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Speaker 1: you take the leap towards growth, you stop worrying so
Speaker 1: much about coping. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Have
Speaker 1: you tried to start meditating daily but can't seem to
Speaker 1: stick with it? I had that same problem too for
Speaker 1: a long time, which is why I've created a new
Speaker 1: guide called the Top five reasons you can't seem to
Speaker 1: stick with the meditation practice and how to actually build one.
Speaker 1: At last, just head over to our website at one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net and you can get free access
Speaker 1: to this helpful resource. Again, that's a free guide called
Speaker 1: the Top five reasons you can't seem to stick with
Speaker 1: a meditation practice at one you feed dot net. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Scott
Speaker 1: Berry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist interested in the development of intelligence, creativity,
Speaker 1: and personality. He applies a variety of perspectives to come
Speaker 1: to a richer understanding and appreciation of all kinds of
Speaker 1: minds and ways of achieving greatness. Today's Scott and Eric
Speaker 1: discuss his book Transcend, The New Science of Self Actualization.
Speaker 1: Hi Scott, Welcome to the show. Hey been looking forward
Speaker 1: to be on the show for a while. Happy to
Speaker 1: have you on. We're going to discuss your latest book
Speaker 1: called Transcend The New Science of Self Actualization. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with
Speaker 1: the parable. There's a grandfather who's done with his granddaughter
Speaker 1: and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 1: of us that are always at battle. What is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops
Speaker 1: and she thinks about it for a second, and she
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandfather. She said, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. So much, so much that
Speaker 1: parable is so important. In fact, the ideas around that
Speaker 1: parable have really influenced me a lot in studying notions
Speaker 1: such as what is the true self? Is there such
Speaker 1: a thing as the true self? And then is that
Speaker 1: true self the the bad wolf for the good wolf?
Speaker 1: You know? And how do we know what? You know?
Speaker 1: Can we choose which is the true self? Do we
Speaker 1: have any choice in the matter. I'm very interested in
Speaker 1: it from a humanistic psychology perspective. Humanistic psychologists are very
Speaker 1: interested in the tension between secure in growth or or
Speaker 1: defense and insecurity and growth, and how those things are
Speaker 1: constantly battling for attention. I'm interested in from an evolutionary
Speaker 1: point of view that parable, you know, the extent to
Speaker 1: which we evolved to be naughty. You know, that's why
Speaker 1: we have. We evolved because our genes don't you know,
Speaker 1: don't care about the great life meaning we do, but
Speaker 1: the genes don't care. The genes want to propagate it
Speaker 1: as fast as possible to the next generation. So we
Speaker 1: have all these hedonistic pursuits and fears of potential survival
Speaker 1: issues take priority. So just so many different levels of analysis.
Speaker 1: I just think it's so wonderful that your your podcast
Speaker 1: is around what some could argue the most important parable
Speaker 1: of them all. How did you first discover the parable?
Speaker 1: I first heard the parable somewhere in my first several
Speaker 1: months of recovery from heroin addiction. I just heard it
Speaker 1: in some a a meeting somewhere, and of course, coming
Speaker 1: out on the heels of heroin addiction, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty powerful story for me. Because and I saw the
Speaker 1: truth in it was like, well, this way I can
Speaker 1: get better, and here's the things I can do that
Speaker 1: will get me better, and these are the things I
Speaker 1: can do that will make me worse. And you know,
Speaker 1: I often joke that, like I wasn't even feeding the
Speaker 1: bad wolf anymore. He was just eating me, uh pretty
Speaker 1: much for for dinner, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for that
Speaker 1: matter at that point. But that's where I first heard it,
Speaker 1: and so it sort of had kicked around my head
Speaker 1: for boy, twenty some years before the show started. That
Speaker 1: really so such so powerful. Yeah, so let's jump in
Speaker 1: here about your book. In the pre show conversation, you
Speaker 1: and I were talking for a couple of minutes and
Speaker 1: I said, hey, I loved your book. I love this
Speaker 1: stuff about transcendence and I love this stuff about self actualization.
Speaker 1: But one of the things a lot of listeners are
Speaker 1: struggling right now and they're looking for ways to cope.
Speaker 1: And I said, can we spend a little of our
Speaker 1: time on ways to cope? And you said, let's discuss
Speaker 1: that on air. So let's discuss it. I've been doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of podcasts and promoting I don't like the
Speaker 1: word promote, but talking about my new book Transcend the
Speaker 1: New Science of Self Actualization, and everyone wants to talk
Speaker 1: about how can we cope? How can we cope? And
Speaker 1: it's interesting because sometimes the way you phrase the question
Speaker 1: in your head, the framing, influences how you actually feel,
Speaker 1: and this whole parable is relevant. You know, if you
Speaker 1: keep feeding the question how do I cope? How do
Speaker 1: I cope? You'll forget We're capable of thriving. Not everything
Speaker 1: in life is about coping all the time, even when
Speaker 1: it seems like it is. My researchers shown is that
Speaker 1: if you take the leap towards growth, you stop worrying
Speaker 1: so much about coping, that question doesn't even become that
Speaker 1: prominent in your consciousness anymore. So I actually would argue
Speaker 1: that the best way forward in this time is to
Speaker 1: devote as much time in your day to more transcendent
Speaker 1: ways of being. There's a whole continuum of transcendent experiences,
Speaker 1: things like gratitude, love, uh flow, getting deeply immersed in
Speaker 1: something you love doing, watching inspirational videos, watching romantic comedies,
Speaker 1: you know, or watching naughty comedies. That's fine too, you know,
Speaker 1: the things that that that really give you a deep
Speaker 1: belly laugh because they're so wrong. I mean, that could
Speaker 1: be transcendent to get outside of yourself, get outside of
Speaker 1: thinking so much about yourself, you know. Um, the more
Speaker 1: we can get outside of um that self rumination, I
Speaker 1: think that's the real key to moving forward. I've been
Speaker 1: asked the question so many times in the past week.
Speaker 1: How can people cope? That I almost feel a nauseous
Speaker 1: what's on asking that question? Now? It's like too much?
Speaker 1: Too much with the question. You can put on CNN
Speaker 1: and they'll tell you plenty of things you need to
Speaker 1: be worried about, and you can watch that eight hours
Speaker 1: a day and not learn any new information. Then if
Speaker 1: you watch it five minutes in the morning, check in, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's happened yesterday. Okay, I'm done, done for the day.
Speaker 1: Now I can Can I enjoy my day? Am I
Speaker 1: allowed to enjoy my day? Am I allowed to have
Speaker 1: any peace? You know? Like? Am I allowed to uplift others?
Speaker 1: And forget about it? And my answer is yes, you can. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that. It makes me think. We had Mark
Speaker 1: Nepo on the show very recently, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that he talked about that really stuck out to
Speaker 1: me was this idea of yeah, their survival, but a
Speaker 1: lot of times we make a god out of survival
Speaker 1: and that ends up taking away our ability to thrive.
Speaker 1: I love that. I need to listen to that episode. Obviously,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to cope? Like, let's philosophically discussed
Speaker 1: that a second. What is the state of your coping
Speaker 1: look like? To me? The idea of coping has this
Speaker 1: mental image of like, you're just holding back, you know,
Speaker 1: as hard as possible. The barrage of cropole that's about
Speaker 1: that that wants to dump on you. Yeah, and you're
Speaker 1: just sorry for the terrible analogy, but in any second
Speaker 1: it could crack. Yeah, coping doesn't seem to make a
Speaker 1: very permanent solution to me. The most permanent solution, in
Speaker 1: I view, has always been U might take a very
Speaker 1: act approach acceptance and commitment therapy approach is not doing
Speaker 1: experiential avoidance, but just go toward the darn thing, you know,
Speaker 1: with with bravery, you know, I remember there's a there's
Speaker 1: a cute YouTube video which I'd have to look up.
Speaker 1: If if you do show notes, I can send it
Speaker 1: to whatever um talking about the act approach, where you're
Speaker 1: on a ship and you're steering a ship, and you
Speaker 1: know where you want to go. You have the direction
Speaker 1: you want to go. You know our direction in the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: The direction is to live our lives again like before,
Speaker 1: maybe even better than before. But there's these constant monsters
Speaker 1: underneath the whole of our boat that are just screaming
Speaker 1: at you, like stop. You know you can't go further.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to reach there. You you need to stop.
Speaker 1: Go And and what this video beautifully shows is that
Speaker 1: this person realizes has the insight that well, first he
Speaker 1: tries going and clauboring them all, but they keep coming back.
Speaker 1: They're not going to go away forever. The best thing
Speaker 1: is to keep driving that boat with it all in
Speaker 1: your ear and be like, no, it's it's there. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm with it. I'm with it. I hear you all,
Speaker 1: I hear you all, but I ain't listening to you.
Speaker 1: I'm still going. I'm still going in the direction I
Speaker 1: want to go. And this applies act approach, by the
Speaker 1: way has been applied to people overcoming drug addictions has
Speaker 1: been uh. Steven Hayes has pioneered this and he's a
Speaker 1: good friend and we have lots of nerding out sessions.
Speaker 1: I did a role play with him on my podcast
Speaker 1: and I was like, I was like, Steve, I I'm
Speaker 1: a loser. I mean, I don't really think a loser,
Speaker 1: but I was role playing with him. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm a loser. I have all these thoughts and I
Speaker 1: don't know why this is my role play voice, Vinny,
Speaker 1: But you know you chucolate too much. You know what
Speaker 1: can I do? And he helped me through this, and
Speaker 1: the best way through it is not through experiential avoidance.
Speaker 1: You know, it really isn't. So I don't know, coping
Speaker 1: seems like a boring outcome. How about we transcendent? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you say that oftentimes the way to grow towards
Speaker 1: greater growth and transcendence is not by ignoring the inevitability
Speaker 1: of human suffering, but by integrating everything that's within you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is part of us now, this moment is part
Speaker 1: of us. And the question is how are we going
Speaker 1: to integrate it and not get rid of it? I
Speaker 1: mean that it's a bad question to try to get
Speaker 1: rid of it. How can we integrate it? Well? A
Speaker 1: lot of people are integrating it really well. I just
Speaker 1: must to have been really impressed. I'm not surprised. I've
Speaker 1: always have positive faith in humanity, but I'm seeing so
Speaker 1: many people integrating it their fears in such beautiful way
Speaker 1: as creating videos that are going viral and uplifting all
Speaker 1: of our spirits. To healthcare workers, sure they have fear,
Speaker 1: what are they gonna do just cope during the day,
Speaker 1: or they save lives, you know, like they're saving lives.
Speaker 1: They chose to save lives. You just have such a
Speaker 1: wide range of the human spirit right now on display,
Speaker 1: like it's never been on display. Sorry if I sound
Speaker 1: too optimistic, but I think there's I think there's some
Speaker 1: positive outcomes in this situation. Yeah, well, I think there
Speaker 1: certainly are. And I think that the challenge with things
Speaker 1: like this I always find is that on one hand,
Speaker 1: difficult situations, we know they give opportunities for growth. Difficult
Speaker 1: situations can be some of the most fertile soil there is,
Speaker 1: and yet oftentimes I'm hesitant to pay my growth in
Speaker 1: my fertile soil while other people are dying. Right. It's
Speaker 1: this sensitivity to say, well, yeah, I recognize I can
Speaker 1: grow through this, but I don't want to only frame
Speaker 1: it as a growth opportunity for me, because it's fairly
Speaker 1: callous to people who whose experience of this whole thing
Speaker 1: is very different than what mine is right now. But
Speaker 1: just because other people are suffering doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: have to suffer a and be you do care about
Speaker 1: other people, which is a very worthy goal. Not suffering
Speaker 1: is the best way you can offer value to the world.
Speaker 1: So I would put out those two postulates in response
Speaker 1: to what you just said. Yep, I agree with both those.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you say in the book
Speaker 1: is that this is critical not only to health and wellness,
Speaker 1: also to our survival. And it's the ability to reduce,
Speaker 1: manage and even embrace uncertainty. And I think that is
Speaker 1: what a lot of people, if you, if they had
Speaker 1: to boil down what they're dealing with right now, it's
Speaker 1: this massive uncertainty because what's coming? When is it coming?
Speaker 1: So what are some strategies for doing that for reduced
Speaker 1: managing and embracing uncertainty? Certain team management is like one
Speaker 1: of thost important skills we can learn in life, and
Speaker 1: many of us are are faced with having to develop
Speaker 1: those muscles, sometimes for the for the first time in
Speaker 1: it to a great degree. Other others are faced with
Speaker 1: this moment of great uncertainty, having spent their whole lives
Speaker 1: being neurotic messages you know, uh and and and they're
Speaker 1: ready for it, like you know, I'm I'm ready. Like
Speaker 1: when this happened, I was like, you know, come on, really,
Speaker 1: I got my oxygen tanks, I got my I got
Speaker 1: everything right here in my living room. I've been waiting
Speaker 1: my whole life for this moment. We have the portable
Speaker 1: breathing oxygen things, not the whole not the full tank. No, no,
Speaker 1: I got that I could pull it out of. You know,
Speaker 1: I got just you know, I got you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of that that hikers you know by Yeah. So
Speaker 1: we each come to at different stages. But I think
Speaker 1: that I'm not the here are the five ways to
Speaker 1: hack your management uncertainty guy Like, that's not me. So um,
Speaker 1: I look at the science and try to think of
Speaker 1: what practices can help us move towards growth. And I
Speaker 1: found that this trait openness to experience is a personality
Speaker 1: trait that we differ on, but we can all cultivate.
Speaker 1: And in my prior book, Wired to Create that one
Speaker 1: of the central went to that book was The thing
Speaker 1: that separates creative people from lesser creative people is that
Speaker 1: the created people get excited by uncertainty. They don't fear it.
Speaker 1: They have a different temperament and attitude. Sure, so, in
Speaker 1: one way, my answer your question is changed your unproductive
Speaker 1: attitude towards uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't necessarily mean you're going to die.
Speaker 1: Uncertainty is uncertainty. The thing it drives people who are
Speaker 1: neurotic crazy is uncertainty, not something that's bad. In fact,
Speaker 1: research shows that people who are neurotic a f they
Speaker 1: tend to prefer the really dire outcome over a prolonged
Speaker 1: period of ignacious outcome. You know, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of neurotic people right now. Herson, give me the darn
Speaker 1: virus already, you know, like, come on, let's get it
Speaker 1: over with. Let's go, I can't kill. What's killing me
Speaker 1: is that is having to sit and would deal with
Speaker 1: this uncertainty. This, this is the thing is is going
Speaker 1: towards being open to the new experiences and embracing it
Speaker 1: and like and and being like, you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: so much I can't control, you know, letting go of
Speaker 1: that illusion of control, and some people do it through
Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation. That's really helped a lot of people to
Speaker 1: be able to sit with their thoughts and sort of
Speaker 1: unload their deepest anxieties away from their consciousness so they
Speaker 1: don't have to connect to it so much. Other people
Speaker 1: manage it a movement and have found that exercise really helps.
Speaker 1: But so much of it also is just changing your
Speaker 1: core beliefs, as they say in cognitive behavioral therapy, your
Speaker 1: core beliefs about the world. And maybe one of your
Speaker 1: core beliefs before this moment was that the world was safe,
Speaker 1: and your core belief has been completely upended, and you
Speaker 1: don't know what to do or what's right or what's wrong.
Speaker 1: And my response to that would be that you're your
Speaker 1: core belief before maybe it was not right, maybe you
Speaker 1: didn't realize, but every time you stepped outside across the street,
Speaker 1: there was an uncertain outcome there. Every time you know,
Speaker 1: you'd a lot more than you realize. I definitely think
Speaker 1: that's true. I think that this has brought to the
Speaker 1: surface things that have always been true. We've always been
Speaker 1: profoundly out of control of lots of elements of life,
Speaker 1: and and the fact that we thought we were controlling
Speaker 1: it all was just an illusion. I just think this
Speaker 1: is exposed some things that some people are already in
Speaker 1: touch with, and maybe increase the likelihood of some of
Speaker 1: these things, but but certainly didn't change our fundamental relationship
Speaker 1: to them, which is that you know. Again, to quote
Speaker 1: Mark Nepo again, I don't. I guess I got him
Speaker 1: on the brain, but a long time ago he talked
Speaker 1: about the terrible knowledge, and the terrible knowledge is that
Speaker 1: anything can happen to any of us at any time.
Speaker 1: You know it is. It's a terrible knowledge, but it's
Speaker 1: a hard truth that once confronted, we can sit with easier.
Speaker 1: Abraham also, the humanistic psychologists argues in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: going right to the ultimate unknown as the best thing
Speaker 1: and making peace with your mortality. I know it sounds
Speaker 1: not like a fun thing to do, but there are
Speaker 1: cultures where they make death such a prominent feature. You know,
Speaker 1: they don't shun away from it or sweeped under the
Speaker 1: rug that they make people think about it and meditate
Speaker 1: on it, and they're much happier. Those countries are like
Speaker 1: like the country buton they're a very happy people. It's
Speaker 1: not like that practice has created it more anxiety. In fact,
Speaker 1: just go towards your worst fears. And now I'm not saying, hello, Corona,
Speaker 1: come to me. That's not That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But in your head, you know, like really meditate on
Speaker 1: your deepest fears and think, what is the worst thing
Speaker 1: that could happen? Even if you're dead, what's the worst
Speaker 1: thing that happened, you know, like you won't suffer anymore.
Speaker 1: Lots of Buddhist cultures have always recommended, you know, meditating
Speaker 1: on your own death, which actually, your book is tremendous
Speaker 1: and I have a preposterous number of notes for a
Speaker 1: forty conversation, so there's no way I'm getting to all
Speaker 1: of it. So as you hit on something and it
Speaker 1: comes up, I'm like, wow, just I guess I'll take
Speaker 1: that one. But you described I guess it's a game.
Speaker 1: But something called the End that you got involved in
Speaker 1: that basically was this confronting our mortality straight on. So
Speaker 1: I guess two questions there A tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about that, and be is that something that's available
Speaker 1: in the world to normal people or was it some
Speaker 1: experimental thing that you just happened to get looped into
Speaker 1: Oh I can find out. I don't know what stage
Speaker 1: there at right now with it, but I think you
Speaker 1: might have to live in Philadelphia to participate in it.
Speaker 1: I should totally make a virtual version of it. It
Speaker 1: was an experimental theater production that I got involved in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was really interesting. I was going through an existential
Speaker 1: crisis at that time in my life and it was
Speaker 1: really bad, just right before I started writing this book
Speaker 1: and getting the idea for this book, and I was
Speaker 1: doing a lot of reading, a lot of ringing the
Speaker 1: existential humanistic psychotherapists, Irving y'all who wrote a great book
Speaker 1: Existential Psychotherapy. I started with that book. It was so good,
Speaker 1: it was so good. And then this this game fell
Speaker 1: in my lap, and this game allowed me to for
Speaker 1: feul was thirty days fully confront my worst fears. And
Speaker 1: they would even give us role playing situations and it
Speaker 1: was scary like because they were such good actors that
Speaker 1: it was real. But we would we would go in
Speaker 1: the doctor with one of our missions. We would get
Speaker 1: a text from an entity called the End every day
Speaker 1: who would give us on a new mission. And one
Speaker 1: of our missions, I went to a doctor's waiting room.
Speaker 1: It looked like a doctor's waiting room and they were
Speaker 1: like that, They're like, doctor will see you now. And
Speaker 1: I went into the doctor and the doctors like so
Speaker 1: their test results came back and your cancer has really
Speaker 1: gone weight stage and you might only have a few
Speaker 1: days to live. Basically now I knew it didn't really happen,
Speaker 1: but for some reason that the way they set they
Speaker 1: set it all up to plug tugging your your heart strings.
Speaker 1: And the actress was that we were supposed to really
Speaker 1: confront what would have feel like. We we role played
Speaker 1: everything we got, we could, try to get our finances
Speaker 1: in order. We had things like if this was our
Speaker 1: last day and earth, who could we most want to
Speaker 1: talk to? And I just felt like a greater connection
Speaker 1: to everyone and I a greater sense of meaning. Um
Speaker 1: My fear of death really dissipated after that. It was
Speaker 1: just a really beautiful, beautiful game. One of the things
Speaker 1: that you talked about in the book, and I thought
Speaker 1: this was really great. And a lot of this book
Speaker 1: you're talking about Maslow and a lot of his writings
Speaker 1: and really going deep and unearthing a lot of things
Speaker 1: of his that most of us who have a passing
Speaker 1: knowledge don't know, but there's a phrase that I loved,
Speaker 1: and he said he made it clear that human match
Speaker 1: duration was an ongoing process and that growth was not
Speaker 1: a sudden, salutary phenomenon. But it's often two steps forward
Speaker 1: and one step back. And I just think that's such
Speaker 1: an important idea, that like, we don't grow all at once,
Speaker 1: and we don't grow in a linear way that are
Speaker 1: maturing in our growth. We go forward, we go back,
Speaker 1: we go forward, we go back. But I just think
Speaker 1: that's such an important idea, and I was really struck
Speaker 1: by it when I read it. I think it's so
Speaker 1: important because people treat Maslow's hearchy of needs like it's
Speaker 1: some sort of mountain you climb, and that we're like
Speaker 1: it's a video game, you know, where you reach a
Speaker 1: certain level. He's like, dude, to two, level three now,
Speaker 1: you know, and you go into the next level and
Speaker 1: you don't ever turn a level two. Maslow did make
Speaker 1: clear that we're addressing multiple needs simultaneously all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, we're we can go right down the list
Speaker 1: of the basic needs and you give me a number
Speaker 1: from zero to one hundred how much it's satisfied, and
Speaker 1: none of them are going to be a hundred, right,
Speaker 1: and we're constantly falling backward and moving for word again.
Speaker 1: And you know, people who are from addiction can test
Speaker 1: this for sure. You're not a failure. If you slip
Speaker 1: once or twice, you know it's not It's not like
Speaker 1: you've gone back to level zero, even after a full
Speaker 1: year of growth. If you have a slip, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you fell all the way back to step one again. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's actually part of the process. Despite some of
Speaker 1: our recovery programs over reliance on how many days you have.
Speaker 1: What you just said is an absolutely true statement. The
Speaker 1: more that we can remember that as we struggle, the
Speaker 1: better that you know this is a learning process. The
Speaker 1: other thing that you said pretty early in the book,
Speaker 1: you said today many people who are striving for transcendence,
Speaker 1: they're trying to hit transcendence without a healthy integration of
Speaker 1: their other needs. You use examples like people who expect
Speaker 1: a mindfulness retreater or yoga class to be a pantasy
Speaker 1: for trauma and deep insecurity. So to what extent do
Speaker 1: we need to sort of do these things in meet
Speaker 1: our basic needs, work our way up the hierarchy of
Speaker 1: needs and and to what extent can we jump in
Speaker 1: at different levels? It sounds like both at certain points.
Speaker 1: The key is it's all about integration and we're a
Speaker 1: whole unit. We can't separate one of these needs from
Speaker 1: the rest of us, and if we do, that's when
Speaker 1: things running a problem. And and you know, to the
Speaker 1: to the chronically hungry human being who's not a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: everyone looks like a hamburger to them. You know, you're
Speaker 1: walking around, that's all you're seeing. You're looking for food
Speaker 1: for vegetarian, You're looking for where's the broccoli? You know,
Speaker 1: like everywhere you look, I'm desperate for broccoli, and you
Speaker 1: don't care about anything else but broccoli. And the same
Speaker 1: principle applies to being severely deprived of any of these
Speaker 1: just severely deprived of connection you come across to others
Speaker 1: is very quite needy, which is actually a parado. It's
Speaker 1: very unfortunate. It's a kind of catch point two that
Speaker 1: the the loneliest people tend to be shunned the most
Speaker 1: by society. That's a shame. But you know, you you
Speaker 1: walk around and being like please love me, please like me.
Speaker 1: I'll do anything you know for you to like me
Speaker 1: when you're chronically deprived, and the same thing with esteem.
Speaker 1: If no one respects you at all, any of the
Speaker 1: work you do in this world doesn't feel like it
Speaker 1: has any of an impact. You start to have an
Speaker 1: outsized demand for respect. And that can take different forms.
Speaker 1: That could take the form of the school shooter, the shy,
Speaker 1: introverted school shooter, or it could take the form of
Speaker 1: I don't know if you could think of any examples
Speaker 1: of a grandiose narcissist, someone who is really obsessed with
Speaker 1: greatness or something. I don't know. I can't think of
Speaker 1: anyone like that right now, but maybe you can think
Speaker 1: it's not only that, uh, they could take that form.
Speaker 1: You know, I shall have power over the world, and
Speaker 1: so this is really important to identify where you're most
Speaker 1: severely deprived. But I would say ultimately it's all interconnected
Speaker 1: because we need to think of it like you want
Speaker 1: to get to the heights of your humanity. If you
Speaker 1: want to reach your full potential, well treat it like chapel.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't observe the most beautiful aspects of
Speaker 1: the chapel. The chapel uh needs a strong foundation, or
Speaker 1: alsino crumble and you have to really make sure that
Speaker 1: that foundation of who you are is as strong and
Speaker 1: stands on as a sturdy a foundation as possible, so
Speaker 1: that you can really reach those heights so they're all
Speaker 1: interconnected with each other at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: That's a debate that shows up in the spiritual world,
Speaker 1: particularly parts of the spiritual world that are more focused
Speaker 1: on nondual awakening or awakening from the illusion of a self.
Speaker 1: Is hey, are you more likely to awaken if you've
Speaker 1: met your basic needs, if you're psychologically healthy. Is doing
Speaker 1: psychological work worth doing? Or you just skip right by
Speaker 1: all that and just have a non dual experience and
Speaker 1: you're on your way. You know, it's a It's a
Speaker 1: debate that that community spends a fair amount of time on.
Speaker 1: Are you in that community? I spend some time in
Speaker 1: that community in that I've had some mystical experiences that
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in the Buddhist sense that this
Speaker 1: self is an illusion and illusions the wrong word. It's
Speaker 1: it's not what we take it to be, and that
Speaker 1: there are ways of orienting towards the world which which
Speaker 1: result in profoundly different orientations to what I call myself.
Speaker 1: So in that way, yes, but I wouldn't say that's
Speaker 1: the only world I'm in or the only place I'm
Speaker 1: interested in either. You know, I guess if I have
Speaker 1: a you know, a spiritual orientation, as I'm a Zen Buddhist,
Speaker 1: I study with a Zen teacher, I go on silent retreats. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty interested in this idea of awakening, and you know,
Speaker 1: have had some pretty profound experiences that have shown me
Speaker 1: what's possible. So, yeah, wonderful. I wanted to hear your
Speaker 1: personal experience the closest I would come to for myself
Speaker 1: as describe myself as a Zen Buddhist as well. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that the humanistic psychologist Abraham has a
Speaker 1: deeply influenced by by that. Did you get a chance
Speaker 1: to read the final chapter theory? Z? Yes? I did
Speaker 1: that state of consciousness that that he was getting at
Speaker 1: the plateau experience? Yes, not the peak experience. I think
Speaker 1: it's as closest as we get to two ancient notions
Speaker 1: of satory or you know, some of the highest states
Speaker 1: of consciousness that one could could achieve. And I think
Speaker 1: it was striving towards that I really tried to to
Speaker 1: get us to it in the book. It's there's kind
Speaker 1: of a twist ending of the book because you think,
Speaker 1: I tell you to tell the listeners the twist ending,
Speaker 1: I want them to spoiler alert. You think that you're
Speaker 1: just going upward in some upward direction, like you've transcended
Speaker 1: this and that and that, and then you're like, you're
Speaker 1: gonna end the book triumphantly with your purpose and then
Speaker 1: your full potential, and then you can start being a
Speaker 1: positive psychology coach and make millions of dollars. And then
Speaker 1: what you find in the book is that it actually
Speaker 1: ends on a different note, right am I? Right, that's
Speaker 1: not the note of which it ends. It ends on
Speaker 1: Maslow's realization, having gone upward that upward trajectory and then
Speaker 1: facing mortality, that the you to life actually was there
Speaker 1: all along in his backyard, in the view of a
Speaker 1: of a tiny flower. Yeah. I just have found it
Speaker 1: so interesting reading the trajectory of Maslow's own life and
Speaker 1: his personal journals and his correspondences with his East Asian colleague,
Speaker 1: you ay as Rani, who made people might not have
Speaker 1: heard of uh this generation, but who was deeply interested
Speaker 1: in these higher states of consciousness. And it seems like
Speaker 1: those states of consciousness are just you're so profoundly touched
Speaker 1: by beauty and things that are as many school as
Speaker 1: can get. It makes me think of several Zen teachings.
Speaker 1: There's a Zen teaching that I never get these things
Speaker 1: exactly right, but it basically says, like, in the beginning,
Speaker 1: the mountain is just a mountain, and then the mountain
Speaker 1: is no longer a mountain, and then after that the
Speaker 1: mountain is just a mountain again, you know. And it
Speaker 1: talks about the fact we start from this ordinary consciousness,
Speaker 1: we might have some of these peak experiences, some of
Speaker 1: these mystical experiences, and then when we're on the other
Speaker 1: side of it, we're back to like, well, it's a mountain,
Speaker 1: but it's a mountain in a different way, in the
Speaker 1: same way that you're describing in the book, this plateau experience,
Speaker 1: which is we think of a peak experiences this thing.
Speaker 1: We it's a speak experience. We sort of shoot up
Speaker 1: too and we're there, we come back down. But the
Speaker 1: plateau experience, they're more enduring, and they involve seeing the
Speaker 1: extraordinary in the ordinary. And that's the thing I love
Speaker 1: about this Zen training for me is so great is
Speaker 1: because whenever I start spinning off and being like, well,
Speaker 1: I need that, No, it needs to be that, it
Speaker 1: needs to be over there, I need this, and it
Speaker 1: just goes no, right here, come right back. Like your life,
Speaker 1: right where you are, with the ordinary things in your life,
Speaker 1: has the capacity to awaken if you look there closely enough.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I didn't know that I'd be able
Speaker 1: to bond with you today over our our mutual interests
Speaker 1: in this. I don't get a chance to bond over
Speaker 1: this everyone I talked to, So I don't take it
Speaker 1: for I don't take anything for granted. It's really blest
Speaker 1: for this moment that we can have together. But I've
Speaker 1: really come to that realization too that so many things
Speaker 1: in life are pulling us. We need to do that.
Speaker 1: We I want this, I want that. Those are actually
Speaker 1: all the distractions. Those are the distractions. The truth lies
Speaker 1: within you right now without anything more, anything added. So
Speaker 1: much of the key of all of this is not
Speaker 1: adding stuff, being as president and aware to who you
Speaker 1: are at your deepest core in this moment. It's a
Speaker 1: profound realization, and and and it's something that you can forget.
Speaker 1: That realization. You can get it through meditation, sometimes you
Speaker 1: have these moments or you have that insight again and
Speaker 1: then you forget it and then you go back, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we might be looking here to do list, you know everything,
Speaker 1: you're looking at your emails and getting stressed by your emails.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think it's interesting that that is true,
Speaker 1: and that it's not immediately and often apparent, and that
Speaker 1: there are ways of being, there are things that we
Speaker 1: can do, and I love that was what a lot
Speaker 1: of the book talks about, is this idea of of
Speaker 1: the B realm, right, this is this realm of pure being.
Speaker 1: And near the end of the book you list like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many it is, but like pages
Speaker 1: of these things that Maslow recommended, his potential ways to
Speaker 1: spend a little more time in the B realm. Did
Speaker 1: you like those things? I did? Some of them were great,
Speaker 1: some of them were Yeah. He was just rattling that
Speaker 1: off there towards the end of his life. The other
Speaker 1: thing that was interesting for me in that section of
Speaker 1: the book was meta grumbles. Yeah that interesting. Yeah, can
Speaker 1: you share that idea a little bit? He went all
Speaker 1: out with the meta So meta needs, we have meta needs,
Speaker 1: meta values, met of motivations, being motivated by things that
Speaker 1: are above our basic needs. He called meta motivations. Meta
Speaker 1: grumbles are higher forms. You know, I've had met as,
Speaker 1: like higher higher form of each of these things. So
Speaker 1: we can have lower forms of grumbles, which are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm hungry, Oh my god, no one
Speaker 1: loves me. Oh my god, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know, like no respects me. But meta grumbles are
Speaker 1: like grumbling and being completely dissatisfied with things that lie
Speaker 1: outside of yourself, you know, like I'm so frustrated that
Speaker 1: there's such a lack of beauty in my environment right now,
Speaker 1: the lack of justice, deficiency of meaning. Those kinds of
Speaker 1: concerns have a different flavor to them and can be
Speaker 1: viewed higher than are lower grumbles in the sense that
Speaker 1: they don't always need to be satisfied. They may never be.
Speaker 1: It might actually be good to be perpetually dissatisfied with
Speaker 1: those things. Why, he said, at the highest level of consciousness,
Speaker 1: we are beyond health and happiness. Such words don't have
Speaker 1: meaning anymore in our world view. What it made me
Speaker 1: think of was I agreed with those meta grumbles, and
Speaker 1: then I also sort of thought, well, like you just said,
Speaker 1: there's not enough beauty or meaning. My metic grumble is
Speaker 1: often with myself. What I feel like is occasionally my
Speaker 1: lack of ability to perceive those things, you know, is
Speaker 1: like I know that there's meaning and beauty right where
Speaker 1: I'm at, and yet I'll be damned, but I can't
Speaker 1: seem to see it today. I just can't find it today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's that interesting that like the next day you
Speaker 1: might look at the same thing and suddenly it looks
Speaker 1: beautiful to you. I mean, the same thing, you know
Speaker 1: how you notice that, Like, yeah, you'd be like, you
Speaker 1: might have great appreciation. Gosh, I'm so lucky to have
Speaker 1: a mom like I have. And then the next day,
Speaker 1: you know, she she nags you to death, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't see that, right, Yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 1: your mom's like, no comment. Yeah, yeah, we're gonna You've
Speaker 1: got a line that I think is a really powerful line,
Speaker 1: and it summarizes a lot of what we were talking
Speaker 1: about a little bit earlier, and I guess still very
Speaker 1: much in what we're describing right now, which is the
Speaker 1: self can be our greatest resource, but it can also
Speaker 1: be our darkest enemy. So you might challenge the even
Speaker 1: grass resource part. I feel like a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the Buddhist world that they kind of hate on
Speaker 1: the self and and and I know, I know you're
Speaker 1: not like that right now now, I'm not one of them.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think so. I think it's a
Speaker 1: concept that is actually fairly useful in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: And it's also that's why I said, when I said, well,
Speaker 1: the self is an illusion, I was like, well, that's
Speaker 1: not really what I mean, because no, on on some levels,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, it's not psychologically an illusion. It's
Speaker 1: a psychological mechanism. Yeah. Yeah, And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there are moments where I feel like myself gets in
Speaker 1: the way, and there are plenty of moments where I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a pretty useful thing to have a
Speaker 1: sense of People who completely lack a sense of self
Speaker 1: that psycho pathological, for instance, people with borderline personality disorder
Speaker 1: report feeling no sense of self that's independent from others.
Speaker 1: They feel like there's always serving others and don't have
Speaker 1: any grounding. What I try to do in my book
Speaker 1: is have a good synthesis between Eastern notions of self
Speaker 1: actualization and Western notions of self actualization and have an
Speaker 1: integration of them, because I think too much selflessness can
Speaker 1: become pathological, just as pathological, not more so than too
Speaker 1: much selfishness. UM So I try to mix it up
Speaker 1: by talked in the book about healthy selfishness, for instance,
Speaker 1: that whole section on that um I talk about when
Speaker 1: you have a deep integration at the highest level. The
Speaker 1: word selfish doesn't make any sense anymore because what you
Speaker 1: do is good for you and it simultaneously good for society.
Speaker 1: So what does that even mean anymore for it to
Speaker 1: be selfish? Is there anything that you'd like to make
Speaker 1: sure we touch on or that you feel is important
Speaker 1: that we haven't covered on as we as we head
Speaker 1: towards nearing the end. No, please don't say that we're
Speaker 1: nearing the end after playing that game. I don't actually
Speaker 1: want the end happened. Um Well, I want to give
Speaker 1: a shout out to swim Pony, who is the experimental
Speaker 1: group that that at the end. First of all, I
Speaker 1: wanted to give them their name a shout out so
Speaker 1: people could google that if they wanted swim Pony. But
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we had a chance to cover
Speaker 1: the transcendence aspect and the plateau experience that I don't
Speaker 1: get a chance to talk about that all the time.
Speaker 1: I just want to emphasize to people that this idea
Speaker 1: of what you feed grow stronger, well, that's backed up
Speaker 1: by evolutionary psychology. Robert Wright wrote a wonderful book called
Speaker 1: Why Buddhism Is True. I don't know if you read
Speaker 1: that book. Yeah, we had him on, Oh great, because
Speaker 1: he must have loved the parable because the research does
Speaker 1: show that we have lots of parts of ourselves that
Speaker 1: are constantly fighting us. Well called it the civil war
Speaker 1: within and it's you know, constantly battling within us, and
Speaker 1: we can integrate it and we can have harmony among
Speaker 1: all these factions. A lot of that is about where
Speaker 1: we put our focus, and we where we put our attention.
Speaker 1: Attention lies at the heart of so much of our suffering,
Speaker 1: and I think that it's important to recognize that we
Speaker 1: can nurture what's good within us just as much as
Speaker 1: we can nurture what's dangerous or damaging to our health.
Speaker 1: But I would also say that this idea of good
Speaker 1: and bad is also a dichotomy that is transcended as
Speaker 1: of economy, transcendence, the high level of conscious. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: even understand that parable. You know, evil and good would
Speaker 1: be integrated so that there'd be a higher unity. Neither
Speaker 1: would make sense on its own. You know, ultimately, nothing
Speaker 1: would be viewed as good and bad by itself. That
Speaker 1: things like kindness can actually backfire, and you can try
Speaker 1: to be kind of people who aren't ready to receive
Speaker 1: it and do damage to them. Um, you could have anxiety,
Speaker 1: and anxiety and lots of situations can be helpful. So
Speaker 1: I think that parable is very simplistic in categorizing. Well,
Speaker 1: these are the things that are the bad wolf, and
Speaker 1: these are things that the good wolf. And sometimes those
Speaker 1: things that are listed under the good wolf can be
Speaker 1: very bad, and under certain contexts, things that are listomed
Speaker 1: to the bad wolf can be great. Like aggression can
Speaker 1: can lead to growth in a Martin Luther or King
Speaker 1: sort of way when integrated towards motivating you to to
Speaker 1: solve an injustice. So that's why I like Maslow's framework
Speaker 1: of things that have a D flavor to it and
Speaker 1: a B flavor to it, deficiency versus growth or being
Speaker 1: and anything. You know, I think nothing is either good
Speaker 1: or bad on its face. Everything can either have a
Speaker 1: D flavor or be flavor UM includes aggression. D aggression
Speaker 1: be authenticity. You can have authenticity it comes from a
Speaker 1: D level where you have to say everything that's on
Speaker 1: your mind, like and you call that authentic as opposed
Speaker 1: to be flavor of authenticity where you really grow and
Speaker 1: um and and do things and make choices that are authentic,
Speaker 1: but they're authentic and will help you grow. I often
Speaker 1: think about that da of like any personality trait taken
Speaker 1: too far to one direction or the other tends to
Speaker 1: become problematic, but not just an extreme extremity version. But
Speaker 1: just where is it coming from? Is it coming from
Speaker 1: what kind of motivation? Is it coming from motivation to
Speaker 1: satisfy a deep deficiency within your soul? Or is it
Speaker 1: being motivated by wanting to grow and to integrate and
Speaker 1: to help others? Ye, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Let's wrap up by talking about AWE. You call all
Speaker 1: the every person's spiritual experience. My colleague David Yiden called
Speaker 1: it that. Yeah, Like yeah, I really resonated with that
Speaker 1: description of all. All is the state of conscious where
Speaker 1: you feel reverence for something as well as maybe even
Speaker 1: a little operating fear of it. But it's just so
Speaker 1: beyond you, It's so beyond comprehension um. It's it's you're
Speaker 1: struck by the beauty of it and the scope of it.
Speaker 1: And my collegus and I have been studying it because
Speaker 1: we do think that it's out of all the transcending experiences.
Speaker 1: It's it can be stripped of its religious connotations. Regardless
Speaker 1: of our religious belief system. We can all experience the
Speaker 1: same feeling of all. We can all have that feeling
Speaker 1: and rally around similar experiences. You know, the mystical experience
Speaker 1: is not something that people easily divorce from religion, but
Speaker 1: I think all is something that can be and gets
Speaker 1: as close to it. Yeah, and I loved the discussion
Speaker 1: of there being two sort of main cognitive parts of it.
Speaker 1: One is the perception of something vast and the other
Speaker 1: being the fact that it's hard to mentally process. It's
Speaker 1: sort to put it into a box. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: That sort of leads to this idea of a unitary continuum.
Speaker 1: Tell us what the unitary continuum is? Well, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of transcendent experiences we can have in our lives,
Speaker 1: and they differ in the extent to which there's a
Speaker 1: deep connection between softened world. We feel some connection to
Speaker 1: something we're doing. We feel absorbed, We have mystical experiences
Speaker 1: alway on the right side of they continuum. That's like
Speaker 1: a oneness of the kazoo, you know. I think that's
Speaker 1: a I think that's an ancient zen terms zoo. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're you're one with everything, even where people are
Speaker 1: like I want to check you in our mental institution,
Speaker 1: you know, because but you don't need to be all
Speaker 1: the way there. You can be a somewhere on the
Speaker 1: continuum um. You can have feel so inspired and have
Speaker 1: a peak experience. And Maso's view two see great possibilities
Speaker 1: for yourself you never saw before or or for others.
Speaker 1: Gratitude the love experiences is certainly on that on that
Speaker 1: could tow quing romantical of um. Some people are, yes,
Speaker 1: some of the most profound experience that one could have.
Speaker 1: So I think that we can have a whole continue
Speaker 1: of it of transcendent experiences, yep. And I like that
Speaker 1: because I think it makes transcendence applicable at a lot
Speaker 1: of different levels instead of like transcendence is just this
Speaker 1: thing that's way out there. No, we all get flavors
Speaker 1: of it. Is that correct? That's what I'm hoping to do.
Speaker 1: I hope to democratize spirituality a bit. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: worthy goal, I think so. I'm glad, do you think so? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well it Scott, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the show. I really enjoyed the book a great deal
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate getting this chance to talk with
Speaker 1: you too. Eric goes for real delight to chatt with
Speaker 1: you today. Thank you if what you just heard was
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