Speaker 1: As you deeply are connected to this larger hol. It's
Speaker 1: where the word intra connected comes from. It's like we're
Speaker 1: not just interconnected, like you're there and I'm here, and
Speaker 1: we're connected with Joe. That's cool, but we are intra connected.
Speaker 1: There's a wholeness to life that we can feel, this
Speaker 1: deep sense of commitment to for agency, take the perspective
Speaker 1: of the whole, and even sense into it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by
Speaker 2: Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to entangle the stories that
Speaker 2: hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and humanity at
Speaker 2: large using the Perception Box lens. They do this through storytelling, experiences,
Speaker 2: impact investments, and scientific research. Unlike a Collaborators, the only
Speaker 2: way forward is inward. Later on in this episode, I
Speaker 2: have a lot more to say about the Perception Box
Speaker 2: and how it relates to this episode, but right now,
Speaker 2: let me tell you a little bit about today's guest. Today,
Speaker 2: we're so happy to welcome Dan Siegel to the show.
Speaker 2: Doctor Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry the UCLA
Speaker 2: School of Meta and the founding co director of the
Speaker 2: Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Doctor Siegel is also
Speaker 2: the executive director of the Mind Sight Institute. He's authored
Speaker 2: numerous articles, chapters, and books, including the New York Times
Speaker 2: bestsellers Mind a Journey to the Heart of Being Human
Speaker 2: and Aware, the Science and Practice of Presence. His latest
Speaker 2: book is called Intra Connected MAWII M plus we as
Speaker 2: the Integration of Self, identity, and Belonging. In this episode,
Speaker 2: I talked to doctor Dan Siegel about expanding the notion
Speaker 2: of the self. Modern culture has taught us that the
Speaker 2: self is all about individual identity and personal experiences, but
Speaker 2: doctor Siegel posits that who we are is not limited
Speaker 2: to the brain or body. He argues that the self
Speaker 2: is not isolated. It's composed of our relationships to other
Speaker 2: living beings and to the natural world. This expanded view
Speaker 2: of the self has important implications for the trajectory of humanity.
Speaker 2: We also touch on the topics of consciousness, neuroscience, quantum physics,
Speaker 2: and the full state. This is a really rich and
Speaker 2: lightening conversation. We had a whole bunch of aha moments
Speaker 2: about transcendence, about the nature of self, and about the
Speaker 2: interconnectedness that we all have with others. I think you'll
Speaker 2: enjoy this episode just as much as I did, and
Speaker 2: find it just as mind expanding and self expanding as
Speaker 2: I did. So without further ado, I bring you doctor
Speaker 2: Dan Siegel. I am really excited to chat with you
Speaker 2: today because there's just so many threads that you bring
Speaker 2: together in this latest book, interconnected, and you know, it's like,
Speaker 2: I'm reading this book and I'm reading this thread from
Speaker 2: a prior book of yours, another thread from another prior book,
Speaker 2: another thread from another prior book, and I love how
Speaker 2: you integrate all together. But I guess that's your point,
Speaker 2: isn't it. This book is really your real integration book.
Speaker 1: Oh good, well, I'm so glad you found it that way.
Speaker 1: That's what I was hoping for. So that's great that
Speaker 1: you found it that way. Thank you for taking the
Speaker 1: time to read it.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course it was very very interesting and
Speaker 2: very relevant to the world we live in right now,
Speaker 2: and such an emphasis on identity and belonging in a
Speaker 2: way that divides us, does that not in a way
Speaker 2: that that brings us together? So heck, if this book
Speaker 2: can can bring us greater peace, I think it's done
Speaker 2: a It's done a great job. So I wanted to
Speaker 2: start by this quote, which is very intriguing and I
Speaker 2: think it'll be very intriguing to our listeners. Who we
Speaker 2: are is both within and between me plus we yeah
Speaker 2: equals MAUI the reality of an integrative wholeness of our
Speaker 2: interconnected lives. Can you explain our audience a little bit
Speaker 2: what that means? What does it mean to be both
Speaker 2: simultaneously within in between?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know, we live in a modern world, which
Speaker 1: tells us, you know, that our identity, the features that
Speaker 1: say who we are, is the body we live in,
Speaker 1: you know, So it's the within this. The way we
Speaker 1: say the self is identical with the individual the body.
Speaker 1: So in really reflecting on that you know about who
Speaker 1: are we really, you come to realize you're also your relationships,
Speaker 1: like with people in your family or your friends, people
Speaker 1: you know, and then even people you don't know, the
Speaker 1: larger humanity. So that's the between this. So if you
Speaker 1: take a step back and say, well, what are you really,
Speaker 1: you're really energy flow and that flow happens inside the body.
Speaker 1: So that's the within this, and that flow happens in
Speaker 1: how we're communicating with each other. Right now, you and
Speaker 1: I are speaking with each other or looking at each other,
Speaker 1: people joining us in this conversation are literally con is
Speaker 1: with and verse to turn. We're turning together our attention,
Speaker 1: and attention is that process that determines energy flow. So
Speaker 1: you know, in many ways what relationships are sharing of
Speaker 1: the betweenness of energy flow, between the two inners of
Speaker 1: you and the inner of me. And then when you
Speaker 1: put them together, that's like the me is the inner,
Speaker 1: the we is the relational And you say, well, why
Speaker 1: do I have to choose? And I had taught a
Speaker 1: course once a workshop called me to We, and one
Speaker 1: of my students was so upset with me. She said,
Speaker 1: you're a hypocrite. And I said, okay, well why my hypocrite?
Speaker 1: She goes, You said, it's important to have both. You know,
Speaker 1: this honoring of the inner of your knowledge of yourself.
Speaker 1: You're taking care of your body, sleeping your body, feeding
Speaker 1: your body, exercising your body, knowing the history of your body,
Speaker 1: and all of that's the me. She was absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And we're also a wei. So the term me to
Speaker 1: we implies getting rid of me and going to we.
Speaker 1: And she was right to say it needs to be
Speaker 1: something else. So she said, what is it? It's got
Speaker 1: to be something else, and I tried out this word
Speaker 1: we ultimately and she loved it, and it really made
Speaker 1: sense that who we are as both within and between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there was there were a lot of
Speaker 2: aha moments for me. I don't know how familiar are
Speaker 2: with my work at all, but I wrote the book
Speaker 2: called transcend The New Science of Self Actualization, and there
Speaker 2: was an AHA moment when I was reading your book
Speaker 2: where you said, well, maybe we should call it self
Speaker 2: expansion instead of self transcendence. And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, that's brilliant. I should I should change the
Speaker 2: title of my book next next edition to not transcend
Speaker 2: but Expand.
Speaker 1: You know, how did that sit with you? I love
Speaker 1: to know, because you know, self transcendence is you know,
Speaker 1: it's an ancient you know, art of meditation, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a term from emotion science. You know, we have
Speaker 1: these self transcendent emotions of awe and gratitude and compassion.
Speaker 1: But it how does it sit with you? Having written
Speaker 1: a book transcend you know, which which is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a different wording, but maybe it's really talking
Speaker 1: about the same thing. But what was it like for
Speaker 1: you and what does it How did it sit with you? Good.
Speaker 2: This is a good energy flow. This is a good
Speaker 2: energy flow, and it feels that it's a real flow here.
Speaker 2: So yeah, the term has never really sat great with
Speaker 2: me because I had to keep explaining to people what
Speaker 2: I mean by self transcendence is integration, not leaving behind
Speaker 2: any parts of ourself. So I talk a lot about
Speaker 2: a revised Maso's hierarchy of needs, and I have transcendence
Speaker 2: as part of the revised hierarchy of needs. And I
Speaker 2: also it tried to integrate indigenous wisdom, which is why
Speaker 2: I appreciated you doing that a lot in your book.
Speaker 2: But I found the need to I kept explaining to people, Well,
Speaker 2: it's actually like Russian nesting dolls, right, It's like every
Speaker 2: part of you, you know, the higher parts, really do
Speaker 2: need the other parts, the so called lower parts, you know,
Speaker 2: in order to have a whole of interconnectness. But when
Speaker 2: you say self expansion, you don't need to explain it
Speaker 2: as much, you know, you don't need to defend it
Speaker 2: as much. So anyway, when I got to that line,
Speaker 2: I believe you were talking to doctor Keltner, who's I guess,
Speaker 2: I think a mutual friend of ours, and you said
Speaker 2: to him, you know, what do you think of self expression?
Speaker 2: I think he said awesome. That was again such a
Speaker 2: typical doctor Keltner response. But you know, so no that
Speaker 2: I really like that change in terminology. I really like it.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, you know, And I think in your liking it,
Speaker 1: there's also an opportunity to you know, have this discussion
Speaker 1: we're having right now. Like you know, in ancient contemplative traditions,
Speaker 1: like in Buddhist practice, for example, there's the term no self.
Speaker 1: And so I've been recently meeting with a number of
Speaker 1: Buddhist educators, scholars and practitioners, you know, to talk about
Speaker 1: the term. And when you really get down to it,
Speaker 1: it's there's no separate individual self. And then I say, well,
Speaker 1: but you know there is an inner aspect, so it
Speaker 1: is a real thing. I mean, as an attachment researcher,
Speaker 1: you know, my science training is in studying parent child relationships,
Speaker 1: and you know, we study how when the way your
Speaker 1: parents treat you is not so good, your development of
Speaker 1: a let's just call it a core self, this inner
Speaker 1: core self lot that's lodged in your body is pretty
Speaker 1: disrupted and it leads to a lot of suffering. And
Speaker 1: to say that that's not real. You know. I got
Speaker 1: to say as a therapist, that is really upsetting to
Speaker 1: me when I work with these people who are suffering,
Speaker 1: and to say their suffering is not real is really
Speaker 1: painful to hear that stance. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a bypass that sometimes happens, not with everyone, but in
Speaker 1: some meditation practitioners. They're trying to bypass the hard work
Speaker 1: of actually taking a core self that didn't develop well
Speaker 1: because your parent child relationships are really troubling, they were problematic.
Speaker 1: Do the healing that takes a lot of work, but
Speaker 1: it's doable. And then to go as your course. And
Speaker 1: this is why I try to take a developmental stance
Speaker 1: in the book, you know, to say, well, how does
Speaker 1: that course self actually develop? Is it real? And the
Speaker 1: view is that it's real, but it's a differentiated way
Speaker 1: of being an individual, which is fine and not a butt.
Speaker 1: And there's also a self experience which we can talk
Speaker 1: about next. You know, that is beyond the skull and skin,
Speaker 1: you know, and so in that sense, your word transcend
Speaker 1: is great. It transcends just the separateness of being an individual.
Speaker 1: And then you know, I really and I don't know
Speaker 1: how you feel about this. But I, you know, I
Speaker 1: really wrestled with because I have a big doubting mind.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe self should just be limited to the individual,
Speaker 1: and it should be self transcendence, and there should be
Speaker 1: another term for like feeling that you are other human
Speaker 1: beings and that you are the trees. And then I
Speaker 1: thought about it some more. I thought, well, when I
Speaker 1: looked at the literature on self, it was always about
Speaker 1: like the sensations you have, the perspectives you have, what
Speaker 1: you act on behalf of, and that you know, had
Speaker 1: this fun acronym SPA, you know, sensation perspective agency. And
Speaker 1: then I thought, well, actually this really self expanding. It's
Speaker 1: not self transcending, because what if you could feel into
Speaker 1: the suffering of others, really not become them, but feel
Speaker 1: into it to then act on behalf of them. Or
Speaker 1: what if you could feel that the earth was your body,
Speaker 1: we would stop treating it like a trash can. So
Speaker 1: then then I and I don't know how it's going
Speaker 1: to come out, But then I felt like, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was self expanding, and we should start seeing that you
Speaker 1: have an identity lens that you can move it close
Speaker 1: up and say yeah, there's the self that's inside the
Speaker 1: skin in case body, but then you have a self
Speaker 1: that's all humanity and a self that's all living beings.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I mean, that's that's the proposal. And to
Speaker 1: hear from you that it sits well with you, they're
Speaker 1: really exciting for me because you know, I know you
Speaker 1: write deeply about this and you know the importance of it.
Speaker 1: And even when dak Or Keltner said, awesome too, why
Speaker 1: don't we change the name from self transcend it to
Speaker 1: self expanding? And he was really excited about that. It
Speaker 1: really makes the conversation a little different to say that
Speaker 1: our bodies right here and now we are each other.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that in a poetic way, but
Speaker 1: more like a deeply scientific way. How are we defining
Speaker 1: the self to say that it ends at the skin?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, no, absolutely. And part of the problem within
Speaker 2: the field of psychology is that there are a million
Speaker 2: different definitions of the word self. So it's not like
Speaker 2: there's a consensus. We can't say to the general public
Speaker 2: we figured it out there there's one definition, you know,
Speaker 2: there's such a variety of definitions. And then the interesting
Speaker 2: question is, wasn't different between the self and the mind, right,
Speaker 2: I mean to me, intuitively, the mind is a broader construct.
Speaker 2: You know, not all representations of the self are in
Speaker 2: the mind. We have other representations in the mind that necessary,
Speaker 2: not our necessarily self. But that links to Andy Kark
Speaker 2: and David Chalmers the extended mind thesis. I kept thinking
Speaker 2: about that when I was reading your book, because I
Speaker 2: feel like there was a strong connection between what you
Speaker 2: were saying and what they're arguing. And then my friend
Speaker 2: Anny Murphy Paul wrote a book recently called The Extended
Speaker 2: Mind The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. But they
Speaker 2: use the term mind, right, And you're focusing on self,
Speaker 2: and so it's an interesting question like, what are we
Speaker 2: talking about the same thing a different thing? What's it
Speaker 2: difference between self and mind? And how do you view
Speaker 2: the self? I'm asking you a lot of questions in
Speaker 2: one here. Well, how do you define the self?
Speaker 1: I know? Well, you know I wrote the first book
Speaker 1: I ever wrote was called The Developing Mind, you know,
Speaker 1: which took the word mind and said, wow, we have
Speaker 1: a word in English m I and D. Not every
Speaker 1: language actually has a word like that, but English does
Speaker 1: in some other line, which is due to So what
Speaker 1: does it really mean when we use it? And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm trained in psychiatry, which is psyche, you know,
Speaker 1: means the soul, the spirit, the intellect, and the mind.
Speaker 1: You look at Webster's definition of psyche, so a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: or a psychologist, you know, like yourself, or someone doing
Speaker 1: psychotherapy or in the field of psychological health, all those
Speaker 1: psyche derivations have those four meanings. Psyche means soul, spirit, intellect,
Speaker 1: and mind. So then I don't know how it was
Speaker 1: for you, but for me, as a psychiatrist trained by
Speaker 1: psychologists to do research, so I'm trained to detachment research
Speaker 1: by psychologists, I had the opportunity to ask my academic
Speaker 1: mentors what is this mind? And I was kind of
Speaker 1: confused when they said, we don't have a definition of it.
Speaker 1: So then I started systematically asking anyone in the field
Speaker 1: of mental health, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, nursing people in
Speaker 1: master's level, were you know, all sorts of folks. I
Speaker 1: asked literally one hundred thousand people in person before the
Speaker 1: viral pandemic, and the numbers were remarkably consistent across the globe.
Speaker 1: It was about two to five percent would say yes.
Speaker 1: In my formal training as a mental health practitioner, I
Speaker 1: was given a definition of the mind, and ninety five
Speaker 1: percent would say no, I was never given any definition.
Speaker 1: I would be in the ninety five percent. Where would
Speaker 1: you sit in at in what exactly? Yeah, did someone
Speaker 1: in your training in psychology tell you a definition? Not
Speaker 1: a description, you know, like its emotions, its thoughts, but
Speaker 1: a definition of what is what is the mind?
Speaker 2: So that's a very interesting question. My training goes back
Speaker 2: to Herbert Simon at Carnegie Mellon and he, you know,
Speaker 2: viewed the mind in very artificial intelligen and so but
Speaker 2: I was never explicitly given So the answer is no.
Speaker 2: But what is so interesting about that is that I
Speaker 2: was trained in cognitive science at which is all about
Speaker 2: the mind, without giving that as part of the manual.
Speaker 2: So that is very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, isn't it funny? I mean I was teaching at
Speaker 1: a course called something like I don't remember, it's like
Speaker 1: Education Mind and Brain or something like that, and we
Speaker 1: were having a faculty dinner and one of our heroes
Speaker 1: and I don't have his permission to say his name,
Speaker 1: but he was like the most senior professor of psychology
Speaker 1: on the planet. He's like eighty five or something like that,
Speaker 1: and everybody revered him. I love him. I had met
Speaker 1: him years ago about some other issues related to his research. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we were at the faculty dinner.
Speaker 3: We were just hanging out and having a good time,
Speaker 3: and I just decided to ask him.
Speaker 1: I said, you know, you're the most revered psychology researcher
Speaker 1: on earth. He goes, oh, no, I'm not. And every
Speaker 1: went around the table said yes you are. And I said, so,
Speaker 1: can I just ask you a question? And he goes,
Speaker 1: of course. I said, his mind was completely intact. I said,
Speaker 1: in your field as a psychology researcher, professor of psychology,
Speaker 1: does your field of psychology have a definition of the mind?
Speaker 1: So everyone's quiet around the table. He pauses and he goes,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never thought of that before. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: could you think about it now? He says, of course,
Speaker 1: let me think. Pauses. He goes, no, we have no
Speaker 1: definition of the mind. So I said, would you like
Speaker 1: to hear one? He goes yeah. So we're in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: We get on the trolley car. You know, he's old,
Speaker 1: and so we wanted to sit down. Everyone else is
Speaker 1: standing up around us, and we're sitting in the trolley car,
Speaker 1: picture it going, and I'm giving him this download of
Speaker 1: you know what I said in the developing Mind, you know,
Speaker 1: which is that you can make a proposal for a
Speaker 1: definition of mind beyond descriptions. And after he hears the definition,
Speaker 1: his face lights up. He goes, that is consistent with
Speaker 1: my entire life's work. And I accept that definition, and
Speaker 1: then everyone on the trolley cars starts applauding it was.
Speaker 1: So you want to know what I said, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: said my seat, you know, I said, if you see
Speaker 1: our mental lives is being both within and between. That is,
Speaker 1: they happen in relationships, you know, and they happen within
Speaker 1: the body, including you know his expertise with studying the brain.
Speaker 1: You know, they happen both within in between. So what
Speaker 1: is shared what's happening both within and between its energy flow.
Speaker 1: And some of that energy flow has symbolic value, so
Speaker 1: it's information. So a formation of energy that is standing
Speaker 1: for something like the word hello, is not just the
Speaker 1: airwaves going hello. It's a symbol. And when when formation
Speaker 1: is symbolizing something, it's information anyway, because it changes over time,
Speaker 1: we call the flow. So I said, the mind might
Speaker 1: be Now this is coming up like in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: so right after the nineteen eighties, when a bunch of
Speaker 1: mathematicians and physicists has gotten together with system science and
Speaker 1: really talked about emergence. That there's something arising from the
Speaker 1: interaction of elements of a system that is larger than
Speaker 1: the elements themselves, and it's called emergence. It's a scientific
Speaker 1: property of what are called complex systems. So to me,
Speaker 1: the criteria for complex systems, which are systems capable of chaos,
Speaker 1: they're open to influences from outside themselves, and they're nonlinear,
Speaker 1: meaning like a small input at one point leads to
Speaker 1: a large and difficult to predict result. If you have
Speaker 1: those three characteristics, you are a complex system. So it
Speaker 1: seemed to me our lives were complex systems. They're immersed
Speaker 1: within the internal complexity of the embodied nervous system, the
Speaker 1: brain and its body, and also just our relationships are
Speaker 1: incredibly complex literally in this way of defining complexity. So
Speaker 1: those scientists and the eighties had shown that there's an
Speaker 1: emergence comes from complex systems. So I thought, what if
Speaker 1: the mind is the emergent property of complex systems which property.
Speaker 1: What those scientists showed was that there's a process called
Speaker 1: self organization. So it might be that everything is an
Speaker 1: emergent property of the mind, like, for example, it might
Speaker 1: be that certainly sensation subjective experience might be an emergent property.
Speaker 1: The consciousness that lets you know you're having subjective experience
Speaker 1: might be an emergent property. Information processing clearly is. But
Speaker 1: this fourth facet of the mind that I offered as
Speaker 1: a definition to that professor is this the mind might
Speaker 1: be this is from thirty years ago now, but it
Speaker 1: might be the emergent self organizing, embodied and relational process
Speaker 1: that is regulating energy and ination flow. And when this
Speaker 1: professor thought about it and said that is exactly what
Speaker 1: I've been studying, you know, it was so beautiful. And
Speaker 1: I think the reason everyone applauded was because it wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to say, in a way anything new. It was
Speaker 1: trying to say, let's just define what we're all doing anyway,
Speaker 1: and so we can have a shared vocabulary. And from
Speaker 1: that definition of the mind, you could actually then say
Speaker 1: what a healthy mind is, because you could say, how
Speaker 1: do you optimize self organization? And we can get into
Speaker 1: that later, but that was a very powerful moment back
Speaker 1: in It was nineteen ninety two, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: a long time ago now, But you know, I put
Speaker 1: out that definition in a publication and I called it
Speaker 1: a working definition, and I was excited that other definitions
Speaker 1: would come in and we'd have big debates and we
Speaker 1: could get rid of that one and come up with
Speaker 1: something more accurate or whatever. But in thirty years there
Speaker 1: hasn't been a single other definition short of just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the mind is is what the brain does,
Speaker 1: which doesn't really say what the mind is. If the
Speaker 1: mind is just brain activity. By the way, why do
Speaker 1: we need a word like mine? M just call it
Speaker 1: brain activity, right right?
Speaker 2: Well, I, first of all, I like that definition of mind.
Speaker 2: But I like that definition of mind for a definition
Speaker 2: of consciousness. I think that's a great definition of consciousness.
Speaker 2: Maybe you don't see a difference between mind and consciousness.
Speaker 2: Maybe that is what you see as the mind.
Speaker 1: Well, say say more about that.
Speaker 2: Well, you have a great you have a great way
Speaker 2: of inter being almost said way of being. But I'll
Speaker 2: use your terminology inter being to uh to say, tell
Speaker 2: me more about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah from ticking o han, Yeah, that's I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean there, as you know, there's lots
Speaker 2: of extraordinarily nerdy debates in the philosophy of mind about
Speaker 2: what is consciousness? Isn't it? Is it an emergent proper?
Speaker 2: And I'm an emergence guy too, So we're on the
Speaker 2: same frequency here, We're vibrating in the same frequency when
Speaker 2: it comes to where does consciousness, you know, how does
Speaker 2: it arise? Through the complexity of interconnections, is what I
Speaker 2: what I believe, and through the evolution of you know,
Speaker 2: the evolution of the species, we got to a certain
Speaker 2: point of complexity where this this emerged. But I do
Speaker 2: see a distinction distinction between conscious the conscious mind, and
Speaker 2: the unconscious mind. We learn lots of things implicitly, like
Speaker 2: I That's what I studied for my pH d thesis
Speaker 2: was implicit learning and its relationship to intelligence. So I
Speaker 2: wouldn't put that within the mind, you know, the realm
Speaker 2: of the mind or so. I do think that in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, mind and consciousness are very synonymous
Speaker 2: with each other. And it sounds like you view that
Speaker 2: as the situation as well.
Speaker 1: Let me begin by just saying that just having a
Speaker 1: conversation together about this is so rewarding because you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, from the world we're in now, these
Speaker 1: topics are actually really important. It's not just intellectually interesting.
Speaker 1: The question about who we are and you know, what
Speaker 1: we're aware of and what we can do with that awareness,
Speaker 1: you know, is literally a matter of life and death
Speaker 1: on the planet. So these are important foundational concepts and
Speaker 1: vocabularies that actually set the stage for you know, how
Speaker 1: kids learn in schools, how parents raise kids, how people
Speaker 1: interact with each other at work, what governments can do.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can go on about that in a way,
Speaker 1: maybe we should looking at, you know, where we are
Speaker 1: at as a human family. But for this question of
Speaker 1: consciousness in mind, I'm really open to you know, learning
Speaker 1: more every day. I see every day as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to keep on opening and learning and changing. This is
Speaker 1: why it was so peculiar that in thirty years no
Speaker 1: one has pushed against this definition or offered an alternative definition.
Speaker 1: And the definition is not the same as conscious. I
Speaker 1: wrote a book on consciousness called Aware, where I try
Speaker 1: to outline the distinction between mind and consciousness and also
Speaker 1: looking at itself so we can talk about those three
Speaker 1: words and how I think they're actually importantly different from
Speaker 1: each other. So let's take implicit learning, which you've got
Speaker 1: your doctoral degree in, and certainly implicit memory, which my
Speaker 1: research advisor was an expert at Bob Yorke. You know,
Speaker 1: I was so taken by the whole field of memory
Speaker 1: research when I was a psychiatry trainee and you know,
Speaker 1: got a it wasn't a PhD, but it was a
Speaker 1: national and studentmental health you know, research training grant to
Speaker 1: study memory systems, narrative systems and relationships, you know. And
Speaker 1: as a therapist, it was really relevant because you know,
Speaker 1: so much of you do what you do when you
Speaker 1: have a client command of patient, you say, what do
Speaker 1: you remember about this? Tell me this story of that,
Speaker 1: you know, and as you're suggesting, so much of what
Speaker 1: they've learned is implicit learning. And then I came across
Speaker 1: patients who had been traumatized where the implicit memory systems,
Speaker 1: at least my view of what was going on, were
Speaker 1: being activated without being integrated with the explicit memory systems.
Speaker 1: So for me, and I'm giving you this background because
Speaker 1: for me as a therapist back in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: when I became a research fellow in eighty nine. You know,
Speaker 1: this is a long story, but my research mentor's boyfriend's
Speaker 1: ex roommate was Larry Shackter, you know, who is a
Speaker 1: big memory researcher. So she says, let me call Larry
Speaker 1: up and he's going to meet with you. So I
Speaker 1: meet with Larry, you know, and I'm just some kid,
Speaker 1: you know, just interested in these things. But he's like
Speaker 1: this world's expert, you know, in declarative and non discarded memory.
Speaker 1: So it was at that moment, you know, back in
Speaker 1: probably eighty seven, when when I was getting set up
Speaker 1: to apply for the research grant, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: meeting with Larry, you know, that that I realized for
Speaker 1: therapists to understand implicit learning. And here's where maybe we
Speaker 1: differ a little bit. Their mental health was impacted by
Speaker 1: the implicit memory system that when it wasn't integrated with
Speaker 1: the hippocampal processing and a part of the brain that
Speaker 1: allows it to become explicit, that is, explicit, factual or
Speaker 1: explicit autobiographical, then they were prone to flashbacks if they'd
Speaker 1: been traumatized, and that the implicit you know, my understanding
Speaker 1: of implicit memory is it has you know, emotions, it
Speaker 1: has perceptions, It probably has bodily sensation, it has behavioral
Speaker 1: repertoires call procedural memory, and these are all summarized under
Speaker 1: mental models and influence something called priming, which is the
Speaker 1: getting you ready to respond. Now, I guess for me,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is a mistake, Scott, so you can
Speaker 1: tell me. But to me, that was all a part
Speaker 1: of the mind, even though it was not a part
Speaker 1: of consciousness. So that I would have a patient come in.
Speaker 1: Let's say they were in a relationship and every time
Speaker 1: they were about to be sexual said they'd been abused sexually,
Speaker 1: their whole system would be primed to feel like their
Speaker 1: partner when they loved, was an attacker. And then their
Speaker 1: mental model was, you know, sexuality is bad and people
Speaker 1: who get involved with you sexually really want to hurt you.
Speaker 1: So then they'd come in for couples therapy, and the
Speaker 1: only way to work with their mental health was to
Speaker 1: work at the level of implicit learning. That was absolutely
Speaker 1: affecting what I would call their mental well be so,
Speaker 1: but maybe that was not such a good use of
Speaker 1: the term. But for me, in that sense, it was
Speaker 1: energy flow patterns that were being organized. So it was
Speaker 1: self organization of energy flow patterns. And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When simal self organization happens. This is now mathematics, but
Speaker 1: you're differentiating in linking aspects of the complex system to
Speaker 1: allow a kind of harmony toize. Where it's these five
Speaker 1: features of flexible, adaptive, coherent, energize, and stable. That's from math.
Speaker 1: And when I've been when met with mathematicians, I said,
Speaker 1: what do you call that that creates optimal self organization?
Speaker 1: They said, we don't have a name for it. I said, well,
Speaker 1: is it when you differentiate and link? They go, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's what creates that harmony of that optimal complexity maximizing complexity.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I got to talk to my
Speaker 1: patients about it. I gott to name it something. They go,
Speaker 1: name it whatever you want. I said, okay, I'll name
Speaker 1: that balance of differentiation on the one hand things being
Speaker 1: different and linkage on the other is integration. It's different
Speaker 1: than how mathematicians use that term, which is more like
Speaker 1: addition anyway, So integration looks like it's the way you
Speaker 1: get optimal self organization. But if you block differentiation or linkage,
Speaker 1: you go to either chaos or that's math. So I
Speaker 1: went back to the psychiatric books and especially the diagnostic Bible,
Speaker 1: the DSM, and every symptom of every syndrome's god was
Speaker 1: either chaos, rigidity, or both. And in this very room,
Speaker 1: over thirty years ago, I went nuts because I said,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, here's the definition of well being integration,
Speaker 1: and here's a definition of unwell being impaired integration. And
Speaker 1: this is what I need to do as a therapist.
Speaker 1: I need to identify blocked integration and help my clients,
Speaker 1: my patients become integrated. And sure enough, those things started
Speaker 1: to work in ways that I wasn't doing anything my
Speaker 1: supervisors told me to do. I was just following this
Speaker 1: line of scientific reasoning.
Speaker 2: Today's podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is
Speaker 2: to untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations,
Speaker 2: and humanity at large using the perception box lens. They
Speaker 2: do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research.
Speaker 2: Today's conversation with Dan really illustrates the importance of expanding
Speaker 2: the walls of our perception box. The perception box is
Speaker 2: the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and
Speaker 2: it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another
Speaker 2: and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Dan presents his
Speaker 2: fascinating ideas on how we can expand ourself and widen
Speaker 2: the lens of our identity to include other people. From
Speaker 2: a perception box perspective, we can actively work to change
Speaker 2: the negative stories we tell ourselves, such as I am
Speaker 2: not safe. By including other people in our sense of
Speaker 2: self and being more open, honest, and vulnerable with others,
Speaker 2: expanding our perception box can help us feel the joy
Speaker 2: that comes with being our authentic selves. Truth is, we
Speaker 2: always have to live in our perception box, but the
Speaker 2: more we can practice expanding the walls and realize that
Speaker 2: another person is part of us, that the self is
Speaker 2: not in isolated entity, we can increase our agency to
Speaker 2: how we respond to what rising inside us. Sometimes this
Speaker 2: just requires deep breaths just to get enough space that
Speaker 2: when the thoughts come up, you can choose to believe
Speaker 2: and act on them or let them pass self. Inquiry
Speaker 2: is also valuable, constant questioning is this really true? And
Speaker 2: authentically engaging with others to get at the real truth
Speaker 2: about how you are perceived and also to discover the
Speaker 2: common humanity you may share with another person. When we
Speaker 2: expand our perception box walls, we see just how interrelated
Speaker 2: we all really are. To find out more about unlikely collaborators,
Speaker 2: and the perception box go to unlikely Collaborators dot com.
Speaker 2: So this is this is interesting because this map is
Speaker 2: I'm an individual differences researcher as well as a cognitive scientist.
Speaker 2: And the two meta traits of all personality break down
Speaker 2: as stability and plasticity. They're above the Big five is
Speaker 2: the Big two. Yeah, and most mental disorders can be
Speaker 2: classified into a severe lack of stability and that usually
Speaker 2: those are usually the effective disorders or an extreme heightened plasticity,
Speaker 2: which would be chaos, which you tend to see in schizophrenia.
Speaker 2: An optimal amount leads to creativity and that so I've
Speaker 2: tried to show that the optimal amount for creativity where
Speaker 2: you fall off the edge and then you can just
Speaker 2: gets into psychosis disorders. But that's just perfectly maps onto
Speaker 2: what you just said.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so exciting, that's so great. I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you more about that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I can send you papers now, well,
Speaker 2: I could send you paper is well another time, another time,
Speaker 2: but no, So that that really maps on nicely to
Speaker 2: what you just said. The other thing about the mind,
Speaker 2: including the unconscious I think that there's there's some really
Speaker 2: interesting nuance there, because there is a reason why the
Speaker 2: fuel distinguishes the unconscious mind from the conscious mind. I
Speaker 2: do think there's a valuable distinction there, because there are
Speaker 2: I think the unconscious mind consists of aspects of our
Speaker 2: mind that are not available to conscious introspection, and I
Speaker 2: think that that's a valuable distinction. To make Mark Leary
Speaker 2: interesting enough, he's the closest one I've ever seen to
Speaker 2: coming up with a definition of the self that you know.
Speaker 2: He just lays it out there as the definition, whether
Speaker 2: or not you agree with it or not, and I'll
Speaker 2: read to you his definition. Mark Leary defines the self
Speaker 2: as the mental apparatus that allows people and a few
Speaker 2: other species of animals to think consciously about themselves. So
Speaker 2: he really does equate the self with consciousness in his
Speaker 2: explicit definition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting. So let's review his definition.
Speaker 2: The mental apparatus that allows people to think consciously about themselves.
Speaker 1: So it's like Demasio's higher level of an Edelman's higher
Speaker 1: level of consciousness. Demasio talks about that aspect of the
Speaker 1: self comes to mind. It's sounds like a similar thing,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess for me as an attachment researcher,
Speaker 1: we don't know about young young children's capacity for self reflection,
Speaker 1: but I would suggest to you that there is a
Speaker 1: kind of self. Dan Stearn might have called it the
Speaker 1: core self, that is before the capacity for that kind
Speaker 1: of self reflective consciousness. You know, we do have consciousness
Speaker 1: that's you know, more not second order, but first order.
Speaker 1: You know, aware of your sensations and aware you know
Speaker 1: of your movements, like appropriate reception basically an inter reception
Speaker 1: for awareness of the interior of the body. And even
Speaker 1: in evolutionary terms, there's some interesting things that if you
Speaker 1: want to go off on that tangent to look at
Speaker 1: what does self reflection mean where you start developing what
Speaker 1: some people would call an autobiographical self. And I would
Speaker 1: I would love to have discussion with Mark Leary and
Speaker 1: yourself about the important role of autobiography, right, which is
Speaker 1: not just saying here's what's happened to me now, but
Speaker 1: here's what's happened to me before, and maybe here's what
Speaker 1: I'd like to happen to be in the future, that
Speaker 1: kind of past, present, future, autobiographical capacity and the capacity
Speaker 1: to be in the present moment. And as someone who
Speaker 1: does myself does active work with you know, mindfulness and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. You know, it's really interesting to distinguish
Speaker 1: an autobiographical self versus a mindful a mindful self, which
Speaker 1: if you look at the work of Norman forban Zendel
Speaker 1: Siegel up in Toronto, you know, they would suggest, even
Speaker 1: if you look at the brain networks, that the midline
Speaker 1: default mode network would be more like what Mark Leary
Speaker 1: is talking about an autobiographical self. He doesn't use that term,
Speaker 1: but what we can call an autobiographical self, whereas the
Speaker 1: lateral circuits are more sensory capacity to be in the
Speaker 1: present moment and let go of that autobiographical past, present
Speaker 1: futures stuff is part of in Farben Seagulls no relationship
Speaker 1: to me, se g a l in their work, you know,
Speaker 1: would suggest that there's also a researcher I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember his name up in Canada also who does a
Speaker 1: lot of work on the default mode network, but I
Speaker 1: can't remember his name right at this moment. But he
Speaker 1: would also occur, Oh no, no, oh gosh, I remember
Speaker 1: when he first presented his work a while ago. It's
Speaker 1: with an l I think, but that might be wrong too.
Speaker 1: But in any event, he and a lot of other
Speaker 1: people would say, yes, there's an autobiographical consciousness that Mark
Speaker 1: Leary is talking about. That's important. But for me anyway
Speaker 1: and an interconnected I tried to make this distinction that,
Speaker 1: you know, sensation and perspective and agency, just to go
Speaker 1: across lots and lots of ways of looking at the self.
Speaker 1: That's just one way of finding a common ground. It
Speaker 1: would not include necessarily an autobiographical capacity, you know. So
Speaker 1: for example, you could say, and this may be too
Speaker 1: far out, and I'd love to know your point of
Speaker 1: view SPK you know about you know, when I in
Speaker 1: the book, I tell this story of you know, going
Speaker 1: first to Panda Populace, which is a forest in Utah,
Speaker 1: and seeing these forty eight thousand aspen trunks that look
Speaker 1: like separate trees. But then you go a little bitneath
Speaker 1: the surface, it's one root ball. You realize it's one
Speaker 1: of the oldest and largest organisms on Earth. It's one
Speaker 1: living thing. And then I was out in the forest
Speaker 1: a week later with some system scientists doing a retreat,
Speaker 1: and after the three days when we came back, the
Speaker 1: only word I could use because they were all saying
Speaker 1: I was interconnected and interwoven, an intered being, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't use the inter word because in those three days
Speaker 1: of being alone in the forest, it felt like this
Speaker 1: could sound funny, But I was the body, yes, and
Speaker 1: I was the creek, and I was the trees, and
Speaker 1: I was the sky, and there was no longer this
Speaker 1: autobiographical distinction of the body being the center of experience alone.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know how Mark Leary would feel
Speaker 1: about that, but for me, it was the feeling that.
Speaker 1: And I know in pant psychism people actually write about this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying I'm a pant psychist, but they
Speaker 1: would say there is consciousness in all living beings something
Speaker 1: like that, or maybe even all things. I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: that far because I don't. And that's why I don't
Speaker 1: think you need consciousness to talk about mind. In other words,
Speaker 1: I think mind is subjective experience, it's information processing, it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's consciousness, and it is limited by the
Speaker 1: scholar skin. So it doesn't need to be you know, confined,
Speaker 1: just to the individual. Now in that sense, maybe people
Speaker 1: would disagree and say, no, no, no, you have to
Speaker 1: have mind only happening inside a person. And this is
Speaker 1: where maybe this distinction self, mind and consciousness, those distinctions
Speaker 1: is important. I think mind includes more than consciousness. I
Speaker 1: think mind includes more than self. And then in some ways,
Speaker 1: when you look at the idea of self construction, self
Speaker 1: is constructed out of mental experience. So, you know, some
Speaker 1: people see the self as really narrow. Some people have
Speaker 1: a collectivistic view, and that self construl you know, is
Speaker 1: a mental process. So I guess I would put the
Speaker 1: word mind as the larger construct and then put self
Speaker 1: as one aspect of mind and consciousness as another aspect
Speaker 1: of mind. That's that's just this could be just semantics,
Speaker 1: but at least the way I write, that's kind of
Speaker 1: how I try to use that word. Maybe there's a
Speaker 1: better word for it than that, but for now, that's
Speaker 1: that was my placeholder for that overarching energy and information
Speaker 1: flow emergent experience.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for qualifying all that. There's a
Speaker 2: real big puzzle I've been trying to solve in the
Speaker 2: field for a long time, paradox that I still haven't
Speaker 2: fully cracked cracked that, but and that's what the default
Speaker 2: mode network. Because I've been I've published papers on the
Speaker 2: default mode network in the context of creativity, showing that
Speaker 2: it's essential for creative thinking, for divergent thinking, our creative self.
Speaker 2: You know, from jazz improvisers to poets you put them
Speaker 2: in the fMRI machine, to h to rappers. When they're
Speaker 2: in the flow state of consciousness, their default low network
Speaker 2: is as alive as can be, and their executive attention network,
Speaker 2: which is what mindfulness people love so much. It was
Speaker 2: like showing, look, mindfulness improves executive attention that it's actually quieted.
Speaker 2: So when I jump between literally when I jump between literatures,
Speaker 2: I see like I feel like there needs to And
Speaker 2: I've been trying to like integrate these literatures and it's
Speaker 2: not easy because they're almost not they're almost talking past
Speaker 2: each other. The mindfulness literature to them, they get so
Speaker 2: excited when they quiet the default will network, where the
Speaker 2: creativity literature they get so excited when they ramp up
Speaker 2: the default will network. And so what I liked in
Speaker 2: your book was a kind of a throwaway paragraph you had,
Speaker 2: but it was like I was like, no, no, no, he
Speaker 2: needs to really stay there and explicate it. And is
Speaker 2: that you didn't take a hard stance, which I see
Speaker 2: a lot in the mindfulness literature where you say like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's default networks evil, it's bad, we need to quiet it.
Speaker 2: You said, it's all about the disintegration, integration of it
Speaker 2: with the other brain networks. And I think that's the
Speaker 2: key to this mystery. I think that's that's where the
Speaker 2: field needs to focus on. Is the extent to which
Speaker 2: you bring all this because I've argued the default world
Speaker 2: network is the functions of the default mold network are
Speaker 2: the very form of the very core of human existence.
Speaker 2: If we wipe that out, we would know, Yes, it's true,
Speaker 2: we would not no longer feel such a great sense
Speaker 2: of self or an identity to ourselves all you know, identity,
Speaker 2: all those things. It's true. But I also think there's
Speaker 2: something so uniquely wonderful and human about the capacity to
Speaker 2: have an identity, about the capacity to draw on our
Speaker 2: rich associative network of emotional memories, you know, to make meaning,
Speaker 2: to make meaning, And I think we'd be so remiss
Speaker 2: to knock that out. Do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, Well, Scott. Let me let me offer a
Speaker 1: little in honor of you're talking about musicians and jazz
Speaker 1: and stuff and riffing. Let me riff off that if
Speaker 1: I could, Yeah, of course, and see how this, how
Speaker 1: see this, how this you know, resonates with you, and
Speaker 1: then you can do maybe a riff on this and
Speaker 1: and just see how it goes. But I'm with you
Speaker 1: completely on everything you just said. As we are, it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're both grasshoppers, like jumping from literature to literature,
Speaker 1: you know, and then say wow, because it is. It
Speaker 1: is something an impression that I've also experienced that in
Speaker 1: some writings. The default mode is you know, thought of
Speaker 1: as you know, a wandering mind is the unhappy mind,
Speaker 1: and the default mode when it's activated is a bad
Speaker 1: guy and shut.
Speaker 2: It off, for he's the bad guy, the villain in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: And because I'm in all these different worlds, I have
Speaker 1: no problem saying things that get some people irritated, because
Speaker 1: you know, anyway, it's okay. I just want to involve conversation.
Speaker 1: So here's what I want to say in response to that,
Speaker 1: And I'll just say a couple of almost like notes
Speaker 1: in a kind of I'm not a musician, but like
Speaker 1: that set up a certain pattern. So the first to
Speaker 1: say is the and if there's anything I'm about to
Speaker 1: say that you disagree with, I would love to know.
Speaker 1: But the first to say is that the brain, you know,
Speaker 1: as a pattern detector and an anticipation machine, you know,
Speaker 1: that really helps with our survival. But what that means, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: is that as we learn, you know, we develop these
Speaker 1: top down filters. So every time we see a furry animal,
Speaker 1: you know, with a tail that barks, we just label
Speaker 1: it dog and we don't really bother with it because
Speaker 1: it's not a wolf, it's not a lion, it's not
Speaker 1: going to kill us. We can just go past the dog, right,
Speaker 1: So then we don't really see this being in front
Speaker 1: of us, right. So just to label all of that
Speaker 1: top down. There's a lot of top down ways that
Speaker 1: help us be efficient in how we function in the world.
Speaker 1: Every time you go to eat food, you don't like
Speaker 1: marvel at the amazing you know, whatever lettuce that's in
Speaker 1: front of you, just eat the lettuce. Now, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, that makes things efficient. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: that can actually dull our senses, meaning that while sensation
Speaker 1: brings energy, flow into the body. We quickly go from
Speaker 1: sensation to perception, and perception is a construction where sensation
Speaker 1: is as much bottom up as we get living in
Speaker 1: these bodies. So now we have this interesting distinction between
Speaker 1: energy flow as a going through a hose like a conduit.
Speaker 1: So I made up this word conduition versus construction. Right,
Speaker 1: So once you get to perception, things are constructed. Now,
Speaker 1: part of what the default mode does partly and the
Speaker 1: associate of cortex is to take all this learning and
Speaker 1: perceive things and then conceive things and even higher order construction. Right,
Speaker 1: And so we're actually getting further and further away from
Speaker 1: seeing things the more we know, and as the classics
Speaker 1: line goes, the more you know, the less you see. Okay,
Speaker 1: So part of I think the positive aspect of mindfulness
Speaker 1: research and mindfulness practices, and I speak this way. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many if other people do, but whatever,
Speaker 1: This is my experience of it. Anyway, you know, is
Speaker 1: that it helps to basically disengage top down filters so
Speaker 1: you can see more clearly what's actually there. So the
Speaker 1: dog now is not just the dog, it's this amazing
Speaker 1: being with pause and flaws and fur and all this
Speaker 1: beauty and you kind of fall down in ecstasy over
Speaker 1: the incredible privilege of being alive, and the world becomes
Speaker 1: so beautiful and at the same time so funny, because
Speaker 1: the whole gift of being aware is like a comedy show.
Speaker 1: I mean, even though there's all this suffering, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, it's an incredible privilege to be here. Now,
Speaker 1: that combination of beauty and humor is I think, not
Speaker 1: telling the default mode to be quiet, but telling the
Speaker 1: default mode to be open. So part of the introcept
Speaker 1: of it is perception of the interior sensations. For example,
Speaker 1: in those studies of jazz players, when they're doing jazz
Speaker 1: versus people just playing a memorized or reading a classical piece,
Speaker 1: the circuits are different. You have to be super present
Speaker 1: with what is, and the default mode is needed for
Speaker 1: that right And at the same time, we want to
Speaker 1: make sure it isn't overly differentiated to say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just Scott, I'm just Dan, and Dan just acts this
Speaker 1: way or that way whatever, Like Dan as an adult,
Speaker 1: Dan shouldn't dance, Dan shouldn't move, Dan shouldn't wear plaid
Speaker 1: on a podcast. I mean, what the heck is going
Speaker 1: on with you know this body called Dan you know.
Speaker 1: So in a way, and this is consistent with the
Speaker 1: recent research on you know, psychedelics and their one or
Speaker 1: two sessions can lead to help and depression, trauma, people
Speaker 1: facing death when they're a terminal diagnosis, you know, in
Speaker 1: the panic about that, the anxiety. I think what happens
Speaker 1: and I say this in the book Awhere, you know
Speaker 1: is that you are able with psychedelics but also with mindfulness.
Speaker 1: Practice is and we have a practice called the Wheel
Speaker 1: of Awareness where Daker Keltner gave the Mystical Experiences Scale
Speaker 1: when we were teaching a workshop together. He got the
Speaker 1: same scores on people doing this wheel that they got
Speaker 1: as if they were on psilocybin and people were walking
Speaker 1: around going, oh my god, look at all the beauty,
Speaker 1: Look how funny everything is. You know. So I guess
Speaker 1: the big picture of this is I think when you
Speaker 1: integrate the brain, it includes letting these top down filters
Speaker 1: relax and then beginning to open in a creative way.
Speaker 1: That when I was for with one hundred and fifty physicists,
Speaker 1: you know, I was given a chance to you know,
Speaker 1: be a junior faculty on this this week long gathering
Speaker 1: of one hundred and fifty physicists and me, you know,
Speaker 1: and I I kept on asking them what's energy? What's energy?
Speaker 1: What's energy? And they said the most amazing thing, Scott.
Speaker 1: They said, well, energy is the movement from possibility to actuality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I said what And they said, energy is the
Speaker 1: movement from possibility to actuality. And I said, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And I'd already gathered thousands of reports of people doing
Speaker 1: this Wheel of awareness practice. And the wheel basically is
Speaker 1: where you have the things you're aware of on the rim.
Speaker 1: And this metaphor of awareness, basically, consciousness is the awareness itself.
Speaker 1: The knowing of consciousness is representing the metaphor of a hub,
Speaker 1: and then you have a singular spoke of a tension. Anyway,
Speaker 1: when people would, just as one example of the practice,
Speaker 1: bend the spoke around and get into the hub, they
Speaker 1: would experience this expansion of who they felt they were.
Speaker 1: They felt connected to everyone and everything is one parliamentarian
Speaker 1: once said, feeling of love arises and when you take
Speaker 1: the common statement said it's empty but full. And I
Speaker 1: would ask people what do you mean by that? They go,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just what it feels like empty
Speaker 1: but full. I don't know what that means. That's what
Speaker 1: it feels like. And then you map it out on
Speaker 1: the physicist's view, which I put in a graph where
Speaker 1: basically when they say the movement from possibility to actuality
Speaker 1: with in visual terms, what their meaning is the lowest
Speaker 1: level of certainty is where all possibilities are sitting before
Speaker 1: they manifest into actuality or even into probabilities. And that
Speaker 1: you know Arthur Zionce who was at this meeting I
Speaker 1: was at in Italy with one hundred and fifty physicists.
Speaker 1: He calls it a sea of potential. So it's the
Speaker 1: quantum vacuum. And so I drew it out for Arthur
Speaker 1: and I said, well, Arthur, look here's the wheel of
Speaker 1: awareness studies and here's your view. Does it map on
Speaker 1: like this, so you have the bottom, you have maximal
Speaker 1: uncertainty where all possibilities are sitting. And what Arthur calls it,
Speaker 1: and he says, this is a physics term. It sounds poetic,
Speaker 1: but it's from him as a physicist, quantum physics professor
Speaker 1: at Amherst. It says that there's a formless source of
Speaker 1: all form, where all possibilities are sitting, and from that
Speaker 1: formless source of all form in our graph we called
Speaker 1: the plane of possibility arise different movements of energy into
Speaker 1: different degrees of probability that we can call plateaus that
Speaker 1: limit which peaks can arise, or you can go straight
Speaker 1: up from the plane of possibility. So what I think
Speaker 1: creativity might be, and I want to hear what you
Speaker 1: feel about this, is when people let the default mode
Speaker 1: relax a little bit, when they let these top down
Speaker 1: filters relax a little bit, not getting rid of them,
Speaker 1: but actually relaxing them. Integration is enhanced because now you
Speaker 1: can differentiate by accessing this plane of possibility, which I think,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the source of awareness that we
Speaker 1: could talk about. Did I hurt another thumb? But you
Speaker 1: dip down in and you need to be ready to
Speaker 1: be filled with uncertainty. So that's hard. But the synonym
Speaker 1: you learn for uncertainty is freedom and possibility. And I
Speaker 1: think creativity arises when you allow not even so much
Speaker 1: make you allow this energy flow to rise from that
Speaker 1: plane of possibility, and then new combinations naturally emerge in
Speaker 1: integrative ways. It's almost like it's a portal through which
Speaker 1: integration arises, and then, as many people will say, I
Speaker 1: don't know how this piece of music got made. I
Speaker 1: don't know how this poem came out. I don't know
Speaker 1: how this song got written. It just came through me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's because you're relaxing the filters, which
Speaker 1: are top down filters, and letting integration manifest.
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Speaker 2: psych podcast. I think that the description of creativity that
Speaker 2: you gave is quite right, and I love it. I
Speaker 2: think you got the neuroscience completely backwards, and I think
Speaker 2: this is a big problem with a lot of the
Speaker 2: mindfulness people who talk about the neuroscience of the default
Speaker 2: mode network, is that I think the research actually suggests
Speaker 2: the opposite. The research suggests that that the top down
Speaker 2: filters are not coming from the default won network. They're
Speaker 2: coming from the executive attention network. That's where the top
Speaker 2: down great That's where the top down filters are coming from.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, a big pet peep of
Speaker 2: mine is I don't think the mindfulness people fully appreciate
Speaker 2: the value of They treat the executive attention network as
Speaker 2: though it's the greatest thing since sliced bread at all times.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe it's their own personalities, Maybe you know,
Speaker 2: they just they love to constantly be in that sort
Speaker 2: of zombie state where it's like I am fully aware
Speaker 2: of everything happening outside of myself. But look, the thing is,
Speaker 2: I think that creativity requires a relaxation of the executive
Speaker 2: network enough where you don't have that self critical because
Speaker 2: I think I don't think that self critical shit comes
Speaker 2: from the default mode network.
Speaker 1: I really don't.
Speaker 2: I really don't, because all the research on creative flow
Speaker 2: shows so clearly. I can send paper after paper showing
Speaker 2: so clearly that when people are in that subjective state
Speaker 2: where they say, I feel like for the first time,
Speaker 2: I'm not critical, I'm not. There's not a level where
Speaker 2: I'm staying above myself metacognitively. I'm just in the flow state.
Speaker 2: Flowing that brain state actually is a full liveness of
Speaker 2: the default moone network and a real quiet and a
Speaker 2: real quieting of the executive network.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 2: I love what people in the mindfulness field are getting.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to tell them that this is so wonderful.
Speaker 1: I love this. I love this, so let me understand it.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about the chatter of a mind,
Speaker 1: let's say means self critical, where is that arising from?
Speaker 2: You know, there's like the more the more recently evolved
Speaker 2: areas that bring like BA ten, which is like the
Speaker 2: most recently evolved area of the of the lateral prefilt
Speaker 2: to cortex. My answer to that, while your question is
Speaker 2: lateral surface of the prefault to cortex, not the media,
Speaker 2: not the medial. The medial is the default moon network. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's it's the lateral that that causes us to look
Speaker 2: and reflect on the self in a conscious way, where
Speaker 2: then we start getting a mess. We start going in circles,
Speaker 2: we start criticizing ourselves, We spile downwards, spiral upward. If
Speaker 2: you're I think a pure state of being is actually
Speaker 2: one where you're deeply in touch with your default mode network.
Speaker 2: I really think that.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. So when they talk about in the research,
Speaker 1: you know, the classic thing of mind wandering, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: so to say something about the mind wandering, the mind
Speaker 1: wandering and the self critical stuff, we're like overlapping things.
Speaker 1: But this is learning so much, this is great, so
Speaker 1: to say more about it.
Speaker 2: I am learning a lot from you Dan as well.
Speaker 2: So this is I want to say, this is quite mutual.
Speaker 2: Quite mutual. But my research background in grad schools with
Speaker 2: Jeromel Singer, who's the father of daydreaming research, and he
Speaker 2: was very clear to make the distinction between different styles
Speaker 2: of daydreaming. There is a style of daydreaming he calls
Speaker 2: positive constructive daydreaming, which is the greatest source of creativity,
Speaker 2: and that is intentional uh, using your mind wandering in
Speaker 2: a way that's productive and future oriented and.
Speaker 1: Meaning sorry future future or future sorry and meaning making
Speaker 1: and positive and constructive.
Speaker 2: And he was very clear in his research to distinguish
Speaker 2: that from two other day dreamy styles guilty dysphoric rumination,
Speaker 2: which is default mo network. That is, so I think
Speaker 2: the default mo network can latch onto other systems to
Speaker 2: create one of these three things. So it can latch
Speaker 2: onto the migdala if it and and therefore the migdala
Speaker 2: is feeding the default moll network gots of negative shita
Speaker 2: because you're feeling negative. But also I think that the
Speaker 2: third type is the type that that I think is
Speaker 2: really what a lot of people chris a lot which
Speaker 2: is not good for mental health. And that's poor attentional control.
Speaker 2: And that is that's that's the mind wandering that has
Speaker 2: a negative connotation. That's where you just don't feel like
Speaker 2: you can control it, control it at all. So I
Speaker 2: think probably the best for mental health state to be
Speaker 2: in is one where you can access your default mode
Speaker 2: network at will, but you have the attentional control of
Speaker 2: the executive network. You have that flexibility yeah when you
Speaker 2: want it, and the flexibility to turn it off when
Speaker 2: you don't want it.
Speaker 1: That's a beautiful definition of integration.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what any rate it is. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's that, my friend, is where we think we need
Speaker 2: to go in this field as opposed to this fact
Speaker 2: fragmentation we see in the field of like the mindfulness
Speaker 2: researchers saying, look, we're so excited, we quieted the default
Speaker 2: whatever creativity researchers are looking to be like, look we're
Speaker 2: so excited we quieted the executive attention network. I just
Speaker 2: think that's where we need to go on the fields.
Speaker 2: On the same page.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the same page exactly. It's so beautiful to hear
Speaker 1: all this. And you know what's so cool about it too,
Speaker 1: is that when you look and I didn't know if
Speaker 1: you were when you said, have them half right? Heafy
Speaker 1: wrong if you're going to go with the awareness thing.
Speaker 1: But what has been so interesting? And I did I
Speaker 1: did the wheel originally systematically with ten thousand people in
Speaker 1: person live, and then I did it with another forty
Speaker 1: thousand sofore before and I had my assistant ed this up.
Speaker 1: I said, could be this many? She said, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: done fifty thousand people in person? Did the wheel awareness,
Speaker 1: and then the percentage that reported their experience doesn't mean
Speaker 1: everybody had this experience. Would talk about these subjective sensations,
Speaker 1: for example, time disappearing or feeling empty but full. That
Speaker 1: when you look at the physicists view of energy as
Speaker 1: the movement for possibility to actuality, it looks like, and
Speaker 1: this is the proposal, you know, it looks like it
Speaker 1: correlates with dropping into open awareness, accessing some timeless place
Speaker 1: which is empty but full, which correlates with and I'll
Speaker 1: say this at the risk of you saying I don't
Speaker 1: agree with that at all. But before my book Aware
Speaker 1: came out in twenty eighteen. The month before that book,
Speaker 1: which really gets into what I'm about to talk about
Speaker 1: about quantum versus new Tone realms. The cover story of
Speaker 1: Scientific American was when does the quantum Realm Meet the
Speaker 1: Newtonian Realm? And I said, Lord, this is is amazing
Speaker 1: because I was so nervous. People think I'm like out
Speaker 1: of my mind. At least I have defined the mind
Speaker 1: so I can say them out of it, you know,
Speaker 1: because I'm talking about one reality and two realms, and
Speaker 1: that it looks like that. In macro states, large bodies
Speaker 1: like you know, the bodies were in anything larger than
Speaker 1: a molecule or you know, an apple falling from a tree, Planets,
Speaker 1: you know, these large objects macro states. Newton figured out
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty years ago the properties and had
Speaker 1: equation has equations that we use to this day to
Speaker 1: stop a car, for example. But then one hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, we started studying because of technology, we could
Speaker 1: small things like electrons and photons, and those micro small
Speaker 1: states have very different properties than the macro states. So
Speaker 1: even though it's all energy, as Einstein said energy, it
Speaker 1: was mass some speed light squared, meaning mass is just
Speaker 1: very condensed energy. Well, we know that these units of
Speaker 1: energy called quanta, their probability fields, and that there are
Speaker 1: no entities in the quantum realm, the microstate realm. There
Speaker 1: are just events. There are happenings. Now, Interestingly, in this
Speaker 1: quantum realm, it accesses what's called the quantum vacuum, which
Speaker 1: is the formless source of all form. It's empty of
Speaker 1: form but full of possibility. And it is timeless, meaning
Speaker 1: in the quantum equations there aren't there's no variable of time.
Speaker 1: It's because the second law of thermodynamics. Most likely it
Speaker 1: only applies to the macro states where things are tending
Speaker 1: to fall apart. And it's probably our awareness of this
Speaker 1: what's called arrow of time, this directionality of change, that
Speaker 1: the second law determines. That probably is what we mean
Speaker 1: by the quote the word time unquote. So I say
Speaker 1: all that because so far anyway, with the fifty thousand
Speaker 1: people who did it and collecting and recording their reports,
Speaker 1: it looks like when people get into pure awareness, it's
Speaker 1: in the quantum realm of timelessness and this empty but
Speaker 1: full state. And I say all that because when you
Speaker 1: talk to artists, which I have a chance to do.
Speaker 1: My son Alex Siegel, as a musician, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to him, and he's a composer, but I'll talk to
Speaker 1: him and his colleagues, and they talk about when you
Speaker 1: talk about the flow state, they talk about entering this
Speaker 1: what to them looks like an alternative state of mind
Speaker 1: without drugs or anything. They get into the flow, it
Speaker 1: becomes timeless and stuff starts happening through them. That feels
Speaker 1: full of possibility. But how does that all sit with you,
Speaker 1: that all quantum of you?
Speaker 2: I love it, I absolutely love it. Also, I find
Speaker 2: having three cups of coffee also gets me in the
Speaker 2: state of equal probability of anything possible. Enough enough coffee
Speaker 2: will do. That is I mean, that's dope. That's dopamine, right.
Speaker 2: Dopamine is the neuromodulator of explorations, as my colleague Colin
Speaker 2: de Young calls it. And the more we can activate
Speaker 2: dopamine and get the dopaminergic pathways to our default mode network,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that's what's going on there. I
Speaker 2: think that's exactly what's going on there. We found an
Speaker 2: interesting correlation between the efficiency of the default mode network
Speaker 2: and the personality trait openness to experience. We publish that
Speaker 2: paper showing that those two things are actually positively correlated
Speaker 2: with each other quite substantially. So people who have a
Speaker 2: more efficient default mode network where all the different sub hubs,
Speaker 2: because you know, each of these networks have so many
Speaker 2: different hubs that do different things. The more there's integration
Speaker 2: there we go. The more there's integration within within the
Speaker 2: default mode network, the more you tend to score higher
Speaker 2: on that trade openness to experience.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting. You know, we got to do another
Speaker 1: conversation when Yeah, I've been working for seventeen years with
Speaker 1: four other colleagues. Now there's just three of them up,
Speaker 1: so there's four total living one passed away on a
Speaker 1: model of subcortical networks and their relationship to temperament and
Speaker 1: how these subcortical networks may be preferentially sensitive in different individuals,
Speaker 1: and you study individual differences and we've come up with
Speaker 1: a model that we're you know, when you have this
Speaker 1: many people writing a book, it takes forever because every
Speaker 1: time you get one version you get it's been taking literally,
Speaker 1: I'm not exaggerating seventeen years of composing this framework. But
Speaker 1: in any event, it'll be fun to talk to about
Speaker 1: it because part of it is looking at the Big
Speaker 1: five personality traits and seeing, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: actually do something with those as a therapist or as
Speaker 1: an individual versus this model we have, which is something
Speaker 1: you can actually do something with, and it's very different.
Speaker 1: It overlaps a bit with the Big five personality traits,
Speaker 1: but it's a little and anyway, well, when that's all done,
Speaker 1: I want to send it to you and have a
Speaker 1: conversation about it because because it also builds on this
Speaker 1: notion that we're talking about that you know, the role
Speaker 1: of consciousness in accessing flow states or in you know,
Speaker 1: liberating us from and I'll just say it from the
Speaker 1: modern message we get is that the self is separate,
Speaker 1: that you know, who you are is just your body,
Speaker 1: and people are feeling incredibly lonely, especially after the viral pandemic.
Speaker 1: People feel very isolated in the in group outgroup distinctions
Speaker 1: we've inherited from our primate evolution, you know, get worse
Speaker 1: under threat. So there's more social injustice and racism, you know,
Speaker 1: and even the way we treat the planet is we
Speaker 1: excessively differentiate ourselves from nature, as if there's humans and nature,
Speaker 1: you know, rather we are nature. So these are really
Speaker 1: pressing issues of social justice, environmental you know, protection and
Speaker 1: generating regeneration. And the opportunity is here for those of
Speaker 1: us who study, you know, issues related to mental life
Speaker 1: to contribute to that journey of humanity in a way
Speaker 1: where everyone, you know, it's called pervasive leadership, everyone listening
Speaker 1: to you and to me right now has an opportunity
Speaker 1: to participate in guiding life on Earth in a more
Speaker 1: positive direction. So often we feel helpless and hopeless, but
Speaker 1: actually these ideas I mean, for Scott and for me
Speaker 1: these are interesting, but for everybody you know, these can
Speaker 1: actually be actionable ideas when you start to live your
Speaker 1: life that you are more than just an individual self,
Speaker 1: when you realize your default mode network. Sure can participate
Speaker 1: in autobiographical stuff, but it could be part of flow
Speaker 1: and creativity that in fact, part of that flow in
Speaker 1: creativity is to let go of what you've been told
Speaker 1: from outside of you that you are just separate. You
Speaker 1: dissolve away the loneliness and realize you are connected to
Speaker 1: this larger hole. It's where the word intra connected comes from.
Speaker 1: It's like we're not just interconnected, like you're there and
Speaker 1: I'm here and we're connected with cha. That's cool, but
Speaker 1: we are intra connected. There's a wholeness to life that
Speaker 1: we can feel this deep sense of commitment to for agency,
Speaker 1: take the perspective of the whole and even sense into it,
Speaker 1: and that's an invitation. I think that really can be
Speaker 1: a gift that keeps on giving as we every day
Speaker 1: there are new challenges to take on as kind of
Speaker 1: dance partners. But realize, what's the music today? How do
Speaker 1: I really take this dance and move it forward in
Speaker 1: a positive direction?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, I really do love that. You know, you
Speaker 2: talk a lot about the importance of widening our lens
Speaker 2: of identity, and there's just so much there's so many
Speaker 2: practical implications of that the society we live in today.
Speaker 2: I have a quote here I love you say, can
Speaker 2: we widen our lens of identity to see this broader
Speaker 2: belonging and to embrace the subjective experience, a perspective, an
Speaker 2: agency of self that is beyond the boundaries of our
Speaker 2: gin in cased bodies. I wanted to ask you because
Speaker 2: he didn't make this stuff, this this link here in
Speaker 2: your in your book, and I was like, how did
Speaker 2: you know make that link? Because it's your to your
Speaker 2: earlier work. How does that relate to the window of tolerance?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, that's a really interesting.
Speaker 2: Come you didn't bring that into. How come you didn't
Speaker 2: bring that in?
Speaker 1: And sometimes less is more so, you know that's I
Speaker 1: remember my first editor ever I ever had, she said,
Speaker 1: I you know, most people write seven ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: in a book, and you know you put seven ideas
Speaker 1: in a sentence. You gotta you gotta make say less.
Speaker 1: So so thank you for beingerance.
Speaker 2: It has influenced me in my own career.
Speaker 1: A lot that really.
Speaker 2: I teach it at Columbia. Yeah, I teach it to
Speaker 2: my students.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm so happy to hear that. You know,
Speaker 1: that means a lot to me. It's Scott, thank you.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, I think it's exactly right for the
Speaker 1: larger human journey. Widening this lens of identity will widen
Speaker 1: our window of tolerance. We're literally we're going to start
Speaker 1: to feel this harmony that arises when we realize we're
Speaker 1: in this together, you know. And you know, I did
Speaker 1: this some critical conversations for some educators where I said, look,
Speaker 1: we live in a body that has a genetic evolutionary history,
Speaker 1: and part of that history is in group out group distinction.
Speaker 1: We're probably never going to get rid of that. So
Speaker 1: the isn't The issue isn't how do we get rid
Speaker 1: of that?
Speaker 3: No, the issue is how do we rise above it
Speaker 3: and through it? So we say to kids, you're going
Speaker 3: to always have in group outgroup distinctions. Now don't take
Speaker 3: yourself so seriously realize yourself is the person you've just
Speaker 3: put in the outgroup, you know, And then that's the
Speaker 3: widening of the identity lens. I really think we can
Speaker 3: do this you know, humanity can and I think you know,
Speaker 3: we meet we need to make it accessible and practical
Speaker 3: and we but we also need to make it fun.
Speaker 3: But these are actionable things we're talking about.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Is there anything you want to end on here today
Speaker 2: from a very like societal macro view.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the one thing I'll say is that,
Speaker 1: you know, culture transmitted a message about our separateness, you know,
Speaker 1: and if we're gonna let's say, use the word self,
Speaker 1: and we might choose to use a different word, but
Speaker 1: for now, let's just use that as a placeholder. If
Speaker 1: self is the center of what we use as features
Speaker 1: of identity, then it shapes belonging. So in modern culture,
Speaker 1: and it may have derived in the West, but it's
Speaker 1: now all around the world, so let's just call it
Speaker 1: modern culture. We get a message that the self is separate,
Speaker 1: and so we work from an individualistic point of view,
Speaker 1: and I'll just speak maybe a little bit to the extreme.
Speaker 1: But it's not working. I mean, I think we all
Speaker 1: know that people feel it, that stats are there, it's
Speaker 1: not working. So what I hope the conversation that Scott
Speaker 1: and I are having with you is you know, really saying, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that was an error. Maybe the modern cultural message
Speaker 1: of separation of this solo self is actually an error,
Speaker 1: and not only is it mistaken, it might be a
Speaker 1: lethal lie. So just like if you had a friend
Speaker 1: who had a splinter in their foot and they didn't
Speaker 1: know it, and they're hobbling along. They don't like to hobble,
Speaker 1: then you say, let me look under your shoe, let's
Speaker 1: look under your sock, let's look at the sole of
Speaker 1: your foot. Oh my gosh, let's remove the splinter. Now
Speaker 1: your friend puts their sock back on, puts their shoes
Speaker 1: on it, and they could walk in a balanced way.
Speaker 1: It could be that the splinter of the psyche of
Speaker 1: modern society is the message that the self is only
Speaker 1: in the body, the soul of self. And if that's
Speaker 1: the splinter, it actually might be quite simple. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's gonna be easy, but it might be simple
Speaker 1: to say, let's raise children to realize that they're a
Speaker 1: me and a wee. Let's have people in schools realize
Speaker 1: they are a me and a we. Let's work with
Speaker 1: people in companies. Let's treat each other out on the street. Literally,
Speaker 1: have a new word we. I mean, it's a funny word.
Speaker 1: But we can get in all the languages on Earth
Speaker 1: and say, look, we made a mistake. Whoops. We thought
Speaker 1: the self was the same as the individual. We were wrong,
Speaker 1: and it led to disastrous outcomes. We still have a
Speaker 1: window of opportunity to change by removing the splinter, the
Speaker 1: lie of the separate self, and now learning to walk
Speaker 1: in a more balanced, integrated way on earth with all
Speaker 1: living things. So thank you for being here with us,
Speaker 1: and Scott, thank you for having this body called Dan
Speaker 1: here with you. And I just think we can do this.
Speaker 1: I really do. It's a matter of identifying the splinter,
Speaker 1: removing it and having fun walking, running, dancing. We can
Speaker 1: do this. We can.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Instead of solo self, maybe we should call it the
Speaker 2: isolate itself. Maybe this is more isolated exactly. Oh I
Speaker 2: love it, Dan, you know, just thank you so much
Speaker 2: for this chat today, and I'm rooting for you out
Speaker 2: there to make this change in the world.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's been a pleasure. SBK, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 2: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 2: at thus psychology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube page,
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Speaker 2: great supporter of the show, and tune in next time
Speaker 2: for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.