Speaker 1: We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and devotion does not have
Speaker 1: to be to an entity with a will and a beard,
Speaker 1: but connection to the greatest possible love and unity that
Speaker 1: binds us all and gives us our common humanity. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the One You Feed.
Speaker 2: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 2: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 2: you are what you think, ring true, and yet for
Speaker 2: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 2: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 2: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 2: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 2: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 2: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 2: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 2: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 2: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 2: episode is a guest that has been on two previous times.
Speaker 2: He's closing in on the record of most appearances on
Speaker 2: The One You Feed. It is Rain Wilson, an American actor, comedian, podcaster, producer, writer, director,
Speaker 2: and the list goes on and on. You guys probably
Speaker 2: know him best as Dwight from the TV show The Office,
Speaker 2: but his accomplishments are so many I can't even begin
Speaker 2: to list them all. But most importantly for this episode
Speaker 2: is to mention his new book called Soul Boom, Why
Speaker 2: We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rain, welcome to the show, Eric.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me back thirds of Charm.
Speaker 3: I'm really glad you're here.
Speaker 2: Rain.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to talk to you every time we
Speaker 3: get to do it. And today we're going to be
Speaker 3: discussing your latest book, which is called Soul Boom, Why
Speaker 3: we Need a Spiritual Revolution. But before we get into that,
Speaker 3: we will start like we always do with the Parable.
Speaker 3: In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking to their
Speaker 3: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 3: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 3: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 3: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 3: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 3: grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks
Speaker 3: up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?
Speaker 3: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 3: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 3: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 3: that you do.
Speaker 1: Eric. As you know, I'm a huge fan of your
Speaker 1: podcast and you are og old school. You've been doing
Speaker 1: this for a long time. You've been in that kind
Speaker 1: of recovery mental health wellness space since the talkies were invented, right,
Speaker 1: wasn't it? And I love how you frame the conversation
Speaker 1: around that really exquisite story, and to me, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of a story from my faith, which is the
Speaker 1: Baha'i faith, and that is the son of the founder
Speaker 1: of the Bahai faith, who went by the title Abdul Baha,
Speaker 1: which means servant of Glory. He came to the United
Speaker 1: States a little over one hundred years ago and he
Speaker 1: was interviewed when he landed at the docks in New
Speaker 1: York City and there was a journalist there and they said,
Speaker 1: do Bahais do members of the Bahai faith believe in Satan?
Speaker 1: And Abdul Baha said, yes, Bahais believe in Satan. And
Speaker 1: the guy seemed a little surprised, and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: to a Bahai, what is Satan? And abdul Baha said,
Speaker 1: Satan is the insistent self. I love it, and I
Speaker 1: love that idea of the insistent self, because Satan not
Speaker 1: being some creature with a tale and red skin and
Speaker 1: who lives in an evil place. But Satan is inside
Speaker 1: all of us. It is the insistent self side of
Speaker 1: all of us, and we all have that insistent self,
Speaker 1: that ego that is a veil between us and God.
Speaker 1: To quote Rumy, the ego is a veil between us
Speaker 1: and God and keeps us in the mud. You know,
Speaker 1: it keeps us with those qualities that you described, you know,
Speaker 1: greed and avarice, comparison, envy, aggression, fear and lust. And
Speaker 1: so to me, the parable that you put at the
Speaker 1: centerpiece of your show is the number one most important
Speaker 1: spiritual path, spiritual battle that any and every human being walks.
Speaker 1: It's in every spiritual tradition, and it's the battle between
Speaker 1: us and our lower selves and our higher selves. And
Speaker 1: battle is a tough word. Almost feel bad about using
Speaker 1: the word battle because conflict is so inherent and baked
Speaker 1: into that word. But a balance between these two sides
Speaker 1: of ourselves and the spiritual path for anyone, and no
Speaker 1: matter what your background, if you're spiritual not religious, and
Speaker 1: you struggle with God, if you're a Christian, if you're Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim,
Speaker 1: Bahai is always how do we keep the insistent self
Speaker 1: at bay? Recognize it as an important part of the
Speaker 1: human experience. We wouldn't be here as human beings if
Speaker 1: we didn't have greed, lust, avarice, aggression. Right one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, we probably need those qualities to keep
Speaker 1: our tribes alive in our caves. They don't serve us
Speaker 1: as much anymore. The stakes are much higher and much
Speaker 1: more insidious. So the spiritual path and all of these
Speaker 1: different faith traditions is feeding the wolf that isn't the
Speaker 1: insistent self.
Speaker 3: I love that answer. There's a few things in there
Speaker 3: to touch on. The insistent self is a great phrase.
Speaker 3: And I know you, like me, did some recovery work
Speaker 3: in twelve step programs, and I remember reading it was
Speaker 3: the AA Big Book. I wasn't sober very long. I
Speaker 3: was twenty five years old and had been a homeless
Speaker 3: heroin addict and I remember reading there's a section in
Speaker 3: there that talks about and it says it a little
Speaker 3: bit bluntly maybe for today's world, but it says selfishness,
Speaker 3: self centeredness that we think is the root of our problem.
Speaker 3: I really got it, and like in a moment, I
Speaker 3: remember that moment of like, instead of that being something
Speaker 3: that made me defend myself, I just suddenly went like, oh, yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: all I do is think about myself. All I do
Speaker 3: is think about like how I feel and how I'm
Speaker 3: going to modify how I feel by whatever chemical I
Speaker 3: can get my hands on. But it is an entirely
Speaker 3: self centered pursuit. And so right, that phrase, the insistent self,
Speaker 3: I love because I do think that you know, we
Speaker 3: all know we need some degree of self and desire
Speaker 3: and will to function in the world. But that phrase
Speaker 3: insistent talks to me about that being out of the
Speaker 3: other word you use there, which is balance. Right. I
Speaker 3: don't love the word battle either, you know, I think
Speaker 3: these things are a balance, but the insistent self gives
Speaker 3: me a very clear like, Oh, it's the self that
Speaker 3: just keeps carrying on beyond when it's useful and beyond
Speaker 3: when it's helpful. And so thanks for sharing that phrase.
Speaker 3: I love that one.
Speaker 1: Thanks Thanks Eric.
Speaker 3: One of the things that you talk a lot about
Speaker 3: in the book is the importance of finding a spiritual
Speaker 3: path that resonates with us individually. This is a big
Speaker 3: piece of your work in general, I would say, and
Speaker 3: I would be curious if somebody is coming to this
Speaker 3: and wants to develop a spiritual life of some sort,
Speaker 3: but they've either come out of a tradition that no
Speaker 3: longer makes sense to them, or they don't really know
Speaker 3: what they believe in or feel like, how do you
Speaker 3: think about people getting started on this path?
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I wish I had an easy answer,
Speaker 1: and I wish I had kind of had more time
Speaker 1: to formulate this. It feels like that could be a
Speaker 1: book just on itself, just answering.
Speaker 3: That really could it Probably could, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That question. I think the Twelve Steps do it very
Speaker 1: well by first kind of defining what a higher power
Speaker 1: looks like, and that can be tricky for a lot
Speaker 1: of people in recovery and a lot of people on
Speaker 1: a spiritual path. One of the things we explore on
Speaker 1: the New Soul Boom podcast is the concept that for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, their religion or faith journey is
Speaker 1: the most inspiring, uplifting thing they'll ever encounter, and the
Speaker 1: most meaningful thing they'll ever encounter. And for a lot
Speaker 1: of people, their faith and spirituality journey is the most
Speaker 1: traumatic thing that has scarred them the most, So we
Speaker 1: have to be very conscious of that. There can be
Speaker 1: a great deal of religious trauma. But that's one way
Speaker 1: I think. You know, meditation is super important to my recovery,
Speaker 1: my mental health journey, and that's a pretty easy thing
Speaker 1: to undertake. That doesn't require a lot of belief and
Speaker 1: a lot of knowledge, and you can just sit quietly,
Speaker 1: preferably you know, maybe outside, maybe in under a tree
Speaker 1: or something like that, and even just take five or
Speaker 1: ten minutes to just quiet the mind and breathe and
Speaker 1: be in the moment. You don't have to do anything
Speaker 1: fancy around that. And then I have a chapter in
Speaker 1: the book about sacred pilgrimages, the sacred Pilgrims I call it,
Speaker 1: and the idea of finding what is sacred in daily
Speaker 1: life in our modern world with our phones buzzing and
Speaker 1: emails that need returning and cost co parking lots, and
Speaker 1: how do you find the sacred in that world? The
Speaker 1: main thing for me is to consider the idea. The
Speaker 1: quote I often go to is from Father Tehart de Chardin,
Speaker 1: who says we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
Speaker 1: We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And when
Speaker 1: I am reminded of my spiritual reality, that's where I begin,
Speaker 1: and that's where I begin every day, Like, yes, I
Speaker 1: have this insistent self, I have Rain Wilson. I've got
Speaker 1: this big, middle aged, fleshy body from suburban Seattle. My
Speaker 1: body has certain needs. It likes to overeat, you know.
Speaker 1: And I have an ego, you know, And I'm in
Speaker 1: Hollywood and I'm like, oh, why did so and so
Speaker 1: get that part and I didn't? And why didn't I
Speaker 1: get considered for this role? And why am I not
Speaker 1: getting paid that? And you know, it's really really difficult
Speaker 1: to sidestep that in show business and release that. But
Speaker 1: when I remember that I am a spiritual being having
Speaker 1: a human experience, that can inform the choices that I
Speaker 1: make and the path that I walk. Wherever that takes you.
Speaker 1: You know, that can take you to indigenous Native American
Speaker 1: spiritual beliefs. It can take you to transcendental meditation. It
Speaker 1: can take you to mystical Catholicism. You know, the Vedas
Speaker 1: and Upanishads, the Buddha. But it is a universal in
Speaker 1: all religious traditions that we have a spiritual higher component,
Speaker 1: a spirit, a soul, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: And how then do we step by step clear space
Speaker 1: in our lives to feed, nourish, contemplate, and embrace the
Speaker 1: spiritual side of ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Listener,
Speaker 3: while you were listening to that, what resonated with you?
Speaker 3: What one thing to feed your good wolf comes to mind?
Speaker 3: If the thing that came to your mind was more
Speaker 3: time for stillness, or you've tried meditation before and you
Speaker 3: really haven't liked it, then I want to give you
Speaker 3: a quick tip that might make.
Speaker 1: It better for you.
Speaker 3: And it's simply to stop expecting that you're not going
Speaker 3: to have thoughts. Nearly everyone has this expectation that they're
Speaker 3: going to sit down and meditate and they're going to
Speaker 3: stop having thoughts. And when they stop having thoughts, that
Speaker 3: means they're doing it well. But no one does that,
Speaker 3: and so we end up feeling like we're failing all
Speaker 3: of the time, every three seconds, failed again, failed again.
Speaker 3: We develop a relationship with meditation that is aversive. So
Speaker 3: if you want to stop dreading meditation and actually find
Speaker 3: it relaxing. Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf
Speaker 3: dot me slash calm. In it, I walk you through
Speaker 3: my process to engage with meditation in a new way,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people have found it really helpful.
Speaker 3: That's good Wolf dot me slash calm. As far as
Speaker 3: your life and the things that you know you get
Speaker 3: caught up in, I don't wish anybody getting caught up
Speaker 3: in anything, But what I like about that is there's
Speaker 3: this real tendency of a lot of people to look
Speaker 3: up right, and we think, well, so and so their
Speaker 3: life must be just fine, it must be great because
Speaker 3: it has these things in it that I want. Right,
Speaker 3: and you're a person that you know, the vast majority
Speaker 3: of the actors on the planet would look up at right.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of actors on the planet and go, God,
Speaker 3: if I could have a career like that, right, if
Speaker 3: I could just I love those examples because I think
Speaker 3: it shows that for all of us as humans, regardless
Speaker 3: of where we're situated in different places, that there are
Speaker 3: ways to be unhappy where we are, and there are
Speaker 3: ways to be happier where we are, Like right, where
Speaker 3: we sit. And this is not to say, you know,
Speaker 3: like that if somebody is living on three dollars a
Speaker 3: day that like they should just be able to be
Speaker 3: as happy as everybody else. That's not what I'm trying
Speaker 3: to say. But I'm saying that speaking to that general
Speaker 3: sense we all have of I would just be happy
Speaker 3: if I got X, right, I know, and I look
Speaker 3: at my own life, I'm like, I got a lot
Speaker 3: of X that I wanted, and I am happier. But
Speaker 3: I don't think it's because of that, right, I think
Speaker 3: it's because I've continued to try and develop along as
Speaker 3: you would say, spiritual lines.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. So all of contemporary society in Western
Speaker 1: civilization wires us and motivates us to seek happiness outside
Speaker 1: of ourselves. So we just keep reaching for more. We
Speaker 1: want to make more money, we want to have a
Speaker 1: better relationship, we want to live longer, we want to
Speaker 1: look more youthful, we want to own more stuff. And
Speaker 1: you know, going back to our caveman ancestors, it makes
Speaker 1: total sense. You know, if you had a lot of
Speaker 1: deer jerky and a lot of you know, beaver pelts,
Speaker 1: you know, and berries in your cave and you had
Speaker 1: a lot of like eligible mates, you know, in your cave,
Speaker 1: you would thrive. So the acquiring of stuff and the
Speaker 1: need for stuff is hardwired into our brain stems, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't help us so much in the modern world.
Speaker 1: I was really lucky to do this television show I
Speaker 1: was on the Peacock Network last year called Rain Wilson
Speaker 1: and the Geography of Bliss. And it was traveling around
Speaker 1: the world looking at happiness in other cultures and what
Speaker 1: brings people joy and bliss and what we can learn
Speaker 1: from other cultures and bring back home to America. And
Speaker 1: you know, the thing that I found is really quite simple,
Speaker 1: and it was so revelatory, and it's connection. We really
Speaker 1: thrive in connection, and we really waste away in isolation.
Speaker 1: And this is also how we're wired. So you know
Speaker 1: what wolf are we feeding. We're putting away the you know,
Speaker 1: the materialist pursuits of seeking happiness outside of ourselves and
Speaker 1: finding connection. And that is certainly human connection and finding
Speaker 1: tribes and communities and like minded people or different minded people,
Speaker 1: but it's also connection with nature. It's connection with the
Speaker 1: higher power. We long to be connected. That would be
Speaker 1: the only other than turning inward and seeking, you know,
Speaker 1: peace from the kind of agitated unquiet that we walk
Speaker 1: the world. It's connection and I got to experience that
Speaker 1: in Iceland and Thailand and in Ghana, West Africa, and
Speaker 1: it's helped me bring it home to my life here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: I agree. I mean, to me the words spiritual, You
Speaker 3: and I have slightly different definitions, and maybe we can
Speaker 3: go into that in a second. Right, for me, spiritual
Speaker 3: is all about To me, it just means connecting with
Speaker 3: the things that really matter. That's kind of it for me.
Speaker 3: I'd love to ask you what it means to you
Speaker 3: in a second, but I don't want to miss this
Speaker 3: discussion of your TV show, which sounds delightful. I'm going
Speaker 3: to need to figure out how I can get National
Speaker 3: Geographic to watch it. Peacock, Peacock, Peacock, Okay, all right,
Speaker 3: that's easier to figure out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you just get the free month on the Peacock
Speaker 1: and just watch.
Speaker 3: It and then and then forget to cancel, forget to cantnam. Kidding.
Speaker 3: You've done a lot of studying of different cultures, particularly
Speaker 3: in the spiritual dimension, for a long time now, right,
Speaker 3: you're really well read in the spiritual literature. I'm curious though,
Speaker 3: as you went out and traveled, it sounds like there
Speaker 3: was this overarching thing that you sort of got, which
Speaker 3: was connection. But were there any other things in that
Speaker 3: that surprised you or that was like a new angle
Speaker 3: on something you were like, Wow, I never thought of
Speaker 3: it that way before. I'm just kind of curious for
Speaker 3: another takeaway out of that experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, I mean there's so much. One of the
Speaker 1: big disconnects we have in the modern world is our
Speaker 1: connection with nature. I was reading recently and it's an
Speaker 1: easy thing to google, Like how much time people spend
Speaker 1: outdoors is astonishingly low. You know, usually less than an
Speaker 1: hour a day, and that's amazing when we used to
Speaker 1: spend twenty four hours a day outdoors, or at least
Speaker 1: twelve hours a day outdoors. Take the people of Iceland,
Speaker 1: for instance. You know a lot of times they're forced
Speaker 1: inside during the very cold winters, but their relationship, their
Speaker 1: connection to nature is incredibly profound. Their love, the Icelandic
Speaker 1: love of the glaciers and the volcanoes and the hot
Speaker 1: springs and the waterfalls and the geysers that populate their island.
Speaker 1: They really worship that aspect of being Icelandic, an intensely
Speaker 1: burning love for nature and for their island. I found
Speaker 1: the same thing to be in Ghana and in Thailand
Speaker 1: as well, and it's something that I realized was very
Speaker 1: much missing in my life. I mean, I try and
Speaker 1: take a big camping trip every summer, and you know,
Speaker 1: I like to take dog walks and you know, go
Speaker 1: down to the beach sometimes. But to really prioritize nature
Speaker 1: time is a big part of a spiritual pathntal health path,
Speaker 1: a wellness path. And it sounds good, yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: more trees, more nature, It sounds good. But you know
Speaker 1: what would it take to really prioritize, like to measure
Speaker 1: like how much time do you spend outside? How do
Speaker 1: you increase that? Can you take being vaguely outside to
Speaker 1: being committedly outside and can you get out two or
Speaker 1: three times in the year into the wilderness and where
Speaker 1: there's not a phone and there's just trees, and how
Speaker 1: does that feed yourself? It's very common sense, but I
Speaker 1: think it has had a profound effect on the mental
Speaker 1: health crisis that we've been undergoing over the last twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really hard like I prioritize being in nature,
Speaker 3: and I bet I'm under an hour a day average,
Speaker 3: And that's with me even trying, you know, just given
Speaker 3: you know the nature of a lot of the way
Speaker 3: my life is structured. And yet I know for me
Speaker 3: it is a really valuable thing. There's something about it.
Speaker 3: I think it's helpful on many levels for me. One
Speaker 3: of the levels is like I can just walk outside
Speaker 3: and it's beautiful and I can be like, you know what,
Speaker 3: this costs absolutely nothing, and this is always available. It's
Speaker 3: like this resource is here. It's how I feel about
Speaker 3: libraries too. I walk into a library, I just feel happy,
Speaker 3: you know, it's like this is amazing, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: look at this repository of hope and possibility that like
Speaker 3: I can just walk into nature has that similar. Obviously
Speaker 3: it's working on different mechanisms, but there's a correlation to
Speaker 3: me about something about this resource that's always there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Another aspect around Bliss is very simply
Speaker 1: doing things for other people, being of service, and they've
Speaker 1: done countless studies in the field of positive psychology around this.
Speaker 1: That again, contemporary Western society says, you know, me, me me,
Speaker 1: you know it's me time to take care of yourself,
Speaker 1: get stuff for yourself, acquire stuff, putting yourself first and foremost.
Speaker 1: But in actuality, when we are of service to others,
Speaker 1: when we prioritize others and sacrificing of our time, of
Speaker 1: our attention, of our status, of our resources for others,
Speaker 1: it gives us a great, deep sense of fulfillment. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget meeting this woman in Thailand, and this is
Speaker 1: a common practice in Thailand that every year for her
Speaker 1: birthday she goes and hands out food and is of
Speaker 1: service to the monks that live in very impoverished state
Speaker 1: in the monasteries and hands out food to the poor.
Speaker 1: So her birthday is a service day to others. And
Speaker 1: I thought that is really beautiful and one ady opposite
Speaker 1: of America where it's all about celebrating ourselves and getting
Speaker 1: cake and presents for ourselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great story. So I mentioned what spirituality
Speaker 3: means to me about just being connected to the things
Speaker 3: that matter most. What is a working definition for you?
Speaker 1: Well, the Oxford Dictiontionary talks about spirituality as being being
Speaker 1: concerned with the non material aspects of life, So that
Speaker 1: goes hand in hand with what you're saying. In my
Speaker 1: faith tradition, there is a metaphor that I love to
Speaker 1: look at that helps elucidate this idea, and that is
Speaker 1: the baby in the womb. I believe, and Bahais believe
Speaker 1: in many other faith traditions, believe that there is a
Speaker 1: divine eternal aspect to myself. That is, my consciousness is
Speaker 1: not just a random assortment of molecules and neurons firing
Speaker 1: in a brain that has given me a personality and perspective,
Speaker 1: and I'm not just an elevated ape or monkey, but
Speaker 1: that my consciousness is partially connected to my corporeal existence,
Speaker 1: and it's part juices and electricity and gray matter, and
Speaker 1: it is also my consciousness the part of me that
Speaker 1: weeps at a poem, the part of me that longs
Speaker 1: for connection, that beams when I hold a baby that
Speaker 1: size when I see a sunset, That this part of
Speaker 1: myself is of this world and yet not of this world.
Speaker 1: The metaphor is the babies in the womb. So a
Speaker 1: baby in a womb. We were all in a womb,
Speaker 1: and when we were in that womb, we had no
Speaker 1: idea you and I eric that we would be on
Speaker 1: riverside dot FM, looking at each other having a profound
Speaker 1: conversation about health and wellness and love and God and
Speaker 1: spirit over microphones and the Internet and podcasting, etc. We
Speaker 1: had no idea that that existed. We were just floating
Speaker 1: in amniotic fluid, growing our arms and legs and toes
Speaker 1: and elbows and eyelashes that we were going to need
Speaker 1: in the physical world. And you know, if you were
Speaker 1: to ask a baby, hey, why are you growing these
Speaker 1: elbows and eyelashes and fingers, the baby will be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, leave me alone. I'm just I'm fine
Speaker 1: right here floating around. It has no idea of the
Speaker 1: miraculous infinity that lies outside of the womb. It has
Speaker 1: no idea about radio Head and Miles Davis and the
Speaker 1: poetry of Ee Cummings and what the Grand Canyon looks like.
Speaker 1: And in the same regard, that's what we're doing in
Speaker 1: this physical realm. In this physical realm, we are growing
Speaker 1: our spiritual arms and legs, our spiritual toes, our spiritual
Speaker 1: eyelashes and elbows that we will need once this material
Speaker 1: body falls aside in Nirvana, in the happy hunting grounds
Speaker 1: in heaven, the next plane of existence, and what are
Speaker 1: we taking with us? You know, maybe not so much
Speaker 1: our personalities, but those qualities that we've grown in this
Speaker 1: world are qualities of kindness and humility and compassion and
Speaker 1: love and honesty. Those are our spiritual arms and legs
Speaker 1: and elbows and toes that we are taking with us
Speaker 1: on our infinite journey into the beyond. So it's really
Speaker 1: beyond heaven and hell. There's not like that kind of
Speaker 1: concept in my faith tradition of like, oh, believers are
Speaker 1: going here and non believers are going here. We're all
Speaker 1: on this journey. You know, eight billion of us are
Speaker 1: on this journey. And the journey begins in the womb,
Speaker 1: and it comes here to the physical realm and continues.
Speaker 1: So what is spirituality. It's being concerned with that journey,
Speaker 1: you know, with the accruing of those spiritual virtues of
Speaker 1: seeking like sunflowers turning to the sun, seeking to turn
Speaker 1: toward the divine impulse, and understanding that our lives are
Speaker 1: infinite and miraculous and and in incredibly short and precious
Speaker 1: while we're in our bodies. You know, I'm dealing right now.
Speaker 1: I lost two friends to cancer in the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, I've got like four friends with cancer right now.
Speaker 1: And this happens when you're in your fifties. And the
Speaker 1: comedian Neil Brennan talks about Sniper's Alley. It's like, when
Speaker 1: you get to a certain age, it's called sniper's alley
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, the people around you start
Speaker 1: getting picked off. Boo boo boo. And it's true and
Speaker 1: it's sad, and it's heartbreaking, and it's reality, and it's
Speaker 1: part of the journey.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to hear about all of your friends. Thank
Speaker 3: you every year getting older, I'm in my fifties. Also,
Speaker 3: is this fragility of life becomes ever more clear, which
Speaker 3: can be a positive and is all so deeply unsettling?
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Indeed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to turn our attention for a minute
Speaker 3: and talk about mental health, although it's going to lead
Speaker 3: us right back into soul boom here in a second.
Speaker 3: You talk about in the book about you've dealt with
Speaker 3: many mental health issues, you know, depression, anxiety, addiction. And
Speaker 3: I did an interview recently with a woman named doctor
Speaker 3: Lisa Miller. I don't know if you're familiar with her work.
Speaker 1: I love Lisa Miller. She's amazing and we just had
Speaker 1: her as one of the first people on our soul
Speaker 1: Boom podcast that's coming out in a few weeks, so perfect.
Speaker 3: Yes, she's wonderful. The thing in her book that really
Speaker 3: blew me away was, you know, when she began studying
Speaker 3: spirituality and she found the protective effect that it has
Speaker 3: against depression was a higher protective effect than they had
Speaker 3: seen in nearly anything else. Now it's slightly more nuanced
Speaker 3: because what she over time sort of found out was
Speaker 3: that people who suffered depression often have turned to spirituality
Speaker 3: because it's a path out. But there does seem to
Speaker 3: be a correlation between mental health and spirituality. And I
Speaker 3: would love to hear your thoughts on what things do
Speaker 3: you find most helpful you know, for your mental health overall,
Speaker 3: So if you want to talk to how spirituality informs
Speaker 3: that and then anything else that feels alive for you
Speaker 3: right now in that area.
Speaker 1: Thanks. It's really one of my very favorite topics. The Buddha,
Speaker 1: as we know, has principal teaching. He says, I teach
Speaker 1: one thing and one thing only suffering and the elimination
Speaker 1: of suffering. Life is suffering or there is suffering or
Speaker 1: the world has suffering, however you translate it. And the
Speaker 1: word suffering that was used at the time in the
Speaker 1: Sanskrit or Pali was duka, and from what I've read
Speaker 1: and understand, duka is most expertly translated as anxious discontent.
Speaker 1: And I think any addict understands anxious discontent. And I
Speaker 1: wake up with it most every day, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I got a little headache or my back hurts, or
Speaker 1: why didn't this work out? And I'm resentful at this
Speaker 1: person and I wish I had that, and why didn't
Speaker 1: this come? And even if it's not specific, it's just
Speaker 1: that feeling, it's that vibration of things aren't right. So
Speaker 1: I have to adjust myself away from anxious discontent toward
Speaker 1: radiant acquiescence, toward acceptance, towards gratitude. And I use tools
Speaker 1: from both the Twelve Steps and psychology and spiritual practice
Speaker 1: to help realign myself. And that's a different wolf that
Speaker 1: I feed, right, I don't feed the anxious discontent, you know,
Speaker 1: I feed gratitude and connection right empt to some days
Speaker 1: I'm better at it, some I'm not. Frankly, a lot
Speaker 1: of the time I just fail totally and get too
Speaker 1: busy to meditate, and all of a sudden it's four
Speaker 1: o'clock and I'm a dick to my wife and I
Speaker 1: think my life is shit, and I don't look around
Speaker 1: and go, you know, wow, I've actually got it really good.
Speaker 1: So the spiritual life has helped me a great deal
Speaker 1: with understanding anxious discontent. And you know, meditation certainly grounds me.
Speaker 1: But prayer is an important part of this for me
Speaker 1: because I believe that there is a power that's greater
Speaker 1: than myself, and that surrender to that power asking for help.
Speaker 1: You know, Anne LaMotte has that great book Help Thanks Wow.
Speaker 1: You know the three forms of prayer, and I can
Speaker 1: connect with this creative presence, this force, this force of
Speaker 1: beauty and light and warmth and knowledge, and that it
Speaker 1: helps me. I think that on my mental health journey,
Speaker 1: something I've always really responded to Eric is transcendence. And
Speaker 1: I think that humans have a longing for transcendence. We
Speaker 1: long to transcend out of our bodies. We don't want
Speaker 1: to just sit in our bodies. Jack off, eat a sandwich,
Speaker 1: watch some Netflix Poppo is it, take a poop and
Speaker 1: just be in our bodies. That's an important part of
Speaker 1: being a human being, but we also long for what,
Speaker 1: for love, for understanding, for beauty. We have that transcendent
Speaker 1: impulse for something to reach out beyond the mirror material.
Speaker 1: And I know that I've always had that. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just wired that way, but I feel like most everyone
Speaker 1: has that to a certain degree. And that's what spirituality
Speaker 1: is all about. It's all about like life is precious,
Speaker 1: life is short. The experience continues, embrace the transcendent, and
Speaker 1: in the doing we find kind of meaning and purpose.
Speaker 1: We can give the transcendent to others. It's a gift. Again.
Speaker 1: We're spiritual beings having a human experience. The list goes
Speaker 1: on and on. I mean, there's so many things I
Speaker 1: could talk about the positive benefits of spirituality, and especially
Speaker 1: for young people and the mental health epidemic that's going
Speaker 1: on right now. I know I'm rambling a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I'll just say another one that's really important is suffering.
Speaker 1: So the Buddha teaches about suffering, but the idea of
Speaker 1: suffering comes up in every faith tradition as well. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that you know, psychologists all kind
Speaker 1: of universally agree is that the younger generation does not
Speaker 1: have much resilience. There's a setback and it causes a
Speaker 1: big breakdown. There's a difficulty and they don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. There's a fear of an obstacle, and so
Speaker 1: that shuts them down. It's a big generality for those
Speaker 1: you know under twenty eight or thirty right now, but
Speaker 1: this is a big tendency. And I think that spirituality
Speaker 1: provides a context for suffering, Like what is suffering? What
Speaker 1: is the purpose of suffering? Suffering exists, There's ways to
Speaker 1: detach from suffering, there's ways to overcome suffering, there's ways
Speaker 1: to develop determination to pierce through suffering. But suffering is
Speaker 1: a necessary part of the spiritual struggle. And we feel
Speaker 1: pain so that we can feel joy and we have
Speaker 1: something to compare it with. And it is through suffering
Speaker 1: that we grow our resilience. You know, when you go
Speaker 1: to the gym, you're lifting weights, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: You're breaking down the muscle fibers. You're literally tearing them
Speaker 1: so that they grow back stronger. And this is part
Speaker 1: of what it is to be a spiritual being in
Speaker 1: having a human experience. The list goes on and on.
Speaker 3: For me, I love where you started with. You know,
Speaker 3: Buddha teaching suffering and the end of suffering, and you
Speaker 3: kind of came all the way back to it at
Speaker 3: the end. And you know, I know what drew me
Speaker 3: to spirituality. I was probably seventeen eighteen years old, and
Speaker 3: I'd been around the Christian faith, but it just never
Speaker 3: really resonated with me. It never made sense to me.
Speaker 3: I'd been pointed into Zen Buddhism by my teacher I
Speaker 3: had in high school, and that sort of led me
Speaker 3: to the Doud aching. But I know what it was
Speaker 3: about those two works that resonated with me and sort
Speaker 3: of set me on this journey, And it was that
Speaker 3: idea that there was a way to be okay in
Speaker 3: the world, even as difficult as the world is. I
Speaker 3: was an over serious seventeen year old, but it was
Speaker 3: pretty clear to me even by then that the world
Speaker 3: could be a really difficult place and that there was
Speaker 3: an enormous amount of suffering in the world, and the
Speaker 3: thought that there was a way to not have to
Speaker 3: solve that problem by making it all go away, but
Speaker 3: instead there was a way to be okay in the
Speaker 3: midst of it. That to me was like that was
Speaker 3: the beacon, was the thing that sort of really drew
Speaker 3: me in, and that did not stop me from descending
Speaker 3: into addiction. And I often think of my addictions as
Speaker 3: you were talking about, as a search for transcendence, Right,
Speaker 3: that's what That's a lot of what that energy was, Right. Yes,
Speaker 3: I think by the end of my addiction there was
Speaker 3: probably a fair amount of hiding from pain. But in
Speaker 3: the beginning it was about connecting to joy and beauty
Speaker 3: and the insistent self being quiet long enough that I
Speaker 3: could appreciate the world in its beauty.
Speaker 1: I just want to piggyback on what you're saying, like
Speaker 1: whether for me it was drugs, whether it was alcohol,
Speaker 1: whether it was porn, whether it was kind of like
Speaker 1: love addiction and romance codependence. You know, it was a
Speaker 1: search for several other things we've been talking about, connection
Speaker 1: and transcendence and meaning and seeking joy, seeking a way
Speaker 1: out of the insistent self to try and kind of
Speaker 1: obliterate that anxious discontent. And you know, like they say,
Speaker 1: it works until it doesn't work anymore, and then you
Speaker 1: find yourself even you know, further down in a hole.
Speaker 1: But that is that same impulse, It is that essential human,
Speaker 1: transcendent spiritual seeking impulse and I'll also say that some
Speaker 1: people have a hard time, and mostly because of how
Speaker 1: they've been raised with a certain idea of God. They
Speaker 1: have a hard time like worshiping something greater than themselves.
Speaker 1: And I think that humans always worship something greater than themselves.
Speaker 1: Everyone worships something. It's just true. There might be a
Speaker 1: couple of people listening right now. Oh that's bullshit. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I believe it's true. It might be
Speaker 1: your career, it might be money. It might even be
Speaker 1: making your family or your spouse your higher power. It
Speaker 1: can be you know, your political party. It can be
Speaker 1: status at work. It can be workoholism. Workoholism is in
Speaker 1: contemporary America, is given a free pass. You know, if
Speaker 1: you work sixty seventy hours a week and have a
Speaker 1: couple divorces because of it, Like God bless you. You're
Speaker 1: a job creator, entrepreneur and you know, just trying to
Speaker 1: provide for their family. And I would rather substitute something
Speaker 1: more like love or beauty than that.
Speaker 3: All right, now, let's pause for a quick good Wolf reminder,
Speaker 3: and this one is on meditation. If while you're meditating
Speaker 3: your mind wanders, you probably, like most people, treat that
Speaker 3: as a moment of failure, like, ough, my mind wandered again.
Speaker 3: But let's flip that and instead treat that as a
Speaker 3: moment of celebration because in that moment, your mind actually
Speaker 3: woke up and you were mindful of the fact that
Speaker 3: your mind wandered. So it's a win. So if we
Speaker 3: can flip that right on its head and say, oh,
Speaker 3: good job, brain, we actually make it more likely that
Speaker 3: a our brain is going to do it more often
Speaker 3: because we're training it, and b that we're going to
Speaker 3: enjoy it more. And specifically, it's about how to make
Speaker 3: you not dread meditation so much and actually find it relaxing.
Speaker 3: Check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash calm. So you've multiple times used the word divine.
Speaker 3: You've used the word god, which again for many people
Speaker 3: is a real turn off. And a little game that
Speaker 3: I love to play is what are other ways of
Speaker 3: saying that concept that are more welcoming and open to
Speaker 3: people who have a problem with them. And you've got
Speaker 3: a couple great ones in the book, so I thought
Speaker 3: I would read a couple that you reference, and then
Speaker 3: you can feel free to add anything else you want.
Speaker 3: To add to it, one is you reference I'm not
Speaker 3: sure how to say this person's name, but Nicholas of Kusa,
Speaker 3: a fifteenth century philosopher who said divinity is in all
Speaker 3: things in such a way that all things are in divinity.
Speaker 3: He spoke of a God who's this is the part
Speaker 3: I love, whose center, so to speak, is everywhere and
Speaker 3: whose circumference is nowhere. That is such a great line.
Speaker 3: And you know you then also go on to talk
Speaker 3: about the idea of the Doo. And I just got
Speaker 3: done doing a really deep dive teaching for this AI
Speaker 3: type program that's going to be created around the doo.
Speaker 3: And you know, the dow that can be told is
Speaker 3: not the eternal Tao, but this idea that whatever we're
Speaker 3: trying to describe, when we use the word God or divine,
Speaker 3: our words are always going to fall short. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Amen, this is such a tricky one. You know. In
Speaker 1: the book Soul Boom, I have a chapter called the
Speaker 1: Notorious Good, which is all an examination of what God
Speaker 1: is and what God isn't. And I would say the
Speaker 1: conversation needs to begin with like what is God not judgmental, male, patriarchal, damning, contemptuous,
Speaker 1: those are a couple of the humanoid, you know, on
Speaker 1: a cloud. You know, to start with a list of
Speaker 1: what God is not, you know, and and.
Speaker 3: Really we missed beard, bearded beard.
Speaker 1: You know, I have a beard, and I know O
Speaker 1: god like certainly, but don't let that confuse your listeners.
Speaker 1: But you know, start with what God isn't. Oftentimes when
Speaker 1: people say I don't believe in God, I'll say, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in the God that you don't believe in.
Speaker 1: So I went on this search. It was kind of
Speaker 1: before I was even in recovery. I was just an
Speaker 1: abject misery of mental health with anxiety and depression. And
Speaker 1: I thought because I grew up a member of the
Speaker 1: Bahai faith, and I had jettisoned the religion and spirituality
Speaker 1: to just essentially like go crazy and party in my
Speaker 1: twenties in New York and be an actor. And so
Speaker 1: I started tiptoeing back towards spiritual ideas and religious ideas.
Speaker 1: But the God thing was a big hang up. I
Speaker 1: had spent a while as an atheist and tried to
Speaker 1: have that make sense. It didn't really make sense to me.
Speaker 1: And then I was reading about Native American spirituality and
Speaker 1: in the Lakota Sioux tradition, the idea of God is
Speaker 1: known as Wakantung, the Great Mystery. And so you're asking
Speaker 1: for names of God that could allow people into a
Speaker 1: path of seeking the divine. There's one right there, the
Speaker 1: Great Mystery. I knew at the time, and I was
Speaker 1: in my late twenties, maybe twenty eight. I don't believe
Speaker 1: in God, and I don't believe in some guy patriarchal
Speaker 1: in my book, I call him sky Daddy. I don't
Speaker 1: believe in sky Daddy, but I can get behind the
Speaker 1: Great Mystery. And that was very exciting to me. And
Speaker 1: the more I kind of read about this Lakota idea,
Speaker 1: the Great Mystery, there's no personification whatsoever. This is not
Speaker 1: a guy. It's not a dude. It's not a being.
Speaker 1: It's not a demi God, it's not a demiurge. It's
Speaker 1: simply a radiant force contained in nature, and it's beyond
Speaker 1: time and space. It's in the wind, it's in the
Speaker 1: beauty of the trees, it's in the sunlight and the flowers.
Speaker 1: It's known through the majesty of mountains, it's known through
Speaker 1: all of the metaphor beauty and power contained in nature,
Speaker 1: and it also courses through our ancestors and our consciousness.
Speaker 1: And as an artist, I could get behind the Great Mystery.
Speaker 1: So that's where I started. My kind of God journey
Speaker 1: was like and I remember saying to friends of mine, like,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in God, but I do believe in Wakantanka.
Speaker 1: I believe in the Great Mystery. And so I've tried
Speaker 1: to stay there. And I talk in the book Soul
Speaker 1: Boom and also on the podcast that's coming up a
Speaker 1: lot about God as being more akin to love or
Speaker 1: art or beauty than any kind of conscious being. And
Speaker 1: when I am able to sit in that reality, I
Speaker 1: feel much closer to God. When I worship a God
Speaker 1: that is love and beauty and art and music and
Speaker 1: transcendence incarnate, then I feel most heart connected to that
Speaker 1: rather than any kind of like someone or something that
Speaker 1: has opinions and thoughts and has superpowers.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think Saint Augustine said, if you understand God,
Speaker 3: what you understand isn't God. Ah, You've got another line
Speaker 3: in there where you call it the essence of essences.
Speaker 3: I love that one.
Speaker 1: Also.
Speaker 3: The Great Mystery has been sort of my fallback for
Speaker 3: a long long time. Is because I'm just like, well,
Speaker 3: ultimately all this is a mystery, and so that is
Speaker 3: something that I can towards and that I can both
Speaker 3: want to figure out and also be okay not figuring out,
Speaker 3: you know, doing both those things.
Speaker 1: The God of the Christian Church, by and large is
Speaker 1: often far too similar to Zeus, and people get really
Speaker 1: hung up on that and they get angry, I don't
Speaker 1: believe in God, And what they're really saying is I
Speaker 1: don't believe in Zeus, you know. And the theologian Paul
Speaker 1: Tillic and philosopher kind of redefine God as the ground
Speaker 1: of all being and again trying to get got out
Speaker 1: of the sky and more into the ground and like
Speaker 1: being itself, interconnectedness and life itself. You know. I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different ways to look at this,
Speaker 1: but I think what's important is to understand that we
Speaker 1: are wired to worship, We're wired for transcendence. Prayer and
Speaker 1: devotion does not have to be to you know, an
Speaker 1: entity with a will and a beard, but connection to
Speaker 1: the greatest possible love and unity that binds us all
Speaker 1: and gives us our common humanity. And then what's even
Speaker 1: more important than that, more than any kind of belief
Speaker 1: is like what you do, who cares ultimately what you believe.
Speaker 1: Some of the best people I've ever known have been
Speaker 1: diehard atheists, serving their fellow humans, sacrificing of their time
Speaker 1: and energy and status and attention and bank accounts for
Speaker 1: other And it really is it's in what you do.
Speaker 1: It's not so much what you believe, but hopefully what
Speaker 1: you believe can guide you to be ever more altruistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: A friend of your, Stephen Phelps, talks about that a
Speaker 3: little bit you say in the book. He reminded me
Speaker 3: that the discussion of God has unfortunately been far less
Speaker 3: focused on God as a goal, a destination away of life,
Speaker 3: a rich garden of qualities to emulate, or an energy
Speaker 3: to both draw from and align with. Right, So instead
Speaker 3: of thinking of God as this thing to be worshiped,
Speaker 3: it's really about this way of being and way of
Speaker 3: engaging in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, James, And the Bible says faith without works is dead,
Speaker 1: and God is in what you do. And we see
Speaker 1: God revealed in what people do and how they are
Speaker 1: and how they travel through the world.
Speaker 3: There's been something that it's happened to me for years,
Speaker 3: but I haven't really known how to think about it before.
Speaker 3: It tends to happen when I'm watching TV or a movie.
Speaker 3: It sometimes will happen in reading, and it happens in
Speaker 3: real life if I see it. It doesn't occur with
Speaker 3: the regularity. But if I'm watching something and someone just
Speaker 3: sort of does something, it's not like a huge thing,
Speaker 3: but it's a moment of just real kindness. I always
Speaker 3: tear up. And I think I just sort of realized
Speaker 3: there's actually a term for it. I think it's like
Speaker 3: moral elevation or something. It's something like that, But it
Speaker 3: also has something in common with me about kind of
Speaker 3: what you were just saying. It feels like something if
Speaker 3: we were going to use the word worship, right, it's
Speaker 3: something that is worth worshiping.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It does for me feel transcend.
Speaker 1: That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. And there is
Speaker 1: a word in every faith tradition that essentially translates to
Speaker 1: loving kindness. It's different than kindness, and it's different than love.
Speaker 1: It's loving kindness and it's how we serve one another.
Speaker 1: And I hear you in responding to that, and I
Speaker 1: feel the same way, and how and why are we
Speaker 1: so disconnected from acts of true loving kindness. One of
Speaker 1: the things I get into in Soul Boom, one of
Speaker 1: the least popular parts of my book that a lot
Speaker 1: of people, I think, frankly, I just lose a lot
Speaker 1: of people, is talking about the latter half of the book.
Speaker 1: I start talking about systems and how broken contemporary modern
Speaker 1: systems are. An average listener is listening to you right now.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're a school teacher and they can tell you
Speaker 1: about how broken the education system is in the United States.
Speaker 1: Maybe they are a nurse and they can talk the
Speaker 1: same way about healthcare, transportation, agriculture. It's completely broken. How
Speaker 1: we do agriculture from top to bottom is completely skewed,
Speaker 1: you know, with monolithic monofarming and greed and government subsidies
Speaker 1: for you know, soybeans to feed cattle and contribute to
Speaker 1: climate change, and it just goes the list goes on
Speaker 1: and on. And the most toxic of all of them,
Speaker 1: of course, is our political system. And we're about to
Speaker 1: engage in probably the most toxic election known to man.
Speaker 1: And we've been through some doozies, and so I talk
Speaker 1: a lot about how do we take spiritual ideas like
Speaker 1: this one of loving kindness and put it into our
Speaker 1: systems because the problem is is our systems are built
Speaker 1: on that old cave man way of doing things. It's
Speaker 1: one upsmanship. It's backstabbing, it's every man for himself, it's
Speaker 1: accruing things. It's greed, it's envy, it's don't tread on me,
Speaker 1: it's live free or die. It's some of the worst
Speaker 1: impulses of being a human being is the engine healthcare.
Speaker 1: Healthcare should not be based on greed and one upsmanship
Speaker 1: and every man for himself and survival of the fittest.
Speaker 1: But it is. But we are not having that conversation
Speaker 1: as a culture to say, okay, put aside Christian versus Jew,
Speaker 1: versus Muslim versus Buddhist. Put all that aside the differences.
Speaker 1: What are the universalities? Because those universalities are at the
Speaker 1: core of human wisdom for tens of thousands of years.
Speaker 1: Can we recalibrate systems to be based on these ideas
Speaker 1: Easier said than done. I don't know exactly how to
Speaker 1: do it. I have some glimpses. Sometimes we see some
Speaker 1: glimpses of that, you know, profit sharing, super easy example
Speaker 1: of you know, a more just capitalism, where workers have
Speaker 1: a larger share in what they're creating. And so it's
Speaker 1: instead of CEOs getting paid millions and workers getting paid
Speaker 1: minimum wage, that there is a more active ownership. That
Speaker 1: is a spiritual idea. You might say, well, no, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's a communist idea and it's a social justice idea,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, God is just. We seek just.
Speaker 1: We seek fair mindedness and justice as part of our
Speaker 1: spiritual impulse, and we know that it is moral and right.
Speaker 1: And how do we seek that? How does that strike you, Eric?
Speaker 1: Because I know that there's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: I'm not putting you with them, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that simply view spirituality as something that you
Speaker 1: do on a bench under a tree, and then it
Speaker 1: makes you slightly better, more serene, less anxious, and then
Speaker 1: if you're going to spread that love day by day
Speaker 1: going about your work and your job, then that's how
Speaker 1: it works. And that's the extent. But do you think
Speaker 1: it's possible to kind of extend these concepts into how
Speaker 1: us humans do things?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think I have a few different responses. I mean,
Speaker 3: one is, you know, certainly I agree, and you talk
Speaker 3: about this in the book that like, our spirituality can't
Speaker 3: be just about our own interior, you know, well being
Speaker 3: right to me, a spiritual life has to have an
Speaker 3: inflow and an outflow to it, and then what that
Speaker 3: outflow looks like, I think is different. I think about
Speaker 3: this a lot because I tend to focus on this
Speaker 3: show more on the individual things that people can do
Speaker 3: in their lives versus systematic because I feel like that's
Speaker 3: where my experience and strength lies. That said, I do
Speaker 3: think that these ideas can be applied more broadly, and
Speaker 3: I think they have been to some degree. Now. I
Speaker 3: know that there are natural ups and downs in everything,
Speaker 3: but I think we are a more humane species than
Speaker 3: we used to be, you know, in many ways. You know,
Speaker 3: I think our circle of concern extends further than just
Speaker 3: our tribe. I'm not saying everybody is that way by
Speaker 3: any stretch of the imagination, but I think more and
Speaker 3: more people, as we look globally, are that way. So yes,
Speaker 3: but I don't know enough again, like playing to my
Speaker 3: strengths about how we do that, Like if you mentioned
Speaker 3: this upcoming election, Like I feel a little flum mixed
Speaker 3: right now about the political situation because on one hand, I
Speaker 3: absolutely believe that the path forward has to be some
Speaker 3: sort of mutual discussion where we can find what's in
Speaker 3: common and be able to talk to each other. And
Speaker 3: yet it's very hard to engage in that when it
Speaker 3: feels like and I will say this for both sides
Speaker 3: of the aisle. I happen to live on one of them,
Speaker 3: but I see it in both sides. We don't tend
Speaker 3: to be listening to each other. We don't tend to
Speaker 3: have the attention span to process nuanced and complex ideas. So, yes,
Speaker 3: I do think that our spiritual life can inform us politically.
Speaker 3: I think that's a dangerous idea taken too far, though,
Speaker 3: because I think we've got a problem where you know,
Speaker 3: religion can get too far into government, right, And I
Speaker 3: know you're not talking about religion, right, So I think
Speaker 3: it's tricky. But yes, I feel like if we could
Speaker 3: be having more discussions about common values, that would be
Speaker 3: a place that we could then move on to strategy. Right,
Speaker 3: We could move on to tactic, and we could move
Speaker 3: on to strategy if we could agree to some common
Speaker 3: things that we all believe that there are virtuous. So
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was a cop out answer.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly right. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: I went to the FDR Museum in New York not
Speaker 1: long ago, and it was so interesting what arose out
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression and out of the social programs
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression, the idea of like a five
Speaker 1: day work week and a you know, eight hour work
Speaker 1: day and no children working. And we collectively kind of said, hey,
Speaker 1: we don't want old people to be starving and the
Speaker 1: way they used to in the old world. Will create
Speaker 1: social security and everyone will put aside a little bit
Speaker 1: and it'll sit in a fund and it'll crew interest,
Speaker 1: and then we'll just make sure that old people aren't
Speaker 1: starving the way they used to be in the eighteen nineties.
Speaker 1: If there was an old person without anyone to take
Speaker 1: care of them, they would just sit on a street
Speaker 1: corner and starve to death. So, you know, collectively we said, hey,
Speaker 1: this is important, and we addressed it.
Speaker 3: I think what's interesting is I'm not sure how I
Speaker 3: think FDR was a deeply polarizing figure at the time.
Speaker 3: Like I mean, I think collectively we can all look
Speaker 3: back and go, it's probably good not to a lot
Speaker 3: of old people starve to death. But at the time,
Speaker 3: I think he was deeply, deeply divisive, right, And it's
Speaker 3: interesting how some of these things that are deeply divisive
Speaker 3: at the time we look back on and go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: well that really was a more enlightened policy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I think social security was more from
Speaker 1: LBJ and I'm not a historian. I think it was
Speaker 1: more from that realm. But you're absolutely right, it was
Speaker 1: very divisive, and it was like this is communism, you know.
Speaker 1: And you know, Medicare and Medicaid came up around the
Speaker 1: same time, so super divisive, but ultimately embraced by our
Speaker 1: culture and now you could never take it away, which
Speaker 1: is always a good sign. But one of the examples
Speaker 1: I bring up in my book is Bahai elections. So
Speaker 1: to underline, the Bahaigh faith has no clergy. There's no gurus,
Speaker 1: there's no priests, there's no mullahs or rabbis or pastors
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So every Bahai community has nine
Speaker 1: people in it governing the affairs of that Bahai community,
Speaker 1: and that can be from Akron, Ohio, to Santa Barbara, California,
Speaker 1: to and then there's national spiritual assemblies, you know, the
Speaker 1: Bahais of Ecuador or Brazil or Mongolia, and the elections
Speaker 1: are done completely different than elections in the western world.
Speaker 1: They are prayerful. They come out of meditation and you
Speaker 1: meet and gather. There's no yard signs, there's no campaigning,
Speaker 1: there's no money that goes to elections. You prayerfully and
Speaker 1: on a silent ballot, on a secret ballot, put the
Speaker 1: nine names of the people you think have the most
Speaker 1: spiritual wisdom and maturity for the job, and those nine
Speaker 1: people then govern the affairs of the community. Those nine
Speaker 1: people don't have any power over anyone else. So someone
Speaker 1: who's on you know, the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Speaker 1: Bahy's of Ecuador, let's say they can't go into a
Speaker 1: room of o their behinds and say, hey, you do this,
Speaker 1: and you do this. That's not how it works. When
Speaker 1: they're assembled and they come to an agreement together, they
Speaker 1: can pass you know, kind of like agendas and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But this might sound too pigh in the sky, like oh,
Speaker 1: we could never do that, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: have that response, But I don't know that that's true.
Speaker 1: You know, what if there was place, what if you're
Speaker 1: in you know, Clearwood Springs, Ohio, and people in Clearwood Springs,
Speaker 1: Ohio are sick of politics as usual and corruption and
Speaker 1: campaign donations totally millions of dollars. And they say, let's
Speaker 1: meet at the local football stadium and all two thousand
Speaker 1: people in the town, We're going to do a silent ballot,
Speaker 1: secret ballot vote for nine people or seven people or
Speaker 1: five people that are going to govern the town. There's
Speaker 1: not going to be a mayor. They only have power
Speaker 1: when they're together in collection, in collectiveness, and they consult
Speaker 1: on the issues at hand, and people can meet with
Speaker 1: them collectively and you know, let's have some music and
Speaker 1: some hot dogs and some moores and meditate and write
Speaker 1: it down. And if someone, let's say, you know, the
Speaker 1: family doctor in town is too busy, well he's got
Speaker 1: to sacrifice some of his business. Because part of it
Speaker 1: is like contemporary politics, the people who want positions are
Speaker 1: power seekers, you know, And why are we always voting
Speaker 1: for the people who want power? Like it makes more
Speaker 1: sense that to get someone that's who's the guy, the
Speaker 1: shark tank guy owns the Maverick Mark Cuban Like he's said,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna run, I'm not gonna run. But obviously
Speaker 1: super people are like, oh, you should run, like we
Speaker 1: should elect Mark Cuban. Maybe he'd do a better.
Speaker 3: Job precisely because he doesn't want.
Speaker 1: Precisely for the reason because he doesn't want it. Yes,
Speaker 1: but couldn't couldn't we see where you know, Clearwood Springs,
Speaker 1: Ohio might benefit from something like that. Then that's the
Speaker 1: idea of taking like a spiritual idea of a true
Speaker 1: public service and putting it into practice systemically. That's great.
Speaker 3: So listener and thinking about all of that and the
Speaker 3: other great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going
Speaker 3: to isolate just one top insight or thing to do
Speaker 3: that you're taking away, what would it be? Remember that,
Speaker 3: little by little, a little becomes a lot, and a
Speaker 3: habit for me that has accrude and benefit over time
Speaker 3: is meditation. However, one of the things that gets in
Speaker 3: our way of building a steady meditation practice is that
Speaker 3: very striving.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Of course, we're doing it because we want certain benefits,
Speaker 3: but in the moment of actually meditating, we need to
Speaker 3: let striving go and focus on just being there and
Speaker 3: experiencing it no matter what's happening. It becomes not enjoyable
Speaker 3: because I'm trying to make something happen some special moment.
Speaker 3: We want to let go of that. So if you
Speaker 3: want to stop dreading meditation and actually find it enjoyable,
Speaker 3: check out my free meditation guide at Goodwolf dot me
Speaker 3: slash calm. I think I would recommend that you try
Speaker 3: that in Clearwood Springs, California first. I think you're gonna
Speaker 3: have a better reception then in some rural part of Ohio.
Speaker 3: I'm just guessing that's all right, But no, I mean
Speaker 3: I totally agree. I mean, I love that idea of
Speaker 3: like it's not even like you decide you're on the ballot,
Speaker 3: you just are sort of like everybody gathers and says
Speaker 3: like these are the people.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that is a great place to wrap
Speaker 3: up Rain. You and I are going to talk more
Speaker 3: in the post show conversation about some of your pills
Speaker 3: for using these spiritual ideas to change our society, and
Speaker 3: so we'll talk about some of those in the post
Speaker 3: show conversation listeners. If you'd like access to that ad
Speaker 3: free episodes and the pleasure that comes from supporting something
Speaker 3: that matters to you, go to oneufeed dot net slash
Speaker 3: join and we'd love to have you as part of
Speaker 3: the community. Rain, thank you. Your new podcast, Soul Boom
Speaker 3: is out and it's a great listen and we'll have
Speaker 3: links in the show notes to that, as well as
Speaker 3: your book and all other things. Rain Wilson, thank you
Speaker 3: so much for coming on again.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure. Eric, thanks for having me back again.
Speaker 1: And if I come on a fourth time, will I
Speaker 1: have the record of the most appearances.
Speaker 3: I think you will tie the record. I think you
Speaker 3: will tie the record. You will tie it, so you'll
Speaker 3: need to come on two more times. Once upon a time,
Speaker 3: a two time guest was like, wow, but having done
Speaker 3: this a decade, there's a bunch of those, right, three
Speaker 3: time guests. Yeah, that's your rarefied.
Speaker 1: All right, I think four. I want to be the
Speaker 1: record holder. I want to be like Alec Baldwin on
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live without the murder.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes we don't. I'm not going to make jokes
Speaker 3: about as.
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