Speaker 1: So many of us don't live life. Life lives us,
Speaker 1: and I think it's up to us to really live consciously.
Speaker 1: This is why mindfulness is so important.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Richard Williams,
Speaker 2: better known by the stage name Prince Ea. He's an
Speaker 2: American spoken word artist, poet, rapper, filmmaker, and speaker. After
Speaker 2: graduating magna cum laude from the University of Missouri Saint
Speaker 2: Louis with a full scholarship and degree in anthropology. He
Speaker 2: started and popularized the Make Smart Cool movement to promote
Speaker 2: values like intelligence, free thought, unity and creativity, and hip
Speaker 2: hop music and culture. In twenty fourteen, Prince Ea shifted
Speaker 2: his focus from music to creating motivational and inspirational spoken
Speaker 2: word films and content, and his YouTube videos have received
Speaker 2: over three billion views and he discovers a wide range
Speaker 2: of topics such as environmentalism, race, work, life balance, and spirituality.
Speaker 2: Princeya's work is widely recognized, including Oprah's Super Soul one
Speaker 2: hundred and Forbes thirty Under thirty.
Speaker 3: Hi, Prince Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Eric. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for
Speaker 1: having me on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I am really excited to talk with you. You
Speaker 3: talk about a lot of the same things that we
Speaker 3: talk about on this show in your videos and your courses,
Speaker 3: and so I think we're going to have a lot
Speaker 3: in common here. But before we get to all that,
Speaker 3: we'll start, like we always do, with a parable. In
Speaker 3: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild
Speaker 3: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 3: of us that are always at battle. One is a
Speaker 3: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 3: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops.
Speaker 3: They think about it for a second and they look
Speaker 3: up at their grandparents. 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: Wow, thank you for sharing that funny. I wanted to
Speaker 1: film a video on that a long time ago, and
Speaker 1: I still might because it's such a powerful, potent story.
Speaker 1: It's a parable, right, It's hundreds of years old, so
Speaker 1: it's time tested. And what does it mean to me?
Speaker 1: It means that we have a choice. I have a choice,
Speaker 1: and I think it comes down to the two wolves,
Speaker 1: which for me, it's either fear or it's love. I
Speaker 1: think these are the two forces that play in our
Speaker 1: dimension in which we inhabit on this planet. And I
Speaker 1: think at every moment, we have that choice to choose
Speaker 1: either fear limitation anger this very negative vibration I would
Speaker 1: call it, or we could choose love, which is more open,
Speaker 1: which is more compassionate. And I think the more that
Speaker 1: you feed one of them, the more that will grow, right,
Speaker 1: And it was ticked out hand who say He says
Speaker 1: nothing can grow without food, not the anger, not the hatred,
Speaker 1: and also not the joy and not the happiness. So
Speaker 1: that's what it means to me. It's a very powerful,
Speaker 1: powerful metaphor for life. And it really comes down in
Speaker 1: each moment, which are we feeding in each moment, each decision,
Speaker 1: because that's what our lives are, right, It's an accumulation
Speaker 1: of the small moments. There's a movie I love. It's
Speaker 1: Vanilla Sky. I don't know if you remember that film
Speaker 1: with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. It's a beautiful film,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. Haven't seen it in years, but
Speaker 1: I always remember this quote in the movie. He says, oh,
Speaker 1: the little things, there's nothing bigger. So it's the little choices.
Speaker 1: Are we gonna choose fear? Are we gonna choose love? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I think what's interesting about what you just said
Speaker 3: about little choices is that it's the little choices, and
Speaker 3: it seems like the choices are inconsequential. They're so little, right,
Speaker 3: and there's so many little moments of them, and they
Speaker 3: feel like, well, there's not really a good or bad here.
Speaker 3: There's not a love or fear here. This is just
Speaker 3: I'm making my coffee. I mean, I'm gonna do the
Speaker 3: next thing. But it really is, as you're saying, the
Speaker 3: more intentionality we can bring to our choices. I was
Speaker 3: reading something I always forget where I get what I
Speaker 3: get from my guests, But it was something you had
Speaker 3: said about some scientists believe make thirty five thousand choices
Speaker 3: a day, and you said, I don't believe that to
Speaker 3: be true because so many of those choices are happening automatically.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We're not conscious of the choice. We're not conscious of
Speaker 3: which wolf might be getting fed. You know, it's just
Speaker 3: the default, autopilot. And again, some of that's a human advantage.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I can't make every choice. I can't be deliberately moving
Speaker 3: my hand right now, right, it's just kind of it's
Speaker 3: doing its thing. But the more of them that are deliberative,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent it's habits. You know, I think we
Speaker 1: all know. James Clear Atomic habits, right, and one of
Speaker 1: the most powerful books written in the last freaking decade.
Speaker 1: It's all about cultivating those habits because you know, they
Speaker 1: say the first part of our lives, we make our habits.
Speaker 1: In the last part, our habits make us. I think
Speaker 1: that's so true, and it's so important for us to
Speaker 1: get in front of these habits while we still got
Speaker 1: a chance, because we really don't want to be a
Speaker 1: victim of life. So many of us don't live life.
Speaker 1: Life lives us, and I think it's up to us
Speaker 1: to really live consciously. This is why mindfulness is so important.
Speaker 1: To be mindful as you're pouring the coffee and you're
Speaker 1: not just thinking about, Okay, what do I have to
Speaker 1: do at work? I'll tell you a parable which you
Speaker 1: may have already heard, but there was a story of
Speaker 1: the Buddha. He met a very very impatient disciple. And
Speaker 1: the disciple he said, Buddha, Buddha, can you enlighten me
Speaker 1: right now? And the Buddha says, I can't enlighten you
Speaker 1: right now. It takes time. You have to cultivate these practices.
Speaker 1: He says, please, please, this is just enlighten me, just
Speaker 1: just you know, got I got a plane to catch.
Speaker 1: I gotta get out of here, please please. And the
Speaker 1: Buddha he said, okay, here's what you do when you eat,
Speaker 1: eat when you walk walk, and it really is just
Speaker 1: that simple to do what you're doing when right, to
Speaker 1: really be in it. Right, you're not thinking about what's
Speaker 1: going to happen two years from now or two minutes.
Speaker 1: You're really in the moment. And this is what all
Speaker 1: the sages, all the gurus talk about. Yeah, the power
Speaker 1: of the now. Yep.
Speaker 3: It's funny. You and I were talking beforehand about my
Speaker 3: newly discovered love of surfing, and that's really it, right,
Speaker 3: is that when I am surfing, there is nothing else,
Speaker 3: you know, That's it. It is that moment entirely, all
Speaker 3: my attention, all my focus, it's just all right there.
Speaker 3: And that's probably the key to it, is it does
Speaker 3: that better for me easier? Right, that that state is
Speaker 3: easier for me to achieve on a surfboard for some
Speaker 3: reason than it is other times. But it's always worth
Speaker 3: striving for. Mmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're talking about flow, we're talking about
Speaker 1: being in the zone, We're talking about being in the now.
Speaker 1: I think it's the Japanese they called it motion, the
Speaker 1: Taoist they call it the dow right. That eternal nowness
Speaker 1: is what we're all looking for. And the funny thing
Speaker 1: is you're never not in it. It's just the mind
Speaker 1: that tries to go to the future or go back
Speaker 1: to the past and rehash that and this. The breath
Speaker 1: is a good doorway to the moment, to the now.
Speaker 1: You know, the breath is always there, and if we
Speaker 1: can just come back to the breath, that will bring
Speaker 1: us to that place of beauty, you know what we're
Speaker 1: all searching for. They say, the true tragedy in life
Speaker 1: is not how much we suffer. The true tragedy is
Speaker 1: how much we miss, how much of the beauty that
Speaker 1: we just walk past or run past, not even aware
Speaker 1: of what's happening. So to cultivate mindfulness, I think it's
Speaker 1: the number one most important thing to really live a happy,
Speaker 1: fulfilled life.
Speaker 3: I've heard you say that you don't love that phrase,
Speaker 3: who wants a full mind? Yeah, and it is a
Speaker 3: phrase that has gotten way over you used. But it
Speaker 3: doesn't change the simple fact that being aware of what's
Speaker 3: going on in our mind and around us is kind
Speaker 3: of the whole game.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the cheat code.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, that's the.
Speaker 1: Cheat code to beat the game. Yeah, that's that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I like you. You did, you
Speaker 1: did your homework. Yeah, mindfulness is you know, language, language
Speaker 1: is power. It depends on how I'm feeling, I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, But mindfulness sometimes I use awareness or mindful awareness,
Speaker 1: presence awareness. All of these are words that really point
Speaker 1: to the same thing, which is just coming back to
Speaker 1: the witness. Just witness. Don't get involved in the thoughts,
Speaker 1: don't get it, just just witness. Just watch. There's a guy,
Speaker 1: Anthony de Mello. He said, don't try to change your life,
Speaker 1: just just watch it and then it'll change. Then it
Speaker 1: will change.
Speaker 3: He is a great seer and his writing is very
Speaker 3: confrontational too. It is no no bs, like, he's not
Speaker 3: soft footing around any of it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It caught me off guard first reading. I was a
Speaker 3: little bit like, whoa, hang on, buddy, take it down
Speaker 3: a notch. But he's speaking the truth, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: speaking the truth.
Speaker 1: I think the truth sometimes has to be told in
Speaker 1: a way that shakes you up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, you.
Speaker 1: Know, because we don't change when we're comfortable. That's a
Speaker 1: message for me. I think that's definitely part and parcel
Speaker 1: of my success, and it's something that I have to
Speaker 1: also remember that it really is about the package it's
Speaker 1: about the package. It's not just about the message, but
Speaker 1: it's about the packaging. Right, Like if you go to
Speaker 1: a restaurant, it's a five star Michelin restaurant, and the
Speaker 1: waiter brings out the food and they bring it out
Speaker 1: on a paper plate and give you some plastic utensils,
Speaker 1: the packaging isn't right. So it's really it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: The one you feed, how you serve the food has
Speaker 1: to be packaged in a way that I think really
Speaker 1: does justice to it. And I think what you're saying
Speaker 1: is Anthony de Mello. He was very, very forthcoming, very
Speaker 1: to the point, very poignant. Yeah, in the way that
Speaker 1: he communicated, and I love it. And I think the
Speaker 1: most powerful people Martin Luther King. I mean he man
Speaker 1: that guy he was cutting, he was cutting, he cut through.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Behind me there's a statue of a Bodhi Satfa called Manjuicry.
Speaker 3: And one of the reasons I love Manjuicery is he's,
Speaker 3: you know, got one hand on like a lotus, right,
Speaker 3: but the other one is holding a flaming sword, and
Speaker 3: that flaming sword's job is to cut through ignorance. And
Speaker 3: that's kind of what we're saying here is sometimes that's
Speaker 3: the cutting that needs to occur.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. You gotta send me a picture of that
Speaker 1: after we finished. I love that. I've never heard of him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a Bodhisatfa in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition. So
Speaker 3: changing gears. I'm wondering if we could talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about you and your challenges depression. You made a
Speaker 3: video with a I don't know what the group was.
Speaker 3: It's a group that supports mental ill this recovery. Is
Speaker 3: it called Impact maybe. Yeah, it's quite a video of
Speaker 3: you've got depression as a person sitting in a crime room.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I was really moved by it. But talk to me about,
Speaker 3: you know, when you had depression and what.
Speaker 1: Was it like. Yeah, well, you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: on the north side of Saint Louis, and you know,
Speaker 1: my family we're very like, I don't know, traditional in
Speaker 1: the sense of most people where I'm from. We don't
Speaker 1: really go to therapists. So I say that to say
Speaker 1: I was never clinically diagnosed. I never got on medication
Speaker 1: or anything like that. I didn't go to church or
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people are like you know,
Speaker 1: just pray it away, or you know, Jesus will take
Speaker 1: the will and make it go away. I think there's
Speaker 1: an element of spirituality that can indeed help depressive states. Yep.
Speaker 1: But I also think there's a science, and I think
Speaker 1: we need to kind of look to the science. I
Speaker 1: love the Dolly Loma. I know he's in some hot
Speaker 1: water these days. He always says, Hey, if science did
Speaker 1: disagrees with Buddhism, we might have to rethink Buddhist teachings.
Speaker 1: And I love that. I say that to say it
Speaker 1: wasn't never clinically depressed, but I looked at all the
Speaker 1: symptoms and I definitely experienced depression throughout my adolescence. And
Speaker 1: also I do feel as though just my own awareness
Speaker 1: that my brain that I have could be biochemically I
Speaker 1: believe that it may lean naturally towards that state because
Speaker 1: I know that if I don't ingest certain minerals, supplements,
Speaker 1: do certain things, it just kind of goes that way.
Speaker 1: It can still be here. But I've also trained it
Speaker 1: through different therapies CBTRBT Buddhist tradition is also a good
Speaker 1: fortification of the mind and to not believe in the
Speaker 1: thinking mind. Stoicism. I can kind of rally off all
Speaker 1: the names of the things that I've studied to help me.
Speaker 1: But it all started I think, Like I said, my
Speaker 1: adolescence definitely experience, you know, some suicidal thoughts. They weren't
Speaker 1: like every day, but there were some points where I
Speaker 1: woke up and I just didn't want to be here,
Speaker 1: didn't care about my parents, didn't care about friends, just
Speaker 1: didn't want to go outside. Right, These are kind of
Speaker 1: classic depressive symptoms. And then I just started looking into it.
Speaker 1: I just started trying to understand it, and came across
Speaker 1: a book from David Burns called Feeling Good. The New
Speaker 1: Mood Therapy, came across books like the Dowd Chain, came
Speaker 1: across traditions like Advita Vedanta. Say that you were not
Speaker 1: these thoughts. You were not the thinking mind. Thoughts come
Speaker 1: and go like clouds in the sky. Watch your thoughts
Speaker 1: like you're crossing the street and you watch traffic. So
Speaker 1: these different things. What they did was they gave me distance.
Speaker 1: They gave me distance from the thoughts. I wasn't the
Speaker 1: thought itself, I wasn't tied up in it. I could
Speaker 1: actually observe it. I could watch it, I could be
Speaker 1: mindful of it and just that awareness. This was a
Speaker 1: huge relief, a huge relief. But I think the depression
Speaker 1: was also a bit of a gift because it allowed
Speaker 1: me to look within and find out what was going
Speaker 1: on under the hood. You know, what kind of nutrient
Speaker 1: therapies amino acids could I play with to change the
Speaker 1: hormonal balance in my brain. So I always tell people
Speaker 1: that think that they are depressed, I say, you are
Speaker 1: not depressed. You are experiencing depression. Who you are is
Speaker 1: not depressed. Who you are can observe that depression, and
Speaker 1: it's difficult to understand that when you're in it. Learn
Speaker 1: helplessness is a huge thing. But I love the work
Speaker 1: of He was a scientist and he created something called
Speaker 1: learned optimism. And I think we can retrain our brains,
Speaker 1: as we were talking about earlier, to see the good,
Speaker 1: to see the positive, to just shift our perceptions. There
Speaker 1: are so many tools that I always tell people it's
Speaker 1: not hopeless. It's not a hopeless situation that you're in.
Speaker 1: In fact, you should be very hopeful because there are
Speaker 1: so many tools out there in all modern world today
Speaker 1: that you just have to find it. You have to
Speaker 1: find the right one that works for you. So, you know,
Speaker 1: going back to my story, I think depression played a
Speaker 1: role if it forced me to try to understand it,
Speaker 1: and I think at one level it also allowed me
Speaker 1: to bring out the creativity inside of me, to bring
Speaker 1: out the vulnerability inside of me. You know, I started
Speaker 1: out as a musician, and you know, a musician is
Speaker 1: like a poet, is a very vulnerable art form. And
Speaker 1: so I was very vulnerable and very vocal about what
Speaker 1: I was going through. And you know, when I would
Speaker 1: create music, I would find my audience they would say, Oh,
Speaker 1: I feel the exact same way, Thank you for putting
Speaker 1: that out there. And then that's how you build community,
Speaker 1: That's how you build friendships, That's how you build connection.
Speaker 1: Connection came from the expression which some say is the
Speaker 1: opposite of depression. Depression. While you know, I think it
Speaker 1: is a virus, I think that it can also be
Speaker 1: an opportunity, tunity, a signal, an alarm that something's off.
Speaker 1: You may not be living the life that you're meant
Speaker 1: to live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very similar to you. I think I have
Speaker 3: a brain that orients towards that direction. When I let
Speaker 3: it off its leash, you know, and I, like you,
Speaker 3: have found that there's a lot of different things that
Speaker 3: contribute to managing it. There's a lot of different tools,
Speaker 3: and I've had to over the years kind of put
Speaker 3: together my little depression recovery kit. You know, mine's going
Speaker 3: to look different than other people's, but knowing what's in
Speaker 3: that kit becomes very important. And as you were talking
Speaker 3: about the thoughts, I was thinking a little bit about
Speaker 3: you know, part of the problem with depression is that
Speaker 3: when I'm in it, when I'm experiencing it, I like
Speaker 3: your phrase, when I'm experiencing it right, I can know
Speaker 3: that my thoughts are not correct. I can be like, look,
Speaker 3: you know, your brain's not working real well today, and
Speaker 3: you know, ignore those thoughts, and underneath it there's still
Speaker 3: this like ugh feelane, you know. And I've talked on
Speaker 3: this show many times about some times I treat it
Speaker 3: a little bit like the I call it the emotional flu,
Speaker 3: you know, which is that when it comes, I treat
Speaker 3: it a little bit like I would the flu, meaning
Speaker 3: I don't make a big fuss out of it. I
Speaker 3: don't take myself to the emergency room. I make sure
Speaker 3: am I doing everything I can to support myself. I
Speaker 3: know that while I'm sick, the world's going to look
Speaker 3: kind of crappy, you know, I let it kind of roll.
Speaker 3: Now that's again after having dealt with it head on.
Speaker 3: So I'm not saying that's always the case, but for
Speaker 3: me becoming aware of the fact that, like there's some
Speaker 3: degree of this low mood that feels like it's a
Speaker 3: companion of mine that doesn't seem like it's going to
Speaker 3: completely go away. So how do I work with it
Speaker 3: as skillfully as I can? And to your point, you know,
Speaker 3: what opportunities does it present? You know, I wouldn't be
Speaker 3: doing the work I do, like you if I hadn't
Speaker 3: had it. You know, I wouldn't be doing the work
Speaker 3: I do if I hadn't been a heroin addict. I mean,
Speaker 3: all these things contribute to our lives being meaningful. They're
Speaker 3: part of our story.
Speaker 1: That's it. I love the analogy of the puzzle pieces putting,
Speaker 1: and everybody has their own puzzle that they have to
Speaker 1: put together, right, Like I think social support for just
Speaker 1: the human species is it works right, So that's a
Speaker 1: big one. The thing about depression is like when you're
Speaker 1: in it, that's the last thing you want is to
Speaker 1: be around people. Yeah, the very thing that can allow
Speaker 1: you to come out of it is the thing that
Speaker 1: you're like pushing away, which is another trick totally.
Speaker 3: Even things like movement, right, Like, we know movement helps,
Speaker 3: but the last thing you want to do is move
Speaker 3: when you're feeling depressed exactly. It is challenging in that way.
Speaker 3: How do you work through that?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I haven't had the need to work
Speaker 1: through it lately, but in the past. Well, just that book, right, So,
Speaker 1: that book by David Burns is so powerful, right, you
Speaker 1: know the book, right, I do. So this book actually
Speaker 1: created a practice of its own called bibliotherapy. People got
Speaker 1: better just by reading the book. It's got so many
Speaker 1: tools in it. I think if you read the book,
Speaker 1: or if you study CBT, which is cognitive behavioral therapy
Speaker 1: or is I like to call it crushing bad thoughts,
Speaker 1: you will find a list of ten cognitive distortions. Print
Speaker 1: this list out, put it on your refrigerator, put it
Speaker 1: anywhere that you can see it. Because I feel like,
Speaker 1: whenever we suffer ninety nine percent of the times, it
Speaker 1: is because of one of these ten cognitive distortions. Period.
Speaker 1: But when you see it you can see, Oh there
Speaker 1: it is. My brain's just trying to trick me again, right,
Speaker 1: so you observe it. Yes, depression is something you really
Speaker 1: can't think your way out of it. You can't intellectualize
Speaker 1: your way out of it. This is why I think
Speaker 1: behavioral activation is one of the more successful treatments for depression. Moving,
Speaker 1: like you say, you don't want to move. So this
Speaker 1: is why having that good social support, that network is
Speaker 1: so so important. That's the biggest thing. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the reason why I like to study cultures. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got my degree in anthropology, and I love Dan
Speaker 1: Buttner's work on the Blue zones where you have people
Speaker 1: rights people who are you know, centenarians. They live well
Speaker 1: past one hundred years old, and they're healthy, theyre happy,
Speaker 1: they're vibrant, they're still having sex, they're still you know,
Speaker 1: watering their gardens, they're still playing with their great great grandkids,
Speaker 1: they're still riding the bike. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: baffled a lot of scientists for years, and they really
Speaker 1: finally figured out why they lived so long. And it's
Speaker 1: because of their friendships. It's because of the love that
Speaker 1: they have around, right. They a lot of them have
Speaker 1: the same friends that they have when they were kids,
Speaker 1: when they were ten now and they're one hundred and ten,
Speaker 1: they have the same people around them. So the human animal,
Speaker 1: I think we do need each other, and when we
Speaker 1: get in these low mood states, we have to trust
Speaker 1: the people around us. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's really true and really important, and
Speaker 3: those other people can be the things that do help
Speaker 3: us do some of the things that we need to do,
Speaker 3: you know, that are good for us. But one of
Speaker 3: my favorite quotes is depression hates a moving target, right,
Speaker 3: So for me, that's kind of it. It's like, just
Speaker 3: get off the couch, doesn't even matter what, just be moving,
Speaker 3: you know, And how much I'm able to do may vary.
Speaker 3: I may be like, well, you know, today I'm not
Speaker 3: going to get on the peloton bike and do a
Speaker 3: crushing hour ride, but I might walk, you know, around
Speaker 3: the block.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's something else you don't even have to move,
Speaker 1: but it simulates moving. But a sauna, a sauna or
Speaker 1: a ice bath, both of those things. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can just sit there, right and you are making physiological
Speaker 1: changes in your body. You are helping your nervous system,
Speaker 1: You're fighting depression. When you just sit there so you
Speaker 1: can sweat it out and you can shiver it.
Speaker 3: Out too, or you can do both. That's my favorite
Speaker 3: back and forth back and for Okay, yeah, but you
Speaker 3: brought up sauna. So you've got a fairly new podcast
Speaker 3: that you do in a sauna. You basically have people
Speaker 3: come join you in the sauna. Why'd you choose to
Speaker 3: do a podcast in the sauna?
Speaker 1: You know? I just like doing stuff that's never been done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am one who takes the road less traveled or
Speaker 1: not even paved, I should say, so I wanted to
Speaker 1: do something different. And also I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: good conversations inside of sauna's, you know, at the gym,
Speaker 1: at the club, you know, So it's like, what about
Speaker 1: having conversations with celebrity scientists, cool people just inside of
Speaker 1: a sauna as we as we sweat out the toxins
Speaker 1: and the bs. Well, what's what can happen? So we
Speaker 1: landed on a sauna. We tried to figure out how
Speaker 1: to get the equipment inside the sauna without melting. We
Speaker 1: figured it out and.
Speaker 3: It sounds really good. I was like, I can't believe
Speaker 3: how good this sounds for being in a sauna.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you. Yeah, that's that's my producer, Dustin.
Speaker 1: He works magic. But we got it. It's an infrared sauna.
Speaker 1: It's not a dry sauna, so it doesn't get that hot.
Speaker 1: But so we do twenty men us in the sauna,
Speaker 1: and then we do another twenty minutes outside the sauna
Speaker 1: for like what we call a hydration session where we sit,
Speaker 1: we get like a foot bath with Epsen Saw, we
Speaker 1: drink coconut water, and we continue the conversation in our bathrobes.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a good podcast, gig.
Speaker 1: I haven't had any complaints. Yes, they love it. Come by,
Speaker 1: we can get.
Speaker 3: In all right, I will take you up on that.
Speaker 1: Awesome.
Speaker 3: We've given our Instagram account a new look, and we're
Speaker 3: sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else, encouraging
Speaker 3: positive posts with wisdom that support you and feeding your
Speaker 3: good wolf, as well as in behind the scenes video
Speaker 3: of the show and so of Giny andized day to
Speaker 3: day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody
Speaker 3: would be interested in. It's also a great place for
Speaker 3: you to give us feedback on the episodes that you
Speaker 3: like or concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful,
Speaker 3: or any other feedback you'd like to give us. If
Speaker 3: you're on Instagram, follow us it at one underscore you
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Speaker 3: underscore You underscore feed to add some nourishing content to
Speaker 3: your daily scrolling. See you there. So I want to
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about meditation. It's a big thing
Speaker 3: in your life, a practice you were really into, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to just sort of start and ask you
Speaker 3: a little bit about what is the type of meditation
Speaker 3: you're doing these days? How has that changed over time,
Speaker 3: how does it vary week to week, month to month.
Speaker 3: I'm just kind of curious how you approach that big topic.
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to say I love your questions,
Speaker 1: I love your vibe. I'm so excited to talk about
Speaker 1: these questions because they're super important. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: anything more important than the topic of meditation. I do
Speaker 1: believe that meditation is the anti virus software that can
Speaker 1: cure our world of all of its ills. Meditation is
Speaker 1: not something you do, it's actually a state of being.
Speaker 1: I think there are portals into that state, but I
Speaker 1: think the portals have gotten a bit confused. But the
Speaker 1: portals of meditation they vary. Right. I'm a big tntra guy,
Speaker 1: and I know people listening to this they might say, oh, Tantra,
Speaker 1: you must have crazy wild sex. Huh. I'm like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no. See, this is what the commercialization of spirituality
Speaker 1: has done. So tantra is a science and one of
Speaker 1: my favorite books the Vignanna Baharava Tntra. It speaks of
Speaker 1: one hundred and twelve Tontric practices to reach the point
Speaker 1: of what they call baharava oneness Christiana consciousness, christ consciousness,
Speaker 1: whatever name nirvana. Only two of them have to do
Speaker 1: with sex. One that has to do with sex really
Speaker 1: doesn't even have to do with sex. What it is
Speaker 1: is they say, at the point of orgasm, you put
Speaker 1: your mind fully on God. So I love the practices
Speaker 1: of tantra because they take meditation. I'm using air quotes.
Speaker 1: They take meditation off the mat, they take it out
Speaker 1: of lotus and bring it in the world. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite is space spatial awareness. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know if people are driving. If you're driving,
Speaker 1: don't do this, But if you're sitting in a room
Speaker 1: or maybe when you pull over or you sit in
Speaker 1: your office. I want you to just look around and
Speaker 1: ask yourself what do you see? And when I ask
Speaker 1: people this question, they say, oh, well, I see chairs,
Speaker 1: I see a desk, I see a window, I see people.
Speaker 1: And I say, okay, yeah, but you miss that which
Speaker 1: was most of the space, which allows all that to inhabit.
Speaker 1: The space is what we are space. I feel like
Speaker 1: if there's any religion or any god that should be worshiped,
Speaker 1: it should be space because space is the most abundant
Speaker 1: thing in the universe. Matter is very very very tiny.
Speaker 1: Any physicists will tell you this, but this is just
Speaker 1: one to really focus on the space. You can focus
Speaker 1: on the space in between my words. So when you're
Speaker 1: speaking to somebody, you put your mind attention on the space,
Speaker 1: and what happens is your mind starts to take the
Speaker 1: form of the space. So this is something that people
Speaker 1: can do anywhere, anywhere. It really brings you to this
Speaker 1: nondual awareness, this peace, and this feeling of home. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite gurus and the Sarka Data Maharaji's got
Speaker 1: a quote that I have on my wall and he says,
Speaker 1: he says, having never left the house, you have been
Speaker 1: searching for the way home. Having never left the house,
Speaker 1: you have been searching for the way home. We search,
Speaker 1: search and search in life for joy and happiness and fulfillment.
Speaker 1: And what he's saying is, it's already here. It's you.
Speaker 1: It's not something you even have to do. It's your
Speaker 1: very nature. It's here and now. I love this practice,
Speaker 1: this contric practice. One other meditation that people can do
Speaker 1: in their daily life that I like to do from
Speaker 1: Tom to Tom is a walking meditation that I got
Speaker 1: from tick Nott Han, the zen Monk best selling author.
Speaker 1: We mentioned Martin Luther King earlier. Martin Luther King nominated
Speaker 1: tik Not Han for a Nobel Peace Prize. And what
Speaker 1: you do is, when you're walking, you can be in nature,
Speaker 1: you can be in your office. When you're walking, you
Speaker 1: want to focus on your breath. And with each step
Speaker 1: you want to breathe in. And as you breathe in,
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, I am here, and you breathe
Speaker 1: out on the exhale, you say, I am home, So
Speaker 1: I am here on the inhale. I am home on
Speaker 1: the exhale. And you do this as you walk, and
Speaker 1: as you walk, you imagine your feet are kissing the
Speaker 1: earth with every step. So you say, I am here,
Speaker 1: I am home, and as you walk, you kiss the
Speaker 1: earth with every step. And what you're gonna notice is
Speaker 1: your pace is gonna slow down, and you are gonna
Speaker 1: be filled with so much joy and presence and a
Speaker 1: liveness with this meditation. So this is another one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. Let me give you three, just to finish
Speaker 1: the trinity off. Let's see what else I got. So
Speaker 1: this is one that I got from a guy named
Speaker 1: Stephen Walynsky. I don't know if you're familiar with this guy,
Speaker 1: Stephen Wilensky. I'm not.
Speaker 3: I've followed you on all the references so far, but
Speaker 3: you've got one here. I don't know, Okay.
Speaker 1: So Stephen Wallinsky is like there's a few people that
Speaker 1: I want to meet in the world. Could probably count
Speaker 1: them with one hand. And he's probably at the top
Speaker 1: of my list as an author. He's written so many
Speaker 1: beautiful books, he's done documentaries. I have no idea where
Speaker 1: he is now. He kind of just disappeared. He's probably
Speaker 1: in deep meditation somewhere. He was a disciple of the
Speaker 1: guy that I mentioned the saga Da of Maharaj and
Speaker 1: Stephen Wilinsky had a meditation where what you do is
Speaker 1: you well, First, you obviously you know, you bring yourself
Speaker 1: to this moment. You relax your face, your jaw, your eyes,
Speaker 1: your shoulders, take a breath, and then you ask yourself,
Speaker 1: without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions, or memories, am
Speaker 1: I an American? Am I Russian? Am I Ukrainian? Am
Speaker 1: I Canadian? Or neither? And then you do that again.
Speaker 1: You say, without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions, or memories,
Speaker 1: am I black? Am I White? Am I Asian? Or neither?
Speaker 1: And then you go deeper. You say, without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions,
Speaker 1: or memories, am I a man? Am I a woman?
Speaker 1: Or neither? And then you go deeper without using your thoughts, associations, perceptions, emotions,
Speaker 1: or memories. Am I a human being? Am I even
Speaker 1: a spiritual being? Or neither? And what you do is
Speaker 1: you stay in this gentle, non judgmental awareness. This is
Speaker 1: our true nature. This is home, This is who we
Speaker 1: always were, without a name, without a label. This is
Speaker 1: why the Hindus. If you look at the Sanskrit word nirvana,
Speaker 1: people think nirvana is this state of h just ecstasy
Speaker 1: and amazing bliss. Actually, the word nirvana means extinction. There's
Speaker 1: no more you there, yep. So that meditation alone, I think,
Speaker 1: is a shortcut to pretty much what every spiritual tradition
Speaker 1: points to, which is the oneness. Right.
Speaker 3: What's really interesting about that type of meditation, as you said,
Speaker 3: is get into that place when you suddenly said I'm
Speaker 3: not any of those things, to go well what am I?
Speaker 3: And to really look at that and if you're able
Speaker 3: to stay with it. You know, my experience is what
Speaker 3: you will find is like I I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but as you were talking, I can never pronounce that
Speaker 3: spiritual teacher's.
Speaker 1: Name, miss Argandauda maharajh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know he's got that idea of you know,
Speaker 3: you abide with that sense of I am, that's it,
Speaker 3: nothing after it I am. Because when you do that,
Speaker 3: you're like, well, I'm clearly there's something here, like something is,
Speaker 3: but but what is it? Where is it?
Speaker 1: What shape is it?
Speaker 3: You just suddenly start going like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 3: there's nothing here that to find And it's a mystifying,
Speaker 3: sometimes mildly disconcerted and state. If you can get to it,
Speaker 3: but also deeply freeing.
Speaker 1: Only for the mind. Only for the mind.
Speaker 3: That's fair, Yeah, because the.
Speaker 1: Mind wants to figure it out. It wants to objectify
Speaker 1: that which cannot be objectified. The eye cannot see itself,
Speaker 1: the knife cannot cut itself. The mind cannot truly know
Speaker 1: it's itself. What's what's being behind it? You can't get
Speaker 1: there with the mind. It's not the right tool. I
Speaker 1: think the last step of the inquiry is when the
Speaker 1: questions themselves disappear.
Speaker 3: Yep, I was out today. I've been meditating in nature recently.
Speaker 3: I'm teaching a retreat this summer at Kripolu about nature
Speaker 3: and connecting with nature as a way, and so I've
Speaker 3: been really engaging in that practice. And I started reflecting
Speaker 3: on something I heard recently. It was some book about
Speaker 3: human development or evolutionary past, and that there was a
Speaker 3: time that we were human but we didn't have language
Speaker 3: to imagine what that might be like. Is a fascinating
Speaker 3: thought experiment, because most of our thoughts are words that
Speaker 3: we're saying to ourselves. But if you didn't have those words,
Speaker 3: what is the experience of being? And I've found that
Speaker 3: it's a really interesting thing. To reflect on, you know,
Speaker 3: and I do that sometimes, is like to your point,
Speaker 3: if not using memories, you know, not using language even Yeah,
Speaker 3: what is this is a really powerful way for me
Speaker 3: to get closer to that state of.
Speaker 1: Being Wow, Yeah, because the word is not the thing, right, it's.
Speaker 3: Now that can be named, is not the doubt right.
Speaker 1: And yep, yep, yep. So that's how we get caught up.
Speaker 1: We get caught up in the words. So that's a
Speaker 1: fascinating thought experiment exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, but we must have been thinking, we must have
Speaker 3: been thinking, right, yeah, you know, but we didn't have
Speaker 3: the words. And it's just it's similar to me when
Speaker 3: I try and imagine what it might be like to
Speaker 3: be an octopus, for example. It's just a fun way
Speaker 3: of trying to say, like, there are states of consciousness
Speaker 3: that are very different than the ones we inhabit, and
Speaker 3: what are the different ways of kind of getting closer
Speaker 3: to those and being able to see with those eyes.
Speaker 3: I'm a zen practitioner primarily, and one of my teachers
Speaker 3: said to me, I thought this was so wise. We
Speaker 3: do a lot of coon practice in right, and they're nonsense,
Speaker 3: right at first glance, they're nonsense, but The advice I
Speaker 3: was given is sometimes imagine what the state of mind
Speaker 3: would have to be for the person who said that
Speaker 3: and believes it to be true, instead of going that
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense, that's nonsense. To say what state
Speaker 3: of mind would I have to be in that that.
Speaker 1: Would be true.
Speaker 3: It's sort of a reverse engineering way of entering into
Speaker 3: the mind, and you can't do it exactly. These are
Speaker 3: all just tools portals to use your work, right.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's another one is when a spiritual teacher says something
Speaker 3: that you're like that that sounds nuts. One way of
Speaker 3: approaching is go, well, what would their mind state have
Speaker 3: to be for that to be true? You know, we're
Speaker 3: just kind of playing with ways of getting deeper powerful.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't see, I got chill bumps here.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's it. That's empathy, right, empathy the Greek
Speaker 1: word to see through the eye of the I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it. I mean. There's another meditation that I love.
Speaker 1: It's called to install the Guru. So what you do
Speaker 1: is you visualize your guru or your teacher, your enlightened master,
Speaker 1: and from the feet to the head, you imagine that
Speaker 1: their body merges with yours. You have installed the Guru
Speaker 1: into this self, which is very similar. Like what state
Speaker 1: of mind would that have to be in right to
Speaker 1: believe that powerful? Love? That? Eric? So good? So good.
Speaker 3: Do you have a spiritual teacher that you actually work
Speaker 3: with or do you feel like your spiritual teachers are
Speaker 3: primarily the people that you read? I mean, I know
Speaker 3: you're a voracious reader, just as I am. Do you
Speaker 3: have teachers that you actually work with or has it
Speaker 3: been more your sort of quote unquote gurus are the
Speaker 3: people we've talked about that you're reading.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the latter. I've definitely attended seminars and like
Speaker 1: Byron Katie and love her Gangaje and Eli Jackson Bearer
Speaker 1: who were disciples of a man named Papa g And
Speaker 1: you know, being around some of these people, but never
Speaker 1: on like a one to one student disciple. I've never
Speaker 1: had that. But I've just been so touched by so
Speaker 1: many masters. You know. I think rom Dos was one
Speaker 1: of my first on ramps into spirituality him and you know,
Speaker 1: Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson. I'm a big science guy too.
Speaker 1: So people say, oh, science and spirituality they don't go together.
Speaker 1: Why not? Well, science is the empirical pursuit of the truth,
Speaker 1: and spirituality is the experience that you pursue for the
Speaker 1: nature of what's real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they should go together, I mean, because you're seeking
Speaker 3: the truth in both cases exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I never had a direct teacher. I think that.
Speaker 1: That's not to say I never will. I do believe
Speaker 1: that everything that we need is within us. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: are grace to be able to see that, and sometimes
Speaker 1: people need a master or a guru to point to
Speaker 1: it and tell them that actually, you're already that you
Speaker 1: don't even need me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All these stories of people like Rhamdas
Speaker 3: when they saw their Guru and they instantly were like
Speaker 3: transformed has made it difficult for me to work with
Speaker 3: Zen teachers, which I found to be beneficial working one
Speaker 3: on one with a teacher, because my mind is always like, well,
Speaker 3: is this a truly enlightened being? And it's kind of
Speaker 3: silly right in a way, because it's almost they're more
Speaker 3: like a spiritual friend than they are, like, aren't guru?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: But in the Zen tradition there are I don't like
Speaker 3: this word, but I don't have a better one. There
Speaker 3: are correct responses to co ons that have been passed
Speaker 3: down for thousands of years, and your teacher is the
Speaker 3: one who's like, yep, good, let's go into the next one.
Speaker 3: Or you know, very politely. Some are more polite than others.
Speaker 3: You know, you need to sit with.
Speaker 1: That some more.
Speaker 3: Is what my teacher would always say, which is al
Speaker 3: way of saying, nope, you do not have Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love coons, by the way, and I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that you study that. I've got books to stick
Speaker 1: on all the coons.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yet, you know, it's what I've gotten from it is
Speaker 1: actually you become the answer.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it. The answer is always that, you know.
Speaker 3: It's a little of that game we talked about a
Speaker 3: minute ago, like what would it be like to be
Speaker 3: in the mind? You know, what would it be like
Speaker 3: to be the distant temple bell ringing? You know, that's one.
Speaker 3: How do you stop the sound of a distant temple
Speaker 3: bell ringing?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: You can't get to it right, you know, And so
Speaker 3: it's about you become that thing. Some of it to
Speaker 3: me has been an imaginative exercise which turns out to
Speaker 3: be a powerful approach.
Speaker 1: Love that. Yeah, that's it, that's it. Yeah, Coon's what
Speaker 1: what's my favorite kan Yeah, the Sound of one hand
Speaker 1: clapping classic, probably the most famous one. Yeah. Yeah. Does
Speaker 1: a dog have Buddha nature move mood? Yeah exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so many beautiful ones, so many, they're they're great.
Speaker 1: I love them so much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a book that you might like, if you
Speaker 3: haven't read it. It's called Bring Me the Rhinoceros.
Speaker 1: Maybe that sounds very coon like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Bring Me the Rhinoceros, by a Zen teacher
Speaker 3: named John Karen T A R. R. T. It's another
Speaker 3: one of those where yeah, I mean basically that's the
Speaker 3: end of the Coon Bring Me the Rhinoceros, which of
Speaker 3: course is just nonsensical, but ye know, so good. But
Speaker 3: that's a really great book about Coon's and about sort
Speaker 3: of a modern and he's a beautiful writer and teacher.
Speaker 3: He's really gifted. If you're into Coon's, that's definitely one
Speaker 3: to read. Okay, Bring Me the Rhinoceros.
Speaker 1: Write it down, now, bring me the Right, Bring Me
Speaker 1: the Rhino cool. I'm on it. I'm on it.
Speaker 3: I loved what you said about meditation, about bringing them
Speaker 3: into more of the moments of our lives, taking them
Speaker 3: out of you know, just a formal sitting practice. I've
Speaker 3: got a program called Spiritual Habits where we try and
Speaker 3: take the science and behavior change and apply it to
Speaker 3: spiritual principles. And that's really the key piece is like,
Speaker 3: it's great to believe in these things, it's great to
Speaker 3: think about these things, but you need them in the
Speaker 3: moments of your life. And so you're talking about doing that.
Speaker 3: Do you have a formal practice that you do regularly
Speaker 3: or is it kind of just depend on different phases
Speaker 3: of your life, different things.
Speaker 1: I don't have a formal practice. It is very spontaneous.
Speaker 1: I think throughout the day what I find happening is
Speaker 1: just a reflex to come back to the here and now.
Speaker 1: But I don't do that, you know, the thirty minutes
Speaker 1: in the morning or oh show, I think you know,
Speaker 1: he said, Actually, I think it can be useful, but
Speaker 1: I think when meditation becomes regimented, very militarized, we can
Speaker 1: miss the beauty the life of it. Yeah, the spontaneity
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: So of more interest than that, actually is what you
Speaker 3: just said, which is you reflexively come back more to
Speaker 3: the present moment. How did you train yourself to do that?
Speaker 3: Because what I think is one of the biggest problems
Speaker 3: to what we're talking about, which is having these moments
Speaker 3: throughout our day where we connect back to the moment,
Speaker 3: our deeper nature, whatever you want to connect back to,
Speaker 3: is that we forget, We get busy, and we forget.
Speaker 3: And so to me, the holy grail is when you
Speaker 3: begin to sort of as you're saying, you've trained this
Speaker 3: into yourself a little bit, so it is a little
Speaker 3: bit more habitual to turn back towards the present moment,
Speaker 3: or turn back towards your deeper nature, and sound like
Speaker 3: you have done that to some degree. Are you able
Speaker 3: to think back to how you got there?
Speaker 1: Well, I think there's different paths for different people. I
Speaker 1: feel that it is good to have, like in the beginning,
Speaker 1: to have structure pockets within your day that maybe you
Speaker 1: do nothing, maybe you're just in a state of wonder,
Speaker 1: or just give yourself that space, that openness, that awareness.
Speaker 1: But for me, it was really the practice of self inquiry,
Speaker 1: asking myself repeatedly, who am I, to whom do these
Speaker 1: thoughts come to? To Whom do these thoughts come to?
Speaker 1: To Whom do these thoughts come to? And recognizing that
Speaker 1: number one, there's no verbal or intellectual answer to that,
Speaker 1: the question just dissolves. And it was at that deep
Speaker 1: recognition that I realized that a lot of the spirituality,
Speaker 1: just like a lot of the psychology, is kind of
Speaker 1: just a game of the mind. And I think once
Speaker 1: you recognize your true nature, you're kind of out of
Speaker 1: the game. That glimpse. You just can't unsee it. You
Speaker 1: just can't go back to. I think how it was
Speaker 1: if you really saw the illusion for what it is,
Speaker 1: you can't really get in my experience, in this one's experience,
Speaker 1: you can't really get caught up. So I think really
Speaker 1: recognizing it first, and not just from an intellectual level,
Speaker 1: but really from a deep scene because you know, so
Speaker 1: many teachers, even like Adiya Shanti and so many teachers
Speaker 1: one of my favorite. Yeah, yeah, they speak about like
Speaker 1: it just being an accident. They say meditation makes you
Speaker 1: more accident prone. Yep, but it's like it's it just
Speaker 1: kind of graced. So for me, it was that practice
Speaker 1: of self inquiry that Ramana mah Harshy the the stage
Speaker 1: of ourbinachula, his words of to whom the thoughts come to,
Speaker 1: where do they arise and what do they subside to
Speaker 1: Just that recognition. The more that you see it, the
Speaker 1: more that the pockets of awareness and the space is
Speaker 1: going to arise. Yep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you were talking about the meditation on space
Speaker 3: and all that, it made me think of There used
Speaker 3: to be this meditation app on the phone. This was
Speaker 3: a long time ago and it has since. I don't
Speaker 3: know what it's called. It never got updated. You can't
Speaker 3: use it anymore. But it was this kind of amazing
Speaker 3: app where it would play a sound. I don't remember
Speaker 3: what it was, whether it was a little bit of
Speaker 3: music or what it was, but your job was to
Speaker 3: tap the button when the sound went away. And so
Speaker 3: what you were watching for was that disappearance. You were
Speaker 3: watching for things that have come into existence to disappear
Speaker 3: from existence. And it was just a totally different way
Speaker 3: of doing it than what most of us are doing.
Speaker 3: And I loved that app. I wish it still existed
Speaker 3: because it was just a fun And when I say fun,
Speaker 3: I mean like I enjoyed doing it. It was effortless
Speaker 3: to kind of sit and do it. You know, you
Speaker 3: can do that with anything right. We can go outside
Speaker 3: and do it right. We can notice the sound when
Speaker 3: it comes, but we can also notice when it's gone yea,
Speaker 3: and be like, well where to go?
Speaker 1: That's it? I love that. I love we might have
Speaker 1: to work on that and get that app back up
Speaker 1: and run in or create.
Speaker 3: Our own I'm down if you want a partner on.
Speaker 1: That, for sure, great, awesome.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you a question. I've heard you
Speaker 3: use this phrase before, and you've talked about the world
Speaker 3: being not insane but unsane. I'm just curious. That's an interesting,
Speaker 3: slight change of words there. Talk to me about what
Speaker 3: those two things mean to you.
Speaker 1: Well, like all words, they're all useless, but for me,
Speaker 1: insanity is one thing. Actually, I believe I got this
Speaker 1: phrase from Alfred Korzibsky, author of Science Insanity Beautiful Book.
Speaker 1: Korsibski created a language called English Prime, and in this
Speaker 1: language is a very scientific language. You don't use the
Speaker 1: verb to be. You don't say this is a microphone,
Speaker 1: this is a mason jar. You say this appears to
Speaker 1: be a mason jar. This appears to be a microphone.
Speaker 1: And his whole premise on doing that is because absolutism
Speaker 1: and certainty has created so much harm and violence in
Speaker 1: our world, and when we can get more skeptical about
Speaker 1: our language. Like we said earlier, the word is not
Speaker 1: the thing. The map is not the territory. It humbles us.
Speaker 1: You don't say, oh Bob is angry. You can say,
Speaker 1: oh Bob appears to be angry right now. It softens us.
Speaker 1: It's more aligned with reality. So the unsane mindset is
Speaker 1: I think the mindset of certainty of this is the
Speaker 1: way it is. But for me, I always prefer to
Speaker 1: as the Taoist say that I don't know, my I do.
Speaker 1: The Buddhists say the beginner's mind, right, the expert, what's
Speaker 1: the old saying you probably know this one.
Speaker 3: There in the beginner's mind. There are many many possibility
Speaker 3: experts there's few or yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think the world we're very definite. We
Speaker 1: don't have that level of doubt or certainty to say
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong or it's just a beautiful state of
Speaker 1: being to be able to say I don't know, because
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, world, you turn on the news,
Speaker 1: everybody knows. Everybody is so one hundred percent certain about everything.
Speaker 3: Oh so certain.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: There's that great Bertrand Russell quote which is I won't
Speaker 3: get it right, but it's something like the problem with
Speaker 3: the world is that the intelligent are uncertain about things
Speaker 3: and the idiots are so sure of themselves. Right, Like
Speaker 3: I butchered that someone I'm sure can create it. But
Speaker 3: it was this idea that so many people are so
Speaker 3: certain of themselves, and usually their certainty is problematic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and this is what I call insanity, but unsanity.
Speaker 3: That's a good word for it, because insanity has a
Speaker 3: more specific framework versus insanity. I like that you've given
Speaker 3: me two different authors that I've never heard of, which
Speaker 3: happens so rarely on this show. You're so excited.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we're going to do that for
Speaker 1: each other. The bodhisofpha behind you. Yeah, I hope we
Speaker 1: have a great friendship, and I'd love to compare notes
Speaker 1: on all of these amazing things. But I think what
Speaker 1: we're doing here is really bringing people to a more
Speaker 1: sane way of living and viewing. To know something means
Speaker 1: that that something is dead. You can never know your partner,
Speaker 1: you can never know them because they're always changing their
Speaker 1: living organism, they're taking in new information. They have so
Speaker 1: many dimensions.
Speaker 3: But we think we do It's that looking again, looking
Speaker 3: more closely and in Zen, we would say not knowing
Speaker 3: is most intimate, and I love that idea because when
Speaker 3: you don't know something, you give it your attention, and
Speaker 3: that's where intimacy arises. When you know something, you stop looking,
Speaker 3: your intimacy fades.
Speaker 1: That's it. Love it.
Speaker 3: Wow, Well, we are near the end of our time.
Speaker 3: Any sort of last thing you'd like to leave listeners
Speaker 3: with based on where your heart and mind is right now.
Speaker 1: I think from what we spoke about, if somebody listening,
Speaker 1: maybe just one person is kind of aligned or feels
Speaker 1: something about what we said to really go into a
Speaker 1: deep with your full heart. And we talked a lot
Speaker 1: about space. We talked a lot about silence and meditation,
Speaker 1: and one of my favorite quotes is from Roomy says
Speaker 1: silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful place to leave it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: This has been deeply enjoyable. I'm so glad to have
Speaker 3: gotten to have you on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so much fun. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Let's do it again, yeah in the sauna maybe.
Speaker 3: Okay.
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