Speaker 1: In a question, there's implied a correct answer, and in
Speaker 1: games there's implied you're fooling around to see what's there.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Brian Tom O'Connor and actor, theater director, cabaret performer, and
Speaker 1: formerly depressed guy who stumbled onto the source of joy
Speaker 1: and happiness in the background of all experience. He is
Speaker 1: the author of the book Awareness Games. Playing with your
Speaker 1: Mind to Create Joy. If you value the content we
Speaker 1: put out each week. Then we need your help. As
Speaker 1: the show has grown, so have our expenses and time commitment.
Speaker 1: Go to one you feed dot net slash Support and
Speaker 1: make a monthly donation. Our goal is to get to
Speaker 1: five percent of our listeners supporting the show. Please be
Speaker 1: part of the five percent that make a contribution and
Speaker 1: allow us to keep putting out these interviews and ideas.
Speaker 1: We really need your help to make the show sustainable
Speaker 1: and long lasting. Again, that's one you Feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash Support. Thank you in advance for your help. And
Speaker 1: here's the interview with Brian Tom O'Connor. Hi, Brian, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Eric, thanks for having me. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to have you on. You have a book called Awareness Games,
Speaker 1: Playing with your Mind to create Joy. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to getting into some of the different games that you
Speaker 1: have and and asking you a little bit more about
Speaker 1: why you think games are are a good approach. But
Speaker 1: let's start like we usually do with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. My grandson stops and he thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and
Speaker 1: he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says,
Speaker 1: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 1: by asking you what that parable means to you in
Speaker 1: your life and in the work that you do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that parable. I actually read it. I can't
Speaker 1: even remember where, but about a year ago I read it,
Speaker 1: and I remember as soon as I read it, I
Speaker 1: found tears welling up in my eyes. I found it
Speaker 1: so moving, and I wasn't sure why. I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was because I was just moved by the idea
Speaker 1: of having such a wise and kind and clever grandfather,
Speaker 1: or maybe being a wise and clever and kind grandfather. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I thought about it for a while, and Uh.
Speaker 1: I also realized that whenever I hear something with a
Speaker 1: ring of truth, I find that moving, and so that's
Speaker 1: part of it. And then you invited me to be
Speaker 1: on the show, and I thought about it some more
Speaker 1: in comparison to my book Awareness Games, and I realized
Speaker 1: that there's a metaphor in the book Uh that I
Speaker 1: think really applies to the parable, and it's uh, the
Speaker 1: metaphor of real reality versus virtual reality. And in virtual reality,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly the same, of course as putting on
Speaker 1: those virtual goggles, but it's kind of what we do
Speaker 1: when we're completely occupied in thoughts about the past and
Speaker 1: going over what happened in the past and worry or
Speaker 1: planning about the future, or having little conversations with other
Speaker 1: people in our minds. It's like putting on those virtual
Speaker 1: reality glasses and all of a sudden, we're not here now,
Speaker 1: We're not in what's actually happening at the present. And
Speaker 1: the opposite of that is something might call real reality,
Speaker 1: which is combination of a couple of things. It's just
Speaker 1: this that's happening here right now, all the things were
Speaker 1: aware of in our senses at this moment, and in
Speaker 1: addition to that, the actual noticing of the awareness that
Speaker 1: everything's appearing in And I find that that's where happiness
Speaker 1: is and that's where love is is in that real
Speaker 1: reality of noticing exactly just what's happening now and noticing
Speaker 1: the background awareness. And the reason is is that pure
Speaker 1: awareness as opposed to getting involved in the content of
Speaker 1: awareness is like, um, what's like a clear mirror that
Speaker 1: just reflects whatever is in front of it. It doesn't decide, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to reflect this orange on the table, but
Speaker 1: I'm not going to reflect that banana. I don't like bananas.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do that. It accepts everything. And our awareness
Speaker 1: is like that already. It's not something we have to do,
Speaker 1: it's something we have to notice is happening. It's unconditionally accepting,
Speaker 1: and that is unconditional love, and that's happiness. So I
Speaker 1: find that the more time we spend in real reality,
Speaker 1: which is like the good wealth, the more that sense
Speaker 1: of acceptance and love kind of colors and flavors and
Speaker 1: perfumes the rest of our lives. And when we notice
Speaker 1: that we're in this virtual reality of worry and fear
Speaker 1: and trying to fix what's wrong, that that leads us astray.
Speaker 1: And when we're and then we're arguing with reality, and
Speaker 1: that's when things start to come up that you might
Speaker 1: associate with a bad wolf, like anger and fear, frustration, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So that was sort of my reaction to the parable excellent.
Speaker 1: So let's dive a little deeper into that because you
Speaker 1: talk about I mean, the goal of the games that
Speaker 1: you have in this book is to become more aware.
Speaker 1: You you start off the book by saying, an infinite
Speaker 1: well of happiness and joy lies within each of us,
Speaker 1: and people from all cultures have been sending reports from
Speaker 1: there for thousands of years. I've stumbled upon it within me,
Speaker 1: So let's see if you can find it too. I
Speaker 1: bet we can all experience it if we know where
Speaker 1: to look and where not to look. It doesn't appear
Speaker 1: in the outside world. It doesn't appear in thoughts or concepts.
Speaker 1: It doesn't appear in anything you can give a name to,
Speaker 1: which makes it kind of tough to describe in words.
Speaker 1: You can sense it by shifting your point of view
Speaker 1: from the content of awareness to awareness itself. So elaborate
Speaker 1: a little bit more on that last sentence, because I
Speaker 1: think that's really important. Well, Basically, what we normally do
Speaker 1: is we think about objects in our awareness, the content
Speaker 1: of awareness. So that includes all of our senses, our
Speaker 1: sights and sounds, things that are happening, our emotions are
Speaker 1: bodily sensations, even our thoughts. These are objects, and these
Speaker 1: are the contents of our awareness. And if we stop
Speaker 1: and sort of take a little half step back and
Speaker 1: ask what are all these things appearing in or appearing too?
Speaker 1: And then we start to notice the awareness itself. It's
Speaker 1: awareness of awareness instead of awareness of just the contents.
Speaker 1: And when we do that and we let the contents
Speaker 1: be as they are, that's a big key. Just let
Speaker 1: it everything be as it is. With some practice and
Speaker 1: with some playing around, we start to find this well
Speaker 1: of happiness starting to rise up, because that's where it lives,
Speaker 1: in the background of awareness. Tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: more about why games. So you've written a book of
Speaker 1: a series of awareness games. Why do you think that
Speaker 1: games are an effective way to get to this awareness?
Speaker 1: Because mostly what we're presented with and we get into
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff is various meditative practices, typically from
Speaker 1: a spiritual tradition of one sort or the other. So
Speaker 1: talk to me about games. It's true. In meditative traditions
Speaker 1: are usually given a set of very specific instructions that
Speaker 1: you're to follow, and often there's a sense of whether
Speaker 1: you're doing it right or whether you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, there's an authority there who decides
Speaker 1: are you doing it right or you're doing it wrong,
Speaker 1: and we just sort of naturally give authority away. And
Speaker 1: in games, it's like experimenting with something. It's like taking
Speaker 1: a balloon and squeezing at one end and seeing if
Speaker 1: it comes out the other where our own authority. We're
Speaker 1: playing with our own minds, we're testing it, we're squeezing it. Also,
Speaker 1: I find that sometimes even with regular meditation, sometimes it
Speaker 1: works for me on one day and not another, or
Speaker 1: maybe one hour and not another. So there are actually
Speaker 1: a lot of games, even though they're all basically the
Speaker 1: same game designed to draw your attention to awareness itself,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of variety in it. So if one's
Speaker 1: not working for you, now you try another one, and
Speaker 1: if that's not working, you try another one, and then
Speaker 1: maybe tomorrow you go back to it. There's an example
Speaker 1: about how to play. It's sort of like experimenting. When
Speaker 1: I was a little kid, and I used to be
Speaker 1: in bed and I would be lying awake, and I
Speaker 1: would say to myself, what if there was nothing? And
Speaker 1: I found that if I kept asking myself what if
Speaker 1: there was nothing? I would get this feeling all over
Speaker 1: my body, this kind of weird pleasurable, odd feeling and
Speaker 1: then it would go away. And so I said to myself, Gee,
Speaker 1: that's that's why I want to investigate that. Let's see
Speaker 1: if I can get that back again. So I would
Speaker 1: play with asking these questions and imagining, well, if there
Speaker 1: was nothing, who would be there to notice the nothing?
Speaker 1: And it was that kind of sense of experimenting and
Speaker 1: playing with your own mind that kind of informed the games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the approach you're taking because you you talk
Speaker 1: about that in order to get to this awareness, often
Speaker 1: we kind of have to sneak up on it, and
Speaker 1: and that our desire to find it, you know, we
Speaker 1: work so hard at it. You know, I'm going to meditate,
Speaker 1: you know, really all the time, and you know, because
Speaker 1: I'm looking for this thing. And you talk about in
Speaker 1: the book about how sometimes that very process can get
Speaker 1: in the way. Yes, and it absolutely can, because a
Speaker 1: lot of times we're actually trying to make something happen
Speaker 1: or trying to avoid something happening, and that's actually natural.
Speaker 1: And that was something that I found through trial and error,
Speaker 1: through experimentation. Like one time I was watching a video
Speaker 1: and interview and someone said, what if you made no
Speaker 1: effort at all, and I start to think, well, what
Speaker 1: if I made no effort? And then I just started
Speaker 1: to laugh, because first of all, trying not to make
Speaker 1: an effort is an effort, and so that was a
Speaker 1: kind of a funny paradox. And then something relaxed and
Speaker 1: I really stopped making an effort, and I started to
Speaker 1: feel this sort of marvelous feeling where I was smiling
Speaker 1: so much I thought my face would break and that
Speaker 1: was great. And then a couple of days later I
Speaker 1: would say, well, let's see if I can recreate that,
Speaker 1: And it's this amazing paradox if what you're trying to
Speaker 1: do is recreate an experience that you've had before, or
Speaker 1: on the other hand, if you're trying to get rid
Speaker 1: of something you're having now, like an emotion you don't like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. You have to sort of allow everything
Speaker 1: to be as it is and just accept what's happening now,
Speaker 1: and then take that little step back to notice the
Speaker 1: pure background, like the white space, like the the white
Speaker 1: board instead of the instead of the lettering on it,
Speaker 1: or the blank page or the or the empty screen.
Speaker 1: It's tricky, and you have to play and you have
Speaker 1: to sort of hope that you might play around the
Speaker 1: well and hopes that you'll fall in. You also say
Speaker 1: something that I think is really interesting. You say, because
Speaker 1: you don't have to believe anything to play a game.
Speaker 1: If I try and teach you something, your mind runs
Speaker 1: it through the truth checker. Is it true? Is it
Speaker 1: not true? Is it a crock? With the game, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you
Speaker 1: find out for yourself while you're playing around. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so key because I found myself because I've certainly read
Speaker 1: a lot of spiritual books and talk to teachers and
Speaker 1: both psychological and spiritual and philosophical, and they would say
Speaker 1: these things that and my mind would say, no, wait,
Speaker 1: that can't be true. Wait a minute, that's that's crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean if I look at a tree and you
Speaker 1: say the tree isn't outside, it's in my head, you know,
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I don't believe that. And what it
Speaker 1: did was it activated that little part of the brain
Speaker 1: that's always on alert for right or wrong or true
Speaker 1: and false, so that you can argue with it. And
Speaker 1: that's actually turns out that's not where happiness is. That's
Speaker 1: not actually helpful. It's totally great for figuring out how
Speaker 1: to get to the airport on time, but it's totally
Speaker 1: not helpful in finding out where happiness lives inside you.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting point that I think about, and
Speaker 1: I don't really know the right way to frame the
Speaker 1: question exactly, but there is this idea of that this
Speaker 1: aware mind is the place to be. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's where it's at, it's what's happening, it's where happiness is.
Speaker 1: And yet there's the other part of the mind that
Speaker 1: we need a great deal of the time to do
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that we do in the world.
Speaker 1: So what's your perspective on the balance there. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really good question and a really good point. It
Speaker 1: reminds me of a famous quote I can't remember. It
Speaker 1: was probably einsteiner or I may be totally wrong, who
Speaker 1: said that the mind is an excellent servant but a
Speaker 1: poor master. You do need that part of the mind
Speaker 1: to accomplish tasks, and it's really great. And what I
Speaker 1: find is that when you take some time to notice
Speaker 1: the pure awareness that's already there and already happening, but
Speaker 1: we don't notice it's sort of been clouded over by
Speaker 1: all our thoughts we take a little time to do that,
Speaker 1: and then maybe we take another time, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can do it small moments, many times a day,
Speaker 1: or you can do it for longer periods. Once you
Speaker 1: do it often enough, you start to click into it
Speaker 1: pretty easily, and then an odd thing happens. It actually
Speaker 1: colors when your mind does start to go into a
Speaker 1: day dream or us start to go into planning, there's
Speaker 1: some sort of perfume or some sort of feeling that's
Speaker 1: left over that colors and resonates the rest of your life,
Speaker 1: so that when you are actually just doing things like
Speaker 1: going into a store and buying something from somebody, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you realize that your relationship with that
Speaker 1: other person is totally different, because there's a kind of
Speaker 1: a friendliness and a warmth and a lovingness to your
Speaker 1: interactions that comes by surprise, even though in that moment
Speaker 1: you're not actually playing an awareness game. But it colors everything. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of quick announcements. The first is
Speaker 1: that the one you feed one on one coaching program
Speaker 1: will be opening up again in several weeks. We're opening
Speaker 1: it less frequently this year, so if you're interested, stay
Speaker 1: tuned for more details. Secondly, Chris and I want to
Speaker 1: take a moment and thank you all who have donated
Speaker 1: the show. It is appreciated more than you can imagine.
Speaker 1: We have reached our first goal, so thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and now we are working on the next ones. Anyone
Speaker 1: who's donated at the ten dollar a month or higher
Speaker 1: level recently got their first private mini episode. I released
Speaker 1: one a month to the patrons of the show, so
Speaker 1: if you're interested, go check that out. You get the
Speaker 1: one that came out, and you will get the next ones.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to give a short example of the
Speaker 1: sort of thing that supporting the show helps to do.
Speaker 1: So I got an email earlier in the week from
Speaker 1: a college professor who wanted to use one of the
Speaker 1: one you feed episodes in a class, which is his
Speaker 1: mind boggling to me as it probably is to you. However,
Speaker 1: what she needed in order to do it was a
Speaker 1: transcript so that students who are unable to hear were
Speaker 1: able to follow along. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: we do with donation money is spending to get episodes
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Speaker 1: around and send her the transcript of the episode right away.
Speaker 1: So that's an example of one of the things that
Speaker 1: the money for the show does, and how by you donating,
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Speaker 1: It really does matter. And now for the rest of
Speaker 1: the episode with Brian Tom O'Connor, at the very heart
Speaker 1: of all these games, they're all a series of questions essentially,
Speaker 1: So what is it about a question that is so
Speaker 1: useful and why do you call them awareness games versus
Speaker 1: awareness questions? Well, that's a good point because it's a
Speaker 1: good quesestions. Yeah, did a good question exactly. The question
Speaker 1: about questions is a good question. The difference between games
Speaker 1: and questions is that in a question, there's implied a
Speaker 1: correct answer, and in games that's implied you're fooling around
Speaker 1: to see what's there. You're really just sort of messing
Speaker 1: around inside your own mind and poking it here and
Speaker 1: poking it there and seeing what comes up. But one
Speaker 1: of the tools is questions, like asking yourself the question
Speaker 1: could I not be aware? Is it actually possible to
Speaker 1: not be aware and then just seeing what comes up?
Speaker 1: And uh so it really is a matter of giving
Speaker 1: you the freedom to look and play as opposed to
Speaker 1: finding something correct. Yeah, as I looked through the book
Speaker 1: and tried a couple of the exercises, I really liked
Speaker 1: that sense of playing as a game instead of looking
Speaker 1: for something in particular. And I think, and you say
Speaker 1: it yourself in the book, that every one of the
Speaker 1: exercises sort of a variation on three basic questions. So
Speaker 1: maybe let's talk about those three questions, and then maybe
Speaker 1: you could lead us through a couple of the games
Speaker 1: and so that listeners could get a little sense of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. Okay, sure, Yeah, So the three
Speaker 1: basic questions that are just a series of moving back
Speaker 1: and inside. And so first you ask what's in awareness?
Speaker 1: So basically you're just noticing what's appearing in awareness now,
Speaker 1: and that includes everything that's appearing to all of your
Speaker 1: sense perceptions, sites, sounds, smells, etcetera. That includes all the
Speaker 1: sensations that are happening in your body, your kinness, that
Speaker 1: extense of your body, your feeling of your body against
Speaker 1: the chair or the floor, the breeze on your face.
Speaker 1: It also includes um any emotions that may be going
Speaker 1: through right now, or even thoughts. So you're asking yourself, well,
Speaker 1: what's in awareness now? And this is sort of what
Speaker 1: we traditionally think of as mindfulness. Right, If mindfulness done right,
Speaker 1: is that awareness of everything that's in our consciousness? That's right.
Speaker 1: I think it's very related to that, and that's I
Speaker 1: think where you start. And then you ask, well, what
Speaker 1: is awareness? So you're moving from the content to awareness itself,
Speaker 1: and you're trying to look at awareness. And one thing
Speaker 1: that you might notice is that it's the same awareness
Speaker 1: that a sound appears in. Is the same awareness that
Speaker 1: a thought appears in, or the same awareness that an
Speaker 1: image appears in, And so you start to realize that
Speaker 1: even within you, it's it's one thing. So after progressing
Speaker 1: from what's in awareness to what is awareness? The third
Speaker 1: question is what is aware? And that's very similar to
Speaker 1: the classic self inquiry question of who or what am I?
Speaker 1: So you're realizing that, so what is aware? Who or
Speaker 1: what is it that is actually aware? And usually you
Speaker 1: might say well I am well what what am I?
Speaker 1: And that's when you can start saying, well, I'm aware
Speaker 1: of the body, is that what awareness is, or is
Speaker 1: awareness separate from it, And so it's a little shift
Speaker 1: in identity from the objects, including your body, including your thoughts,
Speaker 1: including your perceptions and sensations, into the pure background, or
Speaker 1: some have called it the ground of being, or pure
Speaker 1: subjectivity or just being. This this sounds very simple, this
Speaker 1: idea of switching from the contents of consciousness to what
Speaker 1: is consciousness. However, for anybody who has tried it, it's
Speaker 1: a relatively challenging endeavor. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1: And I think that's kind of what you're driving at
Speaker 1: with a variety of games, is that you can approach
Speaker 1: it from a lot of different ways, a lot of
Speaker 1: different things, and maybe some of them will trigger something.
Speaker 1: In My experience certainly is that the same question doesn't
Speaker 1: get me to the same place. The very first time
Speaker 1: we had lock Kelly on the show, Um whose work
Speaker 1: sounds very similar to yours in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and lock Kelly has this question of you know, what
Speaker 1: would be here right now if you had no problem
Speaker 1: at all? And for me that was the first time
Speaker 1: he said that was a really profound moment. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, you know, I can't get back to that
Speaker 1: same place by asking myself that same question again, which
Speaker 1: is why again, I like the idea of the games.
Speaker 1: So let's let's maybe walk through a couple of them,
Speaker 1: and maybe you can tell us, you know how what
Speaker 1: a couple of them are and how you do with them.
Speaker 1: One of the games is pretty simple. It's there's actually
Speaker 1: a pair of games called future fishing and pass catching.
Speaker 1: And this is just to help give you an idea
Speaker 1: of thoughts about the past and the future that are
Speaker 1: going through your head. And it's just helping you by
Speaker 1: giving a little bit of a visual image to it.
Speaker 1: And so in future fishing, basically you're just letting your
Speaker 1: mind wander. You're gonna let it go where it will,
Speaker 1: and it will. It'll just wander. And then you think
Speaker 1: of your mind as a stream that passes in front
Speaker 1: of you. So you imagine you're fishing in the stream,
Speaker 1: but instead of fish, what you're fishing for our thoughts
Speaker 1: about the future. So I thought about the future comes
Speaker 1: you just catch it on your reel. You're reel it in,
Speaker 1: you pull it out of the stream. Maybe you put
Speaker 1: it in a little box or a basket beside you
Speaker 1: on the shore, and then the game is just to
Speaker 1: see if you can allow whatever flows through the stream.
Speaker 1: And whenever you see a thought about the future, you
Speaker 1: just catch it. You pull it out, put it in
Speaker 1: the box, and see if it's possible to clear the
Speaker 1: stream of thoughts about the future. It may be possible,
Speaker 1: it may not be, but it it really helps highlight
Speaker 1: that there is another option other than just thinking about
Speaker 1: the future. And my experience with what happens is I
Speaker 1: do some of these things. It's similar to what happens
Speaker 1: in meditation, which is I start doing that and then
Speaker 1: the next thing, I know, you know, who knows where
Speaker 1: my brain has gone. Um, and so I come back
Speaker 1: to the game, so to speak. The visualization. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like you're kind of talking about visualizing something in
Speaker 1: this case, yes, in this case, so you're using a
Speaker 1: visualization to kind of help you along to focus on
Speaker 1: the thoughts about the future. And so in the way
Speaker 1: that you see it, am I actually like spending a
Speaker 1: fair amount of time really trying to see the river
Speaker 1: and the fish and and all that. I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of curious how you do some of these things. I
Speaker 1: know there's probably not a right answer, So well, it
Speaker 1: does depend on each individual person. The way I do it, though,
Speaker 1: it's pretty simple. I don't really work too hard at it.
Speaker 1: I try and sounds like I think, I like Chris
Speaker 1: couldn't resist. I haven't gotten a good Chris joking lately,
Speaker 1: so I'm glad I could afford one here. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: try to use the least effort possible. So if I
Speaker 1: can imagine myself sitting on a stream, or imagine my
Speaker 1: mind is the stream, and if I thought about the
Speaker 1: future comes like I have an appointment tomorrow, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be too close to another appointment. What am
Speaker 1: I going to do about it? You just snag it.
Speaker 1: You just imagine that thought biting on your hook and
Speaker 1: you reel it in, you put it away, and then
Speaker 1: you just let the stream wander again and you play.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, it's not something that you do
Speaker 1: necessarily for a long time, because a lot of times
Speaker 1: I'll sit down in one session and I'll play a
Speaker 1: bunch of different games. I'll try one, say oh, that's
Speaker 1: not really quite doing it for me today. Let's just
Speaker 1: let's let's try another one. And you play around and
Speaker 1: then you see one and it sort of catches you
Speaker 1: and you say, oh, that's really good, Like slippery Mind
Speaker 1: is another one that one seems to be really fun
Speaker 1: and good for for extended amount of times. When I
Speaker 1: was a kid, I grew up in New Rochelle in Westchester,
Speaker 1: and there was this amusement park called Rye Playland, and
Speaker 1: it had this fabulous funhouse with a hall of mirrors.
Speaker 1: And this was this great old Art deco amusement park,
Speaker 1: and it had this little thing and it was a disc.
Speaker 1: It was a very smooth, polished metal disc, and all
Speaker 1: the kids would sit on the disc and then it
Speaker 1: would start spinning, and the idea was to try and
Speaker 1: stay on the disc, but the centrifugal force would just
Speaker 1: push you off and you would just slide right off
Speaker 1: the disk. And some kids were successful in staying on
Speaker 1: the disc. But we all suspected that there were a
Speaker 1: little screws located here and there, and I think that
Speaker 1: some guy controlling it could put a little tiny jolt
Speaker 1: of electricity through it and shock you and make you
Speaker 1: shift your position so that the friction of your clothes
Speaker 1: released you and you went sliding right off. So when
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that, I thought, oh, that would
Speaker 1: be so much fun to make a game out of
Speaker 1: that and awareness game. So in Slippery Mind, you just
Speaker 1: imagine your mind is a very slippery, smooth surface, no walls,
Speaker 1: no fences, and nothing to hold onto its circular surface.
Speaker 1: And you imagine your minds that way, and when a
Speaker 1: thought comes in, it can't say it's it can't stay
Speaker 1: it's too slippery. It just slides out the other side.
Speaker 1: And so sometimes the thought will come in, it'll circle
Speaker 1: for a little while. And so if you notice this
Speaker 1: thought circling and you can you can do something like
Speaker 1: you can tilt the disc a little one make it
Speaker 1: slide off, or you can send it a little jolt
Speaker 1: of electricity or nudget to slide off. And this is
Speaker 1: something that I don't know. I find I can sit
Speaker 1: and play this for quite a while. And what happens
Speaker 1: is you don't get engaged in the thoughts. They don't
Speaker 1: take over. They don't say, hey, let's get involved in
Speaker 1: me as a thought, and let's think about it, and
Speaker 1: let's ruminate over it and examine it. It It just there,
Speaker 1: it is, okay, let's just send it out the other side.
Speaker 1: So it's just kind of a fun way of doing that.
Speaker 1: Do you do these games in addition to a formal
Speaker 1: sitting meditation practice, or in place of or I think
Speaker 1: that it can be either. It can be complimentary to
Speaker 1: a formal sitting meditation practice. I often sit in meditation.
Speaker 1: I like guided meditations. I think they're great. I think
Speaker 1: lock Kelly has some great ones. Rupert's Spira is a
Speaker 1: wonderful guided meditation guy. I do listen to those. But
Speaker 1: I found out early on that I wasn't the type
Speaker 1: of guy who had this impeccable discipline to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: at eight thirty, I'm going to sit and do this
Speaker 1: meditation for half an hour. And and I knew that
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen. I mean, I try it, it might work
Speaker 1: for a week or two, and it would go away.
Speaker 1: And I just despaired. I thought, well, you know, this
Speaker 1: is the way I am. I don't think I can
Speaker 1: change this. And then of a sudden I realized, well,
Speaker 1: I don't have to change it, because I was determined
Speaker 1: to find a way out of depression and to find
Speaker 1: where happiness is. And and then I said, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, maybe I don't have to do that. Maybe
Speaker 1: I can just play myself on my own terms, at
Speaker 1: my own time, whenever it occurs to me whenever I
Speaker 1: feel like it, And so I think that there's a
Speaker 1: little freedom that you get when you think about it
Speaker 1: as games that you can play whenever you want to.
Speaker 1: But I know lot of people who have meditation practices
Speaker 1: who love the book and who play the games in
Speaker 1: addition as well. How many different games are there in
Speaker 1: the book? You know, I can't remember it, probably about seventy.
Speaker 1: I'm always bad with numbers. Four. No, I know it's
Speaker 1: it's more than four. There's more than four and less
Speaker 1: than it's a good range. Well. Another thing about games
Speaker 1: is that you know, my background is in theater, and
Speaker 1: my mom was an actress and a teacher, and she
Speaker 1: specialized in teaching theater to kids, and she taught us
Speaker 1: something called theater games. And they were invented by a
Speaker 1: woman from Chicago named Violens Bowen, who was very instrumental
Speaker 1: in starting the Second City Theater group in Chicago and
Speaker 1: Improvisational Theater. And these were these were games that you
Speaker 1: did in rehearsal for plays, and that also influenced the
Speaker 1: idea of awareness games, of using a playful way of
Speaker 1: arriving at something as opposed to an effortful, hard working
Speaker 1: way of arriving at something. I love the approach of
Speaker 1: it as a way to augment or, you know, in
Speaker 1: some cases, in place of a meditation technique, because I
Speaker 1: really do think there is a lot to be said
Speaker 1: for the over seriousness sometimes of some of this stuff,
Speaker 1: and anything that can help with a lighter hearted approach
Speaker 1: I think is almost always good medicine. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: so too. But also I know that my personality is
Speaker 1: such that I respond better to lighthearted things, whereas other
Speaker 1: people may may respond better to very serious things, and
Speaker 1: then another book might work for them, Yep, exactly. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that I have found when I
Speaker 1: am dealing with this idea of trying not to be
Speaker 1: so focused on the contents of my thoughts is that
Speaker 1: once I'm emotionally stirred up to a certain extent, that
Speaker 1: seems near impossible. And so I was just kind of curious,
Speaker 1: what are your thoughts on that, and what is the
Speaker 1: role of emotion in this, because one of the questions
Speaker 1: I'm always exploring on this show is trying to strike
Speaker 1: the balance between what I would call sort of a
Speaker 1: spiritual bypass where you just you get rid of emotions
Speaker 1: anyway you can you let them slide right out of
Speaker 1: the slippery mind versus actually being more present to them.
Speaker 1: So I'm just interested in your thoughts on that topic
Speaker 1: in general. I agree, and that was one of my
Speaker 1: thoughts about the good and the bad wolf, like do
Speaker 1: you starve the bad wolf? And and you really can't,
Speaker 1: because if these emotions come and you just sort of
Speaker 1: stifle them, they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna form a
Speaker 1: little eddie inside you and they're never gonna leave. But
Speaker 1: when you are loose enough and relaxed enough and non
Speaker 1: resistant enough that when an emotion comes you can let
Speaker 1: it come, it actually flows through you to the other side.
Speaker 1: And this is gonna happen when you do any kind
Speaker 1: of approach like this, even as playful a one as this,
Speaker 1: emotions are gonna come up. At one of the games
Speaker 1: that I have called include Include Include addresses that when
Speaker 1: you have really tough emotions, and what you really need
Speaker 1: to do is you notice the emotion, and you notice
Speaker 1: the awareness that it's appearing in and you don't try
Speaker 1: to change the emotion. You allow to be there, but
Speaker 1: you include everything else. You include the sounds, You include
Speaker 1: the feeling of your body. You include more and more
Speaker 1: and more, and you just include, include, include everything that's
Speaker 1: in awareness. And what happens is that that emotion becomes
Speaker 1: instead of something that overtakes you and becomes you and
Speaker 1: becomes everything. It's just really one small corner of what's
Speaker 1: in awareness right now. I love that idea. You're broadening
Speaker 1: your awareness and trying to be less myopic. Well, Brian,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come
Speaker 1: on the show. I enjoyed the book. I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to trying more of the different exercises as I go on.
Speaker 1: I'm glad to have more than one or two at
Speaker 1: my disposal to to kind of play around with. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to have the book. Great. Well, it's a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk to you. Eric. Excellent. Well, take care. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. You two. Okay, if what you just
Speaker 1: heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation
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