your post about material wealth. Right, nothing
Speaker 1: stops the wanting process, and so as long as we
Speaker 1: think that we can permanently satiate it. For me, I
Speaker 1: put way too much stock in the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: used to be a relationship. If I could just get
Speaker 1: that relationship, you know, and now I sort of see
Speaker 1: through it at least. It's not that I don't fall
Speaker 1: into the spell a little bit. It's not that I
Speaker 1: don't feel to use your point or elier these impulses
Speaker 1: that come up in various directions, But I try my
Speaker 1: best to keep reminding myself, like, lasting happiness isn't there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some enjoyment, there's some pleasure, but lasting happiness it's
Speaker 1: not coming via that route. There's this other route that
Speaker 1: I've been nurturing that I need to continue to nurture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a fun test that listeners can do on this
Speaker 1: is that if you think back to ten years ago
Speaker 1: and something that you really wanted, it was just like
Speaker 1: you were burning inside, you know, and it changed the
Speaker 1: way that you triangulated your reality. You were talking to
Speaker 1: this person because it could get you to talk to
Speaker 1: this person, and somehow that was going to lead to
Speaker 1: hopefully you getting this thing. You know, you chose to
Speaker 1: make this action because you knew like if I can
Speaker 1: do this and this and this, I can sequence this
Speaker 1: and I'll be able to achieve this thing I'm desiring.
Speaker 1: And you get really tense and wrapped up in it
Speaker 1: and it becomes a thing, and then whether you got
Speaker 1: it or not. You can look at it now and
Speaker 1: think like, oh, well that was silly, Like I didn't
Speaker 1: really do anything for me. It just made me maybe
Speaker 1: even like manipulate people or say something that you're like,
Speaker 1: you change my behavior in a negative way. And I
Speaker 1: was tense and suffering the whole time and like kind
Speaker 1: of feverish with hunger for this thing. It wasn't really pretty.
Speaker 1: And it's so goofy to think back that I was
Speaker 1: so worked up over getting you know, like limited edition
Speaker 1: sneakers or what do you whatever it was, or a
Speaker 1: new car or the job. And then now you can think, oh,
Speaker 1: that was funny, like what I've grown so much, and
Speaker 1: now do that with whatever you're wanting right now, and
Speaker 1: you can see just as how silly it is and
Speaker 1: how illusory it is, because it really is, at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, just a passing illusion. It's this
Speaker 1: thing that the mind teas up for a while until
Speaker 1: it gets exhausted. It's really kind of like chewing gum
Speaker 1: for the ego in some ways, just to keep you busy,
Speaker 1: you know. But I think that to me, if you,
Speaker 1: if you step back a few steps, and I mean
Speaker 1: what I do anyways, I stepped back a few steps,
Speaker 1: and everything that comes through, whether it's good things, bad things, whatever,
Speaker 1: I am really just not detached. But I don't get
Speaker 1: involved with the things. So of course I like saying
Speaker 1: in a nice hotel, but I don't go thinking like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm a guy that gets to stay in
Speaker 1: a nice hotel. I just think, oh, I'm a guy.
Speaker 1: There's a nice hotel. I'm going to go into it,
Speaker 1: and then let's enjoy it as much as possible while
Speaker 1: we're here, and really enjoy it. But at no point
Speaker 1: is there a self identification through that process. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a zen thing of like, you know,
Speaker 1: good things in life happened, bad things in life happened.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, things are just happening. The
Speaker 1: perspective through which you engage with those things is what
Speaker 1: dictates your reality and your experience and ultimately your levels
Speaker 1: of attachment. And so even yeah, these beautiful things that
Speaker 1: we can't experience and there's nothing wrong. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: one of the other hang ups. I think people who
Speaker 1: are trying to go inward in this way often um
Speaker 1: struggle with is they think, like, I'm terrible for wanting
Speaker 1: a nice car. It's like, no, you're not. There's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with that, And a nice car is a beautiful
Speaker 1: achievement of engineering, Like it's it's a great you know,
Speaker 1: it's a great thing. But if it changes your behavior
Speaker 1: you're and whether you're in it, if it makes you
Speaker 1: feel arrogant or like better than everyone else, then you
Speaker 1: have a problem. But if you're driving that nice car
Speaker 1: just like it was a Toyota or whatever, then you're
Speaker 1: all good because you're not mistaken and applying the concept
Speaker 1: of the thing to your identity. You're just a identity
Speaker 1: engaging with an experience. And that's how I anyways stay
Speaker 1: free from that stuff. It feels almost like we're talking
Speaker 1: about two levels of suffering that we can have around
Speaker 1: these things. One is the one you just hit on,
Speaker 1: which is very much identity based. Right. It's if I
Speaker 1: had enough money, then I would be good enough. If
Speaker 1: I had that car, then I would be respected. I
Speaker 1: would be the kind of person who owns that car. There,
Speaker 1: so there's an identity element that's wrapped up in that.
Speaker 1: I think that's very real, at least for me personally.
Speaker 1: You know, I always don't want to overstate things, but
Speaker 1: for me personally, I think a combination of age and
Speaker 1: several somewhat shattering spiritual experiences have dropped a fair amount
Speaker 1: of that identity game, right Like that I feel less
Speaker 1: tied to For me, it seems to remain more around
Speaker 1: the basic mechanism, the wanting process, you know, just the
Speaker 1: wanting to be comfortable, the wanting to be happy, the
Speaker 1: wanting to feel differently than I do, not because of
Speaker 1: who I am, or maybe they're connected in a deeper way,
Speaker 1: but it seems like those two different ways sometimes for
Speaker 1: me that I have to approach things. Can I shake
Speaker 1: off the identity apart? And then there's the other part,
Speaker 1: which is sort of like a creature that's optimizing for pleasure,
Speaker 1: right Yeah, And that aspect of it that you're talking about,
Speaker 1: I think that stepping back and observing the arising bodily
Speaker 1: impulse is not only a great way to deal with it,
Speaker 1: but it becomes hilarious to me because it just becomes absurd.
Speaker 1: You can use all plethora of things to test this
Speaker 1: and play with this with yourself, but hunger is a
Speaker 1: great one. What we're getting down to is like the
Speaker 1: mammalian brain, you know, signature, the vapor rising off the
Speaker 1: mammalian brain that's affecting, you know, the higher higher intelligence.
Speaker 1: If you kind of realign that higher intelligence to observe
Speaker 1: the vapor rising from the mammalian animal brain, then it
Speaker 1: becomes sort of strange and funny. And you see how
Speaker 1: that constant urging of want is just another impulse and
Speaker 1: just another signal which you can choose to just really
Speaker 1: like let go of. And I think, to me, like
Speaker 1: curiosity is a really helpful way to like play those games.
Speaker 1: So I think maybe one year ago, two years ago
Speaker 1: in Austin, there was a period where what they were
Speaker 1: calling the snow apocalypse. You know, Texas is not set
Speaker 1: up for snow, and it snowed in an insane amount
Speaker 1: during COVID lockdown, and everyone lost their power and water
Speaker 1: for like a week. People were freezing and they didn't
Speaker 1: have no food and it was brutal. We had a
Speaker 1: little bit of food, but not any water, and so
Speaker 1: we were sitting around and didn't know how long this
Speaker 1: is gonna go. And I just thought, I'm gonna just
Speaker 1: like instead of you know, worrying about this too much.
Speaker 1: There's really not much I can do at this point,
Speaker 1: and there's no reason to panic. Instead, this will be
Speaker 1: a fun test to see what hunger really is about,
Speaker 1: Like what is that animal creature impulse to want to eat?
Speaker 1: And I'm not, of course belittling anyone who's starving or
Speaker 1: trying to denigrate that in any way, but I mean
Speaker 1: just as something that arose in my own life where
Speaker 1: I was like, huh, let's see like what hunger is.
Speaker 1: And I just sort of like watching the feeling of
Speaker 1: hunger in that way and observing it and then just
Speaker 1: observing how it was changing my perception, how it's changing,
Speaker 1: like the way that I was reacting, and like my
Speaker 1: levels of patients, my energy levels and all that. But
Speaker 1: after a while, just you know, it became really funny
Speaker 1: and just sort of a silly thing, like it lost
Speaker 1: its teeth to me, you know, and it was a
Speaker 1: good way to deal with it. And so I kind
Speaker 1: of used that little experience moving forward for some of
Speaker 1: those similar things where it's like it feels like it
Speaker 1: has more power of you because it's coming from a deeper,
Speaker 1: older part of the mind. But really it's just the
Speaker 1: same as the identity issue. It's just coming from the
Speaker 1: bottoms of the top. Yeah, that's a great way to
Speaker 1: say it, it is coming from the bottom instead of
Speaker 1: the top. And it's so interesting though, because when you
Speaker 1: think about what we are, I use the analogy of
Speaker 1: soup earlier, or incalculable recipe. Right, A big part of
Speaker 1: that soup and incalculable recipe are hormones and neurotransmitters and
Speaker 1: all these things that really control to a certain extent
Speaker 1: our experience. And I often like to think about how
Speaker 1: free will? You brought that up earlier. Do we have
Speaker 1: free will? Right? Without going into the deep philosophical sense
Speaker 1: of it doesn't exist, Let's just assume it does exist
Speaker 1: to some degree. Do all humans have the same degree
Speaker 1: of it? You know? So, for example, free will when
Speaker 1: it comes to not eating that piece of chocolate cake
Speaker 1: over there, you can take me and five other people,
Speaker 1: and depending on the biological makeup of those five people,
Speaker 1: depending on hormone levels, but depending on a variety of
Speaker 1: different things, depending on blood sugar levels, a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of different things. It may be relatively easy for me
Speaker 1: to look at that piece of chocolate cake and be like, no,
Speaker 1: no big deal, whereas it might be like a Jesus
Speaker 1: on the cross moment for someone else to walk away
Speaker 1: from that piece of chocolate cake, right, And so I
Speaker 1: find it really interesting to think about our ability to
Speaker 1: work with impulses that are often mediated by things that
Speaker 1: feel beyond control. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting. I mean it's something I've thought about
Speaker 1: a lot. And the idea of determinism is very tasty,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep with the food, and it's very tasty,
Speaker 1: like it seems it seems so plausible, and I think
Speaker 1: it is. It does seem to be, and just to
Speaker 1: sort of give a super shortcut to determinism for it's
Speaker 1: not familiar and basically saying that we have no free
Speaker 1: will because everything in the universe is causally created, so
Speaker 1: like essentially there was the Big Bang, and then that
Speaker 1: created planets, and then over time it created some speaking
Speaker 1: of soup, there's a little you know, protein soup of
Speaker 1: bacteria and the oceans, and then some little fish and
Speaker 1: so forth, and then it goes up until sapiens being created.
Speaker 1: And then all of the chance, inheritance of action from
Speaker 1: your parents and everything that you know pushes you then
Speaker 1: dictates the options that you can have and that you
Speaker 1: can make because you're just this motion of all of
Speaker 1: the things that happened before you, and you're not really
Speaker 1: able to make any other choice because everything has been
Speaker 1: kind of determined by what's happening before you. It's simple causality,
Speaker 1: and I do think that's one element of it, because
Speaker 1: just on a physics level, that checks out right, does it? Though?
Speaker 1: My question about that is doesn't quantum physics sort of
Speaker 1: throw that whole thing off by saying, hey, what's going
Speaker 1: to happen here is a probability not a made decision? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: And it was about to say, was that I have
Speaker 1: not you know, the person to say so it definitely
Speaker 1: physics is definitely work out on that. But a person
Speaker 1: who's an expert in nothing and it has no certification
Speaker 1: whatsoever and didn't go to college and no expertise. But
Speaker 1: it seems as though that linear train of thought resolves,
Speaker 1: you know, and makes sense. However, again, back to what
Speaker 1: we're talking about previously, is that that's a very human
Speaker 1: thing to be like, Okay, this one answer and this
Speaker 1: one way of going that's it's like, well, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's a couple of things that are all happening at once,
Speaker 1: and you have to kind of step out and peel
Speaker 1: back your perception a little bit to hold those two
Speaker 1: things at the same time. And I love your example
Speaker 1: of people have different or varying degrees of free will
Speaker 1: because it fits right into like this thing that I've
Speaker 1: thought about for a long time is it's kind of
Speaker 1: like compatible ism in a sense, but it's more of like,
Speaker 1: we don't have free will per se. However, inside the
Speaker 1: ecosystem of our own mind, because of our subjectivity, we're
Speaker 1: able to choose our choices. So on the palate of
Speaker 1: your own perceptual identity and awareness and nervous system, plus
Speaker 1: the inheritance of your past, you then have the freedom
Speaker 1: and the will to choose the very small switch bank
Speaker 1: of choices that you're able to think of were able
Speaker 1: to muster at that moment. But it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: in other areas you are acting without realizing it, because
Speaker 1: we certainly all are doing that constantly totally. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, we have a little bit of elbow room,
Speaker 1: a little bit of wiggliness where it seems as though
Speaker 1: we're able to choose a variety of options in certain situations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think to say that our choices are certainly limited
Speaker 1: by so many factors. I mean, if somebody's listening to
Speaker 1: this in you know, Mumbai, they have different set of
Speaker 1: choices about what they're going to do with their afternoon
Speaker 1: than I do in Columbus. Like it's just the way
Speaker 1: it is, whether they're better or worse. Like I couldn't
Speaker 1: say right, they're just different. But I do think this
Speaker 1: question of the ability to make choices, and I think
Speaker 1: our amount of free will is different on different things.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting for me because I know at one point,
Speaker 1: like to choose not to take a drink. For me, ultimately, yes,
Speaker 1: it was my choice. I I was the one who
Speaker 1: picked up a drink and either did or didn't at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, that's where it ends. And
Speaker 1: it felt so hard then so hard, and now it's
Speaker 1: so easy, right, same person, same thing. But the level
Speaker 1: to me like now it's it feels like an easy choice.
Speaker 1: Then it felt like being torn apart inside choice. What
Speaker 1: do you think is a way that people move from
Speaker 1: those impulses that them up that feels so strong that
Speaker 1: we almost despite our best intentions, give in to them.
Speaker 1: And we could be talking about hard core adiction or
Speaker 1: or even not right on a spectrum, but where the
Speaker 1: impulses are really strong, and I find it hard to
Speaker 1: just let them go. Versus the other hand, what you're
Speaker 1: describing is is a much different thing where I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm observing what could be a pretty strong impulse like hunger.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of space around it. What's the
Speaker 1: path do you think from one end of that to
Speaker 1: the other. I think the hugest thing is not being overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: So the person who is out of control of their
Speaker 1: decision making is overwhelmed, like they have no spaciousness of mind.
Speaker 1: The tension and the stress and often the emotional stress
Speaker 1: that they're feeling because of generally something traumatic that happens
Speaker 1: to them is so heavy and they feel so limited
Speaker 1: in their options that it's like they're in grid luck
Speaker 1: traffic times twenty. It's too much, And so whenever the
Speaker 1: imp luso arises, it's like, Hey, this thing, I'm going
Speaker 1: to accept it because one, I don't have the space
Speaker 1: or the emotional energy to really be thoughtful about it.
Speaker 1: But two, I'm so compacted and I'm so overwhelmed that
Speaker 1: anything is worth having a break from that. I just
Speaker 1: want to have a break from this feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's why drugs or alcohol or sex or whatever,
Speaker 1: pick your your pleasure or you know, careerism, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: There's so many different forms of it. Social media definitely one.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's something that we feel overwhelmed with
Speaker 1: negative emotion and with you know, often intellectual energy, and
Speaker 1: we are stuck between a rock and heart place because
Speaker 1: we for whatever reason aren't ready or don't have the
Speaker 1: toolkit to look at where our sufferings come from and
Speaker 1: to begin to integrate and work with that, you know,
Speaker 1: psychological pain, and we feel like we can't move forward
Speaker 1: because everything is too tense and two dense. So what
Speaker 1: we want to do is basically just nomb out and
Speaker 1: just get out of that somehow and be distracted from
Speaker 1: what we're feeling. But of course you can only stay
Speaker 1: distracted for so long and wherever you come back to it, well, hey,
Speaker 1: nothing has changed, You're still there. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things that people experience with something like pain killers or
Speaker 1: anti anxiety meds, where of course, you know, in low
Speaker 1: doses at reasonable times, those can be useful for people
Speaker 1: with you know, certain chemical imbalances, but if you depend
Speaker 1: on them and you're using them every day, recreationally. That
Speaker 1: river of emotion doesn't just go into the ether. You're
Speaker 1: just putting up a damn you know. And that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, whenever you stop taking them, all that floods
Speaker 1: back out and like, O God, this is terrible, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take them again, and it creates a real issue.
Speaker 1: You know. The way to having that spaciousness is, of course,
Speaker 1: you know, the therapeutic approach of having some you know,
Speaker 1: some type of talk therapy to begin to open those
Speaker 1: doors and let out some of that emotional pressure. And also,
Speaker 1: of course I would recommend your meditation or mindfulness practice
Speaker 1: to begin to calm the body down because most people,
Speaker 1: especially in this you know, the era of information, we're scared.
Speaker 1: We're like, we're in a constant state of anxiety because
Speaker 1: there's so many things to deal with and there's so
Speaker 1: much information and now there's so many types of flavors
Speaker 1: of truth and reality coming at us that people are
Speaker 1: just freaked out. So they're just going from one thing
Speaker 1: to the next thing to the next thing, and they
Speaker 1: really get stuck in this fight or flight modes, Like
Speaker 1: the the amygdala is just turned on because we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: now I have to do this, and after this and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and I feel, you know, worried. And
Speaker 1: now even if I'm sitting on the couch, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about work or I'm thinking about this other thing. And
Speaker 1: so why meditation is so valuable is that whenever you
Speaker 1: calm the body and you actually you know, can be
Speaker 1: as simple as just you know, sitting and breathing. That's
Speaker 1: all you gotta do. Give yourself that space to sit
Speaker 1: and breathe. Just by taking regular relaxed breaths and just
Speaker 1: relaxing the muscles every time you exhale, it sends signals,
Speaker 1: you know, to the brain, telling your brain that the
Speaker 1: body is safe. And that's the issue is that people
Speaker 1: feel that level of overwhelmedness because the body doesn't think
Speaker 1: they're safe because they're dealing with so many things. They're
Speaker 1: engaged with so many things, and they're worried about so
Speaker 1: many external factors, right, and so their body is like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we must be under a threat because we're on like
Speaker 1: a high beams are on and we're like constantly doing
Speaker 1: so stay in fight or flight mode. But by meditating
Speaker 1: and consistently using the compound growth of that of sending
Speaker 1: these signals just through relaxed breathing to the mind the hey,
Speaker 1: the body is safe. You can actually relax now. The
Speaker 1: mind then changes all of the chemical nature of itself
Speaker 1: and goes into the parasympathetic nervous system mode of the
Speaker 1: you know, the rest and digest mode, where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: we can actually calm down a little bit, we can
Speaker 1: stop you know, keeping us locked into fight or flight mode,
Speaker 1: and that relieves some of the pressure. It gives people
Speaker 1: an ability to calm down, to actually collect the thoughts,
Speaker 1: to blow off and release some of that stress and
Speaker 1: have a bit more spaciousness. And that's really step one
Speaker 1: in removing the pressure from the overwhelmed that creates addiction
Speaker 1: and impulsive behavior. I read a tweet from somebody today
Speaker 1: that I loved that echoes something I've said many times,
Speaker 1: and it ties to what you just said a little bit,
Speaker 1: which is it was basically an underappreciated victory and mindfulness
Speaker 1: is realizing you simply didn't make things worse, yeah, which
Speaker 1: I've often said. You know, if you boiled all the
Speaker 1: work that I do down, you might say like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I just have basically taught you how to
Speaker 1: not make things worse. However, for some of us, our
Speaker 1: capacity to make things worse is so profound. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that's a huge win question for you. I was reading
Speaker 1: again something of yours recently, and you mentioned you do
Speaker 1: an hour of exercise every day and you do about
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of meditation, So you're actually doing, you know,
Speaker 1: basically double exercise to meditation. So speak to the role
Speaker 1: for you of exercise in creating some of the freedom
Speaker 1: we were just talking about. Oh yeah, it's so important.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, my entire life, I was just
Speaker 1: hyper intellectual and really shutting down, compartmentalizing all emotionals everything
Speaker 1: like that, while you know, intensely studying Buddhism and just
Speaker 1: general Eastern wisdom traditions and also you know, Western philosophy
Speaker 1: and thinking I was really getting somewhere. And I was
Speaker 1: to some degree until you know, it hit me that
Speaker 1: I I had a mentor or a kind of a
Speaker 1: slight teacher way back like twenty years ago that said
Speaker 1: make sure and open your heart before you open your mind.
Speaker 1: And I was like, whatever, you know, I got this,
Speaker 1: you know, of course, as like a twenty year old,
Speaker 1: and I got to this place that I call existential paralysis,
Speaker 1: where like my level of the computation of the detail
Speaker 1: of the existential landscape was so intense that it was
Speaker 1: kind of like almost like a nervous like intellectual breakdown
Speaker 1: or something. I was so overwhelming, and I could describe it,
Speaker 1: but it would be exhausting for for listeners for me
Speaker 1: to go into the detail. It's like a tiny snapshot
Speaker 1: would basically be like I got to this place of
Speaker 1: opening my eyes in the morning where I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of blood vessels that just expanded because
Speaker 1: like rays of energy coming from like a nuclear furnace
Speaker 1: nine million miles away just like flew through space and
Speaker 1: a radiant like bounced off the walls and those cells,
Speaker 1: you know, had a cellular change in my eyes. Now
Speaker 1: my blood and you know, and just the stuff and
Speaker 1: like walking outside and like, oh, all the microbes in
Speaker 1: the grass and the you know, in the soil, or
Speaker 1: there's all these microbes in every single blade of grass
Speaker 1: and all you know, the blood vessels of the trees,
Speaker 1: of the blood vessels of the earth, and so you know,
Speaker 1: times a thousand, just stuck in that zone, I sat down.
Speaker 1: I was actually, okay, this is too much and I
Speaker 1: lose like in that space for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and you just get increasingly more intense. And that was
Speaker 1: in my late twenties, and I thought, Okay, I gotta
Speaker 1: fix this. What's the foundation? Like, what am I missing here?
Speaker 1: Because I'm clearly missing something. I'm out of balance, I'm
Speaker 1: out of whack. What is it? And I thought, what's
Speaker 1: kind of like our birthright as a human being? And
Speaker 1: I thought, it's the mind, body and soul, right and
Speaker 1: soul whatever you call that, whatever you want. I caught
Speaker 1: the non self, you know, but it doesn't sound positive people,
Speaker 1: but I mean it in a positive way. So I thought, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I've been working on the mind in the you know,
Speaker 1: the self intensely compulsively for all this time, and I've
Speaker 1: never one time thought about my body. And so I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: no wonder, I'm freaked out. No wonder. I'm like, because
Speaker 1: I'm so ungrounded and I'm so trapped in my head
Speaker 1: that I need to get back in the ground, get
Speaker 1: back into like being an animal, and actually, you know,
Speaker 1: get in tune with the physical nature of being as
Speaker 1: opposed to just the the intellectual or the you know,
Speaker 1: inner aspect. Of it, and so I just started like
Speaker 1: running and doing yoga, and I started reading about nutrition,
Speaker 1: eating well, and all of a sudden, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I feel fifty percent better after two weeks, you know.
Speaker 1: And so then it became a thing where I just
Speaker 1: started running five times a week for like ten years,
Speaker 1: and I recently have switched that up to something else.
Speaker 1: But getting up in the morning and having all of
Speaker 1: that intellectual energy, all that animal energy, you know, because
Speaker 1: we I think, you know, some statistic I read one
Speaker 1: time like whenever sapiens were nomadic, we walked like eight
Speaker 1: miles a day or something like that. It's like it's
Speaker 1: built in. It's to need to move and to get
Speaker 1: that all that energy out. And so that's it's so
Speaker 1: important to me, is just like blasting out all the
Speaker 1: animal energy, really getting the body revved up, and it
Speaker 1: wakes me up and really like get you alive. And
Speaker 1: I think that another aspect of it is breaking through
Speaker 1: barriers of resistance. It's a great practice because, like we
Speaker 1: talked about before, we're sort of wired to seek the
Speaker 1: path of least resistance, and so that of course feeds
Speaker 1: into life. Anytime that we're going through something like well,
Speaker 1: I have some emails to do, but it sounds too overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Like I joke about a friend of mine, it's like
Speaker 1: something really important, you know, that you need to do,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, that would have taken twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: I can't deal. You know, that's way too overwhelmed. You know,
Speaker 1: no way could I pause and do that. But the exercise,
Speaker 1: it taps you into the power of like your animal
Speaker 1: creature power. And so whenever you get in that mindset
Speaker 1: of like, okay, say you're running and you start feeling tired,
Speaker 1: you could just stop, you know, sure, But also humans
Speaker 1: are so much more powerful, and our will and physical
Speaker 1: strength is so much more intense than we give it
Speaker 1: credit for that. If you just reframe that and change
Speaker 1: your mindset, you can keep running for you know, an
Speaker 1: hour or something like that. And so breaking through those
Speaker 1: little barriers because it's basically just your mind throwing up
Speaker 1: a little thing that's like, hey, we're spending a lot
Speaker 1: of energy. You should stop in case the lion drives
Speaker 1: to attack you or whatever. And then it's like, no,
Speaker 1: you can override that, you know. I just sounds so weird,
Speaker 1: But whenever I was younger, I used to imagine whenever
Speaker 1: I would get tired when I was running, that I
Speaker 1: was like chasing like a hog through the undergrowth in
Speaker 1: the jungle, and that the only way that the tribe
Speaker 1: would eat is if I could catch this thing. And
Speaker 1: I would really just go there like Jordan's you know,
Speaker 1: and back. God, I gotta and but it was just
Speaker 1: a good, like kind of nervous system reframe. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: so that's so valuable because then whenever you're in your
Speaker 1: daily life and it's time to have a tough conversation
Speaker 1: or to do that, you know, one extra task, it's
Speaker 1: not a thing like well I'll just give up. It's like,
Speaker 1: this is no big deal. I caught the hog girlier
Speaker 1: in the undergrowth. This is you know, talking to this person.
Speaker 1: This is nothing, you know. So that's super super viable.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it really is the foundation. And and
Speaker 1: I think that stacking these habits in this way to
Speaker 1: me anyway, it's all a routine that just facilitates the
Speaker 1: way I feel the best and the you know, the happiest, clearest,
Speaker 1: most energetic mind. And it's that, you know, the exercise,
Speaker 1: shaking off the energy, breaking through barriers, you know, waking
Speaker 1: up the nervous system and then going to the meditation
Speaker 1: and then calming it all down and focusing it and
Speaker 1: just continue that cultivated sense of awareness. And after that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's go time. You know, it feels so beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. My exercise to meditation ratio might be
Speaker 1: might be close to two to one. And if I
Speaker 1: was forced, you know, if I was forced to be
Speaker 1: like you can only have one wellness intervention in your life, Eric,
Speaker 1: it would be exercise. I would jettison at all. I'd
Speaker 1: be like, well, I'm sorry, never meditating again. Med's okay,
Speaker 1: they were helpful, but goodbye. It would be I'm going
Speaker 1: to exercise, which is tremendously boring thing to say, Right,
Speaker 1: what's the best way to feed Eric's goodwolf? Exercise? Okay,
Speaker 1: show over. We did not need five hundred episodes like
Speaker 1: We're done. Um turns into a health podcast. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I interviewed a woman recently. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: seen the book, but I think you would like it. It
Speaker 1: It was called Move by Caroline Williams, and she does
Speaker 1: a lot of research on why exercise is so beneficial
Speaker 1: for us. I think you would actually really kind of
Speaker 1: nerd out on it a little bit. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that I had not seen before as
Speaker 1: to like more up and coming scientific theories about what's
Speaker 1: going on with movement and us. It was a good
Speaker 1: book and she was actually a good interview too. It'll
Speaker 1: be out by the time any listener, here's this Okay, listeners,
Speaker 1: you can find that episode in our in our back catalog.
Speaker 1: I know that. You know. The Other thing about exercise
Speaker 1: that's interesting is I just had this conversation with Jenny
Speaker 1: the other day, and I think this speaks to some
Speaker 1: of what we've talked about a little bit before. And
Speaker 1: I've got a coaching client who's right in the midst
Speaker 1: of this, right, We've got him back on track, and
Speaker 1: he's just crushing it exercise wise, right, And the first
Speaker 1: three weeks it's like, yes, yes, right, Like he feels different,
Speaker 1: he feels better, it's it's awesome. And somewhere around the
Speaker 1: three to five to six week mark, what happens is
Speaker 1: we adapt that feeling better starts to become sort of
Speaker 1: the new normal, and you go, well, jeez, am I
Speaker 1: really getting a lot out of this, which is I
Speaker 1: think why we often stop things. And I was having
Speaker 1: this conversation with Jenny the other day. I was joking,
Speaker 1: but I was like, you know, as much as I exercise,
Speaker 1: I should feel like even better. And she was like,
Speaker 1: why don't you stop for a couple of weeks and
Speaker 1: talk to me about how you feel? And that's the
Speaker 1: exact truth, right, which is just the benefit of it
Speaker 1: sort of melds into the new normal. But the new
Speaker 1: normal is eight clicks higher than the old normal. I've
Speaker 1: often joked that if you could take the like eighteen
Speaker 1: or twenty or twenty two year old me and put
Speaker 1: him in my brain now, I think he would think
Speaker 1: he was enlightened. And I don't mean that because I'm enlightened.
Speaker 1: I mean that because the gap between what that poor
Speaker 1: little guy understood and felt and what I do is
Speaker 1: so dramatic. And that's often I times think enlightenment is
Speaker 1: often people talk about being enlightened when they have an
Speaker 1: experience it is so dramatic. I think it would be
Speaker 1: a pretty dramatic experience for that eighteen year old to
Speaker 1: inhabit my current level of consciousness. Yeah, and I hope
Speaker 1: I can say the same thing at eight I can.
Speaker 1: I hope by the eight I can be like a
Speaker 1: fifty year old me could drop into this brain, you know, like,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good sign that that we're growing
Speaker 1: totally yeah, yeah, I totally feel you on that. If
Speaker 1: I took eighteen year old me and put him in
Speaker 1: my brain now, he would probably think, like, what you're
Speaker 1: You're so soft now, you know, you're so weak. You're
Speaker 1: like being nice and like feeling things, creating space, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Is it dead in here? What's going on?
Speaker 1: There's nobody here? Yeah? Yeah, where's all the delusions of
Speaker 1: grandeur comes on? That was tasty. Yeah, man, that's inspiring.
Speaker 1: You know. It shows that like like if we're talking earlier,
Speaker 1: is like, well, who is the self? Who? Who is
Speaker 1: your identity? What does that really mean? And that's just
Speaker 1: another example of the way that it's got sort of
Speaker 1: a main frame to it. You know, you're still Eric,
Speaker 1: but what's blown through over the course of several decades
Speaker 1: you're just a completely different person, you know, And the
Speaker 1: challenge of looking at something about ourselves that we might
Speaker 1: want to change feels like the stakes are really high,
Speaker 1: and it feels immovable and it feels maybe impossible. But
Speaker 1: if you just remember anyone that's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: hold on a second, Well, actually I have progressed, I
Speaker 1: have like broken through things in my life, and this
Speaker 1: thing just seems huge because it's just the next one,
Speaker 1: you know, and so you can just move right through
Speaker 1: that one as well. And realizing that like real change
Speaker 1: is possible. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's such a good reminder,
Speaker 1: is we've been through change before and recognizing that just
Speaker 1: because change feels difficult doesn't mean it's not doable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And change is a funky one because it makes us
Speaker 1: deal with fear and discomfort at the same time. And
Speaker 1: so that's a pretty big proposition for people because they're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is the unknown, so I'm scared of like what
Speaker 1: comes after this change, and it makes me uncomfortable about
Speaker 1: like who I am. So it's like your identity plus
Speaker 1: fear and so a lot of people don't want to
Speaker 1: do it. But how many times do you have to
Speaker 1: finally make that change or have some sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, external traumatic intervention or something that makes you
Speaker 1: make a change and then afterwards like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I feel so much better, Like I wish I would
Speaker 1: have done that five years ago or whatever. It's like
Speaker 1: how many times you have to go through that before
Speaker 1: you just didn't realize, like, you know what, I should
Speaker 1: be more aggressive in my changes than you, just like attack.
Speaker 1: We talked about this, I think on on my podcast recently,
Speaker 1: is the power of aggression on the path and like
Speaker 1: how much it has a place, you know, of finding
Speaker 1: those moments about yourself where you feel that resistance or
Speaker 1: those areas where you should move into and actually using
Speaker 1: some of the animal energy, using some of that that
Speaker 1: aggression or assertiveness to then break through those things. Because
Speaker 1: you know, it's like we're all sitting around waiting for
Speaker 1: permission to make our lives better, but no one's gonna
Speaker 1: ever give it to you. You know, you have to
Speaker 1: just recognize what your pain points are, what things you
Speaker 1: want to change. It's all possible. We discount our will
Speaker 1: and our ability to do things so much, you know,
Speaker 1: and just recognize that and then using some of that
Speaker 1: a servantess to go through it. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: really powerful skill. Yeah. The word I love that I
Speaker 1: think sums up sort of what you were describing when
Speaker 1: you're running and you you push through or that you
Speaker 1: just sort of used with you know, aggression or a
Speaker 1: servness is fierceness. You know, fierceness just feels like it's clean.
Speaker 1: And whenever I think of it, I think of man
Speaker 1: juiciary who is a Buddhist icon of Bodhisattva and he
Speaker 1: holds a flaming sword. You know, the flaming sword is
Speaker 1: there to cut through delusion. You know, there's a fierceness
Speaker 1: to him. He's a body safa dedicated to bringing all
Speaker 1: beings to enlightenment and great love. And he's also got
Speaker 1: a flaming sword. And now it's been relegated to TikTok videos.
Speaker 1: The flaming sword thing. I love that. I really resonate
Speaker 1: with that a lot. Again, it's one of those weird
Speaker 1: things where I don't know, I suppose it's not a disservice,
Speaker 1: but it's just a level of confusion. I think that
Speaker 1: people that look at the world of meditation or mindfulness
Speaker 1: with the you know, the the undoing of the self,
Speaker 1: and they think the point is turning into a puddle
Speaker 1: and being this sort of like passive, soft observer sort
Speaker 1: of whatever. That's very gentle and like you know, all
Speaker 1: this stuff, which I mean gentleness is great, but that
Speaker 1: is just almost sort of childlike in their delicateness, and
Speaker 1: that doesn't really have anything to do with the inward bath,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a possible outcome of how someone
Speaker 1: deals and integrates those teachings, you know, And the issue
Speaker 1: with that is that those personalities are often characterized as, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is the goal, this is what you should look like.
Speaker 1: You know, this is who someone who has done all
Speaker 1: this work. Look how soft and gentle and they're always
Speaker 1: smiling and all that that they are, and how softly
Speaker 1: that they speak, and blah blah blah blah blah. They
Speaker 1: cut their carrots with a knife and fork and they
Speaker 1: don't even hear the plate noise either that, you know,
Speaker 1: that's how soft and sweet there. It's like, well, that's
Speaker 1: great for them, but that's not also what everyone is like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's not what everyone's personality is like. And
Speaker 1: to me, I try to be vocal about the fact
Speaker 1: that I am a very like calm person, but I'm
Speaker 1: also very very like internally, I'm very assertive and very
Speaker 1: sort of like I listened to like hardcore wrap all
Speaker 1: the time, you know, like, and it's like that energy
Speaker 1: is like to me, is just embodies the same way
Speaker 1: that you're talking about. Is it's like, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: that's just the way that feels right to me, because
Speaker 1: it's the energy of like having an hunger for existence
Speaker 1: and a passion and almost like it feels like a
Speaker 1: download thing. That's where the exercise helps too. But it's
Speaker 1: like there's like a pressure of like energy or force
Speaker 1: of like vitality, and like it's so awesome and like
Speaker 1: everything this is just it's so rich and complicated and
Speaker 1: beautiful that I just like to get in there. And
Speaker 1: that's a really valuable and valid energy and you know,
Speaker 1: and so I I dislike whenever people think like, oh
Speaker 1: I have to like melt into something I'm not or
Speaker 1: else I'm not making that same type of advance. But
Speaker 1: it's not true. It's not about who you are how
Speaker 1: you rock the thing. It's about how you show up
Speaker 1: in and how you live it. Yeah. Absolutely. Another Zen
Speaker 1: thing that I've always loved is a great determination. I
Speaker 1: just have always liked that. I've just been drawn to
Speaker 1: Zen to a certain degree because there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of softness in it. Culturally, the word zen people think
Speaker 1: means peaceful and soft, but if you look at the
Speaker 1: Zen tradition, I mean they hit people with sticks all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, they are. It is not a
Speaker 1: it is not a milk toast kind of spirituality. You know.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to what we were talking
Speaker 1: a minute ago about making change and doing better things
Speaker 1: for ourselves, and you said self discipline, and isn't depriving
Speaker 1: yourself of things, it's giving yourself freedom from being controlled
Speaker 1: by them. Wow. Is that a great reframe? Thanks. The
Speaker 1: feeling of being entitled to stuff is a real issue
Speaker 1: because in the same way that we feel like you know,
Speaker 1: we want the material thing or whatever, the indulgence somehow
Speaker 1: has been sold to us as if it's something that
Speaker 1: we are owed or that we deserve. And so whenever
Speaker 1: people are trying to evolve in some self mastery in
Speaker 1: some way, what typically throws them off the path is
Speaker 1: this egoic miswire of like, well, you know, I deserve
Speaker 1: to have whatever, like you know, the chocolate cake all
Speaker 1: the time. I deserve to have a couple of beers
Speaker 1: to the end of the day or whatever. Both of
Speaker 1: the beers and cake are both find you know, a
Speaker 1: big fan of both, But it's not about the fact
Speaker 1: that you deserve it. So when you reframe It's like
Speaker 1: exercising self control is not keeping yourself from giving you
Speaker 1: what you deserve, but it's removing the power of the
Speaker 1: want of those things and the feeling of entitlement to
Speaker 1: those things, so that you're free from being controlled by
Speaker 1: external objects and ultimately the delusion that something outside of
Speaker 1: you is what you need to complete you. And after
Speaker 1: you recognize that and make that reframe, then all the
Speaker 1: ornaments in the tasty snacks and the various things in
Speaker 1: our human world, they're all fine, but you control them
Speaker 1: instead of them controlling you. Yeah, that inner freedom. I mean,
Speaker 1: we used to say in a a all the time,
Speaker 1: people who got sober in jail, they would say, I
Speaker 1: felt more free in jail sober than I did out
Speaker 1: of jail with drugs because I was their prisoner, like
Speaker 1: I was enslaved to drugs. Right, there was no inner freedom.
Speaker 1: I love that idea with whatever it is we're wrestling
Speaker 1: with that. You know, self discipline isn't depriving yourself of things, right,
Speaker 1: it's giving yourself freedom from being controlled. I think that's
Speaker 1: a beautiful idea. I know, you gotta run a minute.
Speaker 1: I want to wrap up with one thing. Do you
Speaker 1: get a minute. Sure, yeah, all right, it would be
Speaker 1: relatively quick, I think, although with you and I nothing
Speaker 1: is quick. Um. I want to talk about MI neural beats.
Speaker 1: You create a bunch of these, you obviously believe they
Speaker 1: help and do something, or you wouldn't create them. So
Speaker 1: what is it that you think that they do? And
Speaker 1: then my my follow on question would be is there
Speaker 1: much scientific evidence to their benefit or is it more
Speaker 1: anecdotal from your perspective? Like this helps me, and so
Speaker 1: I do it. I really, against my own will, became
Speaker 1: like a world renowned binoral beat creator because my prior
Speaker 1: life I was you know, in music production and also
Speaker 1: just composed music. But it was always an internal kind
Speaker 1: of practice and just a thing that really tied into
Speaker 1: my spiritual or inner life practice. Over time is like
Speaker 1: I can create these sounds and ultimately it's just creating
Speaker 1: like ambient music. But twenty years ago before it was cool,
Speaker 1: you know, and I was like, how can I create
Speaker 1: these sounds? Like I noticed when I listened to this
Speaker 1: Like for example, like I mentioned earlier, hip hop gives
Speaker 1: you a lot of energy. Listening to death metal gives
Speaker 1: you a lot of energy. Bill listening to you know
Speaker 1: something relaxing or whatever. A sugilberto is gonna make you
Speaker 1: feel calm and like mellow or whatever, and then taking
Speaker 1: that another step lower, like ambient music, it's like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's gonna make you feel really spacious and mellow. And
Speaker 1: so I would create sounds for my own meditation, and
Speaker 1: I That's what I was doing forever. And then I
Speaker 1: just was always, you know, nerd ing out on various
Speaker 1: ways that sound could affect the mind and the body
Speaker 1: because it's just just fascinating to me. So, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, I got into nyl beats and was
Speaker 1: making them just for myself for meditation. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: these seems like I'm dropping into a different gear with these.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like almost a self hypnosis type of
Speaker 1: thing from the vibrational quality of them. And then fast
Speaker 1: forward to maybe like seven years ago or something, a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who has a sizable platform asked me
Speaker 1: about them. Hey, can you make some for me? As yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: So I made him something just for fun and then
Speaker 1: he's like, these are so amazing, like we should sell these,
Speaker 1: and I was like all right, and so we sold
Speaker 1: him and then people went crazy for him, I mean
Speaker 1: and then I ended up making like more and more
Speaker 1: and more, and people just kept coming back, and then
Speaker 1: people all of the world started hitting up for private
Speaker 1: commissions and all this stuff, and it became a whole thing.
Speaker 1: So I never really like wanted it, but it just happened,
Speaker 1: and I was like, people are enjoying it, so I
Speaker 1: keep doing it and it's kind of fun to make.
Speaker 1: So that's how I kind of got into making them.
Speaker 1: And do I think that they work. They seem to
Speaker 1: work to me, And it's like I said, in the
Speaker 1: same way that different tones and kind of vibes and
Speaker 1: music will change how you feel. I think that this
Speaker 1: is that, but with a specific intention on creating the
Speaker 1: described effects. Looking into the science of it, there have
Speaker 1: been a handful of research studies done on them, particularly
Speaker 1: one that I was a part of actually in the
Speaker 1: university and in Australia, which they're putting people who have
Speaker 1: anxiety into fMRI machines and then playing the tracks that
Speaker 1: I made, and also a control track, so it's just
Speaker 1: the music without the tones to see if it has
Speaker 1: any brain wave change. And basically they were just discovering
Speaker 1: that it was creating, you know, neurological changes and reducing
Speaker 1: anxiety and stuff like that. So you know, I would
Speaker 1: never make any claim of like this is scientifically proven
Speaker 1: that that you know, FDA proved, but try and be
Speaker 1: very clear and up front about that. Is like you
Speaker 1: can try it, like if it works to you, great,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't then that's cool too. But in
Speaker 1: the study they've done so far, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: not just the music, it's the actual binaural underlying quality
Speaker 1: of what's happening there. Yeah, interestingly interesting. I've listened to
Speaker 1: some I think yours primarily in the past, but I
Speaker 1: had somebody asked me about them recently and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: that'sk Corey because he's against his will kind of a guy. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you think about, like, think about how sound affects us
Speaker 1: in a in a kind of a deep way, even
Speaker 1: back to you know, a few thousand years ago, people
Speaker 1: going into battle are beating drums. Why because the constant
Speaker 1: pulsation of that drum is increasing their energy and their fury.
Speaker 1: A gong and a temple in a meditation hall is
Speaker 1: an is a chronic type of beats. So it's basically
Speaker 1: what happens when someone hits a gong, he goes. So
Speaker 1: it's instead of bin earl, which is two beats, it's
Speaker 1: one wave, one beat moving forward, and they have used
Speaker 1: that forever to calm and center people. And so basically
Speaker 1: the binarial aspect is the same idea, but just taking
Speaker 1: it to the notion of like, well, what are our
Speaker 1: brain wave frequencies? You know, what are the ones that
Speaker 1: help us relax and stay focused? And can we target
Speaker 1: those by creating you know, the same type of effect
Speaker 1: with a bit of audio technology and it seems to
Speaker 1: work to me. Awesome, Well, thank you so much Corey
Speaker 1: for coming on. It's always such a pleasure to talk
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah. Likewise, man, beautiful. If what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly
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